what a day

Tuesday is my long work that begins at six a.m. and ends with our "Don't Dis My Ability" radio show on Portsmouth Community Radio. Google search and you can listen to shows on audio archives. The guests were the director of Richie McFarland Children's Center and a father of one of the children afflicted with a rare birth defect. Moving story of love and devotion by a staff and a family. Not too long ago families were advised to give up their child to a state facility, but this father and the rest of the family would never, at any time or any place, abandon their son. Hard to keep control of your emotions sometimes when I look love in the face. I often wonder during these interviews what is the purpose of such mysterious events that occur in our lives. This morning I am thinking about this father and this family's obvious daily commitment to give their three year old son ...everything. And in doing so, give the rest of us hope which is...everything.
Last week I went to my old man's weekend job. Strange that I should be paid to live in what is essentially a Bed & Breakfast setting. The eighty year old mother was saying goodbye to her forty something autistic son telling him that he was perfect and asked him what does mommy want you to be. He answered as he always does with one word, "Happy".

I almost forgot. When I was leaving the radio station last night our engineer asked me if I was going to attend the pot luck and station meeting the next night. I said I could not because I had to be at my FA meeting. He told me that I was going to be named volunteer of the year at the dinner. Karen will accept and read this on my behalf.

Dear Friends and Fellow Volunteers,
I am the smallest member of a team of giants that make up "Don't Dis My Ability". Their names are Ali Ketchum, John Eubanks and John Lovering. We interview mountain climbers, who each and every day, climb the steepest of mountains. It is on their behalf that I accept this recognition.

Dr. Mary story

How can a Mongol dwelling remind me of a story about my mother? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm reaching out for help, people. I heard the word "yurt" yesterday. Yurt is a Mongol dwelling. Actually, I don't even know if the person said "yurt". They might have said, "I hurt my finger" or "Do you think Gertrude is a nice name for our new baby"? It doesn't matter because I immediately thought of something that happened forty years ago. We had a demented neighbor who lived across the street in a run down house. He was a short little man that had a loud raspy voice which he used to yell at anyone who crossed his path. His name was Art, but for some reason we referred to him as "Yurt" and we were afraid of him. I don't know why we called him "Yurt". We thought it was a funny name for a mythical figure who escaped from violent children's fable. "Run! Yurt is after us! We dared each other to knock on his door but no one ever had the nerve. There was a wonderful elderly couple who lived in a little cottage right next to Yurt's house. They were even more afraid of Yurt than my friends and I. One summer they were painting their little cottage--just the two of them. Yurt was watching their progress every day. He knew that sooner or later they would need to paint the back of their cottage that was right on the edge of his property. Yurt knew that the old couple would have to put a ladder on his property in order to paint the back of their cottage and he was waiting to pounce on them with flying geriatric fists. The old couple came over to my mother, who liked to sit on her porch in good weather and wait for the next patient.
"Dr. Mary! What can we do? Mr. Kass is waiting for us to trespass on his property so he can scream and wave his fists and call the police. We really need to finish painting our cottage!"
I was listening to the conversation and wondered what my mother would do? She said, "Mr. Kass takes his basket and wheels it down South Chestnut Street to buy groceries for the week. You have about an hour and a half to finish painting the back of the cottage. Have all your materials ready tomorrow afternoon when he leaves for shopping and as soon as he gets out of sight paint as fast as you can!" This was better than a low budget crime picture at the shabby theater on Main street where the popcorn was so old and disgusting that the only reason the kids bought a bag for 10 cents was to dump it on someone's head. I sat on the porch way too excited for a lazy summer afternoon and wondered. Would Yurt surprise the old folks on his property and beat the stuffing out of them? Would he catch them high up on the ladder and kick the ladder out from under them? I sat on our porch--front row seating for the main event. I looked at the old couple slapping paint everywhere. Then I looked at Yurt just coming into sight on South Chestnut. So far he hadn't spotted the mad painters. I leaned back and got comfortable. Any moment now I thought. Yurt finally looked up and let out what was most likely a garbled raspy obscenity. He started yelling and running with his grocery cart. The old couple finished putting paint on the last bare spot and scampered down the ladder. They struggled carrying the ladder and paint supplies as Yurt got closer and closer. It was going to be a photo finish and the winner was Mr. & Mrs. Geezer by a nose. They ran into their house, locked the door and pulled down the shades. Yurt was jumping up and down waving his fists until he wore himself out. Defeated, he slinked back with his weeks food to his ramshackle house.
Years later a normal couple bought Yurt's house and a couple of young guys rented the old folk's cottage. The neighborhood was no where near as fun. Everything changed except my mother. Desperate people--either physically or emotionally sick would come to her with impossible problems and she knew what to say and how to help them. Toward the end of her life I came home to her house in Maine and saw a sobbing lady being swallowed by my mother who was sobbing right along with her. They never saw me. I'm confident that she was doing exactly the right thing.

TGIT

Tuesday is the only week day I work and thank God for that. I don't know how I ever did this job 7 days a week. People all over the world say that in different languages. I read a National Geographic article about Chinese men who all their lives pull barges up a river. A whole line of them strapped to a heavy rope straining from morning to night. Strange what we complain about. Muhammad said in an Hadith that "A complaining man complains in paradise". I wasn't aware that He visited America. Goldilocks complained about porridge or something about three bears. I'm not sure I can sympathize with the complaints of mythical characters. Maybe Goldy was upset about stepping in something outside the bears cottage--that at least would be more understandable. There is a joke about an elderly grandmother with early signs of dementia visiting her family in Florida. She asked to take her little grandson to the beach dressed in a brand new sailor suit she had brought with her. After repeated assurances that she would be vigilant at the ocean off they went. Of course the old lady lapsed into dreams of long ago moonlight and jasmine when she could actually see the moon and smell the jasmine. The little boy wandered into the ocean and was going down under the waves when a lifeguard saved him. He was brought to the grandmother and given mouth-to-mouth to revive him. After some tense moments the boy began to cough and the crowd cheered. He was placed in the old ladies' arms. She looked down and then looked at the lifeguard and said, "he had a hat".
In an another era, an ice wagon would come to your house and drop off a block of ice to keep your food cold in an ice box. The idea should be revived except it should be a complaint wagon that comes to your door. I would gather all my complaints and hand them to the driver and he would complain "That's all? You must not be really living if you did not suffer disappointments yesterday. Did you not fall short of perfection? Were you not trying hard enough. Did you not have your love discarded like a used piece of gum?
What a world when the man who drives the complaint wagon complains better than anybody else. A final word. I am surprised as you are that this bit of fluff congealed and became serious. Oh well, I'll just try harder tomorrow.

a bit abstract

Each day on this new program, which is saving my life second-by second, new doors and windows keep opening up to the wider inner and outer worlds. I came into the bare church hall in downtown Portsmouth almost three months ago at 400lbs and nothing was working on my body except my ability to chew the wrong substances. Like most people I thought this was just a diet program cloaked in the trappings of spirituality, but found that it is a spiritual program cloaked in the trappings of a diet program. New revelations about myself as a Baha'i, about the mysteries of people and life grow like an out of control virus. The latest is an observation is about the wisdom of god reflected in the changes in my life. When I stopped poisoning my body with the wrong foods I began a rapid loss of weight the speed of which made those changes blatantly obvious. What is also obvious is the wisdom displayed in those changes, again second-by-second, as the weight disappears from areas most likely to threaten my existence. I lose a pound every two days mainly my stomach and not from my head or heart or lungs. Think about that a moment. This a continuous display of mind boggling intelligence that I have not noticed before. My intelligent food choices have open the door for the wisdom of God to work a miracle on a physical level. Conversely, slowly gaining weight every year was killing me. Despite my prayers, my behavior prevented the answer to my prayers from reaching me. To carry the comparison further, allowing the poison of materialism and ego and all the other poisons to enter my spiritual being prevents the spiritual wisdom of God to reach my spiritual reality. Bahai's believe that the spiritual world is a reflection of the physical world and that the main purpose of the physical world is for the individual to continually ask the inner question, "I observe this reality in the physical world what is the spirtual counterpart?" An obvious example is that we understand spiritual laws because we live with physical laws every day. To sum up; I am experiencing new insights on every level of the wisdom of God on a daily basis instead of experiencing new insights into my personal ignorance. Maybe there is hope for me yet.

energy

I haven't written much because I feel like a one note guitar player with no amplifier. I'm putting all of my diminished energy into becoming normal--I hear the laughter and shouts of "not possible". In ten months I will weigh 190 lbs. I last weighed 190 in High School. My family has never seen me normal in any sense of the word. I have heard so many stories of desperate, courageous people at the meetings I attend. Last week this little bit of a lady stood up and told her story about weighing 300lbs. About having high blood pressure, sleep apnea, acid reflux and migraines. Now they are all gone leaving only the human being. I have heard variations on that story for the past 9 weeks. People filled with so much low self worth that they can hardly walk-- literally and figuratively climbing out of a dark pit. A word about that dark pit. It is very small and gets smaller with time. Then one day the sun shines through the new spaces of your moving frame-areas of your being become re-illuminated. For me that means poems and books to write--crazy projects like the radio show and the film we are making on suicide prevention. Classes to give and people to meet, places to go without fear of becoming a burden-and grandchildren to tell stories too--about enchanted hummingbirds and how when their Aunt Julia was a child she helped put the color blue back into a rainbow and on and on.

thinking out loud

My second weigh- in is coming up on Monday, Sept. 13 and I am thinking more about the future than ever before. At the rate I'm losing weight in seven months I will be a normal weight. Sounds incredible to write about the future when I had made my peace with moving on to the next world. Now, I have to readjust my thinking. At my beginning weight of 400lbs. my world was small and getting smaller. There is an inverse ratio of physical size and the size of the world a person lives in. There is so many things I couldn't do--such as going for long walks with my wife--even strolling down to beautiful Green Acre with my grandchild seemed like a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. Fears change. The world is suddenly quite large and more unknown than ever and the unknown generates fear. In this case the fears are welcome--embraced even. As life should be embraced. Life should be so vast that it becomes impossible to put your arms around and not the other way around. By that I mean life could not embrace me--could not get its arms around me. All this is not to say physical size is the only factor in creating a too small world. I have friends who suffer from severe depression that certainly shrinks the world they live in. I also work with individuals and interview individuals with disabilities and that can shrink your world. I have a memory of my friend Kathy coming to the radio station for an interview. Although we are on the first floor, the front entrance had about a two inch lip that was really difficult to get her electric wheel chair over. We strained to push the chair. I thought and still think about how at that moment the horizon of her world was two inches away--not somewhere faraway where the sky meets water or earth-- beautiful pristine line that separates two very different kinds of beauty. Kathy's horizon was a grimy strip of two inch high concrete--a formidable wall of a prison. So my prayer and hope for all my friends is that you walk your entire life around a beautiful mountain lake where the clouds come down for a swim on a warm summer afternoon and that this "sea of joy" be able to contain your reflection.

Google voice

In my new life of calling strangers getting up at six a.m. and going to meetings I need an economical phone-especially after a 624.00 cell phone call has made me an outcast. I am currently living in a van by the river and my family says I have joined the Peace Corp. Free Google voice to the rescue, I still wet my pants calling strangers and talking about being a food addict but now I can do it for free--wait a minute! That doesn't sound right. I should be charging to humiliate myself. Verizon charges 10cents a minute. I should at least charge 20cents for a simple humiliation--40 cents for a soul baring-I need to move and grow a mustache humiliation. But I digress. How about Google Buttons? No one sews buttons! No one! Even the Pope wears robes because no one sews buttons!! Now that I have lost weight I have to pay to get buttons replaced when I inhaled and shot buttons out across the living room causing the cat to go deaf. Now people are afraid of me and my buttons. I have to take them to complete strangers at a dry cleaner to sew them back on. How about Google buttons? Hold your garment close to the computer screen and mouse click on Google buttons. What good is a lousy computer if it can't even sew a button a shirt. I think the Pope said that first-I don't know. I'm just a fat man getting up at dawn eating low fat yogurt. Don't ask me these questions until I'm normal.