I’ve stared at that photograph for the past four years But this is the first time I’ve felt anything Nothing much has changed, your eyes are still the same Staring blankly into space, hiding a man’s heart And we just sit here without communicable thoughts Real men don’t cry anyway, not even best friends I wonder what you are thinking, what you remember Perhaps every time we sang off-key with our guitars Or getting hurt by the girls we could never attain
Maybe the knowledge that our paths must diverge At least for now, not tears tonight, visible ones anyway
The roar of the airplane engines seem quiet Compared to the pounding of hearts at the terminal He holds her one last time before goodbye Trying to embrace her for a lifetime in a brief moment Her face is a poorly constructed wall of forced muscles Ready to shatter under the forces of the human soul Words give way to trembling hands Struggling to hold on to uncertainty He whispers in her ear and tells her to go The bittersweet night beckons with solitary darkness Masking the lonely hours of an empty morning.
This is the end goal after all the friends have gone home and the lights are turned down. To be able to sleep as soundly as possible, to look at the person in the mirror with acceptance, to look forward with strength and hope.
The advice to forget the past has never made any real sense to me. The past is a mixture of good and bad, light and darkness. You take the wins with the losses, the joys and the sorrows. It is a giant Yin-Yang symbol with swirly black and white crashing into each other.
Rather, I think the aim is to make as much peace as possible with it. The seeds of tomorrow’s joy are often planted in yesterday’s suffering.
And at the end of the day, all things will be made new, everything sad will become untrue.
I’ve mostly given up on writing about the crime situation in Philadelphia, but these two stories caught my eye out of the daily carnage in the city. The first involves someone from the church where I used to attend and who was killed near a high school. The second involves young children who are terrorizing students at the University of Pennsylvania.
“A 69-year-old Chinese immigrant who was attacked and beaten a week ago by a gang of male teens while he was taking an evening walk died yesterday when life support was removed. Police said the teens had grabbed Kwok Ho, put him in a chokehold, and threw him to the sidewalk, smashing his head in the July 10 assault. He had been walking alone around 7:30 p.m. in the 1300 block of Greeby Street in Oxford Circle.
He was admitted to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital with serious head injuries from which he did not recover, and his ventilator was removed around 5:50 p.m. yesterday. ‘It was not a robbery attempt and was not provoked,’ Sgt. Bob Ruhlmeier said of the attack. “We’re investigating whether it was just done for fun.” Police have not made any arrests and the investigation is continuing.”
“Pedestrians in [the region of UPenn] are being extra vigilant of late due to a string of assaults and robberies by roving groups of juvenile boys. Some students said they feel vulnerable walking in the area where people on foot have been attacked… No specific group is believed responsible for the crimes, which have been committed by random groups of two to eight boys roughly between the ages of 9 to 13, said Karima Zedan, a spokeswoman for Penn’s division of public safety.
Pat Kozak, an administrative coordinator in the political science office, said a graduate student she knows was attacked by one of the groups earlier in the summer. ‘It was Mother’s Day, and she was talking on her cell phone to her mother. These kids came up and punched her in the face, fracturing her jaw. I think they took her phone,’ Kozak said.
Since July 3, two robberies, one theft, two assaults, and one indecent assault have been reported in the area between 30th and 43d Streets and Market Street and Baltimore Avenue. No weapons were used. On July 7, two boys, ages 13 and 16, were arrested in connection with a robbery at 42d and Locust Streets.
The bands of adolescents have struck mostly between 4:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. in the 3700 block of Locust Walk and the 4000 and 4200 blocks of Locust Street, according to a campus security alert. University officials said the victims were students, residents, faculty and staff members…”
A significant portion of my life was dedicated to protecting others. Because I wasn’t protected. Especially by the ones who should have done so. A friend with similar personal and professional experiences said we weee destined to do so. To run to the fire rather than away.
A life filled with weak cowards, so we vowed and strove to do the opposite.
My primary role at the NYPD was to protect it. What an honor – to protect the protectors.
The role of a lifetime.
Only a few truly understand.
They are enough.
It was costly.
It was worth it.
This wasn’t on purpose but it occurred to me just vert recently that I named my kids after two legendary protectors.
The girl for her father and people.
The boy for his Khan. In fact he said he would protect Genghis as closely like a felt coat.
I used to pray the following for them:
That my daughter would fight others and fight for others.
That my son would never be outmaneuvered and envelop others like water.
May God shine His face upon them and look kindly on those petitions.
Last year, I attended my prosecutor mentor’s wife’s memorial service in St. Paul, Minnesota. On a weather changing spring day following the long, northern winter, we honored her. A Vietnam veteran and 30 year prosecutor, he quotes the following from Psalm 118 to me during her final hours:
“This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
I sat next to his brother-in-law, a theologian. during the memorial. We talked about faith, how he used to teach a class on Christianity and Buddhism. I told him how I appreciated the connections between my faith and Taoism. He told me of a difficult family event and how he was still coping with the aftermath. I asked whether he still believed in God and he replied, yes with doubts – “Are You there?” and the problem of evil. He tattled on my mentor not saying grace before meals. Hell, I haven’t done this for ages myself.
I just gave him a hug after all that and it was good for all.
Minnesota is the reason why I don’t bat an eye at school shootings. My first 5 cases I worked on as a 25 year old – attempted murder (shot in head), followed by 4 first-degree homicides (stabbing, bludgeon/strangulation, shooting of a teenager, gang killing).
At the airport waiting for the outbound flight, I wrote the following:
Off to the Twin Cities to light candles for the same girl I lit them for 20 years ago. Because words, prayers, and candles matter. You never know which one sets off the firestorm
Shortly after the trip, I sent her a letter more than 20 years overdue. It was possibly the most beautiful and truthful thing I have written. A letter I started earlier in the journey.
No regrets this time.
One life.
You’ve got to do what you should.
But I also lit more than one candle at the cathedral.
My college roommate surprised me with a pure gift. I was speechless. It was a document I had not seen for almost 27 years – a collection of my poetry that I collected for a college class.
I will post the introduction here with the first poem with the rest to follow. Please keep in mind I was very young when I wrote these – some even as a teenager. But the people I wrote about were real and I thought had something to impart. Also a bit of a preview of the future. As I reflect on what much of the journey was about, a good portion was about telling stories – mine and others.
I thought that made a lot of it worth it. The highs, the lows, and all the in-betweens. The stories matter because the story matters.
May yours be an interesting and enduring one.
Life.
A journey in which we are nothing more than nomads wandering from place to place in search of temporary rest. No final destination, no ultimate sanctuary that we must reach. The meaning is in the paths we walk down and the fellow travelers we encounter along the way.
Some walk beside us, some pass us by from the direction we are traveling, and some we pass by the roadside. And so the shifting winds of chance and time dictate our stories, unwritten sentences in an almost inaccessible book whose future pages remain hidden and whose past chapters are echoes from a non-existing source.
From the soup kitchens, nursing homes, colleges, and churches of human communities, an almost infinite number of stories remain untold. Stories that have drawn lines on faces, tales that have stolen the passion of living from eyes, and memories that have dulled the frequency and amplitude of the heartbeat. But life goes on and the journey continues. Some say we study history to prevent the past from repeating itself. Some say there is nothing new under the sun, that what is and what is to come has already been. I agree with both.
Knowledge from others gives us tools to face our own problems that we will surely encounter in our lives. These problems many times have universal and common themes that express themselves in many variations.
I want to tell these stories so that others may see and understand life from a different perspective. They are humbling because they remind us of our frailty and our mortality.
However, they may also contain hope and a sense of relation for those of us who have experienced moments of sorrow and grief. Christ once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” This statement seems vague and contrary to truth, but to me it says that he understood that life is filled with bitterness and pain. That life is far from perfect, many times unfair and cruel. But through the angst-filled yearnings for resolution and seemingly unanswered prayers, the light is there, comfort exists. Not all these stories contain obvious light, but some do. It is up to the reader to decide whether to search for that light in the story.
I have chosen to narrate the lives of the people that I have encountered so far in my own brief journey. I have learned that men, women, and babies cry. I have also learned that we all bleed red. Grief transcends natural and artificial barriers with its disinterested nature. Strangely enough, it is at our moments of sorrow that we truly know who we are. It is at the lowest points of life that true growth in an emotional and spiritual sense can begin. I desire to portray people in their most naked state, for who we really are. The masks we wear so well burn away in the fires of emotional hells.
Another aspect that I see in grief is personal sadness at the sight of others in a state of sorrow. True humanity seeks to bear others burdens and to alleviate pain. While it is not possible to grasp the actual magnitude of another’s pain, trying to understand it to the fullest teaches compassion and patience. These poems in this project are meant to be markers along the proverbial road of life. It is my hope that the passers-by will recognize and learn from them.
Richerd
I talk to the old man sitting in front of me His bed undone, room unkempt, he complains… A photograph now faded by time hangs silently He will not look at it, it is too painful, too real For the memory of youth only brings regret From a wasted life, now slowly passing away He speaks loudly, can’t hear himself, the nurse says But I know better, his deafness is nothing Compared to the silence of words unspoken, love untold A single flower sits on the table by his bed I don’t think he knows it is there, wilting away He talks about the weather, winter is coming again Not as cold, though, as constant loneliness I tell him it’s time for me to go, he’s tired He falls asleep and I know he’s dreaming Of grandchildren on his knee, watching the setting sun.
2. In a way, I secretly hoped for worthy adversaries. For better or worse, I found them
3. If you are fighting or playing a stronger conventional opponent – in any context, you cannot ever fight or counter them in strictly a conventional manner. Time, space, territory, morale, hearts and minds.
War, policing, sports, business, politics, relationships, family.
4. My faith teaches that we are to pray for those who persecute us but it doesn’t say exactly what to pray for. For me, it’s a simple one. May you feel what we feel
5. A detective friend also pointed out to me recently that the real game is influence. – over money, power, etc. And I realized that is so true on many levels but the way many choose to pursue or exercise it isn’t that great. I haven’t nailed it down precisely but it’s got to be something to do with hearts and minds. Service and surrender.
My students loved movie days. Some a bit too much – Yay! Awesome! It’s movie day! – come on, please try to contain the excitement, I wasn’t that unentertaining. I really worked on my stand-up game for class, not bad even if I say so myself.
In any case, I used to show “Blindness” based on Nobel Prize author Josê Saramago’a book, starring Julianne Moore, an un-Hulk like Mark Ruffalo, and a very unlikable Gael Garcia Bernal.
The brief synopsis – a worldwide contagion of blindness occurs, panic ensues, chaos reigns. The first group of those affected gets sent to quarantine at an abandoned asylum. Except one of them, Moore, can still see. No one else knows. She takes care of the others, fighting off predators and guards, watches her husband Ruffalo cheat on her. There are multiple scenes difficult to watch, this was before trigger warnings came into fashion, today I probably couldn’t show it.
My students would leave stunned and disturbed after viewing it. One even asked me specifically whether I would debrief them, he was so thrown off his guard. Because I had to watch it so many times, I was desensitized and probably didn’t pay enough attention to discussing its lessons.
I used the movie to illustrate servant leadership – to lead in order to serve, to serve in order to lead, to make others better, at great cost. Exactly the opposite I saw in the news and personal experience.
In the movie, the others regain their sight after Moore leads them to safety. In the book, the government executes her.
The more mature and seasoned me would have drawn the connection with MLK, JFK, Lincoln, Gandhi, and others in the same vein.
Songs of Pain and Hope 