Moving on

In February I told you about the great art caper. Not one of my proudest moments, to be sure. But in the end, it was resolved amicably. The head of the art department got wind of my actions, hell he probably read my blog, and worked out a deal in which I was to provide the student with four newly stretched blank canvases and all parties would agree that the matter was settled.

Well Karma is a bitch. I can tell you that. You may think you have made your amends and then Bam! It gets you. I got a call Monday afternoon from a fellow grad who informed me that all of my paintings had been tagged. I say all because I had just finished hanging my paintings for my upcoming thesis oral that will take place this Friday. Someone snuck in late Sunday night, probably between 1 and 2 in the morning and painted a brilliant red stripe right through the middle of each of ten canvases that I have been working on collectively since last August.

Now I have to tell you that I was pissed. Right? But as I made arrangements with J. to go out there immediately, I had already begun forming the nucleus of my response which was- the suffering ends here. I have had my share in this stint of vandalism, but the last thing I wanted was to perpetuate this nonsense any further. It has to end.

I went to work, lectured for an hour and then drove out to school to survey the damage. Fortunately while at work I ran into a colleague, a print maker, versed in solvents, and he hooked me up with just the formula that I needed to undo the damage. There is no solvent in the world that will remove spray paint without softening the acrylic underneath; the trick it to find the solvent that is mild enough to loosen the enamel enough to sponge it off while doing minimal damage to the under-painting.


I worked diligently last night giving each of my precious babies a sponge bath and then went back again today to retouch the original painting with a fresh coat to hide the damage. The net result was nothing short of miraculous. That and my attitude, which I was able to keep in check despite the constant stream of on lookers who kept asking “why aren’t you more pissed off?” to which I would frequently and annoyingly respond “It’s just another opportunity for spiritual growth.” I have to admit I took a lot of secret pleasure in that response, but I always delivered it stoically and with great reserve. You would have been proud.

Well I am ready for my Oral exam on Friday, but I want to leave you with a parting thought that was given to me by my friend the Un-

“The weird thing is, it fits in with my whole theory about Final Exams. Which, if I have never unloaded this onto you, I will do so now. When you're finishing a job or academic program, my theory is (this comes from the Professoressa, actually) that the universe often if not ALWAYS presents us with some kind of special Final Exam. We're being asked, ‘Are you really ready to move on to the next thing?’ And this is additional/extra to our required earthly exams--this is a special spiritual exam. I had them leaving Santa Fe, or leaving England [snip] Hell, *I* had one the night *I* was ordained, in 2002. It's a weird thing that just happens. It's almost like the gods are saying (I think): ‘Okay, you've done all the required stuff and you've jumped through all the corporeal hoops. But we all know (they say to you) that your REAL work here wasn't about signing papers and filling out forms and getting As and managing to complete thesis shows. Your REAL work here was something deeper--something spiritual. Have you passed that test? Have you learned what we Gods wanted you to learn? And most importantly are you ready to go onto the NEXT thing?’

So I think all this shit that's flying at you, suddenly, inexplicably--with the program, with this horrific vandalism, with [snip] life even--is your Real Final Exam. Inviting you to think about what the last five years has REALLY been about, because we both know it wasn't just about accumulating letters on a transcript. There was a real spiritual work you have been doing, alone at night with those canvases, in those confrontational interactions you've had with your department members, writing those blogposts. Something deep and secret, known only to you.”

I share this with you because I feel the gut wrenching truth of it in every word. Sure life offers you challenges, and when life gives you lemons you make lemonade etc. But that isn’t what is being said here. What I hear my friend saying is that there are tests in life, moments that say are you ready to move on to the next phase, have you done what you needed to do here and are you able to put it all down and move on? I believe this because I know it is true, but also because I really feel that I am ready for this test, that my attitude, my ability to set is all aside fix the problem and move on is the answer to that test. So one Friday I am going to take out my no. 2 pencil and fill in the bubble that says “next” and win lose or draw I am moving on.

One more week

My sister called me last week wanting to know the date my thesis exhibition. “I’m thinking about coming” she said. I told her that I wasn’t sure but that I thought it was slated for the last week in April. “I’m meeting with my Chair on Thursday” I told her. “I know for sure then.”

The meeting was fairly typical. I had hung a painting I had worked on over spring break and we started with a brief critique. He was pressed for time so he moved to cut the meeting short at which point I told him I had a few questions about the thesis exhibition.

“What are your questions?”

I asked him when the date was and his response was “you figure it out.” Then I asked him about the oral examination that was to go along with the exhibition. He started to answer, then paused and said “of course all of this depends on whether or not your committee approves your exhibition.”

“What do you mean?”

“You committee need to approve the exhibition in advance of the final show.” I looked at him stupidly for a moment as his words sunk in. “You have another hurdle to jump” he said.

“I thought that is was the midterm was about.”

“No.”

I have to admit I felt a little crazy right about that time, but as the reality of the situation sank in I grew into acceptance. I mean, I knew that I was going to have to defend my work in front of my committee, right? It just turns out that I have to do that defense in advance of the show, not right before it. In short, I went from having about four weeks to get ready for my defense to meeting with my committee next week.

“You know what is coming” he said, referring to the midterm “You just have to decide how you react to it.” I thought of the prison rape scene in the movie the Shawshank Redemption. “It’s like getting a speeding ticket” he continued “do you call the cop a prick and give him the finger or do you take the ticket, smile and thank him?”

I felt pretty good about the situation at first. All I have to do is paint my ass off for a week. I know what the faculties objections are, I got that earful at midterm. So, correct the problems and move on. However, when I woke up this morning I felt needlessly crazy. The pronouncement felt random, worse it felt personal, and it left me with a sinking feeling of insecurity and depression.

I was talking about this with my wife when it hit me. The situation might be personal and insecure. But does that mean I have to be? Looking back over my blog posts from the last few years I have noted an inordinate number of posts that have to do with the stresses of grad school. Most of them I can’t even bring myself to read. It is safe to say that graduate school has provided me with a limitless number of opportunities for spiritual growth. But here is the thing, I seem to have evaded the most basic one, namely that I get to choose how I react to this situation. Do I roll over and die in a little grey puddle of depression, or do I realize that this is not about me, in that great, character defining sense of ‘is this about me’ way. Sure it is about me work and it could have a profound effect on my future, but something tells me being afraid isn’t going to help.

So for today my mantra is “it maybe personal and insecure, but that doesn’t mean I have to be.”

I knew this thing was coming. It's just coming faster than I originally thought. In reality, if I do this thing right, I have one more week. Jesus! One more week. Is that all? Suddenly I wonder what have I been doing for the past five years and where all that time went. Where has all that work gone? One more week. Wow. I wonder What will step up and make me crazy once graduate school is gone?

Who was your bully?

My daughters like American Girl Doll products including the series of movies that give life and back-story to the dolls and their lives. The most recent was a movie titled Chrissa Stands Strong. The story tracks the life of Chrissa as she is uprooted from her home and lands in a new community and more importantly, a new school. There she must face the trials and tribulations of being the new face and eventually encounters bullying from a group of queen bees, the “mean girls.”

My daughters like to identify with the characters in the movies drawing on the title characters and their assorted cohorts, but when our third child announced that she liked the main queen bee of the movie, Tara, we knew it was time to pull the plug.

Who was your bully? I can summon a long list of assorted bullies from my past, the main one being a boy named Robert B. who was a grade higher than me, and who took endless delight in snapping me with towels in the locker room, punching me on the play ground and even one episode where I was kicked in the balls as I was standing beside my hall locker. I am a forgiving soul but I have to tell you I hope that sonofabitch dies a horrible mean death. ☺

Honestly though, I think I was terrorized a lot as a child: ranting father, older brothers, school yard bullies and an assortment of psychopathic children encountered in after school programs left indelible scars on my gentle psyche.

Let’s face it. I was a wimp. I was what you might call athletically challenged. I had no facility for running, throwing, or kicking and had a genuine fear of being pummeled. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that I wouldn’t recover. I had been knocked around enough to know that you take your lumps, you put on an ice pack and within a few days the bruises and bumps would disappear. But this knowledge alone was not enough to overcome my fear of, well, pain.

In all likelihood my situation was acerbated by the fact that we moved every two or three years ensuring that I was the perpetual new kid that got prodded and tease and humiliated. At some point, sick and tired of being the world’s punching bag, I started taking Tae-Kwon-Do lessons.

I was talking about this in therapy the other day when the therapist pointed out that my experiences had lead me to fight fire with fire. As I grew older these skills were needed less and less. However, I never fully let go of those old feelings. Sadly, the solutions that had worked for me as a teenager, i.e. fighting back, no longer worked as an adult. The net result is, well, that at some point, if I am frustrated enough or tired enough, or just plain fed up, I will contemplate hitting (or occasionally spitting.) Worse, as I am tired or frustrated in those situations, I seldom take the time to contemplate anything and have been known to lash out.

Get that? Character defects are one-time assets that now no longer aid us and in fact cause us harm. I know this. I have heard it talked about in twelve step rooms for years. Things like over confidence can get you the job but it can also cost you the job later on. There are really too many examples to name there here, because really any asset is a defect of character waiting in the wings.

I don’t have a lot of good solution here. I had to ask my wife what the twelve step solution to assets/defects run amok was and she said (matter of factly) “The seventh step prayer:”

“My Creator, 
I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. 
I pray that you now remove from me 
every single defect of character, which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. 
Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.”

I think like anything the first step is recognizing the problem, giving it a name and realizing that I have been working in the dark here. Realizing that my behavior was born of these past experiences was a slap on the forehead moment for me. Feelings of inferiority or the need to explain or justify myself are also linked here and I is going to take time to sort it all out. It is a weird moment when you realize your particular brand of crazy was learned. Weirder still to think that those character defects might be useful to god (as the seventh step implies). Though frankly I will be glad when I am rid of them. Because my character defects are now my bully.

Heavy Drinkers

J. said something to me the other day that made me stop and think. We were talking about alcoholism (big shock) and she reminded me that the big book of AA makes a distinction between the alcoholic and the heavy drinker. “The worst thing” said J. "is when an alcoholic gets a heavy drinker as a sponsor. Heavy drinkers have a different experience with alcohol and the advice they may give an alcoholic could be misleading.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, I don’t know if that is an exact quote or just the way I remember it. I found myself wondering what is the difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic. For example, how does a heavy drinker, who has gone into AA for help, differ from an alcoholic? Does the heavy drinker know at that point that they are just a heavy drinker and not an alcoholic? All that is required for membership is a desire to stop drinking. So it doesn’t really matter if you like one beer or twenty. It doesn’t matter if you can stop after two drinks or can’t stop after a dozen, all you have to want to do is stop. The rest is for god to sort out.

There are a lot of anti-AA websites out there that will tell you that alcoholism is not a disease, and that AA is a religion or worse a cult. More there are sites that will talk about the abysmal failure of AA to “cure” most of its members. I remember talking to an alcoholic once who told me that one in a hundred who walked thought the doors would still be there in 6 months and that one in a hundred of those ones would still be there in a year. That is a frighteningly small number when you think about it. But none of this convinces me that AA is wrong or that AA is bad or that we should throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater because the numbers aren’t to alcoholics what penicillin is to bacteria.

Why are people so vehemently against AA? That is a hard question. But if I had to guess, most people who hate AA were people who at least visited those rooms and that most people who come into contact with twelve step programs do so because they are unhealthy in some way and are looking for help. Maybe AA couldn’t help them, or maybe they weren’t able to accept the help that AA offered or maybe the syntax of AA just rubbed them the wrong way. Who can say. One thing is for sure it elicits violent emotions from some. You wouldn’t think someone visiting a church or a therapist would walk away spitting vitriol against other members, but that is what happens in AA. Some hate AA with a passion, even though AA really exists as an organization designed to help people cope with their addictions. Sad.

I sometimes wonder about my own drinking as well as that of my family. I have had friends tell me “you’re a lush” and one co-worker who outright called me an alcoholic to my face. Clearly I think I fall into the category of heavy drinker, as I think most of my family does. But the difference between heavy drinker and alcoholic is a tenuous one and should never be taken for granted. The road to heavy drinking often interescts with the road to alcoholism and it might only take a gentle nudge to push one from one path to another.

I had a grandmother who was probably a heavy drinker until she found out she had cancer. I don’t know the facts of the story, but the way I tell myself the story is that my grandmother got the cancer and then she got drunk. My father tells me a similar story, one that ends with him in al-anon for about a year.

I go to al-anon. But I couldn’t imagine only going for a year or two. Al-anon has become a part of my way of thinking. It isn’t the only way, but the language of al-anon is inclusive enough that it fits nicely into my own spiritual beliefs that are really informed for the most part by picking and choosing what I believe from the best of most world religions. Al-anon lets my spiritual beliefs evolve as I grow and change, and it gives me a forum to voice these changes with a group that not only listens but affirms and offers feedback.

Today In church I asked my pastor about the new church movement. He sighed and said it would take hours to explain. His wife nudged him and said he had to work on his elevator speech about the movement. A few minutes later someone, I think it was my wife, said: “It’s like a cross between church and twelve step, isn’t it?” He agreed, adding more details and analogies. I kept thinking that there was an Episcopalian joke in there somewhere. But we’re Methodists, or at least they are, and so I kept it to myself.

Whenever I think about my spirituality I always seem to ask myself the same question my wife pointed out during that conversation on alcoholism. Am I an alcoholic in a room full of heavy drinkers? That is, does this or that spiritual message really fit me? Or am I just being lead the party line and swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. The question of “who are you” or “what do you believe” is so open ended and so vast that it is easy to get caught up in the moment, caught up in “what do I believe” and forget for a time that what I really believe in is the search for questions, better questions, more probing question than these that force me to examine myself and let go of the answers. The answers are so temporary and so little anyway, it is the questions that really interest me. Forget about the answers, those like so much else are really ends in a life full of possibility. Why be settled with answers? I find my life works best when I let these go and leave the rest up to god.

fighting love

The other night I was at a friend’s house having dinner when, somewhere in the evening he disappeared. I had no idea where he had gone so I went to look for him and discovered him fuming in the kitchen. He waved me away with a gesture that said both “I want to be alone” and “it isn’t you.” I later came to find out that he had had an incident with his son.

I think about this encounter almost daily because I am so in awe of it. I mean, if I hadn’t gone to see where he was, I might never have known that he was upset, and this is so counter- what? Intuitive? to my own experience. I mean, when I get mad, I get loud, and consequently, everyone knows.

I learned this from my father. When my dad gets mad he gets loud. I’ve had other male role models including two grandfathers that never showed anger, at least not verbally or physically, but my dad shouts, and that’s what stuck. I shout. I holler and I cuss and I carry on and I wave my arms menacingly and, if you are really lucky, I hit.

I don’t want to get into that right now. I will, just not right now. Right now I want to think about something else. Hell, I want to think about anything else, but J. and I have been on a streak of fighting and I can’t stop thinking about it. Mostly I think about how I want it to stop and how powerless I feel over my ability to stop the fighting.

I mean, every married couple fights right? Put two people together long enough and they will fight about something. Here is something I wish I knew fifteen years ago, the trick of the successful marriage is not about love it’s about forgiveness. It is about forgiving your spouse and about forgiving yourself. Well, maybe that is love but it isn’t the kind of love they sell in dime store novels, it isn’t the kind of love you romanticize about in college, and it isn’t the love you think will endure forever. That kind of love ends up on the big screen. Fighting love? Well let’s just say fighting love is the kind of love that ends up quietly biting its upper lip in the kitchen while life goes on around you.

I am trying really hard to be gentle with myself right now, so I am not going to spend a lot of time telling myself how wrong I am to get loud when I get angry, and I am not going to spend time looking at anger and violence. Instead I want to nod to fighting love, because I think really I have a lot to learn from fighting love. I mean, my relationship with my spouse has not been without its ups and downs and so I guess from one point of view you could say our relationship has been the beneficiary of successful fighting love. But I am slow and I continue to fail to learn the most basic rule about fighting love which is… hell I don’t even know.

I guess I keep thinking about my friend standing in the kitchen. Fighting love doesn’t mean carrying on the fight. Fighting love is not about winning the fight. Then again fighting love is not about losing either. Fighting love might be defined as releasing outcomes and surrendering yourself to the process.

They say that unconditional love is unconditional. Fighting love must be part of that because any conditions you set become obstacles to overcome. I don’t know if it means anything but so often when I become angry I lose myself in the fight. I become irrational and belligerent. I suspect that instead of surrendering myself to the process I have lost myself in the process. I need to meditate on this more.

It seems I have been fighting a lot lately. I have this feeling that I am either a wet blanket or a wall of stone. I seem to vacillate between sucking up everything or putting up with nothing. Again, this seems to be shades of my father. I can almost feel myself acquiescing to his tantrums or alternately telling him to FO and die. I don’t know that I ever learned fighting love and so I have ended up with a love that fights.

I made some comment today that J. said was patronizing. I didn’t mean it as patronizing, but there you are. It could have ended badly, with feeling hurt on both sides. Instead we had a terse discussion that ended with apologies and a reconciling hug. Still, fighting love has a way of feeling a lot like fighting, and maybe that is where I have gone so wrong. I know the sensation of succumbing to the irrational feelings, the hurt and the shame that are so much a part of any good fight. I have those feelings and I have nowhere to put them. In a fight you neatly tuck those feelings into a blanket of anger and carry them around on your back for a few days, but when you reconcile there is no anger, there is no blanket. There is only the feeling that you have done your best, hurt feelings and all.

Probably the feelings of hurt and shame are residual and just need time to pass. I don’t need to wrap them in a blanket. I don’t need to tuck them in for bed, because in all reality they are unwelcome visitors, the remnants of past fights long buried that don’t belong here. Most likely I have called upon them, because years of experience have taught me this is what you are supposed to do when you feel backed up against the wall with nowhere to turn.

So I am unlearning bad behavior. I am standing in the kitchen, chewing my lip reminding myself that the person I am really fighting here is me, letting go of the fighting one slow breath at a time.

Naming your problem

Mississippi John Hurt sings one of my favorite blues songs on his Last Sessions album. The title of the track is Trouble, I’ve had it all my days. Really just about every song on this album is a keeper so if you are looking for a good blues album, or if you know a special someone who really likes the blues, you have my recommendation.

One of the stanzas goes like this:
Well, you talk about trouble, I had it all my days.
Trouble, had it all my days.
Seem like trouble, gonna carry me to my grave.

Mississippi John Hurt’s song is a love song about his girlfriend and her “evil ways.” He pines for her, he goes to jail for her, and despite his willingness to do anything for her, he thinks that she will eventually leave him. It is the epitome of the classic blues tragedy.

I like that image of trouble carrying me to my grave. It conjures the image of problems taking on human forms. I mean, it is one thing to say, I am having problems with my spouse or my children or my coworker, but entirely another to say, my problem exists as an independent entity, capable of walking around and talking to others and even picking me up and carrying me on occasion.

In the song, MJH suggests that while his girlfriend is causing him pain, the real trouble of his life has existed for many years. And that his mother even warned him at one point that trouble was a monkey on his back.

My momma told me, before I left her door.
Lord, momma told me...
Gonna have trouble, Son every where you go.

This image strengthens the notion that MJH’s troubles lie somehow outside of his experience with his girlfriend or his life in general, and that trouble is like his shadow, always present and always connected to his every movement even in the most illusive way.

If your problems could walk around, if they could talk to people, and hold your hand, if they could lead you to the store and lie down with you when you sleep, what would that problem look like. Is your problem masculine or feminine? Is your problem old or young? Is your problem short and lean or tall and fat? Blond or Brunette?

I have a friend who was dating a girl with an inoperable brain tumor. It was the first time I had ever known someone remotely close to me who had cancer, and it gave me a window into the life of people whose problems are infinitely more pressing than mine. I mean this woman is going to die from her problem. her troubles are literally carrying her to her grave, and so she did what most people in her situation do. She named her tumor. Like that great line from the movie Fight Club “If I did have a tumor I would name it Marla. Marla. The little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, but you can't.”

What would you name your problem? Evelyn? Spencer? We know that everything is in a name. If you want your network to run smoothly, you need to use a good strategy in choosing a name for your computer. Some names are destine to have certain problems that are predictable. Something tells me this isn't as easy as naming a doll or a fish. (Though these are problematic too) Maybe more like naming a penis or a musical instrument.

So what is it going to be? Somewhere, out there, there is a free range problem, roaming around like spirits waiting for some chance encounter when one day they will adopt you. It might be a bit like a horse picking up a flea. The horse might be at first contently oblivious to the fact that he has a passenger, while the flea might be thinking “Wow! I have a horse on me.” Whatever the realization, gradually the awareness of the problem’s presence becomes noticeable. Like a pair of schoolgirls simultaneously jumping rope, your actions and those of your problems become quickly syncopated. If it hangs around long enough your problem and you might come to even look alike, like pets and their owners, or worse, like the old married couple that both wear flannel and have the same haircut. Soon you and your problem become indistinguishable.

It is at this point that you might want to think about divorce proceedings. Because, like any couple that has been together for a long time, you and your problems won’t separate easily, in fact chances are that the process will be a long, drawn out, and painful affair that lasts months or even years.

What would I name my problem(s). Like the demons in the movie Exorcist I might name them “Legion” for they seem like both many and one. But this would be unfair to my problem, and highlights the final problem in naming a problem. My constant companion has been with me for so long, I want to treat it with kid’s gloves. I want to be kind to it. I want to be gentle. I don’t want to name it “mucus” or “scumbag.” I want to give it some gentle, sensible name like Lillian or Bob and pretend that my problem(s) are sensible manageable people. This seems to ensure that the problem, whatever it is, is going to be with me a good long while.

Well, you talk about trouble, I had it all my days.
Trouble, had it all my days.
Seem like trouble, gonna carry me to my grave.

Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn't.

O.K. so here’s the thing. I write a post about my crazy mind, and how, even in moments of pure triumph, my crazy mind turns them into moments of abject terror and panic, and when I scan through the responses I have gotten that congratulate me and ask “what was the problem?” Then I start to wonder…am I the only person with crazy mind? Because for a while crazy mind had me thinking that everyone had crazy mind, and maybe they do, except that for most people crazy mind is manageable. Or maybe it isn’t, except that my variety of crazy mind would be manageable to them, while their variety of crazy mind would seem like nothing to me.

I could try to define crazy mind. I could tell you what it is and where it comes from and hope that it would make sense. But it wouldn’t help. It doesn’t make the crazy go away. Nothing makes the crazy go away, well, nothing and time. But I am no good at waiting around for time to make the difference and so I rush about like a gerbil straightening his cage, pushing a pile of woodchips from one corner to the other all the while telling myself that this is somehow making a difference.

I go to al-anon and study the twelve steps and go to church and talk about God and in my spare time I read about Zen and Buddhism and philosophy and none of it helps. But mostly I think this is the case because I think that they will help. I think that having the answer to some question will somehow make the difference. But it doesn’t because all answers do is to explain a theory about how a thing should work. They explain the theory, not the thing itself.

The other night I went over to a friend’s house to help him install a ceiling fan. Well actually he asked me to de-install one fan, move another fan from a different room into its place and install a third in the vacancy left by the second. Piece of cake.

He actually invited a couple of friends over to help with the project(s) and really installing a ceiling fan is mostly about shutting off the power, hooking up the mounts, matching the various same colored wires to one another and turning the power back on. That is, in theory what is supposed to happen, except that nothing worked the way it should.

The old fan came off without so much as a whimper. The replacement fan also slid nicely into place. The new fan had a lot of components and took a while to assemble but it too finally hung proudly from the ceiling. Everything worked the way it should until the power was turned on, at which point it was revealed that nothing worked.

The easiest thing to do was start with the second fan. A little toggling of the wires and a bit of carefully screwing the plate back into position did the trick. But the new fan, the one with all the new fangled gadgets, that one took more work. I will spare you the story of trial and failure, but I will tell you briefly how, for one spectacular moment it did work, except that I hadn’t secured the toggle bolt and so, as the fan sat their proudly spinning, it suddenly lurched from its mount as it had been slowly unscrewing itself from the ceiling and fell, dangling from the many multicolored pretty wires that are probably even now the culprit for why it will not work at this moment. It worked, but now it doesn’t. We got it to light up, but the fan won’t turn. Having light is at least a good start but knowing we were licked for the night we put our tools up and ate dinner and laughed off the whole enterprise with good cheer.

There are many maxims that cover the gist of this story. The one I use the most is “the best lain plans of mice and men often go awry.” Another is my favorite and comes from the book “Little Big Man” and it goes something like this:

With Custer and his regiment annihilated, Jack the narrator accompanies his Indian grandfather Old Lodge Skins to a nearby hill where the weary leader decides to end his life. He gives his speech to the Great Spirit, saying he is ready to die. After the speech he lies down motionless for several minutes. It begins to rain the Grandfather wakes up and says “Am I still in this world?”

“Yes, Grandfather.” Says Jack.

Old Lodge Skins groans and gets up saying “I was afraid of that.” Then he adds poignantly “Well, sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn't.”

I don’t know what this has to do with my having crazy mind. Or even how I got here. I know that when I walked into my friends house I had no idea that things would turn out so half assed, just as I had no idea that I would freak out and convince myself that the faculties remarks were going to spell my doom somehow.

I feel so crazy most of the time and all I want is for it to stop. But that usually doesn’t happen all at once. So, in the mean time all I can do is to do the things that I know to help. Like going to meetings and talking to people and keeping a careful inventory.

I know that I am terrible at setting boundaries and that I am a huge people pleaser that just wants to be like and is mortified and terrified at the thought that someone out there isn’t happy. Also I am learning that this lack of boundaries means I am easily frustrated and that I just as easily allow this pent up frustration to build until it explodes in torrents of anger that terrify my wife and children. Also I am learning that part of embracing my imperfection and allowing myself to be human means learning to stop trying to explain everything all the time, kind of like starting a post with the words “O.K. so here’s the thing” as if to say “yet again I how found the “answers”.” Finally I think I need to be gentle with myself. As I often time tell a once adopted sponsee from al-anon: "eat, sleep, and try not to think so much."

Sometimes that Magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't I know it is time to take my own advice, to go easy on myself and wait for the magic to do its stuff.

a zebra and his stripes

So my sister calls me and leaves a voice mail message that goes something like “um, I just read your blog and I think congratulations are in order. I mean, I can’t tell for sure but it seems like you just went through an examination, and it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong, and you passed. So, congratulations!”

I had to think about his for a moment when I heard it. Especially the part where she said “you didn’t do anything wrong.” It just hit me like a ton of brick. “Yeah” I thought. “Hell yeah! I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong!” I let it sink in for a minute and then I repeated it again to myself. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I passed.”

In a pass/fail situation there is only pass and only fail. Still I can’t help but wish I had passed more smoothly or that the oral examination had been more congenial. But as they say, in the end, no one is going to ask how you passed. They are just going to ask if you have the degree. So why am I walking around like some big open sore? Why do I feel like every nerve in my body is exposed and raw?

In private I told my graduate committee chair “I think this place is having an adverse effect on my mental stability.”

His response? “We just have to get you out of here.”

His response hurt. I felt like he was saying “We are just so sick of you.” But another friend pointed out that it really didn’t matter what he was saying, because what “we need to get you out of here” really means is “this is poison” and I have to go.

I think the thing is I feel like a failure because it doesn’t go more smoothly. That somehow, my inability to have more meaningful communication with the faculty is some sort of character defect, and I have been beating myself up for this reason for quite a while.

The sad thing is I think I am predisposed to this kind of behavior. I tend to make the failings of my relationships my responsibility. It is horribly self pitying and so completely unproductive, and yet so much easier for me than realizing that I am powerless over the outcomes.

Duke: The lights are growing dim. I know a life of crime led me to this sorry fate... And yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.
Otto Maddox: Bullshit! You're a white suburban punk, just like me!
Duke: But it still hurts!
Otto Maddox: You're gonna be all right. [Duke groans pitifully] Maybe not.

The Gita says I have a right to my actions but not the outcome of my actions. The way of right action is to release fear and uncertainty of outcomes and embrace the moment rather than the result. Intuitively I understand this. What I lack is the resolve to implement this way of the middle path in my life. Instead I internalize and allow fear and what I call crazy thinking to over run me ability to cope with reality as it is happening.

I am terrified. I would say I am terrified of failure, but recent activities suggest I am just as equally terrified of success. Check that, what I should really say is, I seem to be terrified of life. As the Gita would say I am so hung up on results, good or bad, that I am unable to see them for what they are. Worse, realizing that I am engaged in this behavior, I beat myself up for it.

I don’t mind being crazy. I have lived with my crazy mind for most of my life now and I am starting to get used to it. But I really hate this tendency to beat myself up for being who I am. It is as if a llama would throw itself off the cliff for being a llama, or a lion would surrender itself to the zebras for being a lion. I am brash and cocky and pretentious, and when the faculty says “you are too brash” I immediately fall into despair and self doubt. “Is that right?” and “Is that good? Bad?” and finally “what should I do?”

Well I tell you what I am going to do. It only took me two days but I am going to stop beating myself up for succeeding. I am going to stop worrying if the faculty “likes” me and focus on “getting out of there” as they say.

My wife likes to quote the big book and say “self knowledge avails us naught” or something like that. It probably means that either A) I say I am going to stop but I won’t because I can’t or B) I will stop worrying about this but only because I will find something else that the faculty does to start worrying about or C) Both.

My vote is on C. Mainly because I am powerless over my character defects. But you know, that is O.K. because the zebra shouldn’t hate himself for his stripes, and at least for this moment, right now… neither will I.

expecting different results

In yesterday’s post “why I hate grad school” I wrote of my experience undergoing the moments around my graduate review. With a days distance and some perspective I think it is fair to say that I don’t deal with stress well. This isn’t the first time I have said this. I think my inability to cope with stress pops up in many forms: especially with my kids.

Parenting is hard. When you are engaged as a parent it is almost impossible to get much else done. Children need care. They need attending. They need assistance. They need to know not to flush an entire roll of paper towels down the toilet. They need to know that pulling hair and hitting and stealing their sister’s toys are not acceptable forms of dispute resolution. But mostly they need to know I love them and that I am there for them, and they only get this when I am fully engaged with them. In fact, most of the problems that I have with kids, both in their behavior and my stress come when I try to do too many other things when I should really just be with my kids. Sadly I have tried many times to negotiate work and school and kids simultaneously, and it almost never turns out well. Quite the contrary. What I actually end up doing is teaching myself how to react stressfully to stressful situations.

Did you get that? I am not sure I did so I am going to keep saying this until I learn it. By setting up stressful situations in my life, I am not teaching myself better management skills. I am not multitasking. I am not “being efficient.” By setting up stressful situations in my life I am teaching myself how to get into stressful situations. Worse I never handle stressful situations well, so I can’t even say that I am teaching myself how to deal with stress. That would take forethought and some advanced planning. No, all I do is perfect the ability to throw myself into situations that invariably end up with me freaking out or losing my temper and wondering why life is so damn hard.

Graduate school is another example of this. At some point early on in my graduate career I felt abused. It is hard to say now, looking back, if I was abused or not, but feeling put upon I reacted badly, that is, I reacted like I do in any stressful situation: I freaked out and got angry. This set up a pattern for how I was to deal with these graduate “encounters” for the next five years; through two degrees and two schools.

In writing this I am having this “no s**t Sherlock” experience. This is the kind of thing people talk about all the time in therapy. Living with an alcoholic, for example, creates in most family members of the alcoholic a kind of rehearsed response to their behavior. But it isn’t fair to pick on people just in therapy. This is how we learn to treat our friends. This is how we learn to be with loved ones, with co-workers, and in short. We rehearse the stories we tell ourselves, like actors on the stage, until we become so good in our roles that Laurence Olivier himself could not do as good a job.

Yesterday’s response to my gradate faculty was unfortunate. But it is really MY unfortunate, because it is the response that I have come to expect from myself. The question it, I only have a few more chances to do this right, and do I want to use that time to unlearn some of these behaviors and change the way I interact with these people. Or do I move on and hope that next time will be different?

Well- one thing they say in therapy a lot it “insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.”

Why I hate graduate school

It is hard to know where to begin. Today was a hard day. But mostly, I think, because that is the story I have chosen to tell myself. Today was the day of my Graduate Comprehensive Exam. It is where I show my work and tell the faculty “I know how to make the work” and “I know how to talk about the work” so “I am ready to graduate.” Except that I was really nervous, and the day never really went as planned.

You could say that my day really began when I heard my name being called and I came to standing in front of a plate glass window. I was staring into the quad outside, but really I wasn’t staring at anything. I don’t know where I had been. For a moment I thought "perhaps I had blacked out." It was then that I realized that it was over. I had made the presentation and it was finished.

I heard my name being called. I turned and there were people standing around. Some were talking in small groups, others were walking towards the exit. My eyes locked with my committee chair. “Lets meet in the media room.” I nodded and walked forward. I watched as we approached the room. I saw him fumble for his keys. The door fell open and several faculty members and I walked in. Everyone was seated. “Where was I supposed to sit?” I wondered. I pulled a chair into the center of the room. Then thinking better of that choice I left the chair there and retreated to one corner of the room and waited. Everyone was silent. “Why was no one talking?” Someone asked a question.

“If you would like to talk about procedure I can wait in the hallway.” I offered. More silence.

“I think we have your statement. Why don’t you wait outside while the faculty talks?” Thankfully I left the room.

I walked outside. I saw another faculty member talking to a student. I wanted to scream. I walked to a construction site nearby and picked up a clump of dirt. It was heavy to the touch. I broke it into pieces. "Why did it crumble so easily?" I threw the debris to the ground and picked up another. This one felt heavier. Wetter. I threw it into a mound of earth. I turned. The couple had left. The sun was annoying. I walked to the shadow of the building but the shade was uncomfortably dark.

“I hate it here.”

I went inside. The hallway was deserted. I walked the length of it and climbed some stairs. I though better of my decision and walked back down again. “I am pacing.” I thought. Better to sit, but there were no chairs. I walked the length of the hallway again and came to a rest in front of the media room door. I could hear muffled voices within. “I am in shock.” I thought, then added “I can’t be found here.” I ran back to the stairs and climbed them halfway and sat in the shadows. At some point I called my wife. The conversation lasted hours and seconds. Later I remember feeling ashamed for not remembering it more clearly.

Voices.

Bodies.

Movement.

Two of the faculty members had left the building. Two more were in the hall. I heard them say something about line quality and technique, “I can hear you” I said, or possibly “I am aware” as if to say “of my shortcomings.” None of it made sense.

“You passed” said the chair.

I am staring out into the quad through a plate glass window, I hear my voice being called. Suddenly I come to. “Is it over?” I wonder?

How Buddha saved Christ

When I was an undergrad in college, I wrote this paper on Plato, which I titled “The Erotic Love of Wisdom.” It was supposed to be my undergraduate thesis paper but in reality it was probably just me jerking off on paper.

Someone proof read the paper for me, probably a professor, but I don’t remember who, and told me that the ideas I was championing in the paper reminded them of a video that had recently watched on Gnosticism. I had never heard of Gnosticism so I went and rented the video.

There really isn’t anything worth reporting about that movie. It was a shoddy piece of documentary video shot by a new age production company championing their own esoteric brand of Christianity, and using the discover of Gnostic texts in Egypt to support their outlandish claims. Needless to say I was under impressed, but I was interested to learn more about the discovery of never before seen texts written by Christians about Christianity from within a few hundred years of the death of Jesus.

I bought myself a copy of the Nag Hammadi Library; the collection of texts referred to in the movie and set about reading them. Fascinated, looked in the front of the book and learned that the book had been published in connection with the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont C.A. Called them. Got an application, and Voila I was in Graduate school studying the first four hundred years of Christianity.

You could say my interest in ancient Christian texts is a by-product of my brand of Christianity. That is, for me Christianity begins with the revelation. In the beginning was the word, and while it is over simplified, one could understand Christianity as a kind of explanation of the revelation, communicated to us in words and statements that depend on the believer’s acceptance of these statements.

After all, one thing that the Nag Hammadi discovery had shown us is that Christians have always been profoundly concerned with these statements: with the accuracy of their transmission from original sources, with the precise understanding of their exact meaning, and with the elimination and condemnation of false interpretations. At times this concern with the words of Christianity has been exaggerated to the point of obsession, accompanied with the arbitrary and fanatical insistence on hairsplitting distinctions and the purest niceties of theological detail.

My study of Gnosticism in Graduate school was cut short when I decided to drop out and follow the love of my life. But my time in graduate school opened for me an awareness that the obsession with doctrinal formulas and ritual exactitude has made people forget that Christianity is a living experience which transcends all conceptual formulations. I know that I am guilty of this behavior, stopping short at a mere correct and external belief expressed in good and moral behavior, instead of entering into a relationship with God as the word made flesh.

Actually it took learning more about Buddhism for me to even begin to understand what that relationship would look like. Let me first say that the Buddhist metaphysic is not a doctrinal explanation in either the philosophical or theological sense. You don’t have to believe in the enlightenment of the Buddha as a solution to the problem of the human condition, and the experience of Enlightenment is not a revelation of how the universe came into existence, what will eventually happen to it, what the purpose of life is what are the moral norms, what will be the reward of the virtuous, and so on. To try to pigeonhole either Christianity or Buddhism in these terms is to reduce it to a mere world-view. Yet this is how Christian theologians frequently view Buddhism and sadly it is how I once viewed Christianity, not as a living theological experience but as a sense of security in my own correctness, a feeling of confidence that I am saved. A confidence, I may add, that is based on my correct view of creation and a merit system peppered with the anxious hope that the right answers will present themselves and that life is really a struggle to attain this sense of righteousness even as my desperate recourse to sacrament or understanding of the word cause me to continually fail, fall and struggle to rise again.

What Buddhism taught me about Christianity and ultimately about my own spirituality is that Zen does not need to explain the universe as much as Zen wants me to pay attention and to become aware, to be mindful and to develop a certain consciousness which is above emotional deception. Deception of what? Of life as it truly presents itself, and not life as my consciousness wants it to be. Because Zen, less a philosophical system about nothingness, rejects systematic elaborations in order to get back to a moment of pure unarticulated direct experience of Life itself. What is this "I" that exists and lives and what is the difference between an authentic experience of life, and the illusory awareness of the self that exists? Zen is not an idealistic rejection of sense and matter in order to ascend to a supposedly invisible reality, which is alone real. The Zen experience is a direct grasp of the unity of the invisible and the visible, a radical awareness of experience that does not require of explanation, but awareness.

In researching these thought I encountered a website that rejected the comparison of Buddhism and Christianity because, “Buddhism believes neither in the existence of a loving and living God nor in a substantial self, so the compassion of a Bodhisattva cannot be accorded with any ontological reality while Christianity treats love both as a means and as a goal of life. Moreover, love is seen as the very nature of God. As love has its source in God, so we are asked to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and this love found its ultimate expression when offered himself as a victim upon the cross for the remission of sins of mankind.”

To which I would say that this is a terrible misreading of Buddhism and that the Buddhist does not rejoice in the escape of the phenomenological world of suffering or try to negate it. Instead the Bodhisattva elects to remain in the world and find Nirvana, or pure awareness, not by reason but by the same compassionate love that identifies all sufferers in the world of birth and death with the Buddha, whose enlightenment each person potentially shares. Christian charity is exactly like Buddhist compassion as both seek not only to be free from suffering, but to eliminate that suffering wherever and whenever it is found.

The thing is, it took me a long time to get out from under the idea that I had to understand Christianity to get it. Stories of the virgin birth, walking on water, and the crucifixion became puzzles for me to solve, and having thought I solved them or at least having come to reconcile them with my faith or the lack thereof made me feel no closer to god. Instead, it took my discovery of Buddhism to understand that I didn't need all of these stories, or or that matter to understand them, in order to have a profound experience and relationship with the higher power of my choosing. I don't understand the whole pascal lamb, and the eucharistic host, and finally I don't have to. For me, Buddha saved Jesus