Frank is Emptiness

September 23rd, 2018

I walked along the bike trail to church this morning. Well, most of my seven mile walk was along the bike trail. For some reason the trail abruptly ends at certain places, and then I have to walk along the shoulder of the Highway 32, near the onrushing traffic. The bike trail winds through meadows and wooded areas, and it is generally peaceful. Highway 32 is not. Cars fly past at speeds far in excess of the posted limit. I am never quite sure if the drivers are aware of my presence. The looks on their faces indicate to me that their minds are somewhere else.

As I walked south on Highway 32, I noticed a car sitting on the shoulder with its four-ways flashing. There was a young man standing at the side of his vehicle doing something, but I was too far away to determine what it was. I slowly came closer to him, and I became curious. Eventually, I was near enough to see that he was struggling to fill his tank with a red plastic gas can.

The odd thing is that I only noticed any of this because I was walking. If I had been driving, I probably would not have even noticed the car. Walking slowed me down enough to perceive what was happening.

I got up next to the car, and I asked him, “Are you okay?”

He looked up at me, and said, “Yeah…I mean no. I mean, yeah, I could use some help, if that’s okay with you.”

I came to him and noticed a small pool of gas on the ground next to the side of the car. I asked to see the gas can. He handed it to me.

He said sheepishly, “I am not from around here. I ran out of gas.”

I shrugged. The guy looked like he was maybe twenty years old. He was short and slight, and he was unsuccessfully trying to grow a goatee. He looked vaguely Asiatic, especially around the eyes. I ran out of gas once when I was his age. I felt like an idiot when that happened. I haven’t done that since then.

He had what looked like a brand new gas can. He must have walked to the nearest filling station to get it. It had some kind of fancy “child proof” nozzle. “Child proof” usually means “adult proof”. It had a spring-loaded valve that only worked when you lined up two rings on the nozzle. If the rings were not lined up properly, then gasoline slowly leaked all over everything. I found that out the first time I tried to use it.

I got gas on my hands, and promptly muttered, “Fucking goddamn piece of shit.” That didn’t solve my problem, but I felt a little better.

I took a moment to read the instructions on the gas can that were written in microscopic letters. I found out what I needed to do, but it still took me two more tries to actually get the gasoline pouring into the tank of the car.

As I fumbled with the can,  I asked the young man, “What’s your name?’

“Luis.”

“I’m Frank.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Milwaukee.”

“Where in Milwaukee? South side?”

“No man. More like downtown. Like Third and Mitchell.”

“Okay, Got it.” The gas was flowing by now.

Luis put his arm on my shoulder. “Thanks, Frankie. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Yeah…right.”

Luis asked me, “So, how do I get to Milwaukee from here?”

“The next light is Ryan Road. Make a left there. Take Ryan Road to the freeway. Then head north to Milwaukee.”

“Okay, cool.”

The gas can was finally empty. I asked him, “Hey, you got a towel or a rag? My hands are full of gas.”

“Yeah, here.” he handed me a small towel.

I wiped my hands. “This towel is going to stink.”

Luis smiled at me. “Man, thanks for the help. God bless you!”

I don’t know why I did it, but I did a gassho (I folded the palms of my hands together in front of my chest and made a little bow to him). Luis did the same to me.

He got into his car.

I walked away.

September 21st, 2018

“When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, ‘Son, when you grow up,
Would you be the savior of the broken,
The beaten, and the damned?’

He said, ‘Will you defeat them;
Your demons, and all the non-believers,
The plans that they have made?’
‘Because one day I’ll leave you
A phantom to lead you in the summer
To join the black parade’.”

from My Chemical Romance, “Welcome to the Black Parade”

Karin and I went to Mass yesterday morning. That, by itself, is nothing unusual. We go to Mass together almost every day. It’s part of our daily ritual. Yesterday was different because the school kids from St. Rita’s were also there with us. The children from St. Rita’s school come to Mass every Thursday morning, along with their teachers.

When it came to distribute the Body and Blood of Christ (the bread and the wine), Karin went up to the altar to serve as a Eucharistic minister. At Mass, a number of lay people help the priest to give out the wafers and the wine. It’s rare for the priest to do it alone, unless there are very few people at the liturgy. Sometimes, not enough people volunteer to be ministers. That happened yesterday.

Karin was at the altar, counting the number of people near her. She decided that they were one person short. I was still standing in the pew, and she stared at me for a moment. I made no move to come toward her. Karin frowned a bit, and made a hand signal that said, “C’mon! Get over here!” So, I left the pew and stood near her at the altar.

Distributing communion is not a difficult task. The person who serves as minister stands at the front of the pews, and people line up in a queue to receive the Eucharist. Because the children were there, we had three separate lines. I was distributing the bread in the line that was made up mostly of little kids. Some of them were not old enough yet to receive communion, so they came up to me in the line with their arms folded in front of them, indicating that they could not take a host, and that I should give them a blessing instead.

A young girl came up to me with her arms folded in front of her. She had blond hair and intense eyes. I raised my hand to make the sign of the cross on her forehead. I felt a sudden pain. It was a deep, piercing ache in my heart. I had an overwhelming sadness. I could barely give the girl the blessing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I said to her hoarsely, “God bless you.” She walked away, and the next child stood in front of me.

It was a little boy. He too had his arms folded over his chest. I blessed him, and my heart hurt again. My eyes welled up. I couldn’t understand why.

I was okay giving communion to the older students. But I felt this tremendous sorrow with the younger ones. They looked at me the way small children often look at adults. They had eyes that were trusting and innocent. They looked up to me.

Eventually, all the children had passed through the line. I calmed down a bit, but I was shaking. I felt exhausted.

As I took the ciborium (dish) back up to the altar, it occurred to me that I wasn’t really seeing those children for who they were. I was seeing other children; other children who are no longer children. I was seeing the faces of kids who went to war, or went to jail, or got hurt in a thousand other ways. I was blessing kids who maybe I never really blessed all those years ago. I was trying to look into eyes that are no longer innocent.

Are blessings retroactive?

Then I asked Juan, “So, what is ‘freedom of religion’ all about?”

Juan answered, “A person is free to practice any religion, or not to practice any religion at all.” Juan was proud of that answer, and he was right.

I wanted some more. “So, what does it look like? How would I know ‘freedom of religion’ if I saw it?”

There was an awkward pause.

I thought for moment. I had gone to the Lake Park Synagogue in the morning to worship with the congregation there. It was Yom Kippur. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the black yarmulke that Karin had knit for me years ago. I put the skullcap on my head and told them, “This yarmulke is ‘freedom of religion’. Jews wear it to pray. When a Muslim woman wears a hijab around her head, that also ‘freedom of religion’. What a person wears, or eats, or does can all be part of freedom of religion. Got it?”

Christobal and Juan nodded.

I asked them, “What about ‘freedom of assembly’? What is that?”

Christobal said, “When we get together?”

“Exactly. Frank and Christobal and Juan can sit here in this room without worrying about the cops busting in the door. We are assembled here. When Voces has its May Day rally, that is an assembly too.”

“What do you think about ‘freedom of the press’? What is that?”

Christobal said, “It is about the news?”

“Yeah. ‘Press’ is an old word. They used to make newspapers with a printing press. Now, the ‘press’ means anything with the news: TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines. The media can say whatever they want to say, regardless of that guy in the White House.”

The Bill of Rights actually means something. These guys need to know that.

We all need to know that.

September 16th, 2018

Father Jim is a priest and an Augustinian friar. He is erudite, witty, and eighty-eight years old. I try to imagine if I would be as spry as Father Jim if I was eighty-eight. Alas, I can only visualize being dead at that age. Karin and I went on a weekend retreat led by this priest. The purpose of the retreat was to learn more about St. Augustine, and to get closer to God somehow.

The Augustinian order is a small part of the Roman Catholic Church. There is a plethora of orders and groups, like the Augustinians, within Catholicism. This fact is sometimes a surprise to people, especially for those who have no direct connection with the Roman Church. Some people, viewing the institution from the outside, imagine that there is a monolithic Catholic community, with a rigid hierarchy that demands total obedience from the members of the Church. They assume that it is a highly disciplined organization whose members march in lock step.

Hmmm, not really. It’s more like herding cats.

The Catholic Church is this sprawling, mutating, living organism that currently includes over one billion people, each of whom has a different opinion on what the Church should be. The Church is a community where diversity and unity have wrestled for two millennia.  It is a family of sorts; a family that is profoundly dysfunctional, but also capable of constant renewal and reform.

There is a quote attributed to James Joyce. He was once asked to describe the Church. In reply, he said, “Here comes everybody.”

Exactly.

The problem with including “everybody” is that people have a wide range of interests and talents (“charisms” in spiritual terms). Different people are attracted to different paths to God. Thus, the Church contains a nearly limitless variety of groups, each of which appeals to a certain type of person. There are Franciscans; they are interested primarily in helping the poor and in protecting the earth. There Dominicans and Jesuits, who like to teach and preach. There is Opus Dei, which is very, very traditional (and to me, a little scary). There are the Catholic Workers, who are essentially Catholic anarchists. I like those folks a lot. Anyway, there is an endless list of groups and orders. The Augustinians just happen to be one of them.

So, what makes the Augustinians different from everyone else? Good question. Father Jim tried to allude to that question during the retreat, and he was somewhat successful in answering it. The answer is actually very difficult to explain in rational terms. A particular order appeals to a person in an intuitive way. It’s a heart thing more than a head thing.

From what I have gathered in the short time that I have spent with Augustinians is that they are deeply concerned with relationship. Father Jim spoke at great length about the Trinity, the doctrine of a triune God. The notion of one God consisting of three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is a mystery, in the sense that nobody will ever really understand it. It’s a bit like quantum physics: it makes no sense at all, but it is apparently true. The value of discussing the Trinity is that it provides a cosmic example of relationship; three persons in intimate and loving relationship with each other for all eternity. That’s pretty wild. It seems a bit Hindu (think about the relationship between Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva). Augustinians care about relationship, about connection. They feel in their bones that absolutely everything and everybody is connected. It’s almost Buddhist in a way.

Each order has a founder, someone who was charismatic and who still inspires people to this very day. The Franciscans look back to Francis of Assisi. The Benedictines admire and emulate St Benedict. Augustinians base their lives on the words and actions of Augustine of Hippo, a 4th century Roman living in Africa. Augustine had an early life that begs to be whitewashed by the Church. He despised Christianity in his early years.  He fathered a child out of wedlock. He partied hard. He also wrote the story of his dissipated youth and his conversion experience, The Confessions, and he left out none of the juicy parts. So, it is hard for the church to clean up his background and stick him into a stain glass window.

Augustine is quoted as saying,”God, give me chastity and continence…but not yet.” It’s hard to dislike somebody like that. Augustine was earthy and pragmatic, and somehow still intensely spiritual. He was totally human. He was a mensch. His present followers tend to be the same kind of people.

The Augustinians have other heroes. They look back at Augustine’s mother, Monica, who constantly prayed for her son’s conversion (and probably nagged him incessantly). They remember St. Rita of Cascia, and Thomas of Villanova. They also remember one other Augustinian friar, Martin Luther. Yeah, him.

The Augustinians have a sense of humor. They admire Luther in a backhanded sort of way. I have yet to meet an Augustinian who failed to smile when speaking about Martin Luther. He’s the rebel that they all wish they could be. He’s the man.

I don’t think that I will join with the Augustinians. I am more of a Franciscan/Catholic Worker kind of guy. However, I really do appreciate their path in life.

September 17th, 2018

The doorbell rang late yesterday afternoon. That always makes me a bit edgy. There was a time, not too long ago, when the only time the doorbell rang was when the local cops wanted to discuss the activities of a certain family member. When I went to the door, I was relieved to find that it was not an official visit this time.

Duane was waiting for me on the front porch. Duane and his family live in the house on the corner. Over the years, our neighborhood has slowly become more diverse: we have Muslim families, Latinos, Hmong. Duane’s family is, thus far, the only black household. The folks on our street tend to get along pretty well. Duane and his wife have been to our house a couple times. They always greet us with a smile, and they are, quite simply, good people.

Duane often sees me walking our daughter’s border collie, Shocky. Karin and I take of her pet while our daughter is away. Duane is aware that I take Shocky for very long walks along Oakwood Road. Oakwood, at one time, was a quiet country lane. Now, after the building of several subdivisions in the local area, it more closely resembles a race track. The road still only has two lanes to it, and there is no shoulder or sidewalk. A pedestrian, like myself, is by necessity on the road. Sometimes drivers have trouble understanding that fact.

Duane greeted me as I walked out the door to talk with him.

He said, “I brought y’all a present. I know you walk that dog at night, so I got you a leash that lights up in the dark. I don’t want you to die, Frank.”

That was very neighborly of him. It’s not often that people on our block show that much concern for my welfare.

In all honesty, I am somewhat negligent about safety precautions. I generally do not  wear reflective clothing. It is not unusual for me to walk the dog along Oakwood Road at 4:00 AM. A portion of the road is completely unlit. I know for a fact that some of the people going to their shitty jobs at that hour of the morning are either inattentive, or bleary-eyed, or both. They don’t see me and my black dog until the last possible minute. That probably scares the drivers more than it scares me.

Duane told me, “Frank, I almost hit you one time on the way to work. Well, you know, it’s because I didn’t see you.”

It’s comforting to know that Duane didn’t try to hit me on purpose. That wouldn’t be so neighborly.

I thanked Duane, and we talked for a bit. Then he went on home.

I walked Shocky this morning at 4:00. It was a clear night, with a sky full of stars. Oakwood Road was dark as the inside of a cow. I used my new, illuminated dog leash. It worked great. It kept Shocky safe. That’s a good thing.

Our daughter would be really pissed off if her dog got killed while I was walking her.

September 13th, 2018

This letter from me was posted by the Capital Times in Madison, WI, yesterday.

“September 11th, 2001, is a date that I will always remember, just as millions of other Americans will. What strikes me most is not the actual terrorist attack that occurred on that day. What I find most disturbing is the after effect of the attack, our country’s seemingly endless over-reaction to that act of horrific violence. The 9/11 attack killed thousands, but our actions since then have killed even more. During the last seventeen years, the United States has been in a number of wars that were somehow initially triggered by the attack on 9/11.

My oldest son fought in Iraq. He was deployed to fight in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, but we invaded that nation anyway. My son got shot. He killed people. He came back a very different man. In a strange way, his experiences can be traced back to September 11th, 2001. Would we have ever invaded Iraq if 9/11 had not happened? Would my son have gone to war? How many more young people will go to war because of 9/11?”

September 12th, 2018

The shofar is a strange instrument. It has a rather limited musical range. The ram’s horn  has only one note on its scale. The person blowing the shofar can make the sound of the blast short or long, or loud or soft, but those are the only options. However, the shofar does look pretty cool. I have to admit that.

Rabbi Dinin gave his sermon, or “drash”, prior to his blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. “Drash” is an interesting word for me. Many years ago, I studied Arabic, and one of the first words that we learned in class was “darasa” (درس), which means “to study”. Even though “drash” comes from Hebrew, it seems to me that it is related to “darasa”. Both words somehow have to do with learning. This may be a small and insignificant connection, but it is a connection nonetheless. I spend most of my waking hours looking for connections. I look for the things that bind us together, and I rejoice when I find one.

The rabbi spoke about the significance of Rosh Hashanah. It is first and foremost, the beginning of the Jewish year. He tried to explain why the Jewish people used the shofar on this particular holy day. It was bit hard for me to follow all of what he said, but my understanding is that Rosh Hashanah is both a day of rejoicing, and a day of judgment. On a day of rejoicing, a day when the King is here among us, then a trumpet would be used to celebrate that day. However, Rosh Hashanah is not just a day of rejoicing, it is also a day when the King (God) judges us. A trumpet is not intense or deep enough. The shofar, despite its obvious musical shortcomings, is very moving and very visceral. The sound that it makes comes from the heart.

Rabbi Dinin also talked about how we are judged. I found that part of his drash to be intriguing. He was speaking about the Jewish people, but he could have been talking about almost anyone. The rabbi described the view of the sages that a person is perhaps judged more harshly by God as an individual, than as a member of a group. A single Jew, standing naked and alone before the judgment of God, is more at risk than when he or she can be judged as part of the Children of Israel. The good deeds of the “people” can make up for the failings of an individual. This is not to say that each person is not responsible for their own actions. It is more that our individual actions are considered within the context of our community.

There is an echo of this view within my own tradition, Catholicism. Catholics place (or used to place) a huge emphasis on community. With Catholics it is never the idea of “me and my God”. It is always “Our God and us”. This is in stark contrast to the view of some of the Protestant Christians, who focus intensely on a personal and exclusive relationship with God. The Jewish perspective, and the Catholic perspective, is that we are all in this together. There is no such thing as a private sort of salvation. Looking out for number one is not an option. We are all inter-connected.

Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, once said that when she died, God might ask her, “Where is everyone else?”

The point is that we all go to God together. Or, we don’t go to Him at all.

Happy New Year.

September 4th, 2018

My Old School from Steely Dan

I just stared at the name of the sender of the email. It was from John. I didn’t open it. I was curious as to what the message would say, but I also suspected that its contents would cause me endless frustration. The email was in response to one of mine, and I kind of sensed where this interaction was going. I have often traded messages with this person in the past, and most of the time, our exchange of words has been amicable. The exception to that is when we start talking about our alma mater, West Point.

John and I both graduated in the Class of 1980 from the United States Military Academy (USMA). We were actually in the same company, B-4. We were in daily contact with each other each and every day for four years. We came from radically different family backgrounds, but we were (and are) friends. John and I spent much of the summer of 1978 together in Alaska, courtesy of the U.S. Army. Over the years, we have maintained an intermittent Internet relationship. We haven’t seen each other, or heard each other’s voices, in thirty-eight years. In a way, it is remarkable that we have any relationship at all. Perhaps, in truth, we don’t.

Our paths diverged upon our graduation. We were both Army officers, but John went into Field Artillery, and I went into Aviation. At the end of John’s service, he moved into a position in the defense industry; not an unusual transition for a West Point grad. When I got out of the Army, I got a job in trucking, and then I became an anti-war activist; a very unusual transition for a West Point graduate. One of John’s sons went to war in Afghanistan. My eldest son, Hans, went to war in Iraq. John seems to be okay with the fact that his son fought in a war. I am not. I am proud of Hans, but I wish to God that he had never enlisted. I don’t think the war did him no good at all.

John has stayed very connected with our old school. He is involved in many activities with alumni and current students (cadets). He really likes to maintain that connection with USMA. More power to him. Somebody should keep the faith with the Long Grey Line. However, that person is not me.

I have not set foot on the campus of West Point since 1981. I have no plans to ever do so. Karin and I traveled up the Hudson River Valley a year ago, and there was a clear opportunity for us to stop at my school. I declined to do that. There is nothing there that I miss. There is nothing there that I want to remember. Karin didn’t know me when I was a cadet. It is probably best that she doesn’t know that experience, even vicariously.

West Point is a strange place. The experience of a student there is a cross between attending an Ivy League college, and doing time in prison. For me, it was a four-year-long mind fuck. After nearly forty years, I am still a bit off kilter.

Oh, back to the email…

John cannot understand my feelings toward USMA. He truly cannot. He writes to me about West Point and the alumni functions, and I, like an idiot, respond by saying that I want no part of such affairs. Then we get on to a seemingly endless exchange of emails, where John tries his best to convince me that I should revere our alma mater, and where I tell him to go pound sand. It never ends well.

In my last message to John, I told him, “I was there, things happened, and it’s over.”

The message from him, that I refused to open, no doubt had a pithy response to my statement.

Keep in mind that John is a very good man, and that he is smarter than I am. He really is. I am helpless against his logic and reasoning. The problem is not that John chooses to be the keeper of the flame for our old school. The problem is that he expects me to do the same. I can’t and I won’t.

I agree with John that our time at West Point changed our lives immensely. There can be no question about that. The real question is: “How were our lives changed?”

John became a staunch defender of the status quo with regards to the U.S. military. I became a pacifist and a friend of the Catholic Workers. I am still both those things. How did this all happen? I have no idea. It just is.

I deleted John’s email. It was a cowardly act. I just couldn’t deal with it.

I plan to write to John in a month or two, and pretend that I never received his email. We can start over. Maybe.

September 4th, 2018

We had a big crowd tonight. I went with a couple other people to the psych ward of the VA hospital to visit with the patients. As usual, we brought them snacks and drinks. The ward was full up. Twenty-one veterans came to hang out with us. Some of them just stopped by to grab some cookies or fruit. Some of them stayed to play cards. A few of them stayed to sit and talk.

One man stood off by himself. He was tall and gaunt. He had long, grey hair that hung down limply to his shoulders. He had a beard that matched his hair. The man wore glasses with thick lenses. The lenses made his grey eyes look abnormally large. His arms were thin and blotchy.

The man had a curious look. By that, I mean he looked like he was curious about something. He seemed interested in his surroundings, but perhaps a bit befuddled.

I spoke to him. “Hi, how are you?”

He smiled and replied, “Oh, I’m okay. I just wish I knew where I was.”

“Ohhhhhh….”, I replied.

The man looked absently around the ward and said, “I don’t know where I am. It seems like a nice place.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The man went on, “I wonder how long I’ve been here. Maybe I got here today. I don’t know…maybe I have been here a year.” He shrugged. “It’s okay. It would just be nice to know.”

“Yeah”, I said.

I asked the man, “What branch were you in?”

He smiled, “I was in the Army.”

“Me too.”

Then he asked me, “So what did you do?”

I told him, “I was a helicopter pilot.”

His eyes lit up, “Really? Wow. I don’t think I would have had it up here to do that”, as he pointed to his head.

“What did you do?”

The man answered, “I was a medic.” He laughed. “They pointed to three of us, and told us that we were all going to be medics. I remember some of that time, but only bits of it. I wish I could remember more.”

I told him, “I got out thirty years ago.”

He thought for a moment. “I am seventy years old, or maybe I am going to be seventy. I’m not sure. I got out, hmmmm, it must be fifty years ago. Something like that. Yeah.”

“That’s a long time.”

The man looked at me and said, “Oh yeah, it is.”

Then he paused, and said, “I would like to see my brothers and sisters. I wonder if they are still alive. They were all older than me.”

We looked at each other for a moment.

I told him, “I’m glad that I talked with you.”

He smiled again, and replied, “So am I. I think I will grab some of those grapes.”

I meditate with a Zen sangha. We strive to achieve a “don’t know” mind. We try to get to a point before thinking, before judging. We work so hard to accept things just as they are. We attempt through sheer force of will to be in the moment.

I just met a guy with a “don’t know” mind. He doesn’t work at all. He just is. 

I envy him.

September 2nd, 2018

James and I were standing next to each other in the plaza in downtown Chicago. We were both holding signs explaining the reason for our group’s political demonstration (i.e. our opposition to the sale of American munitions to the Saudis, which the Saudis then use to murder Yemeni school kids). It was still mid-morning, and much of the plaza was in shadow because the sun was hiding behind the skyscrapers. I was tired, and my thoughts were confused. I was just watching the endless flow of traffic. James attempted to make conversation, and I was giving him monosyllabic responses. Finally, he asked me,

“What gives you life?”

“WTF?”

I was dumbfounded by that question. I mumbled something back to James. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t feeling very alive at that moment.

He looked around at our protest, and then he asked me, “Does doing this give you life?”

These were rather profound questions. They were definitely not what I expected to hear. James is an intelligent and thoughtful young man. He is given to asking penetrating questions. He doesn’t make small talk, so in a way it wasn’t that much of a surprise that he asked me about what gives me life. Thinking back on it, that is exactly the kind of thing he would ask.

Silence prevailed.

Was participating in the protest giving me life? I don’t know. It felt like the right thing to do, but it also felt a bit pointless. A political demonstration is an act of faith as much as anything else. My faith in God, in myself, and everything else was at a low ebb that morning.

Finally, I said to James, “In response to your previous question, about what gives me life, I would have to say that it’s my kids that give me life.”

I went on, “My children give me a purpose. Even when they struggle and suffer, and they do, they give me life. They need me. I need to be needed. That’s important to me. I can’t fix their problems, but I can help. That’s why I am alive.”

James replied, “They just want your love and support. That is all I want from my parents.”

“I’m not sure how good I am at supporting them. They call me. Hans calls me a couple times a week. I just listen to what he has to say.”

James responded, “Well, you’re there for them. You listen to them. A lot of parents don’t do that.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We talked about Hans for a while. I told James about Hans’ experiences in the Iraq War. Then we talked about vets. Then we talked about the Native Americans, because they know how to deal with returning vets. The conversation flowed from one subject to the next.

It got to be almost 2:00 PM. I needed to catch the train back home. I told James that I was going. He put down his sign and hugged me. As I left, he said,

“Keep on living.”