Last House

Posted on February 2, 2013 by stephenarcher

I took all the pic­tures in Guatemala with a small Leica dig­i­tal cam­era at my waist. I assumed the cam­era saw about what I was see­ing and fired hun­dreds of frames. Any street pho­tog­ra­pher uses this tech­nique. Hav­ing a small black, non­de­script cam­era helps. What I sac­ri­fice in not hav­ing the big Nikon is returned in the expres­sions. The peo­ple in this door­way were look­ing at me look­ing at them. They were not look­ing at the cam­era or even a guy with a cam­era. I wanted to look at peo­ple on the other side of the world – and make the pic­ture while I did. If I had a cam­era at my eye this would not feel the same to me. Almost any hand held cam­era works for this includ­ing your phone. The next time you walk any­where take out the cam­era you have with you and make as many pic­tures as you can. See what you are see­ing in the mall. What if you move a lit­tle closer to the peo­ple you pass and force them to look at you. Take that photo. I stood straight in front of this fam­ily and after a bit I waved and smiled, but not before we just looked at each other.

This was the last house before the ceme­tery. The crypts were brighter than this shack and yet there was a broom just out of the frame of this pic­ture and if these peo­ple were like every other fam­ily I saw, they swept the dirt often. These are poor peo­ple but not peo­ple who don’t care. They are not checked out, way­ward or addicted. They are the same as any­one else who cares for them­selves, their fam­i­lies; they only have less money. We are the same in most ways. I just have every thing I could imag­ine and they have fewer things. They love the same.

These are the peo­ple I saw in the clin­ics and oper­ated on while I was in Guatemala. They are gen­er­ally short, mocha col­ored, smooth skinned and very beau­ti­ful to look at. I spent a lot of time just look­ing at the dif­fer­ence in their skin and bones and hair com­pared to mine. I had an odd sen­sa­tion of being on a dif­fer­ent planet and look­ing at every­thing in won­der. I love that. I love it that I allow myself to soak those visu­als in and not turn away. Because of that my cam­era finds frames I like to look at. Sim­ple as that. The tech­ni­cal parts of pho­tog­ra­phy fol­low my will­ing­ness to look the same way that a chef’s abil­ity to layer fla­vors fol­lows her will­ing­ness to let the fla­vors linger.

I loved being a 6’4” gringo in the land of the short peo­ple (the kids called me grandote – look it up: the “ote” suf­fix in Span­ish makes an adjec­tive take on par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics). Loved it because peo­ple would turn to look and then I could freely look back, like the voyeur I am. Many Guatemalans are inti­mately woven to their Mayan roots. The bright clothes: jun­gle green, cockscomb red, sun-at-ten a.m. yel­low com­bined to make par­rot col­ored skirts and blouses; flat facial fea­tures, skin pulled smooth over demure cheek­bones, and brown, end­less eyes; incred­i­ble endurance with broad flat feet car­ry­ing them up to twenty miles to see us the in clinic – car­ry­ing the cry­ing baby girl with cleft palate to see Dustin, the Amer­i­can plas­tic sur­geon, who would rein­vent her mouth so she could suck and grow; small hands with very gen­tle hand­shakes com­bined with ready smiles in greet­ing. Maybe I made it up but I don’t care…felt like I could feel that Mayan lin­eage in their touch. I can feel what I made up it was, now, as they look at me from these dark door­ways, in my cam­era, in this frame, on this screen, in my mind, in my heart, that’s where.

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Mistakes

Posted on January 29, 2013 by stephenarcher

We had been in Guatemala a few days, walked the mar­ket a few times, set up the OR’s and been in the clin­ics; we were work­ing hard by this time. The OR was full of cases. Three oper­at­ing tables – they are not called beds; I guess no one is rest­ing – were side by side in one big­ger room. The only air con­di­tioner for a mile was purring along inad­e­quately for the after­noon heat. I was work­ing away on a her­nia and think­ing about my Spanish.

I was born in Panama. My par­ents are flu­ent in Span­ish, hav­ing worked in Ecuador for years as doc­tors. My sis­ter is flu­ent in Span­ish the way she is in Eng­lish: no dif­fer­ence for her. Span­ish has shaped her life. I spent my child­hood in South Texas, friends with Mex­i­cans. I spent two sum­mers in the Domini­can Repub­lic with my Domini­can best friend Danny. I spoke Span­ish pass­ably after those sum­mers. So, in high school and col­lege I “stud­ied” French. This has been recounted (http://​www​.bend​light​.me/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​l​o​o​k​-​a​t​-​us/) and you could (re)read it. It is just as hilar­i­ous as this. I was smart then and, of course, French, right? Makes per­fect sense.

I stud­ied French because I would not be boxed in to Span­ish. I repeat, I was smart. My her­nia patient is wak­ing up and gur­gling and so, of course, I call Lia, the inter­preter, over to help. She, you know, inter­prets the gur­gles into Span­ish and Eng­lish, because I did not learn Span­ish. I don’t know what gur­gle is in Span­ish. For our team, the inter­preters com­plete the oper­a­tion. They put the clo­sure on the wounds, like ver­bal stitches. I hate them and their easy, effer­ves­cent con­ver­sa­tions. I love them and their expert help and their mel­liflu­ous cadence of Span­ish. When they talk the words have a regal rhythm, like Andalu­sians pranc­ing, but ver­bally. Any­way, it’s like that all week, lov­ing and hating.

When you speak another lan­guage every­one is poten­tially inter­est­ing. Every­one is potential.

The great thing about Span­ish speak­ing peo­ple, at least in Cen­tral Amer­ica, is that they put up with the effort of the gringo. They love an attempt at com­mu­ni­cat­ing. This is in con­trast to the French. My Parisian French teacher (again, http://​www​.bend​light​.me/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​l​o​o​k​-​a​t​-​us/ same link) was not so for­giv­ing, although you will read that I could have cared less, but that is that story. The Guatemalans, alter­na­tively, loved a try. They smiled always and nod­ded me in to my next con­ju­gat­ing dis­as­ter – I guess those are dif­fer­ent than con­ju­gal dis­as­ters. Lin­gual mis­takes can be fun (or at least instruc­tive) if the audi­ence will put up with one’s shortcomings…I’ll stop.

As my son learns Eng­lish it is all about fail­ing. He mis­pro­nounces every­thing. He comes close to “yel­low” by say­ing lleyl­low and tries again after I say, “yes, buddy, ‘yel­low!!!!!!’.” Etc. Same as walk­ing. When he learned to walk it was about falling. When he speaks it is about say­ing it wrong and hav­ing no shame or fear and say­ing it again and again. Point, say: repeat. Lan­guage learned. My brain can learn a lan­guage. My ego has sim­ply to get out of the way.

To prac­tice let­ting my ego off the hook, I take fuzzy pho­tos. From my ear­li­est days with a Canon AT-1, fully man­ual SLR, I have allowed myself end­less rope in pho­tog­ra­phy. I rel­ish mis­takes and I know that they mat­ter and are beau­ti­ful. My father instilled this in me by mak­ing sure I knew that it was ok to burn through any num­ber of rolls of real film for the one photo. Any­thing could be thrown away. It’s art – it’s to be dis­carded, until it isn’t. And some­where along the line I have learned that the blurs can be won­der­ful, like a green table of let­tuce becom­ing a ver­dant stream. Good enough. Beau­ti­ful even. My Span­ish is on the way, this way, by blurry errors and beau­ti­ful mistakes.

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fall to winter

Posted on December 25, 2012 by stephenarcher

Ten Things I Learned This Year

It is pos­si­ble to employ empa­thy and com­pas­sion in the bet­ter build­ing of a busi­ness. Another way to know this is to know that fear dri­ves ruth­less­ness and know­ing one’s self makes it impos­si­ble to be almost any­thing but com­pas­sion­ate. Those who can’t find com­pas­sion for them­selves, once they know them­selves, have a hard time stay­ing here. I run a lit­tle busi­ness that is poten­tially under threat by much big­ger enti­ties, but by stay­ing focused inside – on my staff, my per­for­mance, my goals, I allow those out­side threats to try to keep up with my bet­ter place to work.

Falling is a nec­es­sary part of walk­ing. My son will hap­pily fall 50 times if he believes he is still on a rea­son­able path to somewhere…anywhere. When did I last fail 50 times and con­tinue on? When did I for­get that the path to suc­cess runs (or stum­bles) through the land of failure.

If I hear “All done!” and I fail to remove the plate from the high chair, I can rea­son­ably expect what­ever is on the tray to hit the fridge or the floor. In other, words, believe it when I hear some­one say some­thing, even it it doesn’t fit with what I think should be. Recently a col­league at work said some­thing out­ra­geous about being unwill­ing to care for a sick patient. I was lit­er­ally incred­u­lous, but there it was. It was true, and the plate hit the floor.

The love of my lit­tle fam­ily has made me softer, bet­ter, less of a jerk some­times and more will­ing to see the world through the eyes of all the peo­ple who care for their kids, sac­ri­fice their free time to raise them, work their asses off to be with them, and go to bed tired and won­der­ing if it is enough.

It is enough. (I haven’t learned this, but I am hop­ing to.)

I still need time for me. Funny part of that is that if I know I have asked for time and I have it, I need less than if I feel like I am hav­ing to swin­dle it away. No one in my life is keep­ing me from it. I make up lit­tle games that I don’t have enough so that I can plan these capers to get more. My plans, how­ever, don’t make sense, because almost always I can get what I need. It is like show­ing up to rob a bank and find­ing the money ready for me in a lit­tle red wagon. I spend year after year learn­ing this lesson.

The brain of a tod­dler is infi­nitely capa­ble and it is humbling.

The brain of a tod­dler is infi­nitely insa­tiable and it is annoying.

The heart of a tod­dler is infinite.

I have lived some­thing that I believed: if I am con­nected to my heart and I have the help of even one per­son, I can go through very deep water. Thank you, Rose.

That’s 10. But like any good rock star, here is an encore.
Com­po­si­tion and curios­ity are my best pho­to­graphic skills. I knew I had some skill with pho­tog­ra­phy, but I can now say what I like about my pho­tos. I think that I am will­ing to take pic­tures of things that don’t mat­ter and com­pose the pic­ture so that it brings beauty to me, maybe to you too. This pump­kin, a twig, a blank ocean, a wall – all just this week. I like the moments in the gaps. Even for still life’s there are moments between. For every moment there is a moment between.

Happy New Year, Bend­light read­ers. Feel free to give www​.bend​light​.me as a gift. Can’t beat the price!

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Twenty6

Posted on December 19, 2012 by stephenarcher

Twenty6

A to Z. All of them.
The let­ters in my words drift away, unmoored,
torn away, taken down, by a rip cur­rent. I have twenty6 to work in to some­thing to say,
but they, like me,
are em ty. The words are full of nothing.

Every­thing I say needs these lost twenty6, and they are gone, and I am mute.
I am look­ing at us look­ing at one another. We are won­der­ing if we are of the
same stuff.
We are. All of us. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing and we cling to one another and all we are is not all we are, some­how.
Take a pic­ture of me twice. I am the dark and the light.

I am the empty gun falling to the ground; I am the cas­ing bounc­ing. I am the locked door in an ele­men­tary school. (When did that hap­pen? My school was as open as the wind.) I am the child’s hand on my classmate’s shoul­der, fol­low­ing her to the woods away from the school. I am the eter­nal mem­ory of her shoul­der and my sweaty palm clutch­ing her and feel­ing of her lit­tle per­fect dress.

I am the old man now look­ing at my hands and the odd­ness of this life and I really have not a word to say.

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Doing Nothing To Get Somewhere

Posted on December 11, 2012 by stephenarcher

In an oper­a­tion, some­times, there are moments when I can’t turn back and I really can’t go for­ward. I have to wait and see. Doing more can be worse. Today, I used a sur­gi­cal sta­pler to divide the blood sup­ply to a part of the gut of a patient, some­thing I have done, lit­er­ally, a thou­sand times. This time, the tis­sue that held the blood sup­ply swelled and the gut turned a lit­tle grey. Maybe a vein was lay­ing in an odd ori­en­ta­tion, maybe I was off five degrees. Sur­geons like pink and lively tis­sue. Grey is bad, and black is dead. Less than pink means the blood sup­ply is com­pro­mised. As I watched, the por­tion of intes­tine I was work­ing with peri­stalsed (pushed, like a snake in Mr Knapp’s first grade class or Mr Steele’s third grade class would push a mouse through) and fought against the com­pro­mised blood sup­ply. It was as if the bowel was striv­ing against the stress. It was inter­est­ing. How can I be detached enough to sim­ply observe this bad sit­u­a­tion and still care about what is hap­pen­ing? Not sure, but I know I can. Partly it is because it is not hap­pen­ing to me. I know that sucks, but it’s the truth. It’s how you get through the tragedies in your friends‘ lives too maybe.

Surgery is not like a car­toon event. The blood ves­sels of inter­est are hid­den in lam­i­nates of tis­sue and I make deci­sions based on where the ves­sels usu­ally are. Plus I am doing Nin­tendo surgery, oper­at­ing through small inci­sions while look­ing at an HD screen. All those end­less hours (loved each one), blow­ing my tips from my bus­boy job at Pelican’s Wharf, play­ing Aster­oids, paid off in my oper­at­ing now on video screens and using sticks with­out wrists to dis­sect, cut and sew. All that to say this: I can’t exactly see the ves­sels I cut some­times. I bet you would like your sur­geon to swim in clear blue seas at all times, but it’s not like that, some­times. Some­times it is murky.

The bowel got dusky, swelled. It was not a por­tion I could remove or bypass..or ignore. I really had no outs. I could make up an oper­a­tion in which that por­tion was taken out and I pulled up a limb and sewed it in there but it would seri­ously jeop­ar­dize the rest of the oper­a­tion, put her at huge risk, etc. “Tech­ni­cally fea­si­ble” does not always mean “wise to do”. (True in many parts of life).

So I did noth­ing, waited. I moved along with some other parts of the oper­a­tion and checked back in with my par­tially devas­cu­lar­ized limb of small intes­tine. It looked a lit­tle bet­ter as time went on. I think col­lat­eral ves­sels were com­ing to the res­cue. For­tu­nately our bod­ies are made with redun­dancy after redun­dancy to make up for our behav­ior, injuries (even injuries like surgery), over­whelm­ing waves of of the inevitable, our twen­ties, etc.

An hour later things were still mar­ginal and my outs had not changed. I did noth­ing, which for a sur­geon, is doing some­thing. Sur­gi­cal wis­dom is often defined by the cases or maneu­vers we don’t do, by the things we pass on, by the prac­tice of restraint and trust in the patient and her body to work with what was my best in the moment. A sur­geon who does any and every case that comes her way is one to avoid. “No” is often a good indi­ca­tor of some­one thinking.

All this hap­pened today. I am home now. My patient is in her room, vital signs all ok, skin all closed up. I can’t see what it going on with her ten­der loop of small intes­tine. I am wor­ried, but I am in the gap and wait­ing. It’s all I can do, and all I should do.

There are lessons here, and I know you see them. Me too, I guess, but mostly I am pon­der­ing my skill and her anatomy and the foibles of humans work­ing with each other, on the con­tact sport of surgery. She is float­ing and I am float­ing with her, between places and I will not leave her until we get somewhere.

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What Moves, Moves

Posted on November 28, 2012 by stephenarcher

What nature makes is bet­ter. The right angles that I focus on are not found in what flows eas­ily, nat­u­rally. My mind finds the right angles, my heart, the flow. Sim­ple as that.

Or this…
I can’t write about any­thing new. Nei­ther can you. We cre­ate out of our need and we return to the same spot, look­ing for it to be home.

Or…
I don’t know…what would be new. Pol­i­tics. Ok I am writ­ing about that. Tell your­self what is going on in pol­i­tics right this minute. It is now old and done, as in right now. Maybe I am writ­ing about my work, or yours. That is cool because it is good work, but I can write about the mechan­ics of that all day…yeah I guess some of you would actu­ally like watch­ing that Life­time Net­work all day, but I wouldn’t. But still, I do write about it, because tak­ing a knife to your abdomen and get­ting paid for the priv­i­lege is some­how Dex­ter awesome…can’t deny that one. I have a weird, cool job.

Or…
this pic­ture works because I like the con­trast between what moves and the rest of it. I like life that way. There you know a lit­tle bit about me. Also, the water looks like fur, which is cool in a pic­ture, but not in a glass.

Or…

I am a fraud and what I think I feel is only my thoughts. Who you know me to be is how I am in the world. I am less than the guy look­ing for feel­ings, I am more change­able than a river after the snow melt. I make real, human mis­takes with you, with real humans. Ugh. That is bor­ing too, but there it is. I don’t know how to tell you that I am dif­fer­ent from hour to hour – can be here and all high-hearted and high-minded or I can be cor­nered at work and be a jerk, or I can cre­ate a cor­ner and be worse. I am every one of those things, mostly every day. How the hell is that pos­si­ble? I don’t see the same swings in many peo­ple out there, espe­cially those I work with. Is it that I am writ­ing about it or is it that I am the only one who can ride all the way to the edge of the pen­du­lum of mood and action and swing back to the other side and expect you to keep up with that? Ridiculous.

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Home Is Anywhere

Posted on November 26, 2012 by stephenarcher

I am a guy in my head. Maybe you would call me Mr. Mis­ery. Music is a way to find my heart – a long shot but reli­able, oddly. I lis­ten to music to see if the emo­tion can find a tie to my head that allows the feel­ings to be ok. It is like I have a switch on the rail­road that forces the train to make a turn to appease my brain. My head has to be ok and then my heart can have a chance. I am not say­ing this is ideal. I am say­ing it is my way.

Elvis Costello makes sense to both my head and my heart. Some­thing in me wants to be him, but that goes against the idea of him. So, some­thing in me wants to find my angry, lov­ing, raw, defined voice, like him. He wrote this line about home being any­where you hang your head. My brain likes the play on a place to hang your hat. It also appre­ci­ates being able to write about con­tem­plat­ing mur­der with­out being ridicu­lous. My heart is always look­ing for home, for a place to be, for home dammit. I love the ten­sion in the line, in the song, the poem really. Adding real music to real poetry is beyond what I can imag­ine, although I have been told that adding real writ­ing to real pho­tog­ra­phy is new and dif­fer­ent. I agree. (!!)

Here comes Mr. Mis­ery
He’s tear­ing out his hair again
He’s cry­ing over her again
He’s stand­ing in the super-market shout­ing at the cus­tomers
Here comes Mr. Mis­ery
He’ll never be any good with a mouth full of gold and blood
He’s con­tem­plat­ing mur­der again
He must be in love

[Cho­rus:]
But you know she doesn’t want you
But you can’t seem to get it in your head
Oh and you can’t sleep at night
And she haunts you when you go to bed
When you’re tired of talk­ing and you can’t drink it down
So you hang around and drown instead
Home isn’t where it used to be
Home is any­where you hang your head

You hang your head
Home is any­where
You hang your head
Home is any­where
You hang your head
Home is any­where you hang your head

Here comes Mr. Mis­ery
Look­ing for a place for his mouth to shoot
Say­ing “You’d look cute in your birth­day suit“
You tore him out and screwed him up
Like a bad page in a naughty pic­ture book

The day ended as it began
As he was sec­onds older than the man he was this morn­ing
And the world has wiped it’s mouth since then
Or maybe it was yawning

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The Feather of Maat

Posted on November 11, 2012 by stephenarcher

A heart heavy with things undone, with a life unlived is heav­ier than the feather and that heart goes back to try again. A life in which all I have is given away yields a heart lighter than the feather of Maat and I pass on…thanks Michael Meade for this story.

The Mid­dle

He is alone. There was a time when TV would turn itself off. The net­works were done after the late movie after Johnny Car­son. The rerun of the local news brought the begin­ning of the lone­li­ness. As the sports report­ing re-ended he would curl around the round couch pil­low, pleated and gold with a gold but­ton in the cen­ter. Look­ing back now he sees him­self as a nau­tilus around that pil­low, but then he was only sad, that it was end­ing, that the national anthem was next and then the color bars. When he was even younger, before the color bars, it was the Indian head test card, he thought it was mys­te­ri­ous, myth­i­cal, the Indian head.

This would take up the screen, sta­tic, for a few min­utes. He would stare at it, try­ing to pre­dict that moment it would end. At 2am the noth­ing began, the snow, and sta­tic white noise. The TV turned itself off, the net­works actu­ally turned the switch off on the sig­nal and he would feel very alone.

It is years later. Of course TV never goes away, but inside he is alone, like the snow on the screen is inside him and the white noise too. He looked it up, the snow…

“Sta­tic on your tele­vi­sion is ran­dom emis­sions of elec­trons from the cath­ode of your CRT onto the phos­phor screen. Cos­mic rays, (not really rays but pro­tons or alpha par­ti­cles), pen­e­trate our atmos­phere with extreme uni­for­mity and the den­sity is fairly well known. There is a sta­tis­ti­cal prob­a­bil­ity, then, that some of the dots on your screen are caused by them. But you can never know which ones. I learned once that if you turn down the bright­ness until you can hardly see any dots at all, then these cos­mic par­ti­cles will still be vis­i­ble, but you can still never know which ones are com­ing from your TV and which are from outer space.

What I think would be excit­ing is if you see a streak across the screen, since this would most likely be a cos­mic par­ti­cle that hit it more or less on the same plane as the screen. I’ve never seen one, though. Happy cosmic-“ray” hunting.”

He is wait­ing for the streak of some­thing to hit him, some­thing on the same plane, but instead he imag­ines he feels the hits straight on in his gut. He smiles a lit­tle at the lit­tle, ran­dom, cos­mic body blows of loneliness.

Bad things hap­pened. They do to every­one. If I said it was no dif­fer­ent for him, it might be the last blow he could take. But it was, I guess, no dif­fer­ent. He just some­how knew about it. He was not the obliv­i­ous guy going to work and get­ting home after work, etc. He was, as they say, wak­ing up and he was real­iz­ing he, his life, was nailed to the floor. Lots of peo­ple had it worse– tor­tured peo­ple, peo­ple being beat up for real, not just by cos­mic par­ti­cles inside him. But he knew it wasn’t true. Those peo­ple had action, at least, a fight. He was stuck, not out of fear any­more or even habit. Habit is repet­i­tive action. He was stuck the way air is every­where – it just is. He was stuck like the color bars, like the Indian head before the blank snow, stuck and wait­ing for a cos­mic par­ti­cle to glance his way. Wasn’t coming.

The End

He smiled. His fail­ing heart lurched for­ward. He had taken up smok­ing a few years ago. Once he had started smok­ing he real­ized that it was what he had been wait­ing for. The smok­ing was what made him happy. He was cut out to be a smoker.

It seemed crazy that this was what his life was meant to be, but in every mov­ing part of him he knew it was. The smok­ing took him to the park with the other smok­ers, gave him the com­mon rit­ual and the lan­guage to con­nect – ”got a light” “Yeah, some­where, here you go.” It was noth­ing but, of course it was every­thing and it healed him. Even­tu­ally he added chess in the square to the smokes. He made friends, walked home with Daryl each day after chess, stop­ping in together to the mar­ket to buy the day’s food; friends. They smoked on the stoop before call­ing it a night and he would go in and fall in to bed, tired and ok, light as a feather.

He was dying now. This lit, last cig­a­rette was half on the table half off. He loved watch­ing the smoke curl. It was like a cat that wants some­thing curl­ing around his legs. He, him­self now, wanted nothing.

The Begin­ning

It really wasn’t that bad a start to a life. It was like mil­lions. He was sim­ply ignored. Because he was a kid and a kid has to get atten­tion to sur­vive he would clean. They, the peo­ple who gen­er­ally ignored him, his par­ents, have to remem­ber to feed him, for instance, and if they for­get to feed him he will die, same for shel­ter, and, I guess, for love. He does not know any of these “rea­sons” for clean­ing. He is sur­viv­ing. He cleaned him­self, the floors shone, the kitchen sparkled like a Mr. Clean ad. He didn’t know why. He could have made messes. Could have cooked. He could have run away to the cir­cus. He could have played sports. For the food and shel­ter though, he had to do some­thing. He ster­il­ized him­self, dis­ap­peared in order, became a right angle. He was there just barely enough to eat, to be fed. He stayed until he could get a pay­check and then he left.

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This Truck Is Moving

Posted on November 4, 2012 by stephenarcher

Some­one will be pres­i­dent in two days. It will be B.H.O. I will bet any­one read­ing this $100. Bet soon. Pretty soon it will be too late. It might mat­ter who is pres­i­dent. It might also be an out­side issue, not rel­e­vant to the thriv­ing liv­ing of my life in this moment. What if it doesn’t mat­ter? What if I decide that it does not, that it is a pass­ing moment, maybe one I can make beau­ti­ful like a truck at dusk, or maybe I decide I am the street in a drive by shooting…somehow I am involved but not in a way that changes anything.

What have I agreed to in my life? Don Miguel Ruiz, a sur­geon who left surgery but who returned to sur­geons when his heart was failed and who got a new heart from the trans­plant sur­geons, wrote an amaz­ing book ask­ing this ques­tion. It took me a long time to under­stand the ques­tion. I was able to answer it as I woke up, only as I woke up. What I agree to defines my free­dom. I agree to a con­tract here with a busi­ness that is self-centered; I agree to a law­suit that wants to me admit some­thing I don’t believe; I agree to beauty being defined by some­thing other than the under­tow in my heart that I know is right. My agree­ments are maybe endless.

But I can make deci­sions to beat back these crazy agree­ments. What are the ones that mat­ter? What agree­ment will I make with you that makes us love more deeply? What are the ones that I will teach my son? My only busi­ness in his life has to do with safety and respect. I cre­ate the first and I earn the sec­ond and if I do both of those things he will be as free as I can hope him to be at my hand.

So Ruiz says these are the four…
Be impec­ca­ble with your word.
Don’t harm any­one, includ­ing you, with words. He says to speak with integrity. To me, integrity means doing the right thing when no one else is around. I have never been able to really do this. I wan­der. But I do know about this and I hold it as part of the stan­dard I would carry on my flag, going in to bat­tle or in to love – they are very much alike inside me. I agree to this.

Don’t take any­thing per­son­ally.
Every sin­gle thing I say or do is about me, mean­ing that I am only telling you about me, even if I say to you, you are 5’7” tall. Chew on this and it will over­take every impulse to whine you ever had. It is true and I agree to this. Try to make it not be true…the more you talk, the less you will talk.

Don’t make assump­tions.
I guess you know what this means…just kid­ding. But you do. This agree­ment asks us to com­mu­ni­cate explic­itly and end­lessly. We get sick when we are alone and we get bet­ter when con­nected. This agree­ment addresses this truth. It forces us to make vil­lages, to con­stantly ask for more, for help, for any­thing – doesn’t mat­ter what, because the ask­ing is what mat­ters. I agree to this because I am lonely when I am with­out you. Still be aware, that if you are too much in my space, I will, impec­ca­bly I might add, ask you for some room. I just need you to back up. Don’t leave. If you leave, I will assume you have stopped lik­ing me and if you are gone I can’t ask and I will be left with my ridicu­lous con­clu­sions. It’s a cir­cle like that.
Always do you best.
This is such an awe­somely fair request. I am doing it now. I am writ­ing as well as I can, so I agree. No regrets.

Here is what I won’t ask my son to agree to:
Stand­ing in line in all its vari­a­tions
Any­thing that doesn’t con­nect to safety, love or respect
The use of peo­ple
The love of things, overly

A mil­lion other things. What I won’t agree to is less impor­tant than what I do agree to. What I do agree to dic­tates my next move. I like these four agree­ments. They cre­ate space for me to love and love is the only thing I know for sure mat­ters. More love in me cre­ates char­ity, true depth of feel­ing, light-ness, and beauty. We do every­thing, I guess, to feel good, or dif­fer­ent than feel­ing bad. We don’t seem to do well with feel­ing bad for too long. We look for med­i­cines that even­tu­ally make us destroy our­selves. These agree­ments seem to help pro­vide rails for the train of my life to roll on. I think I will write these on the wall of my son’s room. Maybe some­day he will won­der about them.

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Sun sets on the real world

Posted on October 22, 2012 by stephenarcher

Not sure if I have ever needed any­thing enough to know if I hoped for it for real. Some­thing in me resists hope. Part of it is my per­son­al­ity – I can be, I am, fine with this lit­tle bit, less even, if you want. Don’t ask me to play your dis­ap­point­ing hope games. At least with faith there is a some­thing to put the thing (faith) in to; hope hangs out on a ledge just look­ing good. It’s not enough. Or maybe I don’t remem­ber what it means. Hope asks the sky, from the posi­tion of being stuck on con­crete on the earth, to come to the park “some­time” so that maybe I will have the luck (!) to be here and the courage to say, “Oh, hi, you rule my world and I wrote to you in hiero­glyphs on the ground, just know­ing you would show up today. Hi, and maybe let’s fall in love or something.”

I don’t want to (con­tinue to) sound like a cynic, but it has been this way for me for­ever. I don’t get hope. I get belief because I know that what I invest my action in, is called belief and since I act in the world, I must believe some­thing. I believe in love because there is a part of me that has no walls and cares no mat­ter what and receives even when I can’t and that is love. I believe in trust because I know what it is to ruin it and I know what the empti­ness of its lack looks and feels like, it’s for­lorn des­per­a­tion. Hope though?

I want this to hap­pen? Hope it will? Where am I in hope? Can I define it in terms of con­nec­tion to the power and will of oth­ers in my life? I call that con­nec­tion to the “not me”, I call that spir­i­tu­al­ity. I don’t hope for it; I tap that syrup or I don’t.

Still, this kid writ­ing on this side­walk, this is hope. There it is. Was going to say, “I get that”, but it’s more like: I can’t avoid that.

I promise to let myself want in the void like this kid, or maybe not. I can’t promise, ok?

I will give you this:
I know I would never erase this mes­sage. Why? Because, with him or her, I hope. I want her or him to show up some­time, to take his/her hand and swing and to let this dream come true, this once.

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