Vaughn's space

A friend of mine who did her medical training and residency in the Bronx likes to say about a tough day of seeing patients back-to-back, "It was a day." In the rush and chaos that often characterize health care, it is a statement that sums up victory over a day too full of demands, frustration and bureaucratic insanity to be immediately described in any other way. The details are lost in the fog of near-exhaustion. For me, "It was a week." And I had to comb my memory this morning to separate from the haze some exceptional experience that made the press of the week gone by meaningful and rewarding. I saw 22 clients, an hour at a time each, in individual psychotherapy. One encounter stands out in bold relief from all the others. It was with a client who now lives in county-subsidized housing but whose spirit will never be confined to a small apartment in a drab, highrise building. Nor will it be dampened by the mental illness he comes to treat.

 

This client told me of his survival for three years living in a "pup tent" with his wife along a seedy urban waterway known to Salt Lake City residents as the Jordan River. Crossing that river does not take one to Heaven. In fact, it's hotter than Hell out there in the summer and colder than an ice-covered stone in winter. The word "survival" suggests living in such circumstances was harsh. For most people, it would be. But this client, a very resilient client indeed, reported his experience as if it were an adventure that only slightly tested his considerable genius at beating back the unpleasant and creating comfort where most people would find none. He reminded me of those pioneering homesteaders of the 18th and 19th centuries, hacking their way into the virgin lumber of America as they spread westward, building cabins and lives amid an inhospitable forest. The client detailed for me how he would use two different propane-fired stoves to heat the tent and to cook meals. He told me he knew almost to the hour when the propane tanks would empty, depending on how many meals were cooked and what those meals consisted of, or how many subfreezing nights had passed. Of course, he said, he and his wife had sub-zero sleeping bags to help conserve on fuel during the long winter nights. He also told me how he used 12-volt car batteries to power a television and a stereo set, and detailed his resourcefulness in recharging the batteries for free. Life along the Jordan was going to be more than the basics, he said. And, so, he wired the tent for light and sound. I did not ask him, but I wondered if occasionally, while watching the 10 o'clock news, he might have seen video of a body being recovered from the waters of the Jordan. It is not an uncommon event. As he told me of his experience and ingenuity, the client smiled and gestured enthusiastically with his hands. His attitude was "no sweat, it was not a big heartache. Hell, it's what you do. You make some space for yourself in this life and enjoy it, whatever the conditions." He did not speak those words; they are my attempt to describe more fully what a wonderful and bold nature this client has. It is lessons like the one this client offers that inform the therapy I do in my private practice, where well-to-do professionals search for answers to troubles that will not be quieted by success and comfort. What comes to mind is a saying attributed to Carlos Castenada. Paraphrasing: The mind can make of itself a Heaven or a Hell. The choice is easier said than done, and I marvel at this client's strength of philosophy, one that permits him to choose a Heaven amid what most others would find to be a Hell.

On this Fourth of July, I am thinking of Lafayette, the French Marquis who was a hero of our American Revolution. I was born and grew up in York, PA, where Lafayette headquartered as the Continental Congress sought safety from the British, who had pushed the rebellious "colonists" out of Philadelphia and west to the refuge of York. It is known to historians and we who grew up in York that Lafayette saved George Washington from being replaced as Commander in Chief during a toast at the Golden Plough Tavern, back there on Market Street in York. The young Frenchman put to rest what would become known as the Conway Cabal, the gossip-inspired effort to place a good ol' boy in the lead saddle of the war. Lafayette would prove instrumental in our freedom in so many ways. In this case, he merely lifted his glass to Washington, and Washington remained in command. As was one of the highest compliments that could be paid anyone in that blue collar home town of mine, He, Lafayette, was the kind of guy you'd want with you in a bar fight. The gentlemanly Golden Plough dustup proved no exception. I remember that farther along on Market Street, just beyond the graveyard where Declaration of Independence signer James Smith is buried, there was a building, still standing, where Lafayette kept his headquarters while our country's leaders drew up The Articles of Confederation and waited to move east again to retake Philadelphia. That building housed a social services agency when I was in my teens. I was reminded again today by a documentary on an educational channel that Lafayette was not just a thinker and a diplomat who brought the French into the war with us. He was very much a combatant and a brilliant strategist. He fought in a manner that would now be considered guerrilla warfare, outfoxing British forces of superior strength. He was, of course, instrumental in victory at Yorktown, VA, when Lord Cornwallis, defeated, was too humiliated to surrender his sword on his own, perhaps still believing that he was above this "rabble" that handed him his a-- on a platter and sent him packing back to England. On two of my trips to Paris, I visited Lafayette's grave. It is not in a celebrated location, not in one of Paris's famed celebrity cemeteries. It is tucked away in a yard of a nunnery, not easily found and not easily accessed. On my visits, an American flag flew over his grave, as one almost always has -- even during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Spirit never dies; it lives through those of us who remember, respect and act. With the U.S. entry into WWI on the side of France, an American officer visiting Lafayette's grave was quoted as saying, "Lafayette, we are here." The American general who entered Paris upon its liberation in 1944 said it again, "Lafayette, we are here." It was their way of saying thanks, that the United States was paying our debt to him. Lafayette, we are still independent in the year 2008. Merci, merci.

It got up to 94 degrees today, and the temperature is forecast to approach the 100-degree mark tomorrow. What difference does a degree or two make? It's hot. Period. End of story. You can't feel the difference between 94 and 100. Summer has come on like it always does on the high desert: suddenly. One week, the high temperature is somewhere in the 60s or 70s, and then the next week -- wham! The days superheat. The sun scorches. The other day, I got into my car after 8 hours in the office, turned on the air conditioning and waited for my vents to cease being blowtorches. Ten minutes or more must have passed before I finally felt cool air. The shocks seemed a little gummy, too. Or was it the asphalt turning rubbery? There will be little relief for months. The temperature will remain above 90. There will be no rain, no clouds in a sky that is Robin's egg blue. Every day will seem, as in the Bill Murray movie, like Groundhog Day, only in reverse: hot day followed by hot day. Same o', same o'. I'm glad I converted from swamp cooler to air conditioning for my home a half dozen or so years ago. Don't get me wrong. A swamp cooler is a marvelous wonder. It sits like a plump box with louvred vents in a window or on the roof, a pump circulating water from the bottom reservoir, lifting it up to the top of the box, then letting it cascade and percolate down through fibrous mats of twig-like material. Meanwhile, a fan pulls air across the sodden material, filling the house with cool, moist air. The process is known as "evaporative cooling." It's much like the process of a breeze flowing over skin beaded with perspiration. This system of cooling is still common on the desert. Problem is, when the temperature reaches the mid to high 90s and stays there for days on end, the swamp cooler exceeds maximum benefit. It begins to tire. It is feeble against sustained night and day temperatures that bake the landscape. And "bake" is not an overstatement. A prolonged cool and wet spring like we've had this year will lead to a heavy growth of brush. In time, the heatwave will dry that extra-heavy growth of brush and turn it into tinder. All it needs is the spark of a cigarette thrown from a vehicle, the flash of a firework, a car backfiring, a lightning strike, a neglected campfire, or the deliberate touch of a match. And whoosh, you have a grass fire or a forest fire. The valley fills with smoke, and World War II era planes -- water tankers -- rumble overhead, day and night, laboring to extinguish the source of the smoke that fills the valley like toxic fog. And, if you have a swamp cooler, the smoke begins to fill your house like the draw on a cigarette fills a smoker's lungs. At that point, you have no choice but to turn the cooler off and endure. Whoo! Thank you, central air. In California, the fires of summer have already begun. They are a phenomenon of the West. As a reporter, I covered the Yellowstone fires of 1988 and learned the ecological role of fire and the reasoning behind the government's policy of "let it burn" in regard to trimming volatile old growth in national parks too long overprotected by Smokey The Bear. Nature is one thing, ecology another. The carelessness of human beings is quite another. I hope common sense prevails this year and we have no human-caused fires.  

My friend, Ann, has sent me pictures from her vacation on Pawley's Island, on the Atlantic coast of the Southeastern United States. She is both an excellent writer and photographer, and I have had the good fortune of receiving her photos of the ocean, the sky and the sun that paints them. I've no doubt she'll post all these pictures for all to see. I have not been able to get away, physically, for many months, but Ann's photos have permitted me to escape in mind and memory. Her pictures from her Southeastern U.S. getaway remind me of a trip, not so long ago, to San Francisco and the surrounding Eden that is Northern California. Ann's pictures show us the ocean and the soft pastels (is that redundant?) of the sea around Pawley's Island. In her pictures, I see the sea oat (is that right, Ann?) grass that is common along the Atlantic Coast, from Maine to Florida. I remember that grass from when I was a young U.S. Airman, both before and after my tour in Southeast Asia, having trained at Eglin Air Force Base prior to deployment, then returned to that sprawling Florida base after my return.  Is there anyone who might read this who knows Destin, FL, and perhaps a restaurant that was built upon planks out over the water? The gumbo was magnificent. Or the Green Knight?  All that aside, I must say that Ann's pictures remind me of a the tonic that is the ocean. In my life since the Air Force, my ocean exposure has been of the Pacific, that mighty force that brings to us Westerners the sense of life that the Atlantic brings to Ann. The trip to San Francisco I am remembering has us renting a car in the city, then driving across Golden Gate to Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties. Ann's pictures remind me of the end of the day, stopping in Stinson Beach to eat dinner at a restaurant a few miles from the water. Leaving, we followed the road leading to U.S. 101. To the right and to the West, the Pacific began to turn light to Royal Blue as the sun set. The scene above the water was of a gold bar separating black sky with shining stars from a dark blue sea. To the east, rising above the hills, was the near-full moon that lit the scene. On the road ahead, a coyote crossed, stopping long enough to look, eyes luminescent, into our headlights. Wild scene, I think I love you.  You make my heart sing. You make everything, groovy. Then, 30 minutes later, pedal to the metal down 101, we arrived in San Francisco to park the car and enter the sweet civilized Friday night of people crowding a city that is so near the wild and yet at the apex of what we are as a sophisticated society. Show us your pictures, Ann. And maybe sometime soon, I'll get off to San Francisco -- a most sophiscated city juxtaposed with the wild -- and send my pictures back to you.

This morning, I used one of those satellite maps available on the internet to zoom in for a "bird's eye view" of the Gettysburg battlefield and Arlington National Cemetery. I grew up near both of these hallowed grounds. It's not just Memorial Day that brought them to mind. Every year at about this time, I contemplate Gettysburg and prepare for my yearly reading of "The Killer Angels," by Michael Shaara, a wonderful docudrama on that history-shaping battle of July 1863. Each year, I read the book because it's a wonderful piece of writing, because it brings a momentous event to life, because it documents with scholarly accuracy the courageous nature of those involved, and because it elicits atmospheric memories of summer in Pennyslvania, where I spent my childhood. I can see and taste the ripening cherries, hear the cicadas and the crickets, feel the humidity and watch both sun and thunderstorms play across one of the most beautiful settings I have ever seen. Wendell "Puddy" Day, who was two years ahead of me at Hannah Penn Junior High School, is buried in the small national cemetery there, having been honored for giving his life as a Marine sniper in Vietnam. Arlington is one of the most moving places I have ever been, but it is not just its association with Memorial Day and the Civil War -- and all wars since -- that brings it to mind this weekend. What brings it to the forefront is the "RFK" item that is in the news. I am not going to offer an opinion on what Hillary was thinking. I don't read minds. And I'm not taking sides here. In fact, I think there are a lot of people on both sides who have abused the memory of Robert Kennedy and his -- and our country's -- tragedy for self-gain. My first visit to Arlington National Cemetery was to see The Eternal Flame at JFK's grave. I would visit it later after RFK was buried nearby. His assassination in June 1968 was as depressing to me as his brother's in November 1963. I had turned the TV off and gone to bed with the understanding that RFK had won the California primary. Yes, I was for him. I woke the next morning to the news. By midday, as I recall, he was dead. The years that followed would find the Kennedys dissected and politically and personally "spun" in ways both lionizing and demonizing. How many different books and opinions have there been? Whoever you remember this Memorial Day, remember this: Men and women, however pure or flawed, and I don't think we can see anyone as "either-or" in this regard, have given the "last full measure of devotion" to our country, as President Lincoln put it at Gettysburg. This weekend, and on a daily basis, honor them. Their contribution is the only thing that I can think of that is written in stone. No amount of debate or "spin" can refute it. To all of them: Respect, Respect, Respect.