Contact me.

Tomorrow I'm going to do something I have never done before.  I'm going to volunteer to assist in the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders.  I can't think of a task more unattractive than cold calling strangers, reciting a script in order to try to elicit a vote or a monetary donation, or knocking on a stranger's door who more than likely is not political... let alone liberal... and trying to convince them to sign on to a campaign.  I'd rather stay at home, take a break from the work week, and do nothing.  But this is something I feel I need to do for my own sanity.  I'm compelled to do this and I would only let myself down if I didn't act upon this need.
I'm tempted to list all the negative reasons why I'm going to volunteer.  There are more than a few.  I'm driven in part by a righteous anger and a desperate sense of weakness.  I'm driven by disbelief at what I hear on a daily basis.  I'm media sick.  I'm alone in my sense of outrage.  I'm surprised by the misery I'm surrounded by.  I'm convinced I know all the answers and everyone else is naïve and willfully ignorant. I'm not really convinced he can win.  I will accomplish nothing with this task.  I am going to be an un-greased bearing in a small gear on a big old machine that nobody wants to use anyway. 
But I'm going to throw all that away.  I'm going to go into this thing with an optimistic attitude.  So much of the world is dedicated to handing us reasons not to believe in humanity, and as we grow older we keep finding more examples to lose our faith in people.  When I was young, I didn't vote.  I was a cynical young bacchanalian, riding through life easy and distorted.  Life was too big to dedicate to the political world, and I missed a lot of history.  But now, I see the political is the personal.  Politics is an everyday occurrence, our relationships with each other is political, and we are shaped by the world at large.  Imagine if everyone everywhere has woven a small tapestry of our lives, and each tapestry is lain upon each others in a haphazard fashion, strewn in a big pile, each touching others, circling ever upwards, creating a grand pile that stretches into the deep past.  We stand now upon that pile of prayer rugs.  We are descended from those stories.  We are living amongst a long history of decisions that were made for us a long time ago, and the world we see today could have looked much different but for a few rugs being bigger than others.
If I was to come up with a hundred reasons not to volunteer, I could do it easily.  But to come up with one really good one is a little trickier.  I don't want to say the wrong thing and I want to convince you that I'm right.  For every superficial reason I can offer about Bernie's policies and his issue priorities, a counter argument can be made.  And no doubt that no one man can change the world for the better (he can for the worse... one man can ruin the world for everyone... John Wilkes Booth proved that much).  The fact is I'm inspired by Bernie.  I'm inspired because he's calling on all of us to remember the simple fact that the government is ours.  People stopped believing that the government was working for us many years ago, and started believing that it was working against us.  They aren't wrong.  The two political parties have us dancing on strings in a sort of macabre gala.  If you step back and look at the parade, you can see that they are no longer concerned with service, they are mixed up in an arms race, a power grab.  They are more interested in symbolic gestures and facades than solving real problems.  Bernie has been an independent for all of his career because he can see how both parties have forgotten the people.  He is the only one of all the candidates with a consistent eye on our needs.  It's as simple and complex as that.  The time has come for us to stop electing "vetted candidate #456238909" and put people in power with the moral mandate of prioritizing the health of the world, and the health of the people.  There's two ways to go this election.  We can hire someone who is finally going to work towards lifting everybody up, or we can hire someone who is going to keep doing the same thing we've always done. 
I'm open for anything.  Contact me.

Thoughts on the coming Autumn

Overlook at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, Traverse City, Michigan.

Summer has ended and Autumn is upon us.  More so than the Winter, I become more pensive, introverted, and perhaps... regretful.  I regret the passing of the seasons.  It's a reminder that most of what I wanted to accomplish in the warmth of the sun went undone.  We traveled, yes.  We worked and played and had our long days and warm nights, but there is always more to be done and the hard realization comes like an old ache, I am letting life pass me by all too easily.  The river of time becomes like a lullaby, drifting from dream to dream, filling us with a drowsy pleasurable feeling that lets us forget that sooner than we think, the river will dry up and the race will be run.  My passive nature, my lack of ambition, comes glaring into focus during the changing seasons.  With the cold coming in, the memories of spring and summer still alight, I see myself on a couch, wasting such precious time, wasting my mind away, living a vicarious life, letting myself get bored and loathing the ennui.  I feel like I've been quite properly subjugated!

Seek the beauty, not the truth

Changes are coming soon.  I am too much of a dreamer.  I've let my muscles atrophy and the world has grown into this burning Giant, seething with energy while I admire it from the distant hills.  This path that I'm on, this path of acquiescence, leads to only one destination... Cynicism.  And I hate cynics.  The cynic is the apathetic among us.  The cynic is a person who cannot find any redeeming qualities in the world of men - he hates!  He is the one who has bought the myth of Eden hook and line, who knows the world was better before, worse now, and doomed eventually.  Will he offer his mentorship?  Will he affect change? No.  He will sit in his unhealthy chair and await a miserable end.  And I will not let that be me.  It's the world I love.  It's this grand river!  Optimism is the righteous reward for keeping a free mind and an open heart.  I wish... I wish I wish I wish... I could get back all those wasted minutes, but this life is a miracle, our consciousness is a gift, and our minds can change without any pain.  So the lessons of time are very harsh, and age comes creeping like carrying a water urn that fills drip by drip, until the burden becomes too heavy.  But I must endure, because there is a happiness to be found by living a true and full life.  I've made such bad choices in my life, I've avoided trying anything because it's much easier to just float along.  I can see now that we are all born to strive- to walk forward.  So I will stop this meaningless pursuit of lost minutes, and instead lean into the wind.

Soledad Brothers "Handle Song" Music Video

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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?

 

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.


       

May 28, 2012: Mind, Body, Spirit

When archaeologists discovered King Tutenkhamen's tomb, they found his mummified remains had disintegrated.  The jewels wrapped in the cloths and buried with the child king, together with the adhesive tar or pitch used to adhere the cloth to the body, reacted chemically over eons, creating a fire, and turning the once divine king into nothing.  Old cemeteries, places where the  living revisit to find connection with their past, with old loves and family long passed, find the names on the headstones fading with each drop of water, each blinding ray of sun, each breath of wind.  Bodily forms are lifted up from the soil, taught to fly, swim through life, and then fall back to the earth.
The mind ages with the body, and the spirit depends on the mind.  As the body goes, and inevitably all bodies go, we become trapped in broken down shells.  We are bombarded and shelled and beaten;  Cooled and heated, burned, frozen, assaulted by winds, until our backs are broken and we hate the world.  The spirit, once young, once glowing and flowing like spring sunshine, now coughs from the smog of the cities.  The mind, engorged on the gristle of the Modern Tribune, tosses wildly on frantic seas.
The pain started in the back.  The lower back seized up often, doubling me over at times.  It often migrated to the middle of my back, behind the diaphragm, bringing the image of a creased or folded mat to mind.  The kind of crease you try to unfold or reverse bend to get rid of but still it remains.  Then at times the upper back would contract, pinching nerves and slumping me down like a crippled man.  Night after night on a bed like a rack, and soon my blood flow was disrupted.  Waking to a hand tingling with need, shaking the pain away and restlessly trying to find a good way to sleep.  Now both wrists feel arthritic, and I can't make the number three in the american fashion.  I can't make a good fist.  I can't hold a pen for long.  Years of walking on uneven ground, in bad boots, on old tennis shoes, over the rocks and rubble of bombed cities, on lakeshore rocks, on hot beaches and ice, have worn the ligaments in my ankles, shins, arches, and knees.  Overexertion leads to a humming pain in my hamstrings, cramps in my arches and pelvis.  Sitting too long has bent me over, and my energy has waned.  If I don't get coffee in the morning I get headaches, and sometimes I have that pain in my chest that I know comes not from heartburn, but from high cholesterol.  This body, which I used to think could get me through anything, is rebelling against my bad behavior.
It's no surprise we become cynical in our old age.  All we once were is forgotten, the memories of how we acted among friends and family is golden fogged, and we see the world now through a lens of what once was, what is now lost.  Yes the world changed, but the world always changes.  The population has always gone up, and the complexities of the times were merely reflections of the complexities of us, of our relations with each other.  "Love is for the young." "Revolution as a young man's game."  "Youth is wasted on the young."  Are we so much better?  Were we any different than the kids we rail against now?  Do we truly know how the world is while we sit and stare at the bits and pieces that reach us from our little media machines?  Our bodies, they begin to fall from grace.  Our minds, at once reject and recoil at the truth of this, and our spirits become older with memory.  It is a fight, an endurance test, this life.  If we don't fight the rising tide, the world keeps spinning, and we keep hating each other.  Let thee not sell out thy spirit to comfort, leisure, and the machinations of the world, go out into the woods, breathe in the soil, go down to the river, let the ever freshening life of warm weather feed you and reawaken you!  For me, I have to change my body first, then the mind and spirit will be young again.  Until we meet again...

April 29, 2012: He Doesn't Belong to Us Anymore

April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
It was a grey day, last Friday, with that rolling April wind that comes on like it's made of silk ribbons of warm and cold air.  The kind of day that seems poised on an edge, ever changing, tempestuous.  Appropriate since it mirrors the way I feel about visiting my father in the Home.  I love him dearly, and I realized quite some time ago, that he was maybe the only real hero I ever knew.  But to visit him now, to see him as he is, it wrenches me.  I don't think I'm being egotistical or unfair to my family by thinking that my father was one of the special ones.  Born third of seven, he seems to have been  an accessible man to all of his brothers and sisters.  They all had reasons for thinking they had a special connection with him, in that way that people confirm the existence of love by certain memories, callbacks to emotional times, shared moments.  He didn't stand out in a crowd, he didn't draw attention to himself, he smiled at you and laughed with you.  But now, there isn't much he can do for himself.  He can't talk, can't remember how to take care of his personal hygiene, and can't survive on his own.  Alzheimer's doesn't hurt you, it takes you away.

Opening the door to the Home is like falling down the rabbit hole.  Old men and women walk around the house trying to connect with place, with each other, with the images they see.  They speak to the caretakers, to visitors, and to each other, but they say nonsensical things.  Some are obsessively complimentary, some are overtly crude and racist.  Some call out for help.  It is an amalgam of damaged humanity.  A slice of primeval mind... men and women lost in a haze of dreams and memories.  In order to relate I try to imagine that feeling I have of trying to remember the name of an actor or book that escapes me... desperate to make the right connection, searching for that name that's on the tip of my tongue... endless.  I have a theory that they are all in a memory loop, having old conversations, speaking to their families, enjoying the life they had again.  My father has garnered praise for being quiet.  The caretakers ask me if he's always been quiet, and my mother says he was, but in my mind I can only think of all the times he's spoken, a lifetime of laughter and conversation.

He seems to have had problems letting them help him with his personal hygiene, which has forced them to use drugs to sedate him a little.  Although they shave his face, brush his teeth, and give him a haircut, he seems to have a permanent tuft of hair coming out of his nose, and it's always a mess.  Towards the end of his time at our home, he would spend way too much time brushing his two front teeth, up and down for 15 minutes at at time.  We've had to buy him new shoes with velcro because he took all his shoestrings out and lost them.  If there is a napkin on the table or a piece of paper he picks it up and tries to arrange it, or fold it, always keeping his hands busy.  When he stands in front of a mirror he can't connect the man in the image with himself, so he becomes obsessed with his reflection and tries to talk to it, threatens it, moves his hands trying to figure out how the man in front of him can mirror his actions.  He can only walk in short, stunted steps, seemingly afraid to stride confidently forward.  Just thinking about him, and the way he is now, seems to scatter my own mind.  I've tried three different times to write about my father and it always seems to fall short of my ambitions.  I always end up trailing off, unsatisfied with the results of my attempts to describe my feelings for him.  It's so difficult to decipher these new rules.  So hard to translate in the spaces we're allotted.  If I had more time, if I could spend years on it, I could come up with a definite answer to the riddle Alzheimer's sets upon us.  But all I can do is describe the broken pieces, try to untangle this web one strand at a time.

My mother met me at the Home last Friday, but I was early so I sat down with him, tried to coax some kind of greeting out of him, some small talk, only to come up empty.  So while we waited I picked up a newspaper and told him about the Detroit Tigers and the Mud Hens... I read him some of the headlines and talked about current events, and this seemed to engage him.  He perked up and listened, trying to remember the names of people in the news, watching me talk.  Perhaps this is something I can indulge in with him.  Maybe he doesn't need to tell me things anymore.  Maybe I should tell him things.  When my mom showed up she brought him his new shoes and we took him out to dinner.  We went to Rudy's and had some chili dogs and fries, and since the weather was bad we took him back.  There wasn't much we could do for him that day.  We took him back into the house and he simply fell in line with the rest of the residents, walking behind them into the dining room to eat dinner.  Mom and I watched him walk away, decided we might as well go, and walked out.  As we left my mom said to me, "He doesn't belong to us anymore, he belongs to them."  All I could do was put my arms around her and let her cry a bit.  I think she's been on the edge of breakdown for the past few years.  When she feels down, she must have that sick feeling in her stomach, that seemingly black empty hole that leads to real heartache.  She begins to cry then pulls back, avoiding a debilitating, paralyzing, three day sob.  After all she has to drive home.

What seems to me the real crime here is how young he is.  He's sixty five and my mother is almost sixty two.  The golden years have been ripped away from them.  Their plans to travel and enjoy their retirement are over, and it appears to me like he won't be able to even be there for my wedding.  If we have children, he won't know them other than the times we bring the baby to him.  My future wife will never know the man he was and her family will never know him.  It is a kind of tragedy.  I always knew that one day my parents would both be gone from this world, and as we've aged I've become more and more philosophical about it, but I always thought we'd have more time, more memories to make.  But it's a bit of a blessing, too, because I can see now, how short life really is, how beautiful is this world and this time, how much of it I've wasted, and how I don't want to waste anymore.  My future life has always seemed like a distant horizon, I could see it and I knew I was moving toward it, but always it was undefined, vague and blurred.  Now I am careening toward it, actively chasing it, desperate to live a good life.  It's what he always wanted for me.  Until we meet again...  

April 8, 2012: Copper Colored Tungsten Carbide

Perhaps it's always been this way.  Perhaps throughout the vast generations of men and women loving each other and following that grand old ritual of courtship, flowing into the promise of engagement, then fulfilling the sacrament of marriage, men and women have always struggled with the disparate nature of their excitement for the impending ceremony.  The timing, the levels of anxiety, that search in the other's eyes for the light of acknowledgement... the agreement of the weight of the occasion to be undertaken... this does not always occur simultaneously.  It cannot be faked either.  Insincerity in a relationship is quickly discovered by the lover as she or he sees the slight look away, the withdrawn muscle, the aura of falseness.  No one should dare to try to sell that lie, to fake enthusiasm, because it is quickly resented, and trust is a hard thing to earn.

Since early May of 2011, when I asked for Anna's hand in a beautiful restaurant in the Renaissance Center overlooking the blue Detroit River, she has poured over details in magazines and on the internet.  She has searched through examples of other weddings, cataloged countless ideas from glossy pictures of models in dresses, flowers, centerpieces, locations, and all the other untold minutiae that goes into putting together a wedding.  I've watched her agonize, trying to reconcile the vision of the wedding she's always dreamed of with the desire to satisfy the needs of friends and family who will grace us with their presence.  She has had to do all this while at the same time keeping up with an enormous work load.  At times she has been overwhelmed.  At times she has been overjoyed.  She began counting down, marking each second day of each month with a smile and the question, "You know what today is...?"  Up until recently, the best I could do was muster a smile, laugh and say, "Six months until our wedding day."  I simply couldn't match her excitement.  While the vision was being layered like warm blankets on a cold bed, I sat in the background wondering how she could invest so much into an event that seemed so distant, a light on the horizon.  For me, I've held my excitement in reserve, because it would make the waiting so agonizing, almost unbearable.  Time, months... weeks... days, would drag until, like her, I would be burned out, wishing only for an end to the wait, for the day to arrive.

For her, each new task she has accomplished has been a joyful occasion.  Booking rooms, arranging for the flowers, finding a location, buying a dress, these things have been torches on the path leading to a distant hillside, at the tail end of a summer, under the warm afternoon light, in front of hundreds of friends and family, by my side.  Trying not to dwell on that day has been like sailing against the wind, and I know I have been of little help to her.  The fact is she knows what she wants.  She knows how the room should look, how the ceremony should go, what kind of menu she wants to offer, what kind of music she wants to hear, and she knows how to go about getting it.  I've listened, offered alternatives, helped her in her considerations, but the truth is all her ideas are well thought out and along the same lines as mine.  While I've played a role, it has been minor, and I've been fairly stress free for all this time, able to carry on with other things while this long year and a half has dragged on.  Until this weekend.

May 4 will mark the year anniversary of my marriage proposal to Anna.  We will celebrate by returning to that restaurant for a meal.  There will be four months left, a third of a year, of this seemingly endless stretch of time until the day we are married.  That knowledge has begun to seep through to me.  I see now that there are many small details that need to be dealt with, and the overall painting of the wedding needs to be shaded and detailed.  These kinds of details can't be done alone, and now the things she needs from me are being more defined.  The role is changing.

On Saturday, we went to a mall, to a Men's Warehouse in order to be fitted for a tuxedo for a friend's wedding I will be attending in November.  While we were there we visited a jewelry store in order to find out what size ring I needed so we could order it online.  We were simply looking to find out the size ring I needed because we had a pretty good idea what kind of ring I wanted.  However, like many surprises life offers us, we found a fantastic copper colored tungsten carbide ring that simply jumped out at me, like it was waiting there the whole time.  Perhaps this is the one thing that gives men a feeling comparable to a woman finding her dress.  Anna watched me with a knowing smile as I danced to the music in the mall, and swayed in that golden light that seems to shine on true believers.  I was, and am, in the trance of love, and the agony of waiting has become very real to me.

Maybe this is the way of things.  Maybe this staggering of excitement is part of the ritual, ordained for the purpose of infusing new life and new energy into the couple when the hardship of anticipation is most keen, allowing the one who is working the hardest a moment of relief, a re-freshening, so that the work can get done, and the hopeful feelings of a lifetime can be invigorated.  Until we meet again...

March 13, 2012: Spring and the Resurrection

Spring rolls in on the backs of the shimmering clouds of blackbirds, swarming together above rivers and fields, dancing aloft for the delight of us children.  Spring is cast upon us by roiling clouds thick from treks across vast waters.  Spring is the baptism of the once sleeping bear that is our soul in winter.  Creeks rise, overcome by the multitude of frozen dewdrops come undone.  Pieces of tree bark, shed from last autumn, combine with old fruit, forgotten leaves, dead branches, and children's mittens to clog the arteries of runoffs, forming patchwork swamps, silting the land like a small river delta, providing the growers with loamy rich topsoil for gardens and flower beds.  Spring is the time of the Resurrection, the promise of the sun, and the quenching of thirsts.  The herds migrate, the people open their wells, the ice packs, which scoured the granite to a polished shine, recede into dark memories.  Consciences are formed from those old ice packs, and we are loathe to celebrate too decadently, for there is work to be done, seeds to be gathered, and hearths to be readied for the return of the cold.
When people ask me what my favorite season is to be working outside, what they're really asking is, which season do I hate more, Summer or Winter.  At this latitude, in this climate, people either love the Spring, or they love the Autumn, because those are the seasons of great change, the time of remembrance, of temperate air.  A summer rain may be a blessing, but the rains of spring and fall are pregnant with meaning, and carry a certain violence with them.  To be outside, in the watery sunlight of a sixty degree day in March, is to be counted with the angels, to be enlightened in the old sense, the impassioned sense.  This year, the winter was about as mild as I've seen in my nine years of reading meters.  I can barely recall the number of days it dipped below thirty degrees.  I must admit I feel a bit disappointed by that, as if I was robbed of a certain hardship, nullifying any glory in the onrushing Spring.  It lends to the unease, the strangeness of this strange year, the year of change, of catastrophe.  I kept thinking, as January turned to February, and into March, when will we reap the bad harvest of days we have sown in this field of pleasant weather?  It seems as if there is a storm coming, a storm that's been brewing since the time of the first calenders.  Are we in the eye of the storm? Is this the calm before the storm?  Perhaps this is a product of our interference with the natural flow of the waters?  Unanswerable questions flower up out of the richness of Spring, just as Pleasure and Leisure spring from Summer, Memories and Sadness from Autumn, and the Ponderance of Mortality in the depths of Winter.
So to answer the question, my favorite season in which to work outside is the Spring.  Maybe as I get older I will change, but for now I'm young at heart, and the Spring is the time to sing out loud, to throw open the windows and shake off the dusty blankets, to wash in the rivers and turn over the soil.  Spring is the time to awaken to birdsong and smell the dank swampy sod.  We fall in love in the spring, we court in the summer, and we wed in the Autumn.  And our lives are full of that first morning light.
Until we meet again...

March 3, 2012: Politics

To use this forum as a means of political expression was never my intention.  Mostly I wanted to speak about the personal, the inner burgeoning consciousness, to express myself publicly in order to reach an understanding with the outside world.  With the whole world seemingly involved in an extreme political discourse, I thought it would be futile and pointless to add yet another voice to the cacaphony already engaged in what has degraded into a shouting match.  However, I realize now that my own political viewpoint is intertwined with my awakening, and to disregard it is to ignore a large portion of my feelings and my time.  Most of my day is spent in my car or by myself, listening to news and current events, podcasts, public radio... I check my phone for updates on the presidential race and world news... and I read links my friends post on facebook.  There was a time when myself and many of my friends were completely apolitical.  The great bureaucracies of the world succeeded in developing in me a sort of malaise.  I felt isolated, cynical, and (if ever there was a word to describe the 20th century) alienated.  The regression of the human race seemed almost preordained, and I felt like a leaf floating in a vast and powerful sea, subject to the whims of forces unseen, indeterminate, and powerful beyond measure.  Like many in my generation, I was subjected to a mass culture of nihilism, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and self indulgence, so that the most important thing was to discover oneself... by oneself.  To be strong was to be strong alone, without reference to anyone else.  But I see now that this way of thinking was taught to me by the instruments of shysters, salesmen, and power brokers.  I can see a new world breaking free of this by the simple realization that we are all connected, that our actions have consequence, and that the world as it is now was built upon a foundation cast in stone throughout the aeons of history.
It seems to me that the worst aspect of the modern age is the way we receive information.  With the modern news cycle being on a 24 hour basis it seems as if we are bombarded with stories of tyranny, oppression, degradation of values, and passionate discourse.  We are fed constant updates until we fear going to sleep at night because the world might change in the course of the six to eight hours we are disconnected!  The modern age comes at us so fast that the news has become a headline, a picture with a caption, and two paragraphs written by a "news service".  This is followed by a litany of opinions on the various social networks, spewed forth by an ignorant, uninformed audience, who are reacting to an initial soundbite they didn't experience for themselves.  If this initial news item is about something which is connected to the tax base or has to do with research grants or is about a certain person allegedly doing something illegal or amoral, suddenly the whole world has become judge, jury, and executioner, and lives are ruined, studies are lost, programs are de-funded, and the world loses insight into itself.  When the whole story is revealed, either nobody hears it, or they hear only what they want to hear and stick to their initial knee jerk reactions.  It isn't just a wheel spinning in mud, it is seven billion wheels spinning in small interconnected circles, bumping into each other and sending each other screaming off in a tangent to slam into another wheel, while the ground underneath becomes a sea of quicksand.
There was a moment when the vast machinery of political power and modern presidential campaigns became clarified for me.  Rick Perry was asked a question pertaining to his economic policies; I can't recall exactly how the line of questioning went; As he was answering, citing his tax reform ideas, how he would promote job growth, etc., he suddenly held out his hands as if he were holding a flagpole and exclaimed passionately, "We need to stick a flag in the ground that says, 'America is Open for Business Again!'"  The camera angle switched, a small number of the audience members applauded, and the moderator continued on to a different candidate.  Two things occurred to me at once... (1) Rick Perry can't distinguish between an intellectual debate and a political rally, and (2) these candidates have to speak in bold idealistic terms in order to incite the constituency to vote for them.  A campaign isn't about solving problems, about pragmatic approaches to governing... it's about highlighting ideals and promoting a kind of philosophical vision of the future.  These men must separate themselves from the pack and hold themselves upright in the bright spotlight of media attention, in order to convince others to place them at the head of all tables, in THE seat of power.  So they speak to us about America.  They speak of how they see this country, how they relate to the vast masses of people from the populous East, through the Heartland, out to the vast West.  They speak of their vision of Justice, Peace, and Freedom, as if they are commodities to be sold to us at the nearest pharmacy.  They tell us how they are the chosen, the deliverers, and their opponents will lead America down a dark and storm ravaged path... and not only will there be the loss of everything we now hold dear, but it will be a slow and tortuous loss.  This is what politics in America has become... maybe it's always been this way.  When they talk about America, I really wonder where this grand country is located.  Can we really look across this vast country and say that we all share a common set of core values?  Can I relate to a person who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan?  Does a corporate executive look at art the same way I do?  We are all scattered about in tribes.  We tread common ground with each other, but our communities are small, and our lives rarely venture outside the confines of our domestic circles.  To speak of a United America is to sell us something, to ask us to buy something, or buy into something.
It's all too much for me sometimes.  I don't have any answers.  Sometimes I swing from anarchist unpredictability to traditional values.  I've always had a leftist bent, like most of my generation, and for the past three elections I've voted Democrat.  But I can see value in ideas from both sides of the aisle.  Most intelligent people I know are intelligent because they carry many different values, and can see understanding and compromise as the only possible future.  Winston Churchill once said, if you aren't a liberal when you're young you have no heart... and if you aren't a conservative when you're old you have no head.  When I hear someone talk about their business, and they say liberals are wrong for creating a welfare state, that there have always been rich and poor people and the rich have always taken care of the poor, and that he shouldn't be penalized for working hard and becoming a productive member of society, I can't argue.  And when a social worker tries to argue for the rights of the homeless, and tries to battle for the voiceless,  reminding us that equality in America is a myth, I see that as truth, too.  Can these two truths coexist?  Will there always be a disparity between those who have and those who do not?  If a major change in the structure of our society occurs, will the new society be any different than the previous?  Or will the sides just switch ends of the playing field?  For the cynics out there, the answer is no.  They say we are all doomed and men will always kill each other for power.  They say that they don't care about the future, that people who are uneducated and lazy don't deserve our sympathy, and that this world is a winner take all melee and you have to get yours while you can.  Fools.  If they don't care about their brothers, why should their opinion count at all?  Maybe they should be told what to do, since they don't really want to hear our side of the story.  It's not that hard to be optimistic.  Television is not American Culture.  The internet is not the answer to democratic power.  Revolution is not spawned by looting neighborhood stores.  We have to go out and find culture.  We have to unlearn everything we think we know about how the world is and how it should be.  Most of our belief systems were taught to us through authority figures and peer groups, and true perspective takes time and work.  Revolution is a state of being, a paradigm shift.
Mostly I want people to realize how much power is really in our hands.  Every dollar we spend is surveyed. Every movie we watch, every TV show we see, every second we lose listening to some fool spouting off at us is calculated and used for advertising.  So what if we all decided to become activists?  Instead of complaining about the world what if we acted to change it?  Don't like how the garbage is piling up?  Recycle and organize community clean up programs.  Don't like how much food prices are going up?  Start a garden and go to farmers markets.  Don't like looking at bums every time you go to a baseball game downtown?  Volunteer at soup kitchens and food banks.  I was a little disappointed at Christmas.  For all the grand talk about Money and Power and Corruption, people still went out in droves and spent the night outside Best Buys over Thanksgiving to get the newest toys and gadgets.  What if for once nobody bought anything at Christmas?  What if we decided to exchange gifts we made ourselves?  What if we painted a picture for someone, or took a pottery class, or bought from a local antique shop?  What if for that week around Christmas, we read to our children... turned off the TV and learned something about the history of Christmas?  What if we communicated and contemplated the world around us... slowed down our lives for one week?  All the billions of dollars spent on advertising would be lost.  Companies who were struggling would crash, and the politicians and pundits would scream at us for weeks that we are ruining everything.  We are slaves to this system that we created.  We are locked into this consumptive lifestyle that separates us from each other and leaves us alienated.  Does it have to be this way?  It's a long conversation isn't it.
Until we meet again...

February 19, 2012: Sea Change

On land, the tuggings of the moons can somewhat safely be ignored my men, and left to the more pliant senses of women and seeds and an occasional warlock.  But at sea even males are victims of the rise and fall, the twice daily surge of the waters they float on, and willy-nilly the planetary rythm stirs them and all the other voyagers.
MFK Fisher


In the days, long past, when crossing an ocean was a true ordeal, perilous, expensive, and seemingly endless, people underwent an existential change.  On those massive ocean liners, powered by steam and the brawn of faceless nameless men, people would eat their steak and potatoes, drink draught beer, smoke lean cigars, talk listlessly to a compartment mate, then drift out onto the deck to try to gauge their location, their speed, their place in the world.  Was it the sea?  The vast unfettered night sky?  The movement of the ship rocking them into a dreamlike trance?  What was it that caused people to drift into a different consciousness?  With all the water around them, and the moon given free reign, no mineral laden lands to block it's magnetic thrust, I like to think that the moon created a neap and ebb tide out of the water in the voyagers' bodies, realigning them with the natural flow of the vast Earth.  In those days, families left their homelands with naught but a few scant coins, a duffel of clothes, and the hunger of memory and hope in their hearts.  The young leaned on the old, the men gathered daily to trade second hand knowledge like a commodity, and the women sang to their babies and convinced themselves that they would make it to a new world, succeed, and see their mothers and fathers again.  At the other end of the deck, artists and tradesmen would read newspapers, drink cognac, and pace impatiently, eager to reach the other side of the sea.  It would take over a week.  A week of drifting, of slowing, a week of staring out at the glint of steel grey sea under charcoal white sky, or the deep purple-blue-green unearthly glow on a hot sun drenched sky.  How the sea must have played tricks on them!  At times they must have looked out over the railing and thought the sea was higher than the boat deck.  Other times sounds and smells must have come to them from across the vast breaks.  With nothing else to occupy them, the sea must have claimed their souls for a time, shifting priorities, slowing down their gait, lifting them and setting them down over and again.

It was a burning hot June day in Athens, Ohio when I experienced a shift in time that I've tried my whole life to realign.  It was the day of my graduation from Ohio University, and I sat impatiently with my friends as the keynote speaker droned on about the ways in which technology would be changing the world.  When it was time, we walked to the stage, received our diplomas, listened as our names were called out, walked to the side of the stage, had our picture taken, and walked out a set of double doors into the stifling heat.  It was as if I was in a dream, or a movie where the protagonist is shown in slow motion - indicating a sudden revelation or realization - when I walked through those heavy doors into the world.  I looked for a familiar face, I looked for my friend who had gone before me, and I waited for my other friends to walk through the same doors, I listened for the applause of family, I looked for anyone to acknowledge the moment... only to find myself completely alone, pacing like a lost soul awaiting perdition.  A few people were scattered around, but their voices came to me as if through water, as if I was suspended halfway between the sea floor and the surface.  I waited in angst for someone to appear, and after a few minutes my sister found me and, smiling, pulled me out of the morass.  It was those few lost minutes I have been chasing for the entirety of my adult life.  That summer, I went to Idaho to work for my Uncle at his State Park, which had for two previous summers been a source of joy and exhilaration for me.  Not so that summer.  I walked around without any pleasure for those three months.  I had no desire to explore the canyon like I used to.  I only sat on an old lawn chair and read endlessly, or lay on my cot listening to music, wondering what I could possibly do to save myself, and I mourned the loss of the life I had known, the ease of it all.

I believe we all suffer from the same angst.  We have all become targets.  Our priorities are dictated to us, our desires are subverted from the original to live well and peacefully into a desire to overcome our brothers and conquer the living world.  We can agree now that we all love the money more than we love God, and at heart we know this is wrong.  All day we say to ourselves that those in power have it wrong, that the world is failing, that they are feeding us lies, and that somebody should do something to change it all. At the same time we've forgotten how to change ourselves.  We've become truly docile, domesticated, and subdued.  We're fed images of suffering around the world and in our own backyards, and at heart we feel we should be doing something to help our fellow children, but we have no ability to change the minds of the despots and oppressors.  So we say it's too late, our paths are set toward the inevitable end.  We have been offered the chance with every waking sun to seize control of our lives and the course of humanity and we have simply let it slip through our fingers because we have been sated by comforts and the idea that we are freer than most, and that's good enough.

But I'm through with that negative thought process.  I've undergone a grand Sea Change.  Like an old soldier coming home across the sea, I'm shaking off the heartbreaks of my youth and looking towards the horizon with a sense of optimism.  One can look at human history and see it as a downward spiral from the garden to the ash pile.  We can trace the arc of history like an arrow shot from the castle towers, and we can see ourselves at the apex, beginning the trend towards a terrific crash.  But I ask, how many times have we gone to the edge, compelled to jump into the abyss, only to pull back and change the forces that push us?  How many Kings, swept into the destructive vacuum of power struggle, have capitulated to the servants in order to preserve the race of men?  How many tyrants have battled against their own people only to realize there would be no future with the path they have chosen?  We have always overcome our destructive tendencies, and when the times are most dire, we have collectively awoken to shake off the dust of apathy, and followed the lighted path of righteousness.  For myself, I have already lived with boredom, with capitulation, and negativity.  I've played the role of the cynic and pessimist.  I can't wake up anymore, look at Anna, and justify being the child I once was.  It would be foolish to think that she would put up with a man whose heart was filled with venom, whose soul was all coal and ash.  I can see how foolish I was not to at least attempt to live.  Happiness is not hard to find, indeed it isn't a place or an object to be found.  It's simply a choice, like everything else in life, it's a decision one has to make to become happy.  For me, to keep learning is a joy.  To try something new is a joy.  To improve myself is a joy.  If we stop learning, if we've decided we have it all figured out, we might as well not lift ourselves out of bed in the morning.  Better to admit to ourselves that we know nothing at all, that the not knowing is the important thing, the best way to live.  Only then can we see the world from a fresh perspective, a hopeful one.  I owe her that much...
Until we meet again...

February 12, 2012: Blessings of the Father

Fathers and sons, histories of men, old knowledge compiled from experience and distilled through time, the thread of memory, I needed more time to learn.  I can feel my father pacing forth in a strange home, see him patting down his arms and his chest in front of a mirror, as if he's trying to remember if he's placed his keys in the breast pocket of his suit coat, when really he is trying to reconcile himself with the image of a man in front of him.  He sees the man in the mirror, knows the man resembles him, wonders how the man is able to mimic his actions so acutely, tries to fool the image by moving his raised arms slowly, unusually, in front of himself, then tries to make the man laugh.  Father, be at peace.  Forget what you have always known now and try to find wonder in the floating dust in the gold sunstreams.  Try to lose the memory of us completely, so that when we arrive you retain measures of comfort from us, unexplainable, unreasoned, but real.  Forget how this time was stolen from yourself and your wife, this time which was to be enjoyed more than every other time, this reward for a life of toil.  You were going to travel.  You would have been able to take longer trips than any you have thus taken, spending eternities on the road, seeing the great Glories of creation, wondering at the monuments time has created out of old soil and clay.  Try not to know how soon you will have grandchildren bringing back those old enthusiasms of childhood wonderment.  Forget how finding a flower in a field is a bit like a miracle to young eyes. 

I could talk to you.  I could sit you down in front of me and tell you of my gratitude, of my heartache, of my dreams... I could pour oaths and pledges and prayers from a litany of knowledge that would not have been realized without thy tenderness, but I know that you are living in a dreamworld where the past is a river stone, smoothed of it's edges and glistening under the slow light of a sleepy stream.  I know that to speak of my plans for the near and far future is to offer up a hopeful sacrifice of sweet smoke to a distant Lord.  In this dream present you must travel alone my old friend and teacher.  You must lead the way into that next land.  But you must try to be kind to us intruders along the way.  You must not be swallowed entirely by the dream.  For us, you must be a little bit stronger than you have been, to give us a bit of comfort along the way.  

If I was to be there in a moment of clarity, I would not speak.  I would only listen for as long as you can hold on.  If there is a moment of respite from this torment, use it to remind me of those times you let me eat the food from your plate, let me leap onto your back, of the times when you gave up your comfort to please a needy boy.  Speak comforts to me, let me know that you will recognize me before you go, tell me to tell your wife that you loved her above all others, even yourself.  This is the Bargain I offer to you.  I will listen if you choose to speak.  

Until we meet again...

February 5, 2012: Seven Months

This weekend Anna looked at me and said, "You know what today is? We're officially seven months away from our wedding day!"  The planning is starting to heat up.  Since I proposed in May, We have found a location, hired a retired Lutheran minister, found a photographer, taken engagement photos, and sent out save the dates.  She found a dress after two trips with her mother last fall.  In the summer, we took two trips to strangers' houses to pick up blue tinted mason jars and burlap runners that she will place lovingly on tables as decoration at the wedding.  The location of our wedding supplies the food, and works pretty much exclusively with one DJ so those things were taken care of rather easily.  We hired a distinguished and paternal looking retired Lutheran minister to do the ceremony.  She has set up a web site complete with photos of us, our wedding party, recommendations for entertainment in Traverse City, and links to hotels.  We have booked a large retreat where we will stay for the weekend along with some members of our family, and she has finally decided on her bridesmaids' dresses.  Recently we've registered for gifts at two different stores, booked room at a brewery/restaurant for a rehearsal dinner (no easy task in Traverse City during Labor Day weekend), and decided on the style for our invitations. She has logged hundreds of hours on the internet, finding wedding idea sites, looking at possible cake combinations, unique planning ideas, possible decoration and dress ideas, and menu options.  She found a honeymoon spot for us in Costa Rica, and we've picked our menus and four exciting activities we will participate in during that week.  Right now she is upstairs, and I assume she is talking on the phone with her mother about the things she registered for this morning.  Her mother and my mother have been active participants in this process, planning wedding showers, and posting ideas on pinterest.  I've had calls from several of my friends just this weekend trying to figure out if we can get together the Friday of that weekend for a boy's night out.  Soon we will be sending out invitations, and we still have to figure out the florist situation, shuttle service, find wedding picture locales, pick a menu, and find a cake.  We have to plan a social gathering for after the rehearsal dinner, and pick out something for me and my groomsmen to wear.  Along with all this is an effort to lose weight.  She has been waking up at 5:30 in the morning to go do an intense workout and we've both been trying to avoid fatty food.  I'm going to have to start testing skin care products to get rid of some splotchy patches on my face.  She has been growing her hair out so that when she styles it she can have more options.  We haven't even thought about what we're going to need to pack.

All this time she's putting in, all those long conversations we've had, the difficult choices we've made, all are leading to a day soaked in emotion. Along with all this planning, we have to consider the smallest details, like  bringing a handkerchief for tears, what kind of paper will we write our vows on, how the preacher's voice will sound as he pronounces us man and wife, how the light will shine as she walks down the aisle with her father.  It's not like planning a vacation where we pick a flight, find a hotel, and pack the proper clothing, we have to also consider the overall picture.  Anna has been working hard on the details so that on the day, we can enjoy each and every little moment without worry.  No matter how many details we work out, though, even if we plan it so minutely that nothing is left to chance, I still think I will be surprised at every turn.  I wish we could slow everything down so I could see every emotion on her face, and relish every smile surrounding us.  I wish that first kiss as man and wife could last forever.  I am worried that we will be barraged by friends and family, trying to talk to us all at once.  I fear that someone will not have a good time and that something will intrude on the magic of it all.  This only happens once in a lifetime and each minute that goes by will be singed with a bit of regret and bitterness, along with the happiness, because I know I don't want it to end.  It seems strange to me how much work goes into just a few hours of dining, dancing, and drinking.  We strive our whole lives to find the person that we will spend the rest of our lives with, we expend so much psychic energy on this one event, and it is over before we even know it.  A wedding should be a series of celebrations, I think.  We should have a week of family dinners, small parties, a grand celebration lasting from sunrise to sunrise, gift giving, games and contests like the old Romans and Greeks, and dancing until we collapse from utter exhaustion.  A wedding should not end until everyone has wandered home in delirium after a week of festivities.  Strangers should wander in and out, offering food, drink, or gifts.  Poems should be read by firelight and songs sung to toast the newly minted couple.  When it is over, everyone should feel like nothing was left out.  No one should walk away wishing they had gotten more time with the couple.  Wisdom should be handed down from everyone who has been through all stages of marriage.  People should wander into a corner of the room and sleep while the hardy ones carry on.  I say let's bring back the Festival of Bacchus, return to the old ways of paying homage to life changes.  We should endeavor to spend more time on these events than we do at work.  That way I could truly appreciate the magnitude of what Anna and I are undertaking.

Of course, Anna would have to do some more planning...

Until we meet again....

January 28, 2012: Building A Life

When I look at my things, I can trace the arch of my desires.  I can remember why I asked my mother for a typewriter, because I wanted to write a novel.  I still have small dusty jars of model paint from when I was a child building model ships.  I have the same paint brushes I've had since college.  I have twelve notebooks with songs, poems, and journal entries written from long forgotten days.  I have a print in a heavy wooden frame of a picture of Colonel Pershing standing next to Pancho Villa that I bought in Baja, Mexico.  I've bought a guitar, a jump rope, leather bound journals, paints and canvasses, and a mountain bike.  All these things I've bought while trying to reconcile myself with this modern world.  There are three types of people in the world, those who are obsessed with the past, those who live solely in the present, and those who spend their lives preparing for the future.  For me, the past has weighed heavily.  Most of the things I had to let go of were little totems from places I've been and things I've seen.  These things were to be a part of some great collage so I could surround myself with memories, enshroud myself in the blanket of the past.  When I buy a guitar, I am trying to rejoin the present... learn something new.  When I buy a calligraphy pen set it's so I can become something new, be present.  When I buy new clothes, I'm trying to drag myself out of the old ways, to keep pace with these manic times.   It's amusing to think of the ways in which we love our little things.  We spend our life buying things that are useful, things that are for decoration, and things that serve no purpose whatsoever, then we carry them with us for our whole lives.  To me, it's not that hard to imagine being a hoarder.  We all have the same feelings within us to a certain degree.  Try throwing something you've had for a time in the trash can.  Something you have sitting in a display case.  You'll find it a daunting task and you might just pick it out and clean it up and put it back on the shelf.  It's become instinct to love the miscellaneous tack we gather around ourselves.  Letting go of it is like losing an arm.  Carlos Castaneda wrote that small totems were infused with the magic of their previous owners.  In a very real sense the things we hold onto become our captors, become like prison bars, sitting in front of us, needing constant maintenance and care, travelling with us through our lives.  When I moved in with Anna, I finally looked at all the loose things I've carried with me since olden times and realized that I would never use them.  I thought I would finally end up in a place where I could raise them from the dustbin, resurrect them in sacred ceremony, and place them on the altar of memory.  But now I realize this will never happen.  Thanks to this new life I've entered, I know that in order to adorn myself in the past, I would have to sacrifice the present.  Each second wasted on such a project, although justifiable, would only be selfish and overtly personal.  I might be able to bask in the glow of a wall full of old posters, fliers, pictures, and bumper stickers, but I would be alone.  The modern world is so much more interesting, and the things I've collected, although a bridge to the past, to who I am, are outdated and irrelevant.

Last week Anna set up an appointment at Macy's in order to begin the process of registering for our wedding.  We went to the mall on a frigid January night and rode the escalator up to the second floor and entered a seductive world of young couples, well dressed saleswomen, a DJ, and delicious pastries. Without any idea of how to go about collecting new things, we began walking through a vast landscape of china plates, crystal glasses, silverware, kitchen appliances, home wares, bedding, electronic devices, and vacuum cleaners... after an hour I was reeling.  It was overwhelming and when it was over we had only registered for four items.  Anna was already planning to go to several other places so she didn't want to commit to a large number of things at one store unless she found something better elsewhere so we walked away unfulfilled.  For Anna, registering for gifts is the last great opportunity to collect the material goods to build our life together.  Like a contractor ordering lumber, cinder blocks, cement, and tools, she goes about the business of constructing a new world for us with aplomb and confidence.  She knows what she wants and she knows how to shop.  I'm the perfect sucker for the retail world.  I see shiny things and I shell out the money like a child at a carnival trying to throw a dart at a balloon.  I know too these things she is buying will replace all the old things I have.  But I'm fine with that.  I think it's time to let go of my material world, the world of concrete functionality.  I will probably hold on to things such as my stereo, books, CD's and DVD's, and the artistic things that I want to explore, but the rest is just gathering dust and I've grown tired of boxing myself in, tired of the avalanche of worldly possessions.  The past will always be there, like a museum I can visit anytime.  Blessed memory returns so fluidly when it's shared with old friends, is so much more true and real when sitting around with people.  I can't really trust myself with those times when I look at an old picture, and it's fairly unfulfilling as well.  The future will be taken care of by my future wife, so knowledgeable, so adept at thinking of such things.  That leaves the present wide open.  Until we meet again...