Revival

Since creating and then abandoning this blog 15 years ago, I retired from American Airlines, our daughter finished college and bought a condo, and my wife hit a bump in the road with her job and went on unemployment, not quite officially retired. 

With the help of my brother-in-law Todd, I have undertaken excavations in my downstairs area, moribund for some 25 years since we moved in to The Old House in 1998. I decided to revive this blog to write about unusual finds, to reflect on saving stuff and getting rid of stuff, and to chart my progress. 

A significant motivating factor was deciding to get the house repiped. This required clearing away vast amounts of junk piled up along the south wall of the house where the water main comes in. That got done. The repiping got done. And now I am plowing through decades of detritus.

Patriarchy has its Perks

The Governor of New York has a pesky shadow.

Like many, I was surprised by the allegations that he hired a call girl. How could someone with such a great reputation go so astray? Normally, not being afraid of taking risks is an asset. But he apparently wasn’t well acquainted with his Shadow. Not respecting the limits of that risk-taking is the realm of chaos and darkness. It’s hard to believe that someone of such stature failed to see this coming. He must have felt he had some kind of exemption. This is the realm of “black magic.” Magical qualities that served him well are now revealed in their inverse proportion.

Merton’s passage from New Seeds of Contemplation speaks to this:

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice, but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he is really a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city, or a religious order, or even a nation. The world is covered with the scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these. However, very often these people are nothing more than harmless bores.

And one can wreck a whole city, a whole state, by sacrificing one’s integrity for sexual gratification. This is not about an affair with one’s secretary. Hiring a prostitute is criminal behavior. And so he has been forced to step down.

My sympathy is with his wife and family – and the prostitute. One can view this event through several prisms, and one of them is the Invincibility of Patriarchy.

There is, first of all, the woman he married, standing next to him in silent support as he made his apologies. She endures both a personal and very public betrayal. She is humiliated twice: once by the event, and again by serving as a prop.

It’s hard for me to understand his wife’s willingness to stand next to him at the podium.

Has she had time to absorb the shock and forgive him? Is she still in shock? Does she blame herself for failing to meet his sexual needs? Has she always known that he had an insatiable sexual appetite? Is she protecting her children by standing by their father? Does it comes with the territory of being married to a public figure? Is her own identity so enmeshed in his that she cannot stand alone and apart? Is it some combination of these things? Is it possible that, in the scheme of things, she has endured worse?

Maybe it’s just one of life’s awful trade-offs. Hillary Clinton stood by Bill in 1992 when the Paula Jones allegations surfaced, and, thanks to Monica, we know that Bill learned nothing.

But if she had abandoned Bill, could he have been elected president? Highly unlikely. The stakes were high. And where would Hillary be today if she had walked out?

Secondly, there is the prostitute. With such high level clients, she’s on the verge of becoming...respectable! She must be very attractive and singularly gifted to snare such high class prey. See how Patriarchy reverses the roles? She took him down. Poor guy. He was just another Washington sightseer when he got snagged by this temptress. We’ll call her Eve.
Here is a man with all the powers of the great State of New York at his disposal, a high profile Democrat in a Democratic year, a crusader for truth, justice and the American way. One would think he could’ve done something for Eve that might improve the quality of her life, beyond offering cold cash for quickie.

One would think that he might consider how this dalliance might redound to the women in his life – wife, mother, daughter, niece, and half the State of New York.

One might think that he could understand the logic: if it’s okay for him to do it, why shouldn’t somebody pay his daughter for her services?

Apparently, in his busy schedule and crime-fighting career, the Governor never found time to ponder his own demons. His inner voice was silent because the inner work wasn’t getting done. Did his close associates knew about his proclivities? If so, they were also too busy or distracted to reflect on the monstrous consequences of ignoring one’s shadow material.

This isn’t a moralistic tale of sexual prudery. If he was a single man who carried on like a playboy, it might not reflect the most polished character, but he wouldn’t be breaking any vows, or laws. It might raise some eyebrows and produce a few winks, but it wouldn’t drive him from office. Though immature, it would be more honest – and legal.

The Governor has driven down a dead end street, and taken the hopes and dreams of a lot of people with him. If he salvages any kind of political career it will truly be a miracle – but redemption is always possible. That murky shadow material he chose to ignore has leapt forth and given him an extremely rude awakening. How he comes to terms with that material will determine his future.

The Deep Dark Place

This blogosphere is a strange animal. I think the point of my first entry was to dance around my uncertainties regarding its purpose, its value, its focus – for me.

Just as I didn’t really “need” the internet when I first got a computer, and e-mail was a bizarre novelty that I didn’t fully appreciate or understand for awhile, this blog is a kind of mystery. My friend Ken O says it ought to be the most natural thing in the world for me, because I keep a journal and try to write a little every morning. And I’ve been doing so for many years. However, writing a journal and posting a journal are two different things. There are things I have consigned to my the journal that I would be disinclined to share with my family and friends, much less the general public. There is a reverse-voyeuristic quality to revealing anything deeply personal to nobody in particular. Exhibitionist, I guess that would be called.

Seems like most blogs serve some purpose – are “productive” in some way. They convey information, or entertain. I like to peruse “Things White People Like.” The satire is very subtle. I also like “The Deacon’s Bench” because Deacon Kendra explores topics that resonate with me and he is a extremely capable and gifted commentator. And because he more or less got me into this blogging business, by example.

But this blog is no Deacon’s Bench; I am still failing to embrace “Aqualung My Friend” as the title, but at the same time...nothing else comes to mind. My subtitle was “Don’t you start away uneasy,” but “Spitting out pieces of his broken luck” is a lot more compelling, if melodramatic. After all, my morning pages (or mourning pages) are frequently the repository for those shadowy, distressed thoughts – what Ken dubbed My Deep Dark Place. Perhaps that is a better title.

But in this age of violence in the streets, in schools, in shopping malls, in churches, in Iraq – I am loathe to title my blog something so foreboding. However, I do think that using the picture of Benedictine Hall being torn down would be compelling. It speaks to a certain violence that is not personal or criminal or random. To me, it was a violence perpetrated on the past, a violence against the soul of the school – and by extension, my own soul.

It may be unintentionally revelatory why the demolition of Benedictine should effect me so much, since I was there such a relatively short period of time, and I never graduated. A ha. There’s no going back. Literally.

The DEEP DARK PLACE

Perhaps, unintentionally – or intuitively – “Aqualung My Friend” hits too close to home. This image of “Aqualung” that I once so closely identified with for theatrical purposes, as described in the initial entry – this is a character whose life is in shambles, who is detestable, perverted, disgusting, half dead, to be avoided at all cost. That’s not the way I see myself, of course, nor have I ever had the DDPs to such an extent. But: is there a part of me I do disown, disavow, a shadowy part that I would like to pretend doesn’t exist? Jungians would say therein lies my unrealized, creative potential – but it’s experienced as dangerous, chaotic, part of the underworld. The stuff of nightmares. Not evil, but rather brokenness, the part that needs redeeming, fixing, TLC, the part that has been ignored, dishonored, relegated to a low status.

The part that needs befriending.

The paradox is that I can ascribe an allegorical image of this “lost part” of my self in the person of Aqualung – but I don’t really know who he is or what he wants from me. A younger version of him was The Punk, who showed up on the stairwell during the Assigioli guided visualization exercise in 1979. I thought that The Punk was a nefarious character, menacing, dangerous, inexplicable, showing up in my nice orderly house filled with mostly Servant versions of my Self (the good boy, always). Only later did I recognize that The Punk was warning me. The Punk could see that something wasn’t quite right within the house. Or rather, within the guide.

That was 29 years ago, but The Punk has still not had his say. He entered the realm of Queen Maeve and tried to quash reality with addiction, and when that was faced, he seemed to vanish. Then he came back in dreams, in the guise of policemen, security guards, authority figures coming after me. Giannini instructed me to stop running and confront – ask my nemesis what gift he had for me! And I did this. How is it I can’t remember the answer?

So I guess that Aqualung, My Friend is a more suitable title than I realized. Aqualung is about unfinished business and unrealized potential. Perhaps that is the source of my anger and the violence that was noticeable in my blog postings against Phil O and Mr. Basso on the Deacon’s Bench. There was a lack of discipline, a lack of control evident, along with a lack of compassion or generosity of spirit. Something harsh and unyielding. Something immature. Something Punk.

Seventh Circle of Hell

So, I’m back to work, after being sick for a week. I got my doctor’s note, and I will have to find a union steward and go see “Attendance Control,” which always reminds me of “Animal Control,” and isn’t far off.

I suppose there is a long suppressed part of my self that is furious with me for letting this happen – “this” being my job as a baggage handler for 29 years come April 2. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact, it was the answer to my earnest prayers. “Lord,” I asked, “Just help me find a job that doesn’t require a degree, or a skill, or a lot of training, and that pays well and has good benefits.” Bingo. Be careful what you pray for, as they say. What was suitable for a 22 year old – a job I could use to pay for school, working afternoons and weekends – is a dead end for the 51 year old. But, at some point, I turned the corner and settled, accepting this job as the one I will retire from.

A decision, or an accommodation, that I have never fully embraced – how could I? The work is drudgery. I am interacting with bosses who are roughly the same age, or even younger, who are light years away in terms of responsibilities, pay, benefits. I may be respected for a few talents like being the union newsletter editor and taking pictures, or being associated with the airport chapel, but I am easily caricatured. Thus, my discomfort whenever the General Manager Art P. would see me and imitate someone snapping a photo. This was my identity in his eyes – it’s what he knew about me. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing belittling. But it raised the question in me: Is this what it boils down to? Is this what I am to be known for – the guy who runs around snapping photos?

Actually, yes – as far as Art P. Is concerned. At work, at the airport, I’m the guy who helps out at the airport chapel, or writes the church history piece. I’m the guy who works in the bagroom – the guy in Pier 4. There are little fragments here and there. Pretty soon, I start believing my own press – yes, that’s me, I’m that guy. And I sink into my DDPs, because I’m more than That Guy, and I know it, but how do I show it? How does one live his most authentic life? How does one restart the process of actualization? I have long clung to the notion that it is bound up, inextricably, with education. Thus, finishing college becomes a metaphor for flipping the “on” switch of Life. Even still: it’s hard for me to figure out just what it will lead to, so deeply have a suppressed the way I used to think about it as a pathway to a new career.

So the half demolished Benedictine Hall is a fitting metaphor. It’s the place where I had most of my classes, where the faculty had offices, where I would sit with Dr. O’Brien and commiserate about the sad state of academic affairs and student awareness while failing to get my own assignments done. Perhaps I haven’t sufficiently recognized my hubris as I jumped from student to pseudo-faculty, just as I did in high school, writing notes for members of the student newspaper to be excused from class.

And it wasn’t Dr. O’Brien’s fault. He recognized a modicum of maturity and sophistication and he honored that; he still required me to do the work. He advised me well: go to Rosary and get a real grounding in Literature & Communications. There was no shortage of good advice. There was only a failure to follow that advice. And the irony is that all these years later I am hovering around the periphery of Rosary, now called Dominican, looking for entree, and as Liesl so trenchantly observed, putting my nose to the glass like a child at the window of a candy store. It was a powerful and perceptive observation, and little did she know, I am sure, its antecedents, its particular, powerful irony.

I came across an interview in the Reader featuring Dr. O’Brien a few years ago. He was running some program that used to have offices in the Loop but was being closed down or moved. It had to do with promoting local writers and getting their books published. I’ll have to research it. Of course I have the clipping, somewhere downstairs, somewhere, nowhere in particular. And the article said he was at Bloomington-Normal, Illinois State University, and I sent him an e-mail. No reply. That was disheartening. Perhaps there was simply nothing for him to say. Or perhaps it went astray. HA. That’s the excuse I use to comfort myself when ignored. I used it before, when writing to another person from college days. I want to say, writing to another old friend from college days, but I don’t know that Dr. O’Brien and I were actually friends.

Originally I was going to title this passage “Productive.” I had been reflecting on the fact that I am at least a productive member of society. I provide a service. And this is what passes for productive these days: clearing my belts of accumulating baggage, stroke counting a lockout sheet, delivering a pre-load if necessary, waiting for the green Pavlovian light to signal me that lock-out time has arrived, delivering the lockout and paperwork, and returning to the bagroom. Five flights a day – 1565, 851, 419, 1571 and 321. After awhile, you know the numbers and the departure times by heart. The gates change, the bag count fluctuates, but otherwise, it’s all the same, five days a week, eight hours a day. Meanwhile there is this other life going on, trying to peek out, running down the battery on the laptop, insisting, against the best evidence, that this is not what I am meant to be doing right now. While the orange light at the end of the pier flashes its warning to the crew chief that Aqualung’s belt is full.

It occurs to me – a scary thought – that this blogging, itself – this could be the manifestation of Aqualung, of that shadowy side, going out on a limb with entries for anyone to see, not really thinking much about who might read it.

Entering the Blogosphere

In the early 1990s I first encountered people who would ask for my "e-mail" or offer me theirs. I didn't know what they were talking about. I did not own a computer, nor did most people I knew. I still typed up the occasional letter on a typewriter, an IBM Selectric with the interchangeable font balls. I still have it, somewhere. In the basement.

I was helping out at the O'Hare Airport Chapel as the bulletin editor, and one day, computers arrived. One was for me. I remember it was made by PC Craft, and it came with two disk drives, one for the 3.5 inch floppy and one for the 5.25 inch floppy. The DOS-based computer was not connected to the internet, so e-mail and web browsing remained in the future.

Deacon Jim O'Malley showed me how to turn on the computer and access a rudimentary word processing program. It wasn't a very good program -- lots of unnecessary spaces -- and eventually I learned how to use WordPerfect. I recall how gingerly I approached using this machine, as if pressing the wrong button would cause it to crash or blow up. Eventually I got the hang of it.

Some years passed before Windows 3.1 was loaded. If I wanted to scan artwork or a photo, I had to close my WordPerfect program, open the scanner software and scan, save to a file, close the scanner, reopen WordPerfect and import the file. It was tedious. And pretty soon, the graphics were causing the computer to freeze because there wasn't much memory.

Then American Airlines, my employer, entered into a deal with Dell to offer computers to all employees at a special discount. American wanted everybody on-line, in part because it was phasing out hard copy paychecks and pressing everyone to use direct deposit and access pay information from the company website, JetNet. And so, by the end of the 1990s, we had our first family computer and internet access. We had dial-up for awhile, and then switched to DSL through our phone company, Ameritech, now ATT. We each had our own e-mail address.

And now, about 15 years since I turned on that PC Craft, I'm entering the blogosphere. And why not? I like to write, and I don't mind sharing my writing. Let me tell you what motivated me to start this blog.

I get Google e-mail alerts whenever "Thomas Merton" pops up on the web, which is quite regularly. I visited this posting: the Deacon's Bench. Soon I found myself in a discussion with Phil Onochie and Mr. Banno about Merton. As I explored the Deacon's Bench I became intrigued with the possibilities of blogging. And maybe I felt a little guilty about monopolizing that thread.

I had another exchange earlier this year on the California Catholic Daily website regarding a talk by Sister Eloise Rosenblatt on "Systems that Disempower the Laity." I was appalled by some of the nasty remarks and launched into a discussion with one John L. Sillasen.

These exchanges have sharpened my interest in critical thinking and clear writing. However, I am still in a quandry about the exact nature of this blog.

I came up with "Aqualung My Friend" from the the song Aqualung by Jethro Tull. It was not the first Tull song I heard, nor my favorite, but it does have some very strong personal associations. During the short time I was in college at Illinois Benedictine in Lisle - from the fall of 1975 to December, 1976 - I would occasionally "act out" the song at parties, given sufficient amounts of beer and a receptive audience. During this time my hair was long and I wore a long coat procured from a second hand store. The photo at left gives you a general idea of my appearance back then, though it's not a very flattering image. I think I had just been awakened. It's one of the few photos I have from that time.

Here are the song's lyrics:

Sitting on a park bench
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.

Sun streaking cold
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.

Feeling alone
the army's up the rode
salvation à la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
don't start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

There was something about the compassion in this song for a derelict old man that moved me, the clever wordplay, and the driving, harrowing music. For a short span of time I became identified with the song, and friends would implore me to "Do Aqualung." I suppose that short stint of "performing" also had some liberating effect. Aqualung became a persona, an alter-ego. Not a very charming fellow, but still. Actually, I was just emulating Ian Anderson, who I must have seen performing on "The Midnight Special" or some other show. I did finally get to see Tull in concert at Northwestern University's McGaw Hall. Amazingly one can view their entire historical tour schedule on line and thus I can even pinpoint the date: March 12, 1977. This was only a short time after dropping out of school, and twelve days into my first apartment at 4404 N. Kenneth Street in Chicago. I was working at Resurrection Hospital in Environmental Services -- I was a janitor, or maybe a floor finisher at that point. I hated the job. Eventually I just stopped showing up. I recall that I got a call from my boss asking if I was still planning to work for Resurrection. The date was 7-7-77. I said no. Fortunately I was able to find work with the Peacock Northwest News as an editorial assistant and started there August 1st, I'm pretty sure. Again, the wonders of computing - I can go to an online calendar of 1977 and see that August 1st was a Monday. August 2 was Bill's 20th birthday and the fire at the Kenneth apartment. I don't remember if that happened Aug. 1st or 2nd. Maybe I started at Peacock on Aug. 8. Who knows. I didn't last long. I got fired in January right after New Year's - my 21st birthday.

Well, maybe this blog will be a place to start a memoir. I don't know. Who will want to read this stuff? Anyway, that's enough for one day. The blog is launched. We'll see if it goes anywhere.