jockeystreet

Year In Review

2010-01-01T23:34:00.002-05:00

I

Lots of good books. Some bad books, too. Some that were bad in a bad way, some that were bad in a good way (you know, awful sci-fi stuff that's so much fun to read).

But also, some very, very good books.

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, for instance. That's the best dystopian future story I've ever read, I think. The fact that it's set in the near future, with a better past fresh in the mind of the narrator, makes it more powerful, more interesting. Terrific book. If you saw the movie (I only ever saw bits and pieces, a long, long time ago), pretend you didn't, and then read this.

And Karen Armstrong's The Case For God. It's a long history of religious thought and feeling in the West, combined with a theological viewpoint that I find interesting and compelling and... reassuring? Is that the right word? One of the best things I've read in a long time.

And Alan Watts' Psychotherapy East and West, a book on "the ways of liberation," drawing comparisons between therapy and liberative traditions like Yoga and Taoism and Zen Buddhism. It's one of the better Watts books I've read, and I almost always love Watts.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Wow. Dark, bleak. Father and son wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Beautiful.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. I read this as being basically the same book as The Case For God. Or rather, The Case For God, as a fairy tale.

And then there was C.S. Lewis' collection, The Dark Tower. A couple of unfinished novels, and some short stories. The novels were wonderful, and it made me sad to know they would never be complete.

Napolean Symphony, by Anthony Burgess. He's a genius writer, willing to try anything. This book is a fictionalized life of Napolean "set" to a Beethoven symphony. It makes for strange reading. It took me at least twenty or thirty pages to get the feel for this, but once I caught on to it, it was outstanding.

Antic Hay, by Aldous Huxley. The typical "European college student gets antsy and quits, wanders around post-war Europe with a bunch of artists questioning the meaning of everything and acting spoiled" narrative. But really well done. I read this while drinking wine on the back deck in Cape Cod, and felt quite sophisticated.

Farm Sanctuary, by Gene Baur. Yeah, I'm biased. Farm Sanctuary is my favorite place in the world, so I was predisposed to love this book.

H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon. I read this after reading a C.S. Lewis essay in which he just raved about this book. And it was good. I have discovered in old years that I like really old sci-fi, I like the "sci" behind it, the imagining of how things might work, the day-dreaming quality of it.

And there was more. Lots more. More that escapes me now. More that was very, very good.

II

When I was younger, when I had fewer responsibilities, when my friends had fewer responsibilities, I went to shows all the time. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of bands, some of them a dozen or more times.

Now, I don't get out and about so much. I'm less willing to drive six hours to see some indie band in a club. Morning and morning's responsibilities come way to early. I'm an old man now.

But I made it out a few times this year.

I saw Earth Crisis play their first Syracuse show in eight years. They're a Syracuse band, they played one of the older, better Syracuse clubs, and it made for a fantastic night. They performed that night better than I'd ever seen them before. And they were joined by some terrific bands-- Madball, for one (always excellent), and Unholy, Wisdom In Chains, Walls of Jericho, others. It made for a very good night.

Then there was Amanda Rogers at a little veg-friendly cafe down the road. An ex-Syracuse musician, a girl with a beautiful voice and a quiet piano. She was joined by the guy from Sketchy Indians, and they played an excellent show. I ate a fantastic veggie burger, ate a raw smoothie, and had a very good time.

And then there was another loud show. Dillinger Escape Plan, at The Lost Horizon. As always, they were fantastic. Chaotic. Aggressive. Over the top. The audience was mostly an emo crowd, and so that sense of imminent danger wasn't quite there. It was by far the most tame Dillinger show I've ever seen. A lot of peole with black eye-liner and tight jeans staring at their feet. Still, it was a good night. The Scarlet Ending opened. They were amazing. Young (and from Syracuse). A weird mix of cabaret and indie rock and punk. I am looking forward to the release of their cd this March.

There were others. Those were the really, really, really good ones. (I'll admit, I had a lot of fun seeing Queensryche too, but that was mostly because of the company of some good friends, and a little bit of nostalgia.)

III

Sam. I mean, there's just always so much to say about Sam. I could go on and on, but I won't. I will. But not in this post. He's talking more. He's turning into quite a musician (lately, he sits in a little tent and beats a drum while singing songs-- and he changes up the beat for verse and chorus, which I find damn impressive for a two year old. Also, he has an awesome new guitar.) He's memorizing books and tricking people into thinking he can read. He's talking and talking and talking and talking. He's telling jokes. Doing jigsaw puzzles. Lying on the couch and talking on the phone. He's got new friends, an active social life. There's always something new, something that just blows me away. If there was nothing else to remember from 2009, nothing else interesting or fun or thought-provoking, Sam alone would have made it a fantastic year.

I really, really, really like that kid.

IV

And then there was politics.

The inauguration of Barack Obama. I attended a local event, where it was televised on a big, big screen in an old theater. It was a terrific day. George W. Bush stopped being president. And, you know, the whole historicity of a black man being elected to lead this country. Fascinating stuff.

The ugliness of Tea Partiers. The heated fights over health care reform.

Here in New York, the coup that shut down state government. The embarassing performance of our elected officials. The utter scumbaggery of it all. Absolutely heinous stuff. But stuff that I won't forget. Hopefully, stuff that no voters will forget whent he next election day rolls around.

V

Vacations.

A week in Cape Cod that I absolutely loved. It was my wife's idea, and I'll have to remember in the morning to thank her for that again.

We took the whole family with us. A big chunk of it, anyway. The three of us, two mothers, a sister, an uncle. And we had a good time. We sat on the beach. Took Sam on his first carousel. Ran around the big back yard. Ate lots and lots of bad burritos (no one in Cape Cod knows how to make Mexican food; here's a hint-- if you're using Prego, you're doing it wrong) that I will for some reason always remember fondly. I sat on the back deck and got drunk on wine while reading snotty literature and writing brilliant blog posts.

It was a very, very good week.

And then there was the family trip to Farm Sanctuary. The obligatory bottle of Four Chimneys organic wine in a field under the stars. Dinner at The House of Hong. Lots of time hanging out with sheep and goats and cows. A cat that followed us everywhere. The little girls in the next cabin over who showed Sam the very small frogs (smaller than a dime) that were all over the place. As I've said, Farm Sanctuary is my favorite place in the world. Now that the boy is getting old enough to fully enjoy it, it just gets better and better and better.

And there was my personal trip to Farm Sanctuary. My two days of solitude in the wind and the rain. With a good book and lots of blank paper and a meditation cushion. Excellent.

VI

In 2009, I returned to the Zen Center. Not often. But I stepped back in there, after a long, long break from sitting with others.

A few years back, sitting on a cushion, it popped into my mind, loudly, clearly, that "Buddhism is bullshit." And so I decided I didn't want to go to sit with groups any more. I even decided not to renew my subscription to Tricycle.

I continued reading lots of good Buddhist books, of course, and I continued sitting on my own.

And then this year, it occured to me that, yes, of course Buddhism is bullshit. That's the beauty of it, isn't it? The very nature of it? And so I wandered back in not too long ago. And plan to spend more time there in the new year, now that the busy holiday routine is winding down.

VII

Movies.

Too many to remember on dvd. Some good ones in the theater.

"Zombieland." Awesome. Gruesome. Hilarious.

"Away We Go." One of the sweetest movies I've seen in years. Just... well, sweet. Very sweet. It sort of made me want to have another baby, but my wife explained to me that having another baby just because you saw a good movie about having a baby isn't very wise. After pouting for a while, I realized that she was right and I thanked her. You should still see the movie, though.

"Funny People." Yup. That was excellent.

And more. I tend to forget movies until people mention them again.

VIII

Work. Memorable stuff, though maybe not stuff I'll enjoy remembering. Budget cuts. Close to a million dollars cut out of my program in the blink of an eye. State and local governments making ends meet by cutting funds that go to helping people with disabilities. Hooray for good leadership! Wonderful stuff.

But good stuff, too. Some new staff in my department that I really enjoy.

An awesome, week-long simulation training for future executive directors and upper management, where you get to play the part of an executive director, make big budget and PR and staffing and marketing decisions over the course of the week, compete against others doing the same thing. That was fun. I'd just had surgery on my hand a few days before and was on painkillers and popped a stitch and had a big bloody bandage on all the time, so it wasn't quite as cool as it might have been if I hadn't been the sweaty, dizzy guy at the networking happy hour each night, but, hey, it was still fun.

IX

Good dates. Yes. My wife and I managed to get out on some good dates this year. Some with Sam, and some... just the two of us. Coffee shops and movies and good restaurants and walks in Armory Square and so on and so forth. It won't get all sappy here, I'll just say I enjoyed having those good dates.

X

I sold my guitars. I think that was this year. Right? It all blends together, becomes a blur.

But I sold my stuff.

Not all of it.

I kept my acoustic guitars (three of them). And some hand drums and harmonicas and such.

But I sold all my old band equipment. Two beautiful vintage basses. An effects pedal board. An amp head. I still have one set of speakers, which is currently serving as a shelf in my office.

It was the second and final sell-off. A few years ago I sold a bass, some speakers, some pedals, and various odds and ends of equipment.

This time all of it went (the speakers were too big to ship, and, hey, I can always use a $450 shelf). It was my way of saying "what do you know, I'm not going to be a rock star after all."

Of course, my buddy Jim today mentioned that he and Jay want to get together soon and play around. Me, Jim and Jay were once Maxim 68 and once before that we were Dirge). And Jim's been writing some good songs lately. And he has a spare bass.

So maybe I will be a rock star. Maybe I will be after all.

But probably not.

So I sold my stuff. Which made room in the closet for Sam's toys, a snowsuit, some blankets, etc.

XI

My sister moved back from New Jersey, now lives ten minutes down the road. That's nice.

My brother moved back from New Jersey, moved into the apartment with my sister.

My other brother moved away to Portland.

That first brother moved to Washington, D.C.

The other brother came back from Portland, and is living with my mom.

I mostly stayed put. I have decided that Central New York has every damn thing I need.

XII

An article I wrote was published in "Grand" magazine early in the year. It's about raising vegan/vegetarian kids. It's not too bad. I got paid. That made me happy.

I was really inspired for a bit there. I was pretty sure after that was published that I was going to start submitting things all over the place and that I'd be up late writing night after night after night.

And then I remembered that I am, essentially, just a very lazy person. Also, that I have low self-esteem. And that I could avoid doing anything hard and avoid the possibility of painful rejection by just not writing anything down.

In 2010, though, just watch me. I've got a feeling.

XIII

In 2009, I decided that I hate my dog, and that I would have to get rid of him. Because he's a terrible little bastard.

I got him on the wait list for one of those no-kill shelters.

And then I remembered that I love him, and that he's my wonderful little guy.

And so he's still here.

He's not pissing on things anymore, and I'm not whispering sadistic shit in his ear when no one's around.

We plan to spend 2010 continuing to try to work it all out.

And that's it. That is, pretty much, my year in review.

There's more, I guess. But that's what comes to mind. You know, "highlights."

I liked this year. Overall, I'd say, "sure, definitely worth it."

So, you know, Happy New Year.

We can do this again in 2011.

Sick Of It All...

2010-01-01T22:34:00.002-05:00

My sister gave me a small stack of Sick Of It All cds for Christmas this year.

A small stack of Sick Of It All cds is a good way to start the new year. All that energy and positivity and whatnot.

I've been listening to Call To Arms and Yours Truly (two discs that for some reason I never got around to listening to until now) over and over again in my car for the past few days.

Having Sick Of It All in my head made me sit down and look for Sick Of It All on YouTube.

The best of hardcore isn't really marketed to the MTV crowd, so there aren't that many great hardcore videos out there. But Sick Of It All managed to do a couple that are worth the watch.

Like this old one, from Scratch The Surface (way, way back in '94). It's called "Step Down," and it makes me laugh a little.

And then there's "Potential For A Fall," from Call To Arms, which I've posted before. This one makes me laugh, too.

And "Take The Night Off," from Death To Tyrants. I don't know why there's a ladies' fight club in this video. It seems a little out of place. But it's a good song, and a newer, more polished video.

I gotta give these guys credit. They're even older than me, and they still have so much energy. I'm looking forward to the next time I get to see them play again. And hoping that those new discs will inspire me to return to the gym, do the occasional push up, and put down the vegan ice cream.

Let Food Be Your Medicine

2009-12-26T20:31:00.002-05:00

So, I'm a firm believer that, to some extent, sickness is "optional."

Not all of it, of course. There's genes, bad luck, things that can't be avoided.

But the insurance industry estimates that 71% of medical costs are due to "lifestyle illnesses." As in, 71% of costs are due to choices. Bad choices.

I would put it even higher.

I would say that stuff like the flu, the common cold, are often optional. Lifestyle illnesses.

Hippocrates said "let food be your medicine." Or something to that effect.

I'm all about that. A big believer.

For years and years, I was sick all the time. I caught every cold, every stomach bug that went around. I was a vegetarian, but I didn't eat for health.

About five or six years back, I made some big changes in my diet. I became a vegan, but, more importantly, I started eating with my mind on health, eating for nutrition and sustenance. Over the past several years, I've learned to avoid sugar, and refined flour, and processed foods. I rarely eat anything that comes out of a can. I eat six or seven servings of veggies a day, buy organic produce, drink herbal teas and slam down veg-friendly vitamins and herbal supplements. White bread isn't bread to me anymore; it's pumpernickel or nothing most days. Soda is a guilty, guilty pleasure to be indulged in only a couple of times a year. I drink at least a gallon of water per day.

And I've seen a change in my overall sense of well-being.

I'm still perpetually 20 pounds heavier than I want to be. I eat healthy food, but I eat a lot of it. And since I started working desk jobs, I don't get nearly enough exercise (sporadic time in the treadmill is no substitute for a physical job).

But I'm healthier than I was before.

I don't get sick. Not often. I avoid almost all the bugs and colds and nastiness that go around the office, all the things that make my wife and my son sick. I get occasional existential tremors, but not too many sniffles. When I do get something, a fruit smoothie and a long nap will usually shake it off.

Let food be your medicine.

I'm all about that.

But then, I had to go and test my theory. Test the notion that good, nourishing food has been keeping me well.

I sort of fell off the wagon around Thanksgiving.

It's the holidays, you know? Eats easy to just go with the flow.

For the past several weeks, I've been filling myself with vegan cookies and pies. I've been running out and grabbing fast food french fries and Taco Bell burritos. I've had soda on three occasions in less than a month. I've been drinking my weight in coffee, enjoying all the vegan chocolate and potato chips co-workers have been bringing into our holiday parties.

And I feel like hell.

There's that dull ache, that sense of something not quite right, that's been sitting in my gut for the past week and a half.

And two days before Christmas, I came down with the first really nasty cold I've had in over a year. My throat feels like glass, my head has been spinning and pounding and then spinning again, and there's still that ominous churning in the gut.

And I keep thinking, "is it maybe the fried tofu I ordered on Tuesday? Or maybe that bag of Fritos?"

I've got to get off this. I've got to turn it back around.

Tomorrow.

One more bag of chips, and then I've got to drop the ten pounds I'm pretty sure I gained this month.

One more jar of salsa, and then I've got to start eating like I actually care about my body.

One more bottle of beer, and then enough is enough is enough.

Can I quote the Tao Teh Ching?

"Only when we are sick of sickness
Will we cease to be sick."

Edward vs Buffy

2009-12-25T21:40:00.002-05:00

I'd forgotten about this. I saw it a while back and stumbled across it again tonight.

I'll confess. I like "Buffy." And "Twilight" took two hours from my life that I'll never get back.

I'm A Sucker For This Stuff, Too

2009-12-20T10:18:00.002-05:00

Awfully strange, you know?

I was never much of a holidays person. I generally volunteered to work if work was needed. I enjoyed family time, but I wasn't all swept away by the season.

Then I got married. And Thanksgiving took on new significance, Christmas became something different.

And then Sam came along.

And now I find myself listening to that awful, awful radio station that plays Christmas music 24 hours a day and actually enjoying it. I find myself getting all giggly and giddy over the Christmas tree, the lights, the felt or plastic snowmen on every available surface in the house.

Hmmm.

I find myself especially in the spirit when the boy busts into an evening of Christmas carols.

Here's a sampling.

Soon

2009-12-19T23:06:00.003-05:00

If my blog was a parakeet, it would have starved by now.

If it was a plant, it would have died, dried up.

But, no. No, that's not necessarily true. As I ran that analogy through my mind, it occurred to me, "hey, I have a plant." It's in the corner. I think it's been six months or so since I watered it. And it was probably another six months since the time before that. But there it is, a little yellowed here and there, but still very much alive. I don't remember who gave it to us. But it's quite the sturdy little thing.

Still, you get the point.

I've been neglectful.

I haven't given this space what it needs.

I'll blame the holiday season. A busy schedule. Thanksgiving. A Dillinger Escape Plan show (with The Scarlet Ending opening things up; I'd really like to write more about them later, they were just outstanding). An old friend in town for a few days. Some really good books (including this one, and this one). Lots of busy busy busyness at work. Season 5 of "Lost." Toddler birthday parties and weekend getaways and the Zen Center and snow.

Lots of reasons not to write. Even though there are lots of things to say.

But to make up for that neglect, I'll do this:

I'll provide a couple of links to a site less neglected.

Here are two posts by Slacktivist, one of my very favorite blogs, one of the few I read regularly.

"Yes we can"

Preferring nightmares

This is good anti-Tea Party stuff. A pleasure to read.

Enjoy it.

Soon, I hope, I'll actually take the time and make the effort to put something of substance up here again.

Soon.

Bleak

2009-12-15T22:50:00.003-05:00

Kicking around in my head are at least a half dozen posts that I'd like to write.

These last few days, however, I've really only been interested in giving my limited "free time" to one thing:

Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

This is a good book. A very, very good book. What you've heard about it is true.

If it were not for that damn job that I have to go to in the morning, I could stay up late into the night and finish it.

I'll be wide awake late into the night anyway. These past two nights since I started reading it, I haven't been able to sleep much. The book has a way of working itself into my thoughts, into my dreams.

I picked this up on my wife's recommendation.

She had one word to describe it:

Bleak.

I'm A Sucker For This Stuff

2009-12-07T20:56:00.002-05:00

72 Things

2009-12-03T21:45:00.004-05:00

Here's another list of 72 things.

This time, it's the "72 Best Albums, Ever."

It involves no objective standard.

Albums appear in no particular order.

"Greatest Hits" and "Live Albums" are not included, and albums that were released as two separate albums but should have been one double-album are only counted as one.

Here they are:

The Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen
Fugazi, 13 Songs
Fugazi, Repeater + 3 Songs
Embrace, Embrace
The Violent Femmes, The Violent Femmes
The Violent Femmes, Hallowed Ground
Ani Difranco, Out Of Range
Ani Difranco, Reprieve
Rush, Hemispheres
Rush, Moving Pictures
Rush, Snakes and Arrows
Nellie McKay, Get Away From Me
Buzz, Temporary Limbo
The Mandate of Heaven, Hun In The Sun
Dream Theater, Images And Words
Tool, Undertow
Tool, Aenema
Shai Hulud, A Profound Hatred of Man
Vision of Disorder, Still
Homesick For Space, Homesick For Space
Refused, The Shape of Punk To Come
Cake, Fashion Nugget
The (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Cross of My Calling
The Urge, Receiving the Gift of Flavor
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Jackknife To a Swan
Morphine, Yes
Indigo Girls, Nomads, Indians, Saints
The Road Dog Divas, Everything's In Boxes
Death Cab For Cutie, Plans
Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Pearl Jam, Ten
Murder By Death, Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?
Crash Test Dummies, God Shuffled His Feet
Counting Crows, August and Everything After
Earth Crisis, Destroy the Machines
Victor Wooten, A Show of Hands
Boy Sets Fire, Tomorrow Come Today
Shelter, Mantra
CIV, Set Your Goals
Gorilla Biscuits, Start Today
Orange 9mm, Driver Not Included
Burn, Cleanse
Bad Religion, Stranger Than Fiction
Rancid, ...And Out Come the Wolves
Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Minor Threat, Complete Discography
Led Zeppelin, IV
White Lion, Pride
The Beatles, The White Album
The Beach Boys, Endless Summer
Neil Diamond, September Morn
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence
Hugh Blumenfeld, Barehanded
Naj One, Foekknawledge
Spearhead, Home
Michael Franti and Spearhead, Yell Fire!
The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Sarah MacLachlan, Fumbling Toward Ecstacy
Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes
Primus, Sailing the Seas of Cheese
Fear Factory, Demanufacture
Ramallah, Kill A Celebrity
Bruce Springsteen, Born In the U.S.A.
Johnny Mathis, I Only Have Eyes For You
Sensefield, Tonight and Forever
Candiria, The COMA Imprint
Candiria, 300 Percent Density
The Jeremy Wallace Trio, Suicide Suitcase
R.E.M., Automatic for the People
System of a Down, Mezmerize/Hypnotize
Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell

Nativity

2009-12-03T19:00:00.002-05:00

"Mary was going to have a baby," my son said to his own Baby, the doll he found in a box at my mother's house two weeks ago and has barely put down since.

He takes good care of Baby.

He reads to her. He stays up late consoling her when she cries. He carries her around gently. He's on his best behavior when she's in the room, trying to set a good example. He cooks for her in his kitchen and has been teaching her all the things he's learned over the past two and a half years.

The other night, we were trying to take a short nap before his mother got home.

I was, anyway. I was really, really, really in favor of the napping. Sam, maybe not so much. And Baby. Baby's hard to read.

So we were upstairs in the big bed and I was sort of drifting off and Sam and Baby were next to me and he decided that since I was too tired to tell any more stories, he'd tell one himself.

"And so they went to where the animals lived, with lots of hay. And there was lots and lots of hay, and there was hay everywhere."

Something to know about Sam: he really likes hay. I took him to Fort Stanwix once. He wasn't really all that impressed by the cannons or the moats or the towers and the bunkers. But he was really into the fact that they had hay in the beds. And piles of hay outside.

Also, Sam is very into the Nativity Story.

Specifically, he's very into a book called The Nativity Story. It has lots of pictures of things he likes, like camels and donkeys and babies and "nice ladies" and sheep and goats and cows and, most importantly, hay. And there's a button on the front. When you push it, it plays a very tacky greeting card version of "Silent Night." But not the whole thing. There apparently wasn't enough room on the little chip for the whole thing, so they leave a bar out, which I find very distracting. I try to sing along, but can't, end up having to skip whole phrases.

The book was a gift from Sam's grandmother, my mother-in-law. I think she felt she sort of "snuck it in" with his Christmas presents last year.

"And Mary," he said to Baby, "went in with the animals and had baby Je-sus in the hay."

And the way he says "baby Jesus" is painfully, tearfully cute. It is the most perfect way anyone could say "baby Jesus." It is one-hundred-percent two-year-old sweetness, innocence, with a heavily accented second syllable and a final "s" that sort of lingers on for a moment.

"And then all the shepherds came to see him with the cows and goats and sheep and the camels."

And when I say that my mother-in-law felt she sort of "snuck it in," I mean I think that she assumed that we'd disapprove, and so did it quietly to avoid an objection.

My mother-in-law isn't entirely happy with Sam's lack of religious education. She has said, from time to time, that she wants him to be exposed to all kinds of ideas, that she hopes he'll be exposed to enough different things to make up his mind for himself.

I don't think that that means that she hopes we'll take him to a mosque, a synagogue, and a Zen Center.

I think it means that we don't take him to church as often as she'd like, and she wishes we'd pick it up a little.

And we don't take him to church because, well, we're not church people. Not exactly.

He goes from time to time. He goes from time to time mostly because mine is very much a church family. I come from a family of pastors (perhaps you've read my sister's blog?) and people who are very busily, happily involved in their churches. So we get to church here and there.

But we don't attend regularly.

And we haven't really given him any of what I can only think to call "religious education." As in, he really only heard the name "Jesus," which he pronounces so sweetly, when we've read him The Nativity Story, or when his former daycare lady dropped something heavy on her toe.

We haven't taught him to say prayers (though we have taught him to hold our hands at dinner time and to express "gratitude" for the meal on the table), and we haven't taught him a lot of Bible stories (his Noah's Ark playset is one of his most prized possessions, but in our house it's mostly just a big boat full of animals). I like to sing old church-camp songs ("Pass It On," "All God's Critters," "The Love Round," "Let Us Break Bread"), but they're not heavy on doctrine, really.

And so, for Sam, the Nativity story is a lot like other stories. And sometimes pieces of those other stories get mixed into it.

"And baby Je-sus was crying, and the shepherd picked him up. And then baby Je-sus said," and here his voice drops, to get as low and rumbly and intimidating as a two-year-old's voice can sound, "who has disturbed my sleep?"

From there, Sam's version of the Nativity story gets a little weird. And, to be honest, I finally drifted off to sleep, caught snippets. I'm not sure if the wise men were caught in the hunters' nets and had to be chewed out by helpful mice (like in "The Mouse in the Lion" or that Hindu fable with the Elephant King and Mouse Chief). I'm not sure if anyone threatened to eat anyone else, or if a rabbit fell asleep under a tree and was overtaken by a diligent, purposeful turtle. I missed some of the details.

And now, Sam's mish-mashed Bible story narrative has me wondering when I should start to sort of more formally introduce him to these big, meaningful religious concepts, give him some direction. Teach him some stories-- the simple ones, at first, the age-appropriate stuff-- for real.

And that's hard.

It's hard because, in all truth, I find it almost impossible to express my religious views to a grown-up, much less a kid. When people ask me what I believe-- and people ask me that, often-- I'm really not sure how best to answer.

In the past, I could give a ready answer. I have identified myself, at various points in my life, as a Christian, an atheist, an agnostic, a Taoist, and a Buddhist (never so much jumping from one set of beliefs to another as much as building on what I found in one place, working out what did and did not connect for me, building into another place, and so on). I've attended Unitarian Universalist churches and Zen Centers and evangelical churches and just plain old regular churches. I seriously considered becoming a Quaker at one point, but decided-- this is true, not a joke-- that I couldn't go through with it because I swear way too much. Quakers have this "plain speech" thing that I really respect, and I thought that I probably wouldn't be a good Quaker role model, would bring down the image of the whole. They're hurting enough over Nixon, I figured that wouldn't be right.

Now, when people ask a straight forward question like "do you believe that God exists?" I really have no answer. If I say "yes," I'm lying. If I say "no," still lying.

And I've decided for me that that's because the answer, truthfully, is "mu."

"Mu" is a Zen/Taoist concept. It's hard to explain what it means. My best effort is this: it means "no, non, not, nope, un-uh." But not "the opposite of yes."

Mu means that you're asking the wrong question. That your question can not be answered. That your question misses the point.

Mu, here, for me, means "tell me what you mean." By "God." By "believe." By "exists."

Because the idea of God as a big guy in the sky; the idea of God as "like Joe, but perfect;" the idea of God as the angry sender of floods and keeper of scores all strike me as sort of silly, nonsensical.

The idea of God as being summed up in words-- any words-- strikes me as sort of silly, sort of nonsensical.

Meister Eckhart hit it, I think. A long, long time ago, he said this:

"All those who want to make statements about God are wrong, for they fail to say anything about him. Those who want to say nothing about him are right, for no word can express God; but he expresses himself in himself."

That seems just about right.

But how do you introduce a two-year-old to that?

"Sam, God is transcendence; we can't say he 'exists,' because his existence is not similar to anything else that we know as 'existing,' and we can't talk of his 'will,' because he is not like anything we know that has a 'will.'"

It just doesn't seem like that's going to be easy.

For now, is it cheating to just say "Jesus was born in the manger" if I promise to introduce the other stuff, the big stuff, as he gets older?

For now, can I just make sure he knows that Jesus didn't eat the shepherd, so he doesn't freak out his friends at daycare?

The Marriage Bill, And Some Re-Posting

2009-12-03T18:48:00.003-05:00

The New York State Senate voted down the bill that would given legal recognition to gay marriages.

They voted it down by a wide margin... 38 to 24.

I have nothing to say to that, really. Nothing that I haven't said before.

So I'll just say again those things that I said a couple of years ago...

Thank You For Protecting Me From Infidels (July 2006)

Dear Judges Graffeo, Smith, Smith, and Read,

Thank you for protecting me from the infidels.

For years now, there's been a certain "emptiness" haunting me. My wife and I have grown farther and farther apart. Our attempts to have a child have failed over and over again. My self esteem was just so-so. I found it hard to get a boner. Life was not as it should be.

Then, yesterday, it was as if a great burden was lifted from my shoulders. Suddenly, I was able to breathe freely. My wife came close to me in ways she hasn't for years. I felt a tingling virility that I thought I'd lost forever.

And so I have to thank you, sincerely, for refusing to let the homos marry.

Now that I can rest knowing that the gay couple down the street will not be guaranteed the privilege of hospital visitations, I feel I'll be capable of levels of intimacy that have been missing up to this point. I'll be a better lover.

Assured that "Bonnie" will not be able to receive insurance through "Angela's" work, I even feel confident in taking another crack at knocking the old lady up.

Knowing that dirty men who touch each other's penises won't be able to file taxes jointly, I have the confidence that I'll be a better provider for my family, will finally be able to ensure a stable home for the children we've always wanted.

Thank you, all of you, for putting those buggers in their place, for letting them know that New York doesn't want them. For protecting the fragile, besieged institution of heterosexual marriage. For protecting our children from the grim menace of legally recognized loving couples. For making us straight folks feel that much more special about the privileges God told you he wanted us to have.

Amen. God bless New York.

The Thompsons

Defenders of Marriage (February 2008)

"Do you feel like our marriage is being threatened," I asked my wife as I crawled into bed, "by homosexual unions?"

"No," she said.

"Even if they get hospital visitation rights, or get to be on each other's insurance?" I asked.

"No," she said.

And I was relieved.

You see, I'd started to think that maybe it was just me. That maybe I just wasn't getting something that was obvious to everyone else.

I mean, every day I hear how the institution of marriage-- my marriage-- is being threatened by raving mad homosexuals sneaking across the border and getting into committed relationships in decent, God-fearing neighborhoods. I look out my window in the morning, expecting to find hordes of slavering homosexuals milling about in my driveway. I go to work, tiptoe about, waiting for my gay coworkers to rip the wedding ring off my finger and throw it down a drain.

But nothing.

As far as I can tell, gay couples living down the street, being on each other's insurance, even having the same last name, well, it just doesn't seem to impact my marriage at all.

And believe me, if it did, I'd be pissed.

I'd be against it.

Because I'm a really, really big fan of marriage. An enthusiast. An advocate.

After I got married, I'd run into friends now and then that I didn't see so much. They'd say things like "probably not that different, right?" We'd known each other for quite a while, lived together for a bit, and so the answer to the question was supposed to be "no, not really." And that's what I said, because when you run into someone in the grocery store and they ask a standard question then you give a standard answer, you don't take the time to explain.

But really, "not that different, right?" wasn't close at all.

I love being married. Being married is awesome. It is entirely unlike not being married. I really, really dig it in ways that I can't put into words. Getting married is one of the two best things that has ever happened to me (my son being born, of course, is the other one). Anything that would take away from that, that would "violate the sanctity" of that, is something that I'm inclined to be against.

And while the same-sex couple down the road may not be threatening marriage in any way that I can even begin to comprehend, there are plenty of things out there that are. There are plenty of things out there that make marriage difficult, that make couples work harder than they should have to work, that stack the deck against people who deserve better. And so what I want, now, is for all the Defenders of Marriage out there, all those so enraged by liberal attacks on the sacred institution, to stand up against the real threats.

Threats like:

• The pressures and demands on time. For the first few years of our relationship, my wife and I saw each other roughly once a week. Even living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, we didn't run into each other all that often. Conflicting work schedules, conflicting obligations of all kinds, made it hard for the two of us to be awake in a room more than every now and then. I'd get to bed an hour or two before she got home, and I'd head out the door in the morning an hour or two before she got up. That changed, eventually. I asked to have some of the responsibilities of my own job trimmed down a bit, so instead of 50 hours per week (plus 8 or more hours of commute), I am now only working about 40 hours per week (plus 8 or more hours of commute). And she managed to get a slightly less ridiculous schedule for herself, has the weekends free, gets home before the boy and I have to go to bed. It's better, but it's still hard at times. It often feels like we are cramming as much activity, conversation, "togetherness" as possible into little, tiny boxes. I was at meeting the other night with some people a good deal older than me. They were talking about the organization's history, things that the early members had done together, and commented that the close relationships between members are harder to build these days because no one has the time any more. There's no time, between families, within families, between friends, within organizations, to build relationships naturally, to grow together, to allow for those wide open spaces where things come about organically, unplanned. Whether it's because a family is just getting by financially and both husband and wife need to work in order to pay the bills; or because a better-off family is composed of members with equally high-ambitions, self-images related to what they are doing professionally; or because we all feel the need to "accomplish" something and be "productive" in order to matter; the result is that we don't see each other. We don't have time together. And this, I think, is a bigger threat to marriages, to relationships of all kinds, than some gay couple somewhere sharing an address, tax form, and health insurance.

• Isolation. When Kurt Vonnegut and his first wife were divorced, he wrote her a letter in which he expressed his sadness and regret in words that went something like this: "I'm sorry I couldn't be a village to you." He realized, as their relationship was ending, that one of the things that had doomed it was the mistaken belief that two people, in isolation, could meet all of each other's needs. Two people, in isolation, will never be able to meet all of each other's needs. Human beings just don't work that way. But we keep trying. We keep believing that we don't need, in our new world, villages, or extended families, or a sense of community. We pursue careers that take us far, far away from everyone we know, we make no connections to our neighborhoods and simply live behind closed (and locked) doors, commuting through what could and should be communities. We trade in our sense of connection to others for advanced careers, or exciting neighborhoods, and we find ourselves, months or years into it all, lonely, isolated, dissatisfied. And so we put immense pressure on the only people around us that we actually have connection with. We turn to our partners, our immediate families, and demand that they meet every need that it has traditionally taken a village to satisfy. And that just doesn't happen.

• Health care. Poverty. Crime. Environmental exploitation. The list here could go on. The gist is this: if you don't have insurance to get you through an illness or an injury; if you can't afford to sometimes take a breather and just enjoy the life you're living; if bill collectors are calling you every day; if your kids can't swim in the lake because of the toxins that have been dumped into it; if your kids can't play in the neighborhood because of the crack houses and prostitutes; if you worry every day about your kids' safety when they go off to school; if any of this, and more, then you will be dealing with pressure, with stress. When you cannot find a way out, when all the work you do doesn't seem to make a difference, it's kind of a no-brainer that your relationships will suffer. The fact that more marriages don't crack under this kind of pressure is a nice testament to how much some people want it to work.

So here's the deal. I really want everyone who has so passionately stood up against gay marriage, on the premise that gay marriage is somehow going to destroy all those good, straight marriages out there, is somehow going to ruin the entire institution of marriage, to take a stand here as well. I want to see a coalition of conservative Republicans, fundamentalist Christians, and talk radio pundits joining together here to strengthen marriages, to strengthen the institution, to question and stand against values that pry families apart, to oppose an economic system and prevailing world-view that makes income and social standing more important than time standing in the kitchen together, to question and oppose the existing conditions that keep some working harder and harder every day without every getting ahead, that allows for our natural world to be devastated, for neighborhoods to collapse.

I want to see this. And until I do, I can't take a word from these people seriously. I can't accept their holy, heartfelt, "I don't hate anybody for being different, I just want to protect this beautiful institution" rhetoric.

The Night Before Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T23:04:00.004-05:00

I've got a friend flying in from Denver next week, and we're going to go see The Dillinger Escape Plan play at The Lost Horizon in Syracuse.

The Lost is a great club, and Dillinger is a great band to see live. I'm looking forward to this.

My brother has decided to join us, and so tonight I figured I should go buy that third ticket. I don't think this is going to sell out, but you never know, and it is not a cool feeling to have a member of your party to be turned away at the door. Better safe than sorry.

So I told my son, "hey, let's go to the record store." They sell tickets for local club shows there, minus all the online fees.

The record store-- Sound Garden-- is downtown, in Armory Square, a really cool part of town.

Whenever my son hears that we are going to the record store, he gets kind of excited.

He gets kind of excited because the record store is just a couple of blocks from Freedom of Espresso, a nice little independent (and fair trade, bird friendly, organic, etc, etc) coffee shop.

He likes Freedom of Espresso because Freedom of Espresso sells big chocolate chip cookies.

So to my "hey, let's go to the record store," there was that immediate reply, "we're going to get cookies!"

I no good at saying not. Plus, I figured, hey, if he gets a cookie, I get a soy milk cappuccino.

So my wife, my son, and I all got in the car, we found a good parking space, we walked a block or so to Sound Garden, got that last ticket, and then headed to the coffee shop.

In front of the coffee shop, there was this older guy, playing saxophone. We put a little money in his case, got some cookies and drinks, and then came back outside.

We spent a half hour or so sitting on a bench in the park across the street from the coffee shop, listening to the music. It was just getting dark, going gray. The streets and shops were lined with white Christmas lights. It was cool, but not cold, and the hot cup felt good in my hands. Couples walked in and out of restaurants, holding hands, leaning on each other. My son sat between us, enjoying his cookie, very happy with the music... jazzy, bluesy twists on "Jingle Bells" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Silent Night" and, when a little girl in a pink jumpsuit stopped to listen, the theme from "Sesame Street."

And I thought, to not bask in this-- to not savor it, love it, breathe it in as deeply as possible-- would be sinful. I thought, this is that perfect combination of events, that perfect scene-- the coffee, the couples the sax, the twilight, the sparkling lights-- that screen writers work so hard to fit into the plot, that cinematographers try to so hard to capture, to bring to life.

And so I did. I basked in it. Savored it, loved it, breathed it in as deeply as possible.

For all my railing here against the overwhelming wrongness of the world, I can recognize, at times, the breathtaking rightness of a moment, a scene, an hour.

And on the night before Thanksgiving, I guess I can say I'm thankful for that.

NIN

2009-11-24T22:45:00.003-05:00

I've been listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails over the past couple of weeks.

In part, this is due to my recently coming to terms with myself as a nineties guy.

You know what I mean.

I've always observed those people. Those people who got to a year, and then just sort of stopped. The maintenance guy with the long hair, the Harley, the leather vest, who only listens to Zeppelin and The Doors. The guy down the road with the big moustache and the tie-dyes and the VW van. The old man still sporting the style that turned all the ladies' heads when he came back from The Big War.

There are these people who just sort of peak and stay there. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's like they went along for a certain number of years, came across an era that they really liked, and stuck with it. The clothes, the hair, the music... you can pinpoint that formative year at a glance. "Ahhh... you figured yourself out in 1976, am I right?"

I never really considered myself to be that sort of a guy. I mean, I always had at least some contact with younger people. I always knew what music was out there, even if I thought that half of it was crap; I was always aware of the new stuff that was under the radar, the edgy stuff, the stuff pushing boundaries. And I didn't have a stuck-in-the-nineties style, because, really, I didn't have any style at all. None that I was aware of, anyway.

And then, one day, I looked in the mirror, and realized that my wife was right.

I'm one of those guys. I'm a nineties guy. I peaked somewhere between 1994 and 1997. And I've sort of stayed there. Flannels in my closet? Check. Worn out, baggy jeans and a hardcore t-shirt? Check. Tool, Pearl Jam, Dream Theater, Fugazi, and Primus albums still in regular rotation 15 years after the release date? Check. Absolutely know clue what my 20-something employees are talking about when I overhear their lunch conversations? Check. Still think Quentin Tarantino is relevant? Check. Seen the latest Kevin Smith movie? Check.

I didn't like that at first. But I've accepted it.

I've come to terms with that, and, in doing so, I've been playing through some old, old cds that hadn't made it to the rotation in a while. The Cure. REM. The Afghan Whigs. And Nine Inch Nails.

Like I said, these past couple of weeks, it's been an awful lot of Nine Inch Nails.

Which is odd, because for most of the nineties, I hated Nine Inch Nails.

Like every pissy, pensive, raging-against-the-machine alterna-kid of my generation, I of course went through a brief period when I loved Nine Inch Nails. I thought that Trent Reznor (it's really a one-man act) was a musical genius, pushing the boundaries, changing music, saying wildly edgy and rebellious things. Nine Inch Nails were one of a small handful of acts (Primus and Rage Against The Machine would have to go in there, too) that really seemed to be changing the sound of mainstream music, pushing it in new directions, bringing in new structures and tones and ways of approaching sound.

I loved that.

But I quickly got sick of it.

Really, really sick of it.

What I got sick of was partly Trent Reznor and the music he made, and partly (mostly, maybe) the people that thought he was some sort of god.

One brief story to illustrate:

My closest friend in high-school was a guy named Jim. He was a good guy, a good friend, but a little unstable, prone to fits of depression, to occasionally outbursts of violence. After high school, our friendship became somewhat strained. We spent a lot of time together into our early twenties, but it wasn't always easy. He started drinking more, smoking more and more weed, eating more and more acid. He joined the army, but was discharged for psychological reasons. While in the hospital before his discharge, he set some things on fire. After he got home, he worked as a bouncer here and there, mostly sat on his mom's couch smoking cigarettes. And tried to kill himself over and over and over again.

Except, you know, not really. The attempts were usually a little feeble. They were attention getters. The depression was real, sure. But he'd walk into the bar the day after he was out of the ER, wrists all bandaged up, and he'd bask in the attention coming his way from gloomy goth girls.

I got less and less patient with this crap. I got sick of being the one who had to explain to his mother why he was such a mess, I got sick of keeping a straight face when those goth girls sat on his lap and begged him not to hurt himself again. I got impatient.

One night, another friend (Jerry) and I stopped by Jim's house. We'd had big plans to go out, but when we got there the lights were off, nobody came to the door when we knocked. We figured Jim was sleeping and we went inside. We found him lying in his bed, listening to Nine Inch Nails. The same songs over and over again. We asked him what was going on, and he said this and that about life being doom and gloom. Wouldn't get out of bed. Didn't go to the bar. Said he was going to kill himself. He told us we could have anything of his that we wanted. He offered us his cd collection, his books, whatever other crap he had lying around. He only wanted us to leave him with his stereo and his Nine Inch Nails discs. Because only Trent understood.

And that was just too damn much. It made me want to gag. Jerry and I conferred briefly in the kitchen. After struggling with it for a while, we decided not to take his cd collection. We went to the nearest convenience store, bought him a twelve pack, told him to cheer up, and went to the bar without him.

He ended up dying that night. Okay, that's overly dramatic. He didn't die permanently. But it turns out that the beer didn't do him any good. He used it to wash down a bunch of pills, called his ex-girlfriend ("it's too late for me now... I just want you to be happy," etc), and then, while listening to Nine Inch Nails, before the ambulance arrived, his heart stopped.

They brought him back. Kept him in the hospital for a couple of days.

Jerry and I kicked ourselves for not taking that Pink Floyd box set.

For the next fourteen years, I didn't listen to any Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails, to me, was just synonymous with this pathetic self-indulgence, this "despair is poetry" sort of mindset. I was tired of it. I didn't want to hear a guy who'd made three platinum albums cry about how God and women and the world at large had screwed him over any more.

And then, a few weeks ago, I put on Pretty Hate Machine. And, shortly after that, Broken. And then I went out and bought a used copy of The Downward Spiral. I even listened a few times to The Fragile, which came out long after I had lost all interest in the band.

And you know what? It was all pretty damn good.

I like this stuff. With the distance of years, it doesn't strike me as so annoying. The writing on The Fragile isn't nearly so whiny and self-indulgent (it's a little whiny and self-indulgent). And the songs are... well, the songs are kind of catchy. All through this stuff, there's good writing. There's good singing. There's good playing. It's really just very well done.

Which is sort of the thing I've been thinking about recently. The thing that has come to mind when I think about Nine Inch Nails.

I'm not sure how to put it, but the best I can come up with is probably this:

Nine Inch Nails-- the early stuff, anyway, the stuff I listened to long ago and am most familiar with-- is really, really conservative.

That thought never would have occurred to me back then. It probably wouldn't have occurred to most fans.

But listening now, I mean, it's right there.

Musically, this stuff is pretty conservative and straight-forward. There are all those things that pushed the boundaries, sure. There are those sounds, those stylistic flourishes, those aggressive beats, those things that helped to shape the '90s sound for so many other musicians. Those were interesting innovations.

But those innovations were put on top of some very traditional, conservative music. Underneath it all, Nine Inch Nails songs are danceable, hummable, memorable songs. Trent Reznor screams, but he sings, too. And when he sings, he sings in a kind of sweet, sincere voice.

Musically, this is pretty conservative stuff.

Lyrically, this is very conservative stuff.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, this seemed pretty far out there. It was counter-cultural. It was something new, something different. It was anything but conservative. Trent Reznor was singing his rage at God, was hating God. Was singing lines like "I want to fuck you like an animal" and "your god is dead" and "I hate everyone."

Listening now, I hear something else.

I hear traditional values taken very much for granted.

It's strange, but in song after song, the "darkness" or edginess in the lyrics comes not from a rejection of traditional values, traditional ideas, but from a thorough acceptance of them. In song after song, Reznor sings about all the terrible things he wants to do, and vents his self-loathing, his disgust for what he's become. And as a kid, this stuff sounded pretty deep and disturbing. But now... well, really, Reznor's sins are pretty mundane. And they point to an ingrained acceptance of traditional values. Again and again, he doesn't exactly reject traditional values, but only violates them... and then heaps scorn upon himself, stews in self-loathing and fear, hopes that "maybe God will cover up his eyes." When he sings about God, even when he screams that God is dead, he doesn't so much deny the reality of God as he shakes his fist at God; his anger at God doesn't seem so much a rejection of the idea but an embrace of it, a "why would God do this to me?" more than a denial of God.

As I've listened to these discs again over the past few weeks, I've found this revelation sort of fascinating.

I've thought about it mostly because it makes me ask other questions.

How often, when we think we are rejecting a system, when we think we are living "not according to the world," when we think we are stepping outside, are we not doing that at all? How often is our supposed rejection or rebellion not that at all? How often is it really a confirmation, a sort of acknowledgment and acceptance, of the things we supposedly oppose? How often do we fail to make real changes because the real changes are wholly unimaginable from our limited vantage point; how often are we substituting a change in style or tone for a change in substance?

I don't know.

For the hell of it, I'll end this with a video. It's kind of a terrible video, but it seemed so cool at the time. It's "Wish." It contains some bad language.

Self Portrait

2009-11-24T22:24:00.002-05:00

If I'd been holding the camera when the miracle began, this would be so much better. As is, you only get the end of it. You don't see any of those good moves, my attempt to do that fifties dance thing where you plug your nose and wiggle to the floor. Running big laps around the house.

But I think that even with the limited bit you get here, you'll have to agree that this was amazing. And so unexpected.

We do things as a family here, so I had to bring my wife into it.

Her performance left a little to be desired.

Then Sam took a crack at it. Not bad for a first effort.

Foer, Rand

2009-11-22T21:47:00.002-05:00

My wife and I have a subscription to The New Yorker. As she is by far the more dedicated New Yorker reader, she gets them first. When she's done, they go into a little rack next to the couch, where, eventually, I get to them.

When she gets a little backed up-- when she's busy at work, or in the middle of a really good Kingsolver book-- I get really, really behind.

These past few days, I've been trying to catch up on a few months' worth of back issues.

The November 9, 2009 issue is one of the best I've ever read.

In addition to a good short story by Stephen King, a couple of good "Talk of the Town Pieces," and a funny "Shouts and Murmurs," there's this article by Elizabeth Kolbert.

It's a review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals, which, prior to reading this article, I didn't have much interest in, and which I would now very much like to read.

The review is an article in itself, is a nice piece.

On the issue of vegetarianism being "sentimentality" (an accusation I've heard myself more than once), she brings in this quote from the book, which I like:

Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, "I'm in the mood for a burger," and orders it. The other says, "I'm in the mood for a burger," but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?

That same issue also has this piece by Thomas Mallon.

It's called "Possessed." It's a not-very-flattering piece on Ayn Rand. I was pretty sure, from what little I'd read and from what I've picked up here and there, that I didn't much like Ayn Rand. This didn't much change my opinion.

Frankenstein

2009-11-15T22:29:00.002-05:00

I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein over the weekend.

I have a review. A short review. Just two words. It goes like this:

"Frankenstein sucks."

And there you have it.

And that might be harsh. That might be a little misleading.

To say that "Frankenstein sucks" might imply that there was nothing of value in the book. That there was nothing good about it. And that's not quite true.

In spite of how much I disliked the book, it was quite a page-turner. It kept me up late. It stayed on my mind while I was doing other things.

But Victor Frankenstein is, without a doubt, the most unlikeable narrator ever. Ever. Not because he's evil. Not because he's "mad." Because he's a fusser. A whiner. Because he is an unbearably annoying, self-involved, "I get a fever whenever I am upset and I can't get out of bed for a month" wimp. I spent much of the book wishing the monster would get it over with and kill that snivelling shit. And then I remembered "dammit, he's the narrator, this is going to go on until the end."

Victor Frankenstein ruined Frankenstein. Had Shelley gotten him out of the picture early on-- say, he trips over a beaker and goes tumbling down the stairs as the monster comes to life-- this might have been a really cool book. But, alas. Victor.

Incidentally, a couple of books that don't suck:

Karen Armstrong's The Case For God and C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.

I didn't know it when I took Lewis' book off the shelf as a break from Armstrong's, I didn't at all plan it that way, but the two books essentially tell the same story, deliver the same message. Armstrong does it with some history, with some theology, with philosophy and reason and such. Lewis does it with a myth, with a story about princesses. But they take you to the same place.

Classical Thump

2009-11-07T16:06:00.002-05:00

Watch this kid play Victor Wooten's "Classical Thump" on a six-string bass.

Awesome.

Wherein Jockeystreet Shakes His Fist At God

2009-10-28T21:23:00.004-04:00

To top it all off, my coffee pot stopped working.

And my shoes. Dammit, my shoes. Do you understand?

I mean, no, to be fair, my coffee pot didn't stop working. It stopped working right. It stopped doing what it's supposed to do. It started doing other things entirely. Now, the clock, instead of showing the time, counts. Really fast. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Like that. Not out loud, just the little clock screen. Minutes, hours. Over and over. And while it's doing that, it won't really let you do anything else. You can keep jabbing "start brew" and it just completely ignores you. But it doesn't just count. Also the power button flashes on and off, and the "auto button" keeps setting itself, then turning itself off, and the brew strength goes from red to yellow to green to red to yellow to green. And so if you want a pot of coffee, you have to quickly jab a whole bunch of buttons in rapid succession so that it gets sort of confused, and for just this short window of time it stops going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then you have to jab the "start brew" (jab it, jab it hard) before it gets all wound up again, and maybe it'll start making your coffee. Then you've got to unplug it again as soon as its done or it will randomly try to start another brew and with no water in the tank will make these sickly dry gurgly sounds.

Damn coffee pot. Didn't need this. What I needed was a damn cup of coffee. And yeah, I got that. I got a few cups. But I needed it in a relaxing manner.

Because you may not have noticed this about me, and when I'm done saying it you're probably going to be like "no, no, I can't believe that that could be true," but it is true:

I have issues with stress.

And I don't even like saying that. I don't like saying that because "stress" seems like the wrong word. When I think "stress," I always get a visual of a squirrel in the back yard, holding on to an acorn or a peanut or something, and the neighbor's cat has just come out of the house, and the squirrel's eyes are all darting around and he's perfectly still except that you can pretty much see his heart beating through his fur, and he's looking like, "oh man, cat, the cat's out, aw crap, he doesn't see me, no he doesn't see me, crap the cat's out, oh man, I'm so screwed, Martha was right, didn't need any peanuts, should listened, aw crap."

"Stress" to me is like "imminent danger." I think stress, and I think that, you know, the strong possibility of losing your job is an occasion for stress. And I'm probably not going to lose my job. Some days I wish maybe I would, but I probably won't. I think being buried in debt, not being able to afford the mortgage or car repairs is stressful, but, though it's somehow awkward for me to say this, though I somehow feel sort of bad about it, really, I'm doing okay on that front. We're comfortable. No cruises, no sports cars, but we're doing pretty alright. I think stress, and I think about marriages that are falling apart with all this screaming and yelling and infidelity, but you know, my wife and I get along pretty well. Admittedly, I can be a hard person to live with, and so I wouldn't say that married life is without it's occasional strains, but for the most part, I think we like each other, we like to sometimes dance in the living room and I have even been known to say sweet things from time to time. Or when I think about stress, I think about the boss that screams at you and the deadlines that are bearing down that you just can't meet. But my boss doesn't really scream at me. My boss-- and my bosses' boss, and his boss-- all seem to like me and respect me, and they generally say very nice things to and about me. When I screw up, I certainly hear about it. But I don't screw up too badly too often. And I don't really have much trouble on deadlines; I sort of have the knack for what I'm doing, and while I won't blow anyone's mind with my creative new approaches to the field, I'm a pretty good soldier, know how to get things done, can take orders well enough, can remember multi-step directions and such.

So "stress" strikes me as sort of the wrong word.

When I say that I have issues with stress, I guess that what I mean is that I am prone to bouts of existential torment. Melancholy. Despair. And a general sort of dizzying nervousness.

I mean, the world, if you haven't noticed, is pretty completely fucked up. I think I've made that point often enough. I usually start with a statement like "Everything Is Wrong" or end by saying that we all really, really, really need to "leave Egypt." The world is pretty completely fucked up and I don't have cable, so it's hard to stay distracted, hard not to notice. And noticing can really bring you down. Lead you into a quagmire of existential torment, melancholy, despair.

And No Sweat is going out of business. Dammit, but No Sweat is going out of business. I didn't need that today. I didn't need that at all.

I have two pairs of quasi-dressy work shoes (one brown, one black; they go equally poorly with jeans or with a suit). I used to buy very cheap sneakers from Payless or wherever, spent maybe $20 per pair. They always fell apart. I don't use leather, and so I'm pretty limited in what I can find in a normal shoe store that meets my enlightened ethical standards. I always bought those cheap fake leather shoes, they always fell apart in seven or eight months, my feet always hurt. Finally, I decided to order what I considered wickedly expensive shoes from a place called Moo Shoes. Vegan, sweatshop free, really comfortable, nice looking shoes. A little over $120, which makes me kind of sick, but in reality, since they last for several years, it's not much more than I was paying before.

So I've had these "Earth Vegan" shoes for several years now, and I was sitting in the office the other day, happened to look down at my feet, and there's this huge damn hole in the sole of my shoe. A big crack, a crevasse. All the way across. So that if it rains, my socks will be soaked. Then I looked at the shoe on the other foot. Same damn thing. Both shoes. Shot. Wearable, for now, but I need some new shoes.

That got me thinking about my sneakers. I have some olive high tops from No Sweat, the coolest vegan friendly sweatshop-free shoes and t-shirts place on the web. I love those sneakers. Love them. Have loved them long and hard enough that they are now in pretty rough shape. So I figured, "hey, I'm buying shoes, what the hell." I went to No Sweat. And they're going out of business. They don't have those olive shoes in my size anymore. Just kids sizes, basically.

So, you know, I'm experiencing some existential turmoil already, okay? The kind where I'm convinced that happiness is an illusion, life is pain and despair, etc, etc. 10th grade-writing-on-black-paper-with-black-ink-while-listening-to-The-Cure-in-the-dark stuff. And now my coffee pot is broken, my black dress shoes have crevasses in them (and I've got a damn Chamber dinner to go to next week!), and No Sweat is going out of businesses, which means I'll never have another pair of those olive high tops.

Nothing for it but to lean out the window, stare into the sky, get a face full of cold rain, and shake your fist at God.

Am I right?

It's been a hell of a couple of weeks. My very favorite kind of stress (existential torment, whatever) is the kind where nothing is actually wrong. It's great when people know you're down, when you clearly haven't slept in weeks, when people can sense you're not entirely present during a conversation, and then, when asked what's wrong, you get to say "well, nothing actually." "Nothing actually" being a better way to answer your secretary on a Monday morning than "has it ever occurred to you that it's all wrong, that it all has to change, and that it all has to start with me?"

I got an email from a good friend that I don't see nearly often enough the other day. He told me he was going through a "rough patch." As I was in what you might call a "rough patch" myself, that really got me thinking. He's a good guy. A very good guy. One of the better ones I know. It seems to me, best as I can put it together, that he's been in this rough patch off and on for a good four or five years now. Before that, of course, we were young and stupid, and it was all a rough patch, but it didn't matter. Now that we're old and responsible, we're supposed to have this stuff figured out.

In his email, he mentioned another friend, another rough patch. Another good friend, good guy, someone who could never really quite get his shit together, now from what I understand going off the deep end a little with drugs that he's not equipped to handle, lady-friends who don't have his best interests in mind, shitty jobs, bad health, bad choices.

Which got me thinking about another friend, the one who has a panic attack every day before he goes to work, who hates his job so much that it makes him feel a little bit like he's going to die, who is so buried in debt that he can't even play with the idea of quitting.

Or another, who always seems so happy and put together on the surface, who has it figured out, but spends days at a time in bed during his fits of depression, can't work, can't be around people. Another good guy. With rough patches.

Or the old friend who never could quite get out of our twenty-somethings, could never exactly move on, could never meet that right person or find that right job or discover that right purpose in life, is still sleeping it off in the parking lot before driving home from the bar, still getting pulled over for weaving, still wanting to hit that loudmouth on the other side of the room, still angry, still metal... but getting gray, getting tired, getting too old for it, very aware of it.

And here's the thing: I don't expect life to be "fair." I know better. Really. I'm an idealist, but I know how it is.

I look at people lately, though, and for too many, I have to ask if life is "good." And I feel angry. I feel disappointed. I feel like they deserve better. I've come to realize that almost everyone I know needs medication to get through a stressful day, or looks at themselves in the mirror and hates their appearance, or is full of debilitating self-doubt, or hides in a dark room until the depression passes, or is terrified of the future, or drinks themself to oblivion most nights of the week, or has to go into the bathroom to get composure after a panic attack, or, or, or, on and on and on.

And I think, "really?" I think, "is this it? is this how it's supposed to be? is this what we've got? is this it?"

The idealist in me doesn't necessarily want fair, but it sure as shit wants "better." The idealist in me can't believe that this is the best the world has to offer, that this is what it means to be here, to be alive. This aching melancholy bullshit isn't by a long shot "enough."

And then, for some reason, I think of Lillian.

Lillian was just about the coolest person I ever knew.

I don't remember how I met Lillian. I remember where I met her, and when. I was in my early twenties, 21, maybe 22. I was working in a hospital cafeteria, serving food on the line to staff and visitors. And Lillian had a friend, Vivian, who had recently been admitted to the long term care floor. Vivian, I think, was pushing 90. Lillian was younger, maybe 60, maybe 65. I'm bad with ages, I don't know.

I can't remember how Lillian and I started talking, but I would sit with her often for coffee on my breaks. She took me at least once to see Vivian, who was somehow affiliated with Houghton College (the school I'd dropped out of a few times).

Lillian didn't say a lot. She talked, and she asked me questions about my life, and she commented on that, but she used only the words that were necessary. And somehow she said everything with a certain "authority." She said things like she knew them to be true.

I enjoyed Lillian. I wrote her into one of the songs I was playing back then.

I have forgotten most of the things she said, but one line from one conversation stands out, always will.

"Peace?" she said. "Peace is an illusion. There is no peace."

She said it like she meant it. With authority. Like she knew it was true.

Maybe it's strange, but I find that thought very comforting right now. Peaceful, almost.

Maybe that' the answer to my melancholy, my disappointed idealism. Maybe that's why others go through "rough patches" but still call themselves happy, while I dive headfirst into despair, refuse to be consoled, shake my fist at God. They get that there is no peace, are okay with it, and move on.

The Afghan Whigs

2009-10-29T21:58:00.003-04:00

I've had The Afghan Whigs in my head all day today, listening to 1989's Up In It in the car, 1993's Gentlemen (one of my very favorite albums of all time) in my office, over and over and again.

The Afghan Whigs made beautifully ugly music. Crunchy, discordant guitars, raspy voice, lyrics that were dark, bitter, full of regret but somehow still hopeful.

These clips don't do them justice, but they're not so bad.

Yeah, one of the best bands ever.

I never did get to see them. I had the chance, once. And then something came up. Something stupid, something not worth missing them, but I figured I'd catch them the next time around.

Turned out, that was their last tour.

Greg Dulli's with The Twilight Singers and the Gutter Twins now. Both are good. Neither are quite The Afghan Whigs.

I'll be listening to Congregation and Black Love and Uptown Avondale tomorrow at work.

Wherein Jockeystreet Changes His Mind About Things

2009-10-28T21:24:00.000-04:00

So, I've changed my mind on Utilitarianism.

I would call it a nuanced shift in position rather than a drastic one.

My Utilitarianism, I would say, is now descriptive rather prescriptive.

I would be saying it wrong. Those aren't exactly the right words for it.

Here's what Utilitarianism is, for those who are not entirely familiar:

Utilitarianism is the ethical philosophy that says that what is "good" or "right" is that which causes pleasure, and that what is "bad" or "wrong" is that which causes pain.

If your immediate reaction is to say "well, that sounds like a pig's philosophy," then you are wrong, but you are not alone. That is precisely what people said when John Stuart Mill wrote his very good and very short book, Utilitarianism.

They were wrong because they had a sad, perhaps piggish, idea of what constitutes "pleasure." They objected because they imagined that this was a philosophy that reduced the moral life to "sex, good; work, bad."

But pleasure, we more sophisticated types know, is more complex than that.

"Work, bad," maybe, but work pays the bills, and I like having a roof over my head, food in the cupboards, and a little spending money on the weekend, so really, in the end, "work, good."

The un-piggish, Mill pointed out, find great pleasure in conversation with their peers, in reading good books, in walks along the river, in taking good care of their bodies, and so on.

I have for a long time considered myself a Utilitarian. It makes sense to me. It provides the math that solves moral dilemmas. What choice brings the most pleasure (good) to the most people, and brings the least pain to the least people? Choose that. Sometimes it's hard to get exact figures, but it's not physics, it's moral theory; inexact figures are considered acceptable.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was on a long drive, listening to the radio, and heard an interview with the moral philosopher Michael Sandell. I'd never heard of him before, and the interview wasn't exactly riveting, but there was some stuff that stuck with me, and I'm not a Utilitarian any more.

Sandell started talking about Dick Cheney and torture. Cheney, as he noted, has made the case for torture (it sometimes feels strange to be saying that American leaders are making the case for torture) on Utilitarian grounds. Torture was the right thing, Cheney says, because it worked. Torture helped us catch bad guys. Torture helped prevent lots of bad things from happening.

Cheney's embrace of torture on Utilitarian grounds isn't what has turned me off of Utilitarianism. There are many bad Utilitarians. There are many people who use Utilitarian arguments without all the math, all the factors. Cheney is one of them. "It worked" is only part of the math that goes into the Utilitarian argument. One might also want to think about the national character, the sense of self, the ability of the people to trust the government, the effect of torture on our standing and reputation in the world, the reliability of any confession given under torture, the likelihood of getting equally useful information by less torturous means, and so on and on and on.

Sandell went on, though. In order to refute Cheney's claim that torture was right because it worked, Sandell painted a "what if" scenario that got to me.

Sure, he said (or didn't say exactly, but I'm getting his point here, if not his words), it's tough for many of us to shed tears over the torture of a Really Bad Terrorist if torturing that terrorist kept a bomb from going off and killing school children and grandmothers.

But what if torturing that terrorist didn't work? What if he was so tough and committed to our annihilation that he wouldn't talk under the roughest treatment?

What if he had a daughter? A little girl? What if he had a little girl who was nine years old? A sweet, innocent, regular little girl? And what if the way to get him to talk was to torture her? What if the way to get him to talk was to rape her? To hurt her? To do unspeakable things to her?

What if no one would ever know? It wouldn't damage the country's standing in the world. It wouldn't disgust the people at home. It wouldn't be used as a terrorist recruiting tool. No one would know. And it would save lives. It would stop that bomb from going off.

Would it be right? Or is there something other than Utility that we should be talking about? Can wrong be wrong even when it works, even when it maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain?

The hard math of Utilitarianism says that the kid would have to be tortured. I'm sure there are better Utilitarian philosophers than me out there (Peter Singer, maybe) who could look at that and find the hole, see the factors that I'm missing. But when I look at it, I don't see it. The math of Utilitarianism says the little girl gets the rack.

And, of course, I can't accept that. That doesn't work for me.

And now Utilitarianism doesn't work for me. It's a moral philosophy I've clung to pretty tightly for close to 20 years now. I don't yet have another moral philosophy ready to take it's place.

As I said at the start, it's a nuanced shift, not a drastic one.

I would still say that Utilitarianism is descriptive of what is good and right. In the vast majority of cases, Utilitarian math will accurately tell you what is right. But it isn't why it's right, and there are cases where the math will get it wrong.

*******************

Here's another one:

Abortion.

That's a more exciting one than Utilitarianism, right? I mean, you rarely go to a popular blog and see people leaving hundreds of comments in an argument over Utilitarianism, you know?

But I don't have much to say about this one.

I don't think I've ever been an avid, enthusiastic supporter of abortion. It's not something that's really ever sat well with me. One of those uncomfortable, awkward things that you support, but you don't really pat yourself on the back for supporting.

What I've enthusiastically said, often, is that many members (not all, nearly) of the anti-abortion crowd are idiots, are dishonest, are not nice people. I'll stand by that.

But my unenthusiastic moral support of abortion has dried up. Completely.

There are exceptions. There are always exceptions. There's exceptions to the "don't push anybody down the stairs" rule. There are exceptions to the "don't run over Steve with your car" rule. There are always exceptions.

But I am inclined to think that those exceptions are rare, and that those exceptions do not justify the very wide open laws that we have on the books right now.

That will make me unliberal, I guess. And unfeminist. To some.

I credit two sources with this change.

One, again, is an interview I heard on the radio. Don't remember who it was, don't remember when it was, don't remember what station. It was a while back. Over the summer. I won't try to go into the details much, but the guy talked about miscarriages. He talked about the sympathy we show when a woman miscarries, about the sense of loss. He asked if that sense of loss was only in the family's mind. If the sympathy was only for the loss of a potential, of a hope, or if it was sincerely for the loss of something tangible.

I played with that thought for a while. Then I came across a post at Queen of Green. Queen of Green is a Christian vegetarian whose blog I check out once in a while. She put up a post called Let The Images Speak over the summer. It had lots of pictures. The pictures bothered me.

And there you go.

Done with Utilitarianism.

Done with abortion.

Summer of Change.

Moral Question

2009-10-23T23:10:00.002-04:00

This is one that haunts me. Has for a long time.

Here's the situation:

Imagine yourself out walking on one of those sunny, bright blue, happy days. Birds are singing, darks are barking in the distance, butterflies flit by, etc, etc. I don't know where you're going, exactly, but it's someplace that ranks as a certain kind of "important." Maybe you're on your way to sign paperwork to buy your first house, it's 2:00, and 2:45 is the deadline. Maybe your on your way to your sister's wedding or your big, big job interview. Nothing life and death here, but important stuff for sure.

The path you're walking on runs alongside a pond or a small lake, and here and there you can see people sailing, tubing, having a good time. There are two other healthy adults on the path with you, going the same direction at pretty much the same pace.

And then you here a splash, and a scream, and a couple more splashes, and you see that not too far out from the shore a little boat has capsized, and there are three children splashing around, screaming that they cannot swim. You look, and you can't see there parents. In fact, you can't see anyone anywhere who could possibly get to them in time to save them, except for you and those other two healthy adults on the path.

So what do you do?

The answer is obvious, right? Being a healthy adult yourself, you run and jump into the water, swim out to one of those kids, and pull her safely to the shore. The other two walkers do the same. Everybody does their part. Problem solved. Horrible, horrible tragedy averted. Everybody's picture gets in the paper, everybody feels really good.

Except here's the thing:

The other two don't stop. They keep on walking. They, too, are on their way to weddings or birthday parties or really big interviews or first dates, and they've decided that they can't be sidetracked, they have priorities, they have their own lives to live.

And so it's just you.

And you can still do your part. You can still jump in the water, swim out to the boat, pull that little girl to shore, and say "I did my part." You might even get to your Really Important Thing on time. Wet, but on time. And that's good. That's great. You've done your part. Good for you.

But somehow, it doesn't work out. It doesn't add up. Somehow, once you're in the water, once you know what you've got to do, you can't just do your part and call it enough. Pointing at the backs of the ones who kept walking on won't justify you, won't give you absolution, won't get you out of this. You won't get your picture in the paper. You won't be a hero. What's more, you won't be able to look at yourself in the mirror. You won't be "good." Not even close. Not at all.

Once you've got that little girl to shore, you've got to swim back out for her brother. Because there's still time. You can do it. And once you've got him to shore, you've got to swim back out for their cousin. And it means you'll miss that wedding, or that interview, or that limited time offer. It means you'll get a mouthful of water. It means you'll be tired and sore. But what the hell else can you do? What the hell else can you do when not everybody agrees to do their part? You've got to go in for all three.

And okay. So you can do that.

So rewind.

You're on a path, it's a sunny, blue day with butterflies and barking dogs, and you're on your way to this interview, chance of a lifetime thing, the guy agreed to see you before he flies out in about twenty minutes. And there's four other people on the path, going your way. And there's these five kids in a boat, not too far out from shore. And you hear a series of splashes, and some cries for help, and the other four keep walking...

Or, you're on a path, on your way to your daughter's wedding, and there's nine other people on the path, and there are the three boats out there, and they collide, and then there are these ten kids in the water...

Or... or... there's twenty, there's thirty people on the path...

The question that comes at me over and over again is "where does it end?"

Doing our part isn't it. Not it at all. Not close to the right answer. Not anywhere in the vicinity. Can't be.

None of the people that we pretend to admire get our admiration because they did their part. None of them. Not Jesus, or Gandhi, or King, or Mother Theresa, not any of them.

And none of those people who have told us with "authority" how we should be living our lives have told us to do our part. None of them.

The examples and the directives have gone far, far beyond that.

And so my question, as best as I can word it, is "where does it end?"

Because I've really been trying to do my part. Knowing that that is woefully inadequate, knowing that that is not even on the field of adequacy, where do I go next?

How many kids do you swim out for? Is there any satisfactory answer that leaves one in the water if you've still got an ounce of strength, could still make another trip? Maybe you can't throw your life away, because you've got children, a spouse, people who count on you. But you can make one more trip and get safely back, right? You've got more in you, right? And can you stop like that?

And maybe asking this question is in itself an inexcusable cop-out. Maybe I only ask the question because I already know the answer. Maybe I only ask the question because I know, and asking, pretending not to know, is easier then the doing. Maybe Kierkegaard is right.

"Take any words in the New Testament," he said, "and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined."

Vision, Not Programs

2009-10-23T22:35:00.003-04:00

I've written from time to time here on the whole notion of "vision, not programs."

Today, on my drive into work, an example of the sort of thing I mean by this occurred to me.

It has been 7 years, 2 months, and 5 days (roughly) since I've smoked a cigarette.

Prior to that, I smoked a lot of cigarettes.

I smoked a lot of cigarettes, and really, really liked cigarettes. Three packs a day, for a while there.

I knew, of course, as just about everybody these days knows, that smoking cigarettes was a bad idea, and so I wanted to quit. Knew that I should quit. Tried to quit. Over and over again. In an effort to quit, I engaged in a number of programs, all of which failed miserably.

I chewed the gum. Nicorette. I chewed an awful lot of that gum over a period of about four months. When I think back on it, I can still taste it... this tart, sort of piercing flavor that would just sort of almost numb my mouth, throw chills up and down my spine as the lovely, lovely nicotine hit. The gum was expensive, almost as expensive (from what I remember) as cigarettes. And it wasn't nearly as cool. I mean, you couldn't lean against the bar looking all pensive and serious and make some witty, jaded philosophical point while smacking on a piece of Nicorette the way you could with a cigarette. And before too long I learned that chewing on two pieces of Nicorette while chain smoking could make one feel light-headed and nauseous, so I quit the Nicorette for my own health.

And I tried the Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant, has a side-effect which prevents the body from "processing" nicotine. You can smoke and smoke and smoke, but you won't get that "fix," that good, good feeling. The idea is that if you're getting nothing out of it, you'll just stop smoking. That didn't work for me. Not being able to process the nicotine just made me sort of angry, made me try harder. I smoked more and more and more, hoping that just one more cigarette and I'd break through that barrier. Add to that the fact that a second side-effect of the drug, for some, is the sensation of bugs crawling under the skin, this just absolutely awful sub dermal itchiness that cannot possibly be scratched. No fun at all. So I quit the Wellbutrin.

I tried hanging a picture of a diseased lung on my refrigerator door for a while. That depressed me every time I got thirsty and went to the fridge. When I got depressed, I usually sat on the porch and smoked.

I bought a carton of cheap, generic cigarettes. Not so much to save money, but because I generally smoked quality cigarettes, and thought that cheap, generic cigarettes were disgusting. I figured I would smoke fewer cigarettes this way, and might start winding down to none at all. I ended up hating them so much that I smoked them as fast as possible so that I could get through the whole carton and buy something good again. The carton disappeared in no time at all.

And of course I went through that "not buying" phase, where you don't buy your own pack, you just bum them here and there when you really need them. But I had a lot of generous friends, and even more not-so-terribly-bright friends who always left their packs lying around when I was over and made occasional comments like "man, I've been smoking an awful lot lately, I think I'm going through two packs a day and I don't even know how."

Somebody-- my sister, maybe?-- bought me a pack of those fake foam cigarettes. They come in a regular pack, look real, but there's no tobacco in them, just styrofoam or something all the way through. You're supposed to suck on them like you're really smoking, you can have them between your fingers, if you puff you get a little blast of menthol (I never smoked menthols, but you need to get something when you puff these things). They were kind of lame, but I tried. I was delivering pizza one night and I'd been alternating on runs between smoking a cigarette and puffing on one of these things. And then, in the dark, I reached down to the pack, thought I was grabbing a real cigarette, lit my lighter, inhaled, and nearly veered off the road, sucking in burning, mentholated styrofoam. Absolutely horrible. The pack of fakes went in the garbage as soon as I returned to the store.

The most successful program was the "sheer force of will" program. I was living with my on-again/off-again girlfriend at that time, and she really wanted me to quit, and my family really wanted me to quit, and I couldn't smoke in the apartment anyway, and it was expensive, and I wasn't hanging out in bars as much so there wasn't quite as much temptation, so I figured what the hell. I locked myself in a room for the weekend, away from anyone I could scream at, and fought it out. Resisted the urge. The first couple of weeks were hard, but after that, it wasn't so bad. I went a full six months without a single smoke, and felt pretty good about that. There were times when I wanted one. I mean, those were stressful times. Living with someone who I was pretty sure didn't actually like me very much, the band that I thought was going to be really, really huge had broken up before we'd even made our first record, I was adjusting to having a grown up job with normal morning hours, I was gaining weight. But I did it. Six months. And then I discovered that my lady friend was the line connecting all eight points of a twisted love octagon and I sort of got a little upset. I packed her stuff in the middle of the night, called her younger sister to come pick me up, and burned through most of a pack of Marlboros in an hour in one of my favorite bars.

None of my "programs" for quitting worked. They didn't work because as much as I kinda, sorta mostly knew that I should quit, on a deeper level, I really didn't want to. I really, really liked smoking. I liked complaining about smoking, sure. I liked thinking that it was a waste of money, bad for my health, a terrible habit. But I also just liked sitting there with a cigarette between my fingers. When I was smoking, I liked it. When I wasn't smoking, I wanted one.

Until one day I didn't want one any more.

I didn't try to quit. I mean, yes, I still had in the back of my mind the notion that I was going to eventually quit. But I wasn't working at it, wasn't making any effort.

I was dating a new, nice lady (the one that I married), and I hadn't told her that I was a smoker. She'd been a straight-edge girl back in her college days, and though she wasn't quite that hardcore about things anymore, I figured she'd have a low opinion of smokers, so I didn't mention it to her. I went outside to clean my car, to make it smell all fresh and nice so she wouldn't ask me why I let my friends smoke in the car. I took a white rag and cleaned the cloth ceiling on the passenger side. It came back a little gray, a little grubby. I went around to the other side and cleaned the ceiling above the driver's seat. It came back thick, black, chalky.

"Hmmm," I thought.

I set everything down, then went on sat on the trunk of my car, looking out into the street. I lit a cigarette, smoked it slowly, and processed that. Lit another one, smoked it. Enjoyed it. Then I threw the remainder of the pack in my garbage. And that was that.

7 years, 2 months, 5 days. Temptations, occasionally, but not very significant ones.

Programs, in my experience, don't work. Not in the long run, anyway.

What we need is a new vision. A new set of wants. A new understanding of our reality.

The difficult thing, I guess, is that we can't always set the schedule for that sort of thing. We can be open to it, we can set the conditions that might allow it, but we can't make it happen. That can be frustrating. But, as far as I can tell, there's really no other way.

Faith Is A Perturbing Thing

2009-10-16T21:39:00.002-04:00

The other day, while we were having lunch, my sister read me her favorite Soren Kierkegaard quote, which she was putting into her sermon for this Sunday. It goes like this:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

I like that. I like it a lot.

It reminded me of my own favorite Kierkegaard quote. Or, rather, not a quote exactly, but a long passage, a few pages in an essay called "How to Derive True Benediction From Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the World."

Part of that goes like this:

Think of a lover who has now received a letter from his beloved-- as precious as this letter is to the lover, just so precious to thee, I assume, is God's Word; in the way the lover reads this letter, just so, I assume dost thou read God's Word...

I assume then that this letter from the beloved was written in a language which the lover did not understand... He takes a dictionary and sits down to spell out the letter, looking up every word so as to get at the translation...

Let us suppose that this letter from the lady-love not only contained, as such letters generally do, the declaration of an emotion, but that there was contained in it a desire, something which the beloved desired the lover to do. There was, let us suppose, a great deal required of him, a very great deal... he was off in a second to accomplish the desire of the beloved. Let us suppose that in the course of time the lovers met, and the lady said, 'But my dear, I didn't think of requiring that of thee; thou must have misunderstood the word or translated it wrong.' Dost thou believe that the lover now would regret that instead of hastening at once to fulfil the desire of his beloved he had not first entertained some misgivings, and then perhaps had obtained a few more dictionaries to help him out, and then had many misgivings, and then perhaps got the word rightly translated, and so was exempted from the task-- dost thou believe that he regrets this misapprehension? Dost thou believe that he is in less favor with the beloved?...

So the lover... understood how to read in such a way that, if there was a desire contained in the letter, one ought to begin at once to fulfil it, without wasting a second...

Think now of God's word... 'But,' thou perhaps wouldst say, 'there are so many obscure passages in the Holy Scriptures, whole books which are almost riddles.' To this I would reply: 'I see no need of considering this objection unless it comes from one whose life gives expression to the fact that he has punctually complied with all the passages which are easy to understand.' Is this the case with thee?

**************

The day after my conversation with my sister, I was reading Karen Armstrong's The Case For God, and came to a few pages on the meaning of the word "faith."

A major theme of Armstrong's book is that our modern, Western notion of "faith" is something very new. To many people, "faith" means "belief," in the sense of an assent to an idea. One believes that the earth is round, and that there are six chairs in the dining room, and that Christ died for the sins of the world. While the faith may spur action, it is the "belief," the "acceptance" of the idea, the intellectual assent, that counts as faith.

But, according to Armstrong, earlier generations of believers didn't see it that way, wouldn't have even grasped that concept. To earlier believers, intellectual assent to a set of "facts," believing in a certain set of details, had little or nothing to do with faith.

Armstrong follows the language of faith through the Greek and the Latin into modern English.

"Pistis," she explains, the word that now appears as "faith" in our New Testaments, meant "trust, loyalty, engagement, and commitment." Those are words that imply relationship, and a certain disposition.

In Latin, "pistis" become "fides" as a noun, and "credo" as a verb.

"Fides," the noun, is best translated as "loyalty."

"Credo," the verb, is derived from "cor do," which can be translated as "I give my heart."

"Opinar," the Latin for "I hold an opinion," was specifically and deliberately never used in place of "pistis."

Later, in the King James, "credo" and "fides" became "believe" and "belief." But "belief" meant something a little different in the King James days. The word "bileven," from which it was derived, meant "to prize, to value, to hold dear." "Belief" meant "loyalty to a person to whom one is bound in promise or duty."

"Belief," Armstrong claims, started to mean "intellectual assent" only in the late 17th century, and then primarily when used by scientists and philosophers. Theologians didn't start using the word that way in large numbers until a couple of hundred years later.

I find all of that very, very interesting. It allows me to see the New Testament in a very different way.

**************

So I've been thinking about Kierkegaard and Armstrong off and on throughout this week, during those rare moments of silence, and I've felt a little challenged by what they both have to say.

I don't know where I'm going with this, exactly. The words still have to kick around for a while, they still have to settle somewhere.

But what I'm thinking is this:

There's no salvation-- however you want to define that-- in holding an idea.

What matters is the action, the transformation, the "being," that spills up and out of that idea. What matters is how that idea becomes lived, becomes tangible. Intellectual assent-- no matter how beautiful the idea-- is nothing. What matters is the orientation of one's life, the way we live it day to day.

Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined.

That's tough stuff.

As I've said before,

The land to which God has brought you is not like the land of Egypt from which you came out. You can no longer live here as you lived there.

Really, really tough stuff.

Because it would be an awful lot easier to live here as I lived there, and still get that "salvation" bit thrown in.

So this is stuff that I've got to think on for a while. Not to find some mental trick to get out of it, but to let it really work it's way in, to let it take hold.

Kind of sucks, doesn't it?

Fascinating

2009-10-16T21:32:00.002-04:00

A jutice of the peace in Louisiana is refusing to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples.

He hasn't been fired yet, even though the couple whose refusal made headlines isn't the first he denied (there were four others).

And, of course, this isn't about racism.

This particular justice is not a racist. Not at all.

If you read the article closely, you'll see that the justice has some really good reasons for denying marriage licenses to interracial couples that aren't racist at all.

He isn't a racist.

No one ever is.

No one ever thinks that they're a bad person.

Of course, this is one guy. Louisiana Republicans are calling for the guy to step down, and I'm sure most of the outrage and shock is sincere, so this isn't exactly about the South and it isn't really about Republicans. It's one guy, with more power than he deserves, and really, really sad ideas. The couple will still get married. They shouldn't have had to deal with this, but they'll still get married.

But isolated as it may be (and less isolated than I think many people would like to believe it to be), this still just sort of blows the mind.

Sugar Tongue

2009-10-16T21:23:00.003-04:00

I've had this song in my head a lot lately, so I figured I'd find a live version and post it. The song is off the newest Indigo Girls album, "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug."

If you're considering picking up that disc, do. But be sure to pick up the double disc. The double CD set features a second recording of all the songs, stripped down to just acoustic instruments, no band. It is much, much better than the first disc, which, really is sort of indistinguishable from the last few albums they've put out (all of which are good, it's just not anything new).

That acoustic disc, though, is terrific.

Drinking tea with milk and Janjaweed
Pontificate on genocide and greed
A spoonful of dissent for an orchestra of need
Is just enough to please this colony

I like that. I like that a lot.