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.

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.

Use Another Label

I was reading the review of Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes in the Times Literary Supplement, there is this quote from him and an addition by the reviewer John Carey: ‘ “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him,” he admits — a perfect summary of the modern western predicament.’

That line stuck in my head, a day later I am putting down here my reaction to it. The intuitive need for a Spiritual life is the clue to follow, get to know what it is that summons, that offers more than is obvious. Become intimately acquainted with what you already know, have always known; be your own guide and tourist; for the time being stop using labels and rules, look to where intuition has always been willing to guide.

Never forget that the church is an institution, set up as an organization by a bunch of guys who wanted to please an emperor, have a creed that all would obey; they chose writings that would be allowed in the book, and those that would be forbidden, wrote that promise of obedience–the creed. I have no idea what the intentions were in these men, I do know about the emperor, the meeting on the island, orthodoxy; all may have been done for noble reasons, but no other person can know the divine better than any other, that is the essence of being acceptable, it has been the power of the example for two thousand years, it is in the nature of being.

The symbols, the rituals, the liturgy will return and be even more important, but only after one knows the nature of the divine, one has looked inside and found the truth. All the other stuff is nice, and it fits; it is supplementary, it does not lead one to understand the ‘ultimate concern’.

By whatever name one uses the absence of it does leave a void, the important missing part; the need and the quest to know are the basis of the First Commandment, true then true now.

The word “God” carries so much baggage for me, so much that is not my own that I refrain from using it when I look into my own soul and when I write; a term that often fits for me is “wellspring of being”, it portrays not only the source, but is active and ongoing, has the mystery of the source of the spring. Most often I use no word; attempt to be beyond words; to be beyond emotions, accept them, transcend them; step slowly and carefully into the void, with the courage to go towards the infinite.

Afraid to believe

A man I know assured me yesterday that Hilary’s tears before the New Hampshire primary were staged, false, done to manipulate; this fellow runs a health care company and so may no more about what was inside her mind than I do, or that is the way he would have it. There was no way that he was going to be taken in by her trick, and he wanted everyone else to know it, so there.

Of course he missed the point: People responded to her show of emotion, voted their desire to believe in a woman who believes in what she is about; this caused a reaction in my friend, why?

What is there about believing in something that frightens?

What is there about believing that attracts even as it frightens ?

Is my friend afraid of being disappointed, being hurt?

Is he embarrassed to be seen as believing?

Is that why he has decided to be a cynic?

It is no secret that the penalty for being a cynic is that one has to live without belief, there is no greater punishment than that. To be driven to that state of mind where he has to insist that Hilary is trying to trick us, to have that attitude is to be like a stopped clock, right twice a day. He could be right, eventually he will find an example to show that he is right, twice a day; the rest of the day the cynic doesn’t know what time it is in his empty universe.

Yesterday I wrote that the greatest act of love is to let someone be, accept without cynicism, accept without fear of disappointment, accept without fear of pain. There is a joy that comes from accepting without qualification, that joy overwhelms any pain or discomfort that comes along occasionally.

I accept her, him & myself- as is.

This is what I have seen

It has been at least six months since I wrote the ‘Lydia Aello’ thing, it was a way of tying a few things together, to see how they looked on paper and screen. It is a good time to add something to the business of experiencing whatever it was that I experienced.

All my bridges were burning, there was no way out of this horrible mess that my life had become, death was my only option. I had gone over my situation repeatedly, had burned out a number of therapists in attempts to find a solution to the depression and anxiety that destroyed all that I might have been. I truly believed that I was going to use the setup I had made, that I would no longer be alive in fifteen minutes, no hope was left unturned.

It was the absolute belief that nothing I held important was useful, no cavalry troop was going to ride in from off stage at the last minute; no smooth, moist thighs were going to open as a safe harbor; that is when I began to sense something else, I now call it ‘Presence’ even though it was and is not a thing, a presence. It is more like a verb than a noun, and it has no character other than it was through me, about me, it was me and more than me, I would never be alone again.

In the months and years to follow I went through James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, fought my way through a number of Tillich’s books, listed myself at the University of Wales, Lampeter where religious experiences can be registered. I have come to believe that I had what those others have had over the millenia, and it has led me to a few notions:

Jesus couldn’t have experienced the ultimate transcendence if he had not been brought to death by the Romans, Jesus the man teaching what all men can know.

That the guy who stood on the dessert and said ‘God is God’ pretty much said it all, and I empathize with his experience.

That people who have spiritual knowledge did not all stop two thousand years ago, there is no reason to think that there is less opportunity to know the divine than there was in Palestine back then, no reason at all.

That it is the goal of everyone to have this knowledge, whether that goal is expressed or kept hidden, there is intuitive knowledge of what it is.

I will post this as is, even though I know its inadequacy, know that what was experienced can never be portrayed accurately and fully: not by Bach, Jackson Pollock or Jesus, but we feel the need to try.

Lydia Aello looks at me

 

LYDIA AELLO LOOKS AT ME

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I was a skinny, noisy kid who had an answer for everything, and an inability to keep quiet about it. Although I grew to six feet tall, before puberty I was usually the shortest kid in class, and had an answer for everything.

 

It must have been in fifth grade that this thing happened, I know that it was just before lunch time, that the weather was warm, I remember the walk home for lunch after it happened.

 

I read everything that came into sight, I was bright, considered myself brighter than anybody else in my class or at home, along with being small, considering myself the brightest led me to having a difficult time in grade school, and not that much easier in high school.

 

The teacher’s name was Miss Orr, at least I remember it that way, this happened about half a century ago, I know that it wasn’t Miss Coulter, because Miss Coulter gave me the strap a few times, she frightened me, which was her modus operandi.

 

When it happened I was sitting in the third row from the windows, it was a nice day I had been looking outside often.

 

Lydia Aello, whose father killed chickens, was looking at me. I’d known Lydia since I started at Memorial Public School three years before, she was the girl who walked to school with Norman Hope’s sister Muriel, they had a poultry business behind their house, she was bigger than I was, she had long dark hair, that’s about all that I can remember about her. I can’t remember much about any of the other girls either, they just didn’t figure for much in my world.

 

 

Anyway, Lydia was giving me this look, looking right at me with this funny smile that somehow told me that she liked looking at me. This had never happened to me before, I had never considered it happening to me, there was nothing in my vocabulary for this. The difference between boys and girls was a fixed thing, they were what they were, and a girl looking at me as if she liked doing it? I didn’t know what was going on. I can remember looking away, then looking back, there was no mistake, she did it again, right at me, with this funny little smile. For once I had no answer, and I always had an answer for everything.

 

I can remember walking home across the fields we called the ‘hydro’ fields, because the high voltage electric lines from the hydro electric power plants, that surround the falls at Niagara, ran through them, I didn’t have much to say to Tommy, Gary or Bob that noon hour. If I had been hit alongside the head with a sandbag, I would not have felt differently. That afternoon I smiled back at Lydia Aello.

 

Since that time I have not always been in love, but I can definitely say that I have never doubted its existence, would not even consider the question. I don’t understand love much better now than I did then, but that it exists is obvious.

What Lydia’s look signaled was that I was acceptable. I don’t know that anyone had ever given me that message before. Those were not the words that would have been used, the child’s term “she likes you” is as close as it ever came.

The notion remained as a ungerminated seed in my soul, not nourished nor often repeated, just buried in the soil, waiting.

 

My thing with Lydia Aello lasted two weeks, or a little less. I got teased about it, I can remember a smile from Miss Orr when Lydia chose me again to answer the multiplication exercise that she was monitoring, I chose her when it was my turn. I never did get to hold her hand.

 

Now jump forward about four decades to when I am about to kill myself.

 

A variety of pills are in the coffee grinder, stuff to make me drowsy, a glass of milk in which to mix the ground medications sits on the counter, a vinyl shower curtain is draped over the kitchen stove. I will drink the milk and drugs mixture, blow out the pilot lights and open the circuit breakers, and then climb under the tent, there will not be an explosion from the gas when I open the oven valve. The plan has been fixed in my mind for some time, simple, clean, final.

 

I am going to kill myself because there are no options left to me; over fifty years of fighting major depression that continues to worsen, I am divorced for the second time, my daughter wants nothing more to do with me, any career is long gone, there aren’t any friends left. I have looked for help since 1959, that is the first time I lived in a city big enough to have a psychiatrist, it had continued in half a dozen places, and with about a dozen and a half therapists, all the medication had been tried, multiple shock treatments, and it just gets worse, the hole gets deeper, all options are gone. This list of failure keeps running through my mind, the conclusion never varies, there is the only way to end this pain.

The list of rejections and failures went again through me, this time there was no “perhaps” that I might insert, my position allowed me for no excuse, there was no person, no endeavor, or place that wanted me.

 

 

I am standing, next to the stove, leaning on the counter, everything is in front of me. This is it.

 

I now see the void of death, in just a few minutes I will be of it. I have never considered the blackness before, there has always been some myth or platitude diluting it, but not now, this is pure, this is reality as I had never known it.

 

It was as if I was naked, standing on a rock, with a storm having blown every reason to live downwind. I stood there in this experience, the second hand didn’t move.

 

And then my stomach heaved, I began to gag, I ran to the bathroom, to retch out something bitter and nasty from my belly.

 

It took me a weeks to know that in that moment of nakedness, I had experienced something else, something other than the feral instinct to live, a notion that I couldn’t and wouldn’t see.

 

Regarding the depression, I made one more effort, using an technique that someone from Mayo Clinic had suggested years before, I started asking around, “who is the most effective person in Chicago treating depression?” The emphasis was on ‘effective’. I attended a couple of lectures, searched bookstores, and asked whatever doctors I could find that question. As had been promised me by the Mayo doctor, physicians are not loath to tell give their opinions. One name and one method came out of this. And the nightmare began to end, the depression was vulnerable after all this time.

 

To get back to whatever it was that I experienced at the time when I truly believed death was next. I thought on that, have been thinking on that ever since; it has become the focus of all that has followed. I experienced presence, not a presence, just presence, more of a verb than a noun. And even though it is more ineffable than love, it has been the subject of writings for several thousands of years, and continues to be.

It has another thing that cannot be doubted, no more than that love I felt when Lydia Aello first looked at me.

 

I assume that everyone I meet has been in love, it may not be true, but it isn’t far from it; I sometimes forget that not everyone has had a religious experience, the two seem so natural and obvious, available to everyone, when the situation comes to it.

 

I realized that it was at this point that the seed planted by Lydia Aello had sprouted, it came to life. That I am acceptable, not by any person, any code, but as an inherent part of me.

The Presence I experienced is that of Being Acceptable.

A truth that needs no argument. It just sits there as testament to my being.

 

Roger Johnson: April, 2007.

 

Letting go of meaning

For the last day I knew that I had to put down here what follows, it comes from saying goodbye to a new old friend, from the understanding that I am starting a new epoch, from that special insight that sets us apart from everything else that is alive. Any embarrassment I feel about writing this comes from my inability to put down just the right words that express what I know, what every one of us knows within.

My path led me to find meaning for who I was and what I must be about, “what will you be when you grow up?”, the route that took me everywhere but to peace. I don’t know why I never questioned the mission, never followed the clues that pointed to a wrong end; I searched and searched for the thing that would make me valid. Depression and terrible anxiety were all that I found.

There is being and knowing, that I am, everything is built upon this. Out of this came, comes, the knowledge of the mystical that I first experienced when Lydia Aello loved me and I loved her in return. Various experiences were of the mystical nature, mostly they happened when hearing a certain piece of music, looking at a picture, that kind of thing; most intense was when I believed that I was about to die, when I could see the deep black of the edge. It was from that intensity that came my daily exploration of the Spirit, the presence, etc.

I felt the need to put all of that down here again while we are at this new place, this beginning, this New Year. Intuitively I know that this direction is unlike the others, the goal a better one.

And I know that I have spent enough time analyzing and writing this: And that the bird feeder is empty, that the rent check needs to be delivered, that there is a cable for the new television that needs to be exchanged for the on that will do the job. And so it goes.

A man from Darfur

I met a man from Darfur; it was an early evening in August, I was walking in the livery staging area at O’Hare. The lot can hold about 200 livery cars and over 300 taxi cabs, a lively place to be on a pleasant evening. I doing what exercise I do, he the same, we walked and talked together for a while, I never saw him again.

The man told me that he had just returned from Darfur, that he had grown up in that area, emigrated to the U. S., had just returned from a visit. He described holding a child as it died, knowing there were other children in the village who were about to die, so many had died in the place he had grown up, so many more would die in the future. There was nothing he could do about it. He was sad, angry, confused, frustrated, and had to come back from that place.

He told me that he was a Muslim, but not a practicing one, that the religion based destruction and killing kept him from the rituals and ceremonies that he had learned growing up. They were responsible for the death of this child, the other child, and all of the others, they who were supposed to be his spiritual guides.

His angry argument against the religious authorities was familiar, I don’t imagine that there is anyone growing up in our culture who has not gone through the argument and history of religion based cruelty, it is something that we start in high school and keep through the early years of college: examples and blame, the frustration of not having a spiritual organization with clean hands. That there is no religious group that has not killed and injured. I don’t need to go through this old harangue, there isn’t anything new about it.

I suggested that he should temporarily lift the words from this business, Allah, Muslim, whatever the nouns are they should be set aside for now. Don’t throw them away, keep them close to hand, within sight and reach. Then go to how he had once felt, what feeling that the practice had given him, just the feeling experience. Stay with just that for a while. He understood what I was offering, agreed that it felt good, was a comfort against his frustration.

All of the words of a Spiritual life carry baggage, so much of it that it is almost impossible to grow from under that weight. Put aside God, Jesus, Christianity, Jehovah, Allah and whatever words, and let whatever it is that is behind those words rise to the surface. There is, always has been, something that needs to be felt, that can’t be ignored, it is the basis for all religions and cults. Just go to that place within, relive the feeling that that you find.

This is nothing more difficult than doing this, nothing takes more courage, and it is the most wonderful. Leave the safe words passed down from your father and mother, the authoritarian laws and directions that were to give lifelong guidance; set them aside, for a short time, be courageous.

The symbols, ceremonies, laws will always be there, they can be picked up and carried at any time—-but for just this short time set them beside me, when I come back to them they will have even more power than previous.

This piece has been the most difficult to complete, has taken nearly a week to get this far. It is far from complete, is disjointed, the words not exact. Writing about this is like engraving smoke. I feel as if I had done too much exercising, I am sore and creaky, and I have a headache; all for those couple of paragraphs. I’ll post this today, will come back to it again, and then once more.

Being in the present

That first smell of coffee as I opened the grinder lid, as the hot water roiled the grounds, as I lift the cup to my mouth for that first sip.

Preceding that I had an orange, I could have made fresh juice in the machine, but not for this morning, today I quartered the sphere so that I could bite with the full width of my mouth. Feel the threads that hold the cells together, feel the juice as the cells burst open, smell the fresh orange on my beard; the first flavor of this morning.

All of that was for a purpose, was planned. At about 3 a. m. I awoke to the presence of memories culled from nearly 70 Christmas mornings, the very good ones demanded that I relive them, open those old presents once again, the disappointing ones wanted recognition as well, to show the power of not quite meeting expectations; and on and on the memories came with swells of intensity, waves of yesterdays.

I realized that this Scrooge episode must end, there ain’t no profit to mood or anything else by bringing in the past this morning; Christmas morning is the quietest morning of the year in a huge city, there is almost nothing going on, even the MacDonald’s is closed today, no one is up and about. And so it is an opportunity for memories to fill the absence of real activities, would fill this Christmas morning with scenes that cannot and should not be repeated.

And so I purposely cut the orange in a way that would fill my mouth.

I purposely stood over the coffee press as the hot water swirled and released the strong odor of Peet’s Garuda Blend, one of their strongest.

What is is right-now. Inhale all the flavor that right-now has to offer, recognize that the birds have come into the yard and are chirping in the sunlight. This is what this Christmas is.

It was a difficult couple of hours, the pull of great gifts, of family together, of laughter, the attraction of those memories is strong, and has been known to lead me down the path of the morose and the bitter.  I do feel the pain of not knowing the grandchildren who open presents I have sent them, feel the pain of a parent who has an unhappy child; I feel that pain because it is real and it is part of this morning.  But it is merely pain, not the mortal wound.

I looked forward to writing this as I lay awake just an hour ago. I look forward to going to work today (they called last night to see if I could do an ‘as directed’ order).

What I am in the process of learning from these 69 Christmases is to devour each one in its time, and then taste what comes next; not the natural way of a long-standing depressive personality, it takes effort and repetition to break the old ways, and I recognize my success.

I just interrupted my prattling here for a couple of minutes in order to fill the feeder, if I am going to find joy in a flock of sparrows I better not forget to do what is necessary to have them and their exuberance.

Again, I want to say that it is now that has the real nutrition for the soul, it always has been that way.  It is why I do hospice volunteering, sit and talk with someone who is not long here, but who has today.

The weather today is to be mostly sunny, with a high near 40.  I am to take some people of means to a number of places this afternoon.  Then it will be home for my recent tradition, cook a frozen pizza and drink an extra glass of wine.

The sparrows have just recognized that the feeder has been filled.