Author: frankisemptiness

December 9th, 2019

We emerged from the underworld.

The Red Line has a stop near the corner of State and Lake in downtown Chicago. Sean, Sarah, and I got off the train there. We went through the turnstiles, and climbed the stairs to street level. I immediately lost my bearings. That’s what I hate about subways. I always feel disoriented when I surface.

Fortunately, Sean and Sarah were there as my guides. Sean quickly put up an antiwar banner, and then posted himself across the street, near the Chicago Theater. Sarah and I stood in front of the Channel 7 recording studios. We proceeded to hand out flyers.

To be more accurate, we proceeded to attempt to hand out flyers. The pedestrians who passed us by appeared to be less than interested. Sean, who has experience with this sort of thing, designed the flyer to silently scream “Stop the war in Iran!”

It was a simple message, although confusing to at least one individual. A man with a long, drooping mustache walked past me as I held up a copy of the flyer and said, “I didn’t know there even was a war in Iran.” Well, yeah, that’s true. Americans are not yet actively shooting or bombing people there. Our government is determined to destroy the Iranian economy, which is a sort of warfare. However, to the casual observer, that does not look like war.

I hate being invisible. For many people on the sidewalk, that is exactly what I was. I had to be impressed with the effort that many a passerby made to ignore me. Some of them looked away from me when they were still several feet away, and they stared into the distance. Perhaps they were suddenly fascinated by some pigeon droppings on the ledge of a building on the other side of the street. Maybe they just wanted to avoid eye contact at all cost.

Some people did make eye contact with me. That was apparently painful for them. They would give me a small, tortured smile. Some of them would nod.  A few of them with voices would politely say, “No, thank you.” It was awkward at best.

I did, in fact, give out some flyers. That was always a welcome surprise. One woman stared at the flyer in my hand and immediately whipped out her phone. She said,

“I want to take a picture of this.”

I told her, “Uh, there is more stuff on the back of it.”

“Oh.”

She paused, put away her phone momentarily, and took the flyer from my hand.

Sarah got into a long discussion about Iran with a homeless woman. She told me about it.

“I talked to this homeless woman for a while. She was quite well-informed. I also talked with a friend of hers.”

In a way I am not surprised by this. The homeless people are our kindred spirits. Nobody pays attention to them, and nobody pays attention to us. All of us are invisible.

Sean rushed across the busy street, effectively dodging the the chaotic traffic. He was excited. He told us,

“I figured it out! I have combined the war in Iran with Merry Christmas!”

Cool. Whatever works.

Note: Sean loves to cross in the middle of scary streets. Perhaps it is part of his struggle against fascism. Maybe he just likes to tempt death. It’s hard to tell.

I have thought about why I failed so miserably to hand out antiwar flyers. I suspect it that has to do with my appearance. I tend to exude a sort of hobo chic. As my wife, Karin, told me once,

“You look like a vagrant.”

Indeed.

It is very possible that some of the festive Christmas shoppers assumed that I was handing out flyers simply to get them to give up their spare change. I don’t know. If I had stood on the sidewalk long enough, then perhaps somebody would have tossed me a crumpled dollar bill, and that would have confirmed my hypothesis.

We spent an hour on State Street. We were islands of stability amid a swirling mass of humanity. It is possible, in fact likely, for a person to absolutely alone while being surrounding by other humans. A person can cease to exist in a crowd.

I wanted to exist again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 1st, 2019

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” – Oscar Wilde

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” – Jay Gould

Stefan and I get together at times. He’s our youngest son, and he works as a welder. He never wanted to go to a four-year college. He knew early on in his life that he wanted to work with his hands. He knew that he wanted to make things. Stefan took every shop course that was available to him in high school. He was never comfortable in a classroom, and he would never be comfortable in an office.

Stefan is only twenty-five. However, he’s already done many things. He worked as a auto mechanic right out of high school. Then he went to Texas, on his own, and worked in the press room of a newspaper in Bryan. He returned to Wisconsin, and he worked in a body shop. He worked in a place that refurbished old furniture. Eventually, he went to a local tech school to learn welding. He joined the Iron Workers Union. Now he walks on top of steel beams one hundred feet up, and does welding in the snow and the cold.

Stefan works hard, and he makes good money. His work is difficult and dangerous. In his profession people get hurt. He told me about one of his co-workers who had his leg crushed by a forklift. That got my attention. I had my right leg crushed by a forklift ten years ago at work. I know exactly how that feels.

Stefan is working class. He has the virtues and the vices of that tribe. He runs with a rough crowd, because the men (they are almost all men) who are Iron Workers are by necessity kind of rugged. Stefan once told me,

“Everybody on my crew has a felony rap, an addiction, or an OWI (drunk driving)…except for me.”

This is nothing unusual. When Stefan was working in the press room down in Texas, he got into a heated argument with a co-worker. Apparently, the other guy accused Stefan of being lazy. That is not one of Stefan’s shortcomings. The argument turned into a screaming match. Eventually, they wore each other out.

Later, Stefan found out that the man had done time for murder.

Stefan’s current compatriots are of the same mold. These other Iron Workers may not be murderers, but they have led interesting lives. These are men who have probably just done the things that most of us are afraid to do. They have lived on the edge. The edge is an exciting place, but rather unforgiving.

Stefan told me,

“We all went out to breakfast one time. First, the guys wanted to order some Bloody Mary’s, then they wanted to get some beers. Then they said, ‘Hey, let’s go to the titty bar, it’s open by now! Fuck, I didn’t even want to see what worked there on that shift.”

That made me remember.

I was in the Army in 1981. I had just finished flight school, and I had been assigned to a helicopter unit in Germany. I arrived in Hanau in December, and I knew nobody. A couple pilots took me under their wing, but I was alone when Christmas came.

A couple guys from the unit found me on Christmas Eve. Their idea was to take me to the red light district in Frankfurt. Frankfurt, like many other European cities, had decided that it was best to keep sexual vice within certain geographical limits. I went there with these other soldiers. I had never been to a place where prostitution was legal, so there was a perverse sort of excitement.

We went into one of the houses. It was actually lit with a red light. The women there were not particularly attractive. Well, maybe they were physically attractive, but the fact that they were selling their bodies like used cars made them seem ugly. It made me feel ugly. I felt dirty being there. I didn’t buy anything. It felt wrong, way wrong. It had nothing to do with love. It hardly had anything to do with sex. It was just a business transaction.

That is what I remember.

“Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint”

from “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones

My father was working class, but he tried so hard to move up in the world. He spent his entire life with a chip on his shoulder. He wanted so much to prove that he was as good as, or better than, other people. He failed.

My dad pushed hard to send me to West Point. I got a scholarship there, and I did well. However, I never became the son he wanted me to be. He was could never decide what he wanted me to be. Sometimes, he would yell, after I went on a drunken binge,

“What is wrong with you? I thought that they were going to make you into an officer and a gentleman!”

They did make me an officer. The gentleman part was always optional.

Then, at other times, when I showed off my education, he would say with bitterness,

“So, you’re a big guy now? Are you better than the rest of us? You forget your roots?”

Now, It’s my turn.

Sometimes Stefan tells me things that a parent perhaps should not hear. It’s okay. I don’t mind. He’s honest with me, and that is all that I want.

Stefan is rough and crazy and street smart. He is also loyal, compassionate, generous, and brave. He is a good son. He is a good man. I love him as he is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 30th, 2019

“I keep reminding the young people that come to work with us (at the Catholic Worker House) that they are not naturalized citizens. They cannot get away from their privileged background. They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by ‘renouncing all compensations.’ Simone Weil does not talk of penance, she does not cry out against self-indulgence. She says, ‘Renounce’.”

from Dorothy Day

It’s been over six weeks since I made I made the road trip to the southern border at El Paso. Distance, whether it be in terms of space or time, can give a person more perspective. It is possible to see more of the bigger picture. However, that is not without loss. Seeing the bigger picture means that a person sees less of the details. The details are what wake me up in the middle of the night.

I am have been looking at a postcard that I sent to Karin while I was on the trip. I love to send postcards. I was fascinated by them even as a kid. I know that it is a totally retro kind of thing. Most modern people send selfies, or post some crap on Facebook. I like to send things by snail mail. I like to give a person something that they can touch. It seems more real that way.

I am looking at the postcard now. In a way, it s a truly wretched picture. It shows part of Ciudad Juarez, with El Paso looming in the distance. It shows the border crossing. The card appears to be an antique. The cars on the street look old even by Juarez standards. Most postcards show something marvelous, something to attract other wanderers. A postcard from Paris might show the Eiffel Tower. I remember sending a postcard from Cairo that showed the Pyramids of Giza. This card shows a desolate neighborhood in Juarez that borders other desolate neighborhoods in El Paso. It is a scene that is very real, but not inviting, not at all.

I remember when I bought the postcard. The fourteen of us were in Juarez, and it was after we had a meeting with a some kind of official of the Mexican government. The meeting was in a building right at the edge of the border. We met in a room that was way too small, and we listened to people who talked way too much shit. I’m not saying that everything they said was nonsense, but at least some of it was. The official spoke about the migrants who were stuck at the U.S. border, and he said that Juarez welcomed them, because they needed the labor force. He insisted that there were jobs available for these refugees from Central America, and that the city was eager to have them stay. Yeah. Maybe.

While in Juarez, our group saw the tent city on the street near to the border. It was not a pretty sight. There were women and kids living in hovels. The men were either trying to hustle some money to survive, or they were sitting on the curb with empty eyes and empty hearts. All of the people in this conclave were in limbo. They couldn’t go back home, and they couldn’t go to the one country where they might feel safe. They were utterly lost. Anyway, that is how they appeared to me.

I cannot know much about these migrants. I did not speak to them. I don’t know Spanish well enough to converse with these people, and why would they want to talk to me anyway? The fact is that I don’t know any of their stories. Even if I did hear about their experiences, I would never really understand. There are some things that cannot be learned vicariously.

These people, these migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are destitute. They have nothing. They left what little they had behind. They left their homes in desperation and fear, and now they linger on the edge of the Promised Land. Most of them, because of the cruelty and callousness of our government, will eventually leave the border and fade away. That is the stated goal of the U.S. government, that these hopeless and harmless people just go away. They will. A few of them will find a home in Mexico. A few of them will try to make their way back to their homelands, where the gangs are actively trying to kill them. Some will die.

We don’t care. We just don’t care.

After the meeting with the Mexican official, we all wandered along a main street in Juarez for a while. We stopped at a mom-and-pop restaurant for some lunch. I think it was called “Sabor a Cuba”/ “Burritos Meny”. We stood in line to order. I asked our guide, Chris, if I could go back a block and buy some postcards at a small shop.

He said, “Yeah, go ahead, but take somebody with you.”

I yelled to Alex, a member of our motley crew, “Hey, Alex, I need you to hold my hand for a while! I want to go to the store down the block and buy some postcards!”

Alex was a good sport. He agreed to walk with me. We went into the shop. I thought about trying out my Spanish with the owner, and decided that it was too much of an effort.

I asked Alex, “Can you ask the guy something for me?”

“Sure, what?”

“Ask him if he takes dollars or pesos. I got no pesos.”

Alex, being a a truly good guy, did what I asked.

He turned to me and said, “He takes dollars.”

“Cool.”

I sighed and said, “Okay, I want ten cards.”

Alex translated for me.

I bought the postcards. We walked out and went back to the burrito shop.

Chris greeted us when we returned.

He said, “Let me know what you order, so that I can pay.”

I got in line and ordered a Coke, in terrible Spanish. I finally made it clear that I only wanted the soda.

Chris came up to me and asked, “Did you only get a Coke?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I’m not hungry.”

There is a point there.

I was not hungry. The truth is that I have never been really hungry.

I do not know what is like to be truly poor. I grew up in a struggling, working class family, but that doesn’t mean anything. We ate enough. When raising my own family,  I laid awake at night worrying about how to pay the mortgage. I never laid awake wondering how I would feed my kids.

I cannot completely understand the suffering of these people on the border. I don’t want to experience what they have gone through. I don’t want to know all that they know.  Maybe that is wrong, but I have my own stuff to handle, and I often am overwhelmed by that.

As Dorothy Day said, I will always be a foreigner to the truly poor.

I can understand them a little bit. That’s all.

That will have to be good enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 27th, 2019

I could hear the sound coming from the front of the house. It was rhythmic, like somebody was tapping on the wall with a small hammer.

“It must be that damn woodpecker again”, I thought.

I got up from the computer and walked to the front door. As I opened it, I saw a flutter of wings as a small bird flew away from the cedar siding near the front windows of the house.  It was the woodpecker. She was clinging to one of the stalks of the elderberries.

The front of our house is riddled with holes. For some reason, the builder used cedar to make the post that holds up the porch. He also used cedar to surround the big front windows. Back in 1991 that seemed like a really good idea. Now, not so much.

The woodpecker has been attacking the cedar for two years now. She keeps drilling holes in the post and into wood near the windows. I keep filling the holes with wood putty. From a distance it all looks okay. Up close, you can see a variety of mottled colors. Eventually, there will be more wood putty than wood in front of the house.

I have tried to use bad-smelling chemicals to ward off the bird. Nothing seems to work. She keeps coming back. The woodpecker is smart, and has a very strong survival instinct. She is remarkably persistent, actually relentless. I would find that admirable if she wasn’t damaging my home.

I looked at the bird as she looked at me. The woodpecker is quite beautiful. She is mostly white with black wings. She is an amazing creature.

I have thought about killing the bird. I’m not sure how I would do that. I don’t own any guns, and, even if I did, it would be unwise for me to use a firearm in my neighborhood.

Thomas Merton said once that all animals are saints, because they only do what God wants them to do. They cannot sin. I thought about that as I looked at the little bird with the destructive tendencies. The woodpecker is simply doing what woodpeckers are supposed to do. I wish she would do it some place else, but the bird is doing nothing that would justify me killing it. I would feel remorse if I did kill the damn thing. It would be wrong for me to do so.

Eventually, the woodpecker will die. So will I. We will see who goes first.

In the meantime, I will fill holes in the wall.

 

 

 

 

November 24th, 2019

“I hold the line, the line of strength that pulls me through the fear
San Jacinto, I hold the line
San Jacinto, the poison bite and darkness take my sight, I hold the line
And the tears roll down my swollen cheek, think I’m losing it, getting weaker
I hold the line, I hold the line
San Jacinto, yellow eagle flies down from the sun, from the sun

We will walk on the land
We will breathe of the air
We will drink from the stream
We will live, hold the line
Hold the line, hold the line
We will live, hold the line
Hold the line, hold the line…”

From the song “San Jacinto” by Peter Gabriel

The guard buzzed me through the entrance of the cell block. He knew me. I had been there to visit often in the past. The guard was a tall, young man. He had shaved his head, and he had a beard that was long and red.

I walked up to his counter. He was busy signing into the computer. It was the start of his shift. He barely glanced up as he greeted me:

“Hi. How are you tonight?”

I answered him, “Okay. And how are you doing?” I hung up my coat on the rack.

He was still looking at his screen when he said, “Oh, as well as can be expected. Thanks for asking.”

I pulled out my drivers license and laid it on his counter. I looked for a sign in sheet, but I found none.

I asked him, “Do you want me to sign something?”

He shook his head. Then he asked me, “And who are you seeing again?”

I gave him the girl’s name.

“Oh yeah. Got it. She’s quite the artist. Really talented. She’s always drawing pictures.”

I thought for a moment. “Yeah, she’s gifted that way. She has a degree. Actually, she has a lot going for her.”

The guard punched at his keyboard, and said, “She could really use that talent. She could be working a booth at the State Fair, and drawing people’s pictures at $25 a pop.”

“Yeah, I guess she could be doing that.”

Then the guard looked up, and said, “Okay, let me give you a token for the lockers. Hmmmm, there aren’t any. Uh, I got to go to the main building to get some more. What do you have to check in?”

I laid my cell phone, car keys, and wallet on the counter.

“Hey, tell you what. I’ll keep your stuff back here. You don’t need to put it into the locker. Okay?”

“Sure.”

I had to go through the metal detector. I laid my bag of change on the counter before I went in. The thing beeped anyway.

I told the guard, “It’s probably my belt. Do you want me to take it off?”

He shook his head. “I’ll use the wand.”

He waved the wand over my body, and said, “You’re good. Go on through. I’ll call for her.”

He buzzed me into the visitor area, a small room with a few chairs and tables, and a couple vending machines.

I went to the vending machine and pumped some quarters into it. I selected a Kit Kat bar for the girl. I placed it on the low table as she walked into the room.

We gave each other a clumsy sort of hug. Hugs in prison have to be very brief.

She was dressed in her teal green uniform. She wore thermal underwear beneath her shirt. Her brown hair is getting long. She looked good, but edgy. She has always looked edgy. Her hands went to the Kit Kat bar. One hand was redder than the other, the result of a bad burn several months ago.

She started talking business. That’s how we do things.

“Because there’s a holiday this week, there is probably not going to be anybody in the office on Thursday or Friday for me to place an order. Can you put some money into my commissary account by Wednesday, at the latest?”

“I already did that. I did it before I forgot about it. I think I put the money in there on Friday.”

She smiled a bit as she bit into the candy bar. “Well, then, never mind.”

The girl trusts me to take care of financial matters for her. I don’t do other things very well, but I can do that much.

I asked her, “What did you do today?’

She munched on the candy bar. “We had group and independent study.”

“Are you still cleaning the classroom?”

“No, we’re done with that.”

“Are the crayons still organized in order, by rainbow color?”

“Well, nobody has used them lately, so I guess so.”

“How about the construction paper?”

“Yup, still in order by color.”

“And you guys earn ‘points’ for doing this?”

She put the empty wrapper on the table. “Yeah.”

I asked her, “So, what do you actually get for these points?”

“Well, we get to wear out ‘greys’ in class rather than this stuff.” She pointed to her green clothes. “Also, we get to bring a non-water drink into class. We also get to pick out a movie.”

“These ‘non-water drinks’, do you buy them yourselves?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t bought them yet. That’s why I wanted you to put money into the commissary account.”

“Got it.”

She looked at me and asked, “Can you buy me another candy bar?”

I got her another Kit Kat. She ripped open the wrapper.

I asked her, “What movies do you get to pick out? Do they have DVD’s here?”

She nodded as she bit into the chocolate.

I asked her, “Do you want me to come to your graduation from this program? I think you said it was on December 20th.”

She shrugged. “If you want to.”

I sighed. “Okay, if you want me to come, I’ll come. Let me know.”

She nodded.

She asked me, “How’s Shocky (her dog)?”

“She’s good.”

The girl told me, “I bet she misses me.”

I looked at the young woman and said, “Yeah, I think you’re right. She does miss you.”

She smiled. “I knew it.”

The girl asked me, “Can I have a Diet Mountain Dew?”

I went back to the vending machines.

I handed her the soda. “What do you do at the graduation?”

“Well, we get a certification. We also have a ‘legacy’ to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s like a skit. We get to pick two songs to go with it.”

“You have to sing a song?”

She laughed. “No, these are songs that they can play from a machine. I want a song from the “Breakfast Club”, but they probably won’t let us have it.”

“I have never seen ‘The Breakfast Club’.”

The girl stared at me. “How can you not have seen it? Isn’t that from the 80’s? That was your time.”

I looked away. “I guess I’m not good at keeping up with the current culture.”

She smiled at me.

We sat for a while, silent. These talks always end the same way. We had run out of safe topics. There is much more to say, but it is all radioactive.

I waited for the guard to finish with a phone call, and then I motioned to him to let me out.

The girl stood all alone. I had forgotten to hug her.

We embraced for a moment. It was stiff and awkward and absolutely necessary.

I went out. The guard gave me my possessions.

He said to me, “She’s good. She has a good reputation here. She keeps to herself. Never any problem.”

The young woman is a model prisoner. Nice.

The guard was trying to comfort me. “She will get out soon.”

And then what?

I went out to my car. It wasn’t cold yet, but I felt a chill. The stars were out.

I drove home in the dark.

I felt the sadness, and the wrongness of it all. Those feelings come when I drive back home. They overwhelm me. How do we deal with this? How do we both keep going?

We hold the line. Hold the line. Hold the line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 23rd, 2019

“Once Khidr went to a king’s palace and made his way right up to the throne. Such was the strangeness of his appearance that none dared to stop him. The king, who was Ibrahim ben Adam, asked him what he was looking for.”

The visitor said, ‘I am looking for a sleeping place in this caravanserai (caravan stop).’

Ibrahim answered, ‘This is no caravanserai — this is my palace.’

The stranger said, ‘Whose was it before you?’

‘My father’s,’ said Ibrahim.

‘And before that?’

‘My grandfather’s.’

‘And this place where people come and go, staying and moving on, you call other than a caravanserai?’ ”

from “The Way of the Sufi” by Indries Shah

 

Karin is gone. She is down in Texas with Hans, Gabby, and little Weston. She’s been there for almost a week. Karin went to Bryan because Gabby needed to have some major surgery. Gabby had a cancerous tumor on her knee. They spent a long time cutting and splicing to remove the tumor, and then to replace the knee. The surgery went well, but now Gabby needs to heal up, and that is going to take a while. I don’t expect to see Karin back home until after Christmas. I am flying solo.

For me this is a big deal. Karin and I have our own interests, but we also do things as a team. I am going to miss going to daily Mass together with her, and then stopping for coffee at Mocha Lisa in Racine. We have our best conversations there. She drinks her hazelnut cappuccino and I drink my black coffee. We discuss anything and everything for an hour or two. Now we can’t do that, and it stings a bit.

Should it?

Does it matter when people leave us?

We live in a transient world. People come and go, like at a caravan stop. Some leave us for a short time, and others leave us forever. Relationships are often difficult to establish, and they are even more difficult to maintain. We live in a time when the word “friend” means less than it did before. The word has been cheapened. A friend used to be somebody that you could trust with anything. Now a friend is somebody who likes you on Facebook.

Karin once made the comment to me, “Maybe we are still together after all these years, because we have been apart so much.”

That seems paradoxical, but it is probably true. It has been in the times when we were separated that we realized how much we depended on each other. Now, after thirty-five years of marriage, it is more obvious than it ever was before. We depend on each other for stability and support. As the years have slipped away, so have our feelings of independence. We are an “alte Ehepaar”, an old married couple.

I mentioned to Stefan that I was missing his mom. He suggested that I get a recording of her swearing loudly in German, and then play it whenever I feel lonely. That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it would work.

I hang on to friends tenaciously. Perhaps I shouldn’t do that. It seems to be recipe for disappointment. Other people are better at moving on than I am. They are more casual in their relationships. They have many friends, or at least acquaintances. I prefer to have a few friends who are there for me, and for whom I am also there. I try to be loyal to people, and I expect them to be loyal in return. That may be foolish on my part. That’s how I play it.

I know from Zen practice that we eventually lose everybody, including ourselves. Attachments cause suffering, even attachments to people. What about love? If I love somebody, and they leave, do I suffer because I am attached to that person? Should I not love them? Does love also mean that I can let them go? Should I not grieve when a friend dies?

I am at an age when I say “goodbye” more often than I say “hello”. People are leaving me, and I will eventually leave them. Whether I like it or not, I am slowly cutting ties.

Time is short. I need to love people when they are still here.

I wait for Karin to come home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 22nd, 2019

A’isha texted me saying that the kids needed help with their homework.

I texted her back to say that I would come over to their house.

It was dark and cold and windy when I parked in front of their home. I rang the door bell. I heard a loud noise from inside the house. Ibrahim answered the door.

“Hi Frank!”

I came in, and I took off my shoes. Yusif came to the door and looked at me mischievously. The other kids did not get up to meet me. Some of them absently said “hi” as they looked at their screens. They were all engrossed in their tablets. Every child was gazing into his or her magic mirror. There are eleven kids in the house. I guess that a screen for every child keeps each of them busy, but it also keeps them distant and remote.

It’s a brave new world.

Despite the joys of the Internet, there was still the yelling and confusion that come from a big family. I am familiar with that. I had six younger brothers. We were always just one step from utter chaos. I could feel that in this house too. It’s not a bad thing. It just is.

Muhammad had homework. He is young and intelligent and cocky. These are all good things. He always comes to me with his math homework. He really doesn’t need my help. He understands the math. I just play along. Sometimes he gets a bit too self-sure. He decided to solve a word problem by multiplying everything.

I told him quietly, “You need to divide.”

The little boy looked intensely at his work, and said, “Yeah, right.”

As Muhammad was working on his math, A’isha, the mother, brought he me hot, sweet tea, as she always does. It’s a Syrian thing. I said to her, “Shukran”, in thanks. A’isha asked me to look at some mail that she had received. It was an advertisement for a credit card. I explained to her that they just wanted to sell her something. I advised her to throw it away. She did.

It took only ten minutes to help Muhammad with his homework. Then Yusif came up to me with two little books to read.

He smiled, “I have these books.”

“Good. Read them to me.”

He did. He stumbled over a couple words.

He said, “Then Jack came.”

I told him, “No. That says, ‘Jake’, not ‘Jack’ “.

Yusif looked at me in an unsure way.

I nodded. “It’s ‘Jake’ “.

Then he kept reading.

The books were short. Nobody else seemed to need help, so I slowly pulled on my jean jacket, and made ready to leave.

Nizar looked at me and asked, “Are you going now?”

I replied, “Well, yeah, I think I’m done here.”

Nizar shouted, “No, Hussein needs help too. I go get him!”

Nizar shouted up the stairs to Hussein. Why do all kids shout? It was like that when I was young. Nobody walks up the stairs to talk to somebody. People just yell at the top of their lungs. This seems to be a universal characteristic of families.

Hussein came down. Hussein is the oldest son. Hussein is a high school senior, and he is taking some college courses in order to get ahead of the game. He had some American government/politics class from Parkside that he was taking, and it was a bit confusing to him.

He needed a computer to do his work, so he tried to commandeer a Gold Chrome from one of his siblings. They balked at this request. He quickly pulled rank as a surrogate parent (which he is), and grabbed Nizar’s tablet. Hussein gave orders to his younger family members, and they followed those instructions grudgingly and with resentment. I was in his position forty or fifty years ago, and I understand the family dynamics involved. Hussein is trying to do a job for which he is not equipped. It just sucks.

Hussein and I finally found a tablet that allowed him to access his homework. He was supposed to analyze three political cartoons. Hussein was totally unprepared to do this. Political cartoons make sense to people from a particular culture, and a particular time in history. To anyone else, these drawings mean less than nothing.

Hussein noticed that I was edgy.

“You keep looking at your phone. Do you have to go? I can do this.”

I told him, “I got time. I need to visit a girl that I love in prison, but not right now.”

He said, “Okay, if you are sure.”

We looked at the cartoons. They were not current. Some were very old, which meant that they would mean less and less to people of Hussein’s age. One cartoon was a parody of a song from John Lennon, “Imagine”.

I asked Hussein, “Do you know what this song is about?”

He shrugged and said, “No”.

“Look it up online. Now. There’s a video.”

Hussein did that. He looked and listened.

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.”

Hussein understands English well. He listened to the lyrics of the song. He did not understand the importance of it, if there is any.

I told him, “For some people, this song was very important. It meant a lot. Lennon was murdered by a crazy fan in front of his house in New York City back in 1980.”

Hussein asked me, “How old was he?’

“Forty.”

He shook his head and said, “That’s too young.”

I said despondently, “Yeah.”

He shrugged. The song went on.

“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”

I said to him, my voice shaking, “I remember exactly where I was when Lennon died.”

Hussein looked at me, “So, where were you?”

“I was in Arizona, in the Army. I was with some friends. We heard on the news that Lennon was dead.”

I put on my coat, and headed toward the door. Hussein followed me.

He said, “Thank you for coming. When do you come again?”

“I don’t know. I text your mom before I come here.”

Hussein asked, “And do you go to the prison now?”

“Yes.”

“Is the girl, is she better?”

I paused. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He shook my hand.

I left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 16th, 2019

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
― Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums”

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

“So, you made a road trip with a nun?”

This has been an often-asked question since I came back from El Paso.

The answer is: “Yes, I made a road trip with a nun. It was quite enjoyable, thank you.”

I drove to El Paso and back with Sister Ann Catherine. Sister A.C. is, technically speaking, not a nun. My understanding is that nuns are cloistered religious sisters, women who keep themselves separate from the world’s chaos and mayhem. Sister Ann Catherine is certainly a member of a Catholic religious order, but she is definitely not cloistered. Sister A.C. is very active in the world, probably more so than most lay people, including myself. She is seventy-five years old, and she hasn’t wasted a minute of her life. She’s done things.

I first met the Sister at the VA hospital in Milwaukee several years ago. We often go there to visit with the vets in the psych ward. The psych ward has a transient population. People very seldom stay there for more than a week. Even so, Sister is good at establishing a relationship with the patients. She always tells them, “Thank you for your service”, and she says that in a heartfelt, authentic sort of way. They know that she is being sincere. Sister worked for years as a nurse, and she sees things through the lens of her experience. Her history allows her to connect easily with the folks in the psych ward.

Sister Ann Catherine served as a nurse in Cambodia back in 1980. I’m not sure if Pol Pot was still running the show in that country at that time, but the effects of his genocidal reign were still evident. Sister’s experience in the refugee camps affected her deeply. It changed her life.

I picked up Sister Ann Catherine at 4:00 AM on October 16th. She didn’t have much for luggage. We both like to travel light. Except for the fact that we nearly got hit by a garbage truck before we even left the Milwaukee (that was my fault), our departure went well. We drove on I-43 southwest to Beloit, and from there on I-39 toward Rockford, Illinois. We drove through northern Illinois in utter darkness. It’s best that way.

I think that sunrise found us driving through Bloomington, which is kind of like being in the Twilight Zone. We were a long way from St. Louis, and it hurt. For those who don’t know, there is literally nothing to see on the stretch between Bloomington to St. Louis. I-55 is a highway that begs a driver to speed. A view of endless, flat cornfields makes a person edgy and impatient. The typical driver may think, “Well, maybe if I just go eighty, then this hideous landscape will all go away.” It doesn’t, not for hours and hours. The rolling prairie in the Land of Lincoln just keeps giving and giving all the way to the Mississippi River. Pure torture.

On the plus side, Sister and I kept up a spirited conversation throughout this seemingly endless journey. We both wake up well before dawn each day, so the morning hours are when we are the most lucid. Sister is clear and incisive when she speaks. She doesn’t parrot other people’s opinions. She thinks for herself, and I admire that. She also listens quite well. I appreciate that too.

We got a little bit lost going through St. Louis. The GPS only works if you pay attention to it. We didn’t. Sister and I were in the middle of an interesting discussion, and then I noticed that we had missed our exit. It did not take us long to get on to the right interstate. Then we took I-44 forever.

I-44 goes through hills and forests and farmland all the way through the state of Missouri. It’s a beautiful ride, and a long one. Sister and I eventually ran out of topics to discuss. Then we resorted to listening to music. Fortunately, I was prepared for that. My tastes are eclectic. So are Sister’s. We played songs from The Klezmatics (the album “Rhythm and Jews”), Indigo Girls, Santana, and Dylan. The music got weirder as time went on.

After twelve hours of driving (I drove and Sister kept me alert), we arrived at our first destination, the Monastery of St. Scholastica. St. Scholastica is a home for Benedictine sisters in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The sisters there welcomed us with open arms, and unlimited goodwill. My wife, Karin, and I are in the habit of staying at monasteries and Catholic retreat houses. However, I had never been to this place before in my life. Sister Ann Catherine simply trusted me to find us a good place to stay for the night. That was a gutsy move on her part. I guess her faith paid off.

The sisters at St. Scholastica have a guest house, which is wonderful. They gave us the keys to the place, without hesitation. They also refused our offer of money for our stay with them. The sisters were emphatic that they wanted to provide for our ministry with the migrants at the southern border. Our money was no good to them.

The second day…

Sister and I drove through eastern Oklahoma and Texas for about eight hours.

We were on our way to Bryan/College Station, Texas. Let it be said at this point, that I have made the trip from Milwaukee to College Station numerous times over the course of the last thirty years. I know every single path between those two points. The scenery was new to Sister Ann Catherine, but not to me.

Upon arrival in Bryan, we first stopped to visit with my eldest son, Hans, and his family. Hans is married to Gabby, a local girl, and they are the loving parents of Weston, a one-year-old redneck. Sister immediately spent time with Gabby and her little boy. I talked with Hans. Hans is a Iraqi War veteran, and he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Heavy Metal: Army Style”, showing a picture of an Abrams tank. That’s my boy. I told Hans about our trip to El Paso/Mexico. He shook his head and told me, “Well, y’all don’t call me if you get in trouble down there.”

Thanks Hans. Screw you too. Actually, he was just messing with me. I do the same with him. It’s a family thing.

Sister and I spent the night with a friend of my sister-in-law, Shawn. We stayed at the house of Anne and Kim. Sister and I did not know anything about these people. Nothing. They were total strangers.

I am used to this sort of thing. I have participated in a number of peace walks and other weird trips that required me to stay with complete strangers. I have grown accustomed to sleeping in places with people I don’t know, and who I may never meet again.  Over the years, Karin and I have invited other travelers to stay at our house. We offered hospitality to people who we did not know and that we never met again. It’s cool. It just works like that.

The next morning (pre-dawn) Sister and I picked up my sister-in-law, Shawn. She was coming with us to El Paso. She hadn’t slept at all. She told me laughingly, “I knew y’all would come for me early! That’s what you folks do!”

Indeed.

The people at the Annunciation House in El Paso wanted us to be there at 1:30 PM. That meant we had ten straight hours of windshield time to get to their shelter. We drove through the darkness from Bryan. The rising sun caught us on I-10 somewhere west of Fredericksburg, Texas.

I-10 is brutal. If you drive to the west, the landscape becomes increasingly more desolate. You start with live oaks. Then you go to junipers and mesquite. Then you go to sage brush and creosote bushes. Then you go to dirt. Nothing but dirt.

We got to El Paso, with is sort of an oasis.

I insisted on listening to Nirvana on the final stretch to El Paso. I cranked up “Smells Like Teen Spirit”:

“Hello, hello, hello
Load up on guns and bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

An albino
A mosquito

Hello, hello, hello, how low
Hello, hello, hello, how low”

Sister Ann Catherine made no comment at all.

November 14th, 2019

“The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.”
― Saint Oscar A. Romero,  from “The Violence of Love”

All right, so what is “conversion”? What does it mean to be “converted”. Father José spoke about that topic at our meeting in the cathedral in Tuesday evening. He said that our five-day trip to the Mexican border has to be a conversion experience for us. He has been there twice, and it has definitely been a conversion experience for him. So, what does that really mean to anyone else?

Almost all religious traditions talk about conversion. In Judaism it is “t’shuvah” (תשובה), which roughly translates to “repentance” or “turning back”. In my ten year experience as an unofficial member of an Orthodox Jewish congregation, t’shuvah seems to mean much more than that. It means self-transformation. T’shuvah is about radical change. It means becoming a new person.

I also have experience with Zen Buddhism. In that group, there is very seldom any talk about conversion in a religious sense, probably because Zen isn’t really a religion. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not a religion. In any case, in Zen there is the idea of change and enlightenment. A person can change, through meditation, and see the world more clearly. The Buddha was, by definition, a person who became awake. Zen has no gods. Zen only talks about recovering our inherent Buddha nature, which just means waking up and becoming who we really are.

Conversion, in its roughest form, just means “getting your shit together”.

This is hard.

We do not have many good models for conversion. In Christianity, the most obvious example of conversion is that of Paul on his way to Damascus. That example is almost useless. Conversion seldom happens that way. It is unlikely that any individual will be struck down in the road by a brilliant light, and then have God speak directly to them.

Conversion happens in slow and subtle ways. A Buddhist once told me that I would never recognize a change in myself, but other people would. I found this to be true. Conversion is not often apparent to the person being changed. However, other people notice.

Sometimes, in Christianity, people are eager to tell about their conversion experiences. This can be less than useful. I have heard, from at least one person, a story of how he found Jesus, and it was clear to me that his new-found connection with Jesus did not affect his lifestyle in any way at all. He was still an asshole. Conversion means more than just kneeling at the foot of the cross. It means a fundamental change. 

Conversion is not something that can be forced. People cannot be truly converted by the sword or by the threat of torture. Conversion has to come from within the person, and even that cannot be forced. I cannot say to myself, “Today, I will change my life.” Conversion does not happen through the force of will. It is more of a letting go of things.

In the Heart Sutra of the Buddhists, it says, “No attainment and nothing to attain”. We do not strive for conversion. We collapse, and we sit down in ashes and sackcloth, and we accept conversion.  We just let it happen. It comes to us.

Have I been converted by our trip to El Paso/Ciudad Juarez? I have no idea. Maybe. I guess I will find out later.

November 10th, 2019

“People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are”

from “Wake Me Up When September Ends” – Green Day