A Lot

Lots of trauma this month.

October 7th was a shock and a bit of a wake-up call for me. I have never really taken a side on the Middle East because it’s such a volatile topic. Even when I was at my most ornery and argumentative, I would never dip my toe into that area of debate. Not just because of my own perception that I didn’t know enough about the issues (it turns out that, like math, I actually know more than I ever gave myself credit for) but also because the passions it inflamed go above and beyond the pale: I simply wasn’t ready for that heat.

As I struggled to make sense of that day and what it really meant to me, my father called me up out of the blue to let me know that he was getting a checkup and that it may have to do with his cancer returning. He had a throat cancer diagnosis in 2017 and went through all the motions to get rid of it and it was successful. But now his wife was urging him to get his shoulder examined because he was feeling pain. 

This worried me. It didn’t feel right.

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Fast forward to a month later almost to the day: after spending a sleepless night on social media platforms reading some of the insensitive and clueless proselytizing from people who refuse to denounce the actions of Hamas on October 7th 2023, I decided that I now know where I stand: I am a liberal who sided with Israel… or rather, Israelis.

It is clear that there is such a rampant stream of antisemitism rearing its ugly head these days that I have to take a moral stand personally. I am no fan of government in general so my stance is not rooted in any love for foreign policies on either side of this fence. I am not about defending Israel’s position towards the Palestinians and I am DEFINITELY not going to praise Hamas for this latest round of terrorism. I unequivocally denounce their actions in Gaza. It was truly deplorable.

But I know historically Israel has always struggled. The nation itself is only 75 years old but the hatred towards the Jewish people goes back very far. I do not align myself with the Trumpers and MAGAts and evangelical Christian hypocrites who stand by Israel as a talking point for their agendas. I stand by Israel as someone with many friends and peers who have shown me their kindness and generosity over the years and who happen to be Jewish.

I was raised in a Protestant Christian environment and let me tell you: there can be some simmering resentment towards Jews thanks to the misconception that they killed Jesus. Thankfully I was not raised this way. Instead I was raised to respect their biblical entitlement as The Chosen People. I was taught at an early age that those who side with Israel shall prosper.

And the person that taught me that was my father.

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My father is not a perfect person. If you know anything about me beyond what I normally reveal, then you know that he and I have had our share of disagreements on all matters of seeming importance: politics, religion, and everything in between. But I always respected his tolerance of Jews, mainly because I went to schools outside of my regular district and shared classes with more Jewish kids than I would’ve been exposed to at my local school.

It wasn’t a grudging respect either. Because the Bible made it clear that God had a plan for the people of Israel, there was no doubt in my father’s mind that it was an irrevocable truth. Given that the Old Testament is basically a chronicle of how the Jewish people disobeyed God and wound up in captivity time and time again only to be led through the wilderness and misery by holy prophets who understood God’s plan, I don’t understand how people could be jealous of the Jews being “chosen”. It always sounded to me like a huge burden to bear. 

But that’s what made it so appealing to my dad. “Nothing worth doing comes easy” is how he broke it down to me. And he was right. On that, he still is right. So he was on my mind when I was online dueling it out with know-nothing Gen Zers and millennials who get all their information from hateful bigots and other know-nothings.

Then my older brother called me. He was crying. He got the news of my dad’s checkup: stage 4 terminal cancer that had spread to his kidneys, and an inoperable tumor in his shoulder.

I was calm, and I spoke with him and reassured him that, as bad as this sounds, (and it couldn’t sound any worse, right?) we shouldn’t just throw in the towel. There was time to do things, to make amends, to spend time, to pray and hope for more time.

The last time he’d been diagnosed, I dealt with these emotions. I’ve put myself through that ringer. Now upon hearing this news I am prepared, in a way. It is still sad, and it is not something I am looking forward to, but I accepted it a while ago and I’m ready… I think.

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I called my dad to confirm and he sounded like he was in good spirits. My sister later confided to me that he and his wife had been crying nonstop the day before, but on the phone his voice was bright and cheery. He was putting on an act, projecting strength.

We talked briefly. I knew it was all he could do to keep from breaking down. I told him that I thought he was right all along about Israel, that even if he and I never see eye-to-eye on things like gay marriage or abortion or taxes, I did agree with him about the Middle East. All he asked of me was to finally marry my girlfriend so that we would be “right with God”. I could accept that.

I’m making plans to fly out there soon and see him after Christmas. I’m taking my son with me. I haven’t figured out how to tell him yet. I don’t want to ruin things for him. But he needs to know. It’s his grandfather after all.

Yes, like I said: a lot of trauma this month. 

Bass Notes

I always give a different answer when asked who my favorite bass guitarists are. Like most of these attempts to encapsulate some sort of Top Ten List, it usually just depends on my mood or what I’ve been jamming to that week. I don’t give the obvious answers like Flea or Jaco or Victor Wooten. But it does fluctuate, and I can’t really say there’s ever been one above all that I strive to emulate.

Today I read the news of Andy Rourke’s death. As far as bass players go, he is not a household name or one of the obvious answers I try to avoid giving. Really, only fans of The Smiths know the name. There’s a lot of those, but even then the average, non-diehard follower of the band probably can’t name the two members who make up the rhythm section— they just know Morrissey and Johnny Marr.

If asked the question today, in the wake of the news of his passing and my subsequent diving into the classic catalog and listening to his versatile basslines glide their way in and out of the Anglo-leaning alt-rock post-punk semi-folk grooves that his former band laid down, I’d have to say it was Andy Rourke all along.

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I learned how to play acoustic guitar one summer, between sophomore and junior year in high school. A friend lent me a copy of the Louder Than Bombs songbook and over the course of those three months I learned how to play the rhythm guitar parts to nearly every song. And that also meant listening to my copy of the album constantly to make sure I was at least somewhere in the neighborhood when it came to playing them correctly.

Johnny Marr is a magician on the six-string. It wasn’t until years later that I realized half of the tricks and techniques he employed during his Smiths tenure: open tunings, capos, different types of guitars, studio effects, pedals… he kept you guessing, he was hard to nail down. He refused to give up his secrets.

But I began to hear Andy’s playing more, at first to distinguish between the guitar and bass parts. Then, it became a matter of Andy’s parts just standing out. I once read a review of a Smiths album (or maybe it was a bio of the band) that described Andy Rourke’s bass playing as existing on its own if the rest of the music and vocals were stripped away, as if they were completely different songs woven into the fabric of a Smiths tune. That’s a pretty apt description of Rourke’s style, and it has stayed with me for decades. 

Andy’s playing complemented Marr’s because he achieved the opposite of what Marr was doing: Andy didn’t keep any secrets with his basslines. They were out in the open, unafraid. He wasn’t guarding anything. You could nail them down. They were (and still are) accessible.

But they were amazing all the same. Maybe more amazing, because they lived under cover of the rest of the band. So in a way he was hiding… but he wasn’t holding back either. He wanted to be heard, and the best way to be heard while competing with loud guitars and drums and wailing vocals is to become the throbbing pulse that ties everything together.

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It’s a theory that the majority of bassists started out on another instrument. Very few bassists started out wanting to play bass, the theory goes. It often became something that was foisted upon an aspiring guitarist when there was no bass player available and the other guitarist in the band was very very good.

The kid who lent me the Smiths songbook is the only musician I’ve ever met who started off on bass. I think he gave me the book so I could learn the guitar parts and we could jam. I did learn them, but by the time we were in a band there were others involved who had more experience and who didn’t want to cover Smiths songs. Then he quit the band and I ended up taking up the slack. Eventually I ended up in a slew bands where I was the only person who was available to be the low end. But I didn’t own a bass. I borrowed them from people, and in one case in particular I never gave it back. Shame on me. 

Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever purchased a bass on my own. They were always gifted to me by generous people. The kid with the Smiths songbook eventually sold me an imitation of a blonde Rickenbacher later on, but that was stolen out of a band mate’s house at some point. My replacement was an old Fender Precision bass that was— you guessed it— given to me for free by someone else. I still have it. I play it all the time. It’s my main bass guitar to this day.

Bass players are in demand, always. That’s because everyone wants to be the singer or the guitarist or the drummer. So I never run out of opportunities to jam.

I think Johnny Marr persuaded Andy Rourke to play bass when they were young and starting out, and the world is a better place for that. 

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While listening to old Smiths songs this morning, I realized how much I owed to Rourke. I have been subconsciously stealing from him for as long as I’ve been playing bass. Certain licks of his are instantly recognizable to me because I repurposed them for songs over the years. Usually they were other people’s songs, and they were none the wiser. They liked what they heard but no one ever said to me, “You just nicked Andy Rourke for that part!” And since I wasn’t doing it deliberately, I guess I felt comfortable with doing it repeatedly.

After a while, you find your own style. But it is always indebted to the player whom you based your style on. And now, after realizing that he was only ten years older than me, I also realize that Andy was the one who I modeled everything on. I didn’t know it, but it’s true. More than James Jamerson of Motown’s Funk Brothers; more than John Entwistle of The Who; and more than the legendary Bootsy Collins of James Brown and P-Funk fame, Andy Rourke was the main source of inspiration for me, when I was a teen all the way up until now, and beyond.

He was the sad, mysterious member of the band. Morrissey was the voice and POV, Johnny was the roar, and drummer Mike Joyce was the engine propelling the vehicle. So what was Andy?

He was the person driving in the car, the one Morrissey sang about, the one who never ever wanted to go home. Because he hasn’t got one. Anymore.

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“There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” is a classic, of course. And it’s my all-time favorite Smiths song, right up there with another lengthy title (“Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”) and also the first Smiths song I learned the bassline to. Thus, every consequent bassline I’ve ever played has trace elements of that one in it. 

But my favorite bassline from The Smiths? “Stretch Out And Wait”, by far.

That song is in my Smiths Top Ten, for sure. But that bassline is Number One in my book. It’s so good, and it’s the one that kept playing in my head even when I wasn’t driving listening to a Spotify playlist this morning featuring every song The Smiths ever made.

It’s a little melancholy, like all good Smiths songs are. But despite their depressing reputation, I have never actually cried while listening to them. That’s because the music has always been upbeat and happy-sounding. That’s one of the things I truly love about the band: that contrast between ridiculously somber words and sunny, shimmering melodies. Often times I get cheered up when I hear them, because unlike the rest of the world I refuse to take Morrissey seriously. I find him to be hysterically funny, actually. Much like my answer to the favorite bassist question, I don’t go for the obvious answer. I love The Smiths because listening to them makes me happy.

And this morning, while listening to “Stretch Out And Wait” on repeat in the car, I shed tears of sadness and sorrow for the first time in my Smiths fandom. And it wasn’t because of Morrissey’s words or Johnny Marr’s composition. It was because my bass hero died, and I didn’t know he was my bass hero until he was gone.

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This has been a rough week.

My brother AJ passed away eleven months ago, and my uncle Joe died a year ago this week as well. Their deaths were separated by exactly a month. So I am especially tender right now.

Andy Rourke dying hurts, because even though I never met him and didn’t know too much about him as a person, I feel like I knew everything. Because he didn’t hide his secrets. They were there, out in the open, embedded in the notes and scales and pops and licks and plucks and picks and slaps and runs.

He didn’t want you to not know how he did it. He explained it all with his hands on the strings. He gave away the tricks of his trade unabashedly. And what’s truly amazing is that even when he told you how he did it, you still couldn’t believe he did it. It was that good.

Andy Rourke was that good. 

And if you decide to listen to him play, you’ll hear how obvious it is.

MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL MURDERESS

I understand that Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers was not strictly based on the Charles Starkweather case; original screenwriter Quentin Tarantino may have based the premise loosely on the mythic status of the case but never explicitly set out to adapt it into a serious analysis of the true life crimes.

However, after watching the four-episode docuseries on the Starkweather affair, titled The 12th Victim, it’s hard to watch a movie like Natural Born Killers and not feel that the whole idea of the film (in particular the character of Mallory Knox as played by Juliette Lewis) is predicated on a humongous lie.

The 12th Victim is an engrossing study of the murder spree that Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate embarked upon in the late 1950s; the common view in the public eye was that the couple were complicit in the murder of the teenaged Fugate’s family and the subsequent killings. The 12th Victim goes over the facts of the case to make very clear that Fugate was most likely (and by her own admission) not a participant in the crimes and instead was held hostage by Starkweather, whom she’d broken up with before the rampage; according to the docuseries, she was not even aware that her family had been murdered by Starkweather, who told her that they were being held at an undisclosed location and that if she went along with him they would be spared. She did not learn the truth until after Starkweather had been apprehended and she asked the authorities if she could call her mother, certainly not the action of a girl who purposely arranged to off her parents.

Fugate served time for the killings while Starkweather was executed by electric chair. However, the passing of time has not been kind to Fugate, who (despite being paroled in the mid-70s) was recently denied a pardon for her perceived role in the murders. The second half of the series follows as she struggles to clear her name from her association with the infamous Starkweather, trying to extricate herself from the seemingly prophetic curse he saddled on her when he declared that if he couldn’t have her then nobody will.

Many films and documentaries have been made in the wake of the Starkweather murders, from Terence Malick’s Badlands to Tarantino’s True Romance and the first draft of Natural Born Killers. These adaptations almost always without exception paint a romanticized portrait of star-crossed lovers rebelling against respectable society by lashing out in the most extreme way possible.

Perhaps a large portion of the infamy and shock of a case that is over 60 years old is the notion that the adolescent Fugate was a willing accomplice, if not the murderous muse that masterminded the entire thing. Starkweather, despite much evidence to the contrary, is cemented in crime lore as being a violent white trash version of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, a misunderstood loner paying back the powers that be with sharpened knives and gunfire. So it is only fitting that his female sidekick should be what can only really be described as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murderess: anything less would deflate the myth that has been built up over the decades.

Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers is probably the logical manifestation of this image: malicious, angry, lowbrow, vulgar, sexually provocative, and completely devoted to her man, who cherry-picks the qualities he adores about her as to serve his own criminal fantasy. At one point near the end of Natural Born Killers, Mallory suggests that she and Mickey Knox, as played by Woody Harrelson, break out of a prison in the throes of a riot with guns drawn, going out in the stereotypical blaze of glory that cinema often bestows upon its antiheroes. Mickey gently tells her that her plan is “poetry” then goes on to say that they’ll follow her plan “when all else fails”. In other words, he’s not really going to consider it.

In light of watching The 12th Victim, a movie like Natural Born Killers becomes an exercise in picking apart the character of Mallory and discovering how much of her narrative is determined by the male protagonist’s view of the outside world. It’s as if the story of Mickey and Mallory is told strictly through Mickey’s eyes. I can almost imagine a different cut of the movie where the action is interrupted periodically by Juliette Lewis giving narration to provide counterpoint to what’s being shown a la the TV series Arrested Development: “No, that’s not how it really happened. Mickey didn’t rescue me from my family, he killed them then told me to get in the car otherwise he’d do the same to me.”

Even if director Oliver Stone hadn’t heavily rewritten Tarantino’s script, one of the dominant themes of Natural Born Killers is that Mallory is just as much a badass as her male counterpart. She can keep up with his insatiable blood-and-sex lust and even goes beyond it in certain situations. The only man she defers to is Mickey, who is also the only man who understands her murderous impulses. Unfortunately, it becomes obvious in The 12th Victim that Caril Fugate was anything but the sociopathic, devious, Machievellian rebel that the public has taken into their collective unconscious. It’s a contrived scenario that was propagated by none other than Starkweather himself, who upon incarceration first stated that Fugate was blameless but later flipped and implicated her in the crimes when he realized she didn’t love him. Love and the fantasy behind it is a big factor in all of this. Stone takes a different approach to the fantasy scenario by stating without any subtlety that “love beats the demon”; Mallory’s unfailing commitment to Mickey is ultimately redemptive. 

There is always a hint in this genre of cinema that the female half of a criminal pair is somehow empowered by destroying would-be rapists, sadistic perverts, and leering male authority figures. Whether it’s Patricia Arquette’s Alabama fighting back against a hitman in True Romance or Laura Dern dealing with scummy Willem Dafoe in Wild At Heart, or even Faye Dunaway as Bonnie to Warren Beatty’s Clyde, there is a clear line drawn between the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murderess’ consensual psychopathic paramour and the undeserving letches that wish to take his place. Because she chooses who she wants to manipulate and exploit her, it is somehow a step forward for feminism.

True, there is much catharsis watching Mallory Knox dismantle a redneck creep in the opening scene of Natural Born Killers, but that’s only if you buy into the MPDGM ideal. I was someone who bought into that me-and-my-girl-against-the-world mentality when I was a younger man and saw these movies for the first time. It’s the same thread that runs through popular songs like Cake’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”, where the singer pines for a strong yet sexy Warrior Princess because she is more than his equal and may even be better at kicking ass than he is. Imagine a pimp whose hoes wage war against greedy johns on his behalf but only fuck him… which is basically the gist of The Bride’s relationship with the titular character in Kill Bill, another Tarantino film. Watching The 12th Victim, though, has made me rethink this position. It’s the position of a young man who has only a sliver of an idea of what women must endure in a man’s world but still wants to get freaky; to refer to that song again, it’s the position of men who want to have their Cake and eat it too.

Oliver Stone, when he’s not overtly politicking in his films, also possesses this immature position. It reaches a zenith in The Doors, wherein Meg Ryan gleefully labels herself as an “ornament” while Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison hazily christens her his “muse” when she’s really just the only woman who will consistently tolerate his awful behavior. But in Natural Born Killers it almost gets Freudian when you remember that Stone spent the ‘60s in harrowing Vietnamese jungle shit, taking lives for a country that he later had major reservations about (much like Ron Covic in Born On The Fourth Of July). He is the natural born killer of the movie’s title; he spends the duration of the film rearranging Tarantino’s tropes to explain his PTSD. As a filmmaker he is also a media figure, and so the centerpiece of Natural Born Killers— the live interview between Mickey and tabloid journalist Wayne Gale — is almost an internal dialogue come to life. Viewed through the lens of Stone’s personal military experience, the interview is a literal manifestation of the two warring sides of his personality: the soldier who killed lest he be killed rationalizing his actions to the entertainer who dwells on lurid subject matter and exports it to the masses for a profit. Listening to Mickey rhapsodize about the purity of killing, then reading an account of Stone’s first certified kill while in Vietnam, one can’t help but feel that he is justifying the trauma of taking another human’s life at the expense of his chosen profession. 

It also bears noting that Stone made Natural Born Killers in the midst of a divorce from his second wife. Wayne Gale (played by Robert Downey Jr) unceremoniously dumps his wife over the phone during the prison riot in Natural Born Killers while being held hostage by Mickey and Mallory. This is Wayne being swept up in the chaos of the moment but it is very telling that Wayne wants to cross over to the criminal couple’s side. Mickey, the killer side of Stone, does it all for love; Wayne, the Hollywood side of Stone, does it all for ratings. Mickey and Mallory killing off Wayne at the end of the movie is Stone acknowledging that he’d trade all the money and fame for a chance at real love. (Mickey and Mallory killing Wayne is a holdover from Tarantino’s original script; with the amount of rewriting Stone did on it, it’s not a coincidence, conscious or otherwise, that he left it intact for his cut of the movie)

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with filmmakers and artists in general hashing out their personal neuroses and issues through their work. It’s what connects them to us as individuals, after all. I can still appreciate the skill that went into constructing a madhouse experience like Natural Born Killers or any number of movies I’ve mentioned in this essay. Deconstructing art is at the core of the mass entertainment machine. But maybe it’s time we pay service to the real-life inspirations for so much psychoanalysis on celluloid. Because if Caril Fugate were a screenwriter or director, the movie she’d make wouldn’t be about a nihilistic Lolita who is handy with a razor or a handgun, doling out punishment to gas station attendants who are bad at giving head or slimy police detectives with homicidal tendencies, all the while sitting shotgun in a convertible with her ex-con Humbert Humbert at the wheel. Her movie would probably be a lot like The 12th Victim, the story of a young girl from the heartland who got mixed up with an anti-social loser who dragged her along on an insane blood fest of his own delusional making then threw her under the bus right before he left this mortal coil, only for her to fight against the widely held perception of her as a degenerate monster for the rest of her life. 

And she can title it Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murderess if she wanted to, but the point might get lost depending on who buys the rights and who gets cast and (most importantly) who gets to do the Page One rewrite.

Jesus Was A Cross Maker

My friend Asaf introduced me to the music of Judee Sill back on my old podcast. You can still hear it— no one else has, so we may as well start somewhere.

Anyway, I have random songs of hers in my playlists, and her compositions are lovely despite the tragic arc of her short life: she was a bit of a bandit and a heartbreaker herself, although she may have leaned more toward the heartbroken. Certainly her heart was in tatters when she wrote this song  for her lover, JD Souther, who wrote many fine songs for his friends The Eagles. Inspired by the book “The Last Temptation of Christ” (later made into a controversial movie by Martin Scorsese) she felt the song was her way of forgiving Souther for their breakup; her rationale was that if Jesus made crosses as a carpenter for the Romans (which is neither a verifiable fact nor a wholesale invention) then surely no one is beyond redemption, and even bad people have good characteristics. 

That is the accepted meaning of the song, and for Judee Sill it was a gambit and a lifesaver— she felt it was her best work and that it kept her from killing herself in her despair over Souther. There is a definite thread of gospel-like fervor in the music and the words. She wanted to believe, even if her actions spoke otherwise.

In the wake of my brother AJ’s passing, this song (as they say these days) hits different. The sweet silver angels of the opening and the recurring passages symbolize AJ, looking down on us from the heavens. It is my prayer that they fly down low to me, to help me process this pain.

I think about the night before he died, which was the last time I saw him alive. We were having a conversation, and even though I was trying to talk some sense into him in regards to his family life, he didn’t want to go there. He made it clear that he wanted to talk to me about us. And that meant a pleasant conversation and positive vibes. When we were alone he did hint that he had some things to work on and that he was sorry for upsetting anyone. In my mind this is the first verse: I hear his song and even though he is no stranger to me I trust his song, and it charms me and causes me to reflect.

Judee sings about turning around and the stranger is gone. I wasn’t even in town 24 hours before he died. It still doesn’t seem real to me. But it was real, it did happen. I was there when the sheriff told us. I was the one who had to call my brothers and tell them the news. 

The chorus is a mix of feelings about AJ. To many, he was a badass— a bandit and a heartbreaker. But Jesus was a cross maker, Judee adds… he was the creator of his eventual demise.

That’s the part that hits really different. 

AJ loved that bike, so much that I’m certain if he ever talked about the way he wanted to die, it would be while riding. So how tragic is it that he went out the way he would’ve wanted to? Well, for the ones he left behind, it is beyond expression. The fact that I am discussing this at all shows that it has not left my mind and soul, and might never go away.

The second verse describes a heroic man who chases away the devil with a gun by his side. That sounds like AJ. He was a good kid, but he was also fiercely protective of his friends and family. He fought the good fight, as they say. The song continues, “He kept his door open wide”— for me that means that he didn’t judge people and was a friend to those who had no friends. The effect he had on those around him was remarkable, which makes his loss so much harder to face.

The third verse describes a storm and some sort of trouble finding one’s way in the midst of it. The paths are not easy to navigate. This is all of us who mourn him, dealing with his loss. There is not only sadness but anger and regret and guilt. It seems so senseless and yet there is a strange symmetry to his death, a bizarre design behind it that is too deliberate to ascribe to chance. We accept it but we don’t want to accept it— couldn’t we have had a little bit more time with him before he had to go?

The sorrowful answer is no, because AJ was a bandit and a heartbreaker, and Jesus was a cross maker. He was larger than life, and he made the bed that he lies on for the rest of time, and I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that but I do know how I feel— I miss him and cry for him constantly, as do my siblings, and I know it hurts ten thousand times more for my mother and father, and my sister-in-law and her children, one of whom was born after the fact and will never know his angelic heroic devil-bashing pistol-packin’ dad.

AJ didn’t mean for us to be the last hearts he ever broke, but that seems to be the way it turned out. And so this song is no longer about its author and creator. I’ve now transformed it into something that resonates with me as a tribute to my brother. Some may find this song blasphemous or disrespectful, but I think the reason why it has moved me the way it has  is because there was pain and melancholy involved in its origin, and that is easy to transpose over so many works written in similar veins. Judee’s story may be removed from AJ’s, but they are both written in the same ink, in the same universal language of tragedy that spreads across the board all over the world.

It’s a pretty tune, with haunting arrangements and a spectacular vocal performance from a woman who put it all on the line for love. I find myself getting the words mixed up however— I sometimes say “rebel” or “gambler” instead of “bandit” and “life taker” or “carpenter” instead of “heartbreaker”… easy mistakes with rhyming words, but in my subconscious mind there is significance with this. I am still trying to make sense of it all, and now I’ve added another song to the repertoire of melodies that keep gnawing at me when I’m driving, or when I’m going to sleep, or sometimes when I’m wide awake and daydreaming of better times.

Sweet silver angel, please come down flying low to me…

Escape From Kabul

If you have HBO or HBO MAX, I highly recommend watching Escape From Kabul, the documentary that chronicles the evacuation of Afghanis at the end of the war In Afghanistan. But I issue that recommendation with a warning: it is very graphic and extremely disturbing.

There is probably nothing more traumatic than an endless conflict and its messy aftermath. And anything you think you may know about the war in Afghanistan and the evacuation at the end of it is sorely lacking— the scale of this tragedy is seemingly insurmountable.

I’m not here to give a review or an opinion on the show, and I feel that espousing my personal politics undermines the deeper message of the program. But there are moments that stand out among everything else for me: the interviews with Taliban fighters who recollect how they were radicalized to fight when they were kids, watching American forces invade and destroy their land, their families, their resources. The traumatic cycle repeats itself over and over… who among the survivors, from the ranks of both those who escaped and those who were left behind, will perpetuate these atrocities in the years to come, when they come of age? Who among them will stand up for what’s good and decent? Will any of them ever move on and build a positive future from the rubble of this war?

There is going to be a brand new generation of Afghani refugees growing up in this country, and their perspectives will be very important in processing and understanding what happened in Kabul. 

Likewise, the collateral damage done to our soldiers who had to witness the carnage and instability of the conflict and the attendant rescue mission that was Sisyphean at best… these are memories that won’t be forgotten any time soon, if ever.

It’s an engrossing documentary on a subject that none of us really got the scoop on while it was happening. As with most events on an international scale such as this, the real story takes time to tell and eventually reveals itself as the years pass. The lessons learned from such events, however, are hard to discern, mainly because it seems like humanity never seems to learn from the mistakes of the past. Our reactions, instead, are the only things that change: compare the evacuation with the plight of Ukrainian refugees shortly after Russia invaded. There was a markedly different response to what was occurring overseas. And I’m sure that when the dust settles on that war, the documentarians will put the pieces together and we will see something closer to the truth emerge from the wreckage.

But how long will that take? And how many more traumas have to be inflicted while we wait for that time?

Survivor’s Guilt

“Life takes from us the things we love and robs us of the special ones and puts them high where we can’t climb and we only miss them all the time”

— an unlikely song whose lyrics I don’t have permission to reprint 

The 28th of September is my late brother’s birthday. He would’ve been 32 years old.

I hate to relive it but if I’m going to blog about trauma then I have to at least let people know what happened.

He was riding his Harley-Davidson and had to lay the bike down because traffic in front of him suddenly stopped. He slid on the road and broke his neck while sliding into the car in front of him.

His death was quick and, I assume, painless. Efforts were made to revive him on the scene but he pretty much died upon impact.

Despite the force trauma that killed him, he didn’t have a mark on him. His bike was also in immaculate condition.

Various facts and stories have come to light in the wake of his accident: at one point we thought he’d been speeding but that wasn’t the case; the cause of traffic stopping may or may not have been caused by a jaywalker; and there were questions as to whether his handlebars were faulty.

But one thing remains consistent throughout all the accounts: his breaking his neck was a freak occurrence. He should’ve survived it. He was relatively young and probably should’ve been able to shake it off under normal circumstances. But he landed on the bumper of that car in such a way that he didn’t really have a chance to avoid it.

It is senseless. Perhaps it is the most senseless death I’ve ever known. Maybe because it’s my brother and I still can’t believe that he’s gone… or maybe it just didn’t make sense that he should go out this way. 

Not a scratch on him, or even a bruise. When I saw him at the wake, he looked like he was sleeping. Peaceful. Serene.

It’s such a shame that this happened. My brother was as close to perfect as you can get. Yes, he had flaws and shortcomings like anyone else. But he also didn’t have a lot of enemies, and I can’t remember ever being mad at him. People just loved him.

I loved him. 

We were 16 years apart in age but I saw him grow into the man he became, and he accomplished a lot for someone barely in his 30s: married with two children and a third one on the way, beautiful house, brand new vehicles, great new job (Lockheed) with the future wide open, bright and wondrous.

When I was turning 32, I was single. No kids. I lived in Burbank but that soon changed because I lost my job (one of many jobs I’ve lost over the years) and couldn’t afford rent. I ended up moving into a converted garage on someone’s property. I had a truck that my dad gave me and not much else. I was pissing my money away on drugs and partying. I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile in my life.

Within two years I would make the changes necessary to reverse those stats: I eloped with a girl I’d known for only 6 months and 9 months later she was pregnant. 7 years later we were living in Indiana and I was divorced. Never got that house but I picked up some other vehicles on the way. And I have some possessions I’m proud of, but I’ve never been the type to accumulate things. Pretty much my record collection and my music gear and everything else is just detritus.

My brother’s life was far more fulfilling than mine. Many times I think to myself that I’m the one who should’ve been in the casket. It doesn’t seem fair that he’s gone and I’m still here, sucking up air and wasting space. Yeah, I have things to live for: my son, my girlfriend, my family back in California, the friends I’ve made out here… but I’ll always have that thought in the back of my head, that survivor guilt, that feeling that I should’ve been able to at least plead to Death and offer myself instead, because I’m getting older and have lived enough that it wouldn’t be considered a tragedy that I’m gone, and my brother could continue to be an inspiration to everyone around him.

I don’t think Death would take me, though. Not because it isn’t my time or anything like that. No, I don’t think Death would take me up on it because it’s not a good trade. Death would no doubt see that my value is not equal to my brother’s… I’d have to throw something else in to make it worth his time.

I know, I’m pitying myself here. But it’s all that I can handle right now. Everything else falls short. Nothing offers me that much comfort. It’s only been three months and yet it feels like three years, and it also feels like yesterday. Time is meaningless to me right now.

My family is hurt the hardest, because my brother was a daily presence in their lives. They did so many things together, spent so much time creating memories and living their lives as a community. If I’d been the one to go, they might be sad but they don’t see me as often so it probably wouldn’t hurt them as bad. They’d feel bad for my son being left without a father, the same way I feel awful for my nieces and nephew. But I think it would’ve been easier on them if it had been me. 

I shouldn’t say or write these things, I know. But these thoughts (and worse) come to me when I’m feeling low, and the only way to drive them out is to express them somehow so that it no longer resides in me. It has to leave me so that I can move on.

So if you’re reading this, just know that I trust you enough to let you into my private world of hurt, and that I am just venting… not everything being recorded here should be taken too seriously. Some of it is just my coming to terms with this terrible reality.

This Wednesday, when we remember him on the day he was born, when we commemorate his life and his significance, I’m choosing to remember him in a way that is unique to me. I sent a birthday card to my parents that I want them to leave on his grave. They can read it if they want, but it was meant as a message to him. I know he can’t read it, but it’s important to me that I feel like he somehow will get the message contained in the card.

Since I can’t be there, this is the best I can do. But even if I was there, I don’t know how hard it would hit me. I don’t know if I’d be able to even deal with it. And with the holidays coming up, the next few months are going to be so difficult.

I don’t know what else to do, but this isn’t the first time I’ve ever felt this way.

I Love Mankind

On the first day of September 2022 I received through Facebook Messenger a link to an article in a magazine called The Atavist entitled “Fault Lines”. It was sent to me by an old friend from high school, and it involved a lawsuit against the LAUSD and our former alma mater. He informed me that one of his cousins who attended the school after we graduated was also one of the victims referred to in the article as “Jane Doe” and that while he believed her story, he also couldn’t believe how long the abuses chronicled in the article had been going on.

The abuses in question were inappropriate sexual relationships between members of the teaching staff and underage students. Four members of the faculty were named; three were teachers and one was an administrator who may have covered up accusations and allegations over the course of many years. Two of the teachers are no longer alive, leaving the remaining two defendants to make no comment as the suit continues.

Of course, the implications of this are far-reaching and timely, being in the wake of #MeToo and other attendant scandals in the cultural landscape. I didn’t hesitate to post the link on Facebook, waiting for comments and reactions to the piece. As expected, many of my colleagues and fellow alumnus were shocked, outraged, saddened, and devastated by the content of the article. 

I’ve been asked by a few people, both privately and publicly, about my feelings concerning the matter. I have refrained from giving any in-depth comments regarding this because I wanted to take the time to absorb it. But I already knew before I began to write anything down that whatever my statement ended up being, it wouldn’t really resemble anything my former classmates may be thinking.

My experience is unique, and also something I am not ready or at true liberty to fully divulge. I have my reasons, and coming off the heels of a traumatic, life-altering death in my family… well, it goes without saying that I want to be careful with what and how I share my feelings on all of this. I do want to be candid, frank, and transparent about my stance in this matter, but I’m at the age where I also don’t want to spill my guts in a potentially toxic atmosphere only to have it used against me as some weapon for people who want to score points for their own personal agendas, or worse: taken as evidence that somehow I support certain behaviors or actions that enable people who prey on others to prosper.

In short: anyone who doesn’t like what I have to say about my high school teachers having sex with their students and the culture that looked the other way while it happened… I really don’t care what you think anyway, and never have.

*\*

Our high school was unique. The teachers in the Humanities Magnet that I attended in the early ‘90s weren’t your average overworked, underpaid, stressed-out public servants. They could be considered “cool” in that they wore their hair long and dressed like hippies and treated the kids as sort-of equals and didn’t talk down to them and created a curriculum that emphasized social issues and what could be now thought of as “being woke”… indeed, nowadays when I hear talk about “critical race theory” being some brand new indoctrination, I scoff at the notion that this is something recent. We were being taught these kinds of things back then, and we loved it. 

I didn’t go to this school unaware of what was going to be taught either. As Highly Gifted Magnet students, there weren’t a lot of options for us when we left junior high: it was either the Humanities Magnet in Reseda, or the Magnet high school in North Hollywood. Most of my classmates in junior high were going on to North Hollywood; I chose the Humanities program because several of my junior high English teachers felt I’d do well there. They specifically recommended that I attend it based on the strength of my writing skills. There’d be a lot of essay writing and they felt that I would have an advantage in this type of setting.

“It’ll be like college prep,” one teacher told me near the end of ninth grade. (I didn’t enter high school until my sophomore year) “By the time you get to higher education you’ll already be ahead of the curve.” Little did she know that I had no plans of going to college. 

I’d already rejected the idea of becoming some sort of professional before I even set foot in high school. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to graduate; dropping out was something I seriously entertained. But I figured I’d give the Humanities program a shot because, hey— what else did I have going on? My parents had recently divorced and I was 16 years old with no job, no extensive education, and a severe distrust for all authority.

The distrust was tied to the discord in my family that led to the divorce. It wasn’t just a situation where my parents didn’t love each other anymore. Boundaries were broken, lies were uncovered, activities exposed. I woke up one morning and the world had been turned upside-down. Black was white, the sky was green and the grass was blue. Nothing was as it seemed, and therefore nothing mattered anymore.

Without getting into details, you can rest assured that the ugly secrets that had been uncovered did not directly affect me: I wasn’t the victim of any hands-on abuse. Rather, I had to watch as the fabric of the already-unstable safety net of my whole family unraveled before my eyes. I was forced to sympathize with people who committed terrible crimes and who also were raised in traumatic circumstances that compelled them to act out and take advantage of others. In the course of a few months my entire worldview had been turned inside-out, and what’s worse is that the shame of these revelations made it impossible to confide in anyone around me. 

So when I got to the Humanities Magnet, the last thing I wanted to deal with was some self-styled “cool teacher” who wanted to be my buddy. I was willing to write the essays and speak up in class when I thought I had something to say, but I was never going to let anyone in.

*\*

My family was very religious, and although I had been raised in church and read the Bible often, I also challenged what I was taught and always had difficult questions to ask. So when the truth about my family became known to me, the first thing to go was any affiliation with organized religion. It was all hypocrisy to me now. 

My family also had its share of criminals and junkies. A lot of people had done time or left in handcuffs or had to be bailed out. One of my uncles had been stabbed to death and the cops did nothing to help. This and many other incidents led to a major hatred for the LAPD and the justice system. Long before Rodney King and rap groups like N.W.A, I was already not a big fan of the police. So that was strike two.

The rumors about my Humanities teachers started swirling within weeks of our arrival. I knew some of the older class, and they talked a lot. Word got around. Insinuations and suspicions rose and ebbed, and of course this was the ‘90s so our awareness of such behavior was limited and primitive. Yes, it was creepy, but it also wasn’t verifiable. Nobody had any smoking guns that pointed the way to the guiltiest parties.

Still… for me, that was strike three. In my mind, society had already struck out. I was on my way to pitching a no-hitter.

It wasn’t always like that. I mentioned my junior high teachers… they encouraged me to write. They fostered that talent within me. They praised me and gave me hope that maybe I could write for a living and be successful as an adult. And they were human, too: one of them was openly gay and also happened to be one of the most popular teachers at our junior high. So it was shame when he took a long leave of absence and then one day we found out accidentally that he’d died of AIDS.

Despite that intrusion of hard reality into our adolescent lives, I still felt like the teachers looked out for us. One of the counselors must have known about my home situation and took it upon herself to try and keep me out of harm’s way. She even had me serve as a student TA for a teacher who reminds me of Morgan Freeman in hindsight. He knew my situation too, and he was understanding and helpful. I owe those junior high school teachers a lot— they actually cared. I felt it. It was real and sincere.

I was relieved of those illusions after my family self-destructed. I went into high school with a major chip on my shoulder, and no amount of cool posturing was going to get through to me. I literally lost total faith in every institution available to me. 

I wasn’t going to fall for anyone’s smooth talk anymore.

*\*

Not only did I resolve to embrace antisocial tendencies, I also made a clean break from my junior high peers. I didn’t hang out with anyone who knew me before we became sophomores. Looking back on it, I think there was a deliberate hostility on my part due to the fact that I couldn’t really explain what was going on with me. Or more to the point: I didn’t want to open up. That is some scary stuff for a teenager to deal with, and truth be told no one my age was equipped to deal with what I would’ve laid on them. 

I did make friends as the school year started, but I don’t recall being the one who initiated any of those first conversations and interactions. I sort of kept company with the small circle of friends that migrated with me from the old school, but that didn’t really mean anything: I had become a master at being alone in a crowd. Standing next to people at lunch time didn’t mean connecting with them. It just meant that I wasn’t chased away either.

I did make it a point to speak up in class. I looked forward to that. I was going to troll the faculty as best as I could, decades before the label “troll” was even coined for kids like me. I wanted to be a thorn in the sides of the teachers for whom so many of my so-called friends and fellow classmates held in such pliant reverence.

Instead of regular old history, we had a class called Social Institutions. It was taught by one of the teachers named in the article in The Atavist. He had long hair and a beard but he didn’t remind me of Jesus. He just came off as someone’s older brother’s hip friend.

He took my joking and sarcasm in stride. I could tell he was at a loss with how to deal with me. I didn’t disrespect him outright but I refused to play nice as well. I think his opinion of me may have changed once he read my essays, but I can’t be sure. He probably just wrote me off as a smart-ass with a bone to pick with the world. He didn’t have to lift a finger to accommodate me, and I didn’t go out of my way to curry his favor. 

He tolerated me.

I remember going to a protest down the street that this teacher attended. It was a McDonald’s in Northridge, and afterwards he came up to me and said that everyone was going to go to Falafel Palace afterward and that I was invited to come along.

I grimaced and replied, “You’re gonna protest that too?”

He almost laughed. But he wasn’t fazed. We all made our way over there, and I even sat down and broke bread with him and had a conversation. But I could tell he was bored with me. At the time I didn’t know what it was but I think I know now what was going on: I had nothing to offer him. I wasn’t who he wanted to talk to. I wasn’t fawning over his every word and he wasn’t terribly interested in my general negativity. I guess the best you can say is that from that moment on we negotiated some sort of truce or cease fire, even though he wasn’t really out to get me.

Early on in his class, he wrote a statement on the chalkboard for use in a lesson:

LANGUAGE IS POWER

That statement stayed with me for the rest of my life. It is something I still think of to this very day, whenever I need to talk my way into or out of a situation. Whenever I see someone spitting game, whether it be a street pimp or a corrupt politician or a slimy salesman, I think of that sentence. It became nothing short of a mantra, and at a time when I desperately needed to feel some sort of control in my life, those words did the trick.

So thank you, Mr. Coleman, for giving me that. You may have saved my life. I am grateful for it. I owe you that much. But it’s a good thing I wasn’t a vulnerable teenage girl, or else you may have given me something else that I probably would not have wanted.

Maybe that’s not fair to say, seeing as he also had friendships with many male students that didn’t cross any lines. But I guess that was the thing— I didn’t want to be friends with him. I liked him as a teacher, and he wasn’t a jerk to me. I just didn’t want to be friends with my teachers. Any of them. Not even the cool ones.

*\*

My 10th grade home room teacher was a dead ringer for Sean Connery. He was a passionate middle-aged Italian man who taught Art History and gained my respect by writing a lengthy critique of my first essay that I turned in when school began. His essay was an essay itself. It was clear that he had things to say and wanted to disabuse me of any bullshit notions I was dallying with during those days.

He also was kind of nuts. He was prone to sudden loud outbursts followed by profuse and plaintive apologies to the class for flying off the handle. It was really entertaining. He reminded me of Stacey Keach in the movie “The Ninth Configuration”, someone perilously close to the edge of sanity and barely composed, a hair’s width away from going berserk and taking everyone within range with him. 

And yet, I warmed up to him over time, along with a small handful of teachers over the course of my time in the program. I think the faint whiff of lunacy was what drew me in. We never felt unsafe in his presence; he was obviously going through some personal turmoil in his life that occasionally spilled into his professional life but never derailed it. It humanized him in my eyes. He wasn’t too far off from me, in some weird estimation. 

Most importantly, despite his willingness to shoot the breeze with me and other kids, he maintained a boundary between himself and his young charges. I’m sure he was friendly with his students, but there was a line drawn that he refused to cross. He didn’t seem interested in trying to cozy up to us. He just wanted us to appreciate the beauty of art and the history of the human creative impulse. 

He wasn’t named in the article, and that doesn’t surprise me at all. I can’t imagine that he would’ve been the type to date students or try to “groom” them for anything other than their future education and prospects. 

At a time when I was wary of anyone or anything trying to pigeonhole me into a role I didn’t accept, his example made an indelible impression upon me. And somewhere buried in my personal papers, I still have a copy of the essay I wrote that he critiqued extensively at the beginning of the school year. I should find it and read it again, because it will remind me of what I came to that school for: to learn how to be a better person regardless of the chaos that was ripping me apart inside. He might have known a single thing about me as a person but he still managed to reach me and strike a nerve that left a mark on me that remains a part of who I am today.

He did his job, and I thank him for it. I often wonder what has become of him. Did he pass away? Or is he still alive, and possibly shaking his head as he reads about what his colleagues did, and how he may or may not have known what was happening when he was employed there? Does he feel any guilt, any sense of responsibility? Did he try to take a stand but felt himself going up against some Sisyphean task of trying to bring attention to all of the bad things and finally just left in disgust and a notion of self-preservation? 

Surely he couldn’t have been the only teacher who felt that way… and if that article is to be believed, he wasn’t.

*\* 

The main culprit in that article was a teacher who held a lot of sway at the school when our class attended the Humanities program. If any teacher could embody the spirit of that curriculum, if anyone was the agreed-upon face of that whole movement, it was him. He also had long hair and dressed casually and his demeanor was approachable and friendly. 

He was cooler than the rest in that he let students ditch through his classroom window, which faced the street and allowed for perfect getaways. He also had a reputation for being more hands-on than the others. We heard the rumors, and more than a few girls that I knew personally (including a few that I had dated) had some sort of story about his advances. 

So why did we not say anything? Why did we not make some noise in the manner that he and the other teachers were instructing us to do when we went out into the big bad world to do battle against the powers that be?

My only answer is that we were kids, and our defenses were lowered by the need for his approval. Even I found myself coming to him with a selection from the late Hunter S. Thompson that referenced something he taught us in class regarding the Whittier police riots in the late ‘60s; he read it and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. I felt like I’d contributed something other than just snarky comments and petulant snottiness. 

I didn’t have Mr. Miller as a teacher until my junior year, and by that time the chip on my shoulder had been whittled down considerably. I still did things like run an underground newspaper that was critical of everything around me, but the edge had worn away and I had mellowed out due to my life getting more manageable. I no longer thought about dropping out of school. I started playing music with a group of friends that I made over the course of a year, one of those friends being the person who eventually sent me the article in The Atavist.

With a forum like my underground magazine and a larger group of friends to relate to, it would’ve made sense for me to use the persistent rumors as a springboard for pointed attacks on what I perceived as just more grown-up hypocrisy doled out to us impressionable young sponges soaking up academic lessons in race relations, institutional sexism, and heartless corruption. 

But I didn’t. I think it was because, even though we all sensed that there was something rotten going on behind the scenes, these adults were engaging in some sophisticated cognitive dissonance with us. They were simultaneously giving us the tools to grow our consciousness (and consciences) and breaking the rules and trust they were so fervently establishing. 

This is what is the most confusing thing for my former classmates in light of the allegations and accusations. The conflict between someone you admire and their reprehensible actions is seemingly insurmountable. In this day and age, we can’t give quarter to those who betray the trust we put in them. Whether it’s the likes of Bill Cosby or Bill Clinton, when the private lives of so-called exemplary pillars are exposed for public consumption, it leaves us feeling demoralized and cynical. We feel hoodwinked, defensive, humiliated, even foolish for having had the wool pulled over our eyes.

*\*

I don’t feel this confusion. I entered the fray with my illusions shattered and my sense of what the world was like rearranged for the worst. Even as the decades have passed, it not only doesn’t surprise me that the roosters have come home to roost but it doesn’t make me feel that bad. That’s because I already had a primer on gaining valuable life lessons from irreparably flawed people.

Of course, I am evolving every day. I do not lack compassion for the victims, and I don’t feel the need to defend these monsters for their grotesque overreaching. I believe the Jane Does, and I support their actions, and I believe that there must be some justice done to right the wrongs inflicted upon innocent teenagers.

But I also have had to reconcile these issues with my own flesh and blood. Relatives and close family friends who ruined lives also helped me improve mine. It is an ache that runs deep in my bones, seeping into my veins, sometimes poisoning my thoughts with unnecessary bile. 

Perhaps this is also the final lesson that we have to learn from the program, that things are never black and white, that underneath the surface lie things that we are never meant to see, and if we do see them we have to learn to live with them the same way we have to learn to live with grief and tragedy and heartbreak.

I like to brag that I read all of the required reading for our Humanities classes well before I attended the program. I was familiar with Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Vonnegut, Kant, Sartre, Camus, and countless others before we were assigned their times for grades. Well, I’m going to brag some more: I was well-versed in this nausea that sets in when learning that your heroes can be inspiring as well as total scumbags, long before the rest of my peers.

And believe me, it’s nothing to brag about.

No one wants to feel that way. None of us look forward to that day when the masks are taken off and we see that our emperors were naked the whole time and we chose not to see it.

I am fortunate in that I didn’t have to learn about my teachers being predators the hard way. I was not victimized, I was not abused. I don’t mean to come off as callous, or pointing a finger like Nelson from “The Simpsons” and taunting everyone with a smug “Ha Ha!” I am not gloating or reveling in some weird victory that has no meaning for anyone else. 

I can’t honestly say that I knew it all along and that I didn’t care about Mr. Miller or Mr. Coleman or that I alone am able to navigate this strange new world with aplomb. I never knew any of the other characters in this tragic farce. I feel no pride in not speaking up about it even though I had no hard proof. All I know is that I am somehow better equipped for all of it thanks to the horrible conditions and traumatic episodes of my life that brought me to where I am today: somewhat brain-boggled and dazed by how it’s all going down.

It’s taken me a while to collect my thoughts on this, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to address it. I’m certainly not being brave by blogging about it. Too much time has passed for it to be anything other than me venting and getting a few things off my chest.

It boils down to this: those teachers deserve what they get, if they get any sort of comeuppance at all. Miller is dead, and there’s no guarantees that any sort of recompense can be made for those who were abused. 

But they also did a lot of good, and that’s the tough pill to swallow. These shitty human beings also educated us and taught us to go out there and take the likes of them down.

Can you imagine if that had been our final exam when we were seniors? How mind-blowing would that have been if we’d walked into Miller’s classroom the day before we graduated and had been told that we had to verbally dress him down for his sins? Would any of us been able to do it? And if we had been able to, how would we have felt?

Of course, that’s not how life works. People don’t recognize their flaws and just surrender themselves and take responsibility for their actions. They bide their time and hope it all goes away. And that’s why they don’t really deserve our sympathy and compassion.

But we can remember the positive things even as we learn about the negative things. We can hold two conflicting ideas in our heads at the same time and it doesn’t have to be bold hypocrisy or a shameful contradiction.

Because that’s life, and we’ve been living it, and it doesn’t ever stop, and there’s no such thing as closure, even if lawsuits get filed and people get their due. It just goes on and on and we hope we can do better in the future.

And I think of this quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose “Notes From Underground” we read in class, but this quote comes from his most famous novel, “The Brothers Karamazov”:

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”