On Turning 50

On the occasion of my 50^th birthday I am inclined to reflect.  I want to look backwards for lessons on how to proceed.  I want to look inwards to take stock and ensure I am listening to my best self.  I want to look forward to envision the outcomes I need.

 

It is easy to say it is just a number but the point is people age differently.  Some battle ailments and maladies.  Others enjoy pristine health.  Some age gracefully, adapting easily as they go while always projecting cool satisfaction to the world.  Others bite and hiss and moan and scowl their days away.  In a gray world nobody does it perfectly and nobody fully fails. 

 

As for me my values can be understood best by viewing them through the lens of how I can explain them to my children.  For the sake of balance I will alternate between the good and the bad.

 

I have many regrets and I have come to terms with all of them, (excepting perhaps this one on which I continue to process.)  My children live in an apartment.  They live in an apartment, (two, really,) because I am something of an economic or financial failure.  It is not that I have failed to earn an income or even failed to earn a viable income.  It is that I have lived a life to this point of indulgence. 

 

Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I recall considering the idea of saving money and living a life of frugality, temperance, chastity, prudence and austerity.  I had friends embarking on such a lifestyle but for me it seemed so hollow.  In some ways I had a difficult childhood and so the idea of enjoying and getting something in my adult life in the form of experience and understanding was attractive to me.  For me Henry Miller’s quote rang true: “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” 

 

In order to be aware I needed to experience.  In order to experience, I needed to indulge.  So, indulge I did.  Thus far in life I have had things my way for the most part.  I became financially stable around 30-years-old.  (My 20s were good but filled with periods of intense character development.)  My way has been marked by low levels of self-discipline and high levels of instant gratitude.  It is embarrassing and yet, I have walked my walk in large part as a product of my environment.  And now you know my deepest, darkest secret.  (If it is true a man is only as sick as his secrets, well I suppose I just took a step toward better health.)  That I live in an apartment in a great location is not in any way bad for me.  That my two children live in an apartment without a backyard to play in, without the love of a dog for a pet, without a parent who is comfortable allowing them to invite their friends and their friends parents over for virtually any occasion, is a deep and enduring regret for me.  I haven’t given up but this is not the sort of thing one recovers from or resolves overnight.

 

The positive side of my self-indulgent ways is manifested by my world-view, which is informed by my experience, (which is manifold.)  People have lived much richer lives and relatively poor lives as well.  There is value in my experience that transcends me and reaches my children in large part.  I suffered physical, mental and emotional abuse as a child.  These gave me perspective, understanding and empathy.  I was raised by a variety of relatives.  The variety had positive and negative effects.  I spent my teens in Americana, in the back yard swimming and barbecuing with my brother, and an Aunt and Uncle as Mother and Father figures and a cousin as a sister.  We were actively involved in a fundamentalist, (colorfully Pentecostal,) church scene, which also had its plus signs and its minuses.  I attended several higher learning institutions, always getting more from them than what I gave them, eventually studying Journalism.  I spent four years in the USAF.  I lived in Japan for two years and thankfully, I ventured forth from the American base freely and often.  I learned a great deal from that culture and those people and from being abroad.  I was a fire fighter for six to seven years, (including those four years in the Air Force.)  I worked in a bookstore for three years where a budding love of the written word was able to flourish into a full-blown affinity for knowledge and understanding.  I built houses as a Contractor’s apprentice for two years.  I became a CSR and embraced that work as my career, if as a default when other endeavors did not work out.  (I dropped out of all of those colleges, after all.)  I climbed slowly in the work place from CSR, to Lead CSR, to Trainer, to Supervisor, then off to a start-up company trying to teach English language to adult Spanish speakers using children’s Leap Pad technology, then to the unemployment line for seven months, then to a $5 million per year termite and pest control company managing the administrative part and helping manage virtually all of the rest of it, then back to the unemployment line for nine months, then back to Call Center Supervisor for a large corporation, then to Trainer again.  I got married once.  I had two children.  I divorced after less than six years of marriage, and around 12 years of relationship.  I drank. I smoked.  I did drugs.  I caroused and philandered.  All of these with some caution.  I visited South America.  I embraced the internet from Day One.  I am gregarious and enjoy meeting with and talking to and learning about people.  I am open to hearing about my faults and I like to try to improve in those areas.  I developed a tremendous affinity for sports as a child.   I was addicted to reading every last word of the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated as well as the sports section of the LA Times and any other rag I could get my eyes on.  I was a teenaged encyclopedia of sports knowledge.  I played every sport, too.  I loved basketball like I loved breathing.  It was necessary for me. It was my therapy when I was afraid to go home at nine-years-old, and the game that allowed me to assimilate at schools.  I played baseball, too, varsity as a Junior.  In most organized sports I was a B+.  I did not want to be the best because I wanted access to everyone.  I did not want to put anyone off.  I needed to be above average though for the respect of the most as well.  I had other hobbies and endeavors as well.  My life was and is full.  I am pleased in retrospect at my level of engagement.

 

All of this experience informs me and by proxy informs my children.  I am hopeful the obvious drawbacks of my self-indulgence are offset in some part by the perspective gained.  I am highly confident in my world view.  When my children pose questions I typically feel eminently qualified to answer them.  (I have been stumped once or twice but it’s been rare.)  I am trying very hard to be a good Dad.  I am not entirely pleased with my performance in that role thus far but I am aware of the areas I fall short in and I am trying to improve. 

 

At 50 I do not feel irresponsible with this life.  I feel like I have taken it seriously, accomplished some and learned much.  I could die now without the regret of feeling as if I had squandered my time, in spite of the fact I have much I still want to do.  I do not want to die now however.  I want to live.  I want to learn more.  I want to share with my children and others.  I want to use what I have learned to help others.  (It is why I write.)  I want to see how things turn out for me and for others.  I want some time to make some things happen.  I am nothing if not deliberate and so, I need time.  I want and crave time.  I am hopeful I have some more ahead of me.

 

I find at 50 I understand older people better.  I have expressed a general dissatisfaction with the elderly for many years and nothing has really changed about that.  I find older people, certainly older Americans, to be selfish and greedy, (among other things.)  The idea of AARP has annoyed me for years though I admit it is no different than Scientology or the Masons or Objectivists or the Knights of Columbus.  I just have less tolerance for those who have been living longer but have not learned, (or learned to practice,) life’s most basic and fundamental truths.   

 

As I arrive in later years I am fully aware that 50 aint shit.  The other day my eight-year-old son asked me the meaning of life.  It’s a joke we play.  We ask Siri this question on my iPhone from time to time and she seems to have a few colorful, fun answers programmed in.  So Mark asked me straight out, as if emphasizing the is, in the question, like, “Dad, what IS the meaning of life?” 

 

I thought about it for a few minutes then I answered.  Some say life is absurd.  It has no meaning, no rhyme, no reason.  I disagree.  I say we live for the future.  I say we long not for immortality but innate goodness, which can only come from putting ourselves second to our species.  The meaning of life is to learn through the course of it as soon as possible and then to act on this maxim: that which benefits humanity in the greatest possible way, represents that which is the best action.  Action resulting in good consequences for our children and the future of our kind is the best.  It is what we should aspire to.  My answer to my son was not quite so succinct but if pressed to delve further I would add…

 

• Lighting the dimmest recesses of ignorance is noble, right action for our species.  Spreading insight is innate goodness.
• Acting on behalf of the less privileged or underserved is goodness.
• Protecting the powerless from being taken advantage of should be viewed as a responsibility.
• Providing for the best possible environment, to include finding ways of improving it beyond what we can imagine, is righteous. 
• Having the future of humanity as the basis for our heaviest decisions is important.  (At the very least; Research>Treatment.)

 

But what of 50?  What should it mean to me?  What should it mean to the world? 

 

In many ways I feel like I matured until I was 45, then I began to age.  What I know for certain is that the ageing is undeniable.  Lately these moments of ageing sneak up on me.  I was getting a haircut a few days ago and I peered at myself in the mirror and the apron was tied around my neck tightly and I looked closely and noticed my neck sagging this way and that as I swiveled my head.  The changing elasticity of my skin was also evident.  Today it was my hands.  I looked at my hand, clenched and unclenched my fist, and saw there the lines I had at my knuckles all of my life, now have lines framing them.  The lines have multiplied from three per knuckle to seven, or eight.  The elasticity of my skin on the top of my hand, again, has changed.  It’s shiny and prone to wrinkle like old cellophane.  When taut it looks much as it always has but as soon as it is in any way touched, moved or compromised, the years show themselves to the knowing eye, like animal tracks in sticks and moist earth. 

 

I have also gained some weight.  No excuses.  It is reality.  I also know about myself that I have judged myself too harshly.  When I was a young man I thought it a sin to be out of shape.  That thought was easy because I did not seem to possess the capacity to put on fat in any sense of the word.  Still, I was active even amidst the drinking.  Hangovers were cured by running three or four games of full court at the park.  Now as I realize the decline of my physical self, in an age of glorified youth, I contemplate the real work involved in maintaining tip-top physical fitness, and I think how could I?  Why would I?  This stage of life feels like a time of refinement.  I have learned how to live and in some proportion, I get to apply mine understanding. 

 

In my 20s and 30 when I was angry about all the things one should be angry about in this disappointing world, I raged against machines of government, the selfish mores of capitalism, and declining cultural norms.  My dissatisfaction nourished me.  It drove my everyday life like a righteous computer monorail.  I drew ideas from a trough of fundamental notions, most of which I retain. 

 

In my 40s I helped create two lives and I worked on learning how to nurture and care for.  What I learned from growing into the role of Father helped me to prioritize virtually everything.  Perspective gained. 

 

Here come the 50s.  I'm down.  I plan on being a great Father.  Better than I am today.  Better than I think I am capable of.  I want to read more, and talk less.  I want to enjoy great films and eschew advertisement.  I want to appreciate and I want to discern.  I want to talk to my people.  I want to talk to them about ideas and art and the trials of our days.  I want to carry out the mantra of my bloodstream, which proclaims, "Be Positive!" every time its type comes up.  I want to influence and I want to refine.  I mean to provide value.  As for physical fitness I want to be as fit as I possibly can without sacrificing my earnest love for laying around watching tv now and then or other indulgent acts.  I'd rather work at living than at living longer, (though as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "longevity has its place.")

 

I am just out of a relationship.  I learned so much.  I no longer aspire to a relationship.  I once did but now I feel it as secondary or, yet another consideration.  I like being alone, which propels me to savor being around people all the more.  Life at 50 feels more full, not fuller than other's, but fuller for me. 

 

I grok why I was unmoved to cry when I was a child.  I did not know the melancholy of life, the self awareness of homosapien.  At 50 I can cry.  I feel life, the massive weight of it and the lightness of being.  I can connect with just about any idea and I do-I choose to engage.  I feel like an orchid, a fragile twig bending into the sky on the strength of hope and curiosity, sprouting a beautiful something at my greatest reach as an offering to this life, the whole of humanity and no one. 

 

Samsara

Samsara is the repeating cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.
The film; Samsara, by contrast is about numbers, the macro, and all that is vast and expansive. It is a million still pictures woven together in many cases creating motion. It is so many images of the normal culled to highlight and create data for the Encyclopedia Humanica. It is clever and banal. It is prophecy and historical text. It is every moment at once and an exploration of the unique. It reduces human experience and free will to the level of mitosis and champions beauty like Picasso.

The movie is bi. It is visual and aural. It is black and white. It is truth and beauty. It is, (to borrow from Gibran,) opposite sides of the same stone. 
Samsara admonishes the viewer on the diversity of the human experience. We are not unique snowflakes after all.  Still, the uplifting nature of this hour and 42 minutes cannot be denied.  It is gripping and haunting and it feels like it could lead to the release from the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth that is this mortal coil. 

The Snake lives

John Madden said of the legendary Kenny Stabler, (If I had one game to win in the ‘70s, I would have chosen Stabler to be my Quarterback.  In the ‘80s, I would have chosen Stabler.  In the ‘90s, Stabler.  In the ‘00s, it’s the same.  If a game was big, Ken Stabler was big.  If a game was tough, Ken Stabler was tough.  If a game was hot, Ken Stabler was as cool as it gets.)  He went on to say it is a travesty The Snake is not already in the HOF.  I agree with Madden.  When I think of the great QB’s and I think of all aspects of the game, I think Brady is in his class.  I think Steve Young is right there.  For me these three are above the rest.  (Yes, Montana was clutch in some huge games.  Yes, Peyton Manning has thrown for a bazillion yards, as has Marino and Favre.  Yes, Bradshaw was great and gritty and with Montana is right on that next tier.)  Ken Stabler ushered in this new game.  He threw more than other QB’s of his day and for a higher percentage.  He played DBs with his eyes.  And when the game was on the line, he could fumble a ball forward, he could loft a jump ball into the sky so it would land amidst four defenders and his Receiver but giving his Receiver the best access to the ball as it returned to Earth, or he could look right and throw left and win games.  Madden was right.  He did not have the longevity of some and the joke is he studied the playbook by the light of the jukebox but in my lifetime he is the best I have ever seen. 

His death has also affected me more than any other athlete heretofore.  The reason for this is partly because it feels like such injustice that he was not elected to the Hall of Fame in the normal manner, (going in next year by Senior Committee, instead.)  That my friends and contemporaries will view this ode as somehow skewed when I know with certainty of Stabler’s greatness, bothers me.  That he is not already in the HOF, that he was not a first ballot entry, is sheer groupthink.  It was also suddenly shocking as he was relatively young.  (70 is too young.)  I was thinking of which other athletes’ deaths will affect me like Stabler’s and it occurs to me, I will likely feel something deep when Kareem Abdul Jabbar dies.  Same for Ron Cey.  Gretzky, if he beats me to it, will make me sad.  Maybe Don Baylor, or Burt Hooten, or Fred Biletnikoff or Dave Casper or Ted Hendricks?  Certainly when Vin Scully dies I will weep.  I will weep for my own mortality and for nostalgia.  I will weep remembering the voice of my childhood, but really just remembering my youthful self.  Scully has had a great life though and so I will certainly not weep for him.  No, with Stabler it is something else.  It is that he did not get his due.  It is that he represents the self-effacing nature of what it means to be classy.  He may have loved to hang out into the wee hours at the bar, and yes he liked the ladies and even married a Miss Alabama Universe, but he always took care of his business, which was football. 

It was a joy to hear John Madden speak of Stabler in such glowing terms, (and yeah, I am remiss in leaving Madden himself off the previous list.)  I know he knew, (and how could he not-he was right next to him making it happen.)  That others may not conclude that Stabler was the best ever is of no bother to me.  I just wanted to say it in any case because it is my truth for certain.  RIP Kenneth Michael Stabler, the coolest Quarterback ever.

https://youtu.be/dn4dsNAHRgs

Age

I just concluded an affair with a girl 20 years younger than me. I am left with much to unpack. Why did it end? Was the end inevitable? Is there something wrong, morally, spiritually, logistically, reasonably or inevitably with such a large age gap.

When we discussed our relationship and the possibilities and probabilities, we recognized the long odds. For her part my now friend seemed on the run from guys her age. She talked to me early on about pothead ex-boyfriends and dickheads who treated her poorly. No doubt it took two to tango but the behaviors she talked about, the unwillingness to commit based on some unfounded but inflated sense of self-worth, (you know how every guy in his 20s expects to one day rule his world regardless of any planning or evidence to substantiate such an idea,) sounded familiar but only in as much as when I started down those paths at that age I was circumspect enough to recognize my folly and turn. 

She also seemed interested in the different. If I represented some sort of insight, some level of experience, some other perspective, I think she was drawn to that. I think she felt somewhat isolated or raw or sheltered, and so getting to know me represented a chance to expand. She was attracted to my smart-ass mouth initially. (Long story...) She liked my perspective and also that I did not fumble all forward as so many of her contemporaries but rather moved surely in my own direction while letting her know there was some space next to me.

For my part I was simply attracted to this girl. She was, (is,) five feet and nine inches of big, strong supermodel. When I looked at her my immediate sensation was to want to make babies with her. (This in spite of my otherwise void of interest in making more children and in fact, my reluctance to do so.) Said babies, however, would have been the strongest and most advantaged of creatures.

She had this quality though, of kind of towering over everything. It was regal really. I think when she was younger it must have been awkward for her to be so powerful but that is what comes with this perch. Height is natural power-power incarnate. Power manifested. At her current age however, she seems just arriving at a place of comfort with her physicality and who she is. I mean, she owns some social anxiety still, but in being tall and naturally superior to others, I think she recently may have embraced it. 

More about this girl, she had a face like an angel. Not your garden variety Italian fresco cherub. Hers is a complicated beauty. It starts with softly aqueous eyes accented by flat saucers below each of them and an aesthetically perfect, undersized nose. Her nose punctuates her features. In being so efficiently dainty it sets the tone for the pleasing but inferior features around it, (Her eyes notwithstanding-they too exist on a higher plane.) Her physical charm emanates outward from there. She has a cute hairline like something Michaelangelo would have imagined. She has perfect skin and a strong jaw. She is not perfect by the way, not at all. Well, except that she is perfectly flawed. She is not particularly fit. She is slim enough but a bit soft, like a girl, like a woman, really. She has nice hips and oozes sex appeal in a nonchalant way. Here's the thing I'm trying to convey: this baby is hot. Hot like something special. Hot like Scarlet Johansson in Match Point. Remember how she tells Jonathan Rhys Myers guys tell her they think being with her would be special? This girl gave off that same thing. Honestly, what little time I spent with her was special. 

When I met her I did not think of her as a possible lover or romantic partner.  She was younger. She was a stone cold fox. I was introduced and I made nice but thoughts of being close to this kind of physical beauty are too expensive for me. (Yes, something changed about that but it's an entirely different essay.) Still, the time came when I did consider it and I wanted her for just that. I was not disappointed either. Being close to her was special. At first it was awkward, then it was compulsory, then it opened into this sweet, tender thing. We finally played with each other and at those times the years which stood between us melted away like facades of an ignorant species. We became contemporaries, engaged in the niceness of humanity and interpersonal relationships. We loved easily. She was generous in that she sought her own pleasure actively and tried to open up to me, which was not easy for her. For my part I basked in her smell and holding onto her and being so profoundly close. The sounds she made, including her voice, entranced me. Certainly in those moments, in this season, I loved her.

At first I don't think she recognized my age. She knew I was older but she may have thought I was as little as 10 or 11 years older than her, which compared to 20 years is wholly manageable. When she discovered my age I think she recoiled and immediately knew we were not meant to be involved, (rightly or wrongly.) Still, she flirted with the idea. We flirted, and in time we got some time together.

Our little dates were good. I had only the slightest hint of an awkward moment, maybe once or twice. I can't say what it was like for her-I expect it was similar. For me going for fro-yo was odd. Children, teenagers and young couples occupied that space and I felt like an intruder, but we settled outside to enjoy our treat and it was fine. (Maybe at the same time she had a moment when the teen girl selling us frozen yogurt looked at her enquiringly, "Is that your Dad?" I don't know. It could  have happened.)

There is a little more, too, about this girl. I am not interested in mean girls. Women. Ladies. I choose only to be close to or involved with those who have good karma, who send positivity out into the vibratory world and as a result live in the positivity that returns to them by universal flow. She embodies this. She does so shyly, too. The culture around her glorifies behaviors counter to this way and so she has had to examine from whence her own goodness comes and decide if she should be the girl who makes her friends laugh and embodies the mantras of so many hip hop, pop rock, songs. I saw her choose wisely. I saw her wanting more than that.

So, the question is: do people of such age disparity make sense? Can they or should they work in a relationship? Is some age difference okay while a certain amount of difference is too much?

I have long thought an older man and a younger woman made sense. Men tend toward the immature, (generally speaking of course.) Men can be exceedingly superficial in as much as we are attuned to our sense of sight and thereby beauty perhaps more than women. Hence, we appear to be shallow. By contrast women grow up faster in terms of positing the proclivities of adolescence and they are attuned to the tactile, (which is almost a metaphor if it weren't so literal.)

For this reason an older woman and a younger man has always seemed odd to me like an aberration of nature. My thought has always been that women match up well with a man older by enough to be serious about life, and by that I mean, responsible, perhaps career oriented, one who spends his time wisely and ideally even gives back in ways. 

Men may like similar qualities but we tend to value physical beauty at a higher level. Our chemical makeup, (and by chemical makeup I mean testosterone in harmony with pheromones,) shuts down any number of considerations for us when we fall under the spell of whatever bright and shiny thing happens in front of us, (and by bright and shiny I mean stone cold and foxy.)

My thought had been that an age gap of 6-8 years might actually be ideal. And, maybe it is. Or maybe there is no ideal at all.

It can't be good to take romance out of the romantic. That said it certainly is good to use one's brain when dealing with affairs of the heart. In fact it is my fervent desire that when my daughter chooses a mate she does so primarily with her wisdom. I want her to have chemistry with her mate. I want her to be attracted to him and have a healthy even super active love life. But I don't think this precludes her from making a choice based on principles she values and a life she has planned.

My own mistake in my marriage was that I did not plan much at all. For that reason I wound up married to someone less than ideal for me. If I did it over again today my clarity about such a decision would be increased greatly. I could probably break my decision down to about 10 considerations of which, I might expect someone meeting 8 of 10 would represent an ideal match. (I mean this world is diverse, after all.)

• Good values. (As mentioned mean girls need not apply. Deal killer.) Positive. 
• Attractive to me. Interesting. Passionate about things I at least find interesting. (Passionate about nothing would be a deal killer.) 
• Family oriented. (This is not to say interested in having children. This is to say one who values her family and respects the value of bonding with a mate's family.) One who appreciates children and is nurturing at least in as much as she is positive in her world view and understands children are the future of our species. 
• One who strives to be better and values learning. 
• One who acts with integrity and maintains a big picture view of life and the world. Fun. 
• Engaged and engaging. 
• An active adventurer. 
• Someone for whom money is a necessity of the world we live in but not a means to an end. 
• One who strives to be happy but is balanced in her views and accepts the ugliness and struggles of our kind gracefully. 

Okay-so that's like 15. Sue me. 

Of those 15 a couple are deal breakers. That one thing at odds with me means no go. Of the rest, I could likely live with a couple out of place. It is not easy to come into contact with people who share our values on such a scale to say nothing of finding that chemical match. So, in employing my powers of reason to decide, I am able to make allowances. 

I say all this to make the point that this is where I think I was with this girl. I think she liked me a lot but I think the age is the deal killer, which is not unreasonable at first glance. However, as I have come to think about it more deeply, (and it is not impossible my judgment is clouded by my desire-I recognize that,) my opinion is transforming. I see so much synchronicity between her and me.  The age difference is just a number, after all. What is really at the root of that number differential? It can only be physical. Not that it matters but I can pass for someone younger than myself. If I were to tell someone I am five years younger than I really am I would not expect anyone, ever, to raise an eyebrow. Still, I have some gray hair mixed in with the brown. I have a receding hairline in the corners only, which my hairstyle probably minimizes to a degree. I have some wrinkles on my face. I have one in particular between my eyebrows which rises ever so slightly onto my forehead.  I have some other less pronounced ones that are only occasionally visible and I have increasingly bags under my eyes, though I think that is less about age than my lifestyle recently. I need sleep, but I digress. Overall, I'm substantially older than this girl and certainly less attractive to her than men her age.  My curiosity is this; if she has 10 or 15 categories for making such a decision, could this one be one of the ones endured? Asking myself the same question I can honestly say I don't know. Maybe, but an experience I had last year suggests not, even if it did last for 8-10 months and for a moment somewhere in the middle seemed a bit serious. Still, women are different from me, (I think.)

This girl has professed in the past to find me attractive or cute, even. I can't say if I believe her... No. I believe her. I suppose it becomes a question of degrees. My desire is like that of the beast, or that of Mustafa Sa'ed, that she find me not ghastly enough for it to be a deal killer and attractive enough in so many other ways as to compensate for my aged appearance. Is that reasonable? Possible? Wrong, in some way?

I don't think so because I know her and I know myself. I find us well suited for one another in a whole bunch of ways. Her weaknesses or those areas in which she lacks confidence are my strengths. My weaknesses seem complemented by her. I feel yang to my yin for her even as she has stressed to me in the past how much she values what she cutely refers to as, "the feels." This is her way of emphasizing feelings over reason. I struggle to do that but sense the value of balancing my own perspective. I am an analyst after all, in life. In as much as we are yin and yang on this particular subject I feel even as if it is my duty to her to wage this campaign of woo for her on this level, to make the case for us l'est she feel like that one thing is a deal killer. I know I am not her ideal physically, (even as I know I am not repulsive.) (Oddly, once upon a time I was compared occasionally to one of her expressed ideals: Johnny Depp. Still, I don't guess I've kept pace with him, but who has?) Still, I want her to challenge herself to see if she could be happy next to me, if she could love me. I feel like I could adore her on a level I have not heretofore known. Having said that I know she owes me nothing. She has already graced me.

Maybe a 29-year-old girl who hasn't met many mature guys in her age range, who values a man for all the right reasons stands to gain from a relationship with an older man. It almost seems like it is a status issue. Perhaps the older man values the status of the younger, pretty girl while the girl does not value that sort of status?  Or, might that have been my preferred ideal here? If so the advantage for the girl is maturity, is a man who loves her thoroughly with respect and appreciation, is about stability and maintaining interest in the short and long term. Maybe.

What may be most fascinating about my season with this exquisite creature is what she has revealed to me about myself. I write this on a trip far from home amidst a sublime group of strangers. These people are drawn to me and this sensation of others coming to me and lavishing me with odd praise and making their small measures of ardor known to me is something I have shied away from previously. In the past I would practically refuse to look at it for fear of jinxing it but only now am I sensing from whence it comes. They haven't met many if any other people like me. I am unique in ways I have not valued perhaps because it is just me. It's not that I'm so awesome or anything either. I'm just me. But I am me, always me, only me, and this real me is good. I like to talk about big ideas. I like to be honest. I can be critical or filled with accurate and honest praise. These new friends this week have suggested I am a sort of onion with so many folds to be peeled back. They saw me quiet and unassuming then when it was my turn they saw me engage them publicly and they were drawn in and impressed with the force of my reason and presentation skills. Next they saw me through the lens of nightlife, singing karaoke in a self-deprecating manner, having drinks, chatting easily with the girl from Boston and the one from East St. Louis and the one from Georgia and the one from Dallas. We talked about movies and music. I challenged their political views but in a way that validated their thought process but sought an avenue of divergence. There were other little things, even discovering my children speak Mandarin, on which my legend seemed to grow.

I am not suggesting I am special in so many ways but perhaps within the realm of my class I am just that. People in my socio-economic strata do not read from pure passion or for self-edification. They are drawn to what is easy. And when I say they I suppose I should say we. We typically take the road less difficult. We find ways to get by economically and we engage in all the follies of the masses, memorizing the lines of the dumbest films ever made, glorifying the most idiotic so-called artists, and so on. I defy that behavior for the most part and I think this is why people of my ilk are drawn to me. This is an especially strange topic for me and I am not sure I have flushed it out entirely but I know there is something to this.

For several years now my inner dialogue has been quite negative about my age and my appearance. It is not that I have a low self-opinion or exaggerate my flaws but rather that I spend more time focused in on the unfortunate changes of time than I do dwelling on the positive things. And there are positives. My financial situation has never been more stable. I am wiser and more knowledgeable than at any point ever in my life. Thusly, I feel in my prime. My natural tendency to treat others as equals in the least has changed recently and this has been a positive shift for me. I start these days assuming others will not necessarily be as insightful as myself. This makes sense to me. At my age, analyzing the factors, life experience, wisdom, sharpness in mental faculties and so in. I am in fact in my prime. This is my truth and it is important for me to own it regardless of the girl.

I'm getting old. Later this year I will be 50. Sometimes in some ways I think my perspective has to change. I will have to cease to be interested in the recently bloomed flowers and consider instead the fading ones. Undoubtedly they offer a different but certainly equal beauty. This has not become natural to me yet, however. 

In the end I want to give this girl what I have. I want her to have my insight and charisma. I want to give her self-confidence. I want to give her an example of what she should want if I am not what she wants. From her I just want to be close to her purity and simple beauty. I want to feel the sensation of her charms bestowed on me. I want to feel the love of someone so pure and lovely. 

The season of our dissolution lingered like a truce. It was over then it was not. Then it was over. (And then again, not.)

I wouldn't let go completely because I had this vision in my head of us. We were the baddest of badass couples. Unlike so many couples, so many relationships I had been in, so many she had been in I was sure, we were secure. We weren't in it for the approval of others. We were in it for selfish reasons. We appreciated what we gave each other. We needed that, in fact. There was a certain symbiosis between us born of individualism but bloomed in tandem.  We complemented one another and thrived for it, in my vision. And in receipt, we gave. And by giving, we received so much more. And we understood this. And we overcame so much trite minutiae from this simple understanding and proceeding. 

Moreover, in parting my vision changed. I came to imagine her life and I saw her settling into a comfortable space. I saw her getting together with someone entirely expected. I saw their life and in ways, (to me,) it looked simple, and boring, and easy. In that possibility her partner was of the same ethnicity, in her age range, a man of his age and culture in no way like me. They made a family. Her concerns were of a garden variety. Life as always would be fat with struggle and yet, easy. 

With me I saw it differently. I saw us thriving from challenge. I imagined myself working to keep up with her but loving the reward, which was her love and vigor bestowed. I saw myself open to change beyond the years of such behavior, healthier for it of course. I saw myself pleased at being close to this creature I admired for being herself, for living inside of her brain, for being the medium between knowledge and sensation, between facts and feelings. I imagined her conquering the notion of normalcy to embrace the different. I saw her challenged and rising to respond, the outside, the different, the older and more experienced thrusting her life into a dimension beyond the prediction or predilection of social science. By loving from the selfish choice of knowing the greater reward available by such a union, I imagined this girl and myself on a higher plane, reaping an unknown harvest of plenty from choosing challenge, choosing to love, choosing values of receiving from giving, and shunning convention in the name of pushing boundaries into the future, into a realm of life learned lived loved. 

I could see us too, on the daily, my age showing more dramatically with time, her taking on the aspects of woman. I remembered my own youthful immaturity when love was so connected to status and I saw myself in this permutation loving only this girl, the idea of her, her essence, the sum of her traits. I saw her stripped of her stunningly beautiful face and all physicality in or out of line with our cultural interpretation of beauty. Instead, she was simply who she was, her thoughts and values and actions. I saw those traits manifested as my closest friend.

My vision, however is not reality.  When it finally did end for real, the reasons were complex and legion.  

For me a season had come when I stopped feeling sheepish about my age.  I had to stop feeling like I did not belong, or like I was obligated somehow to be aware of my age and to make apologies for others who might be uncomfortable with it, with me.  I was shrinking away from being me, from just living my every moment like a I was a corporeal, thinking essence inside a human body with the body my vehicle for experiencing the world and this life.  I had to think bigger and I had to make a decision to do that.  

It had been as if I should somehow feel less than because of a line on my forehead, because of a few dead hair follicles, or because age had brought evidence to my face in the form of circles under my eyes.  

I chose to think differently.  

So it is I pursued the desires of my heart.

Amber.  (My favorite paragraph.)

I wanted Amber.  I wanted to be so close to her we would breathe the same air in unison and share sighs.  If I won the lottery and became super wealthy I would still want Amber.  It was precisely because she was a little like a monster with her emotional tirades by text or the way she played so strong against me, knowing she had me and working me like a magnetic object she could hold at a perfect distance in spite of my thrashing.

At the end of it all however she did not value me.  She did in moments, at times.  It was short of a foundation however.  When we made love she had real tenderness for me.  If I could freeze time I would.  She told me I was cute.  She kissed me affectionately.  We were in every way compatible and symbiotic in those moments and stretches of time.  

Ultimately however we kind of devolved from there.  In the end it became a known thing if not a joke that I heaped on the praise and compliments.  They were not in any way phony.  And I think she may have liked the attention and the near affection but perhaps in looking at me she knew all along it was a no-go.  She told me recently that one of the attractions for her was that the relationship was sort of taboo.  It is likely the taboo with the positive attention and whatever, some force of personality maybe, encouraged her to explore a bit.  In the end however she became angry.  She lashed out at me.  

I am a frank person, especially with my intimates.  I think it is of my charms.  And my favorite intimates are the ones I can be frank with the most.  Some of my best friends collar my speech to a great degree.  I still love them from nostalgia and because I know their essence so well and I remain attracted to that, to them.  Still, the ones who know I have strong opinions about the world around me and value that aspect of my character make me feel like they really care.  

In any case this girl seemed to get angry at me.  She talked about how when we were out for her birthday she had noticed I grew reticent.  She said it is normally her way to attend to people like that in her circles but she thought it curious that she did not minister to me.  (Lots of good that did me.)  There were a multitude of reasons the night had worn on me but the point is she did not in any way take care of me or enquire if I was good.  And I was okay.  Actually at the end I kind of bolted from the scene but it was no impact to her or her birthday. 

There were some violent jolts in our relationship. She was rude to me, disrespectful even. I chided her via text and she reasoned through the events with me, concluded she had been rude and explained her mindset, then apologized. This reasonability both impressed me and gave me a sense of trust about her. It is funny because she is an emotional creature. She feels something...in this case the need to push herself away from me. 

I think when she looked at my face she saw the age. She saw the little lines. She saw the gray in my goatee. She liked me quite a lot and found me to be compatible to her in every way except one. She felt like my appearance belied the idea of her having found love. My age represented her settling for something other than the ideal. She could have handled that privately. I would be a suitable match for her if life was private but life is not private. Aspects can be but not your partner. 

At this point the girl was unable to reconcile these things. My age was evidently greater than hers. By how much could be considered but it was clearly more. She could not go forward feeling as if she had settled for something less than by translating the comments of her friends or family and the knowing glances of others in public into a sort of derision. She would accept that narrative as criticism of herself only. As if her shortcomings were responsible for her being involved with a lesser creature; the older man. After all, she knew she had a face like an angel. She figured her chubbiness along perhaps with her peculiarities were responsible for her not getting the grade A prospect, a handsome man of her own age with everything going for him, and she imagined a super-motivated version of herself springing forth one day and transforming herself into a supermodel with a great career perhaps inventing a hybrid therapy for autistic children that involved singing various mantras and affirmations of healing and love. The good life was out there somewhere and she was a charmer. 

If the affair with me could be viable in some way it would have to be reconciled. The girl would have to reconcile herself with the idea that choosing to love someone cannot and should not be related to status-more that it should not be contingent on outside approval. She would have to reconcile the idea that love is about mutual respect, involves a close sort of spiritual bond between two minds coming together and choosing each other and choosing to revel and be happy in the bond. 

For my part I felt like I could not ask this of her. It is too much. And yet through my ardor for her I asked it of her constantly. I could not help myself. I romanticized her and I wooed her and it was in this, as she experienced this affection she would pull back and revolt against it. I sensed the duality within her. She loved it and craved it and detested it too. She longed for a man to say the things I said to her. She longed for the respect with which I treated her. She longed to be intellectually stimulated in the manner I addressed her. She longed to be as comfortably pleased in intercourse as she was with me. I was really good in so many ways but for my face and my graying hair. 

Her duality manifested in a number of ways. We could be out having a great time and the subject of an insecurity might arise. In response she might ask if I could grow my hair out again as it had been when I was younger. These were tell-tale signs. She might mention our age difference, which meant she was working on the reconciliation. She might remark positively about me, commenting on my relative youthfulness perhaps on something as inane as how my hands do not look super old. This was her working it out. I liked the idea of her working it out too because eventually I arrived at some conclusions.

First and foremost, like her, I needed to reconcile myself with my desires. I did not desire her for status nor was my desire in some way a character flaw. It sprang from my need to constantly be moving, changing, or challenging myself. I realized I could have chosen any number of less challenging paths. I might have chosen to settle in with someone at a young age. Surely I had those opportunities. We might have had a great life growing old together, growing close and coming to know this sort of existence in harmony with our surroundings. It would have been different. It may have been so rewarding. It was not for me however.

I might have chosen someone more compatible to a long and enduring union than my ex-wife. That did not come naturally to me in all likelihood because deep down I knew I did not intend the affiliation to be particularly lasting. I wanted change even if I had to sabotage it so it would confront me later and uncomfortably. I needed things to move, to force me into precarious situations.

Now I might pursue a girl my age. In fact, I have, but ultimately I concluded she was less than ideal for me on various levels. Initially, she represented complacency to me. It was settling in to existing as opposed to struggling to find the bits and pieces of survival and harmony I could muster daily and in all the blank spaces. If life is suffering one’s life choices should represent the most proficient way of dealing with that fact. 

Second, she was uninspiring in as much as she had lived a life parallel to my own. She had encountered much of the same stimuli as me. She had reacted in some similar and some dissimilar ways. She was a flower not unlike myself but different. It was really good to know her and to have some communion but in the end we realized we were not there to offer each other our best so much as to create ease and who needs ease?  Ease with morphine please, when I have hours left. 

I might have chosen or pursued someone in my ex-wife's age range. I would have that familiarity to help create something, build something, and she might be divorced or have children like myself. There would clearly be some consistencies to build on. Perhaps that outcome is still out there somewhere but as for me, as for now, I am past that.  I want more and by wanting more I don’t mean more accoutrement, or more material.  I mean more substance, more challenge, more growth, more learning, more communion, more understanding.  Truly the role of my life may be fatherhood and if I am a good father, if I am becoming a better father all the time, it is from my insight.  I have refused to specialize like an ant all these years to my seeming detriment but no, alas there is advantage to my choices.  I am not an engineer who lives in a box of expertise.  I am not constantly interested in my profession.  My career is a means of survival and a means to thrive to a degree but I keep it in its place. 

Amber was different, the next generation, a new frontier, and thereby a completely unique challenge to me. This love would be difficult, new, fresh, strange, embarrassing and wonderful. I was energized at the prospect as well as by Amber. 

She was also nearly on the spectrum as we had discussed. Whether it was Asperger’s or not was immaterial. These qualities of getting lost in deep thought in public, of casting her eyes off to a faraway clime, of second and third guessing, of contemplating the hell out of her naval, and arriving at a place where she must get the thought out no matter the size like a cat with a gigantic hairball in need of relief. 

When Amber brought up the idea of growing my hair out again or dwelled on pictures of me as a younger man, (even mentioning that she had shared them with a best friend, which may have seemed pathetic to that person but who knows.)  When she moved in a such a way I knew what it meant.  She strained to reconcile.  When she and I had our best moments there was always a recoil that followed like the thunder trailing the lightning or the shockwave following the blast.  The next morning I might discover she was suddenly intent on losing weight or she had explored graduate programs and preferred one far away. 

This was not Amber being mean to little old me.  This was a reaction based on her belief in all that I told her.  Her recognition of the truth.  When she loses her soft middle she will ascend to supermodel status in everybody’s else’s eyes then too, (and not just mine or the handful of her admirers.)  Instead of a band of misfits following her around, the fat, ugly or old, she will have handsome men her own age.  With those she will be able to step out into the spotlight of the world with confidence at having attracted the truly attractive.  Her problems will not change at all. She will have the same old problems only with more handsome people.  There may be a drawback for her too that is her relative unfamiliarity with this class of people.  I don’t expect her to navigate it especially well though she will learn and adapt as she goes.  She will however still be critical of herself.  She will still want for more. Her relationship with her mother and her bestie will still have its pratfalls.  She will still get dumped occasionally and the beautiful do not as a rule have better sex.  (Some may but the ugly class is carnal.  Know that.)  That her problems will not change is part again of why I think she and I could make sense, or could function. 

Amber can better herself in any number of ways and she can make the pictures from her life so much prettier by making the guy standing next to her increasingly handsome.  This is a real possibility.  On the other hand she can just choose happiness, too, based not on addition, on what she can add to her life or what a lover might add to his appearance to increase her aesthetic pleasure.  She could, if so inclined have what she wants based on subtraction, (as Kundera informed us.)  She can take away a person’s physical appearance, the lines on their face or even their girth.  She can subtract the tone of their voice or their talents, (or lack thereof.)  She can remove any number of attributes in an effort to drill down on who they are, defining them essentially by subtraction not addition, and she may find by stripping everything else away she is able to get down to a greater truth about a person and who she might become entwined with.  She can match herself up by values, (which is my preference in such endeavors.)  At the end of it all she can choose either means of drawing conclusions about people.  And if she sheds a few pounds or increases her education level she will attract people from a higher socio-economic strata.  There is nothing wrong with that at all. 

Still, I wish it might have been me.  She was divine.  (Is divine, even still.)  My experience is such that I have, somewhat late in the grand scope of things, figured out a few things about life.  I wish I would have understood these universal truths perhaps 10 or 12 years sooner but I see no need to bemoan my path nor my learning curve.  Rather, I am thankful to have arrived at this place.  If it was Amber it would be so easy because she is beautiful on the outside as well as the inside.  Still, when I love again it is going to be done right.  I have learned.  I will be low ego.  I will nurture the relationship.  I will place my partner on a pedestal of understanding and I will treat her with dignity and respect.  I am excited at this prospect and I feel like Amber has given my first, best glimpse of that me.  When I think of how I plan to be and mean to be I feel desirable. 

I have learned much from this affair.  I have been nourished by it.  I have felt some pain and I am good with all of it. 

 

mommy

let's start with a platitude.  everyone has a mother.  every creature...  mother's are more common than right arms.  still, not all mothers are present.


this is an ode to my mother.  my mother who was absent.  (she was present for perhaps  1/11th of my life up to the point when she passed.)  my mother missed my early years completely.  incarceration is a bitch for the littlest ones. 


not all mothers enter into it purposely. 


the is an ode to my mother, who at 14 likely landed pregnant by happenstance.  she had no life path carved out and probably did not plan much.  2nd generation americans in los angeles of irish, english, and german ancestry, who became pregnant at 14 tended to let life happen to them and so their socio-economic lot was cast and struggling with masses of humanity was more than statistically probable.  their children were also born into an outlook fat with struggle but so beautiful.  so, so beautiful.


i don't know if everyone else in the world sees the beauty i see.  it is true that adversity builds character and great art often springs forth from it like a delicate, radiant flower climbs out of a crack in the pavement.  (the list of prime examples is unending.)  my perspective is born of struggle and sadness. 


i grew up with four mother figures by the time i was five.  they were wonderfully tender women who gave me love and security.  this ode however, is for my biological mother; tresenia james. 


i don't  know if my mother embraced smack in jail not long after i was born, perhaps sometime after her father had her incarcerated for being incorrigible.  I don't know if at 15 or 16 when she went to jail it was not the most natural thing for a child with an underdeveloped brain to seek the solace of narcotic.  i imagine her at that age partly from how i remember her on heroin at a later age, falling, just floating-falling into a place of comfort, a place where fathers nurture and love, instead of giving up and worse. 


by the time of my earliest memories she was hard.  she had a tattoo on the top of her arm that read, "shorty."  that is who she was to me at first.  every time i saw her, in places like the visiting area at terminal island women's penitentiary off the coast of long beach, everyone called her shorty.  i can remember her even later on the outside, with my aunt, her sister, who was four years her younger, how she was always comfortable everywhere.  outside the liquor store with people lurking in the shadows I recall my aunt expressing apprehension but my mom was in charge of the situation and ventured forth confidently with her jaw set.  my aunt, who by contrast was weightless and playful, was comforted by my mom.  so was i.  my mom was kind of serious.


i guess at some point she saw the limitations of her own life.  i am sure she felt guilty about what she provided for me and what she provided for herself.  i doubt she blamed her father or her family or the world or our species.  i think she may not have reflected at such a level.  self actualization requires some insight and erudition to achieve.


her day to day was probably consumed by the typical thoughts of a teenager.  at times she probably suffered from believing she had somehow caused her circumstances and was worthless for reasons related to how her father treated her, how impotent her mother was relative to my grandpa, and how poorly she understood her environs.  i am sure under the influence of the dope she went places as serene and fantastic as any real destination.  i am sure she felt as soft and pliable and one with the universe as any yogi or ascetic ever.  i know in that haze she forgot.  she forgot her father.  she forgot her child.  she forgot los angeles.  she forgot the love of her mother.  she forgot concepts and values.  she forgot herself and lost in that maze of altered states she walked through moments a totally different person, an entity unfettered by any sense of responsibility or being, perhaps not devoid of love however.


i don't love my mother on what would have been her 63rd birthday because she could not take care of me.  i don't love her because she lived in prisons far and wide.  i don't love her because she gave birth to me, from any sense of obligation or cosmic, genetic connection.  i don't love her because when i showed up at the prison in lexington, kentucky or glendale, arizona or pleasanton, california, i was a rock star.  every incarcerated chola who came across shorty in the joint must have heard of this cherubic child of white and filipino descent, (of a known of. but never encountered father,) because when i walked in those visiting rooms the fucking red, velvet carpet met my feet as prison-made presents showered me with the welcome of my people, my mothers, the girls who were exactly like my mother if of a browner color.  they came to me with smiles and kisses, praising me for being even more profoundly beautiful than the pictures they had seen.  their gifts were knitted or folded or drawn.  they always returned to their visitors as if grudgingly for having to leave the prince to his royal agenda.  i did not love my mother for giving me three colorful years of her life in the apartments of los angeles, bell gardens, hollywood, downtown los angeles.  i did not love her for asking me to steal items from a grocery store or bringing an abusive man into our home, (or rather me, into their home.)  i did not love her for cockroaches or hitchhiking or methadone or a half husky half timber wolf named lobo.  i did not love her for sunset boulevard or a '67 impala.  i did not love her for marijuana at way too young an age but i did and do love her.


i love my mother because she loved me in a way that is now too incomprehensible to know fully.  she loved me in the way she looked at me and the way she spoke to me.  she loved me completely and substantively.  when she comforted me i could sleep.  when she smiled at me i saw nothing else.  i was only capable of giving her love back but my love was that of a child.  i was not disagreeable but still, i had a certain sense of entitlement. she was my entitlement.  silently i demanded some things from her, not all of which she could provide but i saw her strive for those things. 


it may seem unlikely but my mother taught me love.  she gave me all she could, all she had, all she was. 


when she died on a bathroom floor in an apartment in azusa with the mojo pin still stuck in her right arm, i was on the other side of the planet.  a long flight and a day later i met her in a hospital room in glendora. she was on life support and she was not there.  there was no life or love in her.  of her own accord she was motionless.  the rise and fall of her chest belied the stillness of her soft, sunken face.  she could not smile at me in that moment and i had been trained to deal with this.


i did not know what to expect as i flew over the pacific ocean by night sensing the vast expanse below me and within me.  i knew she was on life support but i thought my voice might rouse her and everything would be okay and i would stay by her side forever and help her to overcome this evil comfort she sought so incessantly for 20 years. 


i walked from that room back into the world i knew and accepted the outcome.  when i was asked to go back into the room the next day after the decision had been made i levitated to her bedside and touched her hand.  those who were in the room watched me closely.  i forced two or three salty tears from my eyes and indicated i was ready to go.  back in the waiting room i participated in hugs and tender reminisces of six or eight people, of whom only half of us knew her at all.  then i went with my friends to a mexican restaurant and got drunk on margaritas. 


throughout my childhood i was more or less incapable of crying.  i didn't know why.  i only knew i seemed to accept the facts of the world, not bemoan them.  i was less than for it, too.  later in life when i learned to cry, or came to cry, i came to understand how good it really was.  the love i felt doubled in on itself then multiplied again and again.  i began to feel the weight of the world.  i sensed the nature of sorrow and came to adore it like a lover, to nurture it like an extension of myself and to feel it effortlessly and from instinct. 


if i am in any way special it is because of my perspective.  i love and crave justice like oxygen.  i am of the people because i come from disadvantage and it has always been my life's goal to be a champion for my people.  in many ways i have not lived up to that, perhaps because i am emotionally challenged.  perhaps because i am lazy and indecisive.  still in other ways i do what little i can.  in my work i try to help people assimilate into our crazy, hyper-capitalism.  our utilitarian jobs do not edify people.  they are not about stakeholders-but i try hard to help people understand the forces that play on their lives and find ways to cope and thrive. 


i have worked hard to educate myself in order to be responsible as an adult, responsible to my class, responsible in some way to those who are like me and so much worse off.  i had it good in many ways.  i had an aunt and uncle step in and raise from 11-years-old on.  i would not be a functioning father to my two wonderful children if not for that good fortune.  i am so thankful for all of my mother figures: aunt nancy, lupe, nana, elsie, carmelita, theresa elder, and more.  but my mother, tresenia james, set the bar.  she showed me and gave me love and in spite of her absence and her addiction, it was in those moments when we were together that i learned what everyone should have and know.  i love this metaphor about the wounded oyster.  (it is, after all, the wounded oyster which heals itself with pearl.)  her love as i remember it and feel it deep inside myself is my pearl.  i feel beautiful and i feel a beauty inside me that emanates from her love, so long ago.


you know a mother's love and how profound it is.  you have or had one-and you know.  it is more than circumstances.  it is more than your struggle. 


my mother's love informed my life.  it is the template for what i want in the world, for what i want for everyone.  it was pure and perfect. 


my love for her still, is the best of me.  i am become empathy.  i love.

jeff

There is a guy I kind of love who is, unbeknownst to himself in all likelihood, a racist.  I love him from nostalgia and from knowing his goodness.  Deep in his heart I know he loves. 

Outwardly he hates.  He used to be engaged to be married to my sister and they spent a decade together, a decade in which he was a part of my family and a good father figure to my nephew and niece.  In approaching the subject that is my former brother-(not-quite-)in-law it is important for me to start there, with the fact that I love him.

I do not love the persona he has embraced in the years since he went his own way.  Our relationship is now defined by our connection on facebook. 

On facebook JEFF POSTS ONLY IN ALL CAPS.

That in itself is sociopathic behavior, which many other facebook friends and acquaintances, (along with myself,) have tried to dissuade Jeff from.  He refuses to change his all caps posting. 

When Jeff and I used to commiserate and commune at family gatherings he was not particularly political.  He seemed to harbor some anger in those days that was not directed at any person or group in particular but revolved around his own hard luck navigating his life and making ends meet.  Occasionally he would engage me on a subject that bothered him and when we disagreed he tended to defer to me perhaps because I put together a more cohesive argument. 

Since Jeff and my sister split Jeff fell on some hard times and eventually left California to join his family transplanted from Ohio in Florida.  He ended up going to trucker school and now he traverses the country in a big rig.  He has become exceedingly political in the last few years and I surmise he is listening to Glen Beck as he drives back and forth across the United States. 

He hates President Obama.  He believes Obama is not a Christian, is not American, and is intent on bringing the USA to its knees in every way.  He disdains anyone and everything that is liberal if strictly on the basis of that thing, person or idea being liberal, left, educated, reasoned or on the side of the masses. 

For me it is easy to dismiss Jeff's, (Beck's,) ideas for any number of reasons.  I know that his views require a suspension of intelligent reason in large part based on mountains of evidence.  (Just today I read yet another article which represents the kind of evidential reason I speak of.  Paul Krugman wrote an article in the New York Times about the economic turnaround in California.  Krugman cites facts, which do not require any faith to be placed in his status as a Nobel Prize winning economist, to understand.  In the big picture what Krugman writes about California is representative of so many facts on record about our country and the world at large.)

Still, Jeff firmly believes that if he can argue a point then that argument has as much merit as any other point of view.  He is immoveable in his beliefs about immigrants ruining this country, the social safety net destroying the American dream and so on.  Jeff is angry.  I assume his personal struggle to survive has created a certain desperation in his psyche which combined with his relative lack of background in critical thinking has left him to own a terribly misguided anger.  Jeff hates.  It starts with Obama and quickly spreads to Hillary, Pelosi, Krugman and anyone else Glen Beck suggests he should hate.

On facebook I participate in a group that often discusses political ideas and news of the day.  Generally the group is liberal or at least dominated by reasonably liberal posters.  Jeff is one of the few dissenters typically and he is wild in his dissent.  He has in ways moved the group from discussing nuances about policies, events and ideas to joining in to show Jeff the folly of his ideas.  At times we have discussed the intricacies of ideas as complex as term limits in meaningful ways.  Some reason that in our corrupt system of favors for favors and big money term limits are an absolute necessity.  Other have suggested that experienced, tenured legislators have value in knowing how to navigate the process to the benefit of society.  I consider this a valuable discussion.  I don't if Jeff even has an opinion about this particular issue.  Rather our group has devolved to some degree as Jeff will often make arguments so lacking in reason others of any stripe are compelled to reason with Jeff about his how arguments err.  Never has this tack born fruit.  Jeff is immoveable. 

Recently Jeff's arguments have become more obvious and hateful.  A friend of mine called me a month ago or so because she wanted me to know immediately that someone had posted on my facebook "wall," such hate-filled rhetoric it made her cry and she could not even finish reading it.  This friend happens to be a young idealist.  She is as filled with love and well meaning as anyone I know.  She was literally appalled and wanted me to know quickly so I could delete Jeff's posts because she thought they might in some way reflect on me and she would never want me to be seen by anyone as in any like Jeff.  I had already read Jeff's posts and I was not moved to delete them, (which is not to say I did not find them disgusting.  What Jeff wrote was thoroughly disgusting.) 

I remember a story I once read about a yogi who described the monks in the monastery he lived in as like so many pebbles in a sack.  He said by living with one another and communing daily, like pebbles they rubbed against one another and the effect was that of polishing the individuals.  I like this metaphor.  It is why I like discussion groups on facebook or elsewhere.  I think it is important for humans to discuss and disagree and reason and gain ground on some agreements perhaps more so in this modern computer age of disconnection.  I am attracted to free and open exchanges of ideas. 


Another good and close friend contacted me a few days after my young idealist friend reached me to say that he had had enough of Jeff's unintelligible, racist rants and that he was going to have to leave the group.  I understood even if I did not want him to leave.  I would prefer my friend had thicker skin. I would he stayed and countered Jeff or ignored him, both responses having the same effect of denouncing Jeff's arguments for what they are, mere tripe.  My friend hoped to persuade me to remove Jeff from the group.  I understood his entreaty but I could not bring myself to move on it, (though it was a real consideration.)

Right around the same time another friend of mine engaged Jeff in an argument that quickly devolved into one of name calling.  My friend is a writer and he fairly eviscerated Jeff with some of the most lewd and disgusting images I have ever read.  In turn Jeff followed suit and basically played the same themes back to my friend but of course, in choosing the same course Jeff revealed his lack of imagination and showed himself the inferior put down artist.  Later my friend returned to the argument and deleted all of his posts. 

Jeff is still my friend on facebook and in truth, I still love him.  I hate his ideas.  I think they represent a serious lack of scholarship and worse, a weak-minded succumbing to the tools of propaganda.  After all Jeff is not a man of means.  He barely scrapes by in his life and yet he espouses ideas and values of the wealthy class. 

Personally I have grown tired of engaging with Jeff.  In the last month I may have commented on something he said once or twice.  Yes, when all that ranting and raving was going on I did jump in near the end and chided Jeff a little, reminding him of the Jeff I once knew who helped raise my nephew and niece and who was not the man of hate he now portrays himself to me.  I don't know if those words had any affect on Jeff whatsoever but he did not respond to them.  For me arguing with Jeff has kind of run its course.  Still, I have chosen not to disassociate myself from Jeff. 

I don't see Jeff changing.  I don't see anything I say changing him in any meaningful way but I do think it is preferable to disagree with Jeff or argue with him on occasion to simply removing him from the discourse.  For me it is important to still love Jeff though I expect the same from no one else. 

the evolution of grief

i guess there is something to this idea that grief comes in stages.  mine is ever-changing.  it is amazing how beautiful a thing it can be, how tender and human and fragile, and how defining.

the night i left my eventual wife's apartment having confirmed her pregnancy and learned of her unwillingness to carry the child to term, i looked into my own eyes on the drive home in my rear view mirror and i saw tiny cracks, micro-crevices, really.  it occurred to me perhaps i had arrived at the threshold of middle aged.  perhaps this is where things turned downhill, when vulnerability set in. 

i was in my little, black, two-seat sports car, with the top off on a winter evening.  the cold did not warrant having the top off but i hadn't realized that when i set out.  i stopped at a traffic light in the left hand turn lane, and a truck pulled up behind me with bright lights set high enough above my trunk that i suddenly had a rectangular spotlight shining on my forehead. 

i looked at my eyes, around my eyes at the lines, mostly at the one line between my eyebrows, that curved like a miniature bolt of lightning upwards.  i had formerly liked this line.  i thought it gave me character, perhaps it imbued me with an air of thoughtfulness i fancied.  now instead of quickly disappearing it was leaving behind a slight crease.

i thought of all she had said to me.  she said she had enjoyed being out and alone recently and that she really liked her apartment.  this was to tell me she was comfortable and intended to go spend a season away from me. 

to that point i had pushed her away plenty in the past, then upon sensing her gaining her footing and making her way without me i would pull her back to me as forcefully as possible.  i employed every bit of guile and charm i could muster.  i preened and paraded like a peacock.  i wrote her poetry exaggerating her every aspect.  i made love like we were on fire.  i sought to impress her at every turn.  i meant to convey generosity and goodness and high ideals always. 

you see i needed that over the top sensation from her and from all the other girls, too.  i am not saying it was okay.  it was tragic.  i say it matter of factly.  i am a product of my conditions and i equated drama and ardor from multiple relationships to real love.  i think what happened, and it is hard to know being so close to all of it, is i had a need to be needed which resulted from my being moved around as a child from family to family and not knowing my mother's love, (or my father.)  i was an agreeable child because i was always on the make, that is, trying to endear myself and make myself super attractive in every way to any and everyone for whatever reason or purpose.  i had very few limitations in this regard.

the result was that as a single adult i spent a great deal of time in pursuit of, or rather, gathering, as many admirers as possible.  also, as i progressed through my 20s and into my 30s the pretty girls just got younger and younger.  i rationalized my behavior by telling myself my love relationship would be the most important relationship of my life and therefore getting it right was paramount to my success.  when my behavior became duplicitous i flirted with boundaries.  i played games with words and planted verbal traps. 

i only know i did these things now.  at the time i believed it all.  in retrospect i was pathetic but at the time i was serious.  even the word games.  i would plead for more time or certain understanding, empathy even, believing i was worthy of those things as this could be just the most important relationship ever.  i was convincing, too.  at certain times i may have had some level of involvement with even three girls, one at the end of the cycle where the break-up was taking hold but there was some leeway and i could talk my way back into that relationship if i was so inclined, (which i might be at least often enough to keep that person holding on some,) one in the middle of the cycle, the official girlfriend who i was then in love with and whom i spent a majority of my free time with and who was my regular lover, and one on the front end of the cycle who i might just be flirting with or perhaps exchanging emails.  this was not a formula i employed like some sort of sick don juan but rather it was a cycle i can only now identify. 

now in the late stages of this cycle after a great deal of proverbial water had gone under the bridge, i found my eventual wife wavering in her ardor and devotion for me.  she carried our child, which she would later suggest i had planted purposely when we were both blind drunk, but said she would end it and that she didn't know about us right then but she was going to think about that and try to create some distance from me in order to think clearly. 

i drove home that chilly night slightly devastated.  i had also noticed recently that girls were not looking at me as they once had.  those darling buds of 20-25 were looking at me like i was a contemporary of their fathers, and at 38, i was. actually, i was not devastated, i was stoic.  i remember getting home around 11pm and resolving not to be emotional but rather to know that i still possessed charms and to assume she was not the ideal person for me so i should go to sleep so i could be fresh for work the next day so i could impress and thereby take care of the one constant in my life, my steady job in customer service where somehow i had found enough favor to maintain the position and steadily advance in spite of my unconventional appearance and my occasuional lapses of propriety.

right after my alarm woke me my phone also rang and it was her saying she had a change of heart and that she was ready to go for it with me.  i was perturbed because of my own resolve of the night before and at the same time i showered and drove into work that day in an odd state of euphoria feeling like my life was changing and this was momentous, (which of course, it was.) 

now she is gone.  i mean, she is down the street and we have children so we're in touch but the marriage is over.  the paperwork remains but everyting is else has cleared up. 

i remember now shortly after we were married she would remark on her own wisdom relative to some of her friends for having chosen an older man, (11 years, one month and 22 days,) a man who was ready to settle down.  at the time i took it as an affront.  i thought i was such a great choice that someone in her position could only reasonably assume that older was in and of itself the wisest choice.  i thought she had done so well for herself in me.  i was virtuous, youthful-relatively speaking, intelligent and interesting.  of course all of those assessments were reviewed through my most narcissistic of lenses.  for her part she was making a case for the union because she felt one needed to be made.  i was not the only one in the relationship who practiced self love and she too, poured it on thick.  she considered herself to be exceptionally cute, and she was.  still, her opinion was inflated.  her remark was meant to explain how a fairy of this extreme magnitude of cute could possibly be with someone like me, a slightly older man of average pulchritude, and for her physical beauty was and is king.  whatever is second is so distant in it's relation to this characteristic as to be laughable. 

when we first began discussing separation she proclaimed her virtue by saying she wanted me to be happy.  in fact she thought it would be great if i met a girl closer to my own age to be involved with.  i don't think she said it with malice but it felt malicious.  again she was attacking my physical appearance.  apparently i was very old for her.  in those early days i thought she was simply mistaken as i like hot girls who tend to be younger.  now i don't know.  mature girls seem perfectly attractive.

when my wife said she thought i had practically tricked her into being together i took exception.  i thought that was ludicrous.  now, i am not so sure.  i did see the lines on my face.  i remember that.  i was getting older, indeed my argument to her that night in her apartment had been to state plainly i was getting older and for me it was easy, i was ready to settle down.  no perfect match was ever going to show up.  rather i realized the key was to be committed to working it out and i thought she and i had a substantial foundation on which to build.  she seemed to accept this argument as her own in some regard the next morning. 

i don't know if the accepted stages of grief are in fact my stages of grief.  instead i feel like i am in the bad stage of grief, which actually feels like it is down the line a ways and not really that bad of a stage.  i see so many bad traits in her now.  i don't think she has much in the way of a motherly instinct.  she has enough and she certainly loves her children but she also fancies herself the party, fun girl.  she takes pride in being that and generally needs a lot of reinforcement when she is drinking from those around her to reinforce her indulgent behavior.  sometimes when i look at her face i think she has a porcine quality.  i see the bad in myself too.

one of her reasons for leaving was that she did not think i was doing enough as it related to the daily responsibilities involved in raising children, that is to say; household chores and childcare responsibilities.  while i admitted she did more i attributed what i perceived to be a slight difference to children being somewhat more drawn to their mother than their father, most likely due to temperament.  she said that since she was doing it all anyways she had come to realize that she could do it so she might as well.  ironically, i had once thought i needed to let her feel stranded or alone on a decision from time to time as she seemed so dependent and unwilling to handle basic responsibilities that i knew she was perfectly capable of but she lacked the confidence to do so.  this revelation too, cut me.  it seemed to suggest she had already endured the relationship for a season from some need to have me around to handle life's difficult stuff.  this kind of enraged me at first, (in an earlier stage of grief, perhaps.) 

i see now all of my behaviors which sabotaged this relationship.  i tried to get us to talk and to work on our difficulties but she would not.  i tried to have state of the union discussions but she balked or complained after an hour or so that it was going on for so long.  i tried to proactively suggest we take steps to recreate intimacy betwixt us at which point the reason for our distance would morph from her being angry at me for behaviors from long before we were married to her feeling like her body had changed since she had children and she just did not have any sex drive.  still, in spite of those occasional forays, i did not do enough.  i could have tried harder.  i could have met her where she was but i was too proud.  at the very least i had to have middle and in looking back, i don't think she was ever capable of the middle. 

my grief changed again recently.  it is heavier and feels like a permanent defeat that will consume a fraction of my personality forevermore.  it also feels like it is passing, like a piece of myself that had gone down so low as to be imperceptible to myself is somehow emerging again, floating past the defeat and surfacing anew.  i am still a little angry and sad but i am also found.