Brazellica

So I was riding the bus through Flatbush the other day, hoping my CD player would work just as well at home as it had in the repair shop.

I was enjoying the third book in the Harry Potter series – the one about the prisoner who escaped from Azkaban. And I was noticing that, while author J.K. Rowling had made an inconsequential error concerning toads when her characters were in the Magical Menagerie — that is, she described toads eating dead flies, even though, as far as I know, even an enchanted toad won’t eat a dead blowfly, because unless a fly moves, a toad can’t see it; an old book about the brain features a poignant photo of a hungry frog sitting quietly amidst a dozen dead flies that hang from strings; because the flies weren’t moving, his optic nerve wasn’t firing; like a journalist, a frog sees movement only, so this one was starving in the midst of plenty – she seemed to have divination down pat.

Not that I’m an expert on divination, or anything; that’s why I’m using the word “seemed.” It’s just that as I sat on the Flatbush bus imagining Harry and Hermione and Ron learning how to read tea leaves, their teacher’s instructions rang true. Years ago, a man who followed the same ritual as that prescribed by Harry’s teacher read my coffee grounds, and the results changed my life.

It happened on Easter Sunday morning, 1990. I was in an apartment in the Bronx, visiting the family of my friend Dean. At this point I had been an atheist for roughly three years. Not long after my father’s death opened my eyes to some of the crappier aspects of life, I had decided that if there were a God then I was so angry with Him that He probably wouldn’t like me much either. And if He really did exist, then it didn’t seem to me that he did a whole lot for most of us, anyway. There seemed to be little point in praying to the same God who sat on His Hands during the Holocaust.

Life made more sense after I decided that there was no god at all. Becoming an atheist took away all of my worries about injustice. In a godless universe, after all, what else would you expect?

Is this all there is?

I remember well the first moment when I allowed myself to think that there might be no God. I was on the freshmen heavyweight crew in college. After a late afternoon practice I stood on the dock, looking across the Charles River at the dorms of Harvard and MIT. I looked up at the clouds in the sky and wondered, “What if this is all there is?”

I was scared even to think it — the nuns had done their work well — but as it turned out, the sky looked the same whether I imagined a guiding force behind it or not. I walked home slowly, lost in thought. What would life be like if I didn’t have to worry that my father, myself or anyone else would go to Hell? What should guide my decisions, if this life is all there is? I didn’t know.

Gradually my atheism deepened. Classes in evolutionary psychology and the history of the universe helped reinforce my new understanding. From a scientific perspective, there no longer seemed to be all that much for God to do. Scientists didn’t need to invoke His will to explain lightning, or earthquakes, or the formation of the planets from stardust. They didn’t even need him for that old trick Thomas Aquinas pointed to as proof – the creation of Something from Nothing. A few physicists were coming to the conclusion that it was in the nature of things that even a vacuum would eventually produce a particle of Something.

A year or so after I met Dean, he told me that his uncle could see the future. In a condescending way, I expressed my disbelief. By then, I had been strengthening my views for three years. And I was a senior at Harvard, after all: I knew everything. Dean was just a sophomore.

“Self-fulfilled prophecy,” I explained. (See, I had taken some psychology classes, too.) “Your unconscious believes in these things, and in some way you make them happen. The truth is, nobody can see the future. Even if there was a God, He wouldn’t be able to see it, either – that’s the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. All the way from a Vegas roulette table to a subatomic particle, life is a game of chance.”

Playing dice with the Universe

And it was chance that had brought me to sit with Dean’s family, on a sunny Easter morning, around a wooden table covered with a lace tablecloth. Dean’s mom had served us a delicious Russian breakfast. Now, instead of attending Mass, I was drinking a cup of coffee so thick that it would allow a middle-aged gypsy to read my fortune.

Dean was smiling, as I finished the coffee and his uncle began to look at the dregs in the bottom of the cup. But his uncle was not smiling. Sascha, the brother of Dean’s mom, had served as a soldier in the Soviet Army, back when there was such a thing (as there was, still, on that morning). He had been reading people’s coffee grounds for years. He said there was gypsy blood in his background.

“Hm,” said his uncle. “You have a dog. The dog is sick, or was hurt, or something – something not right with the dog. But you love this dog very much.”

That was true: Our family did have a dog, and I loved her very much, and something was not right with her. She had been hit by a car a few months earlier and nearly killed. She would certainly have died that day if my brother had not managed to find her, bleeding and shivering in the snow, badly injured, huddled away from the road on one of the coldest nights of the year. A car had hit our sweet dog and its driver had kept right on going, and the impact had broken our dog’s hip. Even months later, our dog walked with a pronounced limp.

Sascha was one for one. “But many people own dogs,” I thought. On the other hand, he had not said “You own two dogs” or “You have a dog and a cat.”

“Your girlfriend’s hair is about this long,” he said, gesturing with one hand to a spot just above his shoulders, His other hand held the coffee cup, into which he continued to stare. “You love her, but she is going to go out with somebody else, in two units of time. I don’t know if that means two months, two weeks, two years — but two units of time. She will go out with somebody else, and she won’t tell you, but you will know. And when she sees that you know, then she will know that you love her.”

That was more troubling. Judy’s hair was indeed that long. And the concept of ‘self-fulfilled prophecy’ could not protect me from the actions of someone else — even someone I loved.

“You like many sexual positions,” Sascha said.

I laughed. That was true, too — but it had not been true for long, which was interesting. The laughter helped to dispel, for a few seconds, the anxiety and humiliation I was feeling in the wake of his prediction that Judy would be unfaithful. ‘So what if she goes out with someone else?’ my laugh seemed to say. ‘I can enjoy those positions with others!’

When the laughter stops

However, when I had stopped laughing, I was scared and hurt. I had tried so hard to show Judy that I loved her. Could Sascha be right? Would it never be enough? Or would my being able to discern that she had dated someone else keep her with me?

What was happening to me — was I believing this man? Was he showing me something about Judy that I had simply failed to see?

Sascha went on: “You have an ancestor on your father’s side — a man wearing a hat. You should try to find out about this man; he is your, mm, spirit guide.”

I thought of my grandfather, my father’s father. He had died nine years before I was born; I knew little about him. But in both of the photos of him that I had seen, he had worn a fedora. And I remembered no photos of any paternal ancestors older than him.

“Your parents are apart,” Sascha said. “They’re very apart.” He was looking at the plate onto which I had overturned the coffee cup, and he seemed puzzled. To Dean I said quietly, so that Sascha could not hear me, “I wonder if he can tell that my father is dead.”

Sascha said, “Is anyone buried next to your father?”

“Uh, yes,” I said quickly.

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “Are you Catholic?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Because, there are two crosses,” he said. “If no one was buried there next to your father now, it might mean that someone would be buried there soon.”

I said nothing, but my heart was pounding. He had not said that anyone in my family would die soon — but he had raised the possibility, as well as the possibility that such things were preordained – out of our control. Just as he had done with Judy. That terrified me.

Of course, at some level, whether Sascha or anyone can see the future or not, it’s true that the future is largely beyond our control. But I didn’t like to think that.

Good news too

“You will achieve some level of fame,” he went on. “Perhaps as a politician, something. I don’t say, ‘You will be President of the United States,’ that sort of thing. But maybe a representative of some kind.”

That sounded positive. “Does that mean I will go to law school?” I asked. That was a path I was wondering about.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “Maybe some other way. It’s not clear.”

I had hoped he might say that I would become a famous novelist, but he did not mention writing and I did not ask. I was afraid that he might say he saw nothing at all.

“It’s not clear, but some kind of, um, public success,” he said. “But,” and he turned to Dean, and said some things in Russian, then looked at me as Dean spoke.

“My uncle says that even though you will experience public success, you will be privately unhappy,” Dean said.

By now I was nearly frozen in my seat. “Oh,” I said. Probably I looked scared. “Can anything be done about these things?”

Sascha shrugged. “Sometimes, a little bit, but,” and he said something else in Russian to Dean.

Dean said, “Sometimes, fate is just fate. Some things just have to happen.”

“I see,” I said, feeling helpless.

Sascha made a gesture that showed me that he was finished.

He had just performed a service for me and I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” I said.

He looked at me and shrugged again. Dean said, “My uncle says, he is not used to being thanked for reading such things.”

Now Sascha, and Dean, and Dean’s mother were all looking at me with great seriousness, as if wondering if I was all right.

“Well, I appreciate him taking the time to do that,” I said.

Sascha smiled, and we sat back in our chairs.

But they continued to look at me seriously, just as the class had looked at Harry Potter after his teacher predicted his early demise.

The bus dropped me off and I lugged the CD player and its accompanying stereo eight blocks. The player did, in fact, turn out to work as well in my Brooklyn apartment as it had in the shop. I put on K.D. Lang’s “Drag,” and had lunch.

The CD player worked, and now I could play records again, so I put on Roxy Music’s “Avalon” for one song and one song only, and that song was “True to Life” – because that morning, I’d dreamed that “True to Life” was playing in the background when I met my dad in an amusement park. So goes life.

Originally published by The Guy Code, March 22, 2001. 

Why do people kill themselves?

I revisited this question the other day while floating in an isolation tank. Specifically, I wanted to remember why I had so seriously considered suicide, on and off, for a period of some three to four years, during a time that was externally good.

So we’ll call this week’s column “Intrapersonal Guy,” if you don’t mind. (If you do mind, send me an e-mail.)

Some call them “sensory-deprivation tanks;” others, “flotation tanks.” By whatever name, these specialized bathtubs feel just as sweet. Someone pumps a ton of salt into an amount of water that’s about a foot and a half deep, seven feet long and four feet wide. The water is kept at the temperature of human skin, so you notice it less. As you might in the Dead Sea, you float comfortably on your back, your midsection sagging a bit but no part of you touching the bottom. You put in earplugs and turn off the lights, and simply float there for an hour or so. Sometimes you brush up against the side, but that’s about all the action there is. Eventually an employee comes along and knocks on the side. You tap back to show them you’ve heard them, and they leave, so you can re-enter the world of external sensations at your own pace.

Despite their depiction in the movie “Altered States,” tanks don’t normally tap into genetic memories in order to induce physical regression. I’ve floated three times now, and my musculature has remained stubbornly human. Not once have my guttural sounds led someone to open the tank and find me twitching and incoherent, with goat’s blood dripping from my mouth.

“Altered States” was inspired by the work of John Lilly, a pioneering neuroanatomist and dolphin researcher. The New York Times once described Lilly as “a walking syllabus of Western Civilization.”

Before entering the tank, Lilly would inject himself with lysergic acid diethylamide. Then he would float for hours, spacing out in a whole new way. Regular sessions with a psychoanalyst helped him process his experiences, so he could push them further. In 1966-67, it was not only legal for him to take LSD in this way – he also got paid for it, by the federal government, as had Ken “Cuckoo’s Nest” Kesey before him. The National Institute of Mental Health paid Lilly a salary for five years so he could experiment on himself. “Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer” is his report to them of how he used the grant.

When you’re not taking LSD, as I wasn’t, floating can be tremendously restful. According to one proponent, by shutting down external stimuli and giving you the illusion of weightlessness, floating can give rest to parts of your brain that have never rested before – parts that have had to pay attention to sounds and touch and gravity throughout your deepest sleeps.

Probably that’s not true, but it’s nice to think it might be. It adds to the experience.

Let the mind drift

Because I felt so relaxed, I felt safe to explore a time that I rarely dwell on anymore: the years when I nearly killed myself.

Typically when someone kills himself we say that he must have been depressed. It doesn’t help us much, to say that; it feels like we’re saying that someone fell asleep because he was tired. It’s not really an explanation, but we feel better when we can name a cause, however vague.

But researchers say that only some of those who kill themselves had been depressed. What’s up with the others?

Looking back on the experience, I figured I, too, must have been depressed. It was easier to explain it that way than to have to remember. But I wasn’t depressed. I was afraid. I remember that now. The tank gave me the tranquility I needed to recall that emotion.

Lying there on my back, in the warm salty water, I remembered lying on my side, on my boarding-school bed, afraid that I couldn’t go on. I was afraid of the pain of life, but mostly of the inevitability of Death.

You could say that I was excessively afraid because I had overgeneralized, or you could say that the rest of the world is insufficiently afraid because it has undergeneralized. It depends on your point of view.

The world, and particularly the modern American world, blames various controllable factors for death: heart disease, cancer, war and so on. It tries to address each concern.

I had grown up with that mentality, but suddenly all that seemed futile. I had seen what a river had done to my strong father.

The world might say, “Make swimming lessons and boating expertise mandatory.”

But I couldn’t say that anymore. Here’s where I might have overgeneralized: I decided that it didn’t have to be a river. Something would have gotten my father, I decided, whether it had been his heart or his brainstem or a slow growth on his liver or a speeding car or a bullet or an electric wire or a virus or a failed airplane or some other goddam thing. Likewise, something was going to get me, even if I stayed huddled in a sterile room for eighty years, and ate bran and drank carrot juice and exercised like Muhammad Ali.

No exit

Suddenly I felt trapped in life, because I had suddenly seen that no matter what I did, it would end.

Remember Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, when Charlie and his grandpa were drinking that fizzy soda? The gas made them buoyant, and they giggled as they floated up and up. They were happy as clowns, doing somersaults in the air. Then they saw the rapidly revolving fan at the top, and felt themselves floating toward it in a way they could not stop.

They escaped by burping. They dissipated the gas and became heavier, gradually sinking back to the floor. We are relieved when we see this, in the movie. But we cannot do that, ourselves, because our problem is not caused by excess gas. It is a problem without a solution: One of the conditions of life is that it will end in a revolving fan.

As that truth sank in to me, my fear grew. Call it “fear of fanning.”

When something scares us, we try to move away from it, right? Or kill it. One or the other: Fight or flee. That’s how we’re wired.

Unfortunately we can’t fight Death, only individual causes of it. Nor can we escape it. Realizing that neither fight nor flight would help me, then, I thought about combining them. I wanted to flee Death by killing myself before It got me. I was too scared to just sit there quietly, waiting for the fan like everyone else. I could think of nothing but Death, and when you can think of nothing but Death, suicide seems all the more attractive. “At least,” you tell yourself, “if I kill myself I can stop thinking these terrible self-destructive thoughts.”

That’s not depression – not really. Throughout this time I was working hard and making good grades and playing sports and dating a little. I did landscape labor and painted houses during the summers. I ate regularly, if at times obsessively, and slept okay. Got elected president of the student council and got into Harvard. And through it all, including my first few years in college, I wasn’t sure I could let myself keep living, as long as there was a fan at the end of the tunnel.

I never “conquered” this fear. I doubt it can really be conquered, except by some personal near-death experience that shows you, for certain, that you will live on past the mangling fan. Like most of us, I have gone without such an experience.

Unable to conquer the fear, I began to ignore it, I guess. I suppose that’s how I forgot I had it. At some point I decided that this was all the life I knew of, and I might as well make the best of it. Now I cling to it as if by clinging I could hold myself back from the fan that will eventually suck us all in.

Here’s my Jerry Springer wrap-up: Violence may solve many things, kids, but unfortunately it can’t beat Death. Running won’t help either. You just have to live with that particular fear, and sometimes it takes a few years to figure out how to do that.

I’m glad I did, of course.

Next time I float, though, I think I’ll dwell on something more positive: I think I’ll try to figure out why I decided to get born.  ; )

Originally published by The Guy Code, August 20, 2000. 

As I took notes on what I had just heard, Anderson said that he was hearing from a young woman named Melissa. He said this woman knew some people in the audience, but not very well. After he gave more details, a graying, serious-looking couple in the back approached the microphone.

“Melissa is saying that she has someone else with her who wants to talk with you,” Anderson said. “She’s going to bring him forward, but she wants to make a bargain first. She wants you to promise to go to her parents and tell them that she is all right. Will you agree to do that?”

The couple, looking skeptical, agreed. Anderson then said that the young man Melissa was bringing forward was the couple’s departed son. “I understand,” said the husband, emotion leaking into his voice.

This couple had indeed lost a son. He had committed suicide six months earlier, with a young woman named Melissa. Now their son wanted them to know that he was sorry, but also that he was okay.

Anderson gave readings for another 45 minutes.

When it was over, the fiftyish woman on my right asked me how long ago my father had died.

“Almost 16 years,” I said.

She looked pained. “My husband passed almost a year ago,” she said. “And I just keep hoping he’ll contact me and say something.”

I nodded gravely. At the time, I thought she might have felt some resentment that I had heard from my father at a time when I didn’t need as much reassurance as she did. Now, though, I think her pained look may have reflected the fear that she would have to wait 15 more years to hear from her husband. Hard to say.

In the dining hall, an interesting woman I’d met the night before called me over to sit at her table. Another woman at the table had experienced what I had — she, too, had seemed to speak with a loved one through Anderson. We compared notes, asking each other how much of it had rung true, whether we had thought it was really them.

A number of women and a few men approached us from other tables as we ate our vegetarian lunch, apologizing for the interruption and asking us about the details. “Sorry to bother you,” one would say, “but did your father have a hard time seeing?” Yes, I’d say. “What about the lemons?” I explained their significance. “Did you think it was really him?” I’m not sure, I said, but it felt pretty good; I’m grateful for the experience.

Psychic powerball winners

People looked at me as if I was famous. My new friend Patricia said, “It’s like you won the psychic lottery!”

The other woman at the table who appeared to have made contact — in her case, with a former husband – was more relaxed than I was. She said she’d heard from him before, through other mediums, and wasn’t at all surprised when he “came through” today.

The people who were asking me about my experience were collecting details about others, too. It turned out that the sweetheart to whom Anderson had given the ribbon-wearing teddy bear had not left her house in four months, ever since the accident had killed her boyfriend. As for the teddy bear, she told someone, “I have a drawer full of those. He always used to give me those when he came by.”

We agreed that the bear was an unusual gift. If Anderson had said, “He wants you to have this rose” – well, a lot of guys give roses to their girlfriends. Not so many give them fist-sized teddy bears.

Patricia and my other new friend, Peg, told me how happy they were for me. I told them how glad I was to have met them the night before, so I had someone to talk to about this unexpected event. Pat and I walked around the beautiful grounds of Omega, talking about our fathers, both of whom tended to be distant and to erupt into rages.

As we walked down stone steps and gravel paths, over streams and grass, we found that neither of our fathers drank, but that both had often behaved as if they did. Pat works as an assistant superintendent of an upstate New York school district, and her intelligence and humanity put me at ease. She didn’t need me to either accept all that had happened or to deny it; we could just talk about it, and that was just what I needed right then.

* * *

During the train ride back to New York, I wondered something I hadn’t for many years: Was my dad watching me?

That thought led to others. If I became grouchy toward a stranger who wouldn’t move their bag so I could sit down, did my dad disapprove of my temper? Or was he glad I was sticking up for myself?

Or did he care?

How had his values changed?

Most importantly: Was he really coming to me in friendship?

* * *

When I got home, I rested for a bit, just thinking about it all. I looked at my notes, took a breath and began to call my family.

My mom wasn’t home, which was just as well. I was nervous about telling her this story. She is a born-again Christian, and had told me many times over the years that mediums and psychics drew their powers from the devil. I felt good about what had happened, but it was a fragile feeling; I was not ready to feel that sort of disapproval.

My brother wasn’t home either.

One of my sisters was on her honeymoon, hiking the Inca trail in Peru.

My other sister was in her suburban New Jersey home. She tends to be fairly grounded. I told her the story, not quite sure what she’d think — either of the story or of me, for going to see such a medium.

She said, “Well, I think that’s really nice. I’m not really all that surprised. I feel Dad around sometimes; I talk to him. I think he’s with us.”

“Really?” I asked. I was surprised. “I never feel him around. I really don’t. That’s great, though, that you do.”

Hmm, I thought. How come she never told me she felt his presence? And how come she could feel it, but I couldn’t?

* * *

I called my father’s mother – my grandmother. My dad had been her firstborn son, and her grief may be stronger, at this point, than that felt by the rest of us. She is from a generation that does not believe in sharing pain openly, though, so it’s hard to tell.

I hoped this story would comfort her – this image of her son standing, smiling, with her former husband. I told the story from start to finish, and waited.

“Did you give them your name, Bill?” she asked.

“Uh, well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, I had to fill out a form, to register. Not specifically for this guy Anderson, but for the weekend as a whole.”

“Yeah,” she said. “See, those people, they send out scouts to investigate people. That’s how they learn these things. Then they make you think it’s real. They send out scouts. I saw a program on TV about it once.”

I pictured a couple of solitary men in fedoras, driving sedans in the dead of night toward my hometown and that of 15 or 20 other people, ready to ask a few questions, take a few notes.

After she put the doubt in those terms, I believed, more than I had before, that I had actually spoken with my father.

If Anderson had used scouts, he could have been a lot more specific; I would have been much more easily convinced.

* * *

I called my father’s brother, my uncle. I began to tell him the story, but didn’t make it to the end.

A heart attack had left their father slumped over in a chair when my uncle was 15; that was a year younger than I had been when I lost mine.

When I said that Anderson had said that my dad was proud of me, I could hear the wistfulness in my uncle’s voice. My uncle said, “Geez, I’d sure like to hear my father tell me he was proud of me.”

I tried to keep going with the story, but my desire to do so was fading – the way you might tone down your excitement about a new bike, when you realize your listener still has to walk.

* * *

I called my brother in Philadelphia, where he was at business school. He’d been 11, a Little League baseball star, when the boat had overturned. A neighbor had driven him to the hospital from practice when the news came in. He was so young that he had just looked confused when we told him the news, and that expression had stayed on his face, underlined by pain, into the evening of that day.

My brother asked me now if Dad had mentioned him. My sister had asked the same thing. It hurt me to have to say ‘no’ to them both.

My brother was happy overall, though. Shortly after I had begun the story, I could hear him saying to his fiancee, “Hey — Bill talked to Dad. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.” He was laughing.

* * *

The next night, my mom called me. My uncle had told her part of it, but she wanted her to hear the rest from me.

I could hear a strain in her voice, and I could feel my own anxiety. I decided to ignore both, and just tell it straight. As I did so, my mom asked a few questions: “Where did this guy say he was getting the information from?” Well, he said he was getting it from the people themselves, Ma. “How was he saying things — was it all in one burst?” No, he spoke as if he were translating, from one language to another. One sentence at a time, maybe two, and then he would wait for a response.

When I finished the story I paused, bracing myself. “So what do you think, Ma — was it the devil?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice high. She sounded genuinely unsure, in a way that I hadn’t expected. “I mean, I don’t know what to think. It sounds like it was a really nice thing.”

I felt great relief. “Well,” I said, gently, “I guess the way I was looking at it, was — why would the devil work this way? I mean, it was a bunch of really good things that he told me – the type of things any son would want to hear. There wasn’t anything evil in what the man said. And he made the sign of the cross, before and afterward. He’s very Catholic — almost too Catholic, one woman said.”

“He did say some really nice things. But of course you knew your father would be proud of you,” my mom said.

“Well, no, mom, I didn’t know that at all,” I said. “I’m still not sure of it, in fact. You remember how he was.” I laughed.

“Yes, I do,” she said. She laughed, too.

“Maybe God allowed me to hear these things, so I could feel better about Dad,” I said.

“Maybe so,” she said. “And about yourself. Well, maybe you could pray about it, and ask God what He thinks of it all. Ask Him how He wants you to take it.”

“That sounds like a good idea, Mom,” I said. “I’ll do it. And could you pray for me, too, so that I’ll know how to take it?”

She said she would. And the next time we talked — maybe a week later — we both said we thought it was very nice.

* * *

My sister came back from Peru, and I told her what happened. But she had heard part of it already from my other sister, and by now it was getting to be an old story. It’s amazing how quickly our feelings shift, as time separates us from important happenings. We can’t even feel the same way twice about a movie we see two different times.

I asked her what she thought of the story. She said, “Gosh, Billy, I don’t know what to think. I mean, half the time I don’t even know if I believe in God. But it’s quite a story, anyway.”

* * *

For myself, now, more time has passed. For two weeks or so after I heard these things from George Anderson, I glowed inside. I felt something I had forgotten I’d ever felt at all: I felt like a son. A good son, at that. It was possible, I told myself, that my father was happy with me.

For those two weeks, I felt young and optimistic again, the way I had felt when I was 16 years old, just before the boat went under.

Gradually, the glow faded, as glows must. Walking on Brooklyn sidewalks sped the process along; the sight of a homeless alcoholic can disrupt the joy of even the happiest honeymooner.

Something remains, though. When I think of my dad now, I’m less afraid than I once was. When I talk to him, I do so as a potential friend.

I look at him as someone who recently popped in to say hello after a long time away. He no longer shows the burden of disciplining me, and I no longer show the burden of rebelling against him. It’s easy now, between us.

And if it’s a fantasy, so what? At least it’s a good one.

(Originally published on The Guy Code, June 25, 2000.)

My self-consciousness did not diminish when I got to the microphone. I could feel myself wanting to believe. I didn’t want to look like a sucker, grasping at straws in front of all the people in the audience. At the same time, I didn’t want to be so cynical that I missed out on something real.

I didn’t have long to think about these things. Anderson began, “This man is saying that he had a difficult life. He’s saying that he never got a break, and that you knew that, and felt bad about it. He’s saying that he has finally gotten a break, now, and he’s able to relax, and that you would appreciate that. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes,” I said. It certainly did.

“He’s saying that he’s here with his father. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. That was pretty good, I thought, that Anderson didn’t say, “He’s with his father and mother.” My father’s mother, after all, is still alive.

Anderson continued: “He’s saying that he comes to you as a father but also in friendship.”

That sounded nice.

“He’s saying that he had a hard life, but that he never thought it would be easy, and that you would know that he never thought it would be easy. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, and I was smiling despite the subject matter. It was funny, how often my dad would say, “William, no one ever said life would be easy.” Sometimes, in recent years, I have remembered him saying that, and thought, “Well, dad, of _course_ no one ever said it would be easy. Who in his right mind would ever say such a thing?”

Seed of doubt

On the other hand, these were all generalizations that could have applied to anyone in the room. Hard life, never got a break, comes to me in friendship – for how many sons would those sentiments hit the heartstrings? A lot, I figured.

“He’s holding a lemon,” Anderson said, sounding a bit confused. “He’s saying that would mean something to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, and my eyes and voice lowered.

My dad did not like to do things unless he could do them well, and one of the things he thought he couldn’t do well was sing. As a result, he sang only rarely, and tended to stop if he noticed that someone was listening.

Consequently, when he did sing, I paid attention, while trying to seem as if I didn’t. And at least twice when I was young, I had stayed quiet while he sang the refrain from “Lemon Tree.”

It’s an old standard, one that’s been covered by Trini Lopez; Peter, Paul and Mary; and others. In it, a father warns his son about the dangers of love, comparing it to ‘the lovely lemon tree’:

“Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet. But the fruit of the whole lemon is impossible to eat.”

To me, the song had summed up the bitterness of my father’s life, and the difficulty of his marriage. It spoke to his confusion – how had things turned out this way? He didn’t know. Maybe it was just the way life was.

Six years after he died, I found the single for “Lemon Tree” in a second-hand record store near Boston. I had to buy it, of course. Didn’t listen to it much, though, once I’d heard it all the way through – I preferred to remember my dad’s version, which was shorter. My dad liked a few other songs, but “Lemon Tree” resonated most, and was the only one I ever bought.

When Anderson told me that the man was holding a lemon, the words slipped in under my defenses. I hadn’t been ready to hear about that.

Don’t make me blush

“This man is saying that he wasn’t a wealthy man,” Anderson said, “but that he passed on the good things – and one of them was you.”

Now I couldn’t stop grinning. Felt like a fool. The predominantly female audience gave out a collective “Awwww…”

I leaned into the mike and said, “Now you’re embarrassing me, dad.” And got the laugh I was aiming for.

“He’s saying that you’ve had a promotion recently, in your career. He’s offering you congratulations. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. It was true; I had been promoted about two weeks earlier, to a position I had wanted for quite some time. I hadn’t even told most of my family about the boost. I’d wanted to keep it secret, in case I screwed up and my company took it back.

“He’s saying that he made a quick exit from this life, but you don’t have to feel bad about that – he planned it that way.”

Planned it that way? But why would he have planned it that way? I couldn’t imagine. But I couldn’t deny that the exit had been quick.

“He’s saying he’s seeing all right now; he’s pointing to his eyes. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does,” I said.

My father’s eyes gave him trouble his whole life. His tear ducts didn’t make any tears, so his eyes were always dry; I never saw him cry. He had to put drops in the eyes every few hours. He was also nearsighted, and wore glasses, which he disliked intensely. Because his eyes were so dry, though, he couldn’t wear contacts. It was nice to think that he could see well now.

Walking into questions

“He’s saying he can see well now, and he can walk well now. Does that make sense?”

“Um …” I said. It didn’t. He had always been able to walk fine. My suspicions were aroused. Was Anderson somehow guessing his way through this – and if so, had he made a mistake?

On the other hand, did my father merely want me to know that he was physically sound – rather than dead, as he had been when I’d last seen him? We all say things like “he’s up and around” to indicate that someone is well again.

I didn’t know. But it was the first possibly false note.

There would be one more, and it would follow close on the heels of the first. Anderson said, “He’s saying his health is good now – that maybe at the end, it was not so good.”

I made a sound of uneasiness. It was true that my dad had expected to die young, as had his father and his father’s father (none of them had reached 46), but his health at 42 had seemed fairly good. I had golfed with him the day before his death; he had made no complaints that I could remember. Granted that he had a chronic kidney disease, he was, as far as I knew, asymptomatic at the time of his death.

I wondered if Anderson would say something specific about the boat accident. It seemed so obvious, and it would have been so reassuring to hear that kind of specificity.

Earlier, I had heard Anderson describe to a mother the manner of her son’s death, but that was not to happen here. Instead, Anderson said, “Well, maybe you didn’t know about it; maybe he kept it to himself.”

Certainly my dad kept many things to himself. It was possible that he had been in poorer health than he let on. At the same time, it seemed an easy out for a medium: Whenever your target disagrees, you could just say, ‘Well, maybe he never told you about that,’ and move on.

Anderson moved on. “He’s saying that he was a sensitive man, but he didn’t always know how to show it.” No argument there. “He was a hard-working man, and he had a difficult life, but he wants you to know that it was a fulfilling life.”

Hmm. That was interesting – to think that it might have been a fulfilling life. It didn’t look like one – but maybe in retrospect?

“He’s saying something about grandchildren. That there might not be any right now, but there will be soon, maybe in a few years. He’s saying that when the grandchildren are born, you and your family might say, ‘Oh, if only dad were here,’ and he wants you to know that he will be.”

My own eyes were not as dry as his had been.

“He says he wasn’t the greatest dad in the world, but that his heart was in the right place. He says that he appreciates that you loved him, and wished you could have done more for him, but that you did enough. He says that he knows that you wonder sometimes what he thinks about you, and he wants you to know that he’s very proud of you, and happy with what you’re doing.

“He reaches out with love to his family and his wife. He says that he embraces you with love, until you meet again.

“And now he withdraws, so that someone else may come forward.”

I returned to my seat, and began to take notes, so I wouldn’t forget the details. I knew that I would be reporting this to my sisters and brother and mom, and I wanted to be able to tell them all that I had heard, so that they could make up their own minds about what had just happened.

Inside, though, I was trembling. I didn’t even know what I thought about it, let alone how to present it to others.
(Originally published on The Guy Code, June 11, 2000.)

What happens to your relationship with someone after he dies?

Sixteen years ago, my father drowned. I was 16 years old at the time, the oldest of four kids. The youngest, my brother, was 11. The four of us kids, and our mom, went through some very tough times after this happened – substance abuse, chronic illnesses, thoughts of suicide. Our mom turned out to be stronger than any of us – including herself – could have guessed, and she kept us together by bringing us to family counseling, praying for us, and so on.

These days, we are much closer than most families with kids our age seem to be. We care about each other and laugh together. It was because of them that I moved back to the East Coast from the San Francisco Bay area, which was otherwise a fairly pleasant place to be.

Despite my closeness to my sisters and brother and mom, I have continued to feel my father’s absence wherever I have been, and have felt sorrow that his life was not happier.

He was a tense and brooding man. He was also a very bright and decent man. He worked hard for his family and loved us a great deal, but became frustrated when things at home did not go as smoothly as they tended to go at work. He was not comfortable with things he could not control; he did not know how to let go, to relax.

When he became frustrated, we would feel his rage. After we had felt it a few times, we grew to expect it even when it was not around. And once he was no longer around, I wondered if his anger or his disappointment in us, still might be.

Have I done a decent job setting the stage?

So last Sunday I went up to Rhinebeck, N.Y., for the weekend, to listen to some New Age talk about life after death.

A few of the speakers had good credentials. One was Brian Weiss, a Yale- and Columbia-trained psychiatrist who used to run the psychiatry department at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami. One day, he hypnotized one of his patients, and she started saying that her neurosis had its roots in a previous lifetime. Weiss opted to take her seriously, and when he did so, her symptoms abated.

Another speaker was Tom Schroder, an editor at the Washington Post. Schroder, an intelligent skeptic, wrote a book called “Old Souls” about the time he spent with Ian Stevenson, a well-respected psychiatry professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. Stevenson has spent the past 30 years researching the apparently spontaneous past-life memories of thousands of young children all over the world. He goes to great lengths to compare those memories with the stories told by the families to which the children say they once belonged.

Then there was George Anderson. About him, I knew very little. He’s not a journalist, and he never went to medical school. He bills himself as a medium.

Our society has not agreed on the kind of diploma it should give to people who talk to the dead. As a result, a person who wants to make money in that line of work has to turn skeptics into believers on a daily basis. It’s almost like being a salesman. For those who approach the business as a scam, in fact, it’s _exactly_ like being a salesman.

Over the years, Anderson has converted a lot of skeptics. Other conference-goers told me of the ways doubting journalists had tried to fool him, by giving him false names and misinformation, and said that Anderson had cut through the b.s. without difficulty. It’s impossible to prove mediumship scientifically, but Anderson had managed to leave a large number of intelligent folks without an alternative explanation.

Attending an event involving a medium is a poignant experience. As you scan the faces of your fellow audience-members, you realize that everyone in the room has lost someone in a way that still hurts. You reflect on the process of your own grief, and realize, in a new way, just how common that experience is. No one escapes loss – neither the rich, nor the beautiful, nor even the smug.

The smug may not show up in rooms like this, either – but you know that their smugness, while it may shield them from the appearance of vulnerability, cannot protect them from loss. Each person in the room is surrounded by strangers who do not know or appreciate their absent loved ones. Everyone is willing to relive their grief, to dwell on the lost person or people, in the hope that someone will show up, and tell them that no matter how sudden or violent the death may have been, everything is really okay.

So Anderson began to talk to the 500 people assembled, laying out in general terms some of the insights he had gleaned from the ‘other side.’ He explained how he worked: “If I’m telling you about someone, please don’t add anything to what I say. If I say ‘There’s an Ellen here,’ don’t say, ‘Could it be “Helen”?’ The spirits are quite capable of making me understand them, and if I’m getting it wrong, they’ll correct me. So if I tell you something about someone you’ve lost, I’m going to ask you to say only ‘Yes’ or ‘I understand.’ Please don’t give me any leads or clues beyond that.”

People nodded. Anderson, who was raised Catholic, made the sign of the cross, and began.

“There’s a spirit here named Michael. I get the feeling he’s relatively young. Does anyone know anyone that fits that description?”

Several hands went up. Anderson began to narrow it down – “He was killed in an accident,” and so on. Then he said to three women who sat next to each other, all with their hands up, “I’m drawn to you three. Can you please go to the microphone?”

They could.

“Michael is telling me that he has a different relationship with each of you. One is his sister, and one is his mother, and for one I’m seeing a symbol of a heart – his sweetheart.”

At this, the woman on the right, evidently the sweetheart, began to break down. Poor thing. You could see that she was a wreck.

“Michael is saying to me that the two of you were not actually married yet, but you had talked about it, and he wants you to know that he feels that you are married in his heart.”

The sister was now physically supporting the sweetheart, whose tears flowed like rain.

“In fact, you’re the one – when I was leaving to come here today, a spirit told me to bring something. I didn’t know this spirit, but he told me to bring something from my house, that he wanted me to give it to someone today. And here” – Anderson got up from his chair and walked to a table, and pulled something out from underneath it – “here it is. Michael wants you to have this – he says this is the type of thing he used to give you.”

It was a small, goofy-looking teddy bear, about the size of a small fist.

“Do you understand?” Anderson asked.

“Yes,” said the sweetheart. She could barely stand.

“He says this is the type of thing he used to give you, and that whenever you are feeling particularly low, you should look at this and know that he loves you.”

The sweetheart was not the only one crying.

“But he wants you to go on with your life. He says you’ve been coming apart at the seams – I get the feeling he was a very direct person, when he spoke – he says this out of love, but he really wants you to pull yourself together. He says you have wished that you could have died with him, do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, sobbing.

“Yes. But he wants you to know that it wasn’t your time to die. That you are supposed to be here. And so you have to go on with your life.” cover Curious about this medium stuff? Check out Anderson’s book.

Anderson went on from there, talking to a mother who’d lost her son, a woman whose ornery brother had died, and so on.

As I sat there, watching and listening, I thought to myself, “You know, I really don’t need to hear from my dad. It’s been a long time, and a lot of the people here have a much greater need for reassurance. They’ve suffered losses much more recently . . .” and so on. I certainly didn’t want to get in line ahead of another mother who’d lost a child.

But then I thought to myself, “You know, I really would like to hear from my dad. In fact, I want to.”

In my head, silently, playfully, I said, “Hey, dad – if you’re here, why don’t you show up and say hi?”

Less than 30 seconds later, Anderson said, “Does anyone know a Bill, or Billy?” He laughed. “In a room like this,” he said, “there are probably 40 people who know someone with that name.” Indeed, as many as 20 hands went up. One was mine.

“He’s saying the name twice, as if there are two people with that name – one in the spirit world, and one on the Earth.”

Some hands went down.

“I’m getting the feeling that he’s family. He’s a family member for someone here.” More hands down.

“I’m getting a fatherly feeling.” My hand stayed up; I was too nervous to keep track, at this point, of how many others were still raised.

I was sitting about halfway back, on Anderson’s right as he faced the audience. Now he pointed at me, saying, “I think it’s you, sir. Could you go to the microphone over there, please?”  (Continued in next post)

(Originally published by The Guy Code, May 28, 2000.)

I sent the following to the customer-service department at Cingular Wireless. Still waiting for a response. After I sent it, I learned that some people suspect the cell-phone companies of deliberately wasting our time so they can charge us for a full minute of voice-mail retrieval. Maybe so.

If you’ve tried to get customer-service satisfaction, through whatever means, I’d love to hear about it. Working Americans may not have as many rights as the laborers of other countries, but by G-d we’re supposed to have power as customers. Please send me your stories; I’ll be happy to run the best ones.

To Cingular:

November 17, 2005
Cingular Wireless
Attn: Jamie Carpenter
3201 Quail Springs Parkway
Oklahoma City, OK  73134

Dear Jamie,

I’m writing to urge Cingular Wireless to please do a wonderful deed — one that is easy to perform, and would help your company retain customers by saving their valuable time.

What is this deed? Shrink the length of the automated message Cingular customers must endure when we check voice mail — and the one that Cingular forces everyone who calls a Cingular customer to hear every time they leave a voice mail for that customer.

Today, each time Cingular customers receive a new voice mail, the company forces us to wait out the following message before we can hear the one intended for us:
“One unheard message. The following message has not been heard. First unheard message.”
I can imagine no reason that Cingular should make us sit through those three phrases Every Time We Check Our Voice Mail.

I recently switched to Cingular from AT&T. AT&T didn’t make me do this. It contented itself with “First unheard message.” Even that was more than enough. I knew the message was unheard. That’s why I was checking it.

It is not an improvement to hear three different variants on that message. Like many of your customers, I’m often in a hurry to hear my voice mail. Also like them, I don’t like it when Cingular wastes my time. (As it’s doing now, by insisting that I mail you this letter, rather than simply having someone in your poorly named ‘Customer Service Department’ record my suggestion and pass it on to the right person, as I asked — or give me an email address, as I also requested. Why does a cell phone company make its customers contact it via snail mail? Do you despise us? If so, why? What have we done to you?)

I’m sure most of your customers feel the same way. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you survey us? If a majority of your customers need to hear Three Times something they already know, then by all means keep all three renditions. Otherwise, please drop ‘em.

My other humble suggestion would save the time of people who call Cingular customers — some of whom are already Cingular customers, some of whom may consider joining Cingular if they have a good experience with it.

Right now, when I call a Cingular customer, I hear that person’s voice mail first (which almost always asks me to leave a message), followed by this recorded, impersonal instruction — which also asks me to leave a message, but at greater length:
“To page this person, press ‘5’ now. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press ‘1’ for more options.”

That message is at least one sentence too long. Every human being who uses a phone has dealt with recorded messages for many years. We know that we should record a message at the tone. And when you are trying to leave one in a hurry (as, for example, before your car or train goes into a tunnel that will break the connection), it’s infuriating to have to wait for a recorded voice to tell you something you have known for decades.

In fact, I would argue that the message is 24 words too long. “Press ‘1’ for more options” would be plenty. Then, if someone wants to page that person, he or she can learn how to do so AFTER pressing ‘1’ – thus sparing the rest of us an instruction we didn’t ask for and don’t want.

One caveat: If your customers really need you to tell them three times that they have an unheard voice mail, every time they get one — and if the people who call your customers really need to be reminded that they should record a message at the tone — then the automated messages you currently use are not nearly enough.

You should add new ones. For example, Every Time we open our Cingular cell phones, the phone should announce loudly, “To make a call, use your fingers or thumb to press each number in order. When you have finished, please hit the green phone-shaped button and hold the receiver to your ear, being sure to place the microphone near your mouth.”

Then, Every Time someone answers our call, the Cingular automated voice could break in before he or she says ‘Hello,’ saying, “You have now reached your desired party. Please open your mouth and make sounds in a language that party will recognize. Then wait for him or her to respond, and repeat step one. When you have finished the call to your satisfaction, you may say ‘good-bye,’ or press ‘1’ for more options.”

When we hang up, the phone ought to sing out, “You have just hung up. Your call has been completed. That chapter of your life has come to a close. You are now free to resume your day, secure in the knowledge that Cingular is always with you.”

Please consider leading the way to a saner world — one in which people can take pride in using Cingular, rather than taking offense every time they check or leave voice mail.

Sincerely,

Bill Brazell
Cingular Wireless # 917-XXX-XOXO

Sacvan Bercovitch, a scholar of Puritanism and the Myth of America whose first name combines the first syllables of Sacco and Vanzetti, quoted the line above in 1990 as he spoke to a group of college seniors who probably didn’t realize their beginnings would soon again be small. Bercovitch was quoting a Puritan leader who was quoting Zechariah, and I can think of no better way to start what Technorati says is roughly the 29.200001-millionth blog to grace this planet — which may well be, according to Ray Kurzweil, the only one in the universe that supports intelligent life.

In “The Singularity Is Near,” Kurzweil shares his vision of our humanity, flaws notwithstanding, fanning out via immense increases in computing to make the entire universe aware of itself. It’s the most hopeful book I’ve read in years. Kurzweil does not despise our small beginning. Perhaps we shouldn’t, either.

Thank you, Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, for setting me up right. Without you, I’d have been the #33.400001-millionth blog, and would have felt an even greater temptation to despise my small beginning.