A movement in my life: RIP, Jimi Hendrix

[Update (23 November 2011): Rolling Stone mag top musicians (again) vote Jimi Hendrix the best guitarist of all time; the HuffPost has a short bio video embed in their coverage of this tribute that is worth watching...]


This post is "a movement in my life" (NOT a moment...) for several reasons… It describes a series of events and situations scattered over time and "thought" together at the moment of writing it. The themes are huge for me: from my lifelong love for rock music to my intense hatred of racism, and an abusive father that somehow tied them together in my mind.

After a few hours of helping shoppers at Food for People’s choice-pantry, I came home and finished my Oxford presentation; it’s pretty damn good, and a real potential bridge burner I am "proud" (?!?) to admit. I have 13 daze until I fly to London! Maybe I'll figure out how to make the message more palatable to my audience by then.

When I first got home tonight I put on a random series of 5 CDs I pulled out of my "rock" box, edited the presentation paper for awhile, washed dishes, and made some dinner. Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland” was already playing when I left the kitchen to put away the laundry I had done in the morning. Suddenly I recalled when I really “heard” this album for the first time, while tripping on acid and smoking hash oil. I was 17 years young…

THAT'S why they called Electric LADYland! As usual, the European cover was nixed for the American release; what do we have against women's bare breasts on rock albums? (See the English cover for Blind Faith's Album for another example...)

I was at an artist friend’s house in downtown Fullerton, and a bunch of us rode trikes around the adjacent parking lot in the late afternoon sun while “Still Raining, Still Dreaming,” “House Burning Down,” and “All Along with Watchtower” (the video just below; you HAVE to watch it!) blasted out of the house’s windows and doors. I could really see the music in it's rainbow colors, because I was flying very high… Even now, tonight, I smelled those feelings again for a few minutes, and then I remembered even more profoundly MY Hendrix Experience…

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was my first concert, 5 years earlier. A friend bought tickets to the then-new LA Forum; I remember thinking how expensive those $5 tickets were! There were 3 bands: Cat Mother (who died without a trace), Chicago (then a new band that wowed the crowd from 10 to near midnight, and then The Experience, which came on at almost 1 am, and played until dawn. My friend "Michael" and I went down to the open space in front of the stage. It was 1966, and there was no visible security. We were packed into the space, and everyone was moving, smiling, and singing. I saw my cousin "Carl," sitting on the stage, 10 feet from Jimi’s feet, smoking a joint! (I didn’t start using drugs for another year…)

Jimi’s “Star Spangled Banner” (you really should watch this Woodstock version some time!) went on for an hour, with improvs and solos so long and diverse that the audience would forget that the hook was the national anthem until he got around to playing a few more riffs now and again. As the sun was rising in the parking lot, I stopped to buy a psychedelic poster of Jimi from a vendor, much like this one…

I was star-struck, and on the cusp of adolescence in the middle of the fucking ‘60s! I stuck Jimi’s poster up on my bedroom wall without a moment’s thought. I didn’t think of the televised Watts “Riots” (Rebellion), and how my father, just 2 years earlier had yelled racist obscenities at our black and white TV screen. “Kill the fuckin’ black apes!” was one of his more creative screams… I was 10, and wondered who could possibly scare my big, bad, bully of a dad (future posts) so much!

THE most infamous photo of the Watts Rebellion...

How could I not remember that?!? Freud calls it a repressed memory, and it was about to get a chance to be relived. When my father got home he somehow saw the poster in my bedroom. He ripped it down with one outraged swipe of his hand, and then balled it up and yelled at me, “No one is gonna put up pictures of niggers in MY house!” I was speechless, without a clue yet as to the depth of racism in contemporary America. 


Why get so hung up on the color of a person's skin? It would be 3 years later, locked up in a padded cell on an out-of-control 3-day acid trip, before I would remember that "The Revolution had been Televised," and to confront the fact that, as I would later love to say, “My dad would make a great Nazi if he hadn’t been born a Jew.” That was in 1970, when the '60s were over too quickly, and the downward spiral of the Boomer generation was already underway…

My cell didn't look like this modern version; it was like a concrete cell with wrestling mats nailed onto the walls and floor, and with a drain to hose out the vomit and urine, etc. in the middle.

As a hint of what was to come, by then Jimi Hendrix had already died, along with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and so many others, famous and unknown. Why did so many of our creative artists flame out so young? Perhaps they couldn’t bear to live in the hateful society they could see so clearly? A lot of people blame their demises on drugs, but maybe they were "medicating" because they couldn't stand the realities all around them. The Vietnam War continued for 3 more long, genocidal years, and the Civil Rights movement had been stalemated. Although the United Farm Workers union was looking stronger, it would soon be just another feel-good cause without any rebels. And, the Boomers that had fueled the '60s would put away their love beads and flock to Wall Street.

Morrison's grave site; maybe I'll make the pilgrimage while in Paris?

Somehow I survived my own decade-plus drug trip… I should have died any number of times; I actually rode a motorcycle up canyon passes and to Big Sur while out of my mind on this or that.


My cousin "Carl," up there on the stage at the Hendrix concert, had died during this period. He tried killing himself by running onto the 101 freeway in evening rush hour traffic while naked. When the cars didn’t finish him off, he bought a gun.

I grew up with the notion that life and death were equivalent, and that it was OK to off myself if I wanted to. I remember eating a bottle of orange baby aspirin when I was about 10, mad that I was made to go to bed before my TV show was over!?! My puke tasted like orange candy all night long…

Why do they give it an orange flavor?!?

My favorite book was Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” wherein he shoots a man on the beach instead of killing himself. I grew up angry and hurt, but for some reason, I just never did flip the ultimate switch.

The evening of this post I laid down on my bed, thinking about all these things, while listening to “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” Jimi must have loved life to write and perform such incredible songs. I know it was hard for him to make it in the US music scene because he was a Black man. He had to leave the US and perform in Europe for years, until he broke through in England with the British Wave of white groups like the Stones and the Beatles. Once England loved him, he could finally come back to the US and have a career here. He must have reeled from our hypocrisies; like all these racist middle-age men rooting for the "home team" full of black and brown players... 

Now I’m going to England, and I’m thinking of Jimi. Too weird! I just googled Jimi’s death to add a few facts to my post and found the following:

“Jimi said, "When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild, and freak out an' do anything they wanna do." This musical genius died at 27 years old, leaving behind only 4 completed albums. Although he was staying in a London hotel at the time, on September 18^th, 1970 Jimi was sleeping in his girlfriend Monika Danneman's flat, in Notting Hill, London.”

RIP, Jimi Hendrix...

I had NO conscious idea that Jimi’s death-iversary was upon me, nor did I recall that he had died in London! I do remember than Jim Morrison died in Paris (grave photo way above), which is where I’m going after the Oxford Workshop! Now I need to find out where Janis Joplin died, and tie that into all this other happenstance… Meanwhile, rest in peace all you hipsters and revolutionaries! I think that a new generation is arising, and maybe THEY will carry on the work of making this world a slightly better place.

Janis with her Southern Comfort (the only booze to ever make me puke all night long!)... Cheers!

[Update (9-19-2011): drugs now cause more deaths than traffic accidents in the USA... However, marijuana, other hallucinogens, and all other "illegal" drugs combined are NOT the culprits, so what is described above is NOT an endorsement of suicide-by-drug-use; for THAT pitch, contact the "adult beverage" industry, and big pharma's sales reps and their best buddies, your families' doctors!] 

A moment in my life: RIP, Mom

The post below the carnation is the text of the eulogy I delivered at my mother's funeral in 2004. This rant & rave prefigures "burning bridges" posts to follow...

Mom's favorite flower, the carnation...

"Mom died at twilight on the first day of autumn. But, for 88 summer days I was her primary care provider. I learned to do many things well that I had never imagined I’d ever do. And, at the cusp of turning 50, I finally learned to care for someone just like I would want to be cared for myself. Her’s were the only diapers I have every changed, and my success with treating her bedsores with raw aloe leaves was the talk of the medical staff. But this does not make me some kind of male Mother Teresa! There are 3 reasons why my recent work was not extraordinary, and I want to share each of them with you now.

First, I have lived with Mom on and off for years while writing about Mexican immigrants. She always took an interest in my research, and helped me financially, as well as intellectually and emotionally. She loved me unconditionally. I owe her everything...

Anyway, Mom and I watched ER reruns together every week. [She admitted having a thing for George Clooney (and Paul Newman...). I don't think that I ever mentioned having a thing for Juilanna Marguiles!]

Mom frequently said that she would hate to languish like one of those comatose patients that the show portrays as lifelessly hooked up to a machine. One evening in late June I reminded Mom that ER would be coming on in a half hour. However, stricken by a massive heart attack a few minutes later, she wound up in a real ER for the first time.

During her first hospitalization she asked me to help her die if she became helplessly institutionalized. Fortunately, that day never came. On that fateful fall morning some 13 weeks later, she lay in her own home, thanks to the hospice program. Burbling with what the experts call the “death rattle,” Mom still bent her legs and lifted her bottom up off of the bed so that I could change her diaper, her very last diaper. Mom was never a passive victim, and I am not an altruistic saint.

Viking burial at sea

Secondly, I had a lot of help. My Big Sis relieved me on the weekends; my Bro on many weekday afternoons. A multitude of other family and friends frequently turned her room into a barely restrained party.

Mom also received 47 home visits from healthcare workers as well as round-the-clock assistance during 17 days in the hospital. I found it significant that most of these health providers were women, and almost every one was an immigrant. Mom would listen with wide eyes while I casually did what I do best, coaxing workers to talk about their home countries, families, lives, and dreams. These workers were from throughout Latin America (Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico), and from around the world (Uganda, China, Thailand, and the Philippines). Each and every one of these workers taught me vital healthcare tips to help my Mom. So I did not do this work alone!

They could have been these women that I found on the Internet!

Thirdly, I watched in absolute awe while complete strangers, many of them poorly paid and overextended, lavished genuine and abundant affection on my mother. What is such behavior if not unconditional and unrequited love? Even in her last days, Mom would marshal all her available energy to breathe out a wispy but heartfelt “thank you” to each of them.

If there really is a god somewhere in this vast cold universe, people like those that my Mom thanked deserve the greatest reward. And we native-born Americans should thank the stars above that we still have a nation with millions of immigrants. 2 decades of study already showed me that it is new immigrants that grow the food that nourishes our bodies from cradle to grave; now, in 88 days I also saw that the same sort of people tend our sick and comfort our dying. It was revealing to me that their simple dedication is of the sort that many Americans consider beyond the ability of the average son to perform for his own mother.

I am no martyr for trying to keep my Mom clean and comfortable for a few meager months. I only wish it could have been longer... Marta of Mexico, Alicia of El Salvador, Elizabeth of Uganda, Finnette and Alma of the Philippines, Xia Hu of China and countless others do this sort of work for infirm Americans year after year.

So, please save your praise for the immigrants who do the dirty, dangerous, difficult, yet necessary work of everyday life. And make your praise concrete by advocating a significant increase in the minimum wage, and by opposing all xenophobic laws and any racist American. As the Specials sang, “If you have a racist friend, NOW is the time for that friendship to end!” My Mom felt this way about the immigrants amongst us long before she became so intimately dependent upon them. One of Mom’s many positive attributes was that she was no hypocrite..."

A New Point of View, Part 1

This is the first of a recurring feature, within which I share very little (even trite) and very recent life lessons that you may regard as sheer coincidence or utter hogwash if that is your preference!

(NOTE: VeryLana dared me to post an entry that was short, to the point (and heart), and without the usual heavy academic veneer… So, let's see if I can!)

Yes, "ONCE UPON A TIME..."

...when I was summarily dismissed from my academic job for telling a "supervisor" that I didn't like being "stupid-vised in the classroom"...

An associate dean kicks a part-time professor's butt! Ouch.

...I decided to follow my heart and head, and get the hell out of LA!!!

For the graffiti-challenged, this says "Urban Hell"!

However, I had TOO much stuff for my very small moving budget. The material accumulations of my life felt like a heavy, dead albatross around my neck. I had to shed four-fifths of my junk, at least half of which was as much emotional as material, as it symbolically represented my (just toppled) status as “professor.” 

A full-professor in all his regalia, ironically at Oxford Uni!
I'm gonna be on the lookout for HIM next month...

The physically/emotionally hardest to rid myself of were four 4-drawer file cabinets of research I had copied from hither (UC and CSU libraries) to yon (all over Mexico), and 30 Trader Joe shopping bags full of books acquired in the same sorts of places. They had been compulsively read, with highlighting and note-taking throughout. These possessions showed all the years of effort to attain the somewhat coveted and highly overrated PhD.

The file cabinets went to my sister’s garage, sans their paper contents, which I dumped unceremoniously, but with simultaneous waves of sadness, relief, and elation, into 4 consecutive weeks of recycled-paper garbage cans. Even more files kept in my uni office eventually met a similar fate in campus recycle dumpsters.

Bigger than this one, and 4 weeks in a row!

Rather paradoxically, I donated all of the books to the very university that had just sacked me! “Do you want us to write a letter of acknowledgement to you regarding your contribution?” the librarian queried sweetly as I wheeled load after load from loading dock to "Acquisitions." “Nope!” I replied. “I already know that I gave them to you, and I don’t know what my forwarding address will be…” She furrowed her brow; such odd behavior from an academic she seemed to be thinking.

"Can we send you a letter?"

A quarter century of collecting and compiling the material proof of my hard-earned status as academic was all dumped or donated! ALL GONE! I knew that it could be either a heart-wrenching tragedy (like someone who loses all of their possessions in a fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, etc.)...

The news caption says this family was still smiling after  a tornado hit their home; I bet they were happy to still be alive, something we should all be grateful for in times like these.

...OR the most liberating thing I had done since I ate “green pharmaceutical” LSD at age 15, and wound up in a womb-like padded jail cell for 3 daze while hallucinating R. Crumb characters acting out the Watts' “riots” (that is, “rebellion”) of 1964. But that’s another “bridge burned,” to be told in a subsequent post.

A great UTube, only 26 seconds in length... BUT, at this point I can imagine VeryLana running out of hope for a short, sweet story, and grabbing me by the throat, and saying: 

Not me, and not Lana; and SHE doesn't resort to violence...

Well, as a result of my downsizing, I was left with a sad little pile of about 50 volumes, very few of which are academic. (In fact, I chose to keep mostly art and metaphysical texts that I had collected way back in my LAST New Age era, between 1967 & 1976; hmmm...) 

Doesn't this little pile look sad?

But, then the Humboldt County library sent me a robo-email informing me that my hold on The Psychopath Test (what an amazing read!) was about to expire. So I went to pick it up… When I got there, folks were filing through a side door into what turned out to be a 1-day annual book sale. Thousands of books were piled up everywhere, in 2 different buildings, differentiated as either fiction or non-fiction.

This is EXACTLY what my old uni office looked like!

The price? A dollar a book? No! A DOLLAR PER SHOPPING BAG!!! Bags the size of the 30 I had wheeled into the university library down south just 8 weeks earlier. For just 30 bucks I could have upsized right back to my old collection again!

The library gave us paper bags, BUT I am shifting to canvas, bamboo-weave, and backpack!

But, not wanting to replace the old albatross with a new one... 

Well, yes, this IS an albatross, but it's alive, beautiful, and not around MY neck...

...I restricted myself to what I could cram into 2 bags, 1 of which was purely fiction. However, a few of the most classic academic texts that I had given away in LA were in their hardcover glory at the book sale; I came home with 50 more books, and filled my bare bookshelves.

Bigger than mine, but organized and uncrowded like mine is now!

The moral of this little trite story?

Well, if you believe in morals, which I’ve begun to revert to (just like when Mom read me fairytales as a toddler so long ago)...

Not Mom, and not me, but I can dream, can't I?

...it goes like this:

If I can give something up without descending into utter madness, some of what I have "lost" may come back to me again, unlamented and unbidden.

Or, as a variant on the classic "mind over matter," my recent mantra is that if  I refuse to "mind," then IT (whatever "it" is) won't "matter!"

I can all but hear the sign-off music!

“The End.”

(How did I do, VeryLana?)

The many bridges I have burned, Part 1

Teri Carson “…explores why perfectly intelligent people, who seem to have some sort of grasp on life, go around acting in a self-defeating way...” She finds the inspiration for filmmaking in this common psychopathological aspect of humanity. But I personally am sick unto death with my self-destructive participation in this pathetic passion play (see my July "post" regarding an attempt to develop a new approach).

While I engage in a variety of self-defeating behaviors, the worst one that I am willing to acknowledge here is my seemingly instinctual efforts to destroy any developing social relationships if I feel that they present some sort of existential threat. My ego is easily put on the defensive because it is vaguely yet expansively defined as any of my opinions/beliefs/feelings about the macro-, micro-, or middle- (that is earthly) levels of the material/spiritual universe. When my ego perceives any type of threat, I typically respond by burning any bridge to the people involved. While this allows me to feel safe, it is a self-righteous, stunted, and lonely safety that I choose… Simon & Garfunkel's "I am a Rock" has a similar take on safety in loneliness.

The bulk of today's post, only Part 1 of a series on the social bridges that I’ve burned, consists of embarrassing examples from my “professional” life as a researcher, writer, and scholar. As you will see below, I had good reason to think that I had completely ruined my professional persona by now, via incessant and blatant bridge burning to maintain a safe social space between me and everyone else, including my "superiors," colleagues, and students. But TODAY, I received surprising evidence that I have failed to completely seal myself off from others in my professional sphere.

I have been very self-consciously trying to create a small selfLESS aspect to my ego-dominated existence in recent weeks. The current effort includes volunteering at a wonderful local non-profit (now posted as "Food for People" on my “Famine and Feast in Eureka” blog). While I was out doing research for that post, proof that new bridges will continue to appear even in my professional life arrived in my Inbox. This unanticipated event has taken the edge off of the long planned self-abasement of writing candidly about my calamitous bridge burning.

A cut-&-paste portion (in an attempt to maintain anonymity) of that email indicates that a new professional bridge is on my horizon:

                                               01 August 2011

Dear [PhD Author],

I am writing to invite you to take part in the strategic workshop `… researching … migration processes’, which will take place at Oxford University on ... September, 2011.

…

We aim to produce one or more publications out of the meeting, if possible as special issues of a journal, based on full versions of a selection of the discussion notes.

Costs for travel … and [three] nights of college accommodation (Corpus Christi College) will be covered. More details on this will be provided to confirmed participants. 

Best wishes,

[Director], … [Centre]

Wow! I’ve never been to England (or anywhere outside of the Americas). And, to be invited to Oxford… Just look at this magical photo of the university, which I took right off the web!!!

I've seen these buildings on Masterpiece Theater, but now I'm going to see them in person!

This invite suggests that there are still several continents of scholars that don’t yet know what a rude bridge-burner I am. This is a(nother) chance to meet, greet, and try to “play nice” with folks with common interests AND diverse (i.e, not necessarily MY) perspectives. Wishing myself luck with that, let’s get down to the topic at hand.

Let’s skip all of the jobs I got fired from BEFORE I returned to college and wound up in grad school… I vociferously disagreed with every professor I ever had a seminar with. Then, while finishing my dissertation I bad-mouthed all 3 professors on my thesis committee to anyone who would listen. I had lots of excuses for being critical of my thesis advisers, but NO logical reason to let my negative opinions go out so far, wide, and extreme. That’s just not a good idea in a world where social network ties are so crucial; indeed, this is never a good strategy to use on people who have more power, prestige, and wealth! Needless to say, I couldn’t rely on any of my profs for good letters of recommendation, as crucial as such letters are in the job application process.

If you can't stand the heat...

Against all odds I was “short-listed” (a finalist) for several tenure-track teaching positions. What follows are a few bizarre examples of my self-defeating behaviors in the interview process, even though I expended a great deal of time and effort trying to land such a position.

At one state college I tried to humiliate my department mentor while I was being considered for a position that she had previously told me “…had been written with me in mind.” Her offense? I thought that she was “wrong” on a public policy issue.

This was the scene: while standing in the doorway of her office, and with her prof husband and two grad students present, I repeatedly and passionately insisted, “NO! YOU ARE WRONG!” Everybody but me looked embarrassed, and sought ways to defuse the situation, but I couldn’t be shaken from my insistence that she agree that I was right. She did not admit that she was wrong, and I didn’t get the job “written with me in mind”…

Come on baby, light my fire!

A year later, at another state college, and in the middle of the departmental group interview, I cast a slur on the newly installed Bush Junior. The risk in doing this was minimal (how many anthropologists are Republicans?). But, then I added, "Of course, I didn't vote for THE OTHER guy [Al Gore] either!” This was my way of saying, “I am more radical than Thou…” I had spurned the lesser of two evils and voted for third party candidate Ralph Nader. The professorial faces turned from smiles to stone. Later, one of them told me that it was “my fault that the nation is saddled with 'W'.”  I didn’t get that job, but we all got 8 years of 'W'.

Can you even remember this contentious "election" any more?

While the 1^st two examples concerned “principles,” the next was about filthy lucre… When the department chair of a university in Tennessee informed me of the starting annual pay, I burst out laughing! Tacitly acknowledging that the pay was low for new profs, the chair assured me that the regional cost of living was also low. To which I retorted, “Yeah, but so is the quality of life out here!” Indeed, the current job search was to replace someone who had jumped from Tennessee to a job in a more “cultured” part of the nation. I had effectively called the chair “white trash!” Could I get any worse? Have some faith in me: “Yes I can!” 


My last example had no motive that I can fathom beyond pure self-sabotage... In this case the small department had only 3 faculty members. I knew 2 of the 3 profs from grad school, and against all odds they seemed to like me! So, at the wine-&-dine fest after my public job talk I told the one faculty member that didn’t know me, “Oh, I’m a loose cannon that always causes everyone trouble!” Now, this was the truth, but did I need to tell her that, and then? She reacted as though I was just joking, but as our eyes met I could see that I had instilled adequate doubt about myself in her mind. I felt a little thrill, having established my creds as a troublemaker, but I was still upset when the 3 profs settled on another candidate…

Without a tenured position I had to teach as a part-time instructor, making half the money for double the work. Even after ensuring my lowly insecure position in academia I continued to burn bridges that might have been useful to cross. There are too many examples to consider here! When the economy went into a nosedive and more than 2,000 state part-timer instructors got laid off in 2008 alone, my department chair continued to find me classes to teach. I felt diverse pressures building, but failed to change my self-destructive behaviors at all…

The vocal minority; will the people ever rise up and say "Enough is enough!"???

I filled my courses with challenging materials that students had to struggle to master. I also demanded that the students improve their critical thinking and writing skills. I pushed the notion of academic freedom to the edge, using "truck-driver" language to describe our nation's political, religious, and popular elites. I finally got fired after informing the assistant dean of the college that I didn’t like being “stupid-vised” by administrators (e.g., him) just because I was telling many students that they lacked college-level skills. His email response to my attack implied that my days at HIS university were numbered:

Hi [PhD Author],

Thanks for letting me sit in on your meeting with two students. … I do have to say … that I was surprised at the tone of the meeting, especially … when you shared that you liked to call your supervisors "stupid-visors."  We all agree that there should be academic freedom, but that does not excuse uncivil language or behavior.

…

I hope you have a good, and uneventful, rest of the semester,

Dr. … 

After the semester ended, the courses previously offered to me for the following year were suddenly withdrawn ("suprise, suprise"), and I joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed. I relocated to northern California, and am reconsidering the utility of my antisocial attitudes and behaviors. As I begin the search for a new job, I hope I am finally mature enough to learn from my repeated mistakes. The big question that remains unanswered is whether I can stave off the longtime and deeply entrenched pattern of acting out first, and thinking only later (if at all).

I believe that my self-destructive behavior is the legacy of growing up in a dysfunctional home, where the "fight or flight" response was hammered into me at a very young age. (I actually left home at age 14, self-medicated with illicit drugs for more than a decade, and lived at times during that period in 2 very different cults, the fodder for future posts). As I continue my musings on bridges burned, I will also begin to explore exactly how and why this “perfectly intelligent [person], who seem[s] to have some sort of grasp on life, go[es] around acting in a self-defeating way”… My hope is that in the process of writing about this, I can initiate meaningful changes that will allow me to put out the fires that have been raging all these years within me, and to cross the (social) bridges that most people use to facilitate meaningful human interactions.

Can I cool my jets?

Let’s see what I do (and DON'T do) while I'm at Oxford University next month... I plan to cross their "Bridge of Sighs" (below, and what a great name!). Care to place a bet on my behavior amongst my 40 Continental colleagues?

Oxford's Bridge of Sighs...

Crossing a bridge instead of burning it!

Today was a good day, but it could have been a very bad one… 

I’m finally learning that the difference between “good” and “bad” is largely MY choice. It really is a case of “mind over matter,” and if I don’t “mind” (that is, don’t put a negative spin on something) it won’t “matter” (at least to the degree of reacting to situations without due consideration of my options).

Therefore, it is THE day to begin my blog, which posits the new rule of my life: To cross every bridge that I come to instead of burning them all down out of fear of what may be on the other side!

I had spent the morning scouring discount stores to buy the remaining trivia of daily life that I hadn’t been able to pull in my truck and U-Haul trailer across the length (from south to north) of California. We all know that shopping is a primary pacifier in our extremely narcissistic national consumer culture – see YouTube’s amazing “The Story of Stuff” – even when the purchases are as mundane as mine. My list included clothes hangers (25 bucks for 50 “Slim Line nonslip”); a toilet brush ($4.99 or $7.99 or $21.99!?!); and, an “antique” (that is used, well-made, and cheap) desk and chair ($115). 

I shopped until I realized that my blood sugar had dropped (it was suddenly mid-afternoon!), so I did something I NEVER do – I went into a Marie Callender’s chain eatery and got the HAMBURGER Special (with fries and a slice of pie) for $10.99 (except that the pie actually shown on the special – the seasonal berry one – which was the one that I wanted, cost an extra 3 bucks!). I laughed softly to myself at the scam that this fast-food corporation is perpetrating on its customers instead of raging about it to the innocent young waitress, tapped the nearby Best Western Hotel’s free Wi-Fi while awaiting my extreme protein and cholesterol bomb, and found the following email (verbatim, save my improved punctuation) from the breeder of my beloved dog, Faris:

Hi [phd author],

Hopefully you are somewhere by now. Latest and last on Faris:

   Poor little guy parked himself outside my french doors to the bedroom and looked for you to come and get him; every now and then he did a little bark. I told him that there was nothing that I could do and that soon his waiting would be over.

   I put him down as there was nothing else to do. He accepted the vet and the needle in the leg with no struggle and when the barbs hit his heart, he let his head down and that was it. Very easy and utterly sad.

   I do hope that you have learned from this experience.

Best, Joe

Suddenly, the dining hall was spinning; my day was slipping out of my control as I began to react to this email message.

I had lived in a virtual 24/7 symbiosis with Faris for the 7 short years of his life. I only left him alone if I had to attend some function where dogs were not welcome (like teaching at the university). I didn’t go to restaurants much, only frequenting those with outside patios that were dog-friendly. Forget museums, concerts, the occasional movie, or even a friend’s house if they had cats or didn’t like dogs. How could Joe write such an unpleasant email to me? Why had he been tasked with putting Faris “down”? Why did I feel such a confluence of emotions now, just as the punked-out waitress was plunking down my all-American junk meal?

I have Faris’ 10-inch high medical file beside me as I write about this passive/aggressive missive from Joe the breeder. The “James Dean” of dogs, Faris lived fast – hurtling down streets after motorcycles at 30+ miles per hour while I clung to his leash with my right hand and my bicycle handlebar with my left – and died young – after racking up more than $40,000 in vet bills for various serious illnesses and injuries. His story will be randomly interspersed with mine in future blog entries, even though MY life is more like the Orson Welles of Baby Boomers (you know, “he showed early promise and moments approaching genius, but disappointed us all even as he got more egotistical and let himself go”)…

I got Faris after my mother died (“the only diapers I have ever changed” as her at-home hospice care primary provider). Yet a mere 7 months after bringing a joyful puppy into my bereft and depressed post-Mom life, I became the primary care provider to a dog. After a 5-week trek to diverse specialists, and the brink of paralysis and death, a vet neurologist finally figured out that my puppy had meningitis. The failed treatments coupled with the eventual successful diagnosis cost over $8,000, but it was the round-the-clock care, his bloodcurdling cries of pain when he moved a fraction of an inch in his sleep, and the daily wasting away of what had been a briefly vibrant and beautiful puppy that cost the most. Psychic pain trumps fiscal disaster every time.

Having endured and superseded just that one crisis – and Faris was to have 4 life-threatening episodes – made the current condescension of Joe’s e-note hard to take. But, as I dug into the just delivered burger I decided that I was both relieved and elated that my boy, who had burned so brightly for too short a time, was finally resting in peace. I had learned that there were no cures for what ailed Faris, just resource-wasting efforts to extend his fading life for a few weeks, a couple months, or perhaps a languishing year. Joe had always insisted that he wanted me to return Faris to his natal home if I could no longer care for him. And I thought that Joe was right once we arrived at the breeder's rural property. Faris was so happy to see his mother, uncle, and his first human “daddy.” But the above email from Joe revealed that the breeder actually had resented my leaving Faris in his care...

While there may be other dog owners as devoted as I was to him, I can’t believe anyone spent more time, money, and emotion on their dog than I did on Faris. Joe had said as much in an earlier email, responding to my recitation of his latest round of serious illnesses, medications, and my exhaustion as follows:

[phd author], 

Well, how really awful. 

   I know of no homes that would take on what you are talking about [with Faris]. No one would take this on. I will gladly take him back but he cannot live in the manner that you have set up. Such needs and total dependence on the owner is really unprecedented and would have to be someone with money and devoted to 24 hr care. No such exists that I am aware of. 

   So very very sorry. Joe

PS: If all else fails I will take him back and care for him as best that I can.

This earlier message inclined me to bring him “home” instead of dragging him further north when it was clear to me that the end was near. I didn’t feel that I was abandoning him, but allowing him to complete the circle of his life... 

Indeed, when we detoured from the 101 freeway to head west to Santa Cruz, Faris revived in the cooler ocean air. He literally began leaping and yipping for joy when we arrived at the breeder's place, greeted by the barks of his pack in the nearby barnyard corral. And, in Joe’s cottage, Faris wagged his long tail excitedly and repeatedly did the “downward dog” posture of playfulness at Joe’s feet. I left Faris sniffing thoroughly in the adjacent dog-run, with no reason to believe that Joe’s offer to care for him in his final days was insincere.

But, now sitting in the hamburger joint I felt at the brink of conflicting emotions: anger and guilt. However, I decided not to bang out a self-righteous e-response to Joe’s final missive about Faris, nor torment myself about a lesson “I should have learned.” Rather than lose my control over my day, rather that burn another bridge – with either the blaming breeder or my own peace of mind at my boy’s demise – I decided to stay in control, and to cross this bridge consciously, focusing on the many wonderful memories I have of the life Faris shared with me.

I want to live the rest of my life willing to cross every bridge that I encounter, without depression, despair, or (self-)blame for what has gone before or is yet to come. This is what my blog is about: Examining why and how I burned so many bridges in my past, and my current effort to change that seemingly instinctual "fight or flight" response as I confront new bridges in my future.