So there may be rocket fuel on Mars. It’s in our drinking water and now it’s on the Red Planet.

What would we be more likely to find as the remains of a past civilization, a past effort, than this explosive ingredient? Maybe from the rockets that left when things got too bad. Maybe from the rockets whose red glare signaled the end. Maybe from other explosives. Maybe from fireworks to celebrate on the way down.

Could there be a more profound time in our species’ history to discover the remains of Mars? To give us just enough clues of past life now departed, past trappings of destructive civilization now broken down into dust? Sure, October 1962. Maybe even August 1945, now just 63 years in the rearview mirror. People said it was a miracle that we discovered space travel just after, made it happen on the vision of the same President who nearly ended it all before we got the chance.

Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe it’s time.

Humans have a hard enough time paying attention to their own history. Even though the species is the same and the people sometimes occupy the same land or speak the same language, something seems wholly irrelevant about time long past. That was then and this is now.

But what could be more now than space discoveries? What could make history more relevant than it being brand-new? What could make experience more powerful than it being experienced by those we can only imagine, those we never met, those who killed themselves before we began to be?

It’s far too early and already, since this post idea came to mind, the internet has run away with the idea of life and been lambasted for it. NASA is trying to reign in science fiction imaginations with cold hard science. Water isn’t life. Perchlorate isn’t rockets. Conjecture isn’t evidence.

We have to dig deeper, further. We have to excavate. We will probably need to send our own species to look for the last one. We will probably need samples and endless debate, theorizing until one piece of evidence stands so irrefutable that it changes our view of the universe overnight.

But make no mistake, it’s there. We have never been less alone. We have never been closer to the edge of our collective ego. With apologies to Jake, the space program has never seemed more relevant.

In time, we will likely find that our obligation, our debt of gratitude to the long-gone beings of Mars, is to not repeat their mistakes.

If we have time.

Authorities revealed Tuesday that a man carrying a loaded shotgun was arrested in January near the U.S. Capitol, and explosives left in his truck nearby went undetected for three weeks.
-CNN/AP, 26 March 2008

If we all comprehended all that goes into the decisions that impact our lives, we might never be able to sit still again. Let alone sleep. Two people are anticipating such a decision that I’m supposed to be making… it’s entirely out of their hands. It’s one of those many seeming coinflip decisions we make in life. Eventually I’ll find a way to make it a rationally reasoned decision, but I wouldn’t count on others to do the same in my shoes. This one’s for a job as I end a less than 2-month stint of not being a supervisor anymore. How many college admissions decisions, or college matriculation decisions, or moves, or debate judgments, or responses to date requests, came down to the same kind of coinflip? And who here would say they haven’t been deeply affected by one of those kinds of decisions?

I try to remember everything.
Try to remember so you don’t disappear.
-Counting Crows, “Sundays”

Maybe life’s not so hard to predict. We all have free will, but we all tend to make these ridiculously logical decisions. Maybe that’s the only reason that the coinflips feel so dangerous or scary. It’s where our free will really has to ride a gut feeling, or take a chance, or do something out of the comfort zone. Maybe where it lets itself be influenced by some larger benevolent wave. My Dad might call it “mind at large”. Others would go with destiny or fate. Everyone above would agree God’s gotta have something to do with it. Just about. But who has the faith that their contributed portion of the cacophony of wills is always allocated to benevolence? And wouldn’t resting on that faith somehow violate the bargain and undo the magic? Magic. Maybe that’s another word for it.

This is a list of what I should’ve been, but I’m not.
-Counting Crows, “Cowboys”

I used to make tapes, back in late high school and throughout college. I clung to a dying technological medium in large part because I liked the rhythms of 60- and 90-minute intervals, and especially loved having two opposing sides of something. No one was really ever able to record their own vinyl records, and CD’s don’t have sides. The tape was the perfect homemade medium. I made two tapes that come to mind this week… “Poetry in Stagnation” and “Chaos Theory”. The last of these had sides called “Butterfly Wings” and “Consequences” and was probably my most artistically made mix. The latest Counting Crows album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings”, is clearly written with sides in mind. It’s a bit of a concept album with each half of that phrase parsed into its own side. The CD cover is a vinyl album, just in case we missed the point. Like all new albums (these days at least), it sounds godawful the first time one listens to it. The second time through, I’m not sure I’ve heard anything more relevant in my life. Nothing will ever measure up to “This Desert Life”, the album that started my traditions with Counting Crows releases, perhaps the only album that sounded perfect the first time through too. I’ve always felt a special kinship with Adam Duritz (really, what CC fan doesn’t?), but you can hear in this one that maybe it’s gone too far. Maybe he pushed his own opportunities too long and wonders how much of this ends up being his own doing. There comes a time when it’s time to stop blaming the cacophony of wills and start examining one’s own coinflips.

It’s okay, I’m angry,
but you’ll never understand…
And I can’t see why you want to talk to me
when your vision of America is crystalline and clean.
-Counting Crows, “When I Dream of Michelangelo”

Despite all the coinflips, the cacophony, the difficult decisions, there often come times when one can attune oneself to the universe (God, mind at large, fate, destiny, magic) sufficiently where such things no longer seem scary. One still has to play by the rules, to agonize and try. To make the best decision possible for the best reasons possible. As Brandzy would say, to do the right thing for the right reasons. But this attunement, this awareness, this getting in sync seems to take the edge off the decisions. It takes the really vicious teeth out, leaving them more smile and less bared fangs. Some mornings, maybe even a morning like this, it’s not enough for reassurance. Is that the Cheshire cat I’m seeing? What does finding your place look like?

Would you eat a Honduran melon without fear of salmonella contamination?
-CNN’s QuickVote poll for 26 March 2008

Walking out the door to go to Chipotle, checking the mail on the way, and getting a certificate for free tacos therein. The unending awareness that terrorism would be unstoppable and is thus, by its absence, demonstrated to be nonexistent. A friend’s ability to achieve what one has always wanted, while one is doing what said friend is most interested in for his own achievement. Full moons and eclipses. Butterflies flapping their wings. Earthquakes. Timing timing timing.

Life makes its own excitement.

I am not a Christian.

A fervent believer in God and the extant importance of higher order and morality, I have not been a Christian (or a devotee of any organized religion) since late 1992 or early 1993, when I had a religious crisis in the midst of a Catholic mass while attending Catholic school on the north coast of Oregon. I believe I’ve discussed this on this webpage (this or Introspection) before, but the catalytic event was the internalization of the cross being a symbol of execution, the corresponding revelation that had Jesus been shot, the silhouette of a firearm would hang in the front of and atop the rooftop of every church in Christendom. Suddenly my many misgivings with Christian theology seemed entirely manifest in this grave miscalculation in emphasis and focus. The rest was history, and I rapidly became unable to deal with churches or Christianity for a good long while.

But I’ve always loved Good Friday, one of the few remaining redeeming* observances of the Christian calendar. I’ve often thought of constructing a calendar of my own patchwork faith, and Good Friday and Yom Kippur would be highlighted holidays… perhaps the only two to survive from widely regarded modern religions.

You can see in those two particular days a pretty distinctive theme… there is something to be said for religion’s ability to evoke passionate* sadness and soul-searching in the lives of its individuals. Organized religions, by the very virtue of their attempts to be popularly appealing, tend to shy away from this kind of reverent introspection and focus on suffering at all times. But single moments, a single day carved out of the bulwark, are reserved for the solemn observance of life’s sorrows and a corresponding rededication to doing what one can to limit them.

Much of Christian theology tries to backtrack from this seemingly original intent of Good Friday… even the name “Good” Friday indicates a problematic attempt to wash over the sadness of Jesus’ death with the “long view” and heavy foreshadowing of the Easter to come. Maybe it’s a little like the stock market and its infinite faith in endless rebounding resurrection of value and confidence. Not to make light of Jesus’ plight, but then again, I have qualms with the resurrection story and certainly don’t believe that Jesus was more than an extremely compassionate leader who offered hope before being killed tragically. Which is no small accomplishment – few individuals live such lives and they are frankly the most valuable and important people in our planet’s history. But they are not uniquely divinely chosen… they are instead exemplars of what any of us could accomplish with the right dedication: what we should all be attempting. My strong belief is that Jesus, like Gandhi (the other prime person in this hallowed company), personally rejected any attempts to deify him. Tragically, the world may never know.

The tragedy is removed from the “good” interpretation of this annual Friday. The reinterpretation imposed by those who were in the business of making a religion was that everything was foreordained and that it was a deliberate, calculated sacrifice. There tends to be little examination of what this would actually imply holistically and theologically in Christianity, and the focus is usually shifted instead to an examination of Jesus’ incredible fortitude in willingly initiating such a sacrifice. Granted, this focal point is extremely compelling and one of my favorite aspects of Good Friday. But it overlooks the larger implication about what sort of God would be doing this.

It’s really hard to imagine what sort of point God would be trying to tease out of a foreordained intentional sacrifice like this. Obviously martyrdom is a pretty good way of inspiring people and gathering followers to a person and their beliefs. But much of the strength of martyrdom is that it cuts short a life intended to be lived in full. Most martyrs (Gandhi being a notable exception) are young and have their brightest accomplishments ahead of them. The tragedy and outrage of their being taken is that their incredible leadership and good work is stolen. And thus those who remain to mourn are charged with taking up the work that was done. Even older martyrs, like Gandhi, usually have some intrinsic value to offer whatever process they were leading in the first place. It is hard to imagine, for example, that he could not have had a hand in smoothing tensions which ensued between India in Pakistan subsequent to his passing.

So Jesus as a deliberate martyr achieves much of this (and indeed, the legacy is Christianity, which is a pretty extensive story of people attempting to take up Jesus’ work, with extremely mixed results and intents), but in a very calculating and even devious way. If we are presented with this as being the plan from the beginning, then God comes across, at best, as a conniving strategist. Willing (indeed designing) to sacrifice his own lone offspring to a tortuous end that cuts short his potential for good work in order to create some sort of visceral parable for people to agonize over. Imagine, if you will, a report coming out that agents behind the Civil Rights movement actually planned Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with MLK’s personal knowledge and consent. Or that Gandhi, or maybe John Lennon, were covertly set up by their own supporters so their message might resonate more loudly with the people. Would this strengthen or hinder your reverence for such individuals? For their cause?

I don’t believe that Jesus was uniquely chosen by God, but I do believe he was a person who chose to develop his relationship with God at a quite advanced level. He notably spoke as being the “son of man”… I’m not familiar enough with the interpretations and translations and history and have little interest in devoting my energy to Biblical scholarship, but everything I’ve deduced seems to make it clear to me that his message was that we are all the children of both God and humans, that we all are capable of this relationship, that we all can strive for the highest moral achievement. And his preaching and teaching seems to embody much of what such achievement would look like.

And so I mourn this man’s death… not because some coldly mathematical deity drew up this chess move, but because his death was untimely and tragic (and went on to create so many misunderstandings).

The story of the day of death itself is tortured, troubling, and likely clouded over the years by political motives which corrupted original accounts. Some say he answered no questions, refusing to acknowledge the authority of those attempting to judge him. Others say that he insisted upon being the son of God (though again, my interpretation of this holds that he would say this of anyone). The depiction of the Jewish masses in their treatment of Jesus is almost certainly a reflection of Christian founders’ aims in competing with Judaism on the religious playing field, though there is something to be said for concepts of desertion and betrayal from one’s own people. After all, Gandhi was shot by a Hindu, a man sharing his faith. The complicity or outright force of the Roman Empire is also minimized in most accounts from what we can imagine Empire really doing to a dangerous threat to their authority and control. (And again, motives come into play when considering the eventual Roman conversion to Christianity.)

Still, there are compelling images of the account that offer those little introspective tidbits of somber reflection. The many insults and mockeries, from his own people and/or government. The irrationality of a mob, the inefficacy of retributive justice. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. The beseeching of God in times of crisis, recognizing that God is not an interventionist at any time. A support, a powerful baseline reserve of spiritual energy, but never an interventionist. Perhaps the most powerful (and accurate) statement of a compelling image of God and God’s role in human existence that Christianity ever achieves is embodied in the fact that God does not directly intervene to save Jesus. Sadly, the only way that doctrine can interpret this is the grandmaster strategist angle. But the truth embodied there is really about the fundamental predicate of free will and the resulting conclusion that God never intervenes directly in human affairs, no matter how dire.

That’s a harder lesson to swallow. Maybe you’d rather believe in a God that connives and manipulates but is at least intervening somehow. You’d be in good (“Good”?) - or at least larger - company. But in my opinion, you’d be making a mistake. Better to recognize the incredible respect God bestows in all of us in granting us the power to do literally anything, no matter how good or bad, harmful or helpful, tragic or calculated.

A good Friday to you.

*-indicates pun intended

Wait near the end of September.
Wait for some stars to show.
Try so hard not to remember
what all empty playgrounds know:
that sympathy is cruel.
Reluctant jester or
simpering fool.
But six feet off the highway,
our bare legs stung with wheat,
we’ll dig a hole and bury
all we could not defeat,
and say that we’ll stay for one more year.

Bend to tie a shoelace,
or bend against your fear,
and say that you’ll stay for one more year.
-The Weakerthans, “Fallow”

~

It’s getting cold in California
I guess I’ll be leaving soon
Daylight fading
Come and waste another year
All the the anger and the eloquence
are bleeding into fear
Moonlight creeping
around the corners of our lawn
When we see the early signs
that daylight’s fading
We leave just before it’s gone

She said “everybody loves you,”
she says, “everybody cares”
But all the things
I keep inside myself
they vanish in the air
-Counting Crows, “Daylight Fading”

My friend Stina tells me that 28 is way different than 27. That you can never go back again. That no one younger nor older than 27 could really understand a 27-year-old. She was only joking a little.

A co-worker of mine says that 28- and 29-year-olds go through a lot of significant changes. That one sees a lot of life changes of significance and note cropping up right around that age. He referenced some astrology, some experience, some theory. He wasn’t joking at all.

This stuff - what is going on now (whatever it is) - is no joke.

I’m studying poverty at my workplace. More and more, the question of poverty seems to be coming down to a much larger issue of freedom. You could call it control… you could call it “empowerment” (whatever that means)… you could call it confidence. What it really means is freedom. The ability to not be trapped, to not have tunnel vision. To not, as a rider on the subway some two weeks ago was, be “dreaming of zero” financially. To not spend twenty minutes telling a friend how great it would be to just get back to zero and have nothing hanging over your head.

To have nothing hanging over your head. Nothing.

For some of you (most? all?) this probably seems ridiculous. That’s not a definition of escaping poverty so much as escaping life, right? Life is an endless chain of things hanging over your head… we’re all living in a timeless flow of weights and measures. One obligation is just a way of getting to the next and so forth. Or maybe you only see it this way when you stop to think about it… the rest of the time, it’s just living. Meal to meal, chore to chore, time in the seat to time in the seat. You gotta eat, you gotta excrete, and you gotta find a way to pay for that and everything in between.

For the poor and homeless in San Francisco, there’s really no other way to look at it. There aren’t alternatives when one doesn’t have the means. And that’s really the issue - getting people like that back to freedom. Some level or capacity of being able to get rid of the tunneling obligations that crowd our life into long narrow stretches of darkness.

The rest of us, who aren’t poor and homeless, frankly have no excuse. These chains and walls are of our own creation. This tunnel was built up, layer by layer, by our own spiteful hands. The only ones that can tear it down again.

I am reminded of a day senior year in high school, perhaps exactly ten years ago today (who knows?), when I ran screaming through the halls that everyone has the key and they just don’t know how to use it. It’s there, waiting, and we just never grab hold and stick it in the door. But we all have it. Breathless and wild-eyed, I related this revelation to a series of friends. I probably hadn’t slept in a couple days and was clearly in one of my more manic stages. They rolled their eyes, they chuckled about me, at me. “Tell me about this key,” said one as I recall.

It is not dissimilar. Ten years ago. Good God. And for what? What have I done?

It wasn’t the same revelation then, not exactly. It was more about the fact (then) that life leaves us clues all along the way. That we can decipher the messages in our day-to-day existence and string them together like so much code to construct a blueprint of all the answers we ever wanted. Confirmation. Direction. Hope. It’s a key embedded in little pieces of every moment and we just have to wake up and pay attention to watch it fly together in our hand. And then have the guts to stick it in the door.

I had been warned, I realized, at that specific moment. And I had thrust aside chunks of key while trying to throw myself bodily into the locked door. These ideas and others assembled to form many theories of my theology, one of the first times I might’ve coined to myself that awareness is never enough - it must always be wonder.

So it’s a different key, a different brand of freedom that I’m looking at here and now. It’s rooted in the same realities (how many realities are there, anyway?), but carries a distinct tenor and pitch. Take a machete to the things hanging over one’s head. Get away from time in the seat. Shed, shed, shed. This is careening, screaming from the bulwark of my mental fortress.

But what’s in a year? What harm could a year do? Just one more year, needling away, begging for fulfillment.

Is there ever “just another year”? How much time in the seat has been procured with such a false promise? Tomorrow never comes, so do we ever reach the conclusion of that ‘nother annum? Conclusions are always reached eventually, but rarely on our terms and almost universally too soon. There’s no more “just another year” ’round that time either.

Since all this is about time in the seat, it’s worth noting that life is a lot like a college class. In the end, one doesn’t remember most of what was learned. The details blend together and fade, even if one attended every session and studied religiously. What remains, at best, are the core concepts, some key ideas. The big headlines of what one accomplished. And moments. Some really great (or awful) moments of speaking in class, or listening, or laughing. Having something click.

Life is much the same way. We mostly have time in the seat, the drudgery of countless brushings of teeth and eating of food and opening the mailbox. Thousands of hours of work. Thousands of hours of commuting. Thousands of hours of video games or TV or playing ball.

In the end, whatever’s left to remember comes down to the highlights, the accomplishments, the really worthwhile stuff that was done. Thresholds, good and bad. And moments. Little crystallized moments. It’s a lot like what you might remember from childhood now, only more heavily edited.

So doesn’t it make sense to prioritize those highlights over the rest of the drudge?

Somewhat contradictorily, however, I believe that we will all experience a full life-in-review session shortly after death. A spiritual adviser (an angel, if you prefer) will grab a metaphorical seat next to us on a metaphorical couch and enjoin us to a years-long viewing of our life on a metaphorical television. Our Town meets TiVo. It’ll be about as grueling to experience as Our Town, but not optional or selective. And as engrossing as TiVo, in the end. But with no fast-forward, only rewind and pause.

If we all lived with that in mind, how much time would we spend on the rote and the routine? How many “just another year”s would we sign on for? I bet there’d be a lot more spontaneity, a bit more self-awareness, a whole bunch more thought and examination. Just imagine, pretend you believe my theory for a moment. “I’m going to have to watch every single moment of this again, in real time.” Not just analyze and consider and discuss, but freaking watch. I will see this all again. No matter how sick I am of this workplace/school/seat/neighborhood, I will have, exactly, this much time here again, even if I leave this second forever.

What would you change if you knew this to be the case?

It’s one of those Pascalian/Platonic things that I think it might be worth believing even if it’s complete bunk. Internalize it, believe it, live it. I could say “search your feelings; you know it to be true”… but it might not wash for you. Try living one day with that awareness.

Maybe you’ll find it oppressive. Maybe it’ll be another thing hanging over your head. But maybe… maybe not. Maybe it’s just the kick in the pants you need.

I write this all, expound on it, because I need a kick in the pants. I need a kick in the pants. I need to figure all this out. Oh yes, I have my reasons, but so does everybody. At the end of the day, one can believe their own reasons, but really for no more than “just another year”. Really. No more. And maybe not even that. Because, well, see above.

I spent a lot of my life convinced I was going to be a high-school teacher. Talk about your time in the seat. But I was sure that this was where I could do some good, be inspiring, devote my life to change and all. Of course I always really wanted to be a writer, but writers seem to need day jobs, at least for a little while. Day job considerations have never much competed with writing in any real sense - when one knows one’s calling, the rest is just getting by. Fulfilling obligations. You know the drill.

So the priorities for a day job always looked to be (A) not doing harm, (B) doing good, (C) not being suicidally bored. Hooray. What’s not to like about high-school teacher?

It hit me my senior year in college (something about senior years, eh?) that this would be a disaster. I was disillusioned with school, completely dissatisfied with academic experiences. I had spent the bulk of college doing the absolute minimum to keep my scholarship, trying to float by while I debated, spent time with people, and waited for the rest of my life to catch up with me. Grades had been a game for years and the whole institution was looking like a poorly-designed game by the end of it. I couldn’t wait to get out and get into a world that seemed more real.

And it hit me all at once, just like some narrative revelation: the ultimate futility of what I was hoping to accomplish as a high-school teacher. The best thing, the best thing I could ever offer to a student would be the following:
1. Inspire them and raise them out of a difficult background.
2. Convince them to take studying very seriously and embrace academics.
3. Help them get into a good college, where
4. They could have the same revelations about academics that I just did.

Thanks, teach.

Oh sure, there might be some real and tangible benefits along the way and I’m not here meaning to condemn the work of high-school teachers. But the soul-crushing philosophical circularity of that reality, much less of calling that circularity some kind of inspiration or joy, was overwhelming. It was hard to breathe. Out went the gameplan for high-school teacher. The rest, as they say, is history.

Almost six years of history. Trying to become seven… “just another year”. You could call it the JAY theory. Get out your blue crayons and your ornithology books, kids. Or at least your Toronto uniforms.

It’s looking like a blue JAY.

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs
that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sounds
of Silence

I think “Sounds of Silence” may have been about cellphones.

There’s been a whole new level of energy this past 24 hours, like a current rising up from some supercharged backwater, ready to flood the planet. “I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.” Go back to the ’60’s, I know. But the ’60’s have come for us, again. Barack Obama was born just as late as I was. He moved the woman who moved Hillary to tears to tears. Twice. “There’s something happening here.”

But people aren’t paying attention. In fact, they’re on their damn cellphones.

People are continually baffled that I don’t own a cellphone, inquiring where my Amish beard has gone or why I will get within 10 feet of an internal-combustion engine. More than anything, though, they cite how ubiquitous cellphones have become. I can’t think of an item that was so quickly embraced by so many with so few second-thoughts. Even past partners in holding out (at least of my generation) have conceded for work or for a romantic interest or for some other reason. I am not completely alone at this point, but close.

When one of these people cited some overwhelming statistic of universality at me the other day, I snapped back that if the whole society started taking heroin, I wouldn’t be joining in either. The person actually snorted and replied “Well, if heroin kept you in better touch with people, maybe that would make sense.” I then asked whether she felt that cellphones kept her in better touch with people. She conceded that the phones raised the quantity of contact, but lowered the quality. After some prodding and conversation, she even granted that this was probably an aggregate net loss in communication, in the purest sense of the word. “But I can’t stop now,” she concluded.

Sounds an awful lot like heroin to me. Oh sure, heroin’s probably an extreme example - a little like using Hitler analogies in debate (or reducing to nuclear war in policy debate). But some insidious hard drug, sure. That makes you think your life is better till you really examine what’s going on. That makes you feel better while being worse. That once you start, you can’t even think about stopping.

So just like my stance on alcohol, tobacco, and all “hard” drugs, I’m not even going to go there. Not start. Not even a little. And really, now that I put it in that context, the idea that all of society started doing something crazily self-destructive without me is nothing new.

So as I continue to seem more alien to others, the world seems more apparent to me. There are little signs and clues littered throughout one’s day if one cares to look. Mindsets to approach the world with. An overall presence that is fundamental to the universe. To just immerse oneself in the streets of a city on a cold day, as I did yesterday afternoon, is enough to send one into an almost revelatory set of understandings about what is going on. What is real. What is happening here.

As with anything, there are very few conclusions that come out of these processes. It’s much more about ideas. I’m not going to now tell you that I solved the mysteries yesterday. Far from it. And I’m not sure I’d even want to. But these days, it seems my mind starts to bubble over after even five minutes of, for lack of a smoother phrase, “being here now.”

One of the things one sees in this process, hears, feels, is everyone’s cellphone conversations. Not that they’re all vapid or meaningless, but so many of them seem so empty. Empty of content or meaning. Most of them are the equivalent of a handshake or a wave, hearkening back to the “handshake” days of the early FAX machines of my childhood. Blips and bleeps that signify someone else is on the other end of the line, someone’s out there, that solipsism hasn’t yet won the day in this scary world. And on that level, I can sort of understand. But there’s never really more than a handshake or a wave. No deeper meaning, no exploration. Too often, one “has to go,” usually just to blip-handshake-call five other friends before going underground (literally or figuratively) or to duck into the next distraction. As soon as people are on cellphone calls, they want to get off. And as soon as they’re off, they want to get on another one.

Does this really make you feel more connected? Less guilty, I could see, since guilt about not being in contact seems to dominate so many perspectives these days. New Year’s Resolutions passed around a table about this yesterday. But really, more connected, more deeply understanding of the people in your life?

Yesterday I reveled in the city’s hereness, nowness, reality. Then I ate, feeling compelled to pray before eating for the first time in months. Usually perfunctory functions like saying grace before a meal seem to me part of that ritual that undermines real meaning… so much of my problem with organized religion is founded in it draining meaning out of things through repetition. No function that one has memorized feels like a live connection to God. But yesterday, because it was spontaneous, I wanted that recognition. And I realize that the intent of these rituals is actually to remind one to be mindful of God at all times… the unpronounceable tilted touchstones on Jewish doors, the saying of grace, the forehead-dots. All intended to be reminders. But if one can transcend the reminders, cut to the quick, get down to an ever-mindfulness of God… that’s where it’s really at. Spontenaity. Twisting and turning the dials until one is in tune with God.

And it’s not going to give you the answers or solve the puzzle or fix everything. That’s not the intent, not why God is there. God actually tends to be rather cryptic and has a remarkable sense of humor. But being in tune, attuned, tuned in, can be inspirational and uplifting. And maybe the only thing that gets one through a winter like this.

It probably bolstered my whole experience of observation that I then proceeded to a ghost story movie, one of the best in a long long time. It’s called “The Orphanage” and will probably scare you silly, but is well worth the experience. It’s in Spanish, which didn’t buffer the fright nearly as much as I expected. It is in exactly the genre of “The Others” and “The Sixth Sense”, perhaps the two best ghost movies of all time. I now probably have to say three.

And what is a ghost story beyond a call to awareness, to hereness, to nowness? Yes, ghosts are buried in the past, but they are creating a presence, establishing a reality in the here and now. How better to call people to attention to a deeper world, a world beyond, the world that is actually real and underlying at all times, however hard it is to “see.”

Ghosts as they are understood by pop-culture probably do not exist, but the imprints upon time and place that severe actions create are a gateway to the reality that is underneath the seams of the Metaphor. Everything is connected and woven, and even the cacophony of wills can snap together like a mosaic gone groutless at any time if one just pays attention.

Put away the cellphone. Stop talking. Listen. Hear. Feel. Be. Here. Now.

Al Qaeda: The Looming Terror
An AC360 investigation into the formation of al Qaeda, where they are now, and their illusive leader.
Tomorrow night, 10 p.m. ET
-CNN.com, 11 November 2007

A little over ninety years ago, Vlad Lenin completed a relatively bloodless takeover of power in what was then Russia. It had taken about eight months to become obvious that democracy had failed.

But, as in so many American wars of the last half-century, the takeover of government was just the beginning. Protracted fighting across the nation, against royalist-revivalists, lasted for years after the “revolution” was complete.

Lenin had written a pamphlet at the turn of the century laying out the plans and predictions for this coup, eventually leading to successful execution 15 years later. It was called Chto Dyelat? (transliteration), which can roughly be translated as “What is to Be Done?” The question seems profoundly relevant tonight, when I am somehow railing in frustration at nothing at all.

The question sounds more elegant in Russian. My frustration needs some art tonight.

Emily and I went to a movie tonight, “Lions for Lambs”. It was pretty awful. The movie simultaneously lacked subtlety and clarity. It pounded one over the head with preachy nothingness. Despite CNN (why do I keep quoting this source?) saying the movie was targeted at a “thinking-person’s” audience, the movie seemed to be written for toddlers. And the final conclusion, a crescending call-to-action, was left blank. There was no action. Only an uneasy settling of the fact that CNN (renamed in the movie to prevent a lawsuit) was so deeply manipulating the news as to distort reality. And the absence of action spoke louder than the prior 86 minutes of calling for action.

You can feel Robert Redford’s frustration in the film. It’s everyone’s. Everyone who ever believed in this “democracy” feels so swindled and cheated that they don’t even know which end is up. At least Vietnam gave everyone a fighting chance. People seemed to react to reality in Vietnam. People cared. Injustice was met with horror rather than indifference. The media took the right side. There was hope. Replication of Vietnam in perpetuity over the coming generations might not have been ideal, but it would’ve worked. People could’ve slept at night knowing they had some power or control in “their country”.

But this? What is this? When every aspect of the country has been sold and everyone who could care is in debt or discredited, how can one even begin to mount a response? What would it even look like? Who would be left to care?

So you have this slow choking of American belief in democracy and destiny and all those so-called lovely things we used to care about. Redford was trying to make a movie to shake some hope into people, as near as I can tell. He ended up making a deafening case for hopelessness. His suggested actions are to either (A) go to Afghanistan and get perforated by bullets for no reason after killing people who are not the enemy or (B) stare in horror at the television while realizing that everything you’ve done in your life is worthless.

Oh boy.

He really wanted to have a suggestion at the end there. But it was left blank for the audience to fill it in. At least Al Gore’s equally terrible movie ended with hundreds of suggestions for what you can do to “prevent global warming”. At least he maintained the illusion that corporations are not in control of the planet, but individuals are. At least he maintained the noble lie, full of hope and strong lyrics.

Illusion. Let’s get back to that word. No one proofreads anything anymore. I have to remind myself when reading documents for the people I work for. I sit there, sometimes, thinking “Helen Rosner and I are the only people left on the planet who care about proofreading.” Today’s news doesn’t have time for proofreading or copyediting or even thoughtfulness. As in the movie, it’s about getting facts up on the roll. Or maybe it’s as my Dad would say and no one wants to work anymore. Personally, I think it might (as in tonight’s example) be the universe fighting back, railing through little clues to conspire against a plutocracy hell-bent on recreating something between the Fall of Rome and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs.

Osama bin Laden, not even bothered to be named in CNN’s website promo for its latest shock-n-awe program about idle terrorists, is described as “their illusive leader”. Now whether it’s because grammar is dead or work is dead or what have you, the intended phrase was probably “elusive leader”. As in hard to find. But the devil, they say, is in the details.

The sentence instead reads that the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is an illusion. A mirage. And just to make sure that the universe is with us on the themes of tonight’s show, Dictionary.com’s first full entry for the word gives us this: “based on or having the nature of an illusion; ‘illusive hopes of finding a better job’; ‘Secret activities offer presidents the alluring but often illusory promise that they can achieve foreign policy goals without the bothersome debate and open decision that are staples of democracy’”

That actually gave me chills just now. You can look it up.

Orwell tells us this in 1984:

The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters; perhaps even–so it was occasionally rumored–in some hiding place in Oceania itself.

An argument could be made that it would be better a Two Minutes Fear. And while there is plenty of fear of Goldstein and fear in general laden throughout the ceremonies of Orwell’s Oceanians, it’s hard to rally around fear. Of course, the real powers don’t want people rallying at all. The real powers are squarely between Orwell and Huxley, using just enough manipulation and self-destruction to form their brew.

Go back to your Orwell. And your Huxley. And your Bradbury. And then tell me: Chto Dyelat? Because their answers weren’t very good either. Retreat. Run. Maybe you can make it to the woods or the Falklands or maybe they’ll get you first and take you to Abu Ghraib and torture the hope out of you. Maybe you can read or write or remember and be the last living testament to the way things were.

And I know dystopias end badly because they’re supposed to be cautionary tales. But we already blew through those checkpoints. There was no caution.

In a dystopia, my friends, what is to be done?

Early this morning, we posted a new video for The Mep Report, my former podcast with which I still interact from time to time:

Most of the material is old, but it’s repackaged in a nifty new way intended to promote the show. This one isn’t going to take over the world, but it’s hopefully the kind of thing that makes people want to listen.

Not many people wanted to listen today. In general. It was, again, one of those days that makes one question nearly every assumption, every action. I came so close to not making it into work today. I can’t even tell enough to know whether going in was a mistake or not. At this point, I’m past the point of caring.

On the way home, a prophet got on the BART train. He was a firebrand preacher, raised in the ‘hood, with a goon on either side of him mugging, leering, and laughing as he spoke his truth. The man was eloquent and profound. He found his target audience, a man twice his age from the Vietnam era, engaging him in a repartee of the man’s life and his own perspective. He quickly found more than his target audience. After one stop, I had to put my book away to listen.

Only a tape recorder would have done him justice, but one key moment was his declaration that television is a harder drug than anything else out there, “except maybe alcohol and cigarettes”. He broke down television to its component parts: “tell-lie, and that’s their vision.” His target audience was clearly impressed, verbally affirming. Many of the others surrounding were annoyed or afraid. And just as many, like me, were listening.

After two straight days feeling debilitated despite working for one of the most important social services agencies in California, hearing this man was the most inspirational moment of my week.

He wasn’t perfect (at one point he said he liked Hillary more than Obama, though at least he prefaced it by saying that there’s no point in voting because no one’s vote counts), but it was a damn sight better than anyone else who’s standing up and calling out these days. It made me wonder why I’m not doing more of the same. It also made me wonder how he’d react if I asked for his contact info and said that he should be speaking to more than just BART trains.

Probably, he’d feel patronized. Who the hell am I, anyway? But the man had a voice and a vision. He was able to capture the despair of this day and mix it as a message of unification for a muddled mass of misfits rolling northward toward nowhere.

And why did it hit me like a testimony to our time that this man was speaking to BART trains instead of crowds? Why wasn’t he leading the charge, the voters, the revolution? The inspirational populism of All the King’s Men came to mind, and I had to acquiesce, as I was walking away from the northbound train, that he had no reason to be less corruptible than anyone else. Sure, “the best minds of my generation can’t make bail.” But also, “show me the money.” In the end, he would probably be just as buyable, just as susceptible, just as able to adjust his story and perspective to meet the needs of the imp of self-interest.

In a way, are we all doing the same thing every day? In a small, small, but damning way? Why do I not speak truth to BART trains? Why do I not rave at those who might listen, at those who don’t listen, at those who seem inexorably locked into demanding that I listen?

It’s not fear. It must be a sneaking suspicion of self-interest.

Out, damn imp.

Above ground, now. Walking westward, toward the sun and its descending shadows, still not gone yet by an act of Regress. A woman, seconds before entering a gym in her designer work-out gear, screams at a young woman on a bike in angry sarcasm: “I’m so glad your mommy bought you a bicycle!”

I wasn’t there to see chapter one of this interlude. I only saw the aftershock. Maybe the woman almost got run down. But the dripping bitterness just seemed out of proportion. The younger one stood perched over her bike, stock still, in that kind of silent shame that cuts deepest when one is sure one has nothing to be ashamed of. And did this woman really just yell and then bolt into the carded confines of her high-priced gymnasium? After unleashing invective at the allegedly spoiled?

She eventually moved on. And so did I, hurrying now. And the wandering mind recalled the ongoing rage of a born bicyclist who uncharacteristically turned his rage on everything this afternoon, just before this journey began. Usually his rage is confined to bicycles, but today it was for everything, valid or in.

“He seems in a weird space today. Let’s just leave him alone.”

The zookeeper is very fond of rum. I feel that the last 48 hours have brought me closer to an understanding of why people drink alcohol than I’ve ever had before. There have been many moments of thoughts akin to temptation in the past. A mid-sophomore year (college) night above a pulsing party in the space below comes to mind, as the scent of cannabis wafted to my window. “It would be so easy,” I moaned. Over and over.

I remain, as then, steadfast. But these are trying times. Times without measure.

Stand up, ye prophets. And I may even, soon, have the courage to stand with you.

The following is a direct transcript of the notes I took while immersed in my ~40-hour fast in the woods (41.5 hours of water fasting, 31 hours in the woods). Background information available here and here.

I briefly thought about scanning the notebook pages and posting them here. It would be a more raw reflection of the experience. But it’s not exactly what I want to convey. Besides, there are too many pages (the notebook was very small) and the handwriting is just too unnavigable. Keep in mind that Duck and Cover is the result of me really trying to temper my handwriting into a palatable form… and many of you still complain that it’s incomprehensible at times. The handwriting, not the humor. Okay, that too.

This text is presented unedited, unabridged, in its original syntax. So here we go:

13-14 October 2007 - Marin Headlands, California

13 October 2007

Have arrived at Haypress camp site in Marin Headlands. Emily dropped me off at around 10 AM. I had not eaten in over 8 hours at that point. Last ate ~1:15 AM today.

I think I’ve brought too much water. The journey in was arduous due to weight of pack, but went very quickly (less than 1 mile).

I like my spot and my view. I think I will hike some today since camp is all set up. I am still very time-focused. There are many animal noises and I am not as isolated from humans as I might choose to be. There are 5 groups slated to camp in this area tonight and they are not particularly secluded from each other.

Hungry, but able to delay with water.

I am perhaps explaining things in more detail here than I would normally - I can’t tell how clear things will seem later upon returning to a world of food and time as they seem now. So I’m taking an extra step, just in case.

After putting in ~7 miles today, I think most of the physical exertion portion of our program is over. I initially hadn’t thought I’d even hike that much, but I think it’s good to sweat out the toxins as well as starve them out.

The tent starts out inside the backpack. Then the backpack goes inside the tent. Finally, the tent returns to the backpack. There is something right about this way of living.

I awoke in dark night with the classic dilemma of getting up and going to the bathroom vs. staying “warm” and holding it. Of course the former is the long-term warmest option, so it was taken.

The stars bowled me over. I think I sometimes forget the stars are even there in anticipating the night sky. It sounds silly, but I had really not been expecting the depth and breadth of the stars.

I lingered in the cold to take them in. Even though the distant voices persisted, I was able to fully appreciate the enormity of the universe.

I don’t know how anyone can stare at the stars for a long time and not come away feeling the reassuring grace of God’s presence and benevolence.

It must be. Darkness passed to foggy lightness. Night was an unending span of dreams, hurried overwhelmed awakeness, then somewhat settled sleep. There were brief times that the passage of time was so slow I thought that surely I had died.

I haven’t been able to really divest myself from time-awareness the way I’d hoped. It seems that nature is our first introduction to conceptual time and while it may not demand that we tie ourselves to minutes or even hours, it certainly makes us aware of morning, afternoon, evening, and night. And in so doing, it’s easy for the “civilized” human to take the next step and attempt to extrapolate more granular sands of time.

Far too much of my trip has also been influenced by neighboring campers. It seems most of them will be away early today and I can achieve some solitude. But the cooking of their fires has made me even more aware of the food I’m not eating. Avoiding that temptation was part of the reason for not bringing food at all, even for “emergencies”.

I did get some solitude, though, on the high hills above these headlands. I took off without a pack - just water and a light and many layers - in search of quiet contemplation. I found it in the heavy fog about 1/2 - 3/4 miles up the Fox Trail, almost all steep uphill. A spiderweb was highlighted with dew and caught my bright attention. It couldn’t fool anyone with any vision at all, but the spider remained patient in its center.

I turned uphill from almost that precise location to see a scene of deep-rutted foggy path that almost precisely mimicked a scene of several of my dreams (though none from the night before). There was nothing more momentous from this observation - I continued up the path a bit and decided the uphill was more strenuous than I wanted for my last 10-12 hours without food, so I should get back. Still, I paused for some minutes to simply take in the enormity of the blanketing fog.

Three natural phenomena have overwhelmed me this trip: the ocean, the stars, and the fog. Neither uncommon nor unpredictable targets of adoration and appreciation, but powerful nonetheless.

In any event, I am hungry. Not as severely as I expected to be, but then water can be used effectively to combat the worst of the hunger pangs. I have definitely been much hungrier in my life.

Yet food does seem like a real focal point. I dwell on it. Thinking about having Chipotle tacos when I’m released from this fast has really helped keep me going. My mouth actually has a slight ache from the absence and inaction. I have had meandering headaches, but nothing debilitating. This is impressive, because I haven’t had coffee since early Friday morning, putting me on a scheduled 72-hour fast from coffee by the time I plan to break that.

By the way, take that, people who think my headaches are some sort of caffeine withdrawal! Coffee is good migraine-prevention medicine, but absence of preventative medicine does not equate with immediate sickness.

The fog and my irregular sleep are helping to join forces to make me less aware of time. It could be morning or afternoon right now - I know not which. The foghorns are subsiding a bit, leaving only the ubiquitous quails in the area - there are many and they are in herds (or whatever quail groups are officially called), and they make many noises which neatly balance between familiar bird sounds and bizarre interpretations which are the quails’ alone.

I was wandering around this nearly abandoned campsite when I noticed two rabbits out of the corner of my eye. I danced to approach them - pausing every time they looked up with concern, giving them time to get used to me at this distance, then approaching again until they seemed to need me to pause. One, the larger, was too skittish and eventually bolted for the brush. But the first, smaller one, maintained a watchful eye but stayed outside to forage for food. Both were tiny rabbits, looking almost like pikas. They must have been young.

I eventually reached a bench about 20 yards from the smaller rabbit and sat down to become part of the observant landscape. Over the course of 30+ minutes, I was able to hang out with the rabbit, ocassionally joined by the other rabbit, a number of quails, and a traveling crew of very loud bees or wasps.

The rabbit ate the whole time. I did not. The winde kicked up and seemed to scare the animal more than I did. It gave me my best time of reflection and grounding this whole trip so far.

In the midst, I thought about the wind and the water and all nature’s creatures. They seem to find an ineffable common thread - they take the path of least resistance. This is nature’s way. And given all the things I am out here to find or consider, maybe there is not as much wrong with living by momentum instead of direction. Maybe I am condemning an existence in line with nature’s calling.

But then again, do I answer to nature? Nature eats meat, nature destroys, nature is often cold and harsh and unforgiving. Nature guides by survival above meaning. So how could I adopt a principle of nature, just for its seductive beauty and the wonder of its path-carving? As Professor Hirshman, my second favorite of Brandeis’ philosophers, always graced her classes, “Bears shit in the woods.” Not only did she use this as one of many devices to shock students into thought, but it was her oft-used take-out argument for Aristotle and other naturalists who wanted to embrace whatever they were given by the world around them as what was also right.

And even on my retreat to nature, there is a Port-o-Potty on camp site. 2, in fact. Even I am not retreating to the standards of bears on this, a journey to reject civilization.

So what am I left with? An affirmation of what I already knew? Maybe I should be suspicious of anything else.

And despite their grandeur, the woods aren’t going to give me any concrete answers anyway, even without food or distraction. A bobcat is not going to walk up to me, lick its paw, and tell me what I should do with my job or my website. I know that. That’s not why I’m here.

As I strain for the quiet in the wake of the last other campers here departing, I realize that there is no quiet. There are quiet noises, but no real quiet. I feel I’ve joked with myself many times that this trip would be better pursued in a sound-proof lightless chamber than out in the open. But that’s not really the intent either.

The point is that the wind, the birds, the trees all make noise. Some of it is enhanced by my own tent, but without it there would still be sounds of all variety.

Perhaps nature is just reminding me of others - that we are not on this planet alone. A basic lesson, and one I know, but it bears repeating. To help each other can, ultimately, be our only purpose.

This is neither a new thought nor one terribly tied up in this trip in particular, but when I witness such profound examples of it, I cannot help but take note. Literally.

Ha! It was only 11:54. And the time that’s passed since has been the slowest yet. I’ve checked a couple more times. It’s really starting to crawl. I’m hungry and I think I feel I’ve passed most of the productive or valuable/meaningful time I’m going to get. It’s also colder than yesterday and thus much colder than I’d like. I’m ready to pack it up, pack it in. But I ought not begin too early or I’ll have time waiting in the parking lot, which would be even worse.

I think the bulk of this trip’s impact will really be felt upon return. How will I see time, food, and other people differently? Right now I’m yearning. Upon return, will I be appreciating?

It’s cold and I’m hungry, but I’m very glad to be out of the woods. So to speak.

I had one last good message from the woods on my way out. I had tied my sleeping bag under straps behind the backpack. Quite tightly, I thought. But about 1/3 of the way down the trail, it fell out. Rather than remove my pack and reattach the bag, especially with the understanding it would probably fall out again, I simply picked it up and carried it.

I was immediately delighted by both how much lighter my backpack now seemed and how I was somewhat comforted by the feeling of hugging my sleeping bag to my chest.

At first, I thought “lighten your load!” But immediately I saw that wasn’t quite it - more accurately the message was “shift the weight: your burden will not be any less, but it will feel lighter.”

Now there’s what we call a take-home message.