Le Boulevardier

Unrecoverable

2009-01-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

I just listened to Garrison Keillor perform a tribute to John Updike, after which a performer sang Neil Young's "Helpless".

Something about the line "And in my mind I still need a place to go. All my changes were there" instantly brought tears to my eyes.

I can't really identify the reason. I rarely look back, and references to the pleasantries of what lies in the past strike me as wholly false.

But there are those times, not often, when remembrance of things long gone can evoke in me a rare sense of regret and loss.

And at such times everything seems just too, too sad.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

2009-01-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America."

- Barack H. Obama

44th President of the United States

A Historic Event

2008-11-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the American people chose to elect a man of intelligence, insight, vitality, and understanding to be the 44th president of the United States.

They elected Barack Hussein Obama.

The fact that he managed to win the election despite the fact that he bears an unusual name, and despite the fact that his rival was a highly respected war hero, made this a significant event.

The fact that he is the first African-American to ever hold the highest elected office in this nation made this an historic event.

Now, I participated in this event by voting for Barack Obama.

Certainly not because he is a Black man, and because I thought it’d be a nifty thing to do.

No.

I voted for Barack Obama because he addressed the American people in nuanced, thoughtful terms. He presumed that the voters are informed adults, who think of the issues facing this nation in a serious, perceptive, reasoned manner. This it is that convinced me that I want Obama as the Chief Executive.

From his rival I heard only simplistic platitudes, interspersed with a large amount of unreasonable panic and fear mongering. Obama’s rival spoke to the American people as though they are an ignorant, unreasoning mass, who are either incapable of understanding the issues, or who choose to give little thought to them.

I believe that Obama will seek out the advice and counsel of learned people; that he will act in a decisive manner after giving serious thought to the consequences of his decisions. And that the other countries of the globe will once again regard this nation as a land of truth and justice.

Race had nothing to do with the way I cast my vote. Barack Obama was simply the better candidate in terms of his intelligence, judgment, principles, and moral stance.

Vote!

2008-11-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

Vote your conscience.

Vote for Barack Obama.

That Thirty-Minute Commercial

2008-10-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

Wow.

After watching Obama’s half-hour spot on TV last night I thought to myself, “Who in their right mind would not vote for this man?” As a mere commercial it was impressive. As a piece of politicking it was absolutely astonishing.

Obama hit all the right notes from the very beginning: the waving fields of grain, the smiling children, the old veterans waving at the crowd. In these few powerful images Obama showed us America.

Then he set forth what he regards as the problems facing this country, interspersed with the stories of typical families beset by these problems. Between each story he clearly told us what he would do as president to address and resolve them.

Obama ended all this by reiterating his faith in the American people to surmount these challenges.

“In six days, we can choose to invest in health care for our families, and education for our kids, and renewable energy for our future. In six days, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo. In six days, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history."

These are beautiful, powerful words. For me they say it all. From the other camp I hear nothing except why we should be fearful. I hear nothing about unity and hope for the future.

Yes, yes. I’ve heard all the objections about boilerplate phrases and packaging over substance. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this was never presented as anything more than a political commercial. And it’s a damn good one at that! It wasn’t intended as a State of the Union address.

And for once a candidate did exactly what people claim they want to see in a political ad. He spoke clearly about the issues and what he intends to do to address them if elected to office.

Astonishingly, not once did I hear an attack on his rival. Which, when you think about it, was attack enough.

And unlike many who express open hostility toward Barack Obama I believe there is substance behind the image. It is the reality of a thoughtful, intelligent, deliberative yet decisive individual.

It is the reality of the person the American people need in the White House at this time.

Today on NPR I heard a reporter state that much of the success of the Obama campaign is due to the almost “friction-free” quality of his campaign organization. Despite the huge sums it has raised its spending has been incredibly efficient. I guess Obama’s experience as a community organizer stood him in good stead.

This is the kind of intelligent organizational experience I want to see in the White House. I couldn’t give a damn that he’s never been a mayor of some moose-butt burg, or the governor of a state with less people than most big suburbs.

That’s why I’m voting for Barack Obama on November 4th.

Sic Transit Gloria, yadda, yadda.

2008-10-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about Steve Fossett?

Wasn't he that millionaire adventurer who made a fortune trading futures and whatever on Wall Street?

Yeah.

The guy who made over a hundred flights in high-tech balloons and other flying gizmos, and became the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon?

Yeah.

The guy who swam the English Channel, competed in an Ironman Triathlon, mushed in the Iditarod dogsled race, and climbed the world's highest peaks?

Yeah.

Yeah. What about him?

He's dead.

Oh!

I guess he would've wanted it that way.

Autumn

2008-09-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Autumn has come yet once again.

Beyond my garden window I glimpse in a moment
The flash of many wings among the stand of trees beyond.

I slowly turn my head to gaze upon a flight of doves, perhaps,
And see that the flashes are but leaves, shuddering downward
In their multitudes, from the many branches to the ground below.

And there they lie upon the grass, in slumber,
Awaiting the comfort of Winter's blanket,
And the long, peaceful stillness at the last.

Seeing this I know that there will come a time
When I will miss such a sight as this.

Perhaps in my own still and silent moment, looking back,
I will glimpse for a moment the flash of many wings that are but leaves;

And recall it, if for but an instant,

As I lie still upon the ground, awaiting slumber,
And the peaceful gift that Winter brings.

2008-09-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Republicans have come up with a masterful electioneering move by taking advantage of the current financial debacle engineered by the ineptitude of the Wall Street plutocratic elites. I only hope Obama’s strategists are smart enough to respond effectively.

McCain has announced that he is suspending his campaign pending the passage of legislation on the Hill addressing the financial crisis. This includes passage of the 700 million dollar bailout package pretty much on the Administration’s terms.

It also includes suspension of Friday’s debate with Obama.

And having his fellow Republican, and President of these United States, call for a “leadership meeting” in Washington which would include him and Obama.

The move effectively hijacks Obama’s campaign, and makes any further move extremely problematical.

Why? Okay, most voters are simple, good-hearted folk, and they will not see the cynical political thinking behind McCain’s statements.

First, it postpones a national forum at which Obama cannot but come off as the clear winner, owing to his polished and powerful speaking style. McCain will undoubtedly appear wooden, uncomfortable, and a bit befuddled.

Second, it forces Obama to alter his own campaign to suit McCain’s electioneering strategy. If Obama shows up for the debate who do you think will be the winner in the eyes of the electorate?

McCain, of course. He’ll claim to have put aside his own political ambitions in the interest of the American people, and he’ll accuse Obama of engaging in politics-as-usual at a time when he should have been more concerned with the welfare of the nation. Obama would be screwed.

Of course, if Bush does decide to play along and call his phony “leadership conference” Obama couldn’t refuse to heed the call of his President. To do so would be political suicide.

Thirdly, McCain’s move fosters the illusion that he’s providing some kind of national leadership at the time of crisis.

No! It ain’t so! Leadership should be coming from the President and his cronies. (By the way, have you seen Cheney lately?) McCain is only a Senator. Like Obama. His sole role in this fiasco is to speak on the floor of the Senate either for or against the legislation. That’s all!

The truth is, McCain has simply called a halt to the campaign at a time when the latest ABC poll shows him trailing Obama by nine points. This can only redound to his benefit.

Obama’s response? Well, that’s a toughie. McCain’s put him in a tight bind. But I would recommend simply playing along for the time being, making the most to emulate McCain’s “leadership” posturing.

Two can play at this game.

Believe me, the Republicans won’t be able to resist the urge to engage in character assassination for long.

Then Obama will be able to take up the campaign again, expose McCain’s move for the sort of cynical electioneering ploy it is, and walk away with the election.

The Revolution Is Here

2008-09-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Look!

I’m sick and tired of turning on the news and hearing some pundit blame me for the meltdown of the global economic structure.

Believe me, I didn’t do it!

When my wife and I bought our home we did it the old-fashioned (read ‘correct’) way. We made sure we could pay the mortgage each month. We made sure we came up with a twenty percent down payment. And we made sure to get a fixed rate.

Sure, we bought an old split-level ranch that needs work. No cathedral ceilings. No marbled foyer. Small closets. Clunky old bathroom.

But we bought what we knew we could pay for. After twenty-two years I continue to pay for it, on time, each month.

I also pay off my credit card balance each month.

So to the dour economic analysts who stare at me from the television screen so severely, as though expecting me to shoulder the burden of their fear and panic, and who judgmentally pronounce, “Who’s to blame for the mess on Wall Street. Well, we all are,” I have only one thing to say:

“BITE ME!”

I’ll tell you who’s to blame. The greedy runaway free-market capitalist speculators who wanted to get something for nothing as quickly as possible are to blame.

The only good thing to come out of this whole mess is the nationalization of a large part of the economy. Why is this a good thing? Because it’s happened during a Republican administration. That’s amusing.

The same party that has screamed for smaller government, that gutted and hobbled regulatory agencies, that has sought to privatize as much of the federal government as possible, that has foretold the demise of Medicare and Social Security because of bureaucratic mismanagement, that has wagged it’s finger at the American people for shouldering our grandchildren with unbearable governmental debt,

I say this same Republican Party has now taken the biggest step toward a socialized American economy in modern times.

Bush came into office prepared to dismantle the federal government and hand it over to his plutocrat robber-baron buddies.

As he leaves office the federal government owns a larger part of the economy than ever in modern times.

Now, some might call this socialism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the right-wing pundits will avoid the term by pointing out that, unlike under true socialism, ordinary people are not receiving any benefits as a result of hundred of billions of dollars in federal bailouts.

Still, I bet they’re glad those tax cuts didn’t come before they had a chance to rob the federal coffers to save their capitalist asses.

Bottom line, the unregulated free-market fucked up. The revolution has come. And it was led by Wall Street.

Let's Keep The Catcher in the Rye

2008-09-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

I’m having trouble getting used to my new aide. She’s at an age I remember quite well, even though I would seem to be well beyond it.

You know. The age when all the older people around you seem to know each other and communicate in a kind of meaningless jargon that they can’t see only diminishes them in the eyes of any real person.

Directions. Interest rates. Home values. Kids and their inconsequential activities. Pictures of grandkids and other wastes of time.

They just can’t understand that these things are just meaningless bullshit.

Yet, when you mistakenly attempt to communicate with them about the really important things they look at you with blank, uncomprehending stares. And these quickly morph into condescending smirks, accompanied by, “Wait until you become a little older. You’ll understand.”

And at that point you do understand. They have surrendered.

They have become THEM.

And you can’t talk to Them. You can only turn your back and have as little to do with Them as possible. Because they’ll try to get you. They’ll try to turn you into one of Them. With their vacuous stares and fervent belief in inconsequential nonsense.

And They can afford to be smug about this. Because time is on Their side. Just go to sleep. Just get a little older. Soon you’ll become one of Us. Soon you, too, will be gushing over pictures of the kids and trips to Disneyland. Soon you’ll be arguing fervently over directions to the local 7-11.

NO! NO! You fight! You flee! You’ll never become one of Them!

You know that you belong with your friends and acquaintances. Some of them may be jerks and assholes. But at least they’re real people. You argue with them about real, meaningful things.

The rest of the world, They, don’t understand. How could They? They’re phony. Empty shells. One night they went to sleep, and the next morning They got up the same way. Asleep. Empty. Now They live sleeping, empty lives.

Still, you eye your friends and acquaintances warily, carefully aware of the first signs of change.

Then it begins. So-and-so has become engaged. Another is buying a house. Still another is pregnant and excited about doing up the baby’s room with her finds at Ikea. At a party you overhear an acquaintance becoming a little to involved with the directions to a local party store. They’re becoming Them.

You find your friends dropping away. Slowly. One by one.

Eventually you find yourself holding onto one, maybe two people to whom you can talk freely. Your closest friends, who don’t register mild shock at what you say. Who don’t look uncomfortable when you’re in a confessional mood. Who can still look you in the eye when you say something that might make others retreat.

Because they’re dealing with their own issues. They’re still living with their own shadows. They understand you.

And then, even they are gone. And you’re all alone. No one out there understands.

You don’t fit. There’s no place for you among Them, among the living, among the rest of the world.

Everything’s not fine. You don’t have kids doing great in school. You don’t love your job. You just don’t care about the pictures They took on vacation.

All Their lives seem filled with what is false, phony, bullshit.

And this is why I think The Catcher in the Rye remains a classic.

Someone on NPR characterized it as out-of-date and should no longer be included on high-school reading lists. What young person can identify with a young person kicked out of a private prep school in 1951?

Okay, maybe not many. But I think that the way it presents an individual’s profound sense of alienation from the world around him is spot-on.

Besides, I sort of like Holden Caulfield. Sure, he seems a narcissistic, immature jerk at the beginning. But you have to admit that a guy who has such tender concern for his younger sister despite his inner torments can’t be all bad.

Go Here

2008-09-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

Out of a sense of socio-political outrage I've been forced to create a new blog.

You'll find it right here.

I still intend to put most of my creative things on this blog. But I didn't want to clutter it up with my political rants.

Not By A Long Shot

2008-09-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear someone say that they’re not interested in politics and don’t vote, because both parties are virtually the same and voting doesn’t make any difference anyway, I just have to speak up.

The parties are not the same. Not by a long shot. The Democrats and the Republicans represent two starkly different views of human nature and, as a consequence, how society should be structured.

Democrats believe:

1. Human nature is basically good.
2. Human beings can and should aspire to a peaceful, mutually-supportive society.
3. Relations with other societies should be based upon the belief that the large mass of humankind wishes to live in peace and security, and that areas of conflict should be thoroughly understood and addressed reasonably.

Republicans believe:

1. Human beings are basically perverse.
2. Human beings can’t be relied upon to do the right thing, and have to be closely controlled with laws and restrictive social policies.
3. Individuals are basically on their own. You’re responsible for your own actions, but not for anyone else.
4. Other societies act solely out of a concern for their own self-interest, which immediately puts them in conflict with our own. Therefore, any sign of conflict must elicit an immediate and overwhelming negative response. Let the academics worry about the issues later on.

Every election is an opportunity to make a choice in what is an ongoing cultural conflict.

I am clearly a Democrat by conviction.

I believe people are basically good, and that we can fashion a society that houses the homeless, that feeds the hungry, that tends to the ill, and that allows its members to live with hope, in peace and security. I regard a large standing military as nothing more than an organized welfare state with weapons, better put to use building the infrastructure which makes our society strong.

Which is why I’m voting for Barack Obama.

Times Are A'Changin'

2008-09-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Wasn’t there a time when teens having children out of wedlock was a bad thing?

Like when inner-city black girls were having those children? And when social conservatives were railing against sex education in the high schools, because it would lead to high school girls having children out of wedlock.

But now it seems it’s all okay!

The women at the Republican convention are all just so excited over the fact that the teen-age daughter of the party’s vice-presidential pick is pregnant out of wedlock.

Oh, no problem!

Because she’s getting married!

To a guy who calls himself “a fucking redneck”. And who doesn’t want kids.

This’ll be a marriage to watch.

If it happens.

2008-09-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

These are definitely the least pleasant of times. After the TV is turned off and my aide leaves. As I lay in bed a silence grips the house with such a completeness as to seem in itself almost audible.

I tried to watch the Republican convention on CSPAN, just to hear voices. But thirty seconds was enough to convince me that I'd rather suffer the silence than listen to their crap.

Gustav seems to have spared New Orleans. Still, I heard someone on NPR remark that this does not prove the city is prepared for another Katrina. It only shows the city was ready for Gustav.

Sidney? The IIIrd?!

2008-08-31T15:49:00.000-07:00

Much, far too much, has been made about Barack Obama’s middle name. It’s Hussein, as if you didn’t know. Hussein. Get it? As though that’s all you need to know. Do you really want a President with a foreign-sounding name like Hussein? Hell, you’d be outta your mind! Damn! Gotta be a terrorist for sure with a middle name like that! At least he must be some kinda Muslim. Sure, people say he’s Baptist. But everyone knows he’s a secret Muslim. Why else would he have a name like Hussein?

Hussein. That settles the issue. ‘Nuf said.

Well, I figured if a man’s middle name could be so informative regarding his true nature I thought I’d look up John McCain’s middle name to see what it could reveal about him.

What I found is that his full name is John Sidney McCain III.

Sidney. That’s probably not too well known a snippet of information. Certainly not as well known as Barack Obama’s middle name. I mean, when I was a kid most Sidneys I knew ended being playthings for bullies or playground fodder. I mean, take a look at poor old Philip Sidney. What do you think would happen to him if he dropped into the local Teamsters bar looking for directions?

Now, do you really want a guy with a name like Sidney answering that phone at three in the morning? I thought not.

And what’s that IIIrd all about? I mean, who’s the elitist here? The only people I’ve ever known who had numerals after their names either had unimaginative, lazy parents or were elitist wannabes. E.g. Thurston Howell III of Gilligan’s Island.

Of course, all talk about Obama’s elitism is a smokescreen for the real issue. It’s merely Republican code for “uppity”. GOP criticism of Barack Obama amounts to nothing more than the racist distrust of an “uppity” nigra.

Now, do you really believe that John Sidney McCain III is an elitist wannabe with a name that guarantees he’ll be beat up in the playground of international affairs?

I thought not.

Because a person’s name says little about who he is.

So drop the “Hussein” issue. It means absolutely nothing at all.

Even Sidney knows this.

Raglan Road

2008-08-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

Whew! I guess we can never really be certain what things will grip one’s heart swiftly and unseen. One moment I’m going happily along listening to Mott the Hoople sing All the Young Dudes. Then I wheel my iPod over to my Irish playlist to make sure Raglan Road downloaded correctly.

Instantly tears sprang to my eyes, and I cried violently throughout the piece. Even now my eyes water at the mere memory of the tune.

I first heard the song while watching the movie In Bruges. The film’s characterized as a comedy. Well, maybe a little at the beginning. But believe me, it turns into a grim ride.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had loved not as I should
A creature made of clay
When the angel woos the clay
He'll lose his wings at the dawn of day.

Oh, Jesus. Who can’t help but cry? It’s just too sad, even without the film.

NO CHOICE!

2008-08-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay. So yesterday John McCain picked Sarah Palin to run with him on the Republican presidential ticket. Many pundits hazard the guess that he made this extraordinary choice in the hope of drawing off many disaffected Hillary Clinton voters.

Right. Whatever. Which would make the man seriously delusional. Then again, the Republicans never give much thought to the issues. They figure, “Hell, one woman’s as good as another.”

I constantly hear how Palin will appeal to the female vote because she’s Pro-Life. Wha . . ? This makes her interchangeable with Clinton? Someone better tell Hillary.

Anyway, that term has always set my teeth on edge. Pro-Life. As though people who believe in a woman’s right to choose is Pro-Death. C’mon!

To me the issue of abortion has never been one of life versus death. The issue has always been one of a person’s right to choose. To me this is an inalienable right.

To me the issue of abortion is best defined as a conflict between Pro-Choice and No-Choice. I don’t believe any woman makes the choice to have an abortion casually. And believing that a woman has a right to choose is definitely not an endorsement of abortion.

But I believe in the right of a person to choose. That is really the American way. Any government which seeks to take away a person’s right to choose is simply a tyranny.

Also, it always puzzles me a little that those who characterize themselves as “Pro-Life” are often fervent advocates of the death sentence and war.

Why?

Because they really don’t give a damn about life. They just don’t trust people to choose for themselves.

Like most Republicans they simply want to regulate the behavior of individuals, and de-regulate the behavior of corporate entities so that can make obscene amounts of money while the rest us slide into poverty.

Makes me mad! Grrrr!

South what . . . ?

2008-08-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

I long ago lost my patience with the increasingly shrill rhetoric over the issue of South Ossetia. South what? Yeah. Same here. One moment nobody knows where the hell this place is, and the next moment NBC interrupts the opening ceremonies of the Olympics to let all Americans know that Georgia has just launched an all-out military assault against South Ossetia.

Undoubtedly most Americans probably wondered how far Ossetia is from Atlanta, and why Georgia would invade someplace down south.

But being curious I decided to check it out on Wikipedia, after watching some really stunning opening ceremonies. There I learned that Ossetia has been a part of Russia since 1801. Pretty long time. Longer than Texas has been part of the States.

Anyway as the days went by the news became ever more frantic. A new Cold War? Escalation to include a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia? Self-righteous hypocritical posturing by the Administration.

I grew sick and tired of the whole business.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili cynically sent troops into South Ossetia on the day of the Olympic opening ceremonies, believing the world’s attention would be sufficiently diverted to allow him to carry out his military action. He did this to reassert Georgian de facto control over a territory seeking its own independence. Much like Santa Anna sent troops against the Texans at the Alamo. The Russians sent in troops in response in order to assist their freedom-loving neighbors and compatriots.

The Russians have been in Georgia a little over two weeks, and we’re growing all outraged and impatient with their rate of withdrawal. Hell, we’ve been the warlords of Afghanistan and Iraq for five to six years and we seem to see no reason for getting out of those “sovereign” states any time soon.

Maybe were just pissed because the Russians actually won in Georgia, while even McCain reminds us over and over that we haven’t won in the two countries we chose to invade.

Of course, they’re bigger.

And what’s the deal with Abkhazia? I hear there are Russians there, too. Should we care.

Stalin came from Georgia.

‘Nuf said.

Yeah? And so what?

2008-08-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

I might as well face facts. I’m just too lazy and, well, lazy to come up with a well-reasoned and researched essay every week. But the alternative is to simply let my blog slide into oblivion. Which I really don’t want. Don’t ask me why. May be an ego thing. Probably.

But I find I still have plenty of opinions. Which I end up inflicting upon my aides. You know, the kind of judgmental, prejudiced, uninformed kind of things everybody has, but which the more tactful and intelligent among us keep to themselves.

So I’ve concluded that since this is my blog I’m going to use it as a forum to simply spout off. No research, no deep insights, no informed conclusions. Just the way I see things and how I think about them.

Hell, I figure it’s better than standing on a street corner and shouting my opinions at passersby. It’s harder to get to me this way.

South Ossetia, nasal female voices, Republicans, Kwame Kilpatrick, banks, whatever. I have an opinion about it.

Can hardly wait.

The Great Republic

2008-06-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

During every presidential election it’s inevitable to hear the electorate ask repeatedly, ‘What will the president do about the economy? What will the president do about the environment? What will the president do about foreign policy?’

Sadly, the proper answer is, ‘Not much'.

The economy, including fiscal policy, taxation, corporate investment, consumer trends, the price of food and gasoline, involves global forces which are largely beyond the control of the president.

The same applies to issues affecting the environment. The president cannot dictate what cars we drive or how we choose to warm our homes. Actually, he can’t even proclaim where we can dig for oil or cut down trees.

The same limits on executive power do not apply quite as stringently to the president’s foreign policy decisions. After all, the Constitution of the United States specifies that the conduct of foreign affairs is the one area in which the executive reserves a great deal of discretionary power.

But even in this arena of endeavor the president must take care to act in concert with the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. That is, through Congress.

After all, let us not forget that our nation is a republic. It is a nation of laws. And these laws do not proceed from the pen of the president. Nor does he reserve the power to interpret these laws. These functions are properly reserved by Congress and the Supreme Court. The executive can only act in accordance with these laws and the interpretation of their Constitutional propriety.

Anything contrary to this rightfully deserves to be called a tyranny.

So, why do I express a preference for one presidential candidate over another knowing that the president actually has little power to effectively address the big issues?

Precisely because I believe the current president and his coterie have acted as far outside the expressed will of the people as they dare without risking a Constitutional crisis and impeachment. Initially he was able to do so largely on the basis of the fear and panic engendered by the bombing on September 11, 2001. But as that date recedes in the public consciousness he has only been able to pursue his policies of executive aggrandizement, corporate cronyism, and international alienation by judiciously jettisoning some of the more publicly unpalatable members of his inner circle and the lavish use of executive signing orders and the veto power.

In my judgment a vote for McCain will simply give assent to the continuation of an imperial executive. I don’t agree with this. I greatly respect the Constitutional principle of separation of powers. I have no use for a president who freely vetoes legislation drafted by our appointed lawmakers, and who then seeks to justify the legislative deadlock by pointing an accusing finger at a ‘do-nothing’ Congress. Such an action is simply an exercise of tyranny in disguise. And I bristle when the president seeks to accuse courts of ‘legislating from the bench’ when they arrive at legal conclusions with which he doesn’t agree.

I believe that Barack Obama will act with greater regard for the principles upon which our great republic is founded.

Also, I relish the idea of Hillary Clinton being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Sort of balance things out, you know.

Vote Democratic because . . .

2008-06-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

In November I intend to vote to put a Democratic candidate into office as the President of the United States. Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would make fine Chief Executives, though my preference is for Obama, largely because his election would show to the world that as a nation Americans consider themselves to be part of the global community. I believe that this is a far more important and realistic aim that that offered by the opposing party.

Listening to the Republican candidate I hear nothing but the sounds of fear and alarm. The Republicans constantly seek to remind Americans of how they must regard the rest of the world with suspicion, and that only aggressive and preemptive warlike behavior can bring the American people any degree of safety. Then they further remind the American people that they will never truly be safe, that they must constantly be in a state of readiness for war. That they continuously have to arm themselves, and that they should be prepared to react violently to address the slightest perceived slight. Otherwise, “they” might get “us” first.

I’m not buying it. To paraphrase another great American, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. A fearful nation is a dangerous one. The American public is aggressively fed a steady diet of fear, anxiety, and panic. The networks, newspapers, and magazines are replete with alarms of imminent disaster. Be it terrorists, environmental collapse, asteroids, nuclear-armed rogue states, or bioengineering disasters Americans are subjected to a screaming barrage of apocalyptic news. Even household germs are waiting to devour our families.

Yet, life goes on. Why do so many surrender themselves to blind fear and chronic anxiety rather than get on with the ordinary day-to-day task of getting along?

Well, because the task of ordinary living is largely boring. It’s painfully routine. Terror and warfare makes our lives so much more interesting. And it’s easier to wage war than to deal with such things as global warming, poverty, and universal health insurance.

I do think that blind panic led to Columbine. And the invasion of Iraq. And gang-related murders. And road rage. And the marginalization of the poor. I believe that all acts of violence and anti-social government policies find their ultimate support and justification in a largely unfounded but aggressively fostered sense of public fear.

The time has come to elect a president who will govern a sane and rational nation at peace, not a nation sustained by some paranoid fantasy requiring Americans, as both a people and individually, to react violently to the world around us. The time has come for a president who will not seek to profit by fostering a false sense of anxiety in the American public.

There is no war other than the one we create. The war on terrorism? A total fiction. It’s true. There are no Mujaheddine awaiting offshore in fastboats, prepared to run wild through the streets of our cities throwing burkhas over our women and cutting out the tongues of blasphemers. Such an absurd fantasy serves primarily to divert our attention from the fact that the global industrialists are robbing us blind, draining the blood and resources of this nation while the national infrastructure falls apart from neglect, while more and more Americans are falling into poverty, losing jobs, health insurance, and their homes while more obscenely rich individuals make it onto Forbe’s list of world billionaires.

But I digress. Fight for peace. Hell, do the right thing. Vote Obama.

Noise

2008-05-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting here listening to NPR on the radio, as I do virtually every morning, and from time to time I find that the words take on a sort of meaningless droning sound. This brings me to the realization that the world we hear is full of cant, painfully crowded with a meaningless verbal noise.

It’s hard to escape this avalanche of empty talk. Be it NPR, or CNN, or MSNBC, or FOX news, or any one of the innumerable AM talk shows. All just meaningless noise masking as either informed opinion or meaningless angry rant.

At such times it’s so nice to simply move to the room overlooking my backyard. There I’m not assaulted by the empty verbal madness. Looking over my backyard I hear only the occasional songs of birds, the whir of insects, the rustle in the trees.

Everyone should have a backyard. I feel myself to be very fortunate.

What To Remember

2008-05-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have read my writings at this location to any extent may have formed the impression that I hold soldiers and soldiering in mild contempt. This would be an unfortunate misinterpretation of my sentiments as they touch upon such matters.

It is not those who do the fighting and dying whom I hold in low esteem. Rather it is the horror and obscenity that is war itself that draws forth my full angry disdain and vituperation.

Unfortunately those who are empowered so as to be able to command a nation’s resources, both human and material, and to direct them into the madness that is war invariably seek to rally the general populace behind their decision by a variety of appeals to the general sentiments of a nation. These appeals range from memories of hearth, home, and loved ones, to national honor and dignity, calls for revenge, to tocsins and alarums for the future. These are all the ordinary repertoire of propaganda.

One other such element in this repertoire is the call to support those who choose, or who are chosen, to enter the dark and dreadful theatre of pain that is warfare. A people at war think it just and necessary to lend support to those who face bloody dismemberment or oblivion in their behalf. That this should be so is clearly obvious.

But, I make a distinction between wars. All war is an obscenity. There is no good war. One need not have been in combat to understand its nature. A person need only read of the horrors and listen to those who experienced them to understand that these experiences are such that you would not want to wish them upon yourself or upon others. Similarly, one need not walk off a cliff to understand that it is not a good thing to do.

However, there are wars which, despite their inherent tragedy, are inevitable and necessary. I have just finished reading biographies of Truman and Churchill, and I am now reading the latter’s memoirs of the Second World War. Both these men were admirable figures who did not shirk from the need to wage war, for they believed in all sincerity, and I think rightly so, that their nations fought to preserve the humane foundations of Western Civilization against a tyrannical and feudal new order based upon the enslavement and extermination of human beings.

World War II was a necessary war. Interestingly enough, Churchill was of the opinion that the central tragedy of the conflict lay in the fact that it was an unnecessary war. He thought that an alliance of militarily potent nations could have convinced the Nazi leaders to limit or even forego their imperial designs.

However that may be, I am convinced the current conflict which engages this nation in the Middle East is wholly unnecessary, and that our republic is squandering its human and material resources in a quixotic crusade to attain a victory we can not identify by means wholly unsuited to the circumstances.

Yet, the current Administration and its acolytes have sought repeatedly to turn public support for the soldiers engaged in this misdirected imperial adventure into a referendum on its global policies. The President and his minions would have the American people believe that support for the soldiers is support for the war. To posit, as does the current President, that in order to support the troops one must vote for the funding to pursue the misguided policies requiring them is circuitous reasoning of the most cynical sort.

No. To support the troops under the current circumstances is to make the war unnecessary. Talk, negotiate, build lines of friendship and trust. Make war unnecessary. Build toward a future in which those who speak of the need for war and its concomitant horrors are regarded with disdain and dismissed. People must no longer be led to believe that a due regard for the sacrifices of the fallen requires an implicit affirmation of the need for war.

I believe the memory of the fallen is best served by striving to seek an end to war.

A Godless Christmas

2007-12-24T14:40:00.000-08:00

At first glance it would appear that the phrase ‘a Godless Christmas’ is an obvious oxymoron. After all, Christmas is generally considered to be first and foremost the celebration of the birth of Christ, who is regarded variously as either the son of, the manifestation of, coterminous with, etc., etc, God. (The actual details of the familial relationship vary in certain ways depending largely upon the celebrants’ doctrinal inclinations.) However, I would like to point out that it is in fact possible to celebrate the spirit of the season regardless of one’s religiosity or lack thereof.

I hardly think the heathen Teutonic tribes-people were very much aware of the birth of someone in the Middle East when they gathered about a sacred evergreen in the midst of some forested glen, to hang offerings to their unknown deities and sylvan spirits from its boughs in celebration of a magical time.

And undoubtedly the pagan Latins were wholly without regard for any sort of Christian god when they danced and made merry upon the coming of the Saturnalia. They simply celebrated the hope for good fortune, and used the occasion to share with others the sweet things which goodness can bring into human life.

While it is true that I am an avowed atheist this assertion must be understood in the strictest sense. It simply means that I don’t believe in the existence of god. Any god.

It does not, however mean that I have no spiritual dimension to my life. Truly, I believe that existence is full of all manner of strange and unknowable things. The fact that these things are strange and unknowable makes them a wonder to me. I have no need to apply any sort of name to them. I think that’s because I’m satisfied with the wonder per se, and I feel no need to control it with a label. Most people feel a need to control, so they label the unknown in the sadly mistaken belief that by doing so they understand it.

When I was a child I actually believed that the little animated deer Bambi was a real creature. I truly believed that he and his friends lived and communed somewhere deep in the forest. Over time Bambi died, succumbing to the chilly environment of facts and physics which makes up the adult world. I never regarded this as a good thing.

Children should be allowed the time to inhabit a world filled with wonder, a world in which the ordinary is, well, no longer ordinary. Children should have the opportunity to experience magic in the world. Because in this way the world becomes something extraordinary for us as adults, as well.

The other day I watched a movie entitled The Polar Express. I watched it with a great deal of reservation, believing that it would be just another piece of the sort of commercial schlock which inundates us all during this time of year. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s an absolutely charming story about the need to believe in the magical in order to bring wonder into one’s life. I ended up thinking that young children would be absolutely enthralled by the story.

The entire holiday season is the opportunity to celebrate the goodness which can be found in life. It is a time to remind oneself and others of how sweet things can be when we live our lives with generosity and compassion toward each other. It is also a time to foster in the minds of the young, and to recapture in our own hearts a sense of the magic and wonder which permeates creation.

And for my part you really don’t need the birth of a divine being to celebrate these things, although it may make for a convenient occasion.

Happy Holidays!

PETA Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I watched a documentary about Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also known simply as PETA. At the beginning of the film Newkirk read from some of the letters sent to the organization by individuals with contrary views. Now, PETA is one of those organizations about which people hold very polarized attitudes. Rather similar to those engaged in the Pro-Choice / No-Choice debate. You are either fervently for them, or you regard PETA members as a bunch of, in the words of one correspondent, “carpet-munching motherfuckers.”

Now, when you give it a little thought you cannot help but be puzzled as to why anyone would express such vile hatred toward people who seek to halt the needless suffering of animals. I’ve given the issue a little more thought, and I’ve concluded that it’s probably because people know they are doing wrong by engaging in the thoughtless and violent slaughter of millions of innocent lives. Most people don’t like to be reminded of their complicity in mass murder. And some people take it quite personally when they are called killers. Such people react aggressively and violently.

Before watching the documentary I liked to believe that I could occupy a reasonable middle ground between animal rights and the practical necessity to engage in the euphemistically-termed practice of animal management. The film reminded me, however, that PETA does not allow one to occupy a middle ground. PETA reminds people that they are either complicit in the mass slaughter of innocent lives, or not. If not, then you don’t eat that Big Mac or cashew chicken dinner. If not, you don’t buy that bomber jacket with the fleece lining or those doeskin gloves with rabbit fur lining. In other words, refusing to participate in the slaughter goes beyond simply being kind to your dog or cat. It demands that one totally reorient their eating and buying habits away from products made by the killing of animals. It demands that one makes the effort to be aware of the scale of suffering inflicted upon animals by a huge corporate consumer society which relies upon the wholesale thoughtless slaughter of innocent lives to feed the marketplace.
It’s easy to dismiss the tactics used by PETA activists to protest the treatment of animals. It’s easy to scoff at the theatrics and histrionic behavior of the protestors as the actions of a bunch of loonies and naïve bleeding hearts who ought to shut up and mind their own business. It’s easy until you see the videos taken in the slaughterhouses. Or when you see an animal being skinned, and realize the bloodied body hanging from the hook is still blinking, breathing. Still alive.

The scale of the slaughter is staggering. It’s difficult to comprehend how many animals it takes to feed the huge hunger of a single nation each year. Consequently we tend not to think about it at all. PETA is there to remind us of the extent of the slaughter, and of our complicity in it.

Think of that chilling scene from the film ‘War of the Worlds’ with Tom Cruise. As the human survivor cowers in the cellar of a house and watches the gigantic alien machines spreading human blood over the landscape he comes to realize that people are being used simply as fertilizer. He realizes that human beings have simply become an agricultural commodity. The aliens have no regard for thoughts or feelings. The things which wriggle and scream as they are pierced and squashed are, well, mere things.

Well, we are those aliens. We can’t be bothered with wondering whether or not the animal screeching and bellowing as it is stabbed and beaten is a thinking, feeling being. We reduce the living to mere things.

Carry this thought one step further and you can see the logical progression from animal slaughter to the Holocaust, from McNuggets to genocide, from the slaughterhouse to mass killings in schools. A society which casually accepts the wholesale slaughter of animals for the marketplace is inherently a violent society.

But that’s another subject altogether. There comes a time when people can no longer remain silent when they see a grave injustice. At such a time they can either continue to argue politely, or they can throw the tea into the harbor. They can either let the lawyers squabble, or they can storm the Bastille and undo the system of injustice. Silence abets the actions of those who slaughter the innocents. PETA has disavowed silence. It regards theatrical activism as a necessary adjunct to speaking with corporate heads and the occasional polite ad on PBS.

Frankly, I agree. More people should be made aware of what is at stake. I really doubt that this awareness will serve to prompt many to change the way they live. But at the very least people should be aware of the price of their choices. People should accept responsibility for their actions.

Time to Gird One's Loins

2007-11-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

I recently read a review of a book which I’m now reading. I chose to read it largely because I was attracted by the fact that someone out there remains unashamed to characterize themselves as a Liberal. I’ve always been proud to characterize myself as both a social liberal and a humanist. You can imagine my shock and dismay to find that both terms have become dismissive pejoratives in the popular discourse.

Paul Krugman’s work has reassured me that the time is right to remove the gloves and aggressively combat the sort of mendacious, hypocritical, antisocial egocentrism which characterizes Movement Conservatism. Neocon spinmasters are not nice people and are not worthy of the sort of respectful adversarial stance traditionally assumed by liberal humanists. They are aggressive and unprincipled hypocrites who must be confronted and stopped whenever and however they seek to advance their cruel agenda.

I Had A Dream

2007-09-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream. It was astonishingly complex and detailed. Sadly, as is the case with most dreams, it passed quickly from my memory. Even now I can remember it only in vaguest outline, and for the overall impact it had on me. I think dreams are simply not made to be remembered.

As I recall I was being held in captivity, but in such a way that I didn’t even know until later that I was being held against my will. After all, it was a dream, and things didn’t proceed as they ordinarily would. Nor did my perception of them.

At some point I had to take what was termed “the box test”. This involved watching a number of films on DVD. I then had to answer questions about the films. The test was given by an attractive young woman for whom I had no immediate feelings. She sat at a bench alongside a rather matronly woman, who seemed to be giving her some sort of guidance when necessary.

The films frequently featured a woman to whom many sad things happened. Not horribly or bloodily sad things. They were simply unfortunate little tragedies, but they invoked in me a visceral wish that I could prevent such sadness in her life. Still, I knew I couldn’t. So I drank. And this drinking affected my ability to perform the test.

At one point I found myself transported into one of the films. I was fleeing for my life by half bounding, half flying down a long hillside pursued by some fantastic mechanical contraption which resembled a bird of prey. Its exterior appeared metallic, golden. And each time it came down and struck the hillside it smashed to bits. These pieces instantly reconstituted themselves into yet another fantastic creature and continued to pursue me. This happened repeatedly, until there simply weren’t enough parts left to continue the pursuit.

At this point the film ended and I was put into a small cell lined with blocks of stone. Eventually the door opened and I was led down a short hall to a much larger area. There I again saw the young woman who had given me the test. It wasn’t until that moment that I actually understood that all I’d undergone had been a test. I stood around making small talk with others, jokingly remarking how I was worried that my drinking had affected my final test results. Finally I was assured that everything was alright, that in fact I’d done quite well on the hardest part, which was “the box test”.

Then I was released and found myself standing on a hillside which constituted part of a long shallow valley. I watched as a fantastic metallic bird of prey came crashing down the valley, and I understood that someone else was taking the test.

Eventually all activity in the valley came to a quiet halt. The stillness was interrupted by the sight of a long convoy of vehicles of various kinds moving from one end of the valley to the other, where they passed out of sight.

The last vehicles in the convoy were some sort of utility machines. There were two of them, hauling large, flat circular objects. The machines positioned themselves and began to dig two very large but shallow holes. They did this by wheeling in a circular fashion. They skimmed the dirt covering two very large discs, revealing two flying saucers. At this point the discs which had been on the trucks were positioned over these discs in the ground (to the accompaniment of all sorts of whirring and thumping sounds), and they were screwed into them.

This being done the huge discs rose out of the ground, hovered awhile, then slowly moved toward the crest of the hill. Just before moving over the crest and out of sight one of the discs opened like a clamshell. Hovering in the sky above the hill, it actually waved one of its halves toward me! I instinctively raised my arm slowly waved back.

Believe you me, it was a real E.T. moment. Because I realized that the young woman for whom I thought I’d felt nothing was going away. And that I’d never see her again.

And here’s the thing that impressed me most of all about the whole fantastic series of events. As I stood there on the hillside, alone in the coming darkness waving slowly up at the sky, at that very moment I felt like I was in love again.

The Answer

2007-09-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

I’ll keep this short and simple, since all great truths are straightforward and self-evident.

Life is absurd. It has no intrinsic meaning. One comes from a great void and passes into a vast nothingness. Wherever, whatever, however these before and after states may be, the answer has no application to ordinary human awareness. We might as well regard these times as dreamless non-being. There simply is no awareness. As far as anyone knows.

All we know is that we are here. We exist. This is nothing new. Awareness of one’s existence is the basic starting point of all human life. It is the one thing we all know to be true before we are targeted by an endless barrage of belated and wholly unnecessary “truths”.

Now, here’s where it gets complicated. Because there is nothing beyond mere existence. But from the moment of awareness the individual is bombarded relentlessly by directives about how one must conduct their life. These directives vary in the degree of their insistence from mild parental guidance to stern societal commands to damning religious strictures.

Granted, to a large degree parental and societal guidance is useful. We do, after all, conduct ourselves largely as social beings, and it’s good that we all largely agree to be on the same page. The danger lies in regarding these guidelines as being something more than mere arbitrary suggestions. Danger lies in regarding them as moral absolutes which are not subject to question without injury to one’s own self-esteem or social ostracism. In such instances one risks fears of inadequacy, stupidity, embarrassment, perversion, isolation, loneliness, and generally negative self-devaluation simply for asking, “Why?”

I have founded my life upon an existential basis. On the one hand I feel free to make my own moral choices without regard to text or pulpit. On the other hand I believe that such moral relativism brings to the individual the full burden of moral responsibility. I cannot, nor will I seek to justify my behavior by reference to holy writ or legal statutes. It would have been better had more Germans been moral relativists, rather than just following orders.

An even greater danger lies in the absolute folly of religious stricture. Because throughout the history of human kind these have been the most fervently enforced and fatal of delusions.

There is no God. This is so self-evident to me that I can’t fathom how anyone can believe otherwise. I mean, where’s the proof? Well, I learned long ago not to ask such a question. You know the old saw. “To those who do not believe no proof is sufficient. To those who believe no proof is necessary.” Well, maybe. Maybe not. I do not believe in God, not because of an insufficiency of proof, but because of a total lack of proof. And if others insist that there is proof of God all around, obviously proof is necessary for their belief.

Inevitably in the course of discussions regarding the meaning of life these questions arise: “How can you live without any meaning? Why don’t you just commit suicide?”

Well, to begin with living is pretty much a given. It’s the natural state of living things. The very fact that we’re discussing the matter rather presumes that the first question must remain rhetorical. To posit the need for some sort of “meaning” as a prerequisite for living is like putting the cart before the horse. With or without meaning life abides.

As to why one doesn’t just commit suicide, well, putting aside the obvious hostility implicit in such a question I think it silly to believe that one has to either cobble together some sort of “meaning” or, in the alternative, snuff oneself. I just don’t see life in such stark terms.

To be, or not to be? Hmmmmm. Let me sleep on that one.

Which, as a matter of fact, may be why I’m perfectly happy to be free to simply live and to allow whatever “meaning” there may be to take care of itself. In the meantime I’m free to pass my life in a vast, mysterious, and unknowable reality which leaves me in a constant state of awe and wonder. This is enough for me. I feel perfectly comfortable living without final answers, and I feel no great need to pursue them. This way I feel free to believe what I want, when I want.

And here’s the key to living happily this way. Living one’s life without meaning does not mean living without faith. Oh, I have a busload of faith. Because I do believe that once everything’s all said and done, it’ll be all right.

Yes. It’ll be all right.

Review: LITTLE CHILDREN

2007-07-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

I came to this film with absolutely no expectations. It was recommended to me in the course of an ordinary ‘what’s new?’ exchange with a family member. I’d read no buzz. I’d seen no trailers, even on other DVD’s. Having now watched it I’ve come to regard this film as one of the most intelligent, insightful, and satisfying movies I’ve watched in a long time.

Little Children is the story of a man and a woman who carry on a brief affair in modern suburbia, in part to blunt the sense of ennui, alienation, and disappointment they feel in their lives. As with all lovers their reality is delimited within the space of their mutual intimacy. The objective world of careers, parental concerns, in-laws, and acquaintances, a world from which they already feel totally removed, becomes unreal and absurd.

Sarah is in an unsatisfying marriage to a man who turns to internet pornography for his gratification. Thus he moves even farther from Sarah, whose dissatisfaction with her marriage is reflected in her puzzled anxiety regarding her lack of feeling for her own daughter.

Brad, the man with whom she becomes involved, entertains fond memories of his youth as a high-school quarterback, and the small victories such a thing entails. Though he seems a sensible, good-natured man, he is vaguely troubled by what he perceives as his young son’s artificiality toward him. Also, his attractive wife, though outwardly loving and attentive, gently declines to be intimate with him while simultaneously urging him to pursue a professional path for which he has absolutely no regard.

Trapped in unsatisfying marriages Sarah and Brad turn to each other in order create something real for themselves, to escape the absurd banality of ordinary and formulaic relationships which serve only to suffocate, not affirm.

At the same time the neighborhood is in turmoil about a pedophile, who has recently been released from prison and who has returned to his home among the children and their frantic parents. He is portrayed as a physically repellant individual who is acutely aware of the fact that no woman would care to be with him. Yet, he has a loving and fiercely protective mother, who seeks to assure him that even he can find someone with whom to share his life.

I enjoy films that provide audiences with an amount of moral ambiguity, which refuse to neatly resolve issues in an obvious manner. This picture immediately seduces the viewer with likable and sympathetic characters, and then proceeds to slowly uncover the fatal flaws in their characters which serve in large part to explain the dénouement of their affair. That the central characters themselves may have imperfections in their natures which lead to the ultimate failure of their affair is clearly adumbrated by the use of a discussion of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary by a book club which Sarah joins.

I was surprised that the audience was allowed to participate so much in the private lives of the pedophile, Ronnie, and his mother, May. Usually such a character is relegated to the shadows of the story, and is allowed to leap into the light only to deliver a good scare. In this movie the screenwriter not only takes the viewer into the private moments of an ordinarily grotesque and sketchy character; he actually garners sympathy for him.

Still, and this is the device I so enjoy in more thoughtful films, it’s largely a come-on. The director and screenwriter lead the audience to the point of believing that this fellow may really not be so bad after all, only to have him do something that affirms what a disgustingly sick puppy he really is.

Sarah and Brad pursue their affair, and the viewer sympathizes with them, believing that somehow the vicissitudes of life have denied them the fulfillment they each deserve. Then the viewer is abruptly made aware of Sarah’s own insecurities, a lack so profound as to lead Sarah to stalk her new lover. At the same time Brad’s own lassitude becomes more intolerable, and the justification for his continuing the affair a little less convincing. It’s one thing to seek out a lover when one’s husband masturbates while sniffing a stranger’s panties and looking at porn on the internet. The rationale for cheating on a gorgeous and supportive wife is a little more difficult to fathom. This serves in part to explain a breathless exchange between Brad and Sarah during their initial bout of passion. In response to his questioning Sarah tells Brad that she doesn’t regret what they’re doing. He replies that he does.

I find that I’ve written much about the story but little about how it’s presented. I can only justify this by saying that for me the quality of a movie resides principally in the screenplay. I’m not familiar enough with the art of cinematography to make critical statements regarding a film’s technical aspects, except in the broadest terms. The direction of Little Children is solid and apt. There is little experimentation aside from an infrequent dual-screen shot. I may disagree with some when I say that the occasional use of narration only adds a degree of understanding to the perception of the characters and the world they inhabit. I do not agree that the camera is allowed to linger needlessly on characters as they register their reactions to dialogue and events. The editing, too, is apt.

Aside from Kate Winslet I’m not familiar with the rest of the cast. Still, all the performances are consistently fine. I was particularly impressed with the strength of Phyllis Somerville’s performance as May, the pedophile’s mother. She delivers what is undoubtedly one of the more memorable pieces of gently sad wisdom a mother can give her child:

“You're a miracle, Ronnie. We're all miracles. Know why? Because as humans, every day we go about our business, and all that time we know... we all know... that the things we love... the people we love, at any time now can all be taken away. We live knowing that and we keep going anyway. Animals don't do that.”

In sum, Little Children is a satisfying, intelligent, and analytical film about the dramatic ordinariness of modern suburban life. It treats of the means people often employ to extract some sort of meaning out of lives that are otherwise nothing but unceasing rounds of ordinary minutae. The film succeeds in drawing the viewers into the narrative, then skillfully leading them to places they didn’t anticipate.

Sunshine and Rain

2007-06-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

Guns Don't Kill People. They Just Make It Easier!

2007-05-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Initially I wrote this in response to an e-mail forwarded to me by one of my more right-tending acquaintances. The man is well-read, intelligent, mentally nimble, insightful, and blessed with a degree of personal charisma that is truly admirable.

He simply insists upon regarding many issues in a starkly monochromatic and simplistic manner. It’s not so much that he’s incapable of taking a nuanced view of matters. The man deals with complex legal points practically on a daily basis. I just think he believes that social issues are only as complex as we make them, and that over-analysis of these matters simply serves to postpone taking action to solve them.

This may be true to an extent. However, taking steps to solve an issue without fully understanding the true nature of the problem invites catastrophe. Such actions can spawn further and unforeseen problems while doing nothing to resolve the original problem. Ennobling the will to action over analysis and negotiation is simply no way to solve complex social, economic, or geopolitical problems.

Here’s a little bit of clarification surrounding this email. Recently I received a similar “advocacy” email from a couple I know in Arizona.

Whenever I receive emails castigating “the Media” or “the so-called experts” I go to Snopes.com to find out the facts surrounding the message. All too often such messages have certain elements in common with many of the popular right-wing pundits: they either distort the facts through omission, place the events out of context, or, in the extreme, they simply fabricate facts in support of their own agendas.

Now, I certainly don’t believe the liberal crowd is innocent of this kind of false advertising. But I’ve noticed that the farther one goes to either extreme the more likely he’ll encounter half-truths or outright falsehood.

Oddly enough Michael Moore agrees with Darrell Scott to some degree. One of the questions he poses in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE is, Why does the United States have such a high incidence of gun-related violence when other countries with longer histories of gun ownership have so much less? Obviously both men do not think that the ready availability of guns by itself can account for this violence.

Moore posits that the United States has a history of institutionalized private violence, that justice proceeds from the point of a gun. When a people are taught from an early age that justice is not to be found in negotiation and compromise, that Colt and not the law makes all men equal, such a people will instinctively seek redress of their grievances, real or imaginary, with a gun.

Darrell Scott obviously holds that religious faith is the keys to preventing such violence. Perhaps; perhaps not. Being a student of history I tend to equate religion and institutionalized violence to a greater degree than many Americans. Only recently has this country come to know too well the violence which lies at the core of sectarian belief. Europe and Asia have known this for centuries.

Reading the Funny Papers

2007-04-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

Top U.S. officer at Iraq prison detained, charged

Damned left-leaning elitist media! Wouldn't we be so much happier if we weren't told about corruption in the ranks?

Astronomers find Earth-like planet

Right here! Under our very feet! No kidding.

MySpace! Whew!

2007-04-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

My God! Where have you been, man!? I haven’t seen you on the boulevard in ages!

What a pleasure it is to see a familiar face! I’ve been off exploring. Hiking about upon the broad expanse, you know.

Truly? Wherever did you go? Wait! Let me guess. The fabled towers of Timbuktu.

Well, not exactly.

The searing wastes of the Sahara.

Not quite warm, yet.

The chilly heights of Nepal?

Cold. Quite cold.

Alright, then. I give up. Where have you been wandering all these weeks?

I’ve been rummaging about in MySpace, actually.

Huh? MySpace? Excuse me, but you’ve never struck me as the MySpace sort. Isn’t that place for children and cheerleaders?

Ha! Don’t you know it! I snuck in using the good name of my friend Guy De Maupassant. I thought the natives would conclude that I was just another guy looking for a good time. And I wasn’t mistaken. I was hardly there three hours before I caught sight of the halter tops and thongs migrating my way. Quite the sight!

And whatever was it that made you leave?

Well, you know me to be the serious sort. While at MySpace I tried my damndest to put together substantial essays embodying my thoughts and reflections, only to be repeatedly assailed by the sight of the equally substantial bosoms and bouncing asses of the likes of kissyface507 and partygirl20. It altogether derailed my train of thought.

Brave fellow!

And then there was that persistent sound of snapping bubblegum!

Steady, man!

I should have been better prepared. I knew that it would take more than a knowledge of my favorite color and an expressed desire to meet fun people to survive in that land.

Well, it’s good to have you back on the eponymous boulevard, my friend.

Thank you, Mssr. Le Duc. It’s so good to be back where I feel at home. But I will return to MySpace sometime. After all, there is something good to be said about the site of tits and ass.

Pun intended, I’m sure.

Bien sûr.

I Don' Need No Stinkin' Passport

2007-01-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

Aaagghh!! I can’t stand to listen to these lie anymore! You may already be aware of my general stance as regards Homeland (Fatherland, Motherland, whatever. Insert appropriate proto-fascist term of Teutonic etymology.) Security. It’s all false! A neo-con red herring which seeks to turn our attention away from the Administration’s true agenda, which is to turn the social clock back to a mythic time when women baked merrily in the kitchen while cheerily giving over their sons to the great god of War. The war on terror? Phhhht! Simply an excuse to keep the American people in a state of perpetual anxiety so they will gladly surrender those freedoms our fathers fought and died for in real wars. We’re told that this is a different kind of war. Hah! All I see is pictures of tanks and troops in flak jackets. Looks pretty much like the old kind of war to me! If the administration was serious about conducting a genuine war on terror the American people wouldn’t even be aware of it. You don’t need military divisions to decapitate terrorist groups. And that old saw, “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” How many battle groups do terrorists have poised off our shores preparing to land their overwhelming numbers on Miami Beach? Pah! The war on terror? A shadow play!

But what is real is yet another assault on our freedom of movement, fed to us as yet one more measure necessary to our security. There was a time when I expected to have to show a passport in order to enter some other benighted nation-state, whose tenuous claim to sovereignty was often merely an insistence on bureaucratic officiousness. To me it was often a matter of a little pride that Americans were more confident in their nationality, and did not demand this extra little humiliation of their own people. Now the phony war serves as the pretext for this wholly misguided policy. I have to produce a passport to prove I can return to my country of birth! No matter where I embarked! It’s enough to make one want to move to a more civilized milieu. Like France.

And can anyone really believe that such a policy will serve to increase the security of the American people? Sheesh! First of all, all the terrorists involved in bombing of the WTC were in possession of valid passports. They even bore admission stamps placed in them by U.S. immigration officers! Second, any terrorists of any degree of competence will be in possession of either false passports of such quality as to readily confound border security, or actual American passports sold to them by corrupt officials. These guys don’t just meet up over beers in Amsterdam and decide to take out the Holland Tunnel because there’s nothing shakin’ over the weekend. They put some planning into their acts of carnage. Demanding passports from Flo in Wichita and Ed in Bangor will not frustrate the terrorists’ designs. The only thing this new passport policy insures is an increase in the number counterfeit passports and unnecessary bureaucratic delays.

But I go on.

Oh! And the war in Iraq? Let’s get out! Yes. Now! Are we going to have to prolong the agony, as we did in Vietnam? Pull a Nixon! Declare victory and board the planes with bands blaring. Dubya himself said years ago “Mission Accomplished.” Okay, then. That’s the end of it. What the Iraqi people do now is up to them. We may not like the outcome, but that’s always a chance one takes when one chooses to make war. No one who continues to support that messy affair can define a victory which wouldn’t require an open-ended commitment to an ever-increasing number of American lives. When will there be a stable, free and independent Iraq? Hah! When there is peace in the Middle East.

This much I know: As long as there are armies on the ground over there, there will be no peace.

What I Believe

2006-10-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

I believe in global peace and harmony, first and foremost. That seems such a simple and straightforward thing. So much so as to invite smirks and parody. Doesn’t everyone believe in global peace? Unfortunately, no. Far too many human beings believe in destruction and predation. This is why people find it so easy to go to war and so difficult to build a peace. I speak out against those who believe that war and aggression are the natural order of things, and who seek to justify their own aggression on this basis. Human beings are free to create their own order. Peace or war are matters of choice, not naturalistic imperatives.

There is no good war. War devastates and brutalizes both the victor and the vanquished. Do we admire the Romans any more because they salted the ruins of Carthage? Do we detest the Nazis simply because they lost the war? Sixty years after the fact who really won the war in the Pacific? I don’t believe human beings should seek to secure an uncertain future at the cost of intermittent orgies of self-annihilation.

I am an unapologetic one-worlder. Borders are a holdover from a more primitive, feudal time. I think it foolish to contemplate travel to distant worlds when human beings insist upon dividing themselves along false sectarian lines. One can only defend borders by excluding others from the human community.

I believe in the necessity for human beings to practice and accept compassion and charity. To turn one’s back on charity in the belief that by doing so a person proclaims some sort of self-dignity is a foolish notion. If only people turned their backs on war and aggression for the same reason. Can you imagine? What if people refused to go to war because it’s degrading? The practice of compassion and charity is perhaps the most important thing human beings can do for themselves and each other to realize a better world.

I am an inveterate humanist. It troubles and astonishes me that the term humanism has taken on a pejorative edge in popular usage. People are responsible for the world they choose to create. It is not thrust upon them by unseen forces as a judgment upon human behavior. There are no gods to woo or mollify with prayers, pleadings, rituals, sacrifices, or self-abnegation. Human beings know right from wrong. They always have. Humans don’t need a book or tablets to tell them how to behave. At the same time I believe humankind must accept responsibility for its behavior. Human beings are free to create a utopia. Surrendering this freedom invites an apocalyptic future.

I believe there is a mystery which encompasses all existence, from here to the edge of creation. This mystery transcends human comprehension, and is not encompassed within any establish religious belief. To paraphrase a Taoist tenet, if you can speak of it, that is not it. Which is why I don’t believe in any god. Ironically, this is probably why many regard me as a person of faith. The mystery of existence is something that is beyond my comprehension, so I can only surrender to it and have faith that my life will resolve itself as it should. I do not pray, I do not petition, I have no expectations. I have no need to humble myself or to become more worthy in the hope of realizing my prayers. All existence is full of wonders. I need only live and all will eventually be made known to me. Or not. But that’s okay, too.

Peace, acceptance, compassion, charity, humanism, and faith in the belief that things will be okay. Pretty much sums it up. I suspect this is not a comprehensive list, but it encompasses the core of my beliefs. I like to leave room for thought.

Why I Am A Democrat

2006-10-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

What's that? Why am I voting Democrat? Well, the reason's pretty obvious, really. I just don't believe the other bastards. Plain and simple. That, and I think they're dead wrong about most things. But I guess the two pretty much go hand in hand. I mean, many of them suspect they're dead wrong, and they try to conceal that realization by simply misrepresenting the facts. Lying, in other words.

Yeah, yeah. I know I'm actually an anarcho-syndicalist. But not too many of those are on the ticket. And I do want to make my vote count, after all. As for revolution, well, it's more attractive as a literary conceit than in reality. We've never had a real revolution in this country, you know. What we had was a sort of tiff between the powerful over access to privilege. Just because so many unprivileged were killed didn't make it a revolution by and for the people. That just laid the foundation for the myth that it was some kind of democratic movement. In fact, it was just another "rich man's war, poor man's fight".

You want real revolution you've got to go back to the bloody madness that engulfed France in 1789. Friend, that was a revolution. Or the darkness that descended over Russia in 1917. Whew! Real revolution can be a nasty thing, and it sure doesn't come with a guarantee that justice will prevail. In truth, it simply provides an opportunity for the strongest and most ruthless to succeed.

But I digress. Simply put, the Democrats embody most closely those values with which I agree. Peace, acceptance, inclusion, social equality, and the use of government to foster those ends. The Republicans stand for war, exclusion, whup-ass mindless jingoism, and making the rich richer while screwing everybody else. All of which they try to prettify with the iconic imagery of American flags blowing in the wind, and resolute bald eagles staring off in one direction or another.

"Oh!" people say. "But aren't you afraid of terrorists?" Frankly, no. At least, I wasn't until the American electorate handed over the reins of power to an imperialistically-inclined coterie of right-wing Neocons who have only managed to embroil us in a perpetual, futile conflict that has garnered us a guaranteed supply of suicidal enemies for the foreseeable future.

And, please. Don't talk to me about victory in Iraq. There will be no "victory" in that country as long as there remains one dispossessed member of any religious sect who believes the American-backed government is responsible for his / her plight. What troubles me is that there are right-wing types who actually believe that in such a case America can solve the problem by simply killing that person. In other words, the right (which the Republicans by and large represent) has no fundamental problem with genocide. They've demonstrated this to a degree in the administration's approach to the question of torture. To them, it's all a matter of legalese.

And the wall. I've got a problem with that. I don't believe in walls. America has to protect itself by building a wall along its southern border? How paranoid is that? Will we have to endure the laughable sight of president Putin standing beside the wall in Matamoros saying, "Mr. Bush, tear down this wall!" Walls have never protected any nation. They are harbingers of stagnation and national decline. Viz. the Great Wall of China and the Iron Curtain. The one remains only a quaint tourist attraction, the other is gone.

Family values? Someone define this for me, please. Otherwise, I must regard it as just another of those simplistic catch-phrases of convenience used by the unthinking to justify their self-defeating obstinacy in voting for the Republicans. I mean if this refers to large, closely connected families then why are Republicans so adamant about excluding those nationalities who have far stronger family values than most Americans? Like Mexicans. Mr. Bush, tear down this wall!

Oh, I could go on. Taxes? I don't care! I'll pay the damn things as long as they help provide the services the American people have a right to expect. Don't throw my tax dollars away on disposable military hardware that doesn't feed, house, or clothe anyone. Let's be more concerned with caring for our people, and less concerned with showing the world we can bomb the crap out of anyone we want.

Religious values? Look, you have yours, let me have mine. If someone thinks something is wrong, they simply shouldn't do it! Problems arise when people use their religious values to dictate behavior to others. That's largely why people have slaughtered each other over religions throughout the ages. Of course, one could say that the real reason for this bloodbath has been and continues to be politico-economic dominance. Which makes the religious issue something of a lie. Which means that anyone voting Republican because of religious values would be deluding themselves.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are good, decent Republicans. People of principle who actually believe their party wants to pursue policies which will truly bring good to the many. The John McCains. Maybe I should include the William F. Buckleys, although I think he's just plain wrong despite the verbiage. But for now the party, as well as the administration, is the playground of the likes of Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafley, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and others too numerous to mention. Contrary to the Neocon mythos the right-wing conservatives are the ones who really control the media. Try finding a liberal station on the radio dial. Other than NPR, I mean.

Of course, the liberal camp is not really taking it totally lying down. People who speak out for a more humanist agenda have taken a page from the Neocon manual and discovered the value of an aggressive riposte. Individuals such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and Arianna Huffington. Of course, we all know the liberal humanists have taken over the internet (the Neocons will never forgive Al Gore for this). Where would we be without our Daily Kos or AlterNet?

Finally, I would be remiss were I not to mention those two great spokesmen for social justice, Howard Zinn and George Seldes. Antiauthoritarianism vincit!

Anyway, you get my drift. I'm voting Democratic because I really do believe there's a war going on. And it's going on right in the streets of this nation. It is a true cultural war between those who would seek to impose the terms of people's lives upon them, and those who believe people should be free to make their own lives. They are Republican, we are Democrat. They are the bad; we are the good. Darkness and light, baby. Simple as that.

Me Dad

2006-09-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

I rarely write about my father. When writing I almost always confine myself to those weighty matters of import to our species. War and peace, the parameters of existence, being and non-being, the boundaries of thought as it relates to the known cosmos. Or love. There is something so satisfying in dangling a string before love and watching it as it dances and plays.

Ergo, I rarely write about my father. Until now, that is. He came to see me last week, having flown thousands of miles from the coast to see his lone son in this strange land. And what did his son do to return his kind show of regard? Absolutely nothing. No dinners out. No entertaining. No riding about to greet friends of whom I’d often spoken.

In sum, I was left with a feeling of profound inadequacy. I’ve tried to ameliorate the feeling to some degree by pleading extraordinary circumstances. I’m still recovering from a severe injury which has left me a virtual invalid. I have no car. Were these things not so I most certainly would have been out and about with my father at every practical opportunity.

I frequently tell people I know that my father and I are very similar in terms of our general natures and view of things. My father has an easy, good-natured disposition. He sees the humor in even the simplest and odd things, such as would frustrate or even anger others. Things of seemingly great import he dismisses as of little concern, mere flash and smoke. I would say that he is slow to judge, did I not suspect that he probably doesn’t pass judgment at all, being cognizant of the general frailty of human nature.

We differ significantly in that my father is far less inclined to endure a quiet life, one that I would regard as contemplative or meditative. I find a great deal of quiet satisfaction in reading or watching films. My father must be constantly in motion. Even if this simply involves driving around to see, well, what there is to see.

I belong to what is commonly termed the Baby Boomer Generation. I know, I know! Overwrought, overused, just shut up about it. Nowhere near as chicly outré or inspired as the Beat Generation. Pathetically more self-involved than any of the X, Y, or Z Generations (I call these the AlphaBeat Generations.).

Dad has his own Generation, though I think he pays scant regard to such things. Such a conceit is more appropriate to my own. His has been referred to simply as the Greatest Generation. The one that endured deprivation, fought in real wars, and strove to raise families at a time when work was a job, not self-fulfillment. And they did this largely unheralded and without thanks.

To raise sons like me.

Well, thanks, Dad. I wish I could have done more for you. I know how much you’ve done for me. And I know I’ll be forever grateful to you.

Janis Wails Slow Blues

2006-08-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Listening to that voice I feel my body riding upon the slow and broadly rolling swells of deep, dark waters. With curiously eager schools of small carnivores nibbling at my toes.

Grackles

2006-08-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

I watch the grackles come as one,
Striding purposely upon the lawn.
They sense the time, the moment is now.

There! A rabbit!
I watch as it hops from here,
To here,
To there.
To sit, and watch, and listen.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

Then goes! There! And gone.
Did it catch my gaze?
Did it hear my breath?
I can't really know.
Small beings are aware
Of small changes, and
Of what these portend.

The traffic upon the street beyond,
Fitful yet steady, to and fro.
Does it notice the coming of the grackles?
Does it notice the change of times?

I have my doubts.
Our doings are fraught with the weight of self-absorption.
We haven't the patience for natural subtleties.

Trees take too long and are slow to finish thought.
The stars seem to take yet longer, and tarry just a tad.
And the little things seem pointless in their meanderings.

Yet they know the times, when they come;
They sense the signs upon the winds,
Perhaps they see omens in the circling stars.

And our frantic doings will pass and be gone
While the grackles still come as one,
And stride purposely upon the lawn.

The Prodigal Returns

2006-07-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

“Ma vie! Where have you been all this time? Sit, sit. I’ll order the both of us a glass.”

“My dear Le Duc! Such a pleasure to see a familiar face along the boulevard. I’ve only recently returned from a sojourn abroad, recovering from my unfortunate encounter with the Peugeot. Gentle winds blow fair from each corner of the globe to commingle in this noble son of Man."

“Proverbs?”

“Spenser, I think. Or Dryden. Or some such other representative of that delicious seventeenth-century literary style. No matter.”

“You don’t fear it might be regarded as a tad, mmm, misogynistic?”

“Misogynistic, no. Sexist, most definitely. Which may go a long way in explaining why Milton is no longer as popular today as he was, well, whenever he was popular.”

“Of course! Les belles filles. Where would we be without them?”

“Probably not here, of course.”

“Of course. But here we are, and we must make the best of it. After all, it can be such fun if not taken too seriously, despite the occasional bumps and shakes.”

“Or famines, wars, and plagues!”

“Ho, ho! What merriment the gods have at our expense! We are Fortune’s playthings. Poor players strutting about making sound and fury that means, well, quite little, actually.”

“Ah! Shakespeare! Most definitely!”

“Really? And I thought it was an original idea. Oh, well. La-de-da, la-de-da.”

“Did you manage to happen upon anything remarkable while on this sojourn of yours?”

“Actually, I did, Monsieur Le Duc. I happened to be at my ease one day (An attitude I generally find best suited for avoiding troubles and their attendant complications.), when I raised my eyes from Froissart’s Chronicles and caught sight of a young woman.”

“Oh, ho! Not too ill for the ladies, I see!”

“Listen and learn, my friend. She presented a most peculiarly sad, dark beauty. I simply could not avert my gaze, even for fear of seeming to stare. Her hair was long, and dark as a raven’s wing. Her skin, pale as the moon. And almost translucent. She was far, far too thin, which may have been the result of illness. There was a time when she may have been regarded as consumptive. But it was the look in her eyes and the set of her lips. I saw in her visage a sadly resigned disengagement. To see that on the face of one so young, well, it simply broke my heart.

“I never did find out her name. She reminded me to some degree of Juliette Greco. Of course, without that woman’s fiery vivacity. Or perhaps Beatrice Dalle, though a trifle more stable.

“As I said, I never did find out who she was. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if she was ever there. I only know for certain that I once saw a thin dark-haired young woman with the most exquisitely sad eyes. And the vision broke my heart, for many different reasons I haven’t yet fully examined.

“I think it to be a Japanese thing, you know? That there is an oddly compelling beauty in damaged things. Things that are complete, perfect, bring an end to inquiry. They fail to seduce the mind with wonder. The wonder of why. Why am I attracted? What is there I’m searching for. What answers does this sad, broken vision hold for me?

“Perhaps I haven’t made myself very clear.”

Une silence longue.

“Ahem! Another glass, my friend?”

“Thank you, Monsieur Le Duc. Most kind.”

Knowing To Oblivion

2006-06-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

What is it you seek when you seek to know?
What do you wish to find in knowing?
What is it you expect will come from understanding?

Watching the pale courtly figure of a courtesan gliding through a winter snowfall puts me in mind of a Noh drama. This in turn puts me in mind of Ezra Pound translating Noh dramas. Which makes me to wonder what it was that an Idaho American sought to find in the words of an ancient Japanese art form?

Surely he was seeking an answer. Just as we all seek an answer. To a question we barely know.

We know it’s there. Not on TV. Not in our textbooks. Not in the ordinariness of our daily world.

But it is there. Perhaps among the stars. Or lying unseen in the deepest dark of the waters.

Whatever it is, it is inscribed in the difficult signs of mysteries. Encoded, if you will, in the difficult language of the unknown. Just waiting for one to discover its meaning.

This, I believe, is the driving passion of knowledge. Once one comes to understand, to truly know, all things melt away.

And in that single moment there is that climactic ecstasy when we ourselves melt into nothingness.

In seeking knowledge we seek to return to our primal state, before there was Being.

In knowledge we seek oblivion.

The Price of Gas

2006-05-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

"Man! It cost me a boatload to fill up my SUV."
"Yeah. I hear you."

Lest We Forget

2006-05-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched a Memorial Day segment on the television program 60 Minutes which left me with very ambiguous feelings. The episode featured U.S. soldiers who had been severely wounded in the conflict in Iraq. It showed how, despite their severe wounds, they were able to return to lives filled with futures, largely through their own pluck and courage.

Though I sympathized with the soldiers’ plights I could in no way share in the kind of soldierly zealotry they displayed toward a war which had robbed them of their limbs and minds. All these individuals, save one, could have served as poster children for the militaristic adventurism of the current administration.

One stated that the conflict in Iraq is justified simply because the President says we have to be there. Another went so far as to say that she believes herself to be a better person after having a major portion of her brain removed. Yet another’s biggest regret about having his left arm blown off by a rocket propelled grenade was the realization that he would have to leave his comrades in arms.

While I think it a great mercy that none of these individuals will face the sort of bleak future of disabled veterans from other conflicts, as portrayed by Georges Grosz in his drawing The Hero, I can’t escape the conviction that this select group of individuals represents the very fortunate few. The lottery winners of veterans, if you will. In the background, away from the cameras, are thousands whose futures are filled with broken marriages, unemployment, and marginalization. For some the future only holds the ward of a VA hospital.

At the end of the program Andy Rooney, whom I respect as a humane and sensible individual, made some obligatory remarks regarding the meaning of Memorial Day. I thought it meet to point out that those whom we memorialize on this day did not give their lives. Rather, their lives were taken from them. No one goes into combat with the intention of dying or suffering grievous wounds.

I had to disagree with Rooney’s observation that war, sadly, brings out the most instances of courage in human beings. It doesn’t take courage to die or be wounded in war. It only takes being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in the case of war, that’s all the time. For all the instances of apparent courage found in warfare, there are just as many instances of cowardice and perverse cruelty.

Warfare simply brings out the worst in human behavior. In point of fact the mundane routine of civilian affairs contains far many more instances of true courage. The firefighters, the ordinary cops, the EMS respondents, the strangers who run into burning buildings to look for those in danger, or who run to accidents to aid those who may need help. These are the individuals who display true courage. Because they choose to act selflessly despite the assuredness of peril. Not simply because someone ordered them to do so.

On this Memorial Day let us remember the misery and horror wrought by warfare. Let us not celebrate it as an occasion to display the best in human nature.

Die Wacht Am Rio

2006-05-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

Ah! A letter from my uncle abroad! It’s been longer than I can remember. Whatever would prompt him to write me now? Surely he doesn’t need money. Well, let me see.

“Dearest nephew; Undoubtedly you’ve heard or read of plans by the leadership of this splendidly spacious and un-crowded land to deploy a military presence along the border to the south.”

Hm! Just like my uncle. Avuncular to a fault! A bit terse and to the point, though. But why just the border to the south? Perhaps they face a formidable armed menace.

“This is to supplement the existing force of 10,000 officers whose actual job it is to patrol the border. The multi-million dollar steel fence has proven inadequate to hold back the tide of poor and unemployed seeking to make a better life for themselves and their families, much as the progenitors of those who are already here once did.”

“As the good book says: You feast before the multitude, yet you expect them to only watch? Okay, perhaps it isn’t in the good book. But it might be. It’s a big book, that good book.”

“It seems that technology and the extra-legal zeal of posse and paramilitary militias have proven inadequate to the task. Now the Gang of Four find it necessary to sanction a military presence along the border.”

“You know my feelings regarding borders of any kind. I regard them as the futile, feudal response of fearful societies. The separation of human beings from each other through the expedience of borders is arbitrary, short-lived, and has been the basic source of conflict between people for millennia.”

“And, of course, they never work. From the Great Wall to the Maginot Line to the Atlantic Wall to the Berlin Wall. What remains of them but mere curiosities? Testimonies to quaint and outmoded ideas.”

“I’m certain that in your reading you’ve come across photographs of East German border guards, machine guns at the ready, gazing at the camera from concrete guard towers through binoculars. The photos invariably bear a caption to the effect ‘THEM LOOKING AT US LOOKING AT THEM.’.

Well, now we have become the THEM Just as we had already become the joyous tank crews rolling across the countryside, so reminiscent of archival news footage of the Blitzkrieg.”

“We are no longer the good guys. We are no longer the beleaguered and brave fighters battling overwhelming odds in a conflict we never wanted. That’s the image our leaders try to foster in our minds to support their imperialist agenda. But it’s a lie! And it’s needlessly costing us lives and the trust and esteem of the rest of the world. Furthermore, these policies and the lies used to support them only serve to give credibility to the position of those who would truly wish to do us harm.”

“Anyway, I hope this letter finds you in good health. Write me in care of your aunt Mathilde when you can. I don’t want them to know where I live, you understand.”

“My warmest wishes, your Uncle.”

“P.S.: You know I hold similar views on censorship and any authoritarian attempts to deprive individuals of the freedom to make choices. Laws, when necessary, should enable and not restrict human behavior.”

Well. I’m glad he made that clear. It’s so nice to read that he and Mathilde are still together. Especially after that sorry episode in Marrakech. But as they say, All’s well that ends. Well.

Signs That Might Be Omens

2006-05-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

As I sat in the sunshine today I suddenly noticed a flight of birds before me. Two dark birds, perhaps crackles, were chasing a hawk. They were flying at about tree-top level, maybe thirty feet up, and slightly to my left. One of the dark birds quit the chase by suddenly wheeling away, while the other continued to pursue the hawk, which was at least half again his size. The hawk appeared to be fleeing for its life, although I can’t imagine what damage a smaller bird could do to a bird of prey.

The point of this is that the flight of birds is one of the many things I see in the world which I believe to be full of a meaning of sorts. I’m hardly a superstitious individual. And I’m certainly not religious. Yet, the more I think upon these things the more I’ve come to realize that I am an animist of sorts. The natural world is full of significant events and phenomena. Pools of still water, trees of a kind, the presence of things where they should not be. Or the absence of things where they are to be expected.

A black cat crossing my path means nothing. The song of a bird in the middle of the night does mean something. Owls generally always mean something. I mean, have you ever seen an owl actually look at you? Whew! A lone dog that stands and just looks should be watched to see which way he moves. Which really sort of makes sense, don’t you think?

In reading Plutarch’s Parallel Lives one is struck by how incredibly religious the Greeks and Romans were. They were constantly cognizant of the role of unseen forces in their lives, and busied themselves constantly in seeking to find favor with them, and to divine their meanings as manifest in the events around them.

I am of the opinion that ancient peoples were far, far more religious than any modern peoples, who seek their beliefs in books, and who distill these beliefs into obtuse systems and sets of dogmas and rites devoid of any connection to the real world.

Signs and omens are all about us. They are very personal things, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who claims to be able to read their meaning. Some very few can. But they are not the ones who say they can. Those are charlatans.

I cannot read the omens. I only know that they are all about me. To me, they fill my world with awe and wonderment. Some would call that madness, I suppose. But that’s of little consequence. The mystery of things is too vast to be diminished by such petty concerns.

Good-bye To All That

2006-04-29T16:39:00.000-07:00

Springtime along the Boulevard. Trees in flower upon the warm breezes. What a truly enchanting time.

“Why, Monsieur Le Duc! Whatever is it you are you doing here, loitering along the Boulevard at this time of day? Shouldn’t you be at the ministry, doing whatever it is you do there?”

“Ah! You must congratulate me! I’ve recently joined the ranks of the gainfully idle. After thirty years of servitude to a desk I have been rewarded with a pension (a government pension, mind you), and the freedom to sip a glass of wine in the warm sun whenever I please. Have you ever noticed the number of charmingly delightful examples of femininity which pass along the Boulevard. I’m certain you have, you old . . . old roué, you.”

“Old!? Monsieur! You do me a discourtesy!”

“My apologies. It was truly a poor choice of words. Un mot injuste, you might say.”

“Pish, Tosh. Don’t worry. I’m happy for you. You’re a good friend. My show of hurt was mere display. But what will you do, now that you have so much time on your hands?”

“Why I expect I’ll do what I’ve done all my life, and that is to pursue whatever fancy happens to overtake me at any particular moment. I have a boundless curiosity about all things, and a lifetime is insufficient to satisfy the pursuits it engenders.”

“Often was the time I would be sitting at my desk at Le Ministère de la Sécurité de l’Intérieur (now Le Département de la Sécurité de l’Intérieur) reflecting upon the meaning of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, only to have to interrupt my reveries to issue a lettre de cachet against some poor bastard whose only crime was that he sought to make an honest living to support his family.”

“In point of truth, the words of a Tang dynasty scholar as he reflected upon the sight of the moon shining through the branches of a mulberry tree have always been of greater import to me than anything I ever did as a civil servant. Of course, the civil service has always been a secure haven for creative thinkers who still had to make a living. Think of Hawthorne, Poe, Huysmans.”

“Huysmans? You can’t mean Huysmans the sodomite.”

“Retired on a full pension after thirty-two years in the French civil service. I believe he was awarded La Légion d’Honneur.”

“Ah! I see. Well I suppose the French have more liberal views as regards such matters.”

“I thought you are French.”

“Alsatian, actually. Though my mother was Moravian. On her father’s side. Though I’m certain there was a jumble of Huns in there somewhere back in time.”

“Huns! Oh! Bad luck, that. Being originally from Provence I’m confident of my Moorish background. As the saying goes, ‘The Moor the merrier.’ But I digress. I’m a Bohemian by nature . . . “

“I’m sorry, but didn’t you just indicate Provencal?”

“No, no. Bohemian in the literary sense. A man of irregular habits. Given to whimsical self-indulgence. At best a cerebral jack of all trades, but never a master of any. I truly admire those who have the drive and focus to apply themselves to any one particular endeavor, but I’ve never been able to do so. I’m surprised I applied myself to my marriage as long as I did. But love makes such things easy.”

“You were married?”

“Why, twenty-three years. I thought I’d told you.”

“No, you’ve never spoken of it, my dear Duc.”

“Well, it’s a story for another time.”

“That being the case let us be off to the theatre. I understand tonight is the premier of a new film by my good friend Gilles. Advance word among the academicians has it that it’s quite good.”

“Then, by all means. Let us be off.”

Springtime along the Boulevard. It can be truly enchanting.

Start Me Up, Comrade!

2006-04-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

The Stones in China? What’s this world coming to?

Seriously. What does it mean when the Peoples Republic rocks on while Americans look for new ways to build bigger and stronger fences around the Land of the Free?

OK. Beast of Burden was cut. That’s sort of understandable, in a way. But Brown Sugar? What’s that all about?

Maybe the Committee wants no references to forced cane production.

The Chairman smiles.

Land of Shadows

2006-03-18T14:06:00.000-08:00

What once I was I am no longer.
What once I had has been taken from me.
The life, the strength, the drive, the force,
All hallmarks of vitality have left my frame.
To leave me cast away upon the shore
Of the land of shadows.

Now I pass my days walking amidst those
Who sit in silent consternation at how they’ve come to be.
And I gaze fearfully at those who move without
Knowing the why, or whereto, or wherefore.
At night I listen to the unanswered cries for help,
And I hear the pitiable sobbing of those who dwell in this place.

I cannot be among these shadow folk.
I do not belong here.

I stand upon the banks of Acheron and
Plead with the boatman to take me from this place.
But he remains unmoved. His task is pitiless.
No one returns from the land of shadows.

But I know I will return, for this is not my place.
I will plunge into the dark waters.
I will claw my way from this inhospitable shore
To find my rightful home in the light, among the laughter.
Far from the land of shadows.

Stepping Off the Curb

2006-03-18T13:48:00.000-08:00

Quelle tristesse. Struck down while crossing the boulevard. By a Peugeot, no less. Ah, friends. The irony is not lost on me.

This singular misfortune left Le Boulevardier with a broken back. And after almost four weeks in the hospital I now reside in a rehabilitation center, where I struggle to regain the strength in my back and legs to be able to simply walk again!

Who could imagine that it could be so difficult to do so simple a thing, an activity most all of us have been doing freely and thoughtlessly since we’ve been children?

Ah, well. Such things can happen when one steps off the curb of the boulevard. And there is no sense in assigning fault or blame. Things remain as they are, and assigning fault or blame ameliorates nothing.

While I remain in this, alas, pitiable state you may follow my progress in greater detail here. In the alternative you may find simple joy in a good Bordeaux and the wit of Oscar Wilde. Such a clever fellow.

Nurture the Dream

2006-02-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

At a time when the walls which divide human beings are being pushed higher and topped liberally with the broken shards of hateful rhetoric, it’s comforting to be reminded that there are those among us who envision and actively pursue a better world. It’s only regrettable that such a person has to die before we are reminded that the world is what we make of it, and that we can make it far better than what it is.

Amidst the din of angry shouting between groups, each holding firmly onto the absurd notion that it can cajole and intimidate the other to do as it wants, while simultaneously assuring itself that it will not be cajoled or intimidated into doing what the other wants, it’s nice to hear the words of someone who holds the notion that human affairs should proceed through mutual respect and understanding, not intimidation and murder.

Far, far too many regard civil rights in the narrowest sense, as the carping demand of groups (minorities) who seek to have something others (the majority) don’t. In fact, civil rights refers to the basic respect and human dignity due to all people. And the reason a seemingly growing number of groups demand their civil rights is because so many people in society have been denied this basic respect and dignity.
It is a proper time to honor the memory of an individual who devoted her life to the cause of furthering the awareness that all people are deserving of civil rights in the broadest sense. And that these human rights are to be attained through courage and knowledge, not through threats and violence.

As an aside, while watching a program on television the other night which dealt with the rescue of several human beings overcome by fatal gasses. The story was set in Cleveland in the early part of the last century. The men had been digging a tunnel under Lake Erie about five miles from shore, in order to bring fresh water to the city. Suddenly there was an explosion and the tunnel filled with noxious fumes. Two rescue parties were immediately sent into the tunnel, only to be overcome by the gasses themselves. It was only through the energetic and courageous intercession of a local inventor that the men were finally pulled from the tunnel. The man was Garrett Augustus Morgan. The fact that he was an African-American should be no surprise. Courage and genius have no regard for the color of a person’s skin. What is a sad surprise is how many people are still woefully unaware of this truth. Sadder still are those who insist upon denying it.

State of the Union

2006-02-01T07:31:00.000-08:00

Champagne kisses and caviar dreams.

Lies to soothe idiots and

Blandishments to the simple.

Zen Man, He Go

2006-01-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Zen man, he go.
Where go, who know?
No know.

Ha!

Zen man standing lightly
On leaf laughing.
Breezes being, coming, going.
All same place.

Ha!

How can I not be myself?
How can I not be myself?
How can I not be myself?
How can I
How can
How I
How can I not
How can I
How can I not be
How can I be
How be
How can I be myselfHow
Be
Myself
How can I
How not
How not I
How not myself
Be
How not be
How be
Be
Be not
Be not myself
Be myself
Not myself be
Be
Not be
Myself
Not
Being
Not
Not
Not
Being
.

Ha!

The Art of War

2006-01-09T01:11:00.000-08:00

Don’t speak to me of the nobility of war,
Nor of the need to engage in slaughter.
For to me such lies are no more than mere obscenities.

The butchery that is war breeds no heroes.
No glory, nor grandeur, nor immemorial memories.
War brings merely empty arms and an end to hopes together.

We must not suffer tyrants, you say?
Why, our own leaders smiled at this very one
And shook his hand in comradeship. As long as they needed him.

And now we’re told to regard as the bad guys
Those who go to their deaths in the name of god?
Who are now the heroes? Who are now the martyrs?

No. Do not speak to me of the nobility of war.
Nor of the duty to make anguish and gore.
Such words are merely lies. Mere obscenities.

It's Easy If You Try

2005-12-08T07:49:00.000-08:00

Tall Stones

2005-12-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

How did they come to be?
Here.
In this place.

These silent watchers.
Gathered in awesome presence.
Awaiting the passage of aeons.

No one knows.
None can say,
With any certainty.

Oh, yes. Many have their answers.
The grave children, at play in their gowns
And bearing their summer garlands.

But they're wrong.
Mere sport for the ages.
Mere foolish diversions.

These.
These know, but are silent.
They have no need to say.

I will think upon them,
When my time comes,
And the world begins to fall away.

Perhaps as I prepare for my final sleep,
As strange visions hover before my eyes,
They will appear to me and answer
My final
"Why?"

Thank You

2005-11-24T04:31:00.000-08:00

On the occasion of Thanksgiving Day my first inclination is to be cleverly dismissive. It would be such an easy thing to do. God knows, I'm certain the irony of the occasion would not be lost on many.

Still, the more I reflect on the occasion the more I come to understand that it isn't so much the holiday itself which I find objectionable. It's the implied injunction to be thankful. The glibly imperious assertion that on this day one must be thankful!

But then I realize I can often be ungenerous in my judgements, and I find I overstate the case. No one is demanding that I be thankful. Actually, I think myself a little unkind in seeking to attack the impulse of others to give thanks for those things which enrich their lives.

Truth be told, I must admit that even in the midst of my crippled isolation I have good things in my life for which I find myself giving thanks every day. Thus, for me to seek to show a clever contempt toward Thanksgiving Day would be a sort of petty hypocrisy.

I give thanks for the kind attentions of good friends. Without them so many things in this life would be so much more difficult.

I give thanks for the feeling that I have all I need for what I want. It is sadly true that while so many in this world know the true nature of want, there are many who don't realize that a warm home and a full cupboard really are reasons to be thankful.

I give thanks that I can take pleasure in the small joys and the little beauties which fill my world almost every day. It saddens me to realize that many never know the awe and wonder of ordinary things.

It is true that far too many appear to have nothing in their lives for which to be thankful. This world is often a place of fearful anxiety and abject misery. Upon reflection I can find no good reason to attack peoples' wish to give thanks for what little good they do have.

I give thanks for the blessings which Fortune allows.

As for myself, No Thanks for the miseries.

B & B

2005-11-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

"And what did you do this Saturday evening?"

"Oh, the usual, Sieur le Duc. I tarried in the national library, poring over ancient archives."

"Exciting stuff, that!"

"You might be surprised. There's no telling what you can run across, sometimes. I once found a piece of the Shroud of Turin someone had used as a bookmark. In a volume of Symbolist poetry, of all things."

"How did you know . . . oh, never mind."

"But yesterday evening I was doing genealogical research, on my mother's side."

"Wasn't she Alsatian?"

"I thought Moravian, but I'm not sure. Ergo, the research. How about you?"

"So glad you asked! Last night I had the immense pleasure of going to the theatre to watch a sterling performance of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."

"Surely you're not referring to that grim and shadowy thing by Cocteau? That's a little harsh for cold late autumn nights.

"No, no! This was the musical, directed by my good friend Gilles. With the troupe of Les Arts Créatif du Spectacle."

"Oh, CAPA."

"Well, yeeeesss . . .roughly translated, of course."

"Roughly. Gilles. Isn't he the poet?"

"Yes and no. She's a director by profession, though also a poet by nature. It was through her kind offices that I was encouraged to attend the production. And I must say it was one of the most pleasant Saturday evenings I've experienced in a long while. From the outset I was tendered invaluable assistance by Sieur Ahedeen."

"Moroccan?"

"Algerian, actually. He showed me to an outstanding seat. There was a gaggle of young theatre people nearby, and he playfully admonished them to exercise courtesy toward the old man. One young person (une vrai bebe) challenged him by asking 'What for?'"

"Ho!"

"I know. I love it when the young challenge authority. They are far less likely to run blindly to their deaths simply because the elders, well, just want them to. Anyway, she thought it might have something to do with my hat!"

"Ho, ho! Oh, the young people these days. Charming."

"Anyway, while sitting awaiting the show to begin I was kindly greeted by Ste. Cyr, Marquesse de Coigne, as well as Gilles' good friend, Victoria. Hmmmm . . . I've just now come to realize how much I so enjoy the company of attractive women. They're so much more delightful than, well, you, for instance. No offense intended."

"And none taken, my friend. Even I enjoy the company of attractive women more than my own. Also, I presumed that your notoriety as a rake was not wholly undeserved."

"Really? A rake? Moi? What a revelation! To be regarded as a gardening implement. Passing strange! Ah, well. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was a real treat. Such talented young people. The songs were so smooth and sure I could close my eyes and ride the melodies, wholly surrendering myself to their charms. And they could actually dance, something one doesn't often see in amateur theatricals. The costumes were richly appointed, the sets lavishly designed yet with functional precision and care, the lighting elaborate yet fluent, and the sound manipulated with a wholly professional hand."

"And the direction?"

"Please. I would simply sound like I'm gushing. You know that Gilles is my good friend, and that I absolutely adore her. Were I to attempt to comment intelligently on her directing it would sound to many like the empty enthusiasms of an ignorant schoolboy."

"Still, it'd be easier than admitting that you know absolutely nothing about directing theatre."

"I would not go so far, monsieur! You cannot work for the government for thirty years and not know something about acting!"

"Pas faux, Monsieur Le Duc. Pas faux."

Teaching Nonsense

2005-11-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

“Have you seen today’s article in the newspaper?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, some Teutonic thing I picked up outside the Gare Ste. Germaine. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Neublatt, or something like that. The fellow didn’t have Pravda.”

“I didn’t know you read German.”

“I don’t, actually. But it still carries Calvin and Hobbes. Ho, ho! I love that comic.”

“You exasperate me sometimes, my dear Duc. I meant, which article?”

“Oh, my friend pointed it out to me. She was quite distraught. Here it is. The one about the decision of the school board in that state over there.”

“Which state is that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Some tract of farmland in the middle of nowhere. I believe its major export is tornadoes.”

“My God!”

“Apparently that’s what they believe as well. At least the state’s school board believes it to be so. They want to insure the state’s future generations are free to learn that supernatural forces may cause tornadoes.”

“Supernatural forces?”

“Pixies, sprites, that sort of thing. Except God. They don’t want to introduce religion into the public schools. They draw the line at supernaturalism in the natural science classes.”

“How absolutely reasonable.”

“Yessss . . , quite sage.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too harsh in my judgment of those poor people. I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. Inbreeding being what it is. Besides, it’s not as though we’re witness to Galileo being dragged before the Inquisition. The students are simply being given the choice to believe in fairy dust rather than evolution. I personally believe strongly in freedom of choice. Besides, who in their right mind would choose to be ignorant?”

“Baby steps, sir. Baby steps. I just feel uncomfortable that the teaching of nonsense should be given the mandate of the state.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Also, there is a positive aspect to this story.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Well, if evolution is merely a theory chances are overwhelmingly good that the virus causing that avian flu which is the rage in all the papers today will most likely not evolve into some deadly strain which can infect humans. See, the state school board has delivered mankind from the irrational fear of an influenza pandemic!”

“Ah, but you forget, my friend. Humankind may yet fall victim to dark and malicious forces which are at work in the universe.”

“As in the last election?”

“Amen.”

Time, time, time . . .

2005-11-09T07:03:00.000-08:00

Sitting beside the boulevard affords one time to think, to ponder the nature of things.

Of late I’ve been reflecting upon certain elemental questions which touch upon creation. Ultimate reality, if you will.

A good friend far more learned than myself recommended a film to me. This film sought to impart to the viewer an elementary understanding of string theory.

Please, don’t ask me to explain this in detail. I have a dilettante’s interest in the sciences. And I trust to the kindness of those who really know of these things not to ridicule the simplicity of my understanding.

Yet, the film mentioned something which struck me as somehow profoundly significant in its implications. It said simply that these vibrating strings, these elemental disturbances in the basic void of creation, impart all manifested qualities to all those things which inhabit our familiar reality.

When I heard this I thought, What an odd concept. That time itself may simply be an attribute of things. Time isn’t an illusion created by the manner in which manifested objects move in relation to each other. It is an actual attribute of manifestation. Like color or texture.

The implication of this is that time can actually be removed from an object. Thought of in another way, an object may actually be taken out of time. And placed in another time. It’s all a matter of changing the attributes of the object.

When I thought of this I suddenly realized that here lay the possibility of time travel. Here, in the manipulation of attributes. And with this realization came a vision of a future when people (or their ilk, as we may be quite different by then) will move between times as they now move from here to there. It will be a future when the distances between the stars will be irrelevant.

What a fascinating time to come. I daresay we can scarce imagine the things that will come to be.

Then I thought, Well, if time is only an attribute what of thoughts themselves?

It was then I decided to go slow with the absinthe.

Moderation in all things, after all.

The Passing of Good People

2005-11-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

It always saddens me to learn of the passing of good people. Indeed, how can one not be saddened to learn that the world has become just a little less gentle, a little less merciful. That it has become a harder place than it already is.

Is such a thing really necessary? No. I hardly think anyone would agree that this should be so.

I have heard it said that this woman taught us all how to be better people. It seems such a simple thing. Yet, when you think about it, how would you do it? Like this small woman, would you be willing to risk the indignities, the insults, the humiliations, the threats of death to take a stand for justice? In the simple hope that by doing so others will somehow learn to become better people?

I think there are few who would be willing to act with such quiet courage.

I feel the world becoming harder about me. As though a Golden Age of compassion and mercy has become supplanted by an Iron Age of harsh anxieties. Our leaders bring us no reassurance and comfort. They bring only alarms and an unending litany of fears.

Well. This I know, and I know it quite well. It needn’t be this way. We are better people, and we needn’t surrender our better natures to those dark powers who seek to ensnare us.

We need only speak out. Speak out against hatred, ignorance, and fear. Stand and speak out for justice, compassion, mercy, and knowledge.

I know that this is what I choose to do.

Chilly Day

2005-10-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yellow leaves.
The trees are thin.

Winter comes!

The sound of warm air.

With sincere apologies to Basho, Buson, and Issa. Although I'm sure they're smiling at my tricks.

Thoughts and Reveries

2005-10-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

I so enjoy chatting with informed and perceptive people. Their insights and observations on things are so often revelatory in both a surprising and pleasant manner.

Yesterday evening I was conversing with a good friend de rerum natura, so to speak, and while treating of the socio-political aspect of this world I mentioned a paragraph I’d run across while reading the biography Caesar by Christian Meier.

At first I found the book to be something of a slow and turgid go. But then I encountered a remark the author made which seemed to me to so closely mirror the contemporary nature of things that the parallel instantly came to mind.
In the late Republic the august and powerful of Rome (we’ll avoid such nasty terms as "venal" and "grasping") identified their own interests so closely with the established order, i.e. the Republic, that any criticism directed at them they regarded as an assault on the Republic itself. As a consequence of this, these people of power were willing to undermine the very order they claimed to protect in order to defend themselves. Thereupon followed Caesar, the Empire, unbridled tyranny, etc.

The current Administration and the powerful who own it claim to be the true inheritors and defenders of the freedoms which are the foundation of this nation’s political order. At the same time they are willing to abrogate those very freedoms in defense of their own interests. It is as though political liberties are too precious to be entrusted to the people. The privileged and the powerful tell (not ask) the rest of us free-born citizens to trust them to dispense our liberties to us as they see fit. At the same time they shamefacedly would have us believe that the blood of our children is being nobly shed. They prefer we believe this, rather than have us think that our loved ones are being led to the slaughter in furthering the greed and cynical avarice of the rich and powerful.

For shame.

There is no heroism in the sight a faceless, dismembered body lying in a splash of blood. Nor is there nobility in the screams of the torn and burning victims of battle. War is an obscenity. Period.
We should regard as heroes those who teach and nurture the young. The compassionate and caring, those who give of their strength to support and shelter . . . these are the people who deserve our praises and laurels. The mild and the merciful deserve our praise and emulation.

Imagine a happy world at peace, with no hunger, where those who hurt find healing and are comforted. And where those in need find mercy and compassion. We can make such a world, if we choose to do so. We are humankind, and we have been given the gift to craft such a world.

At times the world can be a hard and difficult place, it’s true. What with droughts and plagues and all manner of natural disasters. But despite these things the world is never heartless. It is only people who are heartless, and they must choose to be so. Even the most fearsome beasts do not kill to prove a point or in pursuit of abstractions. It is people who choose to create misery where there is no reason for it. Then they seek to justify their hatred and brutality by saying simply "That’s just the way things are", and think themselves clever in perpetuating this miserable philosophy.

But that's not the way things are. People choose to act in a way that perpetuates a world of hate and brutality.
Because it's easy to be cruel. It was easy to win the war. We're finding it far harder to secure the peace.

We must choose to live in such a way that it becomes easier to love than to hate. The choice, after all, is ours.

"You rant, my friend."

Ah, perhaps. But it's for a good cause. What a beautiful day. More wine?

My Many Thanks

2005-10-12T06:05:00.000-07:00

“Voila! For your birthday!”

“Why, my good friend D’Esseinte! What an absolute astonishment! I am truly humbled.”

“Tosh! It’s nothing. By the time one reaches my age one comes to know that good friends exceed by far the value of any such trifles. It fills my heart with gladness to be able to proffer such tidings of gratitude for so many years of good friendship.”

“Well, still, my deepest thanks! After all, I know a bit about the world, thus I’m full well aware that it isn’t an easy thing to come by such a . . .an, uh . . .”

“An aardvark.”

“Yes. Certainly. Such an aardvark without some expenditure of time and effort. Particularly one of such resplendent mien.”

“It’s all a matter of who you know, my good friend. It just so happens that the ambassador of a certain well-known insular subcontinent (which will remain unspecified) happened to owe me a small favor arising out of the capture of that rascally Ned Kelly. God save us from the Irish! Or is it for the Irish? I forget. Still, I fear I’ve said too much already.”

“Well, again, my humblest thanks. I know just the place for the little fellow. Look at his little grin! He really does grow on you! Kootchie-kootchie.”

“They are among the most intelligent of their kind, you know.”

“Yeeesss . . . No doubt. Spinoza would blush. It’s a good thing they haven’t WMD’s.”

“Ho! Nor STD’s, as far as I know.”

“I’ll not ask how.”

“How was you birthday otherwise?”

“Ah, my dear Duc. The passing years have brought me the knowledge that it is truly a lucky man who has friends who think of him and wish him well. No possessions can compare to the kind attentions of those who are close. On my birthday I was fortunate to receive best wishes from those few who are near to my heart. One friend I value in particular treated me to dinner and a late-night conversation over music and wine. In sum, it was a fine, fine day.”

“Well, be so kind as to number me among your friends. Let me see, what does Le Monde have to say about your horoscope.”

“You know I hardly believe those things.”

“I know, I know. But it either that or the I Ching. Zounds! What a coincidence! The Chinese have put two people into orbit! I didn’t see that one coming.”

“We so infrequently do. More wine?”

Grand Malaise

2005-10-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes. I saw that episode as well. I was intensely interested in watching his eyes. I wanted to know how his look would appear while he was in the grip of grand mal. It's true that Caesar still seemed to be looking at something. Though I feel confident in saying that at the time he saw nothing. Once the darkness comes there is nothing more to see.

It happened to me once while I was with a woman I loved. She told me later that I had such a fearful look of rage in my eyes. Of course, I remembered nothing. Though I'm sorry she saw that look on my face. I think it may have frightened her.

Undoubtedly there are those who would say that at such time my fury is surfacing within me. Perhaps. I'm certain there are aspects of myself of which I'm not wholly aware.

I remember well the look on the doctor's face when he first pronounced his diagnosis over me. The way his eyes widened as he drew in his breath and said the word. My God, he may as well have pronounced the word "Death" over me. Oddly enough, I was quite unmoved by it. Perhaps because I was so young. After all, it was, what, over forty-five years ago?

I distinctly remember thinking, however, "Well, how bad can it be? Caesar had it, and it doesn't seem to have gotten in his way."

Also, it struck me as being a sort of dramatic, theatrical thing. I was entering my phase of adolescent Romantic narcissism. How perfect, for a lone tormented genius to be actually, well, tormented by something. Otherwise, it would simply be an empty gesture.

I fear I may have had too many such episodes while alone, and that I may have actually done some damage to myself. Although I can't match any of the disservice I've done to my poor but patient body directly to a grand mal, God knows what knocking around I did to myself when I writhed in private.

Oh, it's fully under control. Thanks be to medication. But it's lost its Romance. Now it's simply one element in a constellation of neural mishaps. But I remain unmoved. It's simply karma. Life is rarely perfect. We get on with our laughter and tears, our joys and our pains. And the better us seek to comfort those less fortunate. I think it's the way the world should be.

But I ramble. Another wine?

Hmmmm . . .

2005-09-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

Surely this can't be right. I know she told me to meet her here, but I'm certain this isn't the Rue Madeleine.

Wait! Of course! I sometimes lose sight of how subtle the little scamp can be. She has directed me to seek out the shadows which lie within. The fog of being which is nothingness.

Ho, ho! How truly French!

L'Oiseau

2005-09-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Oh, no, no. Although I can see why you think that. The picture is a little ambiguous in that regard.

No, I’m not the fortunate man kissing the young woman in the photograph below. I’m the fellow in the background. The one wearing the beret. Rather allegorical, don’t you think?
My, I do appear so intense. Of course, it stands to reason. I was madly searching in vain for the woman I love. The bosch were on the move, and I didn’t want us to be separated at such an unsettled time.

There was a fellow . . . um, . . . Ronald, Ronsard, Robin, . . . no! Robert! It was Robert. Robert Doisneau. His last name is easy. It reminds me of “l’oiseau”. After all , it was late in the Spring.

Anyway, he snapped the photograph as I was hurrying by. He stopped me long enough to ask whether or not I would like a copy. Why not? I have so few pictures of myself, and one has to make a living as best one can.

I never did find out exactly what happened to that happy young couple. Doisneau told me that the man was rushing to his posting on the Maginot Line. I’ve heard variously that he either joined the partisans, or that he became a gendarme for the Vichy government, or even that he fled to Algiers, where he opened a café. I’d like to think the first is true, although the Algiers version has a sort of exotic charm. I do not dwell on the second possibility, as I consider the thought rudely discourteous.

Whatever happened to the young woman? Ah, that’s a sad story. Maybe at another time.

Espresso?

Tri-Colors

2005-09-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Such a wondrous thing.

There. Above the boulevard. Ascending through the purple morning haze.

Ah, you can see it so clearly now. A perfect, neon salmon disc. The morning sun.

There is so much in life to bring us awe and wonder. Even the ordinary things are sometimes rendered, well, extraordinary.

My. It almost evokes a paean from me, were I of such a barbarous inclination. Even so, the sight of the morning sun can be such a surprising delight, sometimes. After all, how many billions of years has it been? We really would miss it if some morning it decided to miss its appointed round and go scurrying off to some more appreciative globe. Where heathens stylishly attired in states of deshabille make offerings of willing young virgins Or whatever may be lying about, should virgins be out of vogue.

Oh, there would be such a gnashing and a wailing. To be so forsaken by our old friend. You must admit, it would be a sad thing.

Ah, they’ve kept my table for me. The proprietor here is so kind. Un vrai homme. Coffee, yes. I make it a habit to have no wine before ten. Calories, you know. I have to watch my waistline, you know. Actually, I should be seeing less of it.

Let me see. What hilarity lies within the pages of Le Monde? Where are the theatre pages?

Tsk, tsk. The American militarists are working on a position paper to allow the use of a preemptive nuclear strike. Why do they find it so hard to understand that the world regards the United States as a very dangerous nation? And why are they so insistent in believing that one doesn’t need friends as long as the rest of the world fears them? I would think one would much rather have friends than enemies. After all, friends will come to one’s aid in times of need. Whereas an enemy is just awaiting your moment of need to pounce.

What a sad catastrophe in our old colony! Oh, but here’s something new: “Government Response Sadly Inept”. True. Sad. It makes me a tad uneasy to think of an inept government with the expressed desire to use nuclear weapons first and ask questions later.

“Monsieur Le President, you simply must accept our apologies for the reduction in force (so to speak) of your city and the unfortunate, um, negation of its population of seven million inhabitants. Still, you must bear in mind that there may have been as many as a dozen terrorists among them who may have wished to use some kind of weapon of mass destruction against our nation. Our evidence is airtight and unimpeachable, consisting as it does of the suppositions of a former aide in the Department of Weights and Measures. Unfortunately he happened to be vacationing in your (formerly) wonderful city when it was, um, “set aside”. So we pretty much have to accept his testimony on faith. Again, you must accept our apologies.”

An act of God, they call it. It rather seems that God would choose to act in more benign ways. Odd that we should be thankful to a God that brings us pestilence, famine, and flood. What a puzzlement. Now, health, plenty, and soft warm breezes, those are true acts of God.

What now? Ah! Those jolly students from the university! What injustice has brought them to into the streets this morning, I wonder?

Aux armes! Aux armes, citoyennes! Yes, let the rascals hear the voice of the people! Mount the barricades! Liberte, egalite, fraternite. Vive la revolution! Bravo!

Waiting

2005-09-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

I do believe it true that most people spend their lives in wait. Anticipating the time when everything will be "just so". When their lives will be complete. When the waiting is finally over. Unfortunately for most, when that time comes their lives are at an end.

Tsk. Which is why I try to live for the moment, with no more than a passing regard for what is to come. Only enough to cast a nod in the direction of responsibility. Because who can really know what is to come? Oh, we can make an educated guess. We can live our lives as though we are certain they will unfold as we plan. But then come the accidents; the phone calls at odd hours; the prognoses. And suddenly we know things will be quite different than how we’d planned.

Now, we may mourn these changes in circumstance, but we really have no call to feel that life has cheated us. Life offers us no guarantees, and we should be thankful for whatever good fortune comes our way for whatever reason. Karma, cosmic kismet, whatever one calls it. Accept it gladly, and continue to live.

It shames me modestly to admit that like most I, too, live my life in wait. To the casual observer I may appear to be simply lounging carelessly beside the boulevard, watching those with real lives as they hurry from there to there in pursuit of the next thing they're waiting for. But I've been where they're coming from, as well as to where they're going. And it's always the same. Just another place to wait.

So what could Le Boulevardier possibly be waiting for? Silly question. I'm waiting for her.

I'll know her by her walk. A selfless stride. A gliding movement amidst the jostling crowd. I'll raise my eyes from the pages Le Monde. That long, dark hair. Falling to her shoulders; cascading toward the middle of her back.

Can it be she? Her glance will tell me. That steady, knowing gaze above a whisper of smile. It is that smile which tells me that she understands those things which I long desperately to know as well. And that we must speak together softly in hushed tones as lovers do. So that I may also come to understand.

We were that way. Once. I think it must have been the autumn of 1939. Before the unpleasantries began. We became separated, and we haven't been that way since.

So I continue to wait beside the boulevard. It's been so many years. Decades. Still, after all. For how long do most of us wait for our lives to be complete? I only know that on some beautiful day, much as this, I'll see her form. And I'll call her name. She will turn her gaze upon me. And I know my waiting will be at an end. My life will be complete.

Just Another Day

2005-08-31T00:58:00.000-07:00

Hmm, hhmmmmmm . . .
Hmm, hhmmmmmm . . .
Just another day . . .

What a pretty melody. Of late I've grown fond of the music of Brian Eno.

Some day we will put it all behind,
We'll say it was just another time,
We'll say it was just another day on Earth.

I find something so sadly wise in these simple lyrics. It seems to me that this one simple phrase says it all. That there will come a time when we will come to know that everything we once thought to be worth killing and dying for were all just another day. The madness, the fears, the anxieties, the hatreds, al those things which make life unpleasantly interesting . . . we'll simply put all these things behind us.

Of course, the lyrics are ultimately a little sad, insofar as we will regard our loves, our hopes, our dreams in the same way. Because we will come to know that what we regard as all the vast significance of human existence constitutes nothing but just another day on earth.

Zen mind is the inclination to smile for no reason.

Still, lest we forget, we are in the here and now. And today is a friend's birthday. Happy Birthday, Gail. I raise my glass of chianti in a toast to you, as I pass yet another day along the boulevard. Ciao, mia babina cara.

Congruence

2005-08-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

Sitting beside the boulevard a person has time to think long about many things. Such as the congruence of space and time. The phenomenon rarely fails to give me a sense of wonder.

To give you an example. Yesterday evening a friend and I were conversing amiably over the telephone about this and that, as friends are wont to do, and she asked me whether or not I had seen the film The Jacket. I was mildly astonished, because I had, in fact, watched the film only the day before. Mere coincidence, you say? Perhaps. But when such congruences occur I always have the fleeting impression that they have either happened before, or that the matrix of circumstance has been scripted, that it's all been laid out beforehand. For aeons. Before the sun and moon. Before the Big Bang. Before Time.

I'd even hoped to draw parallels between Contact and The Jacket, but didn't do so when I found the previous blog becoming too lengthy. But I want to do so now.

My friend and I have spoken to some degree about the relativistic weirdness of all existence, as set forth in the theoretical speculations of quantum physics. The film Contact is so fascinating insofar as it portrays so well the wonderful strangeness of creation. It portrays an event which defies the known laws of physics, and invites the viewer to entertain possibilities beyond human understanding.

The film The Jacket also posits a seemingly unlikely possibility, although within a very different moral and dramatic milieu, and for different effect. The concept of precognition. How can such a thing be? Only in the movies, you say? Tut! How jejune. Such a thing can be, simply because we exist in far more than a single here and now. Precognition is a misleading term, as there is no pre- and post-. Metacognition might be a more suitable term. The ability to see the other "nows". And death is simply the passage to another "now". And at some point along these infinite passages one comes to realize that they have abided since the beginning.

This is merely the absinthe talking, you say? Perhaps. Still, I enjoyed watching The Jacket because I like to think that a person can come to be at a place and in a time where the pain is gone and the hurting has stopped. I think you have to admit, it's a pleasant thought.

Contact

2005-08-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

I was delighted to receive recently a hardcover edition of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. I'm very fond of the movie for a variety of reasons, not least of which is Jodie Foster's fine acting in her portrayal of Ellie Arroway. Foster gives a very intelligent commentary on the DVD edition. Her acting seems all the more remarkable when one considers that she performed against nothing but a blue screen throughout her solo transit of the galaxy. I think it an astounding forensic tour de force.

Aside from the acting, however, Contact appeals to me principally because of the effectiveness with which it portrays the unfathomable vastness of space and time. And in doing so it serves to render as utterly pointless all the fears and hatreds which motivate so much of human behavior. On the fantastic shore of some impossible galactic place Ellie comes to realize how truly long all of this has been going on. That a cosmic drama has been unfolding long before and far beyond the ken of humankind. After such a realization it's hard to take governments and borders, with all the provincialism and limitations they represent, seriously. I was also deeply affected by the words of her "father", who tells her that "In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." It's a statement I find true on both a macro- and a microcosmic level.

In reading the novel I've rediscovered that Carl Sagan represented the sort of individual who was far more prevalent at a time when it was easier to have hope. A reasonable and humane individual who could regard others and their beliefs without judgment, and who saw the promise of approaching ages. Such people have now been supplanted by ranting ideologues who now shout at us the many reasons we should live in fear and anxiety of everything and everyone around us. Through some perplexing rhetorical alchemy all those admirable qualities which such a man embodied are now intended to be regarded with derision: liberal, relativist, one-worlder. I never thought I would see the day when a liberal humanist would come to be regarded with contempt. As a young man I was taught that the United Nations was a noble experiment, one of the more promising institutions to come out of the hell of the Second World War. I was also taught that the war was in part the tragic result of the demise of the League of Nations.

Now we have a form of Newthink. The cultural idols of our youth have been supplanted by new ones. Gatherings of nations for the purpose of bringing order to the affairs of states are weak and corrupt. Unless they are "ours".Freedom fighters are ours. Theirs are terrorists. Or guerrillas, if we haven't yet made up our minds. Our heroes are the smiling tank commanders rolling triumphantly across the flat expanses of defenseless lands, much as they did in their Mark III's in September, 1939.

Ah, but I rant. Time to stop reading the editorial page, put down Le Monde, and try to enjoy life along the boulevard.

Yet, I sense rain in the air. It appears there may be a change in the weather coming on.

Duc D'Esseinte

2005-08-25T03:21:00.000-07:00

"And you think you left it in her shoe?"

"Yes, yes! I'm certain of it. I have no idea where else it could be!"

"Quelle tristesse!"

"An utter tragedy, I assure you."

"How do you think it possible such a thing could have come about?"

"Oh, I confess. I must hold myself at fault."

"Truly? How so?"

"Well, you've seen her toes, haven't you? Particularly in the summer?"

"Mmmm?"

"The rings. The rings on her toes?"

"Ah, yes, yes. They are a delight, I agree."

"An absolute medley of silvery pleasures. Yet, in the sun they flash and dance so. The music they make reverberates through one's head. Ai!"

"I think it's the gypsy dancing you hear. She works such magic when she silvers her toes."

"I agree. Still, on this occasion it was quite too much for me . . ."

"Poor man!"

" . . . so I gently placed my hat over her toes. Just to tone them down enough to allow me to clear my head, you know."

"Hmm. Well, I must say, old man, that did border on the rude. In a mild sort of way, I mean. Covering a woman's toes without her express consent . . ."

"No, no! My god, man. I would never do such a thing. I always ask a woman for leave beforehand. I may be a rake and perhaps a scoundrel, sir, but I am never rude. With knowledge aforethought, anyway."

"Of course not, of course not. And you know I didn't mean to imply any such thing."

"Thank you. You're a dear friend. But now I'm left without my hat."

"How's that?"

"Well, when I took my leave I neglected to retrieve my hat. And I'm afraid she may have slipped on a pair of Ferregamo's with my hat still dangling from her toes. Oh, the humanity!"

"Now, now, now. It'll be alright. Besides, don't you think the fit may have been a little tight? I mean, with your hat, and all?"

"Oh, but you know how delightfully petite are her feet. So delicate, so finely wrought. They belong in a museum, you know. Amongst the Delft and Meissen of grander ages."

"Bien sur, mais . . . well, may I be so bold as to suggest, um . . ."

"Please, please, go on. You are my friend. I know of nowhere else to turn."

"Alright. You may want to steel yourself. But please remember I tell you this as your friend."

"I have prepared myself, monsieur!"

"Very well. Your hat, my dear Duc, is on your head!"

"Eh? Wha . . . ? The saints be blessed, man! So it is! Oh, monsieur! Happy day! Why . . . please. Give me a moment. Only a true friend, a man of preternatural insight into the totality of all things could have wrought such a miraculous thing! Monsieur! I am your servant."

"Tut, tut. It's nothing. A friend can do no less. It gave me pleasure to be able to help one as deserving as yourself."

"Still, there must be something I can do in return? Didn't you have your eyes on that chalet in Savoy? Outside Belleville, wasn't it?

"I would not so sully myself. But if you insist you may buy me a drink when next we meet along the boulevard."

"Sans doute! Ah, but here's my cab. Is my head still on?"

"Firmly affixed!"

"Then I am off. Until we meet again, my true, true friend."

"Au revoir, mon brave. And remember what I always say."

"I never forget. Be kind to one another. It will be alright."

"Good man! May the winds be at your back and the gods be kind."

Le Boulevardier always enjoyed meeting D'Esseinte. A trifle eccentric, but no matter. Some call him mad, but he thinks that rather unkind. The man has a generous spirit, and always speaks well of others. Besides, if he does sometimes act a little unhinged it's due to the loss of the woman he loved. Such behavior deserves understanding, by its very nature.

Ah, what a glorious day along the boulevard! Look! Great clumps of cloud sailing lazily through a bright azure sea above. A warm breeze whispering gently past one's ear. It's good to be alive along the boulevard on such a day as this.

And there's always the chance he may glimpse her walking by.