Re: Re

I think about friendship and the people in my life more these days than I used to. I started thinking more about it after my mother's stroke. People came out for her --work colleagues, friends from the neighborhood, from the women's club --all kinds of people.

People came out for me, too --A few were those I'd known since I'd first come to Charleston, a couple from work, a few college friends, one or two others from High School and most amazingly, my two dearest, childhood friends.

It was in comparison a paltry few, but my mother was a teacher for 35 years, the president of the women's club and even considered once as a potential candidate for the local school board (she turned it down). The number of people I see or work with is small and many of my work relationships are at least a little adversarial. I probably wouldn't be doing my job properly if the folks at Mountain Stage loved me, but they don't and it's not tragic that they don't.

The stroke made me start looking at Facebook differently or maybe it just made me look at it again. It seems like the more people I know on Facebook, the fewer people I know in real life, the fewer real friends I have. The presidential election sort of fine tuned that. People weren't looking for conversation on Facebook. They were looking for converts to a particular way of thinking.

It got worse after the Newtown massacre. Out came the gun lobby supporters, the conspiracy theorists and the folks still ramped up from the election noise machine. The things they posted disturbed me to my core and I spent a lot of time trying not to convince them what they believed was wrong, just that the proof they were using for they believed was wrong.


It was foolish and didn't make a difference.

I had an old fraternity brother kick me to the curb after I pointed out that by posting these things he was posting, without any sort of disclaimer he was endorsing them. I showed him evidence that discredited what he was echoing and said that if he was comfortable propagating lies and distortions for political gain it was morally reprehensible.

I deserved being dropped.

Since the new year, I've been trying to cut back on my usage. It's not easy, but of course, not a lot of people were coming around to find me with the service. They just stopped in for a laugh when I was being funny or maybe to read something I posted that I wrote if it happened to be something they were into. Not a lot of people were checking on how I was doing; you know, "Since your mother had that stroke?" or "After that divorce?" or "Since you started seeing that hot librarian?"

Actually, only two and I can't really say I've been following the real lives of anyone I know either. So what's the fucking point of participating in the social network if it's not really social?

So I'm slowing and hoping to stop.

Meanwhile, I'm learning to stop thinking of everybody I work with as a friend. Some of the people I work with do not want what is in my best interests, but rather have interests of their own they want to serve. Relying too much on the people you work with for your community, for your circle, your tribe, is ultimately self-defeating. 


I think you if you want to be part of the world you have to go farther than the keyboard on your computer, farther even than the farthest cubicle at the edge of the room. You have to leave your home, leave your yard, leave even the mailbox at the end of your drive and find your way on some road somewhere.

There are no digital shortcuts an few professional pathways. You've got to find your own way to each new person you add in your life and usually one leads to another leads to another and so on. It's funny. There was a time when I knew this already, but I'd just forgotten.

2013: Living and breathing

Shortly after the divorce, I lost my health insurance.

After over a decade of being fully insured through the state, I was suddenly faced with having to decide whether I wanted to go forward with picking up the newspaper's usually demonized insurance or going without. I was still limping through the first year of paying a mortgage on my own and a car payment I hadn't expected. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to continue feeding myself. Taking on insurance seemed like a burden I just couldn't handle --not yet.

Instead, I opted for a health club membership, figuring preventative care was probably better in the long run. A little swimming, some running and lots of free weights matched with (mostly) healthy eating seemed like a more economical approach to a safety net --plus it seemed like a more positive step.

But I still wanted the insurance.

The last time I was without insurance for an extended period of time, all kinds of bad shit happened. I had a really bad cold that turned into walking pneumonia, but the worst of it was a bout of strep throat, which cost me a couple of hundred bucks and went away right after I took my second prescribed antibiotic pill.

A few years ago, I was really amazed at how easy it was to fix things when you had insurance. I had a issue with my blood pressure, brought on by a bad diet, too much weight, a smoking habit I was sure I could kick whenever I wanted, and a lot of stress. I was doing a piece on a plasma center for Graffiti and the nurse told me my blood pressure was way off. I was sick. The doctor I went to confirmed it, put me on some blood pressure medicine and advised me to quit smoking, lose weight and learn to relax.

A few months later, I'd more or less done two of the three and my pressure was normal. I didn't need the medicine, but the whole experience taught me to pay attention a lot better. I check my blood pressure periodically and can tell when it's creeping up. It goes up with my weight and I start having more headaches.

The thing is, without the assurance of insurance, I probably wouldn't have gone to the doctor. I'd have self-diagnosed, treated myself as I saw fit and hoped for the best. That might have worked out fine, but maybe it wouldn't have. Either way, I certainly wouldn't have had access to blood pressure reducing medicine, which I'm sure made it easier to take care of the rest.

That old issue with my blood pressure became more meaningful after a friend's father had a stroke a few months ago, right after my mother had hers. Mom, who is struggling to regain her mobility, recovered her mind. I don't know if she'll ever be able to walk again, but regardless, things have turned out much better for her than they did for him.

After lingering for a couple of weeks, my friend's father died. He was only a year older than me and like me, had a certain built in reluctance to going to the doctor when he wasn't feeling well.   


Anyway, it's looking like I'll have one less reason to not get a checkup. Apparently, I might just be able to swing health insurance after all.

It's like the best news.

Faith here and now

I attend church these days --I know, quite shocking-- but as much as I try, most of the time I don't feel what's supposed to be in the message. There is no real revelation other than a petty political one that has no business being spoken from the pulpit.

I'm afraid I'm still more Buddhist than anything, just someone who is trying very hard to live by compassion for the sake of compassion, not because it's an expression of love for a divine being and not because I think it will get me into Heaven, but because it makes the most sense to love everyone as you'd have them love you.

As Vonnegut would say, "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

I believe that, even if I don't always get there (obviously).

Still, I think I used to understand Christianity a lot better. I used to pray and when I prayed I spoke to God with a fierce faith. I prayed for those I loved and asked with utter remorse for the forgiveness of my sins. I prayed for assistance, while believing fervently that God isn't one to grant wishes. I begged to understand and to find peace, but peace was slippery.

And I was thinking about some of these things as I was driving along with my girlfriend, discussing the preacher's sermon --I thought the guy sounded good, but didn't much care for what he said.

We were riding along, soaking in the air conditioning. The sun was shining and just ahead of us, we saw a young, dark-skinned man kneeling in the grass and offering a prayer to the east. His long hair was in tight braids tied together like electrical cables right above his neck.

It was just after noon and behind him, he'd dropped the pack he'd been carrying.

He was just a traveler, a weary pilgrim headed somewhere, but this gesture, a prayer by the side of the road in plain sight of Sunday traffic, was easily the most spiritually significant thing I'd seen in quite a while. It didn't make me want to convert to anything, but it reminded me that we're all on our own roads to "Damascus" and most of the time, like this young believer, we're moving against the traffic.

Heavy metal

The muscle guy gave me a strained, bemused look as I ducked my head past the edge of the doorway. He smiled.

"Where have you been? You decide you needed to take six months off or something?"

No, I shook my head and explained about buying a house and trying to save gas and going to the Y, which was just down the road.

"But you decided to come back here?"

I grinned and told him yes, though that really wasn't the reason. It had more to do with getting someone where they needed to be. The Rec center just happened to be along the path on the way back.

He shrugged and nothing else was really said, though he watched me go through my paces. Maybe he doubted me a little and thought I might need a hand when I picked up something. It could be that he wondered if what I'd said was a bandage to cover up another story.

A fair bit of that happens at the Rec center. On an average morning, half to three-quarters of the people lifting weights or hiking mile after miserable on the treadmills are comfortably retired. Some of them haven't worked in 20 years, which is mind-boggling to a man who cannot imagine a day where his presence is not required somewhere at sometime, but the time catches up on everyone. One day, they just stop coming. The old ladies whisper to each other about it. They give it a name: cancer, a heart attack, a stroke, a bad fall.

Maybe they come back after a while. Usually, they don't.

As I took my place on one of the machines, a couple of others stopped by, asked me how I was doing. They seemed concerned, but understood as soon as I explained. We laughed about it, though I couldn't figure out what it was that we all thought was so funny.

Through the rest of the shift, familiar faces watched me. They nodded a greeting or asked me how I'd been.

What an amazing thing: to think of yourself as nobody, as just another pair of tennis shoes, but to realize that you'd been seen all along --and more --to know that while absent, you were missed.

I think we all want to belong somewhere, but we don't always recognize these places when we first see them.  

Feed your face, feed your soul

Growing up, I remember going to my grandparents' homes and really being overwhelmed by their kitchens. On my father's side, my grandmother kept a refrigerator full of deli lunch meat, cheese, soda and snacks (not much on the veggies, however). Her cupboards always had cookies and chips and crackers.

My mother's mom had a fully stocked refrigerator, two huge chest freezers, a second old-style ice box fridge and a pantry --plus a smokehouse out back. You could always find a gallon of ice cream somewhere, plus just about anything else. Granny could feed an army and occasionally did --particularly around the holidays.

We ate like kings when we visited my grandparents. 

My folks stocked up much more modestly. We had plenty to eat, but Dad quit smoking and became a health nut, a manic long distance runner and a crazed gardener. Somehow, he talked my mother into canning tomatoes, corn and grapes and baking loaf after loaf of zucchini bread --I don't think it was her idea.

We had lots of that stuff, but not no much cheese; no crackers, usually, except saltines and cookies were something we saw sporadically at best.

Later on, after my folks split, things got a little tighter. Mom started buying the good cereal instead of just Raisin Bran, but there wasn't the sense of plenty we'd had before. However, even so, it was still a lot more than what I became used to as an adult.


In the dark, dark days, I remember getting by on cheap bags of black beans and medium grain rice. Sometimes, I'd buy cans of Mexican salsa to pour over it, to give it flavor. Other times, I'd get bottles of salad dressing with Arabic labels.

Whatever was less than a dollar.

Sometimes, the only thing in my refrigerator when I opened that door was my shadow and that scared me.  I worried about not having enough, but really, truthfully, I was never remotely close to going hungry --at least not for very long. There were times I felt like it was close, but I always had the beans and rice. I had friends willing to feed me from time to time and my mother lived just 30 miles away.

But I also had my pride and I kept my mouth shut about it. Most times, nobody knew how I was living or that I was just squeaking by. 

Still, when I panic about money, when I worry about how I'm going to get through a month, it always comes back to having enough to eat. The rest can be managed. Utility companies and lenders can be negotiated with. You can beg them to cut you a break, forgive some of the extra fees and charges; buy yourself a little time. If the worst happens, you can go to bed when the light fades and wash up in the employee restroom. You can catch a ride to and from work. It's only temporary.

Food is different. Everybody has to eat and you cannot negotiate with your stomach. It holds you hostage. The best you can do is trim back. When you're a little short, instead of the apples, you get the bananas because apples are $1.69 a pound and bananas are only 55 cents a pound --or you can buy jello. If you're a lot short, stick with the beans then raid the condiment packages left in the fridge at work to make another bowl of pintos seem palatable.

Most of the time no one even notices they're gone.


The fear creeps in when you're not sure if you can afford the beans and I've seen that. It's left a mark on me. I've probably written more about being afraid of going hungry as much as anything.

So, while I was planning my garden, I did something else: I bought shelves, nothing special, just inexpensive, but sturdy shelves. I also began collected canning jars and I started turning a little nothing space without much use otherwise into a pantry.

It's nothing special. Every time I go to the grocery store, I pick up a couple of extra cans of something, a box of this or that. I put it on the shelf. So far, it hasn't come to much --just a dozen or so cans, a couple of boxes of pasta, some powdered milk, two or three pounds of dried beans, a few packages of noodles and a 12 pack of diet soda. It's enough for a couple of days, but my stock will grow and I take nothing from those shelves unless I replace it with something new.

Every once in a while, I go to this little room in my house, just to look at it. I think about what else I should add. Canned meat has come to mind, but I hate tuna and canned chicken sometimes smells like cat food. There should be spices and tea, loads of things, but there's not a terrible hurry. The shelves are filling up slowly, but surely.

These days, I'm not so worried about where my next meal is going to come from or what form it will take. With this little gesture on my part, maybe I never have to worry again. If so, that's kind of a comfort --and one that's long overdue.   

Turn on, tune in.

I started attending church, mostly, because my girlfriend attends regularly and it's a nice place to see her. She dresses up for services and I love the way she looks at me as I come through the door --occasionally late. What I like is she never completely expects me to be there, but is glad I showed up just the same.

She's been attending the same church for as long as she can remember and probably before. My attendance at church prior to the past few months might be considered spotty at best. Oh sure, I was the vice president or secretary or something for a Methodist church youth group in high school --but I was mostly recruited, I think, to help mow the cemetery plot the group maintained.

I never joined the church, just attended youth group meetings and went to services maybe three times in two years.

I also became a member of the Southern Baptist congregation about a dozen years back. At the time I was in emotional free-fall. A friend suggested I come along with him to church and I was desperate enough to give it a try. The message was soft-soap Christianity with a heavy dose of general counseling --plus they served donuts in the morning. As I was broke and hungry almost every weekend, the donuts were kind of nice. I always had two --even if they were invariably stale.

With the Baptists, I was good up until the pastor actually delved into the nuts and bolts of the religion. The preacher and I exchanged many e-mails on why I didn't agree with the contents of his sermon either on Biblical grounds or because it just sounded like thinly veiled political bullshit.

Periodically, he would tell me I should have been a preacher, too. I don't know that he really meant that, but may have been looking for a way to shut me up.

I was never a very good Christian. This isn't to say I was out looting and plundering or sacrificing goats to obscure Byzantine gods on the side. I lived a pretty good Christian life. I prayed a couple of times a day. I attended every service I could. I read my Bible and whatever was considered the hot new religious text of the moment --"The Prayer of Jabez" was popular, as was stuff by Rick Warren. I watched Kirk Cameron in "Left Behind" and was sober --at least the first time through.

The second time, I realized it was too damned silly to take seriously without something to help suspend disbelief.

Quite frankly, I think the rapture is bullshit and about as likely as the world ending because of the return of a flying winged serpent.  

Anyway, I walked the walk --at least as best I understood it. I tried to live by what I read and what I was taught in church. I believed, but then the belief system I'd established was challenged and my faith collapsed like an empty aluminum crushed against a frat boy's forehead.

I was never a really good Christian, I guess. When the real trials showed up, my belief in a benevolent god withered. As much as preachers and pundits talked up the idea of spiritual trials, I could never wrap my head around what was served by making even one child autistic or blind or born with a broken heart.


So, I began to look elsewhere. I wound up reading a lot about Buddhism and a few self-help-y new age books (just not the stupid ones that promised to connect me with dead people, put me in contact with my guardian angel or help me decipher my fate from water). I even called myself a Buddhist for a while, not that I really was.

I liked the idea of letting go of attachment and the notion of responsibility in Buddhism wss very attractive to me. Part of what I didn't like about Christianity is that there was a vein in it that tended to turn everything over to God, including the stupid things people do just because they can, like screw each other for money or dump poison in the water. 

I liked Buddhism's pretty specific, though very broad, code of conduct, but the concept of reincarnation sort of stalled for me, as did the complicated system for determining karmic merit. It seems unlikely that the universe was created by an accountant.

I'm not entirely sure the Buddha believed that either.

I've been hot and cold on religion. These days, I think, I'm moving toward warm. It's been a while, but I'm interested in spiritual things again. 

Attending church is odd for me. I'm not really there for the message, though the man giving the sermon is a nice, earnest and plain-spoken kind of preacher named Mike. Earnest counts a lot in my world. I appreciate having an honest intention and Mike seems like he's in this for all the right reasons. Of course, he also reminds me ever so slightly of Glenn Beck, but without seeming like he drinks gasoline straight from the pump.


Mike is also smart enough to know I'm there for the girl, not for the guy he's talking about. There are times I feel a little bad about that. It's a very nice church. The people are thoughtful, sweet and kind --just very decent people who don't seem to do a lot of grandstanding or chest thumping about how swell they are because they're Christians. I feel a real sense of humility in the bunch as a group.

They're warm and welcoming, but I'm an "other," a visitor, a tourist and an alien. It's not them, of course. It's me. I hear the words, but they don't really move me. I feel nothing much beyond the warmth of my girlfriend's hand and the joy from watching her smile at me, but I wait to see if there's anything else. I never stop hoping there is.

Slingshot

There's just something weird about going into a jock shop named "Dick's."

I don't usually go to sporting goods stores. I'm not really much of a sports guy, but my son is interested in playing soccer and I played soccer in junior high and high school. I loved it and have often thought about joining a geezer league, but so far... my schedule really hasn't permitted.

So, the two of us found ourselves wandering the aisles looking at soccer gear when I spotted the "outdoorsman" section, where they keep the gear for hunting, fishing and otherwise making a nuisance of yourself in the great outdoors. I do not fish, do not hunt and do not enjoy camping, much to the continued irritation of family who really dig it.

As a boy I was taught a whole set of skills useful if the modern world suddenly ended and the dinosaurs returned. Dad hunted, fished and trapped animals for their pelts. He brought me along and I learned some of it; enough to get by, if I needed to. I know how to fish, how to hunt and can skin animals if need be. I'm an okay shot with a gun, but better with a bow and arrow. I picked that up shooting arrows with the kid across the street. Sometimes he even let me take a turn with his compound bow.

We got the soccer ball and ambled over past the fishing lures and the paintball guns. It was like something was calling me and I moved with clear purpose.

In the lower corner of an aisle, there was a single line of Daisy slingshots --different sizes, different pulls, different prices. They were aluminum frames with yellow rubber tubing and a genuine artificial leather patch where you put the sling bullet.

My son looked at me as I picked one up then grabbed a bag of marbles, what you use as ammo when you don't much feel like picking up rocks.

"Is that for me?" He asked.

No. He was disappointed, but he's five.

Now, I have no idea why I wanted this thing. I have no idea why I bought it, except it was something I wanted.

Over ten years ago at a flea market, I bought a switchblade knife off a guy selling them from the hood of his car for twenty bucks. For almost a week I walked around, flicking it open --click-- then closing it. I felt like some kind of a bad ass. I just loved having it on me.

I got rid of it the day after I took it into a radio studio and nearly made the DJ working that afternoon wet himself. It scared the hell out of him and me a little. It was like I was looking for an excuse to use it and that bothered me because really, what precisely is the purpose of something like a switchblade? It only really has one purpose.

I sold it for what I paid for it and that was that.

A few years later, a friend of mine gave me a gun. His grandfather, suffering from dementia, lost his mind, attacked his wife and put her in the hospital. My friend and his father had to go, settle some affairs and put them in separate nursing homes. While going through the house, they came up with several thousand dollars in cash, plus a couple of guns the old man had hidden.

I was given one of them for no other reason than my friend felt like he needed to distribute them.

It was the same problem as with the knife. I spent hours fiddling with the gun, which was never loaded. I carried it around and probably once or twice I put myself in situations where I could have been in a lot of trouble if a cop searched me.

Eventually, I put the gun away, actually forgot about it for a couple of years, then got rid of it altogether when it turned up again.

So, now I have this slingshot. There's a symbol in all of this, something the wanting and needing of this specific item signifies, but I'm not sure what it means.

It is pretty cool, however.