World AIDS Day Haiku

rain against window

gray clouds roll across the sky

meditate on loss

Giving Thanks

My childhood Thanksgivings were full of anticipation, excitement, and family. I grew up in Farwell, Texas, a small town on the New Mexico border. My childhood home was less than two blocks from my that of my paternal grandparents, and the town was full of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

The anticipatory fever for Thanksgiving would start a week or two before the actual holiday. It was catalyzed by my father, who would begin talking about the Macy's parade, turkey, and my grandmother's unbelievable cornbread dressing. He would ask, "Are you ready for some dressing?" or say, "I think we need to see some of those giant balloons. Did you know that it takes 20 people to hold one down?" He was clearly looking forward to the holiday, and especially to seeing it through the eyes of his kids.

But it wasn't only talk that excited me. My grandparents were known as Bonnie and Pappy, and on my near daily bicycle trips to their house, I would encounter the physical preparations that let me know that the holiday was approaching. After making me a Dr. Pepper float, Bonnie would tell me what she was making, or show me the early components that would become our Thanksgiving feast. The excitement would grow as I saw cornbread drying to become the base for the dressing, or her homemade pie crusts, full of flaky goodness. And even though she had major amounts of cooking to do in the days ahead, Bonnie would find time to make a pan of gingerbread with me, which she, Pappy, and I would eat warm from the oven with pats of sweet butter.

I would awaken with excitement Thanksgiving morning, charge into the family den, and turn on the television. We would watch the long anticipated Thanksgiving day parade, and my father would exclaim about the difficulty of wrangling the balloons with each one that made its ways down the route. I loved it, but was always a little worried about the people in the parade being cold.

The actual meal was always at Bonnie and Pappy's house, and was always at noon. My mom, dad, sister Deana, and I would head down the block (driving in the car!), where we would meet up with my Uncle Elmer, Aunt Peggy, and cousins Deb, Greg, Brett, Kevin and Amy. Bonnie would be cooking away and expressing a low level of anxiety, which was totally unnecessary given her kitchen skills. Pappy would tell stories, play games, and joke with all of us kids.

Finally, the moment would arrive - it was time to eat. The family filled up three tables, one big one for adults, and two smaller ones for the kids. However, there was always an argument among the adults about who could go and sit at a kid's table. They weren't outposts, they were where the real fun was. We would eat and eat, devouring platefuls of Bonnie's succulent turkey, savory dressing, sweet candied yams, and green beans that were saved from being a boring vegetable by a little bit of bacon. After we thought we couldn't eat anymore, it was time for pie: pumpkin, lemon meringue, and chocolate were always among the choices. After lunch, we would help clean up and then head for home, where the agenda was napping and watching football. We would all meet up again at Bonnie and Pappy's around 6pm for a second meal of leftovers.

This year I lost my dad, which makes these memories especially poignant. I realize just how lucky I am, and how special my childhood was. I had parents who found delight in recognizing and amplifying the things that delighted their kids, and grandparents who found loving and spoiling their grandchildren to be a higher calling. I had caring aunts and uncles, and cousins who were ready pals and playmates. Today I am lucky to have my loving partner David (and his marvelous family), my sister Deana, my wonderful nieces (Lacy, Anna, and Maddie) and nephews (Don, Will, and Edwin), and a remarkable collection of relatives and friends. They all continue to fill my life with light and love.

I grew up knowing that I was loved by and important to many people, and that has made all of the difference. On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for this legacy, and I hope to express my gratitude by reflecting the same loving attitude into the lives of my own family and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Accountability, Action, and Access

Below is an open letter to the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights organization, over a rift with the much smaller Servicemembers United organization. Servicemembers United is dedicating to ending the Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) ban on openly LGBT people serving in the military.

It seems to me that HRC is seeking to further their own access and prestige. This has been a repeated problem with the organization, but it is a particularly mercenary end in these treacherous times for LGBT folk.

To Joe Solmonese, Brian Ellner, and the staff of the HRC --

I let my membership in HRC lapse in 1998 after the mishandling of the endorsements in NY State when Charles Schumer was running against Al D'Amato. HRC worked against the good of the state and the wishes of our own very effective LGBT rights organization, which astounded and disgusted me. I wrote a detailed complaint letter at that time, and received nothing but silence from your organization. This really affected me, and I put my contributions and energy into other organizations, including serving as co-chair for three of the New York Leadership Awards dinners for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Recently, I considered renewing. I thought the Facebook campaign on National Coming Out Day was interesting, and was thinking about giving the organization a second chance. I am the type of donor that HRC builds much of their movement on. I am a successful professional, and a consistent donor who is connected to other individuals in NYC and beyond who actively give to organizations pursuing LGBT equality. I have been active in both personal giving and in securing corporate donations for other organizations. I have worked with or donated to several organizations, including the Empire State Pride Agenda, Lambda Legal, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Today, a friend on Facebook made me aware of the recent rift between HRC and Servicemembers United. It seems that HRC never learns. You have a strong brand and could do so much good, but you squander your brand and the limited funds of our community. As an organization, you continue to be mediocre in your effectiveness, which we cannot afford at this pivotal time in our movement. An amazing example of this is your completely inexplicable disdain of the anger being express by Servicemembers United regarding the painfully slow progress being made on DADT. Don't forget that we were assured after the Obama victory that repealing DADT would be a priority and that it would likely be gone by the end of 2009. Here we are nearing the end of 2010, and the repeal has still yet to happen and soldiers are still being discharged. The administration has issued no stop loss order, and to my mind has taken no aggressive action on behalf of lesbian and gay solders.

Tonight, the Obama administration announce that they were appealing the decision of Judge Phillips. They state that they want to see DADT repealed, but that they have to let the process unfold through the proper legal channels and processes. We've had enough words and need forceful action by the President. I must confess that I'm disappointed in both the administration and HRC, but not surprised.

As a result of this, I will not be joining HRC. Instead, I will contribute to organizations that are responsive to the needs of our community, work actively to build bridges between the various organizations fighting the good fight within our movement, and who are willing to take on the hard battles when necessary.

Please remove me from your email and postal mailing lists.

Dear readers: please consider joining me in placing our funds where they can be more useful. If you give to HRC, consider stopping, and if not, don't start. Let HRC know of your displeasure. Please feel free to forward this entry to anyone in the community as you see fit.

Sincerely,

Clay Williams

Difficult Things

"If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud." -- Emile Zola

One of the challenges of life is deciding who to trust with information that is sensitive or personal. We all have a history, and our stories can be quite profound. The episodes in our life that point to mistakes or problems can make us feel incredibly vulnerable. Yet they also are a source of enormous power. Handling them wisely can provide deep healing for past wounds, and handling them unskillfully can lead to loneliness or painful exposure. I have given much thought to whether and when I should share the pivotal story in my own journey through life, and have decided that now is the time.

This decision has been brewing for a while, and it crystallized during my September 17 training ride for Braking the Cycle, the annual bike ride from Boston to NYC to raise money for HIV/AIDS prevention and services. The late afternoon was cool and autumnal. The sky was remarkably blue, but dappled with low hanging gray clouds. These weren't rain clouds, but something simpler and friendlier. There was a brisk wind from the northeast, and the Hudson River looked like mercury, rising and falling in gorgeous silver choppy waves. The bike path and West Side Highway were eerily quiet, in spite of people and some traffic. Somehow, riding a bike in the midst of Manhattan, I was experiencing solitude. Within me, something rose up, something at once joyful and sorrowful. Yet the joy did not feel giddy, nor the sorrow unpleasant. I was riding strong, ready for the challenge to occur in the next week, doing something difficult but finding it relatively easy. It was a collision, as I came face-to-face with myself as I am, and found that there was no shame or regret in the encounter, but something tender and loving.

In that moment, I knew that I was ready to disclose the fact that I am living with HIV. Not that I hadn't disclosed my status before. I have been disclosing this since my diagnosis in 1991, but those disclosures were private, controlled choices. Somehow and for some reason, I knew that it was time to take a bolder step.

The basic story is simple. I found out that I was HIV-positive in 1991, although I was probably infected in the early 1980s. The week I was diagnosed, Magic Johnson was also diagnosed, and the media frenzy that ensued, and the conversations that I overheard, amplified my own challenges. I began treatment almost right away, but unfortunately, we didn't understand the medications and viral resistance very well, and my virus became highly resistant to commonly used medications. I completed my graduate work and moved to New York City in 1994. I loved living in New York, but my health continued to deteriorate due to uncontrolled HIV replication. No matter what we tried, the virus eluded treatment. I watched as my immune function gradually deteriorated, hoping with each new medication that came on the market that this would be the one. Finally, in what was essentially an act of desperation, I enrolled in a clinical trial in 2004, coupling a novel new medicine with an already available, but difficult to manage, injectable medication. Within two weeks the virus was undetectable in blood samples, and my immune system began to rebuild. Today, I am on a simpler regimen (no injections) that continues to work extremely well. My immune levels are normal, and my virus remains undetectable.

Why disclose now? The answer is complex, but a major factor is the transformative power I've experienced in doing and training for the Braking the Cycle bike ride. In my first ride last year, I made the decision to ride publicly as a person with HIV. I took the Positive Pedalers flag and placed it on my bike, announcing to all who knew the meaning that I was one of the positive riders. For three days, I received nothing but love and support from my fellow riders and the crew. This experience planted a seed, a suspicion that being public about my HIV status could be liberating and healing. This seed sprouted over the past year, and blossomed into full bloom as I rode my recent training ride along the river.

What the riders and crew do on Braking the Cycle is a difficult, challenging, and remarkable thing. Yet we find great comfort and meaning in doing it. Not shying away from the challenge, heading directly into something serious, silly, and strange, and finding solace and healing in the experience is both instructive and transformational. The hurdles that we encounter in life are essential to the path. They are opportunities to grow stronger and wiser. Shying away from difficulties is diminishment; embracing them is the way. It is scary, and it takes courage, but I've come to the conclusion that it is worth the risk.

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A footnote: there are family members, friends, and colleagues who will learn of my status by reading this. I regret that I'm not disclosing this information to you personally in a more intimate face-to-face setting, but after wrestling with the challenge of how to do that with what is a large number of people, I realized that I needed to just jump in with both feet. Please know that I will be happy to talk about it. An easy opener to the conversation is simply to say, "I saw your blog post."

Tuesday Haiku - July 13, 2010

oft walked canyon rim
tears for mom mingled with rain
what eroded you?

Radical Wishing

All people want to be happy. This is one of the common threads that bind us together. Yet many of us unwittingly predicate our own happiness on the unhappiness of others.

How do we seek the unhappiness of others? Win/lose thinking is the culprit. "For me to be happy, I need to win, and you need to lose," is the pervasive belief that places us on a treadmill to nowhere. We see it in sports, the "who's hot, who's not" celebrity gossip filling our media, competition at work, our economic and political systems, and even the competition among religions for adherents.

What if we realized that this mode of living was a guarantee that we will be involved in never-ending conflict, with occasionally satisfying "victories" but no lasting happiness? Imagine how it would change the world if instead we learned to hold our own views without believing we had discovered the only way to live. Imagine what could happen if we recognized that the people with whom we disagree are also seeking happiness. Imagine if we began to seek ways for others to have their happiness without sacrificing our own. Admittedly, this will require some creativity, but getting out of the win/lose mindset and giving it a shot seems worthwhile at this critical juncture for our world.

The ramifications could be enormous. The need for conflict and war would evaporate. Happiness would cease to be something we were in endless (but fruitless) pursuit of and become something real that we all reflect in the world.

Imagine if we could recite the Buddhist prayer known as the Four Immeasurables, and really mean it for all beings, understanding that if they find their true happiness, we will find ours as well.

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be parted from freedom's true joy.
May all beings dwell in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

Tuesday Haiku - June 29, 2010

smooth reflecting lake
peaceful placid calm serene
the world upside down

Liberty and Pride

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

On Saturday, June 28, 1969, police staged what was supposed to be a routine raid in the ongoing persecution of gay men and lesbians in New York City. The site was a bar in Greenwich Village known as the Stonewall Inn. On that summer night, rather than succumb again to shame and denigration, patrons in the bar began to fight back. The riots that ensued were the birth of the modern movement for gay rights. Each year the LGBT community marches on the last Sunday in June to commemorate and remember this historic event, now known simply as "Stonewall."

Much has happened in the forty-one years since Stonewall. We've moved beyond the era of repression and bar raids, suffered the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, witnessed the lifesaving miracle of HAART treatment for HIV, seen sodomy laws struck down by the Supreme Court, gained the right to marry in six states, and seen laws protecting us from discrimination pass in many states and municipalities.

Yet much remains to be done. The forces of hate and ignorance are alive and well as lesbians and gay men continue to be targets for violence and murder. Eighteen years after "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was adopted, over 13,000 men and women have been discharged from the military for being homosexual, and hundreds continue to be discharged every year. While we can marry in six jurisdictions (Connecticut, District of Columbia, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont), this right was taken from us in two states (California and Maine) after hard-fought and expensive battles.

What we've experienced over the past four decades has made it easy for the movement to lose momentum. Some of our boldest voices were lost to AIDS. Veterans who survived the epidemic suffer from post-traumatic stress and burnout. Many younger gay men and lesbians have grown up in a more accepting and tolerant culture, blunting the urgency and desire to become politically active. The repeal of marriage rights in California and Maine left one young gay man I know shocked and angry. Only after this major setback did he understand the need for ongoing vigilance and activism.

If all LGBT people and our straight allies took two simple actions, we could transform society.

1. Find an organization involved in LGBT issues that you believe in and sign up to make monthly contributions of money or time. The amount needn't be extravagant - continued support is more important than a one time heroic measure.
2. Speak up on behalf of equality whenever the opportunity arises.

Motivated by another Gay Pride celebration on a beautiful, hot, sticky NYC day, I am recommitting myself to these actions. I invite my readers to join me in working to gain full equality for the LGBT community.

Tuesday Haiku - June 22, 2010

Selected Tuesdays are going to feature photos and haiku by yours truly. Here's the first!

dead and fallen tree
cradled in your brothers' arms
under the vast sky

Setting or Rising?

In my last post, I wrote about the role of government and regulation in preventing disasters such as the financial meltdown and the BP oil spill. In this post, I want to tackle a smaller (but I believe related) issue, which is how we care for and manage the local world that we inhabit and share with others.

I was at my local coffee joint the other day, and a man came in and ordered an iced coffee. Upon receiving it from the barista, he moved to the counter to add milk and sugar. He put the milk into the coffee with extreme carelessness, stirring and sloshing the dark brew all over the counter. He grabbed three packets of artificial sweetener, tearing them haphazardly over the cup, spilling crystals onto the coffee on the counter. He snapped the lid back onto the cup and stormed out of the store, leaving a sticky mess behind for the next customer who wanted to doctor his or her drink.

The next customer came along, saw the mess, and set his cup down some distance from the coffee spill. He took some napkins and cleaned up the mess, as well as the rest of the area. After he was satisfied with his work, he carefully prepared his drink and left. As he departed, he noticed me watching him and gave me a sly smile.

In his classic work Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa describes two very important concepts. First is the concept of basic goodness, the idea that at the core of our existence is a fundamental openness, cheerfulness, and intuition as to what needs to be done. Basic goodness manifests itself in our ability to enjoy things like the color yellow or the taste of a peach in an unconstructed and direct way. Basic goodness also shows up in the way that almost any situation is workable. A messy house can be cleaned, a wrong turn can be righted, and we can mourn and recover from a loss. Our situations may not be what we want, but we can work with them.

Another concept presented by Trungpa is the notion of setting-sun world. This is a worldview that embodies a type of depressed pessimism. In part, it is a refusal to be open to the reality of basic goodness, to the workability of our lives. It manifests in many ways, one of which is an unwillingness to take responsibility for the situations we create or encounter.

The careless man who made and abandoned his mess was living in a setting-sun world. Not only did he leave a mess for those who came after him, but he denied the workability of his situation, sacrificing a bit of his own dignity and power by doing so. The man who tidied up after him showed patience and equanimity. He was living in what Trungpa calls the land of the Great Eastern Sun, which is perpetually rising.

The goal of the spiritual warrior is to help create an enlightened society. We do this by embracing our basic goodness and working with our situation. The smallest actions ripple far beyond what we imagine. Picking up a piece of litter someone dropped, cleaning up our own coffee spill, working through our problems with a sense of faith and trust in the workability of things - all of these are revolutionary acts.

As for the connection to our larger global problems, Mohandas Ghandi said it quite succinctly, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Owning Our Messes

Two years after giant Wall Street banks brought the global economy to the brink of meltdown, we are again witnessing the logical ends of anti-regulatory market fundamentalism. This time we are watching helplessly at thousands of barrels of oil pour into the Gulf of Mexico each day. In the June 3, 2010 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Paul M. Barrett does a masterly job of discussing the connection between these two cataclysmic events. The upshot is that we have been hearing for decades from our leaders that industry and markets are to be trusted in ways that our government is not, because government doesn't work. This idea has led us to relinquish oversight of industry to the supposedly superior forces of the market, which led quite predictably to the situation in which we now find ourselves.

The logical flaw behind the story of the effectiveness of unfettered markets is so obvious that one wonders how we fell for this story in the first place. The fiduciary responsibility of a corporation is to its shareholders, not the common good. Markets exist to serve corporations and investors (again shareholders), not the common good. The anti-regulatory fundamentalists claim that this doesn't matter, because corporations and markets will act in their own long term interests, which are supposedly aligned with the common good.

However, people across our great land frequently and regularly act against their long term interest for short term gratification (e.g. running up large amounts of credit card debt). Why should we be surprised when corporate leaders do the same, often encouraged by their shareholders? The idea that markets can govern themselves is as specious as the idea of drivers in a city being able to get to where they're going more quickly and safely without any traffic rules or regulations.

The goal facing us now is threefold. First, we must articulate clearly the case for intelligent regulation. Such regulation should be as lightweight as possible, and should seek to align corporate and market incentives with the public good. Second, we must push our leaders to act deliberately and decisively to enact meaningful regulatory measures. The third challenge is longer term: we must articulate in ways that resonate with the public the fact that government is more trustworthy than corporate interests because it is accountable to the public via the political process. Of course this brings up issues regarding the elements that distort our political process, but I'll save those for a later post.

Let's get to work!

The Source of Silence

My father passed away on Thursday, March 18. The outpouring of love from my hometown was overwhelming, healing, and potent. I returned to New York full of gratitude for family and friends.

I am an introvert. This means that I spend energy to be with people, and recharge when I'm alone. So even though I was grateful for the contact with family and friends, I was completely worn out. I was craving solitude and quiet in ways that I have never experienced before.

Yesterday, I went for a walk in Central Park to seek out some peace and quiet. None was to be found. Leafless trees provide very little buffer against the sounds of the city, and my walk was similar to a walk on the street.

Today, I went for a walk in the park along the Hudson River. The day was cool, very cloudy, with threats of rain, so the park was almost empty. The traffic sounds from the west side highway were quite audible, yet they receded as the lights turned red, and my pace began to slow. Still, I didn't feel like I was finding the solitude I was craving.

As I walked slowly out onto the pier at Christopher Street, I realized that a constant swarm of thoughts was running through my mind. The narratives were wild and frenzied, with recriminations and doubts about the past mixing with worries and fantasies about the future. I worried about what I had forgotten to do in the week I was away from the office, what I would eat upon returning home from my walk, what work would be like next week, and how my life would unfold when I am retired and old.

The chatter was a buffer, an attempt for a sad and lonely son to avoid encountering his feelings about the loss of his father. However, it was also toxic. I realized that my wild mind was causing me to miss the solitude and quiet that I desperately needed.

So I calmed down, felt my feet touching the ground, looked at the play of light upon the river. Again and again, I returned to myself, until I was in the moment and real.

I walked north along the river, tears in my eyes, the wind at my back, and saw the buds of spring life etched above me against the gray sky.