Anti-Mindfulness II - sitting around in my mental underwear.

The phrase in my title was my attempt to articulate a desire to find my tribe, which I still am searching for. I guess I need to elucidate further. The use of the word elucidate might help illuminate here. Most of the time, I have always been frustrated at what I perceive to be the imprecision of basic language and I am always searching for the perfect word to describe the concept I'm trying to convey in an effort to be as concise as possible. My best friend back in Ohio once described this as the ability to sum up some really really idiotic situation with a single word that always had him in stitches. But he seemed to be the only person who seemed to understand what I was trying to express most of the time. Most of the life I've felt misheard/misunderstood (a lot of that is tied to my relationship to my mother - which is going to remain outside the scope of this post -) and I've found myself feeling like I had to dumb down/simplify just about everything I've felt like saying most of my life. And the worst part was that when I felt the strongest emotions about a subject I often locked up completely.  

So I coined the phrase "wanting to be able to sit around in my mental underwear" to describe how I wanted to be in the company of people where I could say whatever I wanted and be fairly confident that I would be heard and understood. The reality is that I spent more time trying to find the best way to say something that I rarely actually got around to expressing my thoughts freely. 

An author who seemed to have this ability to express effectively a lot of his thoughts that were very similar to mine in terms of world view and emotional context was the late author Anthony Bourdain. I even plagiarized a quote of his to use as part of my Facebook intro:

"... my snark is never entirely genuine, nor is it completely irrelevant."

It's only occurred to me now that the snark I display is an expression of my emotion much more than it's a reflection of my intellect, which is fairly formidable if the results of certain test scores are accepted into evidence. (Now I have to take a moment to think about whether I've been more intent on expressing sympathy or empathy which threatens to take me WAY beyond the scope of this post but if I don't mention this here I'll likely forget.) But the original premise was to express my frustration at feeling unable to communicate the thoughts that were important to me at that moment.

I had a six year old violin student named Jason who reminded me of me at that age, he was also taking piano lessons as well computer coding classes and was clearly quite bright. His mom found him a challenge and noted the affinity that Jason had quickly developed for me so she asked me for some advice. I told her that he reminded me of me at that age, and to expect that he would really be excited about something, and he go on and on about something she'd not be able to comprehend, but the best way to respond to that would be to ask: "So you're really excited about this, huh? He would say ."Yeah!" and run off and be perfectly happy. She greeted me at the door the next week and immediately told me "You are a genius."

The point is that I've been able to perceive and understand some things at a level most people just don't seem to grasp. And I've spent a lot of my life trying to communicate not just the concepts but also the level of wonder that comes with such profundity. What I see now is that all these things were created - by a Creator - and it's not realistic to expect other parts of creation to understand or perceive the profundity - but the Creator will. And it follows that focusing on the profundity of the Creator is both natural and much more satisfying. 

So I'm now pondering on mindfulness being just one way of acknowledging both the Creator and His Creation, while anti-mindfulness is the denial of that Creator, and making something else the object of wonder and worship. 
 

Mindfulness - what is the opposite?

There's a new network TV series named The Irrational I decided to watch starting back in October. The main character is a psychologist who survives a terrorist act, a bombing of a church that left him with burns on over 60% of his body and scars on his face.  Given my fascination with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro it seems natural that I'm drawn to principles that are used in solving crimes in the series, particularly in that what we perceive and remember are actually quite unreliable in terms of what the reality is.

After only two episodes I found myself hoping that the show catches on. If the show does more than entertain, people might be prompted to review and reevaluate their own memories and experiences, which has become "truth" in our culture. And as people can acknowledge that their perceptions and memories have in fact always been colored by biases which are varied in origin, they will be prompted to seek a truth from outside of themselves.

My personal observations & memories are no less subjective than anyone else's so I need to examine and identify my own biases. For example, in this week's episode, they show the results of an experiment where subjects are instructed to observe in order to observe a specific question. The results are that because of fixating on identifying a specific fact, we typically completely ignore other things that occur.   I need to examine how often I'm looking just for the answer I want that I ignore answers that refute the agenda or answer other questions that need to be asked. 

My first instinct is to justify/defend; it's hard to stay in the moment. or as the character Charlie Crews (played by Damian Lewis) once said during an episode of Life:

"I wasn't in the moment.
If I'd stayed in the moment, if I'd stayed present I would have been OK but I didn't.

I was thinking about where we were going next. So I left the moment when I should have been completely in the moment which is when people usually leave the moment because the moment is just too much!

The moment is pretty much almost aways too much!

I was thinking about where we were going next."

It seems to me that the #1 enemy of mindfulness is probably the iPhone. Most people's eyes are glued to their phone 24/7, even when they're with a group of people. I've managed to resist the enemy by sticking to a flip phone. I display it proudly and tell people that I'm not going to be the guy who comes home from the beach with white marks across my chest resulting from staring at my iPhone the entire time.  This suggests that I was already aware of the inherent dangers of anti-mindfulness. 
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I started this post almost three months ago, and I've had some time to examine the concept of mindfulness. I haven't done much to practice mindfulness since then, in part because it seems to me that the real subject is what mindfulness seems to solve - and that mindfulness is not necessarily the only solution. It might be more accurate to suggest that anti-mindfulness has taken such a toll resulting in a level of stress that makes intentional mindfulness extremely difficult. 

I have no answers, yet it occurs to me that it might be to tied to appreciation of simplicity for simplicity's sake; maybe it's enough to enjoy something without feeling the need to justify/defend the emotional response. I remember a dinner night at the park during the pandemic, telling some of the people how I'd driven home after a strenuous day at work, enjoying the cool breeze with the windows, chewing on some ice, no one else on the road and the level of contentment I felt at the moment. I could see from the expressions on their faces that they were tracking the moment with me.  

As someone who appreciates cuisine, not to mention the mastery of cooking techniques, I'm somewhat bemused how some people collect restaurants like badges; they merely want to be able to say that they've eaten there even though they couldn't really identify what made that particular restaurant special. I'm *really* amused by folks who drop major coin to consume Wagyu burgers. Wagyu beef is special because of how marbled the fat is; grinding it to make a burger is like taking a piece of Venetian glass and shattering it to make a stained-glass window. But who's to say that I'm no less... frivolous by preferring to patronize "authentic" ethnic restaurants and being able to identify the unique characteristics of the eight major regional Chinese cuisines and making fun of Americanized places like Panda Inn?

Or being able to identify that like I did Saturday night that someone took a different harmonic route instead of a basic V-I from F to Bb by taking the F in the bass, sharping it to become 3 of D7 which started a V of V of V of V of V of V (D/G/C/F/Bb) chord sequence. There's a musical genius out there named Jacob Collier who IMO is destined to reshape the concept of jazz by himself because of his understanding not just of harmony but also of rhythm. Yet whenever he talks about what he does, he always does so from an emotional perspective. For example, to describe what's commonly referred to as an anticipation, Collier describes emotionally as the sense of wanting to come 'home'. 

A Pale View Of Hills

is the title of (Nobel Prize winner) Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel. I'm sure I've mentioned Ishiguro in a previous post and speculated on his success as a writer being a reflection of having to try and integrate world views with some mutually exclusive values as he was born in Japan but moved to Britain as a child. Having listened to some of his interviews, a constant theme in his works includes a conscious intent to illustrate a specific (generally undesirable) trait or combination of traits (one he typically can identify in himself - or in those around him) and intensify the impact of that trait in a central character. 

In A Pale View Of Hills, the main character is an older Japanese woman named Etsuko who married a British man she met in Japan after the war. She now lives in England and is visited by her daughter Niki shortly after the suicide of her elder daughter Keiko whose father was her first husband, a Japanese man named Jiro. The visit by the daughter prompts Etsuko to reminisce about her past, specifically about one summer involving an acquaintance she made after WWII. Through her reminiscing the reader can infer that Etsuko was born into an upper class cultured family and that she was being raised to be a violinist. Some tragedy befell the family resulting in Etsuko being raised by a family friend, perhaps a mentor, who was a well regarded intellectual/instructor before WWII. She married into the family and was pregnant with Keiko. In events not recalled, she was eventually widowed, ostensibly during WWII.

Her father-in-law (and presumably her own family) had held political views now denounced by the postwar culture, resulting in a considerable loss of prestige and standing in the community. It appears that the father-in-law, depicted as being an overbearing father to Etsuko's husband, never came to grips with this. After being widowed, Etsuko, in accordance with Japanese customs and traditions of the period, moved in with an uncle on her husband's side. This is conjecture as some of these details are actually ascribed to a remembered acquaintance named Sachiko who was also widowed with a daughter. Several motifs permeate Ishiguro's works, which include unreliable memories often exhibited through the use of what Ishiguro himself described as an ironic gap. This motif in particular can be inferred in Etsuko's recollections; we can't be sure if Sachiko is in fact Etsuko and Ishiguro himself remarked that his work was in some ways too subtle in his first novel. 

Ishiguro himself has described his first three novels A Pale View Of Hills, An Artist Of The Floating World, and what might be his best known work Remains Of The Day as having main characters being people of the generation that preceded his and how their lives were changed by WWII and how they dealt with the impact of those changes.  

If we have perceived Ishiguro's subtlety astutely, Etsuko was born into a cultured Japanese family of very good standing as it would have been regarded in pre-WWII Japan. She was a gifted violinist. The loss of her entire family led to her being adopted by a peer of her own father whom she still calls Ogata-san even after she has married his son. She gives up playing the violin. We see the behavior of giving lip service publicly to those in authority modeled in how her husband deals with his overbearing father. It would have been customary to have continued to live in the father-in-law's household after marriage, but her husband Jiro elected to move out. If we interpret Sachiko's words and thoughts to be those of Etsuko, Etsuko's future was "a few empty rooms" in the home of her uncle as a member of a disgraced family. Sachiko is depicted as a snob, driven to find a rich foreigner who will marry her and take her and her daughter away from Japan.

If we correctly attribute the thoughts, words, and actions of Sachiko and her daughter Mariko to Etsuko and Keiko, the needs of Keiko were made completely subsidiary to Etsuko's need to leave Japan. This is depicted rather indelibly in the account of how Sachiko drowns Mariko's adopted kittens while Mariko watches. Sachiko herself is remembered to have asked of Etsuko if she thinks that Sachiko is not aware of how terrible of a mother she is. This, other remembrances and interaction between Etsuko and Niki suggest that Etsuko is aware at some level that her words and behavior often contradict each other.     

Keiko never adapted to life in England. She eventually just stayed in her bedroom, venturing down to the kitchen daily to get her meals which she eats in her bedroom. She eventually moved out of the house and got a room in Manchester, where her body was eventually found after committing suicide. A brief moment of insight is suggested in Etsuko's description of the obituary, mentioning how Keiko was described merely as being 'fully Japanese' and that she had committed suicide, observing that Britons naturally associated the two ideas, perhaps because how kamikaze pilots were used in later stages of WWII. Etsuko is a sojourner in a strange land.   

Niki seems to exist to be a foil for Etsuko. She's observed her mother's behavior and is fully aware of the inconsistencies in Etsuko's words and behavior. She wants to be able to love and care for Etsuko, but finds it difficult to be around her. She's struggling to reconcile the 'sacrifices' Etsuko made to bring Keiko to England while Keiko was clearly unhappy being in England while trying to reassure her mother that these sacrifices were necessary. 

As sad as the account is of someone making extreme choices to achieve a goal of changing their circumstances, it's made even more tragic when Etsuko remarks that she is considering selling the house and moving into something smaller. This suggests that while Etsuko is constantly commenting on how much she enjoys her life, the reality is that it's still not enough, despite what it cost her to achieve it. 

I reread the work recently and was compelled to compose this, and I'm trying to figure out why. I now understand myself well enough to know that when a story/incident/account affects me in this way there's an emotional resonance, the source of which is still buried somewhere in my subconscious trying to work itself to the surface. 

There are some parallels; my sister was born in Hong Kong while I was born in the U.S. It occurs to me at this moment that Etsuko is a narcissist. My mother exhibited narcissistic behavior, though she clearly was never a snob. If anything, she was acutely aware of her own humble background and carried around a lot of shame which she bequeathed to me. I suppose that I see parallels in my own behavior and in those depicted in Niki; I was unhappy and completely unsure of what kind of goals to pursue except those that I believed were expected of me. I guess I need to let this to continue to percolate a while; I actually started this post at least three months ago. While starting another topic (which will follow shortly, hopefully) I saw that I'd never published this. So here goes.

American Born Chinese Secret Asian Man

 I suppose I should start by saying that if you don't have immigrant parents, you're probably not going to get this. This is of course the reason why it should be stated. 

About 15 years ago Gene Yang created a graphic novel called American Born Chinese. I'll cut and paste a few things said about the work:

"A tour-de-force by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Gene Yang, American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny's life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable. American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax.

American Born Chinese is the winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award, a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature, the winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New, an Eisner Award nominee for Best Coloring, a 2007 Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller."

"Innovative and unsettling, Gene Luen Yang’s 2006 graphic novel explores Asian American identity through three very distinct narratives. One is a coming-of-age story about a new student who is the only Chinese American in his school. Another focuses on the iconic Chinese mythical figure Monkey King. And the third centers on Chin-Kee, a character meant to embody the most damaging Chinese stereotypes. Chin-Kee’s presence in American Born Chinese is intentionally offensive—and therefore controversial—but Yang’s intent with the harmful dialogue that surrounds the character is to force young readers to dissect the implications of racism and the complexities that come with growing up Asian American."

Sadly, some fans of the work missed that last point entirely and wanted to have Chin-Kee dolls made that they could buy because the character was "cute"- perpetuating the stereotype. Gene Yang has stated that his one regret is not making the Chin-Kee less accessible.

Fortunately, in making the series, they rewrote the character to be an asian former actor named Jamie Yao who was cast in a TV sitcom as Freddie Wong, an accident prone character whose shtick was to say the line: "What could go Wong?" right before he was subjected to some sort of Three Stooges type slapstick injury. His being typecast in that kind of role prompted him to leave Hollywood and teach theater to college students.

What made this even better is that the actor playing the role Ke Huy Quan had a similar experience in real life, having been a child actor in The Goonies as well as in one of the Indiana Jones movies. He ended up becoming a stunt coordinator and production assistant for almost two decades before being encouraged to attempt a return to acting after the success of the movie "Crazy Rich Asians" (I had a black friend tell me how he understands Asians better after seeing that movie. I figuratively just bit my lip and tried to smile.)

The character Freddie Wong being subjected to all those accidents in the show became a meme, resulting in a reunion panel of the actors in the sitcom. The emcee first tries makes the character wear a wig emulating the bowl haircut of the character in the sitcom. Eventually he asks:

'What was it like playing such an unforgettable role for so many years?'

Jamie first commented that there weren't many people who looked like him in roles on TV, so he was grateful for the opportunity. He went on to say that he was only offered roles as nerds or neighbors. Or as a ninja.

The emcee then asked what kind of roles Jamie had been hoping for, to which Jamie responded that he wanted to play the hero as "it's every kid's dream, right?". The emcee suggested that Jamie was hoping for a call when Batman was being cast. to which Jamie responded:

"You know, I teach classical theatre to college kids. And we talk about character a lot. When I say I wanted to play a hero, I mean, I just wanted to be someone who goes on a journey, shows some courage, helps others.

A hero can be a person with superpowers, or they can just be... be someone who fights for something that matters.

My parents were heroes. But as I said, people like that weren't on TV back then."

There's complete silence for a moment in the studio while there are pans of the other actors on stage, as well as of the audience. The emcee then offers the thought that hopefully, this is changing, to which Jamie replies:

"I hope so. And I hope that there's a kid out there watching this who feels he doesn't have to be a punchline, who believes that *he* can be the hero."

For those who know me well, I trust that you'll understand how deeply this resonates with me and I won't go into that any further here other than to acknowledge that I've written my own "American Born Chinese" with my concept of Secret Asian Men, which addresses the racial stereotyping I've encountered in my personal experience.

The thing is that I now realize that I need to make a choice. It relates to a blog I once posted about bowl haircuts, which is one of the stereotypes that's a common motif among kids with asian immigrant parents. While I hated the bowl haircuts I got, my most vivid memory had to do with not feeling heard when my dad accidently clipped my ear and then attempted to invalidate the pain, first by denying that he'd clipped my ear, and then proclaiming that it wasn't that serious when he couldn't refute the blood trickling from my ear. The point was that the memory of feeling invalidated became the larger injury and what often results of that kind of experience is that the need to be heard/validated dominates any attempt to communicate, and the common result is that truth is wielded like a weapon, which prompts anyone listening to respond defensively and to expect that the other person seeks revenge or compensation.

And the message is going to have to go in two directions: to those who don't understand how hurtful it can be to be constantly exposed to racism, malicious or otherwise - and also to those experiencing the racism. For now, the message is going to be: 

1) We want to be heroes;

2) We become heroes by fighting for things that matter;

What *matters* is going to vary for each individual, but hopefully it's always going to include helping others along the way.

Anthony Bourdain

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm an Anthony Bourdain fan. It's not that uncommon; everyone seemingly wanted to be Anthony Bourdain based on the lifestyle he led, traveling to all the places he wanted to visit and getting to try all these different cuisines. But it was more than that. He travelled the world with a humility seeking to learn things he didn't know and to listen to stories of people who otherwise would have no voice. He was smart (and I mean really smart) enough to understand how much he didn't know and able to project that so as to become a perfect guest no matter where he went. But for me, I became a fan after I read a couple of collections of essays he wrote *after* he penned Kitchen Confidential (which put him on the map) called The Nasty Bits (2006), followed by Medium Raw (2010). The best way I can put it is that I felt a resonance, not just intellectually as well as emotionally, but also... morally/ethically in terms of what was right and wrong, that there was a sort of kinship in terms of world view (which has been extremely rare in my experience), even though he was an atheist.

It turned out that his lifestyle and celebrity came at great cost. Although the persona he projected on screen was genuine, he was also an extreme introvert and whenever he went out in public he was typically beset by hordes of adoring fans. It's alleged that shortly before his death he was telling people that he hated his job as a consequence.

It's been five years now since Anthony Bourdain took his own life while filming in France. The world has moved on, but I find myself still mourning his loss. Those closest to him made a documentary about him called Roadrunner, which I've watched. There's clearly a respect for Bourdain in how they presented details leading up to his suicide that are not accusatory in any way, even though they were clearly concerned about how certain things were going on. However, another account written from a sensationalistic perspective provided certain details strongly suggesting that Bourdain took his life due to unrequited love. It was obvious that he was smitten with an actress with whom he'd become involved and actively supported for certain causes and that relationship had had an impact on his work. He went as far as to have her work on an episode he filmed in Hong Kong and the rest of the crew noted how enthused he'd been about that. While filming in France, he saw a picture on social media of his love interest romantically involved with someone else. He texted her to let her know how he felt about that and she allegedly replied "stop busting my balls" to which he replied "ok" - and then hung himself. 

Someone I respect once said that the loneliest moment in life occurs when you've given your life to something, and it lets you down. CNN crafted a few episodes to complete the last season, and one episode was dedicated to Anthony Bourdain and it tried to document what he was that made him so successful. The closing shot includes two people sharing what was most meaningful to them. One was a rocker who'd pretty much achieved so many things that no one ever would, and his response was: "...the nicest stuff right now, it's very embarrassing but really - being loved, and appreciating the people that are giving it to me.". The other was a simple shopkeeper: "...and I guess that's what we all want as human beings, isn't it? To be loved, to be cherished." Given the circumstances leading up to his death, I find myself wondering if that was intentional. Either way, it's certainly poignant. 

Lucky Hank

 is the name of a cable TV series starring Bob Odenkirk. The character he portrays, Hank Devereaux, lives a life that has been affected by a single traumatic event in his life involving his father who left him and his mother for another woman. The impact of the event is compounded by Hank's trying to hang himself in response, only to have the fixture the rope is attached to come loose from the ceiling, resulting in a loud crash with Hank on the floor with the rope around his neck where his father finds him. However, his father just turns and leaves without saying a word, followed by his mother coming into the room, putting her arms around him and saying: "we'll never speak of this again".

The father, who has had a successful career as an author which Hank has tried to emulate, retires and Hank is told by his mother that his father intends to return and live in their small town. Hank understandably struggles with this, but eventually decides to meet with his father and hopefully achieve some closure. It turns out that the father has dementia and doesn't even recognize Hank. 

I've just finished watching the episode where this occurs, and there's some serious harmonic emotional resonance going on here given the relationship I had with my mother and her developing dementia as well, making it impossible to achieve a sense of closure with a lot of angst I've carried around all my life. But rather than "devolve" into some sort of self-pity, I'd rather ponder what alternatives are available for anyone who carries similar baggage and seeks to find a way to let go of it and move forward without it. 

It seems to me that a lot of people cope with these kinds of things by adopting addictive behaviors, and 12 step programs seem to be a viable if not the only proven successful alternative to dealing with these coping mechanisms, that is to say, that healing comes in community. But there's no obvious way to find a safe community to achieve this; we're all broken people and the main issue seems to be the level of denial each individual has about their brokenness. And the goal isn't just reaching some sort of wholeness, but to go beyond and help others in their struggles.

I don't remember the exact quote anymore, but essentially, it seems to me a healthy approach would include a mindset that embraces the idea that people are waiting for us to overcome our adversities.

Another Anniversary

It was the tenth anniversary of my getting attacked last month, and reaching this milestone prompted a fw posts in various blogs I have. This has nothing to do with any of that. 

If this had gone differently, I'd be celebrating a 29th wedding anniversary today. But the wedding was called off. We'd set a date, put down a deposit on the wedding banquet and my sister put down $1300 on nonrefundable airline tickets. I guess my sister saw things a little more clearly from a distance; she called right before she was about to purchase the tickets to confirm that things were going forward. I thought they were, but I was unaware that my fiance had some apprehensions that she just couldn't get past.

In all fairness, had we gotten married, things would not have been easy.  

The Last Of Us

is the name of a video game which managed to get itself turned into a TV series. I don't recommend binge watching this one, as is my wont. The plot is that 20 years ago, a mutated fungus infected the world's population and the story centers around a young girl who has an apparent immunity to the fungus and she and her protector have to travel across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to try and find people with the ability to synthesize a potential vaccine.

There's an episode whose soundtrack the Linda Ronstadt classic Long Long Time. The lyrics are as follows:

Love will abide, take things in stride
Sounds like good advice but there’s no one at my side
And time washes clean love’s wounds unseen
That’s what someone told me but I don’t know what it means

‘Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you for a long long time

Caught in my fears
Blinking back the tears
I can’t say you hurt me when you never let me near
And I never drew one response from you
All the while you fell all over girls you never knew
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think it’s gonna hurt me for a long long time

Wait for the day
You’ll go away
Knowing that you warned me of the price I’d have to pay
And life’s full of flaws
Who knows the cause?
Living in the memory of a love that never was
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and change your mind
And I think I’m gonna miss you for a long long time
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you for a long long time

Simply put, it's a tale of unrequited love - and coming to grips with it.

I recently observed the ten year anniversary of an unusual event which prompted me to take a look back and see how much things have changed since then. I have yet to put a lot of those thoughts into words, but here's one thing I'll put out there. One of my first responses to listening to the song again was to tap into my own grief at being alone at this point in my life. Not so long ago, I would have wallowed in indulgent self pity for an indeterminate length of time. But the me I'm still in the process of becoming began to look at it from the singer's point of view and while it's true that I grieve over potential relationships I never entered into for various reasons, there's grief on the other side of the equation in terms of how my inability to reciprocate those feelings may have been the cause of a lot of hurt. And it's the me that I'm becoming that can also see that while I may hurt people in my past, it's possible for these people to reach a point where the love is stronger than the pain. And that takes a lot of weight off my shoulders. 

Mom

would have turned 91 today, but she finally got her wish to be reunited with my father (who died of Covid in 2020) last October when she finally succumbed to a number of medical ailments which included Parkinsons. As with many diagnosed with Parkinsons, she'd exhibited diminished cognitive skills including dementia, so my mother had stopped existing as I knew her for quite a while before she actually passed away. 

I've already posted an attempt of a eulogy but the reality is that it was more a biography based on what I'd learned from her over the years. And as it is with all parents, much of what we learn from them aren't things that are overtly communicated out loud.  

The relationship I had with my mother was complicated. Even as I am contemplating what to say here, I realize that I can't identify my target audience. My story is my own. I wouldn't presume to claim that it was unique, but at the same time, I can imagine that there are others out there who've experienced something similar and might in some way benefit from knowing that others have experienced something similar even though my responses to those experiences may be very different from the choices they made in the same circumstances; in no way would I want to claim that my experience is prescriptive, yet there may still be a significant minority who would benefit from know that their experience has not been unique, and that there are ways to come to recalibrate the behaviors and beliefs that resulted from these experiences. 

I suppose the first thing I need to make clear is that I am not angry with my mother, but I did experience a great deal of ambivalence when she passed away. No child should be able to justify wishing that a parent would die, but as I stated earlier, my mother had dementia, had been confined to a bed for the last four years of her life and when my father passed two years ago, her only wish was to join him in death and she expressed her desire to die quite openly. She'd been at the weight of about 78 lbs for months when she finally passed. Even before the dementia symptoms became more pronounced, our conversations had always been fairly pragmatic. The language/education barrier was a major factor, but there were things that weren't necessarily said out loud that was influencing what I was learning to believe about things. 

There are therapeutic terms that might accurately describe my mom's behaviors over the years, but I want to avoid that, so I'm just going to say that my mom believed herself to be inadequate all of her life, so she developed a lot of different behaviors to cope with that. One of the results of that was that I spent a great deal of my life being that I was inadequate as well, which led to my developing my own set of coping mechanisms and behaviors. I'm happy to be able to say that I've come to grips with a lot of that, but as long as my mom was still alive, I retained a hope that I could someday have a meaningful conversation about some of the things she'd done and said over the years and what I'd learned from that. And when my mom finally did pass away, my greatest sense of loss was not over her dying, but that this conversation would never take place.  And until now, it seemed wrong to want to mourn about this. For all intents and purposes, my mom died a couple of years ago when it stopped being possible to have even pragmatic conversations but even before that, I'd spent almost all of life feeling unheard. I've described it this way to many people: "If I went to mom with a bump on my forehead, she'd put a bandaid on my knee, send me on my way and she'd feel good that she did what she thought a good mom should do." I have only one significant memory where I told my mom something and she responded in a way that made me feel like she'd heard me and supported me. 

It's tied to another significant experience in my life - when I was almost killed by a box cutter wielding assailant while serving dinner to the homeless in a public park in Pasadena, CA (where I still live). While recuperating in ICU for the better part of the week, the only thing I was worried about was how I was going to break the news to my mother, because she was the type of person who always imagined a worst case scenario when I shared any concern (which I learned not to do). I eventually called her and told her that I'd been hit in the neck during a church event (which was technically true) and while I was still in the hospital, I was going to be OK.  My father turned 90 later that year and I went back east to visit and on the last day of my visit, right after I'd finished packing and has a few minutes before I had to leave for the airport, I told my mom more of the actual details of how a branch of my carotid had been severed, how long I'd been in surgery, etc. but clearly I was OK now. My mom agreed that it was wise not to give her all that detail before she saw that I was OK (I didn't tell her that I'd slept about 14 hours a day for the next four months or so). I also told her that I was going to continue to feed the homeless because it was important and I thought it was what I was called to do. My mom sat there for a couple of minutes, then went into her bedroom and gave me about $200 in cash and told me that this was to pay for food to support what I was doing. 

That's the mom whose passing I now mourn. I wish I'd seen her more than once my whole life.

The Blessing 2

I blogged this a while back and never published it.

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My father would have been 97 today had he not succumbed to the coronavirus last summer. I blogged about that last year. The last time I saw him was exactly three years ago and I blogged about that event as well. Reminiscing on that trip, it occurs to me that I received more of a full blessing from him than I'd originally understood.

I suppose I have to mention that before I left Ohio to move to CA, my relationship with my dad wasn't all that great. After graduating from college, I didn't find meaningful work in IT for over three years, and I spent a lot of time at home doing nothing. One day I was waiting in the car to go somewhere, and while playing with the seat belt, I managed to pull it all the way out and it wouldn't retract. My dad came out, saw me frantically trying to get the seat belt to retract and said: "You f--k up everything." I carried that pronouncement/prophecy with me to CA, where I engaged in a lot of self-sabotaging behavior. More on that in a future post. 

I'd already received what I'd call the first part of the blessing when he affirmed my ability to take care of myself when I began my sabbatical. I was talking with my mom on the phone, my dad got on the line, asked me if I had everything covered, and I told him yes. He said: "ok." and he never brought it up again.

Going on to my last visit, I'd already mentioned helping him with the yardwork when I first got home, but I think I should also mention what happened the night before I left. My dad always reviewed his change and saved certain coins. The night before I left, he gave some of these coins, including a huge container of pennies, thinking that the older pennies might be valuable. He thought it would take at least a half hour to identify those pennies and I told him I'd be done in about 10 minutes by using a more efficient search criterion; instead of looking at the year, all I had to do was check the backs of the pennies to eliminate all the newer pennies and remove them from the pile. I was done even sooner than I expected, and when I showed him, he gave one of those 'huh!' kind of laughs you make when you're pleasantly surprised. He gave another of those laughs when I showed him how I did it. Something changed in that moment; he'd never seen me exercise my mind before.

A Seat At The Table

For those of you who don't know, I've been feeding the homeless on a weekly basis in the greater Pasadena area for over a decade. We bring the food to a park where there are a couple of picnic tables and we serve food there. While making sure that everyone who shows up gets a nutritious hot meal is the highest priority, we encourage people to sit at a table and eat their meal there. Some do so regularly.

The point is that everyone is welcome to a seat at the table. Logistically that wasn't always possible - those two tables might seat a total of 12-16 people, and in years past we fed as many seventy people during an evening and we had a lot of people sitting in groups of twos and threes eating together on the grass.

We get all types of people. I'd like to describe two of them who were sharing a table last night. I will not use their names, and in an effort to protect their identities, I will be somewhat vague in the details that follow. One of them happened to have a criminal past, and it was during his incarceration he was diagnosed with some psychological issues for which he now takes three kinds of medication to help him cope. He fulfilled all the conditions of his parole and was about to enter a job training program when the pandemic struck, resulting in the cancellation of the classes he was scheduled to attend.  He still shows up regularly though not necessarily every week; there are days when he hasn't taken his meds and he knows that he can say things he will regret later so he'll choose to isolate himself.  The other comes from what most would probably describe as being at the other end of any spectrum that might include both of these people. This person has among things worked in the White House in Washington as a press secretary for a cabinet member, written speeches for various heads of state. Unfortunately, problems with addictive behavior has led to him living outdoors.

Perhaps the metaphor would be better if the tables were round so that there could be no perceived hierarchy based on where one sat in relation to the head of the table, but the point remains, there a place for anyone to come have a family dinner.

 

Comfort IV: Learning

I expect that people who know me well know I have a passion for partner dancing, even if they don't understand it, or understand what it is I value about it. But I didn't start dancing until my mid 30's and before that, volleyball was a major constellation in my universe. I played about 4-5 nights a week & followed the sport pretty closely.  

The greatest volleyball player of all time is generally acknowledged to be someone named Karch Kiraly. Let's put it this way: as a freshman at UCLA he played with the varsity and beat the second string and third string teams. Then he'd switch to the second string and they'd beat the first string. Then he's switch to the third string and THEY would beat the first string.  He's won 3 Gold medals at the Olympics and he's now the head coach of the Olympic women's volleyball team.

Karch has recorded a few videos about his approach to coaching. There's one about learning that prompted this post. Hopefully this link will still exist by the time you read this: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_64FAxU99d0

If not, do a search for Karch Kiraly Becoming A Learner. The video is maybe 3 minutes long and it likely take me longer to summarize it, but here goes:

In order to learn, you have to embrace making mistakes. In essence, you have to embrace discomfort. Karch goes on to suggest that doing this also requires that we be patient with ourselves. This applies to how we respond when we make a mistake, and also in how we respond to feedback when it feels like criticism. 

A lot of things come easily to me. Ironically, volleyball was not one of these things and I spent a lot of free time at the gym hoping to find someone to work out with to develop my skills. But for the most part I've not been particularly patient with myself. Shame was a big factor. 

Eat A Peach

 is the name of a memoir written world renowned chef David Chang. It's a little weird because Chang is only in his 40's.

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I started this post almost a week ago, then forgot to save so I have to start over pretty much from scratch. After a couple days of grieving losing that many hours of effort I'm restarting. Though in retrospect, it may not be a bad thing because I've had some time to meditate/contemplate on what I've read (I've since acquired and read/re-read Eat A Peach) and I think what's coming out is a bit more thought-out vs. stream of consciousness/initial response in what I wrote originally. 

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Now almost a year has passed and I let this drift, mainly because I began this in the wrong blog and I'm copying and pasting it into this blog.

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Even though it was published in 2020, I only discovered it because the original topic of this blog was going to be about ethnic food shaming, and I was going to include a quote by David Chang who once said something along the line of that one of the worst things in life was to be made fun of because of the food you eat, especially if it's the ethnic food of one's culture. I was searching for the quote when I found a transcript of an interview of David Chang about this memoir. As I read the transcript, I was further drawn in by references to specific memories described beyond the foods shaming, which included how Chang as a young child broke his leg and because of his father, tried to gut it out and walk on it and cried for at least five days before his leg was eventually x-rayed and it was determined that Chang had suffered a greenstick fracture which ran down most of the length of his femur. I also learned that Chang has been diagnosed as bipolar and has frequently dealt with suicidal thoughts and he describes his success as a byproduct of dealing with his shame (though he doesn't identify it as such) and associated anger and depression.

(NOTE: shame as it's defined in therapeutic terms is IMO something the average westerner just doesn't grasp in terms of its impact as well as its severity. It's not limited to Asian cultures, but it's also a fundamental part of Asian cultures, in how Asians are motivated to perform by being inoculated with the sense that something is fundamentally wrong with them, typically by being compared to some standard that can never be matched. It's fundamentally different from guilt, which are bad feelings which result from some sort of action of behavior. Guilt comes from doing, while shame is being.)

Chang also refers to han, which is a term unique to Korean culture popularized during the last century. There are varied descriptions/definitions of it, but I personally would categorize it as collective cultural shame for not being whole, which again is a concept westerners will likely have difficulty in grasping because the concept of a holistic/community based world view is totally foreign to them. But when the community is everything, families separated into North/South Koreans are irrevocably fractured. And when things identified with one's culture are defined to be inferior as the Japanese did during their occupation of Japan, their culture is fractured and han is a symptom of that trauma. And each Korean will experience it in their own way, so that one particular Korean's experience/description will not necessarily be prescriptive. But it's interesting that Chang points out that his grandfather was essentially Japanese in his preferences and ways of thinking because his grandfather had been educated in Japan. Chang also mentions that his parents were originally from North Korea and fled to the south.

Chang goes on to document how he coped with his anger/depression/shame/sense of inadequacy by essentially killing his meek, soft-spoke persona and adopting a workaholic set of behaviors that fueled the success of his restaurants but left nothing scorched earth behind when it came to dealing with subordinates. He also abused drugs and alcohol as part of his coping behaviors. He has since recognized the damage he's done and is trying to adopt new behaviors while maintaining the success of his restaurants. We'll see how that goes. 

I have more thoughts, but I'll stop here after noting that while Chang was raised in a devoutly Presbyterian household, he states that he won't ask for forgiveness from those he's hurt and he knows that he has to earn their forgiveness, which reflects a lack of understanding about forgiveness; forgiveness is not about the transgressor, it's about the one who was transgressed against being freed from holding any grudges. But I suspect his shame prompts him to continue to think the way he does. And I'm pretty sure a lot of Asian Americans who profess to being Christian still allow their sense of shame to dictate their thinking and behavior.   

Again, I (and David Chang) want to emphasize that his experience is not prescriptive, but I'd be comfortable wagering a sizeable amount that these stories create a lot of emotional resonance for a large percentage (if not a majority) of Asian Americans (perhaps more for males than females - there's another potential topic for a future post). But at the same time, I suspect Chang's shame plays a factor in this, he's quoted as thinking that other Asians will read his story and respond that they went through something similar and they didn't choose the same coping behaviors that Chang did, and basically say "grow up, you baby".

Be Curious, Not Judgemental

The title is a quote misattributed to Walt Whitman. No one can associate the phrase with any specific person, but I'm going to give Jason Sudeikis credit for it.  Sudeikis is the creator of the Apple TV series "Ted Lasso" and also plays the title character. The series has received both public and critical acclaim garnering a number of industry awards for their first two seasons. 

I didn't discover the show until the end of last year, and only because there was a connection between the main character and the head football coach at my alma mater. It seems that Sudeikis, whose character Ted Lasso is a college football coach, consulted Jim Harbaugh to develop a portrayal of a successful college coach. While discussing this in an interview, Harbaugh referred to a scene that's gone viral, known by many as 'the darts scene' or 'be curious' and can be found on youtube using either of those as a search phrase. I invite you to watch it.

The scene makes more sense if you understand the following before watching it, especially if you see the scene with the game already in progress:

1) Ted Lasso is a college football coach who was hired to coach a (soccer) football team in England;

2) The owner of that team has gone through a messy divorce and is motivated solely by revenge. She got the team as part of the divorce agreemen, and the motive behind hiring Ted is to sabotage any chances of the team being successful;

3) The ex-husband enjoys antagonizing the ex-wife who initiated the divorce proceedings, so much so that he's bought a minor share of the team in the name of his current girlfriend/future fiance, which allows him to be in the owner's box for all games. The plan is to conduct interviews lambasting the ex-wife for the poor performance of the team. In his own words: "It will be relentless.";

This sets you up if you watch a video version that's about three and half minutes long; there are two scenes spliced together.

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Hopefully you have taken the time to watch the scene. If your response was anything like mine, you watched the scene over and over about five times. It was cathartic for me on a lot of different levels. 

First off, it was fun to see Rupert get his comeuppance. He's the only obvious villain in the entire series. But it's Ted's soliloquy that gets the main press on this scene. And it scored on two main levels. I've gone through life feeling misunderstood and I've seldom felt like I ever had a chance to even voice my thoughts and/or motivation for anything that might have transpired. It took some time for me to recognize how much shame I'd retained over that when the reality was that their behavior had been judgmental. Then I was prompted to examine how my lack of curiosity in many situations may have resulted in judgmental behavior on my part. I've never bought into the concept of new year's resolutions, but this year, I've made a conscious choice to try and be more curious. 

Just watch the show. You don't have to rely on my endorsement: Rotten Tomatoes gives the series a 95% on its tomatometer. The show has back to back Emmy wins for seasons 1 & 2 for best comedy series and has won a total of about 75 different awards.