The Nightmare of History

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

    -James Joyce, Ulysses.

I used to like to study Greek mythology. To me they were ancient comic books, filled with gods, superheroes and monsters.  But as a good little American who believed wholeheartedly in individual will and self-determination, one thing I couldn't stand was how heroes, like Oedipus, were chained to their destiny, never to escape it no matter how strong they were, or how ingenious their plans. What’s more, those that followed were damned by the sins of their forebearers.

Now however the older I get, the more I see that the social and historical forces at play in one’s life often determine one’s outcome. The Greeks merely recognized this and encapsulated it into their myths. There are aspects of this what socio-economic situation you are born into, your race, how you are raised, your community, your country, and your culture which cannot be changed. And the virtues and sins of these are passed down to you, en mass, whether you like it or not. It is if and how you escape, or who helps you escape, that matters. At the end of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Darnay a.k.a. Charles Evremonde faces execution for the sins of his uncle and father, escapes by being replaced by lookalike Sidney Carton.

Carton sacrifices himself, clearing away all of his personal sins and breaking the cycle of tragedy to be recompensed upon the Evremonde’s, Charles and through his suffering and death, his wife and child's. We must awaken and break away from the inherited cycles of inequity, despair, ignorance, hatred and violence that are passed down from the echoing void and seize us still. Only to understand history, our personal and collective, can we break the chains our progenitors have cast upon us, and live enlightened, safe, happy and free. Let us hope that more humane sacrifices are in order than that endured by poor Sidney Carton.  

I graduated college in 2001. I returned from my cross country trip resplendent, and ready to embark on what was expected, a prosperous career. A few days after my return September 11^th happened. The whole world went quiet. All was shock and despair.  My cousin was killed in one of the towers, a victim of history. I didn’t know him very well. I knew his father, who was my reading teacher in middle school. My family and I attended that tearful funeral. A charitable fund was started in his honor. This event seemed to have set the tone for a decade to come. A dark cloud hung over everything. In my personal life, I had a hard time finding a job. I had grown my hair long, for seven years. It was halfway down my back. I finally cut it in a pang of anxiety, that this was the thing keeping me from gainful employment and joining the legions of successful, adult, career-oriented people whom I was expected to become.  

I finally got a job as a client relations manager at Value Line, Inc. a stock investment periodical. This was a dressed up customer service department. I spent my days being yelled at by “clients” for things I had no control over: late shipments, misprints, accounts being accidentally closed. We got a stack of papers called Donnelly Reports every morning. It reminds me now of "Office Space" and those damned TPS reports. Donnelly Reports were documents generated by customer calls, one page per caller. We were to call back and resolve their issues. Most of the time, we were screamed at, oftentimes insulted or even cursed at, then we were to calm the customer down, resolve the issue and make the next call on the report. This process was a grind wheel presented eagerly to my soft, putty-like brain. I wouldn't last.    

The other thing that weakened my resolve was I started finding out more about the company. It was owned by a tough as nails lady, an 85% owner. She was suing her own brother at the time for his measly 15%. All he wanted to do was sit on the beach and collect his share. I met her once. She was terse, cold, her nose perpetually at 180 degrees. This company was built by their savvy father, and when he was alive it was a great company that took care of its customers. But his progeny only cared about money. Soon, my spirit was broken. I began sneaking out pages from my reports. I put them in my desk, or threw them away. Everyone in my department had the same stack, the same calls to return. This meant they were stuck with the bad calls, while I only handled the good ones.

I needed to reevaluate my life. What was I doing here? What did I really want to do? Where did my talents lie? I found that what really made me happy was helping people. I went back to school to become a teacher and got a job as a teacher’s assistant at Lipman Hall in Newark. This was a residential treatment center for incarcerated youth. I had the high performing, low violence students: arsonists, child molesters, a student who brought a bomb to school among others. And yet, this environment seemed better than the corporate one. At least I was educating people, being a positive role model, making a difference. I wasn’t making evil rich people richer at the expense of others.

Most of these students were victims of history, family and personal history. There is an old French proverb, “To know all is to forgive all.” I wouldn’t go that far. But the message rings true. Most of these students grew up in dysfunctional families, often neglected or worse. I went back to school to become a social studies teacher.

After earning my certificate, with no social studies positions open, I took a job as a math teacher at a conservative Jewish school. I am not of the faith. I was raised a two-time-a-year Roman Catholic, Christmas and Easter. The church wouldn’t give my mom an annulment after she divorced my father because, even though he cheated on her, she didn’t have the money to pay for the procedure at that time. After learning this, I turned my back on the Catholic Church. But there was that cultural/historical expectation. “After all, you want to get married in a church, don’t you?” Ultimately, I wasn’t. But I was forced to attend CCD and only able to leave after my confirmation. Today, I consider myself spiritual, not religious. I don’t give myself a label. I find it too confining. And as Alan Watts said, faith is pure openness. I seek to be open.

On the job, even though everyone knew I was a goy, I had to wear a keepah or yamaka as all the students and staff were required to. I was forced to attend shul or worship, though I was not invited to take part. Most of our students came from reform families, and chafed at all of this. These students too, were mild victims of a history they did not internalize or share. In any event, I worked hard to teach math there. But I was a terrible math teacher. It was my worst subject. I wasn’t invited back for the following year. However, since I was so popular with the students and staff, I got the chance to chaperone the 8^th grade trip to Israel.

I had many wonderful experiences there. We went hiking in the Golan Heights. It was so green and lush. I saw Syria from up high. We followed serpentine paths to a waterfall and a gorge below. We were told not to venture off the hiking trail for fear of stepping on a landmine or unexploded ordinance. Also, scorpions were to be avoided. We experienced many wonderful things. We endured the drunken shouts of playful Hassidim in Zefat yelling, “Happy Purim!” We explored the ruins of a Roman aqueduct spread out across a beach on the Mediterranean. We toured a crusader citadel. We climbed Masada. Two complaining girls irritated us so much that halfway up I told them there was a Starbucks at the top. They were reinvigorated and scrambled up only to find that I had tricked them. Their indignity was swallowed up however from a healthy razzing from their peers. “You really thought there was a Starbucks?!” During some free time, I was able to wander the winding dolomite maze of old Jerusalem, walking stones two thousand years old, see the Tower of David, witness walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent, feast on shwarma and ice cream, and haggle with street peddlers over souvenirs.

We went swimming in the Dead Sea. Try as you might, you were forced to float. Your feet would not stay at the bottom. The buoyancy was unbelievable. It smelled of sulfur. And when you rubbed your belly underwater, it felt oily. From there we camped overnight at a Bedouin camp. They sang to us, and performed their coffee ritual. The next day the Bedouin gave us camel rides in the desert. One student asked if they rode these camels home. A dark, stout, jolly man replied, “I have an SUV kid.” The Bedouin are disappearing. They were given houses by the Israeli government. The older generation pitches their tents on the front lawns. It is the younger generation who are living in them.

I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where it is said that Jesus was crucified; his body prepared, and where he was resurrected. I heard the call to prayer at the Dome of the Rock from the Wailing Wall, while observing our students daven. Here were two groups of people, related linguistically, genetically and biblically (the story of Isaac and Ishmael) taken hostage by history and zealots on both sides.

The whole time we were guarded by young people in their twenties who had just gotten out of the Israeli army. They were carrying M-1 rifles, new in World War II. I talked with them. They were mostly atheists. They didn’t care about the conflict. Most believed in the two state solution. They feared the rocket launches and kidnappings. But felt a general malaise about the entire thing. What could you do? I didn’t get to talk to too many Arabs there. The one’s I spoke to felt a great sense of outrage and pity for the plight of the Palestinians. Other than that, they felt the same way. These too were victims of history, who had not found a way out. No Sidney Carton was available. Perhaps with the Sunni/Shia conflict taking precedence, and Israel in a much more volatile Middle East, the peace talks will make some progress. But again, the Sunni’s and Shia’s are victims of history themselves.

My point here is that most conflicts, most poverty, most of the places on earth where there is suffering, despair, turmoil; these are symptoms of a greater disease, these are the victims of that plague called human inequity, human history. The poor in Malawi are the victims of history, mostly through colonization. The poor in America are victims of history: racism, slavery, genocide, war, lack of access to a proper education, healthcare and a way to make a living. We need to find a way to break this cycle without bloodshed, purging, sacrifice. We need to cut the Gordian Knot. We have to do it in a positive way, a way that doesn’t colonize the mind of the victim. I will explain what I mean. I remember talking to a professor from Easter Island back at MSU. He said that aid workers from the West always came there with the attitude of, “You poor bastard.” And this colonized the minds of the people, made them feel inferior and unable to do things themselves. So I have found a way to fill those who need help with pride, a can-do attitude, with lightheartedness, fun, and with hope for the future. 

“Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.”                                                                                                          -Rumi

Know thyself is a famous quote attributed to Socrates by way of Plato. But how do we know who we really are? Are we whatever we prove ourselves to be, or declare ourselves to be? A quintessence of stardust? A cerebral pattern of electro-chemical reactions? Are we ancient spiritual beings suffering severe amnesia, encapsulated in flesh and skin? In Buddhism we are considered an amalgam, a collection of five aggregates giving the illusion of one unified ego. Could this be true? Or are we the sum of our genes organized in a specific pattern stretching back to our birth, and beyond. To stop and think about what really makes us who we are becomes much more complicated than it first appears.  

As Jung pointed out, we wear many masks depending on context. But I believe that there is a core self that stays ultimately the same. Some people subscribe to a strict set of traits that make up their identity, hardly venturing outside of their comfort zone. Others are more flexible, willing to venture past their perceived boundaries for the chance to cultivate themselves and hastened their development. I believe that we are here in this life to learn something, and to make a difference, to make our world better place and through this make ourselves better. We progress and take what we have learned to the next realm.

It is in this state of testing ourselves that we get to know who we are in a deep and profound way, a metamorphic process ripping apart our previous boundaries and transforming us into more self-realized beings, able to do and perceive far more than before.  In truth, we are the sum total of our experiences, what we do makes us who we are. Bruce Lee said to be like water. As it changes to fit any container, we should adapt to fit any situation. Those like Mr. Lee who can escape all personal tethers can shape themselves into something truly remarkable.

Let’s back up for some context. I was a history major in college. My parents gave me a choice after high school, either get a job or go to college. Being a completely aloof late teen, my path was clear. I had intellectual curiosity, but couldn’t decide on a major. I picked history because I had great social studies teachers in high school. They really made the subject come alive. I also loved stories of how my family came through Ellis Island, or my grandfather’s stories of being a sailor on the U.S.S. North Carolina in World War II. After finishing college, I decided to take a trip out West. “Go West young man” is a haunting echo from our collective past. I felt it like a magnet’s pull on my heart. I had read all about my country but had only seen a little of it, the East Coast. I had to see for myself what things were really like.  It was a transformative experience. I never felt so alive, so in control of my own life, so much wonder, power and freedom.

It was me, my girlfriend at the time—Lisa, a couple of backpacks and the rails. We zigzagged across the country for about a month in August of 2001. I saw Chicago, the Denver area of Colorado, the Flagstaff area of Arizona including the magnificent Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon and the Painted Desert, San Francisco, parts of northern Oregon and Seattle. We came straight back afterward, three days with no shower, only a seat, a big window and our memories.  

Big memories like that feeling you get when you first see the Rockies and your heart sinks into your stomach, or when we traveled for hours through the Painted Desert in a lightning storm. We went to the ruins of an ancient Pueblo atop a high Mesa. The Hopi consider it a sacred place inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors. My hair was standing on end as I looked out for 90 miles in every direction intermittently witnessing huge, blue bolts crashing against the desert floor. Another memory, somewhere between Bakersfield and San Francisco I was shaken awake by a blonde, bearded undercover drug agent who shushed me and asked if I packed my own bags or if someone packed them for me. Later on, in San Fran I was privy to the Morrison Hotel, a small shack in the back of Lisa’s cousin’s house on Alameda Island. Jim Morrison crashed there after high school for a while, or so they say.

I remember jolly, toothless Native grandmothers at a stand outside the train station in Albuquerque who served me the best burrito I ever had. It had potatoes in it. I climbed Multnomah Falls—the second highest waterfall in the U.S. where legend says a native princess plunged to her doom. I saw the crater of Mt. Saint Helens and its aftermath in the surrounding land, a gray and barren place like the surface of the moon, but here and there new plants were springing up from the ashes. We crushed oyster shells underfoot outside a long house on a small island outside of Seattle. And I’ll never forget Carl the taxi driver poet who encouraged me to write a book, even a bad one, because it would make me look deep and profound, and then women would want to sleep with me. Carl told us all about Skin Walkers and how he had heard one on the roof of his Navajo girlfriend’s house one night years before.

It was in the depths of this country that I really began to find myself, learned to trust my instincts and not second guess myself all the time, be open though careful, eternally ready, and always flexible. “Reeds bend so they do not break.” I got a taste of real independence, deep personal growth and once that Pandora’s Box was laid bare, I craved more. I wanted to broaden my horizons beyond the borders of my own country. I would have what I asked for and more, but in return a new and strange feeling, one of our vast human interconnectedness--implying a deep personal responsibility, enveloped me, pricking at me in the most poignant yet unassuming way.

But what does this has to do with burning for change? I want to explain how it is that I came to my great realization, how travel and ultimately Africa herself changed my life, helped me find my center, cleared my perception, helped me test and explore more of the world and through that experience, explore more of myself, and in the end helped me to relax and not worry so much about matters that up close look important, but in reality are insignificant when compared to the bigger picture. 

Imagination Beats Poverty

"The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination." 

                                                                            -Alan Watts 

At first, the idea of starting a company, selling a line of gourmet African hot sauces, and using the profits as an engine for fun, change and development was something I'd been toying with on and off for over four years. The idea popped into my mind occasionally, peering out here and there like a mischievous elf whenever my mind wandered, which was often due to a mild case of A.D.D. The idea originally came to me in 2008 after leaving Malawi, and my wife-to-be, whom I thought I may never see again. I flew back to America with bottles of the hot sauce in my luggage. Everyone loved it! I searched online. No one was selling it here. And there were a bunch of former aid workers online asking where to buy it.

But I wasn’t ready then. I had a rendezvous with my lady love. I made the arrangements and told everyone, laboriously, one-by-one or in small groups that yes I was leaving...again, to meet up with a Belgian girl I had known for only three months, to fly off and live with her in South Korea, and teach English there for at least a year. It turned out to be two. More on all that later…

So if I found this great product no one is selling here and I have an in, why not keep all the profits for myself? Why the charitable angle? It’s personal. But since you came all the way to my blog, I’ll share with you. Just you. We struggled when I was small. My parents divorced when I was six. My younger sister was three-and-a-half. Before my mom remarried, she had a hard time finding a job. She worked at a day care center, and sold towels and other items at flea markets. We wore secondhand clothes and sometimes, as she told me later, she went to bed hungry so that we wouldn't have to. 

I remember as a child learning in school about how smoking was bad. When I came home that day, I went to where my mom hid her cigarettes. I knew where they were. I tore them all up and threw them in the garbage. When she found out, she screamed so fiercely at me, but later on hugged me, apologized and cried. It must have been the pressure and the anxiety. My family’s fortunes have waxed and waned over the years. But I never wanted for clothes, though I never had those Air Jordans. But I never wanted them. I just didn’t care about those things. We always ate well. I never saw the signs of our struggles. Just heard about them, like hearing about a war being fought far off in another country.   

I saw poverty growing up, more overt and less hidden. I had friends from the “ghetto.” I saw them and their families mistakes, their triumphs and struggles. I learned that you have fewer options when you’re poor. You have to work harder and have a lot less time. It puts untold pressure on families. Children see few options for escape. They don’t believe in themselves. The parents struggle and their kids don’t feel like they can do better. They make the same mistakes as their predecessors thinking that this is their life--becoming a parent too young, dropping out of school--that they can’t escape. And mistakes that people in much better financial circumstances shrug off like the loss of a job, the dying of a car or a substance abuse problem, end up devastating the poverty stricken in America, who don’t often recover.

But poor people in America, by and large, have TVs. Some have cars. They have access to food, shelter, transportation, education and medical care, albeit substandard in many cases. But I never saw poverty like I saw in Malawi. 90% of the people are subsistence farmers. They eat enzima. This is a wet corn meal, kind of like grits or cream of wheat, rolled into balls and eaten with “relish” maybe some beans or little bits of meat or vegetables. They eat this for two, or if they are fortunate, three meals a day, every day for their entire lives with little deviation. Maybe if they are lucky they get a little chicken for Christmas. Enzima is just empty calories. It has little nutritional value.

Most poor people in America have rooms, furniture and possessions. Most families in Malawi live in one room huts with dirt floors and thatched roofs, with little furniture or possessions. Many times the houses are made by their occupants by hand, from bricks baked in the sun. In rainy season, often families have to rebuild as the bricks get eaten away by torrential rain. No TV or internet, most people have a radio and now more and more, cell phones. No car but maybe a bicycle. I've seen kids play soccer barefoot, or two sharing a pair of sneakers, each wearing a shoe on their dominant foot. 

Little or no transportation out of the village. They live their entire lives within its boundaries and the surrounding countryside. Forget medical care. Education is available but limited. Often it’s too burdensome for children to walk the mile or two to school, and for many on an empty stomach. Schools have few resources. I visited a school in a rural village with no desks or chairs! 50 to 100 students sat on the floor at a time. They had a chalk board. Other than that, the room was empty. And due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the country is flooded with orphans who are most times taken in by relatives that can hardly support their own kids. These children often have to drop out of elementary school and work to help support the family.  

After Africa, I spent two years in Asia. Then my wife and I spent a month in Europe visiting my in-laws. Finally, I returned to America. I taught G.E.D. English and social studies for Passaic YouthBuild for one year. I saw the grim face of American poverty there, in students who signed up to get their G.E.D.s, in their struggles, in how they felt about themselves, their futures, their communities, in the depression, fear, anxiety, angst and hopelessness.

I saw poverty creep like a specter into all the decisions folks shouldn’t make so young, and in the lack of someone there for them to care for them or guide them. I saw teens, regular people wear faces of strength like masks to hide homelessness, to hide ambiguity about gang affiliation, to hide the fear and trauma of being beaten or stabbed or shot. I saw them follow the lines written for them, if they wanted to play or not, in the need for revenge that sparks a cycle of hideousness with no end, and I witnessed the push and pull struggles of living between loyalty to their homies and the need to build a better future for themselves. So I care about the face of poverty in America, and not just in the inner city though that is where my experience lies.

The people in Malawi affected me most. Not only because of the severity of their poverty but in the enormity of their spirit. They were carefree, lively and filled with a childlike joy. They sang, danced, waved and smiled all the time. Malawians live day-to-day and don't seem to have a care in the world, without any of our modern conveniences, with poverty and death hanging over them like a storm cloud, with little support system save friends, family and community, they seemed to be the happiest people on earth.

Back home where we have every modern convenience, ample support systems, the latest technology, people grumble through their lives. It doesn't make sense. So I think we need a cultural exchange. America needs to refocus, reconnect, stop being so pointlessly busy, build a new sense of community, do something important besides self-aggrandizement, and in the end, find our center.

If we could somehow exchange our strengths, America’s and Malawi’s, reinvigorate each society with the positive aspects of the other, we could see each society grow and prosper in new and unimaginable ways. I still believe, as our enlightened predecessors did, that all the problems of the human condition can be ameliorated with new ideas, new approaches, steadfast wills, brilliant minds and goodwill in our hearts. There are enough resources to feed, clothe, educate and take care of every human being on this planet. Ours is a distribution problem. And it is ours, all of ours. Yours and mine. We all belong to that one family, the human race. 

I think fun, adventure, curiosity, altruism, and a can-do attitude can light a fire of change to ignite the world, one planet and one unified movement. More to come…