Over specialization

As Canadians retreat from Afghanistan I am reminded of a fellow who stopped by to talk of why things are so unsatisfactory these days. He began by saying that it had been his experience that the young men and women returning from Afghanistan were sometimes very messed up.  They had seen terrible things and experienced harrowing viciousness.
From the rape of young boys by adult Afghani men to the ongoing abuses of the Taliban there were times when honour and duty were stretched to the limit. The sad truth is that we are all culpable. But what he described seemed like the "Heart of Darkness".
It was his belief that the reason for the instability and disorder with which we all deal daily is that we have become a nation of specialists.  "Too much specialization" was the resounding note of his discourse... and I have to add...."Specialization is for insects".

Getting more than they asked for.

 I do know an elderly fellow now passed away, who when he was in his 70's, found that he still had some of his old skills. Skills that he hadn't used since the Second World War.
He had been in the lower part of his duplexed home when he found some young men going up the outside of his building to the apartment above. He told them to get down and get out of there.
It was obvious to him that they were going to try and break in and rob the place.
They laughed at him, telling him to get lost and mind his own business. So he did what came naturally.
He got his shotgun and gave them a warning, "Stop or I shoot!"
They laughed at him and kept on going.
So he fired the gun, right through the window.
They fled.
Now firing a rifle in the city is against the law in this land and soon enough the police were at his door.  They informed him that shooting at people  was an offence and they confiscated his weapon.  Then  they let him off with a warning.
I don't think he had fired a gun in many years. I wonder how many other old fellows still have the knack?  

Silly tale about the risks old people take

I never did get to see this vehicle, so I have no real picture of this van, but I know the story is true because the man who told me was initially embarrassed and slightly humiliated by it.
In certain communities there is a tradition of innovation, of finding a cheaper way, a better way, a way to save money - Mennonite communities are well known for their enterprise and hard work and this tale comes out of that tradition.
Now the old fellow had fallen off the barn roof a few years back and perhaps that caused the shift in his thinking. No one would know for sure. He was in his seventies when he went up on the barn roof and he was lucky to have survived with nothing more than a broken leg.
A couple of years later he decided to build his own van. A farmer by profession he was well used to making things work and he knew how to weld and manufacture many things.
He gathered the tools and equipment that he needed, dropping in a rebuilt Ford engine, likewise building or buying all that he needed to make the van mobile. He installed it all himself, wheels, axles, carburetor, headlights, taillights and the thousand other requirements of a moving vehicle. There was one problem though - in the winter he had no heater.
So. Being thrifty he decided to put a wood stove in the back. It worked too, merrily casting smoke and ash liberally from its chimney as it wound its way to the small village nearby and to church.  That is where he ran into the problem.
It was determined that the members of the congregation had some reservations about parking next to the smoking van. Ultimately a place was found for him to park ....in the furthest corner of the church grounds. 
Ah visionaries they are never well received in their own villages. 

Between Abstraction and Reality

As I write this the first holographic pop star Hatsuke Miko performs to raving crowds of Japanese teens, but what I tell is an old, old story. It is a story that women know well. Oddly as I tell this story I find myself wondering what will be the future of womanhood within a world where holographic imagery becomes the new "feminine ideal".

It is also a story about culture shock. About a woman's search for independence and freedom and with that the space that exists between hope and sad realities. It is a story about how in the midst of a religion based upon love, a shadow side emerges.

The temple was dim and had many rooms and was housed in a nondescript sixties style bungalow deep in the countryside. Upon entering we were welcomed and as per the custom in that place we had dressed appropriately, completely covering our bodies from head to toe. I had gone because I was curious about a culture and a religion that had much to offer. Graceful poetry, expansive theories about God and a fine sense of history all steeped in love and brotherhood.

I could be describing any of the monotheistic religions and perhaps I will leave it at that for the the bare nut of the story is experienced by women everywhere. 

In spite of the building being so mundane from the outside, inside the building there was the feeling of the sacred. Temple is temple wherever people practice and believe. The hush, the circumspection, the dimness of light, the incense and the music were all beautiful.

As we gathered in the sanctuary we were seated on the floor, men in the centre on the carpet, women on the perimeter outside the ornate and fringed carpet. There might have been some 60 or 70 of us there with almost equal numbers of men and women. I found myself seated on the floor between two women, one in her seventies and one in her early twenties. 

Gradually as the evening progressed I realized that this was not to be any short service, but rather a series of sacred events taking place over many hours.

Initially there were songs, and sermons, and more beautifully rendered singing, some breath singing and glorious worship.  There was a pace to the evening slowly culminating in dancing as men linked arms and danced swaying slowly to the beat of drums. The men who performed wore vests and hats of red, green, brown and gold felt which set them apart from the worshippers. 

There was a break for refreshments and during that time I found myself in conversation with the main priest. The conversation reminded me of those conversations with men when they have no interest in talking to you, when they see you as 'other', or 'nonessential'. At the time it was vaguely disconcerting, but it wasn't until we went back in for the second part of the service that the veil began to lift. 
After a little more sermonizing and singing, the men departed to commune with one another in a separate room. A room to which women were denied access. The door was closed and shortly from the inside of the room came the now familiar strains of religious song and dance.
Meanwhile, in the sanctuary I began to have a small conversation with my elderly companion. She was or had been a beautiful woman. She told a story of coming to this country after leaving her first husband. Alone, without the language, she made a life for herself and her children, in this new land. She skipped over the details, but somewhere in that early leaving she had found solace with a priest who had encouraged her to leave her abusive home. She divorced that husband. But she had a bitterness mixed with pride in her early somewhat headstrong actions. 
She confided to me that if she had known how hard life was to be, she might never have taken that risk of coming her with her children, all alone in the fifties. 
She was proud that she and her children had survived and flourished eventually but the cost was dear. I could see she had some regrets. As she told the story the young woman seated to left of me began to weep, silently. 
"Had she ever married again?", I asked.
All at once, the venom appeared, " I hate men." The answer came so quickly and violently I think it surprised even her, because all at once, she clapped her hands over her mouth, rose, and ran from the room. I never saw her again. 
I was stunned. I worried for her but could see no way to make ammends. 
The men poured back into the room almost immediately and began the singing and dancing again. The lights seemed to grow dimmer. As I turned to my left I saw the tears streaming down the face of my neighbour.
"Are you all right?, I asked. She shook her head and entered into private speechless crying. There was nothing I could do...for either of them. I had crossed some boundary within the culture and the walls were now up. 
I left before the entire evening was over, for it was to go on long after midnight. 
But on the way home in the darkness of night,  my own cultural background rose up to greet me. Rage, pure and simple. Darkness not light had been the outcome at least for me. 
I knew I could never go back. Somehow the entire evening was awash in the miseries of women confined by men.  And a religion that had espoused such beauty and truth fell from grace.  The place it had in abstraction was so clearly denied to the women.
It was then that I began to ask how is it that around the world women worship God privately yet publicly we are constrained from expressing that love. Our love for God becomes limited by exclusions of liturgy, and power. Yet I am reminded that in one case at least, women are central to God's purpose. But more on that another time. 

Modern Metaphysics

I met an author of detective fiction once who pondered aloud about the relationship between fiction and what passes for real life. His experience was profound.
As he was reading the galleys of his first published detective novel his own partner was murdered. Even the instrument used to kill his partner was exactly the same as in those first galleys. He had to change that. The published book has a different murder weapon than the original galley proofs. Both he and the publisher thought that the change had to be made so that comment in the small theatrical community where they both lived was kept to a minimum. 
We are all conscious that there is a relationship between fiction and the future but rarely have I come across so clear and intimate an example as this one.
I have pondered this for some time, for it does seem that other realities abound. I wonder too about the realitionship with time that seems connected with such occurences.

The last person you would think of

Tony is gone now. He passed away a few years after he told me this story.

Tony was a character. He always dressed as though he had just been doing something like digging the garden, or excavating the backyard. He was never tidy.
But Tony watched out for the rest of us on that street. He sat on the tailgate of his pickup and watched the neighbourhood like some guard dog. If there was a problem he was on it. Crusty, complaining, cantankerous he was always noticing something he didn't like.
He had retired from his job at the Public Works when he was about 65 and by the time he told me this story I think he was getting close to 78.  After the death of his first wife he remarried a simpler woman much younger than himself. He gave her a home and she looked after him right up until just before he passed on. That was a difficult time.
Anyway, one day as I was hauling the groceries out of the car I nodded to him and said,
"In my next life, I am going to be a man"
"You don't believe that do you?" asked Tony, somewhat derisively.
"Maybe. Don't you?"
"I've been to heaven" he said.
"Oh?"
"Yes. When I had my first heart attack the doctors brought me back and that made me so angry"
"What did it look like," I asked.
"Heaven was beautiful," he said, "there was a golden beach, and a golden sky, even the water was golden.  There were golden angels too - with golden wings. So don't tell me about other lives... heaven is real. I have been there."
I didn't know what else to ask. So I thanked him for telling me and struggled inside my home. I have never forgotten this tale. What made it so odd for me was the juxtaposition of opposites, Tony, dirty, mostly unshaven, looking like a homeless guy, and this vision of a golden heaven, pure and unsullied, glinting in the golden light. 
You just never know what brilliant dreams someone has on the inside.

That reminds me

People tell me their stories and I listen. I guess that is the real reason that I am here on this planet.  To listen. Wherever I go, I listen to the stories of others. Stories of the ineffable, the sad, the recriminatory, the desperate, the whispered nuances of other secrets too dreadful to tell. 


For some reason the snake story that follows reminds me of this one. 

It was told by a woman in her eighties. She was still beautiful. Elegantly dressed and graceful in spite of her arthritis. We had been talking about depression and the impact it can have on a life. She remembered that after her husband left her for a younger woman in her fifties,she withdrew from the world into an alternate world of pain and misery.

It was as if the spiritual and mental pain manifested itself in her body and she developed one of those chronic pain filled diseases that seem designed to make suffering the entire world. It was a terrible time filled with loss and no hope for a different future.

She found a little comfort in church service, and the spiritual community that she belonged to ...and one day she had what she believed to be a vision. 

She found herself at the edge of a great lake, sitting on the sand watching the waves come in gently, peacefully. All at once the feeling came over her that she could end it all by just wading into that beautiful peaceful landscape and let the waves take her. Somehow she felt that if she did that there would be no more pain. 

As she glanced to her left she saw a man about her age, sitting on what seemed to be a throne of some kind. He was tall, handsome and very elegantly dressed. Perfectly poised, he was smiling very gently at her. He told her that if she did what she was thinking there would be no pain. That there would be nothing. That nothingness would claim her and that would be the end.

The end of suffering. 

It was tempting. He seemed to have all the right reasons to go ahead and let the waves claim her, to sink into nothingness. He was very convincing. 

Somehow she realized that he was the Devil, which surprised her because she never expected him to be so elegantly dressed, or so seemingly caring. 

She pulled back, knowing that the nothingness was a trap of some kind. That the pain had its purpose, that it needed to be worked through. She decided not to enter the waves, but to go on with whatever lay before her. And then he disappeared and she was left alone on the beach. 

I have never forgotten the picture she drew of the Devil being an elegant, seemingly graceful person who offers an easy way forward towards nothingness, towards a vast emptiness. 

Oddly her vision of the Devil has stayed with me through my own battles.