Sunday Thoughts

We must become intimate with anger to clear the way to our connectiveness, to our vulnerability and an aliveness to everything. In the end, our anger is transmuted to wisdom, which in turn gives rise to compassion.

from Holding Anger, by Jules Shuzen Harris, Sensei in Tricycle Magazine

Last night I spoke on the phone for hours with my oldest friend, Audrey, who lost her husband on New Year's Day of a terrible neuro-degenerative disease, supra-nuclear palsy. We laughed together -- a lot -- even as we talked about overwhelmingly sad things, and I was struck by our long connection to one another, how comfortable it was to lie on my bed and listen to her familiar voice tell me stories, the story of her husband, his illness, his final days, her children's remarkable compassion, her own strength and ability to recognize her failings, the extraordinary love she carries and projects.  It's these things that tie me to the world.

I read Timothy Kudo's  beautiful Op-Ed piece How We Learned to Kill  and felt the sour taste of anger rise like bile in my throat, the absurdity of all of it.

I read the above quoted article about anger this morning and wondered where I was on the journey referenced -- intimacy -- connectiveness -- vulnerability -- aliveness -- wisdom -- compassion. Perhaps, like grief, these things come and they go, get mixed up with laughter, a sense of absurdity, even desperation, and then grounding.

Two War Movies That Made Me Sick and One That Makes Me Cry

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Henry and I went to see a matinee of Unbroken, and I'm glad we were able to walk out of the theater into such blue clarity. I've seen two war movies in the last few days -- that and American Sniper. Despite having seen all the big war movies of the past, I don't generally go to see them anymore. That's mainly because they make me nearly physically ill. American Sniper (I saw a screener at a friend's house), despite the excellent acting and general hunkery of Bradley Cooper, definitely made me feel sick to my stomach. The main words that come to mind are not hero, liberty or patriotism. They are waste, stupidity, tragedy and folly. No matter how honorable, I don't see any glory in being capable of 160 kills, and while the movie did a good job of showing the collateral damage of such a feat, I can't help but think of how many young and impressionable people -- maybe even old and unswerving people -- will be impressed, will think that whole shitstorm in Iraq was a necessary evil, will fancy themselves as Bradley Cooper with his steely precision.  I thought the movie entirely predictable, too, and like many war movies, it manipulates the viewer, laying out moral dilemmas in simplistic ways that do more to shore up predictable responses than change ways of thinking about war.  Like I said, I feel physically ill when I think about the invasion of Iraq, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of soldiers, the decimation of towns and cities and infrastructure and the destabilization of an entire region, all wrought by us, the United States of America.

Angelina Jolie's Unbroken is one hell of an intense movie, and while I can't say I enjoyed it, I was impressed by the story-- impressed by Zamparini's grit and heroism and, finally, story of forgiveness. I'm also impressed by Jolie and how she told the story. The relentless scenes of torture by the psychopathic Japanese war camp commander made me think of Dick Cheney, to tell you the truth, and the mindless minions who carried out torture in our name, for our country, on prisoners and alleged terrorists. I know Cheney himself didn't do the water-boarding, the beating, the forced standing and no sleeping, the rectal feeding and the psychological tormenting, but he helped to authorize it. The Watanabes and Cheneys of the world remain obdurate and unapologetic about their actions, and there's not much we can do about that, I guess. I told Henry that anyone who believes it's okay to torture war prisoners collaborates with and is no different than that Japanese commander. I mean that.

Madness and absurdity.

I think what I need to do now is watch my favorite war movie, King of Hearts, where the madness and absurdity bring only tears, not physical revulsion:

Mondays and Mindfulness and Conflict

Happy Monday. I generally wake on Mondays glad. No Monday, Monday can't trust that day. This morning, Henry and I woke an hour later because school started an hour later. The sun came through the dining room windows and lit on my yellow coffee cup so beautifully that I had to take a picture, felt grateful -- not in the way that is all the rage, that we're supposed to be -- but simply. Thank you, I thought, for this yellow cup, for that sun, for this day.

This weekend I went to a lovely party for a dear friend's birthday. A group of women sat outside by her pool, drank wine and laughed and talked and ate delicious food. At one point in our dinner, a few of us got into what wasn't so much a fight but rather a conflict about what's happening in the world, specifically in the Middle East -- in Israel, in particular. Yikes, right? Who in their right mind gets involved in such conflicts over dinner? Good friends can -- and do -- but it's still difficult. Voices were raised. Emotions were high and visible. My heart beat fast, especially when I was told, You're wrong! I won't go into the particulars, because that isn't my point on this sunny yellow coffee cup radiant Monday morning. We all paddled around the pool, even after the dinner and the disagreements and the emotion. All is well.

This morning, though, I began to listen to this video linked by Tricycle Magazine and was so struck by it -- by the synchronicity of getting the link in my inbox so soon after the uncomfortable conflict:

A Zen Approach to Conflict

If you have twenty minutes and are interested, I encourage you to listen to the video. The teacher, Diane Musho Hamilton, describes "three typical responses to disagreement, which correspond with Buddhism's three poisons: greed, aversion, and delusion. By learning to identify our patterns of slinking away from or escalating disputes, we take the first step toward transforming tense relationships into vibrant connections." If you practice mindfulness, it will be especially illuminating. This first "lesson" outlined not only the different and general ways we deal with conflict but suggests we begin to be mindful of how we respond when conflict happens. It's the first of a series, and I think I'm going to benefit a lot from listening to all of them. I was thinking it could help me move forward with nearly everything that I engage in -- not just my relationships with friends and family, but what happens when I interact with the systems of care for Sophie, and the ongoing fears I have as I vaccinate my sons, which currently rank up there as the most closely aligned body/mind issues I have experienced. I'm interested to hear what ya'll think.

I'm the sort of person who looks at the vastness of the universe and is comforted, rather than terrified, by my own smallness and relative insignificance. I've always told my boys that one of my dreams is to go up into the atmosphere in a rocket ship and look out a window at the Earth in space. I'm so drawn to astronauts' words of that experience, and this morning, when I read my friend, fellow writer and mother of a child with epilepsy, Christy Shake's post, I was inspired.

I feel at turns disgusted and terrified at the havoc wrought in the name of power, religion and territory in the Middle East. As the Hamas rockets fly and the Israeli bombs return, I deflect the insanity with a sort of bitter humor. That'll show 'em, I might mutter, when I read the leaders' threats. This show of force will surely be the end of all conflict. 

There's nothing new under the sun, is there? The Old Testament had it right, at least there.

I wonder if the Universe -- whatever force inherent in it -- looks at our beautiful blue and green globe and sees it as insignificant, just a speck in a vast continuum.

Inclusion, Disability, Iraq, and THCa

There's so much to ponder these days, don't you think? There's that Tumbler going around written by a young woman who cares for her disabled 31 year old sister because her parents died. They live in California and are facing the alarming lack of services and obstacles to getting those services that those of us who already live here are aware of to a nauseating degree. I and some other folks are "on it," though. Stay tuned. Then there's an interesting discussion on my own Facebook page, centered around this article, about the segregation of children with physical disabilities from the elite private schools in Washington, D.C. Some of the commenting got a little testy, including my own, but it's discouraging to think that in 2014, we're still having to not just fight for equal access and inclusion for all children but continue to bring awareness to these issues -- even in the biggest most progressive states in the country.

Sigh.

On another note, our more than a decade long war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost, thousands of those Americans, trillions of dollars spent and country bankrupted both financially and morally, seems to be imploding again.  That foreign policy "initiative" might have been the worst one our country made in history. And if I have to see or hear that crazy John McCain say anything else about it, I might scream. Honestly, the man should just retire to his hometown in Arizona and play golf. What do you think? Should we just continue to bury our heads in the proverbial sand or protest in some concrete way?

What do I know, though, about anything really? It's a full moon tonight -- the Honey Moon -- and while Sophie's seizures have picked up a bit, maybe because of it, I'm looking forward to seeing it from Calabasas where I'll be driving Henry later for his first club lacrosse practice. In the meantime, for the record, we've added THCa to Sophie's cannabis regime. I'll keep you posted.

The Greatest American Moment in American History

I'm a firmly middle-aged white woman living in southern California, born fifty years and one day ago, the one day, today, that the great Martin Luther King stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial and let loose one of, if not the most, amazing speeches in the history of my country. I listened to the speech today while I folded clothes warm from the laundry. The hair on my white arms rose, tears pricked at my eyes, I wondered again at the preternatural magic that man possessed, how he wove history, the present and the future into words -- that glorious cadence of his oratory. As sabers rattle and metal machines lie in wait to drop bombs, yet again, in desolate places across the globe, I wonder, too, whether the words he spoke of, that dream, will ever be realized fully, whether the principles of nonviolence will ever take utterly and completely. I know better. They will not. But I know that I will take those principles into my own heart and teach them to my children and hope that by so doing we will be that many more added to the peacemakers.

Here's the speech:




And here's an excellent article for those of you, like me, who struggle with so-called patriotism and honoring soldiers and killing and dying for liberty. 

It's also for those of you who don't understand people like me.

No, thanks: Stop saying "support the troops."

Dulce et Decorum est

Civil War family via Dream Dogs Art

I never have much to say on these holidays that memorialize soldiers and war and killing and dying. I shirk from expressions like freedom isn't free. I feel a roiling conflict when asked to honor the soldier and not the war and risk the censure of those who take to these easily. I might even envy them. I don't begin to understand the life of a Marine, the dedication, the camaraderie, the duty. I saw the movie Lincoln this weekend and was struck, again, by the simpler brutality of the Civil War when men fought against men, most of the time, in hand to hand combat. It is at once heroic to watch and absurd. I also happened to read an article in the New Yorker magazine called Atonement about a very young Iraqi veteran tortured by a debacle in 2009 when his unit in Iraq opened fire in a street battle and brutally murdered members of a family, including a baby. He eventually tracks down the remaining members of the family and asks for forgiveness, which they give to him, but the cost of this atonement took my breath away. Over 4,000 American soldiers died in Iraq and over 150,000 Iraqis died. This morning, the Los Angeles Times newspaper includes an article titled 2 Wars, 11 Years, 725 fallen Californians. The article states that 41% of these soldiers who died were not yet 22 years old. Sixty-three of them were still teenagers. Those numbers don't make me feel proud; they make me feel ashamed. No, freedom isn't free, but sending boys away to fight and kill never works, has never worked and will never work. On Veterans' Day, I will honor those who have fallen and those who have had to kill others in the name of freedom or liberty or God, but I feel sad for just about everyone.



Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Boys, Girls, The Military, Illusions and a Must-Read by Chris Hedges

Trench warfare, World War I

The disillusionment comes swiftly. It is not the war of the movies. It is not the glory promised by the recruiters. The mythology fed to you by the church, the press, the school, the state, and the entertainment industry is exposed as a lie. We are not a virtuous nation. God has not blessed America. Victory is not assured. And we can be as evil, even more evil, than those we oppose. War is venal, noisy, frightening, and dirty. The military is a vast bureaucratic machine fueled by hyper-masculine fantasies and arcane and mind-numbing rules. War is always about betrayal—betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians.

                                             -- Chris Hedges 

You know when the big war holidays come around -- Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, etc. etc.? Those of us who oppose war and shrink from glorifying it in any way, also shrink from expressing our true opinions of it -- how difficult it is to "honor soldiers," pay respect to those who have given us "the ultimate sacrifice" -- because we will (and often are) called unpatriotic, miserable, and ungrateful. I have been called all of these, even by members of my own family, so I generally post a poem or two written by Wilfred Owen, one of the young artists of World War I who not only spoke eloquently of the war he experienced but actually died in the trenches fighting. I've gotten into "trouble" on this blog expressing my opinion of war, my reluctance to pay homage to those who fight it, my struggles and conflicts regarding young men and women who offer themselves up to either kill or be killed and sometimes both. I have a long list of comments, all from Anonymous, who denounce my pacifist leanings, and some have said terrible things about my Swiss husband and even our children. I have a relative who works in a branch of the services who told me recently, quite sarcastically and casually, that he would continue to "be on the watch," guarding me as I ungratefully lived my otherwise carefree life, taking advantage of those, like himself, living a higher purpose. And while I might roll my eyes at the censure (who in the hell does he think is paying his salary?), I balk at the vast distance between those like me and those like him. I wish it weren't so.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans; calls for sacrifice, honor, and heroism; and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. From a distance it seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a bit part in the great drama of history. It promises to give us identities as warriors, patriots, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion, and pain. Human decency and tenderness are crushed, and people become objects to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naïvely blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, becomes stark. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It might let us see, although the cost is tremendous.

When I went to Washington, D.C. last spring with my two sons, I realized that much of the city is built around memorials to war, to violence, to honoring those who have either killed in defense or perished for freedom or been burned or tortured or otherwise obliterated for ideals. I know, such is life, and I'm not going to pretend that I have any answers. I tromped around and exclaimed at the beauty of the monuments, the history of the brave and the great sentiments, even as I shrank at the horror of it all.  My son Oliver, now eleven, has always been a bit star-struck by soldiering, and given his lack of enthusiasm for school, I get nervous, every now and then, that one day he might want to join the military. Last spring, when the Armed Forces took over a section of the parking lot of Sophie's large, public high school, populated primarily by the disadvantaged and minorities, with their trailers and tents and cheerful pamphlets, I felt nauseous. Cool! Oliver said, when he saw the recruiters, spanky shiny in their stiff uniforms. Awesome! It helps that The Husband is utterly and completely anti-war and also has a cool disdain for American jingoism, but every parent knows that our influence on our children is haphazard at best. For all I know, Oliver (much like his mother -- ahem --) might completely buck our system, vote conservative and become a general.

The Husband, disturbed by what he sees in our sons' starry-eyed view of soldiers, guns and blow-em-up escapades,  brought home a recent article in Boston Review written by the Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent Chris Hedges. It's called War is Betrayal: Persistent Myths of Combat. Hedges writes in simple, powerful language that from as far back as The Iliad, the allure of combat is a trap, a ploy, an old, dirty game of deception in which the powerful, who do not go to war, promise a mirage to those who do.

The Husband is going to have Henry, my older son, read it, and then discuss it with Oliver, too. I figure that, at best, it'll begin to help balance out the bullshit that they've already been exposed to, and we'll hopefully steer them toward a different sort of service in the world, recognizing that yes, this is part of life, but we won't kill to make it better.

Read the whole article here.

Memorial Day with Kenny, Wilfred and the Old Lie

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas!  GAS!  Quick, boys! --  An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen, 1917

May all those being honored today rest in peace, but may they be the last to lose their lives in war.

Kids, Soldiers and Drugs

Boys in the trenches, World War I

I have a lot of friends whose kids are on psychotropic drugs. These are seemingly normal children, not those with special needs, and their problems range from attention deficit disorder and ADHD to depression and more serious issues of mental health. I'm in no position to judge this, cognizant of the fact that nearly all of those friends are wonderful, careful parents doing what they believe is best for their kids. But every time I read an article like the ones I've linked to below, I wonder. What, exactly, is going on that so many kids are being drugged at ever younger ages? Is this necessary? Is this a cultural shift? Is this a new "normal?" Is this going to backfire eventually? Is this a result of the pharmaceutical/industrial complex? Is it all about money? Are these kids at an advantage or have we created a monster?

I come at this predicament from a very biased position, of course -- while both my boys are free, blessedly, of any kind of drug, my daughter has endured an arsenal of them, and I can honestly say that nearly all the twenty or so that she's been on in seventeen years have been of no use to her whatsoever. In fact, they've probably done more harm than good. We are not an exception to this rule; 30% of people with epilepsy do not have control with multiple drug trials. Yes, 30%. I've grown extremely, if not irrationally, opposed to the seemingly careless way drugs are prescribed to children with refractory epilepsy (epilepsy is considered refractory when you've had a trial of at least two drugs and seizures are not controlled) -- I hear of young children on three and sometimes four combinations of AEDs all the time, still, in 2012 --  and I'm starting to get really creeped out by the numbers of "normal" kids being prescribed psychotropic ones as well.

I remember one neurologist years ago telling me that taking anti-epileptics was like peeling back the scalp and tissue underneath and pouring medicine over the entire brain -- a neuro-bath, I believe he described it back in the ancient 1990s. That meant the entire brain was affected by the drugs, and I do remember looking at the insert (that lovely piece of paper written in infinitesimal writing listing side effects ranging from irritability and bruising to constant laughter and death) and feeling like I was drowning in terror. I have never gotten used to giving her this shit. Never. I suppose I would have should her seizures ever have been controlled. I might have even been grateful. But even now, the drugs that Sophie takes are so new no one really knows what the hell they're doing to her, beyond the dizziness, headache, stomach cramping and tiny bit of seizure control. Years ago, when I first began exploring alternative treatments for Sophie, I asked her neurologist at the time whether it was all right to give her Chinese herbal teas that I'd gotten from a very trusted Chinese doctor. I don't see why not, the neurologist said in her clipped British accent, They couldn't be any worse for her than the stuff we've been cramming down her throat for the last decade. Poor little chip.


Evidently, more than 100,000 American soldiers are currently on psychotropic drugs. Yes, that's right. More than 100,000 of them, for issues like attention, depression, psychosis, etc. I suppose the justification is the constant stress and terror many of them have endured during more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're asked, all the time, to honor our troops, to admire them for their bravery, their sacrifices in ensuring our freedoms. It makes me sick that the powers that be are loading them up with drugs so that they can do their job. And some of these soldiers have had alarming behavioral side effects -- outbursts of extreme aggression, psychosis, suicide. Have we replaced the shell shock of old in an attempt to "help?"

The image of the brain, bathed in chemicals, comes to mind.

I hope some of the brightest and best minds are trying to figure this out -- outside of commerce. My biased gut that feels like I'm poisoning my daughter every time I give her doses of Vimpat and Onfi tells me that something is just not right about any of it.

Articles referenced: Growing Up Drugged by Caitlin Bell Barnett, Salon
                               A Fog of Drugs and War by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times