Despite the Risks

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Home sick today, allowing for needed reflection and solace.

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An organ of fire.

I write today not with regret or disgust, but with familiar anguish. This heavy feeling reminds me of a day in the pediatrician’s patient-room with my beloved son when he was 6-8 months old. He was to receive four immunization shots and I would have to be the one to hold him down. It was too much for his mother to bear so it fell on me…as if I had the colder stronger heart. I hated every moment, every four moments! I remember how sickened my stomach felt as we left – I wanted to hunch over.

That is how I have felt these last three days; more so at night trying to fall asleep.

When you have been taught and raised, and have learned how to do everything exceptionally well, you inevitably set yourself up for risks. If you seek quality, we naturally seek protection of that quality. If you seek perfection, then we are inherently seeking imperfection. And with rare quality, with protection, and so with perfection comes its painful costs.

Like that day at the doctor’s with my son, I must take a very mournful course.

They Flee From Me

By Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

(separation)

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but times in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

(separation)

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also, to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served

I would fain know what she hath deserved.

(separation)

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An intuitive friend of mine told me weeks ago of new beginnings with relief for me and a “sense that there is one major decision to make, and once you do actually make that decision, so very much else will follow.” How spot-on she was. Will I enjoy it? No, not at all…but I will embrace it.

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Here Be Dragons

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Remember the old patina-ridden maps of the world from the Age of Exploration where the outer-limits of the seas had sailor-eating dragons? As a boy I was fascinated with their ferociousness and perplexed by their purpose. What did those evil serpents really look like if they devoured all hands on deck? Where are the few survivors? I demand to interview them if they haven’t already gone mad in some insane asylum! Imagine the fear they must have endured. My imagination forced me to squeeze my thighs together so I wouldn’t piss my pants picturing their last minutes of life! What unbelievable courage those explorers must have had…or stupidity.

First Crosstaff

Many decades later, journeys accumulated, and through my graduated intelligence I deduced that those poor victims of dragon-breath were now simply bones and dust – or fossilized dragon feces. A couple of light-bulbs above the head and years later, those maps gained new meaning.

I have traveled to and experienced many cultures on four different continents. I have been to places where the meaning of life resembles nothing like what surrounded me growing up. The many nuances of their daily lives are as familiar to me today as they were then and I thank the gods of seafaring and wing-tips I am alive and changed. But I have missed something. Something was not on the map.

I am a detailer. No not an auto-detailer and no, I have no homicidal tendencies toward tailors. I have been a detailing observer and explorer, and I have always been a cerebral observer and explorer; sometimes anal about the details. Get your mind out of the gutter for a moment; that is another blog for another time. Or better yet, go rent yourself a porn video if you can’t keep-up with me here. Refocus!

I think the title I am searching for is neo-cartographer. I have explored many places on this planet. My Captain’s Log would record not only the longitude latitude bearings, but also something significant to read about the people and their magnificent homes. Still…something was missing. I am a stickler for detail. Were my maps incomplete? Were they out dated? What?

I get a hint.

It was right under my nose. No, that is completely wrong! A great cartographer would slap me across my short-sighted face for saying that! Remarkably, my incomplete map with unimaginable treasures and deadly creatures had never really been so unreachable. Mad at myself I asked, How could you be so blind?

A New Crosstaff

My beautifully created maps were missing dragons. Everywhere I had gone and everywhere I had detailed were missing the man-eating dragons! It seemed the further I would travel, fewer dragons existed. But I have yet to reach three more continents. What if I went to the continent of Asia? Would I find the dragons there? Yes, but I’ve been told they are woven into their fine silk. What if I went to Australia? Would I find them there? As it turns out, I’ve been told they have kangaroos and koala bears. Antarctica? Nope: penguins.

This enlightenment begs the question: Where are the homicide-crazed dragons?

Ah hah! Another hint.

I have a distinct class of maps stored in a cabinet labeled “Domestic”. Excited I rummage through these stacks of maps; between 50 and 60 small, two large, and two of them as big as a 12-place dinner table. On these maps are the faces and memories of all the women I have intimately shared myself and loved. I rediscover some most profound joy and passion, and some hurt and disappointment.

The small maps dominate the shelves. No matter how well I tried to rig the outgoing vessel, no “crew” or co-captain would sign on. The maps are black and white, and very much incomplete. The two large maps have more detail, more emotions, and an array of colors, both with two distinct gold-bands tossed overboard in stormy seas. One map has a newborn boy I thought to become my first-mate, but as the tale goes he belonged to another fleet of sorts. The other vivid map has even more detail, more colors, deeper emotions, and more stormy seas. Yet this particular map, unlike the previous, has more navigational points necessary to make future explorations less hazardous. Mmm, frame this one. My two beautiful children are on it.

But as I examined the two massive maps, I realized I was not going to find any flesh-eating dragons I had been so anxiously seeking. I am hunting in the wrong place. I rolled the maps back up. My search for the beasts was over. Gone were my adolescent fears. Peacefully and with gratitude I returned every single map into my Domestic armoire. Close doors, leave key, do not lock.

A Newer Crosstaff with Dragon-illuminator

I have charted many rough, calm, beautiful, gloomy seas, and met a wide scope of explorers and settlers. Since 1989 I have been in the alternative lifestyles and with them come all types of explorers from all walks of life and orientations. Before ‘89, I was ten years in the vanilla or monogamous lifestyle with a later short, disastrous 4-year return to vanilla-monogamy in marriage then divorce with kids. I was raised and taught my first 26 years under the venerable roof of monogamy by my biological parents. Dignity, honor, and loyalty were three mainstays in my home. However, for the last 13 years I have not lived an ordinary life; everything but. Why?

One perspective from only the shore

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Emerson and I would have been shipmates. Emerson had no fear of dragons because they exist in only one place: in our minds. They are creatures who feast on human will-power. They survive and flourish only when we accept their flames of “It cannot be done…it is not so.”

This is never more present than in our intimate romantic relationships. Fear of self-examination and fear of discovering our flaws, as well as our brilliance, disempower our ability to love more, love deeper, and more importantly to love several soul mates throughout life. Those disempowering dragons exist there, not on maps or out in the world.

When there is no proactive communication between lovers, here be the dragons. When there is attraction to another outside the union or relationship and there are no attempts to understand why, here be the dragons. When there is disproportionate extrospection to introspection, here be the dragons. When there is no articulation as to why monogamy may or may not work in a relationship, here be the dragons. When there is no desire to understand something unconventional, here be the dragons. When there is no patient, forgiving, and non-judgmental discussion about “uncharted seas” and embracing human imperfection as well as brilliance, here be the dragons!

The irony of my personal tale is this: in my quest to discover all things living around me and beyond, feeding my near insatiable curiosity, once on-guard to those damn elusive dragons…I have produced a worldly Captain, a rather large cartographical library, and an exceptionally fine-tuned HDD – Human Dragon-Detector – that can wale the warning…

“Here Be the Dragons!”

There have been two or three horrific dragons that I have fought in my lifetime. Some of them I created, others sent to me. The most painful dragon was also the one that had an evil twin with my name on it. For whatever reason the dragon-of-infidelity menaced me for twenty-two exhausting years, begun by my father’s suicide; another “map” I will share in a later post.

Is there anyone out there, male or female, that knows of what dragons I speak? How far have you traveled inward as well as outward? Where did you find the dragons? Are they vanquished?

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Masada, Texas: How Egos and History Repeat

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Most know where Texas is located. Many may also know where Masada is located. But everyone may not know where Masada, Texas is located. Try to pin-point Masada, Texas with your mapping software or GPS application and you will not find it. Why not? Was it wiped out from history? You will not find it because the play-on-words is a representation of thousands upon thousands of locations throughout history where the egos of one (or a few) uselessly waste the human lives of many.

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The Masada fortress

Masada is an ancient fortress in southern Israel built by Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BCE. Today it is Israel’s most popular tourist destination. Since its fall back into the hands of the Roman 10^th Legion in 73-74 CE, the fortress has become a symbol of Jewish armed rebellion against Romanesque authority or antisemitism.

The dramatic story of Masada is generally understood today from the modern post-1948 Jewish Zionist point-of-view. In other words, because of the long immense history of Semitic exiles (Diaspora) and the sacred Jewish Torah (parts of the Catholic/Protestant Old Testament) designated parts of modern-day Palestine belongs to Israelis — even those who were not born there – Jews have the God-given right and backing by the United Nations to live there. Controversial? To put it mildly, yes. It is the very reason the area has been volatile for over 64 years or more. Trying to rewrite and “correct” centuries and millennia of victorious imperialism and colonialism is often futile; exasperating at best. Though the past cannot be changed, I would like to share briefly another perspective to the Masada story, past and recent, so that we might learn from it and not continually repeat it.

Under the rule of the Roman Empire, Jewish Apocalyptic fervor in the province of Judaea was not uncommon. Not only did this hyped-up belief preach a coming Messiah to free and lead all Jews from Rome, but it also fanned the fire of the End times, or last battle/conflict between good and evil, where the “righteous” prevail with their Messianic Savior and Almighty God. Within all religions there are groups of zealots; those who are radical, active (even militant), and impatient for global change. Their impatience gluts their manipulation of prophetic scriptural passages. The Jewish Sacarii of Masada were just such a group. Interestingly enough, one historical description of Sacarii are those Jewish zealots who wield concealed daggers (today assault weapons?) against authority.

The Roman historian Josephus wrote about the siege of Masada and the Jewish Zealots like the Sacarii. Most contemporary historical scholars blame the second destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE on the militant Jewish zealots like the Sacarii. Within the sovereignty of Rome, all Jews at that time were allowed their freedom to worship and gather peacefully. But to some extremist their interpretation of Holy Scripture was all or nothing. Despite several moderate Jewish groups living peaceably in and around Jerusalem, Roman taxation and apocalyptic fanaticism were made into the proverbial straws that sparked the Sacarii rebellion. Finally, in 73 CE after decades of repressed rebellions and fatalities on both sides, Rome’s patience had worn beyond thin. Extermination was the only Roman or Jewish alternative. Or was it?

“Welcome to Masada, Texas”

Ironically, Masada sits atop a mountain plateau in Israel called Mount Carmel. With the upcoming 20^th anniversary of the Waco tragedy at the Branch Davidian Compound, it should be the umpteenth exponential reminder of how over-zealous, apocalyptic, militant, religious fanaticism uselessly killed 54 adults and 28 children. In a country that sufficiently protects the constitutional right to freedom of religion, how did this tragedy take place inside the United States?

Dick Reavis, author of “The Ashes of Waco”, gives superb objective verifiable answers to how the events of April 19, 1993 and the Branch Davidian leader Vernon Howell’s (aka David Koresh) childhood, rise within the church, Messianic lure, and manipulation probably showed the stand-off could not have ended much differently.

There are many reasons why self-proclaimed prophets of God fulfill their death-wishes and put their followers at great risk, but in David Koresh’s case two primary reasons stand out: 1) accumulation and trafficking of assault weapons, and 2) years of sexual intercourse with several female minors allowed and supported by all the adult Branch Davidian members.

There is no need to spend any time writing about the high-risk dangers and ownership of assault weapons, much less trafficking assault weapons. Newtown, Connecticut 2012, Aurora, Colorado 2012, Stockton, California 1989 and several other massacres all speak clearly on the purchase of or accumulation of assault weapons. Purchase one you will draw attention. Accumulate many and beyond doubt you deserve federal and state law enforcement monitoring or seizure; it is at that point one is not much different from Al-Qaeda. David Koresh and his Branch Davidians absolutely deserved the hyper-concerned ATF initiatives. But this was not the only issue with Koresh’s radical ideology.

Regarding sexual relations with minors, with very good reasons the federal and state laws prohibit adults engaging in intercourse, or behavior of a sexual nature, with anyone younger than 18 years of age. But aside from a legal standpoint, what moral or ethical reasons ever prove sexual intercourse or behavior (let alone births) with minors? Where, David Koresh, in your bible did it tell you it was permissible to have sex with 13, 14, and 15-year-old girls, or permissible to have sex with your male church member’s wives?

Branch Davidian children who followed Koresh to death

Read this disturbing report in the Chicago Tribune, “Branch Davidian Children Tell Of Abuse At Waco Compound“.

Aside from all the other absurdities reflected by Koresh, Branch Davidians, and all other fanatical religious groups (including Christian, Jewish, and Islamic), these two primary reasons demonstrate the applied definition of occult and egocentric. Worse still, twenty-eight young children (most of them fathered by Koresh) paid the ultimate price for one man’s delusional abuse and the naïve scared member parents and adults that let it happen.

Dr. Charles Strozier, Psychoanalyst and Professor of History at The City University of New York, has researched and taught classes on new religious movements for over twenty years. In a recent interview regarding modern new religious movements, Strozier pointed out what type of followers and leader typically form a cult versus popular movements-for-change such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s, or Mahatma Gandhi’s. Strozier states that these groups see themselves as a spiritual movement or spiritual reform outside of established traditional religion. The followers of these movements, he says is based on their “sense of dismay with traditional institutions” or traditional churches. Often fed up with institutional corruption, these followers are consoled by a rebirth of perceived purity which panders greatly to their pain, suffering, or frustration. A lot of the followers are social outcasts due to their lack of social-graces, economic level, and/or level of education to invoke their perceived urgency in change. The system or institutions appear to them as against them; i.e. a ‘my movement is right and good, yours is corrupt and bad’ mentality. It is a distressed human coping mechanism. Dr. Strozier continues:

“I would define a cult as a malevolent — usually with a paranoid delusional leader — that is totalistic, that is ingrown and completely absorbed in its own practices and functions that has the potential to become malevolent, coercive, and absolutist in the way it treats those within the group. People joining these groups are persons who are vulnerable and needy, confused, often very troubled, but who are seekers drawn to the leader because the leader offers certainty about what life is all about and [more importantly] what it should be all about. That gives a wholeness and completeness to their lives.”

When asked the question why people stay in these cults, Strozier explains:

“People are not stupid and they are not going to stay in a community that they do not find some significant rewards from being in and continuing to be in. With that said, there are sometimes those cults which can become really coercive and force people to stay. There’s a dark side because of the pervasive paranoia and the kind of mindset that governs the thinking within the community… there is the potential to move toward malevolence and violence.”

And with that final description, Dr. Strozier hits the nail on the head. If the group and leader become increasingly detached from normal society, and do not or cannot find civil methods of negotiation and compromise, history has shown time and again events usually snow-ball out of control until violence breaks out. What needs to be recognized then and in the future is to strive diligently to avoid ultimatum-absolutist language, for ALL parties concerned.

At some point, because of ultimatum-absolutist language — which unfortunately is biblically based from current apocryphal Judean-Christian passages and testaments — our protected freedom of religion must have functional limits and safety checks, or history shows that “Masada, Texas” will continue to repeat in the future. Is it no wonder so many American moderates have no real issues with removing prayer from public schools, or having “In God We Trust” removed from our coins and bills? Fanatical religion is lethal!

No Dickie on Big Texie

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Professor Taboo

$Texas map+Big Tex$ Since 1994 the proud state of Texas has been strongly Republican. The recent film “W.” directed by Oliver Stone was a good portrayal of our politician’s larger-than-life pride in how things should be run in America. Governor Rick Perry, both branches of our state legislatures, and a majority of municipal representatives all proudly support the defense of heterosexual marriage. The current state laws indicate a Republican-way conservative Right firmly entrenched. Listen to our thousands of good ole boys and you’ll know exactly who wears the pants at home and in this state! YEE-HAAW (spit in the spittoon)!

Yes, we Texans define the art of exaggeration in a BIG way. Case and point: the proud heritage of Big…Big, BIG Tex and the Big Texas State Fair. Do we seem obsessed with size? Are we compensating for anything?

Apparently so…as events of October 19, 2012 revealed.

**Not Peecaan Pie, Humble Pie**

Some of you may have seen or read this story last year. It was bigger news than many realized. One of Texas’ iconic symbols of everything big in Texas lost its Alpha-male high-testosterone image by losing his Dickie-brand shirt, his hat, his boots, and more embarrassingly his Dickie jeans. Female witnesses with libidos in high-gear, watched with baited horniness to see what Big Tex had underneath his 284W-185L jeans. When the smoke and fire cleared hetero-Texas was as devastated as Tin-man, Scarecrow, and Lion when the curtain of the Great Oz came down.

The events of October 19^th, 2012 redefined the adage “The bigger they are the harder they fall.” Investigators determined that Big Tex’s wiring in his jaw – of all big blabbing places – was faulty. Imagine that. The fire spread and singe’d off his haughty (or gaudy if you prefer) cowpoke threads. The Goddesses of Venus and Aphrodite were DONE with big Texas talk and big Texas poking on sex and gender. And they made a great show of it.

As it turns out, Big Tex-ass had no cock at all. Even more astonishing – or for Texas conservatives “more disturbing” – was that Big Tex was transgendered and they didn’t even know when or how! “Holy White Be-Jesus Earlene! Go get my guns!” But alas, for the state’s few pragmatic liberals such as me it was a day of reckoning….a coming out of the proverbial closet.

On that one day I was a proud Texan. YEE-HAAW!

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What Was I Thinking?

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Professor Taboo

If you find yourself firmly in an emergency, possibly critical, and had seconds maybe half-seconds to react, how would you react?

As the noon day sun began its decent toward the western horizon, “Bubba” and I walked from the red pick-up truck toward the hospital’s main doors and lobby. I handed the shotgun to the CFO of the psych-A&D hospital, asked “Bubba” to sit back down, and told him I would hasten the admission to the AAU: Adult Psych Acute Unit. After only a few seconds of getting approval from a dismayed, nervous Business Office Director to handle the necessary paperwork back on the unit, I walked with Bubba to the private room. When I returned to the Intake Office, my supervisor — she also in utter dismay and gasping relief — asked “What were you thinking!?”

Ten Hours Earlier

For three and a half years I worked in the intake office for a private psychiatric-chemical-substance-abuse hospital with three units and four programs: child, adolescent, and adult. Our hospital also had one of the first Dual-Diagnosis programs in the state and nation. I was also working toward a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at the nationally recognized local seminary. This job was one of my all-time favorite jobs; never a dull moment or a day the same as before.

On this particular afternoon everything started about 2 a.m. that morning. It was my rotation to be on-call for un-referred assessments for possible after-hour admissions. I get the page from our nursing staff about a heavily intoxicated male seeking entry into our dual-diagnosis unit.

If anyone is familiar with this type of situation, then you know in a matter of minutes or hours, the heavily inebriated patient could do a complete 180 and figure by their sudden omniscient wisdom that they no longer need any help. This is often a recurring cycle transpiring over several years in their life; they have a “situational revelation” and can “pull themselves out of the funk.” Sound familiar?

By 3 or 4 a.m. Bubba (as I will call him here) promises me over and over he will show up at our hospital’s admissions doors. That is the last I heard of him after an all-night phone conversation, assessment, and pre-admission call.

Eleven o’clock a.m. rolls around. I arrive at my designated time tired having been on-call all night. Pamela, my supervisor, briefs me on the day’s events so far…”Bubba has not shown up for his admissions appointment at 8 a.m.” He has not called to let us know he’ll be late or is coming the following day; nothing. Experience has shown us time and again that dramatic-drunks often fail miserably on their promises or commitments. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. Work continues and the hospital has 3-4 other morning and afternoon admissions lined-up; two of them already waiting in the front lobby. I will call Bubba a little later to ask what has happened.

Why Do I Have To Wait!? Slurred Expletives!

Some hours into my shift, the receptionist in the front lobby calls me: Bubba is here and ready to be admitted. I thought great; better late than never! I had already walked back and forth through the lobby because one of our tasks involved pre-certification for admission. I had noticed a slim bony man, I assumed was Bubba; and he had noticed me. I returned to the lobby and introduced myself.

I explained we had everything arranged about four hours ago, but now we were in the middle of admitting these people who made their appointments. “Sorry Bubba, you are going to have to wait your turn.” He acknowledged and then mentioned that he just knew I was the man he had talked to all night because of my long-hair in a pony-tail. He said kindly that “I liked you when we spoke and now I really like you and your style.” The smell of whiskey reached my nostrils. I thanked him, returned to my office, and let the business office know that the 8 a.m. appointment was now here. The business office manager laughed. I knew exactly why: a drunk’s or addict’s clock is way different from the world’s.

Twenty minutes later the lobby receptionist frantically calls me saying that Bubba has been getting agitated and just walked out to his truck to get his rifle…you better get out here! As I arrive she points to the front parking lot, “He’s out there.” I follow.

I reach Bubba at his red pick-up truck – flood-lights across the roof – as he removes his shotgun from off his rear window gun-rack. “Bubba…hey man. There is no need to do that. I’ll get you on back to the unit, but you have to leave the rifle. That is going to freak some people way out. You won’t make many friends that way” I said calmly. He laughed but frustratingly asked “Why tha hell do I have to keep waiting so fucking long? God damn, you told me last night I was ready for admission!” I grinned at him, “You’re right. That’s why I wanted you here at 8 because we had these other people needing help too. We’re about ready; I’ll take you on back but I should carry the shotgun. I don’t look as intimidating“ and I winked at him.

We stood there for what seemed five minutes talking then he handed me the rifle. We walked back into the front lobby. I handed our CFO the weapon. Tantrum avoided.

Back in the lobby I listened to everybody’s scared, shocked, dismayed, emotional explanations of “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you stay inside and wait for the police to arrive?”…and as I set in my desk chair reflecting, it hits me like the percussion from a 1,000 pound bomb: everyone is right. Bubba could have turned on me and began a shooting spree. I could have made my mother son-less and my sister brother-less. It could have gone bad…really bad. I felt weak and dizzy thinking about what if.

Crisis Averted or Crisis Managed?

Why did I do it? Why did I just walk out there after him without a second thought? In hindsight I know exactly why. If I hadn’t known Bubba from Adam, I likely wouldn’t have dared gone out the front doors. But then I thought, what if I hadn’t and he had walked into our lobby, made our nice receptionist his first victim, then walked back through the business office and made them his second, third, and fourth victims?

None of that crossed my mind the moment she called me “Get out here quick!” Creating a rapport with Bubba all night, then later that afternoon, I realized I was the ONLY ideal person to go out there, calm him down, and stop a potentially horrific scene. In those half-seconds, in that particular crisis, I was his “best friend”.

When I reflect back on what could have happened, for several reasons I am very happy I was there, at that specific time, and acted on my instincts. If I had reacted aggressively or in fear, or any differently, I’m not sure things would have turned out so well. According to everyone else at the hospital I did a brave stupid thing. But did I….really? Was I lucky? Was I extremely lucky? Was Bubba lucky?

How should people in “crisis” be handled, no matter how self-absorbed they might be?

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