ofREH

This is Joe. Joe Clyde.
Please, say his name. Aloud or to yourself.
Please acknowledge him. Affirm with me, that he lived.
He was kind, generous, funny, reserved, complex. He was my co-worker and he was my Friend.
I normally resist these public expressions of such private revelations but my regard for this Man, and the loss of him, compels me.
When someone takes their own life, we are left wondering if somehow we might have made a difference, if we had could have reached out to them more, possibly stemming the anguish that propelled them. The truth is…probably not, but that the demons that tortured Joe and the too many others, are often entrenched and irreconcilable.
Before working on the Coronado Bridge, where I was to intercept potential jumpers, I had very little understanding of suicide or those that were so destitute of hope or choice. I have little more understanding now but have considerably more compassion for those considering it.
Occasioning within feet of someone ending their own lives, can have that effect.
By no means a mental heath expert, I am still hesitant to assign the ever convenient labels of “sick” or “deranged” to the anguished.
Desperate, perhaps. Resigned, assuredly, but also maybe just tired. Too exhausted to continue the daily toil of convincing themselves they matter, are loved, needed and have purpose.
Of course, there are some that consider the end for spite. To lash out in an unforgettable, irretractable measure to laden some remaining with the guilt of conclusion.
Some consider the opposite. Driven by the genuine concern for loved ones and wanting to save them the trial and grief of watching a slow agonizing wasting from disease. Say nothing of wanting to end the needless physical pain of an already determined end.
As a Catholic, it is not a path I could  ever take. As a human being, it is not one I can condemn either.
The choice to end one’s own life invariably touches the lives of so many left behind but ultimately the decision to leave us can only be that of the soul that is faced making it.
Even so, say his name now. Aloud or to yourself and then…someone else’s, someone else you know that might brighten or take heart that you called, asked after them, wondered about their well being.
I pray Joe finds the peace now, that proved so elusive in life.

So,

For those that might have seen “The Adjustment Bureau”, an amusing little movie in which Matt Damon portrays a Man who meets his soul mate but who’s fate is thwarted by the Universe’s stewards of fate. Supposedly, Angelic bureaucrats in suits and hats that keep us all on our own tracks of destiny, they carry out various means of subterfuge to ensure certain paths are kept to and that others are not crossed. Doors that inexplicably close, things that appear randomly to block your way, objects that fall from your hands and make you stoop and possibly miss the passing of another etc etc.
They can also, if inclined, just ‘cuz…fuck with you.
I gotta say, after watching that movie, I am now forever wondering if I am not a pet project or favourite pastime of those bastards in the funny lil hats, when they’re bored. Just ‘cuz.
At the risk of sounding “woe is me”, my life seems to be inordinately lopsided with “butter side down” occasion.
So much so that I have chanced to impress an unbeliever with it’s predictability, leaving her with an “Wow, you’re not kidding” posture after having been presented with multiple scenarios with two possible outcomes and the frequency that mine will invariably be the most troublesome or tedious.
If pressed and having to choose from a set of just two keys to unlock a door…I have yet to pick the right one on the first attempt. Rope or wire entangles in ways that could NEVER be replicated in need. Things get caught on other things that are so improbable that I couldn’t ever hope to do on purpose if my very life was held in the balance. Things spill from my hands at the most inopportune times and if of the paper variety, the wind will suddenly pick up to have me perform ritualistic dance to retrieve it.
This is well beyond the confines of Murphy’s law, this is the hand of Providence.
I used to think, hope, it was God trying to teach me patience, and perhaps He felt as frustrated in the results, but now I think I am the plaything of celestial dickheads in a cafeteria lunchroom.
Get a life!
Of course, I have tried the reverse. To anticipate my first intuition and suddenly turn and pick the other. I can almost hear the laughter above at my silly, futile attempts…I still ALWAYS grab the wrong shoe, in the dark.
Crafts or projects are the worse and seem to be a particular focus for my cherubic companions. The simplest of tasks are made impossible by the breaking of tools or unexplainable failing of software.
A different tool, another approach…forget it. No matter what I try, once the shift is in place, it’s a debacle.
So, short of my wanting a private “chat” with one (Matt get’s his!!) or just begging they leave off for a minute, I fear I am destined to be at the tender mercies of bureaucrats, both at home, work and…above.
Ok, I can deal but seriously?…shit gets old.
Don’t ask me to change your oil…you’ll regret it, trust me.

So, here’s the rub…
I’m just not that exceptional.
I don’t think that I am exempt from the myriad of complaint that dissolve marriages, the increasing, absurd number of personal failures.
I don’t believe, save the very few, that those approaching whatever manner of union they’ve mutually agreed, planned and bargained for, dreamt of and often precariously indenture themselves financially to…do so with the premonition that they will fail miserably, that their failure will touch the lives of many others, and most noticeably, of those that are tied to, dependent on, success. The very legacy of that failed, regrettable, miserable mistake…the Children.
“My Children are the only good thing that resulted from it, I wouldn’t change a thing!”…Yea?…how incredibly, if predictably, fulfilled you are…and them?, how are they faring? How would they prefer it?
I can’t imagine that my own march to an altar would be any less filled with wonder, at hope for a future with the one I am destitute without. Or, would it’s demise, it’s inevitable crashing around my head, be any less vociferous.
I have no romantic illusions of the process, quite the opposite.
It seems to me that it has been the unions without the burden of passion, of romance or ideology, that have stood the test of time. Our trees were once seeded with Clan or Familial concordance.
That ain’t me.
This is me. Preferring a life of single obscurity than that of a marital reckoning.
I prefer to cling to my childish mirage, the illusion of the Woman of my heart, the ethereal victual of my soul, my reason to exist.
I would insist. To express those very sacred vows, I’d have no less…only to see it collapse. To be a party to such great personal tragedy and failure, to have a partner of that caliber and worth, ultimately despise me, and I, her?…miss me with that.
Of course I have my own thoughts on why modern matrimony is such an increasing societal blemish but in the end, I’m just not any better, any less susceptible to what ails us.
Just not that exceptional.

So,

The Luddites were terrorists.
A obscure movement in early part of the 19th century in England, where a band of digruntled workers destroyed textile machinery in a vain attempt to stem the tide of the industrial progress that they perceived to be directly threatening their livelihoods.
If correct in that appraisal,
they were criminally misguided in their attempts to rectify it.
A few, lost their heads, literally.
Interestingly, with the exponential advance of high technology, the 21st century faces some of those same challenges but with much greater and widespread ramifications.
Had you been shortsighted enough, in the late 90′s, to have considered a travel agency a worthwhile investment or avenue to start your own small business…Priceline, Expedia, via the internet, had some very bad news for you.
Now what?
You move on, that’s what. You lick your wounds, reassess and, hopefully, recoup some of your losses and try your hand at something else.
I don’t think it is the responsibility of society to protect you from ill fated choices or ventures. That’s what insurance is for (your next venture, perhaps?). Besides, we have MUCH bigger problems on the horizon…
What will we do with the massive, leadened weight around our necks that is the US Postal Service, when it soon becomes obsolete? All it’s lifelong employees, many beyond the age of rehire or reintroduction into a workforce that…well…expects you to actually do some work. Their unions would insist we somehow keep them on. Regardless of how inefficient or irrelevant.
Or Kodak? Having missed the digital bus and now scrambling to compete in a market that is fast disappearing.
What happens when a single application, written by some industrious, ambitious, bespectacled troglodyte, in her basement, potentially can effectually replace the labours of, literally, thousands?
This is where I’m torn.
It seems to me that as this scenario plays out on many different plains, we are confronted with ever decreasing options for where those deposed, are to repose.
Where does the man, that spent the last twenty years of his life maintaining the machine that supported that other, bigger, machine…go, now that both machines are out of business?
The factor that put them out of business is now huge, prospering. Producing more efficiently and at less cost. The profits are greater and disbursed more selectively.
The Man is now bussing tables, making a very small percentage of what he once did and so is unlikely to indulge in whatever convenience the Machine he used to grease, once offered.
The common theme I hear often from the Conservatives is: “I’ve never gotten a job from a poor man”.
Ok, fair enough, but if the only job the rich man is offering is mowing his lawn or cooking his meals, cleaning his house, or washing his clothes, and there are now three times as many applicants for those jobs because his brilliant innovation saw to the end of their previous employment…and with that exponential growth of unemployed, less expendable income, who can afford his product?
Shouldn’t they…I cannot believe I’m even thinking this..as a factor of their own prosperity, insure those that are adversely affected by it? If only to, also, insure their own future?
As a student of history, I am increasingly less inclined to embrace the concept of trickle down economics. History just doesn’t seem to bear support for it. We seem to repeat the same cycle again and again. From the industrial revolution of the Victorian era and that of the trust barons of manifest destiny, the gap in prosperity between the working poor and the worked for, increases until a Prince Albert or Teddy Roosevelt fight to balance the scales.
I don’t believe that we have that kind of leadership currently and it’s becoming ever more likely that it will take a movement of masses to again adjust the tipping scales of fortune.
We recently have seen the spark of such a movement and I despair that it was ultimately absorbed by such degenerates, but a spark nonetheless…and where there is smoke…

January two, the year of our Lord, nineteen sixty one, was born, in Kettering, Northamtonshire England, My Brother, Mark Lee Harrell.
At the time, almost three years hence till my own coming, I could possibly say I know him as well now, as I did then.
I wonder if two Men, born of the same house, could be as vastly different in personality and appearance, as it is with he and I.
Where I am rash and impetuous, he is calm and reserved. Where I am loud and boisterous, he is quiet and pensive. Where I, (the only one, so said my Father) who could destroy a Tonka Truck, he could reassemble it. Mark went Air Force, I went Army.
Where I have light eyes and light(er) hair, his dark and his hair, once jet black, now, at least share the inevitable march of grey. Though, even on this front, my senior, holds at bay and my own march of “dignified bearing”, seems to have outpaced him.
It may have been these stark differences that compelled our Mother, to our eventual, mutual jocularity, on so many documented occasions, dress us as if we were twins.
Doing so, did little to mask our outward differences and it was for he that perfect strangers often detained my Mother with oaths of earnest delight at “such a charming and lovely young Man!”
A beautiful boy and handsome Man, is my Brother.
If this truth in anyway contributed to my own need for attention and the terror I inflicted on my Parents to gain it, I cannot say, but that my Brother was a special child, sharp and imaginative, striking in appearance and deft in manner, is indisputable.
In childhood, we were much like any other siblings with a three year age span. A good part of it was spent pinned beneath him, knees on my shoulders and a long, threatening, swaying string of spit, suspended above my face.
We shared a bedroom and bunk-beds and he, naturally, insisting on the top or bottom, depending on his mood. Only settling on the bottom to finally curtail his proclivity for sleep walking, after having launched himself from the top bunk one night, into the armoire. We conspired against our mutual enemy, our tormenting Sister. For both having the audacity to be infallible in our Fathers eyes and for the unfairness of having her own room.
We shared some friends. The pool of other American children in Italy somewhat limited, age became less an issue as it might have Stateside. We fought the Guinea Wop kids in the Piazza as a gang and took trains into Naples and Pozzuoli as a unit.
We shared plundered Benson-Hedges cigarettes but certainly not the blame once discovered.
I thought my Brother cruel, aloof, enigmatic, stubborn, carefree, brilliant and untouchable. Both my nemesis and hero.
Our teens were an entirely different experience. Not just in application but in perception as well. The usual, predictable rites of passages of boys to men were spent apart with my leaving home at such an early age.
Catching up when we could, I have always been struck by how differently we ended up viewing the world we lived.
The Seventies saw us both grow our hair long and seek distractions. For Mark, it was distancing himself from the stern hand of our Father, experimenting with some drugs and for me it was resisting every hand of authority laid upon me. Each with questionable results, I think.
The eighties, even more of a disparity in perspective. His, Iron Maiden, mine, Depeche Mode.
It would be some years before we again crossed paths, with my inevitable resurfacing after a predictable, if unexplained, long absence. Mark, not to be overly perturbed, was to embrace me again as if no time had passed.
More than time had passed though.
In that time, he had tried his hand at a family life, marrying a teenage sweetheart and having three children with her. Whereas I, on the other hand, could be relied to take a solitary path.
This reunion, by circumstance, had us in each others company for an extended period and our developed natures in difference again were made apparent.
Ever reticent, we parted from that adventure knowing as little of each other as having entered it. Not mourning the fact, only accepting it more readily. My Brother and I are vastly different Men and fortunately so. We will forever be bonded with history and blood. Once, this may have meant very little to me but today, I cling to it passionately and am thankful for it. Thankful for my Brother Mark and his ability to accept me as I am and his open door. I aspire to his own perceptions and look upon him with the same, mutual, embrace. For all we are, and are not, he is, and will remain, my Brother. As will my love for him.

One might assume, as much as I mention or write about him, that my Father and I were close. We were not.
In fact, it’s accepted that in the end, he despised me. Accepted, being the operative word.
Perhaps it’s as easy to assume, knowing that, I’ve come to romanticize his memory in hopes of somehow shedding that awful truth. Perhaps.
He was flawed, very, but then who among might cast that first stone? Not I, that’s for sure.
For all his flaws, he was also had a great hand in determining the Man I’ve become. Flaws and all. But then…he would, wouldn’t he.
I’d liked to have been able to pick and choose among his many influences and so it’s at this years end that I, in my romanticizing, will again forgo cursing.
Mark, my Brother, remembers differently but I cannot recall a single instance of my Father cursing. Not one.
Lord knows I gave him cause.
This will be my fourth, or fifth, attempt in what has become, for me, a New Years ritual. My last attempt, failing miserably and the first, having lasted the longest.
I’ve noticed, there is a point one reaches, after a few months, that it is the curse that suddenly sounds oddly out of place. That is the hump. Some time later, hearing someone swear aloud, can actually have me cringe. I imagine it’s a little like giving up meat…the longer you go without, the easier it is and the more distasteful it seems.
Only, sitting down to a nice, medium rare prime rib hardly has you seem an imbecile. Swearing, incessantly, certainly does.
Now, I hardly notice it. That, in itself, is disturbing because in my best attempt, it was shocking to hear how often foul language was used as filler in conversation. How people would, like a small child’s “huh?”, insert the F-bomb at frequent intervals to allow for their thoughts to catch up with their mouths.
That’s where I’m at currently.
My disdain for swearing is not out of some priggish notion of 19th century charm or civility…fuck that…but from a gaining appreciation of austerity.
A good. solid profanity can be, if used sparingly, a very powerful thing.
My Father had little trouble getting my attention (keeping it, was another matter) but had I ever heard him let go with a forbidden expletive, I would have known that serious just got very serious.
It’s balance I’m looking for here.
So, out of some romantized idea of tribute to a flawed but distinct presence in my life and my want of just being more like him, I will, this New Year, try again.
Wish me luck and please….don’t make me angry.

So,
One indicator that I’m getting older is that I can choke up listening to Christmas music.
Granted, not just ANY Christmas music, but the Nats and Bings of my youth can easily produce a lump.
Attributable somewhat to my love of the Season, the indefinable spirit that fills many of us, the near atmospheric anticipation of children, but also to memories of my Grandmothers overheated living room, filled with Family, of the smell of kitchen labours, of napping beneath her coffee table, never having felt safer and…her perpetual, never ceasing, stack of LP’s, monitored and prompted by the ever vigilant, black hook shaped arm of her Hi-Fi.
It reminds me of long, back seat, in the middle, feet on the hump, (Mark would claim car sickness and so always get the window. He could just have as easily said “cuz I’m older. Shut up”) drives from the high desert to her house in Downey and then Fullerton. Or the Uncles that would gather us up and take us out evenings to see the spectacular neighborhoods of lighted displays and my Fathers predictable frustration in untangling our own lights, year after year.
It can transport me back to midnight Mass pilgrimages to Rome or to the smell of a fireplace, lit with burning coal, in England.
My Father and Mother were unequaled in their design of a small boys Christmas delight. For a Man that might otherwise be, kindly, considered miserly,  Dad pulled all stops for Christmas and the joy and season it promised.
There was the fake tree (allergies, I’m told), blinking lights and heirloom decorations, illuminated characters forgotten and packed away most of the year, again and again newly regaled with oooh and ahhhs once brought to life. The cherished Manger beneath and the ritualistic placing of the guiding star. Even a cardboard fireplace assemblage to properly hang our stocking (made by Mom, of course, and with our names glittered in definition). One coat rack stood in as substitute, with twisting strands of pine like decoration, wrapped its length, on a Christmas we spent in a Hotel in Naples.
Like every year, Santa found his way in there too.
Christmas mornings were after restless nights. They were, for my Parents, always coffee first…THEN the heaps of brightly coloured, finely wrapped packages, waiting their own imminent demise at the hands of grinning, giddy children.
Three of us, then four. The fourth, a gift herself, of sorts.
I cannot ever remember being disappointed. There was all the plastic army men a boy could want, toy guns, A bicycle I never got to ride, and even a genuine Samsonite briefcase I begged.
There was the long cherished, best friend of my childhood, my own version of Hobbes (of Calvin)…My stuffed Santa.(there is still an accounting to be made there, Mother…WHO finally made him “go away”?)
There were easy bake ovens and doll houses for my older Sister and G.I Joes and water pump filled rocket stations for my older Brother.
Cole and Crosby can bring all that back to me but so can the voices of silly little characters from forgotten Christmas Season specials.
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, for one. Those of Kris Kringle, Burgermeister Meisterburger or the Winter Warlock can have me back, in pajamas, rapt in front of a tv, mouth hanging open and someone, always, “suggesting” I close it.

Very recently, I came across a audio version of that Special and when I began playing it, the affect it had on me was startling. As I listened, within moments, I recalled the anxiety I felt as a child, for Kris and his flight across the  mountains of the Whispering Winds, the sympathy

for the children of Sombertown at not being allowed toys, my dislike of the Burgermeister and his underling,

my thrill at the Winter Warlock being redeemed. As I listened, I found myself recounting and even vocalizing the next lines in the drama.

~~~~~I’ve imbedded audio to enhance this tale. Please click on the “play” links~~~~~

For those of you with small children, or having had them, this may prompt a shrug and a…”So?”.
I’ve wondered since, if you could remember the first time you sat down with your little ones, for the first airing as a Family, if it had a similar affect and if you’ve since become numbed to it from exposure. I hope not. It’s a wonderful experience.
I’ve also wondered, because of the ever ready, on demand, media environment, that children today will appreciate the novelty of what was, for us anyway, annual rituals.
Every year, we highly anticipated, not just Seasonal specials, but annual screenings of movies as well. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (ooooh the child snatcher with the net!!), Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music.

I’d ask, are there a new season of movies and specials that elicit that same reaction from our children? Is Bill Murrys “Scrooged” or his awesome “Goundhog Day”, the delightful “home Alone” or Jim Carreys “Grinch”, even if just fancier tellings (as ours were) of older stories…are they, for them, my “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”? I hope so. I hope they can look forward to the retelling and rewatching as much as I did and I hope that when they get older, the memory of them will incite a flood of emotion as my own have.
Yes, I’m getting older, but I prefer to think I’m just Well Seasoned.

Read the rest of this entry »

So,

I was well rehearsed in the chants, I shook my fists and banged my plastic drum, I yelled until my throat was raw.

I slept on the sidewalk with hundreds of other comrades, ate donated food from the community (the yellow mush from the Hare Krishna Temple was…uh…filling?) and felt empowered!

We occupied the library at UC Santa Cruz (such a beautiful Campus. Thank you Gov. Reagan), and wreaked havoc on the steps of Sproul Plaza at UC Berkley. Ending up at UCLA, where we rushed the stairs of Royce Hall and tangled with Police. At one point, an officer tried to grab my “plastic drum banging stick” from me and I put him on his backside. The crowd grabbed me and pulled me to the back, keeping me from being arrested. They were exciting, amazing times and it was all on the five o’clock news.

Mandela was still imprisoned, Bishop Desmond Tutu was our de facto leader.

I may have even cared a little about the horrific injustice in South Africa under apartheid…but really…I was there to get laid (sorry Mom).

THAT is why I can’t take the Occupy crowd too seriously.

We had our committed, our devotees as well. Heck, the strawberry blonde I followed around the State was certainly one and would suffer no frauds to bed her. I had to convince. I assumed the role of outrage and I should’ve been given an Oscar for my portrayal.

‘Cept, there were many more auditioning for the role. Just as convincing and JUST as motivated.

We had a blast.

Of course, our lack of conviction, in no way, diminished the truth of what initiated the protests. In the end, they even had the desired affect. The UC Regents voted to divest all funds from the Govt. of South Africa.

It may be that the Occupy Movement can have similar results. If only by the intense coverage, those who might not otherwise be aware of disparity between the super wealthy and the working class, might at least take notice. They might affect some manner of change. They will have to, because if left to the devices of those I am watching on the news, those that are there for the ride, that deface and destroy public and private property, that are sexually assaulting Women, robbing other protesters and dipping their filthy hands in the Movements kitty…

I imagine they are well rehearsed in the chants as well.

I don’t care to ring like the proverbial 60′s burnout but there is a very different feel to this crowd. Different but the same.

I may have wanted Mandela out of prison just enough to get in that strawberry blonde’s drawers but I would never have considered forcing my way in them, if Nelson had to stay locked up.

Ultimately, I learned a lot about what I had fraudulently embraced as cause. In that lesson, I was exposed to, and came to care for, the movement that I participated in. I remember being genuinely excited when apartheid was dismantled and the white ruling class released Nelson Mandela and stepped aside, allowing progress, and with it, hope for a more equitable future for the greater portion of a people.

I recall being a lil surprised and glad for my reaction.

I’ll offer as much hope for the Occupiers but I wouldn’t bet on that horse if it looks like me.

So,
I wish I’d asked my Grandmother, before she passed…well…alot of things, actually, but in particular, if she felt that, during the 40′s and 50′s, we, as a Nation, were worse off than when she was a child.
I’m sure she might have told me that life had become more complicated, harried and that things were just simpler for her as a small girl.
Of course, much of that impression might be attributed to her having become an adult. One with the pressures and responsibilities that generally come with adulthood. Back then.
I don’t think, were she pressed (at your peril), she would have said that the Country was a less attractive idea, a perceptibly failing experiment. I don’t think she would have thought that, during the 40′s and 50′s, we were less morally grounded or even civil, for that matter, then when she was reared.
Now…ask yourself the same question.
I ask, because recently I was in line at an airport behind a Father and his two Children and they were both shockingly beautiful kids. Most noticeably, was that they both, boy and girl, had the longest eyelashes I think I’ve ever seen. So long, that I recall thinking they must brush the lenses of any eyewear.
My first instinct was to comment to the Father, “Such beauties, these two!”. Already smiling in greeting and raising my hand, minutely, to point to them as I did so…then, letting it drop, my smile faded and I looking away, as the second instinct took hold.
The one that told me Dad would think me a predator, were I to remark, in any way, on his Children.
It at first disturbed me, then saddened me, then, made me angry. Because I would have felt the same, were they my kids and a strange Man had even noticed them. much less thought to make comment upon it.
I can’t help but wonder at what else has changed in these past several decades. What we as a society have lost, that we once took for granted.
The answer I keep giving is…no, we are not as well off as we were 60 years ago. We are not even as well off as recently as when I was a child, though I think the corruption of spirit had already a solid foundation by then.
If so, if that be a general consensus, shouldn’t the next questions be to why?
What has changed? What are the common denominators of our decline?
The obvious, at least for me, is apathy,  a sense of entitlement, coddling, drugs, Family, Education, Faith, and decadence, both moral and spiritual.
One can argue or highlight the many significance advances we have made in American society. The obvious ones, rooted in race and gender. Perhaps not as obvious, are those in technology and science. From reaching the Moon and beyond, to understanding and mapping the human genome. So many fantastic, inconceivable achievements…yet…what will they, or have they, contributed to our the hope of our future, that of our our youth.
Is your Child better off today, than you, at that age? I kinda doubt it.
Are they safer, smarter, more driven, more compassionate, considerate, hopeful, or…dare I say it, healthier?
I kinda doubt it. (well…except yours, of course)
Globally, Seven billion, this year. Less than a century ago we were half that number. Is THAT the promise of the future?…boundless humanity? This, the boon of our advance…or the price?
There are no truer words whispered to us than those of history.
If looking back, at every redrawn boundary, every calculated resignation to the impulse of society, there could be a bygone appreciation.
We could and have done worse than to savour it.
It may well be all we are left with.