In These Days

...a most unpromising subject

"What the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear
I know the days were so much brighter in the time when she was here
I know that somebody somewhere can make these dark clouds disappear
But until that day, I have to believe, I believe, I believe"
- Don Henley, New York Minute

One of the first times I stood on the Brooklyn Bridge | Canon 2011

I adore Pino Palladino’s mesmerizing bass lines in Don Henley’s “New York Minute,” as they carry the song so deeply toward what the main character is about to do. Harry, didn’t go back to Wall Street, after the crash of 1987. “Harry got up one morning, dressed all in black. Went down to the station and he never came back. They found his clothes scattered somewhere down the track.”

Black Monday saw the biggest one-day percentage drop in U.S. stock market history.

“In the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 22.6 percent in a single trading session, a loss that remains the largest one-day stock market decline in history.  At the time, it also marked the sharpest market downturn in the United States since the Great Depression.”

“It felt really scary,” said Thomas Thrall, a senior professional at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who was then a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “People started to understand the interconnectedness of markets around the globe.” For the first time, investors could watch on live television as a financial crisis spread market to market – in much the same way viruses move through human populations and computer networks.

"You learn how interrelated we all are and how small we are,” said Donald Marron, chairman of Paine Webber, at the time a prominent investment firm. <source: Federal Reserve History>

The opening chimes, counting down time, the twinkling of the piano keys bring on the night, with the undertow of those bass lines taking you to the shadows of Harry’s mind. Thoughts in darkness chasing light. Like a movie, a slow build up to a bad choice, a guilt, a wrong-doing, nightmares that never go away, sirens, the faces of your loved ones, all caught up in a wave of scattered, blinding illumination and second guesses.

In the blink of an eye, in a New York minute. It was over.

In these days, more and more people are dying from lack of mental clarity and some have too much of it. Wide awake. That was me. It was torture. I am no different from many people who have took to writing their way out of being canceled and diminished during a deeply politically fueled time. Except, I don’t believe it was politics anymore. I believe it’s broken people who don’t know how to have decent human discourse.

I resisted, at every turn, any type of mental medication that would lower my propensity to save, to overcome, during the pandemic. The only thing worse than sudden family estrangement, for no real apparent reason, is death and we experienced that too. Many of us out there did.

When estrangement suddenly turns to not being estranged, with no answers as to why this happened in the first place, you go on this kinda journey of just letting it go. You have to. Taking what you can get, knowing how much you love your family - but all the while guarding the part of your heart that the wolf desires to go after. The part that was departed from, where you’re no longer known to the littlest people you loved. Your grandchildren. You have to start over, even if it feels too late.

Yesterday, on John’s birthday, no less, in what I could title Episode #500 of “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” we experienced a milestone. Every single time we are thrust into an extremely uncomfortable world of what feels borderline cruel within an outwardly beautiful picture, God gives us more strength to set our own boundaries and move forward knowing there isn’t much we can do, except to stick to those boundaries.

Have you ever been in invited to a costume party with 100 people and you were the only ones that didn’t get the message it was no longer happening? (no costumes) and then gaslit when you were standing there in your clown suits? “it’s no big deal.” Yeah. It’s not fun, but it does reveal a deeper story. A story that is not ours. As we drove to the event I randomly burst into prayer to ask for joy, peace and kindness in our hearts. It helped.

With that said, the music always speaks to me. Unlike the guilt of the Wall Street trader, I couldn’t think of what we had done to deserve any of this that started so long ago. Trust me, after countless nights laying awake praying to be better, praying for a deep revelation, I have tried to correct my faults. Listen more, speak less. Keep all opinions, as mild as I have typically projected them, to myself.

A few short years ago I couldn’t take any of it. The gaslighting, separate get-togethers, lies and coverups. I realized yesterday, as I stared at my weathered husband’s kind face making small talk on his birthday, in an uncomfortable environment…we had lived a long life like this. It was always in our family. The broken and the hurting. It came naturally as the breeze from outside, that eventually blew inside. The outsider that came in and didn’t want to be part of our family. I had tasted this dysfunction time and time again. It was right under my nose. I didn’t grow up with it, yet I felt it, like the stranger on the screen who does not care about us, yet successfully divides us.

When I was growing up every single person we met was welcome into our life. We were an immigrant family of four. All I ever wanted was a family of my own. A family I could love and embrace, while loving and embracing the breezes that would flow in, never thinking they would be so cold.

We are still here standing, although others have disrespected us. We respect us.

Our weakness, in the end was our ability to love and let go.

"You learn how interrelated we all are and how small we are,” like the chairman said above.

Unlike the tattered clothes along the tracks I want to stick around now and see where my life will take me. My life is worth it, our life together is worth it. Your life is worth it.

We must have the mental clarity to believe, believe, believe that our story is not over. The American story is not over. Your country’s story can be better. The individual story can be good. Our story is one that we should crave to know. It’s not over. It doesn’t ever have to be over.

Too many people we have loved are gone. We can get up and out of our own heads. We can check-in on others and tell them they are worth it. We can find empathy for ourselves and for others in our heart and we can take it. The brokenness.

and move forward. Making milestones.

All the other stories that have bashed us over the head, struck us in the gut and gaslit us into left field, cannot take away our story yet to come.

I truly AM a most unpromising subject. We are all the most unpromising subjects.

“I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain