Social Distance Diary: transmitting the dharma

Today is one of those days when I feel the world shrinking, when the the mountain range of things I can't control (always there in distance, like the Rocky Mountains) just laughs at me and my approaching level of incompetence. 

I think of myself as a river pebble. Sometimes I get knocked around by the current. Sometimes I bump up against other pebbles, bigger rocks, a fish, a cricket, a tadpole, or a plant. Sometimes the current lodges me somewhere: I get stuck in the mud, or between a couple of other pieces of detached sediment.  But water is as caustic as it is refreshing. And the current is always in flux. Being, as I am, a river pebble, I pick things up as I go. But I continue to struggle against what wasn't passed on to me to begin with. 

I really like the house my wife and I live in. It's an old house, and has old house problems. A good many of those problem are things I'm able to fix. Most simple repairs, for example. I've changed power outlets, hung shelves, patched and painted walls.   Replaced toilet seats.  These are things I've picked up over the years: like changing a tire, a battery, or the oil. I know a little about a lot of things, actually, which makes me at least moderately useful maybe 80% of the time. 

But the things I do know stand in relief against all that I don't.  And while I try not to dwell on the reasons why, since the slim difference between a reason and an excuse is a dollop of self-pity,  the fact is it's difficult not to track it back.  

My grandfather, my mother's dad, was a carpenter. He smelled of saw dust, coffee, and nicotine.  He used to scribble little projects on scraps of paper, pieces of paper towel. I used to sneak into his workshop just to smell the smells. My old man ran a jet repair crew in the Air Force; he knew how to work with his hands.  There was a wealth of knowledge there that wasn't passed on. I don't know if any of it would have interested me, but I wasn't given the chance to reject it, either. I was a sickly kid and protecting me meant keeping me away from certain things. 

The things I HAVE learned, I sought. And I do think there's something to be said for being the active seeker of knowledge.  But there's something else about the heritage of knowledge.   I've had a lot of teachers over the years, but it's difficult to trace what I know down to a single heritage.  

In the Chinese tradition of Zen, heritage matters. It's how teachers become teachers; the monastic certificate program.  The master discovers who the next in line is and, through a ceremony , the dharma is transmitted and a new master in invested. And depending on what school you look at, the issue of heritage matters.   Heritage gets a bad wrap in America because it's been all wrapped up in nationalism and narrow views of patriotism.  Heritage and tradition have become tropes, and our culture chases them like they matter.  Whether it's being a Harvard Legacy, a third generation Teamster, a fourth generation military volunteer, or a trust fund baby, we chase heritage like it matters more than the life right in front of us. 

Maybe it's because we're a country of mutts. Those inbred Aryans -- the Proud Boy incel types who think blood heritage matters at the expense of common sense and history -- chase heritage like merchant social climbers Jane Austen is still read for writing about.  Our need for a royalty formed out an imaginary meritocracy makes us chase celebrities and social media "influencers." Maybe we do this because we're more than a dozen generations past the place where most Americans  can easily trace where they come from and we're stuck with 23 and Me.

The good thing is I'm still not scared to learn.  And that's a kind of dharma, too.

Social Distance Diary: Gimped

I can't complain. 

It'd be easy to. But complaining might jinx it and if I'm being honest, a twisted ankle isn't the worst thing that can happen during the plague year.  

And now with talk of "reopening the economy"... as if the economy has really closed... the only thing I seem to be able to focus on is what to carry forward. 

I keep thinking of my maternal grandmother, Lonnabelle Dunn, and what she carried. She lived through the Great Depression. She saved lidded plastic containers -- the kind that cottage cheese, sour cream, and margarine were packaged in. She washed them and saved them "just in case." She grew up in Crystal Lake, Wisconsin.  She taught me to play Gin Rummy, which she enjoyed because her father, a deeply religious man of an temperance bent, wouldn't let her play any card games that used face cards since face cards were used in gambling.  She would save barely used sheets of paper towel.  She could, in turns, be pragmatic and then  pollyanna.  Her world had clearly defined roles and expectations and she spent her later years watching all of that unravel. It must have seemed unfair. 

Some frugality was already set before all of this mess with COVID-19.  It's not that I'm especially good with money ... it tends to burn a hole in my pocket ... but I've been pretty good over the years at keeping reasonable, shelf stable supplies.  I've learned to be a decent cook. I'm fortunate to be married to someone who is an amazing cook. We're decent planners and not particularly scared of new things. I'm content to carry that forward, along with a renewed conviction that life is suffering and connections matter, and that people are still more important than profit.

The thing I don't want to carry forward is some expectation of normalcy. Normal is an unfortunate nostalgia. People infected with it simultaneously have a very specific, concrete notion of what it looks like but can't really seem to agree on what it means. We group together based on having similar pictures of normal in our minds.  We pass these cement abstractions on to out children, and within two generations normal becomes tradition, which is sacrosanct... until it isn't. 

A year after the 1918 flu, the Rev. Francis E. Tourscher was concerned that people were starting to forget, which is why he recorded the stories of nurses in Philadelphia for preservation in the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia . He wanted the facts on record from people who experienced the pandemic because memory has a way of giving way to nostalgia. 

I both derive some comfort and am deeply horrified that our tendency to embrace nostalgia isn't tied to something as new to the world as technology.

Normal -- that infective kind of nostalgia -- often ends up running contrary to fact. And in these, the days of Trumplandia, where facts are under erasure more than ever, normal is a nostalgia we can't afford if we're to carry anything forward that will keep us alive.  So I'm going to let my ankle heal. I will need it to carry things forward. Things that matter.

Social Distance Diary: Check-in checklist

Yes. There's what you'd call a typo.

It's not the social distancing that bothers me, or staying home. I've worked from home for several years now, and though I miss being able to haunt my favorite coffee shops and miss seeing some friends in person, I actually feel like I'm doing ok. I was seriously under-employed to the point of not really working before the outbreak; and I don't mind poverty, exactly. I wish there was more money around for emergencies but thanks to a few thoughtful supporters, I've been able to help us eek out a few solutions on the home front. Which is to say, feel free to check out the tabs about being a Patron or offering one time support via Venmo or Cash.me... 

...but these are tough times, tougher than many have had to experience. Not everyone does poverty well, and I have to confess it's something I've learned on my own over the past couple of decades rather than something I was raised with. My parents worked hard and we lived what used to be called a more or less middle class lifestyle; but my attempts... mostly feeble, always well-intended, but ultimately doomed to failure... have always been short. So if you can't toss some money in the hat, believe me, I get it. There's a few projects I'd love to support but I don't have money and I can't put in sweat equity right now. 

But that's not to say I don't keep busy. I do. 

I count things. A lot. Being a list maker of long repute, I am one who likes ticking off boxes. This what serves as routine for me, I suppose. I have a daily practice -- my writing, reading, and spiritual practice is all tied together. I make coffee. I've been doing more cooking lately, and have only really had one catastrophe. (It involved burned oatmeal.) My podcast takes up a significant amount of time... not only the writing and recording (which is honestly the easy part) but the networking and trying to grow it. I'm fully engaged in my creative work... but this was a pre-COVID state, so, like being under-employed. 

That's not to say I'm not noticing some issues. It's difficult for me to focus on long writing tasks, for example, so even if I had paying clients right now, I'm certain it would move like sludge.  I'm forgetting what is (for me) fairly simple language. ( I couldn't remember the word "superfluous" a few days ago.)  

And I thought my email was hacked 

when in reality I changed the password 

and then promptly FORGOT what it was.

As an alcoholic working on just a little over 2 years of sobriety (infant!) I have had to come to terms with the fact that my brain sometimes works against me. It's not a fault in the programming. It's not crossed wires. I'm allergic to booze like I'm allergic to pollen. That's how the ol' electric thinking box was built. But unlike pollen, which immediately creates a negative reaction, I LIKE what booze does to me. At first, anyway. It is, in a way, an intellectual and even spiritual lubricant. There was a reason why Li Po would write 100 poems for every gallon of wine. Believe me,  I get it.

But my brain makes it near impossible for me to stop once I've gotten started. I chase that feeling... but like anything ephemeral, that dragon is impossible to chase. 

So I make lists. I tick boxes. I am getting better at living in the moment because... well ... anything else is not being present. And if I've learned anything over the years, it is that being present matter more the amount of money I make, more than any socially constructed abstraction of my success or my failure. 

My wife, who is a far better human than I am, said it like this: "What we have works for us."

One of my readings, today, though, did, at least, make me feel better about my need to make lists. Early in  Run to the Mountains, the first volume of Thomas Merton's journals, he made lists. These journals were written before he went to Gethsemani, when he was still a student. A

among the lists he made, one was of things he couldn't believe existed. Two items on this list stand out:

The New Belgium Fascist Party

Evanston, IL

Tom, I get it. I don't understand fascists, either. I've been to Evanston, Illinois and know for certain it exists. But I can't say the same about Coalinga Junction, California. And I've been there, too. 

deadmachine retread: Thus Spake the Congregation

I knew something was wrong when Twila gave me the stink eye outside the student union. Divorces are difficult enough. Being young – too young, I remember my grandmother saying – made it that much more difficult. Having a three-month-old daughter made it even more so. Getting divorced while being married with a three-month-old daughter on a small college campus in Eastern Kentucky pretty much guaranteed that only Sisyphus had a more difficult load to bear.

Perverting common wisdom, a divorce has more than two sides to the story. There’s the usual… what one partner says and what the other partner says. Then there’s what really happened, which tends to be somewhere in the middle. And then there’s what everyone else says. And depending on who it is, where their loyalties lie, what their predilections are, and what their own (inevitably skewed) views on marriage are, there are any number of stories, all of which sound true enough to pass the gossip test regardless of how close to the truth it happens to be.

The usual unofficial morning kaffeeklatch of what was then called the Non-traditional Student Union was congregated in it usual corner spot in the upstairs student cafeteria. Woody, Shyla, Tammy, Jack, Ernie, Barb, Babs, and Shane were all in their usual spots drinking their usual coffee and having the usual conversations – all of which can be boiled down to how most college students have it easy. Marie and I gained entry to this group not so much because of our age, as our ages fell within what is (still) considered the traditional age, but because of our marital and parental status. Young marriages were increasingly less common in the 90’s, even in Eastern Kentucky with its sometimes self-proclaimed penchant for the traditional and the morally unambiguous. Both Barb and Babs, both of whom were products of failed marriages forced by cultural shotgun, applauded our decision not to resort to sin by partaking of marital fruits outside the sanctity of the marriage bed. Tammy, Shyla, and Twila didn’t say that in so many words, but Twila – who was a grandmother with granddaughters who hadn’t headed the words of Jesus since being baptized Old Regular Baptist style in a coal sludge dirty creek at the age of seven – demonstrated her clear approval by speaking often about how she wished her Becky and Sue had inherited some stiffer moral fiber like me and Marie.

Ernie, Shane, and Jack had no opinions on the topic. Or at any rate they didn’t express any openly. Woody asked me once when none of the others were within earshot – with no small amount of incredulity, I might add – how I could saddle myself so young when there was a campus full of beautiful young girls to occupy my time. Jack kept his own counsel about anything that didn’t involve the NCAA and Ernie, who was trying to be a writer, mostly talked politics.

Shane never said anything at all. But since I knew he was the guy Marie was currently fucking, I felt like I knew what his opinion was on the subject of marriage.

The group fell silent when I approached. When I sat down everyone but Ernie and Jack moved their chairs back a little… not like they were making more room but like they were afraid that whatever was wrong with me might rub off.

Ernie eyeballed the women carefully before uttering a neutral welcome.

What’s going on, he asked.

Not a thing. Just waiting between class.

Barb made a harrumphing sound and Babs just shook her head. Jack nodded at me, the way men sometimes do to show solidarity right before the bombs fall and its every man for himself.

I tried making conversation, though I didn’t much feel like it. I wasn’t sleeping and even the copious amount of drinking I was doing wasn’t helping.  Going to class was more an exercise of habit than purpose at that point and my professors treated me with increasing levels of shock, annoyance, or unsympathetic pity. I wasn’t doing anything. But I still made it to class. I was still working, if for no other reason so I could give money to Marie for Rhea. After we split up she moved out of the trailer we shared and in with a friend to help defray expenses. I was staying with friends who would ensure that, if nothing else, there would be beer and tater tots to eat and who could give me a ride to campus.

Barb made another harrumphing sound. You don’t need to be here drinking coffee like you have friends here, she said. You need to go and take care of your daughter.

Babs, Tammy, and Shyla all nodded and vocalized their agreement with Barb. Ernie and Woody shrank back into their chairs. Jack shook his head and kept his eyes on his coffee. Shane sat there rubbernecking and waiting for the actual carnage. It didn’t take long.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Barb went on, thoroughly encouraged by the congregation present. Your wife and daughter are living up in some shack with no electricity because you threw them away. And here you sit like you deserve to be around civilized people.

That wasn’t what happened. I knew that. Marie knew that. I’m pretty sure Shane, as amused as he was with the show, knew, too. The only thing that was true was that I left. The arguments and accusations, the yelling and recriminations by both Marie and me weren’t anyone’s business. The misery we’d inflicted on another wasn’t anyone’s business. And it wasn’t anyone else’s business whether Marie or I were screwing anyone else. I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that the marriage was over, that my daughter would grow up never knowing her parents as being a married couple. It didn’t matter that nothing in my experience had prepared me for that level of failure – not that anything does, really. But I didn’t even know any kids with divorced parents when I was a kid. My parents were happy. My friends’ parents seemed happy. That was what I expected when I got married, for all of the right reasons. And in spite of what Twila thought, it wasn’t to stave of immoral carnal lust. I was in love… or I thought I was, anyway.

But none of that mattered. Just like it didn’t matter that I had just seen Marie and given her money and asked if she needed anything. No, she said, like I insulted her dignity. We don’t need anything from you.

If there was any real justice in this evil world, Barb intoned, someone would take you out to a deserted holler and show you how we treat men that abandon their babies.

The congregation was silent. So was the entire cafeteria. Ernie and Woody refused to look at me. Jack met my eyes briefly and I knew he knew what was what. But he also knew, like I did, that no amount of words would change anything. Sometimes you take your beatings whether you think you deserve it or not.