Standing in the Shadows of the Holocaust

I remember watching a documentary about the American Neo-Nazi rally in Skokie, Illinois in the late 1970s being very touched by the reactions of Holocaust survivors who vehemently opposed the march. I could see the shadows of their decades old horror in their eyes as they protested what they said was a familiar echo of the cycle of hatred reconstituting itself unimaginably once again in their lifetime. Even as an insulated eighteen year old, I could feel their pain, recognized the efficacy of their admonitions, could see the foundation of hatred trying to set itself, trying to harden and cure in front of my very eyes. I wasn't pro Palestinian, wasn't pro Israeli, probably wasn't pro anything at that point. But I could sort out the rhetoric of evil, could perceive the mechanisms of hate, could feel the chilling penumbra that would chase away the light.
Thirty years later, I would stand in those very shadows that I had gleaned in the eyes of those survivors all those years before. The fragmented and jagged shadows that ripped across my shirt as I walked up to the gates of the barbed-wired enshrouded refugee camp inside Jerusalem, heading into streets heaped in garbage, and into schools with virtually no resources warning the promise of the classrooms. The darker, humiliating shadows inside the covered street just outside the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, where a young man in a earth toned uniform held an automatic weapon carelessly as he forced me to recite Koran in a language he disdained, knowing no matter what I did, he was going to refuse me entry and insult the woman at my side just because he could. And the shadows that literally dwarfed and engulfed me as I stood at the base of the wall built in Bethlehem, a drab and forbidding structure obscuring the setting sun, marring it profanely in a place that others found holy, foreshadowing the barren and lifeless shell of Hebron that lay on the other side. A city draped in desolate and empty shadows, the scars of hatred and division.
I suppose I can understand how these shadows look to a new generation of Jews, maybe they are the necessities of security and the bleak under girding of a defiant survival in an age where austere strength subjugates virtue. I can understand this. But what about the eyes of their parents, their grandparents? What do they see in these shadows? No familiar ghosts? No portents of a race poised to lose its soul in the death of another? Not one cry, not one protest, not one shudder?
I have stood in the shadows of the Holocaust, but not in Germany or Poland - they have radiated malignantly to a land bereft of clouds, towering trees, or imposing mountains, nothing now but hate to hide the sun.

I have employed this metaphor before, a reference to the Holocaust that gathered some indignant rebuttal. I have been informed, in no uncertain terms, that I hold no claim to this term, that it is owned by others. But when those custodians overlook these shadows, when they can no longer see the brooding evil lingering there, they have bartered away their tenure in a profane and pragmatic bargain.

Balance Shmalance

I did something today I rarely do, I went to a conference session that I wasn't at all intrigued with. It was a presentation about how to balance your life - work, family, and play. I chuckled as I entered the room, knowing I was an interloper, the only one in the room who wasn't searching for more balance, the only one blissfully happy out of balance. Perhaps I went to understand these people, having encountered them lately, mostly to my detriment. Twice in the past three years, I have been in a job interview process when I have been asked what I do to create balance in my life - when I chortled, things went downhill. Evidently people have a strong bias about such things in their lives, and unfortunately, in the lives of others. I would go so far as to say there are quite a few balance fascists out there.
I did enjoy the session, not finding any particular insight into the construct, but having an hour to contemplate things that are important to me, things that I am passionate about.  Not that it is rare that I think about things, but I had the context and license to explore them indulgently was nice. I started contemplating what drove me, what made me want to do the things I do for a living, for my vocation. It was clear to me almost immediately that it came easily down to two simple things: jobs and dreams.
I didn't have the greatest childhood (didn't have the worse), but I have never had a job I hated that I thought was inescapable. I did jobs in college that were not very appealing, but they were transitional situations and I knew that. Everyday here in the US, I see adults stuck in jobs with not much hope for better futures, and it saddens me greatly. That is why I think I work with at-risk students here in my own country, knowing how much I get out of my work, hoping to give that gift to my students - the hope and freedom of a great job.  I take it for granted too often, but when I work with students, I realize how blessed I am, and how important their careers will be for them.  I try to help them develop the habits and skills they will need to chase those positions, to get them, and to keep them. But more importantly, I try to help them develop the cultural capital to appreciate those opportunities.
When I work overseas, I think more about dreams - once again, being and American is wonderful for a dreamer - literally anything is possible here, and conceivable too.  Not so in many other places of the world.  I want those other children to realize a broader set of possibilities, a broader set of freedoms, two things I also take for granted.  Education is the obvious key, and for me, helping their teachers is my best tool.  Jobs and dreams, dreams and jobs, new horizons, expanded possibilities - these are the things I think about daily when I look into the faces of people I work with 12-16 hours a day.  These are the concepts that motivate me, haunt me, and occasionally reward me. To be honest, I can't think of anything else to plug into this equation to balance it.

The Remains of this Day

It has been a very busy day, one of many to come. I am wrapping things up at one job, getting ready for the next, preparing a conference presentation for later this week, wrapping up the details for new living arrangements, trying to get back on top of my Academy obligations, waiting for a student to come in later tonight for tutoring, and letting some old memories roll by gently, no longer trying to exorcise or excise them, just letting them warm me for the moment.  I am happy with the body of work behind me and excited about the challenges and tasks in front of me. In a very stressful time, things are settling languidly and I am grateful for my blessings. Alhamdulilah

Barbershop Wars

It struck me today, while waiting for a bit over an hour for a haircut, that I have had a life-long war with barbers. I hadn't thought too much about it in the past, and if I had, I probably would have conceptualized it more like a truce, or a non-aggression pact at the very most. From the moment I walk into the shop until the moment they spin me around and ask me what I just may consider the stupidest question in the history of mankind, "How does it look?", I am perpetually at unease.  I think I rather prefer my ventures to the dentist office to tell you the truth.
Getting a haircut is a no-win proposition from the beginning - there is no way to make my head look good, and this is compounded then by the fact that people know you have just been to the barber and you don't look better. Maybe it is because I have a big head, lots of scars, vacillating cowlicks on either side, and hair that has been graying longer than I care to remember. My best expectation for one of monthly excursions is more of a medical mode - "do no harm."  Lately, it seems that there are two choices available, looking like a 14 year old or an octogenarian when I leave - nothing seems possible in between. Alas, I have long since resigned myself to a poor haircut, but there is more to the experience that I dread, much more. Today was a great example, visiting a local community barbershop in West Virginia. You see it seems to be every barber's mission to talk my ears off why he/she trims the hair around them (and sadly, lately, in them), and it is my fervent desire to be left largely alone.
I walked into this local tonsorial parlor in a good mood. Once inside that buoyancy evaporated immediately as I recognized I was fourth in line, and dialogue was part and parcel of the ambiance. There was a middle aged woman holding court, while cutting hair and pontificating with the senior citizens in the room. Each customer had his own particular palaver, and she went toe to toe with each of them. I listened as they debated the merits of a four-quart versus six-quart pressure cooker, canned green beans versus Kroger beans, Douglas MacArthur and Afghanistan, the proper dosages for various acid reflux medications, various banking vagaries and bounced checks, the time of life when ear hair began to grow faster than head hair, and a few other streams I couldn't quite follow. Somewhere in the middle of my wait, it struck me that when I got to the chair, I would be interrogated and would need to feed a particular parlay with something interesting or appropriately sensible - my mind went blank. I think I even dreaded my moment to rise and mount the chair, contemplating letting the next in line go ahead of me. I shook this off, and bravely stood up, put down my Field and Stream magazine, shuffled across ten feet of scattered hair clippings and sat down unceremoniously.
The previous occupant had not finished his business however, and stood at the door finishing his end of the great heartburn debate for several minutes. This gave me time to rehearse the obligatory directions I would give my hairdresser, and I settled on "just clean it up a little, get it off my ears, and I bring the top straight down." She said ok, and I waited for her first foray into a dialogue. Amazingly though, I was rescued by a regular perhaps sensing my reticence, who started into a story about a local publisher who had just released a new book on beekeeping. Feeling like a man who had just been given a reprieve of another sort from another kind of chair, I smiled, hunkered down a bit, and prayed for the efficacy of apiary anecdotes. The chatted about bees and honey and books right up to the time she spun me around and confronted me with the redundant question, asking for approval well past the point of any return.  I had managed to get through the whole ordeal with those simple initial directions and a few grunts.  I was happy.
She was a nice lady, and so, apparently, was her mother from the few stories she shared. I thought while she was chatting and clipping, about why I did not like to talk while in a chair as someone was hovering over me with scissors and electric clippers. I wasn't afraid of them nipping me, nor am I always taciturn around strangers or in new situations. I guess I figure that these professionals have a nearly impossible job in the first place, and I really don't want to distract them from their work. Oddly though, I also considered that my refusal to engage them in the obligatory banter might even irritate them leading to worse contingencies, but I figured it really didn't matter. I smiled as I responded "just fine" despite not looking up to verify the assertion, and I tipped her two dollars as I left.
The spring returned to my step as I walked out to the my truck to return to work - I had survived a trip to a down-home barbershop with minimal discourse, had explored a few new avenues of human nature, and I knew whatever had happened to my head would be irrelevant for me for awhile, as I planned no visit to any mirror anytime soon.

Reticent Reflection

Bemused, this was another day he mused that his only purpose was to somehow manage his way to his own death. It wasn't a pathetic ponderance, nor was it a melancholy mood. Simply the conclusion of a lifetime of catching up to the rest of the world, the abandonment of any desire for a semblance of normality. It would be a long night of speculation, but a new sort, the kind not designed to produce answers or direction. It would be an honest recollection of where he had been, not where he was to go. He didn't care about that anymore, long ago realizing that there was no destination, no place to be.
It would be a night to decide how much longer he would challenge God to delay his death, how much longer he would fight each twilight without a compelling purpose or significant reward. He would leave the sleep aids alone tonight, the first time in several years. Sleep was no longer a diversion, escape, or relief - maybe just another sort of delay, another sort of wasted enterprise. It wouldn't be a desperate debate, this reckoning with himself, just a long over due audit and the balancing of life and what was to be left of it.
There comes a time when mortality loses its luster, and relegated to a long list of things tolerated as there is nothing better to do. Not a prelude to suicide or anything that dramatic, ironically, that would require a reserve of purpose now nowhere in sight. No longer of question of finding meaning or realizing the potential of one's worth, merely the promise of entering the third act of a particularly poor play, too expensive to leave early, too fragmented and clumsy to end gracefully. And no, not a reaction or revelation from reading Camus or Sartre for the first time, that brand of epiphany long abandoned for a more pragmatic erosion. Existential angst is best served to the effete, not really enough to chew on for a man determined to end the anonymity of his life.
Philosophy though, might be a good place to start. He had always understood philosophy, could write papers that got As, could explain and teach it to others, but had never really thought philosophically. It amused him that he was quoted often, many times wondering if the attributed aphorism had ever even crossed his lips. True, he could label things, had a quick wit, and could put concepts together in glib bursts, but he was no philosopher. Philosophic questions held no enduring interest for him, his professors were too lazy hold him to the task, and the subsequent people he encountered outside of college never knew him long enough to realize the lack of depth in the attenuated gestalt of his life. If he had been a philosopher, he would have been more concerned with things, would have battled his circumstances more coherently and consistently - no, he was no philosopher, more like a mnemonic meme, moving across a universe unspeculated upon, connecting others with trinkets and party favors, destined for a benevolent, misplaced romanticism.
Back to existentialism though, and the inevitable search for meaning in his life. Like most things, he had this backwards too, this discovery of the relative meaninglessness of life. Most earn it honestly, working and plodding through life under a false guideline, a errant errand, only to discover much later that it was all a false scheme, an artificial emulsifier that can no longer bind the meaningful elements of their life in a culminating sequence. A cruel and catty cut, often terminal and insuperable. This was not his issue however, as he never owned such a compass, such a personal organizer or mantra. He knew the mores and levers that manipulated his early life were false, but he resisted the acknowledgement valiantly enough to emerge into manhood sufficiently stunted to avoid the issue for a few more decades as he sorted out the debris belying the efficacy of his relationships and his plans.
The first full challenge to this subtle diversion of any fundamental analysis of his life came innocently enough, certainly not in the pages of Nietzsche, Habermas, or Marx, rather on the Discovery Channel, or some other lesser-traveled cable choice. He had watched, probably out of boredom and procrastination, as a pack of wolves chased down an elk, deer, or reindeer (he wasn't paying that much attention). Not partial to carnage, he almost turned away as the wolves closed in on their prey, but he watched anyway, sensing something strange. And on cue, the cervine prize literally stopped in its tracks completely disorienting the schema of the wolves. They skidded to a halt, circled frantically, even snapping and biting at each other. This continued for a dozen seconds or so until the deer, or whatever it was, lost its nerve and bolted. The wolves recovered instantly and overtook it and ripped it to pieces. He recognized himself in this drama, not the victim, not the killer, but the pursuer. The biologic mass of muscle and intent, motive and movement, guilelessness and pursuit.
Challenge and transition had been the hallmarks of his life, the remedy for any harbinger poised to thrust speculation or dissonance in his path. He was not fleeing from, not fleeing too - not fleeing at all, that would necessitate a specific goal, a specific adversary (other than himself); no he was not fleeing, just avoiding the collection and coalescence of witnesses that would eventually manifest itself as a mirror, forcing the unbearable consequence of respite and reflection.
To be continued...

A Letter to My Teachers

Please excuse me today, I am not feeling well. I won't participate, won't support anything you try to do that exposes my vulnerability. I am tired - I spent a good part of my night being slapped, hugged, punched, cursed, and humiliated in front of the only people I have learned to love. I spent the evening not bravely, but necessarily. Honestly not knowing if I would survive the chaos that never seemed to replicate itself consistently. Not knowing if the first outburst, the first onslaught would be the end of it, or if the alcohol would buoy or belay the extent of the violence. I threw myself into last evening's hell knowing no matter what would happen, I would lose something in the bargain. I am sore and I am tired. So please just leave me be today, and if you choose not to, understand that whatever reaction emerges from me is not directed at you as a human being, merely the festering frustration of having no peace, no place to retire to safely. Resisting you will break no bones, will shed no blood, will be a war halfway on my own terms, what passes for the semblance of power in my world. I will forget what ever happens when you call me out, won't think of you any differently tomorrow than I did today. You will suffer if you invite yourself into my world today, it will haunt you for years to come I suspect. I will disrupt your consistency, your sense of purpose, your concept of a good person, your lesson plan. Nothing personal is what I have always been told, but the triumvirate of alcoholism, mental illness, and abuse needs to assert itself efficaciously, never bearing any residual malice for its fodder. You will share, even if briefly, that senseless sort of malevolence that cannot be ignored, cannot be shrugged off. For your sake, I pray you just leave me be today, just leave me be.

Ghosts

I am not sure they are ghosts, it may be that they were never even real.  I carry them around though, and they visit me periodically, mostly in dreams, sometimes at random moments throughout the day. Some carry pain, some regret, and some just remind me of the vast emptiness inside me. Often, I can stay ahead of them, working hard and pressing forward into new challenges.  It is only when I stop and rest that they catch up.
I don't want to tote these images around anymore. I want to leave them here next month when I move on to the next segment of my life.  I need to leave them here. Images from my distant and recent past, reminders of failures and pain that reconstitute themselves perfectly with each apparition. Time doesn't seem to weaken them, and sometimes I am not sure what is worse, suffering from a visit, or secretly missing them. I imagine it is like a drug habit - wanting to remember, to either fix or repair the damage, or just to languish in the few good moments associated with them, knowing that afterward I will feel worse, either way.
Perhaps if they weren't here, I would have no more excuses to focus on and I would be free to forge my future. I have never felt I have been at such a threshold before, not like I do now. I always felt I was just moving forward in a aimless fugue, aware of only what was directly in front of me. Perhaps I don't have the courage to face a future independent of the damage and excuses of my past.  I do sense this is my last good chance to do so, and I need to jettison some things once and for all - ghosts and excuses.