David Letterman, a public man

DAVID LETTERMAN

Last night I watched a very public man do what men should do when they go along the wrong way, he did what so few public people ever do; he had made errors, he admitted them without excuse, he stopped someone else from taking advantage of his mistakes, and is now focusing on what he can to protect all that he loves in life.

The list of public people who give in to the knee-jerk reaction of denying and lying is a long one, one that has grown continually for decades; the actions of people who ignore the truth that they are responsible. We are all responsible, we all occasionally go down a regrettable path; and then we are similarly responsible for doing what we can to make amends. Letterman has done all that, he has not asked for pity or special favor; he is paying a price now and will to pay more in the future, perhaps a long future.

That some people will feel the need to throw ashes on his head makes me ask how they have responded when they did something wrong; remember that no one has never made a misstep or two, that is how we learn, that is what we are about, it is how a man responds that shows how real qualities of character.

How do you and I respond when we do something wrong? The answer is what is relevant and important here.

A NEW ATTITUDE

A NEW ATTITUDE

I had thought for quite a while now that there is nothing new in the area of feelings and attitudes, now I am not so sure that what I knew to be true is so. Here is what has happened so far:

Until about two weeks ago it looked as if I could expect to live another three or four years; this is from the statistics for people who have what I have, and is a number not too far from the average expectancy for all men in this country. I am well aware that these statistics imply and I intend to do anything that I can to come out on the far side of that bell-curve; I also found the study that found people with heart failure often over estimate how long they have to go. I had asked a few medical people, found more than a few articles online that all said about the same thing. My chore had been to get my head around that notion, to accept what was and then to get on with my life.

As I wrote a week or so ago I had an appointment with someone who discovered that I have severe apnea, but that with treatment I can expect to add perhaps four years to this cruise that I am on. And one other thing, he now has probable cause for something that I had been told many times was idiopathic. Treatable and redeeming–quantity and quality.

In effect I have just have just been offered a doubling of my expectancy; this idea is taking a while to root in my cranium and germinate, but it will. There are events and situations all through life that cause feelings and attitudes; except that this business is different, what I am feeling and how I am seeing the world is not quite like any I have ever experienced. I am not ready to say that this is unique, it might just be a variation on one or more, I just can’t say yet.

Obviously I am happy with the news, I have long ago discarded any wish to be dead notions; have reached the conclusion that whatever pains and discomfort come along, no matter how intense, they cannot overwhelm that of being, of becoming. This new thing is a testimony to perseverance, to scratching at the tunnel face until the gold vein is completely discovered; and for that I am relieved, perhaps more than a bit smug. This that I have just received is a gift, more to God than from; but it is such an overwhelming gift that no words are appropriate. Perhaps it would be as if someone gave me a new car–then I see that it is a brand-new Rolls convertible; what the hell do you do with such a thing! A great problem to work at as I go on.

I may write more about this as I figure it out and believe it would be of interest to someone, anyone else. Let me add one more thing: To say that this is more a gift to God than from God is because I know that without man God is irrelevant; He is what we are about, that makes us what we are.

A Refurbished Part for the Engine

I have never had the imaginative cues that would have me starting a book nevertheless a saga, I have never done much writing at all other than journals and these few unscripted scribbles, so I don’t know the rules or guides for starting a new chapter, finishing another. About all that I know is intuitive aided by the thoughts of just a few authors and a friend or two.

I know intuitively that I have just completed a chapter of what voyage.

Without resorting to those rules and guides for either novels or non-fiction writing I figure that a chapter has characters whose role grew, diminished or evaporated through the circumstances that the protagonist experiences and how the characters may fit and be important, appropriate or irrelevant. Out of the weather of events and fates the main character emerges into the next chapter a different person, one who is more fitting to his fate. Routes and passageways have been explored carefully so as not to damage the keel although the loss of a little hull paint is no great price as it will be replaced at the next haul-out.

It is not that there are or ever will be winners and losers, instead there is a crew who may or not be aboard for the whole voyage. One plans then begins a cruise with the idea that the plank owners, the original volunteers and the paid crew will be there at the final port; there is no reason at all to believe this, it is a wish coming from inexperience and love. At each port along the way there is the opportunity for some to leave and some to sign on; there is languishing on docks ahead a few whom I have no reason to choose or be chosen because they are as yet unmet. There may or may not be berths open at that time, and once leaving port it is rare to return to sign on someone who had been left on land.

Yesterday I was informed that the engine needed a new auxiliary part and that it would lengthen the time I can be at sea and maneuver me more easily through squalls; this addition came as a complete surprise to the engineers but it will be installed shortly.

Right now the pilot is obtaining charts of what opportunities have just been offered by the current repair, the charts he thinks he needs are now being drawn as the previous are now out of date and will be stored away in the map drawer. Like all charts they provide information, but no chart, no meteorologist, no pilot knows all that lays just beyond the horizon—and that uncertainty is what makes everyone anticipate the long cruise. The pilot has a few more lines from squinting in bright sun , he is not as quick to bend or haul a line as he had been, but this is of little concern because the tackle we carry has been proven and maneuvers well practiced.

The boat will make a test run of but a few days to check out the maintenance and fitting of the rig while thinking again on those new charts that are arriving piecemeal from the cartographer. The anticipation, that anticipation, tomorrow’s anticipation sparks the crew-ready to embark and hoist sails.

POSSIBILITIES

POSSIBILITIES

It is possible to cherish something so much that I destroy it.

It is possible to desire someone so much that I frighten.

It is possible to proclaim so loudly that they cover their ears.

It is possible to do and be all of those efforts; but it is necessary that I try again today and then tomorrow.

The possibility is the prize.

A Short Follow-up

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February 11, 2009

This is the third day of my ‘five minute a day writing exercise’ which I hope will graduate into something more, different, better. The first challenge is the subject and if the right one is found everything follows well from there. The post of yesterday could be thought of as heavy and even morbid, that is not an unknown criticism. Heavy? Yes, the topic of what goes on in the very center of a soul can’t be anything but heavy, except when it is frivolous; morbid? I don’t think so because it was a fine lines describing the utmost in living, in being. Remember that shying away from something means that I never get to know and enjoy it. For reasons that aren’t all that clear I do enjoy untangling the knots that are at the edge of my reason, my emotions, my spirituality.

I am going to leave this here.

My Old Pal Ben

FEBRUARY 10, 2009 Just as I was about to sit and start my five minute daily writing exercise I received a phone call from the social worker of St. John’s hospital. After introducing herself she asked a few questions to make sure that she had the right person on the phone, then she asked about my old pal Ben. Ben had been hospitalized a couple of days previously with pneumonia; he doesn’t exercise much if at all so I wasn’t surprised that what might have been a chest cold became something else; but that wasn’t her concern. Does Ben have any relatives that I know of, any friends whom she might contact, was there anyone else? The answer to all of these is no Ben has no one in his file except my name and number because I have been visiting him for a couple of years; not as a hospice patient, just as an elder who received the occasional visit. Ben has had dementia from the beginning although recently it has become severe, he no longer recognizes my face, never mind my name. Ben lives in the here and the now, can’t look backward and is frightened to look forward, although he sometimes does talk about that. It has become difficult to visit Ben and the others since I had the heart experience, not that I am near being a candidate for either a home or hospice, just that I sailed a little closer to that shoal than was comfortable. If I go over and see Ben tonight I will have to introduce myself, expect that nothing we have said previously is remembered, and that as soon as I leave all is forgotten. Why go?—- To give a guy the few minutes of conversation and maybe a joke or two that will be all he gets in the course of a day; and immediately forgotten. The reason that it is more difficult to make visits is that it forces me to face the meaningless of all of this, that nothing one accomplishes means anything other than at the time and place; that whether we are or whether we vanish is irrelevant, except that we need to do whatever it is that we are about in order to be complete. This is the fucking paradox that has been giving people headaches and into arguments for thousands of years; and in the end it is about visiting Ben for a few minutes.

Approaching an intersection

This street ahead changes and is no longer the one I should be on, I see the caution light where a number of alternates branch away; I can’t see any highway or street signs or speed limits, if I look over my shoulder I can see that all the streets behind me have names, but knowing the names of streets passed doesn’t help my drive this morning.

I could pull over and stop, like the idling cars I have been passing, but I have too much momentum, I have never driven in the curb lane, I need to make a decision without losing speed; where do I look and who do I ask?

There is a fellow who became famous for touting that he went down the less busy fork, and that was fine for him, but choosing a route based upon who else goes down it or not doesn’t make much sense to me.

What I do know is that I have become a pretty good driver, and that whatever route I travel I’ll probably not run off the road and into the ditch.

Meaning & Acceptance, the Great Jigsaw Puzzle

A few months ago when I began writing a weblog I wondered why I was doing this, why anyone would do this? As I began to find my voice I understood that I was beginning to see clearer than I had; to put down words that any other person in the world can read is as different from diary writing as masturbation is from conceiving a child.

As a kid there was a period when I loved doing jigsaw puzzles, starting with those of a dozen pieces, each as large as a cookie, to the monsters with a thousand pieces of blue sky. I went through that time of forcing a piece where it didn’t belong, feeling the wrongness before anyone else saw it; there was one time when a piece was broken, and so fit, almost; then came that period when I knew the shapes that were common to all the puzzles, each manufacturer had only a fixed number, there was the big square piece with a large lug on each side, the long rectangle with asymmetric lugs, those that had divots on all sides, and the various other chunks. That was the beginning of the end of fascination, I knew the pieces, there were no more surprises. A lesson I learned and have not forgotten is the feeling I had when I snapped the right piece into place, the color was right, the notches and voids aligned exactly, the feeling was right.

What I am doing with a weblog is to assemble my puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle with a difference: no piece that I have picked up along the way resemble any other piece, each piece is true in its own way, each truth has to be aligned with every other or it won’t feel right,  I know the right feeling. I am assembling in the dark, my eyes are blind, it is all done by feel. The pieces are slippery,  sliding over one another and away from my fingers as I try to pick them up and put them in place. I don’t know what picture I am supposed to be making with these pieces of life, but I know instinctively  that I have to make my complete panorama.

When I rail against those who assume that there is a universal plan of life, when I make fun of those who believe the unbelievable it is as I would laugh at someone who is trying to put the wrong piece into the puzzle, who believes without question that that piece must go there even though it makes no sense at all. The Ten Commandments were the solution for the situation Moses had at that time and place, that the rules are not wrong today does not mean that we still are nomads in a dessert.

I needed to go out for forty days and forty nights in order to understand my situation  and what I will make of it. The pieces that I am placing on the table, fitting as I can, are those that I have, that may or may not be relevant to yours. There is no universal plan, and that is unsettling, makes me anxious.  But there is something, something that can’t be doubted, something about existence, about my being and being aware.

I don’t know what causes my need to put my life pieces together in a way that feels right, a need that began with that first child’s jigsaw puzzle; as I look around I see that almost everyone else is making an effort to solve a puzzle together, or that they have announced that they are leaving the table to be a conservative.

When I see that each person has a puzzle to solve I am not ignoring the commonality, I still know that it isn’t a good thing to steal my neighbor’s goat, fuck his wife, make a lying statement; those are common in a gross way, now I look at the fine points.

I don’t think that I have put down here anything new or worth returning to, but I do know that I needed to put these notions down in order that I can look at the next ones.

I accept all that I have written, just as I accept myself as I am, without using the terms perfect or complete, I am as I am, I am doing as I will do, and that is all I need say about that.

The greatest act of love

I think that it was Martin Buber who said:

The greatest act of love is to let another be.

I came across that notion a few years back, it struck me with its rightness, the truth and wisdom of it have taken all of this time to be understood. It came up last night when I was driving the author Clive Barker into town, we were talking about children, how difficult it can be as your child goes from unconditional love to rejection, and you hope that that will continue to change. We agreed that this takes silent courage greater than one could have predicted.

As I was thinking about this over coffee this morning I realized another aspect; include accepting myself as I am. The same old idea comes back from another angle, acceptance and forgiveness. I grew up in an atmosphere of criticism and judgment, attitudes that were embedded early and deeply; it has taken daily effort over the last half a dozen years to try and accept acceptance; criticism and judgment stunted my beautiful sister’s life, made miserable my gentle brother’s.

To love by letting another be is a paradox, goes against the desire to protect, to share experience; it is a paradox that I don’t always understand, but perhaps I do a tiny bit more each time, especially for myself.

Nothing big today

I ordinarily write this thing early in the morning, but there was nothing special today.

I bought a new bird feeder, am waiting for the birds to recognize it.

I knew what was in the newspaper, learned everything the  night before.

Had said everything I know to say so far about the spiritual experience.

Have the date for my annual colonoscopy, next Tuesday.

The combination of these things has stopped me in my tracks, there can’t be anything new to an existentialist until everything catches up. Let me try to phrase this another way.

There are all sorts of things going on in one’s life, from the most mundane first piss in the morning to that of letting the mind approach what is divine; in between are the housekeeping chores that need doing regularly, earning money to pay for ‘putting beans on the table’, having fun in order to ease the tensions; and then there is the upcoming periscope exploration of my gut, something that was just an annual event, until it became something different. Two years ago they found that the expectedly benign polyps were not, that the one in a thousand chance became one in one; and the next year they found the same, the polyps were cancerous, an aggressive cancer. Each time the area was cleared and declared safe for the processing of shit, but it has changed my expectations.

Now is a time to test how well my mindfulness exercises work, how secure I am in whatever spiritual knowledge I have gained, to add another thread of connection to Bert who is dying of colon cancer that has metastasized. It was at 4 a. m. this morning that all came together to scare me.

A couple of days ago I wrote that I was sad, today I am scared.  It isn’t easy to put the word ’scared’ down here and then prepare to push the ‘Publish’ button, it just isn’t done.  The major part of being an existentialist-guy is to fully experience every aspect of what is, to exhaust the sap of each moment, leave it dry so that the next can be tasted.  Just as the sadness came and went so will this fear go, not for about a week or more, but it will pass through, it will pass through completely because I won’t cause any of it to stick behind due to denial.  This whole business has a wonderful analogy when I watch the video screen of the colonoscopy procedure, do it completely and then go on to whatever is next.

My gastroenterologist  likes to tell me that there are more nerve endings in the gut than in the spinal column, that there is a great system that keeps everything moving through, and doing it completely and continually; I think that he must be writing a paper on the subject.

On another note I know the date of the next meeting for bereaving children and widowed; this will be the third time I attend, what my role will be, can be, for these people these situations isn’t yet defined, there will be something that I can bring to the party, something about having been through the process, something about not having support or guidance and so knowing the value of it for others–for the time being I am just present and waiting.

Being present and waiting is a good way to be.