Pax Plena

Tag: Modernity

  • The Problem with Pictures

    Kitty (aka Mario / Kit-tums)

    It was an early Sunday morning, I was packing my suitcase. Predictably, I waited until the last minute. My flight back to Oklahoma was set for noon and it was an hour’s drive to the airport in Denver.

    I raced about the house trying to collect my scattered electronics and books. It wasn’t as if the flight was a surprise, but I tend to put off the reality of leaving until the last possible moment. Somewhere in the chaos of tangled cables and missing chargers, I gained a helper who was none too pleased with my shenanigans.

    “Kitty” (whose actual name is Mario) decided that all of this packing nonsense needed to come to a stop. Being the pacific belligerent that he is, Kitty opted to occupy my carry-on bag rather than actually allow me to fill it with my belongings. The result is that I snapped a lovely photo demonstrating how helpful cats can be and how annoyed they can get with their humans: “Just where do you think YOU’RE going???”

    It wasn’t until I was safely in the air (and a couple of hundred miles away from Kitty) that I looked back at the photos from my trip. I thumbed through the camera roll and wondered about the picture I took of him. It was just a quick, one-off snap before I shooed him out of the suitcase. But it struck me that a picture can capture a lot about life in our age of hyper mobility – yet also so little.

    My son lives in Indiana. My girlfriend lives in Colorado. I live in Oklahoma, and until this past spring, I worked out of a base in Arizona. The past ten years of my life have been spent in constant motion. While I’ve taken plenty of pictures and put myself through the paces of travel, I can’t help but think about all of the things a photo doesn’t capture.

    Sure, Kitty looks sufficiently irritated. But the picture doesn’t capture the moment before when I was frantically trying to collect my books for the carry-on. It doesn’t capture the night before, making guacamole on Saturday evening, and the movie night with my gf for which the guac was mandatory. It doesn’t capture the goodbye kiss at the airport or video chats with my son from afar.

    I guess the problem with pictures is that they don’t capture love and life on the run. They miss the gate to gate, week to week, and ultimately year to year dedications of a life that’s too vast to preserve in toto.

    Ultimately, a picture is just a moment we try to preserve in hopes that it will conjure both memories and context. A still of life that we can set aside. Even as good as a photo may be, its true meaning will eventually be lost.

  • My Neighbors

    Back in Walters, I live about a block from the old train depot. Built in 1920, the Rock Island Depot put Walters on the map in Cotton County and heavily influenced the town’s selection as the county seat. The line itself served primarily as a local passenger stop along the Rock Island and Pacific Railway line – although the tracks eventually linked up to points well beyond the confines of Cotton County, particularly once one reached Oklahoma City or Dallas.

    Today, the depot is on the National Register of Historic Places. It mostly hosts community art events and is home to a newly-minted playground for the kiddos in town.

    I guess one could say its heyday has long passed. But it’s still interesting to think about the people that boarded and disembarked all those trains back in the day. The passenger line ran until the 1950s before cost cuts closed the local lines, opening the tracks to mostly freight (viz., grain) until the depot’s ultimate closure in 1980. Sometimes when I walk by, I think about the age when train travel was a major form of transportation. Folks boarding and waving good-bye to loved ones on the red brick walkway outside. Perhaps soldiers going off to war or returning from battle. Thousands of lives lived and now long gone, even while the building remains – a testament to life in a different era.

    I sometimes wonder about the lives of those people. What their goals were. What they dreamed of accomplishing. The people they were dating. Who their friends were. What they did for work. What they did for fun. How did things turn out for them.

    That kind of wondering has a way of raising larger questions. Lately, I’ve been reading about different schools of psychology and the great debate between Freud’s etiology and Adler’s teleology, and the contrast keeps returning to me. As a former, law-trained academic, I’m out of my depth, but the difference is clear enough. The rub of Freudian etiology looks to the past as a way to explain current behavior. Meanwhile, Adlerian teleology looks to purpose and what a particular behavior is trying to achieve, and whether that purpose can be redirected toward more constructive ends. To a layman like yours truly, the differences seem like an exercise in semantics. But they’re actually quite distinct.

    In Freud’s world, people are the way they are based on their past. And the way to address the present is to work through what has happened in the past. In Adler’s world, a person’s past is irrelevant. What matters is the goal a person is trying to achieve through a behavior, and how to redirect the individual toward a more constructive goal. Freud asks, what happened. Adler asks, what’s the point.

    The link between etiology/teleology and the depot actually gets back to an ancient question that was also posed by a lawyer to Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” While the depot itself is surely in the neighborhood, I can’t properly call it a neighbor – no matter how compelling the depot’s past may be to Freud. Adler, by contrast, would say the history of a building and its former patrons really isn’t that important. What’s more important are the interpersonal relationships I have with the people around me right now. In other words, my actual neighbors are all of the people who live in my vicinity. My neighbors are the people I worked with. My circle of friends. My family. My child. My person here in Colorado. Location doesn’t matter so much as the depth and breadth of the interpersonal relationships that make up my life.

    And I think that’s a good thing. Perhaps I am, by nature, much more Adlerian than Freudian.

    To me, dwelling on the past only accomplishes so much. The real question for each of us is, “what are we trying to accomplish in the limited time we have on this earth?” I think when we put life in stark contrast to the ticking clock that I’ve alluded to in other posts, it makes one acutely aware of the need to treat each moment as an irreplaceable gift.

    Maybe that’s the point. It’s fine to think about the people who have come and gone from the old depot. It’s okay to wonder about their lives and even about what life was like way back when. But that’s not the same thing as loving your neighbor. Loving your neighbor requires active participation. It’s contemporaneous. It requires an investment. And even as frightening as investment can be, even a failed investment of time, love, energy, and effort is better than having never left the past.

    So, I think Mr. Rogers said it best: “Won’t you be my neighbor?”

  • A Visit from a Friend

    A Mourning Dove. I call him Dave.

    I’m in Indiana this week. My time of being a nomad is well underway. It’s cloudy and muggy out. The heat grasps at the moisture in the air. It’s oppressive. Not quite as dreadful as DC in the summer. But pretty close. Even the squirrels and chipmunks have stilled their play to allow the afternoon heat to drag on.

    Soon, I imagine, they will resume their scurrying and gathering, or whatever it is that my friends do during the heat of the summer. My ex-wife’s backyard is filled with animals. I usually spend my days at the dining room table with an unobstructed view of the backyard. When animals make their way onto the deck (which happens fairly often) I call them my friends.

    So, with my friends scampering about, I suppose that the only idle one around here is me. My son has resumed school. His family here has resumed their work routines. My girlfriend in CO remains busy doing attorney things while maintaining her home for her kids. My family in OK are all, well, doing okay! Work, School, and Church seem to run the days there.

    The Sentinel.

    As I thought about the constant motion, it occurred to me that I felt a bit like the tree in the backyard. I call him The Sentinel. A fine specimen of a sugar maple, he stands athwart the chaos of days and looks calmly on. His stately branches reach out and provide shade and shelter as the world passes by. It could be said that he stands idle. But, at risk of being overly animistic, I don’t think he does. I think there’s a wisdom to watching and learning before acting. At least that’s what I think he does, and what I hope I’m doing.

    At any rate, what made today especially interesting was that a mourning dove joined me on the deck this afternoon. He was a handsome fella. He seemed rather content to join me and sit on the deck while we awaited the afternoon thunderstorm. As the humidity rose, I began to wonder where he would go should it truly start to rain.

    It prompted me to learn a bit more about mourning doves. I read that female mourning doves sit on their nests from late afternoon throughout the night. So, I figured that this mourning dove, who was decidedly nowhere near a nest, was a male. For all I know, he had just finished the morning shift of nest sitting and was cooling his heels until the storm arrived or passed. I’d say, he was here at least 20 minutes.

    In considering his stay, my mind began to wander, and I grew concerned for him. I hoped that he wasn’t injured.

    But isn’t that rich! He was doing what I was doing. Together, between me, the bird, and the tree, we were all idling and whiling away the afternoon. There was nothing wrong with me. The tree seemed fine. Yet, I immediately wondered whether there was something wrong with the bird.

    It wasn’t a flash of insight, but it struck me that maybe a guy just needs a damn break from time to time. And while it’s not popular in our culture and economy to take breaks (Gasp! Resume gaps!), maybe taking a break is okay.

    Because, come 6AM tomorrow, I reckon we’ll both be up, taking care of the kids, and doing all the things, all over again.

    I learned a lot today. I’m glad my friend stopped by.

  • The Calendar

    My Son’s summer reading calendar.

    My life is run by a calendar that I do not control. Yet, it’s also one that I cannot resist. I think for many fathers out there, shared custody is a lot like this. We navigate and plan often from across multiple states. We hope that between all of the planning and coordinating, the presence we manage to win in our kids lives will somehow be enough. Whether or not we are successful is left to the onward march of time.

    At any rate, my son lives in Indiana. I reside in Oklahoma. It’s been this way for the past few years. He comes down for the summers and for two months we kick back here and enjoy our time together. I like to plan a side trip for us during this time. We participate, albeit somewhat limitedly, in our tribe’s summer, ceremonial celebrations. We also participate limitedly in the activities of our church. We try to pack in as much time with my family as we can before our time is up.

    But the calendar is always there, lurking in the background, reminding me that I’m on the clock, and that I need to pull together as many good memories as I can. It’s a constant exercise in planning, negotiation, fiscal management, and time management. It sounds like a lot, but really this is just an annual exercise for us.

    After my son goes back to school, the fall will roll around and I’ll see him again on his birthday, and for Halloween in October. I’ll have him again for Christmas. We’ll sort out a spring break visit. And then the summer will be here again and the process will start all over.

    So, while there is much I cannot control, my job as Dad is to make damn sure that I show up, try to create the best memories possible, and bide my time until we can enjoy a brief respite once again during the dog days of summer.

    But the funny thing is, I’ve never really liked summer.

    I melt in humidity and bake in the heat. Being outside in July/August might as well be my own personal hell. I’m not sure when I developed such an aversion to heat-induced discomfort. Somewhere between living in Wyoming, Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma over these past ten years, my constitution has decided it simply isn’t cut out for the heat. It’s a most inconvenient conclusion. These days, I would much rather hunker down in cold air conditioning, than traipse about in the 90-100 degree weather. My body tells me this constantly. Yesterday, I carried hot pizza boxes into the house and got a heat rash up and down my arms. I think it’s the heat. Maybe it’s eczema? Who knows?

    Whatever it is, I’ve learned over the past few years that the calendar controlling my life really isn’t about me. It’s all about my son. The calendar is just the outward manifestation of love in action. I love him, so I make it work.

    The result is that my life is mostly nomadic. I spend time with my girlfriend in Colorado. I carve out the time to be with my son. I juggle the relationships with my family here in Oklahoma. And I cope with the environs, wherever I am, as best I can. I actually feel most at home right here, sitting at my desk. Iced coffee in hand. Yet, I’m rarely here.

    I suppose all our lives are controlled by external forces. Yet, I like to think that my calendar is an act of love. I know that love, the real kind, requires sacrifice. I know this because the people in my life that love me have had to sacrifice on my behalf too.

    It doesn’t make things easier knowing this. But on the days when the heat raises welts on the arms, and the sad day of my son’s departure is at hand, it helps to remember that love, even at a distance, is always worth it.

  • Shoes on the Floor

    It’s the last week of summer. Technically, there’s next week. But my alone time with my son lasts through the end of this week (7/20 – 7/24). Soon, his Mom will come down and get him. School back in Indiana will start the first week of August. Then, summer 2026 will be a wrap.

    It’s a funny thing how time works in a kid’s mind. All summer long I’ve been hounding him to put away his clothes. Pick up his toys. Throw away trash. And pick up his shoes. You’d think after two months of hounding that the message would sink in. But I walked by the shoe area just now and saw these in the middle of the floor – a fact notable only in that this is NOT where shoes belong. I reckon a couple of months is just a blink to a kid, no matter how we adults might think otherwise.

    It’s true that my son really isn’t a kid anymore. My son is now a fully-fledged member of the teenagers’ cohort. His ASD diagnosis notwithstanding, I don’t think there are many teens lurking about who have mastered the art of picking up after themselves. He may not run the tidiest of ships, but if my nephews and friends’ kids are any metric, his general lack of comportment is hardly due to being on the autism spectrum.

    Of course, not all of the summer has been like this. There have been the usual summer pitfalls that are absolutely attributable to the autism spectrum. His sleep has been dysregulated since he got to town. Also, they’re less frequent now, but the meltdowns seem to have gotten more intense. Yelling and screaming are usually the pièce de résistance of his outbursts. And then there are those moments late at night, long after he’s drifted off to sleep, where this Dad just feels like he’s flailing about and not entirely sure what to do to fix any of it.

    But then there are the wins. My kid has read two chapter books this summer (the first two of The Olympians series). We took a trip to Colorado and deftly navigated the chaos and noise of the airports. He has gotten into a new video game in his own right (Ark: Survival Ascended). We’ve even graduated to noise cancelling headphones, adult shampoo/conditioner and grown-up toothpaste. When you add in that he’s never missed a meal, and learned how to use the air fryer to boot – well, it’s nearly enough to counter-balance the challenges.

    The summer is surely drawing to a close. And it’s fair to say that things have been far from perfect. There’s still shoes on the floor. But I suspect that in a few weeks when the house is quiet and everything is tucked away in its proper place, I’ll miss those shoes on the floor and will see more of the wins from this summer than the challenges.