Desire

 

“Human desire is incredible: Our self mobilizes itself by allowing itself to want. What we want eventually involves becoming more than we are. Rather than being driven by discomforts and deprivations, our sense of ‘unfulfilled destiny’ drives us forward.” — Dr. David Schnarch

I live in California. Here, the Buddhist perspective on desire, which is, that it leads to attachment and thereon to suffering, is rampant. So, I’ve had an ambivalent relationship with desire for quite a long time. When, in order to overcome being depressed, I figured out that I needed to know what I desired, and act on those desires, I began to understand that there was one kind of suffering which was actually good for me. Desire killed me, with pain, longing, and a sense of emptiness, but it also delivered me to who I am today. It turns out, it took a lot of strength to maintain my desire, so that I could have a chance of being the person I wanted to be.

I grew up being told not to want too much. I think my parents were trying to protect me. They succeeded for a time. I never wanted more than I could achieve. Little by little, I suffered less, and became very depressed. I didn’t have great disappointments, and I didn’t have the kind of passionate life I was capable of. I was alive, I knew how to survive, but I didn’t know how to thrive, how to create a life worth living.

I knew this before the stroke, had even dealt with it some, was partially out of being depressed, but I still wasn’t myself, wasn’t living a life built on my desire. Being close to death for a long time, having a life that included real physical limitations, forced me to decide if I desired life enough to go through what I must go through. That is why I call myself Lucky. Life forced me to choose, forced me to recognize, and live out my desire. Surrender doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t really have a choice, and I had a choice, I chose life, for the sheer awe of being around to witness the beauty and poignancy that attends our existence. Luckily, Life also chose me. I got a second chance.

It has been during that second chance that I really have come to understand how much my desire plays a role in making this life something that uniquely reflects me. Wanting has taken me over the edge. It has made me become something I wasn’t, but always wanted to be. I am more than I would have ever been, if I hadn’t found the strength within, to want what I couldn’t possibly be. I didn’t want to want, I didn’t want to hurt over where I was not what I wanted to be, but that very hurting sharpened my attention and motivated me. I became what I wanted to be, I grew, because the me I wanted to be, was latent in my being, evident only in my desire.

It is fair to say that only my desire, the power of my wanting, could have helped me persevere, helped me find the strength, to come out Lucky. I owe my present being to desire, to the mysterious integration of my will to become through hardship and the Universe’s desire for something that was simultaneously lifted up and humbled by another chance.

Desire is complicated. I think it is off-base, if it is for something outside of the self. If it is inside, then I think desire is soul longing. It is the urge toward wholeness. It is being pregnant with your self. I think we dare not ignore, or belittle, the power of such desire. Toward that end I ask you, just like I ask myself, what do you want, for your self? It is hard for me to hold myself to the task of finding my own true answer. It turns out that it is harder to live without an answer, to live by someone else’s desire, no matter how good.

I hope you find what you desire (as I hope I do), and I’m sure you (we) will, if you (we) dare want to enough to suffer, to mobilize our strength, our selves, and go beyond our selves, so that we can become our truer selves.

l/d

Silence

Silence. I fear it and look forward to it, often, for the same reason. I hear something speak to me, in the silence.  I don’t know who addresses me, but I know that if I’m truly silent, truth will come forth, not always in words, sometimes in images, dreams, or sensations, feelings that transport me, that install me in a reality like, but profoundly different, from this one. Silence can be pregnant, full like an electricity storm about to break, or empty. I have been stripped down by the silence, and lifted up. I have come to respect silence, to rely on it, and to be guided by it. Yet, even in this inquiry, a paean to the power of silence, I must admit, that true silence contains something that isn’t just the absence of noise.

Silence. It is enigmatic, opening me to the moment, or denying me any kind of certainty, stretching me until I fall into the limitless darkness. I lost silence for awhile, when I lived in the suburbs, and was surrounded by the man-made sounds of a crowded life, then was reduced to tears, when on a hike, I stumbled into the silence of a distant vale. I missed being unhinged by the unfathomable. I was somehow enlivened by silence.

Silence. It is winter, the time of “Silent Night,” a moment when it is supposed to be  quiet. Instead the holiday frenzy is everywhere, friends and family gather noisily together. I once complained to a spouse who made each Christmas an event of light, green bows, song, and holiday hoopla, that I wanted this time of year to be quiet and a spiritual retreat. Watch out what you wish for! The silence seems to be laughing, I don’t know if it is at me, or with me.  I am here in the silence, experiencing Christmas, not so much alone, but in some kind of solitude. I have come, this season, this moment, to be in the silence.

Silence. It beguiles and overwhelms me. I want these silent moments, when the condition of my shy soul becomes somewhat more evident, the terrifying times when I am as likely to find that I’ve been dishonest with myself, and others, and created a heart-wrenching mess, then to find real peace, trust in my being. I need the silence to be honest with myself, to know anything. I’m scared of the silence because it is so truthful. It calms me just long enough to provide me with a glimpse of what is real. It has taken me a long time to develop a tolerance for what silence can do for me. I come into the presence of silence, humbly aware that I am passing through, awkwardly at that, and only the silence persists.

I am also taken with interpersonal silences. I never know what is going on. I feel things happening when nothing is happening. I love shared silences, dwelling with another in the unknown. The moment might just be shared social awkwardness, or it might be the presence of something so huge and speechless that I will be bound forever to this being because we both felt something stupendous pass us by. The latter happens much more rarely than the former, but each time an interpersonal silence occurs, I am reminded that some mystery frequents the space between us. When silence with another comes, I am less lonely in this vast Universe.

Silence has bound me to groups of people. I have felt many forms of it. There has been the impatient and anxious silence that proceeds getting started, the cold and distant silence of boundaries crossed, awkwardly, sometimes heedlessly, and the profound silence that accompanies a shared discovery of our mutual vulnerability/strength. These episodes never fail to remind me how uncertain is our lot and how basically heroic most of us are.  I can go on, I gain access to some utterly human stockpile of strength, of desire, and I am able to face the next challenge, because of shared silences.

I’d like to be as silent inside as I sometimes am outside. The silence has helped me find a measure of internal quietude, a small amount of confidence, just enough to face the uncertainties of the day. In this season silence is extolled, remembered for the generative thing it is. But to me, silence is a year-round phenonema that reminds me how small I am, and how much the Universe wants me.

I would guess you are wanted too! Quietly though.

l/d

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I have also created a blog for the elder’s salon, which has some good pieces in it (including mine). See it at elderssalon.blogspot.com

I have also added a link. I don’t usually recommend websites but I have long felt that we (society) needed a vision of a future worth having and this short film points in that direction, Check it out http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-08-31&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Happiness

I learned about something recently that has given me so much delight, and so much challenge, that I just had to share the prospect of it with you. As you may recall I’ve been blessed this year to be part of an elder’s group, awareness of the viability of real happiness first came to me there. I feel such gratitude toward those who I am traveling with right now, because they (the elders) helped me to see something I had long ago forgotten could exist for me.  Here is how it happened, and what it has constellated for me.

One evening, during a meeting of the elder’s circle, as we were going around saying our names, and describing something we liked about becoming older, I was struck by the impression that I was surrounded by a lot of people who had become themselves. This impression intrigued me. Later, we broke into small groups, where the impression grew into a full-blown, mind-altering, realization. Growing older had meant, for some of us, that we had arrived, despite still having further to go, at a time and place in our lives, where there were no roles, rules, or expectations, other than our own. We were free, and many of us had become idiosyncratically and uniquely our selves.

A rush of happiness came cascading in. I was surrounded by people who had become them selves. I was one of them; free to be authentic, different, uncertain, sensitive, foolish, erotic, crazy, and just plain me. At that moment I liked what getting old had done for me. Of course, I learned later that much of what distinguishes an elder from a merely old person had to do with how one responded to the hardships and losses of a long life. Freedom, and true elderhood, seemed to rest on choices that people made at the most difficult times in their lives. And miraculously, it seemed as if the best choices, the most effective decisions, had all been toward becoming truer to one’s self. In the midst of this group of self-possessed elders I discovered that happiness, my happiness, lay with cleaving to my own being.

That wasn’t all the joy I was to discover that night. I was delighted and surprised by what came next. I hadn’t even gotten used to the idea that my life-long struggle, to be me, had actually resulted in my becoming someone, myself, when it became clear that just being myself made a difference. One of the remarkable things that distinguished this group of people is that they want to give something back. There has been much talk in this group, perhaps spurred on by radicalism, of an elder insurgency.  The urge to provide some kind of alternative, met with the realization that becoming our selves was a radical, even subversive, thing, and an unbelievable joyous surprise was born. Merely being true to one’s self changed the world!

During that meeting, without ever intending it, I was brought to the realization that happiness existed, and could be a regular feature of my life. All I had to do, to be generally happy, was be my self. If I merely held onto my self in my relationships, if I stayed true to what emerged in me, as me, then I would be free. Happiness and freedom became synonymous.

In the weeks that have followed that realization, I have been reflecting upon happiness, and the limited role I have let it play in my life. I have discovered that I keep myself from being as happy as I could be, by letting my anxiety take me out of the moment. I have always been good at anticipating things, I liked to think I had the skill of a chess champion, looking ahead several moves. Instead, what I have realized, is best captured in the words of a friend of mine, who once wrote in a letter, that “anticipatory anxiety” was “the constipation” that “kept all the good shit from happening;” how true, and how unfortunate, for me.

With the experience in the elder’s circle, and with this writing, I realize that I have made happiness highly conditional. My happiness has always been a product of my circumstances, instead of myself. By holding on to my anxious response to each and every coming moment, I have trapped myself in a non-existent and totally fabricated future, which would determine my well-being. I kept looking forward because happiness existed out there, instead of in here, where I am.

I realize that circumstances don’t have to determine my happiness. I don’t have to attend to the future. That is a choice; it is a reflection of where I want to place my attention. I could be happy as a day-to-day attitude. I could choose to focus my attention on my marvelous ability to respond creatively to each moment. I have been granted the gift of not being a machine, with a pre-determined range of choices, I get to meet each moment naked. This freedom scares me. It seems like too much. I could easily fall or fail. I do all the time! But, I know that this is the way to learn to fly. And, I am happy discovering that this too is part of the potential that has been granted to me by Life.

It turns out that I can be happy. I am alive, and I have been prepared for just this much choicefulness. I may be disabled, brain-damaged and egotistical, but I still get to have enough choice about how I relate to things that I can be happy. And, you know the strangest, and best, part of it all, is that I just have to be me, to be happy.

Knowing I can fly isn’t the same as flying, but it is enough to render me happier. Knowing that flying, that being my self, is a service to the world, that makes me feel something else………. a grateful awe.

l/d

Eldering

I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t been there. Maybe you won’t either.

For me it took an experience, maybe it will for you too. But, I think that my experience is so rare, that I want to convey it to you, in hope that it will touch something in you, as it did in me.

 

I’ve spent a great deal of my life struggling with myself to just be myself. What I have observed in my self, was that I had a tendency to make myself into whatever form I thought I needed to be, to earn love, respect, and caring from important others. In other words, in order to be loved I betrayed myself. I got really good at it. I could fool others, even sometimes fool myself, but could never get beyond the feeling that I was only too willing to sell myself out.

 

I knew the pain associated with being untrue to myself. I felt lost in a world that could not, would not, make a space for one like me. It is too simple to just say I was alienated, although I did sometimes feel like an alien, the truth was, that I couldn’t find a place, because I didn’t trust my self enough to take a lasting form, one that anybody could relate too. I was a blob, a changeling, restlessly trying to be something, anything, but myself.

 

There is a huge pain, and deep disappointment, in realizing you want someone else to love you, because you cannot love yourself. Coming to such a place, feeling so far from oneself, being so emptily alone is really disturbing. It is also liberating. The stroke forced me to do what I always was loathe to do, look at myself. It made me grasp, rather desperately at first, that I had one more chance to learn to love, and that I had to start with me.

 

I have spent much of my life being a freedom fighter. I have always sought, and advocated for causes, that increased freedom. This was part of my values, and part of the way I convinced myself that I was on-track when I wasn’t. In all that time I never took on the greatest tyrant, the chief restrictor of my freedom, the treacherous ambassador determining my relationships, myself. The stroke put me in a locked room with him. Learning to love a tyrant is no easy matter (maybe especially if its you).

 

That last sentence is the story of my recent life. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I came to realize that the struggle to love myself was one of the greatest gifts I have to give. It was in the elder’s circle that the light came on. We had just completed going around the circle stating our names and sharing one thing that we liked about being elders. I had been paying attention because instead of the usual aches and pains of getting older the group was talking about what aging had given them. It turned out to be a lot, so much that freedom and richness filled the air, and filled me.

 

I was touched, as I had been before, by how much hardship had grown the people present. I was impressed by how unique, idiosyncratic, and self-possessed this same group of people was. Suddenly it dawned in me that having survived the years, undergone real hardships, and struggling to fight the good fight, and stay true to themselves, these people had been initiated, they were not just a group of old folks, they were elders.

 

In that moment several things rushed into my awareness. Eldering wasn’t just about getting old, it was about being ripened, initiated really, by life. Eldering also meant that these souls, through hardship, loss, love, diminishment, and struggle had become themselves, not completely, but just enough to make a real difference. They were the most subversive beings imaginable, the antidotes to a world gone materialistically mad, different in the only way that matters, free to be themselves.

 

Doubly surprising is the realization that the life-long work of becoming oneself can come to fruition, and can mean so much, not only for the self that has been struggling for freedom, but for the world that needs models, that needs to know that being different is possible.  Out beyond rules, roles, and shape-shifting for love, there is a way to actualize our existence, to give Life its due, to become free, to become what Life intended.

 

When I realized what eldering was I sensed the possibility of happiness. I saw, for the first time, that the freedom fight, the struggle to be myself, is synonymous with the pursuit of happiness. I will write more about happiness later, but for now I just want to bask in the glow that arises as I see that loving the tyrant, loving me, makes me one with, aligned with Life. And, that is what eldering is.

Wisdom

“Wisdom is directly proportional to the size of the group you take responsibility for.”

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

I have been wondering about wisdom. As part of an elder’s circle I’ve been thinking about what constitutes the wisdom in this group of human beings. I don’t think I understand what I’ve noticed here, but I think I’ve got a part of it, and if that is true, I think that there is something here for all of us. Here is what I mean.

It is true I’ve found perspective being amongst these people. I can see a lot of things I couldn’t see before, or could only see dimly, partially. My sight is sharpened as it is failing, but this isn’t the source of the wisdom.  I can see the way the years have brought some things into focus, and that is good, but it isn’t what has moved folks to go beyond themselves. Sight, seeing the bigger picture, certainly is edifying, it brings about a change in consciousness, but it doesn’t go all the way to wisdom.

What is it — what moves a person into a realm that goes beyond conventional ways of knowing? As I sit with these folks I sense the presence of a broader way of knowing, of feeling. I can feel it. It is in the group, sometimes it comes out of someone’s mouth, behavior, or demeanor. Sometimes it sits over, or amongst, us like an atmosphere, about to storm through us, or someone amongst us. Sometimes it is ripe in the silence. Sometimes I am suddenly pierced, something in another’s words, or quietness, takes me away, and simultaneously delivers a chastened, or healed, heart. I want to cry, to exalt, to exclaim my undeserved privilege. Sometimes it just hurts so good.

I have been after this experience for a long time. For me, it started in a community-building workshop, in 1986. I felt something, a presence I knew was bigger than the group gathered that spring day. It included all of us, was somehow of us, but went way beyond us. I had the audacity to believe then that whatever it was, was something that could be integrated and made a regular experience of the world. I’m glad I had that impulse because it has kept my butt sitting in large circles paying attention and trying to learn. Now I’ve had enough experiences of what I’ve come to call communitas that I can tell when its present and when to shut up and listen real hard.

And I’ve been changed. I don’t know how much is a result of the stroke (though I do recommend near death experiences), and how much the world appearing as a circle changed me, but I do know the combination created some kind of strange hybrid awareness. Now I’m always in a circle, always feeling my self, extending out in disconcerting and overwhelming ways. I’d say I simply like it, if my circle of caring didn’t bring in so much human suffering. The Universe now is my circle, and I am just a part of it, trying to act consistent with the whole, and failing magnificently. Practicing being part of the circle has disrupted my life, so much that I no longer think it mine, and delivered me into a circle I intuited, but really had no idea about.

Oh, but I’m trying to write about wisdom, not about circles. I can’t help it, they seem to be linked in my mind. Its like, when I’m in the circle of elders, being in a gold mine, and discovering there are many rich, untapped veins, just calling out to be explored. I feel the rush of sudden wealth and an urge to share such abundance. The location of this mine is a secret though. Strangely it can be sensed, but remains hidden, right here in the midst of us. I can feel its presence, know its here, feel the wealth it implies, and am helpless to go there, to cavort in our shared wealth, until more of us open the doors. Which doors? Our doors, whatever that means.

Wisdom, of the sort that is present in the elder’s circle, is an emergent quality. It becomes manifest as we invest in each other. Not the passive kind of investment we’ve been taught, like into stocks, but a more active, even interactive kind of investing, of shared knowing, caring and responsibility. I really believe that it has been my investment in the others of the circle that has made the circle come to life for me. And, I know the circle, especially the big, unpredictable, other-populated, never safe, circle delivered me more fully into the wonderful mystery of Life.

What is wisdom? I don’t know, maybe its like pornography. Didn’t one famous, but now forgotten justice of the Supreme Court once say, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” Yes, I think wisdom is like that, but I can’t help but feel it is more likely another group of humans, motivated by something more exquisite and elusive than pornography, that create it. Like pornography, it probably starts between the ears but goes to the heart instead of the loins.

I’m sure that one dimension of this experience relates to the quote above. Large circles, circles filled with conflict, chaos, diversity, and differing capacities have served as microcosms of the larger macrocosm and have thus stretched me out in a variety of directions. I think I have been exposed to wisdom, and grown wiser, because of those circles. With exposure to them, like the elder’s circle, my circle of caring has grown, and with it, I have been grown.

From here, wisdom is mystery unfolding, in whatever circle I care enough about to be broken by.

l/d

Pricks of Light

I have waited for this moment. From the time I determined that I was going to write about this, I have lived with feelings of dread and excitement. That is how I know that I am about to be taken on an adventurous ride through the looking glass. I will go, but I will keep my fingers crossed. This journey promises to be wild, bumpy, and more than just a little irreverent.

I am a man. I like having a penis, usually, but now, and for a long time, I am angry and hurting about the state of male sexuality. I am angry enough that my feelings will probably leak (is that a bad metaphor to use here?) out throughout this missive. I am also hurting in a way almost no one knows about, or could guess. That is the real reason I’m writing about this aspect of being male. I could have taken these feelings to my grave, but I have a sense that others are hurting about this, and these feelings are so buried away, so taboo, that people, men and women, may not even know this pain hurts them too.

I haven’t really wanted to notice these feelings. I try hard to ignore the hurt. I’ve talked about this to only a few people. I don’t think anyone gets it. I certainly didn’t think I would ever write about this. But, here I am, going where this awareness take me, believing that air, consciousness, compassion, and caring will help redeem something that has lived in the darkness too long. Please bear, forgivingly, with me.

I’ve been angry and hurting about the fact that I have seen no positive images (not even in the gay world) of male desire.  When was the last time (if ever) you saw an erect penis portrayed as a positive, loving, connective, creative source of divine inspiration? The answer is probably never. And, that has an impact upon me. One, I have ignored too long.

I am aware of the Hindu frescoes that show a loving Krishna with an erection. Thank God! At some point in history male sexuality was seen as a spiritual expression, but not so today. And, what a price I (we) have paid! As a man, I can’t think how many times I felt that what was arising within me was the worst (although it also felt good) sort of thing. Having an erection may seem simple (certainly it is portrayed that way) but it is a complex emotional experience. I am deathly tired of masking my vulnerability, hiding shame and being the butt of myriads of degrading jokes. Socially, culturally, the absence of any sign of kindness related to male sexuality is painful to me.

Male sexuality, especially erect penises, are shown as powerful, but more tellingly, as animalistic, unconscious and rapacious machines disconnected from hearts. How sad, untrue, and indicative of the worst kind of de-humanizing reductionism! Growing up as a man, I lived with, and was treated as, something alien, laughable, and unwholesome. And regrettably, excruciatingly, I believed it, even played the part, and hid out.

Being male has always been confusing, even (maybe especially) when enjoying the privilege of maleness, because there are very few positive images of maleness. Being male sexually is supposed to be the most privileged of positions, but sadly, it also seems to be the most hated, and the most misunderstood. And, there is nowhere to look for a positive image of male sexuality. Does anyone know, or care, what the effect of that is upon the male heart, women, children, the world and our relationship with the Great Mystery?

I am beside myself with grief, fear, sadness and anger about this. I am mad at women, at the terrible things they allow themselves to say about men, who are admittedly sometimes clueless. I am mad at the way women wouldn’t be silent if another women was being degraded in their presence, but will join in when it is a man. I know there is more, the way women think they are better than men, but I am also angry with men.

Pornography doesn’t just reduce women to exploitable sex objects, it reduces male sexuality to the crudeness of disembodied and pathetic penile machines, and exploits the loneliness in men’s bodies. And men pay for their own degradation! Men play like dumb, bumbling, aggressive animals, and forget their own humanity all the time. This isn’t heroic, no more than being cannon fodder is, if a man must go down with the ship, at least do it lovingly!

Sometimes, when I am particularly aware of being a male, I feel despair. The absence of a positive image of a loving man, happy in his body, alive with desire, sensitive to the Universe, haunts me. I think that something important is being left out. Is the light so one-sided, so blind? I don’t think so, our short-sightedness, and on-going prejudice, hurts.

I know women have a lot of pain too. I know men have been the cause of most of it. Still, someone has got to give voice to male pain and exhort everyone to look upriver at how we keep hurting each other. I pray that Rumi is right, that “the cure for the pain, is in the pain.”

l/d

Drift Away

I was in the shower, getting cleaned-up after my workout, when I heard music drifting in from the computer. Even though I’ve heard the song that was playing, many times, I was transported. The music carried me away, to a time (35 years ago) that changed my life. It was a moment that was a precursor for what is now coming into my life. At that second I knew I had to write about this experience. I didn’t know why. I still don’t. I just know that writing about it will reveal what I need to know, and convey something, about the benefit of being in the past, thanks to the music, while being in the present.

The song was “Drift Away” be Dobie Gray.  I’ve always enjoyed it, so much that I found a way to include it in a playlist of songs I workout to. In the shower I remembered the day when I first heard this song. The music carried me back to that moment.

It was Sunday morning. I was a ranger then, and I had responsibility for opening and admitting people, to this beautiful 4000 acre park, that I lived in. It was a quiet morning, being Sunday, and late in the season (probably late October), and the few people who might come, would not arrive for many hours. For entertainment, I turned on the FM radio to my favorite station. There I heard, for the first time, Dobie Gray singing “Drift Away.”

I didn’t know then, what I know now, but I don’t think I could have been more surprised, in either timeframe, by what happened next. In the past I heard the radio station play this same song, “Drift Away,” over and over again. This happened all morning. Strangely, I felt compelled to listen. Over and over I heard the band play “rock and roll,” and felt the music “soothe my soul” until “I drift[ed] away.”

Did a disgruntled employee do it? Did someone fail to show up at work? Was this some form of experiment, art project, breakdown, moment of genius, stoned forgetfulness, or just plain outright neglect? I never found out. I never knew why — to this day. I only know that in the midst of whatever this was, I felt more awake, aware and alive than usual. I went about my day, as if in a dream, startled into some other-worldly form of wakefulness, because I was mesmerized and had no idea what was going on. In some crazy fashion I drifted away.

The mystery of that moment, where some spontaneous strangeness broke through my routine, carried me away. That moment ended, or did it? Thirty-five years later I am struck again, carried away by the music combined with memory, and find my soul drifting into a landscape that is familiar for lacking any kind of recognizable landmark.

What I didn’t know then liberated me. I woke-up to a world that that didn’t operate in any way that made sense to me. That jarred me, and stirred me from sleep. Showering, trying to rid myself of the old stinky, unclean, detritus of living I am again awakened, drifting close to a freshness that is also life. The music is again transporting me.

I’ve been interrupted. Something is reminding me that I really don’t know this place, that I am truly a visitor to this world, that the moment is full of surprises, that I can be, and am, swept along by forces I don’t even recognize. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing or rightdoing,” Rumi says, “is a field. I’ll meet you there.” My experience in the shower, between the past and the present, carried away by familiar music and the unexpected memory, is that the field is not somewhere else, that needs to be gotten too, but right here.

The mystery is right behind everything I think I recognize. I keep looking and think I’m seeing what I have seen before. I see what I know and I am blind, seeing the world I have made up, the world I’ve inherited, that all about me agree upon, and I am participating in a massive trance, a collective blindness.

For some reason anonymity appeals to me now. I have this idea, certainly it is true about me, that people (myself included) have grown so jaded, that no good idea, insight, or revelation can be trusted if it comes from an identifiable man or woman. Everyone seems to have an agenda, everyone seems to want to profit, or everyone seems susceptible to being turned to someone else’s purposes. Because this seems so, I find myself distrusting human motive.

I have an idea this relates to Drift[ing] Away,” but I’m not sure how. Maybe the fact that such aliveness was generated in me, by what came out of nowhere, at no cost, has awakened in me the old giving impulse. I just have the feeling that my happiness, and the happiness of others, resides somewhere near-by, and it is a gift we give each other, by letting the world we know how to make use of, drift away.

l/d

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I have also created a blog for the elder’s salon, which has some good pieces in it (including mine). See it at elderssalon.blogspot.com

See also thslowlane.blogspot.com (note the misspelling).

I have also added a link. I don’t usually recommend websites but I have long felt that we (society) needed a vision of a future worth having and this short film points in that direction, Check it out http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-08-31&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Solitude

 

“To speak again of solitude, it becomes ever clearer that the truth is that there is nothing there that we can choose or avoid. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves an act as if this were not so. That is all we can do.  How much better to realize from the start that that is what we are, and to proceed from there.”  — Rainer Marie Rilke

I am returning to solitude like the salmon returning to the headwaters, to die and to reproduce. I am coming to appreciate the Absolute that lies within, like the silent, hardly moving times, when I am finally with my self. All is quiet, or in turmoil, and yet there is one, which I have at last come to know, who is unscathed. I am solitude. It isn’t something I have, or that has me. It is my life unfolding with change, and it is life being constant. I am nourished into being, and what I have called me, has never actually existed. Solitude is my being, it is the home I cannot leave, not a prison, but a platform where a new train is always arriving.

I feel compelled to write again about solitude, because it keeps changing me, and my relationship with this existence.

I started out wondering how I might turn my loneliness into solitude? I was suffering the corrosiveness of a life alone, without a partner, feeling exiled within this life, amongst a life filled with people. I was a social animal suffering a painful form of social phantom limb syndrome. Where are my people? I must be some kind of outcast. What is wrong with me? All I knew was a deep, pervasive sense that I was in some way painfully unfit. The days and nights of this loneliness were long, uncertain and empty. I hurt continuously, and I kept going, a zombie pretending to be alive.

Gradually, I had moments of solitude, moments that calmed me down, and stripped me bare. I was the one at the center of it all, and I couldn’t bear it. Solitude introduced me to myself. I didn’t like me, and so I couldn’t really appreciate solitude. It was much better for me to feel lonely, and to lament my condition, to long for others, than to take any responsibility for the sickly, broken, malnourished one I met when I was solitudinal. Loneliness was the price I paid for the desire to escape myself. I paid, I can’t say happily, but surely.

Loneliness became bearable, a friend really, it saved me from the unbearable. I pretended the one I met, the one at the center, wasn’t me. I was smart, I could hide well, in plain sight often, disguised as one who knew, who went within. I was crafty, converting my dreaded glimpses into passing insight, looking like a deep person when I was actually treading water in the shallow end of the pool. I got away with it. Sort of. Too few had gone deeply within, so I looked good, but someone within knew the difference, and I grew more fearful that my fraudulence would show. I could see that I was an empty shirt, I despaired that others would too. The fact that they often didn’t, or refused to engage with me, and my fraudulence, deepened my despair.

I was alone anyway. No amount of relationship, family, community, or busy-ness changed that. Finally, I could bear the anxious effort, the pseudo-connections, no more. I collapsed. I could have killed myself, so deep was my despair, so determined my refusal to take any responsibility for my condition, the malnourished one within. I could be cruel, to myself, and others, but I lacked the courage to kill myself. Maybe it was luck, or grace, but whatever the case, I gave in to my aloneness. I think the stroke; disability, the long time on the threshold of death, all aided me. For at last I came to my senses. I came to face the one within.

Death isn’t so bad. There is a solving relief that accompanies the terminal phase. There isn’t any more that can be done, a kind of justice abides with being finished. But facing the privilege of going on, and knowing your self a fraud, even (maybe especially) a good one, is a truly fearsome thing. A second chance is an awesome gift, but then again, it is only worth it, if you face what you refused to face the first time.  Solitude, once it is admitted, is populated by the self-made demons of self-doubt that one accumulates in a lifetime. For long lonely hours I sat vigil with a man who had come to believe in his fears.

Solitude saves me, daily, hourly, even now as I write this. I know that whatever I am, I am, because I let the mystery of my being, the mystery of all being, come to me in solitude. Now, I know, that my writing, loving, compassion, life itself, all rely on my willingness to come to these headwaters. I am nourished by being what I am, a solitudinal mystery, afoot in life, true to the mystery of my origins.

The words of Rilke (above) live in me now, not as a profound quote to be remembered, but as true description of a necessary condition of this life. I am as free as I am, and that means I am free to be me, whatever that may be, because I am solitude rolling through this world, world rolling solitudinally through this life. 

l/d

Sourcing The Depths

She said, “ a spring.” I said, ”yes, perhaps that’s it.” We were trying to think of a metaphor, a symbol, for what we could imagine emerging in the elder’s group. There is a sense of something stirring, a latency that is finding a slow, steady kind of expression, or life, through our interactions, just being together. We were guessing about what it is, trying to find a way to relate to it, like it was some kind of alien child that we were discovering in our midst. The truth is that we, the elder’s group, are sailing into uncharted waters.

So far we have not gone very deep with each other. Perhaps we won’t. The unknown hangs over us, like an enveloping shroud. We know we have a chance. Will we go there ourselves? Will lightening strike someone with such a force of necessity, that it sparks all, like kindling into a bond fire of connection, mutual regard, a quivering mass of humans? Or, maybe we will just walk away, knowing another fearful opportunity we missed, or let go of. The tension is growing, as excitement about the possibility, and as anxiety about the risk.

Can we as elders go further? That remains to be seen. The possibility is, in part, why we meet. I know I attend because I want to feel less isolated, I want to be supported, to share my unimaginable losses, to celebrate the part of me, the part of each one, that endures, that finds the humor, creativity, and spirit as things are going, be they ripped away, or given up. I am a social being, I find meaning and good companions make the way more bearable, available, and lively. All of this I know. What I don’t know, and what compels me to show up in the elder’s circle, is the presence of some wisdom, some unknown knowing that comes from Spirit, as grace, from the depths, from souls touching.

This has provoked in me an inchoate longing, for community, depth, surprise, and continuous wonder. I feel its presence. I also know that I have been called here because this is a place where the awesomeness that binds us to each other, to life, to this place we call Earth, is becoming palpable. Is this elder wisdom? I don’t think so. But, I think that the ability to perceive the signs is. Awesomeness doesn’t belong to us anyway. If anything, maybe our years, losses, shaved expectations, and familiarity with death, makes us riper, but the truth is that we belong to it. I am powerless in this circle, I can speak my heart, unveil my on-going vulnerability, surrender into silence, and I can’t make it happen.

I know, that to even have a chance, I need these others. I’ve learned that much. I alone, cannot host, or even call, this being into the moment. I don’t know, if even we can. I just know that we have a chance, and that alone seems like a precious miracle to me. I’ve been wracking my brain, my imagination, my memories, my savvy, for some idea about how to bring this, I don’t know what, to fruition. And all that I know says, “I don’t know.” That is the unsatisfying truth.

What waits seems so beguiling, so enlivening, so deadly with peace and deep relaxation, like a bath, drowning perhaps, in a warm and embracing sea. I am alive with longing for it, and deeply ashamed because I know my own expectations render it less likely. That is why the spring seemed like such a good metaphor to me. Fresh water from the mysterious depths — —  that sounds like the gurgling I hear, and sense, amongst us.

I know I don’t make a spring happen. If I am lucky, and I am Lucky, then I notice, and I do my best to remember where, and how I found it. This has happened enough in my life that I know it can, I even know the signs, but I also know it doesn’t happen because I want it to. The mystery in the depths is inscrutable. There are times when I can appreciate that. I know I tend toward suspecting all human-made ideas, interventions, technologies, ways. We humans seem to constantly miss the big picture, and create things we rapidly turn into their opposites. But, I’m just human enough to feel exasperated, humble, foolish and vainglorious about the fact that I have no control.

So I’m sitting here thinking about how I want something fresh to spring into my life; something that I cannot control, that I have to be willing to lay all of myself out for, that requires me to be with others as they do the same, something that may still not come to pass. I want this possibility, and I don’t want it. I’m tired. Maybe tired enough to be an elder. I don’t know if my heart can stand another disappointment. On the other hand, I don’t know if my heart can stand holding back, not trying, not being exposed and naked.

What waits, I trust, I don’t know why, I have good reason to look elsewhere, and yet here I am. I don’t think it is because of me, there is nothing special in my being, except maybe, this foolish longing, that hopes for the miracle to come, like a spring, or some other manifestation of deeply mysterious origins.

Neuroplasticity (Part I)

I’ve been brain-damaged for almost seven years now. So, I have been following very closely the research on neuroplasticity and stem cells. I have a friend who had her stroke in the Himalyis, while she was visiting her Tibetan spiritual teacher. It was three weeks before she reached the hospital in New Delhi, and 3 years before she learned to talk again. She is an expert on brain plasticity having recovered her speech, walking again, and recovering some use of her arm. She has taught me about the potential that has recently been discovered. This missive is not so much about that, however. I write because of another aspect of the research into neuroplasticity that concerns me.

I have watched us, humankind, respond to the shift of awareness from a (once thought) static and unchanging brain, to one that changes and can be engineered. What concerns me is the attitude we seem to be adopting. The brain has been plastic for a long time, to nature’s specifications, and we have just discovered this fact, and are busily trying to change our brain function without much awareness of why we may have this marvelous capability in the first place.

Recently, developmental scientists have shown that there are multiple stages of adult development, that human adults grow and change over time. We, as a species, have been endowed with a lot of potential that we have yet to actualize. Since these stages represent real changes in mental outlook, capabilities, worldview and freedom of choice, they also represent (this assumption has been untested thus far) changes in our brain function. The current research has focused some on early childhood development and how awareness of the plasticity of the brain can be used to treat early brain deficits or accidents. At this point, no one is looking at what nature seems to have intended by designing us this way. Knowing that we were designed by nature, over a billion years or so, I have some concern that we may be acting with a great deal of hubris. I think we should pay attention to what nature intended, and designed for, before we act like this is a new, never before discovered phenomenon, that can, and should, be applied to all manner of human difficulties.

Understanding the changeability of the brain is a real breakthrough in our understanding. We are liberated, understanding our own nature, our own potential much better. We are poised on the threshold of a new era. My concern is that we might act on this new knowledge without understanding the natural context in which it evolved. Time and again I have seen the consequences of these kind of actions. It is not only time to be excited, but to consider what is really important. Before we make economic and scientific assumptions about this capability, we should consider how our very own potential may be effected.

In the meantime, this awareness, that the brain is flexible and responds to its environment, is leading to some interesting new thought. With the demographics of our population shifting toward the aged, there is more concern going into how to maintain the vitality, health and productivity of the elderly. This has prompted some focus upon ageing brains, and has led to some innovative ideas about protecting, and improving, brain functioning in elders. Below is one set of findings for preserving, and extending, good brain function in seniors.

A Chicago Tribune article a couple of days ago, titled Seniors see improvement in brain-training classes, includes

0.“Over the next few years, we will see these [brain health] programs burst into the mainstream with great force,” predicted Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, a clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine and co-founder of Sharp Brains, a company that evaluates and helps markets brain fitness programs. A growing body of scientific studies supports the trend.”

0.“The major finding was stunning: Relatively short training regimens — 10 sessions of 1 to 1.5 hours each over five or six weeks — improved mental functioning as long as five years later. Booster sessions helped advance these gains, and some people found it easier to perform everyday tasks, such as managing finances, after mental workouts.”

0.“I think what this shows, conclusively, is that when healthy older people put effort into learning new things, they can improve their mental fitness,” said Michael Marsiske, a member of the research team and an associate professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville. “And even if structured learning is relatively brief, you should be able to see the benefits of that learning for some time to come.”

0.Not all training is alike, however. In the ACTIVE study, each form of mental training (for memory, speed or reasoning) affected only the function targeted without crossing over into other realms. Training results were strongest for speed of mental processing and weakest for memory.

0.“What this tells us is that specific brain functions may need different types of training,” said Dr. Jeffrey Elias, chief of the cognitive-aging program at the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the ACTIVE study.

0.“With that in mind, researchers probably will design comprehensive programs with multiple types of training to forestall age-related mental decline, Elias predicted.”

My hope is that you will find the way to maximize your potential, without compromising the potential nature endowed you with.

l/d

Neuroplasticity (Part II)

  

As you know I have some concerns about how the new found capacity of the human brain is being thought about, and used. We are in a new brain-changing era. The public relations people, the advertising agencies, and the corporate world, are all poising to capitalize on the amazing capacity of the human brain to change with its environment. I can predict a not too distant future where there will be intense social pressure to be actively enhancing your brain function. It seems likely, with the flexibility of the brain, and new brain measuring capabilities, that we may be able to modify our brain function. The concern I have is that we might not do so wisely. Here is why I think that way.

The human brain has been plastic for a long time. Do you know why? The short answer, and it is correct as far as it goes, is because it gave our species a competitive advantage. Basically, we were made the fittest by this development. But, that isn’t a very deep, or informative reason. No one really knows why. Researchers, as far as I can tell, are not really looking into that. Instead they are being funded to find applications for this new knowledge. This poses the prospect that we, as a species, could gain some control over our own brain development, and accidentally override the real reasons nature endowed us with this quality.

Consider the social dimension of our development. There is some evidence that the human brain developed as it did because we are a social species. Language, culture, art, and community all co-evolved with our plastic brains. We may have established the scientific capacity to provide evidence that we can improve memory, speed-up cognitive function and make the brain function more efficiently, but we don’t know how to measure, and show, if our brains are gaining the capacity for cooperation, social coordination, and compassion. In fact messing with one might mean messing with the other.

I come down in the camp, where it seems to me, that what is vitally important to the well-being of our species is that we preserve our ability to care for each other. I worry about us gaining this ability, to engineer the brain, in a culture that is so oriented toward individuality, that sees human potential in those same terms, and easily overlooks the social nature of who we are. Brain-change might just mean reinforcing these tendencies, the emphasis on individuality, at the expense of the social glue that gives us such incredible potential.

For instance, as I reviewed the body of public literature describing research into brain plasticity, I found no research addressing the social aspects of brain functioning. I found this despite Dan Goleman’s well-documented book on the social nature of the brain, despite neuro-scientists pointing out that the human brain develops best under conditions of  synchrony with other brains, and even despite recent research that shows that human life is extended, with better quality, when people are more socially connected. The field is primarily interested in how individuals can change their brains.

This isn’t the end-all, or be-all, of brain research. There are a small minority of researchers, and practitioners, who are interested in how relationships effect brain development. There are some limited findings that show that human beings grow, in wisdom, consciousness,  and social capacity through neuroplastic events. There are conditions that accompany and increase the probability of these kind of neuroplastic events. They happen primarily through intimate activities. Imagine that, intimacy promotes brain development! Below you will find some of the conditions that make this possible.

• a strong and resilient collaborative (mutually attuned) alliance

• moderate levels of stress and emotional arousal (interpersonal tension), alternating with calm

• intense and profound intersubjective moments of meeting

• information and experience gathered across multiple dimensions of cognition, emotion, sensations, and behaviors.

• activating brain neural networks involved in processing and regulating thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behavior

• new conceptual knowledge integrating emotional and bodily experience

• organizing experiences in ways that foster continued growth and integration.

                 (from Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch, Ph.D. pg.289, (parentheses are mine)

It is my contention that all forms of intimacy promote the growth of the social dimension of our brains. This includes the very difficult forms of public intimacy, being real, that can occur in community situations. When this aspect of who we are, as a species, is ignored (because it seems too difficult) then we deprive each other of what is needed to create neuroplastic events that enhance our brains and feed our social capabilities. I believe we have an as yet unexplored social potential, that I would hate to see reduced, by too great an emphasis upon the potential of our individual brains.

l/d

Handling What Cannot Be Handled

I awoke the other morning with a poignant clarity. For a moment, I don’t know how long it lasted, I knew why I was alive, what I’m doing here, how to proceed, and what I had chosen to be up against. During that blessed moment I thought of something I want to use this forum to explore.  I knew that when I felt most alive, absorbed, and meaningfully engaged, was when I was trying to handle what I could not handle. In other words, when I was overwhelmed by what I faced, I was more than I usually was.  This method of engagement, has not been the way I have wanted to live, but strangely enough, it has been when I am most alive. What follows is my intrigued inquiry into this phenomenon.

To be clear, what I am interested in, is the fact that the things that have made me feel incompetent, over my head, defeated, have drawn out of me competencies, awareness, and the discovery of new life. How can this be? This is entirely counter-intuitive. It is also just the opposite of what makes me a good, predictable, reliable, commercial entity. Through some kind of paradox the very thing that renders me capable, is the same thing that makes me feel incompetent!

I am realizing at an advanced age, almost too late (and it fills me with regret), that what really enlivens me, isn’t necessarily what I have chosen, but what has come along, chosen, and overwhelmed me. I have grown, been stretched more, not by the challenges I have taken on, but by the inescapable challenges that have made me cringe, shake, and feel uncertain. These moments, which I would have largely chosen to avoid, have been my greatest benefactors.

This is a scary realization. Whereas I thought I was choosing to grow myself, like a good, responsible seeker, instead I’m finding that I have actually preferred to take on what I thought I could handle, to consolidate and comfort myself, to feel some mastery, rather than feel the vulnerability of real growth. This realization is, for me, one that generates a complex reaction. I am amazed by the recognition that despite my preferences I have been met by the challenges that have grown me. Something is helping me! At the same moment I realize that I am being helped without my explicit consent. I am suffering from such help! I wonder am I handling my life or is this life handling me?

I don’t know the answer to such questions. I only know that had I the capacity to refuse, I might very well have avoided the very things that made me what I am. Left to myself, I might not be myself.  I thank God I wasn’t left to myself, or do I? I tell myself I like to stretch. But, do I like to be stretched? Am I free to exercise volition or not? Would I be, who I would like to believe I am, without going through some things I wouldn’t have chosen, some things, notably hardships, that have shaped me? The truth I am coming to, is that I am only partly mine, that I am defined as much by the difficulties that have shaped me, as I am of some shape I have chosen.

Why is this important to me? Life seems to be serving up just the hardships I need to grow. Isn’t that awareness enough? No, not really. My tendency to avoid what seems too hard, threatens my growth and development. There isn’t alignment between what grows me and my own proclivities. That seems to me to be a recipe for the worst kind of suffering. And, it makes growth look like being victimized. I want to at least be the co-captain of my own ship.

If that is the truth, if I want to exercise some real responsibility for my life, then I have got to develop a different attitude. Instead of avoiding what is hard, thinking something is wrong, I have got to lean into what is difficult, and be glad to be thus challenged. To go beyond myself, I’ve got to greet what reveals my incompetence and carries me beyond myself. Developing this attitude almost seems un-American. It doesn’t look like pursuing happiness. Or, does it? Real happiness and security, it now seems to me, lies in knowing I can do the difficult and grow and be more.

With this understanding, I recall a poem by Rilke, where he draws upon an Old Testament image of a prophet wrestling with an angel. In it he states, “This is the way he grows, by being defeated by bigger and bigger angels.” I’ve read that line and understood it to be about growth but I’ve never focused so much attention upon being defeated. Taking on what is bigger, and being ultimately defeated by it, won’t get me on the news, but apparently it will grow me. Handling what I cannot handle introduces me to a new me. How amazing!

There is one more thing. Life is a gift. This isn’t my life. It is one of the bigger angels. It kicks my ass around the block, corners me, pierces my heart, breaks me down, disables me, and keeps teaching me. It is, in Ram Das’s words,  “fierce grace.” I am being grown, despite myself. As Rilke said, ”What we fight with is so small (meaning my pedestrian human concerns). What fights with us is so big (meaning the angel that delivers me).” I cannot handle what holds me here. I have learned this much. I am a child of God, and like Jesus, I will be put to death, because I have been blessed by Life, an angel sent to shape me. Knowing this much, even as I am being reduced/enlarged, makes me Lucky. 

l/d

A Personal Terror

This report from the Slow Lane is kind of a joke, a bad joke. You see, it is about the fast lane, being trapped there, about feeling helpless. This is the story.

Just last week I was traveling home from work, in my car, on the freeway. I came to a place where the freeway narrowed to two lanes. Trucks were in the slow lane. So I moved over, into the fast lane, to pass the slowest traffic. Ahead there had been an accident. I didn’t know that. Soon traffic slowed to stop and go. The woman behind me noticed too late, and she rear-ended me.

I was stuck in the fast lane of the freeway, unable to move, in a disabled and damaged car (the rear of my car, I later learned, had been smashed into my back tires rendering them immovable), for a least a half hour. I sat in the damaged car, alone, unable to move myself, or the car, while other cars sped by me on the left (the accident occurred where there was a left turn lane) and the right. I became increasingly frightened.

As I sat in my car I felt deeply helpless. Cars sped past. I felt like I could be hit again. I didn’t know if my emergency blinkers worked, or could be seen behind me. I smelled chemical smells. I worried that the car might catch fire. I couldn’t go anywhere, my wheelchair, even if it was accessible (which it wasn’t) was out of the question. Getting out of the car, trying to get in my wheel chair, and wheeling across the freeway, would have been the most dangerous thing I could do. I just sat and waited, in danger, afraid, helpless, and felt my own vulnerability.

I was caught in the fast lane, the irony didn’t escape me, waiting, wondering if this was the end, watching others speed past. When the CHP arrived (she did call them) I was almost incoherent. He, the CHP officer, got me, and my car, off the freeway (by pushing my car). I was an emotional wreck, an incoherent, disabled, brain-damaged man; he wanted as little to do with me as possible. After making sure I was physically alright, he went to hang out with the woman and her child. He assured me he had called a tow truck, and then went away. She, at least apologized, gave me her pertinent information, and inquired about my well-being.

Later, after I was home, during the night, I awakened, afraid, and the tears came. I’m not the kind of man who tries to stop them. I’m crazier than that. Instead I felt my own terror, the helplessness that is my life, the quickness with which it could all change, and the pervasive sense of aloneness that accompanies it all. I was bereft, in the darkness, alone, uncertain, ambivalently and miraculously alive.

Now perhaps this is part of my particular delusion. But, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had some strange feeling that what happened to me was happening to us all. Maybe I’m narcissistic, deluded, crazy, and too enamored of my special-ness. But the reason I feel compelled to write about this horrible experience, is because I have the feeling that you too are stuck, unmoving, endangered, in the fast lane. I don’t know how this could be true, I just have this terrible feeling it is.

The fast lane is a deadly place. We all have to go there from time to time. I wonder. Is this a necessity, do we inhabit it wisely, just for convenience, because it is there, at the speed of the economy, our own obsessions, the hubris of our own kind, and of course, is this really progress? So many of these questions I feel helpless behind, un-American to ask, a luddite, an elderly curmudgeon, and maybe I am. But, feeling helpless, trapped and disabled, a statistic in the making, leaves me shaking, and wondering about the de-humanization we have given over to, at the hands of massification, our excuse for development.

I lay awake in the night feeling like I am part of the wilderness that had just discovered a trap. I thought I knew what to be afraid of, what to avoid. But now, I had been captured by something else; something placed right here in my way. I am screaming, not so much in pain or fear, but with indignity and warning. Life has made room for the fast lane, but are we really ready for it?  Am I? I don’t know, I sleep walk into it just as easily as anyone, but for a terrifying time, I could feel the real consequence of this choice, and it arouses the question in me, is this the human I want to be? 

l/d

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I need your help. I’m starting a blog. This is an attempt to reach out, to put the Slow Lane out there more. I’m turning into a writer, now I could use an audience.  I’m going too keep sending these missives, these messages in a bottle, to you via email as long as I can, but I’m going to start a blog too. This will allow others to be touched, me to archive these pieces, and hopefully more interactions. Will you check it out, refer others to it (if you think it is valuable) and generally wish me well and support this endeavor. See my words at www.lucky-theslowlane