Mom

     My mother is 81 years old. She was born on January 2, 1934 to Glenn and Anna Higley. She was the youngest of 5. Her father worked in the shipyards in the Puget Sound and her mother was a school teacher. She grew up in government housing projects and played outside with her friends a lot, often at a vacant lot where the local kids would dig large holes and lay wood over the top of it to make forts or bunkers. Her oldest brother Dale enlisted in the Army in 1940, he was stationed on a Japanese island and saw some horrors he only retold once to my mother’s knowledge. In contrast in today’s world we tend to think of WWII as the Big One, the war where we had a common enemy, where we knew what their faces looked like and there was no doubt as to the evil they wrought. Through my Uncle Dale’s eyes the sight of a Japanese soldier burning alive from a flamethrower he was manning was enough to haunt him for the rest of his life, enemy of the U.S. or not. Mom remembers the family getting “Ration books” that allowed each member of the family to purchase items like sugar, flour and other groceries. She said that “You could forget about buying tires, they all went to the war effort!” New cars were few and far between as Detroit geared up for war machines.

     Glenna, my mother, is of German heritage, her grandparents came over to America in 1910 in search of a better life in the “Land of Milk and Honey”. My grandmother spoke fluent German but raised her kids without passing on the German language to them, and in fact, her husband forbade her to speak German in public or to teach it to their kids. My mother thinks that this was in part due to the war with Germany…in fear of repercussions from paranoid Americans. I don’t blame them for being careful; look at what happened to the Japanese Americans put into “internment camps”. When I was young my grandmother would visit us and bring along some old German “Beer-Drinking Music” albums and try and teach my brother and me what the lyrics meant. It wasn’t very successful, but I liked spending the time and the attention she gave us.

     Mom does not remember her grandparents at all; they were very old and lived in the Midwest when she was little. Her father Glenn died in 1952, just before her 18^th birthday of a brain aneurysm brought on by a severe coughing fit. His funeral was 2 days after her birthday. She was the last child at home and moved out when her mother went to live with family. Her mother Anna did not remarry for 20 years, in 1972 she married her neighbor in Tacoma, Glenn Shellenberger; a fellow German. He died within a year of their marriage and she never married again.

      My mother grew up in the Pacific NW and has been here her entire life. Mom dropped out of high school in her senior year and went to work in Portland, Ore as an “Usherette” in a big movie theater, she had two female roommates and wasn’t into parties or bars. She did date a Portland policeman for a time though, but it never really went far. I can only imagine what my life might have been like had that fling gone further! Soon the Korean War began and her cousin Leland went off to war, she said she wrote him often and even wrote to several of his friends who had no one at home to write to them. I found this a beautiful sentiment but she shrugged it off.

     She eventually moved back to her hometown in the Tri-Cities, Pasco, WA. In 1960 she met my father, a handsome man who was working as a “grunt” for Pacific Power and Light, hoping to one day become a lineman. He had been in the Navy during the Korean War, along with his brother Clayton they were stationed in Japan and never saw any real action. I have a picture of my father in his Navy uniform and he was an amazing looking man. My mother and he soon fell in love and were married in a small church ceremony with just a few family members present. My mother had grown up going to the Lutheran Church but had slacked off shortly before meeting my father. She said the family had routinely gone to church but they were far from fervent about their faith.  Politically her family had been Democrats through her life, but she shared with me that she had switched to Republican in recent years. I think that this is a common trend among senior citizens as the see the Democrats as being “Liberals” and her dissatisfaction with the current administration is no secret to anyone who knows her. Oddly enough my mom is a big fan of Fox News and feels that the “other” networks can’t be trusted. She even referenced “those damn liberal college professors!” on her litany of what’s wrong with the world today. I don’t think she fully realizes that her son (me) is pretty much on par with “those college professors”. This is a great example how party lines are drawn by rhetoric and false claims and rumors, often fueled by media. Thankfully we just agree to disagree sometimes and I know how to pick my battles with her. I watched her hurt and cry when she lost the love of her life 5 years ago, she deserves every bit of compassion I can muster, as she put up with so much from me during my tumultuous youth.

     After trying for over a year to have children my mother had a “tubal” pregnancy and it ruined her ability to have children. Her and my father sought out adoption as a means to have a child and in 1963 brought my brother Dale home, he was one month old. She said that adopting a child was simple then, you simply signed up, passed some basic requirements and then they called you with choices when they came up. She did say that they were first offered a trio of siblings, including a newborn baby but turned them down after some careful consideration, it makes me sad to think of 3 siblings needing homes and trying to stay together, what was their story…? Mom helped my dad through his exams for becoming a lineman, she said she ended up doing a lot of his homework for him and joked that she probably could have taken those exams and became a linewoman! I don’t think there were any of those at the time, so I asked her about any perceived gender bias that she may have felt. She really could not recall any. Having grown up in the 40’s and 50’s I can imagine why, it’s like a fish being asked how they like the water…what is water?

     I asked her what it was like when she heard that Kennedy was assassinated, she said she was sad and distraught like the rest of the nation, she recalls sitting in a chair in the kitchen while her mother was giving her a home permanent watching the funeral on TV. My parents had gotten their first TV in 1962; it was a large Magnavox console color model; that was a big deal then. She said they often went over to the neighbor’s house and watched Ed Sullivan or The Honeymooners, which were her favorite shows. No TV, can you imagine? In some ways I wish that were the case today, but in a way I don’t really have one either. I do but it is only connected to and antenna and sits silent and dark in my living room excepts for occasional movies, I don’t have a favorite show anymore, I can’t stand commercials so I don’t watch it at all, except Netflix binges of course (Breaking Bad, Walking Dead..). My parents wanted another child and was soon rewarded with a chubby little baby boy they chose to call Matthew, named after Marshall Matt Dillon, the hero in my father’s favorite TV show Gunsmoke.

     I asked her what it was like during the Civil Rights Movement. She said that growing up in the Pacific NW she had friends that were black, Indian, Asian and they all attended school together, there were no “Whites Only” signs during her youth, she said that folks she knew didn’t really exhibit any racial tension. She was horrified at the violence and hate inflicted on blacks in the South that she saw on TV. She said she was pretty much just centered on raising her little family as a stay-at-home-mom and didn’t really pay much attention to global and national issues as they didn’t really affect her that much. I do this too, there is so much publicized upheaval shown to us on a regular basis through our enhanced media that if I chose to be indignant about every injustice I would be in a perpetual state of chaos. As for Vietnam she said that she was disgusted with the way returning soldiers were treated when they came home from the “conflict” (later to be labeled a “War”). Televised and publicized atrocities that were reported at the time did cause some national speculation about how our servicemen had killed innocents as well as enemies, but my mom simply said “Those boys didn’t ask to be sent there, they were drafted and forced, if you weren’t there in front of those decisions they had to make at the time then you shouldn’t judge them!” (Go mom! Yes!)

     Mom didn’t think too much of the “hippies” or Woodstock, she said she just felt that beards and long hair were “kinda stupid”, and weren’t being any too smart with their well-publicized promiscuity; which makes sense since during my youth I insisted on growing my hair long which she had never seen the point of but eventually relented when I was in Jr. High. She divorced my dad in 1970 and remarried in 1972. My father had cheated on her and she was not going to stand for it. She remarried in 1972 to Gary Powell, we lived in Baker, Oregon and then moved to Pendleton, Oregon in 1973. I asked mom about Watergate and President Nixon. She said that she felt that Nixon “got what he deserved”. I then asked her if she thought that such crimes that caused Nixon’s downfall are occurring on a regular basis these days and simply being covered up better, she said that our current administration was “ten times worse than Nixon ever thought of being”.

    Mom and Gary picked out a brand-new pre-fab 14x70 mobile home and got a space in a new trailer park a few miles outside of Pendleton called “Shenandoah Estates”.  They also traded in his Plymouth Barracuda for a Datsun Station Wagon. They also had an old Chevy truck for Gary. My mom reminisced about her first car, it was a canary yellow 1938 Buick convertible, she got it in 1958, and she absolutely loved that car. I would too! Wow. The home was pre-furnished and pre-decorated with tacky 70’s art. We lived there for only two years, mom said that it was a terrible place for a mobile home park as the wind came through unabated by any trees and blew over a few of the trailers that weren’t anchored down, she said that one blew over right next to my brother as he was walking home from the bus stop!

   Mom was getting tired; we had talked for about an hour and a half. She told she loved the Mother’s Day flowers I had sent to her and had arrived earlier in the day. She said she had thought about things that she hadn’t thought of in decades. I told her I was grateful that she and I had had this time to talk about something other than what was going on with me, or my kids. She grew up in a different world, it would be easy to reminisce and feel some longing for such simpler times but it seems to me that it only seems simpler to me, that these are my simpler times. Glenna Marie Higley had a simple childhood growing up with her siblings and parents, it wasn’t any better or worse than my own, I felt the similarities between us throughout our conversation as we paralleled experiences and shared similar attitudes about some things. I may not be biologically a part of my mother, (Nature) but I am culturally and environmentally a product of my mother (Nurture).

   One last thing, I brought up Gary, my stepfather, whom she divorced around 1976. She said she “just pushes that time out of her mind”. He was not a very nice man and was often very strict to the point of abusive with my brother and me. I shared with her that I had gotten over this through exercising forgiveness and empathy. I shared with her that I had finally realized that Gary was just trying to raise kids that weren’t his own the way he had been shown that kids should be raised by his own father, he had done the best he could with what he had, just like me. I think I gave her some pause with this and maybe even a tad bit of peace, since I am fairly certain that she blamed herself for choosing him and then putting up with his sour demeanor and flippant behavior for 5 years before ousting him for infidelity as well.

    My mom lived a fairly simple life through events that we like to list in chronological order and label as significant. To her those were just the times she lived through, the importance of those events has been honed and examined over time, in hindsight she lived through a plethora of historical events, but that is the nature of history is it not? History is looking back and attaching meaning to something. Re-telling and examining an event is not the same as living through it. We can change our experience with the past by changing our perception of our relationship to it…like I did with Gary. It’s all over, done, gone. It only lives in memory and in documentation. Her life, like my own is slowly coming to pass; it will only live in the memories of those we share it with. To quote the famous street artist Banksy, “They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”  That thought struck me deeply, because I recognize it as true. Lately I have been considering what I am going to be leaving behind and what I can offer to my kids and grandkids, maybe this happens to all of us as we hit 50 and above, stories of how someone “dropped dead” of an aneurysm after a coughing fit resonates a bit more as you age. My mom has lived 81 years, she recently buried one of her siblings and a niece, she is feeling her age but rarely lets on that it bothers her. I can hardly imagine what my life will be like without her. But I know one thing, I want my kids to keep her name on their lips and pass it on to theirs so my mother will never have to die twice.

Today is all that matters. James Allen says that   "Mind clothes  itself in garments of its own making. Mind is the arbiter of life; it is the creator and the shaper of conditions and the recipient of its own results. It contains within itself both the power to create illusion and to perceive reality. Mind is the infallible weaver of destiny; thought is the thread, good and evil deeds are the warp and woof, and the web, woven upon the loom of life, is character."
So as you think, therefore you are. I stopped ritualized prayer many months ago, at first I felt guilty, like I should expect some bad things to happen or some kind of punishment. But as I continued to read authors like James Allen and Joseph Campbell I began to see that I simply see prayer as something entirely different from Christianity, like Campbell says, "Religion is a metaphor, it's when its taken literally that we get into trouble." I have never believed in a real "Garden of Eden" or the flood or other myths. I pretended I did, because if I didn't then somehow I disqualified myself for the benefits of this God that Christianity espoused was so interested in "saving" me. Christianity starts you out with a strike against you, says we are "born into sin" and we need saving. That's convenient for them, now we have to spend the rest of our lives making up for something we did not do. "Jesus died for our sins" Not mine. Or yours for that matter. This was thousands of years ago we are talking about. Question everything, what you choose to believe will shape your destiny. I can believe in being good and righteous and selfless without attributing it to an English speaking deity that is most often portrayed as a bearded white old man in the sky. There is no reward in Heaven, Heaven and Hell are inward states that exist within us as we go about our lives. The choices we make in dealing with them either continue our suffering or alleviate it. What I say out loud in prayer better match what my innermost desires are because those are what is pulling things toward me, not prayer. If I have bestial desires in the back of my mind, those are what I will be unconsciously acting upon, not what I say I want in my life through prayer. So what I profess that I don't want I end up with, and what I say I really want eludes me, I know because I have experienced it. It has taken me decades to put words to what I actually have experienced. I credit the two writers I mentioned above for writing those words in a way that finally resonated with me, I have discovered many others that are saying the  same types of things, I see connections that I missed before, it has given me renewed purpose and vigor in other readings that I engage in as well, because what I am looking FOR, I am looking WITH, I bring meaning to my life, I don't need to try and "discover" the meaning of life, I already have it, it's what I bring to it. Education should create a sense of teachability within us that makes us ask questions and seek answers in life not just in textbooks for assignments. Joseph Campbell says that "When you are on YOUR path doors will open up for you that would have remained closed had you not set out on this path" That is how I feel about they way my life has been unfolding this past year, which coincidentally is my Senior year in college. I feel awakened, I have always felt a bit of this awakening but I did not pursue it as I am now, for it is fluid and dynamic, not static or stationary, there is no end to the learning, and that's the good news. I am never bored, nor ever will be if I keep seeking, I am not awaiting a destination, I am in it for the Journey.

I like reading Joseph Campbell. His writings have inspired me to explore my own beliefs and to questions them openly and honestly. I approach life differently than I did only a year ago. His observations on the Power of Myth pulled me away from the scattered and floundering beliefs that i thought I had into a more open and flowing way of thinking. 
  You see I am looking for a patterns, ever since reading a fictional book by Clive Barker called The Great and Secret Show I have wondered about a sort of background program in life, not a religious one, but symbols and meanings that transcend what I normally think and believe. Campbell identified this as being Myth. He says that "Myth's are the spiritual potentialities of the human life". Myth's transcend all religions and belief systems. "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues help us to find within ourselves."
  Myths are clues. 

This is one of my favorite quotes by Campbell. I have heard this message from other writers, speakers, philosophers, psychologists, and others whom I respect and have studied. I simply choose to use his writings as a guide. I find that his message is present in so many different ways throughout my searching for meaning in my life. A spiritual teacher I love and respect named Chuck Chamberlain, who wrote a book called A New Pair of Glasses  was quoted as saying "What you are looking for, you are looking with." The answers are not outside of you, guidance may come from without, but the answers are within. 

One of my favorite TV shows ever was Breaking Bad. The stereotypes and the anti-stereotypes portrayed throught this series were brilliant. Mr. White and his chemistry background, slacks and button-up shirts and glasses. Jesse with his gang-banger slang and trashy taste in cars and virtually everything else. Throughout the course of the series Jesse becomes more of a soulful individual with a desire to do right and Mr. White loses touch with reality and becomes a murderous crime kingpin. I watched the entire series on Netflix, never saw one commercial. Last time I watched regular TV was to see the Super Bowl. There were some clever commercials during that broadcast that sought to break the mold of stereotypes, namely the ones about fathers. I also loved the "Trunk Monkey" commercials. I refuse to watch commercial television because of the commercials, I don't think I have to in order to see if they are still like they used to be. Tell me, are there still commercials that portray beer drinkers as young, vivacious happy people with trim, tanned bodies and lots of friends? Are there makeup commercials that show that a little dab or two here and there will make you desirable? Are the women in most commercials slim, successful and mostly white? Are "everyday people" shown as drab, sometimes lethargic consumers who's popularity will be enhanced by buying the latest gizmo, food, drink or clothing? I have a variety of interesting friends, some have more tattoos than I would want to count, wear enough leather to slay a herd of cows and ride noisy motorcycles. They also have insurance, great jobs, don't drink or use drugs and are always helping someone. My friend Dennis is a retired Marine Drill Seargent and Vietnam Vet who loves to make brownies and birdhouses. Big Mike has a ponytail down to his ass, rides a huge loud Harley and sings loves songs to his fiance' at a sober karaoke night. I know a few sleazeball guys who drive nice cars, work out and dress fashionably but treat women like trash and will lie to your face and help you look for your shit that they just stole. My ex-girlfriend was the sweetest, kindest atheist you would ever hope to meet, fed the homeless and volunteered her time and work to helping many people. Danny is an extremely wealthy man who drives a mini-van and take care of his elderly mother at their home. Larry is a recovering drug addict and convicted felon who volunteered all winter at a homeless warming center and slept in a cot helping people who would have died from exposure. My youngest daughter has 12 tattoos and is the sweetest mother to my granddaughter you could ever know. I could go on, I think a lot of us could. I don't watch commercials because I don't want to involuntarily succumb to the sophisticated stereortyping designed to tell me that I'm not quite enough, that I'm almost there...if I only had this little extra...I'd be OK. No thanks.

    As part of this blog I chose to use a topic. The topic being my interest in Joseph Campbell's discussions on Mythology. I get distracted with other interests so haven't written much about my topic. So I will freely associate with my interest without using quotes or copy and paste from his incredible array of writings. 
I first heard about Joseph Campbell and his use of famed psychologist Carl Jung's theory of the "Archetypes" in a Humanities class I took over the summer through NIC a few years ago, we looked at architecture, art, sculpture, went on a field trip to Manito Park in Spokane and several art galleries and downtown architecture. Since it was  a summer course it was accelerated, we did not have more than one day to focus on literature and other cultural entities. In that one day our instructor lit up with his discussion about the Archetypes and Joseph Campbell, he had just returned from a sabbatical and this was the first class he taught upon his return, in his absence he had explored Campbell's teachings and became enthralled by them. I made a mental note to explore them myself when I had time. 
In subsequent classes in the next few semesters Campbell's name came up more than once, I again felt that twinge to explore his work. One day I saw a DVD biography about Campbell called "Finding Joe" advertised. I went to Amazon and ordered it. In the interim I watched a famed interview with him by Bill Moyers on you-tube. I was hooked. It was like finding a missing link. So many spiritual and philosophical questions that I had were answered with ease, many of which I didn't even know I was looking for. I loved the DVD, I ordered a book of his called "The Power of Myth" it was basically a transcript of the entire interview with Bill Moyers, made in 1987, shortly before his death. I just received 3 more of Campbell's books in the mail this week. I am looking forward to reading his entire library at some point. It just feels right, like I have found something I have been looking for my whole life. As far as what that is and what it means to me...that will be part of my next blog.

                                                    Power and Privilege

I tend to look at my own sense of privilege as being the results of hard work, intelligence and willingness. After watching the movie Crash I have been reflecting on how I have benefited from simply being a middle-aged white American male.

I know that I really have worked hard and have a reasonable semblance of intelligence to draw from. But as I met with the owner of a luxury lake home today with my business development manager in hopes of getting him to sign a contract so we can manage his home as a vacation rental I wondered how he would have reacted had I been a young black man, or a Hispanic. It probably would not have mattered my experience or intelligence, he might have only seen someone who would possibly rob him while he was away at his home in Arizona. I can only speculate, but minorities in North Idaho are very few and far between.  It seems odd that a guy like me has an innate privilege simply by my race and age. Like in the movie the main characters did not see their own prejudices and privilege as being that at all. I think we all struggle and our egos reassure us we are in the right, and cognitive dissonance may poke us in the side when we are in the midst of acting on our prejudices but conditioning and habits take a real strong jab to break through and see things as they actually are. 

Archetypical Alcoholic

In 1987 I came to believe I had alcoholism, my deep-seated twisted thinking now had a name and a cause, but it also had a solution. William James in his book The Varieties of Religious Experiences says that when one has a Mystical experience then what was heretofore unbelievable suddenly becomes apparent and operational to an individual.  (James, 1902) This follows what AA’s 12 step program of recovery espouses as well, in conversations with Carl Jung, AA’s co-founder Bill Wilson was told by Dr. Jung that he often tried to guide alcoholic patients to a form of religious self-discovery akin to what Bill W. describes in the book Alcoholics Anonymous as his “white-light” experience. In a letter to Bill Wilson (Jung, 1961) Dr. Jung said in reference to a former alcoholic patient of his that “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God*”. Dr. Jung further enhanced his reference to God by saying, “The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.”  When I first encountered AA I was swept up by the release of a lifetime of frustration and at once understood that I could be forgiven as well as forgive, and that I was a child of God and had a right to be here. I saw that I could make amends for harms done and that I would be able to live a good life free from the obsessions I had been a prisoner of for as long as I remembered. I had always felt different, alone and misunderstood. I had a name for that now, alcoholism. It fit perfectly. I got involved in AA and followed its precepts willingly and gladly. I did so for many years, but eventually my old thinking crept back in gradually and I sought out sordid places and companions to feed my deeper lusts and hid my desires lest they become known again. I left my wife before she discovered my indiscretions and soon was using drugs heavily again as well as indulging my lower nature with my new yet old obsessions. I did this for almost an entire year. Finally some very dear friends pulled me back from the brink of destruction and I once again recovered. I pieced together my life and rejoined AA with renewed vigor. I tried my best to set right my wrongs against my family and we achieved a livable arrangement, with a divorce and shared custody. Years went by unfettered by my old desires. I soon found myself facing a decision to use again, I had failed to enlarge my spiritual life or gain any new understandings of the lower nature of my desires and how they can manifest in my life and once again gain control. After another year of lying to everyone I knew and stealing drugs from one of my best friends I finally admitted my defeat again and set about to regain my lost passion for life and recovery. It was very slow going; I had broken so many promises to myself and others that I doubted my every thought. I had broken my own heart and those of others who had trusted me so many times that I was beginning to think that I was beyond the usual scope of AA recovery. As Joseph Campbell says in The Power of Myth “Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed”. (Campbell, 1988) I am almost 4 years into this recovery experience and found a lot of my former beliefs about God and spirituality were like trying to put on old pants that no longer fit or are even of a style I liked. I felt uneasy about examining them because it was comfortable and simple to just parrot the party line as I had always done in the past. As I grew in my education I was introduced to different voices and different perceptions that started me looking for a new way to approach a conception of a power greater than myself, which AA emphatically asserts is so necessary for the program to work, and I believe as well. I heard an AA historian quote Dr. Jung’s letter to Bill W at a convention I attended, but this time the words “…higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism” stood out like a Hare Krishna at a Baptist revival.  In his book The Imprisoned Splendor Raynor Johnson says, “The insights of mystical experience cannot be commanded, but it would seem that where the mind can be brought into a state of poised stillness, the deeper self is able, and often willing, to reveal itself in varying measure”. (Johnson, 1953) I found that a stilled mind can indeed reveal much to an eager soul. Through awkward ventures into mindfulness and meditation I have found some solace and insight I have not known before. This life is fluid and dynamic, it is not static or stationary, it ebbs and flows with a rhythm that one only needs to match the beat of in order to find a measure of peace and stability with. My archetypes have less power than they once had but I do not underestimate the possibility that they can slip back into my life with the ease of an attractive old girlfriend who shows up on your doorstep drunk some lonely night wanting to score. (Green Day Self-Esteem, 1994) When I took a Buzzfeed quiz on “What is your Jungian Archetype” I got “The Child”…I like that. I’ll end with a quote from one of my favorite people...”It seems to me that the less I think I know, the more there is that is available for me to learn” (Clapper, 2015).