The Shawshank Redemption

You know, I've never read anything by Stephen King all the way through. There are probably those who, upon hearing this, need oxygen, but it's true. I started a novel of his once -- something about a gunslinger -- and got distracted along the way. Then I read through part of Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and realized I liked the movie better, so that was that.

I used to work with a psychiatric nurse who was quite a bit younger than me and she loved Shawshank; it was her favorite film. That, along with a mutual commitment to sleep deprivation, was one of the many things that made our friendship work so well. She used to say, "I'll have plenty of time for sleep when I'm dead," and I couldn't have agreed more. Of course, she was out partying while I was writing a book but the outcome was similar.

You know the story of The Shawshank Redemption, I'm sure. Andy Duphresne is an accountant falsely accused and convicted of murdering his wife. Incarcertated in Maine's maximum security prison, he demonstrates a peculiar tendancy to thrive even in the most dismal of circumstances and against all odds. Upon making good his escape, he leaves money for his friend Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding under a tree in a Buxton hayfield. With the money is a note, encouraging Red to take a chance and follow Andy to Mexico and freedom.

I live near the site of that fictional tree and the significance of it has not been lost on me. It's possible to live in a prison (often of one's own construction) and never know it. You wonder how a person can be so unaware, but they are. The life they've made has bits and pieces of entrapment placed in critical places like the bricks in a prison wall. On those rare occasions when they contemplate a break out, those bits and pieces seem insurmountable.

Why would anyone do such a thing? There are lots of reasons, I suppose. Security, self-doubt and uncertainty, overly-conventional thinking, family upbringing or the absence of models for conceiving anything else. But like Andy, after years of gazing at those who live outside the confines of captivity, something clicks, and they find the courage and a reason to pick up a small rock hammer and start digging. And, like Andy, they may have to crawl through a foul-smelling river of refuse in the process, but in the end, they come out clean.

A Conversation in the Clouds

I just had the most awesome experience. I took my dog outside for a little "business," and there was still a very light periodic rain falling. You know what I mean, the kind of rain that seems to fall only here and there like widely-spaced polka dots. It was a little chilly, my sweatshirt was almost enough but not quite, and the ground was damp from steadier rainfall overnight. About a dozen wild turkeys were in the hayfield, gobbling to one another and munching a late breakfast.

We paced back and forth up and down the lane, as we usually do, my dog taking note of the magical scents that seem to surface best after a rain. It takes him a while to figure out what he wants to do in the morning. I guess it's his equivalent of bathroom reading.

At one point, as he investigated what turned out to be the right spot, I heard a brief but determined little shower of raindrops in a tree just about fifteen feet away. At first I thought this heralded the onset of our becoming drenched, but the shower stopped as suddenly as it started and never came near us.

As we walked back to the house, I imagined the sky having a conversation with the rain clouds: "Oh, so you need to go out and rain? That's fine -- wait! Wait, there's Beggar and his dog...move a little to his left, will you? A little more...just a little...there! That's good. Now, watch his reaction after you drizzle: he's going to just love this."

Mother Nature's Son

It's another early morning and I think Mother Nature has determined it's her job to help me prepare for board exams. I say that because she has consistently gotten me out of bed well before the alarm clock for several days running. It's funny because I've never been a morning person but around 6:30 there is enough light diffusing through the windows that my slumber is interrupted. Either that or it's the cat cruising for attention or the dog sprawled over me, generating enough heat to melt ice cubes.

Whatever the reason, I'm up and enjoying the quiet solitude. The sky is still a vague greyish-blue (remember, I'm color-blind and pastels are murder for me) but I can just make out a tinge of sunlight on the tips of the trees in the hayfield. It's chilly out and there was a frost warning last night reminding me this is Maine and the latitudes are a little northern, after all.

The dog just walked into my study and looked at me as if to say, "What are we doing up at this hour?" then dropped in a heap by my chair. He's willing to keep me company but only so long as he can sleep through it. The cat has ensconced himself in the north window and is engaged in a staring match with a chipmunk outside on a fallen log. I'm on my second cup of coffee and starting to feel human.

Canadian painter Leanne Cadden writes about emotion as prayer and I think she may have hit on something. She regards emotion is an active, rather than merely responsive, force and says, how we feel creates the environment around us. What we can't put into words is nonetheless a kind of communication that nurtures spirituality. I think it suggests we may influence the course of life without even knowing it.

Taps

Memorial Day used to be less personal for me. Often, it was an opportunity to make the trek over the high mountain passes from Denver to the Western Slope and visit family in late May and early June when the peaks are still snow-covered and marmots (woodchucks to Mainers) are just starting to creep out of their burrows, rub their eyes, and yawn, muttering one to another, "You snored all winter."

But Viet Nam altered the holiday's innocence, and once you start down a road you may not be able to turn back quite so easily. It's that way with a lot of things but, thankfully, though difficult -- damn difficult -- it doesn't have to be impossible. My cousin's husband was a helicopter pilot who was killed in the boundary-less jungle somewhere between South Viet Nam and Laos. He's buried at Ft. Logan National Cemetery in Denver and I found his name on the traveling Viet Nam memorial last year.

I was in my early teens at the time and had only met him once but the reality of his death and its impact on my family became more acute when it was my turn to register for the draft. My friends and I watched the drawing that year with held breath. I thought I had a fairly high number, but my margin of safety vanished quickly. Finally, like a roulette wheel ticking down, the ball dropped into place three spaces beneath me.

Uncle Sam apparently decided this nephew needed an education rather than military service, and I was given a deferment to finish high school and attend college. Over the years, however, because my father was a Disabled American Veteran (it was an injury rather than a wound incurred in the final days of WW-II), I spent quite a bit of time on one base or another, learning the ins and outs of Veteran's healthcare.

Memorial day came home to me in 2001 and I'm not talking about 9/11. My father passed away the previous late autumn and like my cousin's husband and now, my dear friend and coauthor, Dr. Lynn Smith, he was buried at Ft. Logan. They say a man never truly becomes a man until his father dies. I believe that's true. Until then, if he's fortunate enough to have a father who loves him, dad is always there. We make decisions on our own, we're responsible, we may even raise a family, but there's a change that occurs when a father dies and it's not until then that we finally begin to grow up. It's universal in my experience; I've never had a man who has gone through the loss of his father disagree with me.

So, there I was, on a cold day in November, with my father's flag-draped coffin immediately in front of me, while an honor guard showed him honor in slow motion. I'll never forget the moment one of them placed the carefully folded flag in my hands and saluted. I met his gaze and nodded. Seven rifles fired three times and a buglar sounded Taps. I looked over my shoulder at the rifles stacked as though at bivouac and realized I'd brought my father to rest among those with whom he'd served. Since then, I've never been able to hear Taps or see a military funeral, even depicted on television, without tears.

Memorial Day isn't a holiday for picnics, games, and visiting family -- not for me at least, not anymore. Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, on this Day I'm really standing among thousands of white marble gravestones, the mountains to the west, with wind blowing over the grass.

And Taps is being played somewhere in the distance.



(Creative Commons image of Ft. Logan National Cemetery via Wikipedia)

The Crack of Dawn

"It's five o'clock this morning and the sun is on the rise," to borrow a line from John Denver. I really hadn't intended to be up this early when I shut off the light last night, so this is more accident than design. I was dreaming about the correct drug treatment for diseases like "fish finger" when consciousness rescued me from reliving my professor's Robin Williams imitation for the umpteenth time.

Speaking of morning, I love the old television commercial that depicts a young guy coming home for Christmas, quietly opening the front door, his arms laiden with wrapped packages. There's snow on the ground, it's probably 40 below and he's clad only in a sweater and muffler. Excuse me for a minute, this is a description of a coffee commercial and mine has just finished brewing -- be right back. Ok, where were we? Oh yeah, so it's cold but he's warm because he's got Christmas gifts and a muffler. Works for me.

As he quietly shuts the door behind him, we see his adoring little sister standing at the top of the stairs and calling, "Peter, Peter!" He sweeps her up in his arms and suggests they wake everyone else up. The next scene? You guessed it, Peter and his sister are brewing Folger's coffee! I'm being facetious; it really is an endearing storyline and proves once again that Norman Rockwell sells.

Thinking about Rockwell (aren't you glad you couldn't sleep either so you could be up reading my rambling?), as a kid I discovered his work in a volume of American artists and became really fascinated with his images. Partly it was their realism and partly it was the way I felt looking at them. It was like peering through a window at another world, watching its inhabitants jump in the old swimming hole, have Thanksgiving dinner, and sometimes go to war, yet they could not see me.

I love windows. Old single-paned windows like the ones that open out from the hayloft of my barn, large picture windows, small bathroom windows -- any kind of window. Walls without windows make me want to get out the saw and go to work. There's a whole world outside and it's not enough to know it's there, it needs to be seen and brought home. Windows are optimistic, they show us possibilities. All we need to do is go after them.

Tee Totalling in the Afternoon

It was a bit early in the day for beer, after all, it was only four o'clock -- in the afternoon. Most of the others had imbibed since nearly noon but he delayed, knowing what would happen once he started. "I went to a lobster (pronounced lobstah) fest last night," said a friend, "and someone had to drive me home, as usual."

His reticence for drinking didn't stem from sworn sobriety, just the simple fact that he couldn't hold his liquor. Oh, he remained socially-acceptable, unlike the heroine of the Country song, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off," but he slurred his words and smiled stupidly. Usually, he managed to make it through half a beer before he said anything he regretted but on an empty stomach, it was anyone's guess.

He politely passed on Heineken, wistfully turned down a brown British ale, and happily said, "No thanks," to Budweiser decked out in designer labels. It was simply too early and sooner or later he'd have to drive. Later on, he'd wonder where he got his genes and which relative was having the last laugh in heaven at his expense, but for now at least, he could enjoy the company of friends without wishing a hole in the ground would open beneath his feet.

Why, yes, I did go to an end-of-the-year barbeque today. Whatever tipped you off?

King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I used to teach masculine psychology and someone asked how that differs from ordinary psychology. I suppose you could say it's about what makes men tick. In that respect, the only difference is the focus. But having said that, there's more.

Instead of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, we talked about images of masculinity that are common cultural elements worldwide. C. G. Jung called these images "archetypes" and by that he meant, more or less, an unconscious template that influences conscious behavior. Our discussions focused on four particular archetypes, i.e. King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. I'll try to give you a Reader's Digest version of these.

The King refers to a man's ability to order his life and nurture others. A well-developed King considers the consequences of his actions, accepts responsibility for his failings, and encourages his children to become their own best selves. The Warrior describes the energy of achievement and it is essential if a man ever hopes to accomplish anything of lasting value. The man in touch with the Magician is reflective and self-aware. Finally, the Lover gives passion to life and enables a man to dream.

There is no doubt one can find other ways of thinking about the male psyche, but images such as these help clarify traits and behaviors -- they get us "out of our heads" and into real life. They also help men visualize the kind of person they wish to be while confronting who they are.

In tribal cultures, the process of initiation into mature manhood brought these archetypes to life. We still have initiation rites though we call them by other names, e.g. graduation, bootcamp, and so forth. Ironically, our modern initiation rituals don't always result in persons who embody the fullness of the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover archetypes. Women (yes, there are feminine counterparts to each of these) and men may seem adrift, uncertain, or bland. Disordered lives are fertile ground for addiction. On the surface they look fine, beneath the facade lies chaos.

Changing the leopard's stripes is what the men I worked with were all about and their drive and commitment to the process was wonderful to behold. It's what Dr. Rae Crane was about in Medicine Man. It may take a lifetime to achieve, but look at it this way, we all end up the same way, so why not end up better than we might have become otherwise?