An Open Heart

Sansaku: An Open Heart

6/16/17

I have a bad conscience with respect to my step-dad, George. I was told to be patient and thankful, but it’s not how I felt at the time. And while I knew it was bad form to air dirty laundry, I often chose to talk behind his back. That’s why I have a bad conscience.

We kept it secret. He wasn’t one for feedback. That’s what he gave.

When I think about patience, waiting comes to mind. Mother didn’t mind waiting, but hated to keep others waiting. It’s one of those images I hold. She is sitting at the kitchen table, an old lady, already dressed in her heavy coat, waiting patiently for the ride.

Because she tried so hard to please people, she annoyed some. George had the opposite problem.

We called George old hurry-up and wait. He was always in a serious rush to get things done and one reason he’s been catching some flak from my memory has to do with an entry I read yesterday.   It was written thirty years ago, but he can still get my goat. I try to keep an open heart.

A healthy forest needs all the animals and everything is best.

I came in from the garden and asked mom about all the dead lady bugs under the peonies. She shook her head and said, “George sprayed the flowers. He thought they were too beautiful to go to the bugs. I couldn’t slow him down.   You know how he gets.” I did. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, he’ll pour on a ton.

I had also noticed the magnificent apple tree in the backyard was mutilated. I asked her what happened and she said, “George couldn’t get to the apples at the top of the tree, and since he didn’t want the birds to get them either, he cut it off.”   I told her, “I know how he gets.”   He liked to decide and wouldn’t wait once he did.

When it came to waiting, Corder was a goat of a different color. He wasn’t impatient, like George, he was impulsive and wouldn’t wait for long. If you wanted to be with him, you needed to stay close. He didn’t care if you wanted to do something else. He’d tell you, “Then do it.”

Both George and Corder were highly trained musicians. George was a blue-collar, working-class, card-carrying member of the musician’s union. He’d turned professional in high school and won a scholarship to NYU. But this was start of the depression and food was in short supply. He joined the army, shipped off to Panama to play in the band, and later wrote a memoir, “Three Square Meals and a Bed.”

After graduating from LSU in Baton Rouge, he was teaching music when the war broke out. He became the captain at a boot camp for doctors and dentists. He loved to order others around, especially the doctors.

One of my turning points in life, which I often shared in group, was when my mother remarried and I was inducted into the army.   I spent a year in basic training and six more in special forces. Am I thankful? Absolutely. He was a very good teacher.   I learned about patience.

But this morning I’ve been thinking about mother. Had she not died five years ago, she’d be turning a hundred tomorrow. Since I read old journals every morning, I’ve been running into cards. My conscience is clear with respect to her.

I need to specify that when I write about these three parents of mine, I’m writing about my particular relationship with them. It was unlike the relationship they had with others. My siblings understand this and still we argue. It’s a mystery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Altar of the Fathers

Sansaku: The Altar of the Fathers

6/15/17

I’ve been burning incense, so to speak, at the altar of my fathers. I have two of them. I learned the ritual in Japan. Each family has an altar and the ancestors are honored and remembered. I bowed each time I passed it. There’s so much karma and I’m not a father, I’m a son.

I didn’t save any of George’s ashes to put on the altar, but I slipped some prized possessions into Corder’s coffin. I wanted him to know. We tossed George back into a beautiful high-country lake. He’d caught thousands of trout there and it was time to pay them back in bone.

The wind that day was blowing hard down the east slope. Most of George ended up in the lake but some of him ended up in Kansas and some in our lungs. He wasn’t going to go without a fuss. He always made one. We could count on him for that.

He wouldn’t even die with grace. Corder’s was classic. He went out with mystery and panache. How did he know? Irma was also true to form. Her children and grandchildren were gathered the deathbed touching her. She looked at each of us, somehow all at the same time, and said, “I have been proud to be your mother and grandmother. I love you all very much. You don’t need to cry for me.” We cried.

George took five years in diapers. He was always expensive to keep. It’s not what he wanted. One time I tried to appeal to his higher self and gently suggested, “You are free to leave. It’s okay.” He suddenly regained lucidity and glared like a hawk. “I’m not ready to die. Don’t tell me what to do.” He was staying to the crappy end. I never changed his diapers, although I often cleaned the other two before they died.

Endings matter and while I tend to make George the bad guy, he was also the needed shadow.   Without Gollum, where’s Frodo?

I called George, Dad, but Corder was my real father. I looked like him, a rebellious son and long-hair. We didn’t trust the authorities or fathers. And George was regulation army, definitely the patriarch.

Jesus didn’t call himself a father, he was son. But he quarreled with the religious fathers and was as rebellious as Buddha was with his. I guess Buddha left his wife and family behind, like someone else I know. I heard he called his son “Fetters,” as in the ball and chain. He needed to be free. I hope Fetters went on the quest to find him.

They say that blood is thicker than water, and when I finally found my real father, we drank red wine to thicken our blood. George never had much water, much less wine.   He wasn’t honest.

That’s what it boiled down to. Corder could tell the truth about himself, about us, and I trusted him. George didn’t know the half of it. Not himself as we saw him, nor the relationship. Irma used to say, “I feel sorry for him. He’s trying to love us the best he can.” This was the problem, that was the best he could.

My father and George were shadow cast and opposites.   He didn’t get the best part. Corder was all that George wanted to be and wasn’t. Worse still, George was the kind of person he didn’t like. He was in the category with those who irritated him the most, but didn’t know it. This was his dishonesty.   Corder didn’t fake it.

He tolerated George and did his best to avoid him.   He had no respect for the kind of authority George, who liked to pull rank, believed in. “Call me Doctor Walters.” I could imagine Corder rolling his eyes before he said, “If you want it to be like that, I also have a doctorate. Now get me the boys’ mother.”

I overheard what he said, “Irma, what’s wrong with him?” She was wondering herself. But I could also see from George’s point of view.

 

 

Multi-Colored

Sansaku: Multi-Colored

6/13/17

He wasn’t a chameleon, but he was multi-colored and spoke a number of languages, including the nonverbal ones. What he looked and sounded like depended on any number of factors. I once thought him a prime or whole number, like 13 or 31. He was ominous, no doubts, and more like a month than a day.

But he was born at the end of the year and the twelve months round out to 360. That’s the circular number of the multi-colored beast.   He looked like an orbiting planet to me. The closer I came to the surface, the more life I found. And where’s there’s life there’s trouble.

One of the first sayings I learned in psychotherapy was this one: An absence of trouble is an absence of life. It comes from the first chapter in Scott Peck’s Road Less Traveled. I used to tease, “If you want trouble, get married and have kids.”

I like the advice St. Augustine offered, “Love and do what you will.” Corder took the “do what you will” seriously, but he’d had some trouble with the love part.

But he didn’t go to hell. I’m sure of that. Before he died I took a full confession and absolved him best I could. I was his son and felt I had the right to give him the rites. He didn’t disagree.

In all my years as a therapist, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a more honest and comprehensive disclosure. “If there’s anything I’ve hidden, it’s probably the good stuff or more of the same.”

He told me family secrets and then some. When I went back to Boulder I asked mother about a few of them.   More than once she said, “We agreed to keep that secret. But I’m glad he told you.”

He was the one who told the secrets and she was the one who kept them. Both are needed.   Irma said, “You knew him at his worst, I knew him at his best.” And that’s exactly who he was.

Sometimes I imagine him arriving the gates and the angelic crowd gathers around, like they always did at bars. “We’ve been waiting for you to get here, it seems like an eternity. What kind of trouble did you get into this time?” It’s a synonym for life.

I can hear him say, “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you the truth.” This is something he often said to me. I’d say, “Try me.”

If life’s a game, it matters how many innings, how many times at bat, how many games in a season, how many seasons. Does it factor down to your lifetime averages? And if it’s really a game, what’s the point in playing it? Is it conformity, criticism, or congruence?

There’s a pivotal scene in the movie “Braveheart.” A son has been betrayed by his father and the son has betrayed his ideals. The father says, “I did it so you could be king.” The son screams back, “After this, I will never be on the wrong side again.” It’s a game-changer.

He hadn’t started out on the wrong side. But more than a few had warned him, “You’re too smart for your own good. It’ll get you in trouble.” Others had prophesied, “You’re going to be more successful than you can even imagine.” Both sets of prophecies were true.

I used to wonder how someone so smart could be so stupid. This was my childhood experience. My brother and I often waited in bars. “Come on, dad. We need to get home.” He’d toss us a quarter and we’d play a few more games of pinball. It seemed a colossal waste of time and money. I was still a practical kid.

But at twenty-two, I could sit at the bar and drink with him. It seemed he’d learned more than I’d given him credit for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Redemption

Sansaku: Redemption

6/11/17

I can’t hear Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” without remembering a certain student who asked me what it meant. I asked her why. She didn’t want to tell me. I pressed and she rolled her eyes. I pressed some more and she relented.

She liked to keep her cool, but there was this boy at the high school. She wanted to impress him. He asked about “Redemption Song” and if she understood it. She said that she did and he said, “Good, I don’t. Explain it to me.”

She stopped and looked at me. I had to laugh and said, “How does it feel to be a fool?” She didn’t like it, but she asked, “Do you understand that song?” She was serious.

We crafted an essay from the talk. She was applying to a coveted summer program and I knew she’d be accepted. Anyone who can confess that well to being wrong is a candidate for admission.

After it was over she said, “That was my redemption.” I said, “You understand.” I asked her, “Do you wish you’d told that guy the truth?” She didn’t have to ponder long, “No, I like someone else.”

It’s never a good deal to lose your soul and the devil makes deals. He’s interested in souls. He’s not the one who goes cheap for money or some other mixed blessing like power. If love is at stake, the devil wants a sit-down dinner. When you care about another, he wants to talk. That changes things.

Corder called him up and asked for a date. They didn’t have to squabble. Corder made a confession. Trickster gods are like that.

I was surprised the devil let Corder redeem himself. Of course, he wanted something in return. He said, “I’ll make a trade with you, give me your old name.” He became Denver that night. Redemption is transformation, not repression. He remembered.

It was obvious he had changed and in some fundamental ways. He was easy to see. Some people have hard-to-read-flat-poker faces. They give nothing away. He was the-opposite and practically impersonated his own feelings. He wore them on his face and sleeve. He played to the crowd and always found a stage.

He was funny, not a fool, and the once dangerous moods had softened like a summer’s sky after a storm has passed. It was beautiful to watch him. What had I expected? I hadn’t intended a redemption story, but that’s what it turned into.

The Humpty-Dumpty broken egg of the man and his life would never be put back together again, but a bird emerged from the broken pieces of shell. No one saw it coming. It’s a variation on the theme of a phoenix and rising from the ashes.

I was listening to the Grateful Dead yesterday, “A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.” And at the time I met my dad, I was on the run and needed some help. The song and I depart after that, I didn’t need a loan. He wouldn’t have wanted it back.

He told me the story of how he sold his soul, “I didn’t do it all at once, if that’s what you’re thinking.”   He wasn’t after money and didn’t need to worry, he’d always had plenty. On the other hand, he didn’t appreciate what a ton of it would do to him. He said, “I’m ashamed to say, I got off on it.”

I doubt he used the word, redemption, but he talked of getting free. He said, “Mine did not come cheaply.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Monk

Sansaku: The Monk

6/9/17

The journal lets me track what happens to relationships over time. So much comes to mind, including how I feel about myself. It seems my relationship with Corder mostly happened after he died. Mother stayed alive, and now that she’s dead she’s more alive than ever.

I inherited sleep problems. Mom tended to worry and he stayed out late. I studied both. He took some work. Now I’m grateful I didn’t sleep well. I learned about reflection. When I replayed the day, the more attention I paid to my feelings, the more the replay changed. It seemed my head and heart were often out of harmony.

When I began to study dreams and keep a journal, I reflected even more. I watched relationships grow and wither. Some stayed. Often my first feelings were accurate, but I needed to make many mistakes.

Now that I sample forty years of journals every morning, I’ve come unstuck in time. It means I can go back and interact. I know things and find ways to tell myself. The present changes the past and future.

I like big words. Words like humor, humility, love, and wisdom. They’re mirrors that help me see.  My near-sighted eyes need all the help they can get. And I like good sayings. Pema teaches in the Tibetan Lojong fashion. “In all things, train with slogans.” But like core beliefs, we need to be super-conscious of the ones we choose.

My journal did not begin with my own words, sayings, and reflections. I copied down passages from the books I was reading. There was no commentary or context. The first one began with James Hilton, “Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue.” It’s a core belief.

When I still taught, my notes were full of slogans. I coded what I needed to remember in them, like this, crisis as opportunity. Signs are meant to point the way, but ones in the media are very misleading.

I mentioned one of Corder’s core beliefs yesterday, he knew he was smart and could learn whatever he wanted to learn. I wanted to learn what he had to teach. I sat down and wouldn’t leave.

My friend, Red Bird, used a metaphor that applies to my time with my dad. A man needs to be given a bow or to learn how to make one. He needs to string it and learn to make it sing. It’s all about having a voice and knowing how to use it. Red’s code-word-slogan was courage.

My father said, “Corder’s not a hoarder, he’s a collector and he likes to give away.” He talked about money, how it possessed him, and how he got free. Freedom turns out to be a big word. Money’s a devil.

He lived close to the rim or the edge, his back against the wall of the wheel. He could see the center, but also the spokes and tire. Where it was going. He had that unearthly Buddhist detachment.

I’m hardly detached and have to use a different path if I want to be free. I belong to the sensitive race, those who over-excite. Chyako is similar and it’s why we live a quiet life.

Call it ritual or routine, it doesn’t matter in the least. I’m all about the big words. I might not look or act like a monk, but there’s more than one kind. Do you know this song?

“I went to the animal fair, the birds and the beasts were there. The old baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair. The monkey he got drunk and sat on the elephant’s trunk. The elephant sneezed, fell on his knees, and what became of the monk, the monk, the monk?”

 

 

 

Genes and Memes

Sansaku: Genes and Memes

6/8/17

There’s a genius type of person. Everyone knows a few. My brother was textbook. He was born knowing calculus and chemistry. Learning was effortless and school was play. I was not a genius type and never would be. Neither were my sister or mother, but we all knew Garon got the genius gene from Corder.

I was told this from an early age. Since dad was gone by the time I could think, I had to rely on stories. Now that I know him, I can’t count the number of revisions I’ve had to qualify and make.

He was this and then, again, he wasn’t. His personality was all split up yet whole. He was good and evil stirred together. It made him dangerous and safe. He was the one you wanted on your side. And then, again, he wasn’t.

He didn’t call it genius, but said that he was gifted with a photographic memory. It came by way of his mother. Unlike my brother’s scientific bent, his was tuned to words and sound. He was musician and a story-teller. Like Garon, he loved to read and read it all. I was a slow learner.

Garon got good grades, but not because he needed them to feel smart. That wasn’t ever in question. And when he missed a question, which was rare, he was more fascinated by the mistake than hurt or offended. It pointed towards something that needed to be explored.

Corder knew he could pass any test with ease and had that liberating core belief there was nothing he couldn’t learn. Have you ever asked yourself, “If I could learn anything, anything, what would it be? He’d given the question some thought and asked the same of me. But I wanted to know why he chose the saloon. “That’s easy,” he said, “I like to drink.”

Alcohol is bad for the brain and his should have turned to mush given the quantity he consumed. I wouldn’t call it genius how much he could drink and still function with wit and intelligence, but it was highly abnormal.   I have tried to keep up. That lasted a night.

Because I don’t have the genius gene nor the one for alcohol, I’ve walked a different path. I have never confused myself with him and had no need to rebel. But I let him influence me as he saw fit.

He was my teacher and I was his student. I could say the same for my mother. She was my teacher and I was her student. While she taught heart-to-heart, his was more like boot camp. It was all or nothing. I went all-in and somehow stayed the game.

Strangely, many of the lessons I learned from the two were similar and I could see how and why they married. She had a memory that rivaled his, but hers was relational. She knew how she felt and stayed true to her feelings. He stayed true to his, but had something else.

I expected the something else. That was well documented. But the intensity of the connection and feeling, that caught me by surprise. Unlike mother, who was a natural-born Rogerian, full of genuine love and supportive understanding, he was selective and could choose to turn it on or off. He turned it on for me and since he saw so much, top to bottom, high to low, his acceptance was my affirmation.

Mother cared what people thought of her, but stayed true just the same. He cared what he thought of others, and would share if you asked. He was remarkably free to be himself. I envied him this and decided to try. I acquired my taste for the way I dress from him.

Mother loved to work and found her happiness this way.   He didn’t like to work, but loved to play. He found his happiness that way. I’m just like both of them.

 

 

 

 

Indeterminacy

Sansaku: Indeterminacy

6/7/17

We’re indeterminant and made of many stories. It matters who tells the story, when, where, how, in what way. It’s the problem of how to pin down and measure a moving wave, a process, or person. It won’t stand still. It’s why asking if the real Corder, or is it Denver, will please stand up, isn’t going to happen.

It supposedly takes two points to draw a line and that’s about all the time I had with him. But an association comes to mind. I seem to remember two thieves were crucified along with Jesus. One repented, one did not. Cynics say it doesn’t matter. I agree with Christ.

I believe in midnight confessions, the final reprieve, last rites. The way the story ends is that ritual moment and it’s based on the uncertainty principle. And who’s to say what happened?

I argue with myself. But it’s not about right or wrong.

One parent was worthy and she devoted her life to being a mother. The other wasn’t a devoted type of person. Mostly wild and free, he roamed at will. He liked the underworld, but carried the upper with him. I’m back to the two points and trying to connect them.

The second point being, I completely forgave him. Point one was that unforgettable and beyond forgivable time in childhood. We all knew he betrayed us. And now that I’m looking at the line I’ve drawn, it goes through both of us. Why would I find that strange?

I acted out the movie scene. After tracking him down, I could have taken him down. I had the arrow sighted. But that’s when the omen fell. I paused and dropped the bow. The man had courage.

I’ve always known I would get around to him. It’s that indeterminant story I’ve been working on since childhood.

People asked questions. The cousins called him “our notorious uncle” and the aunts felt sorry for mom. If anyone did not deserve to be treated this way… It’s not what she would say.

Being the youngest child, I was protected from much of the verbal truth. But the nonverbal reality shouted its secrets. I watched like a dog in the corner. My mirror neurons fired. Where is he? What’s he doing? And that’s the way they wired, on a mystery.

He was pure enigma for me. Not only was he unpredictable, but he knew the places that yielded arrowheads or crystals.   He loved adventure and didn’t fear or avoid what most people did. He might spend the day reading books on the couch, then go out and not come home for a week. What’s that about? I wanted to know.

I learned on my own, and there’s no other way, but he also had to tell me. I might have missed the full significance. We are very different, but have complementing personalities. We understand each other.

He liked to tell stories and I liked to listen. The criminal attorney had learned from the best of the worst. They told him the truth so the truth would not go against them. He had that dark art. When he told the story, the jury believed him.

He was also an entertainer and lived much of his life in a bar. He still practiced law when he played the piano, but he loved to mess with it. I can’t stand bars and spent most of my life in a school, as a teacher and counselor. It wasn’t an obvious match.

Nothing’s about to be solved on this go around, but that’s okay with me. It’s an issue of indeterminacy.

 

Like a Fish Into Water

Sansaku: Like a Fish Into Water

6/6/17

It’s as if Irma and her sister grew up on different ranches and not at the same time.   That’s what my uncle, the one married to mom’s sister always said. Aunt Alice would say, “Those were hard times and we were poor.” Irma would disagree. “We weren’t poor, we just lacked money, like everyone else.” Reality agrees with both of them.

Her relationship with money didn’t change that much, whether she had a lot or very little. “We’ve always had enough.” When Corder was at the peak of his financial success, Irma called it the nadir, the low point. His relationship with money changed completely over the years. I knew him at the end of his days. He was looking back, reflecting on his life from a number of perspectives, directions, or scales.

I’m reminded of that famous scene in “Silence of the Lambs.” Starling asks Lector to take a psychological inventory. He trashes and throws it back. She asks him to turn his high-powered intellect on himself. I would have loved to hear the answer, especially at the end of his days.

When I first encountered my father, Corder/Denver, I felt somewhat the same as Starling when she met Lector. I had questions I needed to ask, but he sniffed me out and said, “Slow down.” He wanted me to know him. I’m grateful I took the time. I’m still taking it.

Toward the end of my second trip to Prescott, we went out for a late lunch. He ordered a bottle of chianti and a large pot of minestrone soup. We stayed until sunset, probably later.

At one point, he stopped the flow of conversation and said, “This is what I’ve waited for.” I thought I knew what he was going to say. As usual, he surprised me. I can’t quite hear the words, but I remember what he said. That’s what lives in time.

At the end of his days, I imagined us being in a courtroom or maybe on stage at the conclusion of a play. He was being tried and judged. I was in the role of audience and jury. He played the other parts. The prosecution was fierce, but so was the defense. I was spell-bound. There was nowhere else that mattered. We were at the center.

He said, “I’ve milked the hell out of life. I wish I could give it all to you, my son, but you need your own experience. The cream, on the other hand, I think I can skim. Take as much as you can.”

He’d lived a multi-colored life and much of it was wild and crazy. But when he related like this, it was sane in the way sanity should be. He had remarkable insight into himself and knew how to relate. Before I met him, I expected delusions, but what did I know?

Epigenetics helps to resolve the old nature/nurture controversy.   Our nature and potential is there, but it matters how and if it’s activated. How could I know I was meant to be a therapist before I’d seen one? I did, but only after the fact. That’s when it all made sense. And I needed to meet my father for some rather obvious reasons.

People who knew him at what they called his best, were those who knew him early, at the university, the ascent. They were also the ones who knew him at his worst, the disgraceful fall from glory. He was Corder then. In Arizona, as Denver, people knew a different man. When he left Colorado, he left a lot behind. I reminded him of that.

Sitting in the Italian restaurant, I remember the late afternoon sun. The cigarette smoke curled around his head and slowed time almost to a stop. That’s what happens when you enter into light. We became unstuck in time.   Corder, Denver, Dad all slowly flowed together.

Time machines don’t move horizontally, they’re on a vertical axis. When I saw this, I stumbled into the unconscious, like a fish into water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Secret, He Related

Sansaku: The Secret, He Related

6/5/17

If I had to simplify, I’d say my father wound was a deep disappointment that came from a divine expectation. The masculine let me down, I expected so much more. Corder felt pressure to perform and gave reason for the great expectations. He was highly successful.

But it turned out he couldn’t fake it all that well. He told me the story of how it happened. But here’s the rub, when he stopped faking it, something unexpected happened. He played a different game.

Speaking of games, my old golf partner and friend died a year ago today. I need to make a call to Mary Ellen. I want to thank her. We were with her when he died.

Both Wendell and Corder died in style. One of our artist friends said, “Wendell could not have sculpted it better.” They were smooching just before it happened. He died incredibly fast, but slow enough to let us say good-bye.

When Corder died, he called his best friend. Doug answered, “What’s up?” Doug was a director at the hospital and not that far away. Corder said, “Don’t forget the bet we made.” Doug had no idea what he was talking about. But he knew Corder had his reasons. He went up to the fourth floor to explore.

By the time Doug arrived, he was gone, long gone. The guy had sneaky powers and pulled his final trick that day.   Doug called me, much as Mary Ellen had. I was a day late that time.

I boot-legged father therapy from Wendell and he didn’t seem to mind. He was part of the healing.   Once I got to know them, neither let me down. I was far from disappointed.

If Corder took his courtroom skills to the Crystal Palace Saloon, Wendell took his classroom to Hillcrest, the golf course. They both liked center stage and definitely the microphone. Golf is a game where the announcers whisper. He whispered loudly, sure we would hear.

He liked my game, which was wild, erratic, and uneven on the best of days. I could hit a towering drive and chunk a wedge. I sank long putts and missed the easiest one.   My foibles made him smile.

He wasn’t one to bet against. While he might improve his lie and take a putt or two, he was the one you wanted in a clinch to take the shot or make the putt. He didn’t often put his money where his mouth was, but if he did he could. And he had quite the mouth.

When he was playing badly, he’d say, “Now I’m livid.” For the next two or three holes, he’d actually try. It was fun to watch him care. Usually he said, “It’s a paradox, I never keep score but I always know what it is. I do the same with others. It’s not what I care about.”

I knew what he cared about.

He couldn’t help but clown. He was one of those Shakespearian fools who knows. Most golfers are stuck in their heads and their heads are in the wrong place. He let them know in the most colorful of ways.

On his last day of working at the coop, some thirty years before, he carried a water bottle and sipped a fine chardonnay he’d opened at home. He said, “The wine deserved fine crystal, but I’ve never tasted better.” He was unrepentant and free, but a little guilty. It allowed him to be honest with his occasional up-tightness, like with money.

Money is a clinical issue and largely overlooked in practice and theory. This is strange, given the symbolic weight it carries. Wendell, like my father, was open with his secrets. He related. That’s the secret.

 

If You Want to Be Free

Sansaku: If You Want to Be Free

6/4/17

He said, “A retreat is not a loss and no surrender. You should be more discriminating in your language. You’re a bit promiscuous.” He explained the word in Latin, it means all mixed up. Apparently, I didn’t know when to back off.

It’s almost axiomatic you can’t see where a person is headed until you’ve observed them for many incarnations through time. And when the situation is meaning-rich, like his, it takes even longer.

Retreat can be a position of strength, not fear and weakness. And those who can’t retreat are those who won’t surrender, but constantly feel and worry about defeat.

He liked to predict what people were going to say and was usually spot on. But he loved to be surprised. If that happened, he often let them know. I can’t remember anyone thanking him.

He knew a story could be changed in a word. And he knew the best stories grew old if repeated unchanged. Since he was living on borrowed time, it shifted his sense of scale and value. “Well,” he said, “it seems I’ve been given another day. Let’s see what happens.”

There’s a scene at the end of “Harold and Maude.” She’s just died and he’s driving the jaguar-hearse off a cliff. It’s a slow-motion crash that explodes into flames. The camera pulls away and widens the field of vision. Harold’s not dead. He escaped from the car and is playing a tune on his banjo. He dances and sings, “If you want to be free, be free.” That’s how the movie ends. What then?

Chyako understands movies perfectly, but English words are sometimes hard to hear. It’s why she can watch a show again and again, she wants to get the language, what’s hidden in the words.   I’m a convert.

It actually helps to know the end. Now the beginning is extremely meaning-rich and the depth of field increases. I can see up close and also at a distance. Now the crazy childhood stories make sense.

I defended my father, but didn’t know why. Given what had happened, I should have been royally pissed. By the time he died, however, I knew the whole story and the ending made all the difference.   Imagine if Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello changed and ran away. What if they didn’t need to die? What if Romeo woke up in time?

“How did you survive?” I asked him. He said, “I didn’t.”   I wanted to know how a tragic hero could transcend the tragedy and resurrect. That’s what seemed to have happened. “Do you mean, how did Corder become Denver?” That story’s ending is my blessing and surprise.

After the fall, all that was left of Icarus was a pile of feathers floating on the sea. But what if he survived and washed up on a distant shore?

People didn’t like to hear he’d escaped. They didn’t want to know he was happy and free. It violates our sense of justice, although he would say the system is highly flawed. There’s con men at the top. He had to get away, they were co-opting him, like the Shakespearian villains do.

I didn’t know Corder, I knew Denver and he wanted me to understand how he understood himself, his life, others, and the world. He said, “I see myself and my face in you, son, and you know what I have done. One thing, don’t you ever deny.” What in the hell did that mean?

I get the idea behind the false self and know what it’s like to drop an old shell and leave it behind. Does the worm identify with the grubby stage or the butterfly?