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by doug | August 26th, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Senator Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009
It is a sad day, to be sure… and it would have been regardless of the political climate. But with the bitter partisanship, the stalemates and standoffs, the pussyfooting and the pandering, appeasement and acquiescence, the embellishments and the fearmongering and the overarchingly corrosive debates going on across the country and in DC’s halls of power, Senator Kennedy’s death is much, much more poignant. It has already been suggested (three days ago by Sen. McCain, for example) that the Senate would be a great deal more civil and productive were our Liberal Lion on the floor. I’m willing, in my admitted pessimism, to go further.
Meaningful health care reform is impossible without Ted Kennedy.
At worst, nothing will be done. The entire initiative will stall out among intra-party squabbling and bipartisan deadlocks. At best, we will get some watered-down version that will ensure the insurance/drug/healthcare corporation money and influence keep flowing. No real change. No real progress. What the movement needs is twofold – and Senator Kennedy could have delivered them both.
First, we need a statesman who will shake Washington’s marble columns with his roar – and, second, we need someone whose roar will be listened to and considered on both sides of the aisle. We need someone to stand on the Senate floor and shake his (or her) fist and stand up for the little guy, and who is so well regarded as not to be dismissed as just another liberal crackpot. I cannot think of another politician in Washington with those qualities. Ted Kennedy was a towering liberal who was, at the same time, deeply respected by his conservative rivals. Who will reach across to the other side and still stand strong on progressive principles?
Obama (whose progressive leadership is in question, anyway) has left the Capitol and has taken Senators Biden and Clinton with him. Does anyone else have the potential to fit that mold? Who will step into Teddy’s shoes? What icon have we now? Who can we point to and proudly say ‘this is our standard-bearer… this man(or woman) represents us, shouts for us when we have no voice, fights for the public good… and DELIVERS!’?
Anyway.
Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo has a long roster of remembrances from national and world leaders. It is worth a read. If you have a little more time, watch the video of Vice President Biden’s remarks. Very moving.
Thanks, Senator. And goodbye. You are greatly missed.
by doug | December 21st, 2008 @ 12:19 am
Last night I thought I was dying. It seemed as if it was happening just after I switched off the bedside lamp and lay my head on the pillow, but it may well have been on into the night. Time gets squirrely. I do not even know if it was an actual physical event or if I was waking from an unremembered night terror. Sometimes my heart will skip a beat, and that is what this felt like except it was greatly magnified. I couldn’t catch my breath. My head clouded. In an instant I was miles beneath the ocean’s surface. The world was just a pinprick glimmer in the darkness. The buzzing began — a wrenching numbness increasing in intensity inside my skull. And I panicked. To continue the nautical metaphor, I clumsily thrashed my way toward the surface, toward the world, toward life. Struggling. My mind was one feverish question: "is this it?". There was no grand replay of precious life events, no white light, no feeling but fear. I reached the surface and my head instantly cleared. My buzzing brain went silent. I lay under the bedsheets panting, relieved, wondering whether I was waking from a dream or had simply experienced another nocturnal palpitation. If that is the case, it was a prolonged and intense version. And, of course, for all I know it was all imaginary. A scary, remembered moment though, whatever it was. I’m glad I’m still around. Today was a nice day.
That was just the beginning of a night brimming with weirdness. The subsequent dreams were scrambled particles of my partitioned life. There was a school audit going on, although I was on vacation at the same time. My wife was there along with all my coworkers, my dog, my parents’ dogs, and at least one ex-girlfriend. The audits were unusually precarious, and for no good reason. There was just a feeling of dread over the whole thing. Then, there was an airplane buzzing a lake while we sat and lunched on the pier. The plane made two circuit loops where it would zoom down over our heads, skim the water, then rocket up into the sky again. The third circuit was fatal. It dove too low, tried to bank and pull up, and dipped its left wing into the lake. The wing was immediately torn off and propelled toward our position at the shoreline. The remainder of the airplane plunged into some marina buildings across the way while the wing bisected an automobile just tens of feet away from us. One of the dogs got loose in the woods behind the mountain cabin where we were staying. We sent helicopters up to look for the dog, which ended up falling off the mountain and finding its way back to the house. When we discovered him under a blanket with a large cut in his side and I was freaking out trying to figure the best way to get him to an animal hospital, my mother’s response (yes, my mother suddenly appeared) was "ah well, we’ll just take him to the vet in morning" as if it was a simple scratch. The next morning my wife and I were searching for something on the mountainside and found ourselves in the middle of a large mud patch in the middle of a rainstorm.
That’s all I’ve got. It is a jumbled mess, I know. The dream notebook has not worked as well as I had hoped. If I could write these things down while they are still fresh in my mind, it would likely be somewhat more coherent if not more logical. The number of lucid dreams has become more frequent over the past couple of weeks. Not sure what I am doing differently, but it definitely makes the nighttime more interesting. Also, it provides me with material when I am otherwise uninspired. I guess even death scares have their bright sides.
by doug | November 25th, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
Today was destined to be a “downer” blog day. Everything is hunky-dory with me, but all around me there is turmoil, uncertainty, disappointment and death. My wife’s job security – whether she wants to admit it or not – is tenuous. All around her people are being forced into retirement. Co-workers and associates are changing positions. Whole departments are being axed. And there is a strong feeling in the community, no matter how strongly it is denied by the corporate bigwigs, that the long-time Birmingham company will, at some point, move its headquarters to Texas. Every indication is that her job is safe, but the climate is one of volatile change. It is an atmosphere I should know well – I was around for HealthSouth’s surprise dismantling.
I know folks with family strains and folks with marital troubles. I know folks who are worried about increasing expenses and static salaries.
And today someone I work with lost her husband. He had been having some difficulties, but the good news – from what I could glean from conversations, anyway – was that his condition was improving. He had surgery last week – a triple heart bypass – that was serious but was, it seemed, a success. He was at home and on the mend. Apparently their son went by the house to check in on him, and found him dead. I was in the restroom when the telephone rang at the office. I heard a distressed cry and then some sobbing and doors opening and shutting. I went to the window and saw her crying in the parking lot and our secretary offering to drive her so she wouldn’t have to drive herself. I had a strong feeling that what happened was what had, indeed, happened, but I waited in my office for one of the partners to come in and spill the news. How. Fucking. Awful.
Life is scary. It is a minefield – and there is no way to navigate it successfully. You just stumble and bounce around from one mine to another until one day, you step on the big one. And that’s it for you. Death. Disease. Poverty. Crime. Life is a big bowl of suck, and then you get to die at the end of it all. That was what this blog was going to be.
But then I thought about how this was most likely the last post I would make before the Thanksgiving holidays, since we will be venturing once again to the land of no internet connection. And I thought about how, if life is so fragile and fleeting, how unreasonable it is to spend any sizeable portion of it in a state of depression. Sometimes sorrow is unavoidable, yes – and sometimes grief and mourning and the sadness that comes with that is necessary and even cathartic. Sometimes shakeups are essential to keep things moving or clear the path to something bigger and better. But wallowing is counterproductive. If I have only three more weeks to experience life, why would I want any of that time to be spent feeling sorry for myself?
So, with Thanksgiving on the horizon, I wanted to sign off into the four-day vacation with bright feelings of hope and of warmth. I have a wonderful wife whom I get to curl up with every night, no matter how stressful or rotten the preceding day has been. I have parents who care about me and would do anything for me. I have friends who are there for me though every trial, and who would see me through any hardship. I have a warm little dog asleep next to me, and a silly little cat dozing on the back of the chair. I have a roof over my head. I have food waiting to be slid into the oven. I have a job I enjoy that provides for my needs.
By any measure, I am richly blessed.
So, here you go. A long weekend is upon us. We will have turkeys and casseroles and football games and roaring fires, long naps, joyful conversations, reminiscences and warm reunions. Enjoy the holidays, readers. Enjoy every moment.
by doug | November 12th, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Death. It lies in the tall savannah grass, waiting for us all. We frolic along, blissful, sometimes careful, sometimes reckless, but always unprepared. At every given moment, those cruel jaws are clamping shut on someone, somewhere. And eventually it will touch us all — our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our friends, our co-workers and our pets. And there will come a time when that sinister cosmic fate-wheel will come to rest on you. That’s it. It is finished.
Some of us will have the frightening fortune of knowing that death is coming. Others will never know. We will leave behind half crossed-out to-do lists, half-eaten leftovers in the fridge, a quarter-tank of gas in our cars, a $2000 balance on our credit cards. Whatever you believe comes afterward, this life as we know it will surely come to an abrupt and underwhelming end.
For years now, I have been suffering with a heightened awareness of these and other horrible death-related facts. Obviously, the fear of death is nothing new or unique, but I get the feeling that most people are able to shut that certainty our of their day-to-day lives. Either that, or they are otherwise able to explain it away with religion or some other fabricated coping mechanism. (Note that here I do not intend to imply that all religion is fabricated — although some religions, necessarily, are — but, rather, that whether any particular religion is true or not, human societies would certainly need to fashion some coping mechanism [blindfold, security blanket, "higher power", greater good, impenetrable wall of bullshit, etcetera] to deal with the weight of the knowledge of their own inescapable deaths.)
I cannot remember when I started feeling this immense weight. It very probably began with my brother’s automobile accident some six years ago, but I could also have very well had this feeling of dread in the years before that horrible occurrence. I do not remember it if that is, indeed, the case. Whatever the cause — perfectly understandable or not — I am clearly tormented by the idea of death now… almost to the point that it is difficult for me to comprehend how other people can go through life without living it in a constant, overpowering terror of the fate that ultimately awaits them.
I hear, almost daily, these stories of death. I can remember a time when those blurbs and whispers just rolled away without sticking to me as they do today. But now I hear the stories like — to use recent examples — two teenagers killed in a single-car accident on a dark highway, a middle-aged woman slipping on a concrete staircase and cracking her head open, a wayward youth getting shot in the back in broad daylight in a Wal-Mart parking lot, a man in good health dropping dead in mid-sentence in his living room. Random violence. Unknown, untreated medical conditions. Natural disasters. Lapses in judgment. No one is safe.
So, now, when I get a stabbing headache in the back of my skull — my initial thoughts are along the lines of "is this it? is this how it ends?" Or when I get dizzy behind the wheel. Or when an automobile is coming toward me at an intersection. Or when I’m jogging along the streets of my adjacent-to-the-ghetto neighborhood. I am never safe. Which thought will be my final thought? Will it be something powerful like love for my wife or my friends? Or will it be something trivial like what I’m going to watch on TV tonight?
I feel like I am rambling… which is kind of the point. If I sat down and tried to edit these feelings, they wouldn’t be nearly as raw and disjointed but they also would not be nearly as intense and true and immediate. This is not supposed to be some essay on living and dying or religion or the human condition or any of that. There may come a time — there will hopefully, even, come a time — when I do try to flesh out my thoughts and ideas on this matter more fully and in a more structured, focused manner. This is just to get the thoughts out there into the aether. Death is very much a part of my psyche, whether I would like for it to be or not. It may be that it is a healthy thing for me to be so aware of my own mortality. Of course, one would think that would make me want to live every day to the fullest. That is not happening (or else my ambitions need a little tweaking).
And it may be that my burden is not that unique at all. Maybe everyone walks around with the shadow of death constantly hovering over them, its weight dragging their necks nearer to the ground with every step they take. That would be (strangely) comforting. But if that is the case, then it would seem that most people are able to hide those feelings extremely well. Then again, I hope that I do not walk around with the fear of death written all over my face.
I don’t know. What good is it to be aware of your own inevitable demise? I suppose if it made you a more careful person, or a more thoughtful person, or a more giving, caring person, then that would be a positive thing. I suppose it is better than being unaware — the stupid, carefree gazelle bounding across the African plains seconds before it is pounced upon. It is better to know. And what a wonderful thing it would be to get to the point in your life where you could sit back and contentedly say to yourself "I have done everything I wanted to do. I can die happy." Do people ever really get there? Are there people who are truly okay with the idea of their own death? How can that be? How can anyone ever be ready?
It is cruel. No matter who you are — the fifteen-year-old killed in a hunting accident, the thirty-year-old dying of pancreatic cancer, or the eighty-seven-year-old keeling over on the golf course — it cannot be anything but cruel. One minute you’re here. You’re watching hummingbirds flit from flower to gorgeous flower. You’re playing cards with your life-long buddies. You’re making love to your wife or husband. And the next minute you’re just gone.
It is inevitable. And no, that does not make it easier. Sure, there isn’t anything I can do about it, so why worry about it? But that falls under the "easy for you to say" heading. Death cannot be neutralized. It is always powerful. It makes everything you do either more poignant or more useless, depending entirely, of course, on how you choose to look at it. Nabokov wrote "life is a great surprise. I do not see why death shouldn’t be an even greater one." A fine sentiment from one of my favorite authors. It is the finality, though — the un-doability of that surprise — that is the torture.
Ugh. I am boring myself. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish with this diatribe. There isn’t a good answer. There isn’t a satisfying conclusion out there somewhere. How should we handle the death issue? How should we tackle the looming ends of our and our loved ones’ lives? I have no idea. It happens to everyone. It happens to people every day. One minute you’re here and the next minute you’re not. It, alone, makes me want to believe in a God… in an afterlife… with every fiber of my being. For how terrible — how incomprehensible — it would be to not exist at all: to never know beauty again, or to not feel the closeness of someone you love next to you, or the feel of your little pet’s fur under your petting hand, or the warmth of the sun on your face in the morning, or the wind blowing in from the sea on the beach in the evening, or the text of a poem, or the smile of a friend, or a measure of music, or the taste of your favorite food — — for all that to go away never to be experienced again. For nothing to ever be experienced again. Please, God, let it not be like that.
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Fair warning: this topic is a deeply-entrenched part of who I am, and, thus, it will likely continue to crop up from time to time. I cannot promise that I will be able to offer something more substantial on the topic, or more intelligent or persuasive or comforting. Sometimes I just need to vent. Tonight was one of those nights. If you made it this far, I apologize for the morbidity. Go back and read last night’s post. Look at the photographs. I do experience happiness. It isn’t even that I am particularly sad right now. But sometimes the weight is more present. That is the kind of week it has been. And that isn’t a bad thing. What hell, indeed, to be a witless gazelle.
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