The customs agent at Jose Marti International Airport had a particular bug up his ass for me and he just wasn’t going to let me past the gate into freedom, ironically, in the Communist gulag. This gringo was not going to get a pass, no way, not from this guy.

I had packed a few items of clothing and some medical supplies, as always, to distribute to my friends and friends of friends on the island. The amount of difference it made was like a piss in the ocean but at least it was something. One of the many extortion tactics used by Cuban authorities is to levy a “special tax” of 100% of the value on all gift items brought into the country. “No, no,” I replied to his question, “I have no gifts here. Everything you see is mine.”

He smirked as he pointed to the Victoria Secret items I had packed, I thought discretely, and said “Clearly that is not for you. You have to admit that these are gifts.” Think quick. “Señor,” I said in a mock whisper, “You see that I am a man, yes? But, it is a little embarrassing – At night, Señor, things are different.” I enjoyed watching him physically recoil and fumble without success for a response.

The agent then pointed to all the antacid, antidiarrhea, laxative, nausea and other medications in my bag. “Señor,” I said, not missing a beat, “I have a very sensitive stomach and I am permitted only to eat the blandish of foods – But when I am in your country the food is so rich and tasty and wonderful that I cannot stop eating it. The experience of Cuban cuisine is worth all the illness it causes me, requiring that I use a great deal of these medications. He shook his head, and I could barely see the hint of a smile which knew that I was full of shit and that he was just doing his job.

“Welcome to Cuba, Señor,” he said, ushering me through the gate.

Dr. Bill, 2010

I started getting out of the cab when he turned around and handed me some papers on Jesus that for some reason he thought I’d actually be interested in. The cabbie tells me that according to his calculations the end of the world is coming in 2013. “What month?” I ask. “I dunno, maybe September.” “Maybe?” I asked, “Why hedge your bets now?” “Hey what the fuck is a few months either way,” he replied. “Right now I still gotta go to work tomorrow, and the day after that.” I wondered, given this new information, if that was necessarily true. I gave him a three-dollar tip and asked “So what do you think this will be worth in 2013?” He looked away and drove off, unsatisfied with either my tip or my question or both. Hell if I care – I’ve got better things to worry about in the three years I’ve got left.

So with my newfound perspective I go inside and hit the computer. No, I mean literally. I punched the damn thing and almost broke my hand. It kept asking me if I wanted to reboot, and I clicked no, and it kept asking me, so I clicked yes, then no, then yes, but it kept doing the same thing so I finally ended it with a “Reboot this, asshole!” Boy, I showed that baby, didn’t I? Now who’s boss? Mr. I-don’t-have-a-computer-anymore-cuz-like-a-fucking-idiot-I-punched-mine-to-smithereens, that’s who’s boss. I panic. What am I going to do without a computer? But then I thought well with the end of the world coming and all maybe it didn’t matter so much. I went for a drive instead.

I parked at Fisherman’s Wharf and took in the sea air and the music leaking out from Lou’s Blues Club with no one around me. Just how I like it. That’s how I want it to be in “I-dunno-maybe-September,” 2013.

When I was a kid I had no friends to speak of – They left me alone because they couldn’t figure me out. But here’s the thing: The same kids who kicked my ass in gym class would  come up to me later when their friends weren’t around and tell me their problems. Don’t ask me why – It’s not like I ever reached out to them or welcomed them in any way. But for some reason I was a magnet for people with problems, people wanting advice, or just an ear. So I listened: Guys with girl problems, girls with guy problems. The fact that I couldn’t get a date to save my life didn’t seem to matter.

Nowadays I’m pretty good at putting the kebosh on that when I’m not working. I mean, hey, do you enjoy working on your time off? I try to avoid even telling people what I do. Inevitably someone will start telling me their problems, not as a friend, which I wouldn’t mind, but as a self-entitled consumer looking for free services. More frequently, and I just love this, are the ones who nervously ask some variation of “So are you analyzing me now?” Ok, you got me. You, in just a few seconds, have enraptured me to the point where I can barely hold back from delving into your psyche and fathoming your deepest motives, because I love working on my free time and because you are so special, unique and fascinating. Look folks, the truth is that I am naturally pretty basic in my social relationships. I stay present and interact and I don’t try to figure anybody out. I can’t even figure my own self out, so don’t worry, ok?

I got out of the car, walked toward some hip-hop coming from a corner bar and listened for awhile, watching the pretty people come and go. I love watching drunk girls walk around in high heels. They look funny. You can’t be drunk, wear 6” spikes and look sexy, but you sure can look funny.

I drove out to Chrissy Field where I just sat looking at the sky listening to Puccini’s La Rondine, my first opera. Celestial. My eyes closed, thoughts drifting:

I had taken the subway to Queens and got there early, so I thought I would kill some time at the library. She came over and asked if I would help her find a book. I don’t even remember the category or type of book she was looking for, but I remember her long sandy-brown hair partly covering her left eye and her off-white sweater with a long piece of dust on the left shoulder. She wore a small silver cross around her neck and a Mickey Mouse watch – 10:23.

I frantically drudged up from my cognitive recesses what little I knew about the Dewey Decimal system and found the book for her. She was wearing sandals – tan sandals, and faded jeans down to mid-ankle. Her smile revealed braces on her top row of teeth. Not the bottom.

She thanked me profusely. I wanted to ask for her phone number, or if she wanted to have a Coke with me or something. But I didn’t.

The entire interaction took less than fifteen minutes. I think of it often. It happened over thirty years ago.

La Rondine is an unusual opera in that nobody dies. At least until 2013, I imagine. After the second act I shifted into gear and went home. I found this 70’s movie on TV about mutant freaks who take over the world and the cops who kill them. Is that how it’s gonna be?

It’s not that I don’t like interacting with people. I just prefer it on my own terms. Sometimes I’m asked to fax a report to the courthouse. Instead I have my morning espresso and walk to City Hall. San Francisco’s a small town so I usually run into one or two people that I know along the way. I pick up a newspaper (from the store, not the dispenser) and stop for breakfast: Eggs, bacon, but always fruit instead of potatoes. As I get closer to Civic Center I enjoy watching all the hustle and bustle: The self-appointed parking guides, the makeshift food trucks, the politicians, the lawyers – Especially those lady lawyers in their suits with their glasses on and their hair up. One time I ….Uhm, never mind. Then I go into the courthouse, hand in my report and chat for a few minutes with people I’ve known for years – face to face. We talk about our lives, families and travels. On the way out I stop and get a hot dog at that little stand in Civic Center Plaza and look at whatever protesters happen to be out that day.

That’s why I don’t own a fax machine or a cellphone.

So, having rendered myself cyberless, the next morning I took my coffee to the window instead of the computer desk and watched the boats sailing in and out of the bay. I thought about the day ahead, the work that was due last week, the people I didn’t want to have to deal with, the phone calls I didn’t want to return, having to shell out a lot of money for a new computer and how badly my hand hurt from punching out the old one.

But hey, what the hell, it’s not the end of the world or anything, right?

Dr. Bill, 2010

25% of all search engine requests have “porn” or “sex” in the search content.

35% of all downloads are porn.

In any given second 28,258 people are looking at internet sex.

$89 dollars is spent per second on internet porn.

266 new porn websites appear each day.

“Sex” is the most popular searched word on the Net.

Revenue from internet porn in the United States in 2006 was 2.84 billion dollars

72% of internet porn users are men; Twenty eight percent are women.

70% of all internet traffic occurs during the normal 9-5 work day.

There are 372 million porn web pages – or 7% of the total of all WebPages in existence,

4% of internet porn is produced in Germany.

3% of all internet porn is produced in England.

89% of all internet porn is produced in the United States.

9 out of 1o children ages 8-16 report having seen porn on the internet.

As I was working on my second giant coconut macaroon today I read in the paper that a child dies of malnutrition every six seconds. I thought, in my gallows humor, “Gee, what a poor child!” Whistling in the graveyard. One billion people on this planet have no time to do anything all day or night except scrounge what they can for one semi-meal to feed their families. How many of us can even imagine that, by virtue of where we just happened to have been born?

I finished the macaroon, gulped down an espresso, and continued my walk. Since everybody is now on their cellphones there wasn’t anyone to talk to or just say hello to. So sometimes I talk to myself. No one thinks I’m crazy anymore – They just think I’m talking on a cellphone. They stop occasionally to take a sip of their lattes. I used to practice avoiding people because I wanted to be alone sometimes. Now I practice finding people to say hello to that aren’t on their cellphones. But ultimately the phone rings and what could have been a promising conversation suddenly ends. The virtual now trumps the real. How sad.

I remember when I was a kid and didn’t want to finish my plate my grandma would always say that I should eat it all because “people are starving in China.” Well, I smartassedly replied, “Why don’t you send this food to China then?” If only it were that simple.

Friendship, like love, I have learned, has a lot of different meanings. We tend to think of friends as those who we see on a regular basis and do stuff with, but I have friends, very close friends, that I haven’t seen in years and talk to very infrequently. And they are not very far away either. George is a friend of mine. We met when we needed to collaborate treatment for a mutual client over a period of a year or so. We both live in the same city.

I haven’t seen nor had a lengthy conversation with George in over ten years. Normally the only contact we have is that the night before every holiday, however minor, we have a race to see who will call and leave the other one a message first wishing them a happy holiday. He always forgets the Jewish ones, but I let that slide. George is a good friend. I would trust my life to that man, and he means more to me than many of what you would call my more “conventional” friends.

My brother, whom I love dearly, is not my friend. We share a history that no two other people can possibly share, but we don’t like each other very much. We love each other, and it pretty much stops there. I’ve learned to accept it and to keep my expectations in check. Love on its own is grossly over-rated.

Many people come and go. George will be with me until the day one of us dies. That is a true friend.

Now what’s up with these restaurants that are always so crowded with little tiny tables inches away from each other? I mean, why would anybody want to go there? Some actually have signs outside indicating “waiting times!” How do you think they figure that out, anyway? Why doesn’t everybody go to restaurants that have nobody in them, so we can hear each other talk with some privacy? What if we all went there instead? Hmm…wait a minute…

I wanted to make forgiveness another topic, but it fits right in here. I’ve had a bad year, or, more accurately, my year has had a bad me. I strive to be forgiving, and more difficultly to accept that there are those who can’t forgive. I no longer take it personally, and I won’t open my head just to fill someone else’s. Nope. No more.

If I thought for more than a moment of all the starvation, the torture, stoning of teenage women and the decimation of our jungles and forests I would scream for a long time. Someimes I do think of it, and I do scream. Do you ever scream? Or are you too busy either waiting for your phone calls and emails or reading them or responding to them? Are you ever really here or always just anticipating? I tried keeping my computer at work so I could check my e-mails more often. I ended up losing that anticipation of getting a great response when I get home at night, the kind of anticipation that helps your day go better. Now I just enjoy an ongoing rejection. No more waiting.

I have reached the end of my rope with you “positive thinkers” out there. You know who you are. You’re probably in one of those restaurants where all you can hear is one end of another person’s bleating cellphone conversation. You live in a world of denial believing that all that is needed to change one’s outlook  on life and hence the world is to change one’s state of mind. Try telling that to people in Sudan, or Somalia, or Haiti, North Korea, or the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Congo, to name a very few. I don’t mean to be a bummer and I guess I’ll never be the life of the party. I can live with that.

Up to now my approach has been solely, if nothing else, to “do no harm.” If I want to grow, and I do, I do, I am going to need to take more drastic steps, and I here and now attest to you, my dear reader, that I will do so, effective immediately. If I could ever truly save one life I would proudly sacrifice mine. Ok, maybe not proudly. Ok, maybe even not at all, who knows?. It’s hard to be honest with yourself when you’re eating a coconut macaroon.

Nobody is “here” anymore. You are all on your laptops and cellphones, and you can select at any moment what you want to see or not.  Don’t you know that you are hiding? “Ok,” you might ask me, “What would you have me do then?” Open your eyes, that’s all, open your eyes and your ears. Be present. Look around you, listen around you. Let’s talk to each other again. The change in this world would be astounding. You can bet on it. That is, if you still remember how to look someone in front of you in the eyes and talk with them. Feel free to start with me. I’m now officially available (when I’m not in the middle of a macaroon).

Dr. Bill, October, 2009

Mark Twain’s wife never liked his constant use of profanity but she couldn’t do anything about it. Once she tried: She came down the stairs, looked him squarely in the eyes and hollered every cussword she ever heard him use. He looked at her calmly and responded: “My dear, how I love you; You have the words all right, but you just can’t sing the tune.”

During my first trip to Cuba the old man Mario used to spend hours telling me stories about his days on the high seas. I didn’t understand a word he said – I barely spoke Spanish at the time, let alone trying to understand what Cubans try to pass off as Spanish – But it didn’t matter – It wasn’t the words, the content – It was the melody, the tonal changes, harmony and rhythm. It wasn’t out of politeness that I spent hours listening to him. I really enjoyed it, and I got a lot out of our “talks.”

The great pianist, when asked how he could play those notes so beautifully, responded:  “It’s not the notes I play that are beautiful – it’s the spaces between them.”

She spoke Spanish, I English, and neither of us knew more than a few words in the other’s language. Yet we “spoke” volumes to each other, and we came to know each other well, communicating more effectively than I do with those who speak my own idiom. We couldn’t argue about stupid things that didn’t matter, and whatever needed to be communicated always was.

Half the people in the coffee shop, no- more than half, are on their cellphones or I-Pods, Facebook or MySpace. Why am I the only one anachronistically looking around and wanting to smile with someone? Virtual has become real, and vice versa. Nobody is here anymore.

I’ve been watching that couple at the other table. It’s been almost an hour now and still neither of them has said as much as one word to the other. They just sit in silence, drinking their coffee. I can’t tell. Can’t tell if they are so much in love and know each other so well that they don’t need to converse any more; or if they hate each other’s guts; or, and this would be my bet – maybe they have nothing to say to each other any more and are just each other’s habit now.

I have learned from the deaf how to hear, the blind how to see, and the speechless what to say.

I don’t feel heard anymore. Should I holler? Is this the space where nobody can hear you scream?

So it’s just that sometimes I wish you would just shut the fuck up. Ok? Just be quiet, please, and let me look at you and touch you. We can know each other so much better in the spaces between the notes.

I met a man who wasn’t there;

He wasn’t there again today -

I wish, I wish, he’d go away!

Anon.

I took the subway to Queens and got there a lot earlier than I had planned, so I thought I would kill some time at the library near the train station.

Killing time.

Playwright Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) is quoted in 1841 as having said “Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) said in 1854: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

I was just browsing through some books and a girl approached me and asked me if I would help her find a book.

Wikipedia defines “killing time” as “primarily an idiomatic expression, meaning ‘spending time in an inconsequential manner,’ or ‘to pass time aimlessly.’” Aimless, as in without direction.

We use many expressions that treat time, an abstract concept, as if it were a solid thing – make time, waste time, use time, pass time, spend time, save time, etc. To the ancient Greeks time was anthropomorphized: “Father Time.” What would “killing time” have meant to them?

I don’t remember what book it was nor even the category or type of book it was that she was looking for,  but I remember her long brown hair partly covering her left eye and her off-white sweater with a speck of elongated dust on her left shoulder. She wore a small silver cross around her neck and a Mickey Mouse watch which indicated that it was 11:23.

There are many expressions commonly used about time: “Good taste is timeless,” and “Time heals all wounds,” to name a couple.

I frantically drudged up from my cognitive recesses what little I knew about the Dewey Decimal System and found the book for her.  She was wearing sandals – tan sandals, and faded jeans down to mid-ankle. Her smile revealed braces on her top row of teeth. Not the bottom.

We found the book and she thanked me profusely. I wanted to ask her for her phone number, or if she wanted to have a Coke with me or something.

But I didn’t.

The entire interaction took less than fifteen minutes. I think of it often.  It happened over thirty years ago.

Dr. Bill, February, 2009

A mutual friend thought it would be nice if I met her friend Grace in Peru. I agreed and soon got an introductory e-mail from Grace. Very nice. 26 years old. She said that our friend told her that I was “nice and handsome” and that she would love to meet me during my upcoming trip to Lima. She somehow thought it was necessary to add that her boyfriend “lets” her do whatever she wants because he can’t control her and doesn’t want sex as much as she does anyway. More than I needed to hear.

Then came the x-rated pictures and the explicit comments about what she planned to do with, or rather to me when we meet. The all-too-familiar seduction games that I can smell a mile away, that no longer make it past my first perceptual entry gate unnoticed. I was supposed to go gaga all over her like every other guy she’s ever met and when I didn’t she became even more interested in me, puzzled, and then angry. I have to admit, I love turning the tables. One of the benefits of getting beaten at a game a thousand times is that you finally learn how to play it. And how to break the rules.

I have had a recurring dream for many years – That I am swimming and I see somebody drowning but I can’t get to her/him because the opposing tide is too strong and I can’t get close enough. Like those dreams where you’re running but not getting anywhere. I’m so close to the person but I might as well be a million miles away. There is nothing I can do. The person dies. I’m right there and I see it but I can’t stop it.

I was recently told the tragic story of a woman who on 9/11 called home from a floor above where one of the planes struck, talking to her family and knowing that she was about to die. I thought of her family listening, knowing that she was about to die and not being able to do anything about it, nothing except stand by. How well I know that feeling.

So after a few more exchanges Grace finally tells me that I’m just a typical American jerk, loser, asshole and so on. Sometimes one of my own defenses against feeling hurt is to go right into “shrink mode:” Ok, she’s 26 going on 14. Severe personality disorder. High probability of history of being abused. Distant and removed or overbearing and narcissistic parents. Low self-esteem with high need for control, manifested in maladaptive sexual behavior. I went on and on in my mind, diagnosing and dismissing her. It made me feel better at the time. It gave me the sense of power. But I wonder now what would have happened if we weren’t separated by the glass? What if she were here, in front of me? Would it have gone down any differently?

We say we hate drama, but we also hunger for it, crave it, seek it out, and welcome it. Because it distracts us, even if only momentarily, from the awareness of how alone each of us really is. We play these games with each other to help us forget. To help us forget that there is a glass between us. We play these games with each other to help us remember. To help us remember that there is a glass between us.

But sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a crack in the glass, and sometimes with a little effort that crack becomes an opening, and then you’re really together. And sometimes that scares us and we build another glass. And so on. Most of us eventually give up. Many of us just keep playing the game. The brave keep on trying. The few succeed.

Sometimes I wonder why we are all not raving lunatics.

How much of our contacts and relationships are “real?” By “real” I mean, for example, how much of who you see there through that glass is really him/her, and how much your own projections, and you their projections? Projections – Of who you want to see, need to see, are afraid to see, are angry at, triggered by, etc.  How much of him/her or us actually permeates the glass and makes it through our perceptual entry gates unscathed? Answer: Very, very little. Much, if not most, of what we perceive in others are our own projections. We do not see things as they are – We see things as we are.

And I saw Grace as an able seductress with power over others, the maturity of an adolescent and the emotional intelligence of a five year old. As controlling and strong, as sick and weak.

About a year ago a 17 year-old girl named D’ua (literally: “Prayer”) Khalil Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an “honor killing” by her own family and religious leaders because she loved a boy of a different religion. The teenager was dragged outside by several men, her bottom clothing removed to shame her, then stoned and beaten for a half hour until she died. A large crowd of witnesses, including a local security force, did nothing to try to stop it. They just listened as she begged for her life and watched as she lost it, blow by blow, breath by breath.

What made this particular “honor killing” unique is that it was videotaped on a cellphone and distributed over the internet. The horror was recorded in every detail and viewed by millions. There were the perfunctory international outcries and calls for justice and reform. But no one was ever arrested for Dua’s death, and there have been at least 50 more (reported) “honor killings” since. I felt compelled – no, obligated, to watch the video. I do not recommend it. What I saw through this glass etched in my mind and will haunt me forever. I want to rewind the tape, make it not happen, save her, believe that such evil cannot possibly exist, that there was justice, that there was Grace.

After hearing the story of the woman on the cellphone in the World Trade Center I looked up the U-Tube video of people jumping from the burning towers that day. It had been viewed 105,101 times. So far. I wonder why people feel compelled to watch that, just as I felt compelled to watch Dua Aswad get brutally killed. Did 105,101 people want to undo it, to rewind the tape, to somehow make justice out of it all? Why do we want to watch?

A few weeks later I got an e-mail from Grace apologizing for “being such a bitch.” She said that she was really trying to change some things about herself. I felt her sincerity, and her vulnerability. I also took it upon myself to offer her some feedback. I told her that I thought she just uses men to play games, that she uses her sexuality to seduce and have power over men and to toy with them, and that besides being ultimately unsatisfying for her that that just wasn’t nice. She thanked me for that feedback and said that everything I told her was true. She said that she was ashamed of herself, that she tries not to play games but can’t seem to control it. If a guy shows interest in her it turns her off – If he does not show interest it turns her on and she then seduces him – a challenge to “win him over,” which, due to her outstanding beauty, she rarely lost. Games.

Now that the negative (and sexual) charge was out of our “relationship” it became a genuinely warm friendship, at least as warm and genuine as a mutually projected cyber-friendship can be, through the glass. She confided in me, trusted me, and valued my advice and feedback. I became her big brother, father confessor, therapist, friend. Whatever she projected onto me. She became the wounded child, the tormented soul that was crying out for help and wanting me to help her. Whatever I projected onto her.  Of course, any glass, if you look close enough, is partly a mirror too.

She wrote almost exclusively about sexual situations she got herself into that made her feel very ashamed and self-loathing. She was very conflicted – compelled to behave the way she did and hating herself for it afterward. She had this need to degrade herself, which took sexual forms. This became more and more intense with each e-mail I got, each situation more risky and more degrading. She was spiraling downward like a tornado. “What can I do?” I asked myself a hundred times.

She wrote me saying that an Australian saw her in a bar in Cuzco and asked her “how much,” thinking she was a hooker. She said that she decided to play along because she wanted to know what getting paid for sex felt like. She liked it. And not for the money – Grace was wealthy. The guy started pimping her out to his many friends and other strangers. This went on for a few days. She then wrote me and said that she was feeling sick and ashamed and that maybe she should leave. I told her to slip away to the airport, get the hell away from there and go back to her home in Lima. I wanted to take her there myself.

I next heard from her in Lima. She said that she was alone with a black eye that she didn’t remember getting and that she didn’t know what to do. She said that she was going to go out and get drunk. I wrote back and empathized with her feelings,  and I told her, honestly, that I cared about her – But I don’t think she had the programming to understand a guy just caring for her insides, not her outsides. And, obviously, there is very little anyway that one can do from so far away as I was to her, from behind the glass. But then again, would it have made a difference if I were next-door? How many real next-door neighbors have I been able to help, truly?

Her next letter, a couple of days later: She had met three American marines in a bar. They asked her if she ever did a black man, to which she said no, so they decided to indoctrinate her. She said that she wasn’t interested. She was really, at this point, trying to slam on the brakes but it was already far too late. The marines were very aggressive, feeding her drinks and groping her there at the bar. She wrote that she did not want to pursue that, that she had told them no, but that “Something else took over – I was not in control.” They took her to their hotel room, invited over a few more friends, and they passed her around all night long. I wonder if anyone watching thought it was wrong. I wonder if anyone watching Du’a Aswad being stoned to death thought it was wrong.

She wrote that in the morning she left feeling extreme physical pain, self-hatred and shame. She wrote that part of her wanted to go to her parents’ house (less than a mile away) but that there was another force, from within, compelling her not to, to “act bad” again, and she felt powerless over it. Her pain bled onto my keyboard and dried there. That was the last I heard from her.

Her death was ruled an “accidental overdose” of tranquilizers and alcohol. So what is “accidental?” Did she intend to kill herself that night? I think not. Grace had a very sincere and genuine desire to change, but it was too little too late. She also had an internal force to behave self-destructively and she lost the battle, succumbing to her demons within. And of course I went through all of the “What if I had…,”  “I should have…,” etc., etc. But I know there was nothing I could have done to stop it. I couldn’t break through that glass and save her from those sharks. “And,” I ask myself, “What do you think you could have done if you were there? What about those in my life who have died by their own hand, directly or indirectly? What about those close to me, literally and figuratively, whom I couldn’t get to stop harming themselves until they were dead?

There are those I’ve made passionate love with that I will never know. There are those whom I have never met that I will always love. Where then, is the real glass, the real divide? Do we have any control over those we can reach and those we cannot? Over those we let in and those we do not? Of those we see relatively clearly and those we see solely through our own filter?

I never met Grace. I never met Du’a. I never met that woman in the World Trade Center. But I grieve for them, and I cry for them, and I wonder – So where was “God” and where was His justice, His kindness? Where were the answers to my prayers? I have been equally if not more self-destructive than Grace at times in my life. Why am I here and not her? I am certainly not gooder or kinder or better or more innocent than Du’a Aswad. So why am I here and not her?And the woman in the tower, and so on. This is a very long list.

What is “God’s grace” anyway? That God randomly treats some people better than others? I asked a respected psychiatrist and colleague, who said that “grace” is available to anybody who is spiritually open to receiving it. But I’ve known too many evil people saved, good people slain. Did Du’a die for not being “open to grace?” Why am I here after being so closed to all things spiritual for years? Sorry, no sale.

I  believe in a force of goodness and love, albeit not an anthropomorphic one. And not an omnipotent one either, but one that cries with us when bad things happen. And I also believe in an opposing force. The demons that effect us from the inside and the out. I have personally looked into some eyes and have  seen pure evil. It’s terrifying.  It’s the last thing Du’a Aswad ever saw.

There is no justice. “Karma” is a concept for the privileged. Evil men and women get to sip champagne and laugh; the ignorant, oblivious to all else,  fret with every drop in the stock market;  and the pathetic not-in-my-backyard folks demand their lattes impatiently on their way to work. We mistreat our children. We yell at the clerk. We curse the rain in the winter.

Some people get wet. Others feel the rain.

There is no justice. Yet we must still cry out for it. The battle can never be won, yet it must always be fought. We must be kind to one another. Because, you see, we are all we have and time is running out.

Grace’s funeral was Saturday. Her body was cremated and sprinkled over the Peruvian sea that she loved. Du’a Aswad’s body, after being tied to a car and dragged through the villiage, was put in an unmarked grave with a dog to demonstrate that she was worthless.

D’ua Khalil Aswad (1990-2007)

The girl stoned to death in Somalia October 2008 was 13 years old, not 23, contrary to earlier news reports. She had been accused of adultery in breach of Islamic law because three men raped her. Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was killed on Monday 27 October by a group of 50 men in a stadium in the southern port of Kismayu, in front of around 1,000 spectators.

Inside the stadium militia members opened fire when some of the witnesses to the killing attempted to save her life  and shot dead a boy who was a bystander. An al-Shabab spokeperson was later reported to have apologized for the death of the child, and said the militia member would be punished. Yeah, right.

At one point during the stoning, Amnesty International has been told by numerous eyewitnesses that nurses were instructed to check whether Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was still alive when buried in the ground. They removed her from the ground, declared that she was, and she was replaced in the hole where she had been buried for the stoning to continue.

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was accused of adultery, but sources told Amnesty International that she had in fact been raped by three men, and she had attempted to report this rape to the al-Shabab militia who control Kismayo. It was this act that resulted in her being accused of adultery, detained, tortured and killed. 13 years old. None of men she accused of rape were arrested.

She was detained by militia of the Kismayo authorities, a coalition of Al-shabab and clan militias. During this time, she was reportedly extremely distressed, with some individuals stating she had become mentally unstable. No shit.

Amnesty International has campaigned to end the use of the punishment of stoning, calling it gruesome and horrific. This killing of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow demonstrates the cruelty and the inherent discrimination against women with this punishment (and others).

Following that happy note, Mariani Bridi died a few days ago. I bet not one of you  knows who she is. That’s all right, you didn’t know who Aisha was either. Why would you? Well, Mariani was known to millions.  She was a supermodel, a rising 20 year-old Brazilian star with a fabulous life to look forward to. She developed a urinary infection that spead throughout her body and was very resistant to antibiotic medications. The doctors had to amputate her feet, then her hands, and then part of her stomach. It was a noble effort that failed. The irony that she was a model escaped no one (Did you see Amores Perros?).

Aisha and Mariani – What makes these two incidents related? They are both true and tragic stories that have occurred fairly recently. They both involve beautiful women (in all aspects) dying unjustly at the beginnings of their life. They represent a microcosm of what goes on hundreds, perhaps a thousand more times throughout the world each day and we never hear about it. Remember Rwanda? We heard about that 90-day genocide only about half-way though it (That would be 450,000 dead by then), and still did nothing. And all those beautiful boys and girls I saw in Cuba with fake arms and legs dancing and singing. One watching would never know. One of them had a cowardly dad who killed himself upon finding out his daughter had cancer at age 11. Now the poor girl has two major things to work though. I’m addressing all of you who justify the unjustifyable and your own inaction with ideas like  “karma,” the notion that somehow these things were brought upon those afflicted by their own actions, in this or another lifetime, and that if we “just think positive everything will be ok.”  You know what? Fuck you. Please do us all a favor and go find someone to help.

But I digress. Now, how are these incidents related? One was a freak of nature, the other a freak of  (in)humanity, and both acts that God didn’t have the power to stop. If there is a God he has no choice sometimes but to leave us alone.  I think that when bad things happen God cries with us. I imagine He shed some tears for Mariani, Aisha, and the thousands of others that never even make it to the obituary section.

But the crime against Aisha, while just as bad in outcome, was far more heinous. Maybe God couldn’t have stopped it but we sure could have. It was, in the face of natural disasters and illnesses, one that was not necessary or inevitable. One so cruel I can barely fathom it. Is it not enough that so many die on their own, by illnesses and accidents? It appears that only humans, unlike all of the “lower” animals,  have a desire to kill for no necessary reason. I want to know if, for these people, it is fun. That is not a rhetorical question.

The crime against Aisha was humanly voluntary. We could have been God. We could have stopped it where He couldn’t. He gave us free will and we chose to line up, a thousand of us, to take our turn with the bat or the brick. No thought (or arrests) was given to the three men who raped her and precipitated her brutal murder. How many would it have taken, beside the one who was shot, to stop it? Three? Ten? Three hundred? The mere hint of concern that was expressed was quickly silenced by a rifle. But what if more people protested?  Maybe, just maybe, Aisha would have lived. Maybe, just maybe, 13 year-old Aisha wouldn’t have been, after being gang-raped, buried up to her neck and beaten to death with bats and bricks by cowardly men with no souls. These men are not human. They are something morphed out of what was once humanity. They are living proof that along with the concepts of goodness and “positive thinking”  are those of profund shame and pure evil.

The Arabic translation of “Aisha” is: “She who lives.”

Aisha was also the name of the second wife of Muhammed, referred to as the “mother of believers” in the Quran. Muhammed selected her at age nine and consummated their “marriage” before the girl’s first menses.

So when you say your daily affirmations please remember that there are places today where burying raped girls up to their necks and stoning them to death is common practice.

And I wonder if in her passion for justice and in her belief in justice when she reported the crimes against her, Aisha was thinking positive.

Dr. Bill

You wake up in the morning and take another pill so you can sleep until noon. You think that maybe if you can manage to miss half the day the other half won’t hurt so much. Getting out of bed is like trying to walk right out of surgery. On good days come the dreaded rituals: Brushing teeth, showering; on a great day shaving.

Coffee just stimulates the pain, not the mood, but you drink it anyway. You sit and stare at the walls, too tired to move, go out, stay in, or even look around. You don’t care, and you don’t care that you don’t care. You’re falling, and you’re just too exhausted to try holding on any longer. Imagine spiraling down a hole, ever so slowly – A hole with no end, no destination, just a general direction downward.

Do you know what I mean? Because if you don’t I am just not going be able to tell it to you so that you understand. And those people at the edge, up top, they look down and shake their heads and tell you to just get up and just go for a run and just do this and just do that and it hurts so much more because they all remind you how alone you are because they just don’t know what you’re feeling because if they did they wouldn’t say those things and so it must be me and I’m the only fucked up piece of shit in this sea of stuff and….and….

Then inevitably there’s the daily Council meeting in your head. It meets while you wait in an interrogation room for what seems like forever. Each day it forms a consensus, comes back in the room and declares the results, over and over, louder and louder. “Mr. Secretary, please read the minutes of today’s meeting: ‘You are worthless, you are nothing; you are nobody. You never have and never will make a damn bit of difference in this world. In fact your very presence makes it worse. You don’t deserve to be here. You are a pathetic fucking loser – Just look at yourself.’ This meeting is adjourned.”

If anyone else said these things to you you would promptly show him/her the door, wouldn’t you? Or you’d hit him/her or yell or find some way to defend yourself. But here, when it comes from your own head, your own brain, you just sit down, pour another cup of coffee, and listen. You listen and nod and you have nothing to say in your own defense. You know they are right. And then when they are done reading you today’s minutes you’re supposed to go out and be in the world. “Don’t worry – be happy;” “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be;” “Think positive;” “Be grateful for what you have.” Fuck you.

Wish I forget you, but
you’re here to stay
It seems I met you
When my love went away
Now everyday I’m saying to you
Good morning heartache what’s new?

Ella knew. That’s why she sung it so many times. She knew. Do you? Does it feel familiar? Welcome to the club. Totally non-exclusive, open to anybody with a genetic predisposition and half a bad reason. Open to members of all creeds, races, nationalities and religions. And contrary to popular Western belief, membership is not only involuntary but also not at all correlated with material possessions. It doesn’t give a shit if you’re rich, poor, sick, well, married, single, homeless or in a palace. You may not believe me, I know – But I have examples. I have the list. I can prove it to you. It’s so hard to believe because we have been trained to think with the template “If only I …” Fill in the blank – Had a love, had a better job, were single, were married, had a family, had more money, didn’t have this disease, weren’t so fat, weren’t so thin, had hair, and so on.

Then, then, and here’s where it gets tricky – then you become attached to the depression itself. It becomes part of you. After awhile it almost feels like an old friend, or the spouse that you can’t divorce just because you can’t fathom life without them. It blinds us to our choices, makes us attach ourselves to it. Resistance only feeds it and makes it worse. It forces us to feed it, and the more we feed it the more powerful it gets. And then of all things we invite it to sit down and join us for our morning coffee and to accompany us throughout the day.

Maybe you come from a Ward and June family (If you’re under 40 look it up). There was more than enough love to go around. No alcoholism. No violence. Family vacations, help with homework, kindness, compassion and understanding almost all the time. And yet you still can’t remember how many times you wished you were dead, or at least thought about it;  or that you were someone else. A five year-old hides under his bed, thinking about death. He seeks comfort in his parents, and they gave it. But the effects were so short-lived.

As you get older you try therapy, exercise, hobbies, travel, self-help books, medication, you name it. But always the effects were short-lived. The closest thing that came to helping, that actually made the blues go away, even for just a little while, were drugs and booze. But it will eventually make things worse, it will eventually feed the depression and it will eventually get you a first class ticket into a mental hospital, prison, or dead. But I’m not going to tell you not to do it. Maybe those drugs you take are saving your life. And besides, you wouldn’t listen anyway.

What we think of as “Love” is the biggest scapegoat of all. We attribute our depression to not having someone, or someone leaving us by going away or dying. Or by finding out that s/he was never really there in the first place. Most people I meet seem to get that “money won’t buy happiness.” What they don’t get is that neither will “love.” Sorry folks, I hate to break it to you, but finding that Mr./Ms. Right is not going to make you happy if you ain’t happy now. True happiness – I mean serenity, not ha-ha-happiness – is inversely proportional to expectations. In fact the word for “expectation” and “hope” is the same in some languages.

Stop haunting me now
Can’t shake you nohow
Just leave me alone
I’ve got those Monday blues
Straight to Sunday blues

I love to fly. I mean to fly a plane, me, myself. To get behind a single prop Warrior and lift off – To watch the people turn into ants and the houses and cars into toys. To have all, and I mean ALL, of my focus on the here and now – Here and now or die. It’s so simple. I’m up in the clouds. And all your little stories, your petty little bitches and gripes are just little toys now that don’t bother me anymore. And those ex’s of mine – They’re  too small now for me to care what they’re doing anymore. From up there in the clouds.

Then the time is up – it’s time to land, and I feel my mood drop one notch for every 500 feet I descend. Really. It’s that predictable. As I climb out of the plane a palpable wave of despair crashes into me. If you know depression you know what I mean. If you don’t you don’t. If you know depression you know why we’ll grasp at anything, anything – a person, a drug, sport, a job, a thrill – a plane ride – just to not feel it for a few minutes. But the minutes end. Always too soon. And so it goes…

Good morning heartache
Here we go again
Good morning heartache
You’re the one
Who knows me when
Might as well get use to
you hanging around
Good morning heartache
Sit down

Dr. Bill, January 2009