What is left?,

I asked myself after receiving a call from my older brother that our father had passed away. I wasn’t surprised at the news, in fact I anticipated it even though I didn’t know his current health nor did I know his exact age as I haven’t communicated with him in over twenty years. What confounded me was that I didn’t really know how to act when receiving the news. This man who sired three sons, impressed upon them in varying degrees his own frequently violent emotional deficiencies. I can’t speak to what specific impact to my other siblings this has had but for me, I have carried the ghost of my childhood for all of my life. read more

‘Stupid Dog’,

I amusingly thought to myself as I rolled a ball down the hallway of my wife’s house before we were married. Expecting her dog, Petey, to eagerly go after it, he just sat there, looked down the hallway and then at me as if to say, ‘Nice trick human, now go after it.’

A dog is a man’s best friend no matter how many people may be around but they are a woman’s companion when she is alone. Petey was a maltipoo, his actual birth date is unknown since he was a rescue, taken in after being neglected by another family and given to Susan’s mother to help keep her company. Susan inherited Petey when her mother died of cancer and she reluctantly let him become part of her life as his independent personality fit hers. At first, Susan would complain that he would follow her everywhere around the house but then he started to settle down and his presence started to grow on her. He eventually became Susan’s touchstone to the memory of her mother. A physical link to the past, she would often hold him to help fill in the space where her mother had been. read more

Standing there on a small bar room stage, long after she passed away was my mother, and she was singing. One evening last year,I was invited by my wife to attend a get together at a small intimate club to see a childhood friend of hers, Diane Durette, who became a locally known female singer. Shortly after we arrived I heard a voice from behind me, it was Diane and she had come over to greet us before she started to play. I turned to look at a pretty middle aged woman who I thought resembled someone I knew but I couldn’t quite place who she looked like. We exchanged introductions and then she made her way to the stage and started the first set. It was then that it hit me that she reminded me of my mother. Her face, hair and physical build was eerily reminiscent of my mother when she was younger. But the most important aspect of seeing this visage was the freedom of her personality. read more

Most of the time, holding on means that you treasure something. This can get into certain psychological nuances but most of the time it can be something worthy, something special. Letting go means that we either need to get rid of something not welcomed or trust that something good will remain or come back. We all have had things to let go of and at times you find that it is something you no longer have stewardship over it or on the other end of the spectrum, you find that it owns you. In Buddhist thought, all things are impermanent or temporal in nature and the goal of existence is one of releasing. An object or thought can be persistent and it can turn into what is called ‘mind grasping’, the object or thought controls the mind and causes the pain of attachment. In order to free or liberate the mind, you have to find release from it. Buddhism calls this Nirvana, which Joseph Campbell artfully explained as, ‘the ultimate condition where you are not compelled by desire or by fear. It is where you hold your center and act from there’.

Until recently I didn’t realize the totality of ‘letting go’. As a parent, we remember our children’s first steps, being there to catch them if they fell. All too soon, we then witness their first steps towards their own journey, forcing ourselves to stay any attempts to catch them when they fall. Sending them on their way, jealous of life now being their teacher. I am the father of two sons and during their growth I have had to let go. After I failed at a marriage, I couldn’t witness their daily routine, their daily travel through school, and gradual development into manhood. In the beginning it was different, I watched each of them take their first steps where they trustingly held my finger or hand as they learned to step and find their balance. It was when they didn’t need my hand to steady themselves that they let go first. After then, it seemed that even though they still needed advice from time to time that they have been waiting for me to do the same, to let go.

In the remake of ‘War of the Worlds’. Tom Cruise’s character is one of those fathers who, by distance or career demands, couldn’t be there all of the time for his children yet loves them in the genuine flesh and blood capacity that no one could invalidate. During a pivotal scene he physically struggles with his son, trying to protect him by keeping him from going over a hill where we know something traumatic is occurring but we can’t see what it is. His son turns to him and tells him to ‘please let me go, you need to let me go’. They finally stop struggling and stand up facing each other as two men instead of as father and son.

A parent always wants to protect their children but sometimes never realize the moment needed to let go. I was absent enough to not see that moment, thinking that I was still needed to hold their hand or to share life lessons, only to find in reflection that moment had passed. No one person contributes to a child’s life. Since I do not have a real family, my ex-wife gave them the stability of having one through hers. I did the best that I could and when my sons and I were together, I showed them things that they never would have been able to see or experience before. They are still my sons, only they have already started their own journey. Now, whenever I greet them, I hug and hold them for a minute longer than needed but in the end release them. I do the same when it is time to part ways, trusting that they will come back again. That is what it seems to have come down to, because after all, it is about…

Letting go

Another post from my old blog, Compassionate Asshole.

Original Posting -08/19/12

Anton Browne once stated, ‘The way I see it, Twitter is like a big cocktail party.’ This was right before he closed his account there.

There is more to his story but it does show what social networking really is or at least what it can become. Insert the name ‘Facebook’ or your former high school forum name and you basically have the same thing; one gigantic electronic, 24hour, 365day cocktail party. The beauty, or the ugliness of it all is that now all social interaction, because of this newfangled medium called the Internet, is instantaneous. Instead of having private conversations where connoted inflections are heard and discourse can be entertained, everything now is taken as denotative; what you say is electronically inked with a permanent marker. With a real cocktail party there is an end but here you can be ‘onstage’ all the time. And you best develop a thick skin if you don’t already have one because once you are on the Internet, you’re not in Kansas anymore. The Internet is one big, fast paced gut checker. Gilda, the Good Witch of the North, will not be around to entice you to click your heels together when things get tough.

Recently, Robert Ebert posted in his online journal an article written by someone on how electronic medium has replaced real life social interaction:

‘In a world where communication is achieved basically by keyboard strokes directed to a nickname on a computer screen, a lot of people end up forgetting that behind those nicknames there are human beings… Networks such as Facebook and Twitter only have one thing “social” about them: the fact they can establish virtual connection between people–but it’d be a huge mistake to believe that connection is anything but superficial.’
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‘It’s very easy to be cruel, altruistic, passionate, generous or an activist on the Internet. But we don’t live on the Internet, do we?’
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Original Posting – 10/26/11.

Quite frankly I would be more compassionate if the Occupy (insert city here) demonstrators had a more concise message and delivery method. Being upset with corporate identities is an automatic banner filler but protesting corporate greed while blogging on ipads and smartphones while sipping on a Cafe Latte from the corner Starbucks seems a little counter-intuitive. 

One of the beauties of America is that you can publicly voice your displeasure on just about any injustice, real or perceived. The only caveat is that if you overstate your message and thereby overstay your welcome then your presence on public property degrades from an event to a curious but irritating sideshow. I think that in Atlanta, Kasim Reed tactfully respected the art of demonstration but recognized it was time to remind everyone of that old Benjamin Franklin idiom, ‘Company, like fish, stinks after three days’. He also recognized the other aspect of crowd gathering, it is a magnet for tagalongs and others that have a more dire intent. He strategically established a limit to how much money and patience would be spent the next time around and to the fact that having a message does not entitle you to dip your hand into the public coffers. This is America and everything is based on costs, even public demonstrations.
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Welcome to ‘Code 601′

The name (and blog picture) should ring a bell with Science Fiction fans, if it doesn’t then don’t worry. This is a nondescript portal for me to write about most anything since I have decided to tone down my Facebook postings and keep that portal for innocuous fare. Hopefully with a little practice and discipline I might even have something important to say and say it well enough for someone to take time to read it. I have had different websites, blogs and moments on the web before but nothing in length or duration so this will be yet another cycle in self expression. read more