Breathing

I have long practiced one form or the other of mindful breathing. When I was a grad student in New York years ago, I met a guy who taught yoga. He introduced me to alternate nostril breathing (ANB), which I practiced off and on for a few years and then dropped. I had no idea, then, of its benefits, nor did I think I needed them. Then, when I began zen practice in the 1970s, I learned about breath counting—the basic practice for zen practitioners which simply teaches one to count and observe breaths from one to ten, over and over. If the mind strays into thinking, which it always does, one comes back gently to the breath counting. After many years, most practitioners begin to simply focus on the breath, watching it enter through the nosetip, go down to the lower abdominal region (about two inches below the navel) called the hara in Japanese (sometimes the word tanden is used), and exit with the out breath. In so doing, the upper chest and shoulders tend to relax, as does the mind, and some zen schools counsel focusing almost entirely on this hara as the key to practice. More recently, I have returned to a slightly different phase where one tries to simply become the breathing, as I noted in my blog “Earth Breath” (see my book of blogs with the same title, Earth Breath.) Just before that, on a zen walk or pilgrimage I took around San Francisco Bay, I stopped at one of the zen teaching places I was visiting, this one in Albany run by a Korean monk. There I was introduced to his practice of Sun Do breathing. This took place after morning meditation, and, in the first stage, consisted of lying prone, and breathing deeply into and out of the lower belly, called the tantien in Korean. This lasted for about an hour, with the breathing rate controlled by a musical rendering of the four Bodhisattva vows in Korean, one full breath per vow. It worked magically, I thought, and gave me uncommon energy to complete my walk. In addition to this practice, I also use Andrew Weill’s 4-7-8 breathing method (4 breath counts inhale, hold for 7 counts, exhale for 8 counts) for relaxation. 

            There is, of course, more development of this type of breathing in the various Buddhist and Yoga traditions, and now in many western medical traditions as well, but I have never actively moved towards those until recently. The impetus for this new look into breathing came from my cardiologist in Pt. Reyes. He emailed recently recommending a book and talks by one James Nestor. Nestor is not a doctor but a journalist who initially became interested in the ability of some free divers to hold their breath underwater for far longer than average, sometimes 8 or 10 minutes at a time. He began doing this himself, which eventually led him into a full investigation of the science of breathing. Though I haven’t yet obtained his just-published book, Breath (Riverhead Books), I have watched several videos of him and others discussing the benefits of deep breathing (all available on youtube) including why modern humans do not breathe as our ancient ancestors did.

            What Nestor claims is that proper breathing can heal, or go a long way towards helping with such modern diseases as hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, sleep apnea, heart disease, asthma, and many more. Truly fascinating is Nestor’s research into the evolutionary development of the human skull and its nasal opening. He claims that research has shown that, over the centuries, the human facial area of the skull has grown narrower, and the nasal opening smaller, a development that has made full breathing for moderns more difficult. This has also led to more humans having crooked teeth (due to the smaller mouth opening), something that causes more and more of us to need orthodontic work. But that is an aside here. Nestor’s chief investigation involves deeper breathing, and the many techniques that have now been proven by western medicine to improve human health in several areas. This appealed to me because I have been diagnosed in recent years with both high blood pressure and diabetes. If there were a method to help control both without drugs (I mainly control diabetes with diet and exercise, but blood pressure now requires numerous medications), that would be a major boon in my life.

            Of course, the advice to breathe deeply is a commonplace in calming people in stressful situations, most notably women during childbirth. But Nestor is referring to more conscious, regular breathing during all kinds of activities, and rest states as well. So, based on his talks and what I knew of zen breathing and yoga breathing (prana, the Sanskrit word for breath, is considered the foundation for all forms of yoga and spirituality), I decided to look up some of the materials he claimed now have scientific sanction. The literature is voluminous. For example, from Scientific American, a 2019 article by Christophe Andrè titled, “Proper Breathing Brings Better Health, Stress Reduction, insomnia prevention, emotion control, improved attention…but where do your start?” begins with the technique of cardiac coherence, said to help with relaxation. That is to say, slow, deep breathing 

increases the activity of the vagus nerve, a part of the parasympathetic nervous system; the vagus nerve controls and also measures the activity of many internal organs. When the vagus nerve is stimulated, calmness pervades the body: the heart rate slows and becomes regular; blood pressure decreases; muscles relax.

The vagus nerve is said to inform the brain of these changes as well, causing increased feelings of relaxation, but deep breathing may also act “directly on the brain itself.” Andrè cites a 2017 study by Mark Krasnow of Stanford, suggesting that breathing techniques may influence activity in the locus coeruleus (a brain region involved in attention and anxiety) by modulating the activity of a group of neurons that regulates respiratory rhythms—the pre-Botzinger complex in the brain stem. In addition, another study at the Technical University of Munich showed that “attention given to inhaling and exhaling” can “ease stress and negative emotions” by “reducing activity in the amygdala,” a brain section well known to be involved in emotional arousal. And what kind of breathing does this? One cardiac-coherence exercise recommends “inhaling for five seconds, then exhaling for the same amount of time (for a 10-second respiratory cycle).” Such deep, regular breathing is shown to regularize heartbeats. For more calming effect, one can spend more time on the exhale, because heart rate increases some when inhaling, while decreasing when exhaling. In sum, certain therapists recommend the “365 method”— three times a day deep breathing at six cycles per minute (five seconds inhaling, five seconds exhaling) for five minutes.

            This same article also provides several other breathing exercises to relieve stress, most, it seems, derived from yoga breathing exercises. One exercise simply advises following your breath as you breathe; another counsels “abdominal breathing;” another counsels “rhythmic breathing,” holding the breath before exhaling, with a variant to this being “alternate nostril” breathing similar to what is mentioned below. Also mentioned is a breathing exercise of “inhaling for panic,” which suggests rapid inhaling to acclimate to the feel of panic (this may be similar to so-called “holotropic breathing,” a psychological procedure invented by Stanislav Grof for emotional and spiritual advancement, which sometimes induces the bringing forth of hidden emotional traumas so as to deal with them). The website www.healthline.com more clearly lays out the benefits and rationale for alternate nostril breathing (ANB) with detailed instructions. Providing its name in Sanskrit, Nadi Shodhana, the site promotes ANB’s “ability to reduce stress and still the mind,” and asserts also that “it may decrease blood pressure and increase feelings of calm.” This assertion is backed up with results of a “study conducted in 2008” demonstrating that “a 30-minute practice [of ANB] lowered blood pressure, compared to participants who only practiced breath awareness.” The lowering of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure was said to be “significant.” The healthline site also notes that left and right nostril breathing have different effects, as yogis and modern studies have shown: i.e., that “breathing exclusively through the left nostril decreases blood pressure, whereas breathing exclusively through the right nostril increases blood pressure.” Other variants (Kapalabhatiand Bastrika) are also described, and their effects on both activity and mental acuity and lowering blood pressure are noted. What is remarkable is that the site seems to have no spiritual or commercial component, but merely points to the beneficial effects, from a strictly western perspective, of these ancient breathing practices on health. 

            This latter pattern is continued on the NIH-sponsored website, www.pubmed.gov. The article “Immediate Effect of Specific Nostril Manipulating Yoga Breathing Practices on Autonomic and Respiratory Variables,” by Shirley Telles and P. Raghuraj, describes the results of an experiment testing the heart rate, skin conductance, breath rate and blood pressure of practitioners with varying degrees of experience. The results showed that “following RYNB [right nostril yoga breathing] there was a significant increase” in blood pressure; in contrast, “pressure decreased after ANYB [alternate nostril yoga breathing] and the systolic and mean pressure were lower after LNYB [left nostril yoga breathing].” Another study on alternate nostril breathing on the same site indicates that “Alternate-nostril yoga breathing appears to improve performance in the digit vigilance test, along with a reduction in blood pressure.” In other words, alternating nostrils while deeply breathing decreases blood pressure without any loss of mental acuity. 

            With regard to diabetes, a study on the same website, pubmed.com, from the J Med Assoc Thai of January 2008, “Hypoglycemic Effect of Sitting Breathing Meditation Exercise on Type 2 Diabetes at Wat Khae Nok Primary Health Center,” concludes that “SKT1 [Somkorn Kantaradusdi-Triamchaisri, a type of sitting breathing meditation] practice had a post-prandial hypoglycemic [lower blood sugar] effect and a slight reduction to systolic and diastolic blood pressure.” Another site, www.breathing.com, provides a more thorough exposition of the causes and mechanisms of diabetes, and cites from several studies which have “recently discovered that oxygen levels in pancreatic beta cells regulate the activity of pancreatic cells through hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha.” Then, noting that “Optimal Breathing exercises can help in controlling blood sugar and bring insulin levels in the normal range,” a study [also on pubmed.com] by Martarelli, Cocchioni, Scuri and Pompei is cited—“Diaphragmatic Breathing controls complications attributed to elevated Blood glucose levels”—to the effect that “relaxation induced by diaphragmatic breathing increases the antioxidant defense status in athletes after exhaustive exercise,” inducing a “lower level of oxidative stress.” Another study from 2014 showed the same beneficial effect from a six-month breathing program. By filling the lungs with fresh oxygen through deep breathing, that is, all cells in the body are oxygenated, which helps burn off fat. More, such breathing helps control oxidative stress—an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants—which “triggers diabetes-induced inflammation, insulin resistance, and thus elevated blood sugar levels.” By also helping to regulate better sleep, deep breathing works to “decrease levels of inflammatory cytokines” and to “reduce levels of stress-inducing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.” If true, all these effects combined can only aid in maintaining overall health, particularly for those with diabetes. My only complaint about this website is that several products to aid in deep breathing are prominently displayed for sale, something that always arouses my suspicion. I would rather go directly to the many pranayama yoga websites for the same information on breathing technique.

            The use of mindful breathing techniques to treat asthma is also worth mentioning. Numerous studies have been done to assess the effects of pranayama to help asthmatics, whose numbers have soared in recent years—probably due to the worsening quality of air in cities around the globe—to breathe without the use of drugs. One such study from the January 2009 International Journal of Yoga, displayed on the NIH National Library of Medicine website (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017963/ ) is titled “The effect of various breathing exercises (pranayama) in patients with bronchial asthma of mild to moderate severity.” Fifty patients were studied and separated into two groups: one to do meditation focusing on breathing, the second to do breathing exercises, including deep breathing through both nostrils, alternate nostril breathing (here called Anuloma viloma), Bhramari chanting (deep breathing with humming for the exhalation), and Omkara, similar to the above, but with forceful exhalation and OM humming. The conclusions were unequivocal: after twelve weeks, there was a significant reduction of asthma symptoms in the pranayama breathing group as compared to the group that did only meditation. The important conclusions are cited:

Firstly, expiratory exercises are helpful. In bronchial asthma expiration is difficult, so exercises that support expiration are beneficial…Secondly, forceful expiratory exercises (expiration) are helpful and this is illustrated in Figure 4. In this figure, air is easily coming in and going out in a normal person, but in an asthmatic patient air is coming in easily but during expiration there is closing of airways and force is required to open the airways; hence, a high pitch/ forceful Omkara OOOOOOOOOO…MMMM was found to be helpful instead of oooo…mmm. Thirdly, prolonged expiratory exercises (expiration) are helpful.

            Finally, the website www.breathmeditation.org discusses the Buddhist tradition of breath meditation, citing from several sutras attributed to the Buddha’s time. One citation follows:

In the Dhatuvibhanga Sutra (M 140:4), Buddha’s entry into meditation is described in this way: “The Blessed One sat down, folding his legs crosswise, setting his body erect, and establishing mindfulness in front of him–that is, establishing his awareness parimukha–in front of his face at the tip of his nose.” So focussing attention on the tip of the nose is a requisite for meditation in general.

This site also references a book by Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath, as follows:

“Much of what the [Anapanasati] Sutra describes will turn up naturally if you just sit and follow the breathing, if you persist in that practice over the course of days and months and years. It is natural for your attention to deepen until it includes the whole body, and for that process gradually to calm the body.

The Anapanasati Sutra is said to be the Buddha’s own original teaching on breathing mindfully in meditation both for bodily relaxation, and for cultivating the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. In other words, breathing mindfully—from the very beginning of Buddhism—is said to lead not only to bodily health, but to spiritual advancement. The same is true in most Yoga practice: the end result is not simply bodily health, but spiritual health as well. And in truth, perhaps the two should not be distinguished one from the other: as the Romans used to say, mens sana in corpore sano— “a sound mind in a sound body.” The two are one. And at the core of both, it seems, from the ancients to our own time, is deep and mindful breathing.

            Of course, the problem for us moderns, as noted briefly above regarding asthma, is that we cannot count on the same virgin quality of air as could the ancients. Before industrial pollution, the air in most places, though it could be fetid in large cities, was not, until the last 300 years or so, laced with sulfur compounds or acids or fuel exhaust or, now, plastic micro-fibers that infiltrate and settle into our very lungs. And regarding the latter, no one yet knows what the long-term effects of this plastic lung residue on our breathing will be, though we can guess it won’t be good. But there is no guessing about the negative effects of fuel- and chemical-polluted air on those millions among us whose poverty forces them to live near highways and industrial corridors where the pollution is most concentrated, and where asthma is endemic. Eventually, though, no one, not even those high up in gated communities, will be able to escape the effects of having to breathe polluted air. What those effects will be on the efficacy of deep breathing, or even our ability to continue to practice it, is unknown. Until then, however, we could do worse for our health than just breathe—breathe deeply, breathe mindfully, and breathe as part of a regimen designed to maintain our hearts, our lungs, our blood and cells, our brains, our spirits. 

Which is—do we even have to say it about breathing?—our most fundamental activity.

Lawrence DiStasi

Progress, at What Cost

As we all sit here during the Covid-19 crisis pondering our mortality, my thoughts have turned to an age-old question: how much should humans do to try to save ourselves from the inevitable pains of life? This is not an easy question, especially these days. That’s because though we have all been raised to think of the glories of human progress and how much they have improved our lives, both daily and long-term, we are now finding out that some, if not most of the “advances” we humans have made, especially since the industrial revolution three or four centuries ago, have not turned out as rosy as we once thought. Nonetheless, there are still computer mavens and AI specialists who are gleefully predicting the massive improvements to come from robots and cyborg humans who will soon be able (they say) to directly upload to our brains all the human knowledge thus far accumulated, and more besides. In short, the optimism about ‘progress’ is proceeding rapidly to the next glorious phase. So there’s this disconnect and always has been, as far as I can tell, between what we humans can do, and what we should do; between what we can know, and what we should know; whether, as the Greeks saw, the stealing of fire from the gods by Prometheus, was a good thing or a bad thing. In the myth, Prometheus was made to suffer for eternity for trying to give humans the power that should only be possessed by the gods. The Genesis story gets to this same dilemma: Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge which Yahweh specifically told them not to do, because it was presumably reserved for God alone. But Adam and Eve, prompted by Satan, did taste that forbidden fruit and, as a result so the story goes, we all suffered endless pain and difficulty in life from then on. In short, it’s not at all clear that humans are wise or foolish to try to improve their lot through knowledge, or learning, or invention. 

            Lest we think this is all the stuff of ‘out-of-date’ myth, this problem has become all too clear in our time. Consider only the problem of global warming, or ACD as I prefer to call it: anthropogenic climate disruption. This threat to our very existence on this planet—and to the existence of most other life forms as well—stems directly from alleged human progress. We have invented a source of energy, fossil fuel, to power almost all human activity. Wood burning powered steam engines; then coal took its place as a power source; then gasoline became the power source for all of our engines, including those that powered our automobiles, our trains, our planes, and our electric plants. Aside from the destruction that wood, then coal, then petroleum did to forests and miners and oceans from oil spills and air from smoke pollution, there is now the destruction of our atmosphere from the so-called ‘greenhouse effect,’ which , as a result of CO₂, traps heat in our atmosphere, making temperatures steadily rise planet wide. In other words, the price we are paying for motorized progress is the threatened death of our species on this planet. Worse than Prometheus and Adam and Eve combined. And all because humans dared to capture the energy of decaying plant matter and convert it to human convenience. We no longer have to walk; we can ride or motorboat or fly. 

            And that’s not the half of it. I’ve been really alarmed recently about the information that’s emerging about plastic—our modern convenience par excellence. It seems that most of the world we humans have constructed in the last century—from bottles to car parts to containers to bags to shoes to clothing to carpets to computers to phones to construction parts like insulation and waterproofing and paints (the list could go on indefinitely)—is constructed with plastic, itself a product of petroleum. The price for these endless conveniences in our daily lives showed up first (to me, at least) in the revelation of the monstrous garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. A swirling island of plastic bottles and caps and every variety of plastic detritus has all made its way into our oceans, never ever dies (plastic is forever), and is floating like some nightmare ship of human folly in the Pacific. And the worst part is that sunlight breaks it down into tiny balls of plastic that fish and birds mistake for food, consume, and of course cannot digest. And some of that detritus makes its way into our guts too, as we consume fish flesh that is laced with plastic. 

            Now we are also learning that this plastic breakdown makes the particles so tiny that they travel on the winds as well. A recent article in Science Magazine, “Plastic Dust is Blowing into U.S. National Parks, more than 100 tons each year,” points out the horrifying fact that this stuff is deeply embedded in not just water and soil but our air, and thereby in our lungs, our guts, our very cells. A biogeochemist named Janice Brahney has done studies and her results are stunning:

After running the numbers, Brahney and her colleagues estimated that about 132 pieces of microplastic land on every square meter of wilderness each day. That adds up to more than 1000 tons of plastic per year across national parks and other protected areas of the western United States—the equivalent of 300 million plastic water bottles, they report today in Science. …Much of this microplastic might have been circulating for years, if not decades, she says. The particles may have first settled in farm fields, or deserts, or the ocean and then have been picked up again by winds as part of a global “plastic cycle.” (Erik Stokstad, Science, June 11, 2020.)

Just let that sink in. A global plastic cycle. Tons of plastic each year landing everywhere in our most remote, and heretofore pristine, areas. Brahney sums it up thus, according to Stokstad:

“We created something that won’t go away,” says Janice Brahney, a biogeochemist at Utah State University and lead author on the new paper. “It’s now circulating around the globe.”

That truth can be extended to all of our so-called disposable society; nothing, especially plastic, ever truly goes away. 

I’ve also gone to other websites to see where this plastic menace is coming from. Plastic bags, certainly. Plastic bottles. So convenient. But most of it comes from tiny plastic fibers that break down, like the ones we use to make carpets, and clothes. Here’s a few sentences from the critical and terrifying website, www.plasticsoupfoundation.org:   

Around 16% of the plastic produced annually in the world consists of textile fibers. In recent decades, production has grown by 6% every year and is now around 60 million tons per year. Synthetic clothing is responsible for endless amounts of microfibers, which can even be found in drinking water.

Synthetic clothing, like all our shirts made of rayon and dacron and who knows what else, and the fibers of which they are all made; all our shirts and pants and coats that are so waterproof and keep us warm and safe from the cold and elements and are so easy to wash and dry and don’t have to be ironed—well, unfortunately, they break down into these tiny micro-fibers and particles that get picked up by the wind, and rain down the way acid rain used to, only now they blow all over the planet and infiltrate our soil, our water, our bodies:

Research has already shown that we probably ingest microplastics at a rate of 11 particles per hour… The presence of microplastics in human lung tissue was already demonstrated in the 1990s by scientists investigating lung tissue of cancer patients, who expressed their concern that plastic fibers may contribute to the risk of lung cancer…Research showed that plastic particles might persist in the lungs, especially in people with lung disease. When particles would remain in the lungs, they likely stay there for a long time because they are bio-persistent, which could cause inflammation. It also matters how long the fibers are because longer fibers appear to be more damaging…Particle pollution has long been known to damage lung tissues, leading to cancer, asthma attacks, and other health problems.

There’s more, of course. Plasticsoupfoundation is doing yeoman service to, first, make the danger known, and second pressure oil companies to stop making more plastic and use recycled bottles instead. But the problem becomes one of cost: it’s cheaper in many instances (and certainly more profitable to Shell and other plastics makers charging full speed ahead with new production facilities) to manufacture new plastics. And, of course, governments tend to be reluctant to chastise large corporations and make them conform to recycling. So we’re left with the plastic menace, which consists not only of the plastics themselves, but of the additives that are used to make carpet and couch fibers flame-resistant, but which, many of them like BPA in bottles to make them harder, have been shown to be endocrine disruptors. But hell, what’s a little infertility when it’s all so convenient and long-lasting and profitable? 

            I could go on, citing the problems with the pesticides we’ve added to our crops to make them less vulnerable to bugs, and the fertilizers we’ve added to our soils to make them more productive, and the hormones we’ve added to our farm animals to make them less susceptible to disease, and the bioengineering we’ve done to plants and animals to make them more machine-pickable or tender or white-meat dominant for our chicken tenders, and on and on. But you probably know all that. The point here is not to list the modern horrors we’ve created that plague our world, and whose costs are only now becoming evident. The point is, what price convenience? What is the cost of progress? Is progress even possible? Can we clone ourselves and our animals to eliminate any chance of disease or waste or breakdown? And more important, should we, do we have enough intelligence and restraint and foresight to mess with our genes, our DNA, the very code of life? Or is it, has it always been, a fool’s errand? Have we been fooling ourselves all along, thinking that we can waterproof and waste-proof and infection-proof and illness-proof and work proof and gene-proof and death-proof ourselves?

            The myth of Prometheus suggests that perhaps we have been fooling ourselves. Comforting ourselves with our contemporary myth of progress. And that perhaps we should put more of our faith and our effort into trying to come into better harmony with our world, rather than muscle that world into a version that seems more convenient in the short run. Perhaps we should heed the wisdom masters, who have said all along that acclimating oneself to what is, rather than straining to invent or produce what might be, is the better part of valor. That is to say, we humans are not, ever, going to eliminate difficulty. Pain. Sorrow. Suffering. For these are the ineluctable elements of our human condition. Not the only elements to be sure. There is joy and happiness and ecstasy and discovery. There is the pleasure of friendship and family and community and useful work. And growing old. And seeing one’s progeny thrive. And seeing justice sometimes emerge from the courageous effort of some of us and, sometimes, all of us. But nothing can bullet-proof the human organism from suffering, decay, and death. One can be intelligent about the risks one takes. One can accept the advice of those who seem to know what prophylactic or corrective measures to take that give one more advantage in any crisis. But one cannot eliminate risk or effort or work or pain altogether. That being so, one is better advised to, yes, do the footwork, but in the end accept that the outcome will not always be success or even survival. But even there, when survival is questionable, there is the world, in all its daily beauty and complexity and persistence. There is the blood that courses through one’s veins on its own; the cells of one’s body that reproduce themselves on their own; the miracle of growth that seems to magically proceed on its own, even when humans do their utmost to fuck it up. And there is mostly and simply now, this moment when I am sitting here typing at my plastic keyboard on my plastic computer lamenting all this plastic coming back to haunt us, but still—still operating, somehow still alive and part of the inexhaustible, glorious and never-to-be-fully-comprehended or improved-upon universe. And sometimes, perhaps more of the time than we usually know, that might just be enough. 

Lawrence DiStasi

Fear

I have to admit it: it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to try to objectively assess the current president of the United States, or those Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell, who support his every inanity, or his base of supporters who dismiss every accusation of lying or chicanery against him as irrelevant and/or “fake news.” One really wants to condemn them all as idiots or traitors or worse. Ditto with the nation’s cops who are, many of them, clearly racist and militaristic and punitive in their alleged protection of the public. But this position, to a reasonable person seeking real change, is really not tenable. Nor does it reveal very much. Though we may be edging towards fascism in the United States, the way to combat its development (if it is not already too late for that) does not lie with name calling or insult or hyperbole. Nor does it lie in comforting oneself with perceiving and calling out those with whom one disagrees, in the hopes of somehow eliminating them. Gandhi and Martin Luther King were the latest true leaders to demonstrate that. Both name calling and insult only harden positions and lead to open and often violent conflict and the resulting repression. 

            Rather, it behooves us to see that people are motivated, when they are making the loudest noises and the most foolish decisions, by fear. For the most part, they think they are acting in their own ‘sacred’ self-interest. I put the word ‘sacred’ in quotes here to denote its unfitness as an adjective in this context, to indicate that though it may be a common conception in our time, it is not really apt because bloated self-interest is anything but sacred. May be, in truth, the opposite of sacred. But I digress. Most people, from what I have observed, do not or cannot see themselves as cruel or ignorant or racist. They do not see themselves as afraid, either. Or if they do, do not want to admit it, are afraid to admit they are afraid. And that is precisely why they rationalize their behavior with more acceptable notions like self-interest, or racist generalizations, or the ‘nature of things.’ Or perhaps the meanness and contempt of ‘others’: ‘They’ always get the best deal, and don’t care about us.’ Or, ‘they think they’re better than we are.’ Or, ‘they just don’t have the brains or the drive that we do.’ Or, ‘someone always has to do the dirty work; it’s what they’re suited for.’ Or, ‘I don’t have to apologize for looking out for my family.’ Or, ‘we work hard for our money and deserve all the rewards we can get.’ There are hundreds of such rationalizations, suitable for every occasion. And they all have the same basis in fear. Fear of losing what you have—or think you have. 

            This notion has been demonstrated in many psychological and economic experiments in recent years (first theorized by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their 1984 paper, “Choices, Values and Frames”). It has also been confirmed in one of the great comedic sketches of all time, Mel Brooks’ classic The 2,0000 Year Old Man. The conclusion of this hilarious alleged interview (Carl Reiner plays the interviewer) with a man who has lived through most of civilized history comes when Brooks answers the key question: What has driven all of this human history and misery? “Fear,” says Brooks. Simple fear. And though we laugh at the simplemindedness of the answer, we also laugh because we know it is so fundamentally true. What psychologists have added is that it is mainly the fear of loss—loss of what you have or think you have—that dominates most people’s decisions. That is, in economic situations especially, people’s fear of losing what they have far outweighs their belief or confidence in hoped-for gains. So they will refrain from betting (or investing or otherwise engaging in risk), even though the rewards might be very great and their chances reasonable. They are overwhelmingly driven to preserve what they have—which means that most people fear losing what they have too much to take risks for large, and in some cases, almost certain winnings. 

            This is relevant in a wide array of human situations. It is no secret by now that Trump supporters do not think of themselves as racist. Rather, they are largely white, working-class men and women who have lost a great deal in recent years, as factories have closed, or moved their operations to China or Mexico or Bangladesh, and American manufacturing has been hollowed out. Prior to these international moves, these were people, many of them, who had entered the middle class, and whose good jobs meant they could afford homes and even send their children to college. No more. Now many live in communities riven by addiction and closing shops and factories and the encroachment of people of color into their communities, their prospects very dim indeed. They blame it all not on their own fear, but rather on those perceived to be taking it away from them: coastal elites who ran the corporations moving into foreign countries, people of color getting ‘undeserved’ advantages, and foreigners, immigrants or interlopers who appeared to be taking the only jobs left. Anyone who could be blamed, aside from themselves, was  blamed, and when Donald Trump came along and blamed those same groups, they saw him as their savior. But at its root was fear, fear of losing advantages given them by their whiteness, and Donald Trump was savvy enough or paranoid enough himself to heighten that fear and provide the rationale and excuse for it. ‘They’ are coming to take your jobs, and they don’t deserve them, they’re drug addicts they’re rapists, and I’m going to build a wall to keep them out.’ And in that scorn and contempt coming from the top, we can probably see the same fear at its root. For Donald Trump, despite his constant self-aggrandizement of himself as an innate genius, betrays the fear of the man who knows quite well that he isn’t, not even close. On the contrary, he has always been terrified that he will be found out—first by his wealthy, adored father—and exposed for the fraud he is. A bankrupt several times over. A failure at college. A man who can hardly spell at the level of a grammar schooler, who spends hours preparing his “fake” hair, who has trouble reading anything more complex than a line at the bottom of TV screens that summarizes the news. Hence his scorn for those coastal elites, who read books and write books and hence know far more about any subject than the man who gets his information exclusively from watching TV. And heaps ridicule on the literate purveyors of real news which he calls “fake,” to protect himself from being found out for the actual fake he himself is. 

            But it is not just fake politicians who are driven by fear. It is also the powerful heads of corporations and the titans of Wall Street who are driven by a similar fear—the fear of losing what they have gained, no matter if it was gained by diligence, or by trickery or fraud or inheritance. Or by sheer luck. Fear of loss is what drives them all. Fear of missing out on a windfall. This is why they were so eager to transfer to foreign countries what used to be the glory of America, her manufacturing. They saw the writing on the wall: that foreign labor was so much cheaper (and workers there so much more malleable and desperate to work) than Americans, secure with their unions. So the fear-driven solution was obvious: either get undercut by foreign corporations and lose it all, or move the whole operation to the foreign country, with cheap labor and fewer regulations. And justify it as simply acknowledging the new reality of inter-global networks making everything more efficient. And top it off with foreign safe havens for your profits, which is really stoked by fear of losing one’s income to taxes, but can be justified as a more efficient way to maintain stock prices at their maximum. The massive buy back of stock options with savings from government tax breaks runs on the same logic. 

            Add to all this the toxicity of white fear—that is, the fear of white supremacists that their perceived reign at the top of American society is coming to an end, proved by the demographics showing that people of color will soon outnumber them—and you have a formula for what we are seeing in the United States today. A president who openly calls nazified and armed white terrorists “some very good people,” and ditto for groups like the Base and others who openly advertise their hateful programs and calls for the “boogaloo,” a plan for what they see as the longed-for and fast-approaching race war; to settle things with the all-out violence of civil war once and for all (or should we say twice and for all, since we’ve already had one Civil War). And it takes no very great perception to see that these crazies are in large part motivated, too, by fear: fear of losing what they have always had in American society: white privilege. If things proceed as they are, and whites are to compete on an even field with those people of color who will soon outnumber them (and who probably can outwork them as well), whites will no longer be able to count on their privilege to help them stay at the top. They fear they will be outnumbered at the workplace, in the marketplace, and at the ballot box. And they are right. Which is why the Republican Party also knows that its prime supporters, if voting rights remain in effect, will be outnumbered, and so must somehow be helped by disenfranchising or gerrymandering those “others” out of contention. In short, the Republican Party knows that it can no longer win elections fairly, and must cheat, using every trick in the cheaters’ playbook. As well as stoke the flames of discontent and outrage among its white, mostly male followers.

            Finally, though much has been said about them in recent weeks, it is important to note that the police comprise a similar case. For they too are motivated by fear. They are mostly white and therefore susceptible to the same alleged grievances and prejudices as others. But they occupy a unique position in our society, being in closer touch with the minority neighborhoods where much of the overt crime takes place (corporate crime is another matter), and have to contend with the prevalence of weapons that find their way into many of those neighborhoods. It is this prevalence of weapons that needs most to change. When policemen and women know that any person being stopped or chased could be carrying a weapon (and their experience and that of fellow officers tell them that too often they are), then no matter how well-trained or enlightened they are, that fear dominates their posture and procedure. That is to say, so long as American society is dominated by an insane gun culture that encourages citizens to arm themselves to ‘protect’ themselves, then policing will necessarily be dominated by the concomitant fear. How could it not be? There exist some 393 million firearms (at last count) in the hands of American citizens. That comes to far more than one weapon for every adult; and while some have dozens of weapons and many have none, their ubiquity certainly constitutes a danger for any person trying to enforce the law. And many others besides. This certainly does not excuse law enforcement personnel in general from their widespread tactic of punishing protestors and others rather than simply apprehending them as they are legally mandated to do, nor of their overtly militarized approach to law enforcement; but the prevalence of guns and the fear that stems from them makes the general attitude of cops somewhat more understandable.  

            Enough said. Many, if not most people whom we see as out of control in this nation, are driven by motivations that ultimately come down to fear. There may not be anything we can do about this, except to point out obvious things such as how much more dangerous driving a car is than flying, or being mugged, or robbed, or assaulted, or even losing your position in society to an outsider. But what we can do is understand and realize that we are all motivated, in part, by fear, and probably always will be, because from the point of view of this frail body with which we have been endowed, there is much to fear. That means, then, that we humans are more alike than we are different. That we are all struggling with what it means to be human in a world whose every passing year beings us closer to death—the ultimate fear. And that we can demonstrate a little more empathy towards our fellow humans than we have been used to. For in the end, it is not other humans so much that we have to fear, but dying before our time (which for most people is any time). And more than that, dying before we have come to realize how much we depend on each other, on all other beings, on life itself. That should be the real fear. Not “fear itself” as Franklin Roosevelt so memorably said, but the fear of never realizing who we are. And in this, we could do worse than empathizing and sympathizing with all those whom we want to exclude from our circles of empathy. The ones we see as depriving us or threatening us. If we could only do that—and I have had the sense lately, seeing these beautiful young people marching together in spite of all the risks, that they are seeing it and acting on it—then we might come to a greater realization, ourselves and perhaps those ‘others’ too, of what we all share. Both those who agree with us and think like us, and those who seem to have no understanding at all, and want to harm or eliminate us. Because all of us are alike in what really matters, our humanness, our basic nature, which is, yes, this flesh and bone we are so zealous to protect, but more than that too. And it is that “more” that we should really fear not recognizing and coming into some accord with. That “more” that can finally allow us to go beyond fear a little, or at least see through it sufficiently to smile at it and all it has driven us to do for so long and at such cost.

            And here I will end with a quote from a favorite poem of mine by Native American poet laureate, Joy Harjo. It is called “I Give you Back.” It’s well worth googling and reading the entire poem.

I 
release
 you,
 my
 beautiful and
 terrible
 fear.

I
 release
 you….

Oh,
you
 have
 choked
 me,
 but
 I 
gave
 you
 the
 leash.


You 
have
 gutted 
me
 but
 I gave 
you the knife.


You
 have
 devoured
 me, 
but 
I
 laid
 myself across
 the
 fire.

I
 take myself back,
 fear.

You
 are
 not
 my
 shadow 
any 
longer.

I 
won’t hold
 you 
in my hands.


You
 can’t
 live
 in
 my
 eyes,
 my
 ears,
 my
 voice, 
my
 belly,
 or 
in
 my
 heart my
 heart
 my
 heart
 my
  heart.

But
  come 
here,
 fear.

I
 am
 alive
 and
 you
 are 
so
 afraid
 of
 dying.


Lawrence DiStasi




Are People Crazy?

Frankly, I don’t know whether it’s worse now, or better, or the same as it’s always been. But the news of the past few days seems to indicate that people, many people in this once-envied republic called the United States of America, really are crazy. There is a madness afoot in this land that I find truly alarming. What set me thinking about this is a piece I just read about Amy Cooper, the now-infamous “Central Park Karen” who threatened to call police on a black man, and did call 911 to report that a Black man was “threatening her”—apparently because she was outraged that such a man would have the temerity to tell her to leash her dog. The man in question, also named Cooper, was not threatening her at all; he was birdwatching in an area called the Bramble that requires dogs to be leashed, and was telling her to comply, even offering her dog a treat. Ms Cooper, in turn, knew that calling the police on a “threatening” black man would result in his arrest and possibly his death. And yet that was the ploy she—a white woman calling police on a threatening Black man, with all that implies in this nation—chose to get back at him for correcting her lawless behavior. 

         Now we find out that this same Ms Cooper has a history that fits alarmingly well with this most recent caper. An acquaintance she claimed to have had an affair with has reported that several years ago, Ms Cooper became ‘obsessed’ with him, and to get back at him for refusing or dismissing her sentiments, sued him for $65,000, claiming several outrageous damages. Her suit claimed that Martin Priest, married and then divorced, had gotten another girlfriend pregnant, and came to her desperately seeking money, lots of it, promising that he wanted to get back with her after his problems were solved. But that prospect disappeared when, according to Cooper, Priest’s girlfriend emailed her and revealed that she and Priest were living together and planning to marry. Whereupon Cooper filed her retaliatory lawsuit. Priest, in a counter-suit, claimed the charges were “completely salacious” and “absolutely false.” According to the account in the May 26 New York Post, 

Cooper’s suit was later dismissed when neither side showed up for court conferences in January and March 2018, records show.

In an interview with the Post, Priest added that Amy Cooper’s lawsuit was a complete fabrication, that “I never had a romantic relationship with her” and that her allegations were “divorced from reality.” 

            It would seem, then, that this “Karen,” who had an encounter with a black man in Central Park and tried to get him arrested and worse, has a history of grievances to which she responds aggressively, to put it mildly. And whether we can believe her lawsuit or not, it certainly appears that she is behaving like far too many other demented citizens of our great republic. When faced with criticism, or rejection, she goes immediately on the offensive. Rather than respond to accusations with self-examination leading, perhaps, to self-corrective behavior (she could have just leashed her dog as the law required), she attacks in the most vile, aggressive way, putting all the blame on the innocent party and seeking to inflict serious damage. It is as if her image of herself is so fragile that she cannot bear the slightest intimation that she could be wrong or, god forbid, disrespected.

            This brings to mind that other vile response, the one by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Too many police officers in our time act as if their orders, particularly those aimed at minorities of color, must be complied with immediately and abjectly. Any resistance, any hint of non-compliance must be met with ultimate force. To do otherwise, to allow a person of perceived lower status to fail to kowtow to an officer’s absolute authority, is to invite that dreaded “disrespect” and the threat of rebellion. It simply cannot be allowed. And when such an attitude is even hinted at, severe physical force, up to and including murder, is required and justified to stamp it out. Violence not to control merely (Floyd was already handcuffed and on the ground), but to punish severely. What we can surmise is that, aside from racism, beneath this attitude lies fear. Fear that the entire order upon which these representatives of the law have staked their existence, will collapse if a single breach if allowed. In the case of George Floyd, the neck of not just Floyd, but of the entire black community, needed to be knelt upon without letup. To assert control even at the cost of his life.

            This is crazy thinking. Yet this seems to be the thinking—if one can call it that—of many of the citizens in our time. Many seem to be on hair-trigger alert, and in a nation that is so widely armed with the most lethal weapons, such hair-trigger sensitivity is dangerous indeed (there are reportedly groups of white supremacists infiltrated among the demonstrators in major cities actually seeking to foment a civil war). It is as if we’re all living in the time of dueling again. Of slapping one’s rival in the face with gloves. As if the much-heralded Christian ethic of ‘turning the other cheek’ has been fully suspended. As if the average person in America has such a fragile opinion of himself or herself that the slightest ruffle of feathers is enough to set off the bomb of self-protective warfare. And that self-protection takes the form of strutting and arrogance and the rapid resort to lethal means of retaliation. Nothing less will do. Nothing less will soothe the easily-bruised, perilously-exposed ego. 

            If this mental condition sounds familiar, it should. It’s very close to the diagnosis of the same mental condition exhibited by the president of the United States: Malignant Narcissism. This is the most extreme form of narcissistic personality disorder, said to be characterized by not only extreme narcissism (narcissism is named after the ancient Greek demi-god Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool), but also the added conditions of antisocial personality disorder, aggression and sadism, and paranoia. Thus, such a person’s interest would be directed exclusively at what affected him or her with no concern for the welfare of others (the basic narcissism), but also be excessively worried about harm coming from imagined others (paranoia), and prone to want to hurt them either before they could strike, or in retaliation for imagined harms. The retaliation would be characterized by extreme, excessive forms of aggression, with the intention of doing more damage than might be proportional. We see this and have seen it for years with Donald Trump. His response patterns have been attributed to advice he early in life received from his mentor, the notorious Joe McCarthy lawyer, Roy Cohn. Cohn apparently advised Trump not just to respond instantly to a perceived attack, but to counter-attack with twice as much venom. And never admit guilt or wrongdoing. Trump clearly took that advice to heart, not only as a ruthless real estate promoter and businessman, but also as a politician. He had very early on discovered that most politicians, though ruthless too, played by a set of rules which he could exploit by simply ignoring or flouting them. And he did. He insulted without limit. He sued for ridiculous reasons. And he distracted from problems by being outrageous. When he became president of the United States, he adhered to the pattern that had got him there: no ethical restraints, no compassion, hue always to the strategy of all out warfare against perceived enemies—whom he saw everywhere. By using Twitter to implement this strategy, he could be almost free from cooperation with or oversight by the press, which he made one of his prime enemies. In all this, Trump has set the pattern of behavior for our time. After all, if the man holding the highest office in the republic obeys no moral or ethical restraints, but is characterized by unconstrained egotism and self-interest, and is free to insult openly, bullying even those on his side, then the ethical field is open for every American to behave in the same way. Insult, attack, and take no prisoners.

            Of course, there are countless other factors that determine the moral and ethical and mental patterns of an age. It cannot be without consequence that everyone is by now aware of the perils looming from the dangerously rising temperatures known as global warming, human-made perils that threaten not only humans but vast areas of biological life on the planet. Nor can people be unaware (though they may deny it) of the exacerbation of this danger because of inaction and outright lying by both government and industry. The pattern of deceit and chicanery set by leaders like Trump is therefore reinforced in other primary domains. Everyone does it, is the idea; so why can’t I? And the ethic of capitalism itself, said to be the most natural, i.e. most fitting system of economics ever devised, reinforces this same notion: every man for himself, get all you can while you can, and screw the consequences. Exploit everyone, including the entire natural world which we believe God created for humans to exploit, and don’t omit whatever you can steal from government; it’s business, after all, and when it comes to business, ethics and human empathy just don’t apply. Neither does obscene wealth for the few and abject poverty for the many. It’s Nature’s way. 

            All this is crazy, of course, and ignorant and self-destructive and self-terminating in the extreme. But by keeping only short-term advantage in mind, by ignoring human suffering or paying it lip-service, by ignoring not only human connection but also the human connection with all other life forms, the foolishness can be sustained for a time, in some cases a long time. But eventually, the psychopath is caught. Eventually, the natural order demands its balance; its price. All that warring on nature leads to storms, pandemics, ocean acidification, and rising heat waves that increase in intensity. Videos surface and broadcast the injustice far and wide. Revulsion sets in. Widespread suffering and rebellion sets in. And suddenly, the entire game, not just the winning part but also the consequences, is revealed in all its fury. We may be in one of those revelatory moments now—a moment that is revealing the gross injustice in our health care, our life opportunities, our access to the most basic necessities. With more to come. So that generalized disgust, remorse, repentance, and reimagining and reforming might begin. Let us hope so. For we have had enough of the rule of the crazies. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for some sanity.

Lawrence DiStasi

Murder by Cop

Once again, we in America are having to confront the ugly fact of racism in our cultural genes. This week, Floyd George was murdered when a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on George’s neck for several minutes until he died. The whole grisly episode was caught on video, where George can be heard pleading that he “cannot breathe.” Bystanders can also be heard pleading for the officer to let up, and for three other officers to help George. None of that help transpired, until George, not responding, was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. 

The episode is one of the most horrific such videos to emerge in recent years, reminding us of the similar death-by-choking video of Eric Garner, who died in a chokehold administered by another out-of-control Staten Island cop. A day before, another incident—this time of a woman in Central Park calling police to rescue her from a “threatening” black man—adds to the trope of blacks in America threatened by law enforcement. In this case, fortunately, the black man, who had chastised the white woman to leash her dog (he was bird watching, not threatening her at all) was able to prevail because he, too, videotaped the whole thing. The woman later apologized, but her racist ploy resulted in her being fired from her job. And not long ago, on February 23, Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in Georgia by a former police officer and his son, who alleged that Arbery might have robbed someone in their neighborhood. Arbery was, in fact, going for a morning jog, and made the ‘mistake’ of jogging through a white neighborhood, for which he was shot and killed.

The recent murder in Minneapolis was met with understandable outrage, not just by the black community, which demonstrated and ran rampant last night, but by the white mayor, who fired not only the officer who committed the crime, but also his three companion officers, all of whom simply watched the murder without attempting to stop it. But firing these men does not come close to justice here. As Floyd George’s sister has insisted, these men, or at least the one who knelt on her brother’s neck, should be prosecuted for murder. For that’s what it was: cold-blooded murder. There can be no attempt to excuse the action by appealing to that old police standby, ‘I thought my life was in danger.’ No. Floyd George was already subdued, lying prone with his hands in handcuffs behind him, when the life was choked out of him. Whether or not he had earlier resisted arrest, or committed a crime (the suspected crime was allegedly forgery), he was helpless at the time when brutal, lethal force was applied and he was executed. 

Now, we as a nation have to ask why? How could this brutality have happened again? And again. And again. Execution of a black man before even an arrest or trial. Murder by cop. Are all the policemen in this country insane? Racist? Products of a warlike nation that has steadily produced gun-toting veterans of those wars in which anyone classified as ‘enemy’ is to be ruthlessly exterminated, only to return to apply for jobs as cops where they seem inclined to continue their warlike behavior, only this time grimly bringing the war home to exterminate domestic 'enemies,' i.e. African Americans? It seems. I mean a few isolated incidents might be explained as the doings of ‘rogue’ cops, letting things get out of hand. But this consistent murder of black men cannot be seen anymore as isolated, one-off accidents. The pattern is too repetitive, too consistent, too frequent, more the rule than the exception. And it is clear that there is a whole history behind it; a history of seeing free black men as threatening. A history that began in the horrors of slavery, when plantation owners put a price on the head of any black person that had the temerity to try to escape a life of servitude. And that original virus has come down to us after 400 years almost unaltered, though mutated into several perhaps more subtle forms, especially in the area of law enforcement. 

And of course, we cannot forget the not-so-subtle influence of our current racist-in-chief, President Trump. For there is no question that his dog-whistle hatred of everything his black predecessor did, and his praise of “good people” who parade their racism and Nazism in public, has set the tone for our era. That public presidential support for tearing down the accomplishments of the black man who had the temerity to win the White House, has had the effect of unleashing the worst impulses of the already fascist-inclined among us—not least in our police departments.

But this is all too moderate. Too distanced. For what we are faced with here is, pure and simple, a racist armed force in a nation that has never gotten over its primal racism, with the awful result that the greatest danger to every black person in America is law enforcement. And it is a cause for outrage, for bloody murder. And the effects, as in all such situations, are not limited to black people in black neighborhoods. The effects of this persistent racism, now magnified by the politics that feed off it and exploit it, affect every American, white or black or brown. If one of us is unsafe, then none of us are safe. The toxic brew of fear, of aggression, of resentment, of hatred, spills over onto us all. The terrible, terrorist history behind it spills onto us all. Including the murderous riots by whites targeting blacks that most people, including myself, were unware of until a recent post reminded us of the white rampages of 1919. Known as the Red Summer, the attacks started in Chicago, and spread through some three dozen cities and towns across the United States. The riots involved white terrorists attacking blacks (some blacks fought back), and resulted in shootings, beatings, lynchings, and home burnings. The worst death toll occurred in Elaine, Arkansas, where between 100 and 240 black people and five whites were slaughtered, while in Chicago, 38 people died, with 15 more in Washington, DC. The riots were believed to have been fomented by competition for jobs in an economy depressed after World War I, and by government-inspired fear of labor-rights agitation among returning-from-the-war African-Americans that the government feared was bolshevik inspired. Whatever the causes, the persistent racist impulse in the nation made it almost inevitable that the fear and anger would be directed at blacks. 

Now, sadly, we are facing the same old animosities that have never gone away. And it is frightening and disheartening, to say the least. What can it be like to have skin color that makes you the target of the very authority that is supposed to protect you? What kind of anger, fear and outrage must assail one who must not only react from a distance, but from within the danger zone—which, for an African American, is everywhere? We who are white can hardly imagine. But one thing is certain: watching a police officer choking the life from a black man in cold blood, on camera, is something few of us can ever forget. The memory of it, the full realization of what it signifies, is enough to make anyone ashamed not just of America itself, but of being tarred with the identity, "American."  

Lawrence DiStasi

Mood Indigo

I’m in one of those moods again (remember that song?). Which maybe has to do with being locked in and trapped coronavirus-wise. Or maybe it doesn’t, and has more to do with the time of year, or regular bio-rhythms, or astrology, or simply the rise and fall of psychic energy, I don’t know. But I’m in one. Where life seems stupid and futile and everything I do or read seems the same. Not worth the time it takes to think of it. All our attempts at saving the moment or the day or the year, at getting ourselves out of the messes we’re all in (and god knows we’re in a lot of them), don’t seem to matter in the least. What is the good? We’re all heading to the same place anyway, sooner or later, and nothing we can ever do can change that in the least. What is the good of even writing these words? Few will read them and even fewer will care or think about them and so it’s just another jumble of ‘words, words, words,’ as Hamlet I think it was, said in a similar mood. 

            And yet, here I am writing again, pressing rather clumsily on my keyboard and making more mistakes than usual since my stroke took out much of the functioning of my right side, and hoping not only that my right fingers will get more skilled each day, but that something useful or at least proportional or balanced or coherent will come out of this pressing of keys that I hope results in something. And what supports that hope? What can possibly convince me that even if I do manage to come up with something—that is, if my brain, now acclimating to the rhythmic motions of my fingers on a keyboard, can generate something out of the nothing I’m feeling, the nothing that I’m doing, the nothing that is—it will mean something? I don’t know, obviously. Which is one of the magical things about this whole endeavor. Writing, I mean. That sometimes, even when one has no idea what to write, something gets written. It’s the going-through-the-motions ploy. Just start to do it, go through the motions, fake it till you make it, and something will come. And though often it doesn’t, mirabile, it often enough does. Just look. I’ve already got a couple of paragraphs. True, I haven’t said a fucking thing yet, but there are two whole paragraphs of nothing in the completed column already. That means something, no?

            No. It means nothing. Nothing means nothing. And we are all, whether we like it or not or know it or not, meaning junkies. We demand that things mean something, especially ourselves (some would say that finding meaning is not only what we do, but what we are as conscious beings).  And even though I’m already weary of this piece and this line of thought, I keep going on with it in the hope that something, anything, will come out of it. Something meaningful. And I don’t know where it even comes from, this foolish optimism that lulls, that gulls us into hoping for meaning, into going on when we can’t go on. Pace, Beckett. 

            Alright. Enough of this au-ful digressing on this hopeless state. What was I going to say? I was going to say, I think, that some of us, many of us, are getting tired of this hiatus. Imposed from without by this little shit virus. Or rather from our fear that this little shit virus could end us. Could sneak up on us unannounced and unnoticed and slip into our cells and start hijacking them until we can’t breathe, and die. That’s really what we’re afraid of, why we’re all hunkering down in our little cells. Dying meaninglessly and ignominiously beneath an array of mechanical hospital equipment, attended to by people in masks and face helmets as if we had been captured by aliens, only to gasp our last away from anything meaningful or anyone meaningful in our lives the way people now do. Meaningless death via this little shit virus. 

            Trouble is, we’re leading meaningless lives precisely because of trying to escape from this meaningless death. All corona has done is dramatized for us how meaningless our lives are, even normally. And that’s something. Maybe even something meaningful (and look how it creeps in no matter what!) Even writing about meaninglessness provides an opportunity for the little shit to slip in meaning. It does. I haven’t even listed my meaningless activities yet, and already I’m back to finding meaning, or at least desperately seeking one: ‘Sure; that’s what we can do, that’s a direction to head in, a discourse about how even meaningless activity can throw a life vest to /for meaning. So don’t despair, little ones’; and we don’t. Anything, goes the old nostrum, can give us meaning; even meaninglessness. Ah yes. Never give up because at some point the meaningless itself turns into meaning, and we can, we will, we must salvage this piece of nothing and turn it into something. 

            So there it is. You see? The mystery. We start with nothing, and we end with something. This is the way the world goes, after all. Something comes from nothing. Even though the song says, ‘nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could,’ in reality, nothing—the vacuum—actually produces something. Produces everything. That’s the current view, it seems. That from the great void, the great vacuum of space, with a little quantum fluctuation or quantum foam, came everything we now see, and touch, though it may be only with our instruments. Yes, the quantum void (is that even a term?) produces the vast multiplicity of everything there is in the universe. And it all started from nothing; or what appears to be nothing. From emptiness. Which means the Buddhists are right. All is empty, you and I are empty if we plumb deeply enough, and from that amazingly potent emptiness springs all of us and everything else we can see or think of or imagine.  

            So don’t despair. You see in this very piece how it works. From nothing came something. And it seems that it always and regularly does. Even from this shit, not-even-properly-alive coronavirus will eventually emerge something, is already emerging something. And we can look back on it and write about it and marvel once again at the great and impossible empty fecundity of which we are a part. Which we are. And which we will dissolve back into as soon as the shining, which we also are—like flowers, like the petals of flowers that are all descending now at the end of Spring, petals littering the ground and seeds futilely dropping onto concrete but no matter, they don’t seem to mind being wasted, they are living fecundity after all—will likewise drop seemingly wasted, seemingly useless. 

But are they? Are we? Perhaps not. 

Lawrence DiStasi