Fairy Tales for the Afterlife

"The emotions generated from writing on hard, sad topics are real and need tending to. I have multiple strategies for addressing them—stepping away from the computer, reaching out to friends and family, going for a run, focusing on positive things, reading poetry, finding music that feels right in the moment, turning to a ritual such as making a pot of homemade chai, reminding myself that what I feel is but a tiny fraction of the pain felt by the person who experienced it firsthand." 

Carole McGranahan, "Writing About Bad, Sad, Hard Things"

The internet brings a world of hurt into our computers and homes: Bombs at the Boston Marathon destroy lives and limbs, an explosion at a West Texas fertilizer factory wreaks havoc, Buddhist nationalists slaughter Muslims in Myanmar, a tall building housing garment workers collapses in Bangladesh, Syrians and Iraqis continue to kill each other in their civil wars, fire destroys a refugee camp on the border of Thailand, Israeli soldiers shoot at Palestinian children throwing stones at them, drones decimate wedding parties in Pakistan and Afghanistan, landmines in Southeast Asia continue to claim victims decades after the wars ended, girls are raped in America and India and some commit suicide because of bullying and shame, disturbed gunmen enter schools and movie theaters to shoot and kill the innocent indiscriminately, prisoners are tortured and held for years without charge or trial, harmful chemicals pollute water and food, immigrants suffer looking for a better life while poverty and economic inequality strangle the future of the young.

What's a Buddha to do but cry?  Is it any wonder that most religions offer consolation only in the afterlife?

Suffering -- the common translation of dukkha in the Pali lexicon -- is nothing new.  The dangerous elements of nature and contagious disease cut short the lifetimes of our ancestors.  Elites have always been blind to the suffering of the poor.  But when a young nobleman in South Asia became aware of the suffering caused by birth, sickness, aging and death, he left his wife and child at home and set out as a pilgrim in search of a solution to the problem of suffering.  According to tradition, he realized the answer, awakened to it and became The Buddha, while meditating overnight under a Bo tree.  His first "noble" truth is that the human situation is characterized by suffering; it's inevitable.  While the three other noble truths of his teaching point toward a "right" way to live in the world, according to the Buddhist tradition, suffering will only cease when one has transcended the cycle of death and rebirth.

Buddhism, like Christianity, is an otherworldly religion which promises salvation or enlightenment in the afterlife.  This can have the effect of encouraging adherents to devalue this particular life that we are living while working towards their reward after death.  The ethical principles that each religion promotes may be beneficial to other humans now, but the real test of their worth comes later. That Buddhism teaches rebirth and Christianity does not, is only a stylistic difference.

The Buddha renounced his birthright, family and fortune to become a wandering monk.  After enlightenment, he settled down to form a sangha of disciples, and for a long time he taught the dhamma on the cessation of suffering.  His example of renunciation has been imitated by countless seekers for 2,500 years. Buddhist monks and nuns reject normal human life in order to devote themselves full-time to achieving the same realization as their founder and thereby transcend the wheel of rebirth.  This life of suffering is only a means to the desired end of all life.   Even lay Buddhists, admitting that their path is insufficient, accept that their goal of devotion is limited to an auspicious rebirth.

Buddhists are undoubtedly moved by the contemporary world of hurt described in the first paragraph. This arises from compassion for the suffering of others that a recognition of our own suffering can bring.  Sickness and death are shared by all.  The development of Engaged Buddhism, a this-worldly movement started by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hahn and Sulak Siviraksa, seeks to help others through Right Action in the world today.  But Buddhism as a whole finds it difficult to avoid the charge of escapism.  This life, and often this body, is considered an impediment to true knowledge, never to be valued in and for itself.

There are many forms of escapism, and today's social networks can be a means to avoid engagement with life.  They inform, but do they motivate us to help beyond signing an online petition or making a donation to a good cause?  Many of us feel overloaded by the misery that arrives in our inbox or on our Facebook wall.  Democracy was predicated on an informed electorate and it's never been easier to find out what's happening in the world if we can weed out the rumors, lies, conspiracies, half-baked theories and the spam.  I'm not arguing against internet and cell-phone technology for keeping us from face-to-face interactions.  A call, email or message is a connection even if flesh-and-blood are not merged.  The problem is that simply knowing about suffering is not enough for us to engage with the world.  We confuse "knowing" with "doing," just as spiritual pilgrims may confusing "not-doing" with "knowing."

Dealing with the emotions that come with our awareness of suffering is important, as the writer I quote at the beginning points out, but it is not a substitute for dealing with the issues that cause suffering.  We must always see that our own response is "a tiny fraction of the pain felt by the person who experienced it firsthand."  A good cry, listening to music, a pot of tea, deep breaths, and even meditation, are all ways to get a grip, a first step to maintain our equilibrium.  As evidence accumulates that the United States is in the control of banks and corporations more concerned with profits than people, many look for resistance by the underprivileged and excluded that finally comes only in the form of toothless demonstrations and petitions that are ignored by the powerful.  Congress rejects simplified gun control even though an overwhelmingly majority of the electorate supports it.  Why is America, the foremost state terrorist in the world today, still seen as a democratic nation?

I went to the memorial service this week for an American who died of natural causes at the age of 39, leaving his elderly mother alone in Bangkok.  We remembered the good things about his life.  Later, his mother confided in me that she had to pay bribes in order to have him buried, and some of the money went to a church. This is suffering.  I have no solution for it, but I would not counsel the mother to await her reward in heaven, or in a better rebirth.

The Whiteboard Jungle

School's out for summer at Mahachularajavidyalaya Buddhist University (these are the hot months in Thailand) and I've been reading final exams and reviewing homework assignments, attendance, and oral and midterm exam marks, to determine what grades my students will receive for the second semester of the 2555-2556 (Buddhist dates) school year.

Teaching monks and the occasional lay woman or man in Thailand is nothing like the terrifying experience Glenn Ford had when he taught juvenile delinquents in the classic 1955 film, "Blackboard Jungle" (with its "Rock Around the Clock" soundtrack by Bill Haley that revolutionize pop music in America).  And the blackboard is now a thing of the past.  The only problem with the whiteboards at the two MCU facilities where I've taught is that they're hard to clean and the marking pens frequently run dry.  I find my students listen better if instructed in the spirit of sanuk (Thai for playfulness), hence my exam instructions above.

This has been a difficult semester.  I'm faced with the prospect of giving F's to six students.  That's five more than I've failed in five years of teaching at MCU.  The problem started when the Foreign Language Department decided last year to give students the option of studying in a bilingual or an English medium class. I have been the only native speaking teacher of English at MCU (another was added this term), but several Thai teachers, and one Filippino, can teach these English majors using English rather than Thai (and Thai is the native language of only a little over half of the English majors; the foreign students come to Bangkok from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam and China).  I have been asked to teach both classes even though my Thai is rather limited.  Most of the 3rd year students this term choose the English medium class -- 18 this semester compared to 13 in the bilingual medium class.  It soon became apparent last November that the bilingual class was the worst I'd ever taught, and it's not because they are less proficient in English than the other class.

Before I get critical, let me just say that I love my students.  This job that I stumbled into five years ago is the most rewarding work I've done in my life.  I teach mainly undergraduates but I've also taught several different classes in a weekend linguistics MA program, and I've been a visiting lecturer in other graduate majors.  Most of my students are intensely interested in learning English and I'm the first native speaker they've ever studied with.  They're eager to absorb everything about the language and the cultures which sustain it.  All of them come from poor rural families and becoming a monk is the only way they can afford a university education.  And some of them are brilliant and could qualify to enter a top Western university, were it not for the economic barrier both of travel and tuition.  At most they might get a graduate degree in India where linguistics is a popular major for foreign students.

Mahachula is the largest of two Buddhist universities in Thailand (Mahamakut is the other) with campuses throughout the country. The main headquarters now is in Wangnoi, an industrial area near Ayutthaya, with an enormous education plant that grows larger by the day (construction never stops).  I'm not sure how many students there are but easily over 10,000 at this facility alone.  The main faculties are Humanities (mine), Education, Buddhist Studies and Sociology, and there is an International program taught in English. I began my career at Wat Srisudaram in Bangkhunnon across the river from Bangkok and weekend graduate seminars continue to be held there.  Some graduate classes I believe also take place at Wat Mahathat near the Grand Palace, the original location when the school was founded by King Chulalongkorn in the 19th century.

With only a smattering of Thai, there is much that I miss and more that I probably misunderstand.  I can carry on a conversation with only a couple of my fellow teachers.  I've learned that in the Thai educational culture, students are almost never failed.  Allowances are made, repeatedly.  Most of the monks live at temples around the city and have duties to perform there.  Their class load is heavy, up to seven a week during the 16-week term.  Even in a single class the range of proficiency is enormous.  Most students know the alphabet, basic grammar rules and have a decent vocabulary, but they've had little opportunity to speak, lack confidence and are extremely shy.  I saw my task as getting them to speak and write every week, making the experience enjoyable (sanuk) and increasing their self-confidence.

I fell into the job during my first year as an expat when Phra Pandit, the British monk, asked what I planned to do in my retirement.  Don't know, I dumbly answered.  He set up a talk for me to the student English Club at Wat Sri (when this photo was taken) and afterwards I was asked to teach "Listening and Speaking English," an offer that included a work permit and visa.  Who could say no? Having never taught English before, I bought a Headways textbook, published by Oxford, and used it as a guide for my lesson plans.  The facilities were primitive, the sound lab of tapes was not functioning, overhead fans rather than air conditioning, but snacks and lunch were provided by my students.  I wore a dress shirt and tie, never my favorite attire, to give me some legitimacy, and plunged in.

Thailand spends more of its budget for education than it does on the military, rare among nations.  As a member of ASEAN, where English is the lingua franca among members, Thailand has the distinction of having the lowest English proficiency of the ten nations.  Even Cambodians and Vietnamese speak more and better English, according to studies.  Yet, Bangkok is full of international schools, private English schools and the government declared 2012 as the year of speaking English when all schools were asked to conduct at least one day in English.  Many believe the money for education is syphoned off by corruption; I don't know.  I do know that MCU Wangnoi has a marvelous sound lab for language study, but it has been "broken" since it was installed and the door locked.  No one can explain why.  Someone said that all universities are required to have a sound lab in order to be accredited, but they don't have to work after the inspectors leave.  The biggest problem my students have with English is poor pronunciation, and this is because they don't get enough practice (with correction) speaking.  The sound lab would be an enormous help.

Which brings me to my current dilemma: Should I fail a half dozen students?  Although three Thai teachers agreed with me that the bilingual media class was the worst ever, one of them has already capitulated and given passing grades of D or I for incomplete work.  I'll meet tomorrow with the teacher who alternated classes with me on Thursdays and we'll make some decisions.  She even failed a few students last semester.  Why shouldn't they pass?  Most of the six were frequently absent from class, turned in homework late or not at all, copied from the internet (despite my lecture on plagiarism and ease of discovering their crimes), did poorly on the exams, and scored less than half of the 100 points I give for the semester.  None of the six showed the slightest interest to me in learning English.  I'm not sure what happens if I fail them.  Will they return like a bad penny next term?

I don't know how long I'll continue to teach.  The retirement age for permanent teachers in Thailand is 60, and I'm way over that.  I've been given a contract yearly as a special lecturer which apparently sneaks me in under the wire.  My renewal date is May 31 and it's always a bit of a hassle to gather the appropriate documents and signatures.  As far as I know, only three other teachers get them from MCU.  For reasons I don't quite understand, I will no longer be teaching graduate students in linguistics next term, probably because there are only seven in the program and it's supposed to be self-supporting.  Most of the students transferred to an MA program in English and I was not asked to teach for it.  The other farang, hired last year, a Canadian I believe, took what I thought was my place.  Once the work ends I'll be disappointed.  But, as Buddhists know, nothing lasts forever.  And I'll be forever grateful that I got to teach and to know all the many wonderful students I've had here in Thailand.

Defriending My Kids

This is a post I do not want to write, but I can no longer avoid it because the alienation I feel from two of my children is eating a hole in my heart. Only in writing about it can I possibly make sense of it.

Why trumpet my failings as a parent using a popular yet much criticised social network?  I can already hear the jeers from those naysayers who believe social networks and the virtual reality of the internet is either a passing fad or a serious threat to the capability of humans for interacting with their "real" environment.

Social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson calls this "digital dualism," and argues in a provocative internet post, "The IRL Fetish," that, "It is wrong to say 'IRL' to mean offline: Facebook is real life." Jurgenson argues that,

our lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is, we live in an augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. 

So my choice of using Facebook to declare my separation from the children who no longer acknowledge and respect me as their father is in keeping with this new understanding of "augmented reality."  My life today is infused with the digital reality of computers, tablets and smart phones which enhance my knowledge and appreciation of the tangible world around me.  I cannot tell the story of my life without recourse to these devices.

For now, I am unable to give complete details of the story of my separation from these two children.  Suffice it to say that I am responsible for the breakup of my marriage to their mother over 15 years ago.  By then our daughter was 20 and our son 15.  Until the end, we had been a happy family, the one others point to when arguing that marriages can succeed, the ideal couple with their beautiful and talented children.  In my first marriage I had been an absent and irresponsible father, and my two older sons suffered for my sins.  The youngest became an alcoholic and died from this disease several years ago.  The older became a successful workaholic who swore off having any children himself.  His mother and I were poor role models for him. But with my second family I took great pains to correct the deficiencies of my past.  I was there for my son and daughter, right up until I unwillingly moved out.

When my second wife asked me to leave our home, the children took her side. Although my daughter was then on her own, she maintained a room there where her brother was living.  Not long after I moved out, she accused me of wanting to take the house away from her mother.  That was never my plan.  We had purchased the house with a large downpayment from an inheritance she received, financed it with my credit, and as a condition of the divorce I sold her my share for half the increased value of the property.  She had a new boyfriend within two months of my leaving and they were married a year after the divorce was final.

The closest relationship my ex-wife had experienced had been with her mother who had died of cancer when our daughter was only a year old.  She set about recreating this closeness with her own daughter.  Often I felt like the intruder.  My father had been a disciplinarian and I saw my role in the family like his, correcting mistakes and offering guidance.  My daughter, with whom I had felt close until she entered puberty, strongly resisted any critical suggestions I made that she clean her room, or the kitchen after a cooking expedition.  My wife, who believed that children should only be loved and then allowed to do whatever they wished, became an adversary, supporting any resistance to my fathering techniques.  I felt increasingly marginalized in the family.  During much of their childhood I was studying at the university and I tried to share my love of learning with my daughter and son. But they just saw it as another attempt to discipline them so they would get better grades in school.

I thought my son seemed neglected by his mother who devoted greater effort to cementing the idealistic bond with her daughter.  I encouraged his participation in T-ball and soccer and enthusiastically attended all his games.  But he seemed as disinterested in sport as I had been as a child.  Any interest shown in music on the part of my children was a delight and I did my best to fan the flames.  Our daughter has an incredible voice and sang and acted in numerous community theater productions.  We performed together in "Fame" when I played the music teacher.  As an adult she's sung solo and with various singing groups.  In high school she decided to drop the double-barrelled name we'd give her and take the surname of her maternal grandmother.  That hurt me, but I remained silent. Our son showed a curiosity about hip hop and electronic music and I got him a synthesizer/sampler one Christmas that was the beginning of a long journey into his passion that last year culminated in several trips to Europe as the drummer for Hanni El Khateb.  He's a talented multi-instrumentalist and has recorded songs, beats and commercials.  Some day I hope my children will be able to see that I was at least partially responsible for their love of music.

What happened?  After the divorce I tried to stay in touch with my children and cultivate an intimate relationship with them, but there always seemed to be barriers in the way.  Our son moved to an apartment in San Francisco we helped him rent and embarked on a career in retail clothing with music on the side.  Our daughter was living the free and unfettered life of a California hippie, surrounded by friends with little visible means of support.  She painted faces at fairs with her mother's family business and cleaned dope in Humboldt which allowed her to travel to Brazil, Europe and Bali.  She sang and she designed clothes.  While I remained in California, within a short distance of either my son or daughter, it always seemed difficult to make a date or even to keep in touch.

When I was 23, my parents moved from California to North Carolina, and then to retirement in Florida, leaving me behind on my own.  When snail mail was in fashion, we exchanged cards and letters, and when I lived on the east coast I would occasionally visit.  I also tried to call on a regular basis.  They rarely called me and my father once said they didn't want to "intrude" on my life.  It was their feeling that it was the child's responsibility to stay in touch with the parent.  Once my mother called me by accident when she was trying to reach my brother and I realized that he had an entirely different relationship with them.  With this model in mind, I expected my children to make the first moves after we began living apart.  But it was not to be.  Their mother was an inveterate caller and would track them down daily by phone, while I waited for it to ring.  My son was explicit: it's the parent's responsibility to stay in touch with the child.

When I moved permanently to Thailand, I believed the augmented reality of the virtual world made it possible to easily keep in touch despite the distance.  Certainly that was true for a number of close friends back in California.  We used Facebook and email to exchange information.  Facebook made it possible for me to resurrect friendships from way back.  A couple of years ago my children came to see me in Bangkok.  My son paid his own way but his sister wanted a round-trip ticket from Bali where she was visiting.  I soon learned that one of her purposes was to get some cheap dental work done, and I felt a bit used.  She required her own room which I rented near by while my son stayed in my apartment.  I bought tickets for an excursion up the river to Ayutthaya but she declined.  On the last day at Koh Samed she went running over the rocks and broke her foot.  I put her on the plane with crutches.  Besides my children, a number of friends from California have come to visit.  I have a great time showing them around the city I've come to love and they respond with email and blog reports of their visit.

Which brings me to the conclusion and point of this post, the defriending of my kids.  Since their visit to Thailand, it's been increasingly difficult to learn about their lives.  Part of the reason for this blog was the hope that I could share my life with my kids as well as my friends and the few strangers that pass by.  Neither used Facebook much, and although I know they are articulate and can write at length, their emails in response to mine have been few and far between.  At one point I even asked their mother to mediate and keep me informed about their life.  When my son was touring with Hanni, I was able to see photos and videos and read reports online from others about his activities, and I proudly relayed information to my friends on Facebook.

Last September I wrote a long chatty email to my son about my life in Thailand.  His response was shattering.  He was very critical of my two-and-a-half year marriage to Nan and what he referred to as "my lifestyle," implying that living with a much younger woman was a perversion.  He said he would always be closer to his mother than to me.  And as for my constant requests for information, "The more impatient you are, the more repellant you become."  

He implied that his sister agreed with his condemnation of my lifestyle, but my problems with her went further.  Before I left for Thailand five and a half years ago, she asked me to co-sign a student loan for her.  I was only too happy to do so and asked few questions.  It was for a course of study at some New Age institution in California and I didn't even realize the amount until much later.  Her mother tellingly had refused.  All my requests for information about school were ignored.  Eventually I learned that she had used the $20,000 to live on and probably had not gone to any classes at all.  Then a couple of years ago she made some late payments and one of my credit cards cancelled its line of credit to amount owed, a threat to my financial future.  This happened twice.  I believe student loan companies can even attach my Social Security income.  Although she was quick to resume payments, she's never apologized for misleading me.  After my son's email, I defriended them both.

Finally, she sent me an email on Christmas in which she told me that my defriending had hurt her.  But this was prelude to the story of a psychic, "who had been incredibly accurate with some friends of mine," who told her that I had molested her as a child.  Previously, she had spoken of a dim recollection of being molested when she was four by a pre-school teacher in Connecticut, although her mother and I at the time never noticed anything unusual about her behavior.  Now she was imagining, with the help of a "psychic," that it was me who had abused her.  I wrote back and said my answer was no, I had never done that.  And I suggested she get some real psychological help for these false memories, for her misuse of my loan co-signature, for her inability to hold down a steady job, for rejecting my name, and for the depression she says has plagued her for years.  I should add that she has always been extremely popular with a wide international circle of friends.  But then, I don't really know her now, nor, it seems, her brother.

There is much about this tale that must remain unsaid.  I'm not yet ready for a complete autopsy of my life while still living it.  My past deeds have had some awful consequences. I remain in loose contact, through Facebook mainly, with my oldest son.  He once remarked that I didn't start visiting him regularly until the divorce, but that seems more explanation than reason for criticism.  We play Words for Friends online and he consistently beats me.  Those who know me and my family might remark that I am also estranged from my only sibling, a younger brother, although we remain Facebook friends.  He's a lawyer with a penchant for argumentation which disturbed me, and the fights we had after our mother's death made intimacy impossible.  The last time I heard from my first wife she asked for money for our son's cremation, and promised to send me something from his belongings to help remember him by.  It never came.  I defriended my second wife along with our kids when it seemed there was nothing more to say to her.  The breaking point was my children's non-acceptance of my marriage and my life today here in Thailand with Nan.  This great gift that I have received late in life has come with heavy consequences.

I hope I don't seem to be blaming my kids for their judgements of me.  They're old enough to make their own decisions.  The consequence of their non-acceptance of me, a culmination of what I feel is a long history of rejection, is that I must end this charade and move on with my life.  Defriending is the new way to accomplish this in the augmented digital reality in which most of us now live.

Sorry For Your Loss

Oh death, oh death 

Can't you spare me over till another year 

Trad., recorded by Kaleidoscope

In the last week, I've received several of the same messages on Facebook: "Sorry for your loss."  This is because I posted photo memorials for two of my long-time friends who died.  The word "loss" threw me.  It didn't seem appropriate.  Hearing of their deaths triggered a flood of memories, all of them good.  Neither death was unexpected. Ernie, my friend from high school, had lived in a wheel chair with ALS for over ten years. Gene, a fellow dissident Catholic, was nearing 90 and had entered a hospice.  This is how I responded on Facebook:

You know, at this time in my life, it feels like a series of celebrations rather than losses.  I've had such wonderful people in my life!

When you get to my age (73), death is a constant companion.  As the only animal that can anticipate its demise, life sometimes feels like a series of scenarios that all end badly.  One reason I enjoy the company of my fellow geriatrics is that we can joke about death without getting depressed. Of course tales of strange symptoms and visits to the doctor can quickly get boring.  Modern life is marked by the banishment of death to the basements of mortuaries and the silence of cemeteries.  We talk about the departed in hushes tones.  At least my friends in Santa Cruz had better ideas.  When Betsy died of breast cancer, they put her in a homemade coffin and took her to the beach where they propped her up facing the sea and surrounded her with music and dancing.

Ernie Smith was always big in size and heart. We met in high school were he was a football player and member of the "clubbies" while my friends and I were considered juvenile delinquents.  Three of us decided that they had the better-looking girls and converted to their side, but we did our best to corrupt them.  Easter Week in our senior year we rented a motel in Laguna Beach and partied for a week.  Big Ern looked 21 and bought our supplies at a nearby liquor store.  He got a football scholarship to Eastern Washington University but lost it when he put his arm through a glass window at the gas station where he worked.  My dad, who loved Ernie like a son, visited him in the hospital and took him a jar of chocolate-covered grasshoppers.  The day nurse put them in the refrigerator and when the night nurse found them she screamed and dropped them on the floor.  Ernie married his nurse, but I'm not sure which one it was.  He always assumed all his friends shared his enthusiasms and dragged me to a barbershop singing concert but I ended up appreciating the harmonies.  We shared a love for 50's rhythm and blues, and the bawdy songs of Oscar Brand. Ernie raised his two kids in Los Banos and Salinas selling chemicals to the farmers, sang in prize-winning barbershop quartets, was a scout leader, helped found Monterey Dixieland which has an annual festival that attracts huge crowds, and was an usher in his Presbyterian Church.  He came to see me at my lowest point, gave comfort, and spoke of a problem with his muscles that turned out to be ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease).  Ever positive, he got the best wheel chair for his 200-plus body and outfitted a van he could drive.  He took part in several clinical studies and was an organizer and fundraiser for the local ALS support chapter.  And he outlived two wives.  I last saw Ernie two years ago when this picture was taken. We met at a coffee shop in Santa Cruz and he presented me with a generous wedding present that he and our close friend Mark (who died last year) had put together for Nan and I.  You can read more about Big Ern here.  I'm sorry that we didn't get together more regularly on Skype and I shall miss his living presence at the other end of email and Facebook, but I'm very grateful to have known him.

Gene Donatelli was a member of a men's group our friend Ted asked me to join, and for several years a half-dozen or so of us each month gathered at one of our homes to share a potluck and talk about our lives. Most of us were dissident Catholics with various grievances against the hierarchy that seemed determined to thwart our spiritual aspirations.  I was a newcomer, a Thomas Merton convert who thought he could ignore basic Catholic dogma out of a love for the social justice work of liberation theology in Latin America.  Gene on the other hand was an archetypal Catholic.  He and Mary had raised eight children in the church, participated in all the auxiliary movements and had priests as good friends.  But when Mary began to drift away with Alzheimer's, Gene grew bitter.  Both stopped going to mass.  I think he was basically mad at God and the church took the brunt of his anger over losing Mary. When I lived in Santa Cruz, Gene's house was nearby and I would often ride my bike up to have coffee with him in the morning and discuss the news headlines while looking out at his bounteous garden.  Mary could still remember me then.  All of the men's group attended his 80th birthday party which was a joyous celebration of multiple generations.  I'll still remember being with Gene that day.  We visited for the last time two years ago and Mary could no longer remember me (she died last year).  He never got the hang of the digital devices and I had to rely on friends to give me his news.  Gene had one cancer or the other (Does it matter?  They all do the dirty work.) and his kids put him in a hospice where he died last week.  I remember that Gene always made the best cookies when our meetings were held at his house.  He had a warm and gentle soul. I will never forget out times together, Gene.

When I was younger, death gave me the creeps.  That was before the death of my best friend Peter from prostate cancer in 2004 (seen here with his favorite pot plant).  Mostly we try to ignore the finality of it.  A high school friend died in a skiing accident in the socks that I'd loaned him for the trip.  My maternal grandfather slid into senility and died in a "home."  My favorite uncle Ted, gay twin of my father, suffered from emphysema and took an overdose of pills.  Then there was Allen who worked at my university.  We shared a love for the banjo music of Derroll Adams (he was the only other person I knew who had met him), and had other friends in common.  First he had a heart attack, then he was diagnosed with liver cancer.  Two days before he died, a friend and I went to visit him.  His skin was the color of ash, and he talked hopefully of alternative healing remedies.  Peter's death was different.  We both had prostate cancer but his was much more advanced.  Still, he lasted over five years, had a big party when he retired as general manager of KUSP, and we watched the Superbowl together before I left for my first trip to India.  When I returned, he was in a hospital bed in the living room and could no longer talk.  I became an overnight care-giver, gave him massages and changed his diaper.  A week later he was dead, his wife and my ex-wife at his side.  When I got to the house I went straight to the cold body and kissed him (Peter, a semi-closeted bisexual, loved kissing his male friends on the lips).  His skin was hard.  Peter had left the room, and family and friends gathered to honor his memory.  It was then that I realized my fear of death had also fled.

Since then, people close to me have died, not a few, although I don't keep a tally.  Both my father and mother left this world before Peter.  Dad died after a couple of heart attacks and late-onset emphysema in 1992 and Mom slipped away after she broke her hip ten years later. My tears for both were brief, which I long saw as a personal failing on my part.  I think now that I was just prepared for them to go.  Life has to end some time.  Why not now.  With my son Luke, it was different.  He was only 42, but his life had been severely damaged by an addiction to booze and pills.  It destroyed a promising career as a manager of location shooting for TV commercials, and it drove him from home and friends in California to a small room in Boston where he tried and failed to outrun his demons.  I sat by his side in several hospitals fearing he would not survive, and I told him of the pain I felt watching him commit suicide in slow motion.  When he was sober, Luke and I were extremely close.  Our failings generally kept us from judging each other.  But one morning he failed to wake up in his girlfriend's bed.  I sent his mother $1,000 as my share of cremation costs.  She promised to send me something from his cluttered apartment to help me remember him, but the momento never came.  His ashes have never been distributed though he was a lover of the sea.  I have not finished grieving, and maybe never will.

I've tried to believe in something other for years, but it's never worked.  I don't think anything of Luke or Peter, or now Ernie and Gene, survived the decay of their bodies.  We are our bodies.  I don't believe in the existence of any disembodied entities, either gods or ghosts.  Which makes it difficult for me to partake of the Thai world view which imagines invisible forces, for good and ill, everywhere.  I want to understand that the language we use to talk about the meaning of death and the importance of our relations with the dead has some intrinsic usefulness.  We know by the artifacts found that humans have believed from the beginning that death is not the end of the individual, that something survives.  For me this can only mean that our cherished dead live on in our memories, and perhaps in words, photos and videos (now with the internet, nothing is ever erased).

Jerry tells me that when someone dies a violent death, say in a motorcycle accident, the people in his Khmer village in Surin sit with the body for a week to make sure the soul leaves and does not stick around to trouble villagers.  Lately they've taken to putting up red shirts on hangers in the trees around their houses to encourage evil spirits to stay away.  No one knows where that custom began but it's fairly new.  Thai spirituality is largely a transaction with the unseen, using candles, flowers and incense to propitiate good spirits and encourage bad ones to stay away.  I can't imagine what it's like to think these thoughts or hold these beliefs.  For me, the dead are dead, and I cannot stay in contact.  However, Ernie's Facebook page is still up (actually, he has two for unknown reasons), and Luke's remained until I finally persuaded the authorities that he was gone. While I cannot shed my rationalist, materialist skin, I do think that our inability to live in an enchanted world, as do the Thais and most non-western peoples, leaves us diminished and, well, thirsty.

Maybe the poets can tell us how to leave the prisons of our bodies and our minds.  I'll leave the last world to Dylan Thomas.
 

Stormy Weather

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather

I've been preoccupied with the weather lately, enough for others to comment on it.  Since the first of the year the sky over Bangkok has been hazy, morning, noon and night.  I know this because I live on the 9th floor and have a fabulous view of the city over the Chao Phraya River.  I rise before dawn each day and when the light is dramatic I take a photo to share on Facebook.  For weeks the photos have been the same: dim sun, limited visibility.  It doesn't hurt when I breathe so it isn't smog like the painful air I grew up inhaling around Los Angeles.  There is no smell of smoke so it's not the burning of fallow agricultural fields in the hinterlands.  But it also doesn't feel moist like the fog of London Ella used to sing about.  

A week ago we went to Koh Samed, our gateway destination of choice, for a long weekend before Nan begins her new job.  This is the peak season -- January-February -- for Thai tourism because it's our winter and it rarely rains.  Even when it does, Koh Samed, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand a short distance from the Rayong coast, is rumored to have the driest weather around.  But early in the morning of our first full day we could hear heavy rain beating on the zinc roofs around our hotel, accompanied by thunder and high winds that did a bit of damage to areas close to the beach, knocking over signs and umbrellas.  There is nothing sadder than a beach in the rain full of disappointed sun-seekers.

Of course we made the best of it.  It only rained two different days in the early mornings and the rest of the time the sky was merely overcast.  Restaurants were still set up on the sand in the evening despite a few sprinkles and diners gorged themselves on fresh sea food while drinking liters of beer, puffing on Turkish pipes and watch the fire shows.  Despite the inclement weather, Sai Kaew beach was full of activity: kids playing in the unusually turbulent surf, parasailers floating in the sky, jet skis leaping over the waves, banana boats pulling loads of riders, and dozens of speed boats coming and going, picking up and disgorging passengers for the dozens of beach-front hotels.  

The rain even caused a small nam tuum, the Thai expression for the flooding that so troubled Bangkok at the end of 2011.  A couple of side alleys off the tiny main business district had an excess of water which was slowly removed by a noisy pump.  Umbrellas and plastic rain gear suddenly sprouted in a place where sun more than any of the other elements is worshipped.  Since our last visit almost a year ago, construction has exploded.  We sat in a new two-storey restaurant-bar called The Funky Monkey, drinking cocktails and gazing at the tourists walking down the small street between two 7-11 stores facing each other.  Prices drop a short distance from the beach, with a massage costing 250 baht compared to the 350 charged on the sand.  We dined at a no-frills restaurant on a huge plate of barbecued shrimp.

Weather is one of the safer topics; everyone has an opinion.  Funny how when I complain about it, some suggest I move elsewhere as if weather is the sole draw for where I live or visit.  Certainly the warmth of the sun was one of the considerations when I decided to move permanently to Thailand.  Although I've had memorable experiences in the snow, being cold is not one of them.  Nan delighted in the freezing temperatures and falling snow in Seoul but I felt fat in the many layers of clothing that kept me just warm enough not to suffer excessively.  I preferred standing on the warm floors and sitting on the warm toilet seats to lingering outside during our two all-day excursions when we visited in December.

Weather affects our moods, and vice versa.  I love a good storm and the excuse to curl up on the couch with my digital entertainment.  Day after day of murky weather is a drag.  Huddling on a beach chair while my lady plays in dangerously frothy waves is also not much fun.  I also know that when the skies open and the sun shines benignly down I will quickly relegate the weather to a backdrop.  It is only when it frustrates our intentions that weather becomes a hot topic of conversation.  And it is when the dark nemesis of the psyche hovers motionless overhead that weather becomes a major player in our drama.

I've written at length about the difficulty for me of becoming comfortable with uncertainty.  Change is in the air.  My university continues to pay its part-time teachers erratically which makes  taking care of bills and planning the future a challenge.  I'm not even sure I will be rehired to teach next term which would mean the loss of a work permit and the necessity of the visa boogie to maintain residency.  After several years as a student, Nan has gone to work which means we'll spend considerably less time together.  She's excited and I'm pleased for her but will miss our lazy days together.  My body sends unwanted singles for attention that I ignore at my peril.  Yesterday it was a trip to the hospital to have a recurring eye infection examined.  I know all of this is just the stuff of life -- MY life -- and as Nan repeatedly advises, I should not think so much.  But it's hard to abandon old habits.  When stormy weather arises, inside or outside, I yearn to be able to say with King Lear: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!  Rage!  Blow"

Being Ill

For most people, getting sick is no big deal, a minor inconvenience.  But when you get to my age, every sniffle, wheeze, intestinal pain or unexpected ache is interrogated like tea leaves for signs of the end times.

My father was famous in our family for refusing to admit it when he was sick.  Nothing put him in bed, neither cold nor flu, or even a bad hangover.  Then in his 70's he had two heart attacks in quick succession.  Thereafter, the word of the doctor was law.  He surrounded himself with medication and measured the doses religiously.  Late onset asthma and emphysema required oxygen tanks in the house, but he was too embarrassed to resume his daily walks at the mall with his buddies carrying his tank behind him.  He lived until he was 83, a grand old age, but his final years were lived in a medicalized haze.

Life, of course, is terminal; there are no guarantees.  When all goes well under the sheltering tree of good health, we can ignore this simple truth.  The obliviousness of the young to their impending doom, however, is a red flag to elders who are obsessed with vital signs, insurance claims and doctor appointments. The generation gap is never so large as when it divides those youth who are more obsessed with body image than with the body's pains from the geriatric set on the banks of the River Styx awaiting their demise.

Nan has had a cough for weeks and refused all offers of medication. When we flew back home from our trip to Korea, my head filled up like a balloon with mucous and I could barely breathe.  So I immediately sought remedies in the bags of pills we keep in a bathroom drawer.  My sinuses were screaming and pain spread under one cheekbone.  A trip to the emergency room at the hospital up the street confirmed my diagnosis and I got an antibiotic for the infection along with a decongestant, and medicine I've only found in Thailand, Mucosolvan, to clean out the airways.

My worst fear is not being able to breathe.  I recall bending over in our North Carolina home when I was seven, struggling for every breath.  The asthma attacks began when we moved south from Ohio. They took me to the hospital where I was put in an oxygen tent and given a shot of adrenaline to kickstart the faulty fight-or-flight response back into normal action. I was given a back scratch test to determine allergies and found I was sensitive to everything, particularly milk, tobacco and cat hair.  At Duke Hospital in Durham I was a guinea pig for a new treatment that never worked.  Eventually various prescribed epinephrine sprays kept the attacks in check.

My brother is a canary in the mine of disease and fatal conditions.  He has undergone a multitude of tests, at considerable expense, for all of the recently discovered illnesses, and learned he has not a few of them.  The internet has opened up a treasure trove for those ailing mysteriously and has enabled many to find symptoms that fit and a diagnosis that brings comfort in a world out to kill its population off.  My son, not yet fifty, considers my medical problems as early warning signs delivered by bad genes and imagines the dire consequences of not falling far from the tree.

When I came to Thailand five years ago, I abandoned the Statin drugs that presumably had kept my cholesterol in check and stopped using the corticosteroid spray I was told to inhale daily to prevent asthma attacks.  And I resolved to no longer monitor my PSA level to see if the prostrate cancer I'd lived with for six years was spreading.  With the image of my father's declining years in mind, I did not want to constantly watch for signs of decay.  Old people discussing their illnesses are exceedingly boring.

My reluctance to get periodic checkups was mystifying to friends.  One of my closest, who has had several heart attacks and a pacemaker installed, shook his head at my stubbornness.  Medical care in Thailand is approximately half that back in the states, but it is something I consider a needless luxury on my limited retirement income.  Aging skin is prone to all manner of strange growths, but I no longer get a regular skin scan to detect horrors like melanoma, which killed my friend Corb.  My hearing sucks, my eyesight is failing, a degenerative knee hurts when I walk, and I need a tooth pulled, but most of me works just fine so I put off all possible bodily renovations and reconstructions.  If life is ultimately fatal, why try to postpone the inevitable?

Illness comes in many flavors.  On the one hand, my head feels as if it's filled with cotton, raspy throat cords have lowered my voice an octave, and my coughing resembles the crackling roar of an avalanche.  On the other, my muscle tone has diminished considerably, stairs are a constant challenge, getting up in the morning requires unimaginable fortitude, and I spend much meditative time at the toilet because of an enlarged prostate.  Germs and viruses, along with accidental injuries, can make life miserable for everyone, but the debilitation of aging solely troubles those of us who have survived for at lease sixty years.  Only the former can be called "sick."  They're categorically distinct conditions.

When I drove my car drunk into a candy store at the age of 18 and broke my femur, the hospital was my refuge.  I loved the care and attention I received during the two months I lay in traction.  Even the instructors on their rounds with nurse trainees gave me pleasure.  First the girls practiced with a hypodermic needle on a defenseless orange and then they experimented on my butt.  Years later I looked upon that time with nostalgia and thought of doctors and hospitals positively as sources of healing.  What bothered me most was to seek medical help for some ailment only to be told it was nothing to worry about.  Being diagnosed with cancer put that to rest.

Some signals cannot be ignored.  A year ago Christmas, when Nan was away, I felt bad enough to go -- twice -- to the hospital.  The second time I was admitted with pneumonia after a neat device that fits on a finger detected the oxygen level in my blood dangerous low.  I stayed for three days until my vital signs normalized.  And I was convinced that a daily corticosteroid spray was necessary to avoid a repeat performance. Now, after two weeks, my sinus infection is cured but the cold lingers; another fact of aging is that recovery takes longer.

Illness and injury are transient and aging is a permanent, and rapidly escalating, decline of the physique.   Somewhere in the middle are the multifarious malfunctions of the body, like heart disease and cancer, which one day may be confirmed as the result of poor lifestyle choices, or the consequences of pernicious changes in the environment determined by corporate greed.  Total health is an illusive and short-lived goal.

My prescription for life is Deuteronomic and Nitzschean.  In the Biblical book of Deuteronomy, God told the Israelites: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." Constantly watching the body, its health and  its prospects of longevity, is for me to choose death.  Our task is to live here now, as fully as we are capable.  Nietzsche was plagued with migraines and eventually died from syphllis, but a joy for life shines through his most pessimistic philosophy. In his strange yet central idea of eternal return, he advised that we should live our life in such a way that we could relive it forever, a "Groundhog Day" of the will.  I'm damned if I want to relive my life in a doctor's office or a hospital emergency room.

Love Hurts: Korea Style

Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain,
Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, oooh, love hurts. 

 "Love Hurts," written by Boudleaux Bryant and recorded by many 

I did not fully understand Nan's desire to see snow in Korea until we'd returned home and I settled down to watch the 20 episodes of "Winter Sonata," a much celebrated TV drama series that was filmed in part at one of the locations we visited, Nami Island.  By the time it ended, several days and a box of tissues later, I was a blubbering mess, but a dedicated fan of director director Yoon Suk-ho's masterpiece of romantic love.  Ten years ago, the popularity of this story helped set off the "Korean Wave" (also dubbed hallyu) that spread K-pop, K-drama, film and fashions across Asia.  I also came to accept my fondness for tearjerkers and the cleansing of the emotions that these stylized stories of love, innocence, tragedy and redemption can provide.

Nami Island contains plaques, posters and statues referring to scenes in "Winter Sonata," a epic drama of first love, lost love and love regained, against a setting of Korea covered in winter snow.   There was just enough snow on Nami for us to appreciate the connection.  The success of the TV series has dramatically insreased tourism to the island.  After decades of tension between Korea and Japan because of the early 20th century occupation and mid-century war, Japan has embraced Korea's cultural exports and its tourists account for much of the current boom. Bae Yong-Joon, who plays the male half of the star-crossed lovers, is a superstar there. In 2004 the then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi remarked that "Bae Yong-joon is more popular than I am in Japan."

In "Winter Sonata," Bae and actress Choi Ji-woo meet as high school students and experience first love and first winter snow at the same time.  An apparently fatal accident cuts short their time together.  Ten years later, Choi is engaged and working as an interior designer when she meets an architect newly arrived from America who looks strangely familiar.  Is he her first love, perhaps suffering from amnesia?  The plot thickens, revolving around issues of identity, memory, family and friendship, secrets and lies.  There is no sex (and only two short kisses).  It's the second installment of the director's "Endless Love" series of TV dramas which he has described as "non-violent, non-erotic and non-political."  Despite this claim, he flirts with intimations of illegitimacy and incest.  "Winter Sonata," the most successful of the four, has been turned into an anime series in Japan and also adapted as a musical for the stage in Korea.

There is something old-fashion and probably distinctly Korean about the air of innocence maintained throughout.  Terrible things are done, not the least by parents, and the various characters frequently say "I'm sorry" (although with few audible responses of forgiveness).  Tears flow copiously. Missing fathers are sought.  There are numerous meetings over tea sitting on the floor around a table.  Although the women seem quite capable, men are always promising to protect and stand by them.  Since it's winter, people are mostly dressed in heavy coats with colorful mufflers (which reportedly sparked a fad for them).  The twists and turns of plot are tied together beautifully by a musical score featuring several songs, partly in English, played by pianist Yiruma and sung by Ryu Si-won, with titles like "First Time," "My Memory," "Only You" and, yes, "Love Hurts."  I believe director Yoon must have been influenced by the film scores written by composer Francis Lai, for the infamous "Love Story" and also  for French director Claude Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman," but I can find no proof.

Korean TV dramas are very popular among Thais and their own episodic programs, called lakorn, show the influence.  Music is very prominent and each series has a memorable theme that is repeated with many variations.  While I can't understand much of the dialogue, I do appreciate the music and the strong emotions of the characters that move along with it.  Thai lakorns favor ghosts, gangsters and comedy, but there always seems to be a love angle, or more often a love triangle, to engage the audience.  In California I used to watched Mexican telenovelas in an attempt to learn Spanish and they seemed very similar to their Asian counterparts.  Unlike the popular soap operas on American daytime TV, these are miniseries with a limited run.  Even Brazil has its own romantic TV drama tradition.  All episodes of "Winter Sonata" are available on YouTube with English subtitles, and there are even episodes subtitled in Arabic (the anime version is also online).  Europe and the U.S., however, have not yet succumbed to the magic of Asian drama.  

Crying in films has required an adjustment to my sense of masculinity.  Nan always examines my eyes when I sniffle during movies or television.  It's not just bravery in war films or victory in sports films that set me off.  I used to weep during Hallmark card commercials on TV in the U.S..  Little kids lost that are found and the heroic pets that save them are sure triggers for my tears.  Death, certainly, and father-son relationships.  Men are taught to fear being seen as too emotional and I've always tried to man up when the women around me are sobbing over one thing or another with mixed success.  In real life over serious matters I rarely cry, even when my parents died.  The heartache I've felt in love has more often led to angry frustration rather than the cleansing of tears, and I acknowledge this as an Achilles heel.  I've had to resist the temptation of cynicism which wants to label love films and chick flicks as so much schmaltz.  I'll never forget the look on Cary Grant's face when he realized that Deborah Kerr had missed their appointment because of an accident that had made her a cripple.  Director Leo McCarey used music to great advantage in his film.  I was moved by the love stories in "A Summer Place," "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," as well as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Titanic," among many, many others (and all had notable music to carry their romantic themes).

My real life does not have a soundtrack (except for music borrowed from others) and the plot of it rarely seems to move by my design.  I have blundered by pure chance into the most satisfying love affair of my life, one so improbable than a book about it would be dismissed as a fabrication.  Despite enormous differences, we complete each other. In the past I was a foolish lover, treating the women in my life with selfish abandon, seeing them through the fog of my imagination (fueled, it must be said, by cinematic romances).  I have often hurt others despite good intentions, and, like the characters in "Winter Sonata," I am truly and deeply sorry for the damage I have done.  Hurting them hurt me; the pain of love is a rolling stone.  Now, like the lovers in the best of films, I have a chance to redeem myself.

Why does love hurt?  Probably for the same reasons given by the Buddha's analysis.  As humans, we all suffer from sickness, old age and death, and make it worse by resisting change.  We cling together and pine away for health, eternal youth and immortality.  Our human habits of ignorance, anger and envy compound the problems of life.  In the shelter of love for a little while we can avoid the inevitable.  That we cannot stay there forever, hurts.