I began a major endeavor this month to re-edit all of the Blog posts that I had written over the years, and it has re-opened many of the hopes and dreams that I once shared while writing and sharing messages at Contoveros.Wordpress.com.
It all started with a dream I had about Socrates and Plato which connected with my “active imagination” that the eminent psychologist Carl G. Yung had wrote about in hisPsychology of the Unconscious.
Continue readingIt’s been six months since I entered the hospital and got transferred from one rehabilitation center to another, but I think I may have finally licked the worst of my ailments and am ready to join my old household. I still have trouble walking from one room to another, and I need assistance from someone walking behind me while climbing up the stairs.
Continue readingSLOW DOWN!
I believe that is what the Universe is telling me as I have gotten older and time has caught up with this aging body that – for the life of me – can’t physically handle everyday chores and activities I routinely completed some six months ago.
Slow down. Yes, you are getting tired when you ascend the steps to get into your Conshohocken home and then many more steps to get to your second-floor bathroom and/or main bedroom. So, take a break. You have nothing to prove or to “carry-on” as us veterans used to say while serving in the military.
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Continue readingI once worked in the Pennsylvania State Government, meeting and writing a speech for the governor, and broadcasting a news story about a new group of buses being introduced to the Keystone State. Continue reading
I started the Blog shortly after attending the funeral for my last surviving blood relative, Uncle Dominic Hagel, my mother’s brother, who, together with his wife, Aunt Frances, helped to raise me when sent from Philadelphia to Egg Harbor, NJ. My mother had postpartum depression after the birth, and I was sent to my grandmother, who shared her house with Uncle Dom.
Something clicked inside of me. I had just gotten help for PTSD from the Vietnam War and learned to meditate from a VA psychologist who taught veterans mindfulness meditation. I also finished a 6-week course of dream-journaling after reading about Psychologist Carl G Jung.
After meditating, I rose from the pew and stepped out as if I were going for Holy Communion. I walked backward and studied the various statues. Each had a story to tell, and I internalized that understanding and wanted to share my own story.
On my return home, I began to write about what I was taught in second grade as the “purpose of life.” That is “To Know, Love and Serve God,” according to the Baltimore Catechism. I wrote about all three.
In between, I had a dream about Socrates and coupled it with what Jung called an “active imagination.” I saw people in my life as Angels or Guides who directed me in my path to include my teenage mentor who taught me to sing Doo Wop harmony, my oldest brother who guided me into Officer Candidate School and eventual service in the Vietnam War, and a Scottish neighbor of my parents who suggested I study journalism when he heard I took printing courses in the high school trade school I attended.
I wrote about the war and PTSD, securing a not guilty verdict on my first jury trial and serving as a newspaper reporter covering Three Mile Island.
I shared my understanding of the Kabbalah and my journey to Jerusalem, my studies of WON Buddhism, and my trip to South Korea, and how I learned to dance a mean dervish whirl while learning about the Sufi and the Muslim faith.
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My total count is now 881 posts, something I never imagined I would reach way back then. I made so many good friends from all over the world to include Russia, Great Britain, Iceland, Greece, and Canada, not to mention my fellow countrymen and women.
It has been very therapeutic and enlightening, particularly when receiving comments from readers who shared my view and added to the discussion.
He doesn’t play with me like he used to. I’d be the first thing he’d grab and put on his head when he went outside and pretend that he was Davy Crockett. A coonskin hat was meant for little boys and those wanting to be “King of the Wild Frontier.” But he has seen me less and less since that white plastic ball entered his life and got him swinging at it. Continue reading
Writing has opened me to a world above and beyond my five senses and I feel like an H.G. Wells whenever I revisit the past and recall what life was like when I was fortunate enough to stop the world for a few brief moments and write about something. Continue reading
She stared at me as I walked from the courtroom, and I felt her hate bore into me. Her whole posture seemed to drip with contempt, and what I could only feel at that moment was a curse from her whole being.  Continue reading
I can’t think of anything to write about.
I feel lost, adrift, less than human.
That is what happens when you make writing your life’s love. You want to write all of the time and never be too far away from what writing can do for you. Continue reading
Someone from 100 different countries has viewed this site and my flag counter can attest to the number of nations represented here.
I started to write a Blog some seven years ago and hooked up with a link that not only counted the number of persons viewing Contoveros, but determined which country that person was from. I placed the flag counter at the top of my Blog so that anyone — including myself — could readily see it on linking into Contoveros. It’s at my home site.
(See Flag Counter for the latest count. Trinidad is the latest country added to my list!)  Continue reading
I’d pretend that I was a soldier on a mission with a rifle in my hands as I made my way through enemy territory. I’d carry a tree limb most of the time and walk through pathways in a jungle we called Fairmount Park.  Continue reading
Chocolate was my favorite flavor Tootsie Roll Pop. Cherry was my second. I don’t remember the first time I licked one. I must have gotten the candy at age five or six years old. Continue reading
My Uncle Mike was a grizzly white haired Greek who spoke little to no English when my father invited him to stay in our house in North Philadelphia. I don’t know if he really was a blood relative, but he was one of the meanest mother-humpers I had ever come into contact with as a child. Continue reading
When the Good Lord created the Universe, He created order out of chaos. He instilled Free Will in earthlings, something he withheld from the angels of whom He created first. Continue reading
I wanted to shoot the political sign I saw outside of Philadelphia the other day but ended up feeling sorry for all of us who react violently against the person we demonize on the other side of the aisle. Continue reading
If I had my druthers, I think I would have made cats and dogs more like people and made people more like the other animals.
Yes, as God, I would have changed the Book of Genesis and created the dog first, and then, taking a rib from the first one, I would have created his loving mate and good friend, the cat. Continue reading
I learned years ago that I could hide away from you whenever I feel you’re looking too closely at me or expecting me to act a certain way that I really don’t want to act, to speak, or to even think. Continue reading
Could my reckless and often unabashed “agitation” be the instigation for another person to find the voice she needed to speak directly from her soul?
I like to think so. I believe I might have sparked a keg of memories that were waiting for the right moment and touch to manifest and explode for the world to finally see. Continue reading
It was Saturday morning, May the 19th of 2012. I awoke that early morning feeling well rested. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working Monday through Thursday, having Fridays off. In the past, when working a full week, my Saturdays were spent sleeping in and catching up on the many hours of sleep lost during the week. Continue reading
“My grandfather lied to my grandmother about another marriage he had.
I guess it may have run in the family. *
But I never got married while I still had a family. That’s what I’m talking about. He lied about being married at the time he married the only grandmother I ever knew. Continue reading
I typed this over and over again, hoping that one day I’d learn the fine skill of typing as I sat in a class with all girls. Young women, I should say. I was the only male in the Delaware County Community College course of study, and I never once felt out of place or unusual.
I wanted to be a journalist, you see. So, I figured I had to learn the fine art of typing to file my stories. Continue reading
I see my life through the eyes of a kid who grew up in Brewerytown, swashbuckling my way through fights on the streets and later the jungles of Vietnam before finding my true calling as a spiritual clarion who wants all North Philadelphia children to return to their God-given Nature of Love. Continue reading
Mental illness scares the shit out of me. The very term conjures up images of some crazed guy with wild, straggly hair and a demon-like smile of malevolence. Steven King kind of comes to mind when I think of someone who might be a little touched in the head. A Stephen King character, that is. Not Stephen King.  Continue reading
I would love to write a book about how people came to the current journey they’re on.
You see, I have this tendency of going up to people and asking them how they came to be where they are; that is, spiritually, if you know what I mean.
When was the last time you read a book where you had to stop to digest what you just took in because you wanted to savor what you felt?
And then while resonating with it, you get a warm glow about yourself; you feel lighter, more connected with the world, and so happy that another person can put into words what you know is so true?  Continue reading
Have you ever met someone who tells you what you and he or she had done so many years earlier when you hung out that time, but you don’t remember? This happened to me recently at a neighborhood reunion.
Try as I might, I couldn’t remember what the hell they were talking about. Worse yet, I couldn’t place them in my memory back or through the retrieval process. Who is this person, I asked myself while smiling and laughing hard at the retelling of a story they seem to have gotten so much out of.  Continue reading
No matter where I go, Philadelphia will always go with me. I’ve taken the old neighborhood to combat in Vietnam as well as to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I let it shine in the courthouses of Philadelphia and the one and only house of pleasure I visited in Panama.
Yeah, I’m from Brewerytown, an old German-based section of Philadelphia that families of beer-makers settled in a small enclave of the City of Brotherly Love. Brewerytown is near the Philadelphia Zoo on Girard Avenue and not too far from the Eastern State Penitentiary, where Al Capone once lived in a section called Fairmount.  Continue reading
I am to be executed tomorrow and tonight I’ve been offered the chance of a lifetime. I can eat anything my heart desires!  Continue reading
Who am I? What do I believe? And can I name a few of my beliefs?
Let me name a few things I believe about myself. They’re in no particular order.  Continue reading
I believe that all of us are placed on this earth for a purpose, and the aim for us in life is to find out what that purpose is!
We don’t usually seek the answer right away. Most put it off until some calamity forces us to find answers to life’s most important questions. Why am I here? Why am I in this body? Who am I, really?  Continue reading
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say . . . ”War is All Hell!”
American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
When I write, I try to tap into the child within. I try to “feel” something that I can share with another, be it humorous, educational or shocking.
I have stories to tell from my past that brought me to this point, and I think they may help others to feel what I feel and to take action, even if that action is simply to refrain from acting or even thinking.
Continue readingEver wonder what goes into the marketing of a book before it ever hits the bookstores or gets on Amazon.com? Well, I never knew until I saw it up close and personal.
I thought you might enjoy some of the steps taken for my second book, “Ithaca Insights,” to be published through CreateSpace. Enjoy! (Note to sharp-eyed readers. I changed the title mid-way through this odyssey.)  Continue reading
The person who had the biggest impact on my life was my second wife, Wendy Wright Contos. She had a 157 IQ, but never once acted as if she was better than me. She easily got angry at injustices and would, on occasion, lash out against the hypocrisy of politicians, while helping the underprivileged and the rights of women in a male-dominated society. Continue reading
A Viet Cong sniper was trying to kill me. Some motherfucker hiding in the trees, the bushes, the triple-canopy jungle had just shot at my platoon. I thought he was shooting randomly, despite the debris from the ground, grassland and other tiny bits of rock that struck me from a bullet’s ricochets.
No, he was aiming at no one but me! It’s taken me more than forty years to figure that out. 
I felt a lot of healing when I read the following quote from the feminine deity: Moor Jani:
“We all have the capacity to heal ourselves as well as facilitate the healing of others. When we get in touch with that infinite place within us where we are Whole, then illness can’t remain in the body. And because we’re all connected, there’s no reason why one person’s state of wellness can’t touch others. Elevating them and triggering their recovery. And when we heal others, we also heal ourselves and our planet.
Goodbye. I’m leaving you after this. I felt I needed to write this because I really don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or the day after. All of it is a mystery to me. And I’m afraid. 
Yeah, this badass Vietnam veteran finally admits that he’s afraid. I got anxiety up the whazoo, if that is the correct way of spelling it. At this point, who really cares? I felt this way before. I remember what it was like going into the army. It was 1968 — the third of June – and I knew then that I was facing possible death in war. That was the day I was drafted. It was one summer removed what historians now call the hippie “Summer of Love.”
I am looking for the type of cover for my latest book, my son. It tells of a Mystical Journey I embarked upon several months ago, arriving in Ithaca, New York, for a three-day retreat. There, I met a teacher who explained how I could understand my life and its meaning.
(The following is an excerpt from a book I wrote entitled
“St. Francis of Assisi, A Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty“)
Experiencing the Divine from Within Yourself
I found the truth hidden awayin the crevices of my mind, buried beneath what my religious teachers had told me in classes from age eight to fourteen. Yes, there is only one God, but he can only be experienced from within.
Continue readingWhat did I learn about Francis of Assisi while researching the facts about his life?
He wanted to grow up to be a crusader and fight in the Crusades which had gone on for some one hundred years when he was born in 1081 or 1082.
Simply knowing that I wrote a book is one helluva experience.
Seeing it on Amazon.com is breathtaking Continue reading
Dream of Writing a Book about to Come True
As I stand on the precipice of my literary journey, the dream of writing a book feels closer than ever. The countless hours spent brainstorming ideas, developing characters, and crafting intricate plots have finally begun to take shape. I can see the pages of my story unfolding before me, each chapter brimming with potential and passion.
This transformative experience has ignited a fire within me, motivating me to pour my emotions and experiences onto the page. Friends and family, too, have become my pillars of support, encouraging me to embrace my creativity and share my unique voice with the world. With every word I write, the reality of my dream comes into focus, and I am filled with anticipation for the moment when my book will finally be in the hands of eager readers, ready to explore the world I have created.
I am about to become an Author!
Well, a “Published Author” that is.
I just learned that my book about Francis of Assisi, a historic novel, will be available at Amazon sometime in the next two months, September and October (2014). Writing it was a true labor of love. I mixed in Catholicism with Sufism and lots of Buddhism. I also introduced Francis, aka Giovanni di Bernadone, his real name by the way, to the Wisdom of Kabbalah and a belief in what I call “angel therapy.”
For all my legal friends not yet indicted or spending time in jail, I threw in the Rule against Perpetuity. Don’t ask me what it means. I never quite understood it in law school, but it sounded so good, I created a way for Clare, Francis’s female sidekick and saint-in-training, to use the legal maneuvering to keep his first-person manuscript hidden from public view until a fellow discovered it in a castle of some small Greek island.
Michael J Contos, writing under his father’s name, “Contoveros,” discovered the manuscript and brought it to the attention of the world.
You can read the excerpt from St. Clare’s preface here:
Francis of Assisi, written in his own words
Enjoy!
Oh yeah . . . The name of the book is “Francis of Assisi, a Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty.”
Though many books have been written about Saint Francis of Assisi, none have put him in such a human light as this novel. Francis of Assisi, while taking a few liberties along the way, tells the story of Saint Francis’s journey through darkness and war and into the light. Readers learn about the struggles Saint Francis must overcome, and about his trials with his father and with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Contoveros creates for us a Saint Francis who is entirely tangible but inspirational on a spiritual level. From the very beginning, we are fighting for the patron saint of animals and small critters. We are there to experience the vision of “Lady Poverty” alongside him, and by the novel’s end, we understand him and his vision more fully.
Facing death, St Francis of Assisi recalls his flight from his father’s oppression and how he dreamed of becoming a warrior only to be thrown from his horse in battle and witness a mass slaughter before being taken captive and falsely imprisoned in a dungeon. Because of this, he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a malady he struggles with all of his life to overcome.
Upon his release from prison, Lady Poverty appears in a vision to the young “King of the Revelers,” inspiring him to change his life and embark on a journey that leads to a spiritual awakening still sought after today.
As a Vietnam War veteran, Contoveros seems to have an innate understanding of some of the struggles Saint Francis of Assisi faced roughly eight hundred years ago. Both Contoveros and his hero suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of war. Later, both sought forms of spiritual awakening.
An inactive attorney, Contoveros has a master’s degree in history. In preparation for writing A Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty, he researched the thirteenth century and read multiple accounts of Saint Francis of Assisi to piece together the character formed in this novel.
Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, but a student of Buddhism, the Sufi, and Kabbalah, Contoveros now sees spirituality in a new light. He is an admirer of Siddhartha and, like many others, a seeker of answers in this troubled world.
As I struggle to come up with a satisfactory answer for this question, let me focus instead on what Deepak had quoted William Blake as saying in reference to wisdom. Wisdom is “organized innocence.” What a concept! In order to have or to cultivate wisdom, I know that I must be in awe of something; I must see that thing with wonder, with the eyes of an innocent child.
I am hot. I feel like I have a fever . . . A fever that pulses through me for the past several weeks. It seems this fever entered my bloodstream just about the same time as I started doing twice-a-day meditations with Deepak and Oprah for a 21-day Meditation Experience. Writing in the journal has added to the mix.
I was Jesus’ sidekick.
We hung out when he was about 25 years old, and we spent a lot of time together traveling outside of the Land of Galilee. We had even accompanied one of his cousins (- on his mother’s side) for an extended visit to the Far, Far East, where we met with adventures that could curl up a sandal or two.
(Question 2 on Hope)
You may also have experienced this kind of hope, (See https://contoveros.wordpress.com/?p=12505&preview=true) but not thought of it in those terms. Think of a time when you felt sure you were going to attain a lofty goal, even though the path to the goal was not apparent. That is the hope that comes from your being. Describe this feeling of certainty in your journal. – Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Feeling Hope) I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
I needed and wanted to write a book.
(Part 1 of 2)
Recall a time when you felt calm and peaceful, even though the circumstances were not peaceful. Write down a description of that event, and describe how you were able to be calm in that situation. What was the source of this peacefulness if it didn’t come from outside? — Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Day 3 — “Feeling Peace”)
I had led my platoon in Vietnam for several months. We had encountered several firefights, but no one was killed or injured, thank God. But you never knew what the next day would bring, and so we were on edge, on the ready, so to speak, for anything that might have endangered us. Continue reading
I just finished writing 73,000 words about Francesco, the young man from Assisi who overcame post-traumatic stress from battles, as well as a year-long imprisonment, before being ransomed by his rich mercantile father. Continue reading
Why write of an experience, when you can experience it?
There’ll be time enough for writing when the chapter ends and a new one begins at the stroke of the pen.
Live Now.
Live in the Present.
Love Now.
Love in the Presence . . .
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Write with the love you become tomorrow.
The thought of going to prison never bothered me. I’d survive and flourish behind bars, where I’d have more than enough time to reflect and write which I have found is my true love in life.
No, I could kill without worrying about the consequences. It would be my first offense. I am certified as a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I don’t see any judge or jury putting me to death for the crime.
All of this went through my mind when I was waiting at the train platform, and a rather tall, white guy walked in front of me. I was standing near the tracks. I was close enough and in line with others standing on either side of me that I never thought someone could make their way between me and the tracks. But the man did. He walked around me. He stood directly in front of me. No one else stood that close. I recall thinking how totally inappropriate and rude his actions were.
I know how to kill, having been trained in the infantry and as a parachutist who learned not to care about pain. I got used to it, and bared up under it so many times, it became almost second nature to welcome it during a new and challenging task. Like murder.
No, I don’t know any Kung Fu or any martial arts. But I could break the man’s neck from behind. And, if that failed, I would wrestle him to the ground and die before letting him get up as I smashed his head again and again on the platform, caring not a whit about the mess I’d make. I’m strong. More importantly, I’m strong-willed.
He deserved to die, I rationalized and actually saw myself as a champion of the underdogs who play by the rules on train platforms. You have to honor another person’s space. You can’t stand too close to another person until or unless you see the train pulling up, and everyone tightens up the ranks, bunching together to stand at the spot you believe the train steps will come to a halt.
Why break such a rule? Why place yourself in front of someone else just because you’re taller than them are? Or younger? Or slicker? Someone like me may just kill you and use the opportunity to leave behind a staid and predictable life that’s losing whatever meaning it once may have had.
My action could be considered justifiable in a weird sort of way. No, not in a legal sense, but in a Karmic sense, if you know what I mean. I’d create some negative karma but prevent others from getting such negativity in their thoughts and desires to kill as much as I wanted to kill him. I saved them and the rest of all sentient beings a large and cumulative amount of negative karma, that I could be considered a saint in some religions.
I bring this up now only because I asked the Universe to correct my old way of life. Certain actions occurred in response to my wishes.
But instead of acting, I became a “watcher.” I was no longer the actor, but someone above myself looking down on my speech, my thoughts, my relations with others and events that became ripened by different causes and conditions.
No, I killed no one. But I entered a state of mind where I saw a different reality. A reality that has always been there but was blocked by my mind. My mind kept me busy with one thought after another: a fear here, an anxiety there. It jumped from an emotional thought from my past to a future where nothing, but catastrophes existed. And then my mind would race, with me having no control of it.
I feel better now. I control my mind even in the most disastrous moments of life. Who’s to say they’re disastrous? Not me. Not anymore. I’ve gained the equanimity to treat the glorious and the profane the same way. As an observer. Not a slave to emotional and useless thoughts. Just an observer of the thoughts.
Try it.
Dealing with the Vietnam War becomes a little easier each time I write about it. I “desensitize” myself. I now see my actions as separate from the emotions I felt while a young soldier, as well as the feelings of guilt many veterans like me, imposed on ourselves while readjusting to civilian life. It’s helpful when a high school student asks questions and you try to be honest and direct.
Continue reading
I send affection to motorists cut off by a speeding car that winds in and out of lanes. I feel for the driver who was never told by the operator of a car in front that that operator was going to turn, despite what appears to be working lights that turn on and off when you press the turn signal lever up or down.
My heart goes out to you who have observed the speed limit, inching no more than seven miles an hour over a 55-mph limit when someone in a pickup truck rides your tail even though the driver can simply pull into the open right lane and pass your car on the left.
I used to curse out those I believed were inconsiderate drivers. You know the aggressive types that always seemed to have more important business to attend to than you did. Too often, I’d let anger push me to the extreme, and I’d speed up to show ’em what a speedster they had met on the road. It was road rage, pure and simple. The more I focused on how I’d been insulted, the more the rage would become inflamed, causing me to see red and not care about the defensive driving skills I swore I would practice just a few minutes earlier when I was feeling more level-headed.
Then it dawned on me. I could feel compassion for the so-called reckless driver. I know what it is like to be in such a hurry. I’ve been there. I’d feel the world would come to an end should I miss an appointment, be late for a job, or fail in the impression I wanted to make by arriving early enough to greet someone.
I always had a reason to speed. There were so many important things I had to do, to finish, to check off that “to-do” list to feel my life was worthwhile, that I was accomplished, that I am accomplishing . . . something.
I try to understand how the person traveling in the car trapped himself or herself by his or her own expectations, the desires and attachments to concepts and ideas that were no more real than the make-believe “deadline” they have imposed on themselves. No, there has never been a line that we needed to reach to prevent someone from falling down dead.
We’ve created this illusion. We’ve invested much of our lives into reaching certain milestones, destinations, and goals. That is all well and good, until we enslave ourselves to becoming totally “outcome-focused.” How you get there doesn’t matter, just as long as you carry out that task wherever it might be. Too often, it doesn’t matter who we hurt or cut off on the road we have traveled.
The process itself, I have learned, is just as important as, if not more important than, crossing the finish line. We spend the greatest part of our lives in some sort of “process” to get something.
We are squandering away that time if we focus on nothing but the ending. Why not learn to enjoy the road while we’re riding? Enjoy the lay of the land, the smooth macadam where the tires roll on following a bumpy part of the highway. Breathe in the air, the scented smell of that green-tree air-freshener of mint or the dark brown one that smells like brand new leather seats.
Sip from your cup of hot coffee or cool water. Listen to music or the beautiful sounds of silence that help you to still the mind so that you can live through your senses now, not at the end of the road. It is in the moment that you can find true compassion. Seek it inside, and, if you’re lucky, you can pick it up as a hitch-hiker on a road less traveled.
I’ve done what I have done and everyone can be satisfied with my efforts, including — and most importantly — me. Continue reading
While Neil Armstrong was taking a giant leap for all mankind, I had taken a small step toward adulthood one month after the moon landing, and I had no one to thank for it except my brother, who encouraged me to aim for the stars in becoming an Officer and a Gentleman in the Army of the United States of America.
I had weathered the worst six months of my life – worse even than my later combat duty in the Vietnam War – as I underwent the rigorous training in Officers’ Candidate School. We ran everywhere we went, and when we couldn’t run anymore, we’d run in place, waiting in line for chow outside the mess hall, or to use the latrine.
I was the second-youngest in a company of some 200 recruits – carrying a minimum rank of Specialist Five (E-5) – who learned tactics and survival skills and how to endure under the harshest conditions while developing leadership qualities. The youngest ones were targeted for even more physical and psychological drills because of our age.
The company commander once ordered me to do some 400 situps in a sleeping bag, relenting only after he got tired of counting, and I tore parts of my butt apart from sliding it back and forth against the ground so much. I’m surprised I didn’t tear a hole through the bag, but instead of forcing me out of the program, it encouraged me not to quit and to take whatever he was willing to dish out. At age 20, with nothing but a high school diploma, I earned the respect of several with college and graduate degrees who might have changed their minds about my leading troops.
Those of us who made it filed out of the auditorium at Fort Benning, Ga., having been addressed by some old, weathered colonel who appeared to be in his 70s and was still jumping out of airplanes – his latest count reaching more than 600 jumps! He looked a little crazy, “gung-ho crazy,” if you know what I mean. His eyes seemed permanently fixed wide open; he was jumpy and alert to the smallest sound or movement nearby. I would compare the hyperawareness and sensitivity I’d get from post-traumatic stress years later to his demeanor and makeup.
But on this day, August 22, 1969, my oldest brother had prepared a ceremony to take place outside the doors of the graduation hall. Dressed in his regular working uniform as an E-6 (Staff Sergeant), he carefully removed two metal bars from a cardboard box. We called them “butter bars,” the yellow metal bars symbolizing the rank of Second Lieutenant, the lowest rank in the Army’s officer corps.
So many things went through my mind as I stood at attention, looking straight ahead, hoping my dress-uniform hat was affixed properly. I didn’t want to be out of order in any way, shape, or form at this time in my life.
My oldest brother, six years my senior, was about to pin the bars on my shoulder, officially welcoming me to a world where I would become an officer and a gentleman. I did not know then what the designation by an Act of Congress would actually mean. That would come later in Vietnam, when I’d see mortar fire hit and wound half a squad I was leading; when a Viet Cong sniper would shoot and kill Lt. Vic Ellinger, one of only three lieutenants in our combat infantry company; or as two soldiers under another lieutenant’s command would forget where they had placed their claymore mine trip-wire and walk into it, killing themselves.
That was all in the future, along with the PTSD that would raise its ugly head some 25 years after the war. It wouldn’t be all bad, particularly right after being discharged, when this young veteran would use a sense of failure to achieve success in academics, getting degrees in journalism and history before finding his other life’s calling years later as a public defender trial lawyer after obtaining a Juris Doctor Degree.
I knew none of this as my brother George S. Contos fastened the metal bars to my uniform jacket, stepped back, and brought his right hand briskly to his forehead, saluting the superior officer that I had become.
Nothing in my life could compare to that shining moment.
A tattoo can readily identify someone, and sometimes one can become the key to the guilt or innocence of a man facing the wrath of a woman he may have wronged.
A tattoo figured prominently in the last case I tried as a public defender in Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was to be my final court battle. Post-traumatic stress (PTSD) had taken its toll on me, and I thought two weeks of treatment at an inpatient veterans’ clinic would cure the rage and anger that had led to three near-brawls in the courtroom. Turns out I needed the full 10-week course and a complete resignation from 20 years of stress as a trial attorney.
The Philadelphia District Attorney had charged my client with robbery as well as harassment and stalking in a case we were to try before a judge hearing the facts without a jury. The police report said he had repeatedly called his ex-girlfriend at her place of work and eventually stole a cell phone from her.
I wanted him to plead guilty when I got the charges lowered to just misdemeanors. In addition, he would have had to pay for the phone. He refused the offer, demanding to go to trial and get a chance to walk out of court free with only probation.
Violent, ugly visions popped into my head. I saw myself pushing my client’s head through the flat-white-colored wall in the tiny conference room cut out of a section of the courtroom. I yelled at him and asked whom he thought the judge would believe, him or the articulate girl who would have all the sympathy in the world when she told her story as outlined in her statement to the police?
I told him that a misdemeanor conviction would not keep him from getting a job. Most employers ask only if you’ve been convicted of a felony, the more serious offense. “Hell,” I said, “you could tell them the truth if you pleaded guilty to a minor offense to get away from an ex-girlfriend who was out for revenge for breaking up with her.”
“That’s exactly what happened, Mister Contos,” he said. “And I won’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do.”
The trial went as I expected. The young, attractive African America woman was not only sympathetic, she spoke with a ring of truth while testifying. She said he had constantly called her house and her place of work. Despite her pleas with him to stop, he’d increased the calls and even threatened to confront her at work, she said, if he couldn’t get his way.
However, her story started to unravel under cross-examination. She produced no evidence to support her allegation. There were no phone records, no recordings of a castoff or angry ex-lover, no other witnesses.
It turned out that the defendant did confront her at work, and that he did take the cell phone from her. But she said it was his cell phone that he had given to her when their relationship was healthy and loving.
I knew we had raised reasonable doubt when I asked a question my client requested, I pose when whispering to me at the defense table, and she was just about to step down from the witness stand.
“Yes, I do have a tattoo,” she answered. “Yes, it’s his name,” she added, nodding in the direction of the man she accused.
My client testified persuasively that she was the real “stalker” after he broke off the relationship. I introduced “good character” evidence, which, in and of itself, could raise a reasonable doubt for a not-guilty verdict, and the judge acquitted him of all charges, explaining that he could not decide who was telling the truth and that, therefore, by law, he must find in favor of the defendant.
The tatoo provided the basis for some other truth to be analyzed.
One of the most wonderful moments of my life occurred without my knowing it. Had I the presence of mind to be more present for things that mattered, I might not have missed it. Recalling what this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence must have been like, however, is the second-best way I know of memorializing it. Continue reading
I didn’t want to go back to Omega Institute this year. Each time I travelled to this land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, I’d get high from the holistic experience. But then I’d change into an Ichabod Crane feeling chased by the Headless Horseman, who’d tell true-life stories that caused so much pain I couldn’t hold it inside. Continue reading
A black and blue mark developed on my chest, and I didn’t notice it until a fellow swimmer pointed it out while I was in a pool at the gym. The mark is a full inch in diameter, and I would gladly take on a half-dozen more for the immense benefit the initial bruising provided me.
Acupuncture eased and minimized my acute pain from a nagging groin pull. Continue reading
There is a tradition in Eastern philosophies where you’re taught to view each person and other sentient being as if he, she – or it is your mother. I never knew how nurturing this could be until I allowed the child in me to reciprocate and bask in the most secure and loving place. Continue reading
But only those who nurture it can fully appreciate its magical transformation.
I liken it to a mineral or rock that resides within, undisturbed by the daily thoughts and busy lives of quiet desperation. It can be uncovered only when one stills the mind and releases preconceived notions of what creation is all about.  Continue reading
Actively seek out someone in your church, synagogue or temple and befriend him so that what happened in Philadelphia last week never happens again.  Continue reading
It’s time for my disappearing act to begin. I close my eyes, wave an imaginary magic wand, and slowly begin to vanish from existence here. All thoughts and fears come to an end as I find protection beneath a cloak of invisibility, safe from the savages outside and the demons within.  Continue reading
I was seething when I saw my former US senator decry Blacks receiving food stamps from the government. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told an Iowa audience this week that he would tackle this “race problem” if elected president, thus echoing the sentiments of his old congressional colleague, Newt Gingrich, who suggested poor students in city schools clean the bathrooms for their more affluent ones, rather than grow up to be pimps or prostitutes.  Continue reading
Ever wonder what life was like for ancestors living fifty, a hundred or even 200 years ago?
How would you like to read a journal of some great, great, great-aunt forced to raise a family alone after her soldier husband had been killed in the Civil War? Like to see your great-grandfather dressed in Irish kilts speaking to you from the old country, or view a relative wearing a straw hat toasting you from America’s Roaring 20s? 
Well, I’d like to tell my offspring what life was really like at the end of the 20th Century and this new millennium as we kick off the Year 2012. We have the technology to share our thoughts and our knowledge if we simply take advantage of it.
You should be honest about difficulties you faced and how you learned to overcome them. Talk about the failures for them to truly appreciate the successes. Pull no punches, but don’t scare the hell out of their need toward risk-taking.
What I’m suggesting is journal writing with a twist. Why not tell your story in a webcast? Write about a subject you feel strongly about and video tape it (“Webcam” it!) Turn on the camera, look into its lens, and announce your intent to shake hands across time. Tell them what angers you about the world today, with the focus on making a buck at any cost.
Give them an earful of how the religions we grew up with failed us until finding spirituality inside and not in someone else’s building. Speak of how you still get a chill when hearing the national anthem played on baseball’s opening day.
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And smile as you discuss your first job, say, at age 15 working as a messenger boy traveling from one downtown business to another, walking instead of riding the bus to save a 20-cent token. Tell how you couldn’t cut it as a door-to-door sales rep of some product or other when discharged from the military and willing to work at anything to help pay your way through community college.
It’s all of whom we really are, and they can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Webcast yourself! Sit in front of a fireplace or a row of books and practice your presentation before making it. Entice a family member to ask your questions to get you started but
Now all I have to do is comb my hair, get comfortable, and find the confidence to practice what I preach. If I do, I’ll see you on U-tube or some other place in the not-too-distant future.
How’d you like to go back in time and correct mistakes made in the past? No, you couldn’t go back to the moment before you were conceived, or any other time in your far distant past. Go back to more recent moments – say in the past year or two — when you believed you knew so much about life and how to live it without doing harm to others.  Continue reading
It hits like a poison arrow causing me to drop what I’m doing and focus on the pain it inflicts.
Where does it come from? Is it shot from a bow of some unseen foe hoping to do me harm? Or does it arise from within when certain buttons are pushed, like a crazy bone reacting once a physician’s tool strikes that right (or wrong) spot?
My anger springs up almost immediately, spreading pellets out from a shotgun blast over a wide area, striking everything in its path, including the object of my ire as well as ones I never intended to harm.
The anger doesn’t dissipate once it explodes.
It simmers at a low boil, awaiting the opportunity to burn and scold anything or anyone my impatience forces me to look unkindly on and consider spraying upon. It pains and marks me as I hold it obscenely close trying to figure out where it came from, who or what caused it, and why I so easily fall prey to it whenever it erupts inside.
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Remove the arrow before the poison spreads and engulfs whatever goodness remains in you. It can destroy whatever love and compassion you tried to generate in life when cool-headed and away from less stressful situations.
Don’t try to analyze, categorize or editorialize the grave danger it poses. Don’t believe you can control it. You cannot “befriend” it.
It’s too strong and it will demand control of and over you every time.
Sure, you may have needed to use it to right a wrong, to defend with all of your might against some evil, to even kill so that an innocent could justifiably go on living.
But you must give it up! Use it sparingly, if at all, and release it as you learn the long, slow practice of patience.
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This could be first step in understanding that this poison will always be there, that there is a cause for its painful existence; and that help is available to forestall its deadly mission once you learn to walk a path you always knew you’d need to follow to truly awake.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) can be treated and understood without having to face the slings and arrows of war day in and day out.
(Let me deal with the type of arrow that brought down a brave warrior like the Greek Achilles!
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
I didn’t know how much I needed a “fix” until my head slumped on my chest and I “awoke” to a restful, calm, and peaceful world I had been away from for what seemed a lifetime. I felt.
But please don’t judge me. Don’t look upon me as weak or needy. I have tried so hard to be the strong, silent type who could weather any storm alone: self-reliant and dependent on no one except myself to get through the most difficult of life’s situations. Yet, each time I overcame what felt like one disaster after another, I knew deep inside I could not succeed on my own. I needed help from a Source I’d subconsciously tapped into to get me through each ordeal.
I now admit I couldn’t have done it without getting high while no one was looking. I’ve become addicted. In recent days, months, and years, I needed more and more of what I call the “elixir of life.” I’d crave the equanimity it would offer me as a serotonin chemical would enter into my bloodstream, my consciousness, my very essence.
I don’t care what others might say about my habit anymore. I need a crutch to get through my day, and I’m only realizing now how much I struggle when I fail to take a hit. The earlier in the day, I can get it, the better. I need that something extra to assure me all is well, that all will be well, no matter what failings, shortcomings, or simple ignorance I bring to daily life.
I am dependent on this “Source” to take me away from my worries, my concerns, my feelings of, I don’t know, call it an emptiness of sorts that so hard to describe, let alone, understand.
When the need calls to me, I look for a place where I can be alone. I get into a comfortable posture, a familiar one that offers a tingling sensation of anticipation. I am going to escape, I tell myself, as I settle into a chair or on a pillow, exposing my vulnerability to forces outside and inside myself.
I open one hand to the heavens above, ready to accept whatever peace may soon come my way. My other hand rests downward, touching the solid earth that grounds me. The arm and exposed hand facing skyward await the blissful infusion the drug will eventually provide.
My mind is racing like steaming locomotion, a runaway train minus a conductor at the controls. I can’t truly let go and open myself while my thoughts are zigzagging from one place to another. The thoughts fly from the past to the future. (They never seem to come to rest in the present!) Each carries unwanted baggage. I can’t rid myself of these thoughts. They come unbidden, unneeded. They impede my plans to escape the battlefield I’m maneuvering through.
Stop swinging at unseen opponents, hoping a knockout punch will somehow save you, Michael J. Give in, take the fix. Admit that you can no longer live without it.
Acquiesce to the Power Greater than Yourself. Feel warmth slowly spread through your body, easing the tightness in your neck and your shoulders, the parts so tense and coiled they feel like a jack-in-the-box ready to spring out. You need only breathe and allow the source to seep into you, to wash over you, to elevate your mind and your spirit.
Newton Le Roy Gingrich is a big-headed, brain-bloated bully who is best understood if you picture what kind of kid he might have been and remember why you disliked him and his sophomoric antics while growing up. Continue reading
The answer is: because I have to. I need the therapy to look deep inside to provide me. I’m not talking about surface writing. You know, the kind a reporter might type when covering some disaster, a meeting, or a political event that might include both. I write only after communing with some sort of truth that bubbles up from within.  Continue reading
Thank God for Buddhism.
What’s that you say?
I can’t have one in, and of, the other?
Are you telling this red-blooded American veteran that I cannot follow the teachings of the Buddha and still believe in the God of Abraham? Continue reading
I’m a union man. Even though I held but one adult job as a dues-paying member, I will always be a union man. Why? Because I believe it’s the truly right path for the working man to walk.
Not everyone will secure a job represented by a union contract. Less than 18 percent of the US workforce is unionized. But we owe it to unions — starting with the craft guilds in the Middle Ages — for elevating the dignity of the laborer, be it a mechanic, a restaurant worker or the cop on the beat. A union shop at one business helps improve the lot of a dozen non-union workplaces elsewhere. Always has and always will.
Oh, I know there have been excesses. People blame unions for driving manufacturing jobs from industrial states to cheaper labor in developing nations. But for every job lost overseas, I can point to concessions progressive unions have made at home during economic downturns.
America would not have developed its large middle class had it not been for unions, the blue-collar ones our grandfathers fought to create through collective bargaining, strikes, and long hours on picket lines. Their protests of working conditions led to the creation of a minimum wage, the banishment of child labor, and the acceptance of a 40-hour work week.
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The 40-hour work week is nothing to scoff at, Mr. Union Buster. I recall interns at a metropolitan hospital negotiating with management to lower the hours employees should work to no more than 80 hours per week. That union “demand” headed the list of working improvements young doctors sought, and were glad to have gained
I’ll never forget serving as a shop steward along with my Republican buddy — a former “Nader’s Raider” — as we helped to negotiate a contract between the newspaper we worked for as reporters and The Newspaper Guild. We were “that close” to a settlement when the publisher offered to pay an increase to one person working in the dispatch department, but not the other.
The employees did similar work, but one dealt with the public while the other dealt with newspaper carriers. The public representative was a good-looking blonde who was “being groomed” by management who had caught her eye. The other was an older woman, less-endowed, but nonetheless capable of the exact same work.
I refused to vote for the proposed contract, becoming the lone holdout, and was prepared to “hit the streets” unless and until the publisher offered a raise across the board for the dispatcher position. He did, and I became so inspired by the union that I took a leave of absence to work as an “organizer” to help others form their own unions. I entered law school later to become a labor lawyer.
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(I don’t think anyone ever told the second dispatcher how her union worked on her behalf. I saw it as my responsibility to a “fellow worker” and believed with all of my heart that another union negotiator would have done the same for me.)
Unions can serve as the moral compass in the workplace by preventing business abuses. Is it any wonder that the rise of corporations and the “one-percenters” in the past 30 years has been with the decline of, and attack on, the union movement?
[“You have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t have a job . . . No one to blame but yourself if you are not rich.”]
The greatest protest of our generation is seeking change in all shapes and sizes. You can see it in the signs the demonstrators carry, writing the letters out really big with magic markers so that passersby need not squint to get the messages.
There is not just one message, but many, which all have one thing in common: a belief that our world can do better for all and not just the few, the ninety-nine percent making $55,000 a year (per family) or less, as opposed to the one percent controlling some 40 percent of the wealth in the United States of America.
They don’t want your money, Mr. Entrepreneur, only your attention for a moral and ethical way of life that takes into consideration more than the Almighty Dollar.  Continue reading
It’s so wonderful to welcome you to visit. You return when I least expect you, embracing me and bringing peace and calm just when I still myself and end needless thoughts.
Are any thoughts actually needed when I go within? I need but seek a quiet moment with no thought save the intent to be free of the past and the future, thus ensuring I will rest “In the Now.”
It’s not based on my part alone. I find that I need the inspiration that others give me. You, who give your love so easily by opening your heart, unafraid of any consequences, allowing me to touch your soul and be one with you. Yes, I become one with you when the truth from the Source touches me as I hoped it would while writing from the depths of my inner being. It is then that I feel the kinship, the brotherhood with men and women alike.
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I seep into your arms, feeling the comfort that you offer. It is palpable, this feeling that arises. It is like a warm, fully lined coat, puffed up with weather-protected soft materials wrapped around me. I feel totally protected. Like a baby in a car seat with padding upon padding to ward off any harm.
I approach this level of consciousness by remaining perfectly still, freezing my body and then my mind. I sit with my eyes closed, taking in the sounds of a pet bird, motorists driving outside my home, and the ticking of a nearby clock.
It’s as close to heaven as I could ever imagine one could reach. I have no wants and no desires. I simply “am.”
Uh oh. I feel a slight pain in one leg, so I crossed over the other. Do I dare try to relieve this suffering by breaking the stillness? Can I remain in this state by easing my leg into a more comfortable position?
There, my leg is straightened out. I send my concentrated awareness to that part of the body that signaled the discomfort. I feel a warmth spread over that area. It is soothing. It blends in with the focus I still keep in this moment. I am still “In the Moment.” My peaceful calm has not been destroyed but simply adjusted. I need not fear slow, methodical actions to curtail my new, higher level of consciousness.
Should I experiment? Open my eyes and try to do something mundane? Ok, Michael, pay the bill. You can’t get any more mundane than that. You’re writing the check, placing it in an envelope. You’ve just used the left hemisphere of your brain; now let’s scoot back to the right side.
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There, you have it. Peace and calm are still here. You worked mindfully, just like the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, said you would.
Someone now asks you a question. You answer from what feels like a different world inside of you. You answer a second and third question, undisturbed and completely surprised that you can continue your feelings of love and happiness despite a break in your “meditative” posture. No, you don’t need to keep your eyes closed or to stay seated on a mat to be mindfully engaged with the world.
You just have to do it. Do these actions mindfully.
If you could only sell it to the world, we’d all live in peace and harmony. Hell, why don’t you just give it away freely?
Tone it down, America. You are cutting off your nose to spite your face. The face of the body politic, that is, we are creating needless hurt for the countrymen we’d like to lead to our mutual goal: the pursuit of happiness.  Continue reading
Jobs have a way of defining us. We become “the job,” or rather grow into what we perceive to be the “ideal performer“ of that job. Whether we like it or not. The job. Or ourselves.  Continue reading
“Make yourself a Rav, and buy for yourself a friend.”
— Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachya Continue reading
Got inspired to write while working on my third cup of coffee. I wait the 90 minutes I’ve given to a meeting I scheduled at IKEA in Conshohocken, PA, for Highly Sensitive Persons (HSP).  Continue reading
Sometimes, you just gotta learn the hard way. Take Blogging for example.
Contoveros 
