Frank is Emptiness

August 22nd, 2017

Jim was on the phone. He was having a heated argument with somebody. Jim was sitting in a wheelchair in the lobby of the VA hospital. His walker was next to him. The telephone was a landline on the wall. I might not have noticed him at all, except that he glanced up at me as I was walking by, and he said loudly,

“Frank, wait! Don’t go! Tell Sister to come over here!”

Jim was still on the phone, obviously agitated. He told the person on other end of the line to wait, because he wanted to speak with me and Sister Ann. Apparently, the person conversing with Jim wanted to know who we were, and Jim shouted,

“They’re religious people!”

I had just arrived at the hospital. It was a Tuesday evening, and most every Tuesday evening I join up with a small group of people from the American Legion to visit the vets in the psychiatric ward on the third floor of the building. The other folks were already there, including Sister Ann Catherine. Sister A. C. had served as a nurse in a refugee camp in Cambodia back in the 1970’s, when the Khmer Rouge was still in business. She had been there during “Killing Fields” timeframe. Sister A. C. had a long history of being actively concerned with veterans, especially Vietnam vets.

Sister Ann Catherine walked over to where I was. Jim tried to speak to us, and simultaneously listen to the person on the line. That didn’t work out very well. He became upset, and he finally told the individual on the phone that he couldn’t carry on two conversations at once. He promptly hung up.

I’ve known Jim for several months. He’s been in and out of the psych. ward repeatedly. He and I have had a number of long conversations. We’ve talked about his time on Vietnam. We’ve talked about Hans’ experiences in Iraq. We’ve talked about his days of smuggling drugs into the U.S., back in the 1980’s. Jim is thin and frail. He has longish hair that is going grey. He has a Sam Elliott style moustache. His voice is a bit high-pitched, especially when he is excited.

Jim was excited, and not in a good way. Something was obviously very wrong. Since Sister A.C. and I were standing next to him, he was going to tell us all about it. He began his story:

“You wouldn’t believe what all happened to me today! I was at the airport and I got mugged! I had a thousand dollars in my pocket and it got stolen. I was on my way to Costa Rica. I have friends there. Now I’m not going anywhere!”

Sister Ann Catherine asked him, “When you got mugged, did they take your passport too?”

Jim nodded. Then he went on, “I have friends in Costa Rica. The president of Costa Rica is a friend of mine. They could send me money, but I don’t want to bother them with that. And it’s hard to send money to a different country. You know?”

Sister A.C. answered, “Oh yes, that is difficult.”

Jim kept going, “I went back to my hotel, where I was staying. Guess what? I found my wallet in my room, but it was empty! I had five hundred dollars in that wallet!”

Sister A.C. said, “Oh my.”

The rant continued. Jim said, “Now I don’t have any money, and I don’t have a place to stay any more. The VA won’t help me. A lady here offered to get me a cab to take me to a shelter, but they are all full now. There is another place where I can get a cot for the night, but the police have to take me there.”

“Oh my, that’s awful”, said Sister Ann.

“I don’t even have money to eat!” yelled Jim. He looked at the nun, and asked, “Can you at least give me some money so I can get something to eat?”

Sister Ann was suddenly less sympathetic. “Jim, look at me. I don’t have any money on me. I don’t even have any pockets. I don’t have anything to give you.”

At that point, I expected Jim to hit on me for some cash. He didn’t. He had forgotten all about the money.

Instead, he said, “I got nothing to live for…well, except for my children. I might as well just kill myself. I don’t like to swear, except to make a point. But this bullshit!”

Sister Ann Catherine looked around and saw that the rest of the group had left for the psych. ward. She said, “Jim, I have to go upstairs now.” She turned and walked away.

It was just Jim and me. He slowly got up from the wheelchair.

“This is bullshit. The VA isn’t helping me. I got a sharp knife. Maybe I’ll use it. Then they’ll notice.”

He grabbed his walker, turned away from me, and left me standing next to the phone. He was completely unaware that I was there.

I took the elevator to the third floor. I went into the break room, where Sister Ann and the other people were putting out snacks for the patients.

I found one of the people working on the floor. This guy is always there when we come to visit, and he often handles patients that get unruly.

I said to him, “Hey, I need to ask you something.”

“Sure, what do you want?’

I told him, “When I was in the lobby, I was listening to Jim. He’s been up here a few times. You probably remember him. He seemed really upset, and he was talking about hurting himself.”

“Okay.”

“So, do we need to do something?”

The guy shook his head and told me, “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, I thought that I should tell somebody.”

“You did. Like I said, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I do worry about it. Jim probably was just being dramatic, but who knows? The guy in the ward knows Jim. He’s worked with him, so he has a better idea of how seriously to take the man. It’s very possible that Jim was saying those things to me just so he could get sent back to the third floor. I don’t know. When I left the hospital later on, I didn’t see Jim anywhere.

I have been thinking a lot about all that Jim told us. It makes my head hurt. It all sounded illogical and disjointed. I don’t think he was trying to hustle us, because if he was, he would have asked me for some cash. I never spoke while he talked. I was trying to figure out what he actually wanted, but I couldn’t get a handle on it.

Maybe he just wanted somebody to listen to him. I don’t know.

I don’t think that Jim was lying  to Sister Ann Catherine and myself. I think that he really and truly believed everything that he told us. That terrifies me. I can deal with a hustler. I can deal with a bullshitter. A liar may be twisted, but he is still shares my version of reality. A man like Jim is sometimes living in his own separate universe, and that freaks me out. I wrestle with trying to understand what is fact and what is fantasy in Jim’s world. I can’t figure it out, because for Jim all of it is real. All of it.

How does a person get to that place? How does he come back? Does he come back? 

Do you know any Nazis? I do, or rather I did. My father-in-law, Max, was a German soldier during World War II. There was a swastika on his Luftwaffe uniform. By most standards he qualified as a Nazi, at least during his time in service.

Was Max ever a fire-breathing, Jew-hating, Indiana Jones film kind of Nazi? I doubt it. I don’t know what kind of man Max was during the war, but he was a decent and generous person when I met him in 1983. Max got drafted in 1938 and was thrown into a nightmare that lasted for seven years. Max survived. He was severely wounded in the war, and he never saw his home again. He rebuilt his shattered life as best he could. I never heard Max speak against anybody because of their race, religion, or nationality. On the other hand, I never got the impression that he was ashamed of his actions during the war. To his dying day he believed that he had been defending Deutschland.

I look at the pictures of the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and I compare them with what I remember of Max. These guys are a whole different breed. Max was forced to participate in evil. These men want to participate. I don’t think that Max ever really bought all the Nazi propaganda. These people in Charlottesville are true believers. Max just wanted to escape from a living hell. The boys in Virginia are eager to create one.

What does Zen have to do with any of this? Plenty.

Zen teaches that all things change, that everything is transient. In some regards this teaching is melancholy, because it says that all the things we love will pass away. On the other hand, it is a profoundly hopeful viewpoint, because it says that things don’t have to stay screwed up. Things can change. In fact, things must change.

This implies that these raving lunatics in Charlottesville, who marched around while carrying tiki torches and chanting “Blood and soil!” at night on a college campus, could possibly change their minds. Is it likely? Maybe not. However, it is possible. Some of these people might stop hating. They might eventually drop their anger. I suspect that, after the war ended, Max changed. Max didn’t end up bitter and mean. These new Nazis might not end up that way either.

Zen tells us that suffering is due to attachment. It is rather obvious that the folks who marched in Charlotte have some rather intense attachments. Did the counter-protesters have any attachments? I think so. Do I? Oh yeah.

As a case in point, think about how a person may react to seeing a swastika. In ages past, the swastika was a benign religious symbol. For the last century it is represented pure evil. In German the swastika is called a “Hakenkreuz”, a “hooked cross”. That’s all it really is. It’s just a crooked cross. It can mean everything, or it can mean nothing. A Nazi flag can be a symbol of hate, or can just be a rag fluttering in the wind. We decide whether things have meaning and power.

Zen tells us that all people have Buddha nature, an inherent holiness and innate love. Most of the people demonstrating at Charlottesville hid their Buddha nature very well, but they still have it. My job is to recognize that they have it. I don’t need to sympathize with them, or agree with them, or like them. However, I need to acknowledge that each Nazi at that rally has the potential to become a bodhisattva, and I have no right to condemn them and completely write them off.

At the end of practice we always recite The Four Great Vows. We promise to save all sentient beings. Neo-Nazis are sentient beings. I am required to save them, or at least to try. That means that I have clean up my own act first. I have to see clearly, and eliminate hate and resentment from my own heart. Then, somehow, I need to see the suffering in these people. They truly are suffering. They are already in a hell of their own making.  I need to know that, and I need to act accordingly, with whatever compassion I can muster.

August 16th, 2017

A few minutes ago, I was walking Shocky, our daughter’s border collie. Shocky and I both need exercise, so I like to walk with her down Oakwood Road, as far as the railroad tracks, and then home again. That is about a two mile walk, and it takes us the better part of an hour to accomplish.

Today Shocky was not feeling up to par, and she needed to stop often to relieve herself. I decided that we would turn around early. We halted shortly after we turned back toward home. I was watching Shocky take care of her business. When she was done I looked up ahead just in time to see a nearly-full bottle of Sprite flying toward me. The passenger in an oncoming vehicle had tossed it at us. The bottle skidded across the pavement, ricocheted off my sandal, and bounced into the ditch next to me. I never saw the person in the car, and I was barely even aware that a car had whizzed by me. It was kind of a low-tech drive by. I’m not sure if the thrower had intended to hit me or the dog. I don’t think I will ever know.

Now that Shocky and I are at home again, I wonder that that incident was all about. I suspect there were two knuckleheads in that car. The passenger probably said,

“Hey, Dude, I bet I can hit that dog with the Sprite!”

“No way. You’ll never hit her.”

“Here, Man!  Watch this!”

Or maybe, the passenger in the car just launched the bottle on a whim. He saw the dog and me, and tried to find our strike zone. Who knows?

Sheer idiocy. Nobody got hurt, but the act was still remarkably stupid.

There have been a large number of senseless acts in the news recently. Events that simply defy explanation.  Are humans just irrational? Is that what it comes down to?

August 13th, 2017

“I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete or unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things that previous ages had left unfinished.” – Carl Jung from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.” – Buddha

“What goes around, comes around.” – definition of karma. Source is anonymous

“I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” – Exodus 20:5-6

Our son, Hans, calls us frequently from his home in Texas. Mostly, he talks about work, but sometimes he reminisces about his deployment in Iraq. When he is in an introspective mood, he wonders why he felt so much like he belonged there, and why he was/is so good with weapons. He wonders why he felt at peace in the midst of war. He considers the possibility of reincarnation: that perhaps he had been a warrior in a previous life, and that maybe he had fought in that same desert in some other age.

I wonder about these things too. I don’t know what conclusions to draw from Hans’ experiences. I do know that he went to war for a reason, and that reason is not necessarily rational or clearly discernible. The path of Hans’ life has been a decidedly strange one. I have attempted to determine the causes of his life’s trajectory, and I find myself coming up short. There are too many things I don’t know, and there are too many things I know, but do not understand.

Our family has a history of military service. My dad was a petty officer in the Navy during the Korean War time frame. Hans’ maternal grandfather, Max, was a radio man in the Luftwaffe during World War II. I am a West Point graduate (Class of 1980), and I was an Army helicopter pilot during the Cold War in West Germany. The legacy is there, whether we like it or not.

Hans joined the Army despite the best efforts of Karin (my wife) and myself to keep him away from the military. After I resigned my Army commission, I resolved never to let our children join the military or go to war. Karin fervently agreed with that course of action. We never let any of our kids play with toy guns. We sent them all, at certain times in their childhoods, to a Waldorf school, which had this sort of Gandhi-like emphasis on non-violence.

Later, we focused out attention on Hans, seeing as he came of age a few years after 9/11. When Hans turned eighteen in 2005, I went to a meeting with the local Quaker community to find out how to get Hans in the Selective Service system as a conscientious objector. I worked with Hans to establish a paper trail indicating that he didn’t want to go to war. In hindsight it is obvious to me that Hans just wanted to appease me by going through this process. Whatever. In January on 2007, Hans went with me to Washington, D.C. for an anti-war protest. He claims that I conned him into going. I don’t remember it like that, but he was there with me regardless.

Hans moved to Texas shortly after that (we have family there), and he looked for work as a carpenter. He couldn’t find a decent job because the recession of 2008 hit him hard. The next thing we knew was that he had joined the Army in the autumn of 2009. Wow.

Karin and I went to Hans’ graduation from basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky in 2010. Then Hans got stationed at Fort Hood with the Armored Cav. Then he went to Iraq in 2011. Hans wasn’t in Iraq long, but he was a busy man. He got shot twice (once in the chest with a 7.62 round, which was stopped by his body armor). He has told me about killing three people, two of them up-close and personal. Hans saw war and all of its horrors. He participated in the blood-letting. Then he came home.

Hans came back different. He came back to us a changed man. He came back comfortable with violence. He came back haunted by nightmares. He also came back feeling self-confident and more assertive. He was no longer shy or self-effacing. Hans came back mature, much older than his chronological age. Hans came back as his own man. He wasn’t just my son any more.

I tend to agree with Carl Jung’s notion of family karma (see the quotation at the beginning of this essay). There are currents that flow through a family that cannot be dammed up, or thwarted. I don’t understand why that should be. It could be genetic, or cultural, or perhaps something of a spiritual nature. However, there are things in motion that are simply unstoppable. When I think back on our experience with Hans, I have a vision of myself standing on a railroad track, facing an oncoming freight train. I can see the train’s headlight and I can hear its air horn. I see the engine rushing toward me. I get run over.

About fifteen years ago, I met up with a family friend from Texas, Peter. Peter was a massage therapist at the time, along with having a doctorate in microbiology, and being a profoundly religious person. In addition to massage, he would do spiritual healing sessions. I went to him for one of those. The session is a bit difficult to describe, but essentially it was like massage therapy, except that Peter had a vision, like an internal movie, while he worked on me. Peter saw what my spirit was up to, while my body laid on his table. After an hour or so, Peter told me his vision. There is no reason for anybody to take his observations seriously, except for the fact that he knew a number of things about my life that he had no business knowing.

I don’t remember very much of what Peter told me. Visions are like dreams: hard to follow, and harder to remember. However, I remember one part in particular. Peter told me that in his vision he saw me surrounded by my ancestors. We were all chanting together. Then the music stopped, and an angel said, “Frank no longer needs to sing the song of his ancestors. He can now sing his own song.”

That dovetails with what Jung said. Until I was in my forties, I had to sing the song of my forefathers and foremothers. I had to finish their work. For whatever reason, they had to lay down their tools with the job half done. It was up to me, and my generation, to complete their assigned tasks. So, whose work does Hans complete? Whose song does he sing?

Somehow, Hans and his siblings have to finish the work of the past before they can start anew. Somehow, Hans had to go to war. After five years of him being back in the States, it feels like his journey to Iraq was necessary and inevitable. I can’t understand it, but that is how it feels to me.

What about free will? What about individual responsibility? Even if Hans had to deploy, he had choices to make in the war. He created new karma by his actions there. He was thrust into a situation, but he still had options available to him. He had free will, albeit within a limited scope.

Hans makes no excuses for what he did, or for who he is now. I believe that his karma led him to war. What he actually did during that war was the result of his own choices. His soul is seared by his experiences in Iraq. The real question is: “What will he do now?”

August 10th, 2017 (letter from me to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

“So far, President Trump has made good on his promise to clamp down on illegal immigrants in this country.

He has claimed that his focus is to deport dangerous criminals from the United States, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has cast its net much wider than that, arresting and deporting people who have done nothing wrong except to reside in the United States without proper documentation. To his credit, Trump has not eliminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Obama’s executive order that allows undocumented young people to remain in America without the threat of deportation. That is at least something.

Unfortunately, ten states have threatened to sue the federal government to make Trump reverse the DACA order. If Trump gets rid of DACA, roughly 800,000 young people will  be suddenly subject to deportation. These are people who were brought to the United States as small children and who know no other country that the U. S.

I know some of these “Dreamers”. They are ambitious and talented. They only want to be part of America and their local community. Trump needs to resist pressure to end DACA. These kids belong here with us.”

August 11th, 2017 (article from me to the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin)

“Dear Editor: I was amazed to read that President Trump believes that he can somehow win the war in Afghanistan by firing the current commander there, Gen. John Nicholson. Apparently, Trump complained in a meeting that we are “losing” in Afghanistan, and therefore it must be the fault of Nicholson. After 16 years and a trillion dollars, we’re losing? No kidding. Nobody has ever won in Afghanistan. Ask the British or the Russians. It’s not called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing.

October 12th, 2013

August 4th, 2017 (article from me to the Chicago Tribune)

President Donald Trump and two conservative Republican members of the U.S. Senate are promoting legislation to severely limit legal immigration into our country. I want to emphasize that this proposed law has only to do with legal immigration. It would cut in half the number of people able to apply for green cards. It would also set up a “merit-based system,” which would somehow only allow the “best” people to enter the United States.

I help to teach a citizenship class at Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee. I primarily tutor immigrants from Mexico. These are green card holders who have been in this country for several years. They work as forklift operators, cooks, machinists and landscapers. These people obey the laws of our nation, they work full time, and they pay their taxes. These adult students contribute to their communities, and they are an asset to all of us. They will all be good and loyal citizens.

The fact is that, under Trump’s proposed immigration rules, none of these people would ever have made it this far. They would have never qualified for a permanent resident card. Actually, my wife would not have qualified either. And, come to think of it, my ancestors, who came here over a hundred years ago from Slovenia as unskilled labor, would never have become residents or citizens.

This new legislation would keep out the people who will make America great again.

December 6th, 2016

Hans called. The night before last he was at a local gas station in Columbus, Ohio. He had parked on the side of the road, because his big, ol’ diesel pick up truck doesn’t fit well in the parking lot of the filling station. Hans grabbed a pack of smokes and went back to his truck. Some guy came out of the darkness, and aimed a .22 at Hans. He told Hans to give him his wallet.

Now, Hans has been shot with a .22. That happened when he was in Iraq. Somebody put a hole in Hans’ leg during a firefight. Hans looked at the mugger and his gun, and calculated the odds of getting killed by this guy.

Hans reaction to his assailant was, “Really… a .22 ?” Hans pulled out his revolver from under his shirt It was a Taurus Judge. The Judge uses .45 LC ammo or 410 shotshells. I fired one with Hans a couple years ago. Big bang, big hole. Hans figured that, unless the robber shot him in the head or the heart, he would survive. The chances of the assailant walking away after being hit with a .45 slug were minimal. The wannabe robber fled the scene and dropped his .22 pistol. So, now Hans has it.

I mentioned to Hans that the .22 was probably hot. He jokingly responded that it was okay. If he needed to use it for some reason, the gun could never be traced to him. I hadn’t considered that.

May 24th, 2016

I was pumping gas into the Honda at Kwik Trip this morning, after I dropped Karin off at our church. I was watching the dollar amount grow on the readout, when I heard a voice say, “Excuse me, Sir, could you help me with some gas money? I need to go to Ohio.”

I turned around, and there was a slight, young woman standing there, with blondish hair and a brown jacket. She looked malnourished, and she had lines in her face that had no business being there yet. Her voice was raspy. She didn’t have a lot of years, but she looked like she had a lot of miles.

I told her, “Wait until I get finished here.” She went back to her very used car that was parked at the pump beside mine.

I finished fueling the Fit and I walked over to her car. I saw a boy sitting in a child seat in the back. He had curly, black hair and dark skin. The woman was speaking with him, saying something to comfort him.

I asked the woman, “How much gas do you need?”

She replied, “Well, I’m going to Ohio…”

I cut her off. “Just open the tank for me.”

She took off the gas cap, and then moved away as I started pumping. I asked, “How old is your kid?”

She said, “He’s five.”

I nodded. I kept filling the car, and then I stopped when I hit $25.

“Okay, close it up.”

The woman came up to me and asked, “You wouldn’t by any chance be a smoker, would you?”

I shook my head.

She smiled weakly, and said, “Oh well. Thank you,” and she got into her car.

I went back to the Fit. I had a lot of questions churning in my mind. Was she lying to me? My immediate response to myself was: “Who fucking cares?” Anybody who comes up to a guy as grumpy as me and asks for help is obviously desperate. If she is telling the truth, then one tank of gas isn’t going to be enough to solve her problems. If she is lying, then she is doing far more damage to her soul than is she is to my wallet. For me, a tank of gas means very little. For her, it might mean everything. I don’t know.

Did she deserve the help? Once again, “Who fucking cares?” Does anybody really deserve a break? Does anybody not deserve one? I don’t know.

I never asked her any other questions. For one thing, it’s not my business to know her business. Second, if she was lying, then asking her more questions is just encouraging her to lie some more. It’s not a good idea to lead people into sin.

I didn’t even ask her name. Is there any point in asking an angel her name?