Remembering to Forget

"Remember 9/11," they say. "Never forget September 11," they say. 

How can anyone who was alive and aware at that time forget? I will always remember my father calling me up at quarter of 9 in the morning and telling me that two planes had struck the World Trade Center. I will always remember that sense of shock and heaviness that lingered in the air, weeks, months afterwards. 

It was the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. But what made the wound much deeper was that the attack was carried out on civilians who were going about their lives. They weren't navy people for whom the possibility of death was omnipresent and ubiquitous; they were fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters. That was the crux of the terrorists' plan. And this plan was so effective that we are still trying to heal eleven years after the fact. But it is time for us to take a break from remembering. For a little while. 

Yes, remembering is good. Remembering will help ensure that something like this will never happen again. But forgetting is equally—if not more—important at this stage of the game. 

Our country is still in the throes of mourning. It will take a long time to put this past us. But the only way we're going to do that is by not rehashing and reliving the events of that blackest Tuesday in American history. 

Commemorations are good. Memorials are necessary. But it has been 11 years. We as a country need to take a break from all this pomp and circumstance if we're ever going to transcend and rise above 9/11. An acknowledgement every five years is good, and then as the years go on, every 10 years. But rehashing this every single year is doing more harm than good. 

So, i hope you don't mind that I'm not going to post anything pertaining to September 11 next year, and I hope you'll join me in that until 2016. 

I Hope

I hope you'll never know a world not made for you. 

A world where "no," and, "can't," and, "never" are the norms.

"You can't get there from here." 

"You can't be with them." 

"You'll never be one of us."

"Access denied."

I hope you'll never strain your neck,

Looking up

Or looking down. 

I hope you'll only know 

Not ladders nor boxes,

But the wonderful primordial human stew,

Bubbling and hot and cozy,

And all the heartiness that awaits you there.

Drink it in, chew it up and savor it. 

Because You are You. 

You are not sold in stores;

You are not Buy One Get One Free;

You do not come with warning labels,

Or operating instructions, 

Or interchangeable parts. 

I hope you'll know Peace. 

I hope you'll know Confidence. 

I hope you'll know Acceptance. 

I hope you'll know You. 

Debauchery & Diapers

I, Stewart Caswell, am an addict. I guess like most addicts, I don't see anything wrong with my chosen vice. In fact, I can prove that this vice has had positive effects on my life. For those who know me, it is really no secret at all: I am addicted to Facebook. 

When any addict faces his demons, he has to ask himself,  "What is the nature of my addiction?" From watching A&E, I've gleaned that a lot of addicts fall into their spiral because it's a way to self-medicate. But is that true in my case? 

And why Facebook? I've tried to get addicted to all the trendy things to be addicted to: coffee, sudoku, magic markers, but no. Facebook has pushed all those things aside and permanently moved into my life. 

Facebook addiction is a special case. Facebook isn't a substance that will alter your brain chemistry, and therefore your moods. It's just pixels and lines of text and pictures of practically everyone you've ever met in the the history of your life, in various stages of compromising positions and their children and pets. And the steady stream of debauchery and diapers can get a little monotonous. I don't think any of that is comparable to a margarita or a Jaeger bomb. 

On my Facebook, I have a mission.  With every one of my posts I try to get people to think or interact in a way that breaks up the monotony of the normal posts of other people. Have I posted pictures of my soon-to-be-inhaled meals? Yes. There's something satisfying about sharing a particularly aesthetically pleasing plate of food. We do, in fact, eat with our eyes first.  Why not share that with your friends while at the same time effectively saying, "Nanny nanny poo-poo, look at the delicious food you're never going to eat." But I try to add an interesting twist, like connecting the Lone Ranger with sushi. 

I believe there are a number of factors that go into my addiction:

1) Because I have a disability, I am always thinking that the world perceives me in terms of what I can't do. So, by being a louder-than-normal presence on Facebook, in my eyes, I'm trying to exhibit all the things I do excel at, and that, I think, puts me on a level with everyone else. 

ii) I have people who I love and care about in every corner of the globe, and it's great to have a passing knowledge of where their lives are headed, and, yes, even what they're having for lunch. So Facebook is my only lifeline to them. And it's also great to have parts of your support system you can call up at 3 in the morning, but they don't care because it's 9 am for them. 

C) Like it or not, Facebook today is what community bulletin boards were pre-2004. It's even replacing email in a lot of instances. So as we get deeper into the 21st century, it's going to become more and more of a necessity. For my generation our rite of passage was when we got our driver's license; for our children's generation it'll be the day you let them get their own Facebook page, and they are finally able to exact their revenge on you for writing all those statuses about their bodily functions. I can already see it happening. 

So to recap, why am I addicted to Facebook? Validation, self-expression, connection, and necessity. To me, all those are positive things. Facebook is a tool that everyone can use to express whatever the hell is on their minds, and share their lives with their friends and that one dude they met at that golf tournament thingy in 2007. 

So, yes, I am a Facebook addict. But am all the more richer for it. 

Haiku Two

Training for July

Watch out! Here comes more pollen!

At home in Frisco

A Love Letter from My Inner Monologue

Hey. Yeah, it’s me again. Your inner monologue, your pesky left hemisphere that is constantly talking to you without shutting up. Except for that time when you got that really good weed. That calmed both of us down for quite awhile. Or that time when you got a concussion and I started speaking Finnish, and you don’t speak Finnish? Yeah… good times.

I know I can be downright nasty and make you think thoughts that are really kinda out there, and have no grounding in reality, but I do it because I love you. I love us. (We’re out of cereal.) And I want to keep us awake to all the possibilities that are out there. You have the tools to do incredible things, and I have the organization and optimization skills to keep us on track. (And the waffles you love are on sale this week.) I know the road looks long and arduous, and there are going to be trees down in the middle of the road, but I happen to know my way around chainsaws (and bad metaphors), so that they won’t be a problem. (Don’t forget that massage appointment you have tomorrow.)

I’ve been with you all your life, talking your ear off (mostly) the whole time, and nothing bad has happened, right? There have been times when we were embarrassed or said and done things we wish we could take back, but we got over them. When we stood nose to nose with fear and the unknown and didn’t back down, we were unstoppable. (You need to put your milk back in the fridge.) We worked awesome as a team, and I ain’t going nowhere. (Unlike your milk if you don’t put it back in the fridge.) 

All I beg of you is to meet your end of the bargain. I’m just a measly voice that resides in the deep recesses of your mind, but you, you’ve got a real voice (and laundry to be done!) and arms and legs and goals and dreams. I’m not anything without you. 

So please, trust that I know what we’re doing. And that even though you may fail at first and get rejected (Tax day is coming up soon, we need to get on that!), know that people who never fail never succeed—Ooh! You should write that down!—and you’re not a quitter. (You haven’t checked Facebook in 5 minutes… you could have missed something BIG!) You are destined to find happiness and success because you deserve it. (Facebook!) 

Now let’s polish off some of that Kahlúa that is staring you in the face, mix it with that room temperature milk over there, and have ourselves a mini party. Because I need more excitement. (And turn the heat down. It's roasting in here.)

Yours, (FACEBOOK!)

Your inner monologue.

‘Novel’ Idea #1: The Baby Who Knew Just Enough

In a land that Americans think is Southern Canada and Canadians think is good for shopping when the dollar is just right, there lives a girl who will change the world. She may not be potty trained or know her ABCs yet, but she sure knows her way around a CPU and a Bunsen burner. Her influence will be unprecedented, her name will be forever revered, and her diaper will always need changing. Armed with only a Leap Frog cellphone and a stuffed bear called Mr. Fluffington that chortles when you squeeze its paw, she will singlehandedly discover the ever-elusive key to unlocking free energy and then promptly suck her thumb in self-satisfaction. She is: One! Smart! Baby!

Life and Death and The Last Cheetoh

Death. Dead. Died. All those words—one syllable all—are like punches in the stomach for all of us. And the punches land harder the younger the decedent. Over the past week it has been hard not to reflect on mortality, not only with the passing of Whitney Houston at 48, but also the very sudden passing of a person from my hometown who was only 29 when he died, possibly doing what he loved best in the whole world. If you have to go early, I guess the best way to go is zooming down a black diamond trail with the wind in your face and nature majestically splayed out before you.

These two people lived two very different lives: Whitney’s was lived with unprecedented fame and all of the awesome responsibilities that come with that; my friend’s was lived as a typical active American, holding down a job and living his life to the fullest. But no matter what kind of life they lived, the best thing is that they lived, and that we got a chance to know them in our own way. And to think that they’ll never go to another party or laugh at another joke, or win another game of Monopoly, is almost too much to think about. But the suddenness and the unexpectedness of their deaths, at least for me, have knocked  me back into myself. These people aren’t here anymore, no one can really know for sure where they are, if anywhere at all, and that just makes me want to live life even more, so when Entropy calls my number and it is time for me to transition, I will be able to look back on my life and all the people who filled it and made it interesting, and say, “Wow… look at the life that I got to live! It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t totally hard either, but I am sure glad that it wasn’t boring and that I took every possibility that presented itself.” Because the better the life and the more meaningful life we live, the less we can fear the end.

Then I look at my niece who turned 1 on Wednesday, and I think about everything that is ahead of her, good and bad: her first bike ride, her first bus ride, her first crush, her first gold star, her first contusion, her first disappointment… And then I realize that she'll be 88 in the year 2100, and just thinking about all the world events that she’ll have lived through, and what the world will even look like then is just completely mind-boggling. I look into her dimpled smile while she’s blissfully shoving fistfuls of Cheerios into her face, and I think, “you have no idea what is in store for you, kid.”

So, I am going to close out this sappy post by spouting the usual clichés about what death teaches us to do (and they are clichés precisely because they are the truth): Make sure you tell people regularly how much you love them, how much they have meant to you and how much you have appreciate all that they contributed to your life. But the most important thing to remember is not to forget to live. Live. Sing at the top of your lungs in the shower. Go out with the friends you can act stupid around, and just go nuts. Have that extra shot of espresso in your macchiato, or that extra Cheetoh. Pursue your dreams whatever they may be and give the finger to anyone out there that puts up a roadblock and move beyond it, because you only have one life. Just one. So, live the shit out of it, so that when Entropy screams, “42!” and it’s your number, you can go out knowing that you had a kick-ass life. 

The Urge of Crabs

I lead a very boring life. Some people might say it borders on monotonous. Up at 6:30 p.m. Shower. Breakfast. Toll booth all day. Home. Dinner. Bed. Wait, you’ve never met a toll taker before? Well, there aren’t many of us. It’s an honest wage, but just like any minimum-wage job, the days kind of just blend together: one big smudge of radios, loose change, and gasoline fumes. Maybe the gasoline has built up to toxic levels in my system, and what’s been happening can’t be real. It’s all a bad, vivid, nightmarish hallucination. That’s what I keep telling myself. It helps me deal with everything when it starts getting real bad, and I think that if I take a long enough vacation, away from the fumes and the impatience and the mind-numbing routine, things will start to get back to normal. 

I don’t know exactly when everything started happening, it was so long ago, but I do remember when I first encountered it. I saw it bulge when I was eating cereal. I get those red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloths, not only because they’re easy to clean, but because they don’t bunch up like normal tablecloths do, so it wasn’t normal for anything to be underneath there. So, figuring it was an air pocket, I poked it with my spoon. It started scurrying in all directions, and then just melted into the table—I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the only way I can describe it. I dismissed everything as a not-fully-awake-yet delusion, finished my Honey Bunches of Oats and went to the toll station, ready—or so I thought—for the long work day. 

The first person I saw that morning was Barb. “Geez, Jim. You okay? It looks like you seen a ghost or somethin’.” 

“I must be a little hungover from last night. Didn’t get home until two.” I said. That’s what it was. I was hungover. Your brain plays dirty tricks on you when you’re getting sober so as to convince you never to drink that much again. Self-preservation, I used to call it. It must have been one of those many Saturday nights I picked up my girl Rachel and went dancing. We would dance in that bar ’till the wee hours of the morning and forget everyone and everything around us. In fact, I was going to propose to her...

Damn! I always get to that point in the story, and then all my creativity drains from me. There are way too many avenues to take with this story. And the publishing company is always frustrating me to no end. “We want your next book to be titled, Urge of Crabs.”  Urge of Crabs? What am I supposed to do with that?! I don’t even know what that means! Maybe if my publisher gave me a title that made just a little bit of sense, I could get somewhere with the book. I need to get this straightened out.

“Hello, this is Bernie. Talk to me.” 

“Hi, Bernie. It’s me again. Look, I’ve just got a killer block, and I want you to go over with me one more time, what is ‘Urge of Crabs?’ And another thing: why is it that I can’t choose my own titles anymore?”

“You can’t choose your own titles because you get more brilliant the more creative control we take from you. And besides, you’re a ghost writer. These books we’re producing are a dime a dozen. You could write, ‘I could not believe my urge of crabs when I saw two fat girls in a car!’ slap some other words around it, put the chapter titles I e-mailed you this morning in there, and boom! You got a book. Look, Josh, I’m a very busy man and I gotta go. If you have any more questions, call my secretary. She’ll be able to take care of you.” 

“C’mon, Bern—”

“See ya later, kid. And really. Don’t worry about it! You got this!”

I got this. Right. I don’t even have creative control anymore, apparently. If I’m so brilliant, why didn’t he e-mail the whole book to me? If only I hadn’t gotten my English degree off the internet, I could have had a cushy job writing at a magazine or something. 

Okay... well, usually if I read a newspaper, I can get some kind of inspiration and finally get something good down on paper. If Law & Order can rip things from the headlines, maybe I can. Let’s see...

FRESNO, Calif.—Tragedy struck the farm league baseball game between the Madison Wheelbarrows and the Fresno Sloths today when a careless fan threw a hot dog into the Sloth dugout. The hot dog, a Nathan’s Famous, tossed by 22-year-old actuary Chuck Finkleman, landed on the head of the Sloth mascot, played by 30-year veteran mascot technician Martin Gutierrez.

And then it happened. “One minute it’s the bottom of the 6th, and the next thing we know, a flock of seagulls are chasing Marty around the field,” Sloth shortstop Griff Sugarman explained. “I’ve never seen a sloth move so fast!” …

Baseball. I don’t think anyone will put crabs and baseball together. I could write about a giant mutant crab that goes out of control and destroys Fresno. But that sort of thing has been done to death. People will start to think I’m a hack writer, and I can’t let that happen. Okay, TV, don’t fail me now!

“For ten easy payments of $24.99, you’ll never have to not know where your remote is ever again!” —“But Stormy… did all those things you said to me when I was in that coma mean nothing?” — “From my perspective on stage, I could see Newt Gingrich reaching into Mitt Romney’s pocket and…”— “Today we’re cooking crab cakes. Nice juicy crab cakes with the perfect amount of that Dijon-y tang. Every so often I just get that urge for crab, and I have to run to the store and make them.”

Aha!! That is it! That is brilliant!

*          *          *

And at last, I knew my mistake: I should have never trusted that crooked fishmonger in the smelly alleyway behind the laundromat. But thanks to my instincts, and my faithful cocker spaniel Zippy, all of the defective crab was destroyed, and the power belonged to the Humans of Earth once again. Rachel and I were married the next summer and our main entrée was... sirloin tips.

Haiku One

A birthday weekend
Reese’s Peanut Buddha cake
No karaoke.

If I Won $1,000,000.00

I have just done a really impulsive thing. I have just entered a sweepstakes to win $1 million per year for the rest of my life. Here’s why:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to win a life-changing amount of money? I mean—think about it. Listen. I know the cliché du jour is that money doesn’t buy happiness. And I’ll go for that. I’ve certainly seen the evidence right before me. I’ve worked in some of the most impoverished areas of the world and seen how happy people are with next to nothing by way of money. They’re probably the kindest people I have had the great good fortune to meet. So, I agree whole-heartedly that money doesn’t buy happiness.

But here are some things that money does buy:

Money buys freedom. If I didn’t have to worry about money, all my health care worries would fly out the window. For a man with a disability who gets around on crutches and a scooter, that’s a pretty big frickin’ deal. For instance, if I want to drive again, and really get my independence back, we’re talking about a $100,000 van. Another example: one of my Ethiopian friends wants me to accompany her on a trip back to her country when she goes over there for the first time in 5 years. If I had the money, I wouldn’t have to think twice about it. It would be a fait accompli. In Maine one moment and touring a coffee plantation, and breaking bread with my friend’s family the next.

But it’s more than freedom. With money also comes stability, and the means to make my family as comfortable as possible. I can put money in an account and make sure my niece has enough for college so that she doesn’t have to deal with creditors calling her 20 times a week for the rest of her life asking her where her payment is. So, in that sense, money can buy a less stressful, more comfortable future for someone.

There is another oft-quoted cliché that says, “Money changes people.” Clichés are clichés for a reason: there’s a grain of truth inside every one of them. If I come into a lot of money, sure, I’ll be changed, and for the exact reasons I mentioned. But if I am truly honest with myself, I don’t know how that much money would change me. I’d like to say that I’d be the same person I’ve always been. But there would be so many different avenues open to me, and who knows which avenue I’d decide to cruise. But I would hope I’d chose the right ones.

Then there are all those “what if?”s that have the potential of haunting me for the rest of my life. I have accumulated too many “what if?”s to count. Enough with the bloody “what if?”s. If I entered and won, I would be so happy that I made the decision to enter. On the other hand, if I never entered, I’d effectively be putting money in another person’s hands, and wondering. If you want something, all you have to do is put a little bit of energy and intent out in the universe, and wait. If you don’t put any energy out there in the form of action, you’re not going to get anything back. 

So I sit, and I wait. For almost two months. But it’s definitely worth the wait.

1,000 Words on Life, Birthdays, and Somethings

It’s my birthday coming up soon, and I always like this time of year because I can’t help but look at the past and where I have come from, and look at the far reaches of the future and see where my life is possibly heading. Some people say that you should always live life in the present, be happy in the now, and not to worry about all that other stuff. That may be true to a certain extent, but it is also good to see where you’ve come from, who has impacted your life, and how you may have impacted others, and it’s always good to keep your eye on where you’re going, because you never know when something is going to jump out in the middle of nowhere and take out one of your side-view mirrors. Sure, you can’t avoid every something that’ll come your way, but you can at least control some of the somethings, and that is always a good reason to keep your head up, because if you have blinders on, you hit every single something that hurtles itself toward the Smart Car that is your life. And those things look pretty flimsy, so you always want to pay attention, because the side-view mirrors on those things are, like, half the car!

So, I look back at all the family birthday parties that I have had throughout the years, and marvel at the fact that people were able to get me anything because, a) my birthday is 11 days after Christmas, and ii) I am notoriously hard to shop for. But my life is more than just birthday parties. I think back to all of those times Mom and I had to pile in the car and head up to Bangor for my weekly physical therapy sessions, and that time when Mom put a soda on top of the car and forgot about it until we noticed the caramel-colored rivulets of high fructose corn syrup coursing down the back window. I think back at the scores of Christmases spent at my house on the lake, waking up to my sister’s excitement at what might be under the tree, and then making the trek out to my grandparents’ house overlooking the harbor, and the chaos of 20+ people all opening gifts at once. 

Another great aspect is that your birthday really brings your good friends out of the woodwork: 

• Those friends who are willing to go to the supermarket and buy all the ingredients to make the Reese’s Peanut Buddha Cake that they came up with, because what nontheist doesn’t want a Buddha cake for their birthday? And oh, by the way, they’ve never made a from-scratch cake before. I mean, c’mon, that’s love right there! Irony and love always go hand in hand. If you don’t have both in abundance, I’d go out and look for better friends. (Just putting that out there…)
• Those friends who call you up every year since childhood and you pick up right where you left off, and you’re sure to call them on their special day, because that’s what really makes the day special.
• Those friends who buy you trick candles (even though you’re asthmatic), and not enough frosting so the sides of the cake are naked, but you don’t mind because any birthday isn’t complete without them being there, and, y’know, sometimes culinary nudity in cake form is not such a bad thing. It adds character. 
• And, of course, those friends who take a minute out of their busy schedule and jot a little note off to you on your Facebook wall, some of whom you haven’t talked to all year (except on their birthday), and every time a message comes in, it puts a little smile on your face, because you realize just how significant you are in the grand scheme of things. 

And what of the future? Your guess is as good as mine. One of my friends’ mothers always told her growing up that the future is written in pencil; it can be erased and re-written at all times, depending on the choices we make. While the past is rigid and chiseled into stone, our future is like Jucuzzi jets of possibilities bubbling up to the surface, so random and slippery.

The future is something I like to think about from time to time. I remember once sitting in the parking lot of our local grocery store and looking around at things and wondering what everything would look like in 50 years. Because the stark reality is that nothing is static. Everything is always in flux. Almost everything. Your family will always be your family, and for the most part, your friends will always be your friends. And it is so nice to carry that notion around with you when the rest of the world seems chaotic and inhuman. Because, like it or not, we are not discrete entities; we are our experiences, our knowledge, and our opinions. We are the people we meet who leave indelible imprints on our lives, and we are those people who we imprint. And everywhere I go, I lug on my back a pack of my shared humanity and I, at any time, can unload it and use it at will. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is important not to dwell on any one thing, but at the same time. it’s also important to examine your life and find out how lucky you are to be living on this planet, and be comforted in the fact that, thanks to your backpack of life, you are strong enough to take on anything that runs at your side-view mirrors. Some of things will scratch your paint, or knock out a headlight or two, but there are very few things out there that will necessitate a wrecker. 

So, to all of you in my pack, I say thanks.

Say 氣!

Whenever I see the word “qi,” I usually associate it in my brain to be the easiest acceptable Q-dump that SCRABBLE and all its rip-offs/permutations have to offer. It’s a shame this word is used countless times a day as a sure-fire point-stravaganza in a game that people while away the time playing. I admittedly play it, and I can definitely confirm that as much as the word is an excellent Q-dump, the game, as it relates to the tech-savvy smartphone hermits, is a regrettably effective qi-dump.

So, what is qi, and why have I included it in my the title of my newest blog? Well, in the Eastern tradition, qì, (Traditional: 氣, Simplified: 气) is one’s life force; it’s what is inside a person that gives them their energy, and is part of the fabric that makes them who they are. So, in this blog, I am going to hopefully, through my writing about any topic under the sun, show you my qi and what makes me tick. So, sit back, relax and enjoy. And do not hesitate to comment. 

—s2e

Relationship Air

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