Oz, isn't it?

I recently took an assignment at Ft. Riley, Kansas.  It wasn't planned; the decision to go was impulsive.  I'm loathe to leave home, and I was just getting ready to put up a deer fence and build planter boxes for the vegetable garden I hope to start this coming spring.  But the opportunity arose, and I couldn't stop myself.

There's something fundamentally rewarding about working with members of the military and their families, no matter what I might think of their presumed political persuasions (which we can't talk about) and no matter what they might think of counseling (which we do).

More than once, I've heard the comment, "I don't believe in that therapy stuff."  I want to say therapy is a bit like gun ownership:  Some believe their well-being would be compromised without it; others have never considered it even marginally useful, much less a basic need or right.  Of course, the difference between the two eclipses the similarity.  Therapy is intended to heal; owning a gun implies an intent, if only at some unspecified future point in time, to wound, kill, or threaten to do so.

But to be fair, how many times has a gun protected, albeit through threat of harm?  One survey estimates 1,029,615 times per year, another 989,883 per year.  And how does that compare with the numbers who are harmed or killed by guns?  That depends on who you talk to.

And how many times has therapy unintentionally wounded or resulted in death?  We really don't know, but by one estimate 10% of people undergoing therapy get worse.  The only thing I could find about therapy causing suicide was a claim by siblings that "anti-sissy" therapy provided through UCLA by George Rekers, an anti-gay therapist, caused their brother's suicide 33 years later.  Hmmm. 

I frequently question the efficacy of psychotherapy, in part because it's been years since I've wanted to see a therapist myself.  There is something exhilarating about riding the rapids alone, and something reassuring about doing it skillfully, with no assistance, and without someone looking over your shoulder, second guessing every maneuver and cutting through your eddy of denial to point out that you're heading straight into hard-edged discrepancy.  And I'm skeptical of how much help I've been to some who have come to see me for therapy.  However, what I appreciate and trust about my current work is its focus, its attention to cognitions and solutions, and its objective of empowering those who seek help to help themselves, to move past the whitewater of victimization, self-deception and blame, and to take deliberate strides toward aligning outcomes with intentions.  I suppose I believe there's a time and a place for having someone look over your shoulder.  In my current work with military personnel and their spouses, I find many who are in that time and place.

And then there are others, of course, who believe in guns.  And well they should.

Buffalo Soldier, In the Heart of America

11 11 11 11 11

It's Armistice Day, now Veterans' Day, and although the Senate just succeeded in passing a bipartisan bill--with a miracle vote of 95 to 0--making it easier for returned vets to find jobs, we are not yet close to an armistice between the two warring parties that, between battles, try to manage our nation's business.

1111111111

We watched Barney Frank interviewed on Bill Maher tonight.  What struck me most while enjoying his characteristic clarity of thought was the ease and certitude conveying his disdain for the extreme right wing, which has a stranglehold on the Republican party, and the unlikely candidates it has produced. 

I feel compelled to be part of the campaign against a selfish and mean-spirited worldview, but the easiest way to make a contribution has been to make comments in response to commentary which will fall either on deaf ears or on the choir.  I generally put off reading the many political e-mails I receive on a daily basis.  On occasion I sign mass e-mail petitions and letters, a high-tech Greek chorus which undoubtedly has no effect on any conservative politicians.  I avoid phone banks and have a hard time believing canvassing has much effect.  Do I want to just leave it all up to fate and be able to claim some credit by virtue of an occasional $25 donation, a signed e-petition, and, eventually, reluctant  participation in GOTV efforts at the 11th hour?

It's the 11th hour I'm addressing here.  Has my life always been about the 11th hour?  Cramming for an exam, pushing the deadline,  dawdling until the latest possible moment to make an appointment, postponing phone calls, procrastinating on sending e-mails--I have been driven by avoidance rather than approach.  And when I take steps to prepare for something in advance, it's only to protect myself from the anxiety that comes from missing the boat.

This may all sound unnecessarily self-deprecating, but I'm just going where time is taking me.  I only have a few more minutes to get this posted by 11:11 on 11/11/11, and that is the title.

I have nothing to add.  Unfortunately, I waited till the last minute and didn't give myself enough time to think it through.

Happy Armistice Day, and may we seek resolution before it's too late.

All Good Things in All Good Time


Time's up.

Ft. Campbell Homecoming, Christmas 2008

The Walk of Life

I'll move along now from the death theme; no need to dwell.   But before I do, I'll recap the events of yesterday.

The memorial service for our friend reinforced the idea of intentional family.  My Peace Corps family, along with the several other families John Lewis had created through his life--blood relatives, children, and extended family, neighbors, friends and colleagues--gathered to hear of his life and his relationships, and to toast the memories which will help us carry on in his spirit.

Afterward, Marc and I reconnected with a niece I've only seen a couple of times after 30 years' separation, and her daughter, her daughter's boyfriend, and my niece's younger half-sister.  That was a reinforcement of the ability to mend ties broken by anger and disappointment.  This niece, my deceased sister's youngest daughter, is a model of forgiveness and non-judgmental kindness.  Her daughter is kind, curious and grateful.  I feel a warm sense of appreciation being re-kindled in me.

I'll leave it at that on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.  Let there be love.





 

Dakini on Death

My friend Cathy sent this to me, probably in preparation for our friend's memorial service, which is this afternoon.
  

The Dakini Speaks

My friends, let's grow up.
Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
Let's grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
But please, let's not be so shocked by them.
Let's not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise.
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.

by Joyce Wellwood*

________________
*Copied from  http://en.nvcwiki.com/index.php/The_Dakini_Speaks
Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.

That'll have to be it for today.  

Variation on a theme.

Stick Figure

 

Deciding on Death

September 9--Well, that title sounds a bit ominous.  It could mean many things.  Am I starting to sound suicidal here?  Because I'm not.  Decidedly not.  I've thought about it at times in my life; who hasn't?  Okay, never mind; probably some people haven't.

It could mean deciding on euthanasia when in the last throes of a painful, terminal disease, but that wasn't what I had in mind either, although I have no problem with that decision.

What I was considering, in deciding on "Deciding on Death" as a title, was our rationale for killing, depending on the circumstances and our assessment of the victim's value.  Okay, now I think it's really starting to sound ominous.  But maybe it is, and maybe that's where I'm going with this.

Daddy long-legs spiders are dispensable.  There are many of them.  I'm not worried about their existence.  Therefore, like deer to a hunter, they're easy to kill (for Marc, anyway; but I do have to admit that even I--if one inadvertently gets sucked up into a vacuum cleaner--will dismiss it with a cavalier, "Oops, sorry spider.").

Caterpillars, if there are hoards of them erasing the green from branches of all the trees, are easy enough to despise, and when I was involved in my spring of genocide I found myself thinking a lot about the term "dehumanize".  Not that one can technically dehumanize caterpillars; they're not human to begin with.  But it's what I did, nonetheless.  I vilified them, maligned them, discredited them and downgraded them to the status of, well, worms.  When we think of something as a worm, when we stereotype and denigrate any group of living beings, it facilitates the potential decision to eliminate them.

Sunday it will have been 10 years since the attack on the World Trade Center that took so many lives.  To the terrorists who planned and carried out the attack, Americans were no doubt considered dispensable, but they were also held to be despicable, dishonorable villains.  The two questions that keep coming up for me are:

1.  Have we achieved anything in the intervening 10 years toward helping the terrorists see that we are not all despicable, dishonorable villains?
2.  How close are we, as a divided nation, to convincing ourselves that our political opponents are themselves despicable, dishonorable villains?

Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion

I'm just saying....

Life is Death

September 7 & 8:  Marc noted today that all my posts are about death.  It's true, so far.  It started with the death of our friend John Lewis, and I wasn't quite ready to let go, I guess.  I found myself facing the reality and relative imminence of death, and that morphed into an exploration of death as an integral part of life.  As humans who have worked so hard to protect ourselves from death at all costs, we tend to dismiss it as unnecessary, if unavoidable.  So I turned to spiders and other creatures who seem to take it in stride.  Or not.  Do we really know?

Maybe I'll pursue this reflection on life and death up to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.  The biggest news today other than President Obama's talk on jobs was a terrorist threat for this Sunday, September 11.  Yet nothing in that feels imminent to me.  I've always felt removed from the danger of death, even with my father and sister dying when I was relatively young.

That is, until my recent bout with bronchitis and/or pneumonia while in Okinawa, then losing a friend to a mysterious infection shortly after returning.  Somehow, that's sensitized me, at least temporarily, to the potential for loss--of a friend, a loved one, a pet, my own life.

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Over the past two days, Momma Daddy Long-legs has been absent from her web (unless the web encompasses the entire bathroom and that's her hovering over the vanity lights).  The male appears to be pretty much in the same place.  I wonder if she hunts for him as well.  I'm not actively worried about her; how could I be?  She's one of many spiders in my house; she's dispensable.

I do worry about our cats, though, whenever we both leave the house together.  I'm like one of those parents who gets nervous traveling with the other parent, because if something happens to both of us they'll be waiting there, and we won't come back.  My mother used to sing "Little Boy Blue" to me when I was young.  That's the lullaby about the boy who dies in his sleep, leaving behind his stuffed animals and tin soldier, who don't understand why he never comes to play with them any more.  It stuck with me, and I can cry on demand just by singing it.

I also worry about the dangers to the cats presented by coyotes and cars and such, but not to such a neurotic level as the leaving-them-behind fear.  I'm willing to allow them the freedom to roam, and am not as protective as I could be.  At least if something happens to them, I know they had a good life.  They've had lots of good places inside and outside the house to hang out and hunt spiders and torment mice and lizards.

And that would be my compromise with nature, I guess, for the favoritism I show to these indiscriminate predators.

Death for Life

September 6, 2011

Momma Daddy Long-legs has left her catch on a small, triangular web attached to an aloe spear and the smaller succulent's inverted leaves, and has built herself a multi-story house a couple of feet above, in the corner.  She was waiting all day for the next victim to be caught in the slender strands of her web.  A little higher up from where she's been waiting, closer to the ceiling, is a smaller daddy long-legs spider, perhaps a male, who as I understand it will die after they mate.  I'll be watching for that event.  Momma Daddy Long-legs, according to Buzzle.com, can live for three years. ("Not if I vacuum," says Marc.) 

 Tonight, Momma Daddy is nowhere to be seen.  I suppose she could be off hunting.  Pholcus phalangiodes, also known as house spiders, cellar spiders and vibrating spiders, are known to invade the nests of other spiders, eating their prey.  They also vibrate in imitation of caught prey, luring the host out and killing it.

Maybe one of the cats got Momma Daddy.  They do love catching spiders and other insects, since we restrict their night hunting activity to the house lest they become prey themselves.  I just rescued a praying mantis, which I had earlier photographed posing on the small statue of Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion, which Marc bought in Chinatown.  The mantis seemed annoyed at my poking the camera in its mandibular face, and scuttled away up the screen of the porch, eventually, no doubt, finding a way into the house.

The cats also love catching lizards, and Marc and I are regularly rescuing fence lizards, alligator lizards, and skinks.  This afternoon I rescued the tiniest fence lizard, which was lying upside down next to Eartha and clung to my finger as soon as I touched it; tonight I rescued an alligator lizard Frida was playing with in the house. They always seem relaxed while I'm carrying them out to some rocks away from the house, looking around to see where I might be taking them, and I often have to nudge them out of my hand to get them to dart off into a crevice between the rocks.
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 In 1986, I made a decision to stop eating anything I didn't think I could kill myself.  That meant no more beef, lamb, or pork (unless I'm at someone's house and it's being served--then I'm willing to honor it by eating it--or sometimes at a buffet if I think it'll go to waste).  I still believe I could kill a chicken or a fish, but I might well be wrong, knowing my compulsion to rescue and befriend and my aversion to inflicting pain or fear.  I suppose, to be perfectly honest with myself, I should limit my carnivore's diet to caterpillars.

Praying for Rain