push/pull

the semester is nearly over, and by the time December rolls around, i'm usually at my wit's end from all late nights and deadlines and juggling. this year is different, though. i'm taking only one class (mon cours de français) and rather than writing until 2am five nights a week, i find myself in the enviable position of putting in six and eight-hour days on my thesis.

in spite of this, i'm starting to feel the familiar push/pull of ease and anticipation, with my natural proclivity towards excess and productivity finds itself pitted against the holidays' unique ability to bring out all manner of vices. while best known as a time of gluttony, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day also inspires an impressive amount of sloth, which happens to be among my favorite of the Seven Deadly. it seems that nothing much happens during these five weeks, and the promise of easy days and late mornings whispers to me in the night. and yet...

i feel a gnawing in my gut, a gnashing of the teeth, a gnosis of the coming solstice and the persistent awareness that the gnarled tree of knowledge is ever wakeful:

the Joshua tree was named by Mormons

oftentimes we speak of balance as if it was a fixed thing, an object, or something to be obtained. in fact, however, it is exactly the opposite.

(an experiment:
close your eyes and
stand on one foot.
what do you notice?)

as this simple exercise demonstrates, balance is always changing, always shifting, always unstable. this is one of my favorite things about balance because it speaks to the underlying, impermanent nature of all things. Marx and Hegel would call this a dialectic, Lao-Tzu would call this yin and yang, the Tantrists would call this the dance of Shiva and Shakti:

i call these things 'potato, potato'

the very activity that promotes balance one day may be the thing that causes us to fall the next, and events that blindside us might end up being the experiences that ultimately allow us to stand tall. you can try to control it, or figure it out, or deny it; but, as a half-Canadian friend of mine is apt to say, it's usually best just to:

on time, as usual

yesterday was spent running from one engagement to the next: haircuts and wedding planning and ice cream and Christmas tree decorations hung by a room full of heathens and non-believers. there were cookies and chips and homemade deserts and somehow i even managed to watch a forty-five minutes worth of football. it seems that the holiday festivities have descended upon us, and by the time of our third rendezvous i found myself bypassing the birthday cake and opting instead for a bottle of water.

one cannot live on sugar and cheese alone, but this is beside the point.

the point is that a (soon-to-be) former student of mine wrote a poem about time, and it struck a chord with me, probably because the ticking of clocks seems to be my central preoccupation of late. i have a thesis clock and a graduation clock and a wedding clock and a work clock and damn near any other type of clock you can imagine.

in fact, sometimes my yin even lets me listen to her biological clock, but
this is also beside the point.

the point is that my (soon-to-be) former student's poem got me to thinking about time in a different way and brought to mind interesting paradox:

time is eternal... yet always passing.

now, i know this isn't true in an Einsteinian sense. time does have a beginning and an end, which correspond respectively to the Big Bang and (if it happens) the Big Crunch. that being said, however, one still has to marvel at the exceptional life span of this scam we call time. this begs the question: why does time last so long?

the answer rests, paradoxically, in its very impermanence; and i don't think it's too far fetched to attribute time's longevity to its willingness to die. (the word abhaya comes to mind.) i wonder what it would be like if we could apply this same sort of non-attachment to our own lives.

what if we welcomed the passing of each moment...

as readily as its arrival?

what if we could really comprehend what it means...

to live each moment like it was our last?

what if we realized that this moment, and every moment yet to come...

already is?

would the ticking of clocks...

sound any different?

vicarious, trans-continental manifeston

my yin and i spent the bulk of yesterday morning procuring wedding supplies, taking advantage of the sales intended for the holidays and artfully dodging from aisle to aisle without becoming ensnared by all the things we didn't need. all in all we were successful, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i spoke with Saylor last night, who has had an exceptionally trying year. romance, finance, death, and educational woes have all come his way since January, and at times it seemed as if the San Francisco Bay itself were scheming against him. during our conversation, though, i had a sudden revelation that 2011 would be a red letter year for him. i have no basis for this conclusion, but felt it as certainly as an autumn wind on the nape of the neck, that gentle whisper of the coming winter that tells you it's time to pull the scarves out of the closet and walk a little more briskly from door to destination.

was it a premonition or hoax? what are the subtle clues were given each moment that allow us to differentiate between projection and insight? why do we engage distractions that block us from knowing?

i see it in myself sometimes, like my present predilection for the Heroes. there's a part of me that wants to justify this behavior by attributing it to the show's premise, which legitimately speaks to my childhood fascination and love of comic books.

clearly, i arrived a little late to the party

looking a little deeper, however, i suspect that this fondness of past times, of past things,of past memories is itself a distraction. it cannot help but move me away from the moment at hand, and in this separation i search for more reasons to explain away this distance.

Toutes les justifications sont des distractions.

but last night on the phone with Saylor there were no distractions, only the quiet certainty that the coming year (a prime number) will be more easeful than the last. that sort of clarity is the greatest gift any of us can receive, and it's easy to forget during this time of year, when the magnitude and range of diversions are unending. my wish for all my friends and family and strangers and colleagues is that they experience the peace already dwelling inside them.

photo and artwork by my yin

on our national days of gluttony

two days ago, i was talking to my class about my fascination with this time of year and the absurd levels of consumption it inspires. it was related, but only tangentially, to the concept of owning one's emotions, and i managed to bring the conversation back around to the topic at hand before i went too far astray. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i enjoy going far astray, and seeing as how Thanksgiving and Black Friday are our national days of gluttony, it seems the perfect occasion to channel my inner mystical Marxist. so here goes...

on the surface Thanksgiving begins like any other Thursday. grocery stores are open, people rise at a reasonable hour, coffee is made. but something is amiss. there's a feeling of anticipation in the air. people don't eat quite as much breakfast as usual, and the television is full of strange images: giant cartoon birds and the saccharin jolliness of news anchors. balloons roam the streets of Manhattan, and NPR abandons the news for recipes:

i happen to like The Splendid Table, but this is beside the point

the point is that the day degrades into an orgy of sugar, gravy, and bird carcasses. giant meals are prepared all across the nation to the sounds of the NFL blaring from the living room – nothing works up an appetite like violence.

we eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat...

we overdose on this chemical:

l-tryptophan

and then wonder why we feel so lousy the next day.

in fact, we feel so lousy, so spent, so empty, so wanting, that we wake up at 4am and go to a giant concrete box filled with smaller cardboard boxes and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy and buy...

we stand in line for hours for this privilege; why would anyone put themselves through this?

fear

we're afraid of not having enough, afraid of not getting there in time, afraid they will be sold out of that 32-inch flat screen LCD television that i absolutely need because my 32-inch flat screen plasma television isn't good enough any more. who doesn't need to buy a new television at 4:30 in the morning?

fear is processed by the amygdala. it's the small, almond-shaped part of the brain that we share with reptiles, and the fascinating thing about the amygdala is that it short-circuits our cognitive abilities. it's serves an evolutionary function because it allows us to react when our lives are in danger, but this is not the place from which we want to make decisions.

and yet, we live in a consumer culture that does just that. the advertisers and retailers activate this fear and manipulate it. why do they open at 4am? could they not give people the same deal at 7am? or 9am? or whatever time it is they open? there is a finite, known amount of time between now and Christmas.

there is an Operation Ivy song that explains these things:

"buy and consume and want and need"

what would it be like, just for one day, if we all chose not to act on this fear and contemplated instead its origin? what if we spent this day in meditation, what if we spent this time in reflection, what if we spent this day spending everything except money?

thankfully, one might say

this time last year, i was on the top floor of a condo building in Highland Beach, surrounded by chatzkis and feeling the gravitational pull of an actor who makes $20 million per film. but this is beside the point.

i
m
age
miss
in
g

the point is that this year (thankfully, one might say) i attended a much lower key holiday soirée, at my yin's cousin's home in Homestead. for those unfamiliar with South Florida, Homestead is approximately one exit north of Cuba and bore the brunt of 1992's devastating Hurricane Andrew. people still talk about it here, but (thankfully, one might say) not my yin's cousin, whose preferred manner of discourse is best described as diatribe.

( what do you want for Christmas?
alliteration and repetition, please.)

this cousin held court in his living room, and (thankfully, one might say) launched into an hours-long discussion of Israel, compulsory military service, India's backwards religiosity, North Korea, South Korea, self-defense, chanting, nuclear weapons, Afghanistan, reverse-osmosis water filtration, genetics, education, drumming, and Kosherite law.

all of this transpired (thankfully, one might say) over a four course meal that included – at an absolute minimum – two of the most phenomenal dishes i've ever eaten in my life. my yin's cousin's wife is an exceptional chef (among myriad other skills) and it just so happens that the third Thursday in November brings her culinary talents to the fore.

the first dish was these bite-sized macaroni and cheese, which were prepared in a mini-muffin tin. this method maximizes the surface area to volume ratio, which in turn maximizes the crunchy crusty deliciousness that is the hallmark of any satisfying mac and cheese experience.

the second dish was a sweet potato/marshmallow desert-type thingee, except that my yin's cousin's wife makes her own marshmallows from scratch. i didn't even know such things were possible, and had always assumed they grew on some sort of freaky horse bone tree. these had no gelatin whatsoever though, and were perfectly charred on top like the campfire marshmallows of my youth.

then a game of Rock Band commenced (thankfully one might say) with me on drums, my yin on vocals, my yin-in-law on bass, and my yin's cousin's wife's daughter on the guitar. this is one of the songs we jammed out:

the night ended with cupcakes (thankfully, one might say) but not just any cupcakes. these were be-glittered, white chocolate, pre-wedding pieces of heaven topped with homemade icing. some of them had these edible pictures of my yin and i on them, and this really freaked me out. in a panic, i grabbed one of them and yelled at the top of my lungs, "take that ego!" as i chomped into it and devoured my own tiny head.

if only it were that easy...

eulogy for a band, 12 years later

most of us, most of the time, think of memory as a possession. it is something we keep, something we treasure, something we hold on to. we string them together one after another, and eventually the stack grows large enough for us to say, in all sincerity, "this is what my life was like..."

(parentheses are important)

this is what my li(f)e was like...

but days have memory, too, and more often than not, we find ourselves capitulating to the arrow of time. this led me to wonder this morning: how does this day remember me? in an old journal i found a fragment of the answer:

26 October 1998 - 14 August 1999

this is what i wrote, twelve years ago today:

Of all the things I’ve ever missed and all the things that never were this one meant the most. In love in lust in hate in rhyme; out of tempo and gas and patience and time. Two fell in love, one fell out more scars than I care to count; searching for a singer that would never appear. Selling short in lieu of out, working hard to make it work— I’d like to blame it one the name. Half of us couldn’t play, some still can’t I used to think we didn’t care enough now I think we loved it too much. We didn’t need a singer, we had five; we didn’t need to become what we already were. I guess nobody can play forever.

[lapse]

except this isn't what's on the paper. what i actually wrote was even less sophisticated (which is to say more honest) than this. the band i had started my first year of college was breaking up; the relationship i had started my first year of college was breaking up. then, as now, the two had become so intertwined as to be virtually indistinguishable:

author and singer

could the picture be any clearer? it was taken at a small outdoor arena in Winston-Salem, and out of all the dozens and dozens of shows we played, it is the only photograph i have. one yawn, one stare, two metal bracelets and a watch that refuses to stop pushing us into the future.

can this image do justice to the words that followed?

can the words do justice to the tears that came next?

can the tears do justice to what this image means to me now?

that's the difference between my memory of the day, and the day's memory of me. in our search for meaning, we can edit what happened and reconstruct circumstances and switch from 1st to 2nd person accounts of how these events impact the nature of our being. we can make sense of the mistakes we made and understand our actions in the wake of all that followed.

but the day does none of this to us.

the day's memory of me is fixed, and there is a one page eulogy, written on 23 November 1998, to a band i loved dearly. on the next page there is an apologetic poem written to the woman in the picture. i can read the words, i can smell the paper...

getting songs stuck in your head on a Sunday afternoon (time is a scam)

we had a musical review at the theatre where i work over the weekend, and between all the singing and dancing and quick changes and repetition, i managed to get songs stuck in my head running the gamut from George Gershwin to the Four Tops:



it's true, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i talked with my dad last night, and somehow the conversation worked itself around to time – or, more precisely, our perception of its passing. our question was simple enough, and one i've asked myself innumerable times before:

why does time pass more quickly the older we get?

possible answers, with contexts:

1) in high school, my roommate and i tackled this very question. he believed that it was simply a matter of mathematics. to a five-year-old, one year represents 20% of his entire existence, whereas to twenty-year-old this is only 5% of her existence. by the time one reaches fifty, a year is a measly 2% of one's time on the planet, and this trend continues until the moment of death, at which point the neatly algebraic construction of this theory presumably breaks down. perhaps unsurprisingly, this old roommate is currently finishing his doctorate at MIT.

2) last night, my dad suggested that the novelty of youth is responsible for this phenomenon. he said that, as a child, everything is new and exciting, which leads him or her to tremendous anticipation of future events. as one gains life experience this anticipation is tempered somewhat because we become familiar with the baffling complexities of life and establish routines that shelter us from the onslaught of newness. i had never even considered this idea before, and thoughts like these are one of the reasons i enjoy talking to my dad so much.


possible conclusions, without context:

every clock i know is a degenerate liar. time cannot be measured in hours or minutes or days or weeks, and these arbitrary units are best understood as a side effect of the mind's fracturing of this singular moment into past, present, and future.

in some ways, this evokes the über-gods of India, with Brahma (the creator) indicating past-ness, Vishnu (the sustainer) giving rise to the present, and Shiva (the destroyer) representing the future. for the Occidental-minded reader, these same ideas could be attributed respectively to the Father, the Holy Ghost, and to the Son as Messiah.

regardless of which trinity one prefers, the fact remains:

Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"

time is a scam.

audio/visual (Paul Westerberg, meet Wong Kar-wai)

audio

this morning i woke up, meditated and started coffee – nothing unusual. i turned on my computer, clicked on a playlist and this song came on:



ever have one of those moments when something sounds so fresh and new that it seems as though you're hearing for the first time? this was one of those: "Pretty girl keep growin' up, playing make-up, wearing guitar... Growing old in bar, you grow old in a bar."

i had never picked up on the inverted meaning in the first half of this line;
i had always been too lost in the melody. how many things like this do we miss every day? how many times do we let familiarity or routine or the fragile veneer of drudgery to obscure our vision? how many times do we only hear what we want to, or only want what we hear?

Paul Westerberg had some things to say about this, too: "And if I don't see you, in a long, long while... I'll try to find you, left of the dial."

visual

a friend and colleague sent me a link to a website yesterday, which had a short blurb about a film he introduced me to. it was a nice gesture, one of those incidents that confirms my suspicion regarding the interconnectedness of all beings. more over, and perhaps coincidentally, it was around this time last year that my friend and colleague screened Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood For Love for the film class i was assisting:

it inspired me to ask these types of questions:

what
is smoke?
what is longing?
what is a shadow?
what is a mirror?
what is a hallway?
what is a reflection?
what is a smoky reflection?
what is a smoky reflection in a mirror?
what is a smoky reflection in a mirror down a hallway?
what is a smoky reflection casting shadows in a mirror down a hallway?
what is a smoky reflection casting long shadows in a mirror down a hallway?

what resulted was this particular piece of recycled poesy, my favorite version of which lives here. given time constrains, i will offer it in its original form:


leitmotifs in celebration of Sino-cinema

dreaming of hallways in rack focus
i gazed through

(the blinds of memory, half-drawn)

a patchwork predicated on

the
present's
projection
of the presence
of past

predilection and perception.

beginning

pulling time into focus

(slippage)

(dilation)

pulling time into focus

end

repetition and mirrors,
hallways and telephones,
the rehearsed departure of
wedding bands and restraint,

(not my own)

curtains and mirrors,
light bulbs and longing,
the textured punctuality of
clocks casting shadows down the hall.

let the Season begin!

one of the weird things about south Florida is that, instead of four climatological seasons, it has a single demographic Season. this time of year the roads begin to fill with blue-haired women, Canadians, and what i imagine to be rejects from the cast of Jersey Shore.

this is not one of the blue-haired women.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that Season also ostensibly marks the start of my work year, as geriatrics and snow birds slowly fill the theatres and performance venues in every beach town from Vero to Dania. as a result i'm working most every night for the next two weeks, and the next two weeks, and the week after that, and this doesn't bode well either for the health of this blog or the health of my mind.

only one of these is beside the point.

in spite of this i plan to push onward and take advantage of those little gaps of time that inevitably pop up between the chorus lines and Chinese acrobats and state college jazz bands making old jazz standards sound positively ancient. fortunately past (would-be) winters have been productive for me, and i hope to begin posting some older work, revisioned and reinterpreted, as time (and numerology) allow.

mea culpa in place, let the Season begin...

untitled (3 years + 1 day ago)

all butter, no

f

l i e

s

goji berries and tired

afraid of being

b
o r e
d

and awkward.

(i imagined:

"can i read it?"

she asked.

"no."

"why?"

"i'll read it to you when

i'm not in love with you."

2 years (minus) 2 days ago

i've not written in days, owing to a lack of time and unwillingness to get up any earlier. unfortunately 5am has become le temps de réveiller de rigeur, meditating before sunrise and then spending the rest of the day in a combination of teaching and/or writing my thesis. this typically continues until sundown or just beyond, and by the time 10 o'clock rolls around i can barely keep my eyes open. i drift off to sleep seeing the strangest things, like last night's dream of a non-existent African-American Studies department at my university.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i've turned to the old reliable standby of the over-worked and under-slept: the cop-out. explaining our actions into (or out of) meaning is one of the mind's most well-practiced functions, and it never ceases to amaze me how many ways there are to under/stand a given phenomenon.

man cannot live by excuses alone, however, and so i turn to that stalwart companion of the cop-out: repetition. so, given that my class starts in 16 minutes, and in anticipation of the 15 hour day ahead of me, i (re)present what was happening around this time last year, when my yin and i went to see this man play his guitar:

Conor Oberst, Nebraskan

resolve/crumble

introductions were made;

the backdrop: patch-top anarchist
chatter, comparing flashlights in the dark.

topics: androgyny, honky-tonk,
Omaha hipsters, dreams of David Bowie.

searching
for a label
to name
thi/e/s/e
thing/s.

it seams to remain,
the stitching removed.

despotic philanthropy

i saw my first Salvation Army bell ringer of the year yesterday, standing outside of one of the big box drugstores that inevitably sit directly across the street from one of those other big box drugstores. his arm flailed wildly, and i thought to myself: already?

my ire with these non-professional noise polluters stretches back to childhood, when my grandparents would take my cousin, brother and i to do our annual Christmas shopping in Kingsport, Tennessee. it was nothing more than an aging industrial town with a third rate mall, but to us it was like shopping on Fifth Avenue. our small town back in North Carolina didn't have toy stores or book stores or record stores or anything so grand as the Hallowed Consumption Kingsport Mall, and when we got old enough our grandparents would let us go off on our own. hijinks ensued.

the hijinks are beside the point.

the point is that my recollection of Kingsport is inseparable from those clanging bells. the sounds tormented me, coming and going, back and forth, fort and da.

(have you read your Freud lately?)

over the years of trips to Kingsport, i gradually developed a fantasy, a way to finally silence those bells, and to this date it is stands as one of the only times i have ever considered the acquisition of money a virtue. my plan was this:

first, obtain a vast fortune. next, approach a bell-ringer on his first day of work and offer $50,000 to the Salvation Army if he would refrain from the racket. the bell-ringer would have to maintain his post and could not explain why he was failing to fulfill his dharma. (the same rules would apply to female bell-ringers, only with the pronouns replaced.) at the end of the holiday season, i would write the check and drop it in the bucket.

seeing as how i've yet to amass a sufficient fortune, the plan has thus far remained purely hypothetical. it has given me time, however, to streamline and improve the plan. for example, my initial formulation would require me to loiter in front of malls and drugstores and goddess knows how many other miserable sites of consumption. doing so would likely drive me to the brink of suicide, but i now realize that i could just hire someone else to do the stalking.

likewise, my plan would require some research. i have no idea how much loose change gets dropped into those buckets, and my promise of money would have to be substantially greater to make it worth the shame to the Salvation Army. to address this shortcoming, i imagine i would need to embark upon some sort of burglary-by-proxy, not unlike that perpetrated by our 37th president:

a man after my own heart?

best of all, i've even come up with a name for this method of charity, despotic philanthropy, and i believe it could become the latest trend in the world of nonprofits. only time will tell...

4 years + 1 day ago today...

sunrise

i awoke in a motel room in St. Augustine before sunrise and ran to the beach. i had not seen the ocean in years, and at that moment nothing seemed more important. three weeks earlier i had experienced a vision of myself as a toddler, sitting on a bench looking out over the water.

morning

my father and i, both history buffs, visited the Spanish forts that overlooked the bay. walking around the ruins, i wondered how much blood had been shed, how many lives had been lost. i thought about the men who died in sight of the bay, the men who never touched the water.

midday

we stopped at Cape Canaveral and took a tour of the grounds. i was surprised by the amount of wildlife surrounding the launch pad, and fascinated by the sheer scale of the operation. i thought about the men and women who touched the sky, and the perspective that must come with experiencing one's own body as weightless, one's own planet as distant and small.

evening

i arrived in a strange town with everything i owned, or at least everything i wanted to own, in a single bag. it was not unlike my move to New York seven years earlier, except that the sturdy green canvas had been replaced with a flimsy blue linen. that night i purchased a college-ruled composition pad and a new pen. i had been using ballpoint for ten years at that point, and i decided it was time for a change.

night

to my knowledge i wrote nothing on November 9, 2006, and in retrospect i find it a beautiful coincidence that that day now exists as both a metaphorical and indexical limbo. the chain of signifiers was broken on that day; it exists between these journals:

__

and these pens:

__

there is nothing more important than the space connecting one moment of our material existence to the next. it is empty, yet full; present, yet absent.

the pens and journals and sentences left behind are merely the sedimentation of memory, artifacts of a past that (n)ever existed, monuments to the life that was. meaning does not come from words;

but from the silences between them.

3 days in Gainesville

day 1

my yin and i drove up to Gainesville on Friday morning so i could present at this conference at the University of Florida:

she had returned from India only two days earlier, and being a true trooper (a trueper?) she agreed to come with me in spite of her jet lag. our drive was uneventful, and we arrived in time for me to catch the final afternoon session.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that the keynote address was given that night by "mumblecore" director Andrew Bujalski. i was wholly unfamiliar with his work prior to his talk, and he spoke for about an hour or so before finally introducing his latest film Beeswax:

this film blew me away: 16mm, understated, and permeated with a wonderful tension of what lies ahead of us, just beyond our field of vision, on the other side of the morning. the characters themselves remain largely unknowable, not in the Brechtian sense of distantiation, but in the same manner as our everyday encounters. the film is a fascinating exploration of the forces that structure quotidian, and it begs the question:

how well do we really know what motivates the actions of those around us?

Bujalski spoke to this in his keynote, telling us that he like to keep his performers confused because real people rarely have the same clarity of intent and purpose as the images of people we see on the screen. this made sense to me, and i thought of a playwright friend of mine i had seen the week before. we were once in a seminar together, and she had written of Brecht and Godard. i wondered what she would think of Beeswax, or if it was any of mine.

day 2

i presented a paper on Chris Marker's Sans soleil on the second day of the conference:

my paper dealt with memory, which is unremarkable given its author, but i was caught off guard by the questions that came at the end of the presentation. i had prefaced my talk by referencing my interest in Vedic thought, and specifically mentioned smriti vritti, a thoughtform of the past that imposes itself upon the present.

a number of questions arose from this brief aside, which was intended as nothing more than window dressing for the paper proper. and yet, this was what spoke to people – this was what people wanted to know more about. it reminded me that one can never know the karma created of our words any more than we can know the reason why we speak them.

this is the sublime space of not knowing what comes next, when we speak from our hearts and rely upon the mind only to provide the words that others might comprehend.

but this, too, is beside the point.

the point is that i saw one of my best friends from high school that night, the one who introduced me to Nancy on a cold January night in 2000. we reminisced our various exploits in the company of two dogs with eight legs and three eyes between them. he apologized for that fateful introduction, and i told him there was no need, that she remains my most important teacher to this day.

day 3

the third day was more relaxed; everyone knew each other, and my own anxiety regarding my presentation was no longer corrupting my consciousness. the panels were excellent, and the midday keynote helped to wash away the bitter aftertaste of the one the night before. the man was humble, soft-spoken, and had the self-assuredness found so often in those who have less life in front of them than behind.

he spoke of stasis and silence, and their ability to communicate knowledge in a way impossible with words. he described a barrier as "that which can be crossed," and of all the speeches and presentations i head over the weekend, his was the only one that approached the realm of poetry:

but this, three, is beside the point.

the point is that my yin and i left after his lecture, and it was the perfect way to close out the weekend. we both had to teach early the following day, and on the way home we saw one final notable sight, something that made me wish i had my camera.

we stopped at a rest stop somewhere south of Orlando, and out of the corner of my eye i saw two Buddhist monks walking inside. the one on the right held a small white box in his hand, and i rushed ahead to see if my imagination had commandeered my visual cortex:

it didn't, and my mind flooded with questions, all of them an attempt to resolve the contradiction in front of me. why? how? but– maybe... there were a million broken utterances lurking in the central Florida night, but i decided to do nothing. as we were leaving i told my yin, "maybe i should have talked to him."

"don't worry," she responded. "you can always ask him next time."

h(om)coming

my yin returned from India yesterday, smelling like Rishikesh and carrying fresh croissants and pain au chocolat from her layover in Paris. (je suis très heureux.) she had been in transit for 24 hours, gone for 3 weeks, and suffice to say it was a magnificent homecoming.

this is precisely the point, but its magnitude and dimension are beyond my present time restrictions. so, for the purposes of narrative clarity, i will confine my ramblings to the following three topics: vertigo, lingering and memory.

topic 1: vertigo

the night my yin returned we sat in bed and looked at a picture of her standing with her arms spread wide, waist-deep in the waters of the Ganges:

i
m
age
miss
in
g

when i saw this picture i experienced the strangest vertigo, as if i couldn't reconcile the image of the divine being in the photograph with the sight of the divine being directly beside me, with the sensation of the divine being in my arms.

image, sight, sensation – all three were there yet not there, and i really don't have the words to describe it except to say it was disorientingly powerful, not unlike the film of the same name:

Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Carlotta, Madeleine... Carlotta.

topic 2: lingering

my yin told me about coming out of the Ganges, how she dried herself on the riverbank overwhelmed with emotions. gradually they subsided, and she found herself wanting to linger, to hold on to what she had just experienced a little longer:

i
m
age
miss
in
g

it occurred to me that's what this journal is – what every journal is – in some way. these words are an attempt to hold on to these moments in life, to make sense, to create a narrative, to deny the fact that yesterday's homecoming is gone.

every word i write is a memorial to the past.

topic 3: memory

i can't help but feel something has shifted, and it's more than my joy or excitement or contentment regarding my yin's return. knowledge is moving from head to heart, and i'm starting to (non)grasp that each moment is held together not only by memory, but also by the very living-ness of our being:

i
m
age
miss
in
g

there is no need to pontificate lugubriously on the nature of the soul or the socio-historical construction of our identity. there is no need to become too fixed on form or contradiction, or thisness and suchness, or even the unspeakable beauty of the void. notice instead how it feels just to breathe in this one moment:

unburdened by the suicide that is the past.

on the virtues of yesterday's polemic

yesterday, in celebration of the election, i wrote a brief polemic regarding the potential political efficacy of principled withdrawal form the electoral system. this is a touchy subject among my cohort (30-50 yr old, predominately college-educated, predominately white, predominantly 'liberal'); and, as i expected, my tirade provoked a number of comments on one of those pesky social-networking sites. it reminded me of two things:

1) why i rarely engage in political discussions outside of the confines of a classroom; and 2) how difficult it is to talk about structural political change without falling into either clichés that reflect and reinforce the status quo (on the part of my cohorts) or revolutionary rhetoric (on my part).

part of this dialogue was an extension of a conversation i've been having off and on with a lawyer friend in Atlanta for the past two years. we met at a Vice Presidential debate party in 2008, and while we agree on almost every detail of the economy, social justice issues, etc., we also share a fundamental ideological rift that might be described as the distance between my disillusionment (in the most unfortunate sense of the word) and his naiveté (in the most generous).

he is one of the few people i know who seems to not only read about contemporary political issues, but also attempts to integrate the ocean of numbers and opinions and statistics with some manner of historical awareness. this being the case, he brought a smile to my face yesterday when he used the word 'anarcho-syndicalist,' which i have heard only a handful of times since my History of Socialism class in the spring of 1997.

anarcho-syndicalism, interesting though it may be, is beside the point.

the point is that class stands out in my mind, partly due to introducing me to the Frankfurt School, partly for immersing me in the thought of the American Black Panther Party, and partly for the good-looking couple who sat near the back of the room.

she had blond dreadlocks, dressed like your typical nouveau-hippie burnout, and said little. he had medium-length dark brown hair, dressed like a gas station attendant, and said the word 'bourgeoisie' with more je ne sais quoi than anyone i had ever met before or since. for me this couple represented the pinnacle of fashionable revolutionary thought, and he would often argue with the professor and cite Mikhail Bakunin:

one of my biggest regrets from this time period (besides my half-hearted engagement with the texts) is that i didn't reach out to people like this more. i felt as if there was an invisible wall separating me from my classmates, and this manifested itself either in the form of petty, pretentious dismissiveness, or in the guise of Romantic ideation of others. this couple certainly fell into the latter category, and i never did so much as say a word to them outside of class.

nearly fifteen years have passed since then, and i wonder what happened to them. perhaps they grew reasonable. perhaps she cut off that beautiful dreadlocked mess atop her head. perhaps he traded in the mechanic's jacket for a suit jacket. perhaps they turned into good little liberals and have a Green house in the suburbs and vote every two years and drive a BMW because it handles well and do criminal defense work at $200/hour with a little pro bono on the side... but i hope not.

furthermore, i'm aware that this whole line of thought is simply more evidence of my ongoing Romantic ideation. be that as it may, the older i get, the more i realize that i've passed the age where those adolescent fantasies should have receded – and yet here they still are. i think that's what gets kicked up for me every time the election cycle runs around, when one can hardly walk down the street without hearing someone say: 'well, i don't really agree with _____ but at least s/he's better than _____.' for me, voting for 'the lesser of two evils' can be reframed in the following way:

i voted for evil today.

this, in turn, reminds me of last night's discussion at my weekly meditation group. the topic was the yamas and niyams, which serve as edicts regulating behavior in yogic philosophy. the first yama is non-violence (ahimsa), and it occurred to me last night that that's really what the issue of voting comes down to for me: faced with the two harmful options, the only ethical decision is to not choose.

the American democracy complex (on the political efficacy of not voting)

today is election day, and the media coverage surrounding the midterm elections has made even my beloved NPR virtually unlistenable for the past two weeks. my mailbox has been similarly assaulted, with a minimum of three fliers stuffed inside each day. i hear commentators commentating and analysts analyzing and pundits punditing about the importance of voting to our national identity, how this election means so much, blah blah blah.

for these reasons and more, i would like to put forth the following argument: true social change is not possible within the confines of the American democracy complex, and for this reason the only responsible political activity on the first Tuesday in November is to abstain from voting.

part 1: the American Democracy Complex

the myth of American democracy is well-entrenched; and, along with our beloved First Amendment, there is no more frequent rallying cry of this country's nationalism. we are taught that our democracy is what makes this country great, and it is the act of voting is what allows this to be "the greatest and freest nation in the world."

we are taught that the great injustices in this country (invariably occurring the past, never the present) are remedied by the ballot box, and that not voting is an everyday form of low treason, a repugnant abdication of our rights and privileges as citizens.

the reality, however, is that the progressive changes in this nation are rarely enacted by the legislative bodies in our nation. it is the appointed judiciary that provides the impetus to the elected officials, and so our Congress and state houses and White Houses are always playing a game of catch-up with the rulings handed down by the court.

a brief illustration , by decade, in the post-War era:

Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) - no, the deed cannot read 'whites only.'
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) - no, separate is not equal.
Miranda v. Arizona (1966) - yes, you do have the right to remain silent.
Roe v. Wade (1973) - yes, you do have the right to your uterus.
Texas v. Johnson (1989) - yes, you can burn that piece of cloth.
Romer v. Evans (1996) - yes, gay people have rights.
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) - no, we don't live in a post-racial society.

sadly, this year's big decision (Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission) seems to be going in the other direction; and, unarguably, it would just as easy to compile a list of rulings that are reactionary in nature. likewise, appointments to the courts are made by elected officials, but history has shown us that justices tend to outlive (for better or worse) the limited terms of the people who appoint them.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that elected officials are beholden to the money that drives their campaigns on the one hand, and the (supposed) wisdom of the populace on the other. bear in mind, this is the same populace that consistently passes ballot initiatives that curtail the rights of other human beings (see gay marriage, immigration law, etc.).

while i'm not calling for a return to benevolent despotism, it does seem rather naïve to place such tremendous faith in the ability of people to choose in a system that is already corrupted beyond redemption, a system that – from its very inception – has inscribed racism, sexism, homophobia, and greed in its every structure, system, and institution. these tumors constitute our nation's marrow, and it is foolish to believe that a nice strong exfoliation can reach down inside the bones. the question then, asked by V.I. Lenin over a hundred years ago is:

Part 2: 'What Is To Be Done?'

the conscious act of non-voting can be a tool of political action, not merely an indicator of apathy or ignorance. when citizens vote, the individual elected is merely a side effect, a symbolic gesture that provides him or her with the false sense of having "made a difference." if the 2000 presidential election taught us anything (and i don't think it did), it was that every vote doesn't count. the real meaning lie elsewhere.

by voting at all, citizens implicitly say:

yes, this system works.
(Chicago 1968)

this is a valid model for governance.
(Los Angeles 1992)

this nation protects the equality of all citizens.
(Seattle 1999)

i take issue with these assumptions, but history has also taught us that the violence shown in the images above (in spite of their revolutionary romance) is equally ineffective: the riots in Chicago contributed to the backlash that ushered Nixon into office; the burning of Los Angeles only destroyed the communities of the rioters; and globalization has only accelerated since the WTO protests in Seattle.

the problem is that a complete upheaval of the existing regime (representative democracy, the two-party system, our beloved Constitution) is necessary, but it cannot be achieved through working within the system – but how is one to balance the need for political change with the moral imperative of non-violence?

ironically Ayn Rand, acolyte and evangelist of Capital, put forth one potential model in her novel Atlas Shrugged. while not her best work (John Galt is certainly no Howard Roark), it nonetheless presents an effective strategy for bringing down the system: principled withdrawal.

for her, this meant the titans of industry removing themselves from the economic engine of the nation; but in this context, it means ordinary citizens, 'good' citizens who vote every two years, citizens who want to see a more just and verdant nation – these are precisely the people who should exercise their right not to vote.

if enough people withdraw from the process, the true motives and desires that drive this society will be laid to bear: greed, exploitation, and the unequal distribution of rights. these things remain hidden only because people choose not to see them, and civic pride is a subtly destructive vice because it cloaks the fact that our participation in the political system is the very means by which our subjugation is ensured.

what would happen if we withdrew our consent? what would happen if people acted in accordance with their oft-repeated maxim:

"you can't trust a politician"

if this is true, then why do we vote? why perpetuate the dishonesty known as American democracy?

these are preliminary ramblings, and my own political consciousness is admittedly colored by a certain fatalism. it is not nihilism or anarchism or revolutionary socialism, however. i have already been through my own flirtation and disillusionment with the ideologies of Smith and Jefferson and Nietzsche and Bakunin and Marx and Lenin and who knows how many others.

no, my view on these things is coming from a place of sobriety, acceptance, and detachment. i know that this system will eventually devour itself; i know that another system will rise to take its place. my hope is merely that people might pause to consider the next time they close the curtain to the ballot booth: do i really believe in this?

les faux odeurs de l'automne

Combien des heures devant un clavier?
Combien d'acts contre nature constituent notre journée?

Combien de fois ne nous sentons
les feuilles en décomposition
mélanger avec les aiguilles de pin?

Je me souviens cet été quand la distance
entre le point a et le point b mesurait en l'hauteur.

Pas de heures.
Pas de minutes.
Pas de calendriers.

Je bien m'entends avec les montagnes
et regrette l'absence de les odeurs de l'automne.