My drum skin by evening light

I’m not a musical virtuoso. I never have been. The path between my brain and my hands can run a bit long. I’ve tried the piano and the trumpet and abandoned both. But even as my 40th birthday rolled around, the desire to BE a musician (regardless of the desire to do what it takes) has never gone away. Sure, I can sing. Possibly better than most, given the right song. But my hands have always wanted a piece of the action. And they’ve always wanted to the be the beggar who gets to choose.

Late last year, the yoga studio where I learn (The Blue Anjou) hosted it’s first drum circle. I’d never been to one and had no idea what to expect, and was a little apprehensive that I’d just get there and sort of stand around trying to look more comfortable than I felt. Despite having two kids, I wasn’t able to find any of the percussion instruments that we’ve played with over time – at least not any that weren’t made out of cardboard. I was reminded of a part I had in a school musical in 5th or 6th grade. I was supposed to be a sailor. I don’t remember how much advance notice my mom had, but I find myself wondering how, even under ideal conditions, is a housewife in Springdale, Arkansas supposed to come up with a convincing sailor’s uniform? Army, we’d have had covered. But Navy? In Northwest Arkansas? I remember being handed a beret and a dark, long-sleeve shirt with a silvery chevron and star across the chest. Exasperated, and facing God-only-knows what other parenting challenges from my me and my sisters, my mom said in answer to my confused expression, “There. It’s a French sailor costume.” I cried. Even though I was a bit to old to cry over something like this. (By show time, my Godsend of a mother did somehow managed to conjure a borrowed uniform from a former sailor that fit amazingly well.)

So, on the cusp of my excursion outside of my comfort zone to experience my first drum circle, I found myself holding the modern situational equivalent of a not remotely recognizable French sailor costume – a shaker made from an empty mint tin and some rice. All the old feelings where there. I knew beyond reason or sanity that I’d be laughed out of the building, a social pariah, perhaps even banned from the yoga studio for the sheer lameness of my so-called “instrument”. As a 40-year-old husband and father of two, I will still back in elementary school, ashamed of my impending epic social fail.

I went anyway, rice shaker tucked deeply in my pocket. I’d told people I would be there. I wanted to be there. I knew I stood a better chance of playing a percussion instrument and not sucking than just about any other kind. In my mind’s eye, though, the exquisitely exotic instrument in my hand worked shamanic powers to not only channel intense tribal beats through my hands, but to cause women to swoon at my greatness and men to step deferentially out of my path. This mystical, fantasmical instrument would open all conversational doors and make me … cool. However, this talisman of awesomeness was not, and never would be, a rice shaking mint tin. But I didn’t cry this time. But a part of me wanted to.

As I entered the yoga studio and removed my shoes, the drumbeats were already thumping rhythmically. In the entry way, I was greeted and hugged. By a woman. Clearly she didn’t yet suspect my rice shaker. She didn’t yet know that she was supposed to be laughing at me and turning me away. Approaching the circle, I was relieved to see in the middle of the room, a whole pile of instruments. Drums, maracas, shakers (real ones), etc. I was drawn to a blue ceramic drum with a skin stretched over it. It called and my hands answered. Clumsily, but they did. As the night progressed, so did I. Three hours, later, I was having fun but it was time to close up. My hands were vibrating of their own accord. My skin was feeling the drum’s skin, long after they were separated. I’d neglected to take my rings off, and both had worn blisters and were bleeding. I didn’t care. It took over a week for them to heal. I wore them proudly. I was a drummer.

At Christmas, my wife chipped in some money and I got a drum. A heavy wood djembe, hand-carved, with a hand-scraped skin. A deep thumping base with treble tones around the edge. The thing can make some noise. I took it to the January drum circle, and we played each other. I’d messed around on it since first getting it, but this was our first “real date”. And it went well. I asked one of the more experienced drummers to try it out. I’m not a jealous person. I was as excited to hear my drum through master hands as it was to play through them. We both smiled at the richness of the sound. And I’ve gotten a bit better since.

This past week, I took another step. I’d heard there was a drum circle that met on the steps of the Denton courthouse every Saturday evening. I was home alone and the weather was nice. I decided I would be there. When I arrived, most of the other drummers looked to be in their 20′s. College kids. And they were good. Like, really good. And fast. I hoped I wouldn’t stumble in and puke discord all over the place. I noticed that they were able to go off-beat, as I’d seen at previous drum circles, and make it sound like improvisational jazz rather than stumbling incompetence. I want to be able to do that.

As I started to play and warm up and work my drum’s voice into the conversation, that nagging voice came through the back of my skull. “What. The hell. Do you think. You are doing?” it demanded. “You’re 40 years old. These kids are in their 20′s, if that. They’re in their prime. They clearly outclass you. They can even do that weird thing where their hand’s vibrate impossibly fast. What business do you have being here?” But I know that voice, and I’m less intimidated by it than I used to be. I softened my eyes, softened my face, smiled slightly, and answered, “I am doing what you cannot. I’m being present in myself. Watch if you want, but don’t interrupt. We, my drum and I, we’re going to play.”

And we did. As I began to hit my stride and experiment with some of the beats I’d heard the other drummers play, a biker couple came along with their blond curly-topped little girl. After standing at the perimeter for a while, it was clear that she, like me, needed to be part of the music. There wasn’t a spread of instruments as we have at the Blue Anjou, and she hadn’t had the foresight to put rice in a mint tin. But she had a drink with a lid. She marched up on the steps, sat down, and started playing her cup. No concern for what others might think of her more-excuse-than-instrument. And an expression of pure joy. Like me, like them, she was a drummer.

I found myself wondering if this little girl would have put on that beret and dark, long-sleeve shirt with a silvery chevron and star across the chest, and simply ignored anyone who claimed she wasn’t a sailor. Would she have simply decided that she was, and that nothing else mattered? I found myself wondering what else I might have to learn from this little girl. Probably quite a lot.

With only my face above the water, the nearby gentle crash of waves broke on a rocky shore. After a few minutes, the lights went dark and the surf subsided into the distance. Pitch black. Nothing but the sound of my own breath. I suppose it could have been claustrophobic, but with no sense of the boundaries of the pod, there was nothing to distinguish between where I was and the massive expanse of space. I was no more trapped or enclosed than I chose to be. In a sense, I was as free as I’ve ever been.

With the absence of light, the uniform touch of water on skin, and only the sound of my breath, I began to notice to sounds typically ignored, like the rhythm of my heartbeat. Not just the heavy downbeat, but the counter-beat as well. Slow and peaceful. Comforting. Occasionally, a finger or toe would be gently nudged by the wall of my floating bubble in space. Without effort, the extremity in contact with the wall would seek once more its natural position, passively pushing me once again into a delicious limbo.

Time passed. I became aware of muscles that were clinging to their habit of detecting and managing my world around me. They didn’t want to let go. My eyes didn’t understand how to. I gently recited a line from The Art of Noise’s Paranomia: “Relax. You’re quite safe here.” As they let go of their relentless search for something on which to focus, there was an instance of alarm, and then relaxation. This was something new.

More time passed. I stepped out of my thought stream and viewed them as observer rather than participant, or as most of us do, captive. I listened to the symphony of my lungs drawing air in and letting it out, my heartbeat reverberating in the water.

At some point, the nearby rocky shore and it’s waves returned. Shortly after that, the lights came on and it was time to come back to Earth. I opened the hatch, stepped out, showered off and dressed, but all from a distance. Not through a fog, but from a point of intense clarity – of purpose and situation. Time felt slower, more leisurely. Every action and thought was intentional and un-rushed. The man behind the counter laughed happily as I came closer and he saw the expression on my face.

(For more information on floating, location, etc., see The Float Spot’s website.)

So, A few years ago, my wife and I were driving home after Christmas and stopped at a tex-mex restaurant that we both like in Waco. Pulling into the parking lot, I noticed that the restaurant’s marquee proudly proclaimed a Spanish translation of “Happy New Year” on one of the busiest streets in town. Or at least, I’m reasonably certain that was the intent. About a decade prior, I graduated from Baylor University, also in Waco, and did so with a Spanish minor. Some questioned the wisdom of this curious pairing with a major in Computer Science. Clearly, there was divine provenance at work. Baylor is, after all, “Thee University”!

As we entered the restaurant, I found a Spanish-speaking employee through a clever combination of racial profiling and overhearing him speak Spanish to another co-worker. Pulling the hispanoablante aside…

me: Um. You know your sign out there? The one that says, “Feliz ano nuevo”?

him: Sî, yes?

me: Well, the “n” in “ano” needs to have a tilde, so it says “año”.

him: Huh?

me: “Ano”. You need to change the “n” to “ñ”. “Ano” means “anus”. The sign doesn’t say, “Happy New Year”. It says, “Happy New Anus”.

him: “Anus”? I don’t know what is this?

me: <Oh boy> Umm. Anus. Part of your bottom? The hole in your bottom? <starts checking his pants for a hole.> Oh, I can’t remember the cuss word in Spanish… Anus. Where poop comes out. <light bulb goes on> Asshole! “Ano” is the medical term for an “asshole”! Not like a person, but the part of your body!

Finally, he got the message and I only had to explain it to a couple more of his co-workers who didn’t seem convinced at first. Not sure if they ever fixed it or not, though.

Yoga mat for sale. Used once at lunch hour class in December 2009. Usage timeline as follows:

11:45a
Register for hot yoga class. Infinite wisdom tells me to commit to 5 class package and purchase a yoga mat. I pay $89.74. Money well spent, I smugly confirm to myself.

11:55a
Open door to yoga room. A gush of hot dry air rushes through and past me. It smells of breath, sweat and hot. Take spot on floor in back of room next to cute blonde. We will date.

11:57a
I feel the need to be as near to naked as possible. This is a problem because of the hot blonde to my left and our pending courtship. She will not be pleased to learn that I need to lose 30 pounds before I propose to her.

11:58a
The shirt and sweats have to come off. I throw caution to the wind and decide to rely on my wit and conditioning to overcome any weight issues my fiancée may take issue with. This will take a lot of wit and conditioning.

11:59a
Begin small talk with my bride to be. She pretends to ignore me but I know how she can be. I allow her to concentrate and stare straight ahead and continue to pretend that I don’t exist. As we finish sharing our special moment, I am suddenly aware of a sweat moustache that has formed below my nose. This must be from the all the whispering between us.

12:00p
Instructor enters the room and ascends her special podium at the front of the room. She is a slight, agitated Chinese woman. She introduces me to the class and everyone turns around to greet me just as I decide to aggressively adjust my penis and testes packed in my Under Armor. My bride is notably unfazed.

12:02p
Since I do have experience with Hot Yoga (4 sessions just 5 short years ago) I fully consider that I may be so outstanding and skilled that my instructor may call me out and ask me to guide the class. My wife will look on with a sparkle in her eye. We will make love after class.

12:10p
It is now up to 95 degrees in the room. We have been practicing deep breathing exercises for the last 8 minutes. This would not be a problem if we were all breathing actual, you know, oxygen. Instead, we are breathing each other’s body odor, expelled carbon dioxide and other unmentionables. (Don’t worry, I’ll mention them later.)

12:26p
It is now 100 degrees and I take notice of the humidity, which is hovering at about 90%. I feel the familiar adorning stare of my bride and decide to look back at her. She appears to be nauseated. I then realize that I forgot to brush my teeth prior to attending this class. We bond.

12:33p
It is now 110 degrees and 95% humidity. I am now balancing on one leg with the other leg crossed over the other. My arms are intertwined and I am squatting. The last time I was in this position was 44 years ago in the womb, but I’m in this for the long haul. My wife looks slightly weathered dripping sweat and her eyeliner is streaming down her face. Well, “for better or worse” is what we committed to so we press on.

12:40p
The overweight Hispanic man two spots over has sweat running down his legs. At least I think its sweat. He is holding every position and has not had a sip of water since we walked in. He is making me look bad and I hate him.

12:44p
I consider that if anyone in this room farted that we would all certainly perish.

12:52p
It is now 140 degrees and 100% humidity. I am covered from head to toe in sweat. There is not a square millimeter on my body that is not slippery and sweaty. I am so slimy that I feel like a sea lion or a maybe sea eel. Not even a bear trap could hold me. The sweat is stinging my eyeballs and I can no longer see.

12:55p
This room stinks of asparagus, cloves, tuna and tacos. There is no food in the room. I realize that this is an amalgamation of the body odors of 30 people in a 140 degree room for the last 55 minutes. Seriously, enough with the asparagus, ok?

1:01p
140 degrees and 130% humidity. Look, bitch, I need my space here so don’t get all pissy with me if I accidentally sprayed you with sweat as I flipped over. Seriously, is that where this relationship is going? Get over yourself. We need counseling and she needs to be medicated. Stat!

1:09p
150 degrees and cloudy. And hot. I can no longer move my limbs on my own. I have given up on attempting any of the commands this Chinese chick is yelling out at us. I will lay sedentary until the aid unit arrives. I will buy this building and then have it destroyed.
I lose consciousness.

1:15p
I have a headache and my wife is being a selfish bitch. I can’t really breathe. All I can think about is holding a cup worth of hot sand in my mouth. I cannot remember what an ice cube is and cannot remember what snow looks like. I consider that my only escape might be a crab walk across 15 bodies and then out of the room. I am paralyzed, and may never walk again so the whole crab walk thing is pretty much out.

1:17p
I cannot move at all and cannot reach my water. Is breathing voluntary or involuntary? If it’s voluntary, I am screwed. I stopped participating in the class 20 minutes ago. Hey, lady! I paid for this frickin class, ok?! You work for me! Stop yelling at everyone and just tell us a story or something. It’s like juice and cracker time, ok?

1:20p
It is now 165 degrees and moisture is dripping from the ceiling. The towel that I am laying on is no longer providing any wicking or drying properties. It is actually placing additional sweat on me as I touch it. My towel reeks. I cannot identify the smell but no way can it be from me. Did someone spray some stank on my towel or something?

1:30p
Torture session is over. I wish hateful things upon the instructor. She graciously allows us to stay and ‘cool down’ in the room. It is 175 degrees. Who cools down in 175 degrees? A Komodo Dragon? My wife has left the room. Probably to throw up.

1:34p
My opportunity to escape has arrived. I roll over to my stomach and press up to my knees. It is warmer as I rise up from ground level – probably by 15 degrees. So let’s conservatively say it’s 190. I muster my final energy and slowly rise. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. Towards the door. Towards the door.

1:37p
The temperature in the lobby is 72 degrees. Both nipples stiffen to diamond strength and my penis begins to retract into my abdomen from the 100 degree temp swing. I can once again breathe though so I am pleased. I spot my future ex wife in the lobby. We had such a good thing going but I know that no measure of counseling will be able to unravel the day’s turmoil and mental scaring.

1:47p
Arrive at Emerald City Smoothie and proceed to order a 32 oz beverage. 402 calories, 0 fat and 14 grams of protein — effectively negating any caloric burn or benefit from the last 90 minutes. I finish it in 3 minutes and spend the next 2 hours writing this memoir.

3:47p
Create Craigslist ad while burning final 2 grams of protein from Smoothie and before the “shakes” consume my body.

4:29p
Note to self – check car for missing wet yoga towel in am.

(Link to the original posting – don’t know how long it will stay alive, though: http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/spo/2597736393.html

As I pulled the Styrofoam container out of the bag, glaring up at me from the lid was a bright neon-orange-red sticker screaming in large, capital letters, “BACON!” Now, in the spirit of journalistic integrity, the sticker didn’t actually have an exclamation point. I’ve added it to give you an idea just how loud-and-proud this sticker really was. You could have backlit the sucker and not significantly enhanced its prominence.

But given that stickers don’t taste very good, nor are they particularly filling, I managed to pull my attention back to the task at hand: stuffing my face. So, off to work I went, delighting in the happy goodness of my cheesy, eggy, baconey, bagely breakfast comestible. On a side note, the answer is “yes, I do eat while driving”. If this sends you into fits and threatens your “potty controls”, then … well, I guess I’ll just recommend keeping a spare. Otherwise, you’re pretty much out of luck.

So. Breakfast eaten. Work started. Day progressing as usual. Sometime around mid-morning, I finished off my water and stopped by the break room for a refill. A couple of female co-workers were there discussing the pros and cons and personal preferences of reheating fish and seafood in a communal break room. Now, as a computer geek, I’m aware that the well-established standard procedure for this kind of situation (particularly if the females in question are attractive) is brief to moderate incontinence, followed by attempted escape from the general vicinity, punctuated by collisions with solid objects. If you’re an attractive woman, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re a computer geek, just reading this brings back at least a dozen personal traumas.

A few years ago I got tired of the bruising and excess laundry, so I adopted my own strategy:  join the conversation and hope for the best. Which I did. Without much traction. Body language was evasive. Eye contact was erratic. Almost … distracted? Back to the standard procedure (minus the incontinence and collisions – I’ll get those next time)! So, having refilled my water and feeling as though I had somehow escaped certain destruction, I headed back to my desk.

A few minutes later, another female co-worker (also one of my best friends) stopped outside my office, leaned in, and said, “Uhhh. It has been … brought to my attention that … you have a bright orange sticker on your crotch.” Not what I was expecting. I’m confused. She pointed to indicate that I should probably just stop thinking about it and check the aforementioned anatomical region. I pushed back from my desk, looked down, and dead center on my “anatomy”, screaming up from it’s self-appointed showcase in all it’s attention-getting glory, a neon-orange-red sticker yelled, “BACON!”

We laughed, and laughed. And laughed. The co-worker who notified my friend of the “wardrobe malfunction” came by and we laughed some more. She said, “Well, at least it didn’t say ‘SAUSAGE’!” More laughing. And a couple emergency trips to the bathroom.

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to read the word “bacon” with a straight face ever again.

“Of course it’s light. You’re a friggin’ photographer. No light, no photo, Idiot. ‘Course you’re not really even that ’cause your camera doesn’t work.”

“Yes, it does!!”, shouted Frank. “It does work! It does!”

“Fine,” Todd sighed, “Show me a photo.”

Frank grunted once or twice and growled, “channeling the Indian bear spirit”, as he called it. Finally, his shoulders dropped. “It does work. I heard it click before. It just stores a bunch of them all at once. A whole life of them if it needs to. That’s how it works. It does work.”

Frank rubbed his thumb on the particularly worn patch of the camera’s ancient leather case. He’d found it in the attic with grampa’s stuff. The worn patch made things feel better.

Through the camera, he could see things he’d never seen before. People had smiles and frowns. They were still there when he couldn’t see them except through the camera’s magnification. It occurred to him that there might be others like Todd - who didn’t just come and go. Once, he’d even seen a real bear in the camera. Of course, Todd had ruined everything. Todd said the bear would eat him. That’s stupid, though. What Indian would channel a spirit that would eat people. “Next time,” he thought, “I’ll just go talk to the bear. He’ll understand me when I channel the Indian bear spirit. We’ll make sandwiches. No crust.”

He looked back through the camera’s eye and saw Todd’s face. It looked different than usual, but wasn’t an expression he recognized. Just wet and squinty. He was also breathing funny.

‎”Good night, Todd.” … “Good night, Todd.” … “Good ni”

“OK! Yes! Good night, Frank. Good night. Sleep well.”

‎”OK”. Frank practiced his happy face to tell Todd he was happy. Todd said a word he didn’t know. But he’d put some more pictures in his camera, which made him a good photographer.

And that made him happy.

For those less scientifically inclined, Schroedinger’s cat is classic hypothetical experiment in which, by a series of unfortunate circumstances, a hypothetical cat is either alive or dead based on what some subatomic particles do, but until we observe the cat, the strange rules of quantum mechanics indicate that the cat BOTH alive and dead at the same time (perhaps using parallel universes).

On the other hand, we have my little sister. She currently resides a few miles from me with her lovely and entertaining family, complete with a husband, children, and dogs large enough to “counter-surf” for occasional snacks. She’s also a very good photographer and artist. By all accounts, she is what most of us would quite unambiguously classify as “alive”. So, how does she come to be simultaneously dead? The answer lies in how we perceive and recognize those around us.

Roll back the clock to 1978. I was 7 then, and my 3-year-old sister and I were waiting in the back seat of the car while my mom went into the piano teacher’s house for a few minutes. We got restless, as kids do, and decided to go inside. Now, the piano teacher lived on a very quiet street in a wealthy neighborhood with that Southern, old-money feel (or so I remember it, anyway). In order to get from the car to the house, we had to cross the street, so I dutifully looked both ways, and crossed. My sister was more hesitant, and looking back at her from across the street, I impatiently told her to hurry up and cross. As I watched her take her first few steps across, a car shot across my view, making a “wham!” sound, and was gone an instant later. Unfortunately, so was my sister.

From here, my own recall of events are highly edited for graphic content, so I’ll pass that benefit on to you. I saw my sister lying down on the street, looking as though nothing were out of place – other than her choice of where to lie down. Given the distance she actually traveled, I’m not sure how I located her or got there so fast. I told her to get up, or she’d get run over. No response. I ran to the piano teacher’s house and complained to my mom that that my sister was lying in the street and wouldn’t get up. From the doorstep of the piano teacher’s house, everyone else seemed to see what I didn’t, and immediately went into varying states of action, panic, and shock, all of which I thought were a bit much for a kid-sister who was clearly doing something she shouldn’t be doing. She survived the trip to the ER, remained in a coma for a few weeks, came home from the hospital, and life began to resume.

Years later, when I was married and going to school at Baylor, I had a dream. In the dream, I re-experienced the events, but without the edited perception. I woke up screaming, “Get up!!! Get up!!!”, holding my wife’s arm tight enough to leave a grip-shaped bruise. Further dreams that night revolved around silhouetted operating rooms, surgeons, and the sound of their tools against one another and the metal tray. I still don’t have conscious recall of how I saw things in the dream – I only know that it was “the uncut version”.

Over time, it became increasingly easy for something to trigger flashbacks to the event, but with the emotional response triggered by the dream. Sadness, loss, fear, panic, adrenaline. Once it even happened when watching a rather graphic “don’t text while driving” ad, which didn’t seem to directly relate. Most recently, they were triggered more powerfully than ever when a neighbor, having shot and killed his step-son, allowed his wife to leave the house, and after a police stand-off shot himself. Sitting with the mom as she grieved for her son brought back memories of thing my mom had said as my sister lay on the street.

The two events together were overwhelming, so I decided to get some resolution on my own early trauma. It occurred to me that my reaction to the accident would be consistent and reasonable if my sister had died. Put another way, I wasn’t convinced that I had a right to feel as I did. The couple of times I’d communicated with others who had lost someone close, I knew I could identify, but it sounded shallow – my loved one still lived.

I decided to see what things would look like if my emotional response were justified. I traded the assumption that my sister had lived for the assumption that she had died, and allowed perceptions to re-adjust. I began to recall or revise the meaning of more and more things which lined up a new perspective on old events. When my sister came home from the hospital, she had no recall of events prior to the accident. She had to re-learn games and various ways that we would play. She also didn’t show emotional responses, and spoke only in monotones, with very simple, concise answers – none of the usual babble or ramblings of most 3-year-olds. If she didn’t understand, she would just stare. I don’t know how long this zombie-like state persisted, and I can’t list specific traits that might have changed from before and after.

What I do know is that from my 7-year-old perspective. The moment that car passed before my eyes, sweeping her away like an autumn leaf, my sister died. In her body grew another sister with the same name, who I love and care for just as much, but in the sense that Schroedinger’s cat is both alive and dead, so is my sister. The rational explanation is that my emotional memory is inconsistent with observable reality. That my emotions are “wrong”. But this condemnation has proven not only not useful, but counter-productive, freezing the trauma of the event in a state where it can’t be assimilated into my thinking, or approached in any kind of non-toxic way. By making them true, releasing the need for emotional reasoning to match logical reasoning, the events are beginning to thaw and become part of the whole.

Recently, as I sat in meditation, I watched the car pass by, taking my sister in an instant. Fear, anxiety, and condemnation gave way to a sweet sadness and then peace as I raised my hand in my mind’s eye and waved a tearful goodbye. I offered her the meditation I’d offered to myself – and my living little sister – only moments before: May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe.  May you be peaceful and at ease.

Whisper sweet into my ear and speak not tales of thorns and nails,
or the approach of murderous feet, but call them now a lover’s treat,
a gentle sweep through soft, sweet blades of grass.

Look at me with eager eyes that ignite and fire my deep desire.
Trace a line along my skin, a practice stroke, razor-thin,
marking the lies of my demise while I shudder and soak them in.

Lay my head upon your breast, delight me with your sweet caress.
Pour your honey on my tongue and draw your blade across my throat,
mix my blood with air and sweat and honey – my ignorance is still bliss.

My life will drain, numb to pain, hunger seduced by deadly comfort.
I’ll barely know my suffocation, never encounter my violation.
And choke my last breath with your name still dripping from my lips.

And you’ll dance in the night and drink to my madness.

Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth: especially about how to live, what to be & do-and those who differ from them are not merely mistaken but wicked or mad & need restraining or suppressing. It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right, have a magical eye which sees the truth and that others cannot be right if they disagree.

This makes one certain that there is one goal & one only for one’s nation or church or the whole of humanity, & that it is worth any amount of suffering (particularly on the part of other people) if only the goal is attained … the belief that there is one & only one true answer to the central questions which have agonized mankind & that one has it oneself-or one’s leader has it-was responsible for the oceans of blood, but no Kingdom of Love sprang from it-or could. There are many ways of living, believing, behaving; mere knowledge provided by history, anthropology, literature, art, law makes clear that the differences of cultures & characters are as deep as the similarities (which make men human) & that we are none the poorer for this rich variety; knowledge of it opens the windows of the mind (and soul) and makes people wiser, nicer, & more civilized; absence of it breeds irrational prejudice, hatreds, ghastly extermination of heretics and those who are different; if the two great wars plus Hitler’s genocides haven’t taught us that, we are incurable. …

Compromising with people with whom you don’t sympathize or altogether understand is indispensable to any decent society; nothing is more destructive than a happy sense of one’s own-or one’s nation’s-infallibility, which lets you destroy others with a quiet conscience because you are doing God’s (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition or the Ayatollas) or the superior race’s (e.g. Hitler) or History’s (e.g. Lenin-Stalin) work. …

Another source of avoidable conflict is stereotypes. Tribes hate neighboring tribes by whom they feel threatened & then rationalize their fears by representing them as wicked or informer, or absurd or despicable in some way….

All these stereotypes are substitutes for real knowledge-which is never of anything so simple or permanent as a particular generalized image of foreigners-and are stimuli to national self satisfaction & disdain of other nations. …

Nationalism … is the strongest & most dangerous force at large today. It is usually the product of a wound inflicted by one nation on the pride or territory of another. …

Conquest, enslavement of peoples, imperialism etc. are not fed just by greed or desire for glory, but have to justify themselves to themselves by some central idea: … the white man’s burden; communism; and the stereotypes of others as inferior or wicked. Only knowledge, carefully acquired & not by short cuts, can dispel this, even that won’t dispel human aggressiveness or dislike for the dissimilar (in skin, culture, religion) by itself. Still, education in history, anthropology, law (especially if they are “comparative” & not just of one’s own country as they usually are) helps.