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A Story For Today: 2 Degrees and Counting…

Pretty White Gloves

He sits on a folded-over cardboard box, slightly off-balance and without any visible sign of support other than the granite wall of the bank behind him and the few coins in the paper cup he shakes at each passerby.       major

Does he realize it is 4 degrees above zero, or minus 25 degrees if you factor in the wind that blows through the city and his bones with little concern for statistics? Does he notice the thick cumulous lifeforms that escape from his mouth in shapes that shift and evanesce like the opportunities that once populated his life?

Can he even distinguish the usual numbing effect of the cheap alcohol from the cruel and indifferent carress of this biting alien chill?

Too many questions, he would tell you, if he cared to say anything. But his tongue sits in silence behind crusted chapped lips and chattering teeth while half-shut eyes follow pedestrians fleeing from the bitter cold and his outstretched cup.

His gaze falls upon the hand holding the cup as if it were some foreign element in his personal inventory. Surprised at first to find it uncovered and exposed, especially in weather this frigid, he now recalls that someone at the shelter had stolen his gloves and left in their place the only option he still has in much abundance.

Acquiescence.

Examining the hand, and the exposed fingers encircling the Seven-Eleven coffee cup, he smiles in amused perplexity, murmuring to himself, “White gloves.”

Lifting his hand for closer inspection, he adds, “Pretty white gloves.”

An image of his daughter . . . Elissa, he thinks her name was . Yes, Elissa!, he recalls. An image of Elissa rises up in his mind, from a photograph taken when she was ten and beautifully adorned in a new Easter outfit: black shoes, frilly lavender dress and hat and, yes, pretty white gloves. The photo once sat on a table in his living room, but he couldn’t tell you what happened to it, nor to the table or the living room, for that matter. They were just gone. Swept away in the same tide that pulled out all the moorings from his life, and everything else that had been tethered to them.

The last time he’d seen Elissa she was crying, though he no longer remembers why. Must have been something he’d done or said; that much he knows.

“Pretty white gloves,” he repeats, staring at his hand.

He recalls the white gloves from his Marine dress uniform. At most he wore them five times: at his graduation from officer’s training school, at an armed services ball in Trenton, New Jersey, and for three military funerals. There was never a need for dress gloves in Viet Nam. They would have never stayed white anyway; not with all the blood that stained his hands.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see a policeman walking towards him and instinctively hides his cup, some vestige of half-remembered pride causing him to avert his gaze from the man’s eyes at the same time.

“We need to get you inside, buddy,” the officer says. “You’ll die of cold, you stay out here.”

Moments later, a second police officer, this one a woman, steps up to join them.

“That’s the Major,” she tells her colleague. To the seated figure she offers a smile.

“You coming with us, Major?”

“Go away,” he answers, looking up as he leans further against the cold granite wall. “Don’t need you. Don’t need no one.”

“Can’t leave you out here,” the first officer says. “We’ve got orders to bring you and everyone else in.”

“Leave me alone!” the seated man shouts, gesturing with his hands as if he could push them both away.

“Oh shit,” the female officer says under her billowing breath. To her partner she whispers, “His hands. Look at his hands.”

Quickly recognizing the waxy whiteness for what it is, the officer shrugs, “Guess we’re a little late.”

To the man on the sidewalk, he offers, “That’s frost bite, buddy.”

“No,” the seated man protests. He holds up both hands, numb and strange as they now feel and offers a knowing smile of explanation.

Just like the marine officer he once was, just like the sweet innocent daughter he once knew, just llike the young man grown suddenly old on a frozen sidewalk, his hands are beautiful and special in a way these strangers will never understand.

“White gloves,”he insists proudly.

“Pretty white gloves.”

This story comes to mind on days like today when the temperature drops precipitously and an unknown number of the homeless are put through nature’s own meat grinder. On days like today we need to find some way to help those far less fortunate than ourselves. As they say, there but for fortune…     

 

 

 

On This Island In Space

I believe we have much to be hopeful about as we celebrate Earth Day, 2020, though on the surface of things it may appear otherwise.earth

I believe more and more of us are learning to look beyond the surface of things, however, and what we see is more meaningful to the life of our global community than today’s news, tonight’s sports scores or tomorrow’s weather.

I believe we have been brought here—to this lifetime, this moment in time, this island in space—to accomplish something. Each of us on our own separate mission that somehow relates, through the unfathomable meshing of the Universe’s gears, to the greater purposes of life.

I believe we are singers in a chorus whose combined song has the power to lift darkness from the face of the land, if we would only awaken to the true song within each of us.

I believe we are all journeying on the same road, leading up the same mountain, to the same summit. The only difference is some of us have been traveling longer and have learned to avoid obstacles that delay and ensnare travelers with less experience.

I believe suffering and pain have purpose in our lives, often forcing us to grow into stronger, better human beings and to explore horizons that would never have called to us otherwise. I have seen parents who have lost children find meaning in their lives by dedicating themselves to protecting and enriching the lives of other people’s children. I have seen victims use their victimhood to alert and save others from the same tragedies. Such is the serendipitous alchemy of disaster and despair.

I believe the greatest obstacles to happiness are those inner demons that keep us isolated from each other, whether they be hunger or avarice, fear of our neighbors, envy or rank malice. Once we allow ourselves to separate from the rest of mankind, we act like creatures deafened by the volume of our own petty desires. No longer able to hear the cries of others. No longer affected by the tides of calamity or misery that uproot those around us.

I believe we live in a world where noise and movement too easily overwhelm thoughtfulness and purpose. From the earliest age we are taught to fill the spaces in our lives with sound, activity or moving images, as if a quiet home or a quiet mind were unwelcome oddities. As we progress on our life’s journey, I believe we will learn to welcome these spaces rather than fill them, to drink from them rather than run from them, to make room for them in our lives as we would any healing or sustaining nourishment.

I believe we are learning to overcome superficial differences between ourselves and others, no longer allowing diversity to automatically breed fear and distrust. I can’t say if we’ve become more tolerant because the global media web has shrunken our planet, or because fear, lies and ignorance inevitably shrivel under the constant glare of media attention. Whatever the reason, the veils and superstitions that have fueled intolerance across millennia, sending countless soldiers off to countless wars, are now being lifted. The arc of the universe, I believe, is bending towards justice and brotherhood as more and more travelers make their way up the mountain.

I believe we have been brought here—to this lifetime, this moment in time, this island in space—to accomplish something. Each of us on our own separate mission that somehow relates, through the unfathomable meshing of the Universe’s gears, to the greater purposes of life.

I believe one of the reasons I am here—in this lifetime, on this island in space—is to open my heart and reveal what I find through my writing.

And I believe this was written for you.

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I came across this essay written over ten years ago and felt its message was not only timeless but also impeccably timed for today in light of the singular combination of suffering, dislocation and privation brought about by the global pandemic. Not to mention our own government’s stagnation and loss of direction. It’s message of hope is no less strident or believable in light of these events, but perhaps more urgently needed. And so, dear friends, I am sharing it, once again, with you.

Glimpses of the Heart

Somewhere long ago, he hid his heart on the moon.

And afterwards, through the years, he watched it come and go in phases. Sometimes full, more often waxing or waning. But always more distant than he could understand.moon

Those who weren’t close to him—acquaintances, colleagues, even friends—could never see the true image of his emotions. To them he offered the idea instead of the reality, like a photo cleverly hung to mask the moon’s disappearance. To them the lunar sky always seemed full even if clouds sometimes passed overhead to filter the light.

But for those he loved, for whom pretense was too heavy a cloak to wear, he let the waxing and the waning of his feelings serve as a true source of illumination. They could never understand—as he couldn’t himself— this painful rising and falling of light and love, why sometimes the moon was full and other times it was only a sliver in the night sky.

If he had the wisdom to see through space he’d know that he’d hidden his heart on the moon as a legacy to his father. And that within the crater where his strongbox was hidden lay another heart that had once significantly lightened and darkened his world. He’d know he’d been taught the mechanics of love as though an automatic switch regularly turned love on and off to keep it from overheating. He’d know that the heart learns its lessons from pain, passing them intact from one generation to the next. And that one day if the cycle isn’t broken the moon will grow dark and heavy, over-populated with hidden hearts.

Somewhere long ago he hid his heart on the moon. Near where his father and his father’s father had once hidden theirs.

And one day if he doesn’t make the journey to retrieve his hidden self, his children will go off to hide their own treasures where darkness falls in a consistent ritual.

On a cold barren planet.

A million miles away.

Political Terrorism One-On-One

What’s the difference between Al Quaeda and the Republican Party? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Only one of them so far has been able to bring American government to its knees, undermine global confidence in American leadership, tear up the fabric of America’s legislative values and imperatives, and create uncertainty and chaos in the world’s financial markets.defund

Only one of them works everyday to corrode the underpinnings of American democracy from within and destroy our democratic system. Only one of them actively works state by state to disenfranchise the poor, turn away minority populations from the polls, as well as students, the elderly and anyone else who might vote Democratic but would never in their lives commit fraud to cast those votes.

Yes, and only one of them works everyday to turn America’s social contract into worthless pieces of historic paper. Only one of them seeks to impoverish the elderly by reducing their monthly Social Security checks, forcing them to pay more for their health care, and to turn away 30 million uninsured Americans from the health care they’ve needed, and waited for, all their lives. Only one of them works everyday to ignore global warming, to deny evolution, to fight for the right of hunters and mass killers to shoot off 150 rounds per second, and to ensure their wealthy supporters can suck out every ounce of oil and gas from American real estate even if it means destroying our drinking water and agricultural heartland.

Yes, and while the Republicans are racking up score after score in the political terrorist competition, Al Quaeda has to content itself with merely having hijacked commercial airplanes and flying them into the World Trade Center and The Pentagon.

Perhaps if the towers had been filled with the elderly, the poor and Democratic Party supporters, the Republicans might have hijacked an airplane or two themselves before deciding on their far more effective strategy of shutting down the government.

Of course, had President Obama also been in the towers…

 

 

 

 

 

Obamacare Starts, World Ends

Washington, D.C. Well, guess who got the last laugh, after all! Those Zany Republicans were on to something with all their doom and gloom over the advent of Obamacare. They told us the world as we knew it, and everyone in it, would be destroyed, obliterated in one fell swoop by Father Death and his minions.disaster

And we, foolish mortals that we were, laughed at the Republicans. Laughed at how childish they sounded, as if this were just the next round of “death panels”. So we called them out for what we erroneously thought they were: liars, self-aggrandizers, posturing pols of the worst sort, government shut-downers, the whole lot of them seeming like cockroaches caught in a midnight panic when someone turns on the kitchen light.

“Obamacare is Coming!” they shout as they scatter. “Obamacare is Coming!”

But now we know they weren’t kidding us. Now that the world has actually fallen apart with the beginning of this first day of Obamacare. Understandably, this is what happens when 30 million impoverished Americans get health care insurance for the first time. The world comes to an end.

I feel the need to apologize to those apostles of doom.

“I’m sorry, Republicans!” I plead in my heart, not certain they could hear me if I shouted it from housetops. “Can you forgive me for not believing in you? And for thinking you were acting like the weak-spined, unsavory, unprincipled piggish pawns of the 1% you seemed to be. C’mon, how many teachers or lunch bucket voters could give a good God Damn about running an oil pipeline across our corn belt? Or feel the need to shut down Head Start? Naturally I mistook you for troublemakers and political terrorists of the worst sort. So hungry to prevent Obamacare from starting up and perhaps, worst of all, succeeding, you would actually shut down the very government we all rely on, the same government you were sent to help run.

But I didn’t realize what was at stake.

Now I understand what you Republicans tried to say to us, as I look around at all the destruction and chaos. No buildings above 15 feet in height left standing, the roads totally logjammed with burnt out cars, trucks and buses. The streets eerily empty of human life.

You knew and we wouldn’t believe.

Shame on us.

Shame on us for thinking so badly of you. Shame on us for thinking you hated poor people, women, gays, students, the elderly and minorities. Forgive us for thinking you were the mindless pawns of the billionaires’ plutocracy.

We’ll know better the next time.