the case for the nutcase

i've hit a wall of sorts

i've little or no interest in the world of blogging

i still go there once in awhile
almost everyday
but i find myself moving away quickly
to something more engaging
the steadiness of the guitar
the demands of the apple orchard

i began this whole thing by positing
that i would account for what i know
and how i know what i know

maybe i've used it all up

yet one has only to look closer
at one's life to realize
there are areas of knowledge
that have barely been touched

so i wish to address the immediacy
of a person i know
he will remain anonymous to most everyone

for the past three years now
i have been "mentoring" a man who
lives in a group home in a city near where
i live
once or twice a week we meet
for something to eat and conversation

i know this man because his mother
made a pleading request to my abbot
for someone in the community to "befriend"
her son and help him along his
tortured path

thus i became a sort of "paid friend"
and this never sat right with me

recently i have put myself in the position of
being his student
he makes a certain ardent
claim to being a language teacher
the fact that there are no students
does not alter the matter one bit
so i decided that instead of being a paid friend
i'd be a docile student and withstand the bombastic
and often times seemingly random linguistic escapades
into spanish (his background is solidly puerto rican)
an ordeal that inevitably becomes
a spitfire convolution into CHINESE complete
with bits of food and drool
not your ideal methodology
but hey the world is a classroom

the "relationship" ( a terribly overused word)
has been tumultuous and enjoyable

it occurs to me after pondering a recent post
over on AN EARTHLING WONDERS
regarding a brain hemorrhage
and an awareness of right-brain left-brain
activity that this man lives for the most part
in a right brain world
and thus he is by-and-large really out of touch
with the demands and expectations of the world

at one point i was trying to urge him to face up
to the experiences of his life
to acknowledge his history for what it truly is
and find there the clue as to why his life
has ended up the way it has
he countered this (the conversation took place over a few months)
with his approach to it all:
the past is the past
it has no bearing on how i live now
things happened but it doesn't effect the present
"i want to live for the future" is what he said

his idea of the future is having his own place
owning his own car
working the ideal job
and being a rock star

noble american goals i guess

the trouble comes when he is faced with surviving
in regards to any one of these "future" goals

he has proven himself completely incapable
of taking care of himself in matters of
basic hygeine
i once let him drive and was left with the feeling
that this guy would be dead in a week
dead or in jail
(jail is a place he has known quite well)
all efforts at work in the past few years
have ended abruptly
(the fact is he cannot concentrate
on anything but what interests him)

so the part of our self awareness which
critiques our being in the world
the left side of the brain
has little significance for him

he is generally delighted to know that he
exists on any given day
(although in fairness there are
some really very bad days)
and to play it all out in a sort of
stultified context

at the same time his knowledge
of some areas of life is impressive
he quotes thomas paine
he claims to be a devoted follower of the philosophy of ayn rand
( i have restrained myself from suggesting that
therein lies the problem)
he often quotes an unfinished sonnet
he composed for a girlfriend in college
he is constantly "grooving" to music
on his iPod
he takes piano lessons
he is fixated on a band by the name of TOTO
and Olivia Newton-John
and his knowledge in general of
pop music from the eighties is impressive
as well

he makes a strong claim to being
a teacher of chinese language
evidently he lived in TAIWAN
for a few years
and learned at least enough chinese
to make himself understood
by real chinese speaking people
(i've witnessed this)
the problem becomes that
every conversation inevitably becomes a
game of charades
an unstoppable immersion course
in chinese

what he does not seem to know
and this may be a salvific and sort of
necessary survival skill ( my judgment is still out
as to the veracity of psychological awareness)
what he does not know
is the formative nature of experience
be it good or bad
he does not seem to care that the
traumas of his life have molded his character
and that his trouble in making life work for him
stems from this ignorance

thus there is an epistemological disconnect
everything is present in the day at hand
the past is of no importance
the illusion (his inner vision)
of the future is what drives him on
the present is a mix of social welfare and
medication and the odd possibility that one day
he will be a rock star
with a wife and two kids and some dogs
in a pleasant suburb
(he's in his 40s now...how far away can the american dream be?)

my effort is to constantly
suspend judgment over this man
to know him and to accept
even the delusions
as horrendous as they may appear to me

and to decide that in many ways
his life is no more ridiculous
than anyone elses

the epistemological certainty that i maintain
is that i can do very little outside of
merely being present
to help or to change this man's life
i must accept it as a conundrum

life just keeps beating
its multi-rhythmic way

and i must also acknowledge in service to
the epistemological directions of this blog
that in knowing this man
i also come to know myself
in the ridiculous warp and woof
that will someday be a beautiful woven
flying carpet