Day 51 of 365 (Or the Beginning of a Tale Whereby our Hero Finds Himself Wedged Between a Lesbian and a Gay Man under a Twin Bed While a Glock Waving Lunatic is Seeking Vengeance. Our Hero is of course Praying that His Parents Will Not Have To Read About his Demise in the Local Newspaper – it is a long story and will be told in several parts).

My troubles all began when I first graduated law school. The Law and I were not tight you see. For whatever reason and I am pretty sure other who enter law school seeking certainty, my legal education took my moral compass and spun it about quite wildly. The people most drawn to the law, the folks that believe that there exists ultimate principles and that those principles are codified and knowable, are the least suited for the law. Law school teaches you that with words and wily artifice you may say black is white and that a cow in this context is a horse. Lawyers live in the area of uncertainty where rules fail. When everything is arguable that what fixed morale principles are left to guide you? The spinning of that compass lead me to beer.

While I don’t publicize this fact I don’t hide it either. The first time I took the bar exam in the great State of Michigan I failed it. Despite three years at the University of Jesuit Knowledge I had not really anticipated how much of law was simply business, buying, selling and trading and all the things that could go wrong in those processes. In reality the core of law was arguing about who had the monetary responsibility for grandiose fuck ups in the manufacturing and delivering of widgets. . In each and every year of law school I struggled with the Uniform Commercial Code. I passed the courses but those were the courses I got 2.1 s in. Constitutional law, contract law in the abstract, those I did well. I was a truth seeker; I was drawn to ultimate moral rules. In Constitutional Law I set or helped set the curve.

When you graduate law school you are a doctor of law but you are not a lawyer. To be a lawyer you must pass an exam showing mastery, showing creativity and showing the ability to think quickly. While you may have gotten the knowledge to face the questioning of the masters of the legal profession at some point in your law school experience time had lapsed. Arcane issues like the fee tail in property may have become buried under more recent concepts like original intent versus the living constitution.

To deal with what had been lost to time as I passed through law school I like every other bar student took a preparation course. At the time I took the bar the first time I was living in Detroit. Each day I would trudge off to do clerking work drafting briefs asserting that it was a God given right, a Constitution right to have nipples jiggling in your face as you drank beer. I was working first amendment law then. Yup I was defending the constitutional right of communists to assemble and the constitutional right of strippers to dance in bars where alcohol was being served. If you can’t tell my career path defending the constitution was on a high moral arc. This was the purity of the law I had so desired to defend.

The bar review course I took was the Josephson Bar Review. Funny thing about that, one or two of the lecture were actually taught by Barry Josephson. Does that name look familiar? He doesn’t do bar review anymore. He has moved on and is now the producer of Bones, the television show. Some people like Mr. Josephson saw the writing on the wall that said the law is a suck ass profession. He got out and he got rich. One of my closest buddies simply went up north and bought a canoe livery.

Each night as the exam approached the other lemmings and I would arrive at a room in the law school the prep course had rented. We would then spend three hours trying to create mnemonics that when faced with an oddball question on a bar essay prompt we could use to craft an answer. Go ahead, I dare you, ask me about a bill in the nature of interpleader damn it.

After the night of trying to cram a one specific year’s worth on knowledge into my head we would head out to relieve the pressure that had build up in our brains. This in my case usually meant going to the Post Bar on West Congress. On a pale green wall that ran the length of the building someone had written in magic marker, “You can only give yourself away for free so many times.” Yeah the Post was that kind of place.

When exam came it was clear that my balance of time between the post and the lecture hall had not bee well spent. It is the clarity you get when you realize you are entering into a spin on an ice covered road, oh yeah I was driving too fast. I chocked. I gagged. I fell flat on my face on a question about a bogus check and a question on taking a security interest in grain being transported in a railroad car. I might have stumbled on the meaning of FOB also (Freight on Board) too.

When the bar results came the bar examiners posted on the doors of all the law schools in the state. Hearing word the results we in I ran from my office in the Cadillac Tower in downtown Detroit to the University to see if I had made it. I hadn’t.

At the time to pass the bar in Michigan based solely on the multistate portion (multiple choice) of the test you had to get 150 points. Both times I took the exam I got 149 points. With 150 points they didn’t even bother to grade your essays. On the first go round I had essay scores of 8, 9, 10 until you got to commercial transactions. On those U.C.C. questions I had 1s or 2s. Later when I was having an informal conversation with the head of the bar examiners he told me personally that he had never seen a person get a 149 and fail on the essays.

At that point I had to make a decision.

Day 49 of 365 (A Lone Busker)

I used to work downtown. Now I work at the edge of an old mall. The mall was initially constructed in the 1950s. While they have put new facades on the stores the place is sort of a dowager with lots of make-up. The wear still shows. 

 The area here is sort of a nether zone not suburb, not city and definitely not anything with community character. Sometimes during warm weather I walk out to a nearby park with a baseball field. Wildflowers will pop up as the summer drags on. Still it is a solitary space. Except maybe for the guys smoking dope in their cars parked in the baseball fields parking lot.

 This place is a lonely place. I miss the people downtown. In the last year when I was working downtown this young woman had taken to busking in front of a local business. She played a classical style of violin tune and it was quite pretty.

 As I was looking for a photo for another post I came upon this image I had captured. The shot was taken on a warm late spring/early summer day.

 I was simply walking to walk and enjoy the radiance of the sun. As I turned a corner there she was playing.

 A musician on a corner is a perfect icon of the life of a downtown. People handing out samples of candy or thrusting fliers into your hand for events or causes, these are part of a downtown life. At least during the lunch hour even this boring Midwestern place has life. I miss it.

(Day 50 of 365) Don't Let This Beautiful Day Slip Away

Glorious perfect days seem a thing of the past. Now what I am faced with is a choice to either be overwhelmed or to stoically persevere.

Imperfection surrounds me, at home, at work, in my public service. In the past couple of days I have been dealing with the skullduggery of the political world I haven chosen to inhabit. In the background I have been hearing a conversation somewhat akin to Bill Clinton and the mother of all political parsing, “ it depends on what the meaning of is is”.

Also I have been sorting out/motivating a child to sort out a series poor grades.  I think all the perfect days are gone.

But it is okay. Jimmie Dale Gilmore summed up what I feel most days as I awaken. No matter what has occurred or will occur I will accept it eventually.

Tell me now that you know how to greet the dawn each day.
Fearless and unfettered, stand before the sun and pray.
There's no controversy, let silence judge your plea
For justice or for mercy, they both will set you free.

It's a braver, newer world you've found,
Rolling 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round
It's a braver, newer world you've found.

Show me know that you know how to play the winning game.
Laughing 'til the sky stands still with neither praise nor blame.
There's still time for heaven, though we're already there.
The daily bread will leaven all hope, all pain, all care.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore appears from what I can to be a Buddhist influenced cowboy singer. While his stuff is hit and miss for me, when it hits it is really awesome. This song every single time I play it takes me to a different far calmer place than the one I occupy before I sit back and listen to it. It is that last lyric that rings so true. The perfect days may be gone but there is still time for a kind of heaven with acceptance.

Day 38 of 365 (And Some Mornings it isn't Faith but Rather a Poet's Voice that Centers me.)

So that you will hear me 

So that you will hear me my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches. 

Necklace, drunken bell for your hands smooth as grapes. 

And I watch my words from a long way off. 

They are more yours than mine. 

They climb on my old suffering like ivy. 

It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. 

You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,

 and they are more used to my sadness than you are. 

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me. The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual. 

Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over. 

You listen to other voices in my painful voice. Lament of old mouths, 

blood of old supplications. 

Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. 

Follow me. 

Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish. 

But my words become stained with your love. You occupy everything, 

you occupy everything. 

I am making them into an endless necklace for your white hands, 

smooth as grapes. 

Pablo Neruda

Day 48 of 365 (What Has Love Got to Do With It

I often seek wisdom in short writings found in books that have titles like “A Year with Zen”. Christian or Zen, the source doesn’t matter because the words as they flow together hold some similarities.

One of the main areas where both groups of writers of these little volumes dwell is the concept of getting to truth. Each of the different sects best and brightest spend lots of time contemplating their respective faiths’ desire to cut through subterfuge and subtext. A longing is present for a path to arrive at truth. What the truth is that they seek varies but path of each requires a clarified vision. For Saul the scales fell away and he became Paul. For the Zen practitioner the bindings of the “this world” are loosened through practice/meditation. The emptying of the grocery bag of the mind and the ditching of the daily list may punch a hole through the mental garbage through which we may pass on the way to truth.

 One of the writers I go to was talking in the section I was reading today about love. She noted that romantic love is really not a construct of Zen. Romantic love is illusion; it is in many ways an impediment to reaching truth. She dances around the issue that passion. The author is clear she feels romantic love is dangerous by saying that when the hormones die off the illusion of our partner, an illusion that we have created, will fall away leaving us disappointed. Clearly there is some wisdom in these words or we wouldn’t have a current 53% divorce rate. (Interesting side note the raw data for spousal murder is low and doesn’t impact this relationship termination statistic. One spouse killing the other totals about 700 a year. Only 70 of these are premeditated.)

 When I first read this Zen bit I struggled with how the author phrased her stance regarding love. She almost said that love does not exist. But I don’t think that is what she meant. My best guess is that she is saying real love is possible but it has to be something based in a genuineness and not in some imperfect idealization of others. You know we don’t fill the holes in who we are by patching the empty spaces with the good qualities we attribute to others. What love is requires awareness, acceptance, understanding and knowledge of self.

 If I don’t’ know me how can I love you? I think that is it.
.

Day 37 of 365 (Mental Space)

I am running toward the sea, or toward the mountains, or toward the prairies, or toward the north. Where I am running really doesn’t matter all that much does it?  The running is what matters.

No, I am not going to walk out my front door having doused the house in gasoline, dropping a match and walking down the street and take a bus as a fiery orange glow warms the winter in my neighborhood.  Not my style.  Not what I mean by running either.  

 I am mentally running to places I have been, to places I want to hold onto with my all my heart.

Running away, not really I am running toward things that will fade if I do not note them so very soon.

When my brother passed away a whole wealth of memories vanished from this sphere, memories in which I played a bit role.  I realized then I had to keep writing down things that made a difference in who I have become.  Someday my kids will want to know. Can’t you hear the questions already about why was Dad always so weird regarding that? If using the long stepping legs of my mind I run back to those places where my life on a dime and changed my very being and if I observe it and get it down on paper they will know why Dad was so weird.

It is for this reason I come seeking a space to write.  Yup only me and my monster know what really motivates my very being.

Day 36 of 365 (Oppression)

I have lingered too many times on my thoughts of how oppressive this winter seems. I shall stop. However I came upon a poen that kind of made sense to me in my February state of mind.

Winter's Chill

Winter arrived no warning
snow covered the ground like a weightless blanket

the air was brisk sweeping across my face
 chilling to my spleen

 you touched me
 I was warm again. 

winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter winter

 Heather Burns

Day 35 of 365 (The Conundrum of Technology)

Up until now I have not used e-reading devices to enjoy novels. My approach may change. Lately I have noticed how empty my life is without daily reading of writing that is unrelated to work.

Two things awakened my mind to this.

First the morning paper was mis-delivered to my door the other day. Seeing news first thing in the morning in print form felt good. I enjoyed reading the flesh and blood print copy.

Second as I have detailed a friend had insisted I read Stoner by John Williams. It was wonderful. That sent me nosing about on the Amazon site. At first I started to look for the hard copy of Augustus by Mr. Williams. He won the National Book Award for it. Augustus seems not exist in print. It seems to be only available as an e-edition. So I continued on searching for something else to read. I like the feel of a bound volume in my hands.

Eventually I found a book that looked interesting. It is called The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel by Helen Wecker. Amazon has a heroin dealer like feature that lets you read the first chapter of the book online. Having consumed that taste I want to read this particular book. However I really don’t want to pay the price for a “new” book”. On the other hand the waiting list is too long at the public library. For a mere $9.99 I can get the e-book edition and I gather read it on my mobile or my laptop.

Ugh, while I prefer the feel of paper on my hand if this gets me reading so be it. Maybe tonight I will move into this realm.

Trust me I am not a technophobe. I like toys like iphones and digital communications. However that is something about the feel and smell of paper that is just like a communion with knowledge. I don’t know, maybe this is an old guy thing. Kids having grown up in the digital decade may not have the same sense of things.

 Life is change, how it differs from the rocks.

Day 47 of 365 (Why Are We So Afraid?)

February 17, 2014 is a holiday for government workers, President’s Day.  Today celebrates both George Washington’s Birthday under the Gregorian calendar and also Abraham Lincoln’s.  Great being both and deserving of remembrance. The only reason I mention the calendar bit is that I remember in a book I read as a youth that George Washington (and others) had to decide which date they would celebrate their birthdays.  Would they use the old calendar birthdate or the new? The British Empire did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752 at which time Washington was 20 years of age and he had to make a choice.

A bizarre factoid, if anything involving Alaska can be said to be weird, odd or unexpected, Alaska did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1867.  According to Wikipedia, “In Alaska, the change took place when Friday, 6 October 1867, was followed again the next day by a Friday, only this time it was 18 October 1867.  The shift in calendars for our northern most state only occurred after the US purchase of Alaska from Russia. The Tsar-run state still on the Julian calendar. Instead of 12 days, only 11 were skipped, and the day of the week was repeated on successive days, because the International Date Line (although not known by that name in 1867) was shifted from Alaska's eastern to western boundary along with the change to the Gregorian calendar,”

Because it is a holiday I am at home.  At home does not mean I am not working.  I puttered about the living room this morning slicing my toe open on the couch.  I started a pot of black bean soup.  I am reading cases.  At home also means I can work up a blog post.

In one of the first packets I have read I am looking at the fate of a young woman who by age 25 had lost her driving privileges.  Also due to alcohol she had been hospitalized twice.  Her first ER visit was for alcohol poisoning, i.e. passing out at a part and being unresponsive.  Her second stint in the land of wellness followed her fall down a flight of stairs. The young lady’s injuries from that required facial reconstruction.  Amazingly to my mind she did not stop using alcohol after either of these incidents.  It took a dire family event to get her to commit to immersion into recovery with support groups and monthly one on one counseling.

The Evaluation says that the Petitioner’s trigger was anxiety.  The diagnosis, in addition to alcohol dependence (and trust me her pattern indicated dependence), is that of an extreme anxiety disorder. Like so many others I see she suffers from extreme worry about health, love, money, making correct decisions, and many other things, even when there is little or no reason to worry about them.

She is not alone.  

 How any people suffer from this?  According to NIMH just under 20% of American’s 18 and older suffer from an anxiety disorder.  Of five people sitting on a bus, one is fretting without reason.  Someone is agonizing without an objective, empirical basis to do so.

Some major faiths don’t buy into the point of worrying.  Jesus wasn’t on board with it.  Matthew 6 (NIRV) says:

 “I tell you, do not worry. Don’t worry about your life and what you will eat or drink. And don’t worry about your body and what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than eating? Aren’t there more important things for the body than clothes? “Look at the birds of the air. They don’t plant or gather crops. They don’t put away crops in storerooms. But your Father who is in heaven feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? “Can you add even one hour to your life by worrying? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the wild flowers grow. They don’t work or make clothing. But here is what I tell you. Not even Solomon in all of his glory was dressed like one of those flowers. “If that is how God dresses the wild grass, won’t he dress you even better? After all, the grass is here only today. Tomorrow it is thrown into the fire. Your faith is so small! “So don’t worry. Don’t say, ‘What will we eat?’ Or, ‘What will we drink?’ Or, ‘What will we wear?’ People who are ungodly run after all of those things. Your Father who is in heaven knows that you need them. “But put God’s kingdom first. Do what he wants you to do. Then all of those things will also be given to you. “So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Zen masters offer the proverb, 

““If the problem has a solution, worrying is pointless, in the end the problem will be solved. If the problem has no solution, there is no reason to worry, because it can’t be solved.” 

I worry a great deal myself but my mental health issue is not generalized anxiety.  Worry and anxiety never caused me to drink I don’t think.  At least not once I got out of high school.  In high school I clearly self-medicated but it was the 1970s and who didn’t? The drinking age was 18. But my choice to intoxicate myself on a daily basis was tied more to depression than worry.  I didn’t have fear I had a sense of exclusion and it festered.  Once I left for college that changed and my alcohol use dropped.

I am empathetic toward anxiety induced behaviors and I always hope the person is getting better. 

 Still I am always listening for the hidden clues.  Some are subtle and some are bold.  Either way these things suggest that troubling stuff is still being pushed back into dark corners only to re-emerge when there is no court or legal entity acting in oversight.  The other day I had a gentleman come in and ask for privileges.  He however had suffered a loss of someone near to him.  The death had been 18 months before and nothing in the paperwork implied he had any culpability.  

When I asked if the death had been unexpected he went into tears and we could not proceed.  Yes this kind of grief is not clinically the same as generalized anxiety.  However it is a grand demonstration of the kind of things that leave questions in my mind as to what is really going on inside of a people.  When a person tells me they can face the challenges of interpersonal contact but then draws away from their attorney and rocks back away in their chair when a question is asked of them, I have to decide is it my hearing room or is it the anxiety causing the behavior.

But this is just telling you I am aware of the widespread nature of anxiety. It doesn’t provide an answer to the question why are we so afraid.  I can kind of see the point of the Buddhist’ maxim.  Either there is a solution or there isn’t.  If there is not then what can we do?