What made me

Specifically: why do I think the way that I do? I feel that I can identify most of the concepts that are responsible for the way I process information and how I constructing my thoughts. The meat of what I believe. And the only thing that has changed since I was young kid is realizing that there were others that came before me and identified all of these concepts.

I was told twice this past weekend, in as many days, that I had helped to color the way that someone sees the world. In one instance, that I “… really helped to shape my view of the world and I think turn me into a much sharper toothed, jaded version of myself.” I take joy in knowing that as I was fumbling through my own making that I was able to impart some of what I was learning and it seems to have been put to good use. 

My best friend in middle school was Nick. We had a running conversation that lasted throughout high school attempting to figure out why we seemed to find people that ‘got It’ but neither of us could put a finger on what It. We just knew that a lot of people seemed to not. Granted, a lot of our discussions were inside jokes about our network of friends and acquaintances that stretched over several counties in South West PA and into Ohio and the West Virginia panhandle.

People were tested with double entendres, quips and repartee. If you were clueless, than you got dissed or possibly pissed on for awhile. If there was some hope or you possessed something that we might want you might get a pass, but you would no doubt end up the butt of jokes because comedy has a price.

Someone who didn’t ‘get It’ thought that this was mean. We were just a bunch of dicks best avoided. But if you got it, you’d see it all at once and each individual piece simultaneously. Nick and I both recognized this as well. Several years would pass before I read Zen koans and realize that the method we were describing was actually more or less utilized in a long dead school of Zen and that quite often we were speaking in koans and those moments where it felt as though I was seeing something in total was satori.

That’s partially what it meant to ‘get it.’

AROUND the same period, I began studying Existentialism as part of my philosophy major. There I was introduced to a lot of language that helped to define the nuances that we might discuss at any given time and that hard to pin down ‘It’ was best represented by Authenticity which is best defined as recognizing that we are part of the material world full of pressure and influence from external forces. To ‘get It’ is to be authentic. It is to recognize that you have to be true to yourself despite these pressures. I never cared what anyone thought with a few rare instances of unrequited love – but so did the nihilist in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Bazarov could only admit it on his deathbed.

I faced up to it when I would encounter it.

The next concept whose realization lead to a strange comfort is the first noble truth of Buddhism: that Life means suffering. We’re not perfect and the world is not and so we will endure a life of physical pain and mental anguish. Even on the lowest level, like being in the company of someone you really enjoy, the time to part inevitably comes and while you’re not devastated, you long on some level. That’s not to say that there are not happy moments free of suffering but everything is cyclical and so you can expect disappointment and fear to return. You will be depressed and you will be sad again. Life is incomplete and not permanent.

I suppose to some degree I also agree with part of the second noble truth; that attachment is the source of suffering. As life is transient, so to are those things to which we are attached. If you can experience it, you can become attached to it. I part company at the point of the transient ‘self’; the jury is still out for me on that one. I’m not so sure that life just stops. I tend to believe that a God is possible. My question here lies with my concept of Anselm’s God that exists outside of us and so we can never know its mind. He goes on to state that God can know our mind because we are wholly of his experience. But I wonder if we are so finite that this God cannot know really know our mind?

Sorry for wandering off there…

Since I don’t believe in the cessation of self, I have to reject the third noble truth and the idea of Nirvana. I can never remember the Noble Eight Fold Path and so it hasn’t really made an impression on me other than I think it might be possible to create a model to achieve a sort of sub-enlightenment but I disagree that one needs to walk between the extremes of hedonism and asceticism. Sometimes you have to get into the pool to see if the water is cold. Walking the path between the two is to risk deceiving yourself and accepting something other than what is. One cannot be sure some times unless they imbibe.

TO weigh the merits of anything, I analyze it using my own take on Hegel’s “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” and I’ll detail it here. A proposition is the thesis which I compare against the negation of the thesis. This is the antithesis. The common truths are identified along with any other new findings and this is now reconciled as the synthesis. The synthesis now may become a new thesis. This probably sounds really complicated, but it really is quite simple. I profess no truth in the following but only use it to make the concept easier to use. Here’s an example: Capitalism is the thesis; its reactionary antithesis is Communism; the synthesis can be seen in the current governments of Iran, Russia, China and will soon be on our shores. It’s not quite Fascism and it seems to sometimes be nationalistic but I think it is still being defined.

The next item is relatively new to me but the concept is definitely scalable.

MISEN PLACE, or just mise is literally French for “everything in its place” and is one of the core concepts taught in cooking schools. I really can’t improve on the Wiki entry for it: “It is used in professional kitchens to refer to the ingredients, such as cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, par-cooked items, spices, freshly chopped vegetables, and other components that a cook requires for the menu items that they expect to prepare during their shift. Recipes are reviewed, to check for necessary ingredients and equipment. Ingredients are measured out, washed, chopped and placed in individual bowls. Equipment such as spatulas are prepared for use, while ovens are preheated.” With everything in its place, the Chef can just cook. When I first read Tony Bordains description of mise in Kitchen Confidential, I was floored – what a portable concept. This doesn’t just work in the physical confines of a kitchen but it can be applied to a lot of different areas every day. And I do tend to keep “everything in its place”.

I know four murderers. Here are three of them.

I know four murderers. Here are three of them.

The first to be convicted was John Stumpf. He was a friend of my uncle John when I was growing up. Even as a young kid, I could see the volatility and instability that lie below the surface, and while I never witnessed him actually beating someone, at the age of 8 I heard him pummel a guy with the butt of a shotgun. The thumping gaining a distinct liquid squish with each successive blow. 

HE was convicted in 1985 for the killing of a 51 year-old woman that he shot in the face. According to the accounts that I’ve heard, he shot her through her hands as she held them up in front of her face, begging for her life. He was wacking her because he thought he had killed her husband with two shots to the head. He survived to testify against John who now awaits his destiny on Ohio’s Death Row. 

Brian Buckingham was a guitarist in a short-lived band that I was in during high school . The last time I had seen him, the band had not practiced for a few months. He had a vintage, Cry Baby Wah-Wah and I told him that I wanted it back. Well, he ducked me until he graduated later that year and then disappeared. Several years later, I was publishing a zine called Debaser and I used to send issues to Factsheet5 to be reviewed and potentially read by people from around the world. This was when the World Wide Web was in it’s infancy and so a lot of people still read physical publications. One winter day in 1996, I got a letter from a Brain from a prison in, if memory serves me correctly, Arizona. He goes on in the letter to tell me that we played in a band together and that he is sure it is the same Ron because he read the review and the zine sounds crazy. The one thing I clearly remember was the statement that started of the letter: 

“Life’s a bitch and then you kill somebody.” 

I felt kind of nauseated. See, back in 1987, we were at a party in Oakland. In my teens, I never partook in the grass or the glass and so I was completely awake as about 6 people lay passed out around me. This Brian was on the couch opposite me and he had drunk the most of anyone that night. I remember his eyes having that glossy distant stare, at times slightly rolling to the back of his head. He looked exactly like George Harrison circa 1967, with a mop shag haircut; mustachio, sideburns and all, passed out flat on his back. He started to gurgle and gasp for air. I looked on not quite sure what to do as he started to convulse. He then began to spit froth from his mouth.

I immediately got it – he was drowning on vomit. I rushed over and turned on his side as about a gallon of stomach chum projected from his mouth. Bits of O fries and partially digested battered vegetables mixed with malt liquor, stomach acid and vodka. At this point he gained consciousness as did everyone passed out on futons, chairs and the floor. He was white as a ghost. I remember thinking to myself, “This fucking guy looks exactly like George Harrison and he almost died like Jimmy Hendrix.” 

I often think about the different outcome that might have been had I been off walking around, which I had contemplated moments earlier. I saved definitely saved him so that he could go on, years later, to kill someone. I never felt responsible, but from time to time I do think, what if. 

THE last guy was not a friend, but an odd acquaintance. His name is Curtis Johnson. I can’t remember what year he committed his murder – I think it was around 1992 but I had not talked to him since 1989 when I switched schools my senior year. The movie Colors had come out and Gangster rap was also in it’s infancy. A lot of the shit that kids listen to today about smokin’ people and selling drugs was shocking to the squares and parents of the late 80’s. I know when I first heard Straight out of Compton, I was awe struck with the power and grit that I was hearing. Especially when taken in context. Western Pennsylvania was a complete backwater then. Kids today have it all at there finger tips and so it shocks me when they settle for Fall Out Boy and T-Pain. 

ANYWAY, I remember Curtis transferring to the high-school that I would leave. A straight up black nerd with impeccable diction and better grammar than me. He felt everyone out. We had a mutual interest in Rap and Hip Hop and so he was an acquaintance that I didn’t really hang out with but shared shallow pleasantries. That was until we became ‘friends’. I would get called to the guidance office nearly every other day. If there was a vicious rumor circulating about someone, I was accused of doing it; if a restroom was flooded, I got questioned for it. If someone’s tire was flattened, I got shock down for a blade. Most of the faculty hated me. As I heard my name announced along with a list of other names of people that I would now consider Saturday Detention/In school suspension friends, I wondered what the fuck I was being accused of now.

UPON reporting to the guidance office, I was given a hall pass and told to a room next to the lunch room. Was this going to be a line up? I took the long way from the guidance office to the cafeteria. Opening the door, it looked like a typical Saturday Detention. There was the chick who was obviously a lesbian, the chick who alluded to being a lesbian, a girl that was bulimic, a couple of dudes that I had thrown textbooks out of the window with as well as a few more girls and boys that seemed weird at the time. In retrospect I suspect that they had some sort of issues. And then there was Curtis. 

The group leader was the one guidance counselor that I actually liked and was honest with. He was the one guy who always believed me when I was telling the truth. I rarely got sent to him to have a punishment mitered out. He went into this shit about this cool new group that we had been picked to join. A few of the chicks with body issues seemed really happy. I wasn’t. I asked if it was mandatory and told that it was highly recommended. We were told that anything discussed was to remain in that room along with a nice dose of threats and guilt if we talked. They asked this one chick with really deep acne scars to open up about how she was feeling. This particular girl was a real mess. She looked like her face had been set aflame and put out with a rake. In 8th grade, she had let me stick my hand down her pants in art class – under her panties. Her relief at talking was sort of sad. I knew I would never say anything about what she might discuss. Some of the others – I wasn’t so sure. When it got to be time for Curtis to speak, he talked about coming from Compton, and about drive-bys and crack cocaine. The others sat in silence, hanging on his every word. He said that he was in hiding from the Crips. They wanted to kill him for trying to leave the gang. This fucking guy was pretty much reciting a story based on the shit he heard on an NWA record. I mean, this guy was fucking Urkle with clothes that fit only slightly better. I never went back to the ‘meetings’ ever again and I was never called to task for it. I wasn’t a troubled kid but I was merely a kid that liked trouble. 

A few years went by, and my cousin told me how his friend had just been arrested for murdering old people with this guy Curtis. They made off with $50.00. As he described this “gangbanger” that his friend got mixed up with, I asked if he was the guy I knew and sure enough, it was. Seemed this clown should have graduated in 1990 and here it was, like 1993 and this guy was still in high school. Apparently my cousin’s friend believed all of the tales of gangster glory in Compton and this kid thought that he was going to be made an honorary Crip. 

And then there is Mike…