Rian Nejar's Blog, page 15

Easter Gift: Free for 2 days, "Humbling and Humility"

Humbling and Humility
A life journey begins with marital discord, humiliation, and learning for an Indian immigrant father attending a domestic violence intervention program in America. Betrayed by his life partner, and humbled by the State, he perseveres for his family's happiness. Will he succeed? In the midst of violence and suffering, can he find peace, and a non-violent pathway?

Author blog: http://wp.me/p500mx-5W

Get the book, free w/coupon code JX32V, at Smashwords until April 6, 2015.

An Easter Gift from Lucy

Green apples on Lucy’s apple tree

“Humbling and Humility,” a novel on domestic discord, infidelity, and Indian American lives and culture, free with coupon code JX32V, is in e-book form at Smashwords this Easter Sunday. The coupon code is valid until April 6, 2015.

Lucy is an integral part of the complex story detailed in Humbling and Humility (HnH). Her apple tree – that she employs to climb up onto my balcony – blooms around Easter…see the ripe green apples on it? It was thick and green five years ago; blight has claimed nearly half of the tree now. Nevertheless, it is blooming on remaining green branches this year as well, and will be a part of my backyard as long as Lucy needs it.

I hope you will all enjoy the book! I’ll look forward to your comments, musings, reviews…

-rn

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My Choice: A Strong Message of Individuality and Equality…

The voice is confident. Resolute. The arguments, compelling. The message undeniable and clear.

This is a deeply self-aware individual breaking free of shackles, of her community, of an oppressive Indian (Eastern) society. Doubtlessly, an alluring human being. One claiming her right to be equal to any other in her choices and way of life. One asserting self-determination, demanding such recognition and respect from others around.

I love her strong, independent voice…but am troubled by its implications. This is the age-old argument and conflict, between accommodation in society and individualism, but with an added dimension of a demand for liberating equality. That she wishes self-determination is admirable. But does she forgo, in all fairness, courtesies and preferential consideration that gentle folk practice? Is she willing to face consequences for choices made?

In events that unfold in “Humbling and Humility,” I’ve discussed this in various ways. Numerous families, formed and living in both eastern and western ways of life, facing such choices and their consequences. Clearly, how you think about this will be your choice…in all humility, I’ll leave that to you! :-)

As for me, I try now, more than ever, to stress less upon “Me,” and more upon what choices made do to my children and others around me…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do what’s right because it’s right: A mother’s words

A Mother’s Words to a Soldier in Battle

Isn’t life a battle too? Between hunger and satiation, exposure and shelter, ignorance and knowledge, fear, of the unknown, and the thrill of exploration? Do we not navigate through these choppy states of mind toward fulfillment, enlightenment, and equanimity?

Then there is the never-ending battle between opinions about right and wrong, ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and judgment, a raucous and often uncivil debate. News media carried comments from a duck hunting zealot on this topic in the past day. He declared, at a prayer meeting, that atheists cannot condemn rape, a harmful violation of unwilling and fearful human selves, because, in his opinion, there is no right and wrong for such folks. And, since there is no ‘judgment day’ for them, those who inflict such harm upon the wives and daughters of atheists may do so without concern for consequences. What good do such words from a fanatically religious darling of inane television, and conservative conferences such as CPAC, do?

The wisdom and humility of Pythagoras (image from rugusavay.com)

Pythagoras, the Ionian Greek mathematician and philosopher, went so far as to say “Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.” Do animals not put themselves in danger to protect their children, companions, and even humans? Do we not see animals and birds reciprocating kindnesses shown?

What can one then think of a mercenary who deceptively calls to ducks, to simpler beings, with a contraption he created, and shoots them down with deadly weapons they are no match for? Has he not observed these beautiful birds caring for their eggs, their ducklings, and for their companions? How may one judge these actions of such an asymmetrical hunter, employing the wisdom of sages and philosophers of the world?

“Do no harm,” say the wise, of all ways of life, through the ages. Yet some actions are necessary for life; this is explained in one such ancient path that I’m familiar with. Let’s lay that aside for the moment, and ponder ethics and rules with which the secular may live.

“Always do what is right because it is right,” wrote an American mother to her young son in the pacific theater of WWII. A Japanese officer reads the letter, to his soldiers, near the mortally wounded dying boy that he had his soldiers care for with medication they could ill-afford to use. The clip above plays this scene in a heartwarming story from director Clint Eastwood. This mother’s words comforted not only her son, but the Japanese soldiers who knew death was imminent in Iwo Jima. These words touch the human soul.

It is said that a noble person acts selflessly, does the right thing, true to soul and conscience, even when such action is unobserved and unrecorded. This is a distinction of an atheist, for there are no gods or words to fear or tremble at. Nor is there any final judgment, for one who sees all nature as a continuum and an arena for lifelong learning, other than that of one’s conscience, and the innate, altruistic soul.

Does this not ring true to you, to your heart and soul, whatever be your affiliation?

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What is Love but Summer Wine?

Summer Wine came to mind today. A song I’d heard and loved decades ago. Spring is in the air, perhaps; the past weekend was its official beginning this year. As the song goes, summer wine is made from strawberries, cherries, and an angel’s kiss in spring.

Do you remember your first kiss? One that never leaves your mind and heart? I do. Decades later, it is the most vivid of my memories of that time. If anything could come close to a kiss by an angel, that was it for me.

Does that mean something? That the touch, and its joy, never leaves you? I think it is an indication of love, of an emotion, and connection, that rises above all others.

It happened to me in the most unexpected of all places and times…in a spare kitchen, after a hard day’s work, and in the midst of emotional conflict. I was disturbed and angry…at the caring someone showed me without clarifying what it meant. Rather expressive in my youth at the time, I crushed an apple on her kitchen counter with one hand. She looked at me and asked, “Do you really want to know?” Before I could respond, she pressed up against me, pulled my head down to her, and kissed me with a sweetness no words can describe.

Yet, it was not to be…in time, she pushed me away to faraway lands to seek my fortune. But a craving for love, such as I’d felt in that intimate moment, remained with me forever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lucy, Trixie, and kittens from “Humbling and Humility”

Trixie, resting in the front yard

(An excerpt from “Small Measures of Peace” in HnH)

The kittens grew quickly, and became a common fixture on our backyard walls and in the patio. They had distinct behaviors: Black Panther was a male loner, staying away from the pack, Brave Heart was active and frolicked, and Recluse was a scaredy cat who stayed close to her mother.

A complication in territorial ownership arose when another feral cat, a Russian Blue with her own small litter, also came into our yard. Lucy, a Ragdoll, sometimes engaged in hissing matches with the new mother named Trixie by the kids, but let her use the front yard as her domain and a place to raise her kids, while she and Black Panther, Brave Heart, and Recluse stayed in our backyard. In time, Lucy’s kids grew to require territories of their own.

Black Panther was the first to leave. Brave Heart stayed on for some months more, and left thereafter, while Recluse remained with her mother in the backyard. Meanwhile, Trixie’s kids also grew, and having journeyed through the CNR program, dispersed, until only Trixie, Lucy, and Recluse remained.

My kids observed these aspects of feline nature with keen interest, and prayed that all their now adopted pets didn’t leave. Recluse was eventually convinced������by her mother’s not-so-subtle physical inducements������to leave to find her own territory. Though both Lucy and Trixie, the two cat mothers who successfully raised their kids in our home, stayed, in time, Trixie, who appeared to weaken, also disappeared, which the kids and I grieved over for a while. But Lucy remained with us, and showed signs of a desire to venture into the house. She appeared to want to be a house pet, to stay indoors when it suited her, and leave to roam the neighborhood when she so chose.

And so, Lucy, her parental duties in life complete, moved in with us. After a few scratches she inflicted on us at first, she learned on her own to keep her claws retracted when swiping at us, if we ventured too close, and eventually learned not to swipe at us at all. She soon selected a few favorite lounging locations, explored the beds and little enclosures my daughter arranged for her, and chose the kids’ bunk bed’s upper bed as her own.

She also learned to do her excretion outside, and to ask us to open doors for her, and climb our apple tree in the backyard to get onto our balcony. I fixed a cat door section to the balcony’s sliding glass door, and she learned, with much coaching and coaxing in this instance, to push through the magnetic flap to get in or out.

But most of all, she learned to be a companion to my daughter, who often declared, at times of stress or anguish, that Lucy was her only friend in the world. In her evident affection for us, and in caring for her too, Lucy greatly comforted my children. As is the Ragdoll’s nature, she followed us on walks in the neighborhood, and would run after my son when he’d run back to his mother’s after dinner with me. But she always did come back home, as did my children, if only to see her.

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Vague Causes Bandied About – Market Hindsight

SP500 3-mnth chart as of March 7, 2015 (CNBC charts)

I meant to post this the weekend of the 7th of March. Hesitated; perhaps because it may have seemed something of a “told you so!” follow on to a post about markets at record highs recently. Or because there didn’t seem to be strong volume confirmation of the start of a correction. Better late than never.

Two trading days into this week, the DJI and SP500 indices have come down to a flat level for the year. Just below the first gray ‘0.0%’ line in the chart above, below an SP500 support level around 2063. I’d meant to say that if this level is convincingly breached, and the SP500 stays below it for another session or two, we could see an accelerating sell-off to the next support level at ~2000 for that index.

Things do not look good; selling appears to be gaining strength today, the 10th, which (give or take a day or two) is also the 6th anniversary of the legendary Haines Bottom: a simple call by the late Mark Haines of CNBC of a market bottom in early March 2009.

“I’m going to step out on a limb here….I think we’re at a bottom. I really do.”

���Mark Haines, CNBC, March 10, 2009

Mark was a favorite business show host of mine – and of very many others, I am sure – who did not bother much with technical numbers, levels, and related mumbo jumbo. He reflected, quite simply, that the index, around 676 then, was very substantially below its 200-day moving average…and looked way oversold. His pithy insight proved prophetic; that was the bottom of the markets, and we’ve had a six year long bull market since then. Such long bull markets are unusual. Mark Haines would say it has stretched on way too long.

What worries me, despite market movement in the direction expected, is that the reasons cited are rather vague and have been around for a bit now. A strong dollar, and concerns about Greece again. These are not triggers, they are continuing headwinds; Greece seems more of a slow-motion train crash in advanced market terminology. Analysts now say that domestic earnings estimates for both Q1 and Q2 of this year show negative growth predicted. Not by large percentages: in the low single digits, but negative nevertheless. And, given a surprising ‘jobs created’ number last week, the probability of a FED interest rate hike in June or September is much higher. Negative sentiment, building up for some time now, is developing into more confident estimates.

Recent historical evidence may suggest buying the dips; a ~5% pullback, it is said, may be followed by a strong reversal. I’d be more cautious this time. A drop down to ~1875 on the SP500 is perhaps not entirely out of the realm of possibilities…

I remain long VIX.

Lucy and her Gifts…Birds in the Backyard

Mourning Doves feeding off seeds spread along a backyard wall

Lucy, my feral Ragdoll resident, sometimes brings her catch into my place. A mourning dove, small brown birds, and even a lizard once. By the time the birds are brought in, they are beyond resuscitation; I was able to save the lizard because its natural deception – a broken tail that moved in a convincing imitation of life – distracted its captor.

This habit of my feral companion throws me into philosophical conflict because some among these victims are the very birds I feed in my backyard. You can see them on my backyard wall in the picture above…engrossed in their daily morning ritual feeding. How do I reconcile their hunt and capture by a resident in my own home? Yet hunting is her very nature.

But my daughter assures me that this is Lucy’s way of reciprocating our caring and affection for her. That she brings these items of food inside because she considers this her home…and they are gifts for residents within. This could indeed be true, for I have observed Lucy calling for attention after bringing a bird in more than once. And, in some instances, she does not eat the catch that she brings in.

A similar story, one most endearing, is that of a little girl feeding birds – crows�� – in her yard. What began as an accidental feeding grew into a daily activity…one that is regularly reciprocated in an astonishing way. Click on the image caption below for the entire story. I’ll bet that you will be amazed!

Crow feeder in Gabi and Lisa Mann’s backyard (Source: Linked BBC magazine article)

A Writer: Artist, or Craftsperson?

A Child Being Taught to Walk: A Sketch by Rembrandt

Came across a question in a discussion group some weeks ago: “Is a writer an artist, or a craftsperson?”

They are both, are they not? Craftspeople, and artists, in varying proportion?

A difference, or distinction, if you will, is perhaps that every writer may aspire to create works of art that transcend mere form and function.

Am reminded of an example from a movie – “The Artist and the Model” – where the artist shows his model a paper with a sketch on it. The model sees nothing distinctive about the sketch, and neither do we who watch the movie, until the artist begins to explain the brilliance of the scratches made with a stick and ink on paper by Rembrandt.

An accomplished artist brings in so much more into a work with the simplest of strokes…perhaps a master of the art of written expression does much the same, creating and conveying so much more with the most prosaic prose.

Thoughts? Here’s the trailer of the movie you may enjoy watching…it is an imaginative depiction of the sunset of an artist’s life including mature themes.

Law Enforcement, Force, and Civility

An excerpt from Humbling and Humility

Excessive Force

As I waited in a corridor of the intervention program offices with others, for the earlier session to finish up, Paul approached me and started a conversation. He said that his judge refused to believe him, denied his request for a restraining order against his ex-girlfriend, and told her instead that she could call the police if she saw him anywhere near her, which would result in Paul, the plaintiff in this proceeding, going to jail for six months. I advised Paul that he should seriously consider leaving this place if at all possible to avoid further danger, particularly if his ex-girlfriend was indeed baiting him as he informed us all.

Conversation in the session this day began with a tragic instance of gun violence. A Dilbut cop, a sixteen-year veteran Lieutenant of the force, a detective, had been shot and killed recently. He had pulled over a car with an obstructed license plate. Something he probably need not have done, said a group member.

���It’s a dangerous job������ said Sid.

���There were fifty cops chasing these perps,��� Lopez objected.

A typically quiet group member piped up and said that while he felt bad for the cop’s family, the attention given to this incident seemed overboard.

���Look at the fire engine there and all those glossy pictures. I bet, if it was some Joe Schmo, there won’t be a fraction of that level of attention or care, as they show for a cop,��� he asserted.

Another spoke up, agreeing with him. ���What about the Peoria situation, a sixty-seven year old man, tasered twice, and shot to death for DV? And what about the homeowner, fighting an armed intruder, shot six times by a responding cop? Six shots with a police weapon������do they shoot to kill, to leave no witnesses?���

That homeowner, who’d wrestled an armed intruder down and was taking his weapon, survived, but was confined to a wheelchair, permanently, due to his wounds. It was clear that cops focused on how not to get killed, or sued, in performing their law enforcement duties. Reminded me of Fred’s suggested method������in resolving a wife-in-bed-with-another situation������employing extreme prejudice.

I related a personal incident in which I woke up at night, in my house, in my bed, with three guns pointed at me by three Dilbut cops. This was some years prior to ’07, resulting from a door not properly closed by my wife that had swung open in the night. The home alarm system activated while everyone slept upstairs. My wife slept with our children in the kids’ bedroom. No one heard the loud alarm downstairs. The cops came by a while later to find the door open. They’d come in, come upstairs, and found me sleeping in the bed alone.

Sid disagreed with my implication. ���How would you expect the police to respond? Maybe you were in bed with a knife at someone’s throat.���

I didn’t provide any further details; it seemed pointless for us to debate police methods. It is easy to realize that the gun-happy cops could, quite readily, have shot me multiple times, without any further thought, had I reacted in a nervous manner that they could have interpreted as a threat. And, with three guns pointed at a target less than a body length away, I wouldn’t have had any chance at survival.

As it happened, I’d woken up, very much aware of the guns pointed at me, with my hands raised, and asked them if I could check on my family before anything else. They allowed me passage to the kids’ bedroom, where I found the door locked, and upon inquiring if everything was fine, I heard a muffled response from my wife, while the door did not open. By this time, their guns lowered and holstered, the cops explained that the alarm system signal brought them over to check on the house. I asked them to help me search the house to ensure that nothing was amiss, which they did. They left afterward with sheepish looks on their faces, or so I remember.

I did recall that two of the cops who came by appeared to be young, and were likely in training. But three guns? All pointed at someone obviously sleeping, and alone, in the big bed in the big bedroom of the house? What were they thinking? Memory fails me now, but I think they offered an explanation that they thought I might have been a perpetrator who’d decided to take a nap after a crime. Did they get that from the Dilbut training manual for cops?

��� ��� ���