Fresh Eyes

May 31, 2011

My birthday.  At 15,000 feet and climbing, I spend a part of this first day of my 50^th year in reflection.  I find myself looking forward to looking back (ha) as I have so little time when both the desire to write coherently and the brief openings in my days align.

My mother says I was born in a storm that shut down power briefly to the hospital.  Crashes of lightning, dark skies and rain accompanied my way into the world.  My cries might have been stifled by thunder.

Leaving Chicago O’Hare, I saw lightning strike in the distance across the progressively ominous horizon.  The planes seemed like nervous geese, moving around clumsily on the tarmac to group up together as if for safety, and all choosing the same path out of there – to the south and west, towards the calmer skies.

Now at cruising altitude, this clumsy goose has become the albatross, as I believe Baudelaire described it.  Soaring confidently in the bright blue sky with a carpet of white clouds underneath, we are not of the earth, and we are not of the heavens, but somewhere in between.

Yin to the yang, this space is purgatory’s sister.  Struggling for clarity, a broader view, a more hopeful future, we ascend to take a peek.  Gravity, that grave companion!  Ever with his hands around our ankles, we can’t get but so far.  Only the astronauts have beaten gravity at his elemental game of tug-o’-war.

Gravity will lower my bones or ashes to the ground, eventually.  My abiding hope is to live each day as my last in the most positive way.  Loving those around me, taking care of people, creatures and plants.  Doing the best I can to leave a positive and invisible trace on this place that I now look down upon from way up here….

Somewhere over Illinois.

P.S.  I landed and was shuttled to a Cedar Rapids hotel where, sometime in the early evening, under perfectly clear skies, the power went out.

It’s been easy to grow up with the privileges and guidance I have had.  It’s easy in this culture to have a very simple view of the criminal justice system:  bad guys are caught for doing bad things and they get their due by being put out of sight, behind bars – contained deep inside mazes of concrete and steel.

Tonight I attended the premier of Alan Julich’s Against the Tide, a documentary that covers the last days of two inmates in a local prison before they were released, and then their transition into society.  Imagine incarceration for twenty-five years.  One of them sent to prison when he was just  sixteen  years old!

Tonight’s premier was attended by the gentlemen in question, along with members of their support teams.  These teams are comprised of ordinary citizens.  But not really.  I believe they are extraordinary, and am proud to know them.  Thank you to the support team members and Alan for capturing this amazing story.  And congratulations to those re-entering society and making their way around the obstacles that our system puts in place.

Enjoy the following preview, and if so moved, check out the link following to their website  and order a copy.

http://www.ajmm.net/against-the-tide/index.php