Holiday Joy Part 1

And she did not write and she did not run. And a darkness fell upon the land and there was no joy and there was no contentment. And a decree went forth throughout the nations, “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

For 5 days.This is what happens when I don’t do what needs to be done for myself.

The writing wasn’t going to happen and I kind of knew that. The laptop gets taken by the teenage girl and the iPad gets taken by the teenage boy and I am fine with that because they are quiet. And it’s not like I would have been able to think over the incessant yelling at the many thousands of football games that were on ALL WEEKEND LONG.

Oh the yelling.

I actually did sit down to write a couple of times but thanks be to the Almighty I didn’t publish any of those raw, unfiltered diatribes. Each day was rawer and less filtered because of the other thing I didn’t do for myself for 5 days.

No running.

I started off all wrong on Wednesday – the very first day of vacation. I should have gotten up to run, but I didn’t do it. I was sore from the day before and the bed felt SO good and no one else was getting up at the crack of ass on the first day of vacation so why should I?

Because when you don’t, by three o’clock that day, you kind of want to kill all of the people in all of the places all of the time. Whatever, I’ll run in the morning on Thanksgiving Day – it’ll make me feel better about eating myself into a coma later on.  Then I slept on an air mattress Wednesday night and woke up needing traction or a chiropractor or both. Not only could I not run, I could barely walk. OK – so that only lasted a couple of hours and we didn’t eat until 2:00 but inertia and…well…just inertia. And Jonesboro is hilly. I’ll run Friday.

Yeah.

Remember the cozy bed? And the vacation? And now the inertia? Well, let's just say my running shoes stayed dry both Saturday and Sunday as it rained. And rained. And rained some more. And then 5 days were done. Just like that.

And then my running buddy returned and it was all well and good and I am normal again. 

But let me give you a rundown of what occurred in the meantime.

I had my usual Black Friday meltdown…but on crack. I do not understand Black Friday. I do not like Black Friday. Too many gifts…too many people…too many emails…too many “final” Christmas lists from the children (which are never really final). And what about Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday and OH MY GOSH WHO ENJOYS THIS SHIT?!!!

But we went down to the outlet mall – the newly-opened…like 7 days earlier…outlet mall. I’ll set the stage for you. Husband suggests we just go down and look. In my mind, I know this is never going to happen…but whatever. Kids get excited, I tamp down the anxiety that I feel about the crowds and the no-plan-for-anyone’s-gifts-yet angst.

It’ll be nice just to see the Christmas decorations and enjoy the warmth of the holiday spirit amid all the joyful shoppers and the accommodating shopkeepers.

Oh the lies we tell ourselves.

And I knew it was a lie because I had just read an article about how my state “won second prize” in the contest to see who experiences the most Black Friday fist fights. Fist fights. This has to be a good idea…right?

In the car, husband asks the boy – our human GPS – which will be the best way to go to avoid traffic. I snickered to myself. They hemmed and hawed about it and started to get bickery. And then the girl chimed in. And I said,

“Look. There’s not going to be a “good” way to get there, only degrees of bad. And it’s not going to be calming or uplifting when we arrive because of all the people in a gimme gimme gimme mindset. But it’s gonna be OK if we all just decide to be someone else. We will be a completely different family for the next 2 hours. We are going to put on shells made of our best selves. (To husband) You won’t be the angry, impatient driver. (To daughter) You won’t be the clueless teenager who thinks her parents are made of money. (To son) You won’t be the sullen teenager who thinks we’re only going where everyone else wants to go. And I won’t be that prickly bitch who hates crowds…and shopping…and shopping in crowds. We’re just all gonna be not ourselves and everything will be dandy.”

Traffic…nightmare. Parking…bloodbath. There was a neighborhood across from the entrance to the mall where they were charging $3.00 to park. On a residential street. Owned by the city. A nearby church was charging $5.00 to park in their lot and while I’m sure all the proceeds were going to the Syrian refugees who are being mercifully welcomed by the State of Mississippi, we took our chances and turned into the mall lot. We were still acting like the best version of ourselves rather than our natural selves and maybe because of this, we actually managed to find a spot with reasonable swiftness. It wasn’t close, mind you, but we are all healthy people who don’t mind walking so we called it a win. Bolstered by our good fortune, we headed toward the shops.

It’s an outdoor mall. Praise be. So…fresh air (when I wasn’t around the 70% of the people who were smoking), natural light (or something like it beyond the cloud cover and occasional raindrops), and less concentration of sounds (I could block out the Christmas Muzak and people yelling at their kids.) It was looking like I was going to remain inside my shell of a normal person. As we entered the common area, we saw a sign that indicated the mall had been open all night. That’s ALL. NIGHT. Which means there were probably people who had been working ALL NIGHT. I filed this information away so that I could be extra cautious and courteous toward each and every sales person I encountered lest I get cut.

We ventured in and quickly out of stores. They were crowded and people were completely and totally unaware of the sea of humanity that surrounded them as evidenced by their ability to step on, push aside, and cut in front of anyone and everyone in their paths. 

After getting knocked about a few times and not being able to organize any kind of coherent shopping list in my head, I felt the shell of my normal self cracking under the pressure. Thankfully, the kids asked for a snack and chicken tenders magically appeared in a kiosk before my eyes.

Saved for the moment. But the cracks were already there and, as I quickly learned, the kids’ shells weren’t holding up either. Husband’s was fine because we weren’t in the car and his resilience was about to come in quite handy.

Fortified by our crack-laced chicken snack, daughter and I spied a store we wanted to look in which was serendipitously situated caddy corner from a store that my husband and son wanted to check out. Let’s divide and conquer.

Or be conquered as the case may be – as the case was indeed. These two stored contained twice as many people each as the entire rest of the mall combined.

I tried…so help me I did. We looked at some racks. I fielded requests from the girl about Christmas dresses and black leggings…but all I could think about was the metal taste in my mouth. Adrenaline? Fight or flight?

Flight. I told her I had to get out and she rolled her eyes before reluctantly following. I registered the eye-roll and decided to ignore it because this was clearly the Zombie Apocalypse and a teenage eye-roll was the least of my worries. I barely made it out of there without having a full-on panic attack when suddenly I’m at the doors. Freedom! I push them open to inhale that sweet breath of fresh air and as I do, someone in my path exhales their cigarette smoke directly into my face.

Are you EFFING KIDDING ME?!

No I didn’t scream it. But my face surely said it because the woman quickly apologized and ran from me as though I were Super Fly TNT.

I shook it off and headed to the other store to gather the rest of family so we could all run away from this place as fast as possible. When we entered that store it was more of the same. I think I blacked out for a minute. Daughter actually started looking at stuff to buy and in my daze, I wasn’t able to make words to stop her. I scanned the crowd for any people who looked familiar. It was just more Zombie Apocalypse though. I decided that the husband and the boy were going to have to fend for themselves and I would do my best to just survive with my daughter. I grabbed her arm and my desperate face must have said it all because she just followed. No eye roll this time. As we reached the door, we saw the other half of our party – which sounds much more festive than this felt – and I all but broke out into a full-speed run toward the exit.

I don’t know what happened after that. I think the boys may have actually gone back in and bought something? I have a vague recollection of sitting at a table – all four of us – me slumped over in a chair. My shell had long since shattered and I was just a soft lump of formerly-human material. Somehow we got home. I know this because everyone was present and accounted for when we walked in the door. I have no memory of walking to the car or driving back to the house. I’m just glad we made it out alive. And it kind of gives me a ray of hope that we might in fact survive a Zombie Apocalypse because I’m pretty sure Black Friday is the same damn thing.

So that was the first thing that happened.

The next was that we put up our Christmas tree. You can read about that tomorrow and I'm serious this time because I’m writing it now but you don’t need to read any more about my craziness today when you clearly have more important things you should be doing with your time. 

So, until tomorrow. 

One Step At A Time

I am nine weeks into a 22-week training program in preparation for my first full marathon. I am not going to talk about how this is my 6^th try. That’s a topic for another day. What I will say is that in my experience, training for a marathon is at least as hard as actually running one. It’s week after week, mile after mile of exhausting, hours-long training runs that simply have to get done if you’re going to have any hope of completing a 26.2 mile race.

I have a bad habit of looking ahead at the big picture or at big chunks of the even bigger picture.

• 35 freakin’ miles one week in January.
• 20 freakin’ miles one DAY in February.
• 8 freakin’ hills on the Auction Street Bridge and a 45-minute tempo run two weeks before the marathon.
• What the hell am I thinking?

I am guilty of considering things before it’s time to do so.

Fortunately, I have a superb running partner to travel with on this journey. We run a similar pace…have overlapping personal interests…and practically identical points-of-view about our goals for these two races for which we are training. When I’m not demoralizing myself with the thoughts I listed above, my saner self trains in pursuit of the following goals:

• To finish the races (a half marathon and a full) upright, bearing weight on my own two feet without the help of medical personnel, and having a modicum of control over my bodily functions when I cross the finish line.
• To run as much of both races with my training partner– though both of us are prepared to lag behind or forge ahead should it become necessary.
• To celebrate each race with my family and friends by drinking and eating anything I want.
• To complete each training run – no matter how much walking I end up doing.
• To enjoy the journey and remember that it is a privilege to live a life in which I can take 1-4 hours out of single day (often a weekday) in pursuit of these goals.

The last one is, perhaps, most important to me.

We have done the vast majority of our long training runs on trails. These trails are situated amid a vast green space – the largest of its kind in the whole USA – just 20 minutes from our neighborhood. It is a jewel. From various vantage points within this space you can see 5 or 6 different types of communities – urban, suburban, rural farm, commercial, residential, recreational, correctional (yes, you read that right). Sometimes you can stand in one spot and see several all at the same time. It is a remarkable gift.

And it’s not the only one. We have a state park 20 minutes from us which offers running trails – swampy and hilly with switchbacks and the slight threat of bears – we like to run there on the roads in the dark with only headlamps to light our path. No, I’ve never encountered a bear.

And if that’s not enough, one mile from our house is another large urban park complete with an old growth forest, and THREE choices of running trails (dirt, limestone, concrete) all closed to traffic and positioned under a canopy of large indigenous trees.

We are acutely aware of how fortunate we are to have these places at our disposal. We often discuss it as we pound out mile after mile, all the while looking for ways to distract ourselves from the discomfort that running long distances can produce. We are also mindful that no everyone in our city has access to these treasures – not because they are costly to use – but because they are not proximate to the pockets of poverty in our community. We talk about that when we run.

We appreciate this gift.

When the number of miles which lay ahead become too much for us to handle, my partner is fond of saying, “Look at us out here.” And I respond with, “We are gettin’ it done.” We say these things a lot. We are putting one foot in front of the other. One step at a time is infinitely easier to accept than 12 more miles and that’s what that exchange means to me.

One step at a time.

In between these brief exchanges, we have great conversation by virtue of our overlapping interests. These conversations make the miles go by faster (or at least it feels like they are going by faster). But we also have differences which complement each other. I have a tendency to starting talking about big stuff – like global affairs or climate change or municipal financing – and when I’m passionate about it, I speed up. She sees the details and connects the big stuff on a more personal level. This slows us down to a sustainable pace.

My favorite thing that she does is when we are running and lost in conversation (at least I’m lost) and all of a sudden, she exclaims, “Look at the sky!” and I’ll look up to see another beautiful sunrise – because we see the sunrise pretty much every day when we run. It’s always different. It’s always stunning. And she never fails to notice it. Or she’ll stop me as say, “I just want you to stop and look up; do you see the light?” and I’ll look up to see individual beams of sunlight as they peek through the canopy of the old growth forest. These are things that I am not apt to notice when I am by myself but I think they make me a better person when she points them out to me.

It’s so easy for me to become overwhelmed or discouraged when I look at too much at a time. Whether it’s the worsening conflict in the Middle East, my sadness over the treatment of Syrians looking to flee it or simply the dozen-plus miles that lay ahead of me on the road, it’s much more manageable to focus on one thing at a time. After I’ve waxed on about policies and ideas, my brilliant companion brings be back to the faces of people, the colors of leaves, the scenery around us, and the light of each new day.

When I focus on what is right in front of me, I feel empowered to affect the big things in small ways. There is little I can do to impact the international response to ISIS. But I can pray that intelligently-targeted and sophisticated policy will prevail over a continuation of the 30 years of shock and awe retaliation that have led us to this place. Leaders don’t listen to housewife-blog writers about such things…but I believe God does. I can’t change the suspicion directed toward our Syrian brothers and sisters which has led so many in the US to vilify them. I can’t take away anyone’s fear. But I can help the refugees that are already in my community and welcome them one at a time.

I can’t erase the miles of pavement and trail-pounding that stretch before me for the next 13 weeks and I can’t get anyone to do them for me (nor would I want them to), but I can remember why I’m doing it in the first place.

TO finish what I started…healthy, grateful, and in the presence of good friends (and good food).

One step at a time.

23 Days of Forsaking the Talking Light Box

I have now passed the three-week mark without* television and I thought I’d give you some of my thoughts on this experiment.

First, you probably noticed that asterisk next to “without” – let me explain. It’s not like the asterisk next to the names of homerun hitters and cyclists in the 1990s – I haven’t been doping. I’ve just tried to remember the spirit of the 30 days – no mindless watching or channel flipping during the day, no using it to escape the stuff that I should be doing, no watching it in the evening with my family, and no TV at bedtime.

Here is when I have permitted myself to watch TV:

• On November 7, I watched OT in the Arkansas-Ole Miss game – and that was worth it for sure.
• On November 15, I watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes with my family, until 30 minutes in when both kids left the room and then I just watched it with my husband.
• On November 18, we sat down to watch an episode of Frontline that we had recorded a couple of weeks earlier and I fell asleep 20 minutes into it. I finished it the next morning.
• I sat in the same room during a number of football games this weekend though I wouldn’t say that I was watching them. I’ve pretty much had my fill of football for the year. Anyway, it was Sunday and my whole family was in the family room watching and I didn’t feel like isolating myself.

And that’s it. Our DVR is almost full and I’ve had to make the kids go through and delete stuff that they have watched so that there is room to record the rest of my shows for the week. I know…what was it worth if I’m just going to go back and watch them?

This is what it was worth…

I have had lovely, quiet evenings in the family room with my family over the last 3 weeks that included conversation unrelated to the boob tube. We don’t have a lot of down time at our house. For instance, on a typical Monday, our daughter’s day starts with a 4:20am wake up call for 5:00am swim practice. Both of their schools start at 7:15am because everyone knows that’s the exact time of day that teenagers are at their most chipper and ready to learn. That’s a topic for another blog post on another day. They get out of school at 2:15pm and are home a little before 3:00. Then they change, snack, chat with us a bit and head to swim practice (that’s #2 for daughter) at 3:45. They get home at 6:30 and scarf down the entire fridge or dinner – it all depends on how quickly I can get it in front of them. And then they scatter to do homework until bedtime at about 9 or 10 o’clock. Not a lot of family time.

Now, they don’t scatter to do homework, they do it in the family room. We can all talk

about things as they do it, or we can help ( if it’s not math, because 5^th grade is that last time I was able to help with that.) It’s quiet but not silent. And it is commercial-free which is the best part. Commercials make kids ask for dumb stuff that you step on and break when you walk around in the dark. Or they cause them to ask for cereal and candy.  And then I have to be a “no” mom. I’d rather be a “yes” mom but TV makes that harder. Anyway, these evenings have made my heart full and that, as Martha would say, is a very good thing.

I have read a lot more. Mostly news articles. I feel like an educated citizen and since there were local elections this month, that’s a good thing for me to be. I wouldn’t say that the news is any more hopeful when I absorb it through paper or online, but I definitely feel as though I’m getting more legitimate information. Did you know that getting your news from a Facebook headline or from a 140-character tweet might leave you without part of the story? Did you know that when two or three gas-bag, political pundits are screaming at each other on a “news” channel, that it isn’t actually news? Did you know that BuzzFeed is not a quality source for journalism?  I stand by all of these statements and offer this one word: Reuters. Do with it what you like. I’d also like to say, The Atlantic, but at least half of you would say that it is slanted…and that is partially true. However, it takes me about 45 minutes to read an article from The Atlantic and while it is likely covered from a particular angle, there are mountains of verifiable facts included in a single story. And they are sited so that we can go back to the source of the information to decide if we think it’s credible. This may sound like Journalism 101 – of course periodicals have to site their sources.

Au contraire mon frere.

There are an astounding number of online “news sources” which include links in their articles that lead you only to other unsubstantiated articles published by that same journal. It’s like a giant circle of ignorance. SO I’m not just a more voracious consumer of news, I’m a more discriminating consumer of news. That means the left side of my brain – the analyzer – is still working. And that too is a good thing.

Finally, I think my creative muse is present with me for more of the day now because he/she doesn’t have to compete with all the noise and other voices. I have book ideas and blog post ideas and gift ideas and event artsy craftsy ideas at the most random times throughout the day – and I dream about them at night. I forget about 75% of these great ideas but just having them is so reassuring. The right side of my brain – the synthesizer – is not dead either. Another positive takeaway.

So that’s three plusses and zero minuses – a success to say the least. I’m not giving it up forever, but I’m also not going to forget what I’ve learned.

• It is spirit-lifting and peaceful to be in a room with my family when the TV is not on – even if there is math going on in the general vicinity.
• It is beneficial to the universe for me to absorb actual facts with my news.
• My creative muse appears when it is silent and the more time he/she spends nearby, the more he/she gives me to work with.

One more good thing…I have not watched any debates. I could not be more pleased about this fact if you covered it with chocolate and stuck $100 bills to it. I’m not sure either side of my brain...or my heart... or my stomach would know what to do with that crap right now.

Maybe come December I’ll give myself 2 days a week to watch in the evening. And maybe after I go back and watch what I’ve missed, I discover that I didn’t actually miss any of it at all. 

Knowing Just Enough to Know That I Don't Know Anything

I've heard it said that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. It was said by me.

The other day I was straightening up the dining room and under the table I noticed a collection of things that our dog had taken there for “safe-keeping”. There was a boot, an old running shoe of mine, some unidentifiable plastic items, 3 wooden pencils and a crusted-over stuffed animal with no eyes that my daughter had once loved. It had been a dog too, and maybe Dash felt threatened by it. 

Anyway, I returned the boot (thankfully not destroyed) and the running shoe (which I had already destroyed by running in them) and put them back in their rightful spot. The rest I scooped up and threw in the garbage being sure to hide the stuffed dog at the very bottom so that my daughter would not see it. She hadn’t played with – or likely even considered –that stuffed dog in years and I knew that she would not be scarred if it simply remained forgotten forever.

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. This is an example of that statement being true.

There are, of course, examples of situations in which this statement is not only patently false, it is inherently dangerous. For instance:

I’m hiking in the woods and I see a pretty flower that I want to pick and take with me. It’s in the middle of a lot of other plants…mostly green foliage…and I don’t know what poison ivy looks like. And I am allergic to poison ivy. Very allergic. This is an instance in which what I don’t know (the shape of a poison ivy leaf) could definitely hurt me.

In the most important of matters, the decisions we make and/or the actions we take based on what we do or do not know can actually hurt others as well. Lately, I have come to recognize that my own ignorance (and the general ignorance of most Westerners) about the Middle East has had disastrous results – international implications, in fact – for the people living there and for the world at large.

So I have gone on a learning quest – a reading binge made possible by the fact that I am not watching TV this month. Interestingly enough, I must have had an inkling as to my own ignorance about 2 years ago. At that time, I stumbled across a list of people compiled by Reuters who have been covering the civil war in Syria since the Arab Spring in 2011 and doing a thorough, unbiased job of it. For some reason, I created a Twitter list of all these people (10 in total) and told myself that I should check it periodically to keep myself informed.

I took advantage of this self-created, 21^st Century listserv exactly ZERO times.

But since Friday’s attack in Paris and in the days that followed with all of the…er…conversation about Syrians and refugees and ISIS and terrorism, I realized that what I knew about the war in Syria – and it IS a war – could fit in a thimble.  The realization was magnified by a factor of 100 when I watched this 5 minute video created by Ezra Klein back in October. After watching this, I realized that what I knew about the war in Syria could fit in a thimble…for Tinkerbell.  

And I knew that wasn’t good enough.

In my attempt over the last 4-5 years to remove the ugliness of American politics from my social life, I have also stopped reading about current events. These two things, at one time in my life, were hopelessly intertwined because I worked in politics and all of my friends did too. 

I used to spend hours and hours reading research and policy papers on any number of subjects. It was a habit shaped by my years working on Capitol Hill where it was my job to flood my brain with as much information as possible on a given subject until I could speak and write intelligently about it. It was a really marvelous way to enter the workforce. Being informed and knowledgeable was seen as a positive quality. Sharing different perspectives was commonplace – especially among people my age who were still trying to figure out what we thought about the world around us. 

Our parents had shaped our views until they handed us to our college professors who honed our outlooks a bit more. Now we had bosses, colleagues, and influences which were further shaping our policy perspectives and it was up to us to figure out what voices were our own and what voices belonged to other people. We did this together and because we were friends, we did it respectfully. Despite spendning each day reading and learning and soaking up all there was to know, I lived with the constant awareness of how much I still didn’t know. This type of environment can engender humility and, for me, this humility was an ever-present reminder that I didn’t (and still don’t) have all the answers. 

The best part was that I was living in a vacuum in which fact-based arguments were appreciated – invited – by people regardless of their ideology. We had feelings about domestic and world issues, but our discussions were largely free from emotion and, more importantly, free from reactive response.

The real world offers no such vacuum though it has its share of unbreathable space, namely cyberspace and particularly social media. And I won’t go into the pros and cons of one environment over the other, but I will say this…there is a lot of reactive response going on, precious little true knowledge, and absolutely no humility. And it’s not just our leaders who are showing it.

It’s US. Me and you. 

So, I’ve been revisiting my roots. I’m not going back to DC or Capitol Hill, but I am going back to some of the behaviors that I learned there that helped me grow, specifically, binge reading. Right now, the subject is the Syrian War and, peripherally, its relationship to the Islamic State. I am not qualified to have an opinion, engage in an argument, support a position, or judge a Syrian (or anyone else, for that matter) until I have at least tried to understand what is actually going on over there. As you saw in that video, there is much more to this than just Syria and ISIS. This bleeds into Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and a dozen other places. Everyone has an agenda and allies and enemies shift with each passing day. It can't be "boiled down" into one article, premise, opinion, or soundbyte and anyone claiming to do so is lying to you. There is nuance and complexity and…

There is no black and white about it. 

If grey area is not your thing, then you will not like studying the War in Syria. Also, if you’ve been a supporter of US policy in the Middle East at any time in the last 60 years, you may not like the questions that this kind of examination will raise in your mind. So, if American exceptionalism is something that you need to embrace to the exclusion of self-edification, you should know that studying this might be for you.

But I hope you will not allow fear of knowledge to keep you from seeking wisdom outside of your normal circle of influence. What you don’t know can hurt you and it can actually hurt lots of people. We have to remember that the story of this violent and turbulent region is a story about people. They are unlike us in many ways, but just like us in many important ones. Like us, they long for security and stability and freedom and they are struggling to find a balance that gives them a fair amount of each. If we allow our leaders to construct a narrative in which these people are mere characters used to justify their agendas, then we are ignoring their humanity.

Below is a list of my resources so far. If you are already reading a lot on this subject and would like to add to my list, please do so in the comments. I’m looking for fact-based articles and thoughtful analysis from people with boots on the ground and feet firmly planted in reality. I'm not interested in rants or quips from people sitting behind a desk jockeying for airtime or trolling from behind a computer screen to collect “hits,” “likes,” “follows,” or “shares.” So, if you have things to share...I welcome them.

I’m regularly reading from these websites:   

• www.projects21.com/category/middle-east
• www.syriadeeply.org
• http://www.mei.edu/
• www.al-monitor.com

These are the people on my Twitter list – some because of what they share themselves from inside or nearby the conflict or because they tweet other interesting information about the war and other happenings in the Middle East:

• Joshua Landis @joshua_landis (Director of the Center for Mid East Studies at the University of Oklahoma)
• @BSyria (This is just a twitter feed that retweets other Syria-related tweets from Twitter – like a listserv inside my listserv)
• Randa Slim @rmslim (she wears many hats and is an expert on Middle East affairs)
• Jenan Moussa @jenanmoussa (reporter based in Dubai who works for Arabic Al Aan TV)
• Laila Lalami @LailaLalami (novelist and essayist)
• Laura Rozen @lrozen (reporter for al monitor)
• Liz Sly @LizSly (WaPost Beirut Bureau Chief)
• Hassan Hassan @hxhassan (author, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

This is very good:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/inside-assads-syria/

And these are some of the articles that I (a) have already read, (b) am currently reading, or (c) am about to read:

• http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/?utm_source=SFFB
• http://www.thenation.com/article/we-cannot-defeat-isis-without-defeating-the-wahhabi-theology-that-birthed-it/
• http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-militants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/18/how-isis-makes-its-money/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-propaganda-war-us-tried-to-play-by-the-enemys-rules/2015/05/08/6eb6b732-e52f-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/life-in-the-islamic-state/2015/10/01/overview/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/5-stories-you-should-read-to-really-understand-the-islamic-state/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/an-american-family-saved-their-son-from-joining-the-islamic-state-now-he-might-go-to-prison/2015/09/06/2d3d0f48-44ef-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html
• http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/11/15/paris-attacks-the-wests-fatal-misunderstanding-of-islamic-state/?utm_source=Facebook
• http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/how-isis-started-syria-iraq/412042/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-long-war-against-islamist-extremism-has-become-more-complicated-than-ever/2015/11/17/0b255c26-8c8e-11e5-934c-a369c80822c2_story.html?postshare=1751447890823635&tid=ss_tw
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-long-war-against-islamist-extremism-has-become-more-complicated-than-ever/2015/11/17/0b255c26-8c8e-11e5-934c-a369c80822c2_story.html?postshare=1751447890823635&tid=ss_tw
• http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/18/kurds-cant-be-syrias-saviors/?utm_content=buffer19415&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
• http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/15/confessions-of-an-isis-spy.html
• http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2015/11/19/overconfidence-and-the-war-in-syria/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
• http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:12458de66d2e4de79bfd9c8835a903ba

I'm Just Trying to Feed the Right Wolf

On Saturday, I was sitting on my bed with my son who is 13 years old. He asked me, “Mom, are you afraid that ISIS could come to America and do something like they did in Paris.” It wasn’t a surprising question given the events of the previous day, but the answer I heard come out of my mouth surprised me a great deal.

“Well, I think we do a pretty good job of protecting our borders – especially since 9/11.” I used the example of my friend’s Canadian husband who, despite being a law-abiding citizen, legally married to my friend for ELEVEN years, has been denied entry into the U.S. for the last 8 months for no legitimate reason I can discern. If they won’t let really benign white Canadian in the country, we probably look really closely at people of color – any color – who try to get it. I went on, “They would need a lot of financing too and the US has mechanisms for monitoring large influxes of money that flow into the U.S. from foreign countries,” and I continued for a few moments detailing the security in our country.

And then I stopped. 

Because I realized that I had not answered his question, “Mom, are you afraid?”

I always try to tell my kids the truth about the important stuff. Sex, drugs, relationships, death, illness…lies will only get me into trouble and the truth can always be made age-appropriate. My general rule is to not over answer. I aim to give them only the information they are asking for.

But this question was LOADED. Am I afraid? Yes, son, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what people might be planning that could cause you harm in your school, in our church, at a concert, as we dine in a restaurant. But honestly, there have been reasons to fear those things since long before Paris – and not from “outsiders” or “invaders”. Hell, I almost got hit by a woman in the Walgreen’s parking lot yesterday as she careened around a corner while she was texting. The world is dangerous and I always carry a little fear with me about what a risk it is just to be alive in it. These were my thoughts.

What I said was, “You know what? I am a little scared that there are people out there who want to hurt us. And I know that no matter how secure we think everything is, there is always a chance that someone could get through. But you know what I’m more afraid of?”

“What?” he asked.

“I’m more afraid of what life would be like…what would happen to my soul…if I let fear guide all of my actions.” He nodded, but I know a 13-year-old can’t fully comprehend that.

So we were silent for a few moments and I continued to scratch his back. He will have to process that. And as with all of the hard realities that go with growing into an adult human, he will have to fashion his own path with regard to the role fear with play in his life. His experience will be different and so his choices will be too.

While we were sitting there in silence, something made me think of this story from the Cherokee Tribe and so I looked it up and I read it to him:

ONE EVENING, AN ELDERLY
CHEROKEE BRAVE TOLD HIS
GRANDSON ABOUT A BATTLE THAT
GOES ON INSIDE PEOPLE.

HE SAID "MY SON, THE BATTLE IS
BETWEEN TWO 'WOLVES' INSIDE US ALL.
ONE IS EVIL. IT IS ANGER,
ENVY, JEALOUSY, SORROW,
REGRET, GREED, ARROGANCE,
SELF-PITY, GUILT, RESENTMENT,
INFERIORITY, LIES, FALSE PRIDE,
SUPERIORITY, AND EGO.

THE OTHER IS GOOD.
IT IS JOY, PEACE, LOVE, HOPE, SERENITY,
HUMILITY, KINDNESS, BENEVOLENCE,
EMPATHY, GENEROSITY,
TRUTH, COMPASSION AND FAITH."

THE GRANDSON THOUGH ABOUT
IT FOR A MINUTE AND THEN ASKED
HIS GRANDFATHER:

"WHICH WOLF WINS?"

THE OLD CHEROKEE SIMPLY REPLIED,
"THE ONE THAT YOU FEED"

Those qualities of the evil wolf…those are the branches that grow from a seed of fear that is fed. I have spent my entire life trying NOT to feed that seed. This is what I wrote about fear in 2011 as part of my faith statement before the session at my church:

Each day, my journey seems to focus on different things but if I’m being honest, mostly I battle fear.  Sometimes it’s fear of not finding my vocation or worse that THIS is my vocation and it doesn’t fit my idea of who I want to be.  I worry that the people I care about don’t want to be around me and I worry that the people I don’t want to be around won’t leave me alone.  I worry about not doing enough or doing too much – shall I be Mary or Martha?  I worry that I won’t listen enough or that I’ll say too much.  But my greatest fear, by far, is sadness and pain and the things that I’ve convinced myself will CAUSE sadness and pain.  Experience tells me that the easiest way to find true light is to [first] embrace complete darkness, because in my past those are the times that I’ve been weak-willed enough to allow true light to punch a tiny hole on which I can focus.  And then, if I try REALLY hard, I can focus on that light.  Once I do, it stamps out the darkness with authentic light as opposed to the artificial light of bright, shiny things which distract me. That’s when God changes me. 

Being a Christian, as I understand it, is HARD.  It’s not just a set of behaviors and creeds, it’s striving to be like Christ – a guy who was killed by His church AND His state, not so that we wouldn’t die, but because He was showing us how to live.  And I’ve already told you I’m afraid of pain, so you KNOW I’m afraid of following an example that doesn’t promise safety and security – in fact, it pretty clearly ensures the opposite.  Give away all your money, be willing to hate your family and friends, love your enemies forgive everyone as God forgave you, take up your cross, and then, don’t worry, trust God, AND be not afraid.

Two things can happen when you embrace darkness, either you allow fear to grow there, or you look around for the light and when you find it…or it finds you…it begins to feed your faith. It’s a risky place to be…in the darkness. We are there right now as we sit in uncertainty. What should our military response be? How should we increase our security? What should our humanitarian response be?

Where is the light?

Anytime I read those paragraphs from my faith statement, I don’t remember writing them. I certainly can’t believe that I stood up in room full of people and read anything like that and I certainly can’t imagine what is possessing me to share it here on the Internet now. The only answer I have is that doing the scary thing…the dangerous thing…can be the right thing.

Like welcoming the stranger, and in particular, Syrian refugees. I’ve heard all the arguments…the fears…that dominate the conversation. And I do understand them. I just don’t want to feed them – not in myself. It’s not easy, I have to make conscious decisions not to act out of fear. With every decision I must attempt to feed the other seed – the one from which these things grow:

JOY, PEACE, LOVE, HOPE, SERENITY,
HUMILITY, KINDNESS, BENEVOLENCE,
EMPATHY, GENEROSITY,
TRUTH, COMPASSION, AND FAITH

As vivid as the picture is in my head of those terrified concert-goers at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, just as vivid are the photos of Syrian refugees – men, women, and children (not just men as many would have you believe) – who have fled their homes – not because they are looking for a free hand out in Europe or in the States, but because if they stayed in Syria, their choices were:

• Fight for Assad (you know, the guy who uses chemical weapons on his own people?)
• Fight for ISIS

     or

• Die – right after you watch your wife be taken as a concubine and your children sold into slavery.

Having never been faced with a decision such as this, I don’t feel like I’m in much of a position to judge those who decided to leave. And as far as letting them come to the U.S., I have this to say:

As strong as my instinct may be to just hold on to what I’ve got (primarily a safe home, clothes, a warm bed, and plenty of food to eat) and try not to let people take it from me, I know that instinct is just another branch growing from the seed of fear. I believe everything that’s mine was actually given to me -- entrusted to me -- and it’s not mine to bury in the ground or behind a wall. I’ve been commanded to multiply and share with others.These gifts are innumerable, they are undeserved, and there is no way I can begin to adequately reciprocate.The only thing left for me is to do is show gratitude and the best way to do this is through hospitality.

We welcome the stranger – along with the risk – and we say to the fear, go away.

"Mom, are you afraid?" 

Yes, son, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of letting fear win. Because fear and its branches shackle us. Fear and freedom cannot coexist. 

We can find space here – in our cities and in our hearts. We can find room in the inn. We just have to look for the light and let it find us. And we have to stop feeding the evil wolf. 

When There Are No Words...That's When We Need Them Most

My heart is heavy.

That is a phrase that I hear people use….that I myself use or think…in the wake of horrifying tragedy. It is appropriate to school shootings. It is appropriate to natural disasters. It is appropriate to the atrocities associated with war.

Like what happened last night in Paris.

Because I don’t think there are many people who disagree now that we are at war. We disagree about how we should fight an enemy that has no borders…no traditional government…no infrastructure nor military installations nor single spokesperson at whom we can shake our fist and unite against. ISIS, much like Al Qaeda, is a terrorist organization…a network of cells. Kind of like cancer. Just like cancer cells establish strongholds in the body, ISIS cells imbed themselves in communities where they are either welcomed (by providing security where a national government can’t or won’t) or can exist undetected long enough to plan an attack within that community (thus creating a need for the aforementioned security) and then they send new recruits elsewhere to establish new fortresses. 

We know that cancer can be treated in several ways ranging from localized surgery to remove a small number of cells to aggressive chemotherapy which can ravage the person with the hope that it will kill the cancer before it kills the body. With cancer, early detection is the key because surgery minimizes damage to the rest of the body. But once it has spread, chemo is often the best and only option. This would also be true of ISIS, but my fear is that they have spread so now that a swath of poison is the only answer.

But how have they spread? How are they able to recruit from within the very communities in which they unleash their terror? I have a theory.

This morning as I was doing my daily Twitter scrolling, I happened upon a Ted Talk from March of this year. It was by a French journalist named Jean-Paul Mari and it began with his retelling of an experience in which he encountered death while he was in Baghdad during the first weeks of the Iraq war.

It’s about 15 minutes long and I would strongly suggest that you watch it – especially if you’re going to continue reading this. I’m not really worried about making anyone angry, but the video will lend context to what you read and that might mitigate any reactionary contempt. Here is the link. Turn on the English subtitles unless you are fluent in French.

Or if you want to be angry – which is the emotion that most of us want to embrace in the wake of a massacre like we saw last night – go ahead and read. And get mad at me. I’m okay with it.

How many people…first responders, witnesses, survivors…stared into the void of death last night in Paris? How many of them looked at something that, as Mari suggested, we are not supposed to…not physiologically equipped to…look directly into? Like the sun.

When I am forced to drive into the sun, my body involuntarily reacts. My hands instinctively reach for the visor to attempt to shield my eyes from the blinding light. I am aware that if someone were to step in front of my car, I would not see them. I try to use my peripheral vision as I monitor the traffic around me so that the visual disruption doesn’t cause me to have an accident. We cannot look directly into the sun without it literally damaging our eyesight.

I submit that we cannot look directly into the void of death without it damaging our souls. 

It is worst for those in the immediate vicinity. They are forced to look the carnage in the face. And just as our bodies instinctively react to protect our eyes, our psyche instinctively reacts to protect our soul…though the damage has already been done.

The trauma has occurred.

Soon after, those who experience cannot sleep. They cannot function as they did before. “They want to be loved, but they hate everyone.” They believe they are dead because they have seen it…and the only way to see death is to die. Right?

Mari proposes that “the only way to heal from this trauma is to find a way to express it.” Not express it in unhealthy ways…not though alcohol…not by beating your spouse…not by taking your own life to relieve the pain. Express it in words. Name it.

“In the face of such a horrible image – a wordless image of oblivion that obsesses us – the only way to cope with it is to put human words to it. Because people feel excluded from humanity.”

And words…language…are what make us human.

Feeling excluded from humanity…that seems like just the kind of vulnerable state that might make one decide that nothing is worth it anymore. If someone already feels emotionally separated from the world, it’s not a leap to want to make that separation permanent…in a physical way.

Looking at this in the context of war…it is estimated that around 59,000 American soldiers lost their lives during the Vietnam War and that an additional 102,000 committed suicide in the years that followed. That is the power of death – of looking into the void of death – and not naming it and expressing it. PTSD took twice as many people as combat did simply because we did not allow them to really tell us what it was like. We want the adrenaline rush…the heroism. We do not want the whole story.

In war, there are also the bystanders…they stare into the void of death in the collateral damage around them. The people that we call collateral…they just call mom or brother or friend. This seems like just the kind of vulnerable state that would make fertile recruiting ground for a terrorist organization that trains suicide bombers. They can feel the love – or at the very least, the inclusion – that was lost in that moment of trauma, while feeding their hatred, as they slowly march toward an explosive suicide.

What do they care? They are already dead.

And that’s how an organization like ISIS (or a gang, for that matter) operates. They cause the trauma and then immediately provide a way to express it…when everyone else has moved onto the next crisis.

I fear that we are in danger – depending upon how we react – of doing more of the same ourselves.

“Blow them off the map.” I read that this morning in reaction to ISIS’s claim of responsibility. Ok…but could you please point to me on the map where it is that they reside exactly? If we start blowing things off the map, we are going to cause more death…some of it likely justified…but some of it collateral. If we rush to act…to appear decisive…do we not risk creating more and more that we will have to figure out how to fight?

I’m really opening myself up to criticism by asking all these questions because I don’t have a better alternative. Not a concrete one anyway. But I feel like it’s a conversation that we need to have as onlookers too.

We live in a world where we can bear witness to (if not look directly into) the void of death through our phones, computers and televisions. It’s not the same, but if the outpouring of emotion I’ve seen on social media is any indication, it definitely has an impact. “Blow them off the map” wasn’t uttered by a congressional hawk or a military general. This was uttered by a woman in America’s heartland.

And boy do I understand it.

I am angry. I am sad. I am scared. I am shocked. I am uncertain. I can’t stop picturing the scene at the Bataclan. It’s playing on a loop in my mind and I wasn’t even there. My reptile brain says,

Ready…Shoot…Aim. 

In that order.

But my human brain – the one that uses words to express my pain – knows that is not the answer. Even though it may not know what is the answer.  There are many of you who will simplify this and say, we can’t worry about the minutia in war…but I believe the minutia…like a single cancer cell…is where it all begins.

The people of Paris are responding to the minutia. There are people in the heart of Paris taking to social media with this:

#PorteOuverte – OPEN DOOR.

People in Paris – a country that we lampoon in American pop culture as being home to the world’s most aloof and condescending citizenry – are opening their doors to people who were (and maybe still are) stranded throughout the city unable to return to the homes and hotels. They are offering shelter and comfort to those who have stared into the void of death and in doing so, they are reflecting “the better side of humanity” at a time when many might begin to feel excluded from it.

What if they accidentally harbor one of the shooters? Authorities aren’t even sure they got them all.

I’m sure there are plenty of closed doors as a result of that sentiment – if I was in Paris, mine could very well be one of them. Fear is a powerful motivator and it is the seed from which exclusion and isolationism are sown. But I am in awe of those who posted their personal addresses on Twitter and welcomed strangers into their homes in the middle of the night – on a night in which fear could easily have won. I want to be like them.

Like police and medical personnel and other first responders, these door-opening-mirrors-into-humanity are the helpers to whom Fred Rogers was referring in that familiar quote which is often – correctly – pulled out of the archives at a time like this. They are the ones who remind us that there is more good in this world than bad.

As long as we don’t let the bad bring out the worst in those of us who are good.

My prayer for the next several days as Western leaders work to decide upon the appropriate “proportional response” is that they do so with both the big picture and the minutia in their minds and in their hearts. This is a time for the smartest and most thoughtful people we have on the planet to step forward and offer solutions – not a time for people with only their own self-interest in mind to offer more rhetoric to feed the hate, fear, and sadness.

How can we respond more like helpers – helpers who are in it for the long-haul -- rather than like those who opened the void of death in the first place? How can we offer space to grieve our pain and name our trauma?

I’d rather be part of the thread that sews up the void of death as opposed to a force which tears it wide open.

Why I ALWAYS Read Movie Reviews Before I See a Movie

I’ve been having a vocational war in my head today which has made it difficult to feel inspired or creative. Or wise. Or productive. I’m mostly just talking to myself a lot.

Facebook still won’t let go of the red cups and I am DONE with it so, for a few a days I’ll be on Twitter seeing what it has to offer my creative genius.

As it turns out, Twitter wants me to talk about the movie Goodfellas.

Apparently, some guy named Vincent Asaro was found not guilty of racketeering (don’t know what that is, but it’s something that mob guys are always on trial for) and extortion in connection with the 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport. This heist is better known to movie fans as “the thing with those guys in that place”. It was what caused Robert De Niro’s character, Jimmy Conway, to lose his shit and start whackin’ people in the latter half of the movie.

I loving movie mob talk. It’s beautifully vague and captures the imagination.

It was a huge heist…something like $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels were just lifted from the airline’s cargo storage center. According to the U.S. Department of Justice it was the largest bank robbery in New York history. Except that they didn’t rob a bank, they got a key from some guy and just walked into an old airplane hangar and stole a bunch of cargo.

At least that’s how it played out in the movie and that’s good enough for me – for the purposes of this blog.  

SO there were…oh, I don’t know…about 100 tweets about his acquittal this afternoon and it got me thinking about the movie and how much I love it. If I’m flipping through channels and I stumble upon it, I always watch whatever is left.

But I didn’t always feel that way.

In 1990, I went to see it on opening night. I had just turned 17 and I could get into rated R movies without someone buying me a ticket. This was the first one I decided to go to all on my own.

Did I mention that I thought it was supposed to be a comedy? I don’t remember why I thought that. Maybe I thought because Joe Pesci was in it there would be humor? He was hilarious in Lethal Weapon 2. And that Ray Liotta guy, he was in Field of Dreams. He played Shoeless Joe Jackson, for crying out loud.

Obviously this was a feel-good comedy.  

Yes, a feel-good comedy provided you replace “feel-good” with “excessive” and “comedy” with “carnage”. Excessive carnage. Mayhem. Mob violence. I was in a fetal position before Henry Hill had even narrated himself into Ray Liotta. They beat up that mailman while young Henry looked on and about that time I looked at my friends like, “what is this crap?” They were fetal too.

And none of us were laughing.

I toyed with the idea of walking out, but then I would have looked like a kid which clearly I was not because I was now old enough to purchase my own ticket to a rated R movie. I had to sit there and tough it out. Peeking through my fingers – I readied and steadied myself for each bloody, gruesome scene. It was seriously the most violent movie I had ever seen up to that point.

Various scenes that caused me to cower in my seat:

When Henry beat up Karen’s neighbor with the butt of his pistol and then asked her to hide it in her parents’ garage.

• When Tommy stabbed that guy in the neck from the back seat of the car.
• When they killed Billy Batts and cut up his body with a big kitchen knife they borrowed from Tommy’s mother.
• When Tommy shot Spider in the foot because he messed up his drink during a poker game. What the hell was that?
• And then, because all of that stuff had happened unexpectedly before I could cover my eyes with my hands – I spent the entire scene where Jimmy is trying to guide Karen down a deserted alley to look at some dresses or fur coats or something…Whatever, I was ready because I knew at any moment, some big guy with an ice pick or a sword or a set of nunchucks was going to appear and take her out in some ridiculous bloodbath.

But that turned out to be the one time nothing happened.

I have never been so happy to see a movie’s protagonist get arrested. Once the FBI got involved, I was able to let my guard down and return to my normal upright position.

 

As we left the theatre, we all agreed it was too intense and we didn’t really like it. I pondered whether I would ever go see another movie – any movie – again. What if all rated R movies were just guns, chef’s knives, blood with a little cocaine thrown in for excitement?

And then the Oscars rolled around and Joe Pesci won a freakin’ Oscar. And it was nominated for 5 more. Oh and the Brits LOVED it – they gave them a whole bag of BAFTAs...FIVE. One for each dollar I spent on that 2 hours and 26 minutes of terror.

A couple of years later, I had the chance to watch it again (on VHS). I can’t remember why I agreed to it. Anyway, it was much easier the second time around – because this time there were no surprises. I knew that there was going to be a lot of blood and sudden death and mob guys getting mad about stuff that normal people aren’t bothered by. And that their anger would, of course, cause them to kill the person who angered them. Because that’s mob guy logic.

Maybe just knowing what I was about to watch and not expecting a light-hearted comedy was all it took for me to enjoy it. I actually appreciated the acting. I recognized the comic relief (the dinner conversation with Tommy’s mother? The hostess party with all the mob wives?) which was lost on me at 17. Oh…and I could follow the story the second time around. That was helpful.

I’m not sure I was even able to discern the plot the first time I saw it.  At 17 all I saw was guns and drugs and blood and cussing and then Henry Hill was standing in front of a tract house talking about being a shnuck. And then it was over.

The story is actually pretty interesting and well-told and I guess realistic. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the mob world to know if Mr. Scorsese took liberties.

Anyway, learning to deal with movie violence in context came with maturity – something I didn’t have at 17 – and it’s made me able to appreciate other good movies that happen to contain violence (Pulp Fiction, Saving Private Ryan) but tell a really good story. The experience has also made me careful about what I let my kids watch. If the subject matter distracts them from enjoying (or even comprehending) the story, what good is it for them to watch it?

But back to Vincent Asaro…I wonder what will happen to him now that he’s been acquitted. He was supposedly the mastermind behind that Lufthansa heist in the first place. He can’t be tried again because of Double Jeopardy so he shouldn’t need to clean up any loose ends.

No ice picks in the back of any necks.

But Asaro’s probably pretty miffed with the 60+ people who testified against him – not to mention the two who cooperated with the FBI resulting in his indictment. If Billy Batts got whacked for laughing at Tommy Devito and Spider got shot in the foot for making him the wrong drink, I’m thinking that wearing a wire while you’re chatting with your mob-boss cousin and then ratting him out to the FBI will get you some sort of really creative death.

Maybe a wood chipper?

Different movie.

The Gravity-Defying Spin of the News Cycle

If it weren’t such a great way for me to keep up with friends who live far away, I would’ve quit Facebook yesterday for sure. For me, yesterday's FB experience was like riding on the Gravitron at the county fair.

But with a greater potential for blowing chunks.

You remember the Gravitron, don’t you? Lots of people call it the Vomitron and so I never had a desire to ride it. I wouldn’t even have this ride as a frame of reference if someone hadn’t “forced” me on it in junior high. See, I had an unfortunate Octopus (the ride, not the animal) experience one summer at Nags Head followed by an even more unfortunate Tilt-o-Whirl experience (see: projectile vomiting) just moments later. I don’t do spinning rides…whirling about is not fun for me. But the Gravitron is a little different.

There is spinning….progressively faster spinning until finally it reaches a velocity that cements you to your spot against the wall. So you can do things like try to lift your arm toward the center and have it forcefully sucked back to the wall – or into your neighbor’s face -- and you can scoot up the wall on your back defying gravity. When it reaches this speed, you are moving so fast that you don’t even notice that your spinning. I have to say that the middle part is totally worth the slight dizziness you experience as it picks up speed.

It is NOT worth the dizziness that it leaves you with as it slows down and you once again feel the spinning.

Thankfully, there was no reverse digestive incident with this ride – not for me anyway. That would have been an unforgettable junior high embarrassment (which I avoideded with the Tilt-o-Whirl episode because at the beach, I was anonymous.) But I did stagger kind of sideways off the ride which was pretty funny. And then I recovered and that was that.

Facebook was like the Gravitron yesterday. I woke up with chlorine lung and a smallish headache so it took me a while to get going. After making lunches and breakfasts and coffee, I sat down with my iPad and started skimming my newsfeed.

Lots of red cups, but I was too foggy to really read anything yet. Some stuff going on at the University of Missouri, posts about weekend football games, more red cups, more Missouri, some Mental Floss, some meme’s asking for people to chill out about red cups and racial strife on college campuses (because those are two issues of equal importance, apparently), then a few cryptic status updates about everyone being offended by things and the overabundance of outrage and the outrage over outrage. And as the “spinning” gained speed, it was nothing by red cups whizzing past my face.

Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, I had an overwhelming need for a cup of coffee. So I poured one.

And then I sat down to read what I had merely skimmed before. That’s when the gravitational pull of social media stupidity drew me into the wall. It was All. Day. Long. Posts about how stupid the ONE GUY who started all of this was…posts about what the real war on Christmas was…posts about how we shouldn’t be wasting our time worrying about coffee cup décor…memes with red cups that stated all of the above…posts about the ONE GUY who started it being on CNN and looking like a nimrod (which shouldn’t have been news because of course he’s a nimrod) and finally, my favorite, the one about Donald Trump calling for a boycott of Starbucks because apparently one nimrod deserves another. I had to READ that article to make sure it wasn’t satire because SURELY a person running for President of the United States could NOT BE SO RIDICULOUS. But it was real. And it seemed lost on him…as most reality seems to be…that he hosts a Starbucks in the Trump Tower.

This is when I almost vomited…two guys interested in NOTHING but their own relevance…and certainly not interested in how they achieve that relevance…bucking for dumbass of the year. And the ride started to slow down so I began to get dizzy again and suddenly it was urgent…

I’ve got to get off this Vomitron NOW.

This critical intersection of reality and media reality (not the same thing and when they collide it’s like mixing matter and anti-matter) made me seriously consider deactivating my account. I do not think I would enjoy annihilation -- what Egon Spengler believed would happen in Ghostbusters if you “crossed the streams.”

It would be bad.

As the Vomitron lost velocity, I began to focus on other things...to keep me from getting dizzy. Someone posted a beautiful picture of the Aurora Borealis. Then a picture of a newborn baby. I watched a video of a really sweet dog who has become a “mother” to three sweet abandoned kittens. And there was a story about the terminal cancer patient whose dying wish was to see the new Star Wars film and because Mark Hamill is on Twitter, it happened.

So social media isn’t a complete vortex of absurdity. There’s some good to be seen. And I wouldn’t have seen any of it if I hadn’t toughed it out through the fastest and craziest part of the ride followed by the mild dizziness and nausea that came with slowing down.

When I came to a rest, I staggered away from the experience in one piece and read a Mental Floss article which explained why we can feel people looking at us…and watched this video on how to make Barbacoa tacos for my family this week. 

Both of these are infinitely more satisfying and pertinent to my reality than the color of my coffee cup…or anyone’s opinion on what coffee cups should or should not look like…or anyone’s thoughts on why we shouldn’t have spent the last 24 hours obsessing over it.

Next time, though, I think I'll try to bypass the ride on the news cycle and go straight to the food. 

Mining the Silence for Gold

Do you know how hard it is to not look at a 47” HDTV when it is directly in front of you 15 feet away? It’s darn near impossible.

That is my plight these days.

We bought our house because of the open family room/kitchen/breakfast room but this room.

How great will it be that we can watch TV while we are in the kitchen making meals? we gushed about our new “family-friendly”space. We did not consider the impact that our freight-train-wannabe dishwasher would have on our ability to hear the television sometimes. And we certainly didn’t anticipate I would decide to give up television one day turning our family “room” into a family “battlefield”. During the last 9 days, our (not so) Great Room has become my least favorite thing about our house. The kitchen counter…the one where I do 90% of the food prep and cooking…faces our 47” television.

Why in the name of heaven do 47” televisions even exist?

I know…football. Whatever.

But we are going to have to come to some sort of understanding if all four of us are to survive the next 21 days. If they want me to cook their dinner, they will need to find some other form of entertainment besides the giant light box/sound maker that envelops the space where I work to feed them. Once I can move to another room, they can have at it -- as long as their homework is finished and they’re not watching Rated R movies.

They grunt and ask, “Like what?” I suggested cleaning their rooms, the toilets, reading a book, taking the dog for a walk. They looked at me like I’m crazy.

“Just don’t look up from the kitchen counter…you might cut your finger anyway.”

That’s the advice I was offered from one of my teenagers…you know…the ones whose praises I sang for you the other day?

Miscreants. Both of them.

Not really…but it does seem like a small concession to ensure that you have a healthy meal and that your dear mother doesn’t get a crick in her neck from craning it downward to avoid the TV. We’re going to have to work something out.

It’s also really quiet in my house. Because I had been using TV as background noise for my day, I was really careful last week not to just replace it with other noise…like Pandora or Spotify or iTunes. So essentially, my first two days looked like this:

Wake up

Morning kids are pretty quiet (except on occasion when one might wake up chattier than normal) and I’m usually out for my run before they wake up. The longer our runs have been, the less likely I am to make it home before they leave. And daughter is at swim practice at 5:00am three days a week anyhow.  So I have quiet early in the morning.

Leonard leaves for work around 8:30 and he mostly snoozes on the couch before getting ready for work. More quiet.

Then – for 2 days last week – it was pretty much silent from 8:30 am until 3:00 pm when everyone got home. And then it was like a SOUND TSUNAMI for which I was absolutely unprepared. Both kids wanted snacks, conversation, permission slips signed, a run-down of my day, a dinner menu, and something found (whatever they’ve lost) and they wanted it immediately and, for some reason, they want it loudly. Or maybe everything seemed louder after 6 ½ hours of silence.

Then, almost as quickly as it overcame me, the Tsunami of sound receded about 20 minutes later when they left for swim practice. Then I had 3 more hours of silence.

These are the things I’ve noticed about silence:

First of all, it’s not really silent.

Electricity buzzes – or rather, things that use electricity buzz. The laptop has a low hum to it. Fedex planes are landing at the airport…about every 3 minutes one flies over. Occasionally a car goes by and I can hear that it needs someone to investigate its muffler. The water in one of our toilets is running. There is a siren several blocks away. A dog barks nearby. The refrigerator makes a squeaking noise every so often. My stomach gurgles. The cat’s collar jingles as she darts across the upstairs hall for no reason. My joints crack when I change positions in the chair. The click of my laptop’s touchpad…or the mouse…and the keyboard.

Second of all, every sound (phone ringing, text dinging, app notification) is a startling interruption. This has taught me to use the do-not-disturb feature on my phone. Nothing of importance occurs from 9:00am – 12:00pm that needs my immediate attention. If there is an emergency with my kids, the school will call my husband and if he calls me, the phone rings because I allow it to. Everyone else’s agenda is not my problem.

Finally, there is a necessary transition that I have to go through to be ready to receive my family when they come through the door. This involves turning on music about 30 minutes before they arrive. It seems small, but it makes the sound tsunami far less shocking to me when I do this. And if they’re lucky, I’ll be dancing when they walk in the door and that will result in everyone laughing. Laughter neutralizes the acid from any negativity that people might be bringing with them. This is a positivity zone up in here.

Positivity with sarcasm sprinkled in for fun.

So far, I’m enjoying both the operatic score and the crystal clear libretto of my day. It’s not a masterpiece, but at least I can hear it. And the words I hear are all mine rather than Dick Wolf’s or whomever narrates House Hunters. It’s hard to hear your own composition when you allow others’ to play in the background all the time.

Einstein -- The Original Purveyor of BS

I seem to have replaced my old bedtime routine (falling asleep watching Friends) with a new involuntary practice of rethinking every single thought, word, decision, and action that comprised my day.

Every. Single. One.

Kind of makes me long for six whiny, self-absorbed, 20-something New Yorkers in my ear instead.

As of yet, it hasn’t caused me to lose much sleep. The physical exhaustion which has resulted from all of my running overcomes my brains attempts at restless anxiety or insomnia. But in the silence, stillness (which is still absent from my day because I putter and fidget a lot), and complete darkness of my bedroom there is nothing to distract from the musings of my mind. They’re not necessarily profound thoughts, but they are plentiful, disorganized, and, on occasion, alarming. They swirl around in my head so that they almost make me feel physically dizzy and then right as I think I’m going to puke or have a panic attack, I manage to hone in on one specific memory from the day and then I drift off to sleep pondering it. This whole process takes mere minutes, though it feels longer and can be intense. And when I wake up the following morning, I can’t remember what ended up in focus.

Until this morning.

Full disclosure: I wanted to remember it this morning because coupled with whatever thought it was that calmed last evening’s brainstorm, was an urgent need to write about it. That was a very inconvenient time to have that particular need. There was no notebook and pencil by my bed…no recording device…and a realization that if I got out of bed to retrieve either item, I might be forced to endure another swirling thought vortex. Instead I chose to stay put and hope that I could remember the next day. And with some effort I did.

This was the thought…

I have no tangible, saleable skills…no training in a trade or specific profession…that are of value in the American job market.

Ok...so..sweet dreams.

I have talents. I have a bachelor’s degree. I have job experience that is 1 inch deep and 1 mile wide through which I developed my abilities to work independently and in groups, to speak in public, to write persuasively, and to listen fastidiously. I have also cultivated some clerical skills that have served me well in volunteer positions and make me appear extremely capable and organized. On a higher level, I have learned the value of listening to a variety of viewpoints and considering their merits before establishing my own position…of identifying who the key players are in a given situation and bringing them to the table when something needs to get done…of placing myself in the right place at the right time to achieve an organizational or personal goal.

Basically, I am a master of bullshit. And there is no category for it on my resume.

I should have gone to law school. Or learned how to build furniture. Both of these are occupations that I considered at one time or another. I also wanted to be a professional camp counselor – I have some mad small group leadership skills.

So now I’m 42 with a communications degree and resume that is about 16 years old. And I keep reading these articles about the value of a liberal arts education and how we shouldn’t forsake these age-old disciplines in our pursuit of STEM education.  But lately I’m just not feeling it and I suspect employers aren't either.

If only I knew how to code…or be an accountant…or design eco-friendly housing developments.  Now those are some valuable skills.

And then I go back to the word value. Just looking at the dictionary definitions (that’s plural) hints at the complexity of discerning what and who has value and how we assign it as a culture.

It is a noun and verb and for me it is LOADED with baggage.

1.       I can have values -- my ethical code or moral compass.

2.       I can deem something of value – a colleague’s support or a saleable item.

3.       I can estimate a thing’s value – appraise its monetary cost or worth as currency on its own.

4.       I can value – an action word – any number of things, ideas, or people. I value friendship, independence, family, good health…the list goes on and on.

I can also value myself – we call that self-esteem.

The tension among these definitions is great and I am thankful that they weren’t part of the equation as I focused in on my lack of valuable skills last night. I’m pretty sure I’d still be awake.

For myself, I am confident in my values – in my ethical code and in the integrity with which I live it. I also endeavor to be respectful of other’s moral stances even when they differ from my own. These are both things at which I am not perfect but aim to improve upon each day.

I make value judgements with respect to people and things every day. That person is a hard worker…that dishwasher is worthless…my view of this morning’s sunset was priceless.

I value good conversation with dear friends over wine and food. I value the opportunity to train for a marathon. I value the existence of music and art and scientific discovery and historical reflection and self-examination and I really value the existence of words to express it all. This expression is what generates ideas, resolves conflict, and brings order to chaos. I value all of this so much that I ache when the world – myself included – doesn’t always recognize the significance of these things. That they are often deemed worthless in terms of economic value.

How do we live in a world that is, by human design, determined to place a value on everything about us (our bodily usefulness, our intellect, our skills and talents, our possessions) and not transfer that label of worthiness (a price tag) to who we are as people?

How do we reserve the essence of our being – our humanity – but still find some satisfaction in a vocational calling or simply a job that pays the bills (hopefully)?

In short, how can my mastery at the art and science of BS earn me a steady paycheck?

Questions like this are the reason I write and the reason that this TV-less existence is both illuminating and terrifying. There is a metaphorical abyss in which all of my most profound contemplations as well as my most self-absorbed preoccupations reside. Through the center there runs a ridge at the top of which is a narrow footpath. I’m just trying to walk a straight line between the two as the contents of both sides creep upward, threaten to knock me off my feet, and wash me into one chasm or the other. I think the distraction of television can acted as an antacid of sorts…regulating the acidic bubbles that give buoyancy to all the thoughts that inhabit my brain.

I’m going to need to find something else to replace the inanity of House Hunters or the mindless sequence of a procedural drama. I’m really looking for something on the healthy end of the spectrum (think running and praying…not drugs and alcohol) to calm the waters. Otherwise I’m going to end up with insomnia.

Maybe I’ll just stick with the writing. Is there are a job market for writers who also happen to have a masters "degree" in BS? If there is, please send word. 

In the meantime, I will try follow Einstein's advice:

Until I figure out how to do both.