'And every nerve was frayed...'

A few days ago I got caught in cross-town West End rush hour traffic. It had been some time since I had been this way. Every light that could be was red. Every parking lot full of cars, trucks and enormous SUVs (with one passenger – the driver) was emptying onto the roads. And every nerve seemed to fray.

It was actually scary at times. The disregard for other people some drivers have is dangerous. Tailgating in a line of tailgaters at 45 miles-per-hour is dangerous. Switching lanes precipitously is dangerous. Trying to beat red lights is more than dangerous. It is illegal and potentially deadly.

All of that was going on.

Have the pressures of the times made some of us less heedful while driving?

I think so.

About a year ago I posted the following. I thought it might be useful (to some, anyway) to post again:

(Originally published Oct. 24, 2014) –

            Maybe you’ve  had this experience. You are stopped by a red traffic light. You are in the right-hand lane of a four-lane street. You intend to go straight ahead when the light turns green.

        Before it does though, you hear a horn blow, and it is no mere toot. It is full-blown, its length announcing the presence of an Attitude.

You look about expecting to see someone blocking another car, or about to swerve into the attitudinal honker’s lane. Either scenario would justify a good warning honk.

But you see that the only other car around is a rather crappy looking old thing, sitting low to the ground, painted with a worn patina of gun-metal primer – the kind that might encoat a nuclear submarine.

USS Heap is right on your rear bumper. Its driver grimaces in a millennial scrunch.

The traffic light has only been red for about 30 seconds, and now it turns green. You proceed cautiously ahead with an eye on your rear-view mirror.

Once clear, you see Joe Honker jerk his car into a sharp right-hand turn … and was that an ugly hand gesture directed at you?

He roars off – not because he’s got a hot engine. It’s just a wimpy four-banger with holes in the muffler, the kind you jab with an ice-pick to make it sound souped-up.

Once you are clear of the intersection and safely on the way you reflect on this rencontre.

Why would a reasonable driver demand with an obnoxious honk that you – showing no right-hand-turn signal – would break the law and run a red light so that he could exercise his right to turn right on red?

Of course it was irrational…but not an isolated incident these days. I’ve experienced others, and they seem to have proliferated in recent months. You may have had similar encounters.

Can we understand this phenomenon?

Is it drugs? Or is it some sort of twisted understanding of entitlement? Certainly it’s nothing new and seems to be more widespread nowadays.

I think it could be both – maybe one too many Red Bulls? – combined with a sense of egocentric entitlement. Entitlements, after all, seem to be much in the patois of politicians and their toadies these days. We are raising generations of attitudinally challenged newly “entitled” folks. Add them to the already entitled notions many of us may have just by virtue of being theoretically free people, and we have ourselves a social stew with a hint of advanced navel-gazing in the mix.

And can that be the product of politicians over-promising increasingly credulous generations no longer expected to leave high school – or college, for that matter – with a complete understanding of our Constitutional heritage and the rule of law?

And worse – are these historically deprived folks unable to understand that we do not have the right to challenge the rights of others just for the selfish need to turn right on red when someone else is ahead of them?

How petty.

And how dangerous.

BOOK REVIEW

"We're all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren't your own person at all -- are you?" (Circling the Sun, p. 165) ... and this:

"The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip then too tightly or make them bend." (p. 336)

Just now, tonight, I finished Circling the Sun and said to myself "what a beautiful book." ... and even more such a beautiful story.

It happens to be biographical, too. A sort-of fictionalized version of the memoir of Beryl Markham, one of the 20th Century's most remarkable women, one who becomes a record-setting aviatrix. But that's not really what the book's about. It puts a frame on it, but "Circling" is a seriously hard-to-put-down read about a woman whose life begins in Kenya, but becomes all else, all things that matter, as well.

Paula McLain is a wonderful writer. And as I fully expected, and loved to do, I learned a lot about my own writing craft by making my way slowly through her beautiful descriptives of some of the most insightful wisdom surrounding human -- our -- behavior, attitudes, and powerful powerlessness.

Read it. Five stars. No doubt.

'The enemies of recovery are legion'

An excerpt from my memoir, pages 182 and 183

 The sun is setting now, casting a red celestial curtain across the forested horizon before me. Life moves on. Creation’s counsel is dramatic but subtle. Silence alone inspires. And again I ask, where does this “normal” lead?

My story shows the way– through just as many paths as there are people with chemical dependency problems. All paths, however, will run parallel. Some will finally meld into one– “The Path,” the one which follows the basic principles of recovery.

Take care, I must, for the path is not through some kind of monastic solipsism. Isolation is the bane of recovery, dangerous turf for many. The way is through the comradery of one alcoholic or drug addict with another– connections that work but are hard to explain, but I try. My experience, and that of the millions throughout the world who have found the miracle of recovery, supports that belief, that process. First, beware– for the enemies of recovery are legion:

ENABLERS: “Keep your friends close,” goes a popular saying, “and your enemies even closer.” Wise advice, but distorted when it comes to “enablers.” They are people, usually relatives or close friends, who “enable” alcohol or other drug abuse to continue unchallenged. They do so unwittingly, just thinking of themselves as friends. So the friends-and-enemies formula reverses. Enabling friends can become enemies by endorsing victimology and thus prolong dysfunctional behavior, especially chemical dependency.

PEER PRESSURE: Friends should not let friends get hooked, but they do. And the abuser is driven by a need to be accepted, to fit in, to be one of the group. A deadly symbiosis sets in.

CULTURE: Contemporary music, media, and mores can all effectively endorse addictive behavior. The classic motion picture Casablanca, forever a favorite of mine, always comes to mind when I think about this.

The suave “Rick,” Humphrey Bogart’s award-winning character, is never without a cigarette... or a drink. As time goes by, the lithe and lovely Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa comes on the scene and is ever around (until her plane comes in, anyway)... enabling. The message I got was that smoking and drinking were “cool,” so if I wanted to be too, I should do both. I did.

The need to be accepted, and with a ticket to the party, eerily but accurately echoes something my mother told me over and over: “Never go along with the crowd just to make others think highly of you or without thinking it through.” I had forgotten that at the worst possible time in my life.

For these and other reasons, my experience– and those of many others– I believe must be heard. Otherwise, those stories are like blades of grass in a great field, or barely perceptible ripples on the face of an endless sea. They must be told before the constant winds carry them away. We who’ve walked the walk share our experiences, our strengths, our failings, and our hopes for the future with those who will be helped by them... and those who want to be.

 

(An excerpt from WAR BABY, a memoir, pages 182 and 183. See reviews and buy the book on Amazon here: http://goo.gl/OrFRUc )

 

The wonder of a child's imagination

 A girl of about three visited Historic Polegreen Church with her mother recently for a community event -- “Family Fun Day.”

Mom seemed delighted that her child was there to learn the site’s history (See our note below for a description). But she may not have expected just how much that was so.

One of the Girl Scouts who were assisting at the event gave the child a sort-of wand with colorful ribbons billowing from the end. The girl used it to imagine … and she entered the space of the ancient church’s recreated interior.

The child’s imagination and her colorful wand transformed her into a wide-eyed princess walking about her “castle;” for that is what she told her mother when she asked.

It was a moment as evocative as the history of the structure itself . Was the child’s imagination influenced by the spiritual feel of the place?

Perhaps. But we shall never know … until we try it ourselves.

***

            Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Historic Polegreen Church preserves and interprets the beginnings of religious liberties in Virginia Colony in the mid 1700s.

It is located in the metro Richmond, Va. Region in Hanover County. Here’s a link  to a Google map:  https://goo.gl/maps/osYiR

The mission of the Historic Polegreen Church Foundation is to commemorate the struggle for civil and religious freedom in Colonial Virginia by the Rev. Samuel Davies and the “Hanover Dissenters”. Learn more on our Facebook page -- @Polegreen, or Web site – www.historicpolegreen.org, or Twitter @Polegreen1747.