Memory Tree

I am culturally Christian, to be specific, culturally Lutheran. To be even more specific, cultural ELCA. But that's enough of geeking out on the religious specifics. I'm an atheist now, or I am until I can think of something that suits me better. That being said, I do love celebrating Christmas. This is probably because I am culturally Christian (let's keep this simple), but maybe because it is the way in which there are specific sensory experiences that are part of my Christmas nostalgia. I especially love the act of getting a tree, putting it up and decorating it. All while drinking spiked egg nog and listening to Elvis Presley's Christmas album, Bing Crosby's White Christmas, and anything by Amy Grant. There is something intoxicating about the mix of music, nog, pine needles, white lights, and ornaments that take me back to before my own life.

When Tori, my husband's daughter saw my tree and carefully inspected the ornaments, asking about one's that caught her attention. She loved the electrical relay that my brother had, when he was less financially robust, turned into a Christmas ornament and given to me (in fact a number of us in the family received this gift). After a few explanations and musings over the ornaments, she said, "You don't have a Christmas tree, you have a Memory tree".

Sitting here in the glow of the trees little white lights, I have to agree. It is a memory tree. These ornaments are a conversation with the past. For example, I have 2 of some ornaments. Why? Because when my mother died I received some of her ornaments, ornaments that she had bought in threes...one for my sister, one for me, and one for her. I think she liked the idea that we each had the same of something on our trees. Also, when she bought things she really liked, like a cookbook, she couldn't help getting 2 more so that my sister and I could both have one. Looking at any of my two identical ornaments reminds me of this quality of my mother's. It is a memory of her, of her character, of our bond. Or I look at the 1960s plastic ornament of the angel (or it once looked like an angel, now not so much), and I am reminded of the Pennybakers and their endless supply of mixed cocktails and salted peanuts on the coffee table. Their fantastic and terrifying fights. Maryanne was German and her husband, John, was American, they met during WWII and he brought her home as his wartime bride. They were as different as night and day, but the one thing they loved equally were poolside parties with lots of alcohol, or coming over to our house for our various gatherings and imbibing on the good whiskey my mother always kept for when my uncle would come over. Maryanne was a cheerful person, whereas John sulked and brooded, a condition that worsened with the amount of liquor applied. Maryanne would just become impatient and unhinged with him. There is also the ornament that I picked up at a market in South Dakota. It is a dream catcher. The only one I have gratefully, because I am often embarrassed by the roadside kitsch us tourists partake in when on reservations though in the meanwhile not offering any real understanding or attention to what Native people have endured and are enduring. But I like this dream catcher because it was made by an elderly woman who pressed it into my reluctant hands, and I paid her directly, in cash. Somehow it seemed to make things better. My prized ornament, or one of them, is the one I made in Kindergarten for my mom. It has various dried pasta and beads not so skillfully glued to a piece of cardboard with my name scrawled on the back. I remember the pride with which I gave it to my mother, and the joy at seeing it carefully hung in the tree.

But it isn't just the tree with ornaments, it is the smell. The smell of the pine in the house, and the act of putting it up. These physical aspects of making Christmas happen help to conjure other trees, other tree trimmings, the people who were part of the Christmas story in our home. The tree becomes the heart of the home. A place where people gather to talk or, as in the case with my sister and I when we were children, to dream about what lay in those packages, especially those wrapped in the magic brown paper and tied with twine from Switzerland. The way the Christmas tree lights spill across the coffee table in the otherwise dark living room where I sit now reminds me of the way the multi-colored lighted star of my childhood tree refracted on the ceiling. I would lay on the carpet and stare up at the ceiling mesmerized by the design captured there.

My Memory Tree this year is as beautiful as any other. And today is the winter solstice in which Earth is tilting away from the sun, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Tilting away from the sun, but ultimately moving us towards Spring. This shortest day of the year I sit here huddled with my Memory Tree in front of the Christmases of times gone by. My Yule log is these memories. They warm me. The remind me of who I am. They help me feel connected even as my Christmases have become smaller and smaller.

Layers

Today, when they pass, people see a middle age woman and an old dog. They weren't there the day the Los Angeles Pound had an adoption fair and that lady saw the little puppy stumbling around on short legs. In an instant, she was smitten. There is no way to know how these moments of falling in love arise so instantaneously, but arise they do. It might have been the sad eyes, or the ridiculous motion of a little body on uncertain legs, or perhaps the long ears. Whatever it was, within seconds of their connection, little did they know they would be with each other for the next 15 years. Today, when they pass, people see a geriatric dog, they don't see an athlete who could run hard and fast for miles, and leap across creek beds. They don't see the goofy girl who would for years entertain those around her by showboating her chase and throw skills, all by herself, responding with open mouth and cocked head at the laughter. They miss the dog that loved to look at you through the mirror and then back at you in person, wagging her tail furiously, as if she was discovering both you and the mirror for the first time. That trick would go on countless times, ceasing to get old. Today, when they pass, people see a dog that is remote in her advanced years. They weren't there in the truck with her and the lady, moving from house to house, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, Sacramento to South Dakota and South Dakota to San Diego singing songs, heads in the wind and holding onto each other. They don't see the dog who loved the lady's mom, staring longingly at her and putting her head in her lap for the soft pets. They don't see the pup that was ever watchful and knew exactly how to handle it when this mom died. She was a blanket for her lady that day, never leaving her side, head buried deep in folded arms. Today, when they pass, what people see is a middle age woman and an old dog, and what they see is true. Over the years, from young adulthood and puppyhood to middle age and the golden years, they have stayed together. They are a part of each other now. They are family, made of one strand. Sisters, mothers, and best friends. Woven together by time and experience and love. Today, when they pass, what people see is a middle age woman and a geriatric dog but what they might not know is that these are two souls who rescued each other.

Me and Bella circa 2011

"A" Begging

"I want an A", he stares at her with a kind of unstable urgency, unblinking, pupils wide. "I really like your class, I'll do anything." It's a week before the end of the semester, and suddenly it's dawned on him that he has likely killed off any possibility for an "A". "I think you are a great teacher. What can I do to get an "A"? He breathes these sentences together like he is walking a tightrope of thread, his desperation dangles precipitously over a yawning hollow inside of him.

"Well, you are getting a "C" for participation, as we've talked about, because of your daily and incessant cellphone use, throughout the semester, despite having both addressed this problem both to the class generally, and to you personally and..."

"I'm so sorry!!" he strains toward the instructor waving her off with his hand, her explanation like a noisome fly he has no time for. "What can I do to get an A? I work really hard."

Students mill around after class collecting their personal luggage for the day: keys, phones, backpacks, and even their thoughts. She can hear the final reckoning with class topics filtering back to her through the end-of-class noise. "My dad and I kind of have an either/or power relationship." "Did you hear about the study that said gender differences in power are structural, not natural?" They bustle out of the door into the teeming hallway beyond. New students are already arriving, unpacking their daily luggage or, rather, dumping it into piles on the floor, or on their desks, or both.

Stuffing her leather shoulder bag with her teaching paraphernalia, and nodding goodbyes to the other students, she manages the moment. Turning her attention to Nate, she privileges his ears with the classic, perhaps cliche refrain, "I don't give "A's", you earn them." She stares directly at him and says with as much clarity as she can muster, "You still have 2 assignments left to turn in, and those assignments will impact your grade. I can't predict what you will get on those assignments, but focus your energy on them"

Nate begs, "Can we talk?" His book bag and books lie in disarray around him, and his open notebook, hanging limply off to one side of the desk, is filled with doodling. The pages look slightly damp.

He has stepped closer and she can now smell his unwashed privacy. She can't see the pores in his face, but given his physical trajectory, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that she will eventually, be given this insight as well.

"What can I do to get an "A"?"

She now had managed her bag onto her shoulder, the thin strap cutting into her jacket. It was uncomfortable to carry, but its weight triggered her movement out of the classroom. "Nate, you'll just have to finish your work. You have 3 classes left in the semester. Finish the work." The 3 other students who had wanted to talk to her trailed behind. "Listen, I have to talk to these other students now, so email me if you have any questions about the assignments."

"OK, OK, OK. Bye! I'll see you next class! Thank you for your help! I'll do my best!! Have a good day!"

He melted into the background almost as quickly as he materialized at the front of the classroom at the end of every class. An anxious cloud of solid underachievement nursed by years of somebody (or bodies) doing his work for him, supporting him in his belief that he was not capable on his own. He leaned on that belief as he skirted the water fountain and shedded the conversation with his teacher. It landed somewhere on the floor behind him, propelling him forward as he careened into the next classroom. Just as he settled into the blue seat he usually occupied by the window, his English teacher walked in. He'd try a different tactic this time. He'd talk to him now, instead of after class like he had Professor Weber. That way, if he thought of anything else to tell Mr. Trujillo, he could re-visit the topic with him at the end of the class period as well.

"Mr. Trujillo, I was wondering, do you think I am getting an "A" in the class?"

Tired, the 30 year teaching veteran, looked up over his spectacles. He brushed his hand through his stiff curls. "I think so."

"Oh that's great!! Thank you. I love your class so much. You are a great teacher. I learn so much in your class, and I work really hard."

Mr. Trujillo nodded absently. Nate eagerly plucked his phone from his back pocket. He was a good student. He worked so hard. He had to tell his girlfriend.

Guns, guns and more guns

For the record, I am a gun owner. Not sure why I feel the need to front this information, but somehow I feel it is a fact that might enhance my credibility among the gun lovers out there. I will say, however, that I am not a gun lover. I am merely somebody who likes to be a well-rounded human, and that includes knowing how to hold, load and shoot, specifically, a bolt action rifle. I don't know why, but like driving a stick shift and starting a fire, it seems like one of those life skills I ought to have. Maybe it is being raised in the apocalyptic US culture that teaches me such preparedness means I could, in the event of a major catastrophe, drive a range of vehicles useful in survival situations and keep myself warm, fed and protected. At the end of the day, I see it as a tool. A tool I appreciate, but nonetheless, a tool. That aside, I do have dreams about my gun. Dreams of going hunting with my big brother someday. Bonding with him over the hunt and roasted deer after hours of crouching in some shelter. Maybe we shouldn't call them dreams, but more like daydreams. Those ephemeral thoughts couched in shadow and vague detail. But there is one place I never dream of bringing my gun, or dream of others bringing their guns, and that is in my classroom. Such "dreams" would, obviously, count as nightmares. And yet there seems to be a driving desire by politicians, and Trump most recently, to get rid of gun-free zones in school.

Let me start with this suggestion to Trump and those like him. Start with your events instead of in the schools where myself and my friends teach. If you are willing to allow guns into all Trump hotels, into your press briefings and frankly into any event that you host, then maybe we'll talk. But as far as I understand such events, the Inaugural celebration included, do not allow for guns. Political events that feature important political figures are often "gun free zones" are they not? I wonder why? I mean, if guns make us all safer why don't they start allowing firearms in the Capitol? It is interesting that those proposing gun free zones work at the Capitol, where security measures are tighter than ever for the average, ordinary unarmed visitor. Gun-free zones are for everywhere but where they work. "Open carry - but not here!" - that is the message from Republican lawmakers.

There are those who claim I would be safer, that my students would be safer, if there was an open carry policy in public schools. Let's, for arguments sake, agree. Indeed, having a ton of armed people in American classrooms makes students and teachers safer! Safer than what? This is where we have truly reached crazy land. How many Western, democratic nations, with a healthy public, need an armed citizenry to keep public schools safe? Is that the landscape we live in? Where our society is so dysfunctional that the only answer to violence in society at this point is that everybody takes up arms alongside their books? Our police are not enough? Americans are so awful that they cannot be trusted to to shoot up an unarmed classroom? That is the country we live in? This sounds more like the landscape of a failed state. Yes, in a failed state, I reckon guns are an imperative for keeping students and teachers safe. Images coming out of Rwanda in the 1990s come to mind. Or Syria today. Open carry in schools in a functioning state however is loony toons and clearly nobody is consulting teachers en masse.

I do not want to teach an armed student population. I have enough on my mind. The chances for a mass shooting in my classrooms are small. In fact according to the Psych Law Journal (http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2012/12/school-shootings-what-are-odds.html) there are about 2.46 such shootings a year. Granted the article accounts for K-12 and not community college, but I'll take the whole aggregate, even though on average there are less community college shootings in comparison. I have a higher chance of dealing with a person who is terrified of writing, than I do with dealing with a live shooter. I would rather focus on what I've been trained to focus on. I am not saying mass shootings are not a problem. They are. And there should be a concerted effort to dialogue with educators, mental health professionals and campus security to create a system that can identify a student in trouble, intervene before there is a threat and when there is a threat, have an updated policy on how to respond.

This is not a rant against gun owners, this is a plea for sensible and rational policy and gun rhetoric. Arming students and teachers is not a solution, it is madness wrapped in a nostalgic political ideology for the Wild West. There is a reason gun laws were enacted to begin with. I don't think most sane people are looking to prove themselves at another Hyde Park Gunfight or its more well-known but less deadly cousin, the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

Pick me up before you go go

Today felt unmanageable.  Up so very early and still not enough time in 24 hours to accomplish what I should get done.  Coffee.  Early morning campus dash to my office.  The swimming pool beckoning, swim suit at the ready, but the clock is relentless and my tasks endless.  The swimming pool remains sequestered in the realm of possibilities.  More emails. At least my dog is relaxed on her little make-shift office bed.

Last night I had so many weird dreams...disconnected, anxious, bloodless, and disorienting.  That feeling persists.  The universe whirls by and I am running after the chunks that I am responsible for. Running, going, doing but not finishing anything really.  I get weird when I am like this.  Kind of crabby and melancholy and nervous all at once.  But don't ask me about it.  I'll cut you short without meaning to.  Nothing important going on here.  Move along.  Hell, I can't even get to my dentist appointment.

Early morning email from a friend of many years saying he had a dream last night and I was in it.  Oh the funnies.  We did silly, crazy shit back then.  He's smiling when he writes it, I can tell.  I smile too.  Starting off the day with a connection.  It's like that Star Trek thingy where the molecules (the transporter?) start putting the person back together after being teleported.  My molecules are sometimes not mine to manage.  Sometimes a ripple crosses the universe, the internet, the virtual whatever and rearranges me for me.  My nightmares from last night are suddenly spongy, like the surface of a leaky water balloon.

The day moves into a new phase off campus.  Car must be located.  I move through the well managed streets of La Jolla.  Suddenly a familiar voice shouts my name.  In a moment's notice I am picked up and ensconced in a car that had moments earlier been whizzing by.  No ceremony, just a casual celebration of spoken and unspoken threads of connection.  A friend from years back.  We talk excitedly about his prospects of becoming a father.  I've never seen him so relaxed.  So sure.  For a few moments we spend time together like we have all the time in the world and talk like we are picking up a conversation we started earlier that day.  It's like having a present given to you when you least expect it.

The email, me, the car, the 2 friends that actually know each other as well as me.  Here we are.  All together.  Making happies.  Picking each other up before we go go into lives that rarely include each other anymore.  And yet.  Here we are.  Making follies of nightmares.  May we live long and prosper.

Gaze respectfully...if you must gaze at all

I have recently realized (I'm slow) that what I have problems with are the practices of looking...looking at bodies racially, sexually, politically, according to size etc.  Even when it comes to the naming taken on in identity politics that demands first a practice of looking.  So, in other words we name ourselves as "Fat" or "Caucasian" or "Natural" or "Femme", etc we might be undermining social practices that can create invisibility and silencing, but we are also continuing to normalize ways of looking that condone a kind of objectification   Identity politics seems to reach a kind of cul-de-sac of activism because of this.  Not that identity politics are dead, nor are they useless, but practices of looking in many ways defy, undermine and damage empathy.  Practices of looking encourage the gaze of power because the person doing the looking is involved in evaluations that are produced within a system that has powerful social norming practices.  Visual media alone, to which we are subject to daily, makes a practice of highlighting bodies that are considered normal and abnormal...and oddly it seems, we willingly turn this practice back on ourselves.  We practice, in this visually centered culture, identity politics that take up the tools that normative media outlets use in order to try and re-define, for example, what is considered "normal" and "abnormal".  So we ask others to gaze at us in particular ways because, we hope, it makes them think about us, and allows us to re-insert ourselves where we have been ousted or silenced.  The result it seems, is that we end up reifying the looking and gazing that ultimately leaves out the experience of being, especially as connected to others.

Experience of being, you ask?  I look, I see and I experience because, after all, I am a product of Western culture where seeing is a part of my experience.  Fine, but that kind of experience is one that challenges a relationality demanding to be understood, nay to be embraced.   Porn, for example, is an example of this.  I have gone back and forth on porn...hetero porn, gay porn, feminist porn...you see...even in naming the genres, they are named by the ways in which we see the people in these categories!  Porn divides up people into body parts, sizes, predilections, etc. but doesn't remember the interaction, the experience of the people except insofar as they relate to one's own pleasure...These practices of looking are found in the most mundane day-to-day interactions and end up as political fodder (Obama's looking at the Attorney General).  Strangely it is the feminists who are considered radical because they take issue with Obama's comments on A.G. Harris' looks as inappropriate, rather than Obama's comment as a radical departure from the professional norm.  Sadly, the idea that professional behavior would not condone a boss saying, "She sure is a cutie" (Obama's comment in a nutshell), is clearly still a theoretical benchmark.  What feminists bring to light and have brought home (for me) in this Harris instance is that in the moment that Obama made his comment, Harris was turned from an Attorney General into an object of pleasure for men (or women).  We went from interacting with her ideas and with her, to looking at her.  Evaluating her based on her (in her case) attractiveness.  This constant evaluation of attractiveness is a practice of looking and one women in particular undergo.  We must constantly negotiate when we are being interacted with and when we are being looked at, and this happens so seamlessly it is hard to tell the difference at times.  And if we have a problem with it, and it (oops!) leaks out in a unacceptable way (looking "out loud" in a professional setting), it is the person who is looked at who is at fault.  She is too serious.  She shouldn't have been that attractive.  This can also be seen in a culture that still defends rapists the ways in which came to light in the media coverage of the Steubenville rape case.  NBC, ABC, CNN, you name it, employed discourse that highlighted the youth of the men involved, their "normalness" and their tragedy.  This is not to say that they are not victims in a way.  They too are part of a system that teaches them to be predatory in their gazing.  They are trained from a young age to look at women and evaluate them based on various categories of attractive (i.e. "slut", "lesbian", "easy", "virgin", etc).  We can see these men as belonging to us, to our culture and so when NBC airs a program that takes an "inside look" as to how the lives of the rapists had been upended by the accusation, we can sympathize with them.  This despite that the "accusation" that had video and audio corroboration by the rapists themselves (posted on the internet) laughing at the victim for being "dead" at the time of the rapes.  She was unconscious.

Looking is often done, in a noticeable and acceptable way, by the powerful.  People who determine the scope and parameters of looking.  And even as we try to change the terms of how somebody gets represented we don't look at why looking is important to begin with.  Because the practice of looking, the art of looking, if you will, its terms and so forth, are constructed by those with power, people who are disenfranchised are especially subject to practices of looking.  This is why we can talk about poverty porn, because we understand that the gaze on poverty is much like the gaze we have in passing scantily clad people, we look for our own pleasure.  We evaluate what we are looking at based against "normative" models and we appropriate the visual before us in whatever way we like.  We "rubber neck" with fear, loathing and lust.  In the United States, women of color have especially have to endure these evaluations.  Harris is probably not unfamiliar with this and neither are many others.  This is a land where colonialism laid down its laws and boundaries, and where rape was an acceptable tool to conquer unwilling natives, slaves, wives and employees.  This is what is meant, in part, by "rape culture".  This is why the girl who was raped in the Steubenville rape case felt ashamed to come forward.  She had been looked at in a way that was acceptable.  She had made mistakes and was subject to the "natural" practices of over-wrought teenage men.  The culture condemns both, the men legally and her culturally.  She will always be viewed with suspicion and even hostility (which is why she has had to move away from Steubenville).  She engaged in the same drinking behavior as the men, but in her case she passed out.  The scale of power already normally in play shifted even further in favor of those who could now practice their looking unimpeded and act on that practice of looking.  In other words, the practice of looking was boiled down to its essential, the practice itself.

I am not saying any kind of looking, and it's kissing cousin, objectification have NO place, but that this is probably best left done between people for whom power and distance is no issue.  Or if the practice of looking is a mindful one, one where the looking itself becomes highlighted.  Objectification in this instance might even be fun.  Looking and gazing, once the current practice is substantially addressed, might even encourage empathy, rather than a pornographic overtone.  Looking or gazing will never be something that we can completely undo.  However is it possible in making ourselves aware of the practices of power we engage in when looking that we can produce a different kind of looking.  So the next time you find yourself evaluating someone else based on their looks, "positively" or "negatively" remember that you are probably engaging in a practice that inherently reflects the power of social norming behind it.  Gaze mindfully.  Gaze respectfully.  If you must gaze at all.

Fear

Fear makes a person do funny things.  Not "ha ha" funny, but strange-funny, sad-funny and even tragic-funny.  I have been thinking about this as of late.  Really I have been thinking about this since I killed a baby rattle snake in my yard two weeks ago.  There it was, curled up in the traditional rattle snake coil, except for smaller because it was a baby, no longer than a foot perhaps.  I had been gardening, vigorously pulling weeds in my front yard on a warm San Diego morning when my hand alighted near to the snake and my eyes near to my hand.  The rattling motion of the tail is what caught my attention as it varied from the overall stillness in the background.  The rocks, the dirt even, blended with the snake, but that rattle was shaking like crazy.  I have to admit that I was a little slow in understanding what I was looking at.  This is embarrassing for a person who has mentioned with some pride (on the appropriate occasions of course) that she is the daughter of a biologist and also considers herself to be somewhat savvy when it comes to the various wildlife available in this little nook of Penasquitos Canyon.  Certainly not someone afraid of snakes.  It seems however the moment I realized that what I was gazing at was a rattler I immediately came up with reasons as to why I should kill it.  In the meantime, in order to prove my own rationality was at work, thereby meaning my decision making was clear headed, I stretched out the little snake with the handle of my hand spade.  I contemplated the nose of the snake, the way it's tongue flickered in and out (perhaps smelling me?), it's length and the way it's tail moved though I could not hear any actual rattle noise.  In my rational contemplation of the characteristics of the snake I did allow myself some room to be surprised.  I had never thought of this particular detail before, namely that a baby snake's rattles are not audible because they are not dry enough or big enough to make sound.

Once complete with my various speculations of the snake, (speculations is a generous word for a process that took no more than a minute) I summarily drove the pointed metal part of the hand spade through the rattler's neck, directly behind it's head.  I was surprised that 1) the mouth opened in response and 2) that the dirt beneath the snake and my spade gave way, which made for a less clean cut, if you will.  During this time I continued my reasoning that had commenced with my earlier speculations, that this snake was surely a danger to not only myself, but also my dog Bella.  That even if I took it down the slope of my property and placed it in the canyon, that it would somehow make it's way back up the slope, into my yard and kill either Bella, me or both of us.  After all, as we know, baby rattlers are the deadliest.  They don't know how to control their venom and so inject too much and invariably kill their target.

Once the snake was dead I immediately began to feel shame, but this did not stop me from continuing to pile on more fear laden actions.  Instead of burying the dead snake, so that the thing that it now was, could properly decompose into the earth where it lay and be eaten by the various happy bugs, I subsequently picked it up and plopped it into the garbage can.  Now, I reasoned, it could not attract rodents and other undesirables and wouldn't smell or be dug up by my dog.

Fear.  Not just reactionary, protect-yourself-now kind of fear, the kind of fear that is somewhat forgivable (even if you can feel chagrined about it later, depending on the circumstances), but rationalized, well thought out fear.  I never knew I was capable of that kind of fear.  That is the kind of fear that ends up contemplating the most irrational means for the most improbable ends.  The concentrations camps of Nazi Germany come to immediate mind.  But also the death of Matthew Shepard.  And the pre-emptive war that keeps us safe from something(s) but we're not sure what.  I am, it appears, capable of that kind of fear.  Now I am not saying I could rationalize killing 1000 people tomorrow, but give me time and under the right circumstances, the right "conditions of possibility" perhaps I am no better than George W. Bush or Pat Buchanan or that more "irrational" idiot who accidentally shoots an intruder who turns out to be his wife.

Since that day out in the garden I have determined to arrest my fear.  Come to terms with it.  Understand it.  Not that fear is always useless, but I have come to believe that much of the time it is a hold over emotion and response from a much older human ancestor.  I won't speculate as to which human ancestor as there seems to be some dispute in the Neanderthal connection.  Regardless, pre-historic ancestor no doubt.  In other words, most of the time fear should probably be dealt with as being fundamentally irrational, no matter how many fancy words you put to it.  A survival instinct.  So far nothing dramatic has happened with this new awareness of fear, except that I am perhaps more sympathetic to people who are afraid and respond in anger or self defense.  I am also taking some risks again.  For example I have not written in this personal blog since 2010 and I am picking it up again.  I have put the surfboard in the water and attempted to catch waves, not just ride on the foam that I catch after the wave breaks...the result being I have both caught and ridden 3 waves now.  I trust my partner more instead of live in the fear of old hurts morphing into new ones.  I also want my politics to be kindness.  Fear more often then not, does not encourage kindness.  So now I am learning to embrace my fear and look at it, understand it and then let it go.  I hope by doing this I'll have more time to "live the dash" in my life.  1971 - ?  That dash is what matters now, not the question mark.