I've tried not to dwell on the incident though I occasionally find myself mulling over what happened, trying to remember and trying to forget simultaneously. "Trying" is probably a waste of time, but I seem to spend so little time on it, with so many other things to think about and to get done, that it doesn't seem like any loss to me to occasionally ruminate on the topic of being assaulted and what it may mean in the larger scheme of things.
At the simplest level, it was a "knock upside the head." It left a mark, yeah, but primarily it was a reminder of the need for redirection in my life and activities. This has happened to me repeatedly and it probably happens to others in different ways. We become complacent and habituated to whatever routine we're following. It's our lifestyle. We may not even think we should be or need to be on a different path, following different needs and desires, serving ourselves and others differently than we have become used to.
After that "knock upside the head" I was talking to the neighbor the guy was staying with. She's a friend. We're not close, but we get along fine and we have mutual friends and so on, and we help each other out when we can. We're neighbors.
One of our mutual friends was for years my "helper" Wes. He came around first when I was in a very bad state from rheumatoid arthritis and could literally barely move. He offered to take care of whatever I needed, and I was very grateful for his help. I paid him for his trouble, and he was very grateful for the extra money and for my company for he'd been having many problems himself.
He was about 50, a diagnosed schizophrenic, on disability and living with his mother. She was a retired nurse. He had a son who he loved dearly who lived with his mother (the boy's mother) in Arizona.
Wes's mother received his disability checks and doled out very little cash to him because she didn't think he'd be responsible with it, and she was probably right. For example, he'd buy cigarettes with the money I gave him, even though he had bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, and sometimes showed clear signs of walking pneumonia. I counseled him against smoking tobacco repeatedly, and sometimes he'd stop for a while, but then inevitably, he'd start smoking again. Having been a heavy smoker myself, I knew how hard it could be to quit, and I told him how I did it, recommended he try it and offered to help him through the rougher parts of the process. He tried but ultimately failed in part because he continued socializing with people who smoked cigarettes and who mocked his efforts to quit.
Come to find out tobacco wasn't his only unhealthy habit. He didn't drink that I was aware of, but I would learn he used just about any illicit substance he could get his hands on. And it would kill him.
According to my neighbor, he was partying with "friends" one night, and he injected a cocktail of drugs -- she didn't know exactly what -- and went unconscious and never woke up.
I can well imagine how it happened; I can put myself in his place and recognize how vulnerable he was to a partying culture and recognize how tempting and easy it would be for the partiers he was with to take advantage of him and in effect cause his death. "Here, try this! You'll love it!" And he'd do it because why not?
And I can also well imagine that the partiers he was with had no remorse at all. They probably didn't even feel the loss.
Wes was less than nothing to them.
Just so when it came to my own brush with Death last week.
This time wasn't the End, but who knows how close it came? I felt -- absolutely -- the first time I encountered this dude the day before he assaulted me that his intention was to murder me. I didn't think he would do it, but there was no doubt in my mind of his intent.
Where did that come from? On my end, there's a long karmic chain. I can trace it back to 1904, but it probably goes back much farther. My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered (as it happened by his mistress) in 1904, and it's possible but not certain that my mother's father was also murdered in 1916. I actually had long thought that the accident that killed him was no accident, but the more I learned about it, the less sure about it I became. So I don't know. One of my mother's uncles was also murdered (I believe it was in 1898.) He was a police officer who was shot by one of the combatants when he tried to break up a fight in a bar. On the other hand, my mother's father was chased through the streets of Downtown Indianapolis by a police officer who was firing his gun at him. Didn't hit him, but caused quite a lot of damage and mayhem before the chase ended.
An uncle -- my father's older brother -- was accused of murdering his wife, and some of my relatives are convinced he did it and got away with it, but again, I'm not so sure. It's possible, but so is his alibi. So I don't know what really happened there, either.
I've had plenty of brushes with Death throughout my life. How many, I can't say. But enough to constitute a common theme, and it's something that I think most people never experience. I've been shot, mugged, robbed, assaulted, threatened, etc, etc, etc, many times. So far, I've survived every one of these incidents.
I wrote "many times" and until now, I don't think I realized how often these things have happened to me. And how unusual it is in most people's lives. At least I assume it's unusual.
Part of it is due to my own rebel nature, something I have little or no control over. I tend to be a rebel, I tend to resist convention, I tend to prefer alternatives to expectations, and some of those alternatives lead directly to trouble, including life-threatening trouble. I suppose it's related to dare-deviling. Maybe I get an adrenaline rush from pushing the limits. I'm not sure what the reward is, but the risk is something I have often taken, more or less automatically. There is essentially no conscious intent on my part.
In the recent incident, I sensed immediately that I was looking Death in the eye. I wasn't frightened. More concerned once he got in my house to keep him occupied so he didn't go looking around and finding my wife. Just keep him occupied. He was clearly fucked up on drugs, couldn't figure out how to do simple things (like working a doorknob or a lock) but he had a fixed idea: to dispatch me with his tomahawk. Maybe somewhere in his mind he saw himself as a hero. I don't know.
I don't remember him saying more than a few words the whole time, most clearly I remember him saying "Sit down" shortly before he struck me on the forehead with his tomahawk. Afterwards, I thought: "Is he counting coup?" But I think that's too sophisticated an idea for the state he was in. No, I don't think he was thinking at all. Some other process was going on, driven by drugs, his mental disabilities, and by something deep inside him. I asked him repeatedly, but he could not tell me what was wrong.
So here I am, still recuperating. The wound is healing, and the black eye the doctor expected to develop is very faint. There's some pain now and then, I sometimes feel disoriented and dizzy, but it passes. I suspect PTSD, but on the whole, each day is just another day, plenty of tasks to get done, and remember to lock the doors and keep the gates closed.
I contacted the Zen center to get more information on their prison outreach program. I'd heard about it from one of the Zen priests some time ago. He said, if I recall correctly, that it was focused on drug and addiction rehabilitation through Zen practice in the prison setting. I thought that might be something valuable for the guy who attacked me. I'm pretty sure the Zen priest himself has gone through rehab, probably more than once. Which is no negative reflection on him. What I recall being told about the guy who assaulted me was that he had "gone AWOL" from the rehab program he was in (probably by court order) and he had been partying with friends, got fucked up on something -- who knows what -- and had been flying high for several days. He had not been taking his anti-psychotic meds. And he had threatened or run off several other men who'd come to the house of a neighbor where he was staying. He believed, I was told, that every man was a predator on children.
So what do you do? Just send him back to prison and forget about him?
I'm sure some people would do just that, but that's not the way I think about these things or about people in crisis.
I was listening to an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh the other day. One of the topics was "terrorism" and how a Buddhist responds. Or should. He said, "Listening. Deep listening. Compassion." Not with violence. Of course, that's an ideal. It may not work, and it's not always possible, but without even trying, you're sure to see the cycle of violence repeat. Again and again and again. Why not stop?
The question is how to do that without enabling further violence. I was using tactics of Zen compassion and listening during the encounter with the guy who attacked me. I could see a little bit of a change in his behavior every time I asked him "What's wrong?" But it was only for a few seconds at a time, then he'd revert, we'd go around again, and finally he whacked me on the head. I suspect Thich Nhat Hanh would probably laugh at the outcome, and at times, I have laughed too. He would also say, I think, that simply by asking and listening and staying in the moment, I was moving the situation in a positive direction. Yes, some blood was shed, my own, but think how much more there might have been had I not done what I did.
But how to do that without enabling his demon-mind? I know there are ways, but I'm not skilled at them. That's why I'm reaching out to people who might be.
One thing I didn't think of is the golden Kamakura Daibutsu
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| By User: Bgabel at wikivoyage shared, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
that sits in the Buddha-shrine in the living room, something he must have seen though it may not have registered. In other words, he probably didn't know what it was, but he must have seen it, and eventually, just the sight could have profound effects.
Who can say?
So.
That's all I can say for now.
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A bit of an update. Ms. Ché and I have been subpoenaed for a custody hearing on the guy who thwacked me with the tomahawk. Apparently the prosecutor wants us to testify as to what happened and why we think he should stay in custody and not be released on bail while awaiting trial.
It's fairly simple. He's a danger to others and himself.
We learned while discussing the case with the police captain that the dude has a history we knew nothing of. He was, for example, arrested in April for stealing the police chief's car and joyriding. He returned the car but refused to surrender his person, so he was tased, trussed up, and taken into custody. At the bail hearing the judge released him into a supervised rehab program which he left a few days before he assaulted me.
Police are very concerned that this not happen again with this dude.
They want him locked up and not allowed to roam free. We do too. Clearly the rehab didn't work. If he is schizophrenic and he refuses to take anti-psychotics, but will self-medicate with drugs that enhance psychosis, then he's not really capable of handling freedom of any sort at this point.
I told a friend that what I'd like to see happen is that he is imprisoned for up to a year, then put in a locked mental health care facility where he learns how to manage his condition -- maybe 3 years minimum; then if he demonstrates that he can and will manage his condition with medication and meditation, let him be on supervised release with a minder, essentially 24/7, for up to five more years.
She laughed. "There are no facilities, and no programs like that." I said, "Sure there are if you're rich enough. He's not. So what happens? Turn him loose? Or put him in prison for years and leave him to rot and let him continue to be a threat to others when he's let out?"
We'll see what happens.
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There was a pre-trial detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me. We attended by telephone and both Ms. Ché and I testified. She was was traumatized by the experience and retraumatized by telling the story to the court. I felt terrible for her. Wasn't there an easier wasy? Well, I guess not, and by tomorrow I hope she'll feel better. I realize how much she's been holding in. She was in a terrifying situation, and though she handled it masterfully (she'd trained for years) she was really badly shaken.
Dude got to tell his side, and what a tangled tale. He has quite a record, including assault and burglary. His charges now are aggravated assault and aggravated burglary together with false imprisonment. He rattled off a list of clinical diagnoses for which he is prescribed several anti-psychotic medications. He said he had been in a locked men's recovery program run by the corrections department as a condition of his probation after a conviction. He was denied his anti-psychotics and began to act out. He said he asked that an ambulance take him to the hospital, he was hearing voices and having delusions. He was taken to the hospital. It's not cleat if or how he was treated.
He said he called our neighbor while he was in the hospital and asked her if he could stay at her house, and could she come pick him up. Someone else came, and he was brought to our neighbor's house on Sunday. He did not have his medication and he was becoming more and more delusional. I first encountered him on Monday. Our neighbor was not home, but he was there with her children.
On Tuesday, he came into our house uninvited and assaulted me, scared my wife, and returned to our neighbor's house where he was arrested a few minutes later.
I'll say this for him. He was lucid during the hearing. He didn't make sense, but at least he could speak in full sentences.
The judge decided he would stay in custody until trial -- for the safety of himself and others.
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