Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

There is a difference between being lonely and being alone.

Lonely gets down in your bones. Lonely is that feeling that tells you it’s empty, it’s over, it’s all meaningless, and it always was. Lonely isn’t a feeling at all, it is the absence of feeling, it is that achy nothing that sits between your ribcage and your spine just chewing a little hole in the space that holds the air and blood and replacing it with a little pocket full of nothing. Lonely is getting up and knowing that no one will miss you today, no one will think of you today in just that way, that however much you are loved in a high esoteric platonic sense, no one is thumping in their soul for you today and probably not tomorrow either.

Lonely can be claustrophobic, it can be that sense that you start crying and ain’t nobody gonna come fix it. That you can just sit there crying in your bed and no one is going to come for comfort and there’s nobody who could provide that comfort even if you cried out and they came running somehow. It is the empty light absent feeling on the left hand, second finger in from the abyss, how that is so much harder to get used to than the weight and encirclement ever was. It is the sinking feeling in the dark of night and in the dawn of day that tomorrow or this will be a day of contact without connection, of emotion without feeling, of missing and not being missed. The kind of feeling that one didn’t even know one could miss because it was so full and free, that there would always always always be one person in the world who gave a shit, who cared more than anything, and lonely is that person’s indifference, the indifference of the wind, of caprice, of a world without a face.

Lonely is enhanced and hardened by not being alone, by being surrounded in groups and among pairs, of being besieged by the freneticism of community only to have it wash up on the shores of one day or the next suddenly unplanned, unscheduled, free to let lonely swoop down like a bird of prey and snatch you out of the water and leave you hooked and gasping. How you flail and resist for a while, then go limp, dead numb, knowing that lonely’s got you and won’t let you go till you find some other environs that can distract you from your true state again. And you can call out and you can remember God and you can say hey God, you and me, we got this, but God won’t give you a hug because that is not in God’s nature. And God says you and lonely, you got this too, and you have to get cozy and friendly and romantic with lonely because that’s all you got. And God is wise but God is not going to save anyone from anything, least of all lonely, because lonely is the way of the world.

Lonely is wondering, lonely is wandering, lonely is knowing that it doesn’t matter if you pick up the book or turn on the computer or put on the movie or amble outside, lonely is patient and persistent and will be waiting for you behind whatever veil you try to put up. Lonely can be like a blanket, maybe not sopping wet, but sort of ragged and flearidden and vaguely mildewy, it offers a sad smelly sort of comfort, like this is your shit and you might as well lie in it because no one else will. And you lie there, sort of settling in, because you know this blanket and you gave it its flaws and you could no more run out into the street waving the blanket around and attract the right kind of attention than you could repair it to new. And in that, in the blanket’s adaptation, its confirmation to your body and skin, there is a softness, a tearful kind of softness that pads the harshness of the empty ache and the light finger and the inability of anything to enclose you enough.

Lonely is a dog whining and wheezing at your heels. It is a single bird squawking for the flock in separation as night draws near. It is the muffled sobbing of your own breath as you try to figure out what you did to deserve this. Lonely doesn’t mean to be cruel, doesn’t mean to judge, it just sits there biding its time in mild indifference, slowly kneading into your chest with infinitely incremental additions of force. You could almost get used to it, but one day you wake up and your torso has collapsed.

And it’s hard to walk around without a torso.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

The Raritan River flows gently southward, bedecked on either side by paths, one cracked red asphalt raised high above the waterline, the other muddy disintegrating soil strewn with the exposed roots of sickly trees. On one side, western, the vantage from which the students relax in over-comfy soporific chairs and procrastinate, there is a mass of technological construction, well sealed lightbulbs above aging tennis courts with absurdly high chainlink fences, brick structures for respite from the precipitation just blown through, right-angled walkways for the runners pacing ever up, ever down, seeking internal retribution for the pounding of their feet against hard human-made solidity. On the other, eastern, the distant wild side, green-brown patterns peek through stripped winter trees, offering glimmers of nature’s eternity in defiance of the structure and order thumbing its mechanical nose from across the river. The tension and rivalry implicit in the face-off cut by the swirling wind that washes the water down toward the vastness of the weary Atlantic, a body that will take these molecules to the shores of colonizers and their one-time slaves.

There is anonymity in critique, anonymity the vaunted valued safeguard against bias, nepotism, subtle hints of racism or sexism or clues to prejudice. But with the anonymity a lack of accountability, much maligned in this unseen framework of empty crackling air, the ability to levy lobs of vitriol or one-upsmanship with no fear of reprisal, repercussion, responsibility. How the increasingly popular sense that there is nothing larger or more meaningful, nothing beyond, nothing worth worrying about in the future, how it all conspires to reinforce the lack of any internal check. That what is within will remain forever locked, hidden, guarded for all time against the prying of other minds and thus the meaning is truly what we make of it and nothing has value innate or given. That there is something not only of value and meaning lost in this series of conclusions, but actually something of hope or inspiration that also vanishes, that in the futility of being able to get away with anything, there will never be anything worth accomplishing but what is presented in the falsely trumped-up over-filtered court of celebrity or fame.

“I’m giving one star for the originality of the idea simply because I can’t tell what idea is being pursued.”

Creativity is not rewarded in this format, originality and risk-taking not the quest of those who like stories as spoon-fed reiterations of the home movies they watched when they were barely toddling. There is something to the straight narrative, to the predictable, to the time-honored tradition, but these hackneys must be viewed with the same cynicism which the overly happy might view a moment of depression. “Isn’t life sad enough already?” they asked. Isn’t life truly predictable enough, dull enough, that not everything needs a clear sign, a roadmap, a series of bright lines pointing us homeward and within? Is there no room for the thought-provoking, the mind-bending, the exploration of uncharted territory? Not in this format, not at this time. And with that, as with every setback, the exploration of crossroads and goals and work/payoff risk/reward ratios and re-examination of the eternally damaged self. That every voice of negativity becomes a chorus, not just for me but perhaps for most, and that chorus fills its lungs and exudes glass-breaking arias of doom from which there is no hope but to shield one’s eyes against the flying shards and reopen them in the newly windswept ruins of a transparent gallery.

Giggling undergraduates walk in, creep up to the seats, plant a computer down before them to begin to gawk and laugh and compare notes on those they find attractive. It is the diversion of the moment, the best use of the opportunities given, perhaps just a way to bond and blow off steam while they ooh and ahh and chuckle in nervous embarrassment of the exposure of their most secret, twilit thoughts and desires. Does it change the narrative if I tell you they are girls? That they are guys? That they are straight? That they are not? Does a gendered perception color your vantage of what might be okay or what is harmful, harmless? Does it strike as frivolity, as necessary development, as something insightful or inciteful?

“I’m not even sure that unlivability is a real word.”

It’s not, perhaps, but it’s a concept, and what point is there in articulating the absolute rules of a grammar used to strap us to mast of the lack of innovation? The language itself can be a form of oppression among those unwilling to use it to elicit thought. A quest, perhaps, for the best paint-by-numbers regurgitation, a memory contest, a lesson taught in the old traditional style of read, listen, repeat. Dynamism as the enemy. Liveliness danced into the distance. The specter of spontaneity, surprise, unexpected revelation to be held at bay with so much garlic, crossed fingers, and gnashing of frothy teeth.

But this is only half of the story, maybe even less so. There was another whole perspective, one ready to advance the work, one ready to join with friends and holdouts and the lingering supporters in the belief that human creativity can expand beyond what has already been established. “This is a strong, original concept and piece. The editing is good. There are no obvious errors. I enjoyed reading it and am curious what the next chapter would bring in terms of connecting these images. Great work!” And the inevitable disappointment of that reviewer that there is nothing more to read, almost rising to match my own sadness of same, offering a breath of acknowledgment and hope in the face of capricious dismissal. And the inevitable wrestling match to follow, just spoken of in other contexts, the voice of shelves and counterspeech rising boldly against the droning narrative of worthless rejection and, worse, callous indifference and change of heart.

The train traverses the looping rain-dripped bridge in the distance, one of stone or concrete pillars dipping soggy feet in the duck-splattered water as it tours past the campus. There are countless people aboard, each of them contemplating their own mostly post-work discombobulation as they roll toward New York City in search of food and rest and the promise of waking on a Friday with a little more hope than this morning. And it is easy to contemplate these minds untouched and feel the abyssal futility of despair, the distance they each might be asked to climb from the mundane tradition of their lives in order to find something deeper, more valuable, a more lasting way to be the part of the change I wish to see in the world. And yet there is also their underlying humanity to consider, the adaptability of our species that turns each tragedy into triumph, each disaster into rebirth, each catastrophe into some sort of redemptive glimpse at the power of progression. That each person thereon, ensconced in seats in the fading light and perhaps their own fading consciousness, is nonetheless thinking, breathing, capable of greatness. That their mere movement across mile of repetitive track signifies a greater capability of movement across a mental landscape if only they were so prompted, so inclined, so awoken.

The birds come in, unseen in their approach, suddenly gathering to swoop to floaty rest on the half-land marsh of the water’s-edge trees. They will feed, commune, flap and settle, and eventually be scared by something, take to the air, and leave.

We are no better than the birds. And they are no better than us. Each living being seeks connection and comfort, meaning and sustenance. This place can fulfill us all, if only we care to let it. But to do so, we must all believe that such a thing is possible. It is obvious and innate before us, but we have to know how to look. You are, at this moment, walking in a metaphor. But the metaphor, however fake it may ultimately be, is more serious than anything else. It is a painted shadow of the world that carries more weight than all the rock beneath us.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Two mornings ago, I awoke from a dream in which I’d been debating competitively and before an interventionist judge. At 7 minutes into an 8:30 speech, he told me “That’s seven minutes,” stopped flowing, and started flowing the remaining on-case arguments across. I continued to speak but got flustered, lost my train of thought, and, feeling derailed, sat down. He then started coaching the following speaker (the MO) through his speech. At a certain point of over-fond encouragement, I stood up, ripped off my sunglasses (because who doesn’t wear sunglasses while observing MOC’s?), threw them down to break on the floor, yelled “This round is under protest!”, and stormed toward the tab room. Wherein I lodged a formal complaint with a highly ironic person who happened to be running tab at that tournament.

This morning, I awoke from a dream in which I had to save a drowning child of indeterminate age (he was about six years old when standing next to his mother, but an infant once he hit the water) from murky algae in the waters beneath the enormous bridge that spans from Astoria, Oregon to the southwestern tip of Washington. The three of us were about to cross said bridge on foot, a recurring theme I have in dreams in the last couple years for no particularly good reason I can discern. Then the kid took a dive and the mother looked at me helplessly and I immersed myself in the muck through which I cannot swim in real life to fish the younger and younger child out and induce him to cough up the briny sea-river water he’d ingested.

I submit these vivid awakenings without much comment or interpretation – it mostly eludes me anyway, except to note that debate is on the brain in a way it’s rarely been at any time save perhaps my 50-tournament streak from 2000-2002. Even the drowning baby can probably be tied to debate discussions about when its morally compulsive to save such people. I’ve been meaning to compose a post for a while that’s as much excuse as interesting, about how much of the rest of my life is on hold as I sort out what an official and increasing commitment to debate looks like and how the rest of my existence sort of shifts around that weight. It’s almost like the organ-shifting that occurs during a pregnancy – how previously important functions like waste filtration and breathing take a slight back seat to incubating a living, breathing team. Maybe the metaphor doesn’t wash, but given the late impact on my health and other uses of time, it’s apt enough. And I’m fine with it – having to balance things against life as a professional debate coach is sort of the benchmark for “good problems to have”.

It’s sort of amusing to reflect on the New Year’s Resolutions I came up with just before 2011 in an epiphanic shower that I couldn’t wait to write about and how few of those seem relevant now. Constantly re-promised vows to pay more attention to this site and write more quizzes, of which a bit of work has been done but with seemingly less relevance and vigor. It’ll happen if it happens, I now must admit. The commitment to find a new city to live in, now indefinitely on hold. Even the devotion to the fourth novel, stalled out of the gate at a handful of pages after the negotiations and then formation of my new existence. And how it all folds together into a life so unplanned and unfathomed, stapled and duct-taped together but still managing to hold water somehow, as friends all around observe how impossible it is that Storey Clayton is committed to a life in New Jersey, alone.

Today we take the seven-plus-hour tour down to William & Mary, a school I don’t think I’ve been to since I was a patriotic seven-year-old freshly moved to Washington DC and absorbing all the information about the colonial days I possibly could. My parents bought me a green-and-gold sweatshirt of the school, my first-ever college paraphernalia, a reaction to my adoration for the most beautiful campus I could’ve comprehended, and I spent the next few years telling everyone that this would be my college of choice when the time came. Only a massive devotion to urban campuses took W&M off the list. Now, I return.

Once you get to this age, your whole life is spent in some sort of reflection.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Part of the problem with a worldview devoted to science and the belief that everything is completely random and coincidental is that it can blind us to the pattern-seeking wisdom innate to our species. Thus people can see events transpire that, in combination, send a clear message and patently refuse to acknowledge the message under the guise of their faith in a random universe. Setting aside the inconsistency of a “random universe” having ordered and explicable laws which these people seek to define, refine, and demonstrate the consistency of, it’s just not a good use of the human brain to assume there’s nothing to be gleaned from stringing patterns together and trying to discern a communication. We are pattern-seekers for a reason and that reason is probably not to help keep us from surviving.

The pattern clearly being expressed of late is that lousy methods of power-generation are going to kill us. No, really, they are. And probably a good bit faster than the relatively glacial pace of the alleged global warming/climate change/neo ice-age/buy fluorescent bulbs movement. I’ve long considered the above to be sort of a noble lie, a bit of a fudging of things in order to get us to move away from patterns of global organization and behavior that are clearly problematic for other reasons. Basically, if Al Gore’s theology is the only reason you’re going to cut down on your waste and lobby for better energy sources, it’s better than not taking those steps at all. Except, you know, when you believe that individuals instead of corporations move the bar on these things, or when you believe that buying new things to replace old functional things is somehow the solution. But hey.

Getting back to the point. Oil will kill us. Nuclear power will kill us. Coal will kill us. Not slowly, not over time, but quickly and fiercely and with the power of a dark, choking asphyxiation. And you can sit there and say “Gee, isn’t it funny that we went through a massive phase where coal-mining cave-ins were the biggest news story on the planet, and that was almost immediately followed by a massive phase where the biggest, most devastating oil spill was the biggest news story on the planet, and that was almost immediately followed by the emerging reality of sequential nuclear meltdowns triggered by a highly predictable and common event being the biggest news story on the planet – wow that must be random.” You can say that to yourself if you want to. But if you do, with that conclusion, then, respectfully, you are an idiot. And you should think about what is making you an idiot and how you can fix that.

I’ve posted a bit (mostly on Facebook, which is starting, even for me, to steal time away from this page) about Zeitgeist lately and the accompanying movement and the three movies and all that. And while I find their dismissiveness about deeper meaning and accompanying faith in science to be in line with what I criticize above, I do at least value the movement’s general sense of urgency about the problems facing our planet and the obvious unacceptability of what so many people unthinkingly put up with on a daily basis. One of the most frustrating things about being alive on Earth at this stage of history is having to feel crazy all the time for finding the problems apparent in almost every aspect of human structures to be so obvious while everyone else thinks they’re more or less fine (or at least intractable). I’m not saying it would be easy to create Utopia tomorrow, but it does seem clear that major steps we could take in that direction are relatively simple and apparent. And they all just require that internal recognition of what’s distracting us and how to get away from it.

Of course, I can also see the extreme effectiveness of capitalism as a general system in distracting us from what’s important. Surely capitalism isn’t the only structure in place keeping us from realizing the potential we really have to improve our lot and our planet’s lot, but it’s by far the biggest and most effective at present. Discussion of creating actually sustainable forms of power that lack the ability to go awry and destroy ecosystems or small swaths of civilization (or perhaps the entire planet’s ecosystem and civilization) is waved down by the shrugging declaration that the market will somehow solve for calamity, that the invisible hand is smart enough to anticipate short- and long-term consequences that don’t involve money. It’s relatively obvious to the thoughtful that corporations will not start investing with any seriousness in sustainable forms of energy until unsustainable ones have become unprofitable. And it should be relatively obvious now that the risks associated with those more traditional forms of energy are overriding any profit gained from their use. Unfortunately, the profit motive has no slot for accounting for human welfare.

When a government is found to be oppressive, people are lauded and cheered for rebelling against that system. Why not with an economic mode of oppression as well? Here is a clear and stark demonstration of the fact that corporations, capitalism, and the system that keeps them in place as the dominant ways of conducting human affairs are going to kill us. Quickly and painfully. They will kill our animals, they will kill our people, they will kill our way of life. You know, all those things terrorists are allegedly about to do because they “hate” us. Except that capitalists are indifferent to such things, something that can prove far more devastating than hate. Hate at least acknowledges the need for value structures, emotions, prioritization of values. Indifference is lethal, is swift in its disregard. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. I fear capitalists far more than terrorists. The capitalists are actually killing us in high volume numbers, and with far less self-awareness.

So what’s the prescription? What’s the answer to watching every form of popular energy generation go haywire and cause increasing levels of disaster? What’s the answer to watching economic riots generate massive instability and upheaval that also offers the opportunity for change? It’s to embrace the change, to push it further, to take advantage of the power of examination that comes from things being difficult, to start advocating stringently and ardently for an end to the status quo. For something, anything, to replace the currently accepted standards of resource distribution and the currently accepted resources themselves. For the process by which we change these things and which we ultimately decide on to account for things like human meaning and the importance of human values and lives, not merely faith in that system itself. Devoted faith in any system, be it the scientific method, the invisible hand, the concept of randomness, or even the concept of democracy, can blind us to the flaws and failings of such systems. And as we are seeing all over the world, this yields disastrous consequences.

I pray for the people of Japan, just as I did for those on the Gulf Coast and those trapped in mines and will continue to for all the victims of our idiocy. It is not kind that this world requires death as the only antidote to stupidity, that until people start keeling over in large numbers, no one pays attention. It is perhaps the natural consequence of an overpopulated planet in a rudimentary stage of development. It will not always need to be so. But I do hope that these people and those like them can be spared to the greatest extent possible, while we still manage to learn from their suffering.

Which reminds me, before I close, about one of the last major earthquakes in Japan and what hypocrisy and myopia that one reminded me of. Since nothing really became of this poem I wrote in 1995, I might as well attach it here as another addendum about the nature of humanity and how the answers should be clear, or at least clearer. This was written on January 21, 1995, four days after the major Kobe earthquake of that year, amidst Japan initially refusing aid from the West and getting massive criticism for this decision.

SHAKEN EARTH
by Storey Clayton

but all Tied to the World.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

I don’t know whether I find it more remarkable that I haven’t been to the Brandeis campus in nearly four years already or that I haven’t posted here in over a week. Both of them strike in the way of sudden jolts punctuated by the morbid dread of rising tides. The nature of time and its passing being capable of swallowing whole swaths of time whole and rendering an empty landscape in its wake. The cold sinking fear that one could awaken at a certain molded age unaware of how the last few epochs even transpired.

It is a good problem to have, frankly, that I have been busy enough in the last few days to not notice minutes in their flight. Compared to the endless drone of ticking seconds in agonizingly steady progression of the prior few months, a session of too-full overwhelm is precisely what everyone was prescribing. And yet filling that prescription and cashing that check has prompted quick unanticipated concerns about how much time was endured in limbo and whether sufficient long-term decisions were made there. Uncertainty is not the favored state of most beings, but I am not most beings, by definition, nor do I share much with them. In the freedom/security balance, I have always been for not only closing Gitmo, but also opening all borders. I mean this in equal measures to be about my own life and everyone else’s.

It has been a good month, the first of a new age, and I mean that in a relatively unqualified stance. It has been a great month, considering, but even a good month on its own standalone merits. Any of the recently coined measures of quality of life, the leading emotional indicators of the current existence and stance thereon, are setting record highs and aiming for new barriers ahead of any prior sketched schedule. Time is not to be thanked for any of this, of course, but circumstances, though a skeptic could surely argue that one creates the other. Time in a vaccuum, though, I will always argue, does nothing without concrete tangible changes therein. And a vaccuum is where time seems to have been going, both micro and macro.

So I relish the return to alma mater, to a drive even that I perfected with love and deftness over the course of consecutive weekends. To replace the hat I gained in 2007 on last visit and lost somewhere along the way, along the journey from a literal picture of distilled happiness to a newly wandered path with destinations unknown and even less predictable. To sit in an unpredictable living room among old cohorts of this very campus and shake one’s head in wonder at the luge-like course of echoing time, of the dictates and mandates of sequential decisions that in narrow order make sense but sum to unheralded madness. How condemnatory I am of others in such downhill flight, yet how I must shrug and smile and stick my tongue out at its reflection in my own uncontrolled trajectory. How I know the difference to be a certain moral check (perhaps this is my sled, or my sled’s possession of a rudder), but this is more to mitigate the slopes and angles and not erase them entirely. Is it sufficient to enjoy the ride and the howl of the wind of relativity in one’s hurtling escape from the mountaintop? Or should the aim be to find time to reflect and direct while amidst a breakneck decline?

I am peeking through the helmet now, just briefly, before tucking and driving into the next hairpin turn. The exhilaration of having never seen this course, never practiced this run, is both what makes the effort irreplaceable and terrifying. There are no previews, no redos, no maps or graphs. There is something to be said for milisecond decisions replacing measured observation of the same blind corner, though. Ice is ice and tunnels are tunnels and there are only so many ways a course can turn or bend or tilt. In the end, the most we can do is steer our damndest and pray that the earth will stay flat, the supports stable, and that the bottom of the course is still above water.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.