[Dialogue] Stories about a man man I didn't know named Frank

[steve har]

Stories about

----
 Frank Hilliard's Death & Ed Feldmanis's story of a shared moment or two
with him in just 93 words [below] and

---
Rick Laudermilk's vignette of the moment of silence at his father's funeral
-all silence-  because his father was such a private guy.

Because none of the men that gathered for his funeral knew how to or cared
to share a story of what it was like to be with his dad and what they loved
about being with him enoght to come to his funeral and celebrate at the
completion of his life.

Then I remembered

---

Joe Matthew's story about the time his father died and the funeral director
tried to cover up his father's face with lipstick and his body with a brand
new cut-away funeral gown-suit -all of it pretense and abstractions to hide
real death in the middle of real life...and

---

My Dad's funeral when I tried to retell 4 stories from my dad's life some
of the stories everyone knew, some only I knew... once as a boy in
Tennessee when his school blew away in a cyclone, once as a young young
riding an Indian motorcycle cross country, once as an established adult
playing poker in Key West with Harry Truman what happened when "the old
man" lost a huge pot of money.

Once...the last time I saw him... wearing a yellow sweater, smoking a pipe
that I had given him, smelling that sweet sweet tobacco he loved, watching
him rocking in one of those pink metal rocking chairs at the nursing home,
seeing him smile in those last moments before he got up and left for
Alzheimer's land and for good.

---
Now, my peers & teachers pass on:

Sandra True died the weekend I sat 44 hours in the zendo meditating while
she completed her life.

I remembered the time at the Minneapolis House at 3am during a New
Religious Mode Odyssey when I was scrubbing my grave plot like everyone
else on the  floor when two Minneapolis police men opened the door and
asked: Could we what we were doing --they had a complaint from neighbors
about people wearing white sheets". So interesting what happens in a scene
and a couple of words.

---

 Robert Shropshire's at Academy 1973 teaching RS1 when he drew a  diagram
on the blackboard with a piece of fat rail road chalk in the shape of the
letter Omega and told a Mowanjum story of teaching among the Aboriginals

He said one day he was talking to some people about living your life as raw
possibility and having the courage to say so out loud. In my imagination he
was describing himself like that guy sitting on a log with a bunch of kids
listening at the other end of the log.

He talked for a long while. Then there was a big Dreaming. As one man took
a stick and drew a picture in the dirt in the shape of an empty head [or
the Omega symbol].

The man then drew 2 circles for eyes, 1 circle for a mouth, 2 loops for
ears and said: "Before I was like this... an empty head. Now I have eyes to
see, ears to hear and words to say into existence what is real about my
life and share it with others. You have given me words to say what is so."

Shropshire said that in Mowanjum when a different moment of real got said
said into existence clarity broke into candid conversation - again - when
the same guy awoke from a walking-around-asleep dream and said: " Robert
you are not a  "special-magic" black man: you're not a black man like me at
all, you're just a white man... just like them!'

Shropshire used to distinguish walking around in the ordinary places with
ordinary people being fully awake, and how sleepy he felt traveling around
some places in the  United States,how much energy it took not to catching
the sleeping sickness, how in some places you had to struggle to stay
present to conversations for possibility.

The last Shropshire story  I recall was when he went to work at MacDonalds
after a LENS seminar, tried to see what it takes to wake-up and stay awake
in 1% corporate America.

That's how I rememberShropshire as a character  filled-full, vivid with a
sense of wonder, focused whole-hearted, present then, present now in my
meditative council stories.

---
Living still and making online stories

Kaye Hayes listening online and  live again this year to Kaye Hayes 1972
Freedom Lecture thanks to Walt Epply's New ICA-USA Archives digital
recording. What got me was not the 20th C existential/mythological lingo
but the still lively storytelling -the classic ones like "Welcome to Hard
Times, why don' you stick around and build".

What a storyteller she was at the pedagogue lecturn; when I listen to her
at Mike May's video clips... she mostly only tells stories from her
long-ago community and about her work as a mentor among reservation indian
kids who diserve a future view, now, of freedom

---

Gordon Harper makes videoclips of Occupy  and  writes online how Joe
Mathews gave a talk in Maliwada one time on Integrity and gave it to Werner
Erhard who now teaches about Integrity at Harvard B-school and Oxford.

---

A woman named Sandy Something the time my best Costa Rica friend Jo Stuart
invited me to lunch in San Jose last year, with a friend of her's named
Sandy Something-or-another whom I didn't know.

As we sat down at the restaurant an island of English speakers in a sea of
native Spanish speakers I introduced myself and asked this Sandy
Something-or-another where she was from. She said Chicago. I said my
younger daughter lives there and I used to know some people that lived on
the West Side. She said yup, me too they lived at 3444 Congress Parkway,
right?

With in seconds of sitting down we were chanting "This is the drum of the
city, this is the drum of the city, it says to us that we can live...". The
entire restaurant of Costa Ricans  grew quiet as they listened to these
English speaking gringos beating respectfully on the table, chanting.

 The conversation completely changed as we started sharing-long ago Sandy
Powell and Steve Harrington stories. Our mutual friend Jo, who is a writer,
became more and more astonished as deep root and memorable character
stories tumbled out. Later she told me she wished she had brought her
journal notebook so she could write down names and places and themes and
write them out.

At our table it seemed as if an entire group of interior council characters
pulled chairs up around our table listening: many Franks, Ricks, Joes,
Roberts, Kayes, Sandras, Steves  listening like an invisible college
woken-up again to travel east sharing human  journey stories.

---

Thank-you Ed Feldmanis -thank-you  for your Frank Hilliard story of a man I
never met and found in  93 sweet short words.

Yes, I do now remember that Greek restaurant named Diana's downtown Chicago
near Halstead. It was the old place behind the small greek grocery store
right?

It's theplace where Anthony Quinn learned to dance for Zorba the Green. It
is the place where you learn to cheer "Opa" as the flaming saganiki cheese
scorches the blue and white tinsil decorations, right?

It is the place I met the mother of my children one Sunday afternoon dinner
during Academy 73. It was the origin point the action-before the action
that created my family, created lives of my two daughters Sarah and Margot,
foreshadowed my current grandfather mind for a new granddaughter named
Indira.

===

More short-short stories please, vignettes really of the distinctive
characters who  travel East.

More short-short stories of character to pay forward to some other
generation who might also wish to travel East.

-- 
Steve Harrington

Ed's 93 Word Story of a man I didn't know named Frank.

I was in Frank's Ecclesiola at Centrum.  One night we all went to
Greek town to a special restaurant called Diana's. We persuaded the honor
to dance and he finished with resounding Opa's as he flung his glass
crashing against the wall. We were mesmerized.  Our members were raving
about the experience.

On the next day Frank added his insight:  Always appreciate a man's
special talent but never fool yourself thinking that a talent represents a
grounded life.  Our restaurant owner could be someone living authentically
or maybe not. Thanks to Frank for the sharing and his sacrifice. A
beautiful life.
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