Day 2:
The temperature has risen into the 40’s overnight and I can hear the eaves dripping with melting snow. The luggage delivery elves from United Airlines rouse me from bed just before mom sets off to read at the early mass. She wants me to get up and get ready for the later service, knowing I’d rather go up to Sheldon than St. Mary’s any day. Just after she her car clears the end of the driveway I look out through the kitchen window and notice that just enough snow has melted to reveal the beaten up pound cake in the middle of the yard. Shit.
Donning the bright red house coat from the closet (which was a gift to mom in 1993), and some boots, I go punching through the snow. Collecting the sloppy pastry, I carry it toward the tree line at the edge of the property. The land dips a bit as the lawn halts it’s march greet the woods and so can’t be seen from the back window. I give the cake another toss into the thick collection of trees.
She’s driving me a little nuts already with the minute details regarding exactly how to walk out the driveway to tape a sign onto the penny saver box bearing our house number so that when Santa delivers my luggage he can find the right place. You’d think I’d never seen ice before, had never walked up that driveway, or that I had no experience with these things called ‘feet’. I want to snap her head clean off, but I don’t.
Church saves my sanity a bit. I never chant along with the prayers or songs as its never been quite my bag to call myself a sinner or to proclaim belief in “one holy catholic apostolic church”. I stay silent and meditate to myself. Slowly I feel it deflating lik a balloon that’s been poked. I’ve been trying to manage too much, insisting that I know what’s right rather than simply accepting. Accepting that I’m lucky I got into town with just 3 hours of flight delay and one day of delayed luggage. Accepting that there’s nothing I can do to make this situation different or “better”.
As I relax into the mass the words come to me: “to see how something is put together, look at how it falls apart.” How I’m watching mom’s mind fall apart tells me much about the expectation and structure that has held it together for decades. As each repetition of directions or whining in the kitchen starts to irritate me I follow the strand back as far as I can to some comprehension of the fear what’s held her world in place and the force-structuring her thoughts had at the hands of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. When she insists that there are people knocking on the back door and starts running around frantic, I show her the driveway containing only her car. She’s expecting people coming over and every little thud or bump that meets her dim hearing maps itself to that expectation. I realize that she’s not getting to me like she did even a few hours ago. But, I’ve never been so happy to see my siblings show up!
Day 3:
I wake up to the sound of mom exclaiming at the presence of deer in the back yard. They have their dark winter fur on, which surprises her.
“Usually they walk up through but this time they were just standing around over by the trees, straight back from the house. I wonder why?”
Yeah, gee, I wonder.
We recover from the prep for the holiday. Feast on a few pieces of candy. It’s amazing how quickly this place, this pace of life filters into the cracks of my consciousness. It’s funny how fast lessons can go unlearned, again. I whinge about tolerating my family and the conservative siblings without any thought of how many times mom’s “mhm” over my liberal talking points might be her own form of tolerance. We know we both mean well and slowly give in to the compulsive helpfulness. We each try to fix but still hold on – as if our identities depend upon those parts of ourself which the other sees as broken.
But there is a last time for everything. I stop holding back from those talking points that might cause upset. I refuse to pretend that I practice anything like Catholicism on my own, although I do respect it. I don’t pretend to be sexually inexperienced even though I don’t need to go into the details with her. I’m done playing reindeer games.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
There's a last time for everything
Day 1:
Listening to the minutia of directions coming through the phone, I already felt the rage coming on. Nothing is where she says it is. She really hasn’t the first idea where anything really is in this entire house unless she wanders around it talking to her “angels”. It’s a mess that can’t be fixed. Everything one needs to use gets ‘safely’ tucked away in some mysterious location before you’re really done using it while the counters and corners of each room explode with garbage like plastic bags, six month old church missals, old penny saver magazines, tattered shoes and broken shit.
My luggage got lost. United Airlines has made sure I showed up for this holiday completely unprepared. Everything I sent ahead that I might give anyone for Christmas is lost somewhere in this house and I am really loosing it.
“Where’s the box from See’s?” I ask her.
“Oh!…” she proceeds to give me several locations of possible search for the various items, all of which prove to be false. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing on top of that refrigerator in the basement (where I specifically told her NOT to put the chocolate) except a pineapple. There’s nothing on those shelves in the freezer, where my cooking ingredients were supposed to have been stored, but butter and venison. There’s nothing anywhere but shit wrapped in plastic bags. If I see one more plastic grocery bag wrapped around some item I’m going to…
“ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” snap and scream.
I begin pulling items from the chest freezer (this is the third freezer in the house) and throwing whatever I grab with all of my might. Frozen pork roasts sail across the cluttered basement and crash into the washer and dryer that haven’t worked since I was in high school. A chicken bangs into the side of the furnace. A $2 pound cake, packed in a plastic deli container and two plastic grocery bags, goes for a sail and crashes against the wall. I spy that pound cake. You’d think this was some sort of delicacy the way she has it so carefully stored for future use. It’s just a cheap fucking pound cake! These things taste like sweetened foam! Its container has already shattered from the force of throw and impact. So, I jump on it. I jump on the cake and stamp on its slippery, gross larva form as it squirms around the cement yelling “NO MORE CHEAP SHIT WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!!”
For a moment I calm down and attempt to reassemble the freezer, only hesitating to beat the $1.99 a pound pork roast into the floor a few times before returning it to the chest. I throw the smashed remnants of the pound cake into the snow in the back yard with as much force as I can muster. It lands somewhere out there in the field of white between the house and the woods.
But the rage isn’t passed. Just looking for tape, and I can’t close a kitchen cupboard for all of the crap in there. Seconds later a plastic container of crap flies from the kitchen into the living room, spilling it’s contents all over the red rug: replacement staples for a stapler probably long gone, zippers taken off pants before they were tossed, a bit of string, and nameless and formless –
“PILES OF USELESS CRAP!!”
In the living room, hovering over the landing sight of my latest rage victim, I look around. A display of fall gourds has been left to rot in the basket on the coffee table – the coffee table which has a broken leg and which will fall over if leaned on in just the wrong way. This room, this was the room we were not supposed to ever ever enter as it was full of all those items so precious: picture windows, wall mural, hardwood floor, nice sofa, red carpet. I grab the rotted gourds and heave them at each of these features.
“I’M SICK OF THIS! I’M SICK OF EVERY THING LEFT TO SIT AND COVERED WITH DIRT AND DUST AND ROT UNTIL IT’S CRAP! I’M SICK OF EVERY NICE THING BEING LEFT TO SIT UNTIL ITS USELESS! WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHY DO YOU REJECT EVERY NICE THING? I’M SICK OF ALL OF YOU! YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT! NEVER COULD SAY A NICE THING AND WHO THE FUCK WERE YOU? IT’S NEVER BEEN NICE BEING HERE! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A PLACE WEHERE NICE THINGS COME TO BREAK AND DIE!”
Gourds crack and bounce off the picture windows. Gourds smash into the red carpet and break open against the floor.
“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME EAT THIS! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHEW IT AND TAKE IT IN! I REJECT THIS! I’M DONE! THE WINDOWS DON’T MATTER! THE CARPETS AND THE HARDWOOD FLOORS DON’T MATTER! WE WERE THE LIFE IN THIS PLACE AND WE SHOULD HAVE MATTERED MORE!!”
When I finally run out of squash to throw I come to a rest, face pressed against the cold glass of the picture windows. My throat is hoarse from shouting against the dusty air. Years of expectation and disappointment pour out of my eyes. So this is Christmas.
This is “getting together to trim the tree” degrading into an upset argument over strings of lights that don’t work. “They worked last year!!” Dad would bellow. The first time in my adult life that I bought a string of lights and read on the box that these were ‘not intended to last more than one season’ I seriously thought I was going to hit something. Why the fuck couldn’t you people just go out and drop $10 on a couple new strings of lights each year?
This is sitting down to decorate Christmas cookies and getting yelled at for making all the cookies the wrong colors. I had made a green Santa, and as an even worse sin, my stars were red! Red stars were communist (never mind that they tasted better). Stars were blue or yellow, Santa wore red, neither creativity nor communism in colored sugar were appreciated.
This is people sitting around the tree making conversation while mom bangs pots and pans in the kitchen. She’s spied something none of the rest of us sees yet. A diamond ring on a finger.
So this is the living room, the stage of so many moments around the tree, around girls going off to prom or around a bride. This was setting of many a smiling photo and much tacit animosity.
I get up and start cleaning the living room of crushed and smashed bits of squash. I start to put the tree together, using the two strings of lights that work, the antique ornaments and the new tinsel I found last January (finally allowing us to throw away the crinkled tinsel which has been in use since the late 60’s… not joking).
As I plug the works in and tidy the room I think “there’s a last time for everything”.
Listening to the minutia of directions coming through the phone, I already felt the rage coming on. Nothing is where she says it is. She really hasn’t the first idea where anything really is in this entire house unless she wanders around it talking to her “angels”. It’s a mess that can’t be fixed. Everything one needs to use gets ‘safely’ tucked away in some mysterious location before you’re really done using it while the counters and corners of each room explode with garbage like plastic bags, six month old church missals, old penny saver magazines, tattered shoes and broken shit.
My luggage got lost. United Airlines has made sure I showed up for this holiday completely unprepared. Everything I sent ahead that I might give anyone for Christmas is lost somewhere in this house and I am really loosing it.
“Where’s the box from See’s?” I ask her.
“Oh!…” she proceeds to give me several locations of possible search for the various items, all of which prove to be false. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing on top of that refrigerator in the basement (where I specifically told her NOT to put the chocolate) except a pineapple. There’s nothing on those shelves in the freezer, where my cooking ingredients were supposed to have been stored, but butter and venison. There’s nothing anywhere but shit wrapped in plastic bags. If I see one more plastic grocery bag wrapped around some item I’m going to…
“ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” snap and scream.
I begin pulling items from the chest freezer (this is the third freezer in the house) and throwing whatever I grab with all of my might. Frozen pork roasts sail across the cluttered basement and crash into the washer and dryer that haven’t worked since I was in high school. A chicken bangs into the side of the furnace. A $2 pound cake, packed in a plastic deli container and two plastic grocery bags, goes for a sail and crashes against the wall. I spy that pound cake. You’d think this was some sort of delicacy the way she has it so carefully stored for future use. It’s just a cheap fucking pound cake! These things taste like sweetened foam! Its container has already shattered from the force of throw and impact. So, I jump on it. I jump on the cake and stamp on its slippery, gross larva form as it squirms around the cement yelling “NO MORE CHEAP SHIT WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!!”
For a moment I calm down and attempt to reassemble the freezer, only hesitating to beat the $1.99 a pound pork roast into the floor a few times before returning it to the chest. I throw the smashed remnants of the pound cake into the snow in the back yard with as much force as I can muster. It lands somewhere out there in the field of white between the house and the woods.
But the rage isn’t passed. Just looking for tape, and I can’t close a kitchen cupboard for all of the crap in there. Seconds later a plastic container of crap flies from the kitchen into the living room, spilling it’s contents all over the red rug: replacement staples for a stapler probably long gone, zippers taken off pants before they were tossed, a bit of string, and nameless and formless –
“PILES OF USELESS CRAP!!”
In the living room, hovering over the landing sight of my latest rage victim, I look around. A display of fall gourds has been left to rot in the basket on the coffee table – the coffee table which has a broken leg and which will fall over if leaned on in just the wrong way. This room, this was the room we were not supposed to ever ever enter as it was full of all those items so precious: picture windows, wall mural, hardwood floor, nice sofa, red carpet. I grab the rotted gourds and heave them at each of these features.
“I’M SICK OF THIS! I’M SICK OF EVERY THING LEFT TO SIT AND COVERED WITH DIRT AND DUST AND ROT UNTIL IT’S CRAP! I’M SICK OF EVERY NICE THING BEING LEFT TO SIT UNTIL ITS USELESS! WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHY DO YOU REJECT EVERY NICE THING? I’M SICK OF ALL OF YOU! YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT! NEVER COULD SAY A NICE THING AND WHO THE FUCK WERE YOU? IT’S NEVER BEEN NICE BEING HERE! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A PLACE WEHERE NICE THINGS COME TO BREAK AND DIE!”
Gourds crack and bounce off the picture windows. Gourds smash into the red carpet and break open against the floor.
“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME EAT THIS! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHEW IT AND TAKE IT IN! I REJECT THIS! I’M DONE! THE WINDOWS DON’T MATTER! THE CARPETS AND THE HARDWOOD FLOORS DON’T MATTER! WE WERE THE LIFE IN THIS PLACE AND WE SHOULD HAVE MATTERED MORE!!”
When I finally run out of squash to throw I come to a rest, face pressed against the cold glass of the picture windows. My throat is hoarse from shouting against the dusty air. Years of expectation and disappointment pour out of my eyes. So this is Christmas.
This is “getting together to trim the tree” degrading into an upset argument over strings of lights that don’t work. “They worked last year!!” Dad would bellow. The first time in my adult life that I bought a string of lights and read on the box that these were ‘not intended to last more than one season’ I seriously thought I was going to hit something. Why the fuck couldn’t you people just go out and drop $10 on a couple new strings of lights each year?
This is sitting down to decorate Christmas cookies and getting yelled at for making all the cookies the wrong colors. I had made a green Santa, and as an even worse sin, my stars were red! Red stars were communist (never mind that they tasted better). Stars were blue or yellow, Santa wore red, neither creativity nor communism in colored sugar were appreciated.
This is people sitting around the tree making conversation while mom bangs pots and pans in the kitchen. She’s spied something none of the rest of us sees yet. A diamond ring on a finger.
So this is the living room, the stage of so many moments around the tree, around girls going off to prom or around a bride. This was setting of many a smiling photo and much tacit animosity.
I get up and start cleaning the living room of crushed and smashed bits of squash. I start to put the tree together, using the two strings of lights that work, the antique ornaments and the new tinsel I found last January (finally allowing us to throw away the crinkled tinsel which has been in use since the late 60’s… not joking).
As I plug the works in and tidy the room I think “there’s a last time for everything”.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Economic Recovery Plan
It’s a phrase that’s been getting bandied about more and more lately, and today I finally heard it with more than just my ears. My mind took in the magic words: “Economic Recovery Plan” as the President-elect spoke them. This plan is supposed to make us all feel better, like those guys in charge have just the recipe for national money that will put us all at rest. Soon we’ll be able to shop again, right? I can confess to feeling a bit reassured by the onset of a new administration with the word “plan” on their lips and the gaggle of experts in the back pocket. But suddenly, today, I focused in on another part of that oft heard phrase... “Recovery”.
Recovery, really? Do they mean that? Could a plan for recovery really work for us? Let’s match up recovery and the economy.
January 21, 2009. Step one. We admit that we are powerless and that the economy is completely unmanageable by us.
If this is news to anyone alive between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans then this person needs serious rehabilitation, preferably in a battered women’s shelter that's facing foreclosure. Our every attempt to theorize about and resuscitate the economy has brought about still greater mocking failure. Give up, America. Put your busted paws in the air and surrender to collective culpability. We’re all going to each have to do this economic recovery together.
Step two. Come to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Whoa. Sounds extreme. We’ve already got “in God we trust” printed on the money. Isn’t that enough? Maybe the greater power isn’t some abstract and fluctuating diety. but a core belief that we are each no better than the other at heart. Maybe we just need to see that, while we cannot and do not wish to all be literal ‘equals’ in choice and lifestyle, no one deserves to be hurt or exploited for another’s comfort. What hurts one of us hurts all of us. That’s not so bad. It’s actionable – do no harm.
Step three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the higher power as we understood it.
Not so unrealistic, really. We’ve been blindly doing that all along, trusting the government or the job to take care of us, with the gleeful side effect of being able to blame and whinge when we don’t get what we want. Perhaps the bigger challenge of this step in our collective economic recovery is for all citizens to DECIDE and to UNDERSTAND.
Step four. Made a searching and fearless inventory.
Ok, it all comes out eventually. Tricky Dick got caught, as did governor Blago and that rich fellow with his ponzi scam. There can only be one Jimmy Hoffa. Do we want to find out about this stuff generations from now, when the tapes have been combed over and the analysis done, just in time for our children to get busted making the same mistakes? Wouldn’t we rather have some transparent exposure now? It’s like the difference between pulling the band-aid off slowly or letting your big sister yank it off real fast. Pick the speed of your ouch. Money can be more difficult for folks to come clean about than their sex lives. But, its about more than just the games we play around money, fearing that there won’t be enough and that someone will take what we have. It’s a concise history of those moments when fear, selfishness and self pity have ruled the day and sacrificed the angels of our better nature like a sheep in the temple.
Step five. Admit to everyone the exact nature of our wrongs.
Admit the mistakes, the greed, the intention of harm and selfishness before you end up on Jerry Springer next to that overweight bit of trailer trash who wants to start a fight. Admit, as a nation, that while we are not all guilty of the specific acts that have made such a mess of the economy and our relationship with the world in general, we are all responsible. We all got quite used to things being this way and played the game just as much as any high roller. We all contribute to the problem just by being here.
Step six. Became willing to have these defects removed.
And we must pause, here, as some of these naughty little things we do are quite enjoyable. They’re NATURAL. We’ve done things like his for so long… what do you MEAN change? Give it up? Huh. I’ll get back to you on that.
Step seven. Ask a higher power to remove all these defects of character.
If we meant it when we did step six, then, well, nuff said.
This bit should take us until the end of the first Obama administration. And things will be looking and feeling much better. We may all well like our country much more. But it’s important not to stop. Hopefully by the time we vote him back in, the process of change will be so ingrained that no one will remember the days when it was the favorite buzz word of electioneering. Change will be an American addiction, but not a bad one like we have to fat, sugar and cigarettes. It will be a good one, like our addiction to air.
Step eight: Made a list of all persons or entities that we had harmed and became willing to make all of those situations better.
Well, we’ve had our mits in just about every pie all around the planet since the day after the ink on the constitution dried. So, this should be fun. Whom did we harm? Hm. The native American nations? The middle east? Southeast Asia? Africa? South America? The line between “that was selfish of us” and “the bastards deserved it” is pretty much a fractal. It gets more and more complicated the deeper we go. They WERE shooting arrows at us. They WERE pirating our ships. They DID kill our young boys. They DID send planes into our buildings. So lets just start by erasing “them”, whoever they were, from the equation because other people’s shit doesn’t belong on our balance sheet. In liberating our minds of what “they” did, we’ll see how collectively we’ve made decisions based upon self-interest that later placed us in positions to be hurt. WE wanted more land. WE wanted more money. WE wanted more of what was proportionally due us by nature and when we found there were people in the way of what we wanted, we figured out a tidy democratic way of saying “so what”. That right there? That goes on the list.
Did anyone notice, yet, that all this means economic recovery isn’t really just about money? Yeah. It hasn’t really been about money since step 1.
Step Nine:
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Important note: “Others” = other countries. There is no “other” who can point to any patch of dirt (or concrete) inside the US and call it home. Nobody gets to absent themselves from reckoning because their gender, race, orientation or union membership has caused them to appear at a disadvantage. Get off the pity pot, wipe your ass and get on with it. You’re an American, too. So, sorry, no remunerations for folks who can point to a slave in their lineage because we’d all be surprised how many ‘white’ folks fall under that umbrella. By way of slavery & indentured servant-hood, that categorization is another historic fractal. But, we do owe West Africa a great debt for having ripped their cultural fabric into unrecognizable shreds. It does mean that we publicly admit that we are often selfish, dishonest and wrong. What does it mean to do things differently, now? What would it look like to live in a way that does no harm? It might cost us much less than we feared and reward us much more richly than we’d ever dreamed. And won’t it be easier to stop covering up all the facts? But that’s just it. We start tasting the rewards here. Not after step 1.
Step Ten: continue to take inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
Note the word promptly. That means now, not in the next election cycle.
Step Eleven: Continued to make conscious contact with a higher power, asking only for knowledge of its will an for the strength to carry that out.
I know, scary. Why, now I give every nutter hearing voices a license to set off car bombs in the name of their God. But that’s not what this means. The God we seek to get in touch with here is that which is present within all other people; a collective spirit. And when we reach a state of behavior so as to treat our fellows in an un-hurtful manner, it will be far easier to see a god in them. There’s one bar against the acting out of odd “god inspired” craziness. Ask: will it do any harm?
“But if we “do no harm” there will be nothing that we’re capable of doing anymore! We won’t be able to take two steps without causing harm to some microbe? We’ll all look like Jains!”
Really? Aw c’mon. Use your imagination.
Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening, we continue to practice these steps and to carry the message to others.
This should take us into the last year of the second term. Too bad we’ll have to say good-bye to Obama so soon. But think of what more can now really be done? This, THIS is the wonderful world Louis Armstrong warned us about in that song that still makes me cry.
I’m idealistic, I know. How in the heck to get Americans to stop pointing fingers long enough to accomplish such a task? Easy. Our life depends on it. The survival of our species on this planet in a manner that looks anything like “life” hangs in delicate balance. The alternative is a world that looks like Haiti: stripped bare of resources, crowded, underfed, chaotic.
How? Well, H.O.W. –honesty, open mindedness and willingness… these we have to find in ourselves, first.
Recovery, really? Do they mean that? Could a plan for recovery really work for us? Let’s match up recovery and the economy.
January 21, 2009. Step one. We admit that we are powerless and that the economy is completely unmanageable by us.
If this is news to anyone alive between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans then this person needs serious rehabilitation, preferably in a battered women’s shelter that's facing foreclosure. Our every attempt to theorize about and resuscitate the economy has brought about still greater mocking failure. Give up, America. Put your busted paws in the air and surrender to collective culpability. We’re all going to each have to do this economic recovery together.
Step two. Come to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Whoa. Sounds extreme. We’ve already got “in God we trust” printed on the money. Isn’t that enough? Maybe the greater power isn’t some abstract and fluctuating diety. but a core belief that we are each no better than the other at heart. Maybe we just need to see that, while we cannot and do not wish to all be literal ‘equals’ in choice and lifestyle, no one deserves to be hurt or exploited for another’s comfort. What hurts one of us hurts all of us. That’s not so bad. It’s actionable – do no harm.
Step three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the higher power as we understood it.
Not so unrealistic, really. We’ve been blindly doing that all along, trusting the government or the job to take care of us, with the gleeful side effect of being able to blame and whinge when we don’t get what we want. Perhaps the bigger challenge of this step in our collective economic recovery is for all citizens to DECIDE and to UNDERSTAND.
Step four. Made a searching and fearless inventory.
Ok, it all comes out eventually. Tricky Dick got caught, as did governor Blago and that rich fellow with his ponzi scam. There can only be one Jimmy Hoffa. Do we want to find out about this stuff generations from now, when the tapes have been combed over and the analysis done, just in time for our children to get busted making the same mistakes? Wouldn’t we rather have some transparent exposure now? It’s like the difference between pulling the band-aid off slowly or letting your big sister yank it off real fast. Pick the speed of your ouch. Money can be more difficult for folks to come clean about than their sex lives. But, its about more than just the games we play around money, fearing that there won’t be enough and that someone will take what we have. It’s a concise history of those moments when fear, selfishness and self pity have ruled the day and sacrificed the angels of our better nature like a sheep in the temple.
Step five. Admit to everyone the exact nature of our wrongs.
Admit the mistakes, the greed, the intention of harm and selfishness before you end up on Jerry Springer next to that overweight bit of trailer trash who wants to start a fight. Admit, as a nation, that while we are not all guilty of the specific acts that have made such a mess of the economy and our relationship with the world in general, we are all responsible. We all got quite used to things being this way and played the game just as much as any high roller. We all contribute to the problem just by being here.
Step six. Became willing to have these defects removed.
And we must pause, here, as some of these naughty little things we do are quite enjoyable. They’re NATURAL. We’ve done things like his for so long… what do you MEAN change? Give it up? Huh. I’ll get back to you on that.
Step seven. Ask a higher power to remove all these defects of character.
If we meant it when we did step six, then, well, nuff said.
This bit should take us until the end of the first Obama administration. And things will be looking and feeling much better. We may all well like our country much more. But it’s important not to stop. Hopefully by the time we vote him back in, the process of change will be so ingrained that no one will remember the days when it was the favorite buzz word of electioneering. Change will be an American addiction, but not a bad one like we have to fat, sugar and cigarettes. It will be a good one, like our addiction to air.
Step eight: Made a list of all persons or entities that we had harmed and became willing to make all of those situations better.
Well, we’ve had our mits in just about every pie all around the planet since the day after the ink on the constitution dried. So, this should be fun. Whom did we harm? Hm. The native American nations? The middle east? Southeast Asia? Africa? South America? The line between “that was selfish of us” and “the bastards deserved it” is pretty much a fractal. It gets more and more complicated the deeper we go. They WERE shooting arrows at us. They WERE pirating our ships. They DID kill our young boys. They DID send planes into our buildings. So lets just start by erasing “them”, whoever they were, from the equation because other people’s shit doesn’t belong on our balance sheet. In liberating our minds of what “they” did, we’ll see how collectively we’ve made decisions based upon self-interest that later placed us in positions to be hurt. WE wanted more land. WE wanted more money. WE wanted more of what was proportionally due us by nature and when we found there were people in the way of what we wanted, we figured out a tidy democratic way of saying “so what”. That right there? That goes on the list.
Did anyone notice, yet, that all this means economic recovery isn’t really just about money? Yeah. It hasn’t really been about money since step 1.
Step Nine:
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Important note: “Others” = other countries. There is no “other” who can point to any patch of dirt (or concrete) inside the US and call it home. Nobody gets to absent themselves from reckoning because their gender, race, orientation or union membership has caused them to appear at a disadvantage. Get off the pity pot, wipe your ass and get on with it. You’re an American, too. So, sorry, no remunerations for folks who can point to a slave in their lineage because we’d all be surprised how many ‘white’ folks fall under that umbrella. By way of slavery & indentured servant-hood, that categorization is another historic fractal. But, we do owe West Africa a great debt for having ripped their cultural fabric into unrecognizable shreds. It does mean that we publicly admit that we are often selfish, dishonest and wrong. What does it mean to do things differently, now? What would it look like to live in a way that does no harm? It might cost us much less than we feared and reward us much more richly than we’d ever dreamed. And won’t it be easier to stop covering up all the facts? But that’s just it. We start tasting the rewards here. Not after step 1.
Step Ten: continue to take inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
Note the word promptly. That means now, not in the next election cycle.
Step Eleven: Continued to make conscious contact with a higher power, asking only for knowledge of its will an for the strength to carry that out.
I know, scary. Why, now I give every nutter hearing voices a license to set off car bombs in the name of their God. But that’s not what this means. The God we seek to get in touch with here is that which is present within all other people; a collective spirit. And when we reach a state of behavior so as to treat our fellows in an un-hurtful manner, it will be far easier to see a god in them. There’s one bar against the acting out of odd “god inspired” craziness. Ask: will it do any harm?
“But if we “do no harm” there will be nothing that we’re capable of doing anymore! We won’t be able to take two steps without causing harm to some microbe? We’ll all look like Jains!”
Really? Aw c’mon. Use your imagination.
Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening, we continue to practice these steps and to carry the message to others.
This should take us into the last year of the second term. Too bad we’ll have to say good-bye to Obama so soon. But think of what more can now really be done? This, THIS is the wonderful world Louis Armstrong warned us about in that song that still makes me cry.
I’m idealistic, I know. How in the heck to get Americans to stop pointing fingers long enough to accomplish such a task? Easy. Our life depends on it. The survival of our species on this planet in a manner that looks anything like “life” hangs in delicate balance. The alternative is a world that looks like Haiti: stripped bare of resources, crowded, underfed, chaotic.
How? Well, H.O.W. –honesty, open mindedness and willingness… these we have to find in ourselves, first.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Great pets
I go for a jog, just to celebrate the rare day of above – forty degree weather. I learn a few things. For example, the trail I ran all through the summer may be too messy for mid December. Gotta stick to the main drag that they keep plowed for the fire access vehicles. By the time I’m coming back the dog walkers are out. Along Sheridan it’s mostly little dogs not being kept on tight enough leashes. The lady in the fur coat wanders down one side of the sidewalk, possibly still in last night’s stupor. Her fido generally takes a path at the opposite side of the walk, effectively creating a neat snare for other pedestrians or, say, me. A hefty woman passes in front of me holding two lhasa apso’s on leashes. The dogs are each wearing mink doggie coats.
Hey lady, can I be your dog? In fact, while we’re at it, I think there are a few hundred people who have just spent a dozen cold, hungry nights wandering the streets of Chicago who find your pouch’s predicament quite enviable.
Why, really, must we have these strange beasts, with whom communication is so much left to guess work and whose bodily functions require so much vigilance, in our homes? What’s the payoff? How can the devotion of such fuzzy cuteness possibly outweigh the hassle of walkies on cold mornings, visits to the groomer and the cost of kenneling when one must go to the Bahamas for those two weeks in February?
Why not adopt homeless people as pets? I know it sounds horribly crass, like I’m talking about treating the disadvantaged like beasts. But come on. Take a walk through the Loop during tourist season or during the holidays and count, for once, those people on the margins who are so easy to ignore despite the cup full of coins they rattle. Sometimes I stop and give them money and ask them their name. They look at me in shock, and hesitate, as if they’ve forgotten they had one. They’ve compressed their own personhood down to so unrecognizable a form that it takes a second or two to cough out those couple of syllables that make up their label. Treat them like a dog? If that means a warm corner of a house, decent food out of one’s own bowl twice a day and maybe even a mink coat for taking a walk in, that is a fat upgrade.
Those two lap dogs were allowed more personality and identity than the average homeless person. Their quirks, perhaps a tendency to drink from the loo, defecate in the marble entryway, bark at the slightest noise and chew expensive shoes (a crime punishable by death in my book) are met with more tolerance than is shown the average human, especially one that we can perceive as being down on their luck.
So why not have homeless people as pets. I’d wager they can be trained to suit any household. Even the most mentally ill person can muster greater sense than a beast who speaks no verbal language. If the dog’s purpose lies in its fuzzy factor, then simply refrain from having the homeless person shave the beard that living on the street has caused to grow. They can shower themselves without the expense of a trip to the Bark Bark club. They can use a toilet. How great would that be in the middle of February when it’s all of zero outside. Oh wait, you’ll be out of town. Well, you’re pet person can watch the house or even come along on the trip! The advantages are countless. All for the cost of some love…
And what’s so bad about this idea? I mean, we may as well let the concept sink into our consciousness now. Once the Martians tire of playing with the toy robots we keep sending them as friendship offerings, they will ride on over to pay our twinkly little world with it’s orbiting trash ring a visit. And they will probably take one look at how the lot of us have mismanaged things and decide that we’d just make good pets.
Hey lady, can I be your dog? In fact, while we’re at it, I think there are a few hundred people who have just spent a dozen cold, hungry nights wandering the streets of Chicago who find your pouch’s predicament quite enviable.
Why, really, must we have these strange beasts, with whom communication is so much left to guess work and whose bodily functions require so much vigilance, in our homes? What’s the payoff? How can the devotion of such fuzzy cuteness possibly outweigh the hassle of walkies on cold mornings, visits to the groomer and the cost of kenneling when one must go to the Bahamas for those two weeks in February?
Why not adopt homeless people as pets? I know it sounds horribly crass, like I’m talking about treating the disadvantaged like beasts. But come on. Take a walk through the Loop during tourist season or during the holidays and count, for once, those people on the margins who are so easy to ignore despite the cup full of coins they rattle. Sometimes I stop and give them money and ask them their name. They look at me in shock, and hesitate, as if they’ve forgotten they had one. They’ve compressed their own personhood down to so unrecognizable a form that it takes a second or two to cough out those couple of syllables that make up their label. Treat them like a dog? If that means a warm corner of a house, decent food out of one’s own bowl twice a day and maybe even a mink coat for taking a walk in, that is a fat upgrade.
Those two lap dogs were allowed more personality and identity than the average homeless person. Their quirks, perhaps a tendency to drink from the loo, defecate in the marble entryway, bark at the slightest noise and chew expensive shoes (a crime punishable by death in my book) are met with more tolerance than is shown the average human, especially one that we can perceive as being down on their luck.
So why not have homeless people as pets. I’d wager they can be trained to suit any household. Even the most mentally ill person can muster greater sense than a beast who speaks no verbal language. If the dog’s purpose lies in its fuzzy factor, then simply refrain from having the homeless person shave the beard that living on the street has caused to grow. They can shower themselves without the expense of a trip to the Bark Bark club. They can use a toilet. How great would that be in the middle of February when it’s all of zero outside. Oh wait, you’ll be out of town. Well, you’re pet person can watch the house or even come along on the trip! The advantages are countless. All for the cost of some love…
And what’s so bad about this idea? I mean, we may as well let the concept sink into our consciousness now. Once the Martians tire of playing with the toy robots we keep sending them as friendship offerings, they will ride on over to pay our twinkly little world with it’s orbiting trash ring a visit. And they will probably take one look at how the lot of us have mismanaged things and decide that we’d just make good pets.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Present for mom
“Hemp”, I thought. Hemp is plenty strong, there’s no way she’ll be able to destroy this cargo tote bag. Not only is it already pretty tough by design (I have 3 myself), I deliberately ordered a stronger fabric for the side panels and straps. So, two side panels of black hemp and a center in blue fabric, recycled polyester. Well then I guess the gift is ‘green’ too. I picked out the liner inside be brilliant orange. “Why that color? That doesn’t match the outside!” She’ll say. And I know this. It not only clashes with the outside but it is a color that nothing she puts into that bag will have. So that way she can find her shit and nothing going into the bag will fall into the dark abyss that makes her sound so frustrated when its time to locate something. One fat credit card charge later, Timbuk2 is now in charge of mom’s Christmas present. She can stuff her shoes and lunch into it, drag it through the grocery store, throw it around in her car and it will hold up. Good. She will have something durable to use instead of that stupid knitted bag that’s been falling apart for years and which I swear is magic as everything ever entered into it can never be recovered. Finally, mom will be able to carry her belongings in a bag that, while not haute couture, won’t scream “nouveau homeless”.
Wrong.
I think through the expensive and well-intentioned Christmas gifts of years past we’ve given her to meet painfully obvious needs. The warm LLBean coat got returned. The warm slippers still sit in their gift bag in the living room, inches from where she placed them after opening the present last Christmas. Isotoner gloves sat on top of the refrigerator unused, right next to the new tea pot from 3 years ago. The thick terrycloth bathrobe that I got her in 1993 hangs in the closet, ready for me to use when I visit, while the ratty, threadbare thing she always wore-she still wears. When will we learn?
Mom doesn’t want new things that serve her purposes exceptionally well. She doesn’t want to receive the top of the line goods. She doesn’t really take to getting anything, perhaps doesn’t know how to incorporate this sudden possession into her life. She wants to find things. She wants to discover a coat long discarded by the child who grew out of it. She wants to find the sweater that has sat in a drawer and could yet yield a few more wearings. She wants to use her old broken things until they disintegrate beyond recognition. The shoes are worn well beyond the point when her toes poke out wide holes. They are put onto her feet until nothing is left but the foot itself. And that is satisfaction. Knowing that she has squeezed the last bit of usefulness out of an item, whether it be an old coat, shoes, or the teabag she presses for a fourth cup, is what makes her happy. Never mind that the old coat is too thin for a Buffalo winter. Never mind that the shoes no longer protect her feet or provide traction. Never mind that while the second cup of tea may taste better, the fourth is surely too weak. Never mind comfort. The greater comfort is in knowing that every red cent’s worth of use has been gained. When the stuff is used to the point of disintegration, she wins.
When asked for an explanation all she says is “oh, I want to keep it nice!” FOR WHAT? FOR WHOM?
I call her up at work to tell her that a package is coming. “It’s coming from San Francisco.”
“OH! Is it See’s?”
“What? The chocolate?” Apparently, in my various trips through SFO looking for a souvenir, I have created a monster.
I go to See’s Candies online and make her up a custom box – nothing too chewy or hard and heavy on the maple walnut truffles. So, I can stop, now. I guess I knew what she really wanted all along. It's my problem that I haven't been able to bear getting a gift that doesn't try to fix anything.
Wrong.
I think through the expensive and well-intentioned Christmas gifts of years past we’ve given her to meet painfully obvious needs. The warm LLBean coat got returned. The warm slippers still sit in their gift bag in the living room, inches from where she placed them after opening the present last Christmas. Isotoner gloves sat on top of the refrigerator unused, right next to the new tea pot from 3 years ago. The thick terrycloth bathrobe that I got her in 1993 hangs in the closet, ready for me to use when I visit, while the ratty, threadbare thing she always wore-she still wears. When will we learn?
Mom doesn’t want new things that serve her purposes exceptionally well. She doesn’t want to receive the top of the line goods. She doesn’t really take to getting anything, perhaps doesn’t know how to incorporate this sudden possession into her life. She wants to find things. She wants to discover a coat long discarded by the child who grew out of it. She wants to find the sweater that has sat in a drawer and could yet yield a few more wearings. She wants to use her old broken things until they disintegrate beyond recognition. The shoes are worn well beyond the point when her toes poke out wide holes. They are put onto her feet until nothing is left but the foot itself. And that is satisfaction. Knowing that she has squeezed the last bit of usefulness out of an item, whether it be an old coat, shoes, or the teabag she presses for a fourth cup, is what makes her happy. Never mind that the old coat is too thin for a Buffalo winter. Never mind that the shoes no longer protect her feet or provide traction. Never mind that while the second cup of tea may taste better, the fourth is surely too weak. Never mind comfort. The greater comfort is in knowing that every red cent’s worth of use has been gained. When the stuff is used to the point of disintegration, she wins.
When asked for an explanation all she says is “oh, I want to keep it nice!” FOR WHAT? FOR WHOM?
I call her up at work to tell her that a package is coming. “It’s coming from San Francisco.”
“OH! Is it See’s?”
“What? The chocolate?” Apparently, in my various trips through SFO looking for a souvenir, I have created a monster.
I go to See’s Candies online and make her up a custom box – nothing too chewy or hard and heavy on the maple walnut truffles. So, I can stop, now. I guess I knew what she really wanted all along. It's my problem that I haven't been able to bear getting a gift that doesn't try to fix anything.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
in the snow
12 hours of rain, followed by a sun-down freeze plus continuing gusts of powdery snow and the sidewalk looks and feels like sugar coated slop. It’s like walking on butter cream frosting and I haven’t worn proper shoes. Step, step, slip. Step, step, slip.
My umbrella isn’t much protection against the snow gusting from all directions. The wind continually grabs at this feeble protection, giving it a hard yank. It wants in. It wants into the downy folds of coat where I hide. It wants in to my imagination for some empathy. It demands that, just before my legs and fingers go numb, I experience some empathy for all those mice I dispatched to rodent-after-life via my freezer. I’m lucky, I have a warm home that I rush toward. The powder filled wind demands that I consider the condition of those with no warm destination. Many wander with only this cold as their abode.
Some wander off and the world goes cold around them. It wasn’t this frigid 11 days ago. On that day a little old lady with some mild confusion wandered out of her nursing home. Maybe she just went out for cigarettes and took a wrong turn up the straight road leading back home. Maybe something caught her eye and she simply forgot for a little too long. Her senses come and go and usually when she meets up with them she doubles back and returns to her destination. She comes back to 3 meals a day and a warm quarter of a room. But this time, perhaps before logic could kick in, but after she’d just walked far enough away, the temperature snapped down. “Where did the weather trap my wanderer?” I ask of the growing powdery drifts. Surely she’s been seen by some snowflake. Can’t any of you tell me?
But as the snow covers evidence and muffles sound, it returns only silence. In it I see only my search.
My umbrella isn’t much protection against the snow gusting from all directions. The wind continually grabs at this feeble protection, giving it a hard yank. It wants in. It wants into the downy folds of coat where I hide. It wants in to my imagination for some empathy. It demands that, just before my legs and fingers go numb, I experience some empathy for all those mice I dispatched to rodent-after-life via my freezer. I’m lucky, I have a warm home that I rush toward. The powder filled wind demands that I consider the condition of those with no warm destination. Many wander with only this cold as their abode.
Some wander off and the world goes cold around them. It wasn’t this frigid 11 days ago. On that day a little old lady with some mild confusion wandered out of her nursing home. Maybe she just went out for cigarettes and took a wrong turn up the straight road leading back home. Maybe something caught her eye and she simply forgot for a little too long. Her senses come and go and usually when she meets up with them she doubles back and returns to her destination. She comes back to 3 meals a day and a warm quarter of a room. But this time, perhaps before logic could kick in, but after she’d just walked far enough away, the temperature snapped down. “Where did the weather trap my wanderer?” I ask of the growing powdery drifts. Surely she’s been seen by some snowflake. Can’t any of you tell me?
But as the snow covers evidence and muffles sound, it returns only silence. In it I see only my search.
Monday, December 8, 2008
statement...again
Another crack at an artist’s statement because someone shot me an email today and asked me to apply for an exhibit. Apply? Oh well, at least there’s no fee. I’ve procrastinated on this for 40 minutes, so that means it must mean something to me. Ok. Here goes.
I tend to start each painting from a single impression. This could be a desire to explore a particular set of geometric relationships and colors. It could be an odd congruity popping into my mind that comes from having been raised with heavy doses of both Catholic iconography and 1970’s advertising. But, like a joke igniting a conversation with a stranger, with concentration and time each piece expands on its founding premise to form a relationship. In each I feel that the paint and I together hash out a particular idea, mapping its depth and breadth and discovering the strange creatures that live in its terrain.
Painting in watercolor, primarily employing a wet-on-wet technique, forces me to relinquish a certain measure of control over each painting’s results. I bring my ideas to the composition and hopefully the paint dries in a manner that agrees with me. It feels a bit like making a deal with the devil when things work out in a pleasing manner. Often after I’ve created a solid bed of color by bleeding paint into controlled shapes on the paper, I will work ink or graphite into the composition. This brings more depth, texture and heat into the finished painting.
..ok, that’s enough self talk for one day.
I tend to start each painting from a single impression. This could be a desire to explore a particular set of geometric relationships and colors. It could be an odd congruity popping into my mind that comes from having been raised with heavy doses of both Catholic iconography and 1970’s advertising. But, like a joke igniting a conversation with a stranger, with concentration and time each piece expands on its founding premise to form a relationship. In each I feel that the paint and I together hash out a particular idea, mapping its depth and breadth and discovering the strange creatures that live in its terrain.
Painting in watercolor, primarily employing a wet-on-wet technique, forces me to relinquish a certain measure of control over each painting’s results. I bring my ideas to the composition and hopefully the paint dries in a manner that agrees with me. It feels a bit like making a deal with the devil when things work out in a pleasing manner. Often after I’ve created a solid bed of color by bleeding paint into controlled shapes on the paper, I will work ink or graphite into the composition. This brings more depth, texture and heat into the finished painting.
..ok, that’s enough self talk for one day.
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