When Words Fail Me

Big Wind in Fair Oaks today

2007-02-25T11:49:15Z

Yeah, I know, brevity has it's own value.

Read it if you must - especially lifeisacabaret

A little while ago my friend lifeisacabaret posted her answers to an "interview", a mini-questionnaire that somebody had provided her. The idea of the game is that you could comment on her answers and if you wanted to continue the game have lifeisacabaret post an "interview" with you. Knowing Maree I was sure her questions would be somewhat off center and quite intriguing. I wasn't disappointed:

1) If you had to write a summary justifying your existence for an alien laser-wielding robot army to take back to its mysterious leader for consideration, what would you say?

There’s no need to send a laser wielding robot army here if you intend to destroy us. Just drop off the enough lasers in clusters around the world and we will destroy ourselves - will save you lots of time and energy and might be entertaining to boot!

Well that might not justify my existence…, nor anybody else's for that matter. Perhaps I should try this instead:

I assume that sending a alien laser-wielding robot army is your standard protocol for meeting new species, probably quite well justified considering what you have encountered in our galaxy so far. But a fierce introduction like this could also be a sign of some deep seated insecurity you are feeling, perhaps a need for recognition when you were but a mere non-descript larvae, undifferentiated from the tens of thousands of other larvae hatched in your season. Or perhaps you didn't pupate the same as your siblings and were rejected by your family and friends. I can relate, really I can.

Perhaps we can meet and find our mutual interests together, an interspecies pity party where we can regale each other with progressively escalating tales of woe and personal tragedy, a dark Scheherazade scenario, a "failed to adjust to life's realities" contest to determine who is more screwed up. I'm very competitive in this area and I bet you can't keep up!

Yeah, that'll work!

Next:

2) If the mysterious alien leader was then to short-list you for continued existence, but wanted you to submit a clip from your life of say 5 minutes of total experience (sights, smells, sounds, textures, thoughts, sensations - everything) summarizing what your life is about, what would you send?

I’ll have to submit this as a script:

Scene: Just born and cleaned up in my mother’s arms, happy content and at peace as was my mother and my beaming-with-pride father. (10 seconds, no music or sounds other than baby gurgling gently)

Scene: Age 1 - in crib in backyard screaming and crying as neighbor girl proceeds to cover my whole body with spit for about an hour before she was so rudely interrupted from her activity. (5 seconds, baby screaming and exhausted with fright)

Scene: Age 3 - Meeting with maternal grandparents at their home, so warm and kind and loving and giving; immigrant maternal great grandparents in background trying to give me candy and hugs. Fire place burning in background; table groaning with food. Warmth and love abound at every turn. (10 seconds, gentle non-distinct murmuring with pleasant children’s music in background, smells of cooked beef and potatoes and apple pie)

Scene: Ages 5 thru 15 - Being teased mercilessly by younger brother, jealous of any attention that he is not receiving. Unable to avoid being spanked daily and sent to room, isolated and unloved, while younger brother gleefully watches on as I am being destroyed, knowing full well that mom must mete out punishment equally to all “involved” no matter the situation. Living in terror of younger brother who proceeds to negate any level of recognition I might receive from my mother. Not able to explain to a mother who is unable to deal with a situation that was developing outside her control, a mother who was emotionally injured as a child as well, living in the 50s with no support system to help her. Collapsing alone into a ball of tears and piteous jerking sobs at the end. (30 seconds various scenes with music getting progressively discordant and disjointed and loud – indicating the possibility of a mental breakdown in progress)

Scene: Ages 8 thru 21 - First piano lessons. Discovery that younger brother was forbidden to come to the basement when I was practicing piano. Practicing piano for endless hours in the basement. Practicing piano for endless hours and suddenly beginning to play something that sounded half way decent. Practicing piano and playing music from outside the Thompson progressive study series, an old 1930s Schirmers collection that was donated by my Aunt Dotie. Practicing piano instead of going outside to play where my dreaded brother lay in wait for me. Practicing piano at the new house (age 9). Practicing the piano and then keeping still for a bit to listen to the birds that mom insisted were singing louder and more incessantly while I was playing, believing that I was stimulating their creativity. Playing piano for my Aunt Margaret who was herself an accomplished pianist. Playing piano for Christmas at the little country church (age 11). Playing piano for dad. Practicing piano and beginning to get into some really difficult pieces that my old teacher, Ms Beunding, couldn’t help me with. Quitting piano lessons in frustration (age 14). Finding new piano teacher, Mr Wescott. Shot of Don Wescott’s piano instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, Don Wells. Playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata for Dad’s social guests – mucky mucks from the land of academia and social work that was his professional milieu, then running into my room and crying piteously when one of dad’s friends played the same piano I had just played but really woke up the crowd with various clever improvisations and truly lively renditions of American Standards they could sing and dance to, knowing that dad’s friends were just being polite to compliment me, crushed by the realization of just how outclassed I still was even though I had been playing continuously for 7 years (roughly half my life) – piano, my only means of entry into this world, was woefully inadequate after all . Assiduously practicing piano with some truly difficult classical works, struggling fiercely and full of frustrations. Going into a musical contest as an accompanist for friends who played a trumpet trio. Playing piano as the accompanist for Debra in a high school talent contest – she as Lucy and I as Schroeder in the Peanuts musical piece where he is playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, ignoring her advances and she is lamenting his apparent lack of notice – a scene that was entirely too close to reality in our case. Loading my first San Francisco piano (Henry F Miller, 1918 upright) into the laundry room of the flophouse that I was living in at the time, followed by a scene where I was playing a very serene piece and my weird perverted flophouse landlady was in tears listening to me playing, showing her humanity. Loading the piano into the apartment on Grove Street (SF). Playing the piano, getting notice from my 60 year old next door neighbor who would just sit in her apartment listening for hours. Playing the piano and attracting the attention of a certain young woman living up one floor who would sit in her bathroom listening as the music wafted up the lightwell. Meeting this young woman, a law student at USF, and giving her piano lessons. Allowing friends of another young woman living in that apartment house who were visiting from New York to play on my piano, simply blown away by their awesome talents and friendly encouragement – most assuredly of Julliard. (90 seconds with various musical clips appropriate for each scene)

Scene: Age 21 (late autumn 1974 – early spring 1975) – Petitioning for the Nuclear Safeguards Initiative, eventually to become Proposition 15 of November 1976. Night and day, rain and shine, cold and miserable petitioning scenes from Union Square in San Francisco, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Pasadena City College, in front of the Gemco in Compton, Cal State Long Beach, Orange City College, and then (focus and sound to become steady for this scene) a shot petitioning in front of a Gemco in Northridge where the smog was so thick you couldn’t see past the first row of parked cars, meanwhile being berated by an angry middle aged woman because “you damned environmentalists are just a bunch of misinformed fucked up alarmists costing us our jobs”, living / flopping in the house in Laurel Canyon donated by the family of one of our key inside members, flopping in the house of Ed Koopel (of “The People’s Lobby”) while listening to three young members (two men and one very likeable woman) living there play guitar and sing their home made anthem “I’m a People’s Lobby Fool”, meeting David Pesonnen (author of our initiative), meeting David Brower who gave us recognition at the 1975 Xmas party for Friends of the Earth, running up to Santa Cruz with Ken and Celia and Rob to confront our “leader” who had essentially drained 70% of our funds into his pocket while not raising a single penny of donations nor getting any signatures – forcing him to resign, completely running out of money about 3 weeks later with about 340K signatures, short of the roughly 400K to assure we would make the ballot (discouragement and exhaustion of the highest order), getting the news that Dwight had managed to contact a group in Palo Alto that immediately raised $10K in one evening with promises of much more to come, finding these same people (middle class middle aged activists – not at all typical for the times) out on the streets EVERYWHERE finishing up the signature campaign, getting us to almost the 600K level in less than a month. MADE THE BALLOT. Lost the election. Three Mile Island makes headlines. Chernobyl makes headlines. (45 seconds with short clips of distinct voices in critical scenes with muffled sounds for the rest – no music)

Scene: Age 21 thru 53 – Meeting Lorrie in the stairway of the apartment building on Grove Street, talking briefly to her. Offering piano lessons. She comes for her two lessons and learns to play Moon River melody, very halting while I carefully insert left hand part to accompany the piece. Lorrie begins to teach me Japanese words. Our first date: 10-25-75 at the dance studio in San Francisco where everybody knows the steps to complicated Slavic folk dances – Lorrie very uncomfortable but tries her best. Our second date: 10-31-75 at theatre playing “The Harder They Come” just off Polk Street on California +/-. Walking out of that darkened movie theatre because of disgusting violence depicted only to find ourselves enveloped in gay Halloween block party that covered about 6 blocks of Polk Street – a spectacle of plumes and boas and tights and stockings and big hair wigs and heavy make up and dark chocolate voices all having the time of their lives celebrating the joy of their freedom. Living in their joy of the moment with this fascinating young woman at my side. Taking Lorrie to Mendocino to our suite of rooms at the bed and breakfast inn, walking the town’s quaint streets, and clearly falling madly in love with her and she with me – very warm and comfortable feelings with great excitement and thrills to no end. Lorrie moves into the apartment with me to get away from her insane roommate and study for the bar – me taking care of her daily needs so she can stay completely focused for the weeks leading up to and including the bar exam. Looking at the exam list and finding her name as one who passed. Moving to apartment on Clay Street. Getting married at LaFayette Park in San Francisco in 1979, after first having to ask the several hundred gay sunbathers who had gathered in “our” meadow to please allow us to get married there. Lorrie working at JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) on Sutter Street in San Francisco, Lorrie collecting books for her mail order business (Once Upon a Mystery), Lorrie collecting her books for herself, Lorrie going back to Golden Gate University to get her LLM in tax where I would wait for her late at night, asleep in those big cushy chairs, to escort her safely home, Lorrie getting her first state job at TAB (Traffic Adjudication Board where she was a hearing officer…, “your honor, I was just about to change lanes when…”), Lorrie getting her break into the Franchise Tax Board, Lorrie working on the Tobacco Litigation project with the Attorney General’s office, Lorrie and I visiting her friend in Spain for three weeks, Lorrie and Maria and I getting stuck in an unexpected religious celebration in a small village in central Spain, Lorrie and I eating a simply divine meal of fresh sardines and a marvelous marisco soup at Cudillero (small fishing village in Cantabria, Spain) after an exhausting a perilous trip through the mountains, Lorrie learning to ride a bicycle then getting to a point where she rode up into the Marin headlands with me, to Mill Valley and Tiburon to visit her friend and back over the Golden Gate bridge back home, Lorrie and I and her brother and sister in Toronto for the film festival, Lorrie and I and her brother and sister traveling through New York and Boston on vacation, Lorrie and I driving to Las Vegas to visit her parents, Lorrie and I walking down the Grand Canyon in winter, Lorrie and I traveling up the coast with my parents, through Mendocino, Eureka, Crescent City, and ending up at Shakespeare Theatre in Ashland Oregon and later back to The Kitchen in Sacramento for a 6 course feast, Lorrie taking a day off work to cook a gourmet meal for my birthday in her last year, Lorrie waiting for me to come home squeeling “Davey” with her arms open and rushing to give me a hug that I so desperately needed and loved, Lorrie doing her little girl dance at the post office because she just felt the need to express her joy of the moment, Lorrie and I with our friends at Grace Cathedral singing Xmas carols at the end of the program and having dinner together, Lorrie singing her favorite songs in the shower with great gusto and relish, Lorrie hugging me like she had just found her favorite teddy bear in so many pictures we have at restaurants, Lorrie at home after surgery running upstairs to try to sleep in the upstairs guest bedroom knowing that her constant tossing and turning was not allowing me to sleep, Lorrie falling asleep in the chair at the IPT center in Oceanside after her first treatment – relief at last! Lorrie at the IPT center in Oceanside receiving the news that she would have to undergo several months of treatments and couldn’t go back to work until February (her whole countenance fell away and she pouted, her spirit was broken at that point), Lorrie getting palliative radiation treatments at UC Davis as we realize she is not going to live much longer, Lorrie and I at Point Reyes on 8-4-2006 for our one last outing, Lorrie sitting on log at beach on Point Reyes looking out at ocean, Lorrie and I sitting on log at beach on Point Reyes and I take back handed shot (used for the only picture I have on lj to date), Lorrie and I at Robata Grill in Mill Valley after walking at Point Reyes all day – our favorite restaurant in that area, Lorrie saying goodbye to her friends while sitting in the living room, Lorrie listening to me play piano with big open wide eyes hearing something for the first time in her life that really touched and fascinated her, Lorrie telling me that she is sorry to leave me, Lorrie telling her father how much she appreciated having them as parents and how much she really loved them, Lorrie’s sister finally arriving from Hawaii, Lorrie coming back into consciousness right after her sister arrived long enough to say goodbye to her and the rest of her siblings who had gathered, Lorrie turning to me and saying “I’m ready to go”, then “I love everyone” then “Hard…, Life…” and then gulping for air for another hour and then gradually ceasing to gulp and finally with her tongue slightly protruding she choked to death, turning her head toward me as she expired while I held my hand to her face so she could feel me there and talked to her so she could hear me there, her hands and arms which had been so cold during the final weeks of her disease suddenly becoming flushed and warm as her final heart beats brought the blood from her torso back out to her limbs, me sobbing for endless hours and hours while nobody from the family would come to hold me or comfort me for days and weeks, me finally realizing that except for Lorrie this whole family is severely out of touch with their sense of joy and love and are bringing nothing but pain to me, knowing that Lorrie was concerned for them but was far more concerned about me at the end. My love is ripped out of me, the power of the disease has taken her away from me. I am completely shattered and broken, crying constantly, filled with brain fog, but all the while trying to maintain a semblance of balance and family peace knowing that there is no point lashing out and hurting others who simply have no tools to deal with feelings of this magnitude. (100 seconds, her voice at every scenario full of cheer and laughter and joy and life…, until the last one where she is calm, deep, and completely at peace)

Scene: October 2006 - Me in hospital emergency room, holding Lisa’s hands while being wheeled into emergency surgery for small bowel obstruction pretending Lisa was Lorrie with her small supple hands (Lisa’s hands were far larger and rougher) and promising Lorrie I would stay alive for her sake as I had promised her, knowing it was not Lorrie I was talking to but hoping somehow to channel Lorrie through Lisa, me in hospital looking up at wall and seeing shadow on wall that began to stare at me, me non-verbally talking to this shadow and saying I know who you are and what you want but I’m not going with you. Now go away. Noting that a few seconds after the shadow faded from the room somebody a few doors to my left apparently passed away. While unable to speak because of NG tube jammed down my throat, young woman from financial services coming to ask me how they could help me pay for the hospital stay as my insurance card had been canceled – instant vision of losing my wife, my life savings, my home, and my health all within a couple of months appears before me. I scribble on clipboard that I’ll look into it when I can... (20 seconds, beeping of heart rate monitors and normal cacophony of hospitals)

Scene: Return to Point Reyes and that log, looking out over the ocean (Sound of ocean crashing against shore and sea birds gawking and cackling. Slowly fade visual out leaving ocean sounds, slowly fade ocean sounds until all you can hear is a faint cry of “Davey” repeated over and over, fading away into indistinct hollow reverberant oblivion.

[Sorry but that is my life now]

3) If you knew then what you know now, how do you think things would be different? (totally open for your own interpretation)

Assuming that nothing could be done about her cancer, I would have told my supervisor that no matter how important all these damned projects were that they had planned for me, Lorrie and I would be going to Japan in 2003 PERIOD. There is still something I need to do for Lorrie in Japan because we didn’t go together that year, a very important item to her. I wish she could have done this herself as she knew what she was doing. For me this will be my best guess, very nervous about it all.

But if I were addressing the cancer issue, first of all I would have insisted she see a regular gynecologist in December 2005 or January 2006, when the bleeding first seemed abnormal, not wait until May 11 to see a specially recommended gynecologist. Possibly we could have caught it at stage II (almost impossible to catch uterine cancer at stage I as is true with so many cancers – no symptoms at that point), and possibly the IPT would have been effective at stage II as it has been with so many other cancers (roughly 80 – 90% on average with low stage cancers). But the IPT should have been an emergency stop gap measure, something you can do right after surgery (normal chemotherapy requires that you completely heal before you start, thus there is a large delay between surgery and treatment, time for an aggressive cancer to spread and grown) not our final effort as it turned out to be. Instead I would have wanted her to go to that integrative oncology center in Chicago and have them set her up on metronomic chemotherapy that would have started a relatively quick anti-angiogenic protocol for her that would have at least slowed the progression of the metastases, or more likely outright killed it altogether. Then I would have insisted that she chelate the copper out of her body using tetrathiomolybdate, copper being crucial in the production of epithelial growth factors (EGF) that cancer uses to draw blood to the new growth areas – forming their own weird network of blood vessels. Unfortunately it takes real time (90 days) to get the copper chelated successfully but this therapy has been remarkable effective over a broad range of solid tumor type cancers, though not yet subjected to certified clinical trials (TM cannot be patented so there is no money to be made here). Then, if that still didn’t result in remission, but rather just held the cancer in stasis I would have looked at other therapies that might have helped, thermal ablation of the larger tumors for instance, or light sensitization dyes with laser blast, or chronometric chemotherapy, or perhaps a return to IPT in conjunction with chronometric chemotherapy. Perhaps if they were to do phase III clinical trials for dichloroacetate (DCA, recently in the news because of success treating several cancer line in vitro and in some animal studies), we might have participated. Or I would have looked at other possible approaches that seemed like good science but not yet gone through the approval process. I would have done absolutely anything to find a way to help Lorrie return to good health. Absolutely would have moved heaven and earth.

If I can get away from this area of my life, however, and go on to something else; knowing what I know now, the one thing I probably should have done is take out student loans, quit my day job and finish my schooling when I was at the University of Wisconsin. I blew that big time, working 35 hour weeks at disgustingly low rates that barely paid rent, going to all the political rallies against the Vietnam War, running into all the riots around town, and screwing up my classes. My life would have been completely different if I had finished school. I probably wouldn’t have come to California, certainly not by hitch-hiking anyway, and I likely wouldn’t have met Lorrie. But I would have been more likely to have landed in a position doing work that I actually enjoyed and felt matched my natural proclivities. Then again, there was an awful lot of life I would have missed, and I would have missed my one and only opportunity to know pure love and joy, an experience that so few ever have a chance to live, one that makes my life complete – even now when I think of it, she really completed me in a very profound and lasting way.

It is better to not second guess our life. If indeed we are subject to some kind of master plan it is a secret master plan precisely because if it wasn’t secret we would find out about it and try to make changes to suit our own plans; the way we see ourselves now. This would limit our personal growth to that which we already know. I don’t feel life is supposed to be lived under that much self directed control. There may be reasons why things happen but it is best to not try to discern them – we’ll get it wrong inevitably. That’s because we are beings of inherently limited understanding, no matter how smart we may think we are.

4) If you were given totalitarian control of the world and had to write a Manifesto For A New World - a new set of values and rules for the world to live by, what would you write?

#1 – I would make Hawaiian the universal language of the world.

#2 – The national anthem of every country will be “Nani Ko’olau”, a paean of beauty and love set against the backdrop of the Ko’olau mountain range.

#3 – I would make every top management officer in every mid to large sized corporation take a year off duty w/o pay every three years to work for VISTA, PEACE CORP, WOMEN FOR WOMEN, or some other certifiably genuine humanitarian / environmental organization. They would only be allowed to regain their former positions if their supervisors at these organizations can prove that they whole heartedly “got” the mission they were on, not just go through the motions but really proved by their efforts and commitments that they really understand and actually practice their larger responsibilities. I would also limit the top pay that ANYBODY can get in any corporation to no more than 15 times the lowest paid employee of the company.

#4 – All federal politicians would come from the ranks of the top corporations but only after they had successfully completed four rounds of public service with the highest evaluations in service and business as well. Local politicians could simply prove two service records without the corporate experience. State politicians would have to prove at least three rounds of corporate and public service records.

#5 – I would abolish all religions as abominations of spiritual practice. Instead I would institute centers for spiritual exploration and understanding that would interact with local communities in culturally appropriate ways for each to come to their own terms with the universal questions of life in this plain of existence. This knowledge would be shared with other centers as it is developed and offered to all who want it, no matter which culture they are from. Over time there will be a coalescence of spiritual maturity in the general population such that these centers themselves will become obsolete.

#6 – I would sterilize all children at the age of 1. When someone wants to have a child they will have to prove that they have the means - financial, emotional, and spiritual - to raise a child in a responsible and loving supportive household. All children must learn love at home by example, and feel loved and appreciated and wanted and nurtured. Anybody caught being an abusive or flagrantly neglectful parent is subject to hideous painful boils all over their body that bleed and ooze puss continuously for 8 weeks per incident. Any parent that insists on teaching their kids to fear this world instead of learn to grow and embrace this world will have a large R (for ”Rebuplican”, my term for Republicans who’ve sold their souls to the ceaselessly fear mongering conservative demagogues of their party) branded in their forehead and will be shunned by the rest of the community, and their kids taken away and raised by kangaroos…

#7 – I would make all health care universal. I would declare all drug patents good for one year only. I would reformulate funding for research so that medical progress can follow the courses that best benefit THE PATIENT, never the institutions that develop to serve the patient. I would guarantee that anyone who developed and marketed a drug or a procedure knowing that it was harmful to patients but proceeded anyway because of the profit potential involved would themselves be subjected to their own medicine: one year forced maximum medication of the drug they were pushing or one procedure without follow up treatment for surgeries or other unnecessary activities that were known to be ineffective or harmful. Repeat offenders – you don’t want to even contemplate what would happen to you… [it involves substances that slowly burn anaerobically inside your internal organs]

#8 – Proof of music education would be required before graduating from high school. This would involve playing two instruments competently, reading music, thorough understanding of music theory, composition, and appreciation of both form and substance of good musical practice. A final performance exam is required in front of a panel of music experts. You must pass with at least a B or you don’t get out of high school. Rap is entertainment, it is not music.

#9 – No one would ever be allowed to work more than 6 hours per day, 5 days per week. 4 weeks minimum vacation per year is required for every job, with at least one vacation lasting two straight weeks each year. Anyone found spending time away from their family to be at work beyond the maximum hours will immediately be fired and not allowed back at work until their children say it is OK. Repeat offenders will have 3 weeks mandatory vacation added to their already requisite 4 weeks minimum and forced to spend this time at least 1000 miles away from home with their families.

#10 – An expression of joy and love is required by everybody every day. Those found incapable of feeling joy or love will find themselves confronted with unceasing empathy and kindness until such time as they mend their ways and come to grips with the fact that life is too short to be so damned miserable. When you create your own misery you share it with others. When you create your own beauty you also share that with others. You have no right to bring misery to those who know love and joy, so grow up and smell the roses already!

#11 – I would strike Tom Cruise mute.

#12 – I would fire myself at the end of the day.

Friends Only

2007-01-26T17:14:30Z

The vast majority of my posts are friends only. I typically don't take on new friends anymore as there is too much to explain and I don't have time to get to know others either. If, for some reason, you feel compelled to introduce yourself please let me take some time to review before I set you up as friend. It would be most helpful if I get a referral from somebody I trust. I'm considered friendly but am highly intolerant of people who live soulless spiritless lives.

This is Why I Should Stay Away from LJ

2005-08-11T08:18:16Z

Good lord I've done it again, spent way too much time posting up to another's journal. I'll have to paste it here and link it back in case pinkville wants to read all this stuff. What's the matter with me anyway?

We must be about the same age as those were also the seminal events that shaped my world view.

I would take exception with two things here, that the Japanese were ready to surrender at the time of the atomic bombing and that the status of the emporer was not respected, at least in some regard.

The emperor was supposed to be a symbol to the Japanese people, a real living connection to their ancient past, a kind of living monument so to speak. The status of the emperor had been in flux throughout their history with the most recent stretch of 250+ years (roughly 1600 - 1858 +/-)of the Tokugawa Era being one marked by rule of the most powerful clan who only paid tacit homage to the emperor out of respect of their heritage, not out of respect to him personally; much like the English monarchy remain as a symbol to their people but wield no great power in everyday affairs. With the Meiji restoration in the late 19th century the emperor did ascend to a higher level of authority but still did not direct the affairs of state without extensive consultations with his ministers and various government section chiefs.

The Japanese military ministers managed to contort the worship of the emporer as a means of manipulating the emperor and the people into supporting an ever more aggressive military build up and finally the take over of the reigns of government by the Tojo government. Blind faith in an established quasi-religious cult with ancient historical ties is something that could easily be put to use to effect the task they needed, overcoming their naturally peace loving ways (after 250 years of no major civil wars in their land they kinda got used to living a more refined and sophisticated life) and inspiring them to make the sacrifices they would need to carry out their ambitious war plans - the total domination of Asia and the Pacific. Their bad guys were not merely the US but all the Europeans who had managed to colonize so much of Asia but who in their eyes had no naturally rightful claims to those lands. The Japanese felt that it was their natural right to rule all those lands! They had never been colonized by the Europeans and they were technically more advanced and united in their organization than any of their neighbors. That is why they worked so hard and made so many sacrifices for the previous few generations, that was their goal and their dreams.

By the time that WWII broke out with the US in 1941 the Japanese had been fighting their war of dominion of Asia for at least 10 years. One could trace the first successful military adventure with their defeat of Russia in 1902 as the start of their expansion. After 39 years of military expansionism, and meeting with success at every turn so far the people were led to believe that their Gods, as respresented by the emperor, were leading them to eternal victory. It didn't happen overnight, these people were completely steeped in the lore of their own invincibility for many years, especially as made manifest for the previous two generations.

So faced with their first taste of total defeat in 1945 do you think they were really ready to surrender? Perhaps there were some who could see that this was inevitable and perhaps some ministers did make overtures but the majority were willing and even desirous that the Americans should try to take control of Japan through normal military means that would have allowed them to demostrate their fanatical loyalty to the end. They were prepared to fight suicidal battles with sharpened bamboo sticks even if it meant that every Japanese citizen would die defending their land. This represented the vast majority of the population.

My mother-in-law was one of them though she wasn't quite as radicalized as most of the others. Her religious affiliation with the Konko church, a kind of off-shoot of Shinto with most Shinto traditional practices retained, had been outlawed as unpatriotic because they believed in a pacifist philosophy. Members of the church were forced to recant their faith or face severe punishment by the military authorities. This was true with people of all other faiths except Zen Buddhism that somehow managed to find justification for this militaristic expansionism through their interpretation of Buddhist doctrine, calling it divine providence, or revealed destiny or some such nonsense. (I have a link to a most interesting article on this topic somewhere if you want to read about that.) So between emperor worship and Zen Buddist priests the people were provided with a faith system that completely compelled their total commitment to war. There was no OFF button for these people, no countervailing social structure to allow for alternative thinking. We must remember this was the truth of their common mentality, not just something that was part of our propaganda.

Was the bomb really necessary? I think it certainly speeded the end of the war. I think it saved hundreds of thousands or millions of American soldiers from dying. I think it saved many many more millions of Japanese from carrying out their almost endless nightmarish suicidal attacks that they were prepared to carry out. The only power on earth that could possibly convince the Japanese of the futility of war was one that was so massively overpowering and destructive as to finally awaken even the most ardent militarists to the new reality of their defeat.

It is largely due to the intervention of the emporer Hirohito at that point that the Japanese finally surrendered. As symbol of his people he could clearly see that continuing the war was pointless and would result in the complete annihilation of the Japanese people, their culture and their history. He stepped in and took charge of the situation in the one and only time he could exert his power, when his military commanders had finally lost all credibility in their government.

The bombing targets were chosen carefully to achieve the maximum effect of psychological terror but still leave the Japanese with something to rebuild upon later. The US considered bombing Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan and the center of many of their most revered cultural achievements but backed away from it as counterproductive to their long term plans to rule after the war - too demoralizing to completely destroy the sacred heart of Japan. They considered other targets as well but in the end it was decided to bomb Hiroshima as that was a large city with a busy port but not the spiritual center of Japanese legacy. Similarly Nagasaki had been the only port open to outside trade during the many years of cultural isolation to the outside world under the Tokugawas and therefore was not culturally as "pure" as other cities. Actually I understand that bad weather prevented them from attacking Kobe I believe so they careened and dropped their bomb on Nagasaki instead. The utter power of the devastation of those bombs made an impression that nobody in Japan could ignore and had the effect the US military was looking for, the almost immediate and unconditional surrender of the Japanese. But as awful as these bombs were, they did not completely annihilate the national foundations, both economic and cultural, upon which the Japanese could rebuild their nation.

When the US military took control of Japan it was with the cooperation of the emperor. Had the emperor not cooperated we would likely still have had major troubles in our occupation but instead we had a relatively easy time taking over the reigns of government and establishing law and order within a very short span of time. Had we jailed the emperor, dethroned him, or shown him disrespect, or murdered him, we would never have completed our victory over the Japanese people, a victory of their hearts and souls that had recently been so completely dedicated to their dreams of military conquests without end.

Productivity returned to Japan slowly at first but eventually the pace quickened as the pangs of war began to fall into a revisionist historical context and the people began to move on. For his cooperation the US owed the emperor a great deal and so his reign as emperor was never abolished, only diminished a little but not beyond the historical norms of the past. His cooperation smoothed the way to real peace which in turn smoothed the way to a relatively quick return to control of sovereignty of Japan back to a Japanese government, one that foreswore military ventures, one that remained dedicated as our eternal ally, one that was molded to resemble our own, but nevertheless Japanese.

I think the reality and the danger of the fanatical mindset must never be forgotten or ignored when considering what the US had to deal with in those days. The Germans, as fanatical as they were, came from a culture that knew how to win and also how to lose wars. Perhaps a bomb on Dusseldorf might have brought a quicker end to the war there as well but it seemed that once the Germans surrendered in large masses the rest of the countryside quietly acquiesed to the inevitable. Every nation in Europe understood how to fight wars, every nation had won some and every nation had lost some. Fanatical as they were we knew once we had taken control of Berlin the war was over for everybody. I don't think we could have been assured of the same if we had taken control of Tokyo, a very different mindset.

Does that justify the use of the atomic bomb, not once but twice? I don't know. The acts of war are so horrifying as to defy justification on any level. Did the use of the bomb bring the war to a quicker conclusion and ultimately did that save lives? I believe it did. Are we to be eternally condemned as the only nation to have used atomic weapons? Does that warrant us a special place in hell for us as a nation - sadly I believe it does. It a quandry of moral values and judgements made outside the context of those times that we now have to face up to our part in this awful destruction. But as much as we are guilty of an unforgivably heinous act let us not lose sight of the fact that is was not done in a vacuum either.

A Response to Youphoric

2005-08-11T04:03:36Z

I started a "little" response to youphoric who had responded to a post by userillusion. Anybody who knows me knows I can't keep it short so I driveled on and on about something here. Read it if you feel you must.

I realize I am an interloper in this conversation and perhaps shouldn't have commented. I've read bits of userillusion's journal from time to time and find that we have parallel perceptions on many topics so when I saw a disagreement developing in an area that I also have strong feelings about I jumped into the fray uninvited. I apologize if I came off antagonistic or disrespectful.

That said I do have some rather strongly held perceptions about living in faith but these perceptions are valid for me only and guide only me in my life. I do not expect that others would believe the same way because their lives are not my life, we have not traveled the same path nor are we destined for the same goals in life. I feel, however, that we all play our roles in a greater game of living without knowing the real nature of the whole game.

I frequently find that people who hold religious faith believe quite fervently that they have all the answers to all life's questions neatly figured and wrapped up. I find that offensive. To me life is not so neat and tidy. It is a messy process of getting out there, committing myself to something and flailing about with varying degrees of success - all the while learning and growing in personal stature through the experiences I encounter. If it is true that there is some greater guiding force out there, it is not meant for me to know this force directly nor to understand the direction this force is driving me. As I am a person of limited perceptions I can only know what I experience and my perceptions of those experiences are the only truth I can truly understand and believe. If I am part of a larger game plan who am I to think that I can really understand the larger game plan or the mind of the force that creates and directs that game plan? It seems the height of hubris when I hear others claim that they are close to God so they have some kind of special understanding of God's will - BAH! That's purely self delusional feel-good fantasy in my book. It really diminishes the stature of that God image into one that plays favorites - much like the fickle old pagan Gods of ancient times. The best I can hope for is to do my part in this life and carry out my responsibilities to the best of my ability. What happens after that is not mine to know.

Of those who are religiously inclined I tend to respect those who understand that they hold their God image as a personal guide for themselves, not as an absolute truth for all. My friend, a very devout Catholic, would say as he was contemplating difficult situations that he would get himself "centered in God" and then try to fathom what path to take from there. My friend is now a very respected member of his community and extremely well versed in American history of the mid 19th century, an authority that others reference. My friend came to this point in his life after traveling different roads but finally putting his life together after he committed himself to his faith in God via the Catholic church. Do I agree with my friend about his perceptions of God - no. Do I respect my friend for his achievements and recognition that he has now - absolutely. Do I understand that his faith in God is largely responsible for turning his life around and making him into a self respecting and now well respected citizen in his community - yes I do. Is that something that would work for me - absolutely not. Have I seen this work for others - for some it does, for others it does not. We each have our own path to find in this life.

You do not seem a fanatic zealot with your last comments so much of my diatribe is not meant to be directed at you. You seem to acknowledge there are many who call themselves Christians but who do not have the same take as you, are not able to deal with others of differing views. Those are the kinds of "Christians" that I more typically encounter and am most disturbed when I meet them. They have made a profound presumption of their own righteousness in their faith and carry a fundamental assumption that everybody else also acknowledges their righteousness as well.

That I may be reacting too strongly here is probably not appropriate behavior toward you as I don't really know you. I am reacting to something though, something that has been deeply ingrained in many people and in our culture, a kind of high school clique mentality that divides the world neatly into an US ('good' conservative Christians) and THEM (everybody else). As a true believing Christian I would think much of what I am reacting to would bother you too, even more so if these people hadn't managed to frame their views within a Christian sounding context. Frankly I feel that they use and abuse the strutures of religious doctrines and practices as well as the credibility of those who find their inspiration through their Christian faith. I don't know why that wouldn't be offensive.

That said, I am otherwise a fairly tolerant kind of guy.

Debates

2005-06-05T21:17:35Z

For some unfathomable reason I waded back into a debate community http://www.livejournal.com/community/right_left08/104548.html and got wrapped up in a rant that I can't post there so will post "do you forget that no one is perfect? or in your elitist liberal mind do you think that there does exist perfect people. (only hollywood and martha's vineyard right?)"

Getting a little defensive here aren't we?

Is there something wrong with being a liberal? You've referenced that in another response as well and clearly it is something inherently bad for you. What exactly is a liberal to you and why is that something that you loath so much? I really need to know this as the few times I have debated somebody from a religious conservative viewpoint I've never gotten a straight answer to this. FYI, I actually consider myself to be a moderate but am often seen as a liberal because the framing of modern issues has become so very conservative. As a whole, my views in another time would not seem so far off center as they do today.

I repeat myself here: If you are genuinely sorry for something you have done then you should stop doing it in the future. You would make amends for harm you have caused and you would find a way to modify your behavior and stop doing it. If you haven't stopped doing it then you haven't truly repented your ways. If you think you can find something in your faith that allows you to bypass this most basic precept then I would have to question the validity of your understanding of your faith. You simply can't have it your way all the time because you ARE [Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Shiite, Sufi, ...) and believe you can be forgiven your sins whenever you feel like you want forgiveness. It has to show in a genuine alteration of your behavior in this life or else you haven't genuinely repented of your ways. Think about that please.

"THOSE ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO, IN GOD'S EYES, ARE FORGIVEN." I don't even know how to respond to this.

How do you know who is forgiven in God's eyes? I think you just repeat what you've been told and haven't bothered to stop and think if what you have been told makes any sense. You are not God, neither is the one who told you this. You do not speak for God either, no matter how convinced you are that you somehow sit closer to God than anybody else. Goodness gracious, how brazenly you violate the seventh commandment here – “thou shalt not use the name of the lord, thy god, in vain.” Please think about that.

What is the true nature of God? What is your relationship to God? Does God exist? In what way does God exist that you can relate to him / her? These are not light questions that have easy breezy answers but are central to any human with a desire to understand their life in context with a greater whole. You seem to be just repeating verbatim what somebody else long ago had said without understanding the context of the times that they said it What else was happening in those times, what other philosophical considerations were in vogue in those days when these thoughts were developed, how were those thoughts influenced by the perspectives and history of those times, what prompted these thoughts and what affects they had in those times, what perspectives have changed since that time and how has that affected our development to date, and do these same statements in today's context carry the same meaning as they did back then, are they valid in today's perspective? You seem to think you've hit upon eternal truth just because somebody told you that it was eternal truth. Don't you think the same opposition to new thinking was extant back when these new collections of "eternal truths" were revealed to the set of prophets you chose to follow? How can you just decide to be so narrow in your views and yet decide that you also have some kind of ultimate truth that should apply to all? Who the hell is the elitist here anyway?

Am I perfect, absolutely not! I could go on for many days examining my faults, my failings, my defects; I have so many to chose from in such a wide variety of areas. I am not arguing from a perspective of being perfect. BUT I believe it is very important to have an ideal to strive for, a perfection you would like to achieve, and strive with all that you have to achieve that ideal state. I simply can't stand it when those who claim to have such a simple means of instantaneously achieving righteousness in their lives simply bypass the really hard parts of getting there and then sincerely believe they have achieved the same state of righteousness as those who have gone through the shredder of life to get there. I'm sorry but that simply doesn't count the same in my book.

Then again…Perhaps we are arguing the same point from two different perspectives. I’ll consider that a possibility.

Perhaps I have a hard time with your perspective because in my younger years I was of the same frame of mind as you seem to be now. My world would have broken apart if I were to consider anything outside my fundamentalist upbringing. At a minimum I was certain to go straight to hell if I varied one little bit from the path that had been laid out for me from my birth. I lived in fear and paranoia that I could lose my privileged status as one of the chosen at any time by simple unknowing acts of “sin” and prayed for forgiveness whenever I found out that I had violated some kapu of one kind or another. [Kapu - Ancient Hawaiians had many sacred places where only royalty could approach. Commoners found in these areas would have violated a kapu and were usually executed for their crimes, usually tied to the ground and beaten to death with clubs lined with sharp stones or shark’s teeth, very horrible gruesome punishment. Similarly all manner of ‘disrespect’ for royalty were also violation of kapus, something as small as looking up at the royal procession instead of remaining prostrate at all times in their presence. These kapus seem strange to us now, an arbitrary and capricious means of exercising absolute autocratic authority to keep the people cowed and threatened at all times, but they were real enough to the people back then.] I was so swept up in the whole vortex of sin and forgiveness that I was missing the rest of life. Back then I felt quite a bit like I was intentionally blinding myself, shielding myself from all information that contradicted my underlying assumptions, labeling it as sinful or false or, as the case seems to be today, liberal. Later in life I was fortunate to find that I could remain a very spiritual person without all the fear and paranoia that the church doctrines and dogma had taught me. I guess I can't understand why anybody would be satisfied with that kind of life, I certainly found it to be a very limiting, debilitating, and narrow life.

But then again… I have relatives and good close friends who are very involved in their churches and synagogues and derive a great deal of satisfaction from the experience. For many, they initially came to their faith in a state of panic or great emotional turmoil and found solace within the confines of the church, a means of coming to terms with a life that was spinning out of control for them. Through their experiences in the church they began to put their shattered lives back together, related better to others in a more normal civil fashion, got their careers back on line, or made progress towards some higher goals. I have no issue with that, in fact I find something distinctly positive and noble in having an established institution that can ably assist people in need of stability and sanity.

BUT that doesn't mean that the religious experience that those people have will have the same meaning for me. We come from two different places in life. In nearly all these relationships I have with my religious friends we seem to have a mutual understanding that this is true and we all get along quite well, even if we don’t exactly understand each other.

I would like to think that part of the religious education that people receive would be to understand and accept differences in perspectives, differences that should be respected as one would expect to be respected for their own perspective. Unfortunately all too often I find that this prime lesson in life is refuted by the tenets of a faith that insists on absolute rights and wrongs with the inherent understanding that they have discovered "right" and therefore everybody else is consequently "wrong". There is no consideration that there could be multiple possibilities of righteousness; there either is heaven in store for you or not and that is all that we learn in our churches. That's entirely too limited to be an absolute truth yet I hear time and again this same refrain from the religious institutions.

What's even more grating is when I am labeled as a liberal, or elitist, or baby killer, or anti-family, or anti-business, or anti-gun, or any of a number of insulting simplistic hot-button labels by people who have never heard me before on these issues. They just automatically presume that if I am in favor of one issue I must therefore stand for all others even if those extraneous issues don’t relate to the issue at hand. Who ever told you that was appropriate in civil conversation? Why do you want to take a civil discourse down to a level of uncivil name calling and labeling? If you want to talk to me you will have to listen carefully to what I say and respond with courtesy and tact. Otherwise you can expect me to spit venom back in your face just the way you spit it at me.

Amen.

Don't feel compelled to read this, it's just posted as a matter of expediency for me.

Husbands

2005-04-30T13:43:49Z

I tripped across this today while perusing through another journal http://www.mailorderhusbands.net/order/.

What a hoot!! They range from not quite old enough to marry, to wannabe American citizens, to backwoods rednecks, to some grotesque diseased postule who posted in German that he wants a woman, he wants beer, he wants (whatever, my German is extremely limited) and if interested reply here. This has got to be a joke site - what a wacked out bunch of guys.

Sample: (with picture of middle aged man in coveralls sitting in his natural environment) "I deal in reality...and the reality is that I'm ready for love. I can chop lots of wood and can even climb a greased pole. I keep in shape by chasing chickens around my back yard. I keep my self clean and take baths weekly.
Country: West Virginia, U.S.A."

Now if that's not impressive I don't know what is!

Ladies, if these are your choices out there I would suggest a single life is in store for you!