We are Responsible

My Tickling the Tongue of a Dragon post from a few days ago elicited a number of responses, one that came today. Kate was very adamant that she was not "we" as the cause of the oil spill. In response, I quoted a man (like myself, in current disfavor (with Kate, at least)), Werner Erhard (founder of EST), who wrote this about responsibility:

Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one's life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what's so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself - an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life.

I first heard it 30 years ago. Actually when I went through EST it was handed to me on a little slip of paper. My interpretation is that it is a similar statement to what is called the butterfly effect, that we have an endless effect on things that happen. And yet Erhard tells us that doesn't mean we should feel like sinners. The butterfly causes a tornado in Texas, yet it is not a bad butterfly. It is one (minuscule) part of the "scheme of things" gracefully flapping its wings as if there is no tomorrow.

Kate maintained that she is not part of "we." I think she is, but not out of any fault of her own. We are one interdependent system. All our actions and interactions extend throughout the universe. This realization gives us power. It is empowering.

P.S. So I actually felt more like I was living today (than dying), and then found out that I have walking pneumonia. But the fact that I'm not coughing so much makes me think I'm on the mend.

I knew my wife was going to be late for dinner, so I told her that I was going to eat without her. "That will be fine," she said. I could hear in her voice, though, that she wanted me to wait, so I did. Finally we sat down to dinner. Then her friend called from St. Louis (as my son did the night before). Maybe tomorrow we'll both turn off our phones. Or maybe not.

To Hell in a Hand-basket

The doc gave me some wicked little yellow cough pills. They work on the cough center of the brain along with the lungs. It said not to bite into the pill or it would numb your mouth and then you'd choke to death. As usual I read the instructions after I took the pill... but (luckily) I didn't bite into the little bugger so I'm alive... I think.

I signed up for an online course, and the instructor asked if I was living in Austin, Texas. Since most of the day I was just coughing, the word "living" took on a special meaning. I emailed back that I was in Austin, and that I was living... not mentioning that a few hours earlier I was more dying than living.

(I did a collaboration  years ago with my friend Mary about living and dying. I thought she was dying and she thought she was living... and we didn't realize the disconnect until the end. And now, eighteen years later, she's still living.)

I tried to write something, but then I'd have to cough, and then I'd have to cough again... and my mind couldn't do much more. So I met my wife at the "Upper Crust" for dinner, but I had just eaten dinner... so I planned to just have water with a big chunk of lemon. I then figured if I sinned a little it might feel better than coughing, so I bought a bran muffin. Just a little sin in my book (I try to eat no wheat & no eggs).

In the middle of our "dinner" my son called... and he's usually lucky to find a few minutes to call... so we talked. Finally I said I was on a hot date with his mom... so I got off the phone. I realized that it was a little warm in the restaurant/bakery. A bakery at 5:30 pm isn't otherwise a hot date because it is empty and ready to shut down when their last customers leave (us). Hot date stuck in my mind, so I decided, esp. since I was dying, that sin was called for, so I saw some large cinnamon rolls on a tray for sale. I pointed to them and told my wife I was now really going to sin. She said, "why don't you get a piece of pecan pie?" I went to look at that and said to the clerk I'd like a piece and pointed (extra words were hard to come by without coughing). It was a $1.10. I asked if there was a special price for a birthday boy? He took one of the two dollars in my hand and put it in the tip kiddy jar. The pie is free for your birthday, he said (that's why we love Austin!).

My wife asked how it was, and I said, "terrible" (eliminating any need to share). That must have been sin #6 or 7. It actually was so satisfying to taste something so sweet. It took my mind off my cough, and it is much more fun "to go to hell in a hand-basket," as my mother liked to say, than to cough.

I finally made it home (despite the warning that those taking the cough pill shouldn't drive) and fell asleep (dying) to wake (living) and felt a whole lot better...  even feeling the good taste of that sinning pecan pie from Upper Crust that took me to hell and back, in a hand-basket.

Diesel Engines on my Birthday

They say that because diesel gas has a high flash point that truckers need to leave their truck running, or they will have trouble starting it up. I haven't written for a long time... I think it was two days ago. I had one piece already written but not posted... but yesterday I just felt like coughing... which didn't lend itself to writing. I suppose if I was someone like my hero Jack London I still would have written (he wrote 15000 words every day no matter what). 1, 2, 3... 

I should have left my engine running. Now I don't know what to say. I could talk about how much I liked all the Facebook birthday greetings. Or I could write about how I read some stuff a brilliant high school classmate wrote today, and then I concluded I had no business writing. Or how, yesterday, a few people came up to me and said how much they were enjoying these posts.

Today is my birthday. I liked hearing an artist say the other day, "I was born, and then I had to deal with that." I had never thought of life as a process of dealing with this thing that happened to me. In Buddhism there is no I, so it doesn't make sense to me in that context. And yet it does, because all we can deal with is what is.

I guess if I could live the last 64 years over I would try to relish every moment, knowing how precious it was and how it would never return. What I would give just to be in a room with my parents and grandparents. When I was 16, my only thought was to get out. Now I am out, and they don't live on earth, and I can't  be in a room with them. Darn! When I see/hear kids being rude to their parents I feel like saying, "do you realize how lucky you are to have two parents... and ones that love you and are willing to put up with your c..p."

So if I had a birthday party (it will be in a couple of weeks when my kids are here) I would have made that my birthday speech. In a couple of weeks maybe the oil will stop gushing from the dragon's mouth, and life will be back to normal. I'll be sharing my birthday with my youngest grandson, so he'll likely be the one doing the speech with his indecipherable screeches. It will be fun.

Now that engine is running, And I'll have to remember to leave her running.

Another Non-Anger Story

About 40 years ago I had my first teaching job and decided that I could afford a new car (as opposed to one that had 100000+ miles and was falling apart). We were going to be moving to Texas the following year and we thought we'd need something dependable. First I decided on an used Suburban, but it was owned jointly by the Grissley Cheese Company and the Southside Worm Ranch (my son's family has a print I made about this fiasco), and their banker finally told me that they couldn't sell it. Then it was a Checker (as in cab) station wagon, but I was unsure if I could get it serviced in Dallas. Then an International Harvestor used Travelall... but it was expensive for a used car. Finally decided on a fleet version of a full-sized Chevy wagon. Gas was 29 to 39 cents a gallon and no one thought it would ever go higher.

Even though we lived in Peoria, it seemed the place to get a fleet model was in Chicago... so I called a dealer and arranged to pick up the car on a certain date. I called them a few times after that to confirm that they had the car. They reassured me that it was there waiting for me.

At that time my parents lived in Chicago. My dad and I went to get the car. I don't remember if we drove, or took public transportation. We probably drove, though my parents didn't own a car for many years in Chicago.

We arrived at the dealer, which looked more like a parking garage. I'm not sure that it had a showroom at all. I identified myself and asked to see the car. Oh, they said, we don't have that car. I was all ready to explode when my very calm and practical father said, let's go to another place and find your car. (What a teachable moment for a father.)

Somehow, we managed to go to another dealer and found the right car at the right price.

Mortgages and Oil

The US has just moved from one catastrophe to another. Or did we? What does the business of mortgages have to do with the business of oil. Risk.

I know an old man who only invests in CDs. His whole life has been about being careful. He doesn't gamble, at all. When the stock market is run by the bulls he shakes his head and tells you it will fall. When it is run by the bears he says he told you so. But he's nice... and he doesn't rub it in.

I suspect that those who succeed in risky ventures are those, unlike the old man, willing to go out on a limb. I imagine that most of the wells' managers take the chances that were taken at the leaky one. That's the name of the game. Take big chances for big profits.

On his deathbed, the Buddha's last word was "appamada," which means a commitment to care, to be fully present. In this state, one would see the possible consequences of their actions. Would they get fired, though, because they had shut down their well until the back-up systems were functioning properly? Probably.

Too Sad for Art?

Preface:

Is the world too bad
for art? Are the starving
children and the
spewing oil enough
for the poet to put
down her pen and
cry?

Or
is it a matter
of comparing
infinities, where
every day is
fully saturated
with many
disappointments...
and joys.

Sometimes
one infinity seems
larger than the
next, but
aren't they
really
all the
same?

Event:

I went for a walk
today—
a walk
I had joyously
anticipated.
No sooner
had I stepped from
my porch
a beautiful
blackbird lay on the
ground with no
life in her.

She must have hit
a window or something.

I continued my walking
planning to deal
with her
upon my return.

She enraptured my thoughts,
and my eagerly anticipated
walk became a collection
of tears rolling down my
eyes onto the hot pavement.

Half-way to my intended
destination,
I would go no
further.
I quickly returned
to where the bird
had met her fate,
but found her gone, already.

Finale:

Is there anything
more tragic than
Romeo and Juliet,
love that could
not be, and yet,
almost was?

Tomorrow I will
walk again, looking
for that blackbird that
rose from her sleep.

More Regulation?

Certainly one can imagine a situation where regulators could be wise, unbiased and omniscient enough to save countless lives and prevent disasters. In reality, do such people exist and can we afford them? We'd need them not only overseeing every oil well but testing every batch of hamburger (as oil free seafood skyrockets I suspect red meat will be making a comeback).

Sometimes regulation can backfire, as it did for workers in smokey environments across the country. The Surgeon General in 1996 declared that second-hand smoke causes cancer. Yet OSHA refused to ban smoking from the workplace. I suspect that this made it harder for injured workers to sue their employers, whose behavior was more or less approved by OSHA. Had there not been "regulators" (OSHA), the employees could have simply used expert witnesses (like the Surgeon General) to state their case. The argument that "OSHA approves" could not have been used by the defense.

One of the deans at the college where I worked used to quote the aphorism "careful what you wish for." Suppose that BP's activities was approved and certified A+ by some government regulator. Would they then still be responsible for clean-up?

Another fascination of the BP spill is that with all our technology and wisdom, we can't stop the spill in a timely way. We have grown up to believe in technology. So often I've said (or at least thought) that the limit was our imagination, not our technology. But now... we've found a dragon we can't slay.