Philosophy 101 Page 4

is back in 733 East.

  I'm waiting and shaking gently, perhaps from sympathetic nerves.

  11:31;

  The surgeon, Michael Liu, just spoke to me. The surgery was a success. Time to make some calls.

  Everything in this house is dysfunctional, and yet, against all odds, and after nine months of dad, as well as Samantha's whole family, enduring this, Sam, almost single-handedly, has finally produced a miracle, and found dad the right doctors.

  Who knew it would, it could be possible?

  So here it is, the quiet time. I am outside, sitting on a concrete ledge. It's a nice day here in Chicago, here in dad's old neighborhood. Samantha will be walking up shortly, and I will give her Brianna's cel phone, which I've had for five days now. I will be going home today.

  A wonderful strength can be found in the quiet contemplation that can come into you after a successfully negotiated sustained stressful period. I feel that now.

  And there will be strength and understanding in the simple gesture, the giving back of this phone, to my sister. We will know it and see it in our eyes.

  I'm going home.

  -

  The first language we learn and share is the is the wordless, sensory laguage of the newborn: lights, colors, shades, sounds, patterns. This is the fundemental non-verbal, elemental and solid foundation upon which we build the verbal.

  But there is another language, which also includes all of the senses, and includes every broken way of seeing, hearing, speaking, thinking, and learning, and this language, dysfunction, is just as old and just as permanent as the other two languages, but unlike the other two languages, dysfunction does not always cooperate with the harmonious nature of the world, which is a problem for us, because, as my uncle Andy Kenny said, in his book, Chicago's Gods: The Mafia Meets The Bhagavad Gita: "We depend upon social agreement to make the language work." Well, for those whom are dysfunctional, the 'social agreement' was not something we started with. We came to the party late and sober, and see all sorts of drivers who need to have their keys taken away; the language we speak is more important to us than the social agreement.

  Dysfunction is a funny language. Most of those that speak it don't know that they are speaking it. I am dysfunctional, so I know the language of the dysfunctional, and have known since a very young age that dysfunction, in its purest form, is a vaccuum, and that, if I was ever going to learn to'see' the world in a clear light, I would need to first look inward and learn to see the dysfunction inside myself as clearly as I could see it others.

  -Although dysfunction gets a [sometimes justified] bad rap, it guides my boat [I have no choice]. Of the beautiful contradictions inherent in dysfunction, I know of only two that grab me: If I miss, I miss with ignorance. But if I hit, I hit with an insight that is deeper than all the memory cells in my body.

  -

  -And In God They Say We Should Trust?-

  They read our e-mails, our texts, our Facebook Page. They listen in to our phone conversations. They sort us by age, weight, height, sex, ethnicity, religious affiliations or lack thereof. They judge us by whether we can dance, cook, sing, lose weight, be interesting, and whether or not we are photogenic. They rate our Blogs, our wives, our girlfriends, husbands, husbands' girlfriends, and they take away points if we don't swallow. They divide us: High risk, Low Risk; Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Lunatic Fringe; Union and Non-Union. They scoff at our style of dress and how we carry ourselves; they find fault with smokers and drinkers and coke heads and crack heads and scrip junkies. They want to know whether we are gay or straight, bisexual or transexual; they want to know what Parades we march in, what meetings we attend, what bars we go to. They want to know what's in our blood, what's in our piss; what's in our genetic code. They want to know if we are working, and where we shop, and how long we've been unemployed, and how long we've had thoughts of hurting ourselves. They want to know if we buckle up, ride without a helmut, or practice safe sex.

  They are the Watchers, the Measurers, the faceless faces behind every suspicion; the ringing in your ears. They are really not there, they say, or so far away...yet, in reality, they are closer to us than we will ever know; closer to us than we are to our own consciences.

  They are the Watchers, and they measure all things, including your happiness, your sadness, your depression, anger, complacency and conformity.

  They do not fear you as much as you fear them; they do not fear each other, yet do not hesitate to listen in, and/or watch the other Watchers when they're not Watching; after all; you've got to punch out and go home sometime.

  And if they see something...even if it's not terrorist-related...well...the Nobodies don't need to know, but Somebody needs to know.

  Some Higher Up.

  So they turn over the evidence; doesn't matter that they were supposedly looking for "terrorists"; Somebody should see what these Watchers find so interesting, after all, when they see something interesting, there's a human need to share [otherwise it seems soo illegal].

  Good Watchers, if they know what's good for them at all, justify their curiosity with a timely "heads up" to their superiors, and a "just following orders, Sir".

  "Can you be blackmailed?" he asked all potential candidates looking for work.

  I can't name the man that asked the question, because, when he left Office, he took all his papers with him, and so, his quotes can't be found on the Internet, nor by the Watchers.

  Is this all true?

  Am I right?

  Just ask David Petraeus.

  He had to step down, not because he was a "terrorist", but because he was having an affair.

  Here in America, In God We Trust; Everyone Else, We Watch.

  The truth is, we have been lied to, misled, and brought to our knees, all in the name of Homeland Security.

  Then, in walks Mr. Snowden.

  A Watcher with a Conscience...

  .

  When I was a Baby, I watched for Meaning, and saw Meaning.

  When I was a Youngster, I watched for Context, and saw Context.

  When I became a Man, I watched for Love, and saw Love.

  And life went on, and all was good, until 9/11.

  9/11 brought it all home for me: Meaning, Context and Love; I looked for all three and found them that day, and the days immediately following 9/11. And along with Meaning, Context, and Love, I also found, amongst the horror and grief and despair, Hope.

  And I saw that we all found Hope, and that Hope was strong, uniting, and it was a beautiful, even in that terrible moment, and so, I let my tears roll down my cheek freely.

  But now, more than a half score years later, where I once saw hope, I now see confusion.

  And where I once saw hope, I now see surrender.

  And where I once saw hope, I now see we were blind.

  And where once I saw a future, I now see it was manipulation.

  And where I once felt tears, I now feel hardened.

  And where I once felt close, I now feel alienated.

  And where I once felt at one with my country, I now feel isolated.

  And where I once felt sure, I now feel lost.

  In Edward Snowden, for the record, as in Bradley Manning, I don't see a threat.

  I'd rather drink a beer with either of those two fellows than with Dick Cheney.

  -

  -Sleeping On The Train-

  I've never rode on a train in my life and didn't know that I was on this one until I woke up.

  Vague remembrances of long-ago satisfactions, purer than happiness, drifted pleasantly into my mind.

    Listening to Procol Harum and blinking away sleep, I look around the train car. Seated, comfortable faces stared down and out; sightless faces, each staring into their own particular version of the truth/space/time warp [the big W.W.W.].

  Freight clogs the aisle. Faded posters crowd the walls; peeling, torn, faded; washed out; old; meaningless. The conductor enters the car, smiling happily [to my mind] in a m
eaningless way; meaningless, because I have no context for him; no way of knowing what it is that makes him smile, makes him so happy. Fuck. He might have a bomb in his underwear. You never know what makes some people happy anymore.

  Nobody talks, nobody sees the conductor making his way down the aisle. Nobody seems to be aware of him at all, nor do they seem to have noticed all the freight in the aisle. Outside my little window, I see the miles and miles of windowless warehouses rolling away. The rhythm of the train and  Procol Harum  provides the lull and counterpoint to the dissonance in my mind, caused by the texters, the conductor, the crates clogging the aisle and the silence.  All the crates in the aisle are on wheels, and I have become aware that the one next to my seat keeps bouncing, gently but insistently, off my armrest.

  Get the fuck off me.

    I mindlessly shrug it away. It rolls across the aisle... then rolls back. I look at it. A small clear plastic pocket, holding the crate's Shipping Papers, is stuck to its side, and  is facing me. Curious, I reach over and remove the Shipping Papers  from the pouch and unfold them. Hey, I used to work on a dock. I take a look:

  Two seperate pages.

  Page One:

  Point of Origin:  Unknown.

  Point of Destination:  West Virginia

  Page Two:MSDS  [Material Safety Data Sheet]:

  Chemical:

  MCHM [methylcyclohexylmethanol) .

  Chemical Classification:  Unknown.

  Toxicity:  Unknown.

  I fold the papers and return them to their pouch. The conductor, still smiling with a roiling emptiness, makes his way down the aisle; squeezing through, past all the crates,