Let's hear it for the gray!

To begin to explain how I feel about where we are right now, I need to start by talking about some basic colors.

There's black and white, and then there's gray. And at the risk of sounding pedantic, while we may think we know what we mean when we refer to them, I feel that nevertheless I need to explain what I refer to, and how I feel about these colors.

When I was growing up, like most people growing up, so many things were very clear. There was right and there was wrong, and so forth. And I was suspicious of the grown-up world, where it seemed that immorality and hypocrisy used as a crutch the idea that things were not so clear as we youngsters thought they were. A similar idea, that helping one person or promoting one idea often means hurting other people, also seemed like a cop-out, an excuse put forth by lazy incompetents.

Now of course I am on the opposite side of that divide, and for better and worse, I see things differently. I am shocked that nowadays it seems that so many people carry that black and white view of the world well into their adulthood, in some cases never letting go of their simplistic worldview. I am troubled to be forced to see things in a much more complicated way, where there are often no answers to problems, for example, but I am sure that is what a mature person must do. And I will defend my right to hold to a moral center of my own making, to continue to work out an understanding of how best to deal with the complexity of adult life, to anyone who insists that I abandon this middle ground for their islands of certainty.

I am continuously challenged by the fact that with so many issues that come up, I do not agree with either side. And usually, I have good friends and loved ones who stand on both sides, snarling and gesticulating at the perceived enemy across the gaping chasm of uncertainty. Perhaps I have a thing for iconoclasm or something, but my views do not usually fit comfortably into either camp, and I must make a place for myself on the outside.

For one thing, call it a spiritual conviction, but I cannot believe in placing this versus that or us versus them. To put it in common parlance, I think this 1% versus 99% stuff is bullshit. We all got ourselves into the situation we are in, we all benefitted from the shady dealings that eventually sunk the ship. None of us are living in the cabin next to Thoreau out near Walden Pond, making our own candles and stitching together our own mocassins. Modern society is a closed system, and while you can choose to participate in it or not, not only is it unhealthy to NOT participate in it, but most people who believe they are not participating in it are deluding themselves.

And the truth is, in my opinion, that when you put things into an us versus them paradigm, you play directly into the hands of your perceived enemy. You put a target on your back. You give your enemy fodder for rallying others to their own cause by pointing out your failings and the weakness of your argument. You limit yourself to a position that may not, in the end, really serve your needs or bring you any kind of longlasting happiness. There is a ridgity there that is bound to eventually sink your cause.

Now I know that for so long in our culture, we have been conscious of the little guy and the big guy. Our country was founded with a sense that here, for the first time in history, the little guy would get his due. In America, all citizens would have the protection of the law, and access to economic opportunity. But how many of the little guys secretly longed to be big guys, and what would stop them, once they became big guys, from using their resources to protect their big guy status and prevent other little guys from similarly climbing to the top of the economic machine?

So it's time for us to begin to, among other things, re-calibrate our expectations of what our country is, to forge a new identity. The ingenuity and the fairness that for so long seemed to be our birthright have gone elsewhere. For example, American inventors who are coming up with ingenious ways to create sustainable alternative energy are finding investors in Germany and other countries, while they are ignored and belittled at home. It's time we came up with a new way to get an edge. A way to set ourselves apart. It's time to embrace the gray.

I am not talking about gray areas as in the questionable behavior that Jack Bauer engages in to go beyond the law and catch terrorists. I am, to go back to the beginning of this discussion, suggesting we embrace the complexity of modern life, where no one position on any issue successfully conveys the complete picture. I am also suggesting that we give up on some of the idealism we have held onto in white knuckle fashion for so many generations, still believing that certain long-standing problems facing human civilization can ever be solved. It is more than possible that many of these things could be better managed once we accept that they will never go away.

There is flexibility in the gray, I believe, that will allow us to move forward and embrace new challenges and find allies we didn't know we had. There is always more that we have in common than whatever ideals and positions that divides us. When we stop labelling others as our enemies and give ourselves in service to treating others as we wish to be treating, we may find others much more willing to bridge gaps and lend a helping hand in our times of need. Time is short, and practical considerations command our time much more than idealistic posturing. We need each other, as bad and misguided and misinformed as you may believe us to be. We need to embrace the gray.

The latest sequel of "Halloween" - starring the St. Louis Cardinals

Wow. I've been a baseball fan for almost 40 years, and I have never seen anything like last night's game 6 of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Folks at ESPN and elsewhere had talked about the things that went wrong for the Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and the Cardinals in game 5, when miscommunications led to the wrong relievers being in the game at the wrong time, leading to the Rangers winning, 4-2. Well, in game 6, La Russa's moves largely worked, especially the late ones, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Rangers manager Ron Washington made all the wrong moves. What am I talking about? Let me give them to you one by one.

1) With the Rangers winning 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth inning, Washington takes out starter Colby Lewis and brings in super-reliever Alexi Ogando, who had been struggling in the World Series. Ogando proceeds to walk Yadier Molina, forcing in the tying run.

2) With the Rangers winning 9-7 in the bottom of the 10th inning, instead of bringing back closer Neftali Feliz to finish off the game, Washington goes to Darren Oliver. Darren Oliver????? Yes, we know that St. Louis had two lefthanded batters, Descalso and John Jay coming up, followed by the pitcher's spot (with St. Louis out of pinchhitters). But Oliver - correct me if I'm wrong - has better results against righties! Just a major head-scratcher. And wouldn't you know, surprise, surprise, those two leftie batters both singled to get the Cards off to a fantastic start!

3) After bringing in Feldman to replace Oliver in the 10th, Washington elects to pinchhit for Feldman in the top of the 11th, and bring in Mark Lowe in the bottom of the 11th. Not as obvious a mistake as no. 2 above, but still - Feldman has great stuff, didn't throw that many pitches in the 10th, etc. With a tied game, you could make the case that Washington wanted to be cautios and save Feldman for a possible game 7. But if he had left Feldman in, kept the score tied, with St. Louis's most feared reliever, Jason Motte, out of the game, you had to figure Texas's chances of scoring in the 12th inning or later against Jake Westbrook, who had not pitched in weeks, were pretty good.

You may not agree with me, but anyway you look at it, fortune started to smile on St. Louis, from the 8th inning through the end of the game. Texas had 3 hits in the final 4 innings. Meanwhile, St. Louis, with 3 hits through the first 7 innings, managed 10 hits in those final 4 innings. John Jay, 0 for like 99 thus far in the World Series, had two hits and scored the tying run in the 10th. Everything went the Cardinals way (except for Josh Hamilton hitting a 98 mph fastball with one hand off of one leg for his first home run in 82 ABs in the 10th inning).

So I tend to think all of this leads St. Louis with a major advantage going into tonight's game 7. Then again, I am sort of rooting for St. Louis, though I'm not sure why. Maybe because of Albert Pujols, or Tony La Russa, or Lance Berkman. Maybe because I don't believe in this "Texas deserves to win it because they've never done it before" reasoning (who did people who believe that kind of stuff root for in 2005, when the White Sox who hadn't won in 87 years were facing the Houston Astros who have never won the championship? Shouldn't those people by rights be rooting for the Chicago Cubs to win EVERY year?).

Cruz and Napoli are banged up, Hamilton is still banged up, and oh yeah, the Rangers just last night suffered the most gut-wrenching loss in the history of baseball. Yeah, yeah, I know, they will all say, "oh, we gotta shake it off and play tonight like last night ever happened", but last night did happen, and not too many people have the focus to completely put it out of their mind. As soon as the Cards start doing something positive, you know most of the Rangers are going to be thinking, "oh no, here we go again."

I remember in 1995 watching the Yankees play the Seattle Mariners in the AL division series. After winning the first two games in New York, the Yankees had to try to win one of the next 3 games in the hell-hole known as the Kingdome in Seattle. In the 3rd game, the Yanks had an early lead, only to see Seattle come back and win. In the 4th game, the same thing happened. By the 5th game, I was hoping that an earthquake would come and demolish the Kingdome. And when Paul O'Neill hit a home run early in game 3 to put the Yankees up, did I think, "yeah, here we go, we are going to win this thing!"? No, I thought, "oh no, the Yanks may have a lead, but I know those @#$%^ Mariners are going to come back again!" And what happened? The Mariners did come back and finished off the Yankees in extra innings, in gut-wrenching, agonizing fashion. And here, now, in the 2011 World Series, I'm sure there are a huge numbers of Rangers fans AND players who fear, in their heart of hearts, that no matter what the Rangers do, the Cardinals will come back and beat them. Just in time for Halloween, we have Jason and Mike Meyers combined, in the killer team that wouldn't die, the St. Louis Cardinals.

Oneata, "kissed by the sun"

For capers, there are not many that can measure up to the scrapes we get into while in college or shortly thereafter, the stuff we do before we have really started to put our roots down and get all respectable.

One of the strangest but most sublime adventures I ever got involved in was spending most of a night in the attic of the Ward House on the Wagner College campus.

The Ward House, named after the family that owned it and lived it until the college bought it in the late 1940s, was used for a long time for music classes and performances. During the time I was in school, my friends and I grew to love the building like no other part of campus. Part of the reason was its location, across the street from the rest of campus and therefore rather isolated. Also, its history was rather compelling: it was built after the Civil War by William Green Ward, a retiring Union officer (Colonel or General, depending on who you ask). After he and his wife died, his two spinster daughters lived in the house until they died in the 1940s. Most of all, we loved the house, I think, because we thought it was haunted, or at least a repository for weird disturbing energy.

More than one student had had bizarre experiences while in the house - things like suddenly feeling cold, getting dizzy. Friends of mine had identical dreams about the house. I myself had dreams, some beautiful and some nightmarish, and continue to have them to this day.

The dreams and bizarre experiences aside, we loved the house, and prized the classes that were held there. So when, after my junior year at Wagner, it was announced that the house was being closed down, it was a blow to all of us. The college's administration had decided that the house was too expensive to heat and maintain, and they were concerned about security issues since it was so far from the rest of campus. They locked it up while it was decided what was to be done with the house.

We feared the worst, that the school would get rid of the house, probably tear it down. And that is what eventually happened. But it took a few years of vandalism and then finally a terrible fire before they could justify tearing it down.

A friend of mine, B., had taken up the cause of the building in the meantime, and he began learning about the background of the house, the history of the neighborhood where it stood on Staten Island, and all about the family. He interviewed elderly relatives who remembered spending time in the Ward house when they were children, back when the two sisters and their parents were still alive. And he started collecting memorabilia about the family and the house - photographs and the like. He discovered that the family had named the building "Oneata", a Native American word that means "kissed by the sun," inspired by the fact that the front of the house faced east, more or less.

When the house was shuttered, B. became concerned about important things being lost if the house should be demolished. One area he focussed on was the attic. It was said that, when Wagner College took over the building in the late 1940s, all the Ward's possessions still in the house, including materials found in closets and the attic, were either sold or discarded. But B. was sure that there were still things left behind, perhaps belongings that might shed light on the family.

At this point I had already graduated from Wagner, but B. and many of my friends who were great lovers of the house were still students. The only access to the attic was a door in the ceiling of the main hallway in the house. The scheme was hatched, not sure by whom, to steel a ladder that we could then bring into the house and prop up in the hallway beneath that door and then climb up the ladder. It was decided we would remove a fire escape ladder from another building on campus, Kairos House (which housed the campus's chapel), with the idea that after we were done using it, we would return it, and noone would be the wiser.

Keep in mind that, as students, we knew the security force on campus, and knew them to be inept and largely ineffectual. We figured that if we were careful and timed things out well, we could avoid detection and not have any trouble. The snatching of the ladder went well; however, getting into the house did not. We had the ladder in place - Me, B., two friends named Chris (we knew a lot of Chris's back then), and maybe one other person - and sat in Chris's car waiting for security to make their pass before we made a move to get in (luckily, we didn't have break in, because due to vandalism and the college's carelessness, there was at least one door that was open). Unfortunately, when security made their pass and saw my friend's car, they lingered, until we drove away.

I wanted to go back, walking through the woods to the house, but everyone else thought it was too dangerous, that now that security had seen someone near the house, they would keep a close eye on it. Ultimately, I gave in, because I knew my friends weren nervous, thinking that if they were caught they might be expelled from school. Before we left, we had ditched the ladder in the woods, thinking we could come back after a week or two, find the ladder, and go on with our plan.

However, when we looked for the ladder on a night a few weeks later, we couldn't find it. So we had to steal another ladder. Luckily, Kairos House had a second ladder. So we took that one, snuck across campus with the ladder in our hands (crap, that thing was heavy), and got into position well before it was time for the security sweep. The door was open, and we got the ladder inside and into position.

Our friends had had enough excitement, so they decided to leave. But B. and I stayed. We climbed up the ladder, pushed the door up, and found ourselves in a place that noone had been for who knows how long. The attic was dusty the way that oranges are filled with juice. It was not tall enough for either of us to walk standing up so we had to crouch and waddle. Over time, our backs and legs grew very cramped and sore. But we stayed there for several hours, until we had explored every inch of it.

Did we find much? Not really. A handful of pieces of porcelain dolls. Lots of postcards, and some early glass photograph negatives, some whole, some broken. A couple of books that were in horrible shape. But we looked over it all, and gathered together whatever seemed like it might be useful or interesting. B. kept most of the stuff, but he let me keep a couple things that were not historically interesting - a title page from a score of Verdi operatic instrumental music arranged for playing on the piano, and some other stuff I've forgotten.

At around 6 in the morning, after being in the attic for 4 or 5 hours, we snuck out, left the ladder behind, and scooted off the campus through the woods to avoid detection. We made for the house where one of our Chris friends lived, and crashed on his couch and in an extra bedroom, exhausted, cramped, and absolutely filthy. I swear it took a week for me to get the smell of that must and dust out of my nose.

A year or more later, after the house had gone through more setbacks, B. and I snuck inside once more. What we saw was shocking. The school was using the house as a place to store all kinds of junk like old rusty bed frames and God knows what. But all the walls were crumbling, the paint was gone, the wood door frames were scratched up if not gouged, it looked like there had been about 50 years worth of destruction in one year. The door to the attic was open, revealing that someone had cut a square hole in the roof of the house. Whether this had been done by vandals or by the school, the effect was the same: rain coming directly into the house would destroy it much faster than just vandals. We scouted around and took what few momentos of our time as students in the building remained: the numbers on the rehearsal room doors, etc. We knew after all this that it wouldn't be long before the house was gone. And sure enough, just a month or two later a mysterious fire was set, ruled as arson by the police though the culprit was never caught. And after the fire, Wagner College finally got what it wanted: now condemned by the Board of Health, they had to tear down Oneata. We were heartbroken, but we had a good number of momentos.

With all the information B. collected, all the interviews, etc., there could be at least one book written about the Wards of Staten Island and their home. But I gather he abandoned the project. I hope some day he will pick it up again, so that people can hear again about the property and the house that so captured our imaginations.

A Tribute to Sammy

This entry will probably make little sense to many, but for the group of people I shared time with last week, it will hopefully be very clear what I am talking about.

After hearing from people who knew Sammy all their lives and most of his, I would like to give my perspective, of someone who just got to know him in the last year of his life.

I know some have said that in recent months, under the burden of progressing illness, Sammy was not the person they always knew. This man was feeble and uncertain of himself. The Sammy they describe to me was a take-charge kind of guy. Well, I can tell you that to me, beyond the infirmities time imposed on him, that person was still there.

Therese, Sammy's daughter, and I started dating in January of 2010, and I met Sammy and his wife Eileen for the first time in September of 2010. They came to New York City to visit for a couple of days before boarding a cruise ship to Canada. Then, on the back end of their cruise, we spent another couple days visiting in New York before they got on a plane back to Florida.

We had a wonderful time. And near the end of our time together, when Eileen lamented that this might be their last vacation, Therese proposed (and I heartily agreed) that the four of us do a cruise the following September. And in the ensuing months, we have been planning out that trip, a cruise to the Mediterranean that Therese, Eileen and I go on starting a week from now.

Now I want to clear up something - and this is really the central point of this tribute. Anyone who thinks that the work of planning this trip, and accommodating Sammy's infirmities for this trip, has been some kind of labor or burden, or that we have made some kind of sacrifice in including him in the trip, is wrong. They don't know the real story. So let me tell you that story now as best I can.

In getting to know and love Therese, I have from the beginning felt so special because of the openness and generosity she has demonstrated to me, in welcoming me into her life and her home. I supposed that she learned to treat people in such a loving way from her parents. This suspicion on my part has been confirmed in the last week, when all the members of Sammy's family welcomed me with equally open arms. I may be a recent addition to the family, but in true loving fashion, I was treated on equal terms as everyone else.

So having been treated so well, with such loving care, I can only hope to demonstrate the same qualities myself, to give back what I have received. Planning our trip has been so much fun. The anticipation, as we have been counting down the days until we were to leave, has been delicious. Unfortunately, Sammy didn't hang on long enough to enjoy the trip with us. But he got tantalizingly close!

And the experience of sharing Sammy's last days, and taking part in caring for him, and then putting together his memorial service, is something I will never forget. My grief at his passing must be miniscule to what Therese and Eileen and Joan and all the cousins and friends are feeling. But I know that none of us can have any regret about not doing all we could to make Sammy's transition from this life to what is to come as smooth as possible. We did, as Therese kept reminding us, an incredible job. The pangs of pain at losing this man who meant so much to us will continue to come. His suffering has ended; we still are here to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on.

The memory that I will always carry with me is spending last Christmas with Sam and Eileen, along with Therese and her daughter Valentina and Valentina's boyfriend Jake, in Naples, Florida, at Sam and Eileen's home. There is a photo from that visit of Sammy, Jake and I smoking cigars on Sammy's porch on Christmas morning. Sammy looks very happy. He was very happy. I was very happy too.

The theory of evolution, human intelligence, and "Star Trek"

OK, so I am reading "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand, which follows the development of modern American thought from the time of the American Civil War to the first couple decades of the twentieth century through the prism of four of the great thinkers of that era, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce and John Dewey. I found this book when Therese and I were in Boston for the Early Music Festival a few weeks ago, in a 2nd-hand bookstore called Brattle Book Store (a cool spot - if you're in Boston, check it out).

Anyway, the section on William James talked a good deal about the rise of Darwinian thought and the theories that evolution and natural selection replaced. It is fascinating to me, that monogenism and polygenism, those very theories, were both used as justifications for slavery and the place of negro people in America. Natural selection, it seems to me, does not comment one way or the other on the question of whether white people and non-white people are equal or superior or inferior to each other. However, it does make the whole question moot, as it threatens to remove European human beings from the lofty position he had enjoyed, poised on the top of the heap of creation.

In the mid-19th century, when Darwin and others were developing their theories, there was already a good deal of friction between religious leaders, who were happy to have theories in place that agreed with the man-at-the-center-of-the-universe construct they saw in their bibles, and those who would supplant those theories. As we well know, that still goes on to this day. I have spent time myself engaged in that battle. When I was ten years old, I was confronted in school by Cathy Baker, a classmate who attended the same Lutheran church I did.

After she tersely demanded I explain how I could believe in evolution, when the bible says we all come from Adam and Eve, I calmly and simply told her, "it's not the same thing." I did not see Christianity and Science as working in the same realms, and therefore, one could not be a threat to the other. Religion is about believing in something, while science is about accepting theories.

The two realms have one connecting phenomena, in my estimation. That is, they both involve being comfortable with things that cannot be conclusively proven. Evolution, relativity, even spaghettification (another theory and the spark of inspiration for this blog) can never be proven beyond a shadow of doubt. God may show all kinds of signs in the opinion of believers, but she has never appeared in a courtroom in the guise of George Burns or Morgan Freeman. All conclusions about what God wants us to do with ourselves and our world will remain strictly speculative for the forseeable future.

But that doesn't stop us from trying to figure out all this mess, and trying to use religion and science as we are inclined to do it. I personally use both to some degree or other, but I don't place absolute value of one over the other. If there's one thing that natural selection helps me with, it is humility, and seeing everything as relative, with no predetermined hierarchy. An avowed brainiac, I am constantly reminded that, as much as I would like to put myself on another plain from fellow human beings who I judge to not enjoy my level of intelligence, there are many reasons why doing this does not work. One is that intelligence can be measured in any number of ways, and as much as I would like to think I am MORE intelligent than others, when I do, I am apt to put myself in position where I can be knocked off my high horse.

It's like teenagers, right? When I was a teenager, I looked at my parents and thought I had figured everything out, and didn't need their help any more. When they told me I couldn't do something or other, I was outraged - how dare they place restrictions on me! But now that I am older, I grudgingly admit that they frequently knew what they were talking about. I thought I held all the cards, when in fact M & D had the aces and quite a few other face cards.

I continue to believe that the problem people have with evolution is not really a matter of religion. To me, it is the same problem people had with Copernicus. We would like to feel as if we are the last word, the top bananas, deliberately created as unique and perfect, not to be improved upon. Evolution knocks humankind off THAT high horse. Humans are subject to the same pressures, the same frailties, as the rest of the creatures with whom we share planet earth. No matter how much we use science and other systems to remove ourselves from the game - curing diseases and combating natural disasters and so forth - in the end we may suffer a fate that is beyond our human powers to avoid, a fate controlled by the forces put in place by chance, or God, or however you would like to categorize those forces.

I like to consider what forms intelligence takes on besides the ones we think of when we say "intelligence." We all know that there are people who will never score high on the SATs, for example, who nevertheless possess faculties for carrying out sophisticated activities and creating mind-blowing stuff. And I also like the fact that, once white European ancestors are not the be-all and end-all, it becomes possible to not only consider what the other guy can do that we can't - but also to take a closer look at what is happening in the rest of creation that demonstrates intelligence that approaches our own.

Animal lovers, for example, know for sure that Descartes was wrong about animals just being machines that carry out simple instinctual properties. Animal intelligence is something that is fascinating to me. The tricky thing is how to distinguish between anthropomorphising - seeing human properties, in this case, intellectual processes, in animals - and actually observing instances of animals carrying out intellectual processes of their own design. I had a cat for 14 years named Hobbs who I considered to be a cat scientist, because I got the uncanny feeling that he studied me and changed his own behavior to accommodate my shortcomings so that we could live together amicably. That was my version of the story - I have no idea what he thought about it. I do know that we both adjusted to the circumstances life presented to us, like good roommates always do, to be good companions for each other. Granted, the relationship was skewed, since he was much more dependent on me than I on him. So it behooved him to make some adjustment.

What I'm saying is there were moments, when I was alone with Hobbs, when I definitely felt like the relationship dynamic shifted, and I was the dumb animal carrying out rote behavior, incapable of creative thinking or whatever. In those moments, I felt like he was holding the cards. That would make me laugh, to think that, like some cartoon or children's movie, I was the idiot and my cat was the genius pitying my inferior ability.

Of course, we do measure animal intelligence, whether by our terms and by some barometer we ascribe to the animal in question. For example, people will talk about what dog breeds are smarter than others. Again, I am skeptical of this, because a dog who doesn't learn to fetch a stick in 5 minutes, as far as we know, could be making the judgment that the activity is beneath his dignity!

I suppose the process of trying to imagine what intelligence may exist beyond the realm of human intelligence is a very challenging field (what is that field called? I can't think of it...). Science fiction has considered that topic in many fascinating ways. Star Trek has had many episodes that centered around the confrontation between humankind and human intelligence with creatures from other planets and galaxies whose forms and intelligence are completely alien to our own. Of course, many of the alien species encountered on the show were conventionally humanoid, played by actors with a minimum of make-up. But even within those restrictions, it was possible for the show to consider how different from us other species might be.

It boggles the mind to imagine that beyond the limits of our perception, there might be all sorts of things going on equal if not superior in sophistication and intellectual ferment to our own. To deny that the possibility exists that there might be things going on that show us to be on the bottom of heap as a species instead of on the top, is a great mistake. For me, the true measure of intelligence is curiousity and tolerance. When I am ready to "put myself in another man's mocassins", as an old adage used to say, I can double the size of my world in an afternoon. Or maybe in a moment.

Me and you, and you and me

See what happens when you blink? A week and more passes with no writing. Oh well, here I am again, with another topic to make you think but hopefully not make your head hurt.

There are two basic ways to look at the world. The first one is where I make a distinction between myself and everything else I see around me. There is me and there is not-me. In the second one, there is no distinction and I just feel the continuum between myself and all I see outside of me.

In metaphysical circles, these two positions are known as duality and non-duality. There are all kinds of possible ramifications for believing in one or the other. For example, responsibility takes on a different hue depending on whether you feel that everything that goes wrong in the world touches you or not.

In the west, most of us are diehard dualists. We recognize that part of attaining maturity is learning to distinguish between what battles are worth fighting, and when to leave things alone and walk away. We pick those people we are going to care about, and care for, our relatives and a handful of close friends. Maybe we have a few causes that we get involved in, like feeding the homeless or protecting national forests. But we draw a line as to how far we are going to go, and that is a healthy thing, because at the end of the day we have to take care of ourselves.

Psychologists tell us though that when we are very young, we are closer to having a non-dualist view of the world. We don't see any distinction between ourselves and what we see. We feel very powerful - we cry, and our mothers come running to take care of us. If something goes wrong, we hold ourselves responsible for making it happen, like children who are sure that their parents splitting up must be a result of something they, the child, did.

Being a pure non-dualist must be very hard - not because it means feeling responsible for everything necessarily, but it really means disbelieving the messages our senses are giving to us. If someone else is hurt, we don't literally feel their pain. If a friend is happy, we may brighten up in their presence, but we don't feel exactly what they feel. So non-duality is more of a philosophical concept, something, it seems to me, one may cultivate through a lifetime of meditation and spiritual work. Whether anyone ever completely, truly attains it is a good question.

However, the trend nowadays is towards expanding our personal universes. Facebook and other social media allow us to make meaningful connections on whatever level with people we would otherwise not even know exist. And some people share all kinds of personal information, including personal achievements and tragedies. In addition, we see the interconnectedness of world economies and political movements. We may have previously given lip service to there being domino effects or chain reactions to forces beyond our immediate control, but now, for better or for worse, it is easy to see that anyone and everyone can be touched by something happening on the other side of the globe.

At its base, at its heart, non-duality is about relinquishing control. In that sense it is the exact opposite to what we sense as a baby. We strive to let go of the impression that we are at the center of it all. Shifting from a dualist to non-dualist position is like admitting that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around. It is admitting that the most important thing to me may be happening at a great distance from the body I call my home.

The impulse to be charitable is a non-dualistic one, but when we are cynical about it, it is possible in many if not most instances to ascribe personal agenda to giving of oneself to another. Altruism has followed chivalry onto the endangered species list. For example, corporations and wealthy individuals endow sports arenas and performing arts venues in exchange for getting their names pasted on these same places. It's all part of good business practices.

The way I look at it is that what we really experience is a combination of duality and non-duality. In effect, there is a duality between the two - the two paradigms exist in a dynamic interplay between the two. We each maintain a healthy focus on taking care of number one, while also enlarging our purview to include people and places we previously would not have bothered with. In order to feel comfortable within myself, I have to be comfortable with my surroundings, my surroundings - my apartment, the neighborhood I live in, the places I buy my groceries, etc. - have to reflect me. I don't think I am alone in having these new demands on my world - that disharmony without is going to lead to disharmony within, and therefore, the outside has to be in synch with the inside.

But it does all come back to me. As I deepen my appreciation for what my life is all about, and gain greater confidence that I will give myself everything I need, I can let most people off the hook for providing those things for me. I can allow for greater divergence from my comfort zone, without perceiving disharmony, without being knocked off my center. Growing that security within myself, gaining that confidence, may be a life's work as well. But it has many rewards in the here and now.

Stillness in Movement, or just stillness

On a few occasions, I have tried to get into meditation. You know, sitting in a comfortable position, surrounded by soft lights and quiet, trying to empty the mind and find the still place at the center of my being. But usually what I get is an experience of how much my mind jumps all over the place and refuses to be still.

I know meditation is supposed to be good for me. I also know brussel sprouts are good for me, but at least I can grill those in olive oil and garlic (maybe even add some bacon if I am feeling particularly naughty) and come up with something mouth-wateringly tasty. The noise coming from my mind when I am sitting still is less like garlic and olive oil, and more like sand in the underpants. It just seems to get in the way of me enjoying the quiet like I would want to.


I was encouraged a while back when I read about Tibetan Buddhist meditation, where you get to treat the images that come into your mind not as obstacles, but friends. Follow the labyrinthine path your mind wants to take, and when it has finally run out of gas, then you can really experience the peace, before, like a 5 year old, your mind catches its breath and starts darting all over the place again. Not bad, but still not the wonderous experience of meditation, the revivifying blast of me-as-mountain that I'd like to know.


Of course, the solution was right in front of me, which is why I didn't see it - it's tattooed on my forehead, and I wasn't looking in the mirror. I didn't waste all those years (from 1986 to 1999, basically) singing Gregorian chant weekly. We learned that listening while singing, as daunting as it can be to try to do those things simultaneously, can really settle the mind, transform experience, all that kind of good stuff. Yes, there's still that idea of the workings of the mind as distraction that I have a hard time with. I just can't help feeling that there is a good reason that I think what I think, even if there is a hierarchy and there are times when I would like to set aside the nagging suspicion that I forgot to buy bread at the store to focus on more important and/or more pressing concerns. Cleaning house doesn't necessarily mean throwing out all the furniture to get to the dust and the cobwebs.


So here I am now thankfully in a new chant choir, singing mass once a week. Now granted I am the only singer who is aware of what I am trying to do. I have no idea what the motivation is of any of the other guys with which I am singing. But for me the most important point of the whole thing is listening. Not that I do that very often. In fact, part of my motivation for writing this is to remind myself to remember to listen more frequently during the mass. So far I have been tied up in making sure I sing the right notes, and keep in mind where the next piece of music is in the book.


But things are getting better. Every so often I get the feeling that, hey, I do know how to do this, don't I? I start to relax just for a moment. I look at Charlie, the director, and try to hear the other voices in relation to my own. All the things I learned to do more than 20 years ago when I first learned to sing chant. And then the moment is lost and I go back to struggling. I trust that the more I listen, the faster I will start to get back my chant "chops." And then I will be not a chant follower, someone trying desperately to keep up - I willl be a leader, capable of leading others and capable of being sensitive to others and myself.


In the meantime, if I can make some progress in my physical therapy, I may, before the summer is over, get to take up again one of my other favorite methods for getting to that quiet place: in-line skating. Perhaps because it works the core so well (you know, the lower back and stomach muscles, in some circles the center of our being), skating, especially when I do it alone, is a tremendously "centering" experience. There is so much rhythm to the strides as I move, left, right, that it sometimes feels like I am not moving at all - an analogy to the mind moving and remaining still. It is at the most energetic moments of skating fast with sweat rolling down my face, the sound of the wind whistling through my ears, my limbs darting back and forth, that I remember the lesson of this exercise.

While some may search for stillness by eliminating everything that moves except for maybe the breath, for me, the stillness makes itself most indelibly felt in concert with movement. In other words, stillness is part of all that is moving, and conversely, movement if it is harmonious and free is a part of the meditation.