FilmOnDeepWater

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.  I think that is how my grandmother said it.  But the truth of it is that wishes are horses, unbridled ones, unsaddled ones at that.  Once I mount one of these horses, I relinquish control over my choices, my destiny.  Over time and over memory.  It is just off toward whatever destination these horses my wishes take me.

What is a wish anyway?  It is an old word. Old English, Germanic and Icelandic word.  Funny how the words from the frigid north change so little.  It is as if they hold their forms the way glaciers do.  Slowly releasing a letter here and there over the ages.  The way glaciers recede by shedding icebergs over time.

The word wish was wichen before medieval times, and it meant to desire; Wish still does mean that.  But here seems to be some subtle difference now from then.  I make a wish.  But do I make a desire?  I suppose not.  Instead, I suspect, that I experience one.  Desire, de + sidere, literally means from the stars. A star seems to be a burgeoning thread here.  When a child wishes upon a star, what is she doing?  When I wish upon a star, what am I doing?  Maybe I am grounding my wishes in the distant cradle of my origins, the essential stuff of my being.  It is as if I am anchoring my wish and somehow giving it direction.  Or maybe it is that I am taking some kind of direction from the stars the way sailors chart their way home with them.

Wishing upon a star has the quality of desiring to go home - home in the deepest sense of the word.  Home as harbor, as the sure shelter that calms the waves and buffers the winds.  Maybe wishes aren't horses after all.  Maybe they are compass points for the heart. Precious love notes from the soul. 

                                                                                                            11 November 2002

Choices in my life emerge from an awareness of possibility.  They emerge from the very core of myself.  For what am I, what are we at our essence, if not possibility? I am all the choices I make.  I am possibility made actual at this moment in time.  And what of the next moment?  Nothing more or less than a whole new galaxy of possibilities made actual.  I make my choices, while at the same time my choices make me.  Is it simply a matter of being present to what is?  To what I have chosen?  Is that enough, or is there more?  Embedded in the question, I suppose, is perhaps not an answer, but at least a position.  No, awareness is not enough.  Being present is the context for meaningful action.  It is not an action in and of itself.

So what now of this word choice?  Well, like wish, it has changed little over the centuries.  In Middle English it was choise, and meant then what it means today - to freely select one thing over another.  As a verb, it holds a distant kinship to the Sanskrit word, jusate, meaning "he enjoys, tastes, or loves". In my wanderings looking into the origins of choice I came upon the curious adjective - choice as in "the best". The choicest cut of meat. Choice seats at the theatre, and so forth. This act of choosing, this creating actuals out of possibles, and then distilling them down to the "choicest bits", what if this were how I lived my life? What if I were to live my life as a choice life? As the choicest life possible? How would that look different from the life I am living now? Would it taste different? Would I love differently?

I am choosing to type these particular words across this particular screen. And by doing this I am letting go of all the other possibilities available to me. As I attend to this simple act, I see it in its unfathomable depth. Choice is not the same as freedom. Once I choose, and I am awake to my choosing, I see that I am bound by that choice. I am bound to complete that act, or choose to let it be incomplete, and then accept the consequences for either choice.

Making choices may not be a liberating act in itself, but making conscious choices is a way, maybe the way, toward liberating myself, toward getting off that unbridled horse. Becoming free is completely dependent on my awareness of the binding nature of choice.

Posted by Edd at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Philadelphia, PA                                                          12 September 2005

                                                           The trouble with being poor is that
                                                                      it takes up all of your time.
                                                                                 - Willem de Kooning

Hi all,

So, you want to be prepared for the “Big One”.  Depending on where you live that one would be perhaps a flood.  Now, how did that come into your mind first?  Or maybe the next big one is an earthquake. Everybody says it is coming – the Mother of all Rockers.  And you just can’t be too careful.  The three largest earthquakes in American history occurred not on the Pacific Coast, but right smack dab in the heartland on the New Madrid Fault.
Then of course there is al-Qaeda.  And the “Biologicals”, and the “Dirty Bombs”, and there is always the “Chemicals”.  So, we have to be prepared.
Another thing to remember – is it me, or is there a lot of stuff to remember when disaster strikes?  Another thing to remember is that the federal government, well FEMA anyway, is three days away from helping you.  Or is it five days?  Can't remember.  Probably not three days away if you are in Washington, DC.  Maybe only two.  But for sure three days away if the big one shakes Arkansas on up through Missouri, like it did back in 1811.  Oh, and did I tell you? that quake lasted two years.

All right enough already.  Whatever it is, it just happened.  Power?  Knocked out.  Water? Maybe for a while. Heat?  Maybe, but the gas pipes might have burst.  First responders?  There out there somewhere, just not where you are.  OK, you’re lucky this time.  You are home.  You are prepared.  Not only are you prepared, but you are very prepared.  You read all the alerts: for at least three days you will be on your own.  There will be no cavalry coming over the hill.  At least not when you need it.

Not a problem.  Why just the other day, tech-savvy savant that you are, you went on-line and ordered four days worth of freeze dried emergency food that will keep for months, maybe years.  It arrived nicely packaged.  You stocked up on plenty of water – five, no make that six, five-gallon bottles.  You went to the hardware store to stock up on some emergency equipment as well.  You are sitting pretty.  You, your spouse, and your two kids – high and dry, fat and happy

So let’s do some math** (hopefully no one will check it):
Here’s what you ordered from the emergency food store on-line (oh, and by the way, dear reader, don’t try this at home, the site is out of stock of almost everything right now.)

                Food entries:         16 freeze dried meals  @ $5.29 each        $84.64
                                                 2 larger meal sets @ 26.46 each          $52.92
                                               (just in case you have unexpected company)       
                Water:                  6 5-gallon bottles $7.99 each                  $47.94
Subtotal                                                                                                $185.50
Then there are the emergency supplies from the hardware store:
                                            Flashlight                                               $21.99
                                            Batteries                                                 $16.49
                                            Portable radio                                        $25.00
                                            Candles                                                   $12.75
                                            Oil lamp (see you are prepared!)        $12.79
                                            Oil for lamp (details…)                        $4.99
Blankets, clothes, sleeping bags/bedding:
You already have plenty to spare in your closets.                          no charge

Total (rounded off)                                                                            $280.00

Now then.  Imagine that you are a single mother with three kids at home.  You have read the alerts from FEMA and you want to do the right thing, the safe thing, for you and your children.  You read on the FEMA site all the food items you will need, so off you go to the supermarket to do some price checking. 
Here is your list:
                Canned meats:            4 spam@ $2.99 each                        $11.96
                                                      4 tuna @ 1.29 each                       $5.16
                Fruit bars                    (you skip that one)
                Cereal                         2 boxes @ 4.79 each                         $9.58
                Peanut butter              1 jar @ 3.50                                     $3.50
                Nuts                            2 cans @ 3.69 each                           $7.38
                Crackers                      2 boxes @ 3.99 each                         $7.98
                Juice                           you have some of that already
                Canned milk                4 cans @ 3.19 each                         $12.76
                Hi-energy foods           skip that
                Vitamins                     1 jar                                                   $4.99
                Water                         2 bottles                                            $15.98
Subtotal (not rounded- every penny counts)                                       $79.29

If you have infants:
                Food                           six pack of baby food                       $9.99
                Wipes                         1 package                                        $10.99
                Diapers                       1 large package                              $29.99   

Sub sub Total ( just like in the supermarket)                                    $130.26   
So now lets add in the trip to the hardware store:
                Flash light (a cheaper one)                                                $12.00
                Batteries (a smaller pack)                                                   $6.00
                Candles (won’t use them long at night)                               $4.00
Blankets, clothes, sleeping bags/bedding:
    You don't have any to spare.
    Hopefully nothing is too damaged.                                               no charge

Total:                                                                                                 $152.26

Finally, let’s do some more math:
You, Mr. Fat and your spouse, Ms. Happy, have pretty good jobs.  Your combined income is just about $80,000.  You have a mortgage, car payments, insurance, student loans, yada yada.  You are doing all right, though.  You have a little extra money that you save every month.  And you have enough for a vacation (a week being Disneyed and another week to see the grandparents at Christmas).  Before taxes, you earn about $900 a week each.  On a good week you will take home $1300 combined.  At that rate, the emergency kit tucked away in the garage cost you and your spouse a little more than one day’s wages each (17.25 hours). 

280 bucks is not easy street, for sure.  It's a car payment.  It's clothes for the kids.  It's a new garage door.  It's not nothing, but not that much of a pinch either.

Now back to being that single mother.  You, Single Mom, make $8 an hour.  Before taxes you bring in $320 a week.  Let’s be generous and say that you get to keep about $280 of that.  You have the rent to pay.  And childcare.  You don't have insurance.  Water’s included in the rent (thank God!), but not the electric bill (no AC this summer).  At this rate you will need to invest more than two days of your pay (21.75 hours) to stock that emergency kit.  Of course it won’t be as well stocked, and it won’t last as long as Mr F& Ms H's, so you will need to restock it from time to time.  And you will have to resist the temptation to go into the basement and take out the package of disposable diapers and some of the groceries stored there.   But you’re pretty disciplined.  You have to be – you have three little ones depending on you.

Then again, $152.26 is just about what you owe to the electric company (the bill is overdue by the way), and it is what the dentist wanted to fix your tooth.  It's a big chunk of what your monthly bus pass costs, too.  It's a lot of groceries.  And it is not going to happen.

So there you have it.  See how easy it is to be prepared.  Who needs government when you have yourself to take care of...  well, to take care of yourself?    It just takes a little planning, a little forethought.  What’s the big deal?

Then again, you may not be home when disaster strikes.   You, Mr. Fat or Ms. Happy, tech-savvy savant that you are, may be on a service call when the "Big One" hits.  You may find yourself stranded in a strange neighborhood in a basement with a single mother and her three kids for a few days.

Be careful out there, and of course, be prepared.

Edd

*  Semper Paratis (Aways Ready) is the US Coast Guard motto.
** Sorry about the columns not lining up.  Microsoft Word does not play well with other programs.

Posted by Edd at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Philadelphia, PA                                                                                    8 September 2005

New Orleans:
When Bad Things Happen to Good Places

A thought on the way to another thought ...

A Buddhist monk will tell you, if you ask, that, on a journey of a hundred miles, the ninety mile marker is just about half way.  By that reckoning the halfway point in the hurricane season is probably sometime in October.  So, the urgency to make sure that there is never another bureaucratic debacle could not be greater.

And now some thoughts on the Crescent City...

I have had an unspoken yearning to visit New Orleans for a long time now.  The city has been one of those places that has tugged at me for much of my life.  What year was it?  1969?  What year was it that I sat in a dark, rather seedy theater in downtown Baltimore and watched Easy Rider for the first time?  The way Peter Fonda’s character so methodically rolled those hundred dollar bills.  Were they hundreds, or twenties? I forget now.  Anyway, proceeds from a drug deal gone well.  And how carefully he secreted them in the plastic tube in his gas tank.  Then he and Dennis Hopper headed off, not north by northwest, but east by southeast, on their Harleys.  East and south to New Orleans.  Even before it was “The Big Easy”, there was an easiness to it.  A longing, no a beckoning, to the sensuous.  An easiness that said, enjoy what you have now because the trip to cemetery will be a lonely one for you, the rest of us, though, will enjoy the music and the good company and the fact that we are alive.

Every city it seemed then had its little piece of New Orleans.  I guess in New York it was Times Square.  In San Francisco it was Broadway in North Beach.  Baltimore had its famed "Block".  Each one fueled by booze and half whispered promises never fulfilled.  But in my imagination anyway, New Orleans was different.  From my reading and the occasional glimpses I would see in magazines or on television, New Orleans was different – it was/is real.  The music, and the dancing, and the food and all the excesses of the French Quarter – they were real.  Not the Potemkin Villages I saw in those other cities.  Not a sliver of Eros that calcifies and makes one uneasy, uncomfortable in a fantasy world tinged with the brutal, and hardened by its falseness and pretension.  No, it was and is a real city, with an awareness of its own mortality etched in the faces of every native son and daughter who walked its streets, umbrella in hand, in time to the music that pervaded the place.

That New Orleans is not here any more.  Another bit of unfinished business in my life that will remain unfinished for now at any rate.

What occurs to me now is what the ghosts of New Orleans would be saying.  It seems to me that this is a city with the thinnest membrane between the two worlds.  A city with a history that whispers loud enough for many of its folk to hear clearly without much effort.  I wonder what they would be whispering, if there were anyone there to hear. 

My guess is that they would be whispering:
Don’t fret now.  The city has been washed away many times before.  Each time they said would be the last time.  We built it again, though.  The levees will break again because they always do.  The river and the lake will only give so much to us, and then they take back what is theirs.

They might be whispering:
Don’t fret now, child.  You live on borrowed time just like we did.  We built the city up on the bones of our ancestors.  You’ll build the city on our bones.  It’s how it is.

They might be whispering:
Don’t fret now.  And don’t lose your nerve either.  You have chosen to live on a patch of earth beneath the sea.  Poseidon is your landlord.  He is not a stern one, as landlords go, but he will insist on his payment in due time.  Until then, bring into this new city as much joy and sadness, despair and hope, body and soul as you can.  Poseidon is not a stern landlord, as landlords go, but he insists that all who live beneath his sea live their lives true to their natures, and true to themselves.

And finally these ghosts might whisper:
Don’t fret now, child.  We have left our bones for you.  Use them well.  Someday you will leave yours for those who come later.  They will need them to build the city all over again.  It’s just how it is.

That’s what they might be whispering. 
Don’t fret now…

Posted by Edd at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philadelphia, PA                                                                                    2 September 2005

Hi all,

Finally, I have reached outrage fatigue.  Hope a second wave hits soon, of outrage I mean.  We will need it.

The race and class wars are not over in this country yet.  Those wars were subsumed by the so-called war on terror.  They’re back for yet another generation to wrestle with.

And the ruthlessness that snarls just behind the smug mask of compassionate conservatism is now showing its sharp teeth, its well-manicured claws.

For a quarter century now we have heard a constant drumbeat about the power of the individual, and how little we need of government. 
We now see what happens when the basic governmental responsibilities have been systematically abdicated, outsourced and privatized.
And we now know again (as if for the first time) what happens when we do act as if we are islands after all, entire unto ourselves. 

We have yet to count the casualties. 
We have yet to see the true level of carnage.

The complete calculus of suffering is still undetermined.  Once the human loss is calculated, and the disease threats have been assessed, and the property costs tallied, many will think that is that.

There are others, though, with hearts larger than most, who will return to their cities and then continue with the calculations.  They will take notice of...
        how many pets were sacrificed
        how much wildlife was unable to flee
        how many trees are lost forever
        how many of the details that make up the tides that shape their everyday lives          were swept away
            the barber, who knew how to cut your hair without asking, is gone
            the dry cleaner, who got that stain out that you thought was permanent,                      does not open her doors again
            the corner grocer, whose family was starting over here in America, is now                    starting over somewhere else here in America
            the car mechanic, who checked your brakes even when you didn't ask him                      to, his garage is closed
            the girl down the street, who could watch your kids for an hour because she                     is the girl down the street you once were at her age, she is not down the                     street anymore

And when we believe we, as citizens of this wounded nation, have completed these calculations, then maybe we can find our third wave of outrage, as we continue to do yet even more arithmetic.

Much love, and be careful out there.
Edd

Posted by Edd at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)