Monday, December 1, 2014
Old Friends
This past weekend I had a chance to reunite with some dear people I knew in my early 20's at a bar in Maumee called the Village Idiot. The Soledad Brothers, a band formed by a couple of my friends, were doing a kind of reunion tour and it was timed perfectly for people coming back to town for the holiday. As well, another close friend of mine was in town with his wife and baby boy and were staying the night at our house. This was a good chance to unwind from Thanksgiving, get away from the propriety of family, and cut loose like we used to. So I dragged my buddy out of the house, despite his exhaustion from having to care for his kid and socialize with his family, and we headed to town. Even though we got there at a time which would have been considered rather early 20 years ago, the bar was already packed deep. I like the Village Idiot but it is a small place and they still have a kind of innocence when it comes to bringing in bands because they leave tables right in the middle of the room and serve pizza well into the night. Their pizza is fantastic but it creates havoc when there's 150 people milling around between the bar and the bathroom. Even as we walked in I saw my people, and we were able to get our drinks and weave our way back to the mid 1990's.
It was as good as it had always been. I know they would hate me for boxing in their band but the best way I can describe it is blues-rock, influenced by the Rolling Stones and that particular branch of the pantheon of rock music. They hadn't played together for quite some time but those guys are so good it was like riding a bike. They had played together for years, touring Europe and the U.S. and tightening their style into a taut, sinewy core. With them providing the soundtrack, about 20 or so men and women who had, decades earlier, burned in the brightness of youth, collected together to marvel at the passing of the years. There were a few people who I hadn't seen in a decade, and we spent a lot of time joking around and catching up. To say it was surreal wouldn't be accurate... it was more... refreshing. Everybody was in great spirits and the music was loud and we all stood in front of the stage bobbing our heads to the beat like we were young again.
I was lucky, all those years ago, to be introduced to a great group of people who were very good at Rock, and they introduced me to several tiers of bands and music that probably would have taken me years to uncover by myself. We were also very young and waking up to a new world where we were unbound by old conventions. We didn't have to answer to our parents, and we had a license to go crazy. They all listened to music with a passion and they formed bands on a yearly basis, mingling and experimenting with styles and playing in clubs and bars all around town. In fact, these people and their love of music changed my life entirely. I listened to music differently after those few summers, and had totally different priorities. Coupled with my time at college, I had shed a self that was too small and young and had my eyes opened to an alternate life. For most of my adult life I've been reconciling myself to that brief explosion of madness.
Truth be told, though, so much has changed in the 20 years since I had been friends with that group of people. The center never does hold, and we were all scattered to the winds to live our separate lives. As much as we try to hold onto our place, this is what life on the river is, dynamic and ever in motion. I needed something else from this night, however. Something that perhaps the others didn't need because they were realists at a time that I was idealistic. I needed to be on their level. When we were young they were much more experienced and worldly than I was. They had all grown up together and I was coming in from the outside, both physically and metaphysically. I was very green and wet behind the ears when I hung out with them, and in that strange time of our mid 20's when I was awakening, they were all getting married or settling into jobs and planning out their next steps. So in the ensuing years whenever we got back together I gooned about the old days, and acted like a fool. I needed to be in that youthful sun again while they were living in the now, and I couldn't figure it out and it depressed me. It was my wife that gave me the perspective to realize that I was being the guy who couldn't let go of the past, and that they weren't the same people they were when they were 21, and they didn't need to relive those old days again. They weren't the kind of people who went to high school reunions to rehash old glories on the gridiron, and that was exactly what I was doing. So Friday night I went to the show to say hi to my old friends, introduce my good friend to them, have a few beers, and enjoy the show without any expectations. It made all the difference. Everybody was in the same place and the same time, we all had wives and husbands and kids at home to check on, and I walked out of the bar at a reasonable hour without saying goodbye to anyone. I might finally be learning how to be on the river.
Until we meet again...
It was as good as it had always been. I know they would hate me for boxing in their band but the best way I can describe it is blues-rock, influenced by the Rolling Stones and that particular branch of the pantheon of rock music. They hadn't played together for quite some time but those guys are so good it was like riding a bike. They had played together for years, touring Europe and the U.S. and tightening their style into a taut, sinewy core. With them providing the soundtrack, about 20 or so men and women who had, decades earlier, burned in the brightness of youth, collected together to marvel at the passing of the years. There were a few people who I hadn't seen in a decade, and we spent a lot of time joking around and catching up. To say it was surreal wouldn't be accurate... it was more... refreshing. Everybody was in great spirits and the music was loud and we all stood in front of the stage bobbing our heads to the beat like we were young again.
I was lucky, all those years ago, to be introduced to a great group of people who were very good at Rock, and they introduced me to several tiers of bands and music that probably would have taken me years to uncover by myself. We were also very young and waking up to a new world where we were unbound by old conventions. We didn't have to answer to our parents, and we had a license to go crazy. They all listened to music with a passion and they formed bands on a yearly basis, mingling and experimenting with styles and playing in clubs and bars all around town. In fact, these people and their love of music changed my life entirely. I listened to music differently after those few summers, and had totally different priorities. Coupled with my time at college, I had shed a self that was too small and young and had my eyes opened to an alternate life. For most of my adult life I've been reconciling myself to that brief explosion of madness.
Truth be told, though, so much has changed in the 20 years since I had been friends with that group of people. The center never does hold, and we were all scattered to the winds to live our separate lives. As much as we try to hold onto our place, this is what life on the river is, dynamic and ever in motion. I needed something else from this night, however. Something that perhaps the others didn't need because they were realists at a time that I was idealistic. I needed to be on their level. When we were young they were much more experienced and worldly than I was. They had all grown up together and I was coming in from the outside, both physically and metaphysically. I was very green and wet behind the ears when I hung out with them, and in that strange time of our mid 20's when I was awakening, they were all getting married or settling into jobs and planning out their next steps. So in the ensuing years whenever we got back together I gooned about the old days, and acted like a fool. I needed to be in that youthful sun again while they were living in the now, and I couldn't figure it out and it depressed me. It was my wife that gave me the perspective to realize that I was being the guy who couldn't let go of the past, and that they weren't the same people they were when they were 21, and they didn't need to relive those old days again. They weren't the kind of people who went to high school reunions to rehash old glories on the gridiron, and that was exactly what I was doing. So Friday night I went to the show to say hi to my old friends, introduce my good friend to them, have a few beers, and enjoy the show without any expectations. It made all the difference. Everybody was in the same place and the same time, we all had wives and husbands and kids at home to check on, and I walked out of the bar at a reasonable hour without saying goodbye to anyone. I might finally be learning how to be on the river.
Until we meet again...
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Veteran
One small story my mother used to tell us when we were young illuminated my father in a way that no other story had before. Before I was born, in the very first few years of their marriage, my parents lived in a small apartment above a Laundromat in Perrysburg. It would have been either 1972 or 1973 and my dad was probably 4 or 5 years removed from his time in Vietnam. One night they were sleeping in bed when my mother woke to him tossing and making noise in his sleep. Figuring he was having a nightmare, she attempted to wake him up. From the depths of his dream he grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against the wall, pinning her there and warning her not to move a muscle. It took him a few moments to come to his senses and realize where he was and when he came to, he let go of my mother and of course, felt terrible about it.
I have no doubt that my father probably suffered from a depression after fighting in Vietnam. He never talked about the war and he never specifically answered my questions about his actions. When I asked him if he was ever in battle he would say yes... had he ever killed anyone...? "I'm sure my bullets were in there." This speaks volumes. At some point, my dad was probably diving for cover, then assuming a firing position, finding the sparks coming from the forest, then pulling the trigger, hoping he was sending bullets in the right direction. A boy from a family of 7, grown up playing basketball and baseball, from small town USA, thrust into bloody combat. The thought must have occurred to him that he might not make it out of this mess, that he might be overrun.
I wish there was some kind of salve, some healing rub, to heal those kinds of wounds. I wish men and women didn't have to see such awful things. I hope that veterans from all walks of life find peace. I hope we all do. Mostly, I hope I was a good son to my dad.
I have no doubt that my father probably suffered from a depression after fighting in Vietnam. He never talked about the war and he never specifically answered my questions about his actions. When I asked him if he was ever in battle he would say yes... had he ever killed anyone...? "I'm sure my bullets were in there." This speaks volumes. At some point, my dad was probably diving for cover, then assuming a firing position, finding the sparks coming from the forest, then pulling the trigger, hoping he was sending bullets in the right direction. A boy from a family of 7, grown up playing basketball and baseball, from small town USA, thrust into bloody combat. The thought must have occurred to him that he might not make it out of this mess, that he might be overrun.
I wish there was some kind of salve, some healing rub, to heal those kinds of wounds. I wish men and women didn't have to see such awful things. I hope that veterans from all walks of life find peace. I hope we all do. Mostly, I hope I was a good son to my dad.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Why I'm an optimist
This old world keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down.
-Comes a Time- Neil Young
I think maybe the best thing about humans is that we are getting increasingly better at living in peace with each other. Even as I write that sentence I smile at the thought of everyone reading it in disbelief. I've grown into an optimist, and maybe it's because I've been lucky in my life, but maybe it's because the more I learn about this world the more I see hope for us all. Even though many people I know will not agree with me and will call me naïve or blind, I know that they are getting lost in the forest of cynicism surrounding them while I can rise above it all and see the forest from a different perspective. To me, cynicism is for the young. Optimism is something you have to grow into.
When I went to vote on Tuesday, I wasn't doing it because I was filled with patriotic pride. I didn't do it to honor those who died to bring me that right, and I harbored no illusions that my vote held some kind of power to sway public policy. I did it because in this country, we exist in that electrified no-man's land between theory and practice. There is a tension to our lives and it isn't, as most cynics will claim, because the world is falling apart and we are blowing it as a species. The tension comes from the unknown, the unprecedented. There is no such thing as a perfect philosophy. There is no social or economic theory that can account for the happiness of everyone everywhere. Every idea that all the great minds of the past have put forth can be expanded and carried into the absurd and unworkable. If you argue for a central government or "state", then you can take that argument to its natural conclusion that the state is more important than the individual, and with that you can argue that indeed, it is only right and proper that individuals should be sacrificed to preserve the state. If you argue that the individual should be completely free and not bound by any laws, then you could argue that the individual has the freedom to engage in any behavior he/she chooses, even if that behavior might harm others! Why do we do it? Why do we even bother to form into civilizations? If life is meaningless as the pessimists say, then what drives us to join together? They will say that it was mainly for survival. They'll say that the survival drive became corrupted by greed and lust for Power over each other. They aren't wrong in thinking that. That's probably exactly what it was. But to me, the fact that our consciousness is constantly growing, the fact that we have been able for the last 2000 years to leave a trace of ourselves for the next generation to learn from our mistakes, is proof that we are still in the process of shedding off our natural instincts of annihilation. For the vast eons of our existence, the world was nothing but a zero sum game. You had good water and hunting grounds and I didn't, therefore I will take it from you by force. Ingrained in our DNA is the idea that not all men are equal, and that the only way to survive in this world is to become stronger than your enemy. How we have progressed!
Happiness is as fickle and fleeting and undefinable as love. Our country, our democracy, is defined by us as we go along. We are making it up on the fly. We have taken some basic ideals from previous empires but each day as the sun comes up over the Atlantic we argue and debate over the way we are doing things until the sun sets over the Pacific. There is really no good explanation why we have lasted this long as a country. By rights, we should have flown apart at the seams a long time ago, or at least spread ourselves across the planet until we were stretched way too thin and the barbarians could storm the gates. Our Founding Fathers never could solve their debates. They never actually did come up with some perfect world, but they knew that they couldn't do it on their own. They were fully aware of their own limitations, and were conscious of the flow of time through the ages, so they left us with a government that could adapt and redefine itself. There is no one right way, there is only the way that works right now. This constant debate, this anger and rhetoric and discourse, it is how we have always lived. We argue our theories back and forth, and we could easily stand our ground and say "You are wrong!" until the world actually does fall apart, but in the end, we compromise. We say, "let's just try it this way and see if it works, then we can revisit it in the future." This is how a government should operate... this is the Action after the Thought, and it has led to great things.
Until we meet again.
It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down.
-Comes a Time- Neil Young
I think maybe the best thing about humans is that we are getting increasingly better at living in peace with each other. Even as I write that sentence I smile at the thought of everyone reading it in disbelief. I've grown into an optimist, and maybe it's because I've been lucky in my life, but maybe it's because the more I learn about this world the more I see hope for us all. Even though many people I know will not agree with me and will call me naïve or blind, I know that they are getting lost in the forest of cynicism surrounding them while I can rise above it all and see the forest from a different perspective. To me, cynicism is for the young. Optimism is something you have to grow into.
When I went to vote on Tuesday, I wasn't doing it because I was filled with patriotic pride. I didn't do it to honor those who died to bring me that right, and I harbored no illusions that my vote held some kind of power to sway public policy. I did it because in this country, we exist in that electrified no-man's land between theory and practice. There is a tension to our lives and it isn't, as most cynics will claim, because the world is falling apart and we are blowing it as a species. The tension comes from the unknown, the unprecedented. There is no such thing as a perfect philosophy. There is no social or economic theory that can account for the happiness of everyone everywhere. Every idea that all the great minds of the past have put forth can be expanded and carried into the absurd and unworkable. If you argue for a central government or "state", then you can take that argument to its natural conclusion that the state is more important than the individual, and with that you can argue that indeed, it is only right and proper that individuals should be sacrificed to preserve the state. If you argue that the individual should be completely free and not bound by any laws, then you could argue that the individual has the freedom to engage in any behavior he/she chooses, even if that behavior might harm others! Why do we do it? Why do we even bother to form into civilizations? If life is meaningless as the pessimists say, then what drives us to join together? They will say that it was mainly for survival. They'll say that the survival drive became corrupted by greed and lust for Power over each other. They aren't wrong in thinking that. That's probably exactly what it was. But to me, the fact that our consciousness is constantly growing, the fact that we have been able for the last 2000 years to leave a trace of ourselves for the next generation to learn from our mistakes, is proof that we are still in the process of shedding off our natural instincts of annihilation. For the vast eons of our existence, the world was nothing but a zero sum game. You had good water and hunting grounds and I didn't, therefore I will take it from you by force. Ingrained in our DNA is the idea that not all men are equal, and that the only way to survive in this world is to become stronger than your enemy. How we have progressed!
Happiness is as fickle and fleeting and undefinable as love. Our country, our democracy, is defined by us as we go along. We are making it up on the fly. We have taken some basic ideals from previous empires but each day as the sun comes up over the Atlantic we argue and debate over the way we are doing things until the sun sets over the Pacific. There is really no good explanation why we have lasted this long as a country. By rights, we should have flown apart at the seams a long time ago, or at least spread ourselves across the planet until we were stretched way too thin and the barbarians could storm the gates. Our Founding Fathers never could solve their debates. They never actually did come up with some perfect world, but they knew that they couldn't do it on their own. They were fully aware of their own limitations, and were conscious of the flow of time through the ages, so they left us with a government that could adapt and redefine itself. There is no one right way, there is only the way that works right now. This constant debate, this anger and rhetoric and discourse, it is how we have always lived. We argue our theories back and forth, and we could easily stand our ground and say "You are wrong!" until the world actually does fall apart, but in the end, we compromise. We say, "let's just try it this way and see if it works, then we can revisit it in the future." This is how a government should operate... this is the Action after the Thought, and it has led to great things.
Until we meet again.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Lessons from the Jeep Wrangler
This year in Toledo, we have awoken to the news that, in all
probability, the Jeep Wrangler will no longer be made at our home plant. Due to fuel efficiency regulations, the Jeep
has had to be re-engineered, and the frame will have to be made out of aluminum. Fiat Chrysler has done their analysis and
found that it wouldn’t be cost effective to retrofit the factory with all new
equipment necessary to produce the Wrangler.
Apparently, this change won’t affect employment, Jeep won’t be shut down
and moved to Mexico, Toledoans will simply continue without the Wrangler. The unions have asked GM to reconsider, the
mayor has petitioned Sergio Marchionne in person to change his mind, and he has
said that as long as he is in charge the Wrangler will continue to be made in
Toledo. Of course this isn’t the best
news because he has also announced he will be retiring in 2018. So it seems inevitable that 70 plus years of
a proud tradition will come to an end.
On the surface, it isn’t a major affair, but the reactions
of the people around here speak to a broader point that I never hear addressed
in the media. I count myself a believer
in global warming, and I understand that humanity has caused immeasurable
damage to the environment. I don’t need
the science to believe what I see with my own eyes. We consume and discard with abandon, we build
and destroy, and we waste energy and material.
I don’t get my information from some source that other people don’t, I
listen to the same media outlets as everybody else, and the only conclusion I
can reach is that there is now no place on Earth that we aren’t affecting
negatively, and it’s time for a change.
However, there are many skeptics who seem to be actively ignoring the
truth of this. The power elite who are
invested in the industries that are doing the most harm have been spreading
false accusations and people are swallowing it whole. They say that science is corrupt. They say they’ve been misleading people in
order to keep money coming in from government grants. They say the sun is the real cause of global
warming, not us. In my mind, it is a
form of self-delusion that is born of something deeper. The only way to address the problem of
delusion is to address the root causes, and I think the Jeep Wrangler story
illuminates one of the major problems that is stagnating the debate over global
warming.
The Jeep Wrangler has become an icon for Toledo. Alongside the Mud Hens, Jamie Farr, and Tony
Packo’s hot dogs, we speak of the Jeep Wrangler in hushed and reverent
tones. Here is the vehicle that won World
War 2… Here is the car that carried people over this country’s mountain trails
and wilderness. Jeep workers go back
generations. Grandfathers welcomed their
sons onto the line, then the grandsons joined the Auto Workers Union. I think nowadays we can’t imagine what it
meant for people to have a steady factory job.
Our grandfathers’ generation grew up in a time when they had to hustle
for every penny. A job at Jeep meant a
steady paycheck, money that could be saved for a future. They could get a loan to buy a house, get
married and have a family. It wasn’t
just some illusory American Dream, it was a foothold in the world. They were invested in something other than
hard struggle and survival. They could
settle in and raise kids who didn’t have to leave school to work in the
fields. They were contributing to a war
effort against an oppressive enemy, and they could lift themselves out of
crushing poverty. Loyalty to the company
became an extension of their lives. The
men and women who connected their lives to Jeep, in much the same way the men
and women who worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, or the ranches in
Oklahoma, or the oil fields in Texas, or the loggers in Wisconsin, played the
game by the rules. They worked hard and
earned a happy life. They bought cars
and televisions and watched their country become wealthy and powerful and it
proved beyond doubt that our system was a path to peace and freedom for the
world. Our way of life not only worked
for us, but it was exportable. We were
that shining city on the hill.
Now, the scientists and the lefties are telling us that it
has all been a big mistake. Our grandfathers
and all those preceding generations that we turned into myths and heroes have
created a society that is destined to fail.
The hard work, the success, has created a sickness in the world and
unless we drastically alter our lifestyle the air will be poisoned, the water
will be toxic, and food will be scarce.
Is it really so simple to turn off peoples’ sentiments? Is it enough to simply say, “the facts are on
our side. If you can’t accept these
facts then you are a fool.” We need to
take a step back and reframe the debate.
I have tried my best to understand the world better and the only way I
could was to try to see the next person’s perspective. If the facts that we state over and over don’t
convince people of the truth, then we need to at least listen to them to try to
get at the heart of the problem. For the
people in Toledo who are angry that the Administration has instituted reforms
that are straining industry by making them conform to “Green” regulations, the
same advice applies. Things need to
change. Sacrifices need to be made and I
don’t necessarily agree that a manufactured product copied a million times from
an original model is the “heart and soul of this town.” We can be proud of our tradition, proud that
we made a great and popular product, and we can still be proud of this town,
but we need to take a serious look at how we are walking on this precious
ground.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Life in America: a follow up
After reading my last post, it dawned on me that in all my dramatic assertions the bigger point I was trying to make might have gotten obscured. I'm not wholly satisfied with this post after all because of a lack of clarity. So I've decided to provide a better and clearer outline of the things I was trying to say.
The point wasn't necessarily to bash on the kid who threw the Big Gulp cup. Really I was describing a stereotypical young and disillusioned boy from an economically downtrodden part of town. It might have sounded like I was criticizing the boy and his actions without looking at a bigger picture. At least the "bigger picture" wasn't very well composed. I was trying to describe his alienation from society and the actions that stem from that alienation, his sad life and the effects he has on the world around him. I don't hate this boy, I empathize with him. My point is that he was born into a situation that is truly impossible and his actions reflect an anger at an enemy he can't see or understand. His lot in life was cast generations ago by large social forces and it is this that I'm trying to highlight. We can't pretend to advance as a higher species until we address the issues that create a group of angry young men who only think of meager short term goals. If we are to be proud of ourselves, if we are to live together on this planet, then we must look at this boy without animosity so that we can solve his problems. As well, we must get over our own initial response to these young men. It's easy to curse him then move on with our lives... it's much more difficult to face the situation with a mature attitude and an open mind.
Hopefully the reader finds this a little more helpful. Thanks.
The point wasn't necessarily to bash on the kid who threw the Big Gulp cup. Really I was describing a stereotypical young and disillusioned boy from an economically downtrodden part of town. It might have sounded like I was criticizing the boy and his actions without looking at a bigger picture. At least the "bigger picture" wasn't very well composed. I was trying to describe his alienation from society and the actions that stem from that alienation, his sad life and the effects he has on the world around him. I don't hate this boy, I empathize with him. My point is that he was born into a situation that is truly impossible and his actions reflect an anger at an enemy he can't see or understand. His lot in life was cast generations ago by large social forces and it is this that I'm trying to highlight. We can't pretend to advance as a higher species until we address the issues that create a group of angry young men who only think of meager short term goals. If we are to be proud of ourselves, if we are to live together on this planet, then we must look at this boy without animosity so that we can solve his problems. As well, we must get over our own initial response to these young men. It's easy to curse him then move on with our lives... it's much more difficult to face the situation with a mature attitude and an open mind.
Hopefully the reader finds this a little more helpful. Thanks.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Life in America
On a weekday afternoon, at the beginning of the summer, I witnessed a sudden and small violence that crowded my thoughts in the ensuing months. By small I mean no person was hurt. No sad creature lost its life from hard deprivation. It was an action of complete disregard, and I keep dwelling on it as if it was more important than I know.
I was driving... making my way east on Navarre Avenue in the east side of Toledo. I was nearing Navarre Park next to the Sun Oil Refinery. For many who have driven around this area they know it mostly as a bleak and depressed part of town. Most of the houses were probably built in the Twenties, when plots were narrow and deep, and the houses were all two stories high and five feet apart from each other. Back then immigrants would move into these houses and form neighborhoods and work towards a life. But as time moves on so do their children, and those children spread out from the old neighborhoods into areas further out on the highways. The old neighborhoods became commodities and the houses were converted by the next owners into duplexes for cheap rent. Poor, lower class families moved in. Over time these proud old neighborhoods became surrounded and cut off by industry, ugly highways, and lousy strip malls. It doesn't matter, necessarily, that I'm speaking of an old suburb of Toledo... Everyone in America knows these parts of town. The differences between the east side and some low down part of Philadelphia or Charlotte is only superficial. And the boy I'm to speak of... well everybody knows this boy.
The house is probably about twelve feet above the street with a three foot retaining wall and the sidewalk right on the street. He must have parked in a garage off an alley behind the house and walked around the side to the front. He was probably either seventeen or eighteen years old, and as I approached (in my Prius, to add a bit of irony), he swung his arm out away from his body and cast out into the street a Big Gulp cup filled with soda from some gas station carry out. That's it. This is the act of violence I spoke of. It was as if he was making a dramatic statement, an impertinent gesture, holding out his arm after the throw as if he were Kobe Bryant posing in the process of draining a game winning three pointer. He must have felt my presence as well because as I passed the house and the sad thrown cup he turned back to the west and held his chest out as if he were about to be confronted for this pathetic sabatoge, and he was ready for a fight.
I can tell you my first reaction was shock and disgust. A younger and less civilized Sean Lynott would have pulled his car right into the middle of the road, put it in park, gotten out, picked up the cup, ran up the stairs to his stoop and shoved that cup right in his face, yelling "finish your dinner boy! There are starving people in China!" The problem is, we all know the futility of confronting a kid like that... We know that we would be talking to a brick wall of obstinance, and nothing would be accomplished. So we drive on, filled with angst and hating the world.
After the anger subsided, I thought more about that kid and the way he threw the cup. Always, I question motives, and putting aside my own ego and self righteousness, a whole world of intuition opens up. Contained within that Big Gulp, besides Dr. Pepper, are all of our civilized ideals. The slow descending arc of the tossed garbage is a perfect metaphor of the disdain this kid has for all of your petty theories of economics, environmental degradation, and sense of communal living. The glittering drops of soda are as important as all the great battles of history. Build your monuments to the past, they are nothing to him. No learning, no civilized advances, no technological breakthroughs, no art, no atomic bombs, nothing can penetrate this boy. Everything humanity has built, everything we hold dear, comes tumbling onto the street with an unceremonious... splat. Try to talk sense to Joey. Try to explain to him all the ways he is wrong to throw that cup into the street. All your reasoning, logical though it may be, true and honorable as you are, will be met with three simple words. I. Don't. Care. Joey from the East Side is one of the true outcasts of this world. When the equation doesn't balance, he is the Remainder. We've all seen him before. We've watched him spend what little money he has on cheap Nike rip-off clothes and gregarious NBA caps. We watch him walk into a fast food joint with his high tops untied and his shorts down below his waist. We've seen him get into fights with his dad, get his girlfriend pregnant, fight with her sister, lose jobs, fail at school, and join the army. He abuses weed and shitty beer, he yells offensive gangster rap lyrics in public, he drives like a maniac and gets lousy tattoos. We, who are invested in this world, hate this boy, and his response to that is to create mayhem in his life. He will spend the rest of his shortened life railing against the world.
It's easy to hate Joey. When faced with such a stubborn mule as this my blood gets up. I have been fighting against this kind of rude boy my whole life and he is just one of an entire class of rejects. They trash every part of town they occupy and the rest of us avoid the area like a quarantine. When I look at his neighborhood, I see a kind of grimy squeezed out essence of all the things that are wrong with the world. These boys, they are taught from birth to Want. They are told to look into the store window, to want all the pretty things inside, then left alone to keep wanting without any of the resources necessary to obtain the pretty things, or even to ask why they want the pretty things. This desire for the world of material objects, coupled with an angry home, or an underserved education, creates an alienated beast. He feels no ties to the people around him, indeed they are all more or less combatants. His only goal is to get his. He immediately looks to satisfy his senses because he feels empty inside. Communion with other people would help alleviate his loneliness but he avoids it because he's angry. Eventually he'll lose whatever women he gets in his life, and he'll alternate his time between his job and the bar. This is a true American.
This is a competitive world we inhabit. We are a part of a great race... we strive to be better, bigger, and faster than our competitors, and when we win, we are rewarded. Success is defined by our wealth and power. Truly, it's power that we're after. The lust for power has always justified the means of obtaining it, and once it's obtained, the competition is squeezed out of existence so that the empire can remain. But with all this talk about competition and winners, it's the loser that is forgotten. For every winner there is a trail of losers left behind. And what becomes of them? Do they just disappear? Are we supposed to exile them? Should they just be left to starve by the roadside? They still occupy space. They still exist... they're still human...
When they talk about the poor, when they talk about welfare recipients, when they speak in broad terms about poverty being generational, the wage gap, Capitalism vs. Socialism, lazy shiftless people, American Exceptionalism... when this great war of words reaches a crescendo, East Side Joey stands facing the sun, chest out, middle finger up, asking the question, "what about me?"
I was driving... making my way east on Navarre Avenue in the east side of Toledo. I was nearing Navarre Park next to the Sun Oil Refinery. For many who have driven around this area they know it mostly as a bleak and depressed part of town. Most of the houses were probably built in the Twenties, when plots were narrow and deep, and the houses were all two stories high and five feet apart from each other. Back then immigrants would move into these houses and form neighborhoods and work towards a life. But as time moves on so do their children, and those children spread out from the old neighborhoods into areas further out on the highways. The old neighborhoods became commodities and the houses were converted by the next owners into duplexes for cheap rent. Poor, lower class families moved in. Over time these proud old neighborhoods became surrounded and cut off by industry, ugly highways, and lousy strip malls. It doesn't matter, necessarily, that I'm speaking of an old suburb of Toledo... Everyone in America knows these parts of town. The differences between the east side and some low down part of Philadelphia or Charlotte is only superficial. And the boy I'm to speak of... well everybody knows this boy.
The house is probably about twelve feet above the street with a three foot retaining wall and the sidewalk right on the street. He must have parked in a garage off an alley behind the house and walked around the side to the front. He was probably either seventeen or eighteen years old, and as I approached (in my Prius, to add a bit of irony), he swung his arm out away from his body and cast out into the street a Big Gulp cup filled with soda from some gas station carry out. That's it. This is the act of violence I spoke of. It was as if he was making a dramatic statement, an impertinent gesture, holding out his arm after the throw as if he were Kobe Bryant posing in the process of draining a game winning three pointer. He must have felt my presence as well because as I passed the house and the sad thrown cup he turned back to the west and held his chest out as if he were about to be confronted for this pathetic sabatoge, and he was ready for a fight.
I can tell you my first reaction was shock and disgust. A younger and less civilized Sean Lynott would have pulled his car right into the middle of the road, put it in park, gotten out, picked up the cup, ran up the stairs to his stoop and shoved that cup right in his face, yelling "finish your dinner boy! There are starving people in China!" The problem is, we all know the futility of confronting a kid like that... We know that we would be talking to a brick wall of obstinance, and nothing would be accomplished. So we drive on, filled with angst and hating the world.
After the anger subsided, I thought more about that kid and the way he threw the cup. Always, I question motives, and putting aside my own ego and self righteousness, a whole world of intuition opens up. Contained within that Big Gulp, besides Dr. Pepper, are all of our civilized ideals. The slow descending arc of the tossed garbage is a perfect metaphor of the disdain this kid has for all of your petty theories of economics, environmental degradation, and sense of communal living. The glittering drops of soda are as important as all the great battles of history. Build your monuments to the past, they are nothing to him. No learning, no civilized advances, no technological breakthroughs, no art, no atomic bombs, nothing can penetrate this boy. Everything humanity has built, everything we hold dear, comes tumbling onto the street with an unceremonious... splat. Try to talk sense to Joey. Try to explain to him all the ways he is wrong to throw that cup into the street. All your reasoning, logical though it may be, true and honorable as you are, will be met with three simple words. I. Don't. Care. Joey from the East Side is one of the true outcasts of this world. When the equation doesn't balance, he is the Remainder. We've all seen him before. We've watched him spend what little money he has on cheap Nike rip-off clothes and gregarious NBA caps. We watch him walk into a fast food joint with his high tops untied and his shorts down below his waist. We've seen him get into fights with his dad, get his girlfriend pregnant, fight with her sister, lose jobs, fail at school, and join the army. He abuses weed and shitty beer, he yells offensive gangster rap lyrics in public, he drives like a maniac and gets lousy tattoos. We, who are invested in this world, hate this boy, and his response to that is to create mayhem in his life. He will spend the rest of his shortened life railing against the world.
It's easy to hate Joey. When faced with such a stubborn mule as this my blood gets up. I have been fighting against this kind of rude boy my whole life and he is just one of an entire class of rejects. They trash every part of town they occupy and the rest of us avoid the area like a quarantine. When I look at his neighborhood, I see a kind of grimy squeezed out essence of all the things that are wrong with the world. These boys, they are taught from birth to Want. They are told to look into the store window, to want all the pretty things inside, then left alone to keep wanting without any of the resources necessary to obtain the pretty things, or even to ask why they want the pretty things. This desire for the world of material objects, coupled with an angry home, or an underserved education, creates an alienated beast. He feels no ties to the people around him, indeed they are all more or less combatants. His only goal is to get his. He immediately looks to satisfy his senses because he feels empty inside. Communion with other people would help alleviate his loneliness but he avoids it because he's angry. Eventually he'll lose whatever women he gets in his life, and he'll alternate his time between his job and the bar. This is a true American.
This is a competitive world we inhabit. We are a part of a great race... we strive to be better, bigger, and faster than our competitors, and when we win, we are rewarded. Success is defined by our wealth and power. Truly, it's power that we're after. The lust for power has always justified the means of obtaining it, and once it's obtained, the competition is squeezed out of existence so that the empire can remain. But with all this talk about competition and winners, it's the loser that is forgotten. For every winner there is a trail of losers left behind. And what becomes of them? Do they just disappear? Are we supposed to exile them? Should they just be left to starve by the roadside? They still occupy space. They still exist... they're still human...
When they talk about the poor, when they talk about welfare recipients, when they speak in broad terms about poverty being generational, the wage gap, Capitalism vs. Socialism, lazy shiftless people, American Exceptionalism... when this great war of words reaches a crescendo, East Side Joey stands facing the sun, chest out, middle finger up, asking the question, "what about me?"
Monday, March 10, 2014
Man on the Mountain
Every time I try to wrap my mind around this modern world I get completely lost in the speed and complexity. I don't know how other people think (mind, not what they think, but how they think), but when I have time, I think in the dynamic of conversation. I talk to myself. When the first philosophers published their ideas, they did it in the form of Dialogues. It was a form of thought experiment. They offered a premise then acted as their own pro and con advocates, working out a problem until they could decipher a certitude. I find myself following this same line of reasoning when I'm alone; I imagine talking to friends of mine who I know to be thoughtful people, people who would disagree with me, and I argue with them. It's become almost an unconscious act for me, but unfortunately, many times the conclusions I reach become lost through the day, and I find myself creeping ever closer to the twilight of my life.
For those who have been paying even a little attention to my writing, you might have noticed that time is an obsession for me. Perhaps my father passing away so young after a five year stretch with Alzheimer's disease has awakened in me a fear of suffering the same fate; perhaps the idea of starting a family after turning forty has me craving a long life; or perhaps it's my own regret as I look at all the time I've wasted in my life, making me wish I had it back. Either way, I believe this modern world, with the sheer volume of people, the rushing tide of images and ideas, the swirling noises clamoring for attention, and the values of constant work and action- pushed on us from the very start of consciousness- are conspiring to rob us of the ability to sit and ponder the very times we live in. The idea of sitting still for half a day, in the middle of the week, staring at animals moving around, or a river flowing past, or the light of day changing, sounds like a dream, or a vacation day, a rarity. There is nobody in this country who could legitimately conceive of doing this two days in a row, at least no one who is tied into the modern race. This... time, this swampy, slow, contemplative mindset is an anathema to the salesmen of the world, because they know that if people stopped and looked around at their lives, they would find most of the things they value are meaningless, and that their right to free thinking has been leased out to the Sellers. I've fallen victim to this same fate... I've let myself be entertained way too easily, and I've let time get by me without a fight.
In September of 2001, we listened to the news broadcast on the radio of the attack on the World Trade Center. Our boss had a small black and white TV that we watched the footage on at lunch. At that time, I was making fun of a friend of mine for getting the internet installed at his house. None of us had bought into the cell phone trend that was jumpstarting. We waited until we got home and we watched the rest of the day as all the images poured in. It was an absolute shock and we watched for months as the war, and the hunt for the men who enacted this awful violence began. On April 15, 2013, only twelve years later, two young immigrant brothers set off bombs at the Boston Marathon. My purpose isn't to discuss crime and punishment or the validity of war, but to illuminate the changes that have occurred in our country since those two incidents exploded in our collective psyche. Now, you could almost climb to the top of a tall mountain and watch as the pulse of light from the Boston bombings shimmered across the glowing and wired network of our country. Imagine the network of electrical impulses, the web turning from a normal and efficient pink glow to an overactive hot white. The news wasn't confined anymore to the event, but encompassed our collective reaction to the event, culled from the immediate and vast onrush of opinions and thoughts. The anthill was disrupted and the ants rushed out.
I do understand our modern age. I know from looking at this example what we have become. Somewhere along the line, maybe in my lifetime, maybe it had been building to this before I was born, we turned from a desire for individuality, turned away from the lone pilgrim teaching his truth, towards a new methodology... a groupthink. Where does it lead? Ruination? Or salvation?
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
The Return
I've been struggling with writer's block for, what seems like, a very long time. I looked back at the date of my previous post and was shocked to see it was from a month before I married my wife. So much has happened since then that to rehash all the events of the past year would be a bit like showing vacation slides... slightly entertaining at best and tedious at worst. Perhaps in time I can address some of the more life changing happenstances but for now I have to figure out why I can't seem to sit down on a regular basis and take note of my life. I have a few reasons in mind that are fairly explanatory and I think they cut to the heart of the matter.
For one thing, I have a fear that I'm not good enough. When I start a project I always shoot for the moon. I try to nail the writing on the first try and when it doesn't work I give up. Writing is a difficult and slightly mad endeavor. Especially when you're just testing the waters like I am. It never seems right when you are in the midst of it and there's no one to tell you whether it's good or if you're fooling yourself. Say what you want about whether I should feel that way, if I'm just putting pressure on myself, or that I should do it for myself anyway; it stops the pen from reaching the page.
I also wonder what it's worth. Words have become cheap now. Ideas have been co-opted and turned into commodities upon which the world gets drunk. When things like ideas and words become cheap, you can't trust them. At the very least, you don't put much weight in them. They aren't cheap in Sudan or Ukraine. Places where life is lived on the bone, where hot soup is soul enriching, words are checked and spared, everything hangs in the balance. Every day we explore our world, we comb through the headlines and we listen to the sales pitch. We find new things and learn, learn, learn. The more we learn, though, it quickly becomes clear just how unoriginal we are. Dare I contemplate how hateful we can be, as well? Has that not become clear? Not only do we hate people who are different, we hate people who hate different people! We have indulged ourselves watching the morbid circus of human folly and the thoughtful ones become overwhelmed. Time being stolen isn't just a quaint thought, it's an ongoing crime.
A certain amount of laziness can be attributed to my malaise. When I graduated from school, I thought having the degree was enough. I thought inspiration was going to strike me and I would write as if someone was doing the job for me. For a while I did write; for several years I kept journals and made searching intrigues into poetry and fiction, never finishing a story, always losing the train of thought. I forgot the first rule of craftsmanship; it requires practice. I didn't give myself a structure or a deadline. I didn't make the requisite time and I never set a place in the world. So many ideas floated through my head like a roaming searchlight. If I had learned to tame it I might have started something. In the end, the more I let my mind drift, the more I lost my self-discipline.
There's something else, though. I've been thinking longer about this ethereal problem and I find the problem to be a lot more sinister than it appears on the surface: There's an ongoing realization by some scientists, going by the Uncertainty Principle by Heisenberg, that even as we dig deeply into the farthest reaches of scientific discovery; even as we scan the most infinitesimal quantities and look into the deepest parts of space, there will always be something more, something that we will never have the capacity to see. At first, grains of sand were thought to be the smallest things on the planet. Then, elements... molecules... atoms... ions... then... quarks. The question keeps propping up, what are those made of? The ground we stand on is simply a thin crust of cool rock on top of an ever shifting current. Some of the stars we see in the sky may just be the dying light of a sun that died many millennia ago. As a writer, as a thinker, as a student of humanity, I seek the truth. The Truth, Meaning, is the ultimate prize. Many think that dying is the great Unveiling of the truth and that true meaning will be revealed then and only then. For me, this produces a real problem. It is more than a little unnerving to come to the conclusion that there is no truth in this life... that to commit to an action requires a belief in something, but that belief is based on false notions and that only fools follow paths blindly. For a man like me, it becomes a terrible maze.
Perhaps all we can really do is try our best. And be good to people. Those are things my dad taught me.
For one thing, I have a fear that I'm not good enough. When I start a project I always shoot for the moon. I try to nail the writing on the first try and when it doesn't work I give up. Writing is a difficult and slightly mad endeavor. Especially when you're just testing the waters like I am. It never seems right when you are in the midst of it and there's no one to tell you whether it's good or if you're fooling yourself. Say what you want about whether I should feel that way, if I'm just putting pressure on myself, or that I should do it for myself anyway; it stops the pen from reaching the page.
I also wonder what it's worth. Words have become cheap now. Ideas have been co-opted and turned into commodities upon which the world gets drunk. When things like ideas and words become cheap, you can't trust them. At the very least, you don't put much weight in them. They aren't cheap in Sudan or Ukraine. Places where life is lived on the bone, where hot soup is soul enriching, words are checked and spared, everything hangs in the balance. Every day we explore our world, we comb through the headlines and we listen to the sales pitch. We find new things and learn, learn, learn. The more we learn, though, it quickly becomes clear just how unoriginal we are. Dare I contemplate how hateful we can be, as well? Has that not become clear? Not only do we hate people who are different, we hate people who hate different people! We have indulged ourselves watching the morbid circus of human folly and the thoughtful ones become overwhelmed. Time being stolen isn't just a quaint thought, it's an ongoing crime.
A certain amount of laziness can be attributed to my malaise. When I graduated from school, I thought having the degree was enough. I thought inspiration was going to strike me and I would write as if someone was doing the job for me. For a while I did write; for several years I kept journals and made searching intrigues into poetry and fiction, never finishing a story, always losing the train of thought. I forgot the first rule of craftsmanship; it requires practice. I didn't give myself a structure or a deadline. I didn't make the requisite time and I never set a place in the world. So many ideas floated through my head like a roaming searchlight. If I had learned to tame it I might have started something. In the end, the more I let my mind drift, the more I lost my self-discipline.
There's something else, though. I've been thinking longer about this ethereal problem and I find the problem to be a lot more sinister than it appears on the surface: There's an ongoing realization by some scientists, going by the Uncertainty Principle by Heisenberg, that even as we dig deeply into the farthest reaches of scientific discovery; even as we scan the most infinitesimal quantities and look into the deepest parts of space, there will always be something more, something that we will never have the capacity to see. At first, grains of sand were thought to be the smallest things on the planet. Then, elements... molecules... atoms... ions... then... quarks. The question keeps propping up, what are those made of? The ground we stand on is simply a thin crust of cool rock on top of an ever shifting current. Some of the stars we see in the sky may just be the dying light of a sun that died many millennia ago. As a writer, as a thinker, as a student of humanity, I seek the truth. The Truth, Meaning, is the ultimate prize. Many think that dying is the great Unveiling of the truth and that true meaning will be revealed then and only then. For me, this produces a real problem. It is more than a little unnerving to come to the conclusion that there is no truth in this life... that to commit to an action requires a belief in something, but that belief is based on false notions and that only fools follow paths blindly. For a man like me, it becomes a terrible maze.
Perhaps all we can really do is try our best. And be good to people. Those are things my dad taught me.
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