The walls are up and painted.  The tiles are down and grouted.  The appliances are in and plugged. The furniture is bought and on its way.  August 1, 2016, we move back in to the little shack we call Sawmyl Synders and pickup, more or less, where we left off.  I say less because we have less animals than we did before the flood on the farm – a lot less.  I say more because we have more weeds, more broken equipment, and more doubt about the future on this farm than before the creek became a river and carried part of my life downstream.  Yes, mud had smothered my possessions and with it a great deal of my hope.  However, I was forced to pull many things from the muddy path of Mother Nature’s wrath, and the mementos which I lifted and kept and dried are the priceless objects will kindle new hope.  I don’t remember my life as being in any way remarkable but these souvenirs and awards and digests and diaries do remind me that I had a life that went from hopeless to hopeful to happy.  I say I’m unhappy now.  I can tell you that I was happier before the flood, bringing so many revelations in its wake. About the people in my life.  About the strangers outside my life.  About the incomplete person I have become. Living life between the two.  How will I spend my remaining time while waiting for the great snake of a creek – just beyond my back door – to rise fifteen feet and once again lap away at my life?

I have sketch books, scrap books, and conspiracy books.  I have musings on paper, collections in journals, and opinions on my blog.  These transcribed brainwaves are of varying degrees of incompleteness and incompetence.  I plan on gathering them, separating them, and transforming them into the very best of expression in writing that I am capable.  Yes, I know this task is impossible for me now.  No, I do not think that the word ‘best’ applies to how others may assess my craft.  Maybe, the result will be a ‘better’ me that faces this challenging and frustrating world.  Perhaps, some ‘good’ will come of it, what good I have no idea.  But if I remain who I am – a too timid person relating to others in a too intense way in a much too complex world – I must pursue this calling that is both beyond my capacity and within my comprehension.  What instruments will I need to add to my skimpy ill-fitting author’s tool-belt in order to follow my dream and lead me to intangible but everlasting mementos?

The Eye that detects the important things in a manuscript is the Eye I’m looking for.  Yes, everyone has a story they think should be written.  Only a very few people have the ability to make that story interesting.  Many factors go into making a good story interesting, coherent, and memorable.  Certainly grammar and tense and punctuation are necessary but they are neither the end all or a perfected tool in a writer’s repertoire.  It takes a village to help one start to write well.  It takes a large part of a lifetime to learn to write well.  It takes courage to keep writing.  The obstacles to being an author are like others in any profession but the profession of an author is an obstacle to being like others.

Honda sent us a recall letter which stated that we should not sit in the front seat while driving until repairs are made.  The recall has been announced for 6 months.  They did not offer a rental car.  The only way for a customer to get a rental car, even after Honda explains the possible danger of this auto defect, is for the customer to ask.

Chick-fil-A has changed their menu – but only on the inside of the “Restaurant”.  The drive-thru still has the old menu without the new items and, therefore, with the old numbers.  The other day, we ordered from the old drive-thru menu.  The voice over the intercom told us the menu had changed and described what the new “number 7” item was.  We ordered the old items by reading the description instead of giving the number.  We still got the new “number 7”.

State Farm Insurance is my home insurance carrier.  I have flood insurance which arranged through my carrier but paid to FEMA.  My flood claim is handled by FEMA, not State Farm.  State Farm has told me that all FEMA related questions and issues should be addressed to FEMA only.  My FEMA adjuster told me to ask a question of my carrier, State Farm.  When I called State Farm, the receptionist, at first tried to find someone who could help.  A few minutes later, the receptionist came back to the phone and told me all agents had gone to lunch together, and I would be called back when they returned.  I was never called back.  It was 11 a.m. in the morning.  The office opened at 9 a.m.

My cardiologist office called on Monday and left a message that I had an appointment on Wednesday.  This was an old appointment which I had cancelled the last time I was in the office.  The reason for cancelling was that I did not trust the cardiologist or the office.  The reason I did not trust the cardiologist is that she tried to put me on statins in a sneaky way, a nuclear stress test was misread and she guessed at the reason, the call for the nuclear stress test was prompted by a AAA and a bad lipid panel.  The reason I don’t trust the cardiologist office is that the made mistakes in each and every document that was recorded, the PA stated that the nuclear stress test showed a “heart attack”, they told me they don’t do re-reads (even though they admit to mis-reading the test) and the office sent a different test result to my primary care physician than they sent to me.

My primary care physician would not assist when I called to ask them to help me get my cardiologist to re-read.  The only option the office gave me was to schedule, endure, and pay for another test with a different physician.  My primary care physician would not see me without another scheduled and paid for appointment which would not result in any assistance in getting another nuclear stress test read.

My health insurance carrier said I could file a grievance against the cardiologist.  After much talk and waiting.  The carrier called and said the grievance had been resolved appropriately.  I was told that, by law, they could not tell me the resolution.  However, they would not re-read my nuclear stress test.  If I wanted a good reading, I would have to pay for it.

The postscript here is that all of my medical treatment since that time has been outside my health insurance and their second tier physicians.  I gave my nuclear stress test CD to a relative who took it to the hospital where she works and had it read correctly by a cardiologist there.  When I cut my hand severely during the flood cleanup, I consulted another relative who is a physician.  I am a veteran and went to the VA for confirmation that there is nothing wrong with my heart and there was no need for a stress test, let alone echo-cardiogram.  Even the physician who did my colonoscopy raised his eyebrows when I told him I had stress test and the reasons.  This cardiologist was simply pushing drugs and procedures because that’s the only thing insurance pays for.  My health insurance supplement through Health Spring is FREE!  But now I know the truth.  Free health insurance is having no insurance.

Without describing the details of yesterday’s events, how would you name the feelings which emoted from them?  Especially, pointedly, involving others.  For me, some of the names for yesterday’s emotions would include simple joy, unexpected alarm, necessary concern, and simmering anger.  How does an event get it’s emotional name?  Should there be a unique name that is not adjectival?  When will the emotion expire or transform?  If one is going to remember events which inspire emotions then it is a curious mind that wants to name those event triggered feelings.

Simple joy.  When expectation and judgement are absent from the events that warm the heart and give pleasure, one has a dessert for the day no matter the time.  It seems to me that such an event deserves a term more notable than joy.  More distinguishing than simple joy.  Less dismissive than dreary happy.  I’m going to choose beatitude even though I don’t have a full understanding of what that word means.  It is heading in the right direction.  There I’ve taken an emotion I can’t describe and chosen a name for it that I don’t fully understand.  Let’s go on shall me.

At the end of the work day, I experienced alarm, concern, and anger in quick succession.  Alarm can be a product of expectation gone awry or a sudden reality that forces a response.  I’m liking discompose and consternation here.  Discompose because it reminds me of how my frame of mind decomposes with the rearing of the death’s head of the alarming event.  I like consternation because I can see the stern dead eyes flashing back at me and telling me something I don’t yet discern but that certainly concerns me.  Dis-stern might be it if it were a word.

OK, so following unexpected alarm is necessary concern.  Is it me?  Is it my understanding?  Is it time to stiffen up and fight? The concern I’m referring to is not the caring type of concern but the what’s-going-on type.  Do you feel me?  It’s the concern you find at the crossroads of nervous and caution.  When standing at this intersection, you know that you might be about to be run over or that the ride you were expecting is never going to show.  In any case, I’m not sure if the name for this necessary concern exists.  It seems appropriate that the word have an X in it.  Let’s take vexation or anxiety.  X marks the spot on your daily emotions path where vexation and anxiety meet.  Be it Vexiety or anxiation – you know it when you feel it.

When the simmering anger starts, it won’t be stopped until it either boils over or the heat is turned down.  Rarely does the heat get turned down because this requires two people to join hands with one mind.  Disapprobation descends when dissatisfaction surfaces.  If dissatisfaction is purely one sided then the other side is blind sided.  Misunderstanding is the kindling for this meeting of unhappy souls.  Unless communication can occur, these two D’s will continue to heat up.  An intermediary who has a mutual interest can sometimes intervene.  Rarely do I see both sides of anger equally satisfied.  Often I see partings which are unfortunate because of one or the other or both attaching to anger.  Dis- and mis- go hand in hand and seldom detach from their better halves of approbation and understanding.

I have to go.  I have a bright new rooster in a dark old shed protected from a mean old cat.  It’s time to get things clucking here.  Up and away from Imperial to Sawmyl Synders Farm.

I’m not through talking about my flood experience – not by a long shot.  Yesterday I realized, as I was leaving my crew of workers in the afternoon, that three of the most vilified segments of our population are the three that showed up in my hour of need.  The media onslaught at these groups rails relentless and pours all members into the same disparaging bucket.  The uninformed, unemployed, and unhinged jump on the bandwagon of loud rhetoric and condescending attitudes.  Even though each of the impugned categories of human beings sits accused of heinous crimes against the rest of us, they never give up and they continue to press on and they always show up.  Who am I talking about?

Who will be there AFTER the shit hits the fan?

The Federal Government, in general, for one.  The Department of Homeland Security more specifically.  FEMA exactly, showed up on the Saturday after my flood, just one day after my flood, and started my claim.  It’s amazing to me that a department of our government had a physical person on site, my disaster site, immediately and while storms were still pounding us and street lights were out and roads were closed.  The adjuster accommodated me, when I was late arriving at my own crash site, by rearranging his visits.  The adjuster did 90% of the work getting my claim started by taking pictures which could be translated into a possessions list.  Over the next few days, the adjuster picked up the phone each time I called.  Additionally, I received money from the FEMA Disaster group which set up an office near my house.  They came out, took notes, and approved a rental assistance check the next day.  Big government will never change but it fortunately changed me by being there.

Big government is the enemy until you need a friend.

Waiting in the wings was the Church.  The Christian Church.  The Episcopal Church in the name of St. Isidore.  The Warden texted me after the flood, asking about my welfare.  I texted back that I was deluged.  He asked what the church could do.  I was skeptical that they could do anything, would do anything.  After the fellow FEMA left, St. Isidore arrived and they did do something.  A small group came and did what the no-show remediation companies were supposed to do.  The professionals never showed up.  The for-profit companies never called.  But there was the unsolicited, not-for-profit St. Isidore.  By Memorial Day 2016, all the soggy furniture was on the lawn, the bottom four feet of sheet-rock was cut cleared, and the clammy carpet was pulled out, rolled up, and thrown down with the rest of the steaming mess on my messy front lawn.  Then, like a vision of angels, they were gone!  Gone until three weeks later when they were back in force, two dozen, who went through the house and yard to assist with the massive cleanup of the house grounds, garage, barn, animal buildings and pastures.  I may never be a Christian but I will from now on be a believer.

I don’t believe in God but I love him/her.

Following FEMA and the fellowship came the fellows who nobody seems to want, the immigrants.  They came in after everybody left and are with me to this day.  Father and son working side by side, putting insulation in the walls, covering it with sheet-rock, painting it with a double coat, and then tiling the entire house.  Yesterday, wife and daughter arrived to begin an intense scrubbing.

Give me your tired your poor, because the rich and rested never showed up.

None of us deserve anything and I certainly didn’t deserve this.  I am not bitter about fate’s flood, or friend and family’s absence, probably to a great extent, because of these three groups who showed up when I was in need.

The shit will hit the fan one day for each of us. Who will be standing with you then?  Look around.  How did you refer to your saviors before the deluge?  How now?  Custom love is my nomenclature.

I’ve had the most interesting encounters while recovering from my recent flood disaster.  The other day I took my work crew of two out to lunch at Kitty’s.  Last week, I was introduced to this Magnolia family restaurant by my third electrician Rick (who eats for free!).  Anyway, sitting next to us, I recognized the fellas who started the aquaponics business around the corner from my place.  Without an invitation, I moved my chair around on our spacious table so I could better talk to them.  I started by telling them I remembered chatting with them, each of the two, about this same time last year while visiting their newly opened business.  My wife and I bought their vegetables and toured their facility from dark catfish tank to green floating gardens.  I told them we were flooded last May and were now fixing up.  I knew their aquaponics business had been closed for almost a year and wondered what was happening with their endeavor.

Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect.

In turns out that they were flooded, too. An aquaponics business can flood too, you know.  They said that they were selling that section of their property, which I knew because of the realtor sign out front.  For flooding reasons, they were moving the business to higher ground on an adjacent tract of land.  Hey, that’s my idea.  All new businesses have their startup problems, duh.  These guys have had theirs.  Neither had been shy in, our prior conversations, in talking about their foray into mistakes and calamities…but only the big ones.  If there was a big decision to be made, they made it – and quickly. With disastrous results.  Either immediately or when Mother Nature came to town with her fearsome and weathered spring baggage.  Expensive and continual bad decisions they be.  Torrential and devastating weather hammering poorly designed facilities on a vulnerable site.  They had it all when it came to misfortune.  So what should they do?  They have decided to start up again on higher dryer ground with greater faith with less reason to believe that the Lord would guide them – this time. But the biggest change is that they are going to offer to spread the grief.  They are going to market custom aquaponics packages for the general populous .  It’s not just all in the family any more.  This spread the grief idea, they tell me, was always part of their business plan.  The wealth part is still more aspiration than inspiration.

There’s a fool born every minute.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own experience with another entrepreneur who was determined to “Never Give Up”.  The Great Persecutor – as I like to now characterize him – had gone through life, my life and others, abusing and harming and blaming his problems on each of his victims, from siblings to parents to spouses to children to business associates.  Have I left anyone out?  As a lifestyle, this behavior must have been fulfilling to him short term, but had left him with no long term relationships.  When he literally fell victim to fate, bad luck, or his own irresponsible behavior he, for a short intermission, acknowledged to himself that he might be doing something wrong.  But as soon as he was healed, literally, either physically or emotionally, he was back to his old blame game.  How could he change his behavior so that he would be happy without giving up on the persecution of all others?  He found the answer – in one of those rare down times of self pity where he was seeking guidance out of his latest misfortune – when he employed a life coach.  That life coach got him going and soon he was a dynamo of destruction delivered.  Except that soon he realized he was better and more capable than that stupid life altering life coach.  That was it, the missing piece in his life’s perverted puzzle.  He would keep all of his previous behavior PLUS add life coach to his resume.  Harshly telling individuals what they were doing wrong while expensively charging by the session would seem to be the up and coming profession for someone who looked down on everyone.  He was an expert, a lifelong expert, on persecuting the weak and this was the resolution to all of his raw talent.  With this fabricated, though corrupted, Life Coach idea, his bad temperament could be parlayed into good dollars by simple marketing.  His much maligned mama, while helplessly watching her oldest son pulverize the younger ones,  always knew he would become some thing.  He’d be a Life Coach.

Some day you’ll find a way to make your natural tendencies pay.

With all of the cynicism I can muster, I reflect on these two stories of others trudging on in spite of seeming congenital failure.  If at first you don’t succeed, package your failure and market it as success.  Rather than doing it the way I have done .  I have failed myself, others, and the world on many occasions, with a little help from my friends, family and Mother Naturem occasionally.  However, on this occasion, the difference between me and the born again Aquapond-ers and the died in the wool-over-your-eyes Life Coachers is that I recognized some of my limitations (without recognizing all of them) and also recognized the long learning curve of self-transformation and its elongated timeline (without ever accurately predicting its length).

Aptitude can get you a career but it doesn’t necessarily get you a life.

Never Give Up by necessity, sometimes becomes Never Again.

Sometimes the safety of the known keeps you from knowing.

Letting Go allows Life to Go On.

If the hardest thing in life is to see one’s faults, than the easiest thing to do is to see where life is hardest.

Becoming becomes righting wrongs.

The dead season of winter silently remembers the seasons past in order that a new spring will bring full growth for life’s next harvest.

Life repeats itself so you don’t have to.

Burma Shave.

It’s been over a month since the deluge on the night of Thursday, May 26th.  It is now July 5th.  What did I do?  What did I write.  What’s next?  My blog entry for May 26th, hours before the flood, was titled The Tao: Seeing Path, Polarity, and Pattern in Today’s Events.  Mind you this is before the flood.

My thoughts on the subject of Path touch on current controversial topics, touching first on Second Amendment rights, the future rumble of crumbling infrastructure, empty calories sold cheaply, cheap textiles emptied into rich countries made fully by slave labor, and burgeoning poverty in a country of bludgeoning wealth.  The clouds moving in considered my rights subservient; our crumbling infrastructure a mere morsel; those empty calories a trite consideration, our excess clothing, while cheap textiles, would soon be wet absorbents; and the country’s poverty and wealth to be nearly the same in the eye of the storm.  Water always seeks the path of least resistance.  Water when filling the ten foot banks of a creek, twelve inches in two hours, rises from eight inches to fifteen feet in two hours.  Water, when you are standing over it, may be looked down upon at dusk but will have you on your knees before you can say, “Syndee, we gotta get outa here.”

On May 27th, I wrote a morose piece titled the difficulties of genuine friendship.  The three paragraphs were written in third person, a thinly veiled reflection of an old man who came to an ugly spot in a pretty town to build a homely farm on a scarred land.  A devastating flash flood wiped five years of toil away, brought him not to pity but wonder at why he attempted this endeavor. Some how, he concluded, it was done for approval.  Even though he was mostly alone, occasionally he would be with company and listen to others who would drone on about their stagnant past or current impasse.  He sat and listened – listening for approval.  Somehow, he hoped his father would listen and he would hear his approval, too.

This study of the May 27th article will be longer than the piece itself.  It takes a lot to get one to admit to a lie, even a small one, a partial one, one that only harms oneself.  But mother nature’s waterboarding can bring the most dedicated liar to tell the truth about himself.  Piling dead animals into plastic barrels for feasting maggots does something to one’s poor phony posture, unless of course that is one’s chosen vocation.  Sitting in rising stench, waiting for Help to justify whether to show, with standing water smelling the sweetness in the air of the next storm, which will arrive on schedule, the flood victim is forced to think how he got here – but quickly!  Remembering accomplishments, small and large, which are now downstream; looking at the crooked path the phases of this farm took; feeling the joy of victory and the agony of defeat, in turn, as the breeze turns the now high grass from sheen to dull, from hope to despair.  It could be that this old guy felt in his stomach the nausea of descent into hopelessness.  Yet, he did not.  There was some reason that this deluge brought exciting hope on its cruel waves.  New possibilities with the beliefs of strangers who showed up with genuine faith.  Considerable potential brought to a place where potential for flourishing was fading.  Consider the possibilities and the potential.

On May 30th I wrote Feelings After the Flood.  I feel nothing I blogged.  True in the sense of understanding or acknowledging my feelings at that time.  I did reveal my paradox for stoic posturing with pain and emotional vulnerability to compassion.  I paid homage to Mother Nature and undeniable need to look at the future with a more focused lenses.  My tactics got me an egg business, some holiday turkeys, a lesson in goat worm-ology, and great vegetables and greater weeds watered by a flood of sweat.  The flood was a sign.  A sign for change.  A change that will be great but that will leave none of the great people in my life behind.  Though some people will have to be left behind.  When Mother Nature is seeming to be apathetic toward you, she is actually giving you time to prepare for her wrath.  When you are sitting bored in your recliner on a rainy night, she might be measuring the distance her flood will have to rise to wet your lazy ass.  The knocking outside your door may not be the Mother coming for you.  But it might. Will you find high ground before She does?  Do you hate the rain so much you think you can hide from the following waves?  If you are carried away, where do you suppose She will deposit you.  Do you deserve it?

Surely he’ll call, that fool, said Didi.  Being the responsible one doesn’t mean being responsible for everyone.  Maturity came hard for him.  Should he really be wasting it on others?  If you are beside him, you may call him Didi.  If you are beneath him, he’s Mr. Albert!

I’m not budging until I hear from him again, that weakling, answered Gogo.  It’s funny me, Gogo, being called to help someone.  Being weak and helpless and needing protection myself, I can’t fathom what it is I might do for another when I can’t do anything for myself.  What is it again that happened?  To who? When?

If he really needed help, we’d have heard from him by now, he’s so arrogant, responded Pozzo.  I see it all with mine own eyes.  This is a scam.  But I won’t see it for long, something tells me.  I’ve heard of people being blinded by rage or ambition or obsession, but arrogance? condescension? pretension?  I guess this makes me one of a kind.  Yay for me, I’ve made it!

He didn’t sound like he was in that much distress for someone in a true crisis, he couldn’t even hold a tune, chimed in Lucki.  Isn’t it odd that these others, and all others, consider me a fool for dancing and thinking?  I’d like to drop the bags I carry for Pozzo and pick up the things lost by our friend.  I’d like to be a free man to honor all men instead of a slave to the expectations of these few.  These people, most people, don’t care about other people’s matters. Caring is the only thing that matters to me.

So the four coarse men, having heard of a disaster affecting someone they knew, did nothing while their buddy scurried about trying to mend and save and survive.  They waited for a greater plea because they were too inundated with their personal concerns.  They sat about a leafless tree, and talked ill about the hapless one, who never talked still about any one of them.  He was always giving something, and never taking anything.  Someone who just lost everything.  The four each silently and secretly remembered when this current victim was there for them in the past – in an emotional instant. That was then but probably now – only now – was he considering what his rationale was for helping those four who would never show in the future, this future, for him.  But they had it right.  The odds are in their favor.  If he was truly in a crisis following a disaster, surely needing urgent response, necessarily he would have to call…again.  The clock was ticking.  Just the farm aspect alone would be a cause for panic.  No feed or hay for the livestock.  Animal buildings torn asunder from flood waters.  Predators finding easy prey on dumb animals left unprotected by their not-so-bright protector;  by his now missing oh-so-loyal livestock guardian dog; by his faux-news-and-olds friends – one arrogant, one mental, one mad, one young – who profess that they admire him so much.  Surely the put-upon will call…again.

One who showeth kindness to the undeserving is recompensed in the same manner as the aider of the hyena.

What is the cost of a second phone call by someone who cannot afford not to call?  Too much pride (or too much pride still remaining)?  Too busy (with full responsibility for that which is before him and no one responsible on the other end of the line after him)?  Too frantic (with animals dying or dead, with growing black mold and exploding white maggots at his feet, with a timetable for insurance claims and an urgency to put things back the way they were)?  He always tolerated sneering comments, abusive retorts, and apathetic attitudes because he was always helpless and couldn’t survive in this world without the support of someone smarter, wiser, and more decisive.  Being socially inept, he has nowhere else to go.  Although, I wonder what he did before me?  Before us?  Before the enlightened four?  He must have thought he was waiting for some apparition or deity who would never show.  When we hear his plea again, all four will be there in a second.  Di-di-did you hear me?

If busy is a reason, he has one.

After all of the drinking and teasing and fun I’ve provided for him at my house all of these years, I’ll hear from him again.  What’s so hard about making a second plea for help?  I suppose maybe the first few days which have already past – since I committed to come over to re-mediate the disaster – might have been time critical.  Even urgent.  Maybe he’s picking up the remains of dead livestock.  To tell the truth, I thought he would have failed, on his own, way before now, let alone him becoming a success, albeit mediocre, in a field, no pun intended, like agriculture, where he had no prior knowledge or ability or aspiration.  Yes, he snapped to the task whenever I called him in my need.  Now he is snapped in two.  But I helped him on occasion, too.  Yes, he patiently dealt with my family members, especially one, without complaint or grudge.  No, I don’t feel I owe him anything because that would be a sign of weakness.  He would take advantage of my gratitude, and my time, so I must never show it.  Besides, I forget now why I was supposed to go go help.  Help who?  Help why?  Help when?

The persecutor must be the one to stay angry, because, to admit fault would allow for forgiveness.  Stay angry.

We are making too much of this.  Everyone of us has greater concerns than this pseudo farmer does, at least I know I do.  Look, I have no earned income and I haven’t had it in weeks.  If it weren’t for the residuals from my inheritance, I’d be in quite the fix.  In fact you’d be paying attention to me and not waiting on a second plea from HIM!  He has insurance, let him grow another tail.  He has those freaky Jesus people, let him grow a halo, a first halo.  He must have known this was going to happen when he bought the place.  Buying a property with a creek.  A house in a flood plain.  Putting his entire retirement on the line so that he could collect big in his senior years when the flood – he all but created – arrived to make him rich and sympathy-ed.  Allowing other people, strangers, to clean up the intentional mess, which I before mentionally attributed to HIM.  I should have heard from him by now.  He owes me that.  In fact, he owes me a lot!  I know I’m right.  I’ve convinced myself of it.  What did I just say? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

In the end, we all grow to be cured of our sentiments.  Those whom life doesn’t cure, death will.

We’re not posers are we Pozzo?

Let me sing sad praises to us.

I have a dance that may seem loco

But it goes with my mood as I hear y’all cuss.

Didi fiddles with his broad black brimmer

The boots are stuck on Gogo still

They’re not two thieves but surely sinners

Tell a story to off the chill.

My pied piper Pozzo raves and rants

He sees it all but soon sight can’t

Lucki I sing and shuffle dance

Dumb I become but not  by chance.

Burma Shave.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don’t understand the situation.

How many days have passed since?  For that matter, what day is it?  I notice there are now leaves on our sad tree.  Could it be that we are waiting in the wrong spot?  The tree was supposed to be leafless.  Maybe the foliage is blocking the signal, like it would interfere with a sniper on a cold November day, a sniper who had more noble intent than we.  Each of us four waiting saints wax about their interludes with the tragic one.  How they had interrupted him, unintentionally, while he attempted to tell them of his dreams.  Cutting him off was not intentional, because none were listening in the first place.  Why should anyone listen to another’s private nightmares when they have their own, which are of far more importance to everyone still listening.  None wanted him to go away.  Each was lonely.  Each wanted the loneliness to end.  They agreed there is a sure way to do that – end this.  But as time passes, the inspiration to do-you-know-what-to-you-know-who succumbs to the need to eat and eat they did.  Carrots anyone?

Being alone isn’t that bad.  It’s better than being lonely.

The wait continues but time stands still.  Yet there are now five leaves on the once barren tree.  Didi is singing a song about those five leaves.  Didi never sings.  When Gogo returns he recognizes Didi’s happiness in song and realizes that Didi would be happier alone.  In fact, Gogo thinks he would be happier alone, too.  Gogo proposes to Didi that they separate.  Didi agrees that they both would be happier apart but that Gogo could not defend himself.  They must stay together.  They start to argue about whether it is now spring, why the tree is now covered with leaves, where the chicken bones on the ground before them came from, how the wound on Gogo’s leg came to be, who took Gogo’s boots and left another pair that fit him perfectly, and finally decide to converse calmly but immediately run out of things to say.  Didi grows uncomfortable with the silence.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all much too soon.

Gogo is starving.  Didi offers him something to eat.  Gogo does not care for that particular morsel and hands it back.  Didi says he’ll go and get him something else that is more appealing to his palate but does not move.  Eventually they begin imitating Pozzo and Lucki, with Didi telling Gogo how to pose as Pozzo.  Soon this past time turns to anger and insults which continue unto they both are breathless.  Emotionally exhausted, they embrace and pace and face another day waiting for Godot.

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

While still waiting, they decide to come up with a reason to leave.  Didi, the smart one says that, because Godot has insurance, there is really nothing that they can justify doing for him.  If he didn’t have insurance, well, it would be an easier thing to justify, helping their friend who was flooded out.  Gogo, the dumb one, surmises that Didi’s conclusion is a moot point, irrelevant to the discussion.  Didi counters that if Godot had no insurance his situation would be more critical.  Gogo offers that, yes, it would be more critical in the long run, but any victim of disaster has urgency and immediate needs and crisis that insurance can not immediately salve, let alone the intangible of lose and devastation.  Didi is insistent.  The uninsured will have no home of their own until a long time in the future, if at all.  Gogo stands his ground and states that Didi’s moot point is still moot, that it is merely a distraction to take back the floor of discussion, and that it is meant to keep Didi the center of attention in a crowd of two.  Additionally, if the uninsured deserve more sympathy than the insured, and sympathy is the point, then those who drowned deserve more sympathy than the uninsured.  If the uninsured have less opportunity for resilience than the insured, and opportunity for resilience is the point, then the undocumented workers who are discovered by government officials while seeking disaster aid and then deported, then those who are deported have less opportunity for resilience than the uninsured.  Finally, Gogo says, if deciding what is the greatest tragedy is the most important thing in this discussion, it is that one person’s actual misfortune is being subservient to a theoretical and impersonal one.  Didi grows angrily silent at such a dumb suggestion.

Reason always makes mistakes but conscience never does.

Pozzo and Lucki return.  Pozzo is now blind.  Lucki stops at the sight of Didi and Gogo.  Pozzo runs into Lucki and they fall, along with all of their baggage.  Didi is aroused from his self pity at Pozzo’s cry for help.  Didi reluctantly tries to help but then falls into the pile with them.  Seeing the mess, Gogo decides to leave.  Didi begs him to help.  He promises Gogo they will leave immediately if he will help Didi up.  Gogo relents but also falls down among them.  Soon Didi and Gogo start to nap.  Pozzo awakens them with his shouting.  Didi strikes Pozzo in order to make him stop.  Pozzo crawls away and Didi and Gogo call to him but he does not respond.  Next, Didi calls to Pozzo, using the name of Cain.  Pozzo now responds by crying for help.  Didi wonders if Lucki will respond to the name of Abel and so calls out that name.  Pozzo responds again.  Gogo decides that Pozzo must be all of humanity.

Humanity comes out in a great many forms these days and there is no end to the things a humane person might say or do.

I sit in the factory parking lot waiting for my labor to walk across the street from their apartment.  That massive hive of apartments full of worker bees who daily work long hours for short wages to produce sweet profits for sour employers.  And now I am one of those sour pusses taking advantage, though in good company.  Immigration reform, illegal aliens, and the rancor about them seem as ludicrous to me as the clowns espousing them as I watch the undocumented masses stream through the broken gates of the fixed system which promises as much misery as money.  While employers openly exploit undocumented workers weekly; police stop them and ticket them for a taillight out, turning without a signal, and no drivers license – but seldom arrest them even though they are illegal; landlords fleece immigrant families with high rents, little service, and sometimes dangerous environments; restaurants and markets and clothiers cater to their hunger and thirst and need for a shirt on their backs.  No complaints about the brown people as long as their money is green.  No complaints about the twenty minute delay when immigrant children exit multiple school buses on many main roads at monster complexes as long as their parents have worked overtime for under the minimum wage.  No complaints if the false driver’s license gets the desperate soul from the church to the job site on time.  Oh, wait, my contractors have arrived.

I sit in front of the TV each night trying to understand this immigration issue while the din of protest about it blares out from the outraged screen.  Who is being harmed by honest labor by willing workers and profiteering employers?  Yes, there are bad people in the immigration community, but that ratio of bad to good does not exceed that of citizens as a whole, I’m sure of that.  Yes, there are good people, citizens, who are out of work because of the good cheap available immigration labor, but this does not really seem to be the issue, I think.  No, I don’t feel bad that I’m possibly hiring someone with documentation problems, or that a citizen might be employed in the immigrant’s place, or that my benefit will end with a crime by a criminal immigrant.  I’m happy as a clam and feeling fortunate as well as I pickup my jovial workforce and join the flow toward, what I jokingly call, the Tower of Babel.

I don’t speak Spanish, except in jest.  If I attempt it, I’m told to take a rest.  God bless the long lines of multiple school buses on many main roads at monster complexes that take young immigrant children and produce superb citizens, magnificent athletes, productive workers, and young adults who speak English!  Yes, when you have a crew which includes a young one who speaks the lingua franca, you reduce the Tower of Babel to a mere three stories, much like the apartments, as the thick American employer tries to communicate rapid English and thin Spanish to the skilled immigrant contractor through his or here bi-lingual exceptional child in a back and forth, sometimes comical exchange.

Admittedly, I have not paid much attention to immigration until now because now it affects me.  I know very little Spanish.  I know about green cards.  I about people crossing the Rio Grand, formerly known as wetbacks.  People become illegal aliens in this country because they have no other options.  They are desperate.  We, the United States government, are not accommodating, but we do need these workers. Most of the following text was copied or modified from the webpage of American Immigration Council. The total number of green cards available for all less skilled workers is 5,000 a year, for the entire country.  Even in those cases where family ties do exist to apply for legal entry, individuals abroad face years or decades of waiting for a visa to become available.  The annual Diversity Visa program makes 55,000 green cards available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. That means people from Mexico, China, the Philippines, India, and other countries with higher levels of immigration to the United States are not eligible.

By employing possibly undocumented workers am I taking jobs from native born citizens?  If immigrants actually “took” jobs away from significant numbers of native-born workers, then one would expect to find high unemployment rates in parts of the country with large numbers of immigrants, especially recently arrived immigrants who are presumably more willing to work for lower wages and under worse conditions than either long-term immigrants or native-born workers. Yet there is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level.  An analysis of 2011 Census data found that, at the county level, there is no statistically significant relationship between the unemployment rate and the presence of recent immigrants who arrived in 2000 or later.  Immigrants continue to be nearly twice as likely as the native-born to become entrepreneurs, with the rate of new entrepreneurs being 0.52 percent for immigrants, compared to 0.27 percent for the native-born. 

My son and I stepped carefully along the path of debris from the front yard of destruction to the backyard of despair.  On the back is the burn pile.  Though a grown adult, my son turned his head curiously side to side, looking agape, much like his three-year old son did, at the ruin which had accumulated from the recent flood.  Standing at what would be the perimeter of what would be the burn pile at what would be the end of the day, he asked me, “Are you still angry about what happened with the flood?”.  No one had yet asked me that.  But I had an answer, though borrowed from someone far more eloquent than me.  I said, “Anger is a luxury I can’t afford in times like these”.

I can’t afford to be angry.  To get angry.  To stay angry.  I can’t allow self pity.  Not in times like these.  Three weeks ago, I lost most of my possessions, in a flooded house, and saw my poultry business go south, wet light feathers on lead flood waters.  So, for those of you who think I am angry because you did not show up to help, I can’t afford it.  There is too much to clean up.  For those of you who think I’m not calling you because I am wallowing in self pity, I can’t allow self pity.  There are animals to care for, a dwelling to rebuild, a farm to restore.  Don’t get me wrong.  Fortitude, like anger, has its stages.  One day I’ll hate you, but not today.  One day I’ll cry me a river, but it will have to wait.  Today, I’ll have to be strong, which I never was.

The first response of others to another’s crisis is emotional. Sorrys pour like overflow at a spillway in the hundred year flood.  Next, comes logic.  Expressing sorrow can be an easy sell, an inexpensive as a single cell phone call.  There, you’re done.  Check it off, Anton.  Back to your yoga, Yogi.  After the emotional response, logic kicks in.  It should be obvious that something could be done for a friend in need following a devastating flood. The single word flood, even for the thick, should not require a treatise on urgency, devastation, and despair.  But that’s your attitude as a flood survivor…when you are reflecting unto yourself, the victim.

Doing something for someone must take time, will take effort and might even cost money.  This is the over balancing rational of the person who would be help?  Logical questions arrive to rescue them.  Can I afford it in these times?  Can I back out of commitments made while way back in those illogical emotional times?  Can I present convincingly, to the needy and, more importantly to myself, the arguments that justify never showing up and never even calling, for the time being?  Yes!  It just takes attitude.  And then there’s bonus time.  After the victim’s industrial dumpster is overflowing, his wet salvaged coin and currency collection is basking in the sun, and four stray pit-bulls stock his livestock on his semi-abandoned farm, you can pile on with euphemisms.  What’s the matter there, you’ve been keeping a low profile.  Hey, you must be busy there,  ’cause there’s been a failure to communicate.  I guess you’re angry there, you’ll get over it, you always do.

There must be fifty ways to leave your friends in a lurch, many strategies to backing out or never backing in to helping those who suddenly need dumpster service.  Let’s look at three.  Strategy One: You don’t really want to help.  If you don’t really want to help you will use any excuse, it won’t be complicated.  I have to mow the grass.  You know fast it grows in these times?  I must clean the pool.  Don’t you pity me, it takes so much time?  I have Yoga class today (just in time).  Did you know I have perfect attendance (wish me luck!)?  With Strategy One, made-up excuses run out quick.  The reluctant would-be-helper will quickly look to the victim to supply the excuses.

• I didn’t like your attitude – when I told you I had to mow.
• I expected you to call me daily – after I cleaned the pool.
• I assumed you would call me back immediately – after I texted that I wasn’t coming.
• I know you’re angry – so I won’t show up.

Ad nauseam.

Strategy Two of Help avoidance is justification.  Remember, these are strategies of logic which soon follow reactions of emotion.  Justification!

• Why should I help you when my problems are bigger than yours?
• You have (pick one) insurance, income, in-laws, and I don’t.
• I can’t spend money I don’t have on things I can’t afford for someone who has never been there for me.

With the airtight alibi, which justification yields, you miss the subtlety that reality could bring to self serving faulty perception.  The victim can bypass debate with the justifier’s logic and move him direct past “NO GO” to the stunning conclusion that: When a disaster victim needs help, they don’t care what your excuse or justification is. “I needed help and you didn’t show up”.  It is without measure.

Strategy Three of Help avoidance is being busy.  I’m busy.  I actually prefer this one.  It leaves the disaster-victim-needing-help nowhere to go.  With Strategy One, you have excuse by number.  With Strategy Two, you have excuse by values.  But with Strategy Three you have no excuses.  Can’t be challenged or debated or rationalized or justified.  I’m not coming.  End of story.  Kinda.  Well sorta.  Busy is the antidote to most problems in life.  If you lost everything in a flood, get busy.  If you lost your income and are waiting for financial collapse, get busy.  If you have a small business and too much work to rescue other people, save yourself, stay busy.  You might lose a friend because you’re too busy to help them or call them or think about them.  But if you are busy, you have plenty to keep you that way, and another friend will wander in off the street as soon as that ex-friend departs on the next flood waters and leaves an opening. A.M.F.

What is it you can’t create in another person?  I’m going to elect the emotion empathy.  What is it you can’t explain in yourself?  I’m going to give the word gratitude.  My precious emotion is gratitude.  The number of that beautiful beast is 27.  Twenty-seven helpers showed up yesterday to clean-up my washout.  I did nothing to create the empathy they felt…it was already there.  They did everything to explain the gratitude I feel for their effort…it was created by them.  Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect.  My Damascus Moment always rolls in on a wave of disaster and leaves me on a higher dryer place, with a bit wiser perspective.  Thanks be to those with innate empathy.  Praise be to the emotional option of empathy, resulting in my emotional gratitude, symbolized by the number 27, and emblematic of a higher place which reason, justification, and self-importance never reach.  I have to go.  I’m very busy you know.

When you are first fleeing disaster, you don’t stand on ceremony.  When you are next faced with survival, excuses don’t sit well.  By the time you reach out for recovery, you know where your friends lie.