2/15//23

 Wednesday, February 15, 2023

In bed at 8:45, awake at 2:40, up at 3:10, incoherent dreams of Mike and Janine, and thoughts of my visit with Dr. Chatt this morning.  45℉ with temps falling all day and strong SSW winds 8 to 23 mph and gusts up to 41 mph producing wind chills between 22 and 41℉. Sunrise at 6:49, hours from now, sunset at 5:22, 10+32.

Starting the day with Ta-Nahisi Coates. Pretty strong broth for the middle of the night.  Coates grew up in Baltimore, the Baltimore of The Wire, of We Own This City, of the rogue Gun Trace Task Force, and of Freddie Gray.  Coates describes a world of fear for Black people, a world in which the possibility of violence directed against your body was an everyday reality, from the police or from anyone on the street, even from your parent.  He notes that the American Dream is a White myth, not for Blacks like him in Baltimore or Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO, or his Howard University buddy, Prince Carmen Jones, gunned down by a Prince George's County cop.  In an article in The Atlantic about Jones' homicide, Coates wrote something that reminded me of myself: "I have a weird way of dealing with big, emotional events. My brain moves slow, and I tend to experience things in waves--it took weeks for me to understand, emotionally, what Obama's election meant. Ditto for 9/11, except longer."  I suspect this is a result of emotional deadening that occurs as a psychological defense mechanism developed during his harsh childhood on the streets and with his father, ever ready with his disciplining belt.  What his story mostly reminds me of is our inability to fully understand the lives of one another, both on the individual level and on the group level.  Some time ago at a family dinner I mentioned that I had felt very vulnerable as I put groceries into my car in the Sendik's parking lot, old, weak, slow-moving, cane-reliant.  A daughtr-in-law remarked 'Now you know how women feel frequently' or words to that effect.  Of course she was right.  I don't  know the feelings of vulnerabiltiy that women often feel in this world, and never can.  I don't know the feelings of vulnerabilty that Jews feel in this world, even in the U.S., sometimes especially in the U.S. of Squirrel Hill's Tree of Life shul and I never can.  I don't know the vulnerability that Blacks regularly feel, deep down, in an American society that has denigrated, devalued, and marginalized them for more than 400 years, and I never can.  I can have some appreciation for my privileged status as an American White Christian-cultured Male, but I fall way short of having any real appreciation of what it is like to be Otherwise.  My life turned in 1959 when I was awarded a 4-year, all-tuition-paid, NROTC scholarship that permtted  me to go to a pivate university in another state, led to an officer's commision in the Marine Corps, ultimately led to GI Bill-funded law school, and a privileged position as a licensed attorney.  That scholarship that led to all those life-altering events was open only to males.  Was it also open only to Whites?  Probably not, but in the 8 years I lived as a midshipman and as a Marine officer, I remember only one Black Marine officer, Major Frank Peterson at NAS Willow Grove, PA, who became a friend.  I encountered a lot of Southern Baptists and Catholics in the Marines, but no Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims that I recall.  I have been only too conscious of having lost the Lottery of Birth in terms of my war-damaged father, but too unappreciative of how I won that Lottery in the ways that counted most: White, Male, Christian.   Between the World and Me is not easy reading for a White reader for the same reason listening to Malcolm X speak was not easy listening for a White listener: the truth hurts.

VA Visit with Dr. Chatt.  The doc ordered a pelvic floor physical therapy consult for the chronic pelvic pain and a counseling consult in connection with the sleeplessness and deaths of Kitty and Tom this year.  I am hesitant about the counseling but will probably go for at least one visit.  I'm suspect this is all part of the hypersensitiviity about veteran suicides, which is certainly nowhere near where I am now though I acknowledged to her that I did engage in almost daily 'ideation' when I suffered through the CPP 15 years ago or so.  In any event, I'm always impressed by Dr. Chatt's caring nature during my visits with her.  She's been my primary care doc for more than 5 years now and I think I lucked out with her.