"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Friday, January 23, 2004
Dodging the Shark
panic Function: noun
1 : a sudden overpowering fright; especially : a sudden unreasoning terror often accompanied by mass flight
2 : a sudden widespread fright concerning financial affairs that results in a depression of values caused by extreme measures for protection of property (as securities)
3 : the way you act when you step on a live shark bigger than you are
It was Labor Day at Myrtle Beach and I am thinking it was 1977. I had been riding a high all summer long and today was the big blow out before it was all over. Little did I know what the day had in store.
Tomorrow, the place would be deserted. But right now, it was jam packed with people and I was in a feeding frenzy. The heck with tomorrow, I wanted to bounce off the walls all day long as hard as I could.
I think we started the day by adding detergent to the water in the pool so that the fountain/waterfall would suds all up. Then we started tossing people in. Yeah, I know, it was rude, but mostly we tossed each other in.
They asked us to leave the pool. That was a good idea.
That afternoon it was getting overcast and windy. The ocean turned an angry gray and although the waves were pretty good sized, they were choppy. We figured that didn't matter, it was our last chance to get in some surfing that season.
So, out we went.
Now, we were used to dangerous things in the water. We had all had numerous experiences with sharks and jellyfish, including some fairly close calls. And we knew that sharks really liked choppy, murky water, which is what we had. But I figured that with the number of surfers we had out there, we would scare any sharks away. Besides, I was young, naive, and indestructible.
The break was a lot farther out than normal, so I paddled way out past the break line. I just sat there a few minutes watching everyone else try to catch the junk waves that were coming in, and had almost decided that I wasn't even going to try. I decided to get off my board for a couple of minutes, and by standing there kind of judge the power of the waves a bit better.
So, I threw my leg around and plunged in.
The water where I was should have been about neck level.
But about waist level, my feet hit something very solid.
And it moved.
My feet could barely tell that it was curved. This thing was massive. A lot bigger than I was!
It was definitely alive, and when my feet touched it it jerked.
I got back onto my board in about half a second, and while I was yelling at everyone around me to head for shore, I was trying my best to make sure no parts of me were anywhere near the water.
Whump Sploosh
Something had hit my surfboard from underneath, and the power of it had lifted me up about three inches from the water!
I think at this point I had already come to the realization that I was probably going to die. By now, I was screaming at the top of my lungs, "Shark! Shark!" Everyone within a quarter mile was looking at me. Terrified does not begin to describe what I was.
Whump Sploosh
Again, I was picked up and dropped. Now, I was just screaming "Help!" over and over. All of the other surfers were heading for shore as quickly as they could possible move. There was not a lot they could do, I was going to be fish food.
Then it broke water right next to me...
And stood up...
And there was a friend of mine, holding his head and looking dazed.
"Wow, man, I was swimming under you and you stepped on me, and then I came up twice under your surfboard..."
It was no great white, just a great idiot.
After I let my heart rate come back to normal, I forgave him.
I never surfed choppy murky water again, though. Not on your life.
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
Ferdinand Foch (1851 - 1929)
frail Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French fraile, from Latin fragilis fragile, from frangere
Date: 14th century
1 : easily led into evil 2 : easily broken or destroyed : FRAGILE
3 a : physically weak b : SLIGHT, UNSUBSTANTIAL
4 : how Mad Dog looked, not how she was
It was 1978 in Myrtle Beach, and she was sitting at the bar of Sloppy Joe's nursing a beer the first time I saw her.
I think I might have known her real name at some point, but all I remember now is the nickname everyone called her by..."Mad Dog."
I heard many stories as to how she got that name. One was that she would suddenly blow up into a tornado if she got into a scrape. Another was that her preferred libation was the cheap wine Morgan David 20/20 (referred to as "Mad Dog 20/20") in copious amounts.
Then again, there was the fact that one of her front teeth grew straight out from her face instead of down, and her top lip would sometimes get hung on it, presenting the world with a quite effective and unintentional snarl.
Or maybe it was all three. Sometimes nicknames, odd as they are, just fit.
Well, there was Mad dog, nursing her beer. Sometimes she would waitress in the bar. Most of the time though, she just sat there on a barstool, kinda hunched over the countertop. I think she might have done this because, even with the tooth thing, she was a very pretty girl. Blond hair, blue eyes, nice complexion, good figure. But sitting like that, it was obvious that she was not open to conversation. She would just sit quiet, keeping to herself, like a little flower growing in a crack in the sidewalk.
That is, until some idiot started a fight. That's when Mad Dog would shine.
She would leap from her stool like an avenging angel, grab the guy from behind by his belt, lean him towards the door, and off he would go to the paddy wagon parked outside. It was always so unthinkable that this little frail girl would do something like this, it caught the target by surprise every single time.
Mad Dog had a sister too. I forget her name, but she was pretty as well in a used rock star with too much make up sort of way. Her hair was auburn, her eyes were dusky brown. Where Mad Dog's skin was pale alabaster and porcelan, hers was tanned and ruddy from the sun. Where Mad Dog was sweetness and light and smiles, she was mystery and darkness and intensity.
One evening Mad Dog came to me as I was getting off work and said that her sister had been "rolled" on the beach walking home that night, and was in her room hurt very badly, probably with broken bones or worse. Could I help? Would I talk to her?
Absolutely, I said without hesitation. So we went to where they were living.
I had no idea such places really existed, at least not in Myrtle Beach.
It was an old hotel, and I think they were renting it out for about ten dollars a night per room, or maybe the people therre were just squatting in it. They did have electricity, so it was probably being rented. The place was horrible, smelled like stale urine (which is even worse than the fresh stuff), was torn up, probably infested with every type of vermin you could think of plus some extra ones the scientists have yet to discover.
Mad Dog led me up several flights of stairs, past drunks and people who were stoned into oblivion, leaning against the walls drooling or giggling at some inner comedy. This was as bad as I had ever seen. The fact that it might be dangerous never crossed my mind, I was on a mission and being led by an angel.
We came to the room, and went in. I was stunned.
There she lay, on a bare filthy mattress on the floor. That was the only piece of furniture in the room. There were piles of clothes here and there. All of this squalor left my mind when I saw Mad Dog's sister.
She looked like she had fallen from a three story building and landed on her face. The poor girl was a mass of bruises and blood, and she could barely breathe because she had broken ribs.
And all this so someone could steal $20 from her, Mad Dog said.
I set to work with my best skills of persuasion. No, she refused to go to the hospital. I pressed onwards, and she still refused.
That was when the commotion started outside. Lots of yelling, hollering, and other ominous sounds. Screams, loud bangs, bodies hitting walls.
The door to the room burst open, and framed in the door was a policeman, one that I knew. He was all ready to search everyone in the room for drugs and arrest them all, but he froze, looked at me, and said "What are you doing here?"
Well, its good to know that I didn't look like the type that would hang out in a place like that, but complements aside, I told him what was going on. He immediately stopped what he was doing and helped me talk her into getting medical attention. After a little while, she finally agreed, and we got her to a hospital.
Mad Dog thanked me the next day for helping. I saw Mad Dog's sister a couple of times after that; she was slowly knitting back together. But I don't think she was able to go back to work for the rest of the season.
At the end of the summer, Mad Dog and her sister went to wherever it is that girls like that go when the world moves on. I never saw them again.
It's been almost 25 years now, but in my mind there my friend Mad Dog still sits, faded jeans and a t-shirt that has seen better days, stringy blond hair laying limply on her back, blue eyes focused on her Budweiser, just sitting quietly.
Ready and willing to come to the rescue.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics
spir-i-tual Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French & Late Latin; Middle French spirituel, from Late Latin spiritualis, from Latin, of breathing, of wind, from spiritus
Date: 1582
1 plural : things of a spiritual, ecclesiastical, or religious nature
2 : Of all the parts of me, the most important
Today I don't want to write about an event, I'm going to write about a way of life.
Each and every one of us must have a moral anchor somewhere in our lives. We must have within us a set of rules on how life functions and how we fit within it. We must have made a decision as to where we fit in the order of things.
I see so many people who have bought into the selfish principles that pervade our society. Instead of being anchored in the Divine, they are anchored to themselves. That does them no more good than a ship who has dropped anchor in its own deck! They are relying on themselves for their stability, their meaning. This makes the world a very selfish place as each of these people strive to scratch and claw their way to the top without regard for others.
How can you spot these people? By simply looking at how they act.
Let's take a past pastor I had, for example. One Sunday as part of his sermon, he described his dog gleefully jumping on him when he came home. Then he said his response to it was to clobber the dog, knocking him away.
The Spirit within us will necessarily control the actions we take. In Isaiah we read that "a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice." We left that church shortly after that. Long story, we'll cover it later, but it had all to do with that self directed attitude.
I've seen several examples here at work this week of this principle. At the beginning of the week they let go a girl who was doing temp work for about $200 a week or so. They told her that they could not afford her. Yesterday, the VP paid $250 over the minimum on a company charge card that he uses to take his wife out to eat, not for company business. That would have paid that girl's salary, and she is living hand to mouth and in dire financial straits.
Playing with people's lives. Whatever is within you will well up like an artesian spring.
A coworker had to bring her cat into work because the pest control people were fogging her apartment. The cat was sitting there minding his own business when the VP got too close to him, even after being warned the cat was stressed and may scratch him. Well, the cat did scratch him. So he gets up, draws back, and drop kicks the poor cat across the room. Then he smears iodine all over his "wounded" hand and shows it off to everyone.
When I was in the hospital last year after ending up all in pieces and suicidal, one of the first things my doctor suggested was to get my closest friend at work to come in and talk with me so that I could ask them for some support. So I did that, and got her to come in. The choice of who to call was easy, there was only one coworker who I didn't think had been actively involved in putting me where I happened to be sitting.
Her response? "I've got my own problems. You're going to have to work this out all by yourself." She had been in counseling, and apparently had a problem being "codependant." That's the proper response for a person to avoid codependancy, according to therapists. But all I wanted was validation, a person to say "You are important to me, I care that you are hurting."
And thus was I abandoned.
I walked out of my room afterward and a tear fell, and one of the other patients said that just for a moment, she saw my mask drop. My smoldering wick had been snuffed out.
"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. "
Things like this baffle me. I don't see things the way other people do. I never have. I'm walking on a different path. A better path. It's just that there are few other travelers on this road, although a lot of people wave their bus tickets and SAY they are traveling it.
I learned about Jesus when I was very very young. I cannot remember a time when I did not know about Him, even though there were years I actively ran the other way from Him. But eventually I stopped running, and discovered his extravagant love.
Here was, to me, a person TRULY worthy of holding my anchor! And God can light up any darkness, or give us the strength to face it.
To me, that light permeates every area of my life. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm human just like you, but my drive, my goals, my personality, my actions and reactions are all intimately connected with the Almighty.
Life is so full of darkness, most of it coming from the hearts of men and women.
But, standing with God, you are in the Light, always.
And that's what I feel, that's the deepest principle of my life. I'm not looking for huge mountaintop "glory" experiences, I'm not looking for the buckets of money and blessings, I'm not looking to lead a perfect pain free life.
Father, I just want to stand next to you.
Here, in the Light.
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD), Discourses
brink Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse brekka slope; akin to Middle Dutch brink grassland
Date: 13th century
1 : EDGE; especially : the edge at the top of a steep place
2 : a bank especially of a river
3 : the point of onset : VERGE 4 : the threshold of danger
5 : January 20th, 2003, 3:30pm for Cliff
It's an anniversary of sorts today.
Today, I have beat the odds. I stand proudly with the two out of three men who make it this far. I have deepest sympathy for the one that didn't.
Well, let me explain. To do that, let me take you back to my life as it was, January 2003.
Our company had been in some turmoil, and a great deal of it was due to my finding some very questionable financial transactions by someone high up in the company. I pushed it and the Board of Directors fired him. They also fired our factory management, and our corporate office staff moved in to handle things.
All that sounds well and good, but something else had been going on. The person who had taken over as plant manager assumed that since the corporate staff was on his premises we all worked for him. This blindsided me since we had worked together well in the past, and this arrangement had never been indicated. The Vice President, in his typical avoid-any-conflict-no-matter-the-cost way let him do pretty much what he wanted, and resumed his private solitaire marathon.
Now, I am the IT Director and Controller for the company. Before the Plant Manager was done, I was relegated to a dark, dirty, and incredibly lonely closet sized office in a separate building from everyone else, and entire areas of my job had been moved into his office. Every time I would try to even get involved enough for due diligence, I faced conflict with him.
This was made worse by the fact that he would verbally assault me whenever he got the chance. For some reason he felt that he needed to tear me down. I imagine he has always been a bully, all his life. He's in his late 50's and single, never been married. Guess why.
The person I had gotten fired had been his best friend and the reason he was with the company. The VP also considered the person as a best friend. They both held me to blame. The only other person who could have done anything to help the situation pretty much washed her hands of it and abandoned me to work it out without her being involved.
The daily tension was horrible. I never knew when my world was going to explode.
What I did not realize was that I was quite ill. And that illness had been waiting for decades for this chance to finish me off.
The illness is called Bipolar Disorder. I had had it since I was little and had no idea that I did. Until then, I had managed to handle it.
I was no longer handling it.
The first signs to me that things were very very wrong were when I began entertaining not only suicidal thoughts, but suicidal intentions. I knew inside that I did not want to do that, but the thoughts were increasingly hard to fight. (Of course, most of the people around me had known something was wrong for months.)
I began writing manuals on how to do my job. That way when I was gone it would still get done.
One night it was raining and I was the only one left at the plant. I stayed for three hours extra because I did not trust myself driving. For those three hours, I just stood there in the cold rain, trying to get a grip. I wouldn't stand in my office, it felt like a bear trap. Whenever I looked at the door to that cursed room, I saw that bear trap in my mind.
January 13th, I went into a storage trailer to get some documents. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly weak and could not even walk out of the trailer. It was two hours before anyone noticed I was gone. After some candy I had the energy to return to my office.
January 14th, I went to the McDonalds down the street because I did not feel well. I got a breakfast sandwich, but then became suddenly so weak that I could not even lift it to my mouth. It was an hour before I was able to come out of that, and I just went home. When I got home I ended up just staring at my computer screen for hours without moving, listening to the voices in my head.
These two events were the edge of what is called catatonia. I thought they were sugar crashes. They weren't. My brain was shutting itself down, finding it harder and harder to cope with the outside world.
January 16th, it snowed. On the way to work, I wiped out on the interstate at 55 miles per hour. My thoughts at that instant were one word... "Finally." But I came to a rest and nothing was damaged, no accident, didn't get hurt. I felt disappointed.
January 20th, Monday morning. In my head, this was the day. I had decided. I never wanted to face another day again. I had reached my limit.
I took a coworker and taught her for most of the day how to run payroll. She was obviously angry at me, who knows why, I was acting so bizarre. But she gritted her teeth and let me show her. I ignored it and did it anyway.
We finished at the end of the day. By that time, I had the sense to tell my wife what I was thinking (but not the degree) and she had already called around and decided to herself that I needed some urgent intervention. She was calling every few minutes to check on me.
But first, I had to get home. I don't think anyone knew how hard that would be for me.
I got in my car, then thought better of it because of the tension earlier, and got back out. I walked up to my coworker's car window and tapped on it. She rolled it down. I said that I had felt some tension, what could I do to make it go away. She said everything was fine. I said, so we are OK? She said yes. I went back to my car, knowing that that exchange would make things better for her when, well, when. I purposely did not say goodbye to anyone else.
So, there I was. Behind the wheel of two tons of metal and 20 gallons of gasoline.
In ten minutes I was going to have to make a decision... One exit was the bridge, the other was the way home. The bridge was the quick exit, it would all be over. Home was going to be more problems and more struggle.
I just wanted it over with. It was hurting too badly.
But I still had some sense. I called my mother, my father, and my sister, as soon as my cell phone got into range. Between them and the cell phone, they got me home.
I was in the hospital for ten days. From that point forward, I have been getting well. This blog is my record of that journey.
Bipolar disorder is when a person, for some chemical or biological reason, has nothing that limits his or her mood swings to normal levels. The downs are WAAAY down, and the ups are WAAY up.
It's hard to live with one.
It's harder to live as one.
Statistics say that 33% of men, one out of three, will commit suicide within one year after diagnosis.
So for that one out of three, I am sorry, I know the monster that ate you.
And I stand as part of the two out of three, victor, fellow traveler, child of God just the way he made me.
Happy Anniversary.
I?ll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you?ve gone over to the Dark Side. But I'll be fine. That's the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.
James Lileks, The Bleat web log, September 4, 2003
heart-beat Function: noun
Date: 1850
1 : one complete pulsation of the heart
2 : the vital center or driving impulse
3 : for the United States, Washington, DC
(Here's another Blogger Idol entry. For me the 80's is just too big to cover in one post, or even in a hundred. The last post was about the final part of the 80's. This one will be about the beginning.)
It was 1980, and I was riding the whirlwind.
In the late spring of that year, I had been introduced to Congressman John Jenrette. For those of you who don't immediately recognize the name, he was one of the congressmen indicted in the ABSCAM investigations, and he served time for it too.
When I went to work for him, things were just beginning to heat up. In the midst of all of this, he was also running for re-election. And, like hyenas, anybody who had a desire for power was trying to topple him and take his seat.
I was there during the primary in South Carolina. I saw the opponent use some really dirty political tactics, such as making statements in public that were out and out lies, then calling later in private to apologize. I saw them try to hire key staffers or bribe people. I saw them buying votes.
We still won the primary.
So, now it was June and I headed to Washington DC to be the congressman's assistant press secretary. I arrived on a Friday afternoon and checked into his office. I had no earthly idea where to stay, and they gave me the name of a place called "Hartnett Hall" in the Dupont Circle area of DC. So, I headed that way.
Now, remember here, I had little experience of any city the size of DC at that time. I was as green as it gets.
After a few escapades such as heading the wrong way down a seven lane one way street just as the light ahead changed (can you say "kamakaze"? How about "sidewalk"?) I found Hartnett Hall. The office was in a well apportioned brownstone, and when I walked in they took my money for a weeks rent without any question.
They also told me it was nonrefundable, as of right now, no matter what. It was a sign of my naivete that this did not send up any red flags, but I gladly walked around the corner outside so he could show me the room. We climbed the stairs from the street to the entrance, there were two locked doors to get through, different keys, still no red flag, and three more flights up to my room. On the way he pointed out the communal restroom facility (it was an all male building), and finally at the end of the hall we came to my door, which required yet another two keys.
We opened the door.
Lets see if I can describe this room. The walls were a dark matte forest green, except just a tad towards kelly green. They swallowed the furnishings, which was not hard since there were only two, a bed and a chest of drawers. The chest of drawers was metal and had seen better decades. The bed rested on cinder blocks and was well used. Very, very well used.
There was no air conditioning, and it was Summer.
I said thanks, and headed to unload my stuff.
I had to park around the corner, so every load I was bringing in I was walking by this bar called "Friends." The streets seemed pretty busy, men and women milling about. I made several trips, and was unpacking my suitcase in my room, sweating in the heat and humidity while listening to a little portable cassette player.
Then there was a knock at the door. I opened it.
"Pardon me please, but would it be too much to ask you to turn your music off, as I am trying to take a nap?" asked a man with a perfect British accent, class and style oozing from his words.
The entire effect being spoiled by the fact that he was standing there buck naked in the hall.
"Uh, sure," I quickly said. I watched as he returned to his room across the hall and lay back down with his door left open.
'Odd,' I thought to myself. 'Maybe he is just trying to keep cool in this awful heat,' I added, giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Speaking of which, the heat really was awful. I tried opening the window and after some effort broke through the old paint and got it open a bit. But the next building was only feet away so there was no air flow, and the room was getting more like a sauna than a bedroom. This was simply not going to work!
So, I formed a plan. Step one, go buy a cold beer. Step two, go buy a fan. Step one would be quick and easy, there was a bar just downstairs! That's the ticket!
I head to the bar and walk in. The place is full of people sitting at picnic tables, swinging back and forth, arm in arm and singing like they were in Bavaria.
Problem was, they were all guys. Not a girl in sight. Now, remember, this was 1980. Things like this just didn't happen. Not anywhere I had been before, anyway.
I retreated to the street, and took a closer look at the guys and girls out there. Every one of the girls was really a guy.
I was in the middle of the gay area of Washington, and I was living in a male boardinghouse.
Oops.
Well, I still wanted that beer and needed that fan, so off I went.
I headed down the avenue until I came across a street that looked like it had lots of stores on it. I parked ($5 an hour in 1980? Even then that should have sent up a red flag, but I was in short supply) and I headed to a drug store I had seen.
When I walked up, it was closed. Drat! I turned around to go find my car again when a young lady, very cute, was walking up.
"Are they already closed?" she asked.
"Yeah, we must have just missed them," I said. "Is there anything else in this area?"
"What are you trying to find?"
"A window fan. And maybe a beer."
"There's another store down the block, follow me."
So we walked down the street, chatting each other up the whole way. All of a sudden, she stopped and said "Well, here's where I work, just keep going about a half a block, bye!" and vanished through a doorway.
I looked at the building. All the windows were painted over, and they all said "Girls, Girls, Girls!"
I was betting they had beer, beer, beer too. So I went straight in.
What greeted me was not what I expected at all.
It was a small room, and there was a lady standing there behind a podium thing. Otherwise, the room was empty except for a rack of porno magazines. There was one door in the rear.
She looked at me and said, "Would you like to see a movie?"
"Huh?"
"Come, I'll show you."
We headed through the door.
She went about halfway down this dark smelly hallway and opened one of the curtains that lined the hall on each side. Inside was a little cubicle with a single bed on a wooden shelf, a folding chair, and a TV in the top corner playing a porn movie.
"For $25, you can sit in here for 30 minutes and watch a movie with the woman of your choice."
"Movie?"
"Yes." She looked at the TV.
"With the woman of my choice?"
"Yes. Naked."
"Oh."
There was one of those real uncomfortable pauses while my brain added a file folder it didn't know it needed. "Um, frankly, I wanted a beer."
I bailed as quickly as I could, trying not to come into contact with anything on my way out. I went down the street to that other drug store and bought a fan. Oh, by then I had figured out it was 14th street, the vice capital of DC at that time.
Two weeks later, I moved across the river to Alexandria, and air conditioning.
Hate no one; hate their vices, not themselves.
-J. G. C. Brainard
