Comprehension of human suffering

Rwandan Convicted of Genocide

When I read stories like this, I have a hard time getting past the image of the "well dressed man in a suit." This particular "man in a suit" has been sentenced to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Somehow I can't wrap my mind around the thought that this prison sentence will atone for his crimes. Atonement to me comes in part with a sense of remorse. I see this man in a his nice suit and I can't help but think there is no possible way he will ever feel remorse for the gruesome brutality and suffering he has caused. There are a lot of points to make and thoughts to consider - like how things came to be the way they are. The events that led this man, the Hutu people, to commit genocide. I wonder what prison will be like for him. I'm really asking because I have no idea where convicted killers on such a scale go. I always just sort of put things like this out of my mind. But I wonder what happens when a man in a nice suit is sentenced for such crimes.

Also I know this has been said before but why is it that it's so much harder to feel a great loss and sadness and develop an understanding of suffering in regards to mass genocide as compared to the brutal death of one person? What is that disconnect so many of us have? Is it possible that maybe it is a condition of the human mind. That there is something biological protecting us against the comprehension of such massive grief and suffering? Just as we seek heat for warmth when it turns cold, does our mind dismiss unpleasant realities as a way of continuing our survival? Would we be too dumbstruck by grief if we were able to fully comprehend suffering on a major scale? When I was a kid I loved reading about natural disasters. My favorite book was a book of the earth's greatest natural disasters to date (1980s?). I was obsessed with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that turned Pompeii into ash, and the massive whirlpools that sunk ships. Earthquakes and floods were all terrifying and thus awe-inspiring. I think this was my "safe" way of realizing human suffering. Still it is more difficult to imagine suffering when it is actually caused by humans. I don't think we should dwell on pain but I do think everyone should have an understanding of human suffering to be aware of the grand scale of existence, of life and of our place in this universe.

*photo credits
Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Former Rwandan Army Col. Theoneste Bagosora, right, arrived with his co-defendant Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on Thursday in Arusha, Tanzania.

Where is Muntader al-Zaidi aka "Shoeless Joe?"

Brother Explains Shoe-Tossing Iraqi Journalist’s Anger

A lot of people think this is funny. I did at first I admit. Some people are probably angry or disgusted by the shoe throwing incident. But that is neither here nor there. What I'm really wondering is what has happened to the "man who threw the shoe"? A commenter at the end of the article calls him "Shoeless Joe" and says that he's a "true folk hero." Isn't that quaint? Everyone needs to wake up and realize that this isn't considered a silly prank by Iraqis and government officials. I know this article says the judge told his brother he may serve two years in jail but since then I read that it could be 7 if convicted and as of yesterday his family had not heard from him and he did not make an appearance in court. What will happen or is happening to this man - the "true folk hero" who *gasp* actually has a name, Muntader al-Zaidi?


*photo credits
In Sadr City, Maythem al-Zaidi stands before a photograph of his brother Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush. (Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times)

Winter weather

Since last spring I've dreaded the coming winter. Maybe I secretly hoped that my dread and anxiety would somehow psychically postpone the inevitable. I suppose that's called wishful thinking, and that usually never works out quite like one hopes. Winter is here now and I've made a little peace with the cold, snow and early evenings. I've been thinking of this season as if it were an adventure rather than weather patterns caused by the tilt of the earth's axis. Everything is a challenge; from backing out of the driveway, to walking on sidewalks and finding my warm gloves. Of course it isn't climbing Everest or walking on the moon but the adventure is found in these small challenges. Everyday is an exercise in preparedness for the next big snowfall or ice storm. I think I thrive on the challenge. The more difficult it is to get to work in the morning, the more I want to get to work even though everyone else has taken a snow day and stayed home. Still, in the middle of the constant planning and problem solving I have to remember that I can't control the inevitable and while it's good to be prepared, it's also good (and safer) sometimes to just sit quietly and watch the world fall silent under the falling snow.

Field

There is a field in the south of France that appears to be endless and untouched. The usual demarcations of land ownership are absent. There are no signs of toiling hands, no crops to plow, no roots of trees pierce the ground. There is only a seamless expanse of gold spilling over the land. It is said that to stand in the field is to find yourself in an ocean, waves of wind swell and surge through the tall grass soundlessly. From above the field appears haphazardly placed, as if a fraction of the sun dripped to earth. Birds and clouds rarely pass overhead. Most everyone avoids the field. Roads are planned in consideration. All care is taken to bypass the field at a measurable distance inconvenient to transportation. While the surrounding land must fall under some ownership there is no rush to lay claim, because of this the field's beginning and end is not easily traced. This inexplicable reverence has transpired through too many generations to fully understand. There are a few floating stories secreted away that speak of whispered pacts between human, animal and god. But no one really knows why or how the field remains as it does, seemingly endless and untouched.

Tattoo

Some of my writing from the summer (2008)

Tattoo

A few weeks ago, I was almost certain I was going to get a tattoo. I knew what I wanted and where I wanted it. A small fern in simple black lines on the underside of my left wrist, touching but not covering the visible branch of veins that run from my heart stretching into my hand. My pulse would be a breeze tapping at the leaves which are known to be nourished by damp landscapes, but can also thrive on a dry desert plateau.

The hours between 14 days ago and now are sinking into the earth's crust, dissipating and accumulating in deep time. No beginning to begin or end to end. "Now there, now there" Now and then, I tell myself we are all sinking where we stand. Dipping our toes into a great gulf, absorbed by the unknown, falling in up to our knees. Now and then I am swimming in circles, like the moon orbiting you. Keeping it all together for another second. Seconds lifting and weightless now, and now.

Now is standing on a cliff, staring at the scene below. Salty water fills my eyes. Now. Cresting, spilling, plunging. The rocks below brace themselves against the collapsing waves. Now is lifting my right arm and casting a grey stone back to the grey sea. What touched my hand a second before is swallowed whole. Now is backing away from the precipice until my horizon is calm and distant. Distant and gaining distance.

A dam releases somewhere and water fills a reservoir. Too full and drunk off of sediment and dead branches, ghost towns swept up and gulped down. All that remembering rushes into you and settles in your gut like a stone, pulls you down, holds you down, and maybe sets you free. Behind me now, ley lines leak inky black filling up the laid impressions, covering my path.

I don't really think about getting a tattoo now. Maybe because I already have too many traces of living encircling my wrists settled into my skin there. There like the bones of some ancient fish preserved in the strata, forever held by the sea. Like enduring stains on rocks of mossy ferns that once clung there, nourished and thriving until for some reason unknown, no longer surviving. A few weeks ago a high tide was seen racing towards some infinite end, before curving and caving in on itself.

Forget, Forgot, Forgotten

Some of my writing over the summer...

Forget, Forgot, Forgotten
I grew up around abandoned things. Shells and remains feel like forget forgot forgotten. Empty Outer Spaces. A crater sized pit carved out of red earth dug up by a previous occupant who wanted to leave their imprint in my back yard. My earliest memories sink into me like all the other abandoned things. At age five or six, I would wake in the afternoon to a house still and quiet. I would call out for anyone, and when they didn't come I would stand at the window crying. Sometimes I would scream in my crying, afraid the emptiness would empty me. I would press my face so hard against the glass just to know that I was still existing, not satisfied until my breath left a damp smudge of fog on the windowpane. Eventually someone would walk through the front door. I would run to them carrying every feeling I had ever felt or would feel. Heart broken tiny smashed toy, arms reaching extended and open. No one ever understood how I felt the air escape my lungs, blood drain from my heart like suddenly someone had pulled a plug on all my life and love sent fleeing from my body through my eyelashes and out my tear ducts. No one ever understands. They just hunch their shoulders up towards theirs ears in a shrug, and when their shoulders fall the impact sends tremors like shame through my open still empty arms. Leaving me cold. Eyelashes long and lucky they say, holding in all that dampening sad. An insect shell sits on my desk shuffling back and forth with each breath sucking in and sighing out. I'm always grasping at emptiness. I pull it over me like a blanket. I warm up to the void, and feel out deserted landscapes with pale lined palms and fingertips smoothing the way ahead. Feeling in the dark, the bare space of your back, the scent of your skin that extends from your shoulder to the curve of your neck. I move slowly through the empty rooms at Sundown. Shallow scattered beams withdraw their shadows and slink behind the half opened curtain until there is just me standing in a room with no light. A cigarette still burns and the red orange ash sighs. I inhale. My forehead rests against the windowpane glass. I feel the cool outside air on my cheek at the corner of my mouth. I breathe in your absence until every inch of me is full and filled again with forget forgot forgotten.

Dear Brooklyn,

Sometimes I miss you. I miss Court Street, Smith Street, Atlantic Avenue. One time a woman stopped me on Atlantic Ave. and asked me if I knew the way to the hospital... I said I didn't know. But I did know. I didn't tell her because I didn't really trust or believe that I knew which way was up or down. I did know even though I said I didn't. I always felt like a lost stray a little shy of the streets. I was turned inside out and scattered all sorts of ways. It's true, my sense of direction was a little off and maybe I was lost, but your streets and addresses weren't the problem. So Brooklyn, Court Street, Smith Street, Atlantic Ave if you're reading... I don't blame you anymore. You were just being you, and I wasn't really ready to accept that. I've changed and I really think we'd get along a little better now. See it really was me and wasn't you even though you could be a little harsh at times. I'll always remember how you taught me to ride the subway, savor the sweetness of Italian ice, the long walks to the promenade in the summer sun, sweat soaked shirt watching the traffic roll on the BQE, people leaning against the rail alone with the manhattan skyline. We had some good times.

Runners high?

photo by kalle61m

I may have recently discovered endorphins. I've always heard about the "runners high," but other than just enjoying running I had yet to experience the rush of endorphins that comes along with it... until recently. I've started running 5 miles. In the last mile I start to feel the rush. I'm a little skeptical though because a part of me thinks that maybe I'm just ecstatic about reaching 5 miles, reaching the end and pushing myself. But then something else happens. I don't just feel good during that last mile. I feel good for rest of the day. "Good" is an understatement. I feel like I'm walking on air (excuse the cliche), like I just found out ice cream is the most nutritious thing you can eat, like I just got a new puppy and we're frolicking with butterflies in a sunlit field, like I'm laying on my back in said field listening to the wind rustling the tall grass. There's more but I've probably made my point. It's winter here now. The first snowstorm of the year hit last night and it's still snowing outside. Normally this would have me pretty down, but riding the bus on my way to work - then walking in the snow, I find myself smiling at the smallest things. My corners of my mouth curve into a natural frown and usually this is my expression for most of the day. Running 5 miles is new to me and smiling so much (and randomly) is too. For that, I guess I'll have to make the call. It must be endorphins. They're ok.

On the line...

I'm not sure if I've ever told anyone this before...

But I really love laundry on clothes-lines. The vibrant or stark white colors offering up a slight peak into another person's world and the daily rhythm of life. I just think it's sweet... like a secret that makes you smile.

natural order of things

Things I see when I'm running...


before the ice


signs of winter

Happy Thanksgiving

a nice message on Thanksgiving and every day in between!

To Walk the Path of Thankfulness

It was during one very painful period of my life that I made the firm choice to walk the path of gratitude. At a time when my suffering had reached the depths, when I felt misunderstood and betrayed by some of those I had trusted to stand by me, I made the seemingly irrational choice to be thankful. In my pain, I had chosen to focus on the awareness of what was good in my life in the present.

Gratitude is an agreement we make with the Unknown. I chose to express my gratitude to the Source of Life. You could say it was an act of faith, but I don’t think I deserve any credit for it.

The only other choice was not to be thankful, to resent the actual conditions of my life and everything that had created those conditions. It was then that I saw that I could be grateful for the pain and what it was telling me. In essence, I was learning to trust something beyond my immediate circumstances, something that restored my sense of peace, strength and openness to life.

Since the time that I chose to walk the path of thankfulness, I have tried to make gratitude my fundamental attitude, living in the present, grateful to the Unseen Mystery. Is that Mystery real? Or is the resentment, dissatisfaction, or self-conscious suffering I would otherwise experience more real?

I have come to trust that if we are patient with difficulty, the Unseen supports us. To express thankfulness is to attract goodness. Gratitude merely smiles at dissatisfaction and disappointment. In any moment we can choose to focus on the disappointments or losses we have experienced, on any number of details in our lives that might seem less than what we might want them to be. Or we can choose, instead, to be thankful for things great and small in the present. Above all, we can be grateful for our relationship with a Mystery that we may not fully comprehend but seems to be more and more present and real.

To be thankful for both abundance and hard times is wisdom, for thankfulness is the panacea that turns pain into happiness. Let’s celebrate Thanksgiving.

– Shaikh Kabir Helminski
Kabir Helminski is Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order, Co-director of The Threshold Society (Sufism.org).

There is one thing... Love

I finished reading Peony in Love by Lisa See today. The last sentence of the author's note at the end of the book got to me...

All women on earth-and men too, for that matter-hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, and gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career
and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.

I've been reading a lot lately. I started off reading about love and loss or rather losing someone you love and feeling lost. There were ghosts and dreams, strange disappearances and travel to distant places. I would say things took a turn with Murakami's, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, where love is like the brightest sunlight illuminating you wholly as if you were everyday sitting in the bottom of a dark dry well... the sunlight only lasts for a few seconds each day and then maybe it burns so brightly that it takes everything inside of you and replaces it with itself, love. You can't be sure of anything but that. Now I have Yukio Mishima's novel, Spring Snow to read and I am trying to decide between starting it or finishing Anna Karenina, thus continuing on with my education on love. I want to know everything there is to know.

Oh yes, and the photo is Marie-Antoinette's Temple de L'Amour.

Scenes

I watched the seagulls flying in a whirl
sticking close in formation then scattering.
I watched them and I could only think how
I was probably the only person in the world
watching this scene right now...

Polaroid

...We are so close to the water. She takes off her shoes, places them neatly beside her. The dress she is wearing bunches at her thighs as she draws her knees close to her chest. She is quiet and so we sit in silence watching the current rush through the narrows then slowing where the path widens. I close my eyes, and I almost feel alone if it wasn’t for my arm brushing against her arm. I hear her body slide along the gritty rock surface. Squinting my eyes open I see her inching into the water where it settles just above her knees. She gathers folds of fabric, holding the dress to her waist. A small piece of dress escapes her grip and dips into the water. Tiny flowers soak through and turn translucent. When she moves, the wet fabric clings to her thigh leaving tiny flowers imprinted on her skin. She stands still, letting the current influence a slight sway. She stands with her back to me for what seems like a long time. A few strands of hair lift in the breeze. She stands in the water up to her knees like she is standing in a field of gold she has unexpectedly discovered. Shape-shifting light reflects on her skin from the water’s surface, pools of melting precious metal.

Imagined sweet

Until recently I used to eat honeysuckle, or rather I would try to drink the dew. I would pick a honeysuckle blossom from it's vine, bite the small green tip of the flower where it once met the stem. Then I would gently suck the flower searching for that honeysuckle scent. There was never lot to taste, maybe the slightest prick of sweet would alert the tip of my tongue that it had met with something perfectly delicate and new. The sensation was never as real as I wanted it to be. Instead it was small and fleeting. In the end, I decided honeysuckles were better to smell than taste... And actually they are almost always better to imagine than anything. There's a sort of empty feeling though, in the imagining of something so ellusively sweet. I bite the inside of my bottom lip and wait for the feeling to pass. I've given up crushing flower petals against my teeth, but the imagined sweet won't leave me alone.


*photo by jacilluch on flickr

Harvest moon

Some evening skies are yellow
And over my head they’re blue
What happened to the green between
It happened to me too
-vashti bunyan, against the sky

Everything you do disarms me in an alarming way. The last few days of summer are finally stamped out with one puff of breath in the morning air of autumn, which has arrived one week early. Driving home from work yesterday, feeling my body unravel all the tension I've collected through spring and summer just trying to resist the inevitable fall, I realized it's useless... There isn't anything I can do to protect myself from the pure gold sunrise melting over a silvery blue sky. I'm sensitive to the cold, that is to say I am always cold, and the cold has begun, or is beginning. Still there is something radiating, no doubt a warming of my blood from some heady bout of love that always strikes me without warning in these early autumn moments. If this season came to me in human form, I know what it would look like. I would recognize that red leaf anywhere, those green eyes turning amber. My reflection captured forever, right next to the mosquito and the fly. Here we are. The planets have aligned a little early or maybe a little late. I'm not one to judge the passing of time. I just know what I feel. I know you'll split me open with all your perfect sunsets, bruising the flesh of a sky that unconditionally holds you. I know I'll give too much of myself as I always do. I know you'll give me pleasure just by being in your presence. I'll take what you give and I'll grow bold. My cheeks will have the rosy glow of youth. I will be kind to everyone I know. I will seek quiet moments of reflection. I will give thanks every time I breathe. I will be inspired. People will notice and wonder. I will tell them it is all because of you. I will tell them I am in love. Soon plumes of smoke will rise from chimneys. Another batch of leaves will fall to cover last years remnants. Tedious hands stand at the ready to create the tatted lace leaves a new autumn demands. I will warm up to the chill and chatter of black-winged birds just before I am ushered into the unbearable silent cold. Alone again and buried in snow. I'll wake up in December and wonder if you were ever there, if you were ever real, if you meant what you whispered that one night in September when your face rose above me like a harvest moon.

Traveling without moving

Like a leaf clings to a tree

Like a leaf clings to a tree
Baby please cling to me
We're creatures of the wind
Wild is the wind

let me fly away with you...

Western Travels: memory photographic

I've added new photos to the Western Travels set.

please take a look, i don't think you'll be disappointed. :)

Silence in nature

"Many people just drive through the park...so for them it's just the visual beauty...when you take the time to enjoy it, the park becomes a part of what you are. It can shape you."

-from Preserving Silence in National Parks by Garret Keizer

The first thing I notice when entering a place of refuge in nature is always the scenery, the landscape. The initial moments of visual splendor usually lull me into a kind of quiet and yet thrilling trance. I'm too happy to notice anything else in the midst of such beauty and (human) emptiness. I take a few steps on the trail still enamored with my surroundings, so much so that the rest of the world melts into the background. And then eventually, as if my meditative surroundings are a disintegrating dream, I hear it; the distant hum of car engines or the quaking sound of a boat engine. Recently during a night spent on a small island in Voyageurs National Park, my camping neighbors across the bay thought this pristine wilderness would be the perfect place to blast country songs from their stereo. The steel guitars and twang competed full force with the sounding loons of the north. These man-made sounds tend to invade my experience in nature, leaving it slightly tarnished. Though when faced with such noise I try to remain positive. Without considering the implications of man-made sound in nature, I try to remember something Thich Nhat Hanh said...that every sound can be turned into the sound of a bell - calling us back to the present moment. We must learn to meditate in chaos, because silence is not always a given. That doesn't mean I believe we should shrug our shoulders and accept that the peripheral noise that we have all had a part in creating, is a given when entering the temple of nature.

"If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive"
— Pablo Neruda

Little bells: an introduction

Several years ago (seven to be exact), I found myself in the California coastal region of Big Sur. For a few glorious days I existed on these cliffs cradled between the Santa Lucia mountains and the pacific ocean. I say that I "found myself" as if I had just wandered into California, so many miles from home. This trip however, was well planned. So I say I "found myself," when what I mean to say is: I found a woman. Her campsite was a few feet from our campsite. I should mention here that I wasn't alone on this trip up the coast. I noticed first that she was alone, that she had a small dog and what appeared to be a journal she had set aside to write in later. As I walked on the path between the campsites and the cliffs of the beach, I watched her briefly as she sat in her open tent hanging a string of little bells on one of the interior sides of her four nylon walls. The image of this woman with her bells and journal, camping alone has always stayed in my mind. The minute I saw her, I thought to myself "I want to be like her someday" At the time I don't think I fully understood my intrigue with this woman. I thought only of the fact that she was traveling alone and how I found that appealing as a source of self reliance. Though now, after so many years I'm beginning to understand why I was so intrigued. I saw in her, my desire to connect with myself and my surroundings. To commune, if you will, with the universe in its entirity. To give something to myself more precious than self reliance. A quiet mind, inner sight and outwardly vision, compassion and an open heart able to receive and give. Love. I know I could be wrong in my assumptions of this woman, a fellow traveler. But whether or not she is who I assume her to be doesn't matter. Because in finding her, I found myself...there on the California coast where the Santa Lucia mountains mirrored the sunset in golden and rose colored tones, and the grass was so soft under the thin layer of tent fabric that I've yet to find a more comfortable bed where I could rest and dream. I have my own string of bells now. They hang in my doorway and when I hear their little ringing chorus like laughter I'm reminded of the woman I hope to always recognize as me.