Wave That Flag High And Dry!

The 4th of July has come and gone but my nostalgia for hot and sticky, acrid smoke filled American summer nights has not passed. This was the first Independence Day not in the US of A.

I have never considered myself all that patriotic. The sight of the American flag does do anything for me really. I don't get a lump in throat, get teary-eyed or reflect on the men and women who gave their lives to support it. It's just a flag to me. That's it. The Star Spangled Banner or God Bless America don't do much for me. One reminds me of baseball games and the other pictures of Kate Smith in old Time-Life books I used to look at as a kid.
If I feel any sort of nationalism at all its in regards to the American people. I know that my forebearers came from Scotland, Wales, Germany and Poland. I also don't give a damn. While I find Scotland and Wales to be incredibly beautiful, I didn't feel any kind of "home coming" when I arrived. They were just especially gorgeous spots on the planet. I trace my heritage back to America. That's where I was raised and its people is who I call my own. I always kind of shook my head at the various ethnic parades etc. that go on year round. They are usually fun but I feel they are kind of counter productive. What should be celebrated is our unity as an American people - "One People United". That said,I do enjoy the debates of diversity versus integration that is a hallmark of the American experience and should continue to be so throughout its history. It's that tension between these two pulls that keep the country vibrant and alive.

So, what was I nostalgic about yesterday? It sure wasn't here that awful "Proud to be an American" song that gets played to death at local firework displays and parades every 4th. Nor was it nationalistic speeches by politicians on TV. What I missed was sitting in a hot, sweaty mass of my fellow Americans looking skyward as fireworks explode and fill even the most cynical of us with childlike wonder. I missed cooking out with friends and family leading up to a backyard firework display. I miss dopey parades with little girls in their gymnastic uniforms doing cartwheels down the street and firemen tossing handfuls of candy to the screaming children lined up along the curbs.

I missed baseball, over cooked (veggie) burgers off the grill, playing horseshoes, children writing their names in the air with sparklers, marshmallows turned into torches, aluminum kegs of beer, weird salads and casseroles laid out at parties,the recognition that inspite of all of us being able to claim a different ethnic heritage that we are indeed one people.

I got none of that this 4th of July. All we had over here were memories. It was a nice night so we slept with the bedroom window opened. Sometime in the very early morning hours of the 5th of July, I was stirred from my sleep by what I could swear was the faintest hint of the acrid, sulfurous smell of fireworks. It smelt like my American dreams.

Me and Osama B.

As I laid under the imaging device, my hospital gown wide open, a nurse holding my penis in her hand as she shaved me down and slathered my right inner thigh with cold iodine, the last thing in the world I wanted to discuss was Osama Bin Laden's death and the impact it would have on geo-politics. The nurse didn't seem to get that. So, she shaved and slathered away, jabbering on about Obama and Osama.
I was already in a pretty bad way. Having just had surgery for a right inguinal hernia three weeks back, and still rather sore from it, I had to come back to hospital for a second procedure to embolize the vein running from my left testicile into the spermatic cord due to it becoming a varicocele.
The operation required the doctor jabbing me really hard with a needle into my inner thigh, administering a local anaesthetic and then running a wire through my vascular system and down into my left testicle to check out the varicocele. He then placed a kind of gauze further up the vein to emoblize, thus basically starving the vein to death and causing it to stop squeezing my left nut like it was an anaconda.
This is already a kind of touchy issue, add on top of it the surgeon, the imaging specialist guy, two nurses, a cute teenaged student and some other dude that seemed to be there to observe all looking at my kit, it got really weird.
So, there I am, the Tuesday following Bin Laden's killing, spread out naked on an imaging table inside a freezing cold room as a bunch of strangers check out my crotch and woman shaves my pubes. I am pretty confused over how to act. I want to explain to the teenage girl that my penis is not ususually so shriveled up - that these things happen when it is freezing.You know, let her know I'm not to be pitied. I want the doctors to explain what is going on. I want to go back in time and lose about 20 pounds. I want the nurse to stop tickling me as she shaved off my pubic hair. I want her to then stop splashing that cold disinfectant stuff all over my crotch. What I don't want to do is talk about Osama Bin Laden. But that did not stop the lady from asking.


(He might have been a mass murdering meglomaniac, but he always smiled for the camera)

I had no idea how to respond. What was I supposed to say? They just assumed that I was bursting at the seams to talk about it because the news had been full of images of Americans celebrating Bin Laden being whacked. They must have been really jazzed to have a real life American to question about this. I think I let them down with my lack of enthusiasm.
"They should have captured him alive", was what I managed to get out. The looks on the nurses faces were like a kid when they pull socks and underwear from inside their Christmas stocking.

(Little known fact: Osama Bin Laden was a huge Kiss fan.)

Anywho, the procedure went well. They wheeled me into recovery and left me alone for a little while. I had a book on English history to read but before I picked it up I gave the death of Bin Laden a good think. Here I was, in a hospital in London, half a world away from where I was when the WTC went down. Half a world and an entire life time.
When 9/11 went down, I was recently finished with my exteded undergraduate stint at Indiana University Northwest. I spent my nights partying at the bungalow my brother and I rented and the mornings interviewing for jobs and substitute teaching. I was subing for a class of special needs students when the attack happened. The school principal ordered the school locked down, for some bizarre fear that Al-Qaeda would attack a middle school in Hobart, Indiana. I snuck out of the school and drove home.
I was conflicted. I hated the idea of war etc. but I was also filled with a deep desire to see vengeance wrought on our enemies. I spent the next few weeks rooting on our military as they pushed the Taliban back and was even considering entering the Army myself, since the job market took such a drastic dive after the attacks. I was strung out on a constantly rolling party, filled with the paranoia and patriotic jingoism flying through the media and barelling down towards an existential crisis. I began reading religious texts looking for some kind of guidance. I became a fan of C.S. Lewis for a moment in time and began to think of myself as a "Christian Socialist", the problem was that I didn't really believe in Christ or God for that matter. I was just wanting something to make sense and seem tangible.

I quickly got over this phase and instead began seeking the truth in action, mostly sex and drugs and booze kind of action. Eventually, that too quit being a rewarding spirtual endeavor. I was looking for something else. I sought it in love. I got married. It was good. It was almost what I was looking for but not quite. I was kind of half-baked and in turn made a half-baked husband. Ellen and I moved to China for a bit, she got pregnant and we returned to Northwest Indiana to have our child and start hacking out a future as a family. It was at this time that the Dharma came up and bit me on the ass. I had always read about Buddhism but as soon as I sat down to meditate with the Empty Circle Zen group in Hobart, Indiana, it was like I had finally come home.
Along with all of this was Bin Laden and the various attempts to catch him. He became a kind rambling boogie man, who snuck through the nation's dreams like a ghoul dragging a dialysis machine behind him. My desire to see America avenged died - burnt off in the flames of the Dharma and recognizing the damage violence has on the universe, no matter who is on the receiving end of it. I learned how to let go of my anger over things from my childhood etc. This in turn allowed me to let go of my anger over things like our national boogieman for the past decade.
Osama Bin Laden had to be made to account for his crimes. Killing him was wrong. Killing is always wrong. Maybe the guys that shot him had no choice, but it's a damned shame that they were put in a situation where they had no other choice.

(Things got tough for Osama towards the end.)

Ultimately, it was Osama Bin Laden's karma to be killed by American forces. He committed a heinous action against the nation and the counteraction was his eventual demise. But karma is not just a cosmic give and take. It is also a kind of energy that binds us through the influence we have on each other. Bin Laden has strong karma with the United States of America and its people. If it were not for his actions, I may not have had the emotional/psychological crisis that led to me opening myself up to marriage and then discovering the dharma for myself first hand, which I credit for saving my marriage and leading to my family's current life in London. So, in many ways, Osama Bin Laden has helped make me the man I am today - as he has done for millions of other people in the USA. So, while you go about celebrating the bullet that took out his lights, you should also reflect on what kind of impact he had on your life and see how you could be who you are without him and his actions. I'll bet you discover there is a lot of Bin Laden in your background. That's our people's karma with him.
All of this was running through my head as the anaesthetic wore off and the bleeping and blipping hospital sounds filled the air. My undercarriage was stained a dark orange from the iodine stuff, I had razor burn on my crotch, a tingling left ball and a chemical taste in my mouth. All I could think was that if it were not for Osama Bin Laden I would not be there.