Author: frankisemptiness

October 17th, 2018

The Latina was getting close to middle age, if not quite there yet. I picked her up before dawn at her apartment in Waukesha. It was a cold, windy morning. I had texted her that I was outside of her apartment building.

She came out to my car shivering.

The woman gave me a quick smile, and said, ” Un poquito frío, ¿no?”

“Sí,” I replied.

I was already stressed. The Subaru was acting up again. Aaron had replaced the motor, but there was still a check engine light. I had been ignoring the light, since the car had been running okay. Now it wasn’t. The Subaru has a stick shift, and it was stalling out intermittently when I stepped on the clutch at traffic stops. This scared me a bit. I didn’t know if the motor would kill, or when it would kill. It died once while I was making a left turn in an intersection.

Normally, I would have just gone home or taken the car directly to Aaron’s shop. However, this woman had a 8:00 AM court appearance in Pewaukee, and there was nobody else to take her there. If I didn’t drive her to the courthouse, then she wouldn’t be able to get there at all. Missing a court appearance is a bad thing, a very bad thing. So, I went to pick her up, in the hope that the Subaru would get us to court and then back to her home again.

It takes less than twenty minutes to drive from her apartment to the court in Pewaukee. The car stalled four times during that journey. The woman was already nervous, and she asked me if there was problem with the car. I mumbled, and told her no.

I had been told that the woman would be bringing her adult son to court with her in case there was not an interpreter available. She was alone when I picked her up. I was also told that the court could get an interpreter on the phone, if necessary. I was sure that it would be necessary.

Pewaukee is a small city. It has a combination courtroom/city hall. There was already a line of people standing in a hallway, waiting to go to court when I arrived with the woman.  Two lawyers were in a room adjacent to the hallway. The city does what most municipalities do: they have the paperwork for the court cases ready for the defendants, and the lawyers offer to strike a deal with them in order to avoid an actual hearing. Quite often, the defendants cop to a lesser charge, pay a fine, and life goes on. The lawyers were expecting that to happen when the woman entered the room with me.

The lawyer had a standard form for the woman to fill out. He told her,

“The first you need to do is to decide whether you want to plea “guilty” or “not guilty.”

She gave him a puzzled look , and then she glanced inquiringly at me.

The lawyer continued, “You are charged with driving without a license. Do you have a license now?”

She looked unsure, and then she shook her head. She said quietly,

“¿Una licencia? No…”

I sighed.

I told the lawyer, “She has no idea what you are talking about. She does not speak much English.”

The attorney frowned and asked me, “Can you explain it to her?”

“No, I can’t.”

My Spanish isn’t nearly good enough to explain the charges to her, and even if I was fluent in the language, I would not attempt to advise her as to her plea. It’s not my place to give the woman legal advice. Not at all.

I asked the attorney, “Do you have an interpreter available?”

He cleared his throat and looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“I’ll have to ask.”

He went to talk with the bailiff, and asked him if there was an officer in the building who could translate. The policeman shook his head. Then the lawyer asked the cop to ask the people in the line if any of them spoke Spanish. The policeman proceeded to ask random people if they could translate for the woman.

“Anybody here speak Spanish?!”

He found no one.

The lawyer returned to his chair in the room. He shook his head irritably, and said, “Well,  she’s just going to have to see the judge. I can’t do anything here.”

“Does the judge speak Spanish?’

“No.”

We went into the courtroom. The judge sat behind a large desk, and there was a woman sitting next to him. I am not sure what her official capacity was, but she apparently was there to advise and assist the judge. In front of the desk was a lectern with a microphone. The defendants were to stand at that podium (with their hands not in their pockets) when they were called before the judge.

We sat and waited to be called. The bailiff came up to her with a paper for her to sign. I looked at the document.

He said, “This just says that you are the defendant, and that you appeared this morning before the judge.”

She looked at me. I nodded. she signed the paper.

The judge called her name. We stood up and walked over to the microphone.

The judge spoke to the woman. She gave him a puzzled look. I took over.

“Sir, she speaks very little English. She doesn’t understand you. Sadly, my Spanish is as bad as her English, so I can’t translate for her. Is there anybody who can act as an interpreter?”

The judge turned to the bailiff. “Is there anybody around who can translate?”

The bailiff shook his head, “Well, if Juan was here…he could…but he’s not…”

The judge asked the bailiff, “Is there anyone in the hall who knows Spanish?”

The bailiff shook his head.

The judge asked us, “Can she call someone in?”

I looked at the Latina and asked about her son. “¿Tu hijo?”

She shook her head, “No, él está trabajando.”

The woman next to the judge spoke to us. She said, “We are not required to have an interpreter here, unless it is for a trial.”

I asked, “Okay, so you can’t get anybody?”

The woman from the court paused and said, “Well…if you want to wait…maybe somebody might come in who speaks Spanish.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Uh, no. We…won’t…be…waiting.”

The judge said, “Then we need to reschedule this appearance, for when she can bring along her own interpreter.”

A date and time were set for next month.

Well after the fact, I remembered that the Latina had the phone number for her lawyer, and he had told her to call him if there were problems. She never called. I didn’t think to tell her to call.

I drove the Latina home. I said to her,

“Lo siento.”

She smiled sadly and shrugged. “It’s okay. Gracias!”

She got out of the car. As she left, I said again,

“Lo siento.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 13th, 2018

“You see, you don’t have to live like a refugee
(Don’t have to live like a refugee)” – Tom Petty

The Chicago Tribune published this letter from me yesterday.

“The Trump administration has decided to limit the number of refugees entering the United States each year to 30,000 people. That is astounding. We have over 300 million people in our country. Thirty-thousand refugees represents only .01 percent of our nation’s total population. That is one refugee for every 10,000 inhabitants of the U.S.

Why so few? Are we not prosperous enough to help more than just 30,000 people, all of whom are coming to America because they fear for their lives? Are we frightened of them? The United States has a massive military budget, and we spend more on national security than on almost anything else. Don’t we have the personnel to vet these immigrants? Why are we trying to keep refugees out?”

October 14th, 2018

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

I was on the phone with Hussein. His father is trying to find a better job, and I suggested that he try to get into the Iron Workers apprenticeship program. Our son, Stefan, is part of that program, and he is well on his way to becoming a welder in the union. Stefan has met Hussein’s family, and he actually was thinking about getting Hussein to try out for the program, but Hussein is only seventeen years old, and he doesn’t qualify yet. Because the economy is hot, the Iron Workers Union is looking for people. So, I told Hussein to get his dad involved in the process.

Turki, Hussein’s father, is forty years old. He doesn’t have many years, but he has a lot of mileage. He’s had a difficult life. Turki, and his family, fled from Syria, and went to Turkey for a while. Somehow, Turki manged to get his wife and eleven kids to this country. I am impressed by that. His actions show a great deal of initiative and courage. He has a strength. It is a strength based on desperation, but it is strength nonetheless. He currently works as a janitor in a school. He busts his ass to take care of his family, and he struggles. I think that Turki has always struggled.

Turki speaks English passably, but Hussein had to fill out the apprenticeship application for him online. It is a classic immigrant situation. The children have to help the parents to adjust to the new world. Turki’s kids are his bridge from Syria to America.

I am not sure that Turki will be accepted by the Iron Workers. His education level is sketchy. Hussein had told me that they had not received a response from the union after two weeks. I told Hussein that I would ask Stefan for some advice. Later, I called Hussein to tell him what Stefan told me, and to ask him some questions.

I told Hussein, “My son says that you should call the local union and ask for Rich. He’s the guy who runs the apprenticeship program. He can tell you and your dad what to do.”

Hussein said, “Okay. We do that on Monday.”

“Hussein, I want to find your father some other options for work. What does he know how to do?”

“My father, he works very hard. He can do hard work.”

I sighed. The Iron Workers are involved in laying down a lot of steel rebar. The work is physically demanding. Stefan comes home utterly exhausted from his job, and he’s only twenty-four. Construction work is a young man’s game.

“Yes, I know that. But what skills does he have?”

“What do you mean?”

I replied, “What has your dad done for work?”

Hussein answered me, “In Syria, we were all farmers. He worked on the farm.”

Fuck.

My mind raced. “Can he drive a forklift?”

“No, but he can learn!”

I am sure that Turki can learn. The man is no dummy. The question is whether an employer will take the time to train Turki. Turki is extremely motivated, but his skill set is very limited.

I told Hussein, “I am going to look around to find other jobs for your dad. I don’t know what there is. I really don’t. I’ll look. I will let you know.”

Hussein replied, “Thank you, Frank. Thank you.”

We hung up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 7th, 2018

“The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

Karin and I watched a movie on Monday night. Just in time for Halloween, Netflix decided to offer “The Shining” from Stanley Kubrick. I hadn’t seen the movie since the early 1980’s. It freaked me out then, and the film’s power has not diminished since that time. The only difference is that I am now twice as old as I was when I first saw the film, and my perspective has changed. The movie is no longer just scary. It is also profoundly sad.

I read the book many years ago, before I ever saw the motion picture. The book is better than the film, although both Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall are excellent in the movie. The book has much more detail, and it maintains the suspense far longer. Stephen King manages to keep both the main character, Jack Torrance, and the reader unsure about what is real and what is not. That is terrifying and tragic.

In the story, Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and he is never quite sure if he is actually seeing ghosts or if he is hallucinating. His inability to recognize the truth is the thing that is most frightening. He really doesn’t know. In a way, it is a letdown when the book and the movie make it clear that the hotel is really haunted. The tension is more powerful when nobody knows for sure what is going on.

Drugs are a bitch. It is always scary to wake up in an unknown location, not remembering what happened earlier, and not wanting to know. There is a sickening sort of panic. There is also a deep feeling of shame. King writes from experience, and his description of Torrance is dead on. Jack Torrance is frightened and guilt-ridden and angry and fatally confused. He is going mad.

It’s a sad book/film because the Jack Nicholson character doesn’t want to be bad. He doesn’t want to hurt others. Well, I guess the fact that he is trying to slice up his family with an ax indicates that he does want to hurt them. However, even then, Jack is convinced that he is somehow helping his wife and son by turning them into hamburger. It’s the notion of “tough love” taken to its logical (or illogical) conclusion. In the book, before the end, Jack Torrance has a moment of lucidity and tells his little boy to flee for his life. That scene doesn’t happen in the movie, but even there, at the end, Jack begs for help. He seems to finally understand what he’s done. Then he dies alone and deserted.

It may be easy for someone to read the book, or to watch the movie, and say, “Thank God I’m not like that!”

We are like that, to some degree. I am like that.

Maybe we don’t try to murder people. Maybe we don’t struggle with alcohol or with smack or with coke. Maybe we don’t gamble all our money away. Maybe we don’t have promiscuous sex. But we are all hooked on something, and that something twists our minds and hearts. That something can make us into monsters.

Hitler was a teetotaler. He was a vegetarian. He was monogamous. By most standards, he should have been a model of moral rectitude. But he was a ruthless killer. What was he hooked on? Was it hate? Was it resentment? Was it power? Was it fear?

Do I see what is real? Do I recognize my ghosts and my demons?

I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

October 5th, 2018

“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” – Book of Ecclesiastes

I was at Lake Park Synagogue for a while last Saturday. The Jewish community there was still celebrating Sukkot, and because this Shabbat fell within the period of the week-long festival, the members of the Shul read the entirety of Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is not required that the text be read, so it is also not required that the book be read by only men, which is usually the case in an Orthodox synagogue. Both men and women took turns reading from the book in Hebrew. I liked that. I followed along as best I could, and spent most of my time reading the English translation.

Kohelet is traditionally attributed to King Solomon. It is a brutally honest and unsettling part of Scripture. Like the Book of Job, nothing is sugar-coated. Although Sukkot is a time of rejoicing, Kohelet often focuses on death. So, in some ways, the text seems out of place.

Rabbi Dinin gave his drasha prior to the reading of Kohelet. I always find the drasha (sermon) in the synagogue to be interesting. This is mostly due to the fact that the sermons in the Shul offer to me a very different perspective on the Bible than what I am used to getting. I sometimes sit there and think, “Oh, so that’s what it all means.” The drasha forces me to adjust my thinking, which is both exciting and oddly irritating.

In his talk, the rabbi focused on two words in the book: simcha שִׂמְחָה, which can be translated as “pleasure”, and hevel הֶבֶל, which can be translated as “vanity” or “absurdity”. There is an undeniable tension in Kohelet. The author encourages each person to enjoy the good things in life (food, drink, loving relationships), but he also emphasizes that all these things are essentially meaningless. God wants us to enjoy whatever we can in life, but He does not want us to cling to these things, because they are all transitory.

As a member of a Zen sangha, this tension feels very familiar to me. It is almost Buddhist in a way. Zen does not demand a world-denying sort of asceticism. A person should experience everything that this world offers. The problem is one of attachment. Can I enjoy something and not be attached/addicted to it? Can I let it go? As Kohelet makes clear, we will let go. In the end we let go of all of it. Do we let go voluntarily or do we have these things torn away from us at our death?

I walked home from our church yesterday morning. It was a seven mile walk, and it took me more than two hours. I gazed at the blue sky and the scudding clouds. I looked at the sumac leaves that blazed bright red. Maple trees looked like pillars of orange flame. I saw one or two stray butterflies, seeking food from the ragged wildflowers along the bike path. A strong wind from the north blew my beard back into my face at times. It was a good walk. I enjoyed it. Now it’s done. I enjoyed it, and now I am letting it go. It was simcha, and it was hevel.

And now, at 3:30 AM, I finish this post. This is also both simcha and hevel. 

I’m okay with that.

 

 

 

 

 

October 4th, 2018

“They make you sing karaoke?”

She replied, “Well, everybody does it, so I guess ‘yeah’ is the answer.”

The young lady was calling me from a halfway house. She had just been released from jail to live in this place with several other women. My wife and I had visited the halfway house. It was a dumpy duplex, in an iffy neighborhood. As our young woman pointed out, the home was rather exclusive, seeing as almost everyone in the house had been sent there by the Wisconsin Department of Correction.

Everybody in the house is in recovery. They are all trying to deal with a specific chemical addiction. During the week, they go to classes, and they have access to medical treatment. They don’t get out much. It seems like the residents of the house are all down to relying on caffeine and/or nicotine to deal with reality. Last week the folks there ran out of coffee. Karin and I brought them a can of Folgers, and these people thought we were like gods. We also brought our girl some dark chocolate. That, she did not share.

Apparently, weekends are relatively unstructured, and the women have to amuse themselves somehow.  Hence, the mandatory karaoke on Sunday evenings.

I asked her, “So, what are you going to sing? Any ideas?”

She verbally shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“You could do song from Nine Inch Nails.”

She wryly asked, “So you want me to hurt their ears and make them totally depressed?”

“Well, yeah. Or, you could do a Nirvana song.”

“Probably not.”

“Well, how about I’m Only Happy When it Rains from Garbage?”

She said dryly, “They only seem to have country CD’s here.”

“Oh.”

The girl called us again on Tuesday evening.

I asked her, “So, how did it go with the karaoke?”

“Okay.”

“What did you sing?”

“Wrecking Ball from Miley Cyrus.”

“Is that kind of redneck?”

She replied, “Miley Cyrus is not country.”

“Oh. But you said they only had country CD’s.”

“They went to the library and got a bunch of other music.”

“So, how do you do?”

I heard her smile over the phone.

“I got first place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2nd, 2018

“Dreaming of Mercy Street
Wear you’re inside out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms again.
Dreaming of Mercy Street.
‘Swear they moved that sign’
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms…”

Mercy Street from Peter Gabriel

“When Ma died, my life ended.”

He stared in the distance as he said those words, eyes wet with tears.

“We were married all those years. I depended on her for everything. She took care of everything. Now what do I got left? Nothing.”

He sat back in his chair. Wisps of fine, white hair barely covered his head. He had a face with a prominent Roman nose, hollow cheeks, and eyes etched with pain. His eyes always looked around for somebody who was not in the room. Karin and I were there with him, but others were there too, unseen to us, but visible to this eighty-five year old man.

He said to me, “Frankie, look in that desk drawer. There’s some pictures.”

I reached into the drawer and found some framed photos. They were from the Honor Flight. The man had gone on the flight just a few months ago. I looked at the pictures and passed them on to Karin. In one picture the man was sitting with a pilot in a biplane. They were getting ready to take off.

He told us, “That flight was something else. That pilot, he thought that he was going to tell me all about the aircraft. Then he found out that I had worked on them back when I was in the Navy. So he asked me, ‘You tell me all about the aircraft.’ That was fine machine. You could see where they had stretched the cloth on the wing and doped it up. Then they must have sanded it.  It was smooth as a baby’s behind.”

I asked him, “When you went up, did you two just do traffic patterns?”

“No, no. We flew a ways out. Not just traffic patterns.”

He sat back and thought.

Then he said, “All those guys in my squadron, they’re probably all dead now.”

“I replied, “Yeah, they probably are.”

He nodded.

He spoke again.

“I always kept my whites from the Navy. That’s what I wore when I got out. I wore those home. Nobody cared. Nobody told me, ‘Good job’ or ‘Thanks for serving’. Nothing.”

His voice shook. “My ma, all she wanted to know was how much money I was making. My sister wanted to know when I was going to get a job. Nobody gave a damn that I was back home.”

He swallowed hard. He stared ahead in silence.

The ghosts in the room whispered.

 

 

October 1st, 2018

This letter from me was printed/posted yesterday by the Capitol Times of Madison, WI.

“Legal good, illegal bad”. That summed up Senator Cruz’s view on immigration during his debate with Beto O’Rourke. Cruz used a profoundly simplistic phrase designed to appeal to a population that thinks simplistically. I am not surprised that Senator Cruz used that slogan, and I have heard a number of other people say the same thing. I have even heard legal immigrants say something like that, which astonishes me.

That people who arrived here lawfully would make that kind of comment shows a total lack of empathy for other immigrants who, for whatever reason, have not been able to enter the U.S. through legal channels. The immigration laws and regulations of the United States are outdated, confusing, and unjust. Our current administration is doing its utmost to make these rules more ruthless and more racist. With each passing day, Trump and his associates do whatever they can to make it harder for the poor to enter, for Muslims to enter, and for refugees to enter the United States.

However, it appears that many people stop looking at the issue as soon as they see the word “illegal”. That one word makes an immigrant less than human. “Legal” does not mean the same thing as “moral”. Likewise, if an act is illegal, that does not automatically make it wrong. Also, just because something is legal does not make it right. The Nazis had all sorts of “legal” rules to justify monstrous actions. We  have laws that used to justify terrible things, like the tearing families apart.

We first need to make our laws just and fair. Then we can look at legal and illegal.

September 29th, 2018

Hans called.

He and Gabi are expecting their baby boy to arrive around Christmastime. Karin and I hope to visit them about a month from now. We want to make the drive down to Texas before the snow flies up here in the north country. We won’t be there for the birth of the child, but we will be there for the baby shower. That will have to be good enough.

Hans and Gabi have picked their son’s name. He will be called “Weston”. I am not sure why they picked that name, other than they like it. It sounds so redneck. I can totally imagine a boy growing up in southeastern Texas being named Weston. For me,”Weston” conjures up visions of pickup trucks, AR-15’s, and Shiner beer. It’s a natural.

Anyway, Hans called and slowly said, “Hey”, in his usual monotone.

I answered, as I always do, “What’s up?”

Hans drawled, “Oh…not much. Gabi and I wanted to know what y’all want Weston to call you.” (Note: Hans speaks like a Texan. Actually, he speaks more slowly than most Texans do. He’s a German kid from Wisconsin who found his natural habitat in the backwoods of the South. Go figure).

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, you know…do you want him to call you ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Grandpa Frank’, or did you have some weird name that you want him to use?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, either ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Grandpa Frank’ is fine.”

“Okay, well, we just wanted to know. What do you think about Mom?”

“I’m pretty sure that she wants to be called ‘Oma’.” (“Oma” is how the Germans often refer to their grandmother. Karin is from Germany, and she definitely wants to be “Oma” to Weston).

Hans replied, “Yeah, Gabi and I figured that. Mom was always going to be ‘Oma’. We thought about calling you ‘Opa’, but somehow that just didn’t seem to fit.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Hans asked, “Are you excited about being ‘Grandpa’?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to wrap my head around that idea yet. I’ll be okay with it when it happens.”

Hans said, “I haven’t been able to wrap my head around the ‘dad’ thing either. It’s coming anyway.”

Hans went on, “I haven’t been able to go to all the doctor’s appointments with Gabi. The doctor says that Weston is all healthy. That’s what matters.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I remember you had a rough start.”

“Yeah, I don’t want Weston to start off life like I did.”

Hans got serious, “I’ve been thinking about how to raise Weston. I don’t want him growing up thinking that he’s all ‘entitled’ and such. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

Hans kept going, “I don’t want Weston to think that people should just give him stuff, not like some young people I know. I want him to learn the value of hard work, like I learned from you. You always made me earn the things I wanted. I mean you’d help me out some, but I had to save my money to get stuff. Remember those laser guns I wanted? I had to pay half for them. I learned nothing was free.”

“Yeah.”

Hans continued, “I want Weston to learn respect. Young people, they don’t understand that.”

I replied, “Well, you got to respect him too. That works both ways.”

Hans sighed, “I know. I just want him to learn to respect people, especially his elders.”

Hans switched gears. “I was planning to take a couple days off while y’all are down here. I thought, you know, you and I could do something together. Maybe go shooting…or something.”

“Yeah, whatever you want to do. We’ll do stuff. You and me.”

Hans replied, “Yeah, I just thought that the two of us, we could do something.”

“We will. We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you what was going on.”

“Thanks for doing that.”

Hans said, “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 26th, 2018

I had a couple beers with Mike and Taylor yesterday afternoon. We met at the Water Street Brewery once their work was done at the trucking company. Mike and Taylor run the early morning dock, the same shift I worked before I retired from that corporation nearly three years ago. Taylor starts his job as the planner at 1:00 AM, just like I used to do. It’s a hideous time to be at work. It’s so, so wrong. Mike starts a couple hours later, but he also stumbles into the office during the predawn hours. Both of those guys looked exhausted when we met at the bar, and, of course, they were.

We caught up on current events. I generally meet with Mike every month or so, but I hadn’t seen Taylor for well over a year. We talked about a variety of things: our families, politics, and my strange, twisted adventures. As time went on, our discussion focused on the workplace, because that is our strongest connection. It is also a connection that, for me at least, becomes more tenuous with each passing day.

Mike and Taylor sometimes spoke of people whom I have never met. They deal with dockworkers and drivers and managers who started at the company after I had abandoned the place. As time goes on, the number of people I know decreases, and the number of people who are unknown to me grows. As I expected, the corporation functions just fine without me. Some of the employees there might remember me, but memories are short. That is simply how things are.

I know of two men who retired just before I did, Chuck and Ken. They completely cut any connection between themselves and their former employer (and their former co-workers). Those two guys disappeared off the radar. They made an absolutely clean break. To a certain extent, their actions make total sense. I mean, “It’s over.” It’s done. Time to move on, and all that sort of thing. They were realists.

Or maybe not. The past is past. Zen practice reminds me often that I can do nothing about the past, and that the future does not yet exist. All I have is now. I get that. However, even if the past is gone, it still affects the present. Who I was makes a difference with regards to who I am. I always hear the echoes of my past. This means that I am extremely reluctant to sever ties with old friends, even when I should know better. I don’t hang on to things, but I hang on to people. I should let go of all of that.

A friend of mine retired just recently from the VA. He was an emergency room doctor at the local VA hospital. He called me two weeks ago, agonizing over his post-VA life. My friend is good at agonizing. I am not. After listening to him wallow in uncertainty and anguish for a while, I finally told him,

“You are a teenager again! You can do whatever you fucking want!”

I spoke the truth. If a person can retire (and I know that many people cannot), then that person has an opportunity that most inhabitants of this planet will never have. It is an opportunity and a duty. After retirement, I found out that my purpose in life was to discover my purpose in life. That may sound trite, but it is God’s truth.

For those who somehow manage to achieve retirement, the challenge is to forge a new identity. The fact is that I am not the person who was at the trucking company for twenty-eight years. That fucker is gone. I am now somebody else, and I really ought to get to know that person.

This is not necessarily a hopeless or useless struggle. I have had some fun (and some pain) during the last three years. I went to a Japanese Buddhist temple with my wife and youngest son. I stayed with my wife at a remote Benedictine monastery in New Mexico. I got busted for civil disobedience at an Air Force base near Las Vegas. I shot an AR-15 with my redneck oldest son. I learned all about immigration law at a class in Chicago, and now I will be more involved in helping immigrants than I ever thought I would be. I learned to kayak with an old friend from West Point. I walked through the country with a band of Indians. I have tried to help loved ones who struggle with PTSD and/or addictions. The last three years have been a wild ride, and I thank God for all of these experiences.

So, what is my point? I’m not sure. All I know is that I am much closer to death than I am to my birth. The clock is ticking. One part of my life is over. I know that. I have another part to live. My goal is to live. My goal is to make a difference, although I don’t know how. All I know is that I need to do and need to be.

Wish me luck.