Senseless Evil

Hello fellow seekers of truth and life,

Well, by now, we've had a few days since the horror unfolded in Colorado early friday morning. Normally, I don't like to do topics right after an event just for the sake of being topical and up-to-the-moment. Certainly, as with anything of this awful nature, everyone and his brother is giving their opinion on it, and I don't think just giving an opinion would be worthwhile. I believe this culture of disaster media has gone way too far in giving out all the details and tidbits of the crime, and we need to give the victims space. That said, there are a few reactions I have had in the days since, and I think they merit me putting them up here, and you reading them.

First off, we (my family) had relatives of ours come in from Colorado the last few days. I wrote an email to them that said that between the fires, and this, Denver has not had a good year. Add to that the heat wave and drought that nearly all of the country has been experiencing, and life in this country has been tense this summer. Sadly, this is the second time they've had  a mass killing of this type. The sad thing is, there have been so many shooting sprees since. The only worse thing than how shocking this is, is how unshocking tragedies like this have become. In just the last 5 years, there have been mass shooting and killing sprees in Virginia Tech, the University of Alabama, Fort Hood, Texas, Oakland, California, and, of course, Tucson, Arizona, as well as the terror killings in Norway a year ago. I'm sure there's some that I can't remember right now, and we're not even talking about the infamous Trayvon Martin death this late winter/early spring. Just last Fall, a crazy guy walked into a beauty salon down in Seal Beach, close to where I live, and killed 8 people, and wounded 1.

In the aftermath, people search for meaning to this tragedy. This is only a human thing; we all want the events in our lives to have meaning. This is what distinguishes humans from animals without higher brain function. So it stands to reason that people would look for an explanation, an easy answer that people can latch onto, and act on. I'm sad to say, I don't think there are any simple or easily explanable answers to events like this. I've been racking my brain for many years about what causes people to be so senselessly cruel. I haven't had an answer. I don't understand what kind of madness would drive a person to do this horror, and to be honest, I don't know if I want to understand it, because that would mean that I could conceive of such horrible corners of the mind and heart. I don't have the stomach for that.

Predictably, political factions both left and right are framing this with their own answers on the issues. On one side, you have the reflexively pro-gun guys. No amount of guns is too much for their liking, any kind of gun will do. They'll argue that our Second Amendment Rights are being infringed. They argue that if only we all had the right to either concealed-carry or open-carry gun laws, we'd all be safe. To be honest, I'm sick of hearing people say "If everyone had a gun, there'd be no criminals." They use patronizing, simplistic slogans like "Gun control means using both hands," "When you make guns criminal, only criminals will carry guns."
Apparently, the few states that do not allow you to take a gun anywhere and everywhere, and shoot someone for any reason, those states are now infringing on the essence of our freedom. Because we know how well you will be able to see the perpetrator in a panicked, fleeing crowd. What if 30 other people all pull their guns, too? Will they all be able to tell who the original deliquent gunman is? What if the cops show up? How will they know who the bad guy is, when there's just a whole bunch of people shooting at each other?

In this culture we assume that weapons equal safety. That's only true in the same way that drugs make you happy. In the beginning, you get the high of power and control, respect and safety. There will come a day when one gun is not enough to scare off or kill all the bad guys, because they've got guns too, so you need more guns, more powerful ones, but they get more guns, and so you need tasers and poison gas to really keep the bad guys at bay. It becomes an arms race, a quest to demonstrate ever-growing power. At that point, your weapons become property that also needs to be protected. The hope of being able to shoot your problems away can only last for so long.

We all have this fantasy that if only we could pick a gun, we could be a cowboy and go in there, shoot the bad guys and put a stop to it. This idea stems from the time we're kids. What are we told to do with a bully? Punch his lights out. That way, he'll never harass you again. After all, a man takes care of his business, so it's only natural that we assume that superior force equals superior strength. Not only does this have holes in it, but it reinforces this blame-the-victim ideology so prevalent in our culture of "the self-made man."

It's as if you deserve to be killed if you can't shoot back. I also have no use for this lethargic argument, made by both the right and left, that it won't really do anything to have any limits on gun purchasing and who can own guns. As if, "We can't stop every bad person from getting guns, so let's not even try." Having some limits won't stop every bad person from getting a gun, but will it stop a lot of crazy people from getting guns that shoot 50 or more bullets at a time, allowing lots of people to be killed? Yes.
By the same token, there is the other side that calls for more gun regulation. They say that assault weapons can't be used to hunt (unless you're hunting a 25-foot-tall elk that can only be taken down with 50 rounds), and therefore guns need to be gotten off the streets. They tell you the chances of someone breaking into your home are very small. So the solution is to make it illegal to buy them if you can't meet certain criteria. Most of them are on the losing end of the argument, because they're dealing rationally with an issue that is not a rational one. It's not about guns, it's about having the power, authority, protection and control over your life that owning a gun represents.



This is why I have come to realize that arguments over gun laws and regulations are just missing the point. Do yourself a favor: watch the above video, and ponder most of the media discussion on the Aurora shootings. What are they talking about? What could they be talking about, but aren't? Also, if you're in a more edgy mood, you could watch this video, which makes the same points in more vulgar terms:


Though I beg to differ with some of the points this guy made, it did get me thinking deeper about the issue. Is it really about guns? Is it really fair to assume that guns are inherently destructive, insane, or evil? Are they to blame for all the violence and destruction in the years since Columbine? Or is it that the killers have this drive to cause pain and destruction? Even if we were somehow able to make it so that no violent criminal could get a gun, they would find some other way to hurt, maim, or kill the person or people that they hated, or kill for some nihilistic sense of control in an often unpredictable life.

Guns are really a tool. A gun has no determination in whether it will kill, or whom it will kill. Nor does a canister full of serin nerve gas, or a drone bomber. The decision has to be made by a human with control over the tool. Now, unlike many other things you could use to kill a person, a gun is only designed for that purpose, nothing else. Referring to what this man said above, Licoln Town Cars are not trafficked by dealers to places like Syria or Colombia for the purpose of killing and fighting wars. I couldn't throw 50 knives into a crowd of people and kill 50 or more people doing that. If you picked up a hammer and decided to bludgeon somebody to death, it would take a minute or so, if you were able to work quickly, and if the victim hung around long enough. There's only one thing that is designed to kill a mass number of people, at close range, as quickly as possible, and that is a high-round automatic.

Having said that, to argue that guns are the only problem here, and that if only guns weren't around, we wouldn't be killing each other is a simplistic argument. Moreover, it distracts us from the other part of this problematic equation, the part that happens before the gun and bullets are acquired. This relates to what I said earlier about this kind of madness. Even thuogh we don't know the level of it that would make finding a weapon and killing several people in a movie theater, we need to understand a few things about it.

When faced with questions like this, we also hear a lot of talk about violence in entertainment and media. You hear a lot of people say "Oh, movies and video games are so violent these days. They're causing our kids to be more aggressive." Actually, mass communication scholars back in the 1970's came up with a theory that a greater danger was that people would believe that the world was a scary, dangerous place. So sure, some wackos will copycat violent acts they see in the movies, as Holmes did, but most people will just resign themselves to it.

This relates to our culture's role in all this. Why do all these massacres happen? Is it the guns? Is it violent movies or video games? Is it the bad economy that's forcing people out of work and home? Is it mental illness? All of these things could push you closer to the breaking point, but none of them is enough to make a person a killer (even all combined). Based on some things I've seen, I posit that it is about five things.

First, the fact that, as I mentioned, our entertainment, news, and the attitudes of our friends foster suspicion of others, and other groups. Second, we tend to be very defensive about our property and status, which necessitates violent retribution to "wrongdoers." Third, we tend to believe superior force equals superior strength (and thus moral strength). Fourth, we have no education on how to solve our anger without beating the other guy down. Fifth, and perhaps most crucial, we have an imminent sense of threat. That last one may be the igniting factor among all the other "push" factors.

Those are just things to ponder. Don't take this at face value, though. Take a walk through any town in the US, talk to people about dealing with violent criminals. Chances are, you'll see these assumptions surface. Now, I titled this post Senseless Evil. Invariably, when some horrible tragedy like this happens, we wonder how there can be any justice (or a loving God) in the world. We wonder how a person could do such cruel, evil acts.

People then say "Oh, they're just evil people." I, however, believe evil is about what you do, rather than who you intrinsically are, or are believed to be. It's about the choices you make in life. It's whether you give in to the darker, baser parts of your psyche out of weakness, cowardice, or ignorance, or whether you allow it to pass. So the only thing I can leave you with is, just make the sensible, fair, wise, morally strong choices in your life. Don't be afraid to take some time, or ruffle some feathers, to figure out what those choices are. I'll have more material for ya soon!

See ya, and don't forget to live!

Why I Didn't Celebrate the Death of Osama Bin Laden

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Hello Fellow Seekers of Truth and Life,

One year ago, we got some big news. I think you remember what happened. On Sunday night, May 1, 2011, we found out that Navy SEALs had raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (30 miles north of Islamabad, like the Pakistani version of Manassas, Virginia), and shot Osama Bin Laden dead. I found out about it from Facebook comments from people. I didn't believe it at first, because you hear all sorts of things on the internet, but then we turned on CBS, and there was Obama, delivering the following announcement.



When I heard this, I felt all sorts of conflicting, excited emotions. There was the amazing revelation that something I didn't think could ever happen, just happened. The main conflict was between two feelings, the first was a grim satisfaction that We got him. That was my main feeling, that I hate it when the criminals get away. I believe people need to pay for their crimes. I really wanted him to pay for what he did to all those people, all their families, all their friends, coworkers, and all the people who cared about them.

All of them had a huge, horrific whole ripped in their lives that Tuesday morning in the late Summer of 2001. At least all those terrified people who jumped out of the 87th Floor of that building to their deaths, or the people on the planes who made teary last calls to their families, or employees who burned to death in the Pentagon, will not be left behind as a "cold case."

On the other hand, though, I just cannot bring myself to celebrate death, in any way, shape, or form. You might think that's a sappy way to go, but, quite frankly, I am done giving a damn. I used to take a lot of pleasure in the thought of hitting back at someone who wronged me, even if it was only a wrong to me, but I could never stand the sight of someone suffering. It's something that seeps into my consciousness, and I feel this need to make it stop. Thus, when I was about 14 or 15, I decided that hatred was an addiction that I needed to swear off. Ever since, any celebration of death has bothered me deeply. Let me backtrack, though, and talk about how I got to where I am on this issue.

I remember the morning of that September 11 very clearly still. I remember having breakfast, I was having Lucky Charms, my favorite cereal, as an 11-year-old kid, and my Mom told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. I assumed it must have been an accident, it must have been cloudy. Mom told me it was a terrorist attack. She said it pretty straightforwardly, without much apparent surprise. When I went to school, I was still a little freaked out by my new setting. I had not been in middle school for a week, even, I had just started the previous Wednesday, and when everyone in class started talking about it, I realized what had gone on.

What I remember most, is hearing the teacher talking about the kind of planes that crashed into the towers. "These were big planes," she said. I found out later that these were not light propeller-driven planes, but huge passenger jets, 757-s and 767-s, both of which are massive. You have to understand that back then, I was a huge aviation geek. I loved machines that flew, and I was especially in awe of those passenger jets we often jump on and take for granted. I must have been one of the few people that got excited to get on a plane. It seemed like such a freeing thing to me.

An example of a drawing of jets that I often do. I have done so many of these it's not even funny.

It seemed bizarre to me that such beautiful, amazing machines could be used for such a terrible, destructive purpose. I spent the whole day not getting what went on, and wanting to get what it was that affected everybody that day. I remember getting scared about it that day when my new P.E. teacher was ostracizing us for talking too much. It was just a confusing day, all in all. After I got back from school, we were staring at the TV news ceaselessly, blankly trying to figure out what this was all about. My Dad finally turned it off and said "It's really easy to just veg out and watch TV, but let's not." Probably a good idea, in retrospect. However, in the dark days, weeks, months and the following year, TV coverage like this was something I saw regularly.



By the way, the point of the above segment was the speech from Donald Rumsfeld. His speech also included a line to the effect of "If anyone says this is an attack on the Afghan people, they're wrong." I remember being so thrilled about the speech, and that the US was bombing Afghanistan. After all, those guys had killed our people, we had to go get 'em. That gets to the central journey I have made, lo these 10-plus years since that day at the end of Summer.

I was a really patriotic kid back then, if only because of my goody-two-shoes nature. Still, I really wanted to get the people that did it. I was an 11-year-old boy, I wasn't about to take an attack from some foreigner lying down. I knew that the bad guys were a group called Al-qaeda (I heard it pronounced "Al Kita" which added another level of bizarreness to it), and the main villain was a guy in Afghanistan named Osama Bin Laden, who was the ringleader of another group called the Taliban. As unclear as I was on who these guys were and what their problem was, I knew we needed to take them out.

At the same time, when my Dad told me we were now at war, I got scared, because I got this image of old-school, nuclear war-type scenarios. Even then, I knew that war meant you could get hurt, you could be killed, and so could your whole family. I got anxious then, as I often did when unexpected things happened to me in my youth.

At about this time, I began to learn about a group of religious people called the Muslims. In the months after 9/11, I heard people talk about "Muslim-this," and "Islamic-that," but I had no idea what any of it referred to. In the 7th grade, our teacher took us through the world's religions. She told us that around 600 AD, a man named Muhammad (I've never figured out how to properly spell this name, forgive me) traveled through the desert in what is today Saudi Arabia, and found a bunch of guys worshipping false idols, and in general, acting quite badly.

Then one day, he went into a cave, and had a vision from God, whom they call Allah, and went forth to spread the word. Muhammad was only a prohpet, a messenger of God's vision. Today, that cave is a Holy Site to all Muslims. There are also five central demands in Islam, called the Five Pillars. They include prayer five times a day, facing the Holy City in Mecca, and at least one trip in believers' lives to said Holy City.

The ubiquitous image of the terrorist we are shown. I did this as a mock-up of a picture you would find on TV news about an international terrorist (hence the made-up foreign intel label in the bottom left). I assure you this was entirely fictionalized, but it does have truth to it, does it not?

I later found out that this religion had drawn a lot of suspicion from people here in the US, and later Europe. Because of religious customs in many Middle Eastern countries, people argue that the religion itself is wrong. I drew the above picture four years ago, to capture the familiar theme we find in the news, of the scary Muslim guy who tried to blow something up. Since the 80's, with the destruction of Flight 103, we've been seeing this picture of Middle Eastern guilt shown to us, over and over again.

This despite the fact that, as I mentioned in my post on terrorism on the 10th Anniversary of Daniel Pearl's death, that the majority of victims of Islamic terrorists are Muslims themselves, including about 2% of the 9/11 victims. All you get in our media is images and stories of the scary Muslims who are gonna blow you up or make your country adopt Sharia Law, and when everyone on the TV agrees on that, and all your friends and family believe in it, that becomes your reality.

The first time I realized it was after the Iraq War. In the early winter months of 2003, we began to hear talk of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and "WMD's" weapons of mass destruction. Our government were telling us that we needed to invade now, before the "smoking gun" became a "mushroom cloud." Yet I began to hear a bigger group of people saying that there weren't weapons, there were other ways of dealing with the problem, and we needed to have the UN verify this to be true. I came to find out later that none of this was allowed to happen.

So the orgiastic beginning of this war was dismaying to me, since I was just beginning to discover that war and hurting could be wrong. My country could be wrong. Our country can be responsible for the deaths of families, of children, of people who do not deserve to die. That's never an easy learning experience.

It is only in the months and years that followed September 11th, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Iraq War, that I have understood what those events truly mean. I have been just as angry at the terrorists from Al-qaeda and all the related networks as I have been at US Government officials, upon discovering their deceit, and callous disregard for people's very lives. Not only foreigners, these people don't give a damn about protecting us from anything. It is this kind of anger and despair about the world that has propelled me into meditation on this condition of getting shafted called the human condition.

For years, I felt a lot of anger about the world, about all the pain, unfairness, and loneliness I felt as if it were my own experience. I didn't even have the words to say what it was, accurately, much less the will to discuss it with anyone. As much anger as I felt, I felt it all because there was so little connection of people to each other. They were all in their own tunnel world, thinking about themselves, their cliques of friends, race, family, nation, economic status, and religion.

A dark voice inside me whispered, This is human nature, this is how it is, it is part of you, join it, give in. I was not going to give up, I was not going to be just another stooge to power, to nation, to religion, to Groupthink, as George Orwell termed it. I was going to defeat the dark part of my nature, while everyone else gave in to it in the form of supporting wars, killing in other countries, and all.

So why did I not celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden? Well, because I just don't celebrate death, even if it is the death of a scumbag. Don't get me wrong, what Bin Laden did, not only on 9/11, but in running this collection of bad, bad people in Al-qaeda, and in his Holy War in the US, which included attacking our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and our ship in Yemen in 2000, personified what evil means. To me, evil is not about a person, it is about what they do, and how they do it. Bin Laden conducted the killing of human beings with cool, steely composure, and pleasure in his work, the terrible deaths of people.

Yet, what were we doing the night he was killed? Celebrating like rowdy fraternity brothers, celebrating death. Where does that leave us? Everybody I heard in the news expressed sheer delight that he had died. Even Elie Wiesel, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, said that the death was well-deserved. Rudy Giuliani implied that if you aren't feeling a little gleeful, you're in denial. All they tell you is that it's human nature to take glee in the enemy's death, as if that's all human nature is: barbarism and vengeance. Even Jon Stewart, whom I usually like and admire, joined in the antics.

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What is even worse than him ridiculing the notion that maybe we shouldn't be having an orgy over this event, that maybe it was ambivalent, is his phallic implication at the end, there. That boils down to what most international conflict is about. Listen to a bit of George Carlin's famous Jammin' in New York special from 1992, about the Gulf War that had played out much like this Iraq War did.



You might find this offensive, but I think the point needs to be made that war is about proving who is tougher, who has more might, power or virtue, in other words, whose masculinity is more potent(because, at the risk of making a feminist statement, it is mainly men who are part of wars, but I digress). That's why I believe wars, killing, and hatred are not only destructive, but ultimately futile. After all, sooner or later, you will no longer be able to win power struggles consistently.

Ultimately, these assassinations are more symbolic than anything else. To Al-qaeda, the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon were symbolic of America's power. That's the main reason the terrorists chose to crash planes into them, because they had been trying to attack civilian jet liners for a long time, and several members of Al-qaeda's planning team were showing interest in the Twin Towers as potential targets. To us, here in the US, Bin Laden became the big bad guy. He was the symbol for all that was evil in this world. So I get why people would celebrate the killing of this terrible mastermind.

However, seeing the huge spectacle of raucous celebrations at this raid made me, just, spiritually ill. You may remember the outrage surrounding the picture of Palestinians celebrating as the planes crashed into the buildings.

I saw a picture similar to this one in the LA Times the day after 9/11. Even at my young age, I was coolheaded enough to realize the paper was probably doing it because they wanted war. A war would be good for their news. Yet it made me boil in rage nonetheless. There is no reason to celebrate death. Period. That's what is so awful about these celebrations. It isn't just that we've learned nothing from the errors of the Middle East, it's also that we would spit in the face of anyone who would tell us different from what we want to hear. Remember the story of the girl who trashed the Martin Luther King quote from my post on MLK Day? That to me was the height of arrogance and a willful, malicious variety of ignorance that is so often our error as a culture.

Oh, and by the way, I feel like I should mention this. Not everybody in Palestine was celebrating that day. Below is a photo from a large group of Palestinian students who held a long, silent vigil for their fellow children lost 5,000 miles away. You can find the link to the story here.

You're not gonna see this in the news. It doesn't fit into the neat little narrative that "sells" in the west. Our news outlets like CNN and the New York Times would be terrified of appearing to be "liberal" or "politically correct." So ironically, in their urge to not be politically correct, they come to serve another type of political correctness.

This goes to show that you do not have to celebrate death. Now, there is a difference, I want to make it clear that I know this. I am not defending Osama Bin Laden, and I am certainly not defending anything he ever did or stood for. What he did was wrong and it was evil, there is no dispute about that here.

However, I find it interesting that no one would listen to what the demands of Al-qaeda and all kinds of people in the Middle East are. That doesn't mean we should grant all the demands, that would be unrealistic and would let them off the hook too much. We need to know what the demands are, so we can decide what to allow, and what to stand firm on. We haven't done any of that, though, we've just insisted "They hate us for our freedom!"

The death of Osama Bin Laden was, for me, more a grim relief than anything else. My thought process was "At least he won't be able to hurt anyone anymore." We could learn from this relief, though, rather than go into an orgy of nationalism and machissmo. We must understand that we cannot accept that our government plays power broker all over the world, and expect that it won't come back to haunt us. This does not mean that we are to blame, however, if we stay silent while our government carries out unethical, undemocratic activities, such as the Iranian Coup of 1953, we are implicitly accepting it as normal.

We need to understand that while we, as individuals, may hold certain ideals, when it comes to our culture, the only thing others see, and judge us on, is our actions. We can't expect to keep our governmental status quo going and get more equitable and just results. We also need to have compassion, both for ourselves, and for other national bodies, even as we hold responsible the appropriate power players, be they heads of state, military leaders, or militants acting outside any national authority. Bottom line, if you commit the crime, you do the time, as Robert DeNiro once said.

This grim justice is not a cause to party. It is a cause for a more reflective relief. I believe we should be glad that at the very least, these horrible crimes were answered for. This does not mean that all terrorism has ended. We like to believe that once we "get" the main bad guy, all is won, but remember, this is the "War on Terror," which, by the way, you can't permanently win.

What you can do is root out the desperation and sense of wrong that makes terrorism seem so necessary for the peasants of Afghanistan, Yemen, and so forth. It was rich Saudis that funded Al-qaeda, whom the Taliban gave safe haven. From that, all sorts of people along that barren stretch of land on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border supported the terrorist network. The good news is that Al-qaeda is now on the run, and they are having less and less credibility throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.

The even better news is that most of the people on Earth are not sociopaths at their core. We realize, on some level, that pain is bad. From that starting point, let us learn now that it will not work to simply pin all of the evil in the world onto one man or group, sacrifice them, and believe evil has been purged. This can just as easily pinned on the righteous as it can be on the wicked. Rather, we must realize that there is a part in all of us, from the best to the worst human beings, that urges us to destroy, and to take glee in that destruction.

Often, when we pin evil on someone, putting all that urge to destroy on them becomes more natural, more just. We must face that part of ourselves and say "I don't need that high. I don't need the glee in destruction, even in the truly wicked." After all, working on this projection of our destructive will toward the "evil ones" is what allowed Bin Laden and sociopaths like him to recruit, train, and facilitate real evil. We can step out of that cycle.

Well, I'm sorry this post ended up taking so long, but like I said, I had a lot of contradictory emotions going on when this happened a year ago. I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to feel about it. Venting on my knowledge, and my experience over the years has really helped clarify my aim here. As I was typing, all sorts of memories were coming back that I felt I needed to share with you. I feel this perspective was underrepresented in this story, and needed to be shared. Anyway, if you have any thoughts, feelings, comments, or anything on this you would like to share, please feel free.

I included this post on this blog because I believe our artistic experience can help us see the world in ways we may not have before. I hope that discussion on this helps bring a creative, innovative energy out into the world. I'll have some more good stuff for you soon. Thanks for listening.

See ya!

"The Poetry of Pizza": A Transformational Moment

Poetry of Pizza ran from February to March of 2010 in the Cal Rep Theater.

Hello, fellow seekers of life and truth,

That's a nice opener, isn't it? I think I'll start using that, now. It adds a little more potency to the opening. Anyway, I've got another play-related post for you. This one is multi-dimensional, just like last night's was. Do you remember any moment in your life when things clicked, and your life was taken in a different direction? It may have been a big moment, where some dramatic event turned your life in a 180. Sometimes, though, there are small moments, where you just do one thing, and that one thing changed the way you look at life. After that, everything begins to shift. Two years ago, today, in fact, going to see the play The Poetry of Pizza did that for me.

I remember very clearly the night I went to go see this play, 2 years ago. It was a Wednesday night, March 3, 2010. Yes, I do remember the days of the week that most things happen. Why I know this is a whole different story. Like I was saying, though, I remember that very clearly, because that was the first play I saw as a student in Theater Arts. That evening, I was excited to go down to this theater, located on the permanently-docked Queen Mary. I remember getting going early, having eagerly anticipated this time out. Back then, I lived a much more solitary existence.

Now, I didn't know what to expect from this play. However, it turned out that this play grabbed two parts of me that I didn't know could go together. First off, the action in this play happens in 1998, three years before, well, you know what happened. I remember that time period. Back then, the only people who tweeted were birds, and the only facebook you could find was the one your grandparents were always showing you. Ah, but enough of my waxing nostalgic.

Anyway, Sarah Middleton, who was played by the woman I was studying under, is a 40-something, jaded professor of fine poetic works who has just relocated to Copenhagen. She is under the persistant guidance of her American friends, and the constant eye of a seedy Danish professor. One day, she walks into a pizzeria owned by a colorful group of Kurdish refugees. Sarah finds one in particular, Soran, who is an artist when it comes to these pizzas. When Sarah samples one of these delights, she is taken with this man.

Now, when she talks to him again, she finds out his troubled back story. Even though she is ten years older than he is, as Soran puts it he "feels older than his 34 years." It turns out he and his friends fled from Northern Iraq (an area called "Kurdistan" that encompasses parts of Iraq, Iran and Turkey) when Saddam Hussein began carrying out a murder campaign by poison gas attacks, and many other gruesome methods. This changes Sarah's understanding of Soran's depth. He has not been dragged into the pit of cynicism or nihilism, in spite of the terrible things he has witnessed in life.

As the two grow closer together, a variety of characters, American, Danish, and Kurdish, play out many bizarre antics, Seinfeld-ian in their humor and vulnerability. Sadly, one day, Soran asks Sarah, one day, to shave her, well, bush, as per Kurdish cultural custom. Scared of this, Sarah and Soran mutually decide they are just too different from each other to make it. Their friends are seen telling them to just "let it go." They both feel a hole in their hearts. In the end, Soran and Sarah decide they love each other so much, working through their differences  is worth it to them. In the last scene, the two are getting married in the Kurdish custom, and Sarah samples a very special slice of pizza. All the other characters, and evenly split cast of men and women, discover each other, and none of them are lonely.

Now, normally, this kind of "happy" ending does not work for me. It just leaves some part of the human experience out most of the time. Here, however, it was not blindly overlooking life. It was very life-affirming, and heartwarming. It was something I thought, "Well, that could never happen in real life." Maybe it could, though. People often believe that you need an ending that is as dreary and grey as possible, that takes any hope in your heart, and just squashes it, in order to get people to think. To me, this is not always true. I think The Poetry of Pizza really made that warmth in spite of the darkness and the division apparent.

Now, the woman you see in the photo at the top, was my first teacher at this school that I go to now. She told us that the man who had acted opposite her as Soran had lived in Kosovo back when the War and genocide were still going on in the late '90's. He didn't have to stretch too far to figure out his motivations as a character. Anyway, I only began to realize later how this play had subtly affected me. Theater suddenly became a place of community, of humanity, where you could explore all the pains and heartaches going on in the world, and tell truths in no uncertain terms, but with all the compassion toward a person standing exposed, vulnerable, on the stage. That night, I came to understand what the theater was really about, for me.

I'd like to show you a tribute drawing I did for this play myself, a few months later:

Sarah Middleton boards a flight from the U.S. to Denmark, shortly before the opening of The Poetry of Pizza.

You may notice I have a lot of aircraft and flying machines as subjects in my art. When I was younger, I was simply fascinated by air travel, and dedicated many a visual work to airplanes, helicopters, and such. Anyway, Sarah's looking out into the plane is meant to connote the beginning of a journey into the unknown. It is supposed to be slightly dated-looking, but close to our time, and reminiscent of memories I had of that period.

So my question is this: do works of art (especially plays, books, and movies) have to be dark in tone to convey a meaningful message? Or could it be (at the risk of asking a rhetorical question) that some happy discoveries in plays and films can change our understanding of life, and shift our sense of what is possible to do? I want to finish this post on that note. I'm sorry it took longer to get done than I anticipated; I was fighting off a fever yesterday and today. I will be back up to speed soon, and hopefully, I'll get some time to blog. Thanks for listening.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Groundhog Day Review & Synopsis: Feeling Stuck

Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, a good reflection of ruminations of mine today.

Hi Everybody,

Well, I promised you that my next post would be on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I got the inspiration to post on a different topic. When inspiration strikes, sometimes you just have to change your plans, and clear your schedule to follow your inspiration. However, my next post will be on Extremely Loud, I promise you.

I realized that today is "Groundhog Day." This reminded me of that Bill Murray movie that came out in 1993, about that same seasonal landmark. It's a pretty funny movie. I wouldn't call it a great movie, or rank it up there with Casablanca or Citizen Cane, but I liked it overall. It did what it set out to do, with some fun in between.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend that you do, but I will give you the premise here, and relate back to my overall mood today. Anyway, Bill Murray plays Phil, this local TV anchor from Pittsburgh, who gets sent to Punxsutawney, PA, to do a story on the annual Punxsutawney Phil festival, which is to predict if winter will continue or not. To him, the assignment is tedious, pointless, and beneath him, so he uses the time to be generally douchy to his assistants, including one woman who is his producer.

Anyway, he sees this as the worst day of his life, and tries desperately to get back to Pittsburgh. A blizzard has snowed them in, though, and he must return to town. Phil wakes up the next day to discover that it is-February 2 again. He goes through his day, avoiding old friends and people in town that he meets. As the day repeats again, and again, and again, Phil grows increasingly desperate, chewing people out, and later going on a reckless driving spree and baiting the cops.

As Phil keeps waking up, and it keeps being February 2, Phil is in utter despair. He attempts to kill himself, along with Punxsutawney Phil, in a car accident. Then he tries several suicide attempts, but they are in vain, because the next morning, he keeps waking up to February 2, and the alarm clock plays "I Got You, Babe." Failing that, Phil then turns to generosity, as per his producer's request. He goes around each day, saving the townspeople from various hazards, getting to know everyone in town, even learning new skills. It is only after all of these works of philanthropy that Phil is able to wake up on February 3, and resume his life with his producer.

This is what brings me to the kind of funk I was in today. I realized today that my problem is that I am feeling "stuck." I had heard that term used as a way of feeling before, but I never knew what it really meant.
Loosely defined, it refers to feeling like you can't move forward, for whatever reason. You feel like you can't do anything, whatever you do will fail, and you can't count on anybody to help you out. So you just can't go forward. You can't make any advancement in your job or career, you can't experience the life you truly want to, whatever relationships you may have flounder, and starting new ones is impossible to you.

You could also throw in the term "discouraged." The two feelings actually reinforce each other. You get stuck, and you can't make any progress on things you want. They just seem to pass you by. After a number of things you want pass you by, your discouragement mounts. You just think "Why the hell bother, man? I'm just gonna get the same shit I always get."

Now, today, when I was reviewing a wonderful book I found about this feeling of being "stuck," it mentioned that there are many aspects to being stuck. As I read, I recognized that I shared some of them, but not all. It seems like there are parts of me that aren't stuck, but there are parts that are. Sometimes I feel like my life is just fine, others, it's like I can never get the life I want.

What prompted this little funk of mine? Yesterday, in my theater class, I was working with this group, there were a few girls there, and they mentioned that Valentine's Day is coming up. They mentioned things about the relationships they were in, or were not in. One of them said she'd never been in a relationship during Valentine's Day. I wanted to point out to them that I had never been in a relationship, period. I might as well tell you about this now, because this is something that has been on my mind a lot. I have never been in any sort of romantic relationship, ever.

It isn't that I haven't tried to be before. I tried once, years ago. There was this one girl, a short, blonde girl, in the seventh grade. I remember she had this wonderful smile. Every time she'd smile, her face seemed to light up. Anyway, I had a huge crush on her. I didn't really know what I was doing. I proclaimed that I was madly smitten with her. She tried to tell me she just wanted to be friends, but I wanted her to be mine. I was crestfallen, because I was thirteen; I didn't know any better. Later that year, I tried to get in with two other girls, with very little success. I just tried the same old goofy conversational stuff I used to do back then.

I can still remember the last day I tried to talk to that last girl I had a serious crush on. It was a bright sunny day in early June. I was fourteen, and I just gently walked up, trying to start a conversation, and I got the infamous "talk to the hand" gesture, while she looked dismissively away. It was the worst day of my life. I was totally humiliated. I only realized later what a gesture of personal, biting rejection that had been to me. I haven't had the nerve to make an overture to a girl since.

Now, I don't want to tell you all this to have a pity party for myself. I just, really and truly, want to share with you that has been keeping me stuck, in a big and small way, for all these years. When I see everybody else having such ease getting into relationships, I experience this feeling of being left out, cast aside, and, in the more extreme moments of frustration, damned. In the last couple of years, every time I have seen a girl who looks or seems likeable, she always ends up having a boyfriend. It seems like 80-90% of the girls I meet or know already have boyfriends.

This is why I got discouraged today, because this happened yet again. You know what the most frustrating part of all this is? That I just haven't been able to work up enough courage to make overtures to a girl. I just worry about being rejected, and then what would happen if I did get into a relationship? What do people do in relationships to make them work? I'd worry about making the relationship work right. I don't know if I could handle rejection or being dumped again. I'm the kind of guy that wouldn't be able to leave the house for two weeks after a breakup.

What I realized today, and the whole reason I brought all this up, is that I have a lot of fault in this. I feel like I can only blame myself for the predicament I'm in. I've been too afraid of rejection, of accidentally pursuing a girl with a boyfriend, of being the unwanted one. This has thoroughly stunted my initiative. From all the things I've heard girls talk about what they want in guys, none of it sounds like me. They say they want guys with jobs, money, and a guy who parties at the club every weekend. I've had a few jobs and internships, all of which have lasted only a few months, I still live with my parents at age 21, and I only have a small group of friends, I rarely hang out with them at college-style parties.

So, never having had a romantic or sexual relationship at age 21, I feel really, seriously stuck in my life. There is this sense of desperation when I look at the people around me. There is a blend of angry, resentful, sad and hurt emotions that I do not want to feel. It feels to me like nobody else has the type of problem I have, this type of severe relational handicap. It isn't even that I dislike people. I really do like people, but I want to be able to relate on my own terms. Many times, it feels like I can't do that. It feels like I have to acquiesce on what I really think is important in life.

I realized today, when I remembered that movie, Groundhog Day, that I feel stuck in what seems to be an interminable cycle, at least in respect to relating to other people. The good news is, that like I said, I found this really insightful book on what to do, spiritually and physically, when you feel stuck. It talks about behavior strategies many people have for avoiding facing things in their lives. I have some inklings of things that I used to do everything I could not to face, and I have begun facing those head-on. It feels like it is such an immense, uphill battle, lo these many months (I have been doing this for nearly a year, now). I have an idea of what the traps are, mentally, yet I still fall into them. I know I should be more confident and take more initiative in these things, yet there is something inside me that blocks me from doing so.

The good news is, I feel much less stuck now than I did two or three or four years ago. Back then, I used to have this low-level burned-out, anxious, angry, depressed feeling, and I didn't know why. I hoped things would get better in the future, yet the things in life whose idea made me feel warm, alive continued to elude me. Now, I at least know some of what is going on inside me that drives my feeling of life. I feel less stuck now than I used to. I hope I can continue, and with some time, I will feel confident enough in myself to take that step. God willing, there will be some girl who is attracted to men who strive to be intelligent, conscientious, truthful, just, and an all-around enjoyable person. God, how I hope such a girl can be available. However, now I am getting close to being at peace. Because, really, that is more durable than anything.

See ya, and keep wondering, Folks!

Terrorism Hurts Everybody

Hi everybody,

As you may know, today marks the 10th anniversary since Daniel Pearl's death. Pearl was a Wall Street Journal international correspondent, who broke many stories around the world, including an incident where a US airstrike on a supposed weapons factory in Sudan actually hit an aspirin factory. In early 2002, he was sent to Pakistan to search for al qaeda moles in the Pakistani government, was subsequently abducted by one, held for demands from al qaeda, and then murdered by beheading.

When I learned of this act in depth, it was the barbarism of the acts that made me so mad about it. It was a feeling of simultaneous anger and disgust at the act. You know how he was killed? He was decapitated (head cut off), then chopped into ten pieces, and thrown in a ditch someplace in Pakistan. What other word is there for an act like that but pure animal savagery. It's just a horrible thing to do to anyone of any nationality. When I hear about groups like al qaeda carrying out acts like this against people doing their job, I almost understand the kind of guttural anger that drives people like Dick Cheney to want to bomb countries out of existence, or Rick Perry to have criminals executed, even if they are in fact innocent of murders.

It's not that I would ever do these things, or condone them, in any sense, it's just that sometimes, events in the international arena of news sometimes make you so upset that you do get to that point. You do get that level of intense anger, terror, despair about your species, cynicism, a thirst for vengeance. It can be (and sometimes has been) so overwhelming that it scares you. It scares even me how much of that emotion I have sometimes.

This is not the first time I have given issues of an international scope much thought. I came of age, spent my preteens and teens, in a world shadowed by the spector of terrorism. On the morning 9/11 occurred, I was 11 years old, overwhelmed at starting the 6th grade. So it isn't like I've had much choice in what I've become aware of. In past decades, like the 80's or 90's, you could get away with having little or no opinion in international strife and conflicts, because it didn't have a tangible effect on people's lives here in the US. On that Tuesday morning in September 2001, that perception ended abruptly and shockingly.

Since that day, I've felt like there has been a progressively more urgent nature to what happens to people in other countries. So this issue has been on my mind a lot over the years, even though I am still very young. Since I came across this information on Daniel Pearl, I was looking for a way, in my art, to deal with it. I know that won't have an effect, but it will help me express how I feel about this whole issue. Hopefully, just my sharing it with you will have some small effect.

On the one hand, as I said, I do have that anger and fear, but on the other, I do care about other nations, countries and cultures. I want to protect the people of America and the West, but I also don't want to see people on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran, shredded, incinerated, then written off as "collateral damage." Sadly, a flipside of our American optimism is this our blindness to the damage our foreign policies, and wars, can cause. If we are an exceptional country, surely we could never kill someone who didn't deserve it. So I get that there are bad people abroad, but I also think we need to take a look at our own soul.

For a while, I racked my brain to try to come up with a way to express this. The phrase "terrorism hurts everybody" went through my mind, but I wanted to come up with a picture that represented it. That is how I express what I find through art best. I wanted to draw up an image that got at the universality of having life ripped from someone you care about. I got the idea to do this drawing.

I was inspired to do this from the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. On the night of December 21, 1988, the plane, Pan Am 103, was blown up as it was heading from London to New York City. Everybody on the plane (259 people) was killed horrifically, and when the plane hit the ground, it destroyed several houses in the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and 11 people in Lockerbie were killed. The attack was carried out by two Libyan Intelligence agents, one of whom was imprisoned, later released and returned to Libya. There is also good evidence, from official sources, that it was planned within the Libyan government.

Again, the horrible, terrifying way those people were ripped from their lives is gut wrenching. Hearing of it makes it all the more distressing that the perpetrators "got away" and one was sent back home. Again, I had dark thoughts about what I would like do to inflict pain on the people resposible, only to try to take them back soon after. In one account I read, they reported that some christmas presents that the plane was carrying back to the US lay smashed in Lockerbie. That heartbreaking image really stuck with me.

So I decided to make this image as broadly applicable as I could. I wanted it to be about the feeling of a loved one ripped from life. Just the shock, horror, and pain, is something that unites us all. I decided to make this a jarring image of the keychain of a close love falling out of the side of the plane into the darkness. I included the jettisoned christmas present alongside it. This makes it about what terrorism really costs us: people we love, care about, or know. People who don't deserve to be a victim of political or religious hostility. Thus, it applies beyond just the bombing of Flight 103, or terrorism from the Middle East.

It becomes about us all. What do we lose from terrorism? We lose fellow human beings, we lose humanity. By the way, the majority of victims of Islamic terrorism are themselves Muslims. 30 of the victims of September 11th (a full 1% of them) were Muslims, including people on the flights to Los Angeles, and Firefighters, Police Officers, and Paramedics in New York.

Listen to this beautiful video, done by Queen Rania of Jordan, about victims of terrorism who live in the Middle East and pratice Islam.

This inspired me to make this more of a universal statement. That's where I came up with the statement "Terrorism Hurts Everybody." While focusing on this "clash of civilizations" that has claimed many lives, we lose sight of those things in common that give us our humanity. We need, therefore, to reclaim this sense of common experience across borders or cultures. We need to understand that when one act of violence is carried out, someone always suffers, lives with pain for weeks, months, years afterward.

To return to my starting point, Daniel Pearl was killed because he was doing his job. He was doing his work one day, and then he got killed in this horrible way. The same could be said of nearly all other victims of contemporary terrorism. It's just that his job was to highlight goings-on in the world few of us ever encounter. His job may be one of the most crucial in this world.

Thankfully, his death was not for nothing. Now our world is getting more and more interconnected, in an economic sense, in a communal sense, in a cultural sense, in an ethical sense. This is made possible by technology like the laptop I am using right now, and the IPhone I currently own. What is diclosed in Washington DC, can now be passed on to journalists in Europe, and can launch an uprising in the Middle East.

The good thing about this interconnectedness is that it makes it much harder for us to kill indiscriminately. At the same time that technology is bringing us farther apart, it is bringing us closer together. Now our humanity is being brought to bear, as cultures around the world are not as far apart as they used to be. I do not believe this is the end-all-be-all of what needs to happen on Earth, but I do think this is the beginning. The beginning of a journey that needs to happen.

Well, more on the subject of 9/11 in the next post. I was thrilled to finally get to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last Saturday night. I would have blogged about it sooner, but for the last few days, I have been tied up with homework, already, yes. I'll have that for you tomorrow.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

In Memory of Fuzz: You Will Never Be Forgotten, You Will Always Be Loved

Hi there,


Well, our family got some bad news this morning. Our cat, Fuzz, had been having health problems. She had been drooling, less energetic, she ate and drank much less, and her breath really stank. She was not able to clean herself. We knew we had to take her to the vet, but we assumed that it was just a mouth infection that was bothering her. We thought that we would take her to the vet, they would get her rotted teeth worked on, and then she would get some of her spunk back.


Even yesterday, the doctor sounded semi-optimistic about her condition. He did offer the possibility that there might be a tumor in her throat, but that seemed unlikely at the time. He gave her an antibiotic (along with a fluid injection, since she was dehydrated), and when she came home, we observed that she seemed more alert, and with a little more energy. I watched her, looking at her food dish last night, expecting that she'd likely have a teeth extraction, and then we'd have her back here, somewhat healthy again.


This morning, around 8:30, the vet called. He told me that they were going to stick some apparatus in Fuzz's mouth to get the infectious stuff out. She had a tumor so swollen that they couldn't even get the machine in her throat. When I asked him he told me definitely that there was nothing they could do about the tumor at this point. This was really jarring to hear.


After all this time, Fuzz's time was essentially over. The best thing to do at this point, they told me, since she was already under anasthaesia, was to let her go to sleep. After talking with my Mom, we decided that this was for the best. Otherwise, they said, the tumor would get so bad Fuzz would choke to death slowly. At least this way, she could go peacefully and without pain.


This morning, Fuzz, a female with silver fur, passed away. We don't know exactly how old she was, but I estimated that she must have been about eight or nine years old. This is because the vet doing the tests a while back told us she was about five years old, and that was four years ago. So In her young years, she had been a stray cat. She had been abandoned in an old apartment. Our neighbor, a home repair contractor, took her in, and she lived next door until we took her in, about a year after that.


In the vet's waiting room yesterday, I said to my Dad, and to her, that I remember the first time I met Fuzz. Back then, I didn't know what her name was. We never figured out if she had had a name, or what it was, so we settled on the name "Fuzz," as in "the fuzz," or the police. Anyway, I was sitting out on the front steps one friday night in September of 2005. It was dusk, and I was waiting for Dad to arrive home from some trip. Anyway, I had some new warm-ups on, and then this little cat came up to me. She just started meowing at me, I talked to her, just hoping she wouldn't go to the bathroom on my clothes.


At that time, we were having mouse problems. Mice were getting into our food, crapping all in the kitchen, and making a mess. Fuzz kept hanging out in our front yard. Time went on, and in the early winter of 2006, around February, we began floating the idea of adopting this little cat, to take care of the mouse issue, even though I insisted on being gentle with the mice. We talked with the neighbors, and they said they would like us to take care of her. So, in March of 2006, thereabouts, she began staying at our house. A few months later, after they moved, she became "officially" ours. Fuzz caught a couple of mice, and the rest "got the message."


I have always had a soft spot in my heart for animals, but more than anything, for dogs and cats. Pets can provide you a dimension of companionship that people cannot. An animal won't give you an endless amount of drama, they won't judge you, they won't maliciously use you or manipulate you, and when you come home from an exhausting day, they will listen to you unconditionally, letting you blow your frustration away. It is well-known that a dog will display an eager, happy and enthusiatic attitude (I used to own a sheppard dog named Lucy when I was little). I used to joke that cats always look like they're annoyed or pissed at you.


However, if you spend enough time studying a cat, as I did with Fuzz, you can recognize signs of affection. For instance, if you find a cat head-butting you softly, that is their way of scent-marking you, of making you "theirs." In Fuzz's case, she was a very outgoing cat. When someone would come to the house, Fuzz would first rub her body up against them, then when they sat down, Fuzz would jump on their lap. She had this thing she would do with us, especially me, where she would jump on my lap , then kneed her paws slowly into me. Sometimes she would step on my crotch, which would really hurt.


It might seem odd that a guy in his teens and twenties would be so attached to a cat, but Fuzz was not just any cat. Over the six years that I knew her, I developed a special bond with Fuzz. In fact, some researchers have found great social benefits to having a pet. At the time we adopted her, I was fifteen. As a teenager, I was very awkward, and with my peers in high school, I was very tongue-tied, and often I would make a fool out of myself. I didn't trust myself around people my own age, since I believed that if they knew who I really was, they would think I was weird and be repulsed.

But when I came home, Fuzz would jump on my lap, and I'd just sit or lay on the couch for a while. I didn't have to edit myself, or be conscious of my word around Fuzz. I'd just lightly tell her what I felt. Fuzz was with me all through my victories in school, and running, and in my heartbreaks, trials, and periods of darkness. When I had my days where I was scared, scared to travel, scared of getting sick, scared to be with other people, scared to be alone, Fuzz was always there, listening.

All of my work had to be approved by Fuzz. Her favorite method of approval was sitting on the work.

We laughed and joked about Fuzz's antics, such as her charging at an open paper bag. She loved running along the top of the fence next to our house. A few nights, I would walk out front, and hear her meowing, not knowing where she was. Then I'd look on the roof, and she'd be calling at me. In her younger years, she was great at hunting. Any rodent, small bird, or insect was fair game for her. Many times, we would hear some ugly meow, and find Fuzz out front fighting some other neighborhood cat.

Of course, Fuzz had her own ways. The phrase "herding cats" is no exaggeration. We used to joke that we didn't own Fuzz, she owned us. It was, in fact, her house she was letting us live in. The running gag I used to do with her was talking to her, then responding in her words, with a tough-chick voice. It was our little ventriloquist act. For example, I would say "What can I do for you, Fuzz?" Then I'd answer, as her voice "Give me the food I deserve, damn it!" I loved messing with her that way, because I loved her.

Even though we liked to joke about what a prima donna she was, she was really social and outgoing to people. She was a popular fixture in this household. She would come up to you as you were working on some paper or book, sit right down on it, and then just look up at you. Even as I became more in my element with other people, I introduced them to Fuzz when they came to my home.

Today, I have cried a few times thinking about Fuzz. I think about the quizzical look on her face. It is a look of wonder, of unfettered curiosity. It struck me, now more than ever, that a cat is not bound by any of the restrictions people have. People seem to me to be doing their thing, in their habit practices, ignoring everything outside of that. Fuzz never did that.

I realized today that this has been my first deeply personal experience with grieving. This isn't my first ever loss. Two years ago, my Grandmother passed away at the age of 86, and my aforementioned dog Lucy had to be put down when I was 14. However, neither of those really hit me quite the way this one has. Today, I seem to have returned to my six-year-old self; everything seeming too big for me, making me sad inside. However, I learned that I am not alone. Research reports also show that people who own pets, children and adults alike, view the death of a pet as the death of a friend.

So, I've been experimenting with the way to grieve and honor Fuzz's memory. Over the years, I have used many modes of facing humiliation and heartbreak. I decided that I wouldmake today as quiet a day as possible, since few people would begrudge my taking a slow day to grieve a dear pet's passing. I decided to make no apologies for this, swearing off, for a moment, the feeling that I should be doing more. Then I thought, that's the way Fuzz lived all her life. She wasn't feeling like she should do more, and kicking herself for not doing it. She always did just enough for her.

I am going on so long with this entry because all the memories are coming back. All of today, I have been thinking of things I have seen Fuzz do over the years. People, it seems, have widely varied ways of grieving and honoring the passed. I, for one, get very sad, but I do not want to totally "get over it," because that would mean they would be lost, forgotten. I do not want this.

As I said, I have tried many ways of dealing with feelings of letdown or loss. When I was little, I used to cry a lot. Then, in my teen years, I used to keep soldiering on. Now, I know that there is an aspect of most things that happen that is neither bad nor good. To me, days aren't particularly bad or good, there are bad and good parts to them. As I took a walk this morning, I kept thinking of this song:

I thought of Fuzz, knocking on heaven's door now. This made me really tear up. I imagine that Fuzz is going off to some wonderful metaphysical cat afterlife, where she can chase laserpointers, hunt, nap, and claw people's laps to her heart's content. I hope she's gone on to a sort of "cat heaven." This is what I thought of, with tears in my eyes this morning, shortly after the call came from the vet. I imagined her going on up, arriving, and knocking on heaven's door, then being shown in to her new home.

The rest of today, with my family, we were not only talking about the sudden nature of this sad news. We were also remembering all the fun we had with Fuzz. We would say "Remember the time she was up on the roof, meowing down at us?" "Remember how she used to get really mad at us after we came back from our trips?" This morning, even as I was deeply sad about Fuzz's loss, I had a warm feeling in my heart about all the wonderful time we had together.

As I type this, I am between streams of tears. I find it impossible not to cry on a day like this. However, I do not think today was a bad day, or a good day. It was just another day. To Fuzz, it was just another day. It was the day she went to her Home, that she was set free, in a paradoxical way. All of today, I did not want to forget about Fuzz, even though it was painful to think about her. As I said, I did not want to forget her, to lose her memory, I want to honor and cherish that sliver of time we were given together. I find it painful to cry, but I know crying is necessary here.

So what course will this grief take for me? I don't know. Maybe I'll be sad, feel a little angry, a little guilty for not having taken better care of Fuzz's health, maybe I'll just feel like this grief is a huge, dark force that is inundating me, that I have no power to stop. I might have to face all of this. I guess I'll just have to let the grief run its course. Not that it will evaporate entirely, I would not even want that. As my Dad said, the worst part to him is that after someone dies, their life gets farther in the past, and is less prominent. I will always remember the value Fuzz had in this household.

In our family, Fuzz became a popular fixture. Despite her crazy, sometimes frustrating, antics, we kept caring for her. I considered today that we might have given her a real, caring home where before, she had none. I grieve, but at the same time, I feel a warmth from the memories, and the spirit, of Fuzz. I have felt waves today of both deep, deep sadness, and warm joy for her life.

My real hope is that even though Fuzz is physically gone, and her identity subsumed to the Great Unknown in the Universe, that the spirit, the soul, the driving forces of Fuzz remain always alive and well. This includes living without regret, without prejudice, without resentment or hatred. Living in this way is part of the Fuzz Memorial Project, of which this blog will become an integral part, effective immediately. Even though Fuzz's lifespan on Earth may have ended, we can choose to honor the spirit that she embodied. You can do that by loving, caring and living with no regret. I will have more news on the Fuzz Memorial Project to come.

See ya, and Keep Wondering, Folks!

Turning a Bad Morning Around

Snow White Goes Street!

Hi there! Okay, so this isn't really Snow White, but I'll explain it in a moment. The reason for the title is that this morning was not a good one for me. It was just unpleasant, and there were lots of little things that just got on my nerves. First of all, I didn't sleep good at all last night. I guess I was just too jazzed by doing last night's post. That's the problem with doing these deep, creative things, is that they can make you go bonkers. That happens to me sometimes.

Anyway, my circadian rhythms, or whatever, decided "Hey, we're not gonna fall asleep" until about 1:30 in the morning, after an hour and a half of tossing and turning. Then I woke up at 6 this morning, but couldn't get back to sleep, so I was just lying there in bed, with my mind running for another 2 hours. Then I got up, feeling kind of crappy to begin with. Then someone in my family went off on me when I didn't pay enough attention to them. After this, I had that feeling that I sometimes encounter.

This is when I get burned out, overwhelmed by things going on. In the extreme, this can make me feel depressed, really anxious about almost everything, or mad about the world. I often feel some blend of these at the same time. Fortunately, after I got some work done, and then set to work getting this post ready. At that point, what remained of the crappy feeling I had in the morning was receding.

That's the good thing about my mood lately. Even when I get really bent out of shape, I can recognize that things are going wrong, and decide I want to set today on course. I had heard about how having a bad morning can make the whole rest of your day suck. I didn't want that to happen this morning. Thankfully, it didn't happen. The downside is that, still, I feel, simultaneously, like there is very little I can do to change the course of my life in a meaningful way, and that I am not doing enough. Or what I am doing is not good enough, or complete enough, or truthful enough, or, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, this can be hard to really tough to deal with sometimes. Onto the point of this drawing. I came up with this idea as I was working on the Occupy Wall Street-themed illustration. I thought it would be good to illustrate a woman who was an angel, like a Divine Feminine figure, holding a machine gun, in this case, an M16 military-style rifle. The key to the angel figure, is that if you blow it up, and look closely at her face, you see that she has a warm, open expression on her face. I wanted her to show the warmth, love, and compassion in her face, while showing a strong, leveling, uncompromising strength.

So there are two ways you could look at this. Is she a good angel with a bad side, or a bad angel with a good side? Usually, movies, games, or books with really violent overtones freak me out, but I have to admit that when I thought of that subtitle at the top, I got amused when I thought of the toughest street gangs losing firefights to, and living in terror of, this "Snow White" figure. Is that wrong, to be bothered by really violent stuff, yet to enjoy that kind of dark humor?

My two themes here are love and truth. Here, the angel has the aura of absolute love and compassion in the way she looks toward the viewer. Yet, she has the often harsh power of truth and justice. I symbolized it as an M16 here to show how these two can exist in the same entity, in the form of gentleness and strength.

Also, as you have probably seen here, I think female symbolism is a fascinating thing to use in my drawings. I don't know why, but for many years, I have loved to include female subjects in these artistic endeavours. Maybe because women have always been an enigma to me. There is something about them that is interesting and foreign, but also appealing in some ways. So, yes, I do include women in my drawings. Anyway, that's it for now. I will have some more posts up for you soon. See ya guys, and keep wondering!