Tecumseh's Wisdom

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

Trouble no one about his religion.

Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength.

Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.

If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise ones turn to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.

Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home. -- The Teaching of Tecumseh

This is verse which I feel is wisdom embodied. I believe that much of what is wrong with the world could be remedied with a bit of review when we turn the mirror toward ourselves and look deeply at what we see. Look deeply at how we act. How we live.

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

The fear of death is universal. But you can face this inevitable conclusion of our body’s earthly existence fearlessly by pushing it from your heart. If the heart is filled with hopes, there is no room for fears.

Trouble no one about his religion.

This is one of the most difficult concepts for me to grasp. There is rarely a belief system out there that is totally inclusive of others. We tend to be so often the sheep depicted in the Christian Bible that endlessly wander without guiding principles and leaders. But look closely at those principles and leaders and dissect them to find if the core of the essence is one of inclusivity or exclusivity. The golden rule of “Do unto others…”, apply it to your life! 

Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.

I have always thought everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Differing viewpoints cannot be viewed as negative viewpoints. Learn from differing and opposing opinions. Do not judge that I think you are wrong because I don’t agree. And I will not think you wrong to bring your own opinions to the table. I will not assume anything.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Your life doesn’t have to be perfect but it is the only one that we get to do anything with. Make those anything’s everything and make sure that there is a shine to them.

Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.

Who needs you more than others? The family, friends and strangers in need all benefit when you are able to open your life to them. I often hear that the ones with the most at the end win. But what will the ones left behind remember you for. Your sacrifice, your devotion to others, your money?

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Let your death song be your life. Let others remember the composition of your existence.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.

I joke with a friend that when we fall on bad times, we both know that at least one of us will always wave as we go by the other pushing a shopping cart down by the riverfront. But I know it is more than that. It is the universal recognition of humanity and our ultimate connection to it that gives us Mother Teresa’s, Martin Luther King and the scarred and wounded soldiers that served their country. Remember that we know not what form that our God may walk in.

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

We all deserve our dignity and should strive to build a place where all can find a safe haven to discover theirs. 

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength.

Be glad you woke up on the right side of the sod each day. The obituaries are filled with those that crossed over from living to death.

Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.

This is an under-appreciated joy in America. We have such a plentiful food supply and the riches to obtain it that we end up taking it for granted. My own wife still has to remind me often to slow down and be mindful of my eating. To taste the food that goes in my mouth, and will energize my body.

If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Think about what you were last grateful about. Now think about the last time you thought about what you were grateful about. It has been a while I would bet. And don’t think that there are only big things to be grateful for. How about the fact that you are loved by someone for no other reason thab you are you?

Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise ones turn to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

Alcohol is not firewater. Firewater is a fuel that destroys and is more a misuse of a substance than being a specific substance. Firewater can be alcohol, but it could be violent video games, drugs or physical violence. Are we doing things that rob our spirit of joy?

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.

Look back without regrets. Seek out what fascinated your life and tie a flag to it so when times get tough and you feel lost, you may draw strength from seeing it blown about by the wind of your life force. Let those you will be leaving do the weeping for it is their place to mourn. The day you die should be truly “A good day to die.”

Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

Your death song could be your life. Write that song now.

Mistakes Will Be Made.

"Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life." ~Sophia Loren

I leaned over the side of the boat to wash the fish slime off my hands only to be greeted with “Kerplunk!” My Ray Bans slipped from their perch on the brim of my hat and traveled directly to the bottom of South Manistee Lake. Ohw! That hurt, on so many levels. That undersize largemouth bass I had released moments before was the last thing on my mind.

I felt sick even though I was trying to tell myself that they were just a dumb pair of sunglasses. But my relentlessly unforgiving brain kept up taunting me. “Yeah, just sunglasses. $300 sunglasses. Prescription sunglasses. Only 6 months old. How dumb can you be to place them on top of the brim of your hat to be able to get the hook out of the fish? See, you do so need the bifocals the eye doctor was pushing you to consider. And why no safety strap?”

No, that last thought was a gently echoing message that my wife and fishing partner had moments before delivered to me to consider. In fact it was her bass I had just released that got my hands slimy.

“Why didn’t you have a strap on them like mine have?” she said, “You put this one on my sunglasses for me.”

She was of course right about that. I had spent time rigging a strap for her sunglasses so that just this sort of thing would not happen to her while she was fishing or kayaking. Did I somehow think I was immune to this happening to me?

My point of all this came to me later. After the mosquito repellant dissolving part of my kayak seat later, which after seeing what OFF does to plastic I am having a troubling time thinking about ever spraying it on my skin again. That point is that I am always going to be a victim to doing dumb things. It seems to be a profound part of my nature. Thus far they have not been overly damaging but have been nonetheless annoyingly frequent. Not happening more frequently but kind of consistently constant. Something I am going to have to budget for. Part of the household budget. Mitch’s stupid blunders line item.

Visions Limits

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.” –Arthur Schopenhauer

Tunnel vision. Narrow vision. No vision. Broad Vision. Television. I often wonder what the world around me truly looks like. I know what I see, but is it what others see. I know it isn’t color blind like I see. Red/green colors cause me problems personally so I know the spectrum varies. Maybe to not be red/green color blind is the defect? So the rest of you who see red/green colors are abnormal.

But do people see the same thing when they look at it or do they use their eyes and mind to form the shape, color and movement of the existence they dwell in. Does the mind decide whether it likes something or not, then allow the picture to reflect that prejudice?
The quote from Schopenhauer is actually talking about a different definition of vision. That definition (in my humble opinion) is more in how far or how little we can stretch our minds around new technologies, new ideologies and new futures. And these are amazing leaps of vision that are driving us forward. Often times they are dragging me forward against my will.

I probably look at the time before computers took over the world (yes, they have) and remember the simpler life. Much like my parents remember the time before television. My grandparents generation would have reflected on the time before the telephone, the horseless carriage and expressways.

I try to embrace the new, regardless of how it often makes my skin itch and crawl. At the same time I long for what I grew comfortable with. I wish I could look under the hood of a car and recognize some of the parts. The dipstick for the oil is about the only thing that hasn’t changed in about 50 years.

So I hold onto the simple things that don’t have to be updated by Microsoft and doesn’t require a mouse click or a touch screen. I adapt and utilize those modern technologies and other mechanical things but they don’t give me comfort. Not like my old lawn tractor, acoustic guitar or the pencil that I first wrote this blog with.

Let It Lie

"It's not a lie if you believe it." -- George to Jerry in a classic line from a Seinfeld TV episode

Never would I have believed this till I experienced for myself officiating on the sidelines at a youth football game.

Following a pass play down the sidelines, I suddenly encountered a sudden impact on my shoulder. It was a face. A coach's face. A coach's face where the face of a coach shouldn't have been during a live part of a football game. Ouch. That would be him as I was relatively unfazed by the contact. He, on the other hand, stood stooped over clutching his lower jaw looking as if he may begin to start spitting out teeth. I noted this as the play ended and was returning to my position on the line after the incomplete pass. And by rule as I passed him, threw a penalty flag at his feet. "That will cost you 15 yards for contacting an official," I verbalized to his.

"Whaath!" he exclaimed, as I proceeded to report the infraction to my referee for the enforcement.

And this is where it got interesting or disturbing, you can choose.

The referee decided to explain the penalty to the coach. What a sight as he tried to generate sympathy by remaining stooped over and clutching at the offended part of his face. And streaming out the denial that I did this intentionally and he was where he was supposed to be and it was my fault.

Referee then returns to center of field, yours truly returns to his post on the sidelines, now noticeably clear of coaches standing where they weren't supposed to be.

And then he did it. He couldn't keep his mouth shut, even as he still was holding it with his hand like it was a baby bird.

"I wath where I wath thuppothed thu be and you hith me," came from his lips.

I saw red.

I turned and said, "Excuse me."

"I wath where I wath thuppothed thu be and you hith me, ran righht intho me."

Somewhat shocked, and gazing not only at him but the 5th graders and assistant coaches looking at me as well awaiting my response, I lost my temper.

"You mean to tell me you are going to stand there and LIE to me in front of these kids and your coaches about where you were standing to make it seem that I am the bad guy. Despicable. You are supposed to be a mentor and a teacher and you are going to LIE to me. I know where you were standing. I hit you. If you were standing where you say you were standing I would have run into about 10 of your players or coaches and would have run down my chain crew as well before I ever even got to hitting you. I don't seem to remember hitting anyone but you. That's because they were where they were supposed to be and you weren't. Now are you going to keep trying to lie to me? Because if you are I am going to throw another flag on you as well as toss you out of here and you can watch the rest of this game from the parking lot. Well?"

He backed into the coaches box where he faithfully remained for the rest of the game.

And I hope by those that witnessed me standing against the lie, they may have learned a bit about personal responsibility and integrity.

A few plays later, the guy on the down-box indicator said that he thought I gave the guy a bit of a forearm shiv as I ran into him. Then he smiled and laughed.

Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. An official has to protect himself out there.

"By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man." -- Immanuel Kant

Autumn Ramblings

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. -- E. E. Cummings

So the end of the fall season is streaking at me like arrow shot from a bow.

Sometimes this has me as the deer and sometimes the hunter.

Thwack!

That could be the sound of this time of year. It makes me strangely melancholy and reflective as I watch the leaves fall to the ground and turn from reds and oranges and yellows to the shades of brown and rot. The trees that once stood so vibrant now cast grim silhouettes against the more-ever grayish sky. The night sky even seems to be heavier above me, cold and darkest gray with it's stars that struggle to shine through the gloom.

I actually begin to feel the energy and vitality begin to seep from my body. My wife starts to show signs of hibernation as the days grow short and light is rationed by the sun in our part of the hemisphere.

It is no wonder that Halloween relates perfectly to the glum season that it dwells in. You can almost seem to hear all the different parts of the natural world start to form a scream. Damp, dark, frosty, decomposing. Surrounding almost everything but the brave mums of the gardens.

I think that there is more to fear about autumn that is beyond my understanding. And I wonder if I have not known autumn for too long.

I wish for Persephone to remain, to keep summer's dance alive. But alas, she returns each year through the cleft in the earth. Abandons us to face the approaching winter with windblown rains and tumbling skies. We are left armed only with jackets and shovels and hope. A hope that we will witness the rebirth of another spring.

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay. -- Robert Browning

The Voice In My Head May Just Be My Wife

“Why don't you write books people can read?” -– Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

Nora Joyce's quote really popped out to me especially after I attempted to read her husband James Joyce's book, "Ulysses." This particular book shows up on lists of must read books all the time so I naturally assumed it was going to be good. Wrong! I found it unreadable at it's best. If I hadn't picked it up at a thrift store I would have returned it. Though it was big and heavy enough it may make a literary-statement of my good taste as a doorstop.

But the real wisdom of the quote is the fact that Joyce didn't know how to listen to his wife. Not only was she smart enough to recognize a rambling, disjointed, incoherent, trivial and confusing piece of writing, she spoke up and told her husband so. My guess is he ignored her as he went ahead and published it. All 265,000 plus words.

The people who rave about this book and it's stream-of-thought style must not experience that type of thinking or they would have a different opinion of this type of writing. I actually like to read to reign in that way of thinking.

Now I have had moments where stream-of-thought process takes place in my head and if I was to try and write it down it too would be mostly incoherent. I have a very scrambled brain as far as it staying on task when it is in a problem solving mode. And the older I get the more that stream leads to the thought "Just throw it out!" My wife actually called me a hoarder today when I asked where I got all the tubes of chap stick that are crowding my top dresser drawer.

Following is a launch into the stream of thought of my brain.

"I don't hoard chap stick, I just never seem to have a tube on me when I need it and then I stop and buy one tube and when it is no longer needed because my lips are no longer chapped I put it in the drawer with all the others that are in there along with the ones that I have never even opened and I have no idea where they came from or why I purchased them when I already have a supply in my top drawer..."

Thus begins my stream of thought which would eventually end many, many words later with something altogether unrelated to chap stick--like motorcycles or earthworms.

"Just put a tube in the car," I was told.

But they melt when it gets too warm.

I think I will start with throwing out the extra, open chap sticks.

And why do I have 3 mini-flashlights in this top drawer? I don't think I want to ask my wife that question. She'll just tell me what I don't want to hear.

To Believe in Time, or Not to Believe in Time

"I confess, I do not believe in time". -- Vladimir Nabokov

I am beginning to believe that Nabokov was right when he confessed that he does not believe in time. Even though I feel it passing, like some kind of constant breeze, I still have trouble relating it to myself. I am still a mind that feels ageless in some ways. Almost trapped I would say. So as my physical being moves through time and space, my mind and my spirit seem not to be moving in step.
And that is where belief resides…inside oneself.

But all around me I am faced with the consequences of the passage of time. I am faced with the changing seasons, with the loss of hair, children becoming adults and these markers go on and on and on. It is such a bewildering world and everything, and I do mean everything , seem to be measured with a yardstick of time. Some physicists even look to time as some sort of matter. Solid. Something with measurable mass.

A butterfly is the result of a egg being laid and then hatching after a certain passage of time followed by its emergence as a caterpillar. But wait, the caterpillar then spends some “time” chomping its way through its preferred foliage until it turns into a pupae. Again, after a passage of time, that pupate will emerge as the butterfly we see flickering across the back yard or attempting to cross the road only to end up imbedded in a passing car’s radiator. End of time for the butterfly? Perhaps.

Perhaps not. What part of time really stopped for the butterfly? What part of time stopped for the person behind the automobiles steering wheel?

Maybe we spend too much time trying to gauge the movement of time. It is if you look at it with some open-minded perspective, a solid entity. It is glacial in a sense. The actual passage is slow but the speed is measured by those outside it. A fruit fly is but a brief parallel along the path being carved by time. A butterfly, a bit longer. A dog or a Man, longer. A jellyfish, longer yet.

For me, my calendar is starting to become my enemy. It throws those dates with those things written to do and stands there with so much power. It is like a bully standing over me but in this case I seem to be bullying myself.

So you can maybe see why I wishfully am starting to be a disbeliever in time. To believe is to enslave. I wish to be free of time so I can live.

Belonging

I think the themes of belonging and parentage and love are obviously universal. -- Christopher Eccleston

What does it mean to belong? What belongs to me and what belongs to you and what belongs to someone else?

I remember many moments that gave me the meaning that I belonged to something, something that is bigger than the world that surrounds our body and being. We exist in this large web of living creatures, the respirations of plant life and inanimate planetary structure that gravitates us to the surface of the Earth. We surely belong to the so-called circle of life, now more as caretakers of the planet then how our ancestors interacted with it. Primitive man and his early cultures engaged at a more primal level. We are more aware now, but we seem to be doing a poorer job as caretakers than we are surely capable of, spending far too much time devouring things. As our civilizations expanded and grew it appeared the sole mission was one of create no matter what and leave the mess behind. Our bubble of civilization is expanding and pushing and is getting close to bursting its poisons over everything.

But if effort is put forth to belong once again as a functional part of existence, we may regain the perspective that most of us have lost along this evolutionary pathway. We can start with recognizing belonging in minute ways and start our transformation there. Realize that we can belong to many things and many people and to nothing if we choose. But we will be unable to stop others from feeling that we belong to them. And I do not mean in a possessive form of belonging. I myself belong as a parent to my children, a husband to my wife and a son to his parents. These positions of belonging are a commitment to others that I take very seriously. They are what I consider longstanding, permanent attachments. Serious belonging.

Another favorite type of belonging is the recognition of moments of belonging that you don’t initiate. My thought wander to a time, when off-guard, my wife came up to me for no reason and put her arms around my neck and kissed me. It was a moment that was unexpected by me and I was first puzzled by how I felt. I gradually came to recognize this moment and why it felt strange because it really belonged to her. It was significant to me, and welcome, but it also made me relinquish any thoughts that somehow I could share what she felt. I felt great and I felt love but the act of that moment belonged to her.

I hope we can all seek out those moments in time where we belong and that belonging will make a true difference.

Fortunate Son

God's dice always have a lucky roll. -- Sophocles

I am amazed at how fortunate that I am to be alive. An alive, observant, living and engaged participant in the ether surrounding my flesh. Not just at this moment in the slipstream of time, but an aware and sentient being, able to process the universe surrounding me. I spend time decoding the patterns of life that I encounter moment upon moment of my life.

I see stars in the night sky and wonder why they choose to share their perfection with us, with me. How sensuous a rain drop feels when it dances across the skin on a hot and humid day. How butterflies can stay adrift with the way their wings move still baffles me. I could look it up and get a scientific explanation, but it wouldn’t take away the amazement seeing them offers me.

Just the other night a brutal thunderstorm raged over my house and filled me with wonder and fear and surprise. The lighting was so close you couldn’t see the bolt, just the blinding white of the savaging electricity. The thunder rolled and struck and shook the window frames that I leaned on as I watched. The rain fell less like drops and more like when you stand under a waterfall. It was a fury. I sensed it wanted to kill me. It was seeking a victim and grabbing at the ground and the trees and the electrified air. How lucky I felt to be surrounded by my house, grounded against the nasty ranting of the tempest.

But this night I was lucky. I was safe and was protected to consider another day.

Others have not lived as long or shared a banquet of life like I have. Sudden deaths. Lingering illness. Random, violent taking of life. War. Genocide. Disease. These things razor away the opportunities for beings to be lucky to live and see to their fullest the great mysteries surrounding us.

I have escaped so far what have ended many a soul’s existence. I don’t say that because I feel special, it is more an observation of how unique each of our experience of time here on earth is felt.

So maybe a roll of the dice by God is why I ended up where I am. A lucky roll. A fortunate son of God. So far. And I won't  measure my luck by how I end, but how I got there.

To Trust

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” -- Arthur Miller

I was contemplating betrayal the other day. It seems to be a consistent presence in our lives. It carries about no discernable pattern to its form. People betray other people, regardless of whether or not they love them. Friends betray friends for all sorts of reasons. Our government betrays our trust for many reasons. We betray our instincts and march headlong into disastrous situations, situations that cost momentous amounts of money and loss of human life and tragic suffering.

What is truly lost through betrayals is trust. Who, what, why are all questionable factors now in putting that one foot in front of the next.

Maybe that is one of the reasons that so many people get such gratifying satisfaction from their pets. They can trust them without the possibility of betrayal. Though even after 13 years I still don’t trust the cat. I still often start blindly down the basement stairs only to almost step on it--lazily stretched out on the steps-- and almost take a possible life-threatening tumble. I believe she has been plotting my demise for a long time. The cat is eerily colored to blend in with the carpet. I am sure my wife didn’t consider that when she picked out the pattern. But I always trusted my dogs.

So I ask myself to keep taking the risk of continuing seeking trust.

It is too energy draining to look behind every act, word and supposition to look for the possible betrayal that may or may not lurk there about.

Dad

“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.” --Aldous Huxley

My dad was not one you would find sitting still very often. In fact, the first time I remember him truly motionless for any length of time was when his back gave out, a victim of his strength not meeting the demands of the task. It must have been a huge task that did him in, as I remember the lean, tremendous physical strength that he possessed.

That strength--at least in part--came from his love of the outdoors and all that it involved. And working a day job pushed him to find things to do that were evening or nighttime activities.

When he hunted raccoons with dogs, it was a physical act. You waded through swamps. He traveled through pitch-black woods guided only by the sounds of the dogs. He lugged 30-pound animals out of the woods back through those same swamps and dark woods dragging a couple hounds as well. Then at the end of the night with dawn approaching, he skinned, stretched hides and maybe grabbed a couple hours sleep before it was time to get up and work the auto mechanic job that was his profession.

Or he spent his evenings floating rivers, spearing or pole-fishing for catfish, carp or gar. Hauling the flat-bottom boat and equipment from beds of pick-up trucks or off the roof of a family’s car to launch and reversing the process at the end of the float fishing excursion.

Trapping was another sport he squeezed into his evenings and mornings scheduled around work. Traps would be set and checked and the harvested animals prepared for the fur market. He hauled a basket of steel traps and the trapped animals, down edges of creeks, around lakes in his waders and edges of forests and field, breathing in the life of the active outdoorsman.

Most of the time when I woke in the morning, the only proof of my Dad’s existence was what he had harvested during the time he was away. Animals and fish mysteriously deposited for processing or the families consumption.

I remember my first pheasant hunting trip with my Dad. I was 12. We went all day and we went at his pace. I knew that was expected and it was also what I expected of myself. At the end of that day, I could barely finish walking out of the fields. My gun felt like I was carrying a military field piece of huge caliber. I honestly had never been more exhausted in my entire life. I also knew that what I had experienced was a beautiful look inside the mystery that was inside of my father. For probably the first time, I shared an exact experience on his terms of what it was that he did when he was doing.

He was evangelizing me--challenging me--to experience living the outdoor life from his view of life. And I was saved.

When You Can't Stop Thinking

“It’s surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”—Barbara Kingsolver

  Have you ever taken the time to try and observe the raw pictures of your memory? Take a memory--any memory--and grab you brains camera and take a quick, static shot of it. Now take a minute and concentrate on what you see once you have stopped the flowing aspect of memory.
  It is difficult.
  When I try to stop the movement of thought it vanishes like smoke dissipating in the air. When I try to make it freeze, it blows away. Or flows away like a river.
  It is like lifting the needle off the record on a turntable. The sound of the music just vanishes. Return the needle…joy. At least for those who still remember or own a turntable and vinyl record albums.
  So I have tried to stop focusing on the specifics of memory and more on the emotional qualities of them. How did I feel? What was the real point of saving that particular event? And I must admit that I notice things about my past that were unnoticed as Ms. Kingsolver points out.
  This allows me to discard or devalue some things and to embrace and be joyful of other things. Now when some memory is triggered in me, I am more able to justify the discomfort or happiness that accompanies them.
Perhaps this will lead me to laugh and cry more truly with my many ghosts.

Giving Up To Live

“Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” ~ John Steinbeck

This saying by Steinbeck could be descriptive of the evolution of my being, my philosophy for living. I tried to control so much of where my life was going that the sole purpose seems to have been the ability to master, to control the outcomes of the situations that I encountered. I tried to control my emotions. I tried to fix people who were broken. Fix them even when they didn’t wish to be fixed. I looked at the way that I wished things to be. I was the anti-Zen master.

That way of driving through life just left me tired and also left me without laying down any type of foundation for my own happiness. It was like I was drinking the poison meant for other people, keeping them safe from the poisons that they desired. I would drink the hemlock for the good of all, regardless if I wanted it or not. Much of my young adult life was throwing life vests to people who only desired to drown in their behavior, their lifestyles. I didn’t realize that there were certain people who didn’t care if they hurt the ones that they said they loved. A whole period of my life seems to have been grayed out somehow, just a shadowy part of my lifetime.

But there came a point where I had to root out that way of being or I would have just been devoured by it. I gave up on having any effect on the world around me. Now that may sound bad, but when I did this transformation, the opposite happened. It was almost as if I was in a dark room thinking that the light was on when in actuality I was bumping around in the blackness of my life. When I grew tired of all the misery that people were bashing me in the head with, the lights came on. I quit betraying myself to the will of others.

And once the lights came on for me, it was extraordinarily easy to look around and hunt down those personal shadows that were trailing me. For shadows have no place to hide in the light.

Mom vs. Dad

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. -- James Joyce

Moms are the epitome of unconditional love. I see it with my own wife and her daughter. I truly believe that she feels her daughters physical pain and would take it upon herself in a flash if she could. Pulling the daughters wisdom teeth was pretty much the equivalent of the dentist pulling four of her own teeth. Plus possibly a hard kick to the ribs thrown in with it.

Moms appear to weigh in at just the right time to answer a question or offer suggestions. Me, being a man, seem to quit listening way to soon. Trying to formulate an answer to a question that I thought might be coming, but might never end up being asked. Then I get confused and anxious. Worthless to a child for any concrete wisdom. Most of the time it ends up that a daughter just wants to be heard, to know that someone is sharing her hardship by listening. Moms know this deep down in their souls. They don't even have to practice it, they're naturals. 

Men on the other hand (Dads for example), can be great mentors on how to do things as long as it involves the kids mostly watching demonstrations and learning. I don't believe those of us that were not trained at the university level should be allowed to teach some subjects, even to their own kids. We are way better at playing catch with a baseball or riding next to them on a bike than the skill of talking about things. We should lead good lives and try as we might to do the right things and hope the small ones are watching us men and learning by example. And also keep telling them to "Ask their Mother" for the final answer. Moms, you are the checks and balances of our children.

And we need to definitely listen to our wives, and wives need to not give up on us men. I truly believe it is through a woman's love, and it starts with a mother's love, that men mentally leave their boyhood behind to become a man. And the same mothers love shapes the daughters into the soul of humankind which we men seem incapable of properly understanding.

How else can wars be explained?

Earth Day...or Maybe Gravity Day

Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.--Dave Barry

What on Earth are you doing? I can't tell you how many times as a kid I heard this from adults in my life. How many times have I said this to my own children? How often is this phrase used throughout the world on any given day?

These are the types of wonders that cloud thinking for me.

I guess the answer is that anything done on this Earth is what you are doing. The potential of any given act is a force on whatever surrounds it. I think of all the many sayings in the world that reflect this.
Get the ball rolling.
Jump into the fire.
Go for it.
Just do it.
Don't look back.
Watch this.

Crash!

So really when I think of Earth Day, it tends to really be the force of gravity that I seem to be celebrating. What goes up, must come down so to speak. And I have certainly had my share of crashes. I remember my Dad telling me one time that I fell off my bike in the time before children wore helmets, and he described the sound that my head made when it hit the pavement to be similar to a pumpkin smashing. I always wondered about that, such a hollow sound, and how fortunate I wasn't permanently injured or even killed. Sometimes I use it as an excuse to myself when I do something bone-headed, I tell myself in my inaudible voice that I am certainly "brain-damaged."

So this Earth Day, along with celebrating all the energy efficient lights in my house, recycling that our family does and my serious effort to reduce our carbon footprint (though I wish the Chinese nation would celebrate some Earth Day efforts), I am rejoicing at the many times I have suffered the effects of gravity and the Earth offered just enough "softness" to make my landings survivable.

The Four

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. -- Arnold H. Glasow

I have come to believe that there are four basic things that are not good for living: fear, jealousy, righteousness and gluttony. These four overshadow the whole of everything good that I seek.

Fear:
To be afraid of acting on your instincts is one way to hold yourself back. It can be as simple as not speaking the truth for fear of hurting someone. That may sound harsh, but it’s really not. If it needs to be said, say it. There may be repercussions but that is what living is, an active participation with truth. Times that I did not act because of fear are the times when some major issues may have been resolved rather than tucked away and wrestled with later when they were stronger and angrier.

Jealousy:
This is a poison to the spirit. It projects on others how you are feeling. You see the awful doubts that you harbor and are scared of. This emotion is very closely related to fear but I think it has more bile to its substance. It is like indigestion to the soul. You feed it the wrong food and it is emotional heartburn.

Righteousness:
Not to be confused with confidence and passion, righteousness is the overwhelming need to be superior to others, to demand that they acknowledge and accept your point of view. I see this in politics, religion, social movements and more. It exists and is supported by a community that believes in the “just” cause. The Salem witch trials, Jihads, Jim Jones and the Jonestown colonists are some examples of people believing in the righteousness of their mission. Were purifying flames righteous as they danced and licked up the body of Joan of Arc?

Gluttony:
Perhaps the most grotesque of the four is gluttony, for it takes selfishly everything it can grab and devours it. It hoards and consumes as an angry beast. It holds un-quenching desire for money, deeds, possessions, conquests and control. Wrapping itself around everything it can so others can’t have or share in it. Its greatest enemy, charity, is no match if it isn’t controlled. The great desire to call it mine is overwhelmingly powerful and very hard to control.

These are four of my demons that will master me if I do not acknowledge them. What are yours?

Note: I believe that there is more to learn about the writer than what he has written with his words. My words tend to be discoveries about myself.

Teachers or Brainwashers

“You teach best what you need to learn.” – Richard Bach

I recently presented a short program to a local service club on the disconnection that our society has from its food. I try to outline some of the reasons that I feel have led to the misinformation that is contributing to a certain amount of fear about food. The three major reasons I touch on are: the migration away from the farm by our country's citizens; the phenomenal speed that information travels to people via the internet; and the growth of forums like Facebook and You Tube that are not necessarily reliable or factual sources, but are regardless believed.

After the presentation as I was tearing down my Power Point equipment, a young man of middle school age came up to me and explained that he enjoyed hearing how the majority of Michigan’s farmers are environmentally conscious. He then went on to explain that he had a teacher that was espousing the opposite viewpoint. The teacher told of how modern farm practices were destroying the land and fouling the waters surrounding them.

Now this young man came from a farming background and was at this meeting with his uncle, a farmer. I could only imagine what he must have felt like in that classroom, hearing a teacher accuse him and his relatives of atrocities he knew were untrue. Untrue because he knew what went on at his family farm. What a difficult position to be in as a student. How could he speak up and try to dispel what he must have known was not true and risk the wrath of the teacher, the person who holds his grades and academic advancement in the palm of his obviously biased hands? The teachers hands may have held books on the subjects he taught, and his brain may absorb the words of those books, but could they understand the hands and knowledge of a farmer? Or worse yet, would this young man be painted as a villain to the environment to classmates that bought into the teachers viewpoint? Talk about a uncomfortable position to put a teen in.

I could only assure him that friends of farmers were working very diligently to try to get a true and factual representation out to the public about what it means to have a job with a responsibility to feed an ever-increasingly hungry world.

And I grumbled to myself, remembering that some teachers are out there educating by telling students what to think, rather than helping them develop the power to think and form ideas with their own mind.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. –Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Poet

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." -- Robert Frost

I realize that poets write poetry for other poets. Those readers of poems may not know that they are poets. They know they like the verse, the play of words, the startles of the wordplay. I have written poems and shared them with my wife. mostly poems of love. I think she likes them. I wonder how good they really are. I think that she is a poet at heart as well, so she has an understanding of the emotional passage that is the poem. I believe people with the heart of a poet can see past bad verse, much the way I admire Bob Dylan's singing even though he often doesn't carry a very good tune. The lyrics, or musical poems, are terrific.

Poetry--written, read or listened to--is a sensory experience. People look for sensory experience to enhance their lives, whether we watch movies, bungee jump or set on a rock and watch the waves come into the shore on a beach. I like the freedom that it gives me to just try to paint emotions with a brush where the paint is words. Splashing them around in non-traditional ways. Ways that can make the leap from the reality that we live in to the eternal questions that we ask ourselves.

Sometimes my poems are a question that I have answered and I write it down just to remember that point of my life. Other times I don't know the answer and the poem is a therapeutic effort to figure out what I seek.

I have a book where I have written a bunch of poems from different times in my life. It is a mad scrambled up mess that sort of represents the conflicts and challenges that I have encountered along the way in this life. I have not shared the words with anyone. I often wonder if I should destroy it like I have heard some people do to their journals. Maybe a note to burn it when I die, send the words up in smoke chasing my spirit through the stars.

After all is said and done, I would rather be known as a poet of living life than a bad poet of words.

The Pond

“Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean.”

-- Percy Ross

There are times that I feel completely clogged up. Where my brains and my emotions feel like a sinus infection of the worst kind. Most times ideas, thoughts, and feelings are running around in my head, bouncing off each other, jumping up and down or just doing all kinds of active, metaphysical calisthenics.  But that is when the sheer volume of them is at the noise volume level of a pop song. Not the speed metal that it sounds like lately.

Compare my normal mind as existing in a gaseous state, lots of room between thoughts, and light and mostly transparent. But things change as those gases start to liquefy with too much sensory input until this thickening turns my thinking into a solid, immobile mass of worthlessness. All those electrons slowing down and molecules contracting, growing closer together and the space between them growing crowded until my thought process starts to turn into a substance similar to cold lard.

The only thing to do at this point is to bucket out the pond. And there are a lot of things to bucket out dwelling in the murky waters of the pond that is my brain. It seems no matter how many things get crossed off my list (unwritten down, of course), more things stand up and shout out to be added. I realize there are always unexpected things that will rise up to be dealt with but how can I add them to my life without disrupting the gentle flowing pace I wish to exist in?

I commented to my wife that I was beginning to understand why people went and lived in monasteries. How the would choose to get rid of everything and throw on the hair shirt, grab the Rosary Beads and turn their back on the rat race of human existence. On the other hand, I don't want to leave everything about my life behind even if I could take my wife to the monastery. Especially after she told me that they let you walk in the woods around the monastery. At least that was her experience at the retreat she returned from last month.

I like that.

But I also love the wind when I ride my Triumph motorcycle, the river banks slipping by while I am in my kayak, old car grease on my hands as I work, and meeting the wide array of people while I travel for my job around the countryside.

So I will have to look in every pail full of pond water as I bail, making sure of what it contains. Make sure that the evil, anger, fear, doubts, and negativity are in there. And making sure that the joy and the wind and the sunshine don't get tossed on the banks with them. The process may leave a few bad things swimming around in there but at least there will be some room for both the good and the bad to recognize each other and give the space needed to do the right thing without paralyzing all the pond life.

"The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives." --Unknown

Change

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Change.

Think about that word for a brief minute. Really let it sink in. Let it slosh around inside you and coat your insides. Feel the many connotations of the meaning of the word. It is like milk of magnesia of life.

Change.

 Dictionaries define change in many ways. It can be a noun or a verb or an idiom. A cashier can hand it to you in smaller bills or coins then you gave them, along with your purchase. “The change changed hands.”

It seems to me that change is also the entirety of our being. I am rapidly and constantly in some state of change. The world that I look out at is in continual flux. Some changes I seem to battle with, some I don’t notice too much, some display themselves with shockingly regularity. Personal change seems like the weather to me. One day it is raining, the next snowing, and the next the sun shines down upon me. It could be car troubles, work troubles or troubles with people in your life that are breaking up the harmonic progression of your traveling path. It could not be problems at all...a new friend, a happy place or more focused vision.

The act of encountering the roadblocks, speed bumps and potholes of change, (notice the analogies of the road, don’t know why they all were road related but they are) add a large part to the variety of life’s journey. Or maybe for this paragraph it should be life’s car trip.

But for all the confusion that change can bring I try to think in bullet points about what it truly represents. It may well be a metamorphosis. Simple (or complex if you think about it) as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, work clothes cast off at the end of the day for sweatpants or an adjustment of your held opinions.

• Growth or decay (we wouldn’t have mushrooms without both working in harmony)
• New experiences to break up the monotony of life
• Opportunities to smile about things (or is not a smile a witnessed change to a persons face?
• Look at every moment like a new painting of the future.
• (Add your own additional bullet points here)

Change takes composure and patience to have the most impact with us. Both of which, I continually need more of. Change is not my ruler but I realize that it is the rule of this life.

Bones A Rattlin' for a Fight

I wonder, have I lived a skeleton's life,
As a disbeliever in reality,
A countryman made of all the bones in the world?--Wallace Stevens

I was told by a close friend that I think too much. That I look too deep into things trying to find meaning. He told me that it is OK to not think so much.

I know this to be true. I wish my mind would allow me to listen to him.

I seem to only work at two levels in my life, one that is totally engulfed in whatever the body is doing or it is dashing off somewhere in contemplation of where the universe came from. Hard as that is to explain, it is a black and white reality to my thought process. It's an on/off switch.

The main trouble is I am finding it harder and harder to satisfy the thirst that continues driving me to understand and to seek substance about things. And the more I seek them out the more new things pop up that need to be understood. My list of books keep growing, poets need to be explored, classics read, old books reread, music listened too and collected. And the half-finished projects surrounding me that I work on regularly sporadically (Try to make sense of that sentence).

Yet at the very same time my soul screams that "You are not going to live forever for cryin' out loud and try to relax and enjoy and live without trying to figure out every gosh darn thing around you." Stopping the effort of putting all the flesh on the skeleton of my life and wonderings at the same time as it is parting from my bones is a losing battle.

I am going down with a fight.

The Invisible Paths

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back -- Chinese Proverb

An ash tree in my front yard--large and sprawling shade across the ground below it--has died. Not of old age. Not from a chainsaw. But a parasite called the emerald ash borer. It has actually taken out all of the ash trees on our property. Sparing none of them regardless of age or location. They die slowly over a few years time, sparsely leafing out less and less till they no longer have the circulatory system to transfer its energy to the leaves. They shed their small branches and bark and stand skeletally against the walnuts and maples that surround them.

This bothers me because the ash is one of my favorite trees. I think of wooden baseball bats and I see them as the source. That sound. The summer air and a game that is truly pure when played with joy. But the making of bats requires the death of trees for that process to take place. Perhaps I just feel the connection to the living source that a live tree represents.

I was asked to try to explain Zen by someone when my wife recently traveled out of state to participate in an extended silent retreat. This activity forced a bit of silence on myself as well for my most rewarding conversations exist with her listening to me or I listening to her. I thought of a conversation that took place in the movie "The Natural" between Iris and Roy and I feel the mystery of it. It is somewhat representative of a Zen-like moment or thought. At least as close as Hollywood can get.

Iris Gaines: You know, I believe we have two lives.
Roy Hobbs: How... what do you mean?
Iris Gaines: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

Zen is all about trying, and I emphasize trying, to reach wisdom and attain a bit of enlightenment. To try to harness the travelers that are constantly as thoughts returning through your mind. They are moments that keep coming back to you. They bring old luggage and stinky things with them and they are hard to not grab onto them and hold tight to the often bitterness of their existence.

Learning to let go is the truth of it. It is forgiveness. Understanding. Kissing your loved ones and letting them go. Smiling back at a smile or at a frown. Knowing that there is grass under the snow. Fish swimming in the water.

Birds travel through the air yet they leave no trace in the sky. Invisible paths, but they are there. I saw them leave them with my own eyes. Like many of the paths to the answers I seek, they are invisible to all but the heart.

Hats

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves." -- Rudyard Kipling

I take myself to seriously. That is one of the first things that I was aware of...my sensitivity to being teased. Though I have a great sense of humor and love to tell and hear jokes, funny stories and other peoples laughter, I have always been a bit uncomfortable when I was the one being played the fool.

That has gradually over time slowly faded away, similar to my hairline. But isn't that one of the great uses for hats--they hide what we may be losing--in this case my diminishing hair?

So how many different hats do I have? I have a hat that covers up the past that keeps winking at me. I can't see it wink at me till the hat slips or gets knocked off by little annoyances. I have another that is pulled down almost completely covering my eyes so it is difficult to see what is in front of me...or in other words the future. Maybe that's a good thing. It keeps me wondering what lays in wait for me. A tiger shining brightly or possibly a shadowy, camouflaged mystery. And I have a hat that I wear all the time, that is with me in the present. It is the one I like the best. It fits me the best. It covers what needs to be covered. It lets in my dreams. It even looks good on me, like wearing a grin.

I see it as a clown hat. Seriously. I am learning to laugh at myself.

No clown shoes though, they give me the creeps.