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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
Bad News From My Mother
One night I got a call from my mother, she was distraught. My
Dad left James. My brother had found out second hand from my
stepmother that my Dad ran away. According to both my brother
and Mother; my stepmother, who never cared for any of her second
husband’s first brood came in with a gun and told James that he
had to move out. She said that her husband, his father had
ran-away, that they had fought and broken up and that they were
going to get a divorce. She told James that he had to leave...
that instant.
My brother…
ever the smart ass said, “”I want to hear it from dad, otherwise
I am not moving.”
My Stepmother
had brought over a huge thug of known questionable character to
back her up. Frustrated by James she pointed the gun at him and
said, “James, you better leave, or I swear to God I will shoot
you.”
Not to be
intimidated, James sat there casually and said, “Yeah well, you
better load the gun first.”
In rage, she
started to pull his hair and pistol whip him as she cussed and
screamed.
Her hired thug,
grabbed James, “James, you better get your stuff and come along,
or you know what will happened.”
Humiliated,
dejected, filled with rage and self-loathing, James was dropped
off like a sack of wet laundry back at my mother’s house.
James’s hero, his father had deserted him, had left him to fend
for himself.
The final
result was that my brother was not going to come back home and
after many screaming fits from my mother, stepfather, and my
brother... it was determined that James at the age of fifteen
was going to go live with a guy who had once lived with my
father. His name was Karm Pornopoulus and he had been sort of a
mod-butler for my dad and step mom.
Karm was about
thirty, and he was the only adult male that paid attention to my
brother. In my brother’s eyes, he also seemed cool and groovy
and he had access to a lot of drugs and men and women who like
to get together and party. Right up James’s alley.” This left
James very vulnerable to do many questionable things down the
line.
My mother’s
news filled me with anger, anxiety and sadness that my father
would betray and desert the very child that had demonstrated
time and again his unconditional love and loyalty and even
worship of our father.
My brother
James never recovered from our Father’s desertion. Throughout
his life he remained hurt to the bone until the age of
thirty-five when he died from a broken heart.
The coroner
claimed James died from a cocaine and alcohol overdose. It is
my observation that my brother’s heartache led him to his use of
alcohol and drugs to dull the sharp edge of his pain.
Later that
evening, after my mom’s call, I tried to bury all of my
pain and the feelings of disappointment of my father and the
worst thing was my struggle over the confusion as to the whys
and what-fors of why my father operated in such a incongruent
manner.
I could never
understand my father.
How was it that
he could talk about the importance of team cohesion, loyalty and
even sacrifice of life and limb with the men he had served with
in the Marines during the Korean conflict and then so callously
neglect his family?
I remembered
the countless times my father had mentioned that his father
failed to mentor him; I remembered my father telling us that he
was eternally grateful for two of his superiors that took him
under their wing – helping him to further his career.
This admission
left my brother and sister and I even more confused and hurt.
Why didn’t he
want to mentor us – especially James – his most loyal and devote
child?
I pondered all
of the values that my father often talked about – but never seem
to practice – such as honor, duty, service to country and
family, all of the things he supposedly learned in the Marine
Corp.
I thought of
this and what I had experienced in the Corp thus far; the
disappointment of the violence in our own ranks, the prevalent
drug use, the lack of discipline and lack of team cohesion, the
lack of further military training, the pettiness or neglect by
our superiors.
I thought of
all this and I wished that my fantasy that the Maine Corp and my
family would follow the scripts I had seen in the movies. I
yearned desperately to be part of the real team and family, to
somehow find some sort of meaning out of my life.
As I drank
myself stupid I tried to make sense of it all and I failed.
It was then
that I vowed that I would try to become the type of man that I
had wished that my father had failed to become. I thought of all
of this and then I drank myself into unconsciousness
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(GENESIS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(EXODUS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(REVELATIONS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(JUDGMENT DAY)
THE MARINES: GOD'S CHOSEN
WARRIORS
VINCE'S GYM
CONVERSATIONS WITH NEO
NEO TEACHES ME THE ART OF WAR
& PEACE;
His Version of The Matrix
MEMORIES OF MY FATHERS
ZEN & THE ART OF RESISTANCE
TRAINING:
A Yogic & Scientific Approach To Weight
Lifting
ZEN & THE BIOLOGY OF
TRANSCENDENCE:
The First Matrix of Psychic
Phenomena
ZEN & THE ART OF KINESIOLOGY:
The Yogic & Scientific
Approach To Movement
ZEN & YOUR ENERGY SYSTEMS
ZEN & VARIOUS ASPECTS OF
TRAINING
HOMEPAGE TO ADVENTURES IN MARINE BIOLOGY
HOMEPAGE |
