Happy

I want you to know that I am happy.Not particularly at this moment, but generally speaking I’m a happy man. I am satisfied with where my life has taken me, what I’ve seen, and what fate has allowed me to experience.It doesn’t often come out in my writing, because I express my happiness in other ways. They seem to all be private. For better or worse, my happiness is usually exhibited in things I observe. I read happy books, I listen to happy songs, I think a LOT of happy thoughts, and occasionally throw my head back and laugh out of sheer glee. I tell jokes, and tease my co-workers mercilessly. They tease me back, and some days, we even get a lot of work done. I can't explain it, but for some reason the things I create don’t usually tap that part of who I am. I sing sad songs, I write dark prose about ugly places. But for some reason I want you to know that these things are just a "part" of me. There are plenty of happy blogs, I read lots of them and enjoy them. I want you to know that I am happy.I hope you are happy too. :-)--Stew.

(29 August 2006)

Katrina

I am fortunate enough to have friends that I can argue with. That’s important because without friends you can argue with, you end up testing out your most fundamental confusions on people who DON’T like you. Which means they never point out the flaws in your argument. They “just” try to use them against you.Which brings me to Katrina. Between covering the sad but so completely overwrought saga of JonBenet Ramsey, “the media” has managed to remember that America’s largest single natural disaster happened one year ago this week.And it’s “this week” because it wasn’t a tragedy that struck on a Tuesday morning, and stays seared in your brain like 9/11. Katrina was the disaster that went on too long, like a first novel by a second-rate writer. Long after the story should have been reaching its conclusion, more chapters were being added and the plot wasn’t getting thicker, it was getting murkier and sadder. So, I’ve found myself discussing and debating hurricane Katrina and its aftermath with my friend. She’s white, and doesn’t understand why I see the storm and its aftermath in terms of “race,” a moniker I detest when discussing politics, primarily because it doesn’t mean anything. I’ll come back to that later.The dichotomy of our opinions is pretty simple. We agree that the government demonstrated incompetence in its response to the needs of the people at the local, state, and federal level. Where we part company is the question of why.To me, it’s painfully obvious that it was a combination of apathy and arrogance that led to the Constitutionally-elected executive branch of the federal government not noticing, or collecting the data that would have allowed them to fulfill their Constitutional obligation … specifically the insuring of domestic tranquility, part of the “reason” given for forming a nation in the first place. I believe that apathy has been their standard response to the specific plight of poor people. I believe this has particularly been true of those they could subcategorize as minority, and that this springs from an unexposed view that minorities actually have MORE opportunity thanks to post civil rights legislation. Therefore, those who haven’t managed to succeed have no one to blame but themselves, and as a result should be all but ignored by those who have. They are obviously inferior in some way, or just too lazy to take what has been offered.I believe the arrogance is a by-product of an irresponsible life of privilege. I have no firsthand knowledge about being wealthy, and I suspect that I am guilty of the same apathy toward the problems of the rich that I accuse them of exhibiting toward the poor. The relevant difference is that I am not tasked with their protection, nor do I seek to gain from their loss. The responsibly rich understand that their wealth comes with strings. One of those strings is an obligation to use a portion of their time, money, and power in pursuits to help the less fortunate. The government recognizes this and codified it as a desirable trait by making charity tax deductible. In fact, it is actually DIFFICULT in America to be wealthy WITHOUT declaring part of your assets toward a “charitable” cause. If you try, the government will literally TAKE most of your money away. Without that government insistence on philanthropy of some kind, I suppose the stick in this equation is that if you don’t, and the transgression is great enough, history tells us that the poor will eventually tear down your gates, take your shit, and probably behead you.I’ve always admired the responsibly rich and poor equally. Every group of poor people counts among its numbers many who work hard, play by the rules, and raise responsible families that pride themselves on taking as little from the public dole as possible. These are the people who show up at their jobs on time every day in exchange for a wage they cannot be expected to survive on, and serve as the fuel for the national economy. But there are despicable extremes among both rich AND poor. In action, the despicable, regardless of class, are users. They seek the next handout with religious fervor, and waste tremendous amounts of brainpower developing new ways to game loopholes of the system. They use their despicableness as capital for crime, laziness, and selfishness. Faced with poverty, they become stick-up kids. Faced with extreme wealth, they become board members of Enron … or vacation as a city drowns. They have no concern for how their behavior affects others. They are the picture of arrogance … and apathy. For me, Katrina ripped the façade off the face of despicable America. The poor became looters, the rich kicked off another game of “it’s not my fault” … version two of The Blame Game. And America watched as thousands of people were victimized by criminals in their midst as they waited for other criminals to come to their aid. Millions were displaced, thousands suffered, and hundreds died.And the world watched as more Americans with dark skin than have ever made an appearance on daytime television begged the cameras for food, water, medicine, and help.My friend doesn’t see the race issue. I can’t blame her, but I understand why. I believe it is a question of heritage.Heritage is the substance that is passed down from generation to generation around the dinner table. It’s the knowledge you have that isn’t written anywhere, but know as surely as your multiplication tables. It’s the beliefs you have in common with your grandparents, even though you vote for different political parties. It’s the feeling you get when you see symbols that you realize are a façade.I look at television footage for a living. I’ve learned to believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture is worth a million, and a moving picture with sound … is priceless.To my friend, I share this simple explanation of why I see “heritage” when I look at footage of Katrina:The way the event played out, hit a very raw, sensitive, and exposed nerve in the “black” psyche that we’re still not “part of the country.”As a group with shared heritage, we don’t have the language to describe what we feel. We just perceive it the same way. I cannot speak to the “fact” of it. I can only speak to its “truth.” All these “black” people are not saying the same things simply to piss “white” America off. We say it because we believe it. We say it because we feel it. We say it because we know it. On some level, it doesn’t even matter any more whether it’s “true” or not. Katrina will become a chapter in the unwritten book of our heritage like the Tuskegee Experiments, like the Tulsa burning of 1921, and like the need to be “twice as good to get half as far.”To the poor and displaced people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida … I wish you the blessing of Job. After learning he’d lost everything in a matter of minutes, his story is about trial and tribulation. But it ends with him gaining a double portion of his material possessions. (His children are also replaced, which is kind of weird, but that’s another topic for another day.)Peace,--Stew. (P.S. Knucklehead, I hope you're ok. If you see this, let me know that you are.)

(29 August 06)

Sin, C-Span, and ex-Presidents

I am a C-Span junkie, which is to say that I’m more inclined to watch an entire hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee than catch the soundbites on the evening news.I believe in sin—which I acknowledge is a bit odd since I am still “on the fence” about the existence of God. I think the concept of sin is a necessary device for society because it allows us to all share the sentiment of disgust about certain acts. I define sin as “the act of doing something fucked-up on purpose.”My father would vehemently disagree with my definition, I suspect—on two grounds. #1, he would NEVER use the term “fucked-up” to describe it. We wouldn’t argue that point in person, because I use as little profanity as possible in his presence out of respect for him and the way he has chosen to live his life. #2, his definition of sin is “the transgression of God’s law,” which is the 10 Commandments.I struggle with his definition because I think the 10 specific rules leave out a LOT of stuff that he would then call sin—like homosexuality. (Stay with me, this is headed somewhere.)Growing up Christian (Seventh-day Adventist to be precise) I was taught that all sin is equal in the eyes of God. I certainly don’t believe that, but if it IS true, it creates conundrums of all sorts. [Is a gay couple who concedes that happiness they get from their lifestyle, which is fucked-up in the eyes of others, is worth paying whatever consequences it demands really riding as fast a sin wagon as a mass murderer?] Which brings me to the unresolved conflict that’s happening in my head today.Ex-President William Jefferson Clinton turns 60 today. Happy birthday. One of C-Span’s Washington Journal questions today dealt with how we as citizens should view his presidency. It generated the Republican vs. Democrat responses that you should expect as a viewer of a call in political discussion show in the current political age.For those of you who’ve tuned out news altogether because it’s a constant cycle of Jon- Benet Ramsey, OJ Simpson, and donkeys and elephants arguing over the mundane … here’s the short version.Republican: Bill Clinton is a despicable man who disgraced the Oval Office and the Presidency. The economy did well under his leadership because of the Republican Congress, and the policies established under his predecessor. Al Quaida declared war against America on his watch and he did nothing about it. He is a stain on American history. George W. Bush is God’s man of the moment. He isn’t terribly articulate, but without his leadership we would face daily terrorist attacks. He’s an old-school cowboy who understands that you have to meet force with force, which isn’t always pretty. But if you really love this country, you understand that he’s protecting America and will support him.Democrat: George W. Bush is a moron who didn’t know anything about the world at large before he became President of its most powerful nation. He was right to go into Afghanistan to clear out the Taliban, since they wouldn’t turn over Bin Ladin; but Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism. He lied about the weapons of mass destruction intentionally. He’s a war monger who’s lining the pockets of his friends by creating war without end, and his actions have led more than 25,000 American young people to the loss of life or limb. Bill Clinton was an articulate representative of common political sense. He worked hard for the little people, built the strongest economy ever, balanced the budget, and stared down Newt Gingrinch and the Contract with America lunacy. He had an unfortunate dalliance inappropriately with an intern in the Oval Office, but his sexual proclivity shouldn’t necessarily taint his Presidential legacy. He was wrongly impeached by a Congress that hated him. He couldn’t do much about terrorism because every time he tried to make a military move, he was accused of “wagging the dog” and trying to distract America from his promiscuous behavior.Hmmmm…..The discussion got me to thinking. Which usually gets me to writing. Which brings us here.I’m a moderate Independent. Politically, that’s exactly the same as being an agnostic. We live in a tiny little room, where we play referee … since we can’t get into the game.Politically analyzing the situation is pretty easy for someone with my views. Both men are sinners, but the consequences of their individually fucked-up acts, done on purpose in both cases, aren’t having very similar impacts on world society.What Bill Clinton did, by encouraging and accepting a series of blowjobs and other sexual acts IN HIS OFFICE, was reprehensible on a dozen levels. It DID disgrace the Oval Office. There should be some places that are sacred because of their function. Imagine your Pastor spending a Tuesday night getting a blowjob on the pulpit. Isn’t that just … wrong? I mean, whether he gets caught or not isn’t really the issue. Isn’t it a desecration of the function of a pulpit? Doesn’t the fact that he will stand there on the weekend, and hopefully decry sin in all its various and sundry forms mean that he SHOULDN’T be using it as the venue for the satisfaction of his manly desires? Of course it does. This is what motels are for. The pulpit should be a place of innocence. I would argue he’d be just as wrong to plan a bank robbery, or beat his wife on the pulpit. ALL of those would be despicable acts, made even … WRONGER … by his choice of location to carry them out. There is no excusing it, there are no acceptable explanations, and frankly, I don’t think he should be allowed the opportunity to rationalize his behavior. It should be a punishable crime, and he should be shunned by decent folk for his sin. The Oval Office is the place from which my country speaks most forcefully. It’s where the decisions about which of our bills will be laws of the land without a Congressional fight are made. It’s where we receive the leaders of other nations on decidedly unequal ground. It’s where the conversations about whom we’ll fight, and who we’ll choose more diplomatic means happens. It’s where policy thought happens. It is NOT a boudoir, it’s not a strip club, it’s not a “by the hour” motel. It’s not the appropriate place to take your Mistress, with or without your wife’s consent. It’s MY office. It’s YOUR office. It’s OUR office. It’s one of America’s pulpits. Under NO circumstances, without my approval, is it the appropriate site for some guy’s Cytherean trysts with the hired help. That’s just nasty. It’s wrong. It’s … well, it’s fucked up.On a different level, it’s stupid. Forget Hillary, forget the marriage, forget Chelsea, forget that this guy was a “family man.” I’m not proud to say so, but lots of men cheat on their families. That’s also wrong, but irrelevant for the discussion of this particular man. How his family deals with his actions is a discussion for a separate forum. My topic today is Clinton as President. So here’s a question for the topic: “Shouldn’t he have known … as he was getting his Johnson smoked by the semi-nude girl just a couple of years older than his daughter in MY Oval Office … that there was a chance he’d get caught? I’ve had sex in a few “public” places … and it was always on MY mind in the moment. As President, wouldn’t he have been … AWARE of the potential consequences? Didn’t he KNOW … AS THE BLOWJOB was happening … that if Congress ever got hold of the video, that it would make it MUCH harder for him to get his agenda through? Of course he did. He’s a politician. It’s part of the job description to be constantly aware of how ALL of your deeds, seen and unseen, could affect your political viability. There is NO WAY … even in mid Max Headroom, to not be “aware” that hey … “this could go badly for me.”Of course he knew. Of course he was aware. But he told her to suck on, anyway. This my friends … is sin. A fucked-up act; in this case … getting head under MY desk … done on purpose.Now, how do we position this sin in the appropriate context of the man’s accomplishments? Here … is where it gets tricky.Aside from his sin, there is general agreement that Bill Clinton was not a BAD President. (That’s how we have to couch it to get the general agreement, lol). We can’t debate whether or not he was a “good” President. That’s not how it’s done. The question is … “Was Bill Clinton a bad President?” Most Republicans will even concede that the answer is no. They will insist on an asterisk for the blowjobs, which they are WELL within their rights to do. They will then add that he lied about it … which wasn’t a sin in my view, because … well, how the devil would you EXPECT him to behave? Of COURSE he lied about it. Duh. Having already committed the sin, I would’ve lied about it too. Once the nut is spent, and my obvious stupidity hits me in the instant after, I’d have thought up the best story I could, and rode it till the wheels fell off. Which he did. The lying to the Grand Jury wasn’t a sin … that was a crime; which is completely different. Impeachment was the appropriate penalty for it, and he paid that penalty. This combination of sins and crimes makes it hard to put him in the Great President fraternity. But it doesn’t erase his other accomplishments, either. Which brings us to Mr. Bush II. Not to be confused with his father, who is alleged to have cheated on Barbara … but not in the Oval Office. His sin is a bit murkier to me. He told lies to get what he wanted—war. It’s fucked up because to date, thousands of people have died as a result. To me, the discussion about his intelligence borders on the irrelevant. Once you make a decision, your intellect is no longer at issue. There is only the consequence of your actions. Many a moron has made a decision that resulted in brilliant outcomes. But that original lie … was fucked up. I suspect that in years to come, there will be dozens of books and articles about the pervasiveness of this particular deception. Time will eventually tell us a LOT more about what has happened in the Oval Office since the infamous blowjob. Already, I believe that it’s been used to hatch a series of lies that have resulted in people I know losing their lives.Without belaboring that point, it leads to my conclusion … and question. Are all sins equal? You tell me.

(originally posted 19 Aug 06)

State of MY politics

I am a Nebraskan. A Husker, wandering lost on the Eastern Coast.From a cultural standpoint, this means I appreciate a well-seasoned Runza, and know what steak is actually supposed to taste like.I also appreciate how it is to be cooked, and what you put on it when it’s “done.”If these observations leave a question mark in your mind, it’s because you aren’t as well cultured as we Huskers, lol.It also means that for me, High School civics was a series of lessons about the Unicameral.Wikipedia might tell you a bit more about us, but I haven’t checked it lately, and don’t know if any of my fellow red-blooders have taken the time off from harvest, or planting, or milking to bother to inform you about how an effective government works.You might have heard about the Unicam in the news this year, if you’re a news junkie like me.I still have friends at the television station where I wrote newscasts in the valley of uncertainty after I ended my military stint. And I still watch my hometown news.I have a favorite Senator. His name is Ernie Chambers, and he represents North Omaha. His picture is the one at the top of this blog. He made national headlines by proposing that the only public school district I ever attended be broken up into a triumvirate of separate administrations representing Black, White, and Hispanic school districts.Insane is what they called him.Not so much, but that’s because the rest of the world doesn’t understand the good Senator.He’s not. He’s just a throwback.I haven’t seen Mr. Chambers for almost 20 years, but when my co-worker knocked on my office door to tell me that there was a black Nebraska state Senator on CNN I remembered him well enough to ask if he was wearing a gray sweatshirt, and jeans.He’s a genius who used to cut hair on 24th Street.He raises the kinda unrest and hell in the Senate back home that I’d like to cause in life.He’s “one of us.” He’s ALWAYS been, but sadly you’ll probably never hear of him. When I was growing up, Nebraska was a state that had fewer than a million people, about 13 percent of whom were black.I don’t know the exact number, but I’ll bet Senator Chambers represented just about all of us.Nebraskans decided we don’t need two separate houses of legislation. Unless you’re one of us, YOUR state has a House of Representatives, and a Senate. You ALSO probably pick your committee chairmen by majority party. My Congress can kick YOUR congresses ass.You don’t need both.In Nebraska, you are elected from a neighborhood. To run, you just get your name put on the ballot. You're neither a Republican nor Democrat--you are a name. People either know you, and are willing to vote for you, or not. You don't go to the Unicameral to represent the interests of some generic political party, you go there to represent the people who sent you there. You become chair of a committee because the people on that committee believe you can get the job done. You stay for 4 years, divided into 4 legislative sessions that last 90 days in odd numbered years, and 60 days in even. You make $12,000 each year for performing the service, then you go home. We also split our electoral college votes. Hasn't happened in recent history, because the State has gone solidly one way or the other, but when its significantly split ... the winner get a majority, not a totality.The NATION needs two houses of legislation. The NATION has 300 million people, plus an estimated 30-million illegal “immigrants.Your state … not so much.My state … is smarter than your state because they figured this out early in the game.Two houses means you have to pay a lot more people out of your paycheck. And unless they’re putting money back INTO your check, you’ve got too many people on the payroll.Next time you’re on the internet and none of your friends is around to chat with, look us up.You’ll be surprised that we’re more than just the best football in the nation.

(Originally posted 12 Aug 06)

The Conclusion

“Okay black man, so let’s get the basic facts straight and ask the obvious question.”

He is an acquaintance of my muse, and he isn’t smiling.

I don’t know if he’s black, white, or from the other side.

“One week, a decade ago, you had a bad experience. You’ve decided to purge it from your spirit, but who honestly gives a shit about it? Everybody has a bad day. Rub some dirt on it, and walk it off. Most importantly, SHUT UP about it. It’s unimportant.”

The fact that the conversation was happening entirely inside my mind coupled with the realization that I was alone in the room kept pounding the inside of my consciousness like a timpani.

He was right in a sense. It’s a point I can’t argue.

But I have to finish, because I know that there has ALWAYS turned out to be a method to my madness.

There’s a reason my spirit has kept this story bottled up for these 3500+ days and nights.

There’s a reason my fingers fairly fly whenever I start to recall the details.

There’s a reason my thoughts zoom ... from electrical impulses inside my head, to whispered phrases nobody hears but me, to memorized finger-cadences marching across the keyboard, to saved bytes and bits I had to buy a new hard drive to store, to words on a page, to a light bulb switching “on” in YOUR mind.

It’s a journey of mere seconds.

Something eerie this way goes.

I’ve chosen to verbally fight him—this elegant, logical, and articulate stranger trespassing in the dark recesses of my mind.

I can’t quite see him in the shadows he favors, but I’ve conjured up a picture of him.

He wears a black hat. I’ve decided I’ll verbally battle him word for word, because as I grow older the wisdoms of my elders increase in value.

George Santayana, my elder by every measure, left me a priceless jewel. He said:

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

It stands to reason that those who never HEAR history have a fair and honest excuse for their inevitable, yet unnecessary repetition.

But if the people who KNOW the history don’t tell the people who may not---whose fault is the inexhaustible groundhog day?

As of this month, there are roughly 150,000 American servicemen and women in Iraq. There are another 20-thousand or so in Afghanistan.

While we debate and discuss how they got there, whether they should be there, and how soon they should/will/could come home—there’s a MUCH more important question that nobody’s asking at the town hall meeting.

WHO WILL THEY BE WHEN THEY GET BACK?

We’re not talking about your brother, or father, or cousin, or uncle, or friend, of course … we’re discussing the “other guy.”

Because it is a fact of history that none of the people we know or love has ever come back from war, let’s say … Vietnam, with any mental health issues.

For that matter, the experience has never so much as changed them one iota from being the happy-go-lucky, balanced, friendly guy who was King of the Prom.

RIGHT?

What sort of impact does exposure to death, chaos, and mayhem have on the psyche?

Anybody know??

A 34-year old hand slowly reaches for the sky from the back of the room.

“I know.”

The words are quiet.

Just a few of them, all but hidden on a weblog that nobody will ever read, hosted quietly on a website where anonymity is achieved by melting into the crowd of millions of bored Americans wandering in search of the sex, chat, and fun that are the bold-print items on the agenda.

But they are sincere.

“I have a history with that. And I don’t want anybody to have to repeat it.”

In the shadows of my mind, I can see the black-hatted doubter leaning forward.

He still wants me to “walk off” the pain. But he’s intrigued by the comment.

His aura begs me to consider the possibility that he’s a good guy after all.

Just, misunderstood.

I don’t know, and I'm afraid to find out.

But he’s assumed the position of “the thinker” and he’s listening.

Progress is.

I talked to a friend of mine days before I started writing chapter one of this story. He and I are military buddies. We have been friends for a long time, and in the old days he wanted to go to war.Now, he’s been.And he cries himself to sleep almost every night.

I can relate to that, except that the tears didn’t come when my particular slideshow started every 24th hour on the hour.

He unloaded on me.

Talked about the things he’d seen, the things he’d done, and the things he’d thought about doing.

He told me in confidence, and has given me permission to reference the conversation here … but made me promise to never use his name.

He’s talked about the killing, and the dying.

He’s talked about the maiming, and the blood.

He’s talked about the violence, and the sound.

The smell.

And the heat.

He reached the end, and stopped talking.

Now ... we talk about football, and girls, and funny cartoons.

All the stuff NORMAL teenagers discuss.

He says he is different, now.

When I stare into his eyes I believe him, and I know what he’s talking about.

I wasn't strong enough to find the voice I would need to scream in to give his story the kind of volume it would need to raise the roof off the muthafucka!

So I chose to tell you my story instead of his, because mine isn't as grotesque.

It's not as vivid, there is no good guy or bad guy in my story. There is only an accident, and victims.

Plus, I was finally ready.I am familiar with them both, and believe me when I tell you--My experience was absolutely NOTHING compared to his.

But I’ve walked a few steps down that road.I also believe that he’s strong, probably much stronger than I.

In ten years, you may find yourself reading HIS blog, and seeing this war through his eyes. He is a master with words, and I sometimes read what he writes when I search for inspiration.But he hasn’t written about this, yet.

I write on his behalf because neither you nor I have the luxury of waiting that decade. Because he is legion.

There are almost a MILLION people who have spent a month, or a quarter, or a year, or 18 months, or done repeat tours in the belly of these beasts of conflict.

And they have seen the hell that defines war, and becomes the fiction of tomorrow.

Most of them are stable, and will come back to what we always called “the world” to resume normal lives.

But there are a MILLION of them.

And some of them will suffer nightmares. Others will beat their wives, or children. A few will adjourn to the local bar, where they will spend every drunken night looking for a fight to give their newfound aggression a home. And a small percentage …

of the MILLION …

Will become a threat to you, the people you love, and the community you live in. They are not at fault. They have experienced a trauma so deep that it awakens their darker selves. They have been called upon to “defend freedom.” And defense of anything requires violence, killing and dying, watching, and the summoning of spirits we like to leave sleeping.

Those spirits are organic. They are not robots. You don't just "pull the plug" to power them down. They don’t simply return to rest.

They stalk the dark recesses of the mind, they pound the inside of the consciousness like a timpani. They appear wearing black hats, and lean in to better hear the discussion.

They speak.

They argue.

And sometimes, they win.

They turn men into rapists and thieves, havoc wreakers and murderers.

In one of the earlier chapters, I talked about the wallet … and the photo I can still see as clearly as if I were holding it in my hands. I didn’t know the woman, but yet … she haunts me.

How much greater would that haunting be if I’d killed her. Or watched her die?Watched her kill my friend? Watched HIM die?How much darker would my nightmares be if I’d CAUSED that tragedy, even unwillingly?Post-traumatic stress disorder is real.

I stAND UP in testimony to its existence and its very real power.We have exposed hundreds of thousands to hell, and pushed many of that number into trauma in the name of spreading democracy.Who will protect those victims when the gunfire stops?

Who will protect YOU when it starts again, much closer to home?

Who will quiet the nightmares? Debate the spirits, and clean up the mess??

Shiites and Sunnis were glaring at each other across the room when my grandfather's grandfather was tilling the fields.

They will still hate each other when my grandchildren’s grandchildren are given their first computer. I don’t care about that. It isn’t my problem. Theoretically, I could make it my problem, but I have to pick and choose my battles. I choose my brothers and sisters in arms … who have their OWN August 6th, 1997 experience to cope with. Thank you for listening.

He is quiet … my black-hatted stranger. I am not sure if he is thinking, or plotting.But I can still feel him, hugging the walls of my mind, as he contemplates his next move. He is probably me. I wonder what HE remembers.

(Originally Posted 11 August 2006)

The Sixth of August, Part Six

August 6th, part six...
I wish I could say the rest of the trip was a blur.
It wasn’t.
It is a pristine stained glass of images.
The Tech Sergeant assigned to recover body parts who did so through tears because he’d changed his daughter’s flight from Seoul to the following day.
The near-riot that broke out when a group of mostly Buddhist family members showed up and wanted to walk through the wreckage to stand as close as possible to where the spirits of their beloved had left their bodies and were denied because NTSB investigators wouldn’t allow it.
The first commercial passenger plane that flew overhead.
The chaplains who accompanied the recovery crews trying to provide some sort of spiritual help for whoever needed it.
The EMT from the Southside of Chicago whose eyes glazed over when he told me about being part of the first team on-scene and admitted to crying that morning, just before he broke into tears again.
The emergency room doctor who’d treated ALL of the first wave of rescuees.
The smell.
The Air show that continued at Andersen that weekend, because it was scheduled ... and how shell-shocked a lot of the people who came to visit seemed. It was a weird juxtaposition of happy and sad.
Standing on a guardrail as recovery teams pushed wheelbarrows full of body parts up the hill for "marking" and "identification."
The phone calls back to home base that confused me, because the home team was "excited" about "what kind of footage we were getting."
Finally shutting down the operation because word on the street was that the NTSB was looking for all of the video footage of the incident scene, and not wanting to have to go through the war between government agencies over our footage.
Sitting in my hotel room at the Hatsuo Greens, which has since become some other named golf resort, and trying to keep my thoughts and the room from spinning.
Going to the strip club with Dan (he was against it, for the record) in hopes we’d put it all behind us.
Fighting to find a flight home, hoping to leave from Andersen ... having that hope dashed when a flight to Narita showed up empty at Won G. Pat International.
Literally sprinting the length of the airport to make the flight, while trying to compute how many uniform pieces I had to take off to not be considered technically "flying in an unauthorized uniform."
Having airline attendants call our names over the intercom to tell us that our plane was finished boarding, and was about to head out to the runway.
Barely making it, and being stunned to be confronted with the walk to our seats in the very back row ... and having to pass the roughly 300 people, sitting in seats just like the wrecked plane I’d been seeing in my waking hours and in my dreams over the past three days.
Seeing a pregnant woman in the middle section. I couldn’t tell how far along she was, but she stared by at me with a look of concern in her eyes. I’m not sure if it was how filthy I was, or the terrified stare I must have been giving her. Or maybe, she just didn’t like to fly.
Flashing between the present, and the disturbing videotape as I searched for my row.
Flying DIRECTLY over the fucking wreck as we flew to altitude.
Not being able to fight the urge to look at it.
Almost screaming when we hit the first patch of turbulence.
Wanting to kiss the ground when we landed.
Trying to start processing my thoughts on the three-hour ride back to base.
Getting there, and starting to immediately write the short piece to send to Network.
Calling my wife, and telling her I’d made it safely home.
Realizing I’d changed, somehow.
Not being able to figure it out.
Going home, not being able to sleep and getting out of bed to return to work.
Three days straight of producing the piece. Arguing about what would make the cut, and which soundbites were appropriate, which were not.
Being far too close to the story to be objective, for some reason.
Having to watch the video again ... frame by frame.
Finishing it, and realizing I was as tired as I’d ever been in my life–AND simultaneously becoming aware that I wasn’t sleepy at all.
Drinking Nyquil to make me drowsy, and spending three hours in the most terrifying nightmares I’d ever witnessed.
Getting a lot of positive feedback on the finished product.
Winning a couple of awards for it.
Not caring.
Fast forwarding ten years, and starting a blog.
Reaching the end of this story. And being strangely satisfied that the only thing left ... is to make its point.

August 6, 1997 -- Part Five

There really is a point to this story.
I admit to a political point-of-view, and a specific reason for sharing how this event impacted me–aside from a cathartic chance to cleanse myself by putting the thoughts of my darkest days in writing, allowing anybody with an internet connection to see them and develop an opinion about who and what kind of person I am.
I’ll ask you to trust me just enough to believe that I’ll get to the point eventually, and in return I promise to make it there before I stop typing for good.
Early afternoon of August 7th found me in a production suite at Andersen Air Force Base. The objective was viewing on-scene footage of the first few minutes after the last of the rescues. It’s time I’d like to have back.
There’s this ... "moment" that most of us have in common. I ask you to visit it with me. It’s the moment after you board an airplane and you’re looking for your seat. I’m not a wealthy man, so I’ve very rarely been in the first few rows of a commercial flight; for that reason, I’ve had the opportunity to repeat this ritual repeatedly..
Shortly after my rows are called, and I cross the threshold of the machine and make the right turn that sends me down the middle aisle, I find myself scanning two things. You’ve probably done the same thing. First, I carefully try to unobtrusively find my row number. This requires a constant leaning in and squinting at the tiny numbers above the seats, but below the luggage racks bolted to the walls.
Secondly, I scan the faces.
I used to wonder what I’m looking for when I look at the people. I used to believe I was looking for the pretty women. That was probably true at one time. Now, I admit to looking for potential terrorists, and people who look like they might have a death-wish for some reason. Basically, I’m trying to get a feel for people I’m hoping I don’t have to sit beside.
The end result of that scan is almost a kaleidoscope of faces and images. There are usually men and women. Old and young. A wide variety of skin tones. A variety of colors. An interesting mix of clothing styles. A variation of sleepy, well-rested, and anxious expressions.
Videographers pay close attention to how vision works. Not in the way opticians and optometrists do; Doctors pay attention to the biology and physiology of the process. Video-shooters and editors pay attention to what you see first, and second, and third when you’re confronted with a new scene. It is the foundation for how film and video scenes are put together. The current hypothesis is that when you walk into a new environment, your eye takes a wide shot. You then zoom in to a region of the room, then a specific object. After this, you tend to scan from one item of interest to another. This pattern repeats until you either find an object that will hold your complete attention (like a person talking to you), or you start all over again in a different part of the environment.
(Where is this heading? This is disjointed and hard to follow.)
Have a bit of trust, would’ya?
After being introduced to the theory of videography, I started subconsciously testing it in my own responses and reactions to new environments. That’s when I first noticed the airplane thing...
...which brings me to a metal folding chair, sitting in front of an edit suite with the Senior Airman ... who was NOT my type of guy. He’d been up for about 35 hours too, except that when the crash was first reported, he’d immediately headed up to the scene. He arrived a few minutes after the first fire engine, and hitched a ride in an ambulance. He immediately started shooting...
...he popped in his tape #2, and said ... "check this out. It’s REALLY cool."
It was a videographer’s imitation of that scan I do every time I board a plane.
After climbing through a hole in the skeleton of the aircraft, in the dark ... he’d walked to the front right side of the plane. After the color bars, the first few seconds of the tape were pitch black. He switched the mounted light on. What followed was about 30 minutes of "the walk." From the front of the plane to the end of the first section. From the gaping hole between the first section to it’s conclusion.
I felt weird watching it.
The round light cast a peculiar glow on everything, sort of like an interrogator’s lamp. In the middle of the wide shots, there was a round circle of light where everything was the right color, outside the light ... everything was bluish-gray.
Most of the people were still belted in their seats ... even though some of the bolts attaching them to the floor had snapped, tilting some of them at odd angles.
They were all dead.
I’m no expert on these things, but it seemed like many of them never woke up. A few had their eyes closed, and I might’ve thought you could wake them up if a snapped your fingers loud enough right in their ears ... except for the charred clothes, and skin, and seatbacks.
One or two had apparently been WIDE AWAKE and realized PRECISELY what was happening. Faces frozen in terror, my impression is that their last moments had been exactly how I DON’T want to die.
First class got the worst of it. Most of it was just a mangled mass of metal. The fire had consumed virtually all of the cloth. My eye zoomed in on severed limbs and shoes full of feet and legs up to the knee jangled up in-between some of the charred metal rods and busted suitcases.
In a different environment, it might’ve been a horror movie. But there was no plot, and no music. Just blood, and gore.
I was sure the SrA wasn’t my kind of guy because he was stoked about it. I asked him why he was so excited, and his logic made a sick kind of sense.
"I didn’t cause their death, and its the most interesting thing I’ve ever shot."
Fair enough, but not my cup of tea.
There was a pregnant woman in the second section. I’ve no idea how far along she was ... but I couldn’t help wondering if her fetus had survived the initial impact.
The further you went back in the wreckage, the less actual "damage" had been done -- unless you count the fact that so many of the people were dead as part of your damage assessment.
Some of those images are still seared into my brain.
There were men and women. Old and young. A wide variety of skin tones. A variety of colors. An interesting mix of clothing styles. A variation of sleepy, well-rested, and anxious expressions.
I suffered through about six tapes worth of footage. Close ups and zooms, pans and rack focuses. A continuous stream of sights and sounds I wish I could simply erase.
But they’re all still here.
I’ve tried to drown them in scotch, soak them in beer, smoke them out with nicotine, eat them away, even work them out in the gym until I nearly passed out.
But they’re just as strong as ever.
Usually, my job as a journalist requires me to get as close to whatever is happening as possible. I’d thought in this situation that to board the wreckage was a good idea. I decided at that moment, in that room, where the line was for me. I wasn’t going to board the wreckage. I wasn’t going to even try.
It wasn’t a very professional decision, but in some ways it has probably saved my mind.
I met back up with Dan, and we headed back out to the scene.
There really is a point to this story.
I admit to a political point-of-view, and a specific reason for sharing how this event impacted me–aside from a cathartic chance to cleanse myself by putting the thoughts of my darkest days in writing, allowing anybody with an internet connection to see them and develop an opinion about who and what kind of person I am.
I believe there are three more parts to this story. The third is where I’ll make my point, and probably never mention this event again.
Thank you for your patience.


(Originally Posted 20 Feb 2006)

My Kind of Hip Hop

I miss it. And it's not even that old.





Story tellers...




and of course ... my first philosopher.




Peace,
--Stew.

8/6/97 - Part IV

Death has a certain smell.
Not certain like a specific one of many.
Certain like deliberate, inevitable, assured in mind or action.
It is haunting the way particular songs are haunting. It is visceral and organic. You immediately know what the smell is, even the first time you smell it.
And it uncannily grips you on a level far more intense than any other odor.
The smell of death makes you understand what instinct is. When it passes your nostrils, your psyche screams. Some part of you tries to run from it, but your mind ... constantly processing ... blocks any actual movement. It understands; instinctively, ethereally, that the forces in play are bigger than everything that lives inside you. Bigger than your imagination, bigger than your emotion, and definitely bigger than your thought and knowledge combined.
There used to be a show about a Medical Examiner. It was called Quincy, M.D. Jack Klugman played the lead.
I bring it up because there’s a scene in the opening sequence where Quincy whips the cover off of a cadaver, and the other people in the room immediately faint. As a kid, I always thought the people passed out because of the level of decomposition of the body. I now know that it was actually the smell.
There is nothing like it. Anywhere.
Until that morning on Nimitz Hill, I’d never smelled death.
I’d seen it. I’ve watched a number of people die.
Even felt it, by kissing my grandmother in her casket.
But I’d never smelled it.
In our sanitary, disinfected culture ... we embalm the bodies of our fallen before they start to smell.
Our dead become mannequins. Human forms, devoid of humanity.
But ask a doctor, or a medical examiner, perhaps even an embalmer about that smell ... and I’ll bet you get more than you bargained for.
I was holding the camera on sticks, at the top of the Hill when the smell first hit me.
I’d been working on adrenalin and naivete for more than a day. On some level, I realized this was potentially a story that could make a name for me. That had been my angle, until the odor. My eyes closed.
It was still faint, but Guam is a hot, tropical place where heat and humidity are constant, even in the morning. And the whiff brought a promise of increasing strength.
I carried the gear over to the edge of the hill closest to the largest piece of the wreckage.
Dan had wandered behind me, and was kind enough to snap the photo that accompanies part two of this memoir. It was a surreal moment that I’ve never left, even now ... almost ten years later. The spirituality of the instant wasn’t clear to me at that point. Events later in the day brought that to bear. But the finality was hitting me at about the point Dan snapped the photo.
Before me, was a smoldering hull. It was completely recognizable, and markedly out of place.
It looked as foreign as a car in a tree.
Planes NEVER rest on grassy knolls.
Sometimes they sit on assembly lines. Other times they park in hangars, or idle on runways. They soar on drafts, and bounce onto carriers.
They fly overhead, flip at the air show, and sit at the end of the walkway you travel to board at the airport.
They don’t rest on grassy knolls. Ever.
Few people have ever even seen the right front side of an airplane up close. You board on the left, through the door. You watch the bottom as it flies overhead.
You’re familiar with the tail end. Typically, its where the airline paints its logo. But the "passenger side," as it were ... is, and should always be ... a mystery.
This plane was breaking all the rules.
It was smoking. It was in three or four pieces. There were no stairs. The landing gears weren’t positioned right. And it was full of passengers.
I tried to retreat to my armored position behind the lens ... but that slight scent swallowed my space. It entered my clothes, and I felt it in my skin.
I’m a professional.
I centered the sticks, focused the lens, and pushed the button with my right thumb. I shot.
I zoomed, and panned.
Rack-focused, and moved.
Repeated.
Repeated.
Repeated.
Repeated.
There were workers crawling around the wreckage.
I captured them on videotape.
I centered the sticks, focused the lens, and pushed the button with my right thumb. I shot.
I zoomed, and panned.
Racked focused, and moved.
I repeated.
Repeated.
Dan eventually tapped me on my shoulder.
He was probably stronger than me at the moment.
The flip side of the camera’s protective powers is that when they fail ... LIFE exists in the lens.
You've framed the subject, and focused it perfectly. It is trapped.
You can’t tear yourself away from it.
It is narrow, and sharp. You can see it with a crystal clarity that your vision typically never stops to pronounce.
It stamps a still photo on your mental rolodex that is crisper and brighter than what you see when you simply scan a scene with the naked eye.
Dan taps me again.
"Stew, I’ve set up some interviews."
We start to talk to the men who built the road, and lit the night. It is a turning point in their lives too, but they are afraid to admit it to us, because we’re "press" and they don’t want to be the subject of a "story."
They’re speaking "military-ease" to us. It’s a defense mechanism.
I speak it fluently, but never understood its true purpose.
I’ve seen cops do the same thing at the scene of a tragedy. It allows a language unfettered by emotion, and untouched by reality. It lets them describe what has happened, without telling you what’s going on.
It detaches them, and allows what they’re experiencing to be separate and distinct from what they’re feeling.
It comes out like "At approximately 0630, the driver of the red dodge lost control of his vehicle, leaving his lane and coming into contact with the blue toyota. All five passengers were medivac’d to St. Joe’s hospital where they are in critical, but stable condition" ... instead of "Jesus, man ... what sort of fucked up pain is this that I’m feeling? Could this have been me?"
It was about nine o-clock in the morning.
On the way back to the truck, we stopped to tape the wreckage from every possible angle. B-roll makes a news story. But already, my heart wasn’t in it.
We were walking across the hill, and I saw it.
The suitcase.
The single element that made everything snap back into reality.
It was lying on the ground. Smashed open.
It looked like the suitcase I’d packed the previous day.
Whoever owned it, was a real person.
The straps held the deodorant in place, along with a small can of shaving cream, and a photograph. The socks, boxer shorts, and jeans were still neatly folded, although a bit wrinkled and slightly askew underneath the elastic bands.
There was a photograph.
A Korean woman, probably a few years older than me, standing next to a man who obviously loved her–his arms were wrapped around her shoulders. Standing behind them, a younger man, probably about my age, with two fingers held up behind her head ... in the universal symbol of "she’s going to be soooo surprised when she sees this picture."
I have no idea if she ever saw it, but I was surprised when I saw the picture.
There were some trees, and a rock in the photo. But I was stunned. THIS man, in THIS photograph ... was now, probably dead.
I couldn’t bring myself to push the record button.
I wasn’t a professional at that moment.
I cried.
I have very, very rarely used a suitcase from that day, to this. They still kinda ... spook me. I'm bothered by the way the clothes look, folded underneath the elastic bands. It's a silly little Stew thing that maybe one day I'll grow out of. But not today.
I travel with a duffel bag. Its no safer, but it reminds me of going to the gym, or deploying for a training exercise.
I half walked, half stumbled away.
The hill was virtually empty. Except for the innards of the plane.
I never expected them.
The coffee cans, and Bibles.
The shoes, pillows, and blue blankets.
The current magazines.
The laundered and pressed shirts.
The twisted pieces of metal.
There was a paper cup, with a lipstick mark. How the hell did IT survive?
The baby bottle, the hairbrush.
Dan has also noticed. I don’t know what caught his eye, but we both wandered up the other side of the hill to the waiting vehicle.
We didn’t talk about what we were seeing, only about our next step.
Our assignment was a news story. Enough video for three minutes of produced airtime.
"Let’s head back. We have enough."
The tech sergeant was waiting for us.
The car was quiet for the entire ride.
The sun was still coming up behind us.
I called the home office.
"Scott? Stew. We’ve got enough for a story."
"Yes, its as bad as the commercial stations are showing, and worse."
"They want what?"
"30 minutes worth?"
"Yeah, we have interviews."
"I guess we can get more footage."
"Umm....ok."
"Scott. There’s a terrible smell."
"No, this is my first."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. We can do it."
"OK. Will do. I’ll call back later this afternoon."
"Yes, we’ll be ok."
I turned to Dan.
"They want a 30 minute special."
When you watch the news, you see 1:30 - 3:00 edited video clips. In those pre-digital days, it took about an hour to put a one minute piece together. It also took about 15 minutes of raw tape.
The average :15 second soundbite comes from a three minute interview. Longer soundbites require longer interviews. A 30 minute special takes about ten 30-minute tapes. We had exactly 3/4's of one tape worth of footage.
I would have been perfectly ok with me to end this adventure right there. I could take my 25 minutes of footage, head back to Tokyo, and never come back to Guam. But that wasn’t in the cards for me. I was hungry, tired, emotionally overwhelmed.
I suddenly needed to kiss my wife and tell my mother I loved her.
I wanted a beer, and a shot of whiskey.
I’d had enough for one day.
The Tech Sergeant came in the room with a slip of paper in his hands.
"Stew, you have a telephone message from our video shop. They have some video of the actual rescue they want to know if you can use it. Give them a call, you can go over and take a look this morning."
I’m too young for this...


( 1 Feb 06)

My Father

The ghetto is full of stories from men who have never known their fathers.

I don’t have one of those. I’m Danny B’s Son. I’ve always loved him, and I’d like to personally welcome him to my blog.

We talk a LOT these days. I’m happy about it. For a stretch of ten years or so, we didn’t speak very often. I think we probably needed time to heal from my terrible teens.

Back in those days, he was a strict, and difficult man. My impression was that he could never admit being wrong.

I was as stubborn as he was and that was a custom-made recipe for more confrontations and conflicts than games of catch or lessons in auto repair.

Religion, and business. That’s what we talk about. It’s always been the case, and now I wouldn’t change anything about that.

He took me to a Lakers game once. In Kansas City. The Lakers spanked the Kings, but I’ll never forget it. I think it’s the only sporting event we’ve ever gone to watch together.

Yesterday, I took my son to watch the Washington Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning. I couldn’t care less about hockey, but I hope he remembers it and writes about it someday in his blog.

There are a number of memories that I owe completely to my father.

The most important, was in March of 1998, I think.

I’d traveled from Tokyo to Baltimore to attend some training. My wife and I had just decided to divorce.

I was devastated, but coping.

I called Pop to tell him I was in country, and ended up swallowing my pride and telling him that he’d been right about my decision to get married when and how I did. I was expecting the kind of tongue lashing that I’d always silently accused him of enjoying.

It never came. For the first time in my life ... he got quiet on me.

"Where are you, son?"

I told him.

We did a bit more catching up, he told me that he loved me, and hung up the phone.

I don’t know how much time actually passed, but it seems like the very next evening I got a knock on the door.

My father had caught a bus from Omaha, Nebraska to Laurel, Maryland just to be at my side.

We spent a couple of days just talking and catching up. He never judged me, he never gave me the "see I told you so" lecture that I expected. He just talked to me ... and listened.

To whatever degree my spirit has stayed intact, I'm not sure I would have survived that personal crisis without that gesture, and his silent support.

I doubt I’ve ever told him how much that meant to me. I’ve always loved and admired him,
but in that week he became my hero, again.

When I think about it now, it reminds me of how he’d earned that position over the years.

We both remember the best summer of my life.

His job was transferring us from Kansas City to Omaha. It was the summer between my sixth and seventh grades. Our job was to travel to Nebraska to scope out the new situation and find a place to live.

We were partners.

We stayed in a motel, looked at real estate, and got to know the city. I remember him putting a bid on the house that is STILL my favorite, and not getting it. (Do you remember Belvedere, Pop?)

I remember Mary Ellen, the real estate agent, promising him that she’d find us a perfect house and coming through on that promise.

I remember the 10¢ sodas in the real estate agency. I remember that it was in a strip mall, and that there was a toy store three doors down. I remember leaving the office when I’d get bored to visit that shop and dream.

I remember falling in love with some toy I’ve since forgotten, and that one day he was probably as bored as I was and asked me where I always went when I left.

"Where do you go, son?"

I told him. He asked if he could go with me.

It was my little sanctuary, and part of me wanted to keep it to myself.

But I said yes. I don’t think he saw the point of the toy, but he bought it for me.

He was already my hero. Even then, I wasn’t materialistic. It was a practical toy, but I still remember that moment.

My dad is an ex-Marine. I remember being four, or five, and him deciding that it was time for me to learn how to fight in our second floor flat on Kingsbury Avenue in St. Louis.

He spent most of the morning teaching me "how to fall."

That brought the normally quiet Ms. Davis upstairs to find out "what the hammerbrand" was going on.

A few weeks later, we were visiting one of his customer's houses. Their little roughneck sons had
just gotten a punching bag and set of gloves for a birthday or something, and couldn't wait to invite the preacher’s kid to box against them.

I was terrified.

I remember my dad rescuing one of those poor thugs from me punching the shit out of him on his front porch. (Never give a scared little kid the means to hurt someone. He probably will.)

I remember that my dad rarely "gave" me money. I always had to work for it. But I always had spending change.

I remember learning about capitalism by having to sell magazines.

I remember my father breaking his rule that "the teacher is always right" by confronting Mr. Fox, my white, sixth-grade music teacher, who insisted on calling my friends and me "his little chocolate angels."

That guy was a racist, and I'd made it a point to never follow his instructions "just right." I'd always assumed that I’d get a whipping for never obeying him. Turned out that it was the right decision, though. I was right, and he was wrong; at least in Danny B's eyes, which is all that mattered in those days.

And my dad backed me up.

He also backed me up when the English teacher at my all-white boarding school insisted that I read the part of Kunta Kinte in the classroom reading of "Roots, the Christmas Story." I wouldn't, and left.

He taught me that you don’t have to "already" know how to do a particular thing, to do it well.

When our church basketball team suffered a humiliating defeat against the very Globetrotter-esque church down the street, he became our coach, bought a book on coaching a game he’d never played, and led us to victory against those same scrubs.

He taught me that its okay to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses by making little Eric (four feet tall at the most) our lead-off batter in a softball game against the best pitcher in the league to throw him off his game. (Rest in peace my young friend. You left too soon.)

He taught me that your opponent is not your enemy by standing at the fence the next week, and talking that same teenager to a 1-hitter against a team he’d never beaten.

When he opened his business, we built a really cool bookshelf. We call it the ark, because it’s got shelves on four sides and fills up the middle of a room. (Do you still have the ark, Pop?)

He taught me that it’s okay to stand alone by always having an opinion he’d thought about, and being willing to say it loudly and proudly in a million different hostile environments. He was the first black Republican I ever knew personally.

The lesson he taught me most consistently was to think for myself, and always be willing to make my own decisions, fully aware of the consequences, and fully willing to accept the worst case scenario.

He supported me when I dropped out of college to join the military, even though a war was starting and he didn’t think it was the best time to be heading off to boot camp.

He’s never been a quiet man, nor shy. He’s never been prone to keep his thoughts to himself. I learned that from him, too.

We don’t agree about religion. He’s a devout Christian, and I fully expect that if there’s a heaven, he’ll go.

But he’s respected my choices, and talked openly about both the parts he thinks make sense about them, and the parts he thinks I’m stupidly naive about.

We don’t agree about politics, although Dubya has probably brought us together more on the subject than any President since we debated whether we should go see candidate Carter in St. Louis.

He’s been married to my mom for almost 35 years. I kept it together for about seven and tried to quit with dignity.

I am a man today. I love to discuss religion and politics. I’m strict, and probably difficult. I’ve been beside my friends on some of the most difficult days of their lives. I try to never say "I told you so" on those days.

Last weekend, I started teaching my son how to fall. He asked me for this noisy firetruck. I bought it.

I work for the money I have.

I'm not what you'd describe as "handy," but several years ago I built a set of shelves that I’m really proud of, even though I don’t see them anymore (long story).

I have no problem winning, and will gleefully find and exploit my opponent's weaknesses to do so.

But I know how to lose with honor, and to give my best effort in competition.

I will shake your hand, and congratulate you on your victory.

I'll mean it when I do.

I’ll help a friend.

I think for myself, and make my own decisions.

I’ve suffered enough consequences that hurt me deeply to know I’m not afraid of tough choices. I’m neither quiet nor shy.

I don’t keep my thoughts to myself most of the time, although I don’t tell just anyone everything, either.

The ghetto is full of stories from men who have never known their fathers.

I don’t have one of those. I’m Danny B’s son.

I love you. Pop.


p.s. If you ever want or need a Bible, Danny B will be happy to sell you one in any language. check him out at:
http://www.internationalbibles.com/
If you tell him that Stew sent you, he might even print your name on it in gold leaf for free. I dunno, you'll have to ask him. He makes his own decisions :)

8/6/97 -- Part Three

Andersen Air Force Base sits on what I’ve always thought of as the Western end of Guam. I say thought of, because it occurs to me that I have absolutely no idea how the island is situated in the ocean. I’m not sure where I got the notion that Tumon Bay faces south, or that Nimitz Hill was on the East side. I guess those are just details, but if my impression is wrong, its pretty shoddy storytelling to not know which direction I traveled to get to the moment that changed my life forever.
I suppose that after I finish this entry, I’ll use the considerable power of the internet to check my facts ... but for now, I’ll rely on my memory and impressions for this document. If an error in fact should make it to the final draft ... charge that to artistic license, not laziness. These moments don’t hit all the time, I don’t want to lose this one ... it’s taken a long time to get here.
I think of Guam as being a kidney-bean shaped island that sits out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I’ve driven it end to end dozens of times, and in my mind’s eye, it’s about 30 miles from Western edge to Eastern. I know that from a geographic standpoint, it’s the top of a collection of submerged volcanoes that sits near the Marianas trench. It’s the largest island of Micronesia.
In my mind, we drove from West to East that morning; beginning at Andersen, and ending closer to the Navy’s headquarters at Nimitz Hill. (For an exciting story, check out the history of Nimitz Hill sometime. It played a fascinating, and sorta tragic role that no one ever talks about in World War II.)
I was nervous for the entire ride.
Strangely, Dan and I have never talked about this experience, one-on-one, after the fact. He has his story. This is mine. I believe he was as nervous as me. I’d never been to a crash site of anything larger than a car before.
Nimitz Hill is actually a collection of rolling hills that dominate the eastern part of the island. From their westernmost point, you can stand on top and look over at Central Guam.
That’s where you’ll see the Won G. Pat international airport.
To land there, a pilot has to clear Nimitz Hill in his final approach from the East.
They’re not gigantic peaks, but for this particular flight, trying to land on this particular morning, in this particular storm, they were tragically perfect. In the early morning darkness, the pilot ... unaware that his altitude wasn’t higher than the top of the big hill in front of him, flew his fully loaded passenger jet directly into the side of Nimitz Hill at a speed of several hundred miles per hour.
The plane broke into several large pieces, which spilled their mechanical, corporate, and suitcased guts across the hill, while keeping many of the still-sleeping passengers safely belted in to their useless seats as jet fuel-fed flames licked from one side of the wreckage to the other.
Rescuers were able to get to 25 people from the bunch. The last was a six or seven year-old girl. Video showed her screaming for her mother, who also survived.
By the time the Tech Sergeant, Dan, and I arrived there that morning, the scene was an organized, smoldering shrine. Firefighters and medical technicians were finished with their part of the response effort. The airport was still closed.
We passed the commercial photographers stand at the top of the hill several miles from the actual site. Everyone seemed to be shooting with high-powered lenses; the kind I’ve always equated with stalking celebrities.
On this day, all those optics were pointed to the valley between two hills, at the big metal pile. I asked if we could stop. I whipped out our camera, set it up, and asked Dan to shoot long-shots while I talked to the only reporter I could see.
A couple of minutes with the lone photog who’d slept through part of the night, and was now manning all of the cameras ( a fact many people don’t realize ... in the field, especially foreign correspondents share virtually everything, including tape, cameras, and photographers. CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC might be competitors, but that’s not something you’d EVER learn from watching their grunts do work. They frequently share the work of covering an event so everyone can get some sleep. It always makes me kinda giggle when they leave the impression that one station or another has some sort of "exclusive" ) caught me up to where the story had evolved in the hours I’d been traveling.
He gave me the reporter’s skinny on how the military wouldn’t let anyone down to the site (seemed reasonable then and still does today. I wish someone had kept me away.) He talked about the start of rumblings about one of the island’s higher ranking officials who’d wormed his way down to the scene for what was generally considered a photo op, rather than mission support. He gave me "confirmed" numbers about fatalities and casualties, and off the record stuff about early speculation about the cause of the accident.
He asked if I’d be willing to share any of the footage we were able to get from closer in exchange for some of the early shots of the crash. I told him I wouldn’t be able to do that, but traded cards with him anyway. He was a nice guy.
I remember the TSgt driving us past a Red Cross tent about a quarter mile from the makeshift site entrance (an access road built directly to the side of the wreckage by a team of Seabees, working as survivors were being pulled from the plane) already staffed with volunteers who were handing out sandwiches and bottled water to the clean-up teams.
I remember passing the checkpoint, and sliding/driving down a muddy, 45 degree slope as far as the Sergeant felt comfortable trying to control the vehicle.
I remember getting out, checking the camera, telling Dan to start finding out whatever he could and setting up interviews while I started to shoot, and walking up the slope of the other hill to get the highest angle I could get. I remember standing next to a gigantic metal chimney that looked directly down to the runway below and realizing that it was part of the radar system that rumor said may have failed.
I remember starting to shoot video and getting into that zone I always find when I look at the world through an eyepiece. Behind a camera, I’m not afraid of heights, or depths, or wild animals. It feels a lot like I imagine Harry’s invisibility cloak must feel.
Usually, the lens allows you to see life’s moments almost as art. You’re not really paying attention to what is being recorded as much as how. Is it framed well, does it look well composed? Is it in focus? What’s the most logical move to make? Should I pan, or zoom, or rack focus? Am I close enough? Do I have enough angles for a sequence? The fact that it’s a beautiful flower is left for the poets and botanists who’ll come behind.
That’s what makes it beat back my acrophobia most of the time. It makes the fact that I’m at 10,000 feet and leaning out the side of a helicopter by my safety harness feel like I’m watching television. Fate forbid that I open the other eye and put the camera down for a moment–I freak. But for as long as the camera is unblinkingly filtering things for me, I’m "ten feet tall and bulletproof."
There is one thing I’ve learned pierces that sense of security for me.
Recording scenes of death.
It shoots right through my invisibility cloak like a Hogwarts spell. It makes me human at the most inopportune times. After documenting the obvious connection between this final peak of this final hill and how close it was to the runway, I carried the camera and sticks to the other side of the hill to start shooting shots of the actual wreckage. It wasn’t real to me that there were still hundreds of bodies inside. It was television. I had no way of knowing that I’d arrived during a planned break in activity. Or that things were going to pick up very quickly, very soon. I was just a young reporter on a beautiful day in Guam.
For the moment.

(originally posted 29 Jan 07)

On Religion

I am agnostic.
Allow me to define what I mean by the term, because labels are convenient oversimplifications, and belief is a very nuanced thing.
After decades of being taught about religion, and God; and years more of studying, thinking, praying, and meditating on my own, I’ve arrived at the (hopefully temporary) conclusion that I don’t know whether or not God exists.
I’ve read apologetics that demand belief in the idea, and treatises that explained the existence of a deity away. I’ve found both to have resounding logic in some areas. I’ve also found both to require a tremendous amount of faith. I lost that sort of faith a long time ago. Finally, I have some resolution.
I don’t know.
Not, "I’m right and you’re wrong." Not "I KNOW because I can feel it." Not "it’s true (or false)" because some preacher, saint, or sinner has convinced me. Not even, "this is so obvious I believe it because nothing else makes sense."
My resolution at this time is much more basic and fundamental than any of that.
I don’t know.
I study, I believe I’m learning, I even care DEEPLY about the answer. I think its important. I think it matters. I think there IS an answer. But ...
I don’t know
what that answer is.
Religious zealots and avowed atheists are the same in their insistence that I have to pick a team.
I don’t have to pick a side, and I won’t until I’m ready.
I cast my lot with the ignorant.
I don’t know.
Whenever I start down the road of thinking about the events that cemented me here, I end up reaffirming my belief that its ok that I don’t know.
It’s ok with me for one simple reason.
I don’t believe that you know either.
I concede your faith, I acknowledge that you’ve settled on an answer that satisfies you and meets all of your needs. But I require more.
I don’t scratch unless I itch. I don’t dance unless I hear music. I don’t laugh unless I think it’s funny. And I don’t say I know when I don’t.
The "Jesus freaks," as I endearingly call them, insist that if I don’t accept their Lord as my Savior, then I’ve picked the side of Satan.
Guess what. I’m not so sure about him either.
It’s not a binary function. I can choose Christ, Buddha, metaphysics, Hinduism, Islam or Wicca. In fact, I can select parts and pieces if I choose. I can have all, some, or none. I can mix and match if I want to.
Its not even a matter of there being "two sides to every story" for me. I believe there are infinite sides to every story. The two sides, are just extremes. The people who insist on that theory are extremISTS. And in the view I’ve chosen, the people who believe there’s only ONE side ... are idiots.
There, I said it.
I said it because its one of very few things I believe.
Now that its good and murky for you. Let me go a little bit deeper.
I like church.
I think church is one of those rituals that has a very important place in the human psyche. But I don’t go.
Why?
Simple. Because the people that talk to me at church are annoying. They irritate me, with their self-righteous know-it-allness.
They feel too entirely comfortable asking me questions that are entirely none of their business, and then judging the "type" of person I am by the shallow-assed answers I give them to their entirely sophomoric, or worse, elementary questions.
They never answer the questions I ask in return. That quickly devolves into some idiotic discussion of things I have to take on "faith." Which I’m starting to believe very few of them actually understand.
The rare time I’m at church, it isn’t because I want to be converted. Its because I’m too simple to think I’m the most important or powerful force in the universe. Both nature and faith are much bigger than I am. And even though I don’t know the answer yet, some days, I want the feeling of acknowledging the fact of their tremendous breadth, width, and depth. On about half of those days, I go to church. Most other times, I go outside, or to my local pub.
I don’t go because it’s your "visitor’s" day.
I won’t go because you ask me to.
I can’t go because I believe that what’s happening there is in any way tied to my "salvation."
I go because I want to.
Again, its that simple.
For the record, I find atheists just as annoying.
Their haughty insistence that humankind appeared on the scene without any external factors is almost as nonsensical to me. And their insistence that they "know" there is no God sounds a lot like the same drivel I get at church, minus the sit/stand/kneel/pay routine.
I really like sermons, though. The very good ones are motivational speeches without the Zig Ziglar-ish oiliness. Most of the time, I learn something. More often than not, I get a lot of useful methods and interesting anecdotes from them.
I REALLY like T.D. Jakes. I don’t like Dallas, so I don’t plan to ever attend his church, but if he ever needs a donation for a worthy cause, I’ll chip in.
He’s a scholar, and his words demonstrate that he’s spent a significant amount of time actually studying the principles he’s espousing and extracting something meaningful from the texts he’s chosen to expound on that will benefit his audience in some way.
That’s more than a talent. It’s a gift.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.
There are others.
I put Henry Wright in the same category. If you ever want to hear a useful sermon, from a man who’s done his research, you should find yourself in his congregation, at Community Praise Center in Alexandria, Virginia on a Saturday morning.
The people may annoy you, but ignore them. They portend to mean well.
I always end up here when I think about Guam. August, 1997.
I suppose its my brain still trying to make some sense of what I saw. I’ve let the process work itself out internally for long enough now. I don’t think anyone actually reads blogs, so this seems a cheap and reasonable alternative to more very expensive therapy.
I’m not trying to make converts. So please don’t bother to tell me that I’m right, or that I’m wrong. This isn’t about you. These are my thoughts. I’ve earned them, fought them, and intend to let them continue until they reach their conclusion, or I die...whichever comes first.
If some doctrinal tenet REQUIRES you to respond, start with the ANSWER and PROOF to this question.
"How do YOU know?"
Since your response is uninvited, assume I’ll be somewhat hostile. It’s also true that I will listen to you, and probe your answer. If you’re sure, your better bet is to write it down, copywrite it, and sell it to the masses. They need it, are looking for it, and want it.
I don’t.
I’m having fun without you. I study history, particularly the history of religion ... and THAT is more fulfilling than any year-long course on your twisted version of "truth."
It’s biased, infinite, multi-faceted, and well-documented by passionate people who wanted to get their side of the story out.
But they rarely annoy me. They don’t have that scent of know-it-all on their breath. They don’t nag me about my bad habits, or expect me to accept a dinner invitation. They write down their thoughts in a book, give it a title that catches my attention, and leave it to me to buy or catch it in the library.
If you ever want to talk about THAT ... I’m all in.
Until then,
I’m agnostic.
I don’t know.

(originally posted 15 Jan 06)

8/6/97...part two

Most of that day was a blur to me at the time.

Oddly, now it lives in my memory as a crystal clear moment by moment instant replay.

I remember calling my wife to tell her that I’d probably be leaving at some point, destination Guam.

I remember sitting at my desk, surfing internet news sites for old stories about plane crashes to
get a feel for where the lines were.

I remember making hotel reservations.

I remember doing telephone interviews with some of the local medical staff about the processes and procedures for responding to large-scale emergencies.

They were professionals who’d seen wholesale tragedy in war zones, at refugee camps, and at the scene of natural disasters from floods to earthquakes.

Some of them had even been on both sides of those kinds of days–I remember a Captain talking about evacuating from Mount Pinatubo’s ashy aftermath.

I wasn’t prepared.

Even now, I can’t think of anything that could have done the trick. There are some experiences that there is no preparation for.

It haunts me now as I think about the young men and women we’ve sent to war.

Fate has been kind to me.

I’ve never had to kill a man because his nation and mine disagree. I’ve never seen a man lose a leg to an improvised explosive device, or had to stop the bleeding of a comrade-in-arms on the worst day of his life.

I’ve only seen the results.

But there are tens of thousands of people who have. Even as the greatest generation slowly slips away, a new generation of combat veterans is being born on the battlefield.

I am grateful to have never seen combat.

My experience with war is limited to fewer than a hundred interviews with men who’ve seen the dark side. There are those who’ve learned the value of their own lives by ending the lives of others.

And each of them says he wasn’t prepared.

There are some experiences that there is no preparation for.

I "ended" the day at a bar, bags packed, waiting for a phone call.

It came just before midnight. Two seats were open on an empty medevac flight headed to Andersen. I finished my root beer, made the "here’s where I’m leaving the car" phone call home ... and boarded the jet with Dan.

I was awake for the entire flight. I still regret that.

There was a very friendly med tech who worked the evacuation flights. I don’t remember his name, not that I’d use it here. But I’ll never forget our conversation.

He’d seen our reports, and enjoyed them, he said. He gave me a tour of the aircraft. I’m sure it’s a medical marvel, really.

He showed me how the gurneys bolted onto the frame. He showed me the state-of-the-art medical contraptions that could keep critical patients stabilized en route to state-of-the-art emergency rooms.

He had the gallows humor that I’ve come to appreciate from environments where death is an everyday occurrence.

He talked about how silly the pre-flight emergency warnings were. "If you’re going down, you’re going down," he told me. He even talked about "why" you don’t inflate your life preserver until after you "de-board" a crashed aircraft.

Common sense, really. If you land on water and your preserver is already full of air, WHEN the plane starts to take on water, you’ll float to the top of the aircraft and eventually drown because you can’t reach an exit.

And on exits–"ever seen a plane crash without breaking? Don’t worry about the exit door. Just go out the closest hole."

Pretty cheery stuff, I guess, on your way to your first airplane crash.

I still don't like to fly.

We got to Guam about 18 hours after the crash. The sun wasn’t up yet. We arrived at the PA office before dawn. It was empty, except for the Tech Sergeant. He was calm, composed, and helpful. Turned out, even though he’d only been at the office for a few days, his experience with aircraft mechanics meant he’d seen his fair share of mishaps. He knew the drill and had 18 years of military experience that proved invaluable over the next few days.

He brought us up to date and offered to drive us to the site. The sun was coming up. The base and the location were on opposite sides of the island. I was struck by how simply gorgeous the island is.

It was August 7th, I’d been awake for slightly more than 24 hours.

And the day was just beginning.

The day that changed my life, part one...

August 6th, 1997.

Almost ten years later, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

I was a military beat reporter back then.


Assigned to Tokyo, my job was to cover Army, Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and Navy news in Eastpac.


It was a name the seven of us had cooked up in one of the early newscast planning sessions for my area of responsibility.

It made up a sizable part of the Pacific stretching from the West Coast of California to Japan.


We were only a few months old as a team, and so far the bases I was accountable for were still a collection of mysteries to me.

I’d mapped them out on maps and globes, and familiarized myself with the major units at each of the locations.


Back then, I hadn’t met many contacts, and didn’t know the great restaurants and party-spots at each place at the time. (Today, if you’re planning a vacation anywhere in Asia and want a good restaurant, hotel, party, or nightlife suggestion, I’m your huckleberry.)

It was about 6:25 AM Tokyo time when I heard the first radio reports in the car en route to work. At the time, details were scarce and sandwiched between other stories.

A Korean Air Lines jet had gone down on the tiny island of Guam. No early word on casualties. And in sports ...

Work was a blur as I made arrangements to get to Micronesia as quickly as possible.

Some other day I'll tell you about Pacific Report, and what a challenge and reward it was to belong to that early team.


For now, suffice it to say it was a young newscast that had been designed to fail, but wasn't hitting that mark.

Without a proper budget, staffed primarily by inexperienced DINFOS-trained "killers," and largely unknown in the community it purported to cover, we had too little experience to realize that we weren't supposed to make it work.


So we were turning it into a recognizable name by working our asses off, and having a lot more fun than we were supposed to. Our instructions were to get the job done, worry about the rules later on.

Everything was by the book that morning.

If you’ve never tried to book a flight onto an island the same day that a major air disaster has happened, forego the experience and allow yourself to live vicariously through me.

There are no commercial flights. And the military flights are emergency personnel only. After putting myself on a dozen standby lists, and narrowing down my equipment to as little gear as possible, I worked the phones. Details were starting to trickle in.

I still have the notebook I was using that morning. The first section of scribblings from this story says:

–serious crash, early morning local time
–Won G. Pat International airport, Guam
–KAL Flight 800 (Seoul to Guam)
–330 souls on board
–very few survivors
–military response teams on scene
–Yokota medical evacuations ongoing
–All flights suspended
–Infrastructure damage unknown
–Cause under investigation
–early indications point to wx as a potential factor

It was my first call to the Andersen Air Force Base Public Affairs office. I spoke to a Tech Sergeant there.


He’d cross-trained into the career field when the airframe he maintained had been retired. It was his first week on the island. It was his first day on the job. He was a rookie, too.

Dan was assigned as my partner for the assignment. We hated each other, stemming from an awful trip to Okinawa we’d shared.


I was a little bit nervous about taking him along. In my view, he was an arrogant know-it-all, who didn’t know the job very well.


I think if he were writing this account, he would say I’ve grown a lot since then.


Since I’m writing it, I’ll say he has too.


I consider him a friend, a statement that grew out of a hundred subsequent assignments.


Today, I’d work with him any day, anywhere. But on August 6th, 1997 I didn’t know any better. I also didn’t know that my whole perspective on things was about to be radically transformed, shifted, twisted, and rewritten.

I was about to meet God, and death, and humanity, and fate, and fear, and grief, and tragedy, and heroism, and adulthood.


None of them lived up to my expectations. I was destined to learn that none of them were as good, or as bad, or as powerful as I imagined.


None of them were as strong, or as important, or as eternal as I’d convinced myself they were.


None of them.

The 1000th time

I’m sitting across from her in a restaurant.

It's not a date, but for the 1000th time, a never-married single woman asks me what it is that I have against marriage.

It isn't that she asks the question. It is an indisputably fair one.

What’s bugged me every time is the condescending way she asks it. It's the unverbalized (yet written all over her face) belief that no matter WHAT my experience has been I have no right to say that I don’t WANT another wife.

It’s the odor of her thought that there can be no legitimate rationale for my lack of desire to have again what she wants so desperately to experience just once.


It’s the tangible tentacle of her naive "wisdom" about me and what I "really" feel or can’t possibly understand about my thoughts. It’s my prejudice about her prejudice toward me and my perception that she perceives me to be unworthy of having a different view because I AM, after all ... just a man.

Sadly, because I believe every honestly posed question deserves a reasoned answer ... I give one just about every time. Worse, its never the whole truth. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about the day I quit believing, until now.

I suspect that the rote answer I’ve memorized leads many of the "hers" to believe it happened when my own seven-year struggle ended. A painful experience no doubt; but if relationships were people, that one was born handicapped, and became a crime-destined orphan at a very young age.

Nor is it related to the oft-quoted "50% of all marriages end in divorce." That’s a sad statistic, but I’ve never been prone to assuming I’m just a integer or that every odd will opt for the chance to go against me.

It isn’t even that I don’t know any "happily-marrieds." I actually count among my friends a couple of couples who aren’t planning their divorce parties as I type this blog entry.

The simplest answer goes back to a specific day, and a very precise moment in time.

It involved "Mike" and "Laura"–and the day their decision changed my life.

I’ve anonymized them because they are very real people, living a very real life.

The internet isn’t an anonymous place, and I’ve never asked their permission to publicly discuss what I’m sure is one of the least-favorite events in their lives.

I still consider them both to be my friends, and will until the day one of them calls me and says it isn’t true anymore. That will also be a day I anesthesize myself with very cheap vodka and cry very real tears until I lose sobriety ... and then consciousness.

I love them and their brood and always will.

I’ve lost them. I can’t find them. Google won’t give ‘em up, and the white pages remain strangely silent about their whereabouts.

Now, I’m just stalling ... and that’s not fair. You’re reading this for the answer, and I’ve moved no closer to giving it up.

I met Mike in Panama. It must’ve been 1995, maybe six.

He was a co-worker. He was always in a hurry to get home.

Mike wasn’t just a nice guy, he was the nicest.

Funny, polite, shy, and not liked very much by any of our bosses. They didn’t like that he was always in a hurry to go home. Hell, none of us liked it. We worked hard, and even though he always finished his work, the news business never stops. There’s no such thing as overtime, and some stories take you away from home. There’s no quitting, and the deadline tells you when the day is over.

Mike never wanted to stay longer than his duty hours demanded. He balked at every assignment that threatened to make him miss dinner. He never seemed to put everything he had into our task. He never drank with us after a successful day. He never commiserated with us after a shitty one.

His heart wasn’t in it.

In time ... I befriended him. That’s what I do.

He was happily married.

I was married, and "geographically separated." Mine was in Washington, D.C.

Turned out, his was pregnant and having a very difficult time being away from HER mother and family as her firstborn was evolving in her womb.

He hated the Army for dragging him away from home to as hot, humid, and in her eyes inhospitable a place as tropical Panama City. There wasn’t room in base housing for them, so they were renting a gorgeous but stiflingly hot apartment in El Dorado.

Laura was hormonal and miserable, and hated the fact that Mike worked in air conditioning all day while she sat under a ceiling fan thinking thoughts of snowfall and icicles.

When it rained ... every morning, and every afternoon ... she hated the sound of how the drops hit the windows and steamed everything up.

But she’d signed up for "better or worse" and figured this was somewhere distant from the prior, and close to the latter.

She wasn’t "complaining" just sharing her feelings about Panama. She felt fat (even though she was skinny and gorgeous with a pregnant belly), but loved him dearly, and wanted to be where he was.

She was just having trouble adjusting to the tropics and hormones, and ceiling fans, and spending all day alone.

He’d made Laura a promise.

He told me
that he’d told her
that he’d spend as much time where she was as he could, every day of his life.

He told her that he’d do everything in his power to be as hot and humid as she was for as much time as he could every day of that tropical summer.

He’d promised to sit and eat ice with her, talk to her, and tell her jokes that made her feel skinny until she laughed herself to sleep.

Keeping that promise meant never staying longer than his duty hours demanded.

It meant balking at every assignment that threatened to make him miss dinner.

It meant never putting his heart into "our" task.

It meant never drinking with us after a successful day.

It meant never commiserating with us after a shitty one.

It meant his heart was somewhere else.

When he told me, I thought it was the very coolest thing I’d ever heard.

What I mean to say is ...

I thought it was the very coolest thing I’d ever heard.
That’s not quite it, either.

IT WAS THE VERY COOLEST THING I’D EVER HEARD.

(I’m nowhere close to you understanding what this has to do with the woman at the restaurant, but if I don’t give you this context my non-answer probably won’t make a whole lot of sense. I beg your indulgence.)

My wife came to visit. That wasn’t uncommon ... we had tons of good times. But it was a vacation for her. She’d sit in my hot apartment and watch Spanish soap operas, or hop in the car and get lost and go shopping and do touristy things until my deadline passed and we could share them.

I believe the phone call came on a Thursday. I was standing near Mike when he took it. It was Laura. Something was wrong with the baby. She needed a doctor. He needed to come home and take her to the hospital.

The jackass "petty" officer we worked for didn’t see the crisis. In his mind, Mike could simply finish editing the story for the night’s news, then calmly drive to ensure that the ambulance had in fact taken his wife to the right hospital.

Today, I would advise Mike to punch the jackass’s left eye. I’d punch the jackass’s right eye. We’d hop in my car and hightail it to his house, then the hospital. Problem solved.

But I was younger and calmer back then. I told him not to worry, that I’d have my wife pick up Laura, take her to the hospital, and wait with her until Mike could get there. No problem. The cool thing about Spanish soap operas is that when you don’t speak Spanish, you never worry about missing an episode. The people are just as gorgeous when you come back.

The women hit it off like sisters. I don’t think I ever found out what the medical part of the crisis was, but my wife made a friendship with Laura that somehow automatically extended to me even though we’d never technically met.

Danita eventually returned to D.C.

Mike and Laura’s beautiful baby daughter was eventually born.
I loved her.
She was chubby and cute. She smiled without prompting.
If you poked her belly just right, she giggled just like the Pillsbury doughboy.
In time she learned to walk and talk.
The way she lisped "Stewwwwwwwwwww" melted my heart.

And she was brilliant.

She knew letters and numbers within a year. And Mike taught her the sound of every animal in the universe. She once taught me the sound an ant makes. I’ve forgotten how to make it, but I remember the moment.

I want to type her name ... it was angelic. But she too has the right to be anonymous ... I’ll call her, "Michelle." Her picture still sits on my mantle.

I read her stories, she read them back. I still loved Mike and Laura ... but Michelle absolutely stole my heart.

I wasn’t a cynic back then. She wouldn’t allow it. She said such simple and profound things. She laughed just because I came for dinner, which by now was every night.

They were in an air-conditioned base house by now. I had a space on the couch that I slept in as often as my bed.

Laura always made enough soup and baked enough bread for Uncle Stewwwwwwwwwww.

It was a "Christian" home, in the finest sense of that term. Mike was a P.K. and Laura had been raised in a devout home. Over time, we talked about the things that they felt made their marriage work. They credited their faith, and their upbringing. They abhorred the prevalence of divorce and infidelity in our society. They made the whole thing seem real, and I grew to believe. Not in their religion, I was already way past that, but in the substance of their faith. I watched them weave a universe for Michelle out of that substance. I watched her thrive and grow.

We got a new boss. He was a family guy. He let Mike transfer to a position with a more stable schedule. Laura felt beautiful again, she had an all-day companion at her air-conditioned house in Michelle.

Things were good.

In time, Laura’s belly started to fatten up again. Baby number two was on the way.

By now, I think I even had chores at their place.

We were a cobbled together family of sorts, and I loved them like my own brother and sister.

My wife’s visits were a virtual family reunion for all of us. We laughed, and ate, and talked, and laughed, and shared drams, and discussed religions, and talked about futures and laughed.

Laura wanted me to experience as much of her pregnancy as possible in preparation for my own first child. Mike just beamed every time we all went for a sonogram. I remember the three of us staring in amazement at the virtually irrefutable proof of the baby’s gender. I practiced diaper-changing with Michelle as my tutor. The calendar was against us, as an assignment to Japan loomed in my near future. But it was going to be close, and all of us wanted me to meet the new addition.

It came down to the final weeks. I’d delayed my departure as long as I could. I had ten days left ... and the baby was to be born a week to ten days after I left.

There was talk of inducing labor early so I could meet my new nephew, but practicality won the day.

I kissed Michelle, hugged Laura and Mike ... and boarded the plane that promised to take me to a new future. Bright with the opportunity of FINALLY living in the same city as my wife ... Tokyo.

I laughed as Laura waddled to the door to wave good bye to me. I misted up as I heard Michelle yell "Bye Stewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I love yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" through the screen door.

Bye Michelle. I love yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu too.

There was an e-mail waiting for me in Tokyo. It said that "Noel" had been born strong, healthy, and happy.

It was good.

A couple of months later ... another pregnancy. Mike and Laura were getting close to finishing up the family they’d always dreamed of.

They were heading back to the States ... finally, Laura could have her snowfalls and icicles again.
There are three children in all. I love them all like my very own.
But this story isn’t about them ... its about what happened next.

I got a terse e-mail from Mike one day at work.
"Stew. I need to talk to you. -Mike."

I phoned.

"Stew, I don’t know how to tell you this. Laura and I are getting a divorce." ...

...

...

What?

...

...

...

Who is this? Where’s Michelle?
"She’s fine. We’re all fine. But Laura and I have decided to get divorced."
Why?

"I don’t know, really. It’s more Laura’s decision than mine, and I’m not even sure what it’s all about, but I wanted you to hear about it from me."
How’s Laura?
"She’s ... ok. Things are a bit strange right now, but everything will be fine. God will continue to bless us."

Did you cheat on her?

"No, I would NEVER do anything like that. Besides, you know that I save all the lust in my heart for muscle cars in magazines."

How are you?

"Ummmm...I don’t know how to answer that. I love Laura, I love my kids, I love you, I love my marriage. I don’t know how I’m going to survive, but I am."

Is there anything I can do?
"No. Just remember us the way we were."
Mike. I love you guys. I don’t understand.
"I know. Laura says hi. I have to go to work now."
Bye Mike. Call me if you need me.
"I will. Good bye."

Those moments broke something in ME that snapped again as I watched my own marriage dissolve.

I wasn’t nearly as good a husband as Mike, although I gave it everything I had. Hell, I’m not as good a PERSON as Mike was, so the husband thing is almost a given.

I stopped believing in marriage that day. I wanted to prove myself wrong by making mine work, but somehow I guess my heart didn’t have enough elasticity to snap all the way back.

Now, you can keep your marriage concept. You can keep your empty promises. You can keep your dreams of wedded bliss. They are yours. I don’t have them. Give me a companion, and leave us alone. We’ll survive as long as we can, maybe forever ... then we’ll go our separate ways.

I know it won't be long before I find myself sitting across from her in a restaurant, again.


It won’t be a date, but for the 1001st time, a never-married single woman will ask me what it is that I have against marriage.

It won’t be that she asks the question. It is an indisputably fair one. What will bug me THIS time time will be the condescending way she’ll ask it. It will be the unverbalized (yet written all over her face) belief that no matter WHAT my experience has been I have no right to say that I don’t WANT another wife. It’ll be the odor of her thought that there can be no legitimate rationale for my lack of desire to have again what she wants so desperately to experience just once. It will be the annoyingly tangible tentacle of her naive "wisdom" about how much she knows about "divorced" men like me and what we’ve been through and how many dumb-assed books she’s read about what I "really" feel and how I'm simply not informed enough to possibly understand about my own thoughts.

It will be MY prejudice about her prejudice toward me and MY perception that she perceives me to be unworthy of having a different view because I AM, after all ... just a man.

(originally posted 6 Jan 06)