Frank is Emptiness

June 5th, 2018

“Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.”

from Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist

Karrin and I sat with Jane in the Daily Dose coffee shop. It was very early on a Friday morning. Karin and I showed up right when the cafe opened at 6:00 AM. Jane arrived shortly after we did. Jane is a busy woman. She is attending classes at a seminary, she is helping to run a sober living house, and she is working with people in recovery. We were having coffee together at an ungodly early hour, because that was the only hour that Jane had available.

Karin and I wanted to talk to Jane about a girl. We care about a young woman who is currently in jail. She will be released in a couple weeks and her future has a lot of question marks. She does not know where she will live, how she will get health care, what she will have for transportation, or how she will find a job. (I don’t know either.) This young woman calls us when these questions become overwhelming. When she phones us, she usually starts by saying,

“I’m feeling really anxious!”

Understandable. After a few minutes the anxiety seems to diminish for this young woman. Her voice becomes calmer, and she sounds a bit more relaxed. Generally, we can’t completely answer any of her questions, or solve any of her problems. Somehow, just talking about things ease her mind, at least for a little while. Somehow, it helps for her to know that we are at least trying to help.

Jane talked to us about her experiences with anxiety. She mentioned that, at one point in her life, she self-medicated in order to make the fear go away. I am very familiar with that technique. It is a short term solution that creates long term problems. Jane explained that eventually she learned to deal with the tension and the uncertainty. There are problems that simply cannot be fixed, at least not right away. Jane told us that she became aware of her feelings, and she found that she could handle being uncomfortable with a situation. She could exist in that moment. She didn’t like it, but she could accept it.

I understand that anxiety and frustration. I have spent almost all of my adult life as a problem-solver and a trouble-shooter. I’m good at it. I am not good at situations that unsolvable for me, especially situations that involve people I love. I spin my mental wheels, and I can almost smell the clutch burning inside my head. Even fixing a problem only brings temporary relief. There is always another riddle to solve. There is never a time when everything feels okay.

So, what to do? That depends on the individual. To reduce my anxiety I sometimes meditate, or take the dog for a really long walk. Jane helps other people, and that gives  her a different perspective on her own issues. Some folks pray. Karin knits or spins yarn on her wheel. Some people play a musical instrument. Some people paint or draw. Some people write, like I am doing right now. Finding a effective method is all trial and error. A certain program may work for a particular person, but be absolutely useless to somebody else. Learning to handle anxiety is a lifelong process, a unique process.

We live in a scary world. It’s hard to trust. It’s hard to have faith. It’s hard to keep going.

We’re all anxious.

 

 

 

 

 

June 3rd, 2018

Today is my younger brother’s birthday. Chuck would have been fifty-eight today.

Chuck died in October of 2009. I think the official cause of death was a heart attack. Chuck had extremely high blood pressure, but he refused to take his meds. Instead, he drank all the time. I don’t think that he wanted to live. The last fifteen years of his life were like a slow motion suicide. It was an endless series of close calls, and visits to the emergency room.

It wasn’t always like that. When Chuck was young, he was athletic and smart. He was a brave man, sometimes recklessly so. He was funny and goofy and crazy as hell. He was bold and adventurous, and almost always at odds with our father. After a bitter argument, our dad threw Chuck out of the house. Chuck found a job, found a wife, and started a family…all on his own. Chuck was a self-made man.

Things fell apart. Chuck’s drinking tore up his family. He lost everything that he loved. I think that destroyed him. He never recovered from the divorce. He and our father never really reconciled. Chuck couldn’t fix what was broken, and eventually he stopped trying.

I have always felt guilty about Chuck’s death. I often kept him at arm’s length. I guess I was scared or ashamed or just clueless. Was I a good brother to him? I doubt it.

I know people who would say that Chuck’s life was a tragic waste. I don’t agree with that. Something is only a waste if nobody learns from the experience. I learned from Chuck’s experience. I learned that I cannot save anyone. I can be present and supportive. I can love them. However, I cannot save somebody who does not want to be saved.

I also learned that I have to love somebody as they are, not as I wish they would be. I often wished that Chuck wasn’t so angry, so bitter, or so depressed. I wanted him to be somebody besides the man who I knew. Because of that, I missed the chance to love my brother as he was. I often rejected the man who was standing there in front of me, because I wanted so badly to see somebody else.

Do these lessons matter? Yes, they do. History repeats itself. Now I have to love another person who in some ways resembles my brother. Now I can see that I have to do things differently. Chuck taught me to love differently. Whether he knew it or not, Chuck taught me to see the others in a new light, and to accept them as they are.

Happy birthday, Brother. It’s a beautiful day outside. Maybe be we should sit on the porch and enjoy it together.

 

May 30th, 2018

I like to walk with Shocky at dawn. It is peaceful then. There is very little traffic on Oakwood Road at that hour. I am usually already up and awake. If I am not, Shocky makes sure that I am. Shocky is an affectionate border collie, one who needs to go poddy very early in the morning.

As we left the house, I caught a glimpse of the local fox loping across a nearby street. The fox is occasionally in our yard. I once found the remnants of a rabbit under the spruce trees after a fox visit. The fox is always on the move. Hunting, always hunting.

We walked along the road, and went past a pond. Shocky got restless. I looked to my left. There a deer at the edge of the pond, staring at us. I waved to the deer. She didn’t wave back. She just stood there with her dark eyes following our movements.

The wind was out of the south, warm and humid. I could confirm the direction by looking at the steam billowing out of the stacks at the power plant by the lake. Low clouds were gathering. I looked to the southwest and was surprised to see a rainbow. The rising sun must have been just a the correct angle to catch some raindrops in the distance. Shocky and I stood still. I marveled at the spectrum of light playing in the sky.

Four mallards flew over us, quacking as they flapped their wings. I had to marvel at that too. How is flight even possible? I had that elusive sense of wonder. I looked around me the way I did when I was a child.

Shocky and I headed back home. It started raining. A light, gentle rain. It was just enough to quicken our pace.

 

May 28th, 2018

“Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.”

Neil Young from his song, Old Man

The nursing home is actually pretty nice. It’s clean. My dad’s room is small, but it’s comfortable. The staff is friendly and efficient. The food is good. My dad gets care 24/7.

He is still miserable.

Karin and I went to visit him on Saturday. We don’t see him very often. It is almost a three hour drive from where we live to the nursing home in Iola.  When we go to see my father, it is an all-day affair. Even though we are retired, we still don’t usually have entire days that are completely free. So, it is rare for us to make that journey.

We spent two hours with my dad. Mostly, we spoke with my brother, who was also sitting in the room. My father sat between us, but he seldom joined in the discussion. This was very different from how things were years ago, back when my dad would dominate the conversation. He always had strong opinions, and he would never bend. Arguments would sometimes erupt, and they would not end until my dad had completely worn down his opponent. After a while, I learned to avoid hot topics. I tiptoed through a verbal minefield, making sure that we kept to safe subjects. Even so, sometimes I stepped on a booby trap and ignited a explosion of shouting from my father. Then I would shout back. It was always a bit awkward, and a little nerve wracking.

It’s not like that any more. Karin and I talked for a long time about immigration politics with my brother. My dad scarcely said anything. He only mentioned about how his grandfather was recruited by a mining company in northern Michigan to emigrate from Austria-Hungary. We talked about unions and workers rights. My dad had always been a big union supporter, but he didn’t speak up. My father seemed uninterested or distracted. He wasn’t quite there with us. Occasionally, he would bring up a story from the past, but the story didn’t necessarily match the topic at hand. He said what he wanted to say, relevant or not.

For most of his life, my father has been wound pretty tight. It doesn’t bother me to see him calm down a bit, but he’s beyond calm. He’s apathetic. His often mind wanders through the corridors of his memories, and he doesn’t seem very interested in what is going on around him. His world in mostly in the past. He occasionally confuses names and events from the old days. He knows what he means, but the words sometimes come out wrong. I can usually figure out what he is trying to express, because I know all of the old stories by heart.

When I was young, I just wanted to have a frank conversation with my father. I wanted to be able to be straight with him, and I hoped that he would be straight with me. That never happened. We either spent all our time talking about things that didn’t matter to either of us, or we engaged in a knock down, drag out fight. I only learned about what he was really like by reading between the lines when he went on a rant. Sometimes he would let total honesty slip through the during the argument.

Now it is too late to have that frank conversation. The passion inside him has died down, but so has his mental acuity. He’s calmer now, but that is because part of him is no longer present to me. I guess that I want to speak with the man I knew twenty years ago. Well, he’s gone. We can’t have that heart to heart. Not in this world.

I’ll talk with the man who is still here. I’ll love the man who is still here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 26th, 2018

There is a lot of traffic on Scott Street. There shouldn’t be, but there is. Scott Street is lined with old bungalows, tall shade trees, and kids who don’t watch for cars. The city tore up Greenfield Avenue, which is one block to the south of Scott Street. Greenfield is the main thoroughfare through the Latino neighborhood, so many cars bypass the construction by going down Scott Street. This is especially true around 5:00 PM on a Friday. For at least an hour, a long line of cars waits to cross at the four-way stop on the corner of 17th and Scott.

A big, old house sits on that corner. That is where I go at 5:00 PM on most Fridays. It is a house full of kids, just like the house where I grew up. There are eleven children in the family, and the house is quite crowded when they are all inside. Even after nearly a year, I still can’t always remember all of their names. The two oldest boys, Hussein and Bashar, are not often at home. They go to high school, and I am pretty sure they both have part time jobs. Nada and Amar are sometimes have me help with their homework. They are of middle school age. I usually spend time with the younger children, in particular Yasmin, Nizar, Ibrahim, and Nisrin. We read stories together. The pre-school kids, Muhamed, Yusuf, and Hanin, don’t interact much with me. They all live together in that old house with their parents. They are all Syrian refugees.

It was a very warm afternoon, and some of the children were playing outside, either in the tiny yard, or on the sidewalk. Some of the kids were sitting on the front stoop. A couple of them waved and yelled to me asked I crossed the street to meet them. I walked up to the house and climbed the steps up to the porch.

Um Hussein, their mother, was standing in the open doorway to the house.

I said, “Assalam walaykum (peace be with you).”

She replied, “Wa’alaykum assalam (and peace to you also).”

Um Hussein didn’t smile. She seldom smiles. Her face and clothes are severe. She always wears a dark colored robe and a black hijab. I am convinced that she has had a hard life life thus far, and it shows.

Nisrin ran up to me smiling, her dark curls looking wild around her freckled face.

“You read today?”

“Yeah. What should I read?”

Nizar quickly came up to me with a book we had started the week before. It was “The Fugitive Factor”, a story about two kids on the run from the government.

Nizar gave me the book and said, “Read this.”

Nisrin slumped visibly. She said, “Nohttp://www.yahoo.com/t that book! That one is so boring.”

Nizar was indignant. “It is not boring!”

Yasmin stopped by. She asked, “Can we read it together?”

I answered, “Sure, I don’t care.”

Nizar said, “No! Let him read!”

I sat down on the old sofa that covered part of the porch. Nizar sat on my right, and Yasmin on my left. Nisrin stood in front of me to listen. I started reading the book by myself, and sometimes the others chimed in. We read in spurts, because there were many distractions on the street. It’s a typical urban neighborhood, so the sound of squealing tires and the wail of police sirens are not unusual. There was also the rhythmic bass thump of a car blasting rap music. Sometimes we were drowned out by the Mexican music of La Gran D, a local radio station blaring from the open windows of somebody’s vehicle.

Nizar would get up from the sofa, and shout at the driver of the the car,

“Hola! ¿Cómo estás?”

Sometimes the driver would look up at the porch and smile  at the boy. It’s pretty cool that a Syrian kid is learning both English and Spanish.

The father of the family showed up in his car. I had never seen him before. He was always working when I came to tutor the kids. He had brought some food for the evening meal, but he was also on his way to his job. He stayed in his car. His kids yelled and waved to him. I got up off of the sofa, and I waved too. He waved back. Obviously, he knew that I was there to teach his children. Otherwise, he would have done something other than wave.

We kept reading. Yasmin is good. She is almost able to read that book on her own. Nisrin and Nizar can sound out most of the words, but they aren’t ready yet to read at this level on their own. They will get there. They will get there soon.

Um Hussein informed me that I would not be receiving the customary glass of hot, sweet tea that I have grown accustomed to drinking.

She told me sadly in her very broken English, “We…my whole family…we are fasting now. No more tea.”

I nodded and said, “Ramadan.”

Um Hussein nodded back to me.

That’s cool. I never expected them to give me anything for just showing up. If they fast, then I will fast with them, at least for the time that I am there.

Nizar told me that he had had enough from the book. I stood up and asked Um Hussein if I should stay and read something else. She spoke to Nizar in Arabic, too quickly for me to understand anything.

Nizar looked up at me and said, “It is your choice. Up to you.”

I was tired. I told them all that I would come again next Friday.

I left their front porch.

 

 

 

May 23rd, 2018

“I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn’t born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no sides
Oh yea, you just don’t win
It’s so far out – the way out is in”

George Harrison, from the song “Any Road”

I think that every Zen practitioner, at some point, gets restless on the cushion and wonders why he or she is sitting silently in a room with several other people. There is suddenly the desire to do something, anything besides sitting on the cushion. There is an intense feeling that it is all just a waste of time.

Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s not.

I keep thinking back to my recent adventures with a small band of Native Americans. I spent, in total, about four weeks with these people, wandering all around the country. I went to eight different reservations. I did two sweat lodges. I smoked peace pipes. I danced to their drumming. I drove a POS car through a raging blizzard. I slept in a tepee. I dug up blood root to send home to my wife. I got extensively smudged with smoking sage by a medicine man. During the course of the entire journey, I never knew what would happen from one day to the next.

I blame Zen for this experience.

Seriously.

Zen involves meditating with other members of the sangha. It involves some ritual performed within the confines of a temple or Zen center. It also involves a person’s life outside of the sangha. What happens in the temple must have an effect on life outside of the temple. Otherwise, it really is a waste of time.

For me, one of the effects has been to make me less goal-oriented. It makes me more open to whatever comes my way. I still plan and organize, but I also let things just happen. I made an open-ended commitment to the Indians, knowing (or not knowing) what would happen. To the best of my ability, I let go of my expectations and desires, and I just took a ride on their roller coaster. I tried to be in the moment. I tried to just be there. It was often crazy and uncomfortable and scary, and I’m glad that I did it.

As Harrison sings in the refrain to his song:

“And if you don’t know where you’re going
Any road will take you there.”

That’s a fact. I didn’t know where I was going, and any road was good enough.

It is also a fact that I still don’t know where I am going. Zen practice has made me aware of that. Oddly enough, I am okay with it, most of the time. So, I follow the road that is in front of me, and I walk along it to see where it leads me.

That can be fun.

 

May 20th, 2018

“Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward to what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.”

Jacob Bronowski, from his book, The Ascent of Man

I am actually planning to write about Zen, but I think that the preceding quote from Jacob Bronowski is appropriate, even though he was talking about science, the great passion of his life. Bronowski was a mathematician, and a modern Renaissance man. He loved ideas, but he hated dogma. He particularly loved the pursuit of knowledge.

If I look from Bronowski’s perspective, I can see similarities between science and Zen. There aren’t many similarities because Zen isn’t similar to anything, really. However, they share a few points in common. Both Zen and science are about questions. In both practices, there is a desire to find answers, but the focus is on the questions. During meditation, some people silently ask themselves, “What am I?”, and then respond, “Don’t know.” Scientists ask themselves questions, and if they are honest, they usually shrug their shoulders and say, “Don’t know”. Even if a scientist finds an answer, that answer is simply a door to more questions. Likewise, if a Zen student catches a glimpse of reality, it is only a small step toward a deeper understanding.

A Zen practitioner may have a rare moment of illumination, where his or her view of the world shifts radically. Scientists can have that too. Scientists cling to ideas and opinions just like everyone else. Then somebody comes along and rocks their world. Copernicus tells people that the sun is the center of the solar system, and the effect is the same as when a Zen master screams “Katz!” Einstein explains that all things are relative, and there is a massive paradigm shift. Quantum physics comes along and suddenly light is both a particle and a wave (sometimes, maybe). A scientist with integrity has to be able to let go of ideas, just like a Zen practitioner must. Both types of people have to experience “don’t know”.

Bronowski notes that science is personal. So is Zen. A scientist has to “feel forward” in the unknown. So does a Zen practitioner. This pursuit of knowledge cannot be done vicariously. Each person has to do it on their own. This type of journey can be risky and requires a certain amount of courage. A person who thinks, talks, and acts differently from others is quite often vulnerable. A Zen practitioner and a scientist both are like trapeze artists who perform without a safety net. The safety net is made up of the things we think we know.

Not many people are scientists. Not many people practice Zen. Most people prefer the safety net. They want the security, real or otherwise, of absolutes. They don’t want that tension, that uneasiness that accompanies us when we stand “on the edge of error”. To be honest, I don’t want that either. But I can’t control my curiosity. As someone pointed out, I am a “seeker”. I keep asking.

Most of Bronowski’s family died in the Holocaust. Once again, he spoke about science:

“It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And this was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”

I think I will stick with “don’t know”.

 

May 18, 2018

“I want berries.”

“What?”

“I want berries. You know, like the fruit. Strawberries, blueberries, whatever.”

“Oh…”

Sometimes while visiting the girl we love, I get thrown for a loop. The conversation suddenly veers in a new and unexpected direction. We had been talking about her release date, and then she decided to let us know that she wanted berries once she got out of jail.

She continued, “The variety of fruit we get in here is limited: oranges, apples, bananas.”

“No berries?”

She shook her head, “No berries.”

I thought for a moment and said, “Tell you what. Make a list of the kinds of food you would like, and we will make sure we have them available.”

She smiled. “Cool. Oh, I would also like hot wings, but I probably won’t be able to get them right when I get released at 3:00 AM.”

“Uh, no, probably not.” Then I suggested half-jokingly, “We could celebrate your release by going to George Webb’s for breakfast.”

(Note: George Webb’s is a local diner chain that is open 24/7. The chain is famous for incredibly greasy food served by a surly wait staff. The only thing healthy in a George Webb diner is the pickle that sits on top of the hamburger patty in one of their sliders. The clientele at Webb’s at 3:00 AM on a Sunday morning is eclectic, to say the least. Eating a pre-dawn breakfast there is akin to being part of a Twilight Zone episode.)

The girl thought about the offer, then she replied, “How about Denny’s? They are open all night.”

“Yeah, we could do that.”

She smiled again and said, “We would probably be the only sober people in the entire restaurant.”

Oh, so true. The bars all close at 2:00, and drunks with the munchies descend on Denny’s like locusts. It would be entertaining, if nothing else.

The young woman seemed quite pleased. After all these months of incarceration, a restaurant menu would probably be sensory overload. What would she pick? Everything? I am imagining a long and careful selection process.

I know for sure I will be ordering coffee.

 

 

 

 

May 16th, 2018

I like to walk Shocky just as the sun is coming up. As I walked with her out of our front door, I could see my breath in the cold air. Yeah, I know it’s half way through the month of May already. However, we live in a climate where winter leaves grudgingly, and it is always a good idea to have a sweater handy. Spring is here, but it comes reluctantly. The surest sign that the seasons have changed is the sound of lawnmowers in the distance. Also, motorcycles and tulips suddenly arrive on the scene.

I enjoy this particular time of the year because it is dynamic. The leaves on the trees are still budding. The crab apples and the dogwoods are just getting their blossoms. All things are becoming alive. Nothing is complete. Each morning of each day the landscape looks slightly different. Nature is giving birth. It is almost like Eden.

Sadly, not everything is vibrant. There are still bare trees in the woods. They will stay that way. The emerald ash borer came through this country during the last couple years, and all the ashes are dead, hundreds of them. Their skeletal remains are visible on the horizon. Already, other species of trees are taking their places. Maples, cottonwoods, and walnuts are slowly filling in the spaces that are now bare. In a five or ten years, it will be impossible to tell where all the ash trees were. For now, they stand leafless and naked and dead.

As Shocky and I walked back east toward our house, I saw the sunlight flash through the branches of a red maple. The wind blew the tiny leaves on the tree branches, and the light made the tree seem to be aflame. I stopped to look at it for a moment, and savor its beauty.

I love spring.

 

May 17th, 2018

The Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin, posted this letter from me today. It’s a rant, but it comes from the heart.

Dear Editor: The administration of President Trump has been relentlessly antagonistic to immigrants. All immigrants. Trump and his xenophobic supporters have steadily made it more difficult for refugees and others to enter the United States. They have worked tirelessly to deport undocumented persons, regardless of the damage done to their families and their communities. Now, Trump and his nativist followers are trying to get rid of people who are here legally with temporary protected status. So, what is the next step? Will the Department of Homeland Security start deporting green card holders? Does all this end when the Trump regime decides to exile undesirable U.S. citizens?

Francis Pauc