A Few Words on Transient Grief

7:48 PM CST. Exhaustion and lassitude for dessert. It is dark earlier, to which we are resigned.

There is no meter of which I am aware to measure the suckage of any given day. If there were, it would probably be available at a big-box hardware store, and there would be one in my tool box or glove compartment, right next to the voltage meter or the air pressure gauge where I expect it to be anytime I need to check some voltage or wonder what the pressure is in my tires. Which is not that often, as you might expect. Still, when I want to know if a circuit is hot or the sagging tire does not convince me, it is nice to know that the tool I need will be there.

Except for today. Today, the tool was not there. Come to think of it, it never was, and I am confounded as to why this distresses me so much. Maybe because I was grasping at straws, fighting for air through a dense thicket of gargantuan irritation catalyzed by a Greek chorus of grief that chanted all day in my hind brain.

It is a sunny day in November, in the Year of Our Lawd 2013, and I wanted to call my big brother and wish him a Happy Birthday! He would have been 50 years young today.

He would have been. But he is not, except in my memory and the memory of family and friends. The loss is four years old now, seeming just yesterday and forever ago. It was not until I was pounding on the steering wheel and screaming at the unknowing driver in the car ahead of mine, that I realized why my eyes kept welling up today for no apparent reason.

Big Bro would have been 50 years old today, and I am furious that I cannot call him up and give him some stick about it. He was always supposed to be older than me, and my heart has not yet wrapped itself around that unavoidable fact of our existence. Yelling at strangers who cannot hear me will not change all that, bit sometimes, on a bright November day, I do not know what else to do.

Fan Chao In The Gumbo Kitchen

Thursday, February 23rd, 9:03 PM.  Spring-like winter night, windows open. It is good.

Fan chao, in so far as I can trust a free translation application, is the phonetic English for the Chinese phrase for 'stir fry'.  I sought this out because I wanted to know what it was in Chinese. Alas, I cannot read Chinese script (not yet, anyway), so phonetic will have to suffice. It pains me slightly that I do not know the dialect, so I will take it on faith that it is correct to say 'fan chow'.

I like how it sounds. Especially with emphasis. Fan chao!  It's like shouting "Rock on!" in English.

Not that I was shouting tonight.  No need or desire.  What I wanted, went looking for, was a little peace of mind.  Lately, there has been a lot of stormy weather on the ocean in my head.  Too many thoughts, too many perturbations and stresses.  I sought that peace in the solace of cooking, as I often do.

The exception to that has been recent history.  I haven't cooked as often as I used to, nor have I cooked truly good meals on a regular basis.  A lot of grab-and-go type behavior, and tonight I made myself stop. I stopped, took a deep breath of the cool air lazily coming in my windows, and decided that tonight I would stir fry something.

That I don't possess a wok, or even a basic range of typical Chinese pantry items beyond the ubiquitous bottle of soy sauce I keep in the fridge, was of little consequence.  Fan chao had seized my wearied imagination, ergo fan chao it must be.

I was in luck, to some extent.  I had a chicken breast, a bunch of celery, three green Hungarian wax peppers, an onion and some fresh garlic.  Along with some aleppo pepper and soy sauce, they would constitute the feast.  I retrieved my trusty cast iron Dutch oven from the cabinet, and set to.

The chicken was sliced thin and marinated in soy sauce and rice vinegar with a touch of garlic and cornstarch.  The vegetables sliced thin, celery on the bias, and garlic chopped fine with aleppo. Small amount of oil in the pot, heated to shimmering.

Slice. Chop. Heat. Scatter. Stir. Fill the kitchen air with fragrance, as the mind drains of tension.  The moment of truth, as the chicken and vegetables tilt into the bowl, on their way to the waiting mouth. It is good.

Sit. Breathe. Eat. Sip tea. For the space of an hour, that is all I was or needed to be: a hungry human, eating. That was peace.

Sunday Meditation #10: Bellum Terra

Slightly troubled thoughts today, while completing chores and contemplating the world in which I live.  I have experienced unease and discord in disconcerting amounts, not by design but by circumstance.  A side effect, perhaps, of too much television and Internet.  The world is an unsettled place and it seeps in if we are not careful.

I considered this in my own mind, as I barked a curse at an inattentive driver today on the road.  I was running an errand on my way to lunch.  Hunger and impatience getting the best of me.  The temper flared and I said something that induced in me mild regret.  I know better that what I do, sometimes, yet I have been unable to entirely refrain from anger, spite, and irritation at my fellow humans.

Amusing, perhaps.  That ideal behavior is something we expect from pacifists and clergy folk, monks and nuns.  I am far from being any of those exemplars, yet I often expect myself to act as one.  I sometimes actively wish for the patience and beatitude one expects of saints.  Occasionally I manage the trick, if ever so briefly.  The sensation often catches me by surprise.  Alas, my self-awareness of it is the finger touching the soap bubble and POP! it is gone. 

Ah, I am digressing, in my own meditation.  Why does all of this matter?  What is the cause of this discord?  It occurred to me today, after reading too much news and inanity in the Internet, that much of it springs from the feeling that we live in a Land of War, an American bellum Terra.  Aggression is built into our culture, our patriotism, our propriety towards nations and neighbors.  Everything, even the simple act of our daily existence, is framed in terms of war, conflict, and competition.  The prevailing militancy and mean-spiritedness has turned everything into fight for survival, even when it is no such thing.

I meditated today on my own expressions of aggression.  I realized I had allowed the pettiness and selfishness of a few to infect and disrupt my own better nature.  I understood that some of the nameless dissatisfaction and formless irritation I felt was because I let it affect me.  I did something simple to reset my head.

I cut the grass in my yard.

For thirty-five minutes, nothing more was demanded of me than to push, cut, turn, and repeat.  It was a cool morning, and I warmed up quickly as I let myself be taken up by the task.  The working of muscles, the meter of the breathing, the intake of fresh morning air into my lungs:  this integration of mind and body brought me back together much like that moment at which the camera lens spins into focus, and the image is sharp before the eye.  I needed the physical action to knock my mental actions back onto a better track.

When I was done, I returned indoors and rested a bit.  My gut had relaxed, my mind was no longer roiled.  I felt a slight pang of shame in that I had allowed the world at large to pull me away from my better nature.  But I also felt so much better that I was able to come back.  The world, and the people in it, can make you mean, to be sure.  As to myself, lesson learned.  Serenity takes work, too, and it does not pay to let the selfish, the hateful, and the uncaring dictate the course of our actions.

I will never be a saint.  This is okay, I don't want to be a saint.  What I do want is to be a placidis hominum, (peaceful human) to those I love and those I meet.  In the land of war, peace is water for thirsty soil, and I have much to grow.

Sunday Meditation #8: Water Through Stone and Tree

September 11th, 2011, along the Patapsco River.  Morning, standing on railroad tracks.

For the first time in a long time I was just far enough away from the roads and the machines of modern life that I could truly hear the sounds of nature.  The river was some tens of yards away, and the valley was thick with green leaves.  It was some minutes before it sank in to my head that the only sounds I could hear were my breathing, the crunch of boots on gravel, the trill of water over rocks and the cries of birds out in the trees.  I stopped to consider this small miracle.

I was on my way to the ruins of an abandoned hospital for a photo shoot.  The path I took to get there was along the rail line that followed the river.   The route took me across a bridge and through a short tunnel bored under a small hill.  The tunnel was made of brick, stone and concrete, constructed in 1903.  I was slightly nervous approaching the tunnel.  As short as it was, I had the small fear that a train would come along as I was in the middle of it.  It was wide enough to step safely away from the tracks, with small niches in the brick for a person to stand, presumably out of range of coal smoke and steam back in the early days.

I hurried through, just the same.

It was as I approached the far end of the tunnel that I heard it all.  Drip, drip, drip.

Water was seeping through the arched roof overhead.  Small puddles on the rail ties, glimmering like mercury in the light shining in from outside.  I slowed down a little to watch my footing.  As my breathing slowed, my hearing became more acute.  There, I heard it!

It was a hawk, keening from the trees ahead.  Its sharp cry put all other sounds in sharp relief.  My pace slackened further as I stepped out in to the silvery daylight from the overcast sky.  The hawk cried again, and I could hear the river murmuring sweet nothings to the rocks over which it flowed.  I ceased walking, and stood still.

I could hear the blood rushing through my ears.  A faint rustling from the trees as a small breeze blew.  I could not see the sun, the clouds were opaque, but its presence was known.  Another cry from the hawk.  I stood and listened, to the water through stone and tree.  I heard no cars, no planes, no raised voices.

I heard peace.

On Not Celebrating Death

I thought I would be able to scrape by without commenting on the most significant current event to hit the news this week.  I speak, of course, of the death of Osama bin Laden.  I thought I could wait for it to pass, but then I realized I can't do the dance of joy, like so many others seem to be overjoyed to do.

I had and have no sympathy whatsoever for bin Laden and his partners-in-crime in Al Qaeda. What he planned and what they implemented ranks among the all-time most heinous crimes in the history of the human race.  By all but the most pacifistic of viewpoints, it is hard to say he did not get what he deserved.  If there is any truth to claims that abhorrent criminals will be dealt with appropriately in an afterlife, then he is a prime candidate for an eternity in hell.  Ultimately, his life ended in the only way that seemed possible given the circumstances in which the termination of it originated.

One problem:  accounts of the afterlife differ, in generalities and specifics.  It is those differences that underpin some of the most violent disagreements ever experienced in human relations.  While many would like to believe he is now in for never-ending torment, by his lights (and those of many others) he may be receiving a hero's welcome.

I think it would be most fitting if his soul (assuming such a thing existed) simply faded away into nothingness, no torment, no reward.  Then it would be as if he had never been.  This is perhaps the best that could be hoped for in the case of someone who deliberately put themselves so far outside the realm of human empathy and human kindness.

Terrorism did not originate with bin Laden, and it will not end with his death.  The circumstances that allowed him and his ideology to flourish still exist, and nearly 10 years of American empire-building and backhanded fence-mending have done not nearly enough to mitigate them.  That mitigation is perhaps ultimately an impossible task.  The change has to happen in the hearts and minds of all citizens of the world.  Al Qaeda may wither away, dying like a snake with its head cut off.  But the ideas that drove bin Laden and his ilk will not.  The ideas will mutate, like a virus, and the people who take them to heart will find new and terrible ways to slaughter innocents in the name of fanaticism.

Extremist will not forget.  Even without a body, or a fixed landmark around which to gather, the circumstances of bin Laden's death will give fuel to the myth-making machinery of both sides in this conflict.  That he died in a battle with U.S. forces only serves to increase his status as a warrior hero.

It would have been much better to have captured him alive and put him on trial.  Ultimately, his fate would almost certainly have been the same, but it is the rule of law we supposedly subscribe to as Americans, and justice is what the law demands.  In this case, what was served was vengeance, not necessarily justice.  Vengeance usually breeds more violence, and that seems a likely outcome in this case.

Our military has shown themselves to be tough, perseverant and capable of incredible accomplishments in the worst of situations.  I think the reward for them now should be our gratitude, but more importantly, I think they should come home.  This is a "Mission Accomplished" in truth, far removed from the farce of that perpetrated under the same name in Iraq.  There is no longer any sense in keeping them in harm's way, with the goal achieved.

Surely a great evil has been removed from the world.  Truly this is the only way the story could have ended.  Still, I cannot bring myself to celebrate death.  This whole terrible mess originated in death, nearly 3,000 innocent people.  Since 2001, American casualties in Afghanistan have amounted to about 1,465 deaths.  Total coalition deaths are around 2,340.  Total wounded estimates are in the tens of thousands.

In the name of the pursuit of one man, we have lost:

Nearly 10 years.

Over $400,000,000,000 estimated cost (and rising) of the war to date.

1,465 Americans killed.

That is why I cannot bring myself to dance and clap my hands with glee.

His was a death that had to be, but celebrating it makes me feel too much like the very killers we claim to abhor. The best that I can manage is a certain grim satisfaction, and a hope that his like doesn't plague the human race ever again.

Candle In The Window On a Cold, Dark Night

Candle in the window,

On a cold, dark night,

Her hands on my heart,

She draws me toward the light...

Photo credit: Irish Gumbo

Big Blue Marble: Happy Christmas!

PEACE BE UPON YOU