Man on Street

As a general rule anyone walking along the side of a busy road is going to be interesting in some way although even here, two types predominate. Most common is the vagrant: faded eyes, lank hair, tattered clothing, an expression of lust and longsuffering. The other type is the accidental pedestrian: sweat-stained, clutching gas can, tottering through the grass with an aggrieved expression.

But the really choice subjects belong to neither of the above categories. The other day I saw a young man strutting along the grassy median, clad in black pants and a tight black shirt, wearing a black backpack. His head was shaved in a Marine Corps fade and his red, round face was twisted in an expression of disdain. He pumped his clenched fists with each stride, as if pounding the belly of some invisible victim. He was clearly enraged but with what or whom I would never know. He slipped into the rear view mirror, an anonymous black shape beside the endless river of automobiles.

The Dream

In a dream last night it had all come together. I'd figured it out. I was a successful writer. I had a following -- modest, but devoted. I was earning a decent income pursuing my craft. I was happy with my position.

I would never be popular: I saw that. I could not sway the crowd but I might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds. The English critics, perhaps, would recognize me as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of my poems; besides that, I would put in allusions!

Yes, it's true that my dream may have resembled Little Chandler's musings as he made his way through the streets of Dublin but by GOD Little Chandler never worked as hard or as long as me.

The Randy Gent

He belonged in another era, when randy gents of his type had so many outlets; starlets, prostitutes, charwomen. Trysts in hansom cabs, her pudgy hand framed against the slanting rain -- steaming horses, spasms of engorgement, satiation

Revolution Nein

Yesterday morning I took my son to the carousel park. We were early enough to interrupt a man working out amongst the playground equipment. He was in his mid-forties, wearing black from head to toe, and when he saw us approaching he frowned and exhaled violently through his nose. He had a strong but poorly defined build. As we timidly approached the swings he dropped to do a series of on one-armed pushups, then sprang up to the overhead bar where he executed a series of vigorous pull-ups, counting off a number somewhere in the 300s. He finished off this his creepy calisthenics by attaching plastic handles (which he’d secured to his leg with a black Velcro strap) to the chains of two swings and performing a routine that vaguely resembled the Olympic rings. The police were setting up a bicycle safety exhibition on the mulch and, as the fitness buff wobbled and groaned in his awkward flights, one of the policemen began to stare him down. The fitness buff finished his routine, re-attached the handles to his leg, and then ran down the street, only looking back when he’d crossed the intersection.

There were three officers. One older and bald, his once-powerful build gone to flab but still impressive in the leather-and-polyester of his uniform. He stalked around the tent, taking pictures with a digital camera. A younger officer unpacked bicycle helmets and the third officer, a tall and genial black man, filled out paperwork. Each of the policemen was accompanied by their preferred mode of transport. The older officer represented the police car, the younger the bicycle, and the black officer the motorcycle. My son was partial to the motorcycle. He asked to sit on the seat and when the big policeman reached down to shake his hand he gazed upward with undisguised awe. He was given a badge-shaped sticker which he patted now and then to make sure it hadn’t fallen off.

I took my son back to the swings while the policemen finished their set-up. The wind was blowing hard from the north but the sun was bright. Trucks and motorcycles ground through the intersection beyond the sleeping carousel. The policemen were talking about AIG. The older one rubbed his tan baldness as he scolded his younger colleagues for their anger over the bonuses.

“We’re shareholders in this company now. The taxpayer,” he said.

The younger policeman squinted.

“Which means we own this damned thing, and we’re letting these senators go crazy up there in Washington. This witch hunt, it’s driving down the value, don’t you get it?”

“You think we should just pay these guys?”

The older policeman took a sip from a soft drink, grimaced, and said, “You tell me. You think we can stand to have more failures in the financial system? Or you think we need to move on already?”

“People just don’t like it,” the younger one said.

“There’s lots of things people don’t like. That don’t mean it ain’t the right thing to do. Just pay ‘em and move on. It’s done now. You know what I’m saying? Let it go. It’s done.”

“There’s going to be a revolution,” the black officer said. “And people like you and me, man, we’re going to have to fight them back.”

The older officer pondered this, shrugged, and said, “I plan on being retired by then.”

I had come to this park a few months ago with my father and he’d told me, as we watched my son go up and down the slides, that things were bad in the heartland of America and that a secret movement was afoot to buy up all the guns available in preparation for a revolution. It would happen in the next five years, he said. Riots in the streets. Domestic terrorism. Lynchings. Currency collapse. Famines. Independent states. When I scoffed at this he only nodded his head and said it was always people like me who were caught unprepared and swept away in the tide. I’d put all of this out of my mind at the time. When you’re trying to raise a two year-old you don’t have much time to contemplate revolution.

But then last week I got an email from my uncle in which a Christian blogger predicted a rash of fires on the Eastern seaboard. God would punish us, the blogger said, by destroying New York, Boston, and DC. Of course, this fellow had been predicting the immolation of the east coast for the last 10 years. If he kept it up he was bound to be right eventually. And, I reminded myself, my father’s aggrieved and dramatic temperament had always been fixated on the overthrow of power. Still, it seemed strange to have heard the same idea from three independent sources. Would it really get that bad? Were we headed for total collapse? It made me tired and slightly sick to think about it. I had a little boy, after all. I wanted him to grow up in a stable and peaceful society.

It was a delightfully crisp morning. The sun sparkled on the backs of the slow-moving cars. My son kicked his little legs and yanked on the creaking chains, his solemn expression racing through thick lattices of shadow. It was a springtime morning and the world was pursuing the joy of rebirth, oblivious to our human problems. It was in this tangible, actual, and immediate world that my son still lived. He had not yet learned to substitute a collective human fiction for the simple reality of life. And standing there, pushing him, I could almost remember what it was like to live that way.

Higher Power

At the request of a friend of mine I will elaborate here on a line of thought which I have been pursuing for the last few weeks. It all started with a contemplation of the third step (never investigated the twelve steps? Congratulations, you're still in the gilded era of your addiction or you were born healthy), which says, "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of God as we understand it."

I've always had a problem with this step. I could never take it seriously. Oh, I would say the prayers but I didn't like them much, and no matter how long I "acted as if" my experience with my higher power just didn't seem to improve. I was still going it alone. After eight years I began to hear those recovery-blues whispers: "Is this all there is?"

A few years go I was in a meeting when a strange-looking fellow walked in. He had a red fleshy face, an unkempt mustache, and unruly hair which he slicked across his head. Dandruff lay across his shoulders like fresh snow and the buttons of his shirt strained against his expanding belly. He was always tugging at something: his nose, ears, shirt tail, mustache, blue jeans. He was one of those rare birds who appear unexpectedly in your meetings and who leave without warning: a mad scientist of recovery. When he spoke I experienced a sense of freedom and exhilaration which I'd come to associate with great works of art or spiritual truth. He told me to read Joe Klass's "Twelve Steps to Happiness." I did. Then he disappeared.

So now as I considered my situation I remembered Joe Klass's advice to always look closely at steps which are not working as designed. I thought about the second half of the third step: "as we understand..." and I remembered the conversation between Bill W. and Ebby in the kitchen. This is one of the canonical episodes of recovery literature. Ebby tells Bill to choose his own conception of God.

I really thought about this. I really considered it from all angles and decided maybe, just maybe, this was worth investigating. I was tired of serving an agenda-driven higher power. I didn't want to pray any more to a god who had some master plan into which I must fit. I am selfish. I want to be happy and get what I want. And the Gods to which I have prayed aren't very helpful. The more I thought about it the more I realized that my conception of God encompassed (and elicited) emotions like fear, loss, loneliness and despair.

I became convinced that I was not praying to God at all. As matter of fact, when considered dispassionately, I was praying to the devil, Satan, whatever you want to call it. I was praying to an unintelligent, disdainful, agenda-driven, penurious, punitive deity and asking it (soul a-tremble with fear and foreboding) to have its way in my life.

So I decided to create my own God. It was fairly easy. I just listed 10 characteristics of this deity in no particular order. I review these characteristics before I say my third step prayer. Things are much easier now. As a matter of fact the higher power defined below is in direct opposition to the one I used to have (and the one which unfortunately is hardwired into my brain, necessitating a review of these characteristics each time I pray). So with out further rambling, here are 10 characteristics of my higher power (whom I choose not to call anything).


1. Intelligent -- the smartest guy on the block. Reads the New Yorker, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Science Magazine cover-to-cover on Sunday afternoons while the neighboring gods grind away on their heavenly lawns. He can read Proust in the original and has read and understood all Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. You get the idea.

2. Wants me to live authentically, to be my true self and would rather I err on the side of directness and authenticity.

3. Provides me with talents for my enjoyment and thinks I am already pretty special. Wants me to use my talents fearlessly and joyfully.

4. Doesn't want me to think too hard about solutions. Is at work on solutions and will reveal them in his time for me to admire, like a chess master.

5. Loves me dearly, which really means that everything I do delights him and amuses him to some degree. When he goes to hang out with the other deities he takes a picture of me in his wallet and bores them all with it. And after the picture has made the rounds, he props it against the water carafe and glances at it while he's eating.

6. He will solve any problem that I bring him. No questions asked.

7. He loves my writing.

8. Doesn't mind a bit of a mess, and when he feels hemmed in by his books and papers he bids them alight and fly back to their perches on his shelves.

9. Has never hurt anyone, not even people who deserve it.

10. Rewards me richly just for being me.