ocean swallows sun
forgotten warmth gives rise to
fog upon freeways
awake and alone
body satisfied, heart dazed
soul surrounding smile.
another promise made,
words drip needlessly from lips
wasting kisses’ breath
who is it you seek
when last nights’ countenance falls,
when new sun rises?
what color will you paint today?
or will you instead tomorrow’s lines pen?
I apologise in advance for the negative tone of this post. But I’m more than a little teed off.
February 7, 2008
Hello Mitten,
I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for getting your annoying jack ass self out of the public eye. It was quite a courteous gesture given I am a member of what appears to be a very large, growing, bipartisan conglomeration of people who are sick of hearing your voice, seeing your goddamn smirk, and watching you piss away your childrens’ inheritance, hell bent on further spending us into oblivion and fucking the whole world just a little bit harder - apparently the new conservative way - and who just want you to go the hell away.
On one hand, I am sad to see you go, because you would have been such an easy schmuck to ass-whoop in the general election, come November. I would’ve loved to have seen you spend even more money touring the country and defending the policies of someone with an approval rating that is nearing the single digits. Even though the foreign media seems to think you are somewhat presidential looking, I think you look like a tool. Box. You are a tool box, a box of tools.
Let’s take a look at your own words.
If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.
And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.
Oh, no, you didn’t go there.
Are we really going to start blasting this shithead boom box toxic nonsense again? Are we really going to let assholes like Mitten here tell us that a democratic victory equals a terrorist victory? Didn’t they pull this shit with John Kerry, a freaking war veteran, and he just sort of bent over, and kissed his own ass goodbye?
You asinine fuck. How dare you imply that you and your narrow-minded bunch of insipid. warmongering fools are the only people that can mount a fight against other assholes in other countries. Are people really going to allow themselves to be scared into voting Republican once again? You are nothing more than another Osama W. Stupid Fuck Head Bin Ladin, who calls people like Rush Limbaugh and tells them to spread this message, because at least he realizes that if someone with a little bit of goddamn common sense and, say, perhaps some ties to Muslim countries and peoples, wins an election, then he is plainly fucked, since we will stop fueling his fires and giving him thousands of recruits the world over every fucking hour.
All I can say is, Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, which ever one of you accumulates enough political geeks to get nominated, or if you team up, or if Howard Dean somehow combines you both into a clone cyborg named Hillarack Clobama in his mad laboratory, yee-ahHH!!, either way, please have the guts (notice i didn’t say “balls,” trying to be fair here) to shut stupid jackasses like this man the hell up - and better yet, prove them wrong.
You try to cloak your farewell message in a see-through blanket of ignorant bliss and blind, fervent patriotism, but you are nothing more than irrelevant.
Good-bye, Mitten. See you in hell.
Wait, do Mormons believe in hell? Who cares. Your religion at least made you stand out.
i have often heard that the 20th century was the bloodiest in recorded history. it’s pretty sad that in 100 years of modernity we managed to slaughter more people than in 2000+ years of prehistory. but i was listening to “fresh air” and the president of Harvard, who has just written about how the Civil War affected American attitudes toward death and dying, had some insight into why that really is.
in the Victorian era, here and elsewhere in the West, death was viewed as something intimate to be shared with the family at home. the concept of dying alone and unmourned was foreign and strange. so when the Civil War comes along, and more Americans lose their lives than in all the 20th century wars that followed combined, death becomes a detached, dark, and lonely endeavour.
the straggling Union and Confederate armies could not afford the time or manpower to give every fallen soldier a proper burial. bodies were gathered and thrown haphazardly into half-dug ditches, covered with dirt and subsequently forgotten. the author read part of a letter from a dying Union soldier to his father, in which he states his father can be “happy” knowing how his son had succumbed to death, rather than living with an unsolved mystery for the rest of his days.
i began to consider, with the author’s help, the factors at play in American culture at the time. religiously, people as a whole believed in the resurrection of the body as well as the soul. amputees then began to worry they would be resurrected in pieces. at the end of the 19th century, the religious establishment clashed with growing skeptics as the Modern Age began over the theory of evolution; man resisted terming himself an animal, even as on the battlefield he insisted upon killing and dying like one.
now, i’ve never been a detractor of evolution, or a proponent of creationism, by any means. but it is interesting to think that parallel to the rise of the Hobbesian man as “noble beast” was the climax of human animalisation, as we began to slaughter each other like lambs across the young United States. as evolution began to take hold as plausible, the bloodiest century in human history began to unfold. this undoubtedly coincides more with powerful nations attempting to unseat one another with increasingly more devastating weapons. but perhaps just as we began to look at each other more as evolved beasts rather than spirits cloaked in flesh with a noble purpose (still descended from apes and primordial goo, of course: it’s a question of self-perception), so did we begin to view dying less as an honorable, intimate experience and more as just another process in the rapid evaporation of our lives.
i’m annoyed at how sucky contemporary christmas music is. why is it all plainly despondent or sappy crap? there was a time when christmas music was beautiful, or joyful, or both, and quite frankly i think that is how it should always be, whether secular or sacred. think run, run rudolph and silent night.
so christmas came and went and this year i feel more detached from the season than ever. it is moments like this that i realise my life is really stuck in purgatory right now. i will be escaping that very shortly.
every year after christmas i generally lie awake in my bed pondering what it all means. i generally permit my hyperactive mental juices to saturate my cerebellum a little more than usual, since methinks this is sort of the purpose of this holiday, to reflect on what it signifies, again, both secularly and spiritually. this season i’ve read Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, a critical take on Christ’s life and ministry through the eyes of a socialist skeptic. i’ve also begun reading the Gnostic gospels and the Apocrypha, or sacred texts omitted from the “orthodox” Bible in an attempt to gain a wider understanding of how Christ was perceived in the early days of his nascent faith. those who know me well know that i am spiritual, but not religious, and my interest in religion is a strong academic one at heart. nonetheless i ordinarily delve into the christmas spirit, and this year has proved more difficult to do so.
but lying awake here at nearly 2 AM anticipating the sun to rise on Boxing Day, family having departed and mentally preparing to head several thousands of miles away back to my other home once again, after having bounced from a week in Washington, D.C. back to New Jersey, i’m reminded that the spirit of the season requires us to step away from ourselves and into the hearts of others. this makes me feel the pain that my family feels each time i leave and go further away, and it does not make living any easier. but despite the pain i must seek to understand how they feel; i must look at it through their eyes and hearts, or else risk creating a rift of selfish misunderstanding between us.
look, we are all a little selfish, and perhaps we need be to preserve our own lives and mental stability, for which we must assume the primary charge if they are to be truly “our” lives. and from a social perspective, it’s true that we cannot help others if first we cannot help ourselves. but we bear a responsibility to one another, and selfishness does not serve that duty well. christmas reminds us that we ought to think about what we can and should do for others in our lives and beyond. it’s a time for us to stop talking and start listening, and to maybe put aside our seemingly impenetrable priorities to be there for someone in need. it’s a time for us to remember those without whom we would not be who we are, but also to appreciate others for who they are and what they’re about. a time a shepherd lets rest his flock so he can go and watch over a little child sleeping in a barn, while he ponders who this child is and what he will amount to.
merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.
i hope no one infers that my recent silence here denotes i have crossed the void into complete Luddite. this is certainly not the case. i will share my findings from that unsurprisingly difficult day of disconnect in due time; i’ve been discussing it with folks so as to present a coherent summation. but i wanted to voice something that in my opinion (and hey, guess whose blog this is) takes precedence.
lately feelings of hopelessness have befallen me as i watch the world around us fall into further chaos and clusterfuck - the Middle East further unraveled, Iraq disquieted, North Korean sabre-rattling, Hillary and Huckabee gaining in the polls. my older contemporaries and mentors who have seen and survived what i view as much greater tribulations have unanimously remarked to me that this is the worst state of earthly affairs to which they have ever borne witness. on top of this, the other night i saw Morgan Spurlock’s (”Super Size Me”) newest documentary, entitled “What Would Jesus Buy?” which recounts the prevailing materialism that has, like an anaconda, encircled and suffocated Christmas out of any of its original meaning. As things worsen we succumb to further decadency; as our economy falters and is expropriated to faraway places with slave labour and private contractors, we rack up excessive, insatiable debt as the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.
Jefferson firmly believed in cyclical history, as do i, and remarked that things had been worse before and would be better (or worse) yet. many of my contemporaries have assured me of the same. i have been resolute in the opinion that balance, like Tao, restores and maintains itself through the ages.
yet, as of late i am guilty of beginning to fall into the black void of hopelessness that surrounds our dejected and misguided material society, one that borders dangerously upon the grey shores of the sea of apathy that seems to characterise our generation, at least to outsiders. but now i am more aware that the fragile balance of existence is actually our responsibility.
Native Americans prophesied that the Seventh Generation would enter the fray and begin to heal the rifts and destruction caused by previous generations, and would at least temporarily (as history and time are a wheel ever spinning, not linear, and one never knows what lay around the bend) begin to drastically improve life on Earth.
we are the seventh generation, and at the risk of sounding pompous, dramatic, solipsistic, or all of the above, it’s up to us to make the changes we wish to see in the world.
our generation may have been labeled apathetic by the media, who themselves do little but dissolve the world of its common sense and propagate desperate events with little or no concern for the consequences, and continue to perpetuate the divisions between peoples. but this assertion fails all those of us who struggle with a shotty job market, dehumanising cubiclezation, exorbitant housing prices, college loans, and a failed political system. just as Italy struggles between a 68 and 71 year old, we have still entrusted leadership to an aging bunch of baby boomers who, 30 years later, are still kicking the same dead horse, and have blinders on to the struggles that modernity has propped upon us.
it’s time for our generation to usurp leadership from this peanut gallery of incompetent assholes and start fulfilling the prophesy and realising our responsibilities. this is why i’ve decided to support Barack Obama for President in 2008. he is the only candidate who, though he is not of our generation, doesn’t belong to theirs. he is not bound by their Sisyphean struggle. we need hope and courage and unity, and from familiarising myself with his past and policies, i am increasingly certain that he, if anyone, can produce these.
i recommend Andrew Sullivan’s article from The Atlantic to further explicate my position. again, not to sound dramatic, but the fate of a whole lot of shit is in our hands, people. wake up and let’s be what we’re supposed to be.
instead of inundating my readers with the daily variety of existential crisis that any one in my predicament may find themselves on the verge of day in and day out, and clot up the blogosphere with its retelling, i thought i would share some idea i had while sitting on the stoop on this unusually warm night in the City. it’s by no means compelling or original, but perhaps worthwhile.
i have been reflecting on the nature of technology and how it has supposedly fostered interconnectedness among peoples, if you would believe the plethora of advertising that insists this is so. just take a whiff of the host of social networking sites that i am by no means immune from, which enable us to track our ‘friends” every move, purchase, relationship endeavour, even online Scrabble performance. add this to the fact that we amble about with cell phones in constant ready position to entertain the next caller. how often i’ve found myself with a spare moment to myself, only to cycle through my contact list seeking out somebody whose voice i haven’t heard in a while.
this last example aside i am left, as we all are, to ponder if rampant technological advances i’ve seen over the course of my lifetime (and perhaps you’ve seen even more in yours) have really succeeded in bringing us closer together, in truly connecting us, or has it only superficially done so and in fact driven a solid wedge between the intertwined matter of souls? does how often we check our e-mail actually bring us together, or does the fact that emotions are communicated electronically dilute the personal nature of those sentiments?
on top of all that wondering, today i feel a sort of constant throbbing in my head and tinge of sickness in my stomach, and i think it comes from staring at one too many screens, be it laptop computer, mp3 player, cell phone screen, television, et al. so i’ve contrived a sort of social experiment for myself. tomorrow i will live a day without technology. i’ve spent a good deal of time considering what this actually entails, and i think by ‘technology’ i refer to the personal electronics we rely upon to remain ‘plugged in’ to the societal mainframe (so i’m not eliminating public transit, because i need to get out of the house, and my neighborhood). basically i am just going to walk around and read books (which is what i do most of the time, anyway) and talk to strangers. i want to assess the overall feeling achieved and see if objectively i feel more ‘in touch’ with or without the technology i, like most of us, have come to depend upon.
this feeling of ‘connected’ is hard to define here in terms of a valid hypothetical goal. but i think i’m looking for genuine social contact. it will be hard to incur this feeling in my interactions with others who are not themselves temporary Luddites, but being as this is not a formal experiment but merely a whim of one i merely seek, at the end of the day, an ascertainable difference.
as i was sitting on the stoop i pondered taking this one step further, and i think i will make a point of following through with this experiment as well: i want to live one day of my life, technologically and sociologically speaking, as my parents would have when they were my age (read: imagine it is 1973/1976). this involves a bit of research into exactly what san francisco was like in those years, but i will imagine that the infrastructure is now as it would have been back then, meaning not visiting places that did not exist or riding on public transit that was not yet in place. on top of this, i will dress like my father, which should not be difficult as most of my [favourite] clothing is actually permanently borrowed from his closet. i’m excited to give this one a try, but first i will report back my findings from the former experiment before undertaking such a precise effort, which warrants more extensive documentation (read: embarassing photos and video).
i know it’s a bit of an extreme, but quite often extremes are the only things that have any impact.
i sit in my stuffy corner cubicle pathetic excuse for an office separated from the nearest window by a 7-foot carpeted wall that divides nothing from nothing, twisting a coloured pencil round my fingers, cradling my head in my hand, when suddenly the phone rings. it’s my editor and he tells me to pack my bags, i’m headed to the Balkans to cover yet another outbreak of civil unrest that seems endemic to the region these days. it’s five days that i’m back from Niger and South Africa covering elections; i’m not sure whether to be relieved or annoyed. in my head i begin a long division equation to determine my present jet lag quotient. number of days travelling, times hours per voyage, divided by time zones crossed, minus hours of sleep lost in transit… but mostly i wonder when the hell i am going to be able to pick up my dry cleaning. i miss my pink shirt and it’s getting warm. cherry blossoms will be here soon.
back home i look online to find a recipe for pine needle tea. jenny says it cures depression, but only mild depression. i walk along 11th street for an hour and a half looking for evergreens. maybe this is why people in this city look so unhealthy.
a day and a half later i’m at an airport in a small city with no vowels in its name and one paved highway; this is the capital, i’m told flatly by my guide, a burly, unshaven man of about 60, balding in the back, in military fatigues with a McDonald’s pin on his lapel, a gift from another, more attractive female foreign correspondent, i’m told later that evening. i extend my hand and he gives me a bottle of water and a flak jacket. put this on. there is no time, he says. it would have been nice to have meet you. i’m unsure if he has misconjugated his verbs or actually spoke as he intended.
we wait half an hour to travel, until city lights are extinguished and the stars pepper the sky and draw shadows of mountains in the moonlight. our words are few and bitter in the canvas enclosed back seat of the Soviet army jeep he has commandeered to shuttle us to his operations center, a generous descriptor for what really consisted of seven or eight a-frames and a host of sweaty, noxious bodies lined side by side in the snowy remnants of scorched earth. cigarette, he offers. i see a faint smile on his chapped lips that seems to light up his face, and i notice that he has a lazy eye. i’ll smoke it in the morning, i say, as i put it in my pocket.
i never have a hard time sleeping in the field, no matter how unbearable the conditions, as they are this night. this stems from the fact that i cannot sleep on airplanes. i’ve never been able to. i can’t read, either, it gives me a headache. all i can do is play computer solitaire. i don’t think i would really want to sleep, either, in case i miss a quiet chance to sit and stare into space and think about absolutely nothing. those moments are rare these days.
despite my restfulness i awake in the middle of the night, teary-eyed from the humid winter air and with a burning feeling of hunger in my stomach. i think about what i’ve eaten since i left washington and all i can remember is a handful of figs and a pack of life-savers. wintergreen. what does that mean, anyway, things aren’t really green in winter. you can’t even find pine needles for tea.
i’ve hardly sat up on my cot when i make out my guide crouching beside me, peering through a pair of night vision binoculars over the crest of the ledge our camp is perched upon, beyond the barbed wire fence we lean against. he thrusts his finger to his chapped lips and purses them. now he does not smile, but i really want to smoke that cigarette. i hear the cranking of rusty wheels down in the canyon below. they are constant and begin to get louder but i can see nothing. he stares devotedly through his lenses at the earth below and motions with his free hand to everyone crouching behind and eying below, be quiet, they’re close.
i don’t remember the sound, or the colour, or the smell of the explosion that immediately followed his gesture. i don’t remember seeing bodies or body parts flying about and blood colouring the dust and snow below our makeshift beds. i don’t remember the smell of burning oil from the upended improvised explosive that shattered the cold, almost suspended night air, or the screams, of many pitches, surrounding me in disparate foreign dialects. no, all i remember is the taste of blood in my mouth. that unmistakable, acidic iron flavour that doesn’t go away when you swallow. i do not remember if it was my own blood.
i do, however, remember that it is time to pick up my dry cleaning.
in heaven there is a corner reserved for people who can’t remember how they got there. they pace relentlessly and circle for hours a room that has no walls. they scratch their heads and gape open-mouthed at an obscure piece of air hanging about and glance at each other, intimate strangers, bonded through death. some of them hold hands and quietly gasp and shake their heads, beginning to comprehend that they will never again remember where they were or what they were doing before suddenly entering this space, occupied by so many rational souls but completely devoid of reason. others smile curtly at the shoes of whoever passes them in their ceaseless circling, while they avert their eyes from each other for fear of having to face what has now inevitably come to pass. still others, dazed and curious, curl up in balls on the ground and rock back and forth, mustering whichever faith or reason and imploring it to manifest itself.
though i gripe about football season on the west coast (they only show shitty games, our teams here pretty much suck, you’re watching the 1 o’clock game in your pajamas), the sunday night game is ideal in that it starts at 5 and is done by 8:30, so you’re not burning the midnight oil if it goes into overtime - as last night it should have.
so i found myself in a predominantly stumbling drunk Irish bar in North Beach (?) last night, in my unending quest to find a quintessentially pure Eagles bar here in the Bay Area. i may not find it yet this season, but last night i found some fluttering support in the eyes of generic football fans who are fed up with the notion of a New England dynasty. “i’m rooting for Philly in order to save football,” one guy said. “and to throw off the odds. i mean what the fuck? a 23-point spread? nobody deserves that.” others were general Tom Brady naysayers: “I grew up with him,” muttered a drunk Filipino guy (Brady is from San Mateo). “Nice guy, but always a bit of a prick. I want to see them stick it to ‘im.”
not the kind of unwavering support i had hoped for, but nonetheless a nice antidote to the prevailing Pats sentiment that pervaded the bar ever-more increasingly as the evening progressed (can you say “bandwagon?”)
and they almost pulled it off. i know you’ll be quick to say ‘almost’ doesn’t cut it, but in this case, it may have helped save the season and boost Philly’s hopes and reputation in the world of football and beyond. aside from the obvious (the ‘quarterback controversy’ is starting to fade into the realm of the all-too obvious), here is what i mean:
1. The Eagles have always been a polarizing team. Perhaps this can be attributed to the abrasive impression most people (mistakenly) have of Philadelphians in general. You either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. The impression I obtained from more than a few die-hard football acolytes last night, as well as national sports coverage this morning, helps paint the picture that the Eagles, despite their loss, came the closest anyone has come to unseating an undefeated team on course for being the greatest in football history. They have given the rest of the league hope that it can - and may very well - be done, and this hope trickles down to the fans seeking playoff glory.
2. This is why no matter where I wind up, I stick by my team and my city. Philadelphia is being soured by a blight of violent crime the likes of which have not been seen in the city or even nationally since the 1980s. Recently the escalating violence spilled over from the neighborhoods of West Philadelphia into Center City, forcing (white) residents to notice that something is horribly wrong. For us Philadelphians, the decades-long drought of any sort of national sports championship contributes to this sort of second-city inferiority complex that until recently we shared with Boston. Nascent research suggests that a Super Bowl victory may have economic impact, boosting the GDP of city and area residents, perhaps; but most of all it would help us to realise that anything is possible, and improve the morale of the community at large. Increased economic growth and community sense of self-worth (which, I agree, we shouldn’t have to wait for a Super Bowl victory to acknowledge) tend to correlate to better community relations and a less nauseating crime rate.
3. Most importantly, A.J. Feeley, though he did make some mistakes last night, proved to the city and the nation that the Eagles are not beaten. Who knows how this will play into the rest of the season and beyond? We’ll have to wait and find out. In the meantime, Eagles, good effort, we salute you.
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