FATHER'S DAY 2009

by Christopher Nyerges

When my father’s 80th birthday coincided with Father’s Day some years ago, I wrote a pictorial booklet for my father which outlined key aspects of our life together. It was my way of thanking my father. My wife Dolores and I went to his home after the wild cacophonous family gathering had ended. We didn’t want an audience in an atmosphere of laugher, sarcasm, and possibly ridicule. I only wanted to share the thank you story with my father in a somewhat serious atmosphere.

Dolores and I brought some special foods, put on some music, and I began my short presentation beginning with my earliest significant memories. I shared with him my memories of how he told me I would be an artist when I grew up. He always told me to put my bike and toys away, so "the boogeyman" wouldn’t steal them. As I grew older, I learned that the world was indeed full of very real "boogeymen" and my father attempted to provide me with ways to protect myself against these unsavory elements of life.

I recalled to my father, while my mother and Dolores listened on, the birthday party adventures, getting hair cuts in the garage, and how my father tolerated my interest in mycology and wild edibles.

Everyone found the recounting amusing, even funny, but there were also tears mixed with the laughter. As with most memories, some things my father recalled quite differently from me, and some he didn’t recall at all. Some things that I saw as life-and-death serious, he saw as humorous, and vice versa.

But above it all, I felt I’d finally "connected" with him at age 80 in a way that I’d never managed to do before. My "fathers day card" wasn’t pre-made by a card company, but consisted of my own private and secret memories that I shared with him. I managed to thank him for doing all the things that I took for granted – a roof over my head, meals, an education, a relatively stable home.

Of course, all our family members – "insiders" – knew that my father was no saint. But I was at least acknowledging the good, and sincerely thanking him for it.

My mother died two years later, and we all knew my father would be lost without her. They’d been married over 50 years. His health and activities declined and he finally passed away on the Ides of March a few years later.

Though his death did not come as a surprise – I was nevertheless left feeling his absence. That early Saturday morning when I learned of his death, I even felt parent-less. My view of the world changed and I was forced to acknowledge the limits of life and the futility of pursuing solely a material existence.

After I learned of his death via a phone call, I walked out into the morning rain, in shock, crying, thinking, remembering. I was not feeling cold or wet, and somehow I was protected by that unique state of mind that enshrouded me.

During the next three days, I did as I had done with my mother when she died. I spent the next three days reviewing my life with my father.

At first I allowed the random memories and pain to wash over me. I talked to Frank constantly during those three days, inviting and allowing him to be with me as we did the life review together. I felt his pain, his frustration, his emptiness and loneliness in his last few years of life. I did nothing to stop the pain of this – I allowed myself to feel it all.

I spoke to Frank as I’d speak to anyone living. I felt his presence and even his responses. I did this for myself as much as for Frank and his on-going journey.

I began to see him as a young man, who met, fell in love, and married my mother. Somehow, this was a major revelation to me. I had never seen my own father in that light before. He had simply been "my father." Suddenly, he was a unique individual, with his own dreams, aspirations, and goals. Amazingly, I’d never viewed him in this way during our life together.

And then, after perhaps 12 hours of this, and miles of walking, I began a more chronological review of my life with my father, point by point by significant point. I saw his weaknesses and strengths, as well as my own. As I did this review, I looked for all the things that I’d done right with my father, all the things I’d done wrong, and all the things that I could have done better. I wrote these down, and the "wrong" list was shockingly long. The "right" list only contained a few items!

I asked my father to forgive me, and I resolved to do certain things differently in order to change and improve my character. I know I would not have imposed such a rigor upon myself had it not been for the death of my father.

A week later, when there was the funeral at the church, I felt that I’d come to know my father more than I ever was able to do in life. I briefly shared to the congregation my three days of "being with" my father, and learning what it was like to be Frank, in his shoes, and how we forgave one another.

More importantly, I shared to family and friends gathered that day the importance of constantly finding the time to tell your living loved ones that you indeed love them, not waiting until they die to say the things that you should be saying all along.

I remember Frank now on Father’s Day, and continue to express my heart-felt thanks for all that he – and my mother – gave to me.

CRISIS OR OPPORTUNITY?

FINDING THE REAL WORLD BEYOND THE MONETARY WEBBERY

Money. Greed. Fear. The three horsemen of the new apocalypse. Everyone wants a scapegoat – the bankers, Bush, Obama, The Fed, the highly-paid CEOs. But in our zeal to find someone to crucify, we forget that all of us played a role in this economic crisis. Greed fueled the “housing boom” that had to inevitably crash.
An acquaintance told me during the height of the dizziness, “I can’t afford to NOT use all that equity in my home,” as he refinanced his way to debt. “That’s MY equity,” he assured me, not even realizing that “home equity” is a phantom asset. Where did we lose the notion that it is sound and wise to pay off our loans?
In our book “Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in the City,” we shared in the last chapter some of the illusions of money that most of us carry around with us every day in our brains. We shared our perspective of something called “the four illusions of money,” which we originally read about in the 1979-80 Co-Evolution Quarterly.
One of these illusions is that if we have a lot of money, we will be free to do whatever it is that we feel we want to do. Of course, few people who are victims of this mental illusion ever define what they mean by “a lot” of money, and – amazingly – few take the time to specifically define those things that they “want to do.” I say amazingly, because how can one ever achieve any goal if you have not carefully and specifically defined the goal?
And the reason this idea is an illusion is because when we focus upon money – an abstraction – we tend to then lose sight of the fact that money is a tool to achieve some other goal. How and when did the acquisition of money become a goal in itself?
Of course, in a modern society, everyone has daily needs which are most readily met by money: paying rent or mortgages, buying food, medical needs for the family and children, insurance, gasoline for the car, clothes, etc. These are not the things I am speaking about.
I am referring to the need for us to define, personally, our short-term and long-term goals. Also, we should – perhaps even daily – continue to ask ourselves: What is the meaning of life? Why do I do what I do all day? Am I fulfilling whatever it is that I was born to do? If not, what can and should I do?
I strongly urge you all to read these details in the “Extreme Simplicity” book – and you can get the book from our store at www.ChristopherNyerges.com, or you can get it at Amazon, or any bookstore which can order it.
But here is one way to break free from this particular monetary illusion. List several of your important goals in life. You cannot list “making more money” as one of your goals. Yes, money may help you to achieve your goals more quickly, but you cannot list earning more money as a goal. List those things that you want to do, or achieve, or those skills that you want to master.
List each of these goals on a separate piece of paper. Next, write a simple series of steps that you can see yourself actually doing that leads you in the direction of achieving that goal. Do not list money on this list.
Your steps for achieving your goals should include some of the following: Asking others to work with you to achieve your goals. Asking others to give you things that you need to achieve the goal, or barter with you for objects you need. Consider ways to trade your time or labor so that someone else can give you things or trade consultation or labor so that you might achieve your goals. See?
Begin to see the real world, apart from the webbery of money, and see the people in your life who can work with you to achieve your goals.
Those of you who take these steps, and move forward towards your goals, will find that world seems like an entirely different place. You will discover your brother, and you will find that when two or more of you are working cooperatively towards a meaningful goal, your life will be richer, more meaningful, and your fulfillment will come in the journey.

DOING THE BIRTHDAY RUN

How I reviewed my life one year at a time

By Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges teaches classes in practical survival, is the editor of Wilderness Way magazine, and the author of "How to Survive Anywhere," and other books. He can be reached at www.ChristopherNyerges.com]

My new year came Sunday, January 11, my date of birth. So that’s my personal New Year. As has been my custom, I did a birthday run where I run one lap around a track for each year, and review that year as I run. In a sense, I run through my life, looking back at where I started, where I went, what’s happened in between, and seeking whatever lessons I can.

This year, I didn’t do laps around a track, but ran up and down a dirt driveway for each "lap," a distance of about a fifth of a mile.

For me, 2008 had been a year of pain – losing my dog of 17 years on Easter Sunday, and losing my wife of 22years in early December. Christmas and New Year’s burned by in the time warp I was in, not wanting another close person to be gone. I focused hard as I ran my birthday run, trying to re-live my life, trying to really feel, again, what I felt back then, and my pain came back.

My first awareness of being born was that something was very wrong, that I came from some very holy sacred place and now I was back in a human body on this Dark Age planet. I cried uncontrollaby as I ran, just as I did in my first few years of incoherence and confusion. Yet, I slowly learned what it was to be human, and though I never grew out of my feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and forever out of the loop, I learned the ways of man, of deceit, of double-talk, lies, beguilement.

I’d forgotten – until I did my life-review run – that I once knew that I came from some level of purity and Innocence, then descended to human-ness, and then I worked to learn how to "fit in" to the ways of the grown up world. As I ran each lap, I tried hard to just feel it, and to find the lessons that I still needed to learn.

I remember visiting my grandfather in Ohio, and how he yelled at my mother for some petty thing. I was only a child, but I never forgot that puzzling scene. I somehow thought that getting older meant that people grew wiser, more respectful, more controlled – but this was merely one experience that taught me that was not so.

I remembered as a teen stealing cigarettes and other things at local stores, and eventually getting involved in marijuana for a short while. Both my parents were working and there was no one watching. I looked up to the neighborhood "bad boys" who smoked and swore and stole things, and were it not for getting caught and exposed, I could have stayed on that pointless, nowhere path of crime.

Fortunately, I went through some sort of internal renaissance at age 14, and began taking martial arts classes, learning music, and studying Buddhism and philosophy. I saw that I knew next to nothing, and still I looked positively to the future. At age 54 as I ran, I could see that the past is very much alive in all I we do now, and the future is already written by what I think, and do, and feel as I live each moment.

I found I could do my birthday run with mental eyes wide open, facing all my fears, and perceptions of inadequacy.

In high school, I entered into the world of ideas, and the vast potential good that was available for the world if people – if I – lived ecological lives, though I was too naieve at that time to see the vast overwhelming influence of the pursuit of money in most of us.

I constantly felt the frustration of never really learning anything in school, but I learned to play the game, and learned how to play at journalism so that I could write and share ideas. I didn’t learn how to think, nor did I receive any moral rudder of any sort while in school. I simply learned about the tools I needed in order to go forward.

As I ran, I reviewed my travels, seeking something, rarely finding it. I reviewed my search for "real community," and my various successes in this regard. I felt so happy reviewing the time Dolores and I drove all the way to Oklahoma to take part in the 150th commemoration of the Trail of Tears, and Dolores spoke to the gathered audience with a Shining Bear reading. The whole trip was a magical dream.

Amazingly, I came to the realization that I wasted a vast portion of my life in the pointless pursuit of sex, or whatever I thought that meant. I was too dumb most of the time, too driven by my own animal nature, to cognize the difference between Love and Sex. Even studying Eric Fromm’s classic "Art of Loving" – though a step in the right direction – only began to reveal to me that "love" is not what we are shown on TV shows. True love fulfills, yet only sex is fleeting, and a terrible waste of time, and often a destroyer of families and neighborhoods. It was sobering as I ran to see that dark side of sex all throughout my life, something that I have only slowly been able to deal with.

In the last 10 years, I felt both uplifted by my work, and depressed by my own weaknesses and deficiencies. My separation from Dolores was a source of great sadness, but that sadness was later replaced by the inner enlightened joy of two people, respecting each other, freely coming together for certain goals. We worked together for some of the public gatherings we conducted at our WTI non-profit, and many writings, and other projects. So when Dolores made her final transition in December of last year, I felt both devastated, and forced to review all that was good, all that would take me into the future with the world we created.

So many lessons flowed from this run that it would take a book to record them all –most very personal lessons. I remember thinking that Dolores had created a wonderful life for herself, and that I wanted to do the same, and still want that. I also took faith in a quote from Michael Savage, that "Work is the only salvation."

What Happened on the Massage Table

Falling into inner space

It was already getting dark at the Highland Park farmers market, and my back was hurting me from all the running I’d done two days earlier. My birthday was two days earlier and I followed my two-decades long custom of doing a birthday run where I ran a lap for each year of my life, as I mentally reviewed that year. It had been an awesome run which took me two hours. Anyway, I told my assistant that I was going to get a massage at the shiatsu booth at the market. My back was killing me. Plus I was thinking about my wife Dolores – it had been over a month since she passed away, but I was still missing her very much.

Chiyoki had me lie down on her massage table, and I instantly felt some relief just by lying down. Then she went to work, first on my scalp and then working her way down my back. There’s something about pushing, squeezing, working the flesh and muscle – it was simultaneously painful and enlightening. Something about the pain I was experiencing, both mentally and physically, allowed me to enter into some other twilight-zonish space where time didn’t exist. Maybe the massaging released certain chemicals into my bloodstream and brain – I don’t know. But as Chiyoki continued to twist my arms and knead my back as if it were dough, my mind went into early childhood memories as vivid as yesterday’s breakfast.

I was sitting in the kitchen late at night with my mother, talking about all the things we used to talk about when everyone else was asleep. I would be trying to identify plants that I’d collected that day with my many books, while my mother would drink tea and read her newspapers and magazines. "How can God have had no beginning?" I would ask her. "How can the Pope be infallible?" I would ask her. We discussed these matters at length, and she would often say that I should ask the priest. But later, when word got back to her that I was debating the parish priest, she would yell at me and say "Who do you think you are, talking back to the priest?" It was a pleasant memory, whether we agreed or not, since we could sit there and talk, and she died about 10 years ago.

Time was non-existant as Chiyoki worked my back, and the incense from the next booth wafted over me, reminding me of being an altar boy at the Catholic church, and getting up early before school to practice and to help the priest say Mass. Why was I thinking of that? Was it merely the smell of incense triggering a memory? I thought long and hard about spiritual matters of that sort, and was once serious about going into the priesthood, but something along the way disillusioned me. The past was no less alive then as it was now, as the thoughts and ideas coursed through my consciousness, as the music of the Vera Cruz singers down the block rang out and reminded me of travels to Mexico.

Chiyoki began pulling each arm into the middle of my back and I was about to scream, but I just let her do it. I felt my body needed it. And as I relaxed into the pain, I was climbing the Pyramid of the Sun again, standing at the top as I did in 1974, wondering about the people who planned and built such majesty, and wondering what happened to it all. Past, present, future -- all aspects of the same reality. We think, we build, we live, we die. Our parents and families form our character, and then we make choices, and then we do whatever it is that we were genetically destined to do. What was I destined to do, I thought at the top of the pyramid? Does all life, and all culture, end? If so, what is the point of it all?

I was experiencing some sort of mental free-fall, an internal Fellini movie, highlights of memorable conversations, meetings, endings, as the incense flowed, and the singing rang through the street, while my muscles were being given a good beating.

"OK, all done," she finally told me. I got up, put on my hat, and walked back into the market, realizing once again the illusion of time, and the reality that nothing matters in and of itself, but only how we approach what we do, and whether or not we learn from life.

-- Christopher

Brother Can You Spare Some Change?

A current social commentary
By Christopher Nyerges

They’re telling us on the radio
That change is coming soon
They seem to think that they’re talking to
People living on the moon.

O brother can you spare some change?
I ain’t eaten since noon
The police have made me change my tune
I’ve changed three times since noon.

They’re telling us on the TV
That change is coming soon
I saw the guy who was talking fast
He was born with a silver spoon.

Another bum hit me on the head
He sure looked like a goon
He took what little change that I did have
And he contributed to my ruin.

They’re telling us in the papers
That change is coming soon
They’re lying to us through their red-tie suit
they sound like the outcasts of Dune.

O brother can you spare a dime
I’ve missed a meal another time
I’ve moved my tent three times since full moon
And they’re saying change is coming soon.

They’re telling us on the internet
That change is coming soon
but with no change in my pocket
I can’t even buy a prune.

Please take me to your leader
My life is full of changing tune
I don’t know where I am anymore
I feel like I’m living on the moon.

My life is full of too much change
But I can’t even buy an apple core.
I see the men in their clean suits
But each looks like a whore.

I’m staring out the window
Of the blue bus going downtown
The world was changing around me
There’s just too much change goin’ round.

They’re telling us on the street corner
That change is all the rage
I can’t live forever in the alley
I’m much too old for my age.

But these men in spotless suits and ties
From their open mouths do flow their lies
They speak with straight face and smile
That change will be here in a while

They’re telling us on the billboards
The world’s coming to an end
I don’t have enough change for a sandwich
But there’s plenty for the bailout to lend.

I long so much for the good old days
Back when no one even had a fridge
Back when Wall Street’s big bust hit
and bankers jumped from every bridge.

They’re telling us on the radio
That change is coming soon
They seem to think that they’re talking to
People living on the moon.


092508 – all the talk of change, while the homeless ask me for change, and banks are failing every day – change is certain…

THE SINKING SHIP

Copyright Christopher Nyerges
Commentary on our current state of society

We’re whirly giggling very fast
Gotta hurry make these profits fast
No time for boring prophets past
Wear white robes, said first will be last
Today we seek the dollar profit
So from his pulpit throw him off it
We no longer need to rough it
Tell the preachers they should stuff it
We’re bright future moving fast
Hair that shines, polyester pants
Cut down more trees to build our plants
Try to ignore Ed Begley’s rants
Our great profit must be vast
Cuz we’re number one, future and past
What matters fresh? Let food be gassed
If dollars there, we’d mine Mt. Shast’
Wild land is a thing I hate
It’s non-performing real estate
Tree-hugging is a weakness trait
Save them a tree for go-away bait

O ye who control the fate
Of our vast land and of the state
Humbly look to what your action’s worth
Can’t you see beyond your wide girth
Don’t you see what your thoughts give birth
Your greed it makes a hell on earth

This greed it now is a pervasive thing
It causes us to no more sing
We hide inside our computer king
And no more does our mind take wing
We’re slaves indeed, our brain’s in sling
No more good fortune does tooth fairy bring

The mystery’s gone and no more awe
Our world is tightened by obey law
Mindlessly with spiritual flaw
Would choke us to death if we only saw
The ever-tightening order control
Little by little heads do roll
We pretend it won’t destroy our soul
But our lives become more grassy knolls
Computer chips, and credit cards
Cell phones, ipods, make us dullards
Our minds drained, no more chance for Bards
We open embrace our prison guards

We’ve met the enemy and he is us
We’re already locked inside blue bus
We justify and say "don’t fuss"
We’re already dead in New World crush

We’ve already made money our god
We’re all in body-snatchers pod
If we don’t like it, we’re called odd
We pretend OK with faceless nod
We’re already dead to spirit within
We’ve all committed too many sins
Maybe we hope for something that’s been
But all we see is grim reaper’s grin

God, there must be way out of here
But can’t be drugs and can’t be beer
Find a way to overcome fear
Can’t jump on comet when it is near

I don’t want to be forever podded
I one day want to say "I got it"
Don’t want life to be ‘bout what I’ve boughted
Want to know the point before I have death-nodded

O ye who control the fate
Of our vast land and of the state
Humbly look to what your action’s worth
Can’t you see beyond your wide girth
Don’t you see what your thoughts give birth
Your greed it makes a hell on earth

Thinking About My Father

I never liked the manner in which some parents continue to treat their "children" long after they’ve grown up. I remember reading about a 90 year old father who still chided his 70 year old son as if he was still a boy.

As I grew older and lived apart from my parents, I wanted an enlightened relationship. Perhaps "friends" was too much to hope for, but I wanted to be treated as an equal, not spoken down to, but listened to. But how to slowly bring about such a change?My mother was always easier to converse with, and she was much more willing to relinquish her reins of parenthood on her 30-something, and then 40-something, child. My father had much greater difficulty. He grew up in the Depression and lived his life in that mindset. He never fully trusted banks, didn’t communicate much with his children but expected our obedience, and "taught" us what he could via yelling at us.

I have said, jokingly, that I learned everything from my father. His ideas were too often tinged with stubbornness and folklore, and I often took a contrary path to his advice. Mushrooms were messy and dangerous, so I took up mycology. Everything I needed to know about plants was in the grocery store, so I took up botany and ethnobotany. A computer was absolutely not needed, so I learned how to use a computer along with the rest of the world. Oil, high heat, and a teflon frying pan was all that you needed to know about cooking, so one of my brothers became a chef.

Still, he was my father. As the years rolled by in our separate adult existences, I made the effort to get to know my father as a person, to talk to him, to be a real friend. So I refused to go to the normal family holiday gatherings where there was too much food, a nonstop blaring TV, and loud simultaneous talking (and yelling) by everyone. Instead, I would visit the next day and sit and talk with my father and mother, sometimes with a pie or other home-made dish. He regarded it as odd that I’d rather do that holiday meeting the day after everyone else met, and he even once went so far as to call me a "bad son." But as time went on, I could tell he was touched by having us share a reading and small meal the day after. He no longer chided me for non-attendance at family events.

Once, when trying to dissolve the parent-child bonds, I called him and began a discussion.
"Can I call you Frank," I asked.
"Is something wrong?," he responded.
"No, nothing is wrong," I told him. "I’m just trying to have a better relation with you."
"Do you need money? Are you in trouble?" he asked with worry in his voice.
Needless to say, that conversation did not go as planned, but was still a step in the right direction.

When he died (after a long illness), I got the word via an early morning phone call. In a daze, I walked into the moderate rain, crying, talking to Frank. I walked for hours, and I felt that I "reached" him, and he seemed to appreciate our continuing conversation.

I’d learned to love and appreciate him in his final years. He was by no means an ideal father. He was full of strengths, and weaknesses, talents, and flaws. He knew quite a bit of stuff that was not so. But I grew to admire and attempt to emulate his positive attributes, while also attempting to learn from his mistakes and avoid those patterns in my life.

In this way, I can say that my father taught me. I chose to no longer hold him in the mental bondage of "flawed father," just as I had demanded that he no longer hold me in the mental bondage of "deferential son." Rather than see him as a "flawed father," I saw that he was just another individual with his own life’s challenges, trying to make sense of this life, flaws and all.

By trying to see his life through his experience, I found that I could simply accept who he was, my father, one-half of the formula for bringing me into this world. At long last, I felt at peace with my own father, and felt an unconditional love towards him, years after he died.

CASSIE'S GIFT

"The Greatness of a Nation can be determined by how its animals are treated" – Ghandi

by Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges is the editor of Wilderness Way magazine, and the author of "How to Survive Anywhere." He can be reached at Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.ChristopherNyerges.com]

In memory of Cassius Clay, Christopher’s canine pal of 16 years
I have many fond memories of Cassie, but I remember the end the most right now. I thought that I was taking care of Cassie and helping and saving Cassie – I had to carry him in and out, and was always concerned about his welfare. In the end, I realize that Cassie was helping and saving me. He instilled in me a sense of responsibility and caring that maybe I never had before.

When I walked today, I missed Cassie so much, and I thought about his role in my life. I thought about how I tried to see his dog pictures of the world, how he processes the many smells that he takes so long each day to smell. When I attempted to go into his mind, like Beatrice Lydecker described in her What the Animals Tell Me book, I "saw" a colorful, very dynamic image of flowing geometric shapes that all moved like the wind in varying patterns, in a three-dimensional complexity. To me, it was the complexity of odors that meant so much to Cassie, and very little to me.
Shortly after he died, I asked him to show me his picture, and I "saw" in front of my his big face licking mine. He was telling me that he was happy, in peace, no pain and that I was OK.

As I walked this morning, I thought about Easter Day when Cassie died. Though he had had trouble walking for weeks, he seemed OK in the morning. When I came home in the early evening, it was dark and Cassie was warm but I could not rouse him from his house, and when I pulled him out, I knew it was over, even though I tried to bring him back. There was no music, no singing of birds, just the quiet of the night and the final sounds of his dying body.

As I walked this morning, I realized that Cassie’s gift was his unconditional love. And now that he was gone, I tried to sort out the meaning of that love. I have heard it said that Eternal Life is synonymous with Eternal Love. That Eternal Love is also impersonal. It is universal loving without concern for prejudice or opinion or preferences. It is doing what is right, and not being concerned about my group, or my party, or my race, or my gender, or my family. It is finding those ways of thinking, and of living, that exemplify the Golden Rule, and Jesus’ command to "Love ye one another as ye love your self." Which means we must love our spiritual self, and see that every single one of us is the same.

Cassie taught me to be a better person. He taught me to see that only through impersonal love can we ever find real meaning and harmony. Of course, I feel a personal love for Cassie, and for other close people in my life. But now again, Cassie has made me realize that death is inevitable, and personal love is full of pain and heartache and disappointment. Impersonal loving is not focused exclusively towards one person or animal but is a way of thinking about all life, including all animals. This was Cassie’s gift to me.

NOTE: We held a "fauneral" for Cassie a week after he died. We buried him in the lower orchard, planted a tree over him, and 30 people joined us to talk about our love of dogs and animals.