And Let Me Be

And let me look with bright blue eyes,
on beauty's heart, on beauty's face,
and let me feel her breathing sighs,
with all of true love's style and grace

And let my heart not quicken so,
when shadows crawl across my eyes,
to darken and disgrace my sight,
with unknown fears and useless lies.

And let me be someone to trust,
who will not lie, who does not hurt:
someone who is not ruled by lust,
but loves to laugh and dance and flirt.

And let me show that I can be:
a man like no-one else or other;
a unique soul who lives for truth;
who loves the world and is its brother.

And now I know what I must do,
in life, in love, in work, in play,
and all my thanks must go to you,
for simply showing me the way.

---

I think that I'd like this poem to be written on my headstone when I die.

I wrote it in 1999 for someone who had a surprisingly strong attraction to. She really didn't reciprocate,  and even then, I found a powerful emotional driving feeling at my core in the small hopeful act of falling head-over-heels for someone. Although I was seeking a deeper emotional connection when there simply wasn't one there to have, the poem was a wonderful end-product of this process.

I took a 'transformational life-training' course at a company called Landmark Education in 2001, which had a really profound and beneficial effect on me. This course was all about personal discovery, self-realization, breakthroughs and re-charting the course of my life. It consisted of about 200 people and was lead by a remarkable Australian woman call Cathy Elliot, who must have lead this course to literally hundreds of thousands of people over the course of her career and I was determined to make sure that she remembered us, the people from our course, out of all the hundreds of courses she's participated in.

So, I wrote out this poem in a frame, and read it to her in front of the entire room full of people on the last night of the course. I then asked every single person to sign their name around the border of the frame to represent how the sentiment in the poem was true for everyone else as well. It was just a wonderful night and I filed it away as just one of those fantastic moments for posterity.

About 3 or 4 months later, Cathy sent me a small note of acknowledgment for this: the postcard shown below. This was really a small gesture, but is certainly a token that brings me a remarkable amount of pleasure and satisfaction to see.

And now, as I sit, reflecting on my current experience, amid my failings, the seemingly impossible challenges I face, and the unquenchable thirst for suffering exhibited by my shadows and my fears, I think of this poem. I think of how, at its heart, these few scribbles on a page is a true expression of who I really am and of what I really stand for in myself. Perhaps, we all need such a declaration to seize on in troubled times. This is mine.  

My Feelings for Truth

Truth is power. It provides answers to the questions 'how?' and 'why?'. When we realize it, it touches us, moves us and shocks us. When it can't be found, we become confused and rudderless. When it is abused, it conveys power to deceivers at greater cost to the deceived. When it is shared, it is the basis of trust. The truth requires courage, humility and clarity. It needs no argument. It needs no defense. It needs no impassioned plea to convince or cajole. It simply is. 

It disheartens me to observe that argument seems to stand as the sole arbiter of truth. Win arguments and your truth will carry the day. Argument is fraught with charismatic charlatans who score points, argue, insult, humor, joke and say almost anything to convince you of their point of view. I'm harsh in my judgment of these people. Their souls are stained. I hold the truth sacred and like any true believer, I can be an asshole about it sometimes. 

A couple of years ago, I found myself strolling along third-street promenade in Santa Monica on a Friday night. I saw some people had set up a microphone and were arguing with passer-bys about Intelligent Design. Now, this idea stems from an incident in 1802, when William Daley found a watch in the street. He suddenly realized that there must be a watchmaker. Such a thing could not possibly have appeared there randomly through natural processes. By extension, the same argument should hold for the human eye, or other wonders of nature. Hence, it follows naturally that an ‘intelligent designer’ created us and that the whole notion of Darwinian evolution is unfounded. Nowadays, over two hundred years later, this logic has no scientific credibility, but advocates of this idea argue the point anyway. They have a religious agenda, not a scientific one. They present pseudoscience and proselytize.

I squared my shoulders and cricked my neck in preparation for a fight. I wanted to take these guys on. I needed to. A teenage kid was at the mike trying his best and I stood just behind him and started muttering encouragements: "Good point!"; "You're doing great!". I had a thought. "Ask them about snowflakes! Go on, ask them about snowflakes." After all, each individual snowflake is completely unique, beautiful and complex. We know that their fractal patterning arises from the geometry of water molecules, not from a 'designer'. Our opponent didn't understand the point I was trying to make. He just looked there and looked at me with a mixture of confusion and incredulity on his face. 

After a while, I realized it really didn’t matter what we said, they weren't really interested the argument, they were only interested in winning the argument, no matter what. Tellingly, I noticed a camera they’d set up to record the conversation and I suddenly realized that they'd study the footage and just work to find counterarguments to the things being said. By getting in their face like this, I was actually helping them.

They didn't care about the truth at all. They were bullshitters; worse even than liars, since liars care enough about the truth to try to subvert it. The determining thing was their underlying intent. In this case, this was fairly innocuous: spend a Friday night spreading the good word amongst the heathen, then go off to Denny's for pancakes. 

Things are not so harmless in the wider world. In his book 'Bad Science', Ben Goldacre takes on a whole host of bullshit artists: T.V. dietitians with mail-order doctorates, newspaper columnists stoking false health-scares, miracle cures for incurable diseases; all with an intent based on credibility and cash. These people have the resources to litigate their cause endlessly. They have public relations savvy to drive their perspective relentlessly. They are masters of propaganda, of argument, of finding the public pulse and pressing it just hard enough to sell their wares. Put simply, in the world of argument, they will always win.

During the horrors of the Japanese 2011 earthquake and subsequent nuclear meltdown, the right-wing pundit, Ann Coulter, was on TV espousing possible benefits of radiation for the people of Japan with a few wisecracks about sunbathing. It was in monumental poor taste, minimizing the ordeal of a whole nation for her own publicity. But she did it with enough stage presence to make it sound plausible to the right-wing faithful. She presented anecdotal evidence; she looked good on camera; she made her statements with certainty. It was patently designed to increase her notoriety as an incendiary firebrand and ultimately just to sell more books. 

A friend of mine posted on Facebook "Call me old fashioned, but I think this is wrong". I posted back "You're not old fashioned; you just have a soul". For want of a better word, isn't it just that? Intentions, actions and commitment constitute the raw material and quality of a soul. Bullshitters who to mix cruelty with their lies have the most putrid spirits of all. 

Everyone inhabits the world with a personal understanding of its laws. Our individual 'truths' are subjective and somehow equally valid. A scientific, objective view of the world answers the question 'how?' and gives us atoms and electrons, galaxies, cars, and mechanisms. 

These are, however, utterly devoid of meaning, which arises from our subjective, personal 'truths' as an answer to the question 'why?'. When I declare 'I love you', just you try to convince me otherwise. 

There are many contradicting, equally valid, subjective truths. The way these subjective truths map to the known mechanisms of the scientific universe determine how we predict the future and shape it to our will. The degree that our subjective truths resonate in the souls of our fellows is how we touch, move and inspire each other. 

I've had mystical experiences that defy explanation. A few years ago, I was in love with a Catholic woman and was taking some initiation classes to look at joining the church, despite being an atheist. These once-a-week evening classes allowed me to pepper our priestly teachers with questions. I found that it became more about deeper attitudes and relationships rather than finding a logical definition for God. I was taking time to pray, which just consisted of me sitting quietly by myself, asking questions and contemplating answers. 

One night, I was working out, warming up on an elliptical trainer in an empty L.A. gym at about 9pm. I suddenly had an uncanny feeling of Jesus (yes, that Jesus) running in the air besides me. It was a strange, miraculous feeling of being watched over and cared for specifically by him and it was wonderful. It was very moving. 

Was it objectively real? No. I'm sure that the air never shimmered with light to reveal Jesus Christ in a pair of running shorts keeping me company in a way that was measurable to an outsider. But who cares? That's not the point. The point is the underlying subjective relationship. A Christian who talks to God every day really does talk to God in their mind. Even though my scientific self happily declares this to be objectively impossible. This leads to contradiction, and an imperfect logic that I relish. There is a God. There is no God. 

The 'how' and the 'why' are different things and there's no need to mix them up. The meaning in life is lodged in the 'why', in our intentions, our actions and our commitments. A life lived in bullshit carries little meaning in its brief passing and even less in its legacy. A life lived in truth carries love and real power forward into the future for its heirs.

'Tink'

'Tink'. The soft sound of metal on metal. Two blades meeting for the first time in a quiet engagement. The prelude to a bout. As a nickname, it fitted her perfectly. A slim blond actress with martial grace. Think of Naomi Watts with a sword in her hand.

I was taking a stage combat class for fun. Of course, within the grand sweeping continuum of unfulfilled-hopes-and-dreams-that-is-Hollywood, this was serious stagecraft for some people. After 19 years of training in competitive fencing, this was nothing like that for me. Surprisingly though, it revealed some unexplored worlds that I had no idea about: sexiness, charisma, style.

I walked into class one day and there she was. Distinctively beautiful, poised and altogether as non-demure and fully in-your-face as any fencer could be. That night, we worked on a scene where she was the hero and we were the bad guys. She got to kick our asses. She looked damn good doing it and she made no secret of how much she reveled in her own power. Almost immediately, irrevocably, I fell in love with her.

I had nothing of her sense of danger, nothing of her need to test boundaries. We went out on only one occasion that could have been misconstrued as romantic. If there was ever a possibility of a mutual tryst, it flared briefly that night and fizzled.

I remember her saying "I could invite you up but I have to get an early night" and as gentlemen like myself have always done, I respected her wishes without the faintest idea of what might really be going on. I professed my interest, asked her out, heard that she was seeing someone else and realized that it was hopeless. I either refused or found myself incapable of giving up, continuing to reach for the unimaginable goal of being with her. The romanticism, suffering, and fantasy fed on deep hidden things. I hated it. I loved it. It caught me up in its clutches and it sure as hell wasn't letting me go.

It was a little disconcerting how she easily accepted my feelings. Who knows? Perhaps she enjoyed the attention. Perhaps she was oblivious. This was untamed and driven psychology. It fed a dark shard of thought that resonated darkly within me, slyly muttering "Why would she want you? Why would anyone want you?"

One time as friends, we were going to a comedy show and I, the man, drove. I picked her up looking forward to spending a nice evening with her. I remember vividly the moment when my car simply conked out at a traffic light near the venue. I felt a flash of panic. I sat, hands frozen on the wheel, breathless and frankly aghast. She calmly reached across me, hit the hazard lights on the dashboard and started to look around for a place to stash the car. She was unbelievably gracious all evening and I was mortified. As I said goodnight, I put her into a taxi and tried to preserve some vestige of bravado. The cause of the breakdown was that I had forgotten to fill up the car and had run out of gas.

Amid all this humiliation, unfulfilled desire and self-loathing, there was a moment, utterly vivid and astonishing clarity. I remember one day I was fighting through tears and feeling quite utterly miserable over her. A quiet soft voice welled up in me and said, quite clearly, "Its OK for you to feel this way. You love her and she doesn't love you back".

It was simply the act of giving permission to be, pronounced internally with a gentleness that makes me soften even now. I remember how the tears retreated, how the clenching knot in my belly untied and how my whole body unwound. 

It was a moment that I will remember forever.

We're still friends, Tink and I. She's still with the same guy, still a free spirit, still beautiful. I now know, that like Cyrano with Roxane, some element of my own self-loathing had needed an external beauty to help in the search for redemption. The moment I let all that go was an inflection point of the highest magnitude. It was the moment when my compassion for myself finally outweighed my sense of everything I lacked. In some sense it was the moment the blades came apart, separated and were put back in their scabbards.

All R.A.F.

In pictures snapped at my cousin's wedding, my Grandad stands between me and my uncle; clear and steady, clipped and clean. All RAF.

Grandad flew Hurricanes over the shores of Devon during the Battle of Britain. He fought at the allied disaster at Dieppe. I remember with affection my mother's account of him accidentally flipping his plane upside down and entangling it in a tree. He really never spoke of this time, during his twenties, when he'd dash out to fight Nazis in the sky under the shared terrifying threat of national extinction.

He had a softly spoken presence that always filled in spaces, made things happen. I once stomped into the sitting room, flopping down in front of the TV, frustrated that my ball had disappeared somewhere into the overwrought flora of his garden.

"I can't find it" was all I said, arms crossed, a picture of sullenness. Ten minutes later he tossed it to me having gently snuck away, expertly managing the imminent upset with a grandfather's silent grace.

The old devil was a sly hand with the ladies too. At my sister's 18th Birthday, at the ripe old age of 75, he caused an admirable stir by taking time to have a slow dance with my father's girlfriend. She almost certainly enjoyed it too, since he would never have descended to an inappropriate hand or caress. The old bones had rhythm, and he certainly was a dashing fellow.

I moved stateside at the age of 27 and only saw the family occasionally. I called once at Christmas and asked to speak to him. And so, on the phone, I said, as we Californians often do, that I loved and admired him. There was some silence on the line and all he could say was a ruffled 'jolly good' in shocked embarrassment. The next voice on the call was mum's: 'What did you just say to Father?'

The summer before he died, I took a trip and spent a day with him at the old family home in Devon, the whole place teeming with memories of summer vacations, marriages and Christmases. We talked for the first time as men. He brought out some of his old Royal-Air-Force Logbooks to show me. This treasure described the chapter and verse of each sortie, of each kill, of each loss. Brilliant 1940s cursive penmanship gleamed brightly from the page. The clipped tone of the airman's unflappable commentary chimed echoing in the background. His voice was always soft, charming, and full of a working Englishman's propriety.

I think of him flying, risking everything; his young wife waiting at home pregnant with his first child: my mother.

So now he stands sixty years later. After a career as a Fireman and the father of a family of four kids, eight grandkids and some great-grandkids on the way. I do hope he feels proud in this moment: piercing blue eyes, airman's moustache, impeccable suit. All RAF.

Stand back, I'm going to use Yoga

Although, on the whole, yoga simply makes me feel really relaxed and happy towards everyone in class, sometimes I’ll actually get angry when I’m practicing. I’ll be attempting to master my breathing and focus when someone does something in class that, quite frankly, pisses me off. For example, one of my fellow practitioners will move their mat to the other side of the room and I’ll assume that they’re avoiding me (‘snooty bitch’, my inner dialog will say). Or maybe someone next to me is breathing too loudly (‘what a show-off’, my thoughts will chime). Or a teacher will spend a little too much time working with a pretty girl (‘creep’, I’ll shamefully think to myself). I’m shocked by my own meanness sometimes and its certainly a little embarrassing and humbling to admit it here for everyone to see.

It may seem strange, but this is the central core of what yoga is for. By focusing on the breath and the movements in the asanas, we’re able to hear the uncharitable chitter-chatter in our minds and attempt in some calm way, to let the thoughts rest, to let them be and maybe even let them go.

This isn’t the scary part: I think I’m a nice person, I’m probably at my most calm, relaxed and honestly considerate when I’m practicing yoga. And then, even there, my thoughts are often capricious, unkind, cruel and even violent. And that’s in a quiet room doing something I love to do. Put me on the freeway, in rush hour traffic, with deadlines nipping at my ankles and the whole world in a rush. Out there, my mind is tumult of chitter-chatter and I mostly don’t even notice.

A couple of weeks ago in class, I was next to an attractive woman and the assistant teacher kept on adjusting her, working with her on poses, and flirting with her, or so it seemed. I thought that this was completely inappropriate and this completely incensed me, I was furious.

Rather than let this particular thought process work its way out calmly, I let it take over my practice. It felt good to be aggressive and to work it out through physicality. I was just angry and it probably showed. My face had a hard, gritted edge to it. I moved through the actions accurately, carefully, with precision and purpose. In its limited way, this felt like a solid ‘fuck you’ to the guy I was fuming at. My inner voice was crowing: ‘Yeah, check this out, see what I can do’.

And, sure as night follows day, I got injured. It was minor, a little pain in the external edge of my wrist. More than enough to slow things down and sober me up. ‘Nothing teaches good alignment like a little inflammation’ as one of my teachers used to say and violent actions lead naturally to trauma, pain and suffering. The thoughts themselves do nothing, the actions are the things that carry consequence.

Aggression, showing off, pursuing sensation for its own sake, or even just assuming that you ‘should’ be able to do certain things in yoga are all great ways of getting injured. The injuries can be valuable too, they serve as a break, a wake-up call for foolishness carried too far. The guy I was so angry at is a great teacher; he has a gentle manner, a kind heart and, get this, he’s married. My immediate, triggered reaction to him was, quite simply, flat wrong.

‘Using yoga’ is simply this: decoupling your actions from your reactions. I used to practice Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art that utterly embodies the antithesis of this idea. I was hanging out with some Krav buddies and we were just cycling around the Marina in LA. Two of us were about to cross a street when a car started barreling towards us. My friend leapt into action, he pedaled forward, muscles straining, speeding out in front of the car and skidded to a stop on the other side with some degree of elegance, grace and power. I joined them after waiting for the car to pass. He grinned at me as I met up with them on the other side.

“Did you see what I did?”, he said triumphantly, “That was Krav Maga!”

“Sure. Did you see what I did?”, I responded, “That was yoga.”

A Surreal Encounter Over Real Food

This evening, I felt the need to simply get out and wander around Santa Monica for an hour. The streets were crowded and in-amongst the hoards of beautiful, well-heeled, tanned and gorgeous residents were a number of homeless, soliciting money, sitting on benches, throwing out arbitrary, insistent requests for loose change. I hadn’t strolled for two blocks until a man accosted me and launched into a roundabout speech, laced with flattery and desperation in an attempt to ask me for ‘anything I could spare’. I declined, as compassionately as I could and walked on.

Real Food Daily was busy, packed with customers and sitting prominently at one of the corners of the communal dining tables was a large, big shouldered man tucking into a vegetarian burrito of one kind or other. He was obviously homeless, he had a box with his possessions sitting on the chair next to him. His nails were long, unkempt and filthy. He was wearing a gown under his clothes that looked like the sort of robe male muslims wear (except for the tell-tale tiny dotted pattern that gave it away as hospital clothing). He smelled a little too. Naturally, the only seat left in the whole restaurant was directly opposite him.

I ordered my food and loitered, not wanting to go anywhere near this guy. I was so conspicuous that a waitress asked me if I needed anything. I answered, mumbling somewhat, “there aren’t any seats available”, realizing how ridiculous this particular lie was as I said it. So I walked over, asked him for permission to sit near him and took my place.

The other actors in this drama were a man and a woman, not quite a couple but acquaintances with enough knowledge of each other to be overtly nice and flattering towards each other. She was an elegant lady, of possibly Japanese or Korean descent and he was an American, a Southern Californian with charm and gentle self-confidence. She, like me, had been avoiding taking a seat and asked him a little more brusquely if he could ‘give them space’ before sitting down. The homeless guy shuffled his seat, got up, sat down and asked me if I needed his seat.

“It’s fine, you’re OK where you are” I said, as gently as I could. He then resumed his meal and there followed the most surreal little scene. As this shambling wreck of a man shuffled through his burrito and salad, the couple were digging into a mutually empowering conversation: the well-known staple on the west coast about ‘spirituality’. They spoke animatedly about the challenges of life, about how they’re dealing with life’s tribulations; about how things are quite tough and how they’re realizing things about themselves to become a better person. Phrases like ‘victim mentality’ were bandied about. The lady mentioned how when she was a student in New York (before she had ever had a rich boyfriend) she had no idea what it was like to eat in fancy restaurants. And all the time, I hear this, I see the homeless man’s mouth tremble as if he was crying, or muttering to himself with small measure of fierceness mingled with shame and desperation.

I cannot fathom how he was feeling at that moment. Perhaps he was conspicuously aware of how out of place he was, even of how disgusting we all found him. The sheer obliviousness of the couple was simply jarring, even to me. Their conversation about ‘spirituality’ left me feeling angry. Is this really spiritual? This self-centered view of the world that proclaims and declares its own strength with little or no compassion for those who have, quite literally, nothing? I simply stayed where I was and didn’t change my seat, even where other tables became open in the restaurant. I wanted simply to remain still, to stay in the company of this man without making him feel any worse. I could see him sullenly clean the food off his plate, hating his existence and offer some small quiet protests to the only person he had to talk to: himself. As I left, I asked him if he would accept the remaining money I had in my wallet, a paltry $3.

As I left, I was struck by the totality of his situation. Of how we complain and bitch and moan about trivialities all the time and how little time we have to show compassion for genuine suffering. I feel that this man is unlikely to survive for much longer and am struck by my powerlessness when faced with situations like this.

As I walked away from the restaurant, back to my car, waves of sadness crashed over me and tears sprang to my eyes. Another cheerful looking homeless guy on a bench said ‘spare some change buddy?’ and I choked up as I said no. The final twist of irony was the concern in his voice as he followed up with “Hey! Are you OK?”.