When you disagree but are asked to work together

A friend offered a query for his creative peers, but you don't need to be in a creative field for this to apply. So many feelings get involved with that process, though, it's kind of the perfect crucible for this type of question. It's a question of ethics and allotting one's reserves, and it goes something like this:

Yep, it's like going into a dark tunnel, sure.
A friend you've known for years offers you a paying gig. It's a solid opportunity. You've known the person like half your life, so it would be cool to expand that through collaboration. It's a freelance job, and you'll be working together in some capacity. But while they're not a vile hate-monger, boy, do you not see eye-to-eye on some political matters. And as everyone knows, Politics has practically replaced Religion in matters of passionate conviction these days, to say nothing of what passes for discussion. So: take the job?

Inspired to reply, and then thinking it might be a cool discussion to pass along, the Be Chill, Cease ill on that count goes thusly:


You can probably do it. Know why? IF said friend understands how you feel differently- and for many of you, it might be hard to call you 'friend' and NOT know...but thinks you've got the chops, are reliable, and an all-right enough guy or gal to offer you a break...that counts for something. Mutual benefit of the doubt on differences. Just entering into evidence that speculation..not judging anyone. :-D If said difference doesn't have to enter the personal space, well awesome, cause it is, agreed, occasionally venomous. And some outlet for two fine, basically ethical friends to have discussions might even be welcome (it's agreeing upon the set of facts, these days, is it not, that is the issue?), but said friend would also probably understand a neat sidestep of "well, I think you're an intelligent, impassioned person, but I'd focus on giving our project our all and skip that exhausting subject, if ya don't mind" (the 'ya' is important, friend:-D)..Maybe flip a coin on it? Good luck.


There's so much upsetting stuff, and I've read we process 5 x the amount of information we did thirty years ago (I'm more than happy to limit my time on the 'Net for various reasons) so it can create quite a trainwreck in our nervous systems. I can dig it if you're concerned said friend will drift too often into that outlet out of a feeling of you becoming more of a confidante from long hours of collaboration. AS a writer, you get the advantage of understanding a bit how people with differing opinions, come to them, without having to embrace those that are stridently against your own ethics. Reason, we're finding, is tied first to feeling, then following that in its character. But my point was, so much BS out there and Anger, I find, is very hard to effuse in proportion once unleashed (kinda Love, too).

Like, when we go off, it's kinda the cumulative effect of all the things that tick us off, and so, embracing it can cause more strident reactions than we might intend. But you're a man of resolve, and if you have the reserves to avoid pressing the RAge button over the occasional annoyance, go for this! And honestly, if not, don't, because your peace counts for something, too. If they know you well at all, they may well have the prudence to realize they should steer away from certain querulous engagements, so, it's a matter of personal trust as well as assesment of and faith in your own reserves and qualities. WE do need unity beyond our differences, but you individually cannot hope to shoulder that burden for ALL- it's a gut-check, rather, of whether we have the strength to lift a given weight before us at a given time. If failure would be too costly, perhaps then we must decline certain challenges. But the willingness to take that chance when it is not a fool's errand but actually has a hope of a positive outcome- that is a sign of strength.

Our fears sometimes keep us from knowing the weight of that which lies before us, and sometimes our boldness makes us reckless. Courage and discernment must make friends and accomplish life together!

Then I'd step back from that equation and ask myself if I'd find the creative assignment engaging enough to warrant the investment.
I'm having a similar situation, with less guarantee it'll be remunerative in any fashion. These are the times that try the souls of folk, but while we might not always win, we can always learn and grow.

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My first friend

My first friend            Here's a song, from Mother's Day, being made from my heart to music by my partner, for my Mom and mothers everywhere.

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Discovering a Candle for Silver St. Cloud: A poem

"Discovering A Candle for Silver St. Cloud"



By the continued smell of the candles, clove and cinnamon, I embrace my true nature.


My urge to make things as art to give freely away has served to take me this far down

roads that are my essence. Now, realizing even collected works and volumes are lost

in height, width, and diameter, at length, I reach for my cup, to re-associate me

with the fresh knowledge: what is three dimensional reality? Its questioning, when

taken for granted, yet remains.

And one man, paunched with age, still able to erect his spine and present a chest of

pride, is one lion. Even to breath, is much; to create and destroy, to love and to

hate, to read and to write, and ever to will to give one’s self away, defiant, yet

praying for mercy, the top of the erected spine busies itself with all manner of

pleasurable knowing, to gain the strength that reaches the peak, assessment. A touch

of candle wax pain on the finger tip, pictures by candlelight, of a story altered

when one lights a candle, and ghosts to whom we spoke return to us in smoke.

She loves the children, personalities. Babies grow and she envisions. Ever to give herself, for this she lives; having found herself, she thrives; yet must the toxins of these times release, the itch, the cough, the need to keep sleep against the work of a new day.

Quietly now, a sense, design, all beyond those we know;
To her lips, bring stillness, love
While mother, living, waits for snow.

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Frightened Off the Face of the Earth! Part 3 featuring Stern-era X-Men

JEAN GREY (Continuing to sneak into the defenses of the Wolf Wizard.

I'm close enough to observe his "ritual space;" so far, so good. I notice this amazing box, but all my attention goes to...Remus Sharptooth. I feel you at the borders of my mind.
So let’s be friends, huh? I’m Jean Grey! Who is the handsome fellow under all that fuzz!

REMUS: I DO have a handsome fellow inside!! Snarl!! Don't taunt me, fetching one!

What is your purpose here?

His mixed essential nature becomes an apparent truth.
Jean: "Have I struck a nerve?"
He’s both flattered and...defensive...what is going ON here? It’s like two minds... or even make that three or four at play; we’re not alone! There’s one I see above, and some other around me---!
REMUS: A nerve, a body, a sliver, a cell!
You don’t know what it’s like : plucked out of one history, one continuity, one set of stories, and put together in some new, melded form for the sake of unseen players?
JEAN GREY: You might be surprised what i know about that! Wolfie, I have to be frank, I get no sense you as either inherently good or evil...is this thing happening with everyone’s opening inner lives permanent? What’s going on? Maybe if we could just understand what you are doing here...you can feel some people are afraid, and I picture some disappearing, stressed out---how can all those folks be spared the fright of their lives?
REMUS: You sense it, do you not? Yes, particularly with the gifts I sense within you...you are the first living human I’ve yet encountered here. I do not seek to persuade nor offend you.
JEAN GREY: Could I help you figure out why you seem so uncomfortable?
REMUS: i KNOW not your role, nor bare enough, mine. Two voices in me, divided serving my master---
Sulinar Vix! Let the crystal power flow, as now all dragons arise. Let all become so wide minded as they, Returned One! Almighty Zavox, power of the empirical world, let rupture forth your change across the hastened reality of this planet!
JEAN GREY: So bright! Vibrations...hurt! ---it’s like agony with his spell.

Sensing her ESP probe, Remus turns it around and responds with an effusive overload her perceptions with accurate interactions as they occur throughout the effected space/ time of Transmetamorphosis, including the minds of ever more humans. The natural turning of the world towards this ultimate change begins to seduce Jean, as she envisions a world of empathy.



MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?


What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.

Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!


And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!

Such a world, however, cannot be held hostage by terror. Now she sees the image of Sulinar Vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in some alien armor...


Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!

JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s on the scent of my metallic playpal; could being a machine camouflage him? Whoa! Congrats, you’re bait now...try not to end up wolf chow!

Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower is more physically powerful, and also, that she senses her colluder’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.

Hands interfaced with components inside the super machine decode the digital analysis. MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?


What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.

Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!

In the inner chamber...
Phoenix sees the image of sulinar vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in alien armor...


Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!



MACHINE MAN (thinking) And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!

JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s sensed Machine Man. But she’s not going to reach him before she reckons with the Phoenix!
Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower’s manipulation of fundamental forces, her eyes aglow with malevolent inteligence, aware Machine Man’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.

Now it’s Machine Man’s turn: he telescopes his arm with her sitting on his palm, setting her high atop the machines out of the way.

MACHINE MAN: I realize I can’t be the first guy to put you on a pedestal, my pretty friend!

JEAN: Still he attempts to multitask communication with the machine, which he reasons is neutral, while battling the giant she wolf. Nice work, really!

Hmm...robots can be mutated, but I don't suppose I've considered mutant robots! What type of mutant doesn't have genes? I'm sure I could find something akin but distinct in races all over the universe.
(still JEAN): I'm momentarily safe, but someone must disrupt Remus Sharptooth now! My psi-shields keep me masked for now. If I dive for him, engage him in the physical plane....time to open my psi-link with Kurt, so he can see through me where to teleport; we'll double team!

Sharptooth is alert; he breaks out the blue flash balls to play 'chase!'

KURT (NIGHTCRAWLER): What's going on behind this platform?
JEAN (activating Phoenix force): Another plane; feels almost like the subconscious, like some deprivatory tank, floating in darkness. Well, as a telekinetic, if the Phoenix is ready to stan firm, she just wills a bottom to meet her boots and allow her to walk.
This being Sulinaro Vix has erected a translucent shield. What's this glow?

KURT( NIGHTCRAWLER): That's Storm! Possessed of a transfixing light.
JEAN: Machine Man appears, and I find myself easily reading his mind. It's...different; the information's very readily offered. His...humanity catches me a bit ...off-guard!

KURT: He's pointing to the Slay Box I noticed (what is that word I obtained; was it "slay" or "slave"?)

MACHINE MAN: It's Remus again! Do you see---
Machine Man and Phoenix gaze inside the field, tight around the Box: a giant head, a cavernous maw of doom Viking ghosts who comprise the blade’s flame; the team must fly onward, nonetheless.

On a fantastic plane of the mind and soul, Sharptooth’s head devours Earth’s Children of the Atom!!!

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Peace (The Old Hotel)

“Peace”

The sounds coming out of their room couldn’t be missed from anywhere on the floor of the one hundred year old downtown hotel. None of the words made sense. The woman’s voice---was her name Nadine? ---shrieks for what must be one latest of a dozen times. He types for another hour of morning. He pours word after word, explaining, revealing. He is not sure, if, for her, they are for naught. He has already decided not to send but a few of the words. He suspects he has said all he can say on the matter. It may well be the same even a year on.

He hears the two little girls crying out.

So many times he’d run across Nadine in the kitchen, with no unpleasant moments. She’d said something once about thanking God for all that we have, with some veil over her averted eyes.

Her towering, brawny husband, he knew from less. He’d always nodded his head as they went by, they both had, he’d asked some advice about the Old Hotel a time or two. They may have had a brief laugh passing in the community kitchen.

The yelling cannot be ignored.

It is none of his business. He thinks about the little girls. He decides to wash his bowl in the kitchen and make up his mind from there.

Someone had to do something. Preferably, one of the people living there would end this, or both of them. He’d seen the little girls before---five and seven, maybe---coming in with Nadine from shopping. She was tired and strict. He’d heard them all laughing once, though.

The words he leaves on the monitor writhe earnestly with appeals to reason. Which ones of those words would be singled out for exception? He wants to defuse a violent temper with them. Words only work so well in bad stories; in life they require participation and acceptance or they die on the page. Yet he could not help trying to put them into her head: solace is possible, silence is golden.

He pauses outside the door of 212. A “thwack” soon rewards his vigilance. He washes his bowl. More yelling from everyone. “Thwack” again. Thud of a fist, muted in dense flesh.

So, he knocks.

The door flies open. Breathing hotly, the massive man in workman’s blue leans forward, glares out, while Nadine and the two wide-eyed children stand in the background.

“What do you want?!?”

He stands there in the doorway of 212 with the blue plastic bowl in his fingers. He detaches all excessive emotion, and feeling every pore of his skin, says one weary word.

“Peace.”

The man stands there pondering him for five long seconds.

“All right,” he relents. The door is closed. The sounds return to the muteness typical of the old hotel.

Nadine is at the door of 208, knocking not two hours later, seething. “Did he say anything to you? What did he say?”

He shakes his head. “He really hasn’t said anything to me much at all. About anything at all.”

She leaves without another word.

Her husband, the girls’ father, carries some things down the stairwell when he sees his erstwhile neighbor for the last time, two days later.

“I’m going to try to find a way to make things work better. Going to help her move out a while. I’ll see if I can afford to live here by myself. We’ll see. But thank you, man.”

He never sees any of them again.

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Tales of the Old Hotel: Freddie the Freeloader

Tales of the Old Hotel

“Freddie the Freeloader” (for T.J.)
Strange habit I have: the worst troublemaker in the room wants to tell me his story, as I apparently understand...

After three plus months of life here at our one hundred years old-and-counting hotel, Freddie Allman’s*door sported an eviction restoration notice. At least five times since I’ve seen it, I felt a little sorry for him, on a purely human animal level, because he has lost his home, that most basic need behind food and water and rest.

“Just be wary of that one,” said Ms. Janice, holding a newly-dried pan washed in the community kitchen. “He’s dangerous. When they evict him tomorrow, that one might be loud!”

“I’ve been avoiding him, hon,” I told her. “Steering clear. Not talking. Didn’t want anything to do with his business.” Yet clearly I knew he needed a good community of people. It was a shame he could not see what he might have; Ms. Janice brings me food, O.V. hooks me up, we all do each other favors and turn this wing into a neighborhood.


Life in Freddie’s tiny room was never quiet. If it wasn’t old school rap, it was hair band rock, always just loud enough to hear in the hallway on your way to the restroom. Sometimes the door was open. I’d go down to the other bathroom just to avoid passing the door. Experience had taught me he could pop out at any minute with another request I most likely couldn’t fulfill.

There were other noises known to come from that door, and that was why I avoided him religiously. Not that closed doors meant I couldn’t feel my nerves wrack in empathy as he stayed up on speed. It’s my curse to feel the tightness and mental drain when people around me take those kinds of substances. By itself, that would’ve been reason to be a bit relieved to see him go.

The noises I refer to involve an angry friend of his standing outside the door at 4:30 am, calling him a great variety of bad names and demanding something back. For over five minutes. That was just the last such instance, maybe a week ago. I almost called it the third one, but that’s just three that weren’t between him and residents here.

Ms. Janice had an eye out for him after he came to her door wanting a cigarette. He offered her a dollar, but she said she didn’t have one to sell him. He took offense. “Here’s my damned dollar!” he yelled. “Are you too good to sell me a cigarette now?”

“What I want you to do is leave my doorway,” she retorted, “and never come back!”
So next time she does to empty garbage, he rushes up on her to say, "you and me, we've got something to settle right now! This is why no one her likes you!!" Apparently, her boyfriend then visited his door to inform him perhaps he should let her be.

Such was the residency of Freddie the Freeloader.

I took a “political affiliation” quiz and found the question, about an hour ago, asking did I feel, “some people are just born unlucky.” I pondered how that might fit into graphing me (I came out on the dot with Ghandhi). Now I’m just thinking about Freddie. It’s not like he hadn’t been better off before---he told me he was a car dealer before times got tight---but I never met another soul more miserable to live in this old hotel. Nor have I ever known anyone here to have the police at their door twice over arguments in the middle of the night.


It’s like he decided he lived in a slum now and chose to make his life there as ghetto---what he thinks is "ghetto"--- as possible. More than once I expected gunfire. More than once I thought about going to management and suggesting he be dumped. More than once my rather imposing neighbor O.V. nearly pounded his goatee down around his ankles. More than once I took up an invite to stand in his room before I saw into his drawer and knew all there was to ask.

But it’s not like I didn’t give him a chance, even though I had him pegged for an asshole from our first conversation. Once I got the window into his thinking, however, I could only say my piece and hope he’d realize it did him no favors.

The worst troublemaker in the room wants to tell me his story, as I apparently understand...though he did not think so at first.

(continues http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/11/freeloadin-freddie-concludes-old-hotel.html, or next! )

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Our Living Medal of Honor recipient

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101116/us_yblog_thelookout/meet-sal-guinta-the-first-living-medal-of-honor-winner-since-vietnam

It is difficult to find in life anything like the unity, the bond, the sacrifice between soldiers on the battle field. However else you might feel about military efforts conducted throughout the world, you can take nothing away from the courage of
these warriors except inspiration...perhaps awe.

Sal's story goes back to what was in recent years called by some "Our Forgotten War." While serving with his brigade, the Army's 173rd Airborne, in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, Sal ran into intense fire to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. They'd slept in ditches for five nights in a row; this was the final day of the offensive, to re-take the plateau, 8,000 feet in the mountains.

He had no reason to believe he would survive. The thought of those fallen men left to die led him to direct action. His one advantage, not available to previous generations, was his body armor, which allowed him to survive two shots. He saved one soldier while his brigade was split; in attempting to regroup, he saw a fellow soldier held captive. He killed one insurgent and wounded another to recover the man (who, sadly, died later).

60 Minutes interviews Sal here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdtRxBTZXD0
There is also a video depicting a simulation of the ambush for those interested. The New York Times interview by Elizabeth Rubin is the best account I've found.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/weekinreview/14rubin.html?_r=1&ref=weekinreview&pagewanted=all

There is something I want to share here: the humility of the men in all these Medal of Honor stories. Staff Sgt. Sal is no different; a self-described "mediocre or average" soldier, he says these accolades are nothing he wants. He has done something all men there are asked to do. Let me quote his interview with Lara Logan:

"I'm not at peace with that at all," Giunta said. "And coming and talking about it and people wanting to shake my hand because of it, it hurts me, because it's not what I want. And to be with so many people doing so much stuff and then to be singled out--and put forward. I mean, everyone did something."

The President was struck by the genuine goodness of this young man, and I hope you take that with you from reading about him. In the Yahoo update, we find the following:

When presenting Giunta with the Medal of Honor this afternoon at a ceremony inside the White House, President Obama said that he wanted to "go off script" to say "I really like this guy." He added, "We all just get a sense of people and who they are, and when you meet Sal and you meet his family you just absolutely convinced that this is what America is all about, and it just makes you proud."


Sebastian Junger, the great modern war writer, also did an interview with Sal. Next time you're in a Subway Sub Sandwich shop, think about this former Iowa "sandwich artist" who joined the Army and showed what a gutsy hero might secretly reside even in the average man. You do not have to be more than an ordinary person to live life in a non-ordinary way.

Now I want to ask the same question those brave people ask every morning they wake up. "What the hell are they doing there?"

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Phenomenal Experience

Now I’m called from beyond the grave, with a question, since the days Newton wondered how it is color appears to the mind at all, we’ve yet to answer.
For, how does anything appear in the mind, for that matter? How does one even ask?
It appears to me, for example, my best friend’s just messaged me his wife, my sister, experienced brain death at 6:06 am California time. My next call, then, goes to her.
I suppose initiating the Phenomenal Experience Program mediates the physical reaction of shock. It’s the beginning of nothing, however. This one action sets into motion our lives’ work: to discover oneself, not only here, but outside what we accept as life---another word we struggle to precisely define. Like death.

Beyond this one action, however---what can I do?




Think that's the beginning of my story, "Phenomenal Experience". Due TODAY. Fret not.


My status:
The universal call brighter burns than any star/Though Marble breaks and Iron bends, my dream is dancing far/Among the stars now that dream lives/ to find the mind that dreaming gives. ---from One Who Wields the Power of the Sun

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