WickedEye's Quotient

Stranger Depths (Story Excerpt)

2011-12-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

She loves to swim.

No-one knows this. Why should they? The only place to swim back in base camp is the lake, and it’s unappealing if not hostile. And—black. Dark and cold, the hesitant lines of sunlight that shift through the water reaching no more than 20 feet down.

Not like the cold green waters off the coast of her home. Or the warm, liquid azure surrounding the island she’d visited with her parents when she was small. Waters that cradled and embraced her, that showed themselves to her as she moved through them.

She misses the sea. Misses it with an ache that sinks through to her bones sometimes. Freak, they said in camp, at school, ignorant of her heritage.

Not that it would matter. If they knew, she’d simply have been treated like the prisoners in camp. As half-human, rather than just a freak.

After she’d left school, come to camp, she’d found that twisting ache actually inflicting physical pain. Wondered what the combination of knowledge and her mother’s blood might have wakened in her had she stayed a civilian.

Dangerous, yes. But then all things were dangerous when you dove deep.

And now she swims in knowledge.

Knowledge is power. She’s known it from a young age, though she loved it for itself and not what it could bring her. Like the sea.

She marvels at knowing things, exults in it, as surely as in the sea. Loves the feel, the glide of facts as they weave the world around her. Loves breathing them in and exhaling them in strings of syllables and inscriptions and equations as fluid as the knowledge which forms them. It is the only thing she could have dreamt, could have imagined, that is better than diving into the cradling embrace of the sea: Knowledge, a force that flows like water and lets her breathe it like air.

And as with the sea, the riptides of knowledge she rides—with inscription or equation—can tear apart the unwary.

She wonders at the fact that the thrashing currents left the students at school, the warriors at camp, so untouched. So unmoved. At the fact that her teachers never mentioned that the things they teach are dangerous regardless of whether or not they’re used for dark purposes. It’s only in the last year, while watching soldiers and sybils and sycophants come and go around her, that she’s realized that they don’t know. That several of her teachers didn’t know.

How can people’s bodies be battered by the things that knowledge creates while they remain unaware of the power flowing about them?

But perhaps that’s why. Perhaps having a physical reason to which they can pin the pain means that they’re less aware of other tides.

But her favorite teacher had been aware of the slow maelstrom of knowledge. It was there in the intensity of her gaze at an erring student, the sternness of her demeanor as she controlled her classes—in her ruthless, constant scrutiny of the power being channeled through the words of those she taught.

She understood all that her teacher saw only after she left school. Just before she left camp.

Much too late.

So now she kneels in a forest—outlaw, outcast, betrayer, betrayed—and thinks of the sea. Thinks of bright lines of light in green depths while gazing into the orange heart of a tiny fire with the child she stole asleep in the tent behind her and everyone she loves somewhere that isn’t here. That will never be here, because thanks to the knowledge she channels they can’t find her now.

She and her ward are alone.

Maybe it’s because of her mother. Maybe it’s because she wasn’t meant to know so much. (Was she a freak? Had they been right?) Maybe it’s taken for granted by everyone else, and it’s only she who fears the depths and the inexorable tug of the knowledge she now treads like water.

It’s definitely only she who feels the bottom sinking away beneath she and the boy as the war churns deeper and darker around them. She that the dimming world presses in upon, blacker and colder and closer, stealing the air. There are times now when she thinks that the effort leaves her gasping for breath. (Perhaps that had always been their plan.)

She closes her eyes, shivering in the faint warmth of the fire, and tilts her head back to feel the cold against her face. Pictures the green depths of the sea about her, shoals sinking to black in the looming dark, and feels the chill, heavy swirl of currents which press fierce and heavy on her skin. Which seek she and her ward with a weight and pressure and limb-rending force that she fears her frame can withstand for only a little longer.

(Let it be enough. Let me save him.)

She kneels, blind in the surge of a shadowy riptide, and wonders what it will feel like to drown.

[It hasn't been my habit to post my fiction here; this is something of a test run. An excerpt, in abstract form, from a medium-length story that's been shaping itself v e r y s l o w l y.]

Following Phobos

2011-10-25T22:03:00.001-07:00

I am done with hiding.

You’ve not had the chance to read my writing lately. Or to debate my politics either—the latter for longer than the former. There are a lot of reasons: I’m tired. I’m scared of failing at school. I miss my family. I’ve lost friends to death and disseverment. There are a host more. None of them matter.

Because even though I’ve bent and not broken, I’ve also curled in on myself. Hidden away in a cave in the safety of my chosen scholarship. Left most of the mad, beautiful world to rage outside. Until tonight.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Lecia Brooks spoke at the med school. Listening to this plain-spoken, intelligent, compassionate woman talk unflinchingly of her convictions and questions and dismay stirred me: Recognition. Fear.

I used to do that, Recognition said. I used to say what I believed to be right. I used to protect those who were weaker than I. I used to speak for those who had no voice. And Fear said: Someday you will no longer recognize yourself in her. Keep hiding, it said, and one day not even she will be able to stir the memory of your strength from its tomb.

And then Fear said into the faces of Neo-Nazis and Imperial Klansmen and James Anderson’s murderer: I know you.

I sat next to you as a child riding the city bus home from school. Stopped you from screaming at a stranger. Comforted friends who’d been abraded by you. Argued against you on Legislative Plaza, in my high school, in churches and malls and diners.

I studied you for a decade. Majored in atrocity. When humanitarian law had shown me the worst excesses of hatred and fear, I turned to evolutionary biology because still I did not understand enough. I learned you beyond school, beyond academic disciplines, beyond any border of faith, to the very edge of hope. I know you, Fear murmured as Ms. Brooks showed us a man being murdered, deliberately and viciously, for the color of his skin.

When the newsclip was done I heard my friends crying for the brutality, the vileness, the terrible futile tragedy of what we’d seen. I sat dry-eyed, fists clenched, and Fear whispered at last: You are strong enough.

To face this. To bend medicine and psychiatry and law and politics and evolutionary biology to your purpose. To study, and stand against, violence and ignorance and hatred.

Strong enough to be the stone over which they break and ebb at last. Strong enough to find the ways in which those drowning in it might be revived.

My lack of published papers has always reflected my simple lack of an original take on a meaningful idea. But now—now I have one. My effort, my questions, have a form that matters. An anvil on which my knowledge and talents can be wrought to good purpose.

All it requires is that I immerse myself in a world containing those who relish hatred and harbor a wanton joy in destruction. All it requires is that I obey my Fear.

So I will. Because I live in that world already. Because my Fear is prompted primarily by knowledge of pain.

And because without my full attention, I cannot help that pain to heal.

OUTWARD: SUMMER [Lake, Galaxy, & I]

2011-06-10T00:58:00.001-07:00

At 2:30 am on the morning of my birthday, I went for a drive

[the dam at Devil’s Kitchen].

2 am on a small lake in the middle-of-almost-nowhere is many things.

Uncluttered

[insects and frogs and me]

soothing

[sigh of wind and susurrus of water flowing]

dark

[no lights for miles].

Starry.

I saw the Milky Way for the first time in a decade.

Stood on black asphalt, leaning on the white concrete of a small dam

[dark shallow waters below and behind me]

looking up at the stars

[scent of honeysuckle weaving together sound of water & brush of blown hair]

while mind gave body a surfeit of summer night

[wind on water on skin].

Stood on the inside of the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Γαλαξιαζ (Galaxias)

[standing in and looking out]

moving at approximately 0.07c (the speed of light)

[eyes ears tongue funneling the world backward into my skull]

looking outward at its edge

[neurons firing the reality of night & lake & galaxy].

Visual cortex filled to overflowing

[band of horizon skyglow rising 15° above black-spiked trees]

with a near-hemisphere of starry night

[dark pastel fade of cerulean to sapphire]

the attenuated night deepening quickly

[to silky midnight with diamond-bright flecks of fire].

And stretched behind that fire

[compressed by an angle 60° off the galactic plane]

the milky, rippling ribbon of paler flame

[stippled with staccato darkness: nebulae known but unseen].

Now the Milky Way hangs above the roof of my study

[shimmering as it spins through 600km/s]

but it is time and past time for me to go to bed.

So I will fall asleep on damasked sheets

[inside a minor arm of a barred spiral galaxy]

on a small side street in Carbondale, Illinois

[quietly merging with the Virgo stellar stream].

At home

[I will not need sweet dreams].

And I Fell for Him Like My Heart Was a Mob Informant and He Was the East River.*

2011-06-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

or, Aquarium-based Fishboyfriend Schematics and Other Implausibly Romantic Musings: A Meditation In Ten Parts. With Subheadings. And Sharks.

___________________________________

I. In which I preface the long-awaited description of my decision with a few disclaimers.

1. This post is visible only to those tagged to it. (With few exceptions, that means those who took part in the original boyfriend v. aquarium debate on Facebook. Based on past conversations about romance/acknowledged attractions/romantic involvements, a few other interested parties may have found their way into the tag list as well.) For that reason, it’s quite a bit more candid than most of my other posts—even some of those which give the reader interesting close-ups of various scars. It is, in other words, not meant for general consumption. Thus, if I find people recopying bits of it—other than into correspondence with me—they will be hunted down like a dog in…er, a place where people hunt dogs.

2. As you may have deduced from the (sub)title(s), some of the thoughts here will be serious; others…not. Forgive me the more outrageous cracks; I can’t really help the way my weird sense of humor overpowers me. (And my romantic escapades have been more than outrageous enough to justify almost any crack I make about them.)

3. If you have absolutely no interest in reading about this stuff—for the love of Pete, let me know! I have no desire to bother people with tags to pieces they don’t find interesting, and in fact have stopped tagging several friends because they told me they only occasionally read things I write.

4. Comments, as with the original fishboyfriend debate, are welcomed. However, a little of my heart is out in the open here. Whatever your thoughts, please at least try to be tactful in expressing them.

______________________________

II. In which I describe an 18-way conversation.

The original question: Aquarium or boyfriend?

The discussion went on for 95 comments, with 18+ participants. It was revealing on several different planes. Many people came out of the woodwork to participate. And the level of concern expressed—especially by my guy friends, and especially by those privy to the magnitude of the disaster that was my last ex—gave me all kindas warms n’fuzzies.

On the other hand, the unparalleled amount of cynicism displayed by my male friends—gay and straight—about the possibilities of finding a man who’d be able to treat me well was disturbing. When challenged, they bluntly stated that they didn’t think I realized what guys were like (!), and then gave me a rendition of the male psyche that forced me to apologize to female friends whom I’d accused of sexism when they said the same things.

Not very encouraging…but not totally discouraging either. And more importantly, the process of engaging in the debate clarified some things that I’d (carefully) avoided realizing.

III. In which I begin my blatant Abuse Of Capitalization.

When I posted the question (no, it wasn’t a joke), I was under the impression that I wasn’t dating because I had Other Schtuff To Do than search for that One Special Person I wanted to annoy. (Not for the Rest Of My Life, but On An Exclusive Basis.)

And perhaps secondarily because I was in An Awkward Position when it came to finding Men Of A Suitable Age. (As in, they’re probably my professors. Eeeek.)

And possibly tertiarily because I am Unfortunately Incompatible With The Majority Of Straight Men. (No, really.)

Like so much else in life, the truth was both simpler and more complex than that. And realizing it made me take a long look at that list of six men I was attracted to and considering asking out.

And shred it.

I still find them attractive. But the thing that made it impossible for me to ask any of them out was realizing (finally!) the way attraction works for me.

IV. In which I (re)discover that my brain Controls My Emotions to an Often Unsavory Extent.

It’s long been a truism amongst me and my friends that the only way to my heart is through my brain.

The only way. There may be a few bypasses to other things (most of them via a dance floor), but for my heart that’s the only way. (Though artists and musicians have a bypass too, of sorts—I find certain forms of artistic talent as intriguing as I find certain forms of intellect.)

This has a number of unfortunate side-effects. In the past I’ve been blind to other considerations when caught in the thrall of a truly unique intellect—other considerations that have a tendency to come whiplashing back later on, sometimes traumatically. Witness my panicked call to Dave two years ago when I realized I was attracted to a man 11 years younger than I. My side of it began with: “Oh my god, Dave, I’m a perv!” (To Dave’s everlasting credit, his responding “What?” was laced with laughter rather than wariness. There are very good reasons he & I are friends.)

Other considerations had (thankfully) supervened at the time, preventing me from acting on the attraction, but I hadn’t even thought about the man’s age until almost two days later…when I was appalled.

It took Dave a while to convince me I wasn’t a perv. And I still have problems with the idea of dating a person substantially younger than I am—hence the Men Of A Suitable Age dilemma: I have no wish to hurt or take advantage of a person less romantically experienced than I. (Many of my male friends have told me emphatically that this concern is nonsensical. However, a fair bit of my moral code is considered nonsense in this day and age; that doesn’t stop me from formulating or adhering to it.) My friends did, however, manage to convince me that age is not the primary quality that must be considered when weighing romantic experience.

Fine. Good. Great. But that’s not the only problem. In fact, it’s not even the main problem.

V. In which I realize that Heterosexuality is the Least Of My Problems.

Nor is the Unfortunately Incompatible With The Majority Of Straight Men issue.

Which is surprising. Because since I’m straight (“intractably straight,” as I generally say, which to those paying attention implies—correctly—that I’ve attempted to rectify the matter often enough to realize that such attempts are doomed to failure), you’d think Incompatibility With The Majority Of Straight Men would be a rather large stumbling block.

Nah.

See, that one faded into insignificance when I realized that I’m incompatible with the majority of people. Neat solution, right? [Insert violent interaction of my head with my desk here.]

Once again, it comes down to the way attraction works for me. And since I haven’t clarified that, let me do so now: In order to make me want a man enough to ask him out, he has to fascinate me.

VI. In which I rediscover Fascination as both Vice And Privilege.

There are several layers to that—including all the layers that make me want to be friends with a person: High intelligence, ethical code, verbal wit, humor, interest in the world, a sense of adventure.

But it’s something more as well. An added spice. A twist to the language or ideas or playing field. A level of contest in the decoding. An impression that this man may be playing chess while everyone else at the table is playing checkers.

A provocation.

A sense that he might just be playing a few levels above me, and would I like to step to the table to find out? A sense that I’m dealing with a man whose mind has many levels, and that he’s capable of operating on more than one at a time. A sense that I have to actively try to keep up.

A sense that he’s an equal—who can challenge me.

And it’s not the traditional bad-boy fixation (though I admit to one in terms of fictional characters, both written and read): I’m not challenged by emotional disturbances. All mature adults carry some emotional baggage, and I don’t discriminate on that basis; but anger issues or mommy issues or daddy issues, or many of the varied flavors of emotional incapacitation are, at this point in my life, easily identifiable. They may not prevent me from being interested by a man’s mind, but they’ll back me from romantic to friendly interest faster than you can say “chess.”

And please don’t think that all of this has to be in play for me to say yes if I’m being asked out, rather than asking a man out. To say yes, I have to be interested and entertained; I have to enjoy his company. Most of my friends meet those criteria—they’re not terribly demanding. All that’s necessary past that baseline is the potential for fascination. I’ve had fulfilling relationships with men with whom, before we dated, it would never’ve occurred to me I was compatible. (I am, as several of you reading this know—yes, Joanna, I’m talking to you—rather slow on the uptake in that and several other regards.)

Which brings me to the matter of physical attraction.

VII. In which I address a topic that is Generally Awkward with my Usual Tact And Grace.

There’s a reason I left this till last, or almost-last. And that’s that to me, until that fascination is in place, the physical stuff’s irrelevant. (There’ve been exceptions to that; but I was younger and dumber—and, sad to say, so were the exceptions.) I’ve heard many women say that the physical characteristics come second, but on exploring further I’ve found that this isn’t true for them in the same sense that it is for me. Female friends whose judgment I trust (Marie being the most recent) have also told me that I’m the exception to the rule when it comes to my responses in this area.

Most women have physical characteristics that they prefer, and I’m no exception: Men who catch my eye in a “Wow, check him out” sense tend to be tall, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, with wide shoulders.

But I don’t really look at men on the street in terms of attraction. I look at them as aesthetic specimens—the way I’d look at a piece of sculpture. I look at women the same way; if you’re good-looking, graceful, exceptional in some way, you’ll catch my eye. I’ll appreciate you. But I won’t be attracted to you.

Attraction takes something else. It takes knowledge of the brain behind the mouth, eyes, smile, jawline, shoulders. And once I’m attracted to that, everything else about you will be attractive to me as well.

Which is why the list of men I’ve dated includes tall green-eyed blond reprobates and short half-Korean honors students, Italian-American basketball players and African-American chemistry nerds, blue-eyed saxophonists and brown-eyed business majors, redheaded models and brown-haired poets. All brilliant. All men I was desperately attracted to, both body and mind.

The former is impossible for me without the latter.

And that’s the problem.

VIII. In which I describe the Method by which I normally Proposition A Man.

I can’t ask out any of the men I had on that list—because if I were attracted enough to them to ask them out, I would’ve done it already.

When I’m attracted enough to a man to ask him out—or rather, to make my interest clear, which as often involves me asking to kiss someone as it does me asking him out—if there’re no intervening factors (significant others, sexual preference, age, etc.), I’ll do it as soon as possible.

As in, “You know, I find you really attractive. Would you like to have dinner/coffee/a drink tonight/right now?” Or, “I’d really like to kiss you. Would you mind?” (Several of the people tagged to this Note have experienced some version of this from me. I don’t expect you to attest to it—in fact I’d prefer you didn’t—but the rest of you should bear in mind that most of the people with whom I’ve done this aren’t one-offs. This is how I’ve started several relationships.)

And in the absence of that kind of attraction, I don’t want to pursue anybody.

IX. In which Sublimation collides with the Reason Why I’m Single.

I don’t want to date someone just because I’m single, or because I’m lonely. I’m single because I haven’t yet met anyone eligible whom I truly wanted to date. (As implied above, if I had and he hadn’t made a move, I would’ve.)

And everyone gets lonely. There are several answers to the physical side of that—if you, like me, aren’t into casual sex—and one of them is sublimation. Weightlifting, swimming, a heavy bag…yeah, you get the idea. The emotional side—well, I have wonderful friends; it’s not often I feel lonely. And dealing with the occasional bout of loneliness is part of being a grownup—and sadly, not exclusive to being single.

So the limiting factor isn’t compatibility, or age, or any of those things. The thing lacking for me to take the initiative is, quite simply, interest.

As someone else recently pointed out to me, I clearly need to meet more people I find intriguing.

X. In which lurk possible Members Of Class Chondrichthyes, with no other End In Sight.

I agreed with him. Clearly I do. But neither of us had any idea of how to resolve the problem. After all, twisty, multilayered, perpendicular thinking isn’t a characteristic of a whole lot of people in medical school—or, surprisingly, law school (at least not the one I attended). And medical school—and residency—is where I’ll be for quite some time.

Which is why, all things considered—and absent any serendipitous dropping of intriguing available males in my lap—I’ll be going with the aquarium.

So Stacy, I hope you’re still working on that aquarium-based fishboyfriend schematic.

Maybe eventually I’ll upgrade to a shark tank.

_____________________________________________

*This phrase is not original. To see a long list including that and other utterly delicious analogies, see “It’s Like This” in Style Invitational, a Washington Post contest which has been endlessly pirated (including here, although unlike the others I at least had the decency to attribute the source correctly).

Black Irises

2011-06-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

They sit at my eye level at the last stop sign but one before the parking lot: black irises.

Two of them, grown on the same stem, swaying against a field of lighter purple-and-yellow cousins.

They are not truly black, of course. The slant of the 7:45am sun burnishes their darkness, pulling their true tint—a plangent shade of abyssal sanguine-purple—to the surface of the rumpled petals. Caressing from them a gleam too subtle to be satiny, too tender to be silken.

They should seem out of place. It is a lovely spring morning, sun already coaxing cerulean from the sky; the all-but-black flowers shimmering slowly, entrancingly, in front of their more vivacious cousins should tarnish that liveliness.

They do not.

They make everything, everything—the other flowers, even the sky—more vivid.

Their pale cousins are more luminous in the black blooms’ shadow. And if the cheerful, slender purple prettiness seems shallower than the sinuous elegance of the dusky blossoms swaying (slower, more…deliberate) in the same breeze as they… Still, that prettiness is blazoned more brilliantly on the morning for the presence of those inky crimson-purple petals.

The cant of the morning light itself is sharper, its angle more acute, for the deep heartsblood stain it strikes from the soft weaving of the two entwined stems.

They are arresting. Enthralling. Heartbreaking. Resplendent.

And I will stare at them a few seconds too long before snapping to myself. Before making myself leave. Before parking and walking slowly towards the rest of a day that’s been rearranged by a lustrous dark beauty.

Before wondering what it is in contrast, chiaroscuro—darker shades of shadow—that lets me see more clearly.

______________________________________________

[For my friend Andrea, a woman who brightens all around her.]

Thank you, Mom.

2011-06-10T00:35:00.000-07:00

[Below is the present I gave my mother for this Mother's Day. She gave me her permission to republish it.]

___________________

My mother made me who I am.

She knows that, of course. But in everyone's heart there lie things which we think and know about those we love—think and know and never utter. And all too often, those things are the qualities we think best. The things we hold closest and tightest, and therefore most secret.

We know that we should tell the ones we love. And we will—someday.

But we remain silent until someday is past, and we are left with a pale cold recounting to those who will never be able to experience the things we treasure.

It is not given to any of us to know whether or not we will be here tomorrow, or the next day, or the next—or whether our loved ones will be. And so on this Mother's Day I wish to tell my mother what I really and truly think of her. How I would describe her to someone who lived on the moon, or one of the planets which circle the star Gliese—someone who could never meet her.

I would tell the strangers that she is flawed, and human. That her failings aggravate and frustrate and occasionally anger me.

And that even in that she is exceptional. Exceptional, unique, singular—for the fact that she can have such flaws and failings and yet manifest virtues that eclipse them as surely and vividly as the sun would the moon. In terms of luminosity, in absolute magnitude, she shines so very brightly.

And that her virtues—those of selflessness and humor and compassion and fierce protectiveness—are acted out on a plane that removes them from the ordinary human sphere. Enacted in ways large and small during every minute of every day.

I would tell them that it is easy to be dazzled by large, florid gestures; by conspicuously manifested intellect; by words prettily and loudly spoken. That it is easy to overlook the stunning, overwhelming sum of luminance shed by a person whose every simple gesture, whose enormous intellect, whose softly spoken words, are directed almost totally towards the betterment of those overlooked or shunned or scorned or forgotten.

That such lights shine in dark and light; but their absolute magnitude is misjudged by those blinded by brief flamboyant things.

That she taught me that we are responsible for each other by being responsible for those around her to a depth and extent that still confound me. That when others, even others whose beliefs I share, speak disparagingly of goodwill, of the power of small individual actions to shift the levers of the earth, she is at the forefront of my empirical evidence to the contrary.

I would tell the strangers that she is astonishing not only for the incredible consistency of her compassion, but for the fact that she has maintained it through enormous personal cost. That her kindness and empathy and idealism have survived intact through pain and despair and the kind of vicious, staggering blows that fate seems to strike against only the most shining of talents and spirits.

That when I think of her, and of her life, I am awed.

And humbled. And moved almost beyond bearing.

And proud—so very proud—to be her daughter.

And so afraid that I will never—can never—live up to all she has given me and all that she is.

And convinced that it is worth everything in me—every good thing she saw and named and nurtured through the long, long years in which she raised me—to try.

Thank you, Mom.

Happy Mother's Day.

Unvergänglich Geliebten [Immortal Beloved]

2011-06-10T00:32:00.000-07:00

[Notes made on the program during intermissions in Herr Professor Stephan Möller’s concert this past Tuesday night.]

______________________________________________________________________

Over & under Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor, for Piano—called 'Moonlight'

I don't know why they chose to say “Moonlight” of this single one. All his work is moonlight; moonlight over dark, swift water.

Did the girl with whom he was in love hear this? Did her bones melt for him, liquefy and weave with the music he called forth and threaded with his longing, with her beauty? Or did she listen, and smile, and leave the tempest as untouched as she'd come?

Through Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, for Piano

Why is this not named?

Then again, what does one call a cry of pain and despair that holds radiance as a blackened chalice holds pure water?

Ad astra per aspera indeed, Herr Professor; through the thorns to the stars. But light cannot be unwoven from darkness. And some thorns leave wounds that can bloody even the light of the stars.

And after what star would one name this? No Latin, English, Greek word shines warmly enough, though the Persians have a name which might not disgrace such luminous suffering: Anwar i-Suhaili, Light of the Brightest of Stars.

How does a man craft such music from a ringing prison of silence?

How does he mix with a cry from the abyss the incandescence he can no longer see?

Fire Next Time

2011-06-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

Note: This is another one of those "intensely personal" posts; only those tagged to it can see it.

____________________________________________________________________

Extreme physical sensation has a useful side effect: it is very difficult to feel intense emotion whilst experiencing/enduring it. (Difficult, but not impossible. It generally takes effort and practice, however.) Usually emotions come before and after the physical sensation—hurt, longing, fear, attachment. (Which is why some very odd emotional phenomena can occur at extremes of sensation. Given an overload of the occurrence with the right personality and circumstance, both orgasm and torture can scramble emotional circuitry—a bit of advanced Abnormal Psych for your delectation.)

I know all this because I think. A lot.

The very first person who ever told me I thought too much was Mrs. Ralston. She was my 3rd-grade teacher. I've been hearing a Greek bloody chorus of the same refrain ever since.

To no avail. I like thinking. There are certain things about myself that I can't change, but I don't think that's one of them. If it were, I wouldn't know such a myriad of ways to turn my brain off. I also wouldn't avoid the more common means of doing so (TV, computer games) so devotedly.

My disclaimers having been issued, there are times that thinking grows too painful—even for me.

This weekend is one of them. And this weekend wouldn't be so bad if the 365 days that preceded it hadn't been... somewhat stressful.

(Those who don't wish to read a canticle—literally—of my woes in the past year should avert your eyes now.)

So I heard the searing crash outside my window just as I finished typing my last Note, with all its reflection on a set of vulnerabilities I can no longer display.

I needed to feel something on my skin. Something shocking. Something overwhelming.

A thunderstorm would do the trick nicely.

So I walked out into one.

Stood in the darkness of the drive, at the blind side of the building (so as not to disturb my neighbors' sleep or sensibilities). Turned my face up to the sky.

Let the noise and darkness and the rush of cold—water and wind and thunder that sounded both threatening and forlorn, lonely somehow—wash me.

Rain is primal, rainstorms more so: power that cannot be leashed or governed or lessened by any human agency imagined or contrived.

It is important to remember the existence of such. Humbling. And...reassuring.

Storms put things like suffering, grief, anxiety, loneliness, despair, back into their very small, very human places against the larger span of the earth.

So I stood and breathed in cold and a little water. Felt it sheeting liquid down my skin.

Tasted it—slightly sour, slightly metallic—on my tongue and lips every now and again.

Felt it sting my eyes, gather against my lashes. Blinked it away to be able to see—to keep looking at the sky.

Didn't move or make any sound—why try to form words when they were what I was trying to forget? (Ideas, images, memories—almost all ride a tide of words for me, sooner or later.)

Eventually the storm did too.

A tide I didn't summon. A tide I was trying to forget. Words that tied themselves to others I've known, others I've sung.

A tide made of song and suffering and James Baldwin and lightning and

[It's gonna rain]

sicksicksick

[It's gonna rain]

repeatyouryear

[You better get ready]

can'tfightlikethis

[And bear this in mind]

don'twantaheart

[God showed Noah]

can'tcan'tcan'tbegone

[By the rainbow sign]

don'ttrustyou

[No more water—]

passthisorelse

[Fire next time.]

Vulnerability: Freedom, Friendship, Fred Phelps, & Me

2011-03-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

For two very different reasons, freedom of speech has been on my mind a lot lately.

The first is that my only study break between Monday and yesterday was to read the Court's Snyder v. Phelps opinions (and bang out an abstract so I could write an essay after the SSB final) over a 20-minute dinner break (before returning to drilling cord lesions—woohoo!).

The second is that yesterday night I got my feelings hurt—really, really hurt—by a comment about me that a friend posted (without my name) on FB.

Here's the abstract:

________________________

I am a terrible, terrible person.

Because I hate—really and actively hate—Fred Phelps, one of the most viciously inhumane, destructively cruel human beings I’ve come across in years of studying torture and genocide. The fact that his methods are verbal doesn’t make the atrocities he commits any less atrocious.

And because, even though I hate Fred Phelps, I agree with the Court’s decision.

What kind of person does that make me? To put human feelings and suffering aside for an abstract principle embodied in a case which almost certainly, in this case, violated at least some of the boundaries established by precedent?

I feel guilty. As though I should apologize to Mr. Snyder. Maybe I should.

I can’t stand myself right now. To stand on the same side of a line with Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist? I despise them and everything they represent. If tomorrow I read that Phelps had died, it’d make my entire day.

But I still agree with the Court.

There are times I find it hard to reconcile my sense of integrity with my humanity. This is one of them.

____________________________

Ironic, in light of what's happened.

Because last night for several reasons I was—as Alito described in the dissent with which I disagree—in “a time of acute emotional vulnerability.” And because of that vulnerability, I got upset enough by my friend's public statement to have to leave a restaurant at which I was dining with several people (an event unprecedented in the past 10-15 years; melodramatically as I may converse, I loathe even the vaguest hint of actual public histrionics) lest I start bawling over the entire matter (crying in public—“death of Bambi's mother” movie moments aside—being the single thing I detest more than public drama).

My friend and I discussed the matter briefly before I left, and I told him—probably prompted in part by the abstract I'd written just the day before—that he shouldn't have to apologize for expressing his opinion, that that wasn't what friendship was supposed to be about.

I came home and slept. Woke late this morning. Didn't get on FB till early evening.

Found that the words which had upset me so badly last night were still posted.

Felt as though I'd been kicked in the stomach.

(Yes, I actually do know how that feels.)

So on top of being inhumane, I'm now a hypocrite.

Because if I'd meant the words I said to my friend last night—and I really and truly did think I meant them when I said them—I wouldn't now be convinced, against my own logic, that my feelings aren't as important to my friend as his opinion of them. Instead I would see that he chose to let his opinion stand, as is his right. That he was merely taking me at my word—as I fully intended him to do when I spoke those words to him. That he shouldn't have to choose between my feelings and his opinion of me.

How tangled up in her ethics does a person have to be in order for her own hurt feelings to offend them?

Whatever level of twistedness is required, I've reached it. (No wonder my other hobbies include quantum chromodynamics. That stuff is so much simpler.)

“...Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech...to ensure that we do not stifle public debate...”

Chief Justice Roberts, delivering the opinion of the Court: Snyder v. Phelps, 580 F. 3d 206, affirmed.

Ton Amour et Ta Revanche

2011-03-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

Written Monday, February 21, 2011.

________________________

It's strange to start an essay on Madonna and Lady Gaga with Christina Aguilera, yes?

But watching “I'm Not Myself Tonight” on YouTube (and seeing inane commentary to the effect that she's “wack fr tryin 2 b Gaga”) finally pushed me into writing something that's been simmering in my brain since the day I saw Gaga's “Bad Romance” video for the first time.

Xtina was merely showing the most sense God's given a diva in a long damn time. (Not to mention great taste in bondage gear—black and white rhinestone chains, no less. Very “Azzaro's Spring Collection Meets Coco de Mer's Paul Seville Collection”...but don't those chafe?) The entire video is a tribute to video vixedivas of yore—and Gaga and Madonna are unmistakably, god-how-dumb-are-you-not-to-see-this, front and center (filtered through Xtina's adorably skanky performance, of course).

As well they should be. Between the two of them Gaga and Madonna have designed some of the best music videos ever created, and between their deeply differing aesthetics and remarkable musical talents they've managed to push three generations far past their visual and psychological comfort zones while staying smack in the center of the musical mainstream. Not bad for two bleach-blonde pop stars.

Gaga is indeed the Heir Apparent to Our Lady (rarely has a baptismal name been so appropriate). Madonna, being the most successful female recording artist of all time, is the standard by which success is measured for all female pop artists, and so Gaga’s been compared to Madonna for several years now.

There've been others who aspired to the title of Heir to Our Lady of the Garter (Britney most openly, or perhaps only most pathetically). But two things have always stopped the starlets: the first is the nature of their attempts at heirdom (imitation does not, after all, a Blazing Original make), the second their exclusionary approach to visual and musical artistry.

That kind of exclusion is utterly incompatible with either the personas or the music of Gaga and Madonna. A hallmark of both women’s performances is that it's impossible to draw a meaningful distinction between visual presentation and musical substance when watching them—and it’s that lack of boundary between the auditory and visual aspects of their art that helps set both women apart from those aspiring to heirdom. The marriage of visual to auditory art is at the center of both Madonna’s and Gaga’s musicality.

Hollywood’s never been known for economy of scale; its record companies know how to put on a show on behalf of any number of stars. But Gaga and Madonna have something different than the general run of flash and spark that passes for “image-building” amongst musical stars: a unique and constant self-reinvention resulting not only from their incredibly strong grasp of the word spectacle (and hence spectacular), but more importantly from genuine and highly individualistic visual aesthetics.

Madonna modeled for Basquiat at the start of her career; Gaga created her own production company from the band of visual artists and designers she befriended while living in New York. Because both are musicians, their personal visual aesthetics are filtered through the lens of their music...but neither woman relies on her music to justify her aesthetic. Visual and auditory aesthetics are, for both, part of a larger identity as an artist—a whole which neither feels a need to define or divide.

Because of that holistic approach—and their enormous talent as visual as well as musical artists—both Madonna and Gaga have created visual art (spectacle) which can stand independently of their music, art that is both visually overwhelming while remaining (you'll pardon the pun) in concert with the feel of the song for which it's created. Other musicians pawn off this aspect of their image or artform onto producers and stage directors; their visual and musical representations aren’t different faces of the same polished structure but a piecemeal, jagged collage. The difference, literally, shows.

Madonna's Fritz-Lang-inspired “Express Yourself” video is a case in point. No-one else would have conceived the visual interpretation of a song about female empowerment in sex and romance as an erotic reinterpretation of 1920's German expressionist anti-capitalism cinema. With a cat.

She wrote the script. Chose the costumes. Chose the cat. Oversaw the set. In other words, Madonna ran the show—the director took her lead on nearly everything, wise man that he is. (His name? David Fincher. Yeah—that Fincher.)

Gaga's artistic vision is, if possible, even more exacting. Her “Haus of Gaga” is a group of artists she chose and nurtured herself; her creative control over every aspect of her production is as near absolute as a group of artists working collaboratively allows. Her visuals are both rendered and timed with enviable rigor—her most distinctive video, “Bad Romance” (a tale of kidnapping and prostitution at the hands of the Russian mob) contains sequences designed to be spliced to millisecond precision (the less-than-a-second series of gestures she makes about 2 ½ minutes into the song is both meticulous and potent).

So. Visual artistry and creative control are the first area in which Gaga—and no other female pop artist—is Madonna's equal.

The second thing, the one that makes Gaga the true Heir to Our Lady, is the (pardon the buzzword) transgressiveness of her persona.

Many, many female artists transgress boundaries. (Most good art, in fact, does.) But all the Heir-Aspirants to Madonna attempted to transgress the same boundaries that Madonna did—boundaries she'd already trampled so thoroughly that her followers' attempts were meaningless.

Madonna's persona was original in the world of pop music. One does not become heir to the truly original—whether persona or idea—by imitation.

And Madonna personified Sex.

Sex in all its forms. Open, covert, digressive, transgressive—Madonna was the first female pop artist who flaunted her sexuality openly regardless of criticism or consequence. Desire, power, the language of deviance—she took them all on, subverted both the imago and imagery of sex for nearly three decades. (It still astonishes me that anyone mentions Britney or Xtina in the same breath as Madonna. “I'm a Slave 4 U” or “Dirrty” versus “Justify My Love”: the latter visually and lyrically redefining gender roles and acceptable sexual norms; both of the former individual statements of sexuality. Not transgressive—or even relevant on a larger scale.)

So. Madonna = Sex.

And in a time where openness about one's sexuality adulterated that which made one a desirable woman—violated the idea of female sexuality—being openly sexually desirable and openly sexually voracious made Madonna the Transgressor.

And now? Post-Madonna? In a world where female pop stars appear sexually voracious as a baseline—in an attempt to establish sexuality? Now we have Gaga.

And Gaga = Fear.

Oh, the sex is in there. No question. Gaga is as or more sexually brash than other Heirs-Aspirant (check the bench scenario in the “Lovegame” video in the unlikely event that you need confirmation of this). But the thing which sets her apart is a sensibility that is both obvious and coequal to sex in her visuals: a fascination with the grim and grotesque. That fascination lends a razor edge, a subtle and vicious backhand, to most of her sexuality. Her sex appeal almost always contains a taunt, a threat, a grimace.

Gaga's persona, and her biggest transgression, is based on fear—of the threat of violence, of the grotesque, of the monstrous—and its disturbing mixture with sex.

“Paparazzi”, “Telephone”, and “Bad Romance” are the videos which display her fascination with fear most clearly. It's a toss-up as to whether her Mickey-Mouse makeup as she murders her boyfriend, her dance in the middle of a diner full of corpses, or the hat fashioned from a dead, fanged piglet is the most telling of her visual grotequeries thus far; but the touches are there in nearly everything she's done. The performance of "Paparazzi" in which she ended up on a meathook. The Grammy performance of “Born This Way” in which she's visibly deformed (this is actually a theme in several of her videos, including “Bad Romance”).

Madonna transgressed societal boundaries with sex. Gaga transgresses psychological boundaries with the interplay between sex and fear. (Or sex and death.)

Madonna and Lady Gaga. Both mega-stars. Both brilliant visual and musical artists. Both transgressive.

One aggressively sexual. The other sexually grotesque.

Both captivating. Both seductive.

Like Love. Like Revenge.

[Who looks inside, awakens:] Wind and Rain

2011-03-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

-Carl Jung

_____________________________________

My dreams this morning were--perhaps predictably--horrific.

The one-month anniversary, added to a late-night notice of my sibling having had a car wreck, combined with the upcoming neurology exam to produce a long dream about me having developed a (hopefully imaginary) form of cancer that caused systemic arteriovenous fistulas. Despite me waking myself from it several times, the dream--set in the grim green basement corridor of some dark, dreary building in which I was administered bouts of radiation therapy which left me writhing in pain and vomiting behind the rusting metal fire doors on the climb out, while my stricken mother looked on helplessly--would not let me escape. I endured it until I staggered shaking into my kitchen this morning.

Time was when I'd have set the whole thing to paper. Time was, not so very long ago. But time moves on, and people go to medical school, and nowadays my dreams stay in my head.

But I was reading through my dream journal with this morning's coffee, trying for perspective, and came across one that I set to paper three or four years ago. One that was somewhat frightening in the beginning, but gentled towards the end, and beautiful, start to finish. Its memory gave me comfort.

So I decided to share it. I hope that it adds something good to your day. (Note that the "you" I address is a person years in my past, with whom I'm not even "friends" on Facebook.)

_______________________________________

Wind and Rain

I kneel in the middle of a wide lawn stretching to the edges of the marble paths which enclose it on all four sides, a square of living green bounded by the still cold white of the stones.

I am in the center alone, my hair unbound, falling down my back and across my white shift, blowing across my face in the rising wind. Above me the sky seethes, the roiling, predacious darkened grey moving swiftly over my head in a flight from the larger teeth of the storm stalking behind it.

The wind quickens, and now the paths are crowded with people, speaking to each other as they walk two by two along the dully glinting marble. None look at each other, none raise their voices above a murmur. None tread on even a single inch of the greensward.

I watch them, their measured steps and mellifluous murmurs forming a soothing pattern which underpins the thrumming rush of the wind, rising now as if in counterpoint to the rich susurrus beneath. The gale is whistling now: a high, rising whine which whips my hair aloft like a banner, stinging my eyes and flailing my skin, though the perfect silken green beneath my knees bends not so much as a single blade. The clothing of those on the paths around me is untouched.

I look up at the sky, and the black, ravening mouth of the storm is raging down upon me, the roar of the water growing as the drops fall nearer and nearer.

And then it is upon me, and as the raindrops hit the people on the paths they waver, like a refraction when some shadow passes through it, each globe interrupting my line of vision until the people still walking along the paths are nothing more than a flickering suggestion, flashing hints glimmering above the white marble like errant rainbows and nothing more.

When first it comes it is as though I have never seen lightening before, a tearing stutter of light that seems to have ripped through into some radiantly pitiless sun, and in a white-blind world I hear the pursuing thunder, howling into the backflash: a deafening, abyssal scream that shakes my body from top to bottom.

When I can see again, you are there.

My ears still resounding to the knell of the thunder, I blink across at you standing on the far side of the path, facing me. The faint, iridescent glint of the others on the walkway fade as they pass before you, and resume on the other side; the rain still falls in a shrieking torrent. I can see you, can see your lips moving.

But I can’t hear you.

You step onto the path, easily, as though it were no barrier, and instantly the glints of movement on it fade to stillness. You and I and the storm are abruptly alone.

Then you step onto the grass of the square. You stand there, on the near edge of the virid green, and the raindrops threshing against me lighten, strumming more kindly on my scoured skin.

You walk towards me, and at your every step the rain lightens, dropping with an ever-gentling touch until, when you stand five paces away, it is the merest suggestion of a fine mist clinging to my lashes. I look up at you in the increasing light, and my ears pick up a scant whisper of human tones as you smile at me.

It might be my name.

Teatro di Roma, Prima Lettera--Appendice Fotografico

2011-03-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

Written Monday, December 27, 2010.

_________________________

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian for some time last night about Europe, and my experiences in Italy. Upon looking over mementos of it today, I was seized with remorse for never having posted my photographs from there (I have literally thousands through which I've never sorted).

I had, however, managed to crop and post a few of mine from Rome. I'll be spending a lot of today going through the rest; but in the meantime, here's the link to my set from Rome on Flickr. (Only 31 shots at this moment, and leaning heavily toward the Castel Sant'Angelo, but worth a look nonetheless. It'll be augmented thoughout the day.)

Sumi's Rome Photos

The rest of my photos from Europe--sadly only from Munich, right now--are up on this Flickr account too. You can reach them by clicking "Ninane Emrys' Photostream". (The name isn't a reference to my proficiency with a camera...yet.)

Starlight and Eternity

2011-03-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

Written Monday December 20, 2010.

__________________________

Sandra texted me last night as I was driving; called me this morning. When I saw her text I knew.

I spent the drive up from Martin thinking about your nickname.

Before this fall I'd never had a nickname for you. We joked about it a couple of times—really, four letters is just about as short as a name gets.

But soon or late, I give most people who are important to me a name—most often one that's arcane. One that names them—names that which makes them who they are. Becky the Pirate [Seanachaidh, Storyteller] and Marie [Suryakanta, Beloved of the Sun], amongst others, can testify to that.

Your name, though—it eluded me. Eluded me for more than 20 years. Should it be based on your acting, or your art, or your music...?

Then you told me about why you'd been sick.

And suddenly naming you was simple.

Nakshatra, I told you. Nakshatra, the light of the eternal stars: The light which shall not fade.

Of course it was an attempt at magic, magic of the only kind I know. Of course it was. Of course I did it to keep you. To hold you here. To tie you so firmly to this earth you blessed that nothing and no one, no force extant or imagined or invented, could ever rip you away.

But my magic, like Schmendrick the Magician's, seldom tames itself to my hand. And like Schmendrick, I am a fool. Foolish. Grasping and foolish and hopeless.

How can any magic tie down the wind?

Because that's what I sought to do. Like noosing the wind, like reining a storm of light—like a normal mortal seeking to lasso Pegasus. Pegasus, creator of the fountain of the Muses—or Bucephalus, destined only to be ridden by the King of the World—magnificent steeds, untrammeled and untameable.

You, like the legends, owned a grace and power and surety—in acting, in music, in writing, in art— that never missed a stride...and, like Secretariat in the Derby, a swiftness that ensured that you ran your own race far, far ahead of the rest of the field.

But you worked your truest magic on those of us who ran with you.

You shed luminance as you ran, like a silver sparkler: coruscating, incandescent, the point of your ignition blinding. But no thoroughbred, no cascade of sparks could have created the torrent of light through air that your every stride did. It surrounded you, pouring from you, swirling from you as color from ink blooms through water: Luminance, fierce and passionate and exultant. Light made visible in naked air.

How could it be otherwise, when you burned so very bright?

And what that liquid flame touched kindled into clarity. Became easier to see, to understand. Became more lucid, more recognizable, more truly itself. Became more.

Including us.

That was your magic. The surging whorls of light which poured off you quickened the field. Quickened all of us running behind you. We saw it, bathed in it, felt it lift us—felt ourselves become more intent, more fleet, more graceful. More beautiful. More exalted.

Felt your radiance make us more.

So my enduring foolishness cannot possibly be your fault.

Nakshatra, I told you. The light of the eternal stars.

As if starlight or eternity could ever have been adequate to capture or hold one such as you.

Lullaby

2010-10-03T17:05:00.001-07:00

I found the Zen garden this evening.

I found it by sitting across from it in the parking lot of Morris Library, listening to a rapper excoriate expound on love. By thinking about how much I wish my life were easy enough simple enough to let love be important enough to go stark raving live for.

(Oh, how I wish. Many things are important enough humandignity truth injustice honor disloyalty compassion to craze drive me—but not love. That one was mene mene tekel upharsin weighed almost five years ago now.)

I mean love in the romantic sense, of course—for all my disdain avoidance of it, it's the only form of love I discuss. But then, some things are sacred—even to me. My love of my family, my standards of honor and duty loyalty to my friends: These things will rarely be put up for public delectation.

But my soul self? Yes. It's yours here.

No writer can do less.

My sanctum sanctorum mind has a window. It's just a window through which only I can it's difficult to see.

The world is intensely, immensely beautiful around and against me—even now, cross-legged, muscles aching, thirsty and hungry and exhausted on the harsh carpet of my living-room floor—even now, fury and pain beating fiercely in me, as real as any raven at my already-open window. Even now the world is nearly too lovely for me to bear.

The cool of coming autumn woven with the almost-silence of slumbering trees scents the night air though my window. Leaves have begun—here and there—to drift. The human-made, inhumanly perfect, faint tones of chimes tuned to the spare complexities of Gregorian plainsong ring over the temperature-tuned harmonies of crickets.

Somewhere outside, my fox hunts his dinner under a night whose stars will shine throughout the coming darkness without a single cloud to dull them. I'll feel their light on my face as I sleep, barely filtered through the single white curtain at my bedroom window and the white netting that drapes my bed. The gentleness of their smiling will not hold me safe from my nightmares; but it will comfort me when I wake, and wake again, and its fading will flavor my last, deepest sleep at dawn with a touch of silver to leaven the gold of daylight.

I will waken to sun that loves my skin, that will touch it gently through the window opening on my bed, and leave it warmer, browner, with not a hint of injury to taint the smell of sleep and the dew-softened breeze that will mix on it.

This is the world in which I live, sleeping and waking. This is the reality through which I breathe and move as surely as a fish in water.

These words are the only window I can give you.

May your own reality rest gently on your skin this night.

(And this next weekend month fall year while.)

Teatro di Roma: Prima Lettera

2010-08-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

So here am I in Rome, the city the natives call la Capo di Mundi (the center of the world), with slightly more truth (and less egocentrism) than most other cities who claim the same. So much to see—3,000 years of art and history—so many friends to whom I owe letters...and so little time.

What to do? Why, write all of you at once, of course.

At some point during the last four days many of you have crossed my mind in one way or another—“I wish Bill could see this,” or “God, Dave would love this,” or “Marie isn't gonna believe this one,” or “What would Paul think of this?” Those named are, of course, included in this letter, but I've tagged each and every one of you for a reason.

I haven't addressed my remarks to any friend in particular. But let me say this: If you think something is addressed to you...it probably is.
______________________________________

1. Lust vs. love. Or, Roma vs. Firenze.

Tuscany has my heart. For better or worse, Firenze got to me first.

But oh, does Lazio incite my lust.

This place is an endless dance, like any large city. But what choreography! What style! What an endless, sumptuous buffet of gorgeousness—architectural, archeological, artistic, and human—offered up for continual delectation!

Oh yes, Firenze is my true love—but Roma is the one bidding fair for my bed.

2. SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus. The Senate and the People of Rome.

The initials are everywhere. On storm drains. On statue bases. (More on that later.) On signboards.

Their ubiquity doesn't matter. 3,000 years of dignity, and the practical beginning of ideals I cherish, stand behind those four letters. Which is probably why Roma chose them as its motto.

Not that its marketing prowess makes a damn bit of difference. Not with the Roman Republic standing sentinel, silent & colossal, at its shoulder.

3. Ave, Imperator.

Father Joachim (on whom more at some other time) and I were standing outside the Colosseo, watching the Romans dressed in crimson capes and plastic armor posture with the turisti who were paying to have pictures taken with the “gladiators” (misnomer, really; the Roman lads were dressed as centurions; but there actually are times when I manage to keep my pedantry inside my own head). One of the “gladiators” shouted, “Ave Caesar!”

Father Joachim must have seen me start slightly. Having already endured days of my spouting Roman trivia, he smiled—his normal, gently encouraging smile—and said, “And what comes next?”

And because he was smiling so sweetly and patiently at me, I couldn't tell him that those words make me cold inside. So I stood in the 97-degree Roman sun and spoke the words which never fail to run ice through the center of my spine—the words which complete the nautical gladiators'—the naumachiarii's—greeting to the Imperator: “Ave, Caesar. Mortituri te salutant.”

Hail, Caesar. The dead salute you.

4. Seven-letter synonym for “Via dei Fori Imperiali”: Rubicon.

There stands, on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, a statue of Julius Caesar. Those of you who read
my dispatches from Firenze four (!) years ago know how I get over my favorite Romans (especially the emperors); and this is a one-and-a half-times-life-size bronze portrait of Gaius Julius Caesar. But...but.

The inscription on the marble base is surmounted by the omnipresent “SPQR”.

I've just described how those letters make me feel. But standing on the Via dei Fori Imperiali at sunset, those letters mixed with my awe of Julius Caesar and my knowledge of history to produce a very odd feeling.

SPQR—the body which forbade Caesar's legions the Rubicon. We all know what happened once he crossed it. And now he stands serenely, hand raised in greeting or benediction, on a plinth inscribed with the initials of the idea that murdered him, on a street which divides the Senate's ancient seat in the Roman Forum from the Imperial Fora which Caesar's dynasty built and expanded.

I stood, and looked, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

5. San Giovanni in Laterano & the Senate.

The Basilica of St. John Lateran—the Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris et Sancti Iohannes Baptista et Evangelista in Laterano (Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Sts. John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran)—is the most important church in Rome. Yes, more important than St. Peter's Basilica, though that isn't actually in Italy—but then, technically, San Giovanni in Laterano isn't “in” Rome either. It's an extraterritorial holding of the Holy See, similar to an embassy.

It is the cathedra (seat) of the Bishop of Rome—better known as the Pope. It is the “ecumenical mother church”—Sacrosancta Lateranensis ecclesia omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput (“Most Holy Lateran Church, of all the churches in the city and the world, the mother and head") to Roman Catholics. Its “first and only honorary canon” is the President of the French Republic, a title inherited by the officeholder from the Kings of France. The church was built by Constantine in 324; for 1,500 years, Popes were crowned there.

Because of its pedigree, the art collection of San Giovanni in Laterano stands out even in this city of wonders.

But the only thing which really moved me at all were its doors.

San Giovanni in Laterano stands (as do so many churches in Rome) on the site of an imperial palace, that of the Laterani (the imperial cavalry bodyguards).

And its doors—its doors guarded the entrance to the Roman Senate.

That's right. Pope Clement took the doors from the seat of the Roman Republic to guard the doors of the seat of the Holy See. Took the doors of the seat of the largest republican government the world has ever known, to guard the seat of the head of the largest monarchy the world has ever known.

I've been moved nearly to tears in an Italian city before: Michelangelo's David, in Firenze, had me fighting to breathe through the awe compressing my chest. But this—this wasn't awe. It was a terrible sadness.

Because for more than two hundred years—from the time those doors were taken until the unification of Italy—tyranny won.

And in testament to that victory, the doors of the Roman Senate still hang in exile.

The Fox

2010-07-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

I realized two nights ago that I'm tame.

It took a fox, and a very little time, to bring that home—probably a half-minute at best. But before I tell you of that half-minute, you should know that I may have lied to you.

Though I've said to many people that To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book, it isn't. It's one of two. The second, which ranks even with it—the book I don't mention to most people—is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.

I read The Little Prince—and To Kill a Mockingbird—the summer that I was 12 (what I refer to as my “cloistered” summer—4 months of nearly-nonstop confinement in my Nana's compound, which contained a house with more than 600 books—described more fully in “Who Knows What She Spoke to the Darkness”). Both books were seeds—seeds that bloomed into compasses.

To Kill a Mockingbird is the more obvious, of course. I went to law school, and am doing medicine; I'm passionately invested in reason, in rationality, in human rights and human dignity.

But The Little Prince? What you're reading—what you read every time I write an essay—is a blossom sprung from the cardinal directions mapped by that book.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry—poet, pilot, soldier, explorer—described a large part of the atlas of the things I value most.

And his Fox—the Prince's Fox, whom the Prince tames and teaches to love him—is the one who utters the truth which infuses the whole of that topography: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

The two can overlap, though.

I know, because three days ago it took both to see my first fox.

It paused less than ten feet from me while slipping through my neighbors' slat fence, turning its neck almost 180 degrees to stare back at me over its sleek, willow-thin body. Its head couldn't have come to my knee; a fourth of its body height was its ears, two triangular sentinels at right angles to the only-slightly-larger triangle of its face.

Its tannish-red coat matched the reflected fire of the sulphur streetlight in its eyes. It paused there, midstride, one delicate paw dangling as it examined me—head cocking ever-so-slightly as it blinked and I didn't.

I stood, looking back into the slight fine-boned face, afraid to breathe, afraid to scare it.

After an immeasurable time it blinked at me again, set down its paw, and unhurriedly swiveled its head back around to face my neighbors' yard. One lithe, leaping twist of its body later, it was gone.

I stood staring after it. Was I hoping it'd—what? Change its mind? Come back?

After a couple of minutes, I realized that I was, and that it wasn't. I continued my walk to my car, got in it, and drove away.

Its image remained. That poised whipcord body and dainty face, large eyes somehow intelligent. Regarding me. Considering me. Weighing me—for threat, for worth, for interest.

Cautious. Curious. Beautiful.

And I thought of the Prince's Fox, asking to be tamed, crying once he was, listening to the wind in the wheat fields and remembering the color of the Prince's hair.

Teaching the Prince about rites ( They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours.)
and roses (Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world.)
and taming (It is an act too often neglected. It means to establish ties.)
and ties (If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...)
—and responsibility for the things one loves (You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.).

And thought, Maybe it knew. Maybe it knew it didn't need to come back tonight.

Maybe it will come again.

Maybe it saw that I'm already tame.

__________________________

__________________________

You can find the Little Prince's conversations with the Fox here: The Little Prince, Chapter 21: The Fox

Declaration

2010-07-04T17:02:00.000-07:00

July 4^th. Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence: the day on which we declared ourselves a nation, independent of the monarchy of England.

This is our national holiday. Our fireworks don't commemorate a treaty signed, a battle, or the national patron saint. Our day of national identity—our natality—is the day on which we declared ourselves—declared all men—to be free.

The day that we celebrate that which makes us American commemorates a Declaration.

Words on paper, signed and sealed in a tiny little hall in a provincial town.

A ringing cry of freedom and truth that has influenced every acknowledgment of human rights or privileges which came after it. That has shaped us as Americans for more than 230 years. That a group of wealthy white farmers used to pledge to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor in a way that could not be forgotten or ignored or denied.

The words first read to me by my second-grade teacher have a force and passion, a thundering certainty which is offset by their simplicity: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

Self-evident: So obvious that it is apparent to anyone seeing the thing in question. Regard this human being: She is neither more nor less than you. She holds the same privileges you do; she is endowed by her Creator with certain unalienable Rights...

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

Not by any means the first formulation of the idea, no. But it is the most powerful—both rhetorically and in terms of its consequences—for the men who lent their sacred Honor to its utterance, and for the world which they forced to listen.

I love the Fourth of July, love the apple pie and hot dogs and fireworks. But the privilege, the bounty that I'm celebrating as I look at the gorgeous blooms of sparks filling the sky, is one of words.

The words that are my heritage. My inheritance.

I am a citizen of the country who planted her foot by its Declaration of identity, of human rights and human dignity, with fortitude and fervor and a new flag. Who made them indelible. Who gave them to the world forever.

I, like every American, am heir to that dangerous, potent idea. I have inherited it—and all the responsibilities it conveys.

Because that idea is the thing that makes us who we are and defines who we should be. The thing gives July 4^th and every other day lived under our flag its meaning.

Because I am American, and Americans hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

Memorial: Dark Night of the Soul

2010-05-31T21:56:00.000-07:00

My mother and I were talking about Eckhart Tolle and St. John of the Cross this morning, and now I'm thinking about Memorial Day.

No, it's not your normal breakfast chat. (Few of my mothers' and my conversations can be considered "normal".) This one was spurred by a discussion of suffering and the duties of a healer, and thence to those who have written on suffering.

We both regard Tolle and his ilk as new-agey Johnny-come-latelys. It sounds funny to hear snobbery over spiritual literature by someone who's not a deist or theist (though my mother is). But to my mind the single human being in all of literature who has best described suffering and despair—the terrible vulnerability of the human mind as it endures physical agony and considers the ideas of mortality and eternity—was a Spanish monk who endured nine months of brutal torture at the hands of his superiors.

San Juan de la Cruz. St. John of the Cross, who wrote The Dark Night of the Soul.

I reread a little of it this morning—and then read of the torture that prompted it: of his barely-body-sized cell, of his public lashings, of starvation and a thirst so great he sometimes considered drinking his own blood.

And it is he that made me consider today—Memorial Day—more carefully.

The phrasing of the official description has always bothered me a little: remembrance and honoring of "soldiers who died while in military service". It's one of the major national holidays, and deservedly so; our country has paid a heavy price in blood for everything from its land to its economy, and the toll keeps mounting—will always mount—because of the way tribal societies function.

The official description bothers me because of its exclusivity; another phrase, more popularly used, and describing today as honoring "those who gave their lives in service to our country", highlights an ambiguity that's treated as exclusive.

"Those who gave their lives".

Well, now. Those dead, or those living?

There's more than one way to give your life for, or to a cause. One is to die—to feel your existence flicker out like a guttering candle—to give up every sunset, every drink of icy water on a hot day, every kiss or laugh or child's hug that you might ever have. Such a sacrifice is very great indeed.

But to me there are sacrifices that can be just as great. To live in uncertainty and dire fear, to hear screams in every dream and to wake never knowing whether or not your nightmares are the reality around you—to endure torment and terror and anguish and come home to a place full of people who cannot comprehend what you've endured. A place that expects you to take "we're so grateful to you—thank you for your service" and mediocre healthcare and sketchy-to-nonexistent guidance back to normalcy and weave them together with what you've suffered to fashion a happy, productive life for yourself.

Yes. A grave, grave sacrifice. A lifetime of suffering.

I've known happy, productive, normal ex-soldiers, it's true. But not many. And few of them were enlisted men. And a recent NIH study* documents that those soldiers now fighting in Afghanistan have a much higher exposure to trauma than soldiers in previous wars did.

I have several friends who were married to soldiers whose post-service trauma was so great it destroyed their marriages and their livelihoods. I've been involved with a soldier who, though he knows he couldn't hear the screams of the people in the buildings he was shelling while he was doing it, still hears them anyway—in his dreams. I've seen the men and women at the VA—amputees, paraplegics, people with permanent and dreadful injuries. People wounded gravely in body, and treated for it--mostly. (Healthcare for veterans and soldiers is a disgrace—just like all our other healthcare. But it's a far worse reprimand to our consciences—as the citizens being protected by these men and women—than anything other than our treatment of our children.) People still struggling with what has happened to their minds—though able now, for the first time ever, to seek organized help for that as well.

Saying this, on Memorial Day, is probably far past unpopular. I'm supposed to be waving a flag, I know. Families of soldiers who've died are like to come and spray-paint obscenities on my house. I'm not sure that, were I they, I wouldn't do the same.

The outrage isn't going to improve when I say that I'm an antimilitarist in the formal sense. War between states is a terribly inefficient and unfair way to solve any dispute; the waste in human lives alone suggests it's, well, a really bad idea. But I also study realpolitik and evolutionary biology, and they tell me that militaries are necessary as both deterrent and threat. And that war, which originated as—and for the most part remains—a very highly organized form of theft, is not going anywhere as a tool of human intertribal relations.

Make no mistake: I honor soldiers, and soldiering. It is an ancient and honorable profession. One that, when its laws and traditions are followed, allows even the conquered noncombatant to feel that s/he is not in danger of death or pain. (For a crash course in the difference between soldiers and armed government thugs, read about the taking of Berlin—by both waves of Allies.)

I just think that we should pay more attention to the living soldiers. To the ones who continue to suffer, either in body or mind. That more attention is needed to craft something worthy of giving to these men and women. That we should think of those still giving, still sacrificing, as they walk amongst us. "Armed Forces Day" just isn't enough, or widely enough observed. Certainly nowhere near as widely as Memorial Day.

Our honored dead are exactly that—honored, today and always. No-one questions that.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Like so much else Santayana said, it's true: As long as there are human beings, there will be wars. We can moderate only their frequency and their objectives.

But there's no reason that a soldier should have to continue to dwell inside war once s/he's managed to live through it.

We need to pay tribute—care, attention, honor—to the living, too. To the ones who walk within a dark night now.

_______________________

http://www.anysoldier.com/
To send care packages and letters to soldiers on active service, people who don't get mail. Started by two ex-soldiers whose son was in the military, and now serving all five branches of the U.S. military. This is a great idea.

http://www.cause-usa.org/
Provides comfort items for troops recuperating in military hospitals and rehabilitation centers from wounds and injuries. Immediate help with beginning the transition back into civilian life.

http://www.supportourwounded.org/
Donate clothes to wounded soldiers returning stateside, or donate to long-term rehabilitation programs for wounded veterans. This organization also distributes clothes to Iraqi schoolchildren. An incredible program.

(*Sareen, January 2010 issue of Psychiatric Services.)

HOOPS

2010-05-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I recently decided to acknowledge the fact I've a body again. This has involved refitting, body work, and some engine rebuilding. Basketball was always going to be a part of that.

It's the only team sport I've ever enjoyed (even though I only started playing because my mother made me)—and the only one I've ever been good at. I also grew up with it. My brother was a serious player, as were my mom's friends in med school—some of them even played college ball. Watching them play, occasionally playing with them, was incredible—a living testimony to what a human body can do. (And very occasionally, exhilarating as hell. Making a shot past a 6'4" guy who played forward for LSU? It's happened only once in my entire life, but I will remember it forever.)

That was the hoop in our driveway, though. We've lived in East Nashville pretty much since I was 13 years old, but my mom lives in the swanky "historic" section now—moved in quite a while ago, thank you, before the yuppies discovered it—and there're no driveways here. (A carriageway—literally—every once in a while, but otherwise no.) So when I asked Sunil to come play basketball with me while I was at home, I expected we'd go down to East Park—less than 2 blocks from our house—and play there. Or, for old times' sake, go down and play at the Community Center in Shelby Park. Simple.

Only one thing I hadn't considered: the "swanky" part of the Edgefield address.

So when Sunil told me this morning, after I asked about playing ball with him, that there were no more outdoor hoops in East Nashville, my response was a bewildered, "What the—huh?" (Granted, I hadn't yet had any coffee.)

And then I parsed it. Outdoor hoops mean kids can play ball. Any kids, from anywhere—there's no way to control who uses a hoop on public property. And that means that the kids down the way—the kids from the 'hood six blocks over—could come over and play.

Apparently, this prospect is unacceptable.

I'm not a race conspiracy theorist—meaning, racism doesn't occur to me as the first explanation for most things that make me lift my brows. I do, however, have a very good understanding of the concept of hegemony—the dynamic which makes institutionalized "cultural dominance" (read: "racism") practically a political inevitability (though it can, in most democratic systems, be combated to some degree). I also, as an accompaniment to my studies in international humanitarian law, study psychology—both cognitive and evolutionary.

There's also the part where I pay attention to the people around me.

And the part where I grew up in the South.

I could dismiss the decision as merely aesthetic—hoops take upkeep—if there weren't, now, elaborate playground equipment in East Park that takes a lot more. If there weren't hoops inside the state-of-the-art and and rather snazzy-looking East Community Center just off the park. And if that community center didn't charge a buck a pop for each and every kid walking through its doors.

That doesn't sound like a lot to you. Even I, notoriously broke student that I am, could spend a buck a day to play ball and never miss it.

But for a kid? Especially a kid from a low-income family? A buck a day for a month pays for a pro ball, and all the free ball she can play with it at the neighborhood hoops for at least a year and a half.

But not in the place that taught me about basketball. Not here.

Flanges, Sieges, & Bellowings

2010-05-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

Any serious-minded persons are notified forthwith: Get thee hence. Your kind and your logic are not wanted here.

This is not an essay. It is not political, ethical, or artistic commentary. It is not prose poetry.

It is a list, subdivided into categories, of my favorite animal group names.

Ye be warned.

____________________________

From the Oxford Dictionaries site. Group names listed are those not classified as 'fanciful' or 'invented'.

The Unutterably Perfect Nominatives category.

In order of 'Superlative' to 'Consummately Sublime'.

A rabble of gnats

A pride of peacocks

A plague of locusts

A scourge of mosquitoes

A tower of giraffes

A bloat of hippopotamuses

A crash of rhinoceroses

The Great Book Titles Category.

In order of 'I Would Buy It' to 'I Would Write It'.

A siege of bitterns

A charm of finches

A parliament of owls

A watch of nightingales

An exaltation of larks

A murder of crows

A murmuration of starlings

An unkindness of ravens

The When In Doubt, Call Them What They Do category.

In order of 'Not Even Close' to 'Yawningly Obvious'.

A bellowing of bullfinches

A chattering of choughs

A clamour of rooks
A bask of crocodiles
A leap of leopards
A glaring of cats
A tittering of magpies

The Huh? category.

In order of 'Jim Morrison' to 'Timothy Leary'.

A business of ferrets

A grind of blackfish

A grist of flies

A sounder of boars (twelve or more)

A hive of oysters

A sute of bloodhounds

A kindle of kittens

A husk of hares

A lute of wildfowl

The Irresistible Mental Picture category.

In order of 'Whichever Occurred to Me First' to 'Whichever Occurred to Me Last'.

A smack of jellyfish (Some unfortunate soul being pelted with the things.)

A mess of iguanas (Four words: Mess hall. Uniformed iguanas.)

A labour of moles (Moles with little shovels & spades and workman's caps.)

A tribe of sparrows (Sparrows with spears under their wings, faces painted for battle.)

A huddle of walruses (Walruses in jerseys and helmets, heads together.)

A parcel of penguins (Wrapped in brown paper & string & addressed, with heads and feet sticking out.)

A posse of turkeys (male only) (We don't need no stinkin' badges.)

A sleuth of bears (Bears in deerstalkers, clutching meerschaums and magnifying glasses.)

A rack of colts (Two words: Bike rack.)

A bouquet of pheasants (Hapless pheasants with bodies wedged into a wide vase.)

A nursery of raccoons (Raccoons in bonnets and footie pajamas wreaking havoc on a hospital nursery.)

The Someone In the Military Had Too Much Time On His Hands category.

In order of 'Isn't That Cute' to “Run For It'.

An array of hedgehogs

An army of frogs

A company of archer fish

A mustering of storks

A flange of baboons

A cohort of zebras

A rout of wolves

A battery of barracuda

The Almost Certainly Invented by Hunters and Fishermen category.

In order of 'Errr...' to 'In-Joke'.

A flick of rabbits

A whoop of gorillas

A plump of moorhen

A hover of trout

A wisp of snipe

A richness of martens

A glean of herring

The Now That's Just Mean category.

In order of 'Cold' to 'Daaaamn'.

A pace of asses

A sore of ducks

A rasp of coots

A destruction of wildcats

A dessert of lapwings

A bury of conies

A barren of mules

A mutation of thrushes

A walk of snails

The I Wish My Puns Could Be In the Oxford English Dictionary category (also known as the Jealous I Didn't Think of It First category).

In order of 'Humorous' to 'I'd Thought Monty Python Made That One Up'.

A mute of hounds

A host of angelfish

A puddling of mallards

A gulp of swallows

Undrawing Mohammed

2010-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here's why I don't think drawing Mohammed is a great idea. (Sorry, Cal.)

I am not, it should be said at the outset, a deist, theist, anarchist, objectivist, absolutist, constructivist, daoist, or almost any other thing that ends in “ist” (with the possible exception of 'hedonist', 'idealist', and 'absurdist'; but we'll leave those aside for now). Formal political and religious philosophies leave me cold, and so do their often-irrational demands: Don't draw Mohammed. Don't fund social programs (even to accomplish stated goals). Don't drink alcohol. Keep your meat and milk in separate refrigerators.

However, for the most part even highly religious people keep their demands to themselves—glaring disapprovingly at me as I discuss alcohol doesn't impinge on my life if I don't give a damn what you think. (Growing up in Nashville gives you lots of practice in developing this mindset and its corollaries.) And when your beliefs impinge on my right to do—well, anything otherwise lawful—I'll exercise the privilege of doing what I damn well please while you and your overly-developed, irrational sensibilities (and I mean this in the kindest, gentlest way possible) sod off.

But that isn't the same as doing something one wouldn't otherwise do—something calculated to offend another's sensibilities—solely and only for that purpose. Because as much as I disagree with the political and religious idiocy that gets thrown about more freely every single day (and gets closer and closer to being religiopolitical idiocy every single day—must I keep reminding you people that the U.S. is not a theocracy?), I don't think that offending the people who profess a given creed in a way that's respectful of others right alongside those believers who are frothing-at-the-mouth crazy serves any useful purpose.

Specifically: Speaking as someone who has stood alone beside the exquisite screen surrounding Mumtaz' grave in the center of the Taj Mahal, I can say that the most conservative Islamic sentiments on drawing human forms (or rather, not drawing), which led directly to the juridical pronouncements (fatwa) on representations of Mohammed, have produced some of the world's greatest art. I defy anyone—South Park fan or no—to claim otherwise. While those sensibilities don't match Christian (or indeed most other) artistic sensibilities, there is no reason they should be purposefully trampled by those who wouldn't otherwise do so.

That doesn't include South Park, of course. Matt Stone and Trey Parkers' raison d'être is the purposeful trampling of every sensibility in existence. They should be left in peace to do so, while those whose sensibilities are being macerated come over and stand with the vast crowd of humanity who've suffered the same treatment at their hands.

Radical Islamists who threaten bloody, excruciating death to everyone and everything for so much as uttering the name of “The Prophet” in a louder-than-can-possibly-be-respectful whisper deserve inconsideration, disrespect, and a boot to the back of the head. These are the jackasses who took out a contract on Rushdie, after all (you'll pardon me if I hold that a greater crime, in artistic terms, than threatening Stone and Parker). But most of the people who share their faith don't.

Rational people don't break into tabernacles to grab communion wafers and stomp on them in response to the deranged pro-life morons who bomb abortion clinics. Not because the majority of humanity shares the belief that the consecrated wafers are the “Body of Christ”—but because 1) breaking into buildings is a crime, and 2) even if the church is sitting open, there are a lot of other people who'd be deeply offended—people who had nothing to do with the objectionable behavior.

Jackasses are always with us. I don't like being judged by idiotic behavior on the part of those who share what few beliefs I do cherish (especially since they're cherished partly because they don't lead to that sort of behavior). I very seriously doubt people acting to offend such idiots, knowing all the while that I had nothing to do with their behavior and that said actions would offend me as well, would win any sympathy or support from me.

So instead of “Draw Mohammed”, how about “Boycott Comedy Central for a day for being such gutless bastards”?

Or, if caution in the face of bomb threats doesn't seem bastardly to you (it does to me, since they could easily afford extra security, especially with all the ad revenue the extra hype would bring in), how about “Donate $1.00 to Matt Stone & Trey Parker to fund a one-time copyright buyout from Comedy Central, to broadcast a South Park site webisode on what utter wankers radical Islamists are”? It'd probably be the most-downladed, most-shared, most-watched South Park episode in the world. In history, even. Given free rein, one can only imagine what those guys could produce. It'd be awesome.

It'd be even better if they mention Zachary Adam Chesser, better known as Abu Talhah al-Amrikee (http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/abu_talhah.htm)—despicable piece of cretinous, homicidal filth that he is. He's the guy who started the whole brouhaha in the first place, and who gleefully discusses slitting Parker and Stone's throats. Come to think of it, why not just crash his blog and his beloved “Revolution Muslim” site with huge amounts of well-timed “fan” mail? It is, after all, the kind of behavior these verminous imbeciles understand.

And best of all, not a single reasonable follower of Islam (I realize there are those out there drawing Mohammed who'd argue the phrase, but we all know what I'm talking about) would feel personally offended.

Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught

2010-05-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

I awoke and spent two hours at the gym after only five hours' sleep. My body aches, and it is thirsty for something more than the water I drink can give it. Parched for a sensation that is not pain.

So after my shower I put on perfume—a soliflore, dedicated to tuberose. (My tastes in perfume have expanded, but tuberose was my first love—and they linger, in perfume as in romance.) The scent is called Beyond Love.

It very nearly is. It is certainly as overwhelming as that first, stomach-clenching fall. Sumptuous. Drenching. Lush on a scale that leaves me heavy-lidded.

In fact, narcotic.

Or better. Opiates have nothing on the luscious, ambrosial somnolence of this sensation. Breathing in, being surrounded by, this scent is as overwhelming as lying on summer grass at sunset, watching the sky as a storm rolls toward you—while sprawled between sheets made of cream-white silk.

Actually, I am sprawled on white sheets—sheets of damasked cotton-sateen. The sensory contrast—between the slight give that could pass as roughness in the fine-spun cotton, and the hedonistically sleek, impenetrably textured scent of the tuberose—is hypnotic, bewitching...

...far better than opium.

Everything registers—the three-noted chirp of the lone bird outside my open window; the rippling grey velvet of the clouds; the heavy swirl of the damp air around me as it is stirred by the coming rain; the nearly fur-soft feel of the hair at the base of my neck as my fingers lace in it. Nothing is lost, nothing struck aside by slumberous senses: Every impression plays across the sensorium, soft and heated and clear, not a single edge blurred by the scent which curls around all of them.

I want music now—something subtle and silken and drowning-deep. Something dangerous in large doses.

Something that sounds like the scent drifting from my skin.

But if there is a music that lulls with a heavy stroke—music that is slumberous, but so potent that you cannot bear to let it go to slide down into sleep—

music that drowns you in the air you breathe, because your blood binds its pleasures more tightly than oxygen—

music like the scent of tuberose and jasmine and amber and coconut and musk—

I've never heard it.

And so I lie in silence, in the falling dark of a Spring evening, bathing in the the scent of rajnigandha, “the flower of the night”. Bathing in the scent of Summer.

Of such a Summer as has never existed but in the dark, fragrant heart of a white-petalled night bloom.

Sweeter Than Midnight; More Secret Than the Rose

2010-05-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Sweeter than midnight
More secret than the rose
- Michael Hornyansky, "The Queen of Sheba"

The intensity of my memorial and emotional response to scent holds me captive to the whim of random air currents. The scents of diesel and asphalt take me back to Bangalore; coconut milk and burning wood, to Tangasserri; blooming honeysuckle, back home to Nashville; Earl Grey tea, to West Lafayette... Some of the best and worst times of my life come back to me, strong and immediate, on drifts of wind.

So it's unsurprising that I love perfume; it captivates me utterly. After all, unpopular as the notion is nowadays, I am a sensualist, and no sybarite worth her salt would forbear to revel in the exquisite pleasure perfumery can bring. Its intricate components fascinate and delight me, and they always have. (My perfume of choice at age 16 was Dior's “Poison”—thanks, Mom.)

But med school tells you not to wear perfume. So this past year I've attempted to restrain myself whilst my gorgeous perfumes sat waiting, and I pined for them in silence. After a year of this sullen (mostly) scentlessness, it finally occurred to me to discuss perfume with other physicians. The ones with whom I spoke told me to wear perfume and (perfumista/physician tip) take an alcohol pad to my arms and throat before I went into clinic.

Bloody brilliant! Problem solved. My wonderful scents and I were back in business.

So now I'm reveling in the world of perfumery once again. That world is near-labyrinthine in its complexity—I've been learning about scent notes, accords, blending, and so forth for at least a decade, and I'll continue for the rest of my life. Over the course of that learning I've picked up information and developed tastes which have led to the formation of several general rules, which in my consummate generosity I am of course going to share with you.

My tastes in perfume (and other sensate experiences) are underpinned by five desires:

1. I want complexity. Once in a while I'll crave a simple, one-note scent and pull out jasmine or vanilla or sandalwood essential oil. But most of the time, I want to wear evidence of a perfumer's virtuosity—chamber orchestras of notes blended and conducted so masterfully that simply smelling them creates a symphonic burst of memory, emotion, and sensation.

2. I want truth. I like scent notes which are true to origin—identifiably natural. I like to be able to tell what the base notes in my perfumes are. I like scents which hold their base character perfectly—scents with high substantivity. That means that, with few exceptions (aldehydes being one—you'll pry my No5 out of my cold dead hands), I find scents with dominant synthetics disappointing.

3. I want flowers...& a little sweetness. Though the scents I wear include notes from amber to patchouli to cassis to sandalwood to ginger, their middle or base notes are always anchored by one of the big four flowers in perfumery—jasmine, rose, violet, or tuberose—sumptuous, heady scents. I also want a slight touch of sweetness. Dry, astringent, grassy, or overtly minerally or woody perfumes might smell great on the guy I'm with—but not on me.

4. I want endurance. I love the experience of discovering a scent over time—experiencing layer upon layer of note and nuance and expertly-wrought sensation. I love wearing a perfume whose mood and pacing shifts as the day—or night—goes on.

5. I want exotica. Given my looks and body chemistry, I can pull off sultry, smoky, mysterious scents—and lush, luscious, glamorous ones—and light, sweet, pretty ones...well, you get the picture. I always have more than one perfume of each type. But all of my perfumes contain spice or incense notes, and 75% of the time it's the exotic and/or complex scents which suit my mindset and my mood.

Disclaimer: My tastes—and the opinions resulting from them—are my own. People like and enjoy perfumes across a huge price range, and their olfactory tastes run as far or further over the map than their gustatory ones. If you like perfumes I don't (I can guarantee that you do), if your sensualist principles differ from mine (ditto), or if you have the kind of magical skin chemistry that makes $12 drugstore perfume smell like Calice Becker's finest (don't smirk; I've smelled it)—in other words, if you like pure vanilla while all I can stand is dark chocolate—then by all means ignore whatever you don't like here, and use whatever you can.

A brief description of what I mean by certain terms, and then a description of the substance under discussion here, before I tell you my rules of thumb.

I'm going to discuss my rules for finding, keeping, and wearing Good Perfume. As you now know, for me that means scents which are complex, well designed, and made with medium-to-good quality (mostly) natural ingredients. For reference, here's a partial list of makers of perfumes I've owned/worn repeatedly: Annick Goutal, Boucheron, Bulgari, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Gucci, Guerlain, Fendi, Montblanc, Nina Ricci. Their perfumes, and perfumes like them, are what I consider to be Good Perfumes. They go for anywhere from $40-$200, but with dedicated shopping and patience you can get most of them at the lower end.

If I talk about Very Good Perfumes (which I won't, very much), I'll be referencing makers like Montale, Amouage, By Kilian, Parfums MDCI, Creed, and their ilk. Their perfumes are close to the pinnacle of the perfumer's art, and are fairly well exempt from most of the caveats I mention here. They also retail for an average of $250 an ounce, no discounts—I've worn them, but I don't own them.

Here are some websites to check out should you want more information:
OzMoz (www.ozmoz.com), an incredibly comprehensive encyclopaedia of scents which gives origin and top, middle and base notes for thousands of designer perfumes;
Gogoperfumes (http://www.gogoperfume.com/Perfume_Glossary.aspx), which has a large glossary of terms used in both perfumer and perfumista circles; and
Luckyscent (www.luckyscent.com) a boutique-perfume retailer with a huge database of boutique-perfume reviews from dedicated perfumistas—most of which are far more informative than those on any other perfume site.

Now, a description of the substance under discussion.

Perfume as it's discussed here is a bottled mix of several different plant, animal, and mineral essences and absolutes and tinctures, alcohols, aldehydes, colorants and water in precise proportions, designed by a perfumer and sold by a specific brand. There are other scented substances worth knowing about—essential oils and blended body oils, to name two—but for the most part those aren't discussed here.

The blend of substances used in perfume, when it mixes with the specific chemistry of an individual's skin and hair, produces an effect unique to every person who puts it on. No perfume will smell the same on two different people; nor will it ever smell the same on skin as it does on a piece of paper or a sample card. The unique scent of a given perfume on your skin (and around you—the latter is termed the “sillage” of the scent) is a result of this reactivity, and of the inherent aromatic properties of the substances used in perfumery.

In any perfume, the secondary and tertiary properties of those substances are their intensity—how concentrated their scent is—and their substantivity—how long the note remains true to its original scent (their primary property is, of course, their original scent). The perfume ingredients with the highest intensity and substantivity are generally the purest ones, and therefore (unsurprisingly) the ones which cost the most.

Which leads me to rule number one.

1. In perfume, as in jewelry, there's a price basement past which no good perfume can sink.
Perfume-quality oils and absolutes are expensive, and even good replacements cost money. Cheaper perfumes are cheaper because they use lower-quality ingredients, and fewer of them. That has profound effects on the smell left on your skin, especially over time.

Which leads me to rule number two.

2. Buy good perfume.
This rule merits numbers two through five, but in the interests of space I'll confine it to one item. The rule has several corollaries, but the reasoning is simple: Good perfume smells good. Mediocre perfume can wind up smelling very, very bad indeed, especially if it's chosen carelessly. How you smell determines a very great deal of how people respond to you, whether consciously or unconsciously.

This does have a price basement, as I said, but there are two or three ways to circumvent it. One is to buy testers—they're full-sized, original bottles, but they're sold without special caps or fancy boxes or any of the other froufrou which makes them pretty. For decent perfumes, you'll still set down some money, but it'll be one-half to one-third of what you'd pay for the full version. There are also several websites where you can buy samples (Luckyscent is one) for $3-$10 each, and one or two which sell decants—smaller, unlabeled vials which contain the original fragrance.

3. Buy the eau de parfum of your favorite scents.
Below are the various grades/dilutions of aromatics typically offered at a perfume counter:
Perfume extract (parfum extrait)/parfum solid: 15-40% (usually 20%) aromatic compounds
Eau de parfum (Edp)/Parfum de toilette (Pdt): 10-20% (usually 15%) aromatic compounds (Sometimes marked Millésime, French for “vintage/year of”, used most often of wine and monuments.)
Eau de toilette (Edt): 5-15% (usually 10%) aromatic compounds

The more aromatics in the scent you put on your skin, the longer and more intensely that scent will last. When you know you love a certain perfume, wear the eau de parfum; you'll need less to achieve the same intensity, and the scent will last anywhere from 2 to 4 hours longer than the same perfume's eau de toilette. (Parfum itself is of course the best choice for wear, but it's often prohibitively expensive.)

4. Unless/until you're an expert in what smells good on you, try on every scent.
This one seems obvious, but I'm amazed at how many people violate it—though mostly not for themselves. This is perhaps better phrased as “perfume isn't a good gift”. I've violated this rule myself several times, fancying that such a perfumista as myself is exempt (ha!). For the most part, I've been lucky, but I've been burned enough to reinforce the lesson.

The scent of any given perfume on your skin is, not to belabor the point, unique to you. It doesn't matter what it smells like in the bottle, in the air, on a scent card, or on anyone else.

The fact is that the best way to know how a perfume smells on your skin is to put it on your skin—and leave it there. You should never make a decision about a perfume until it's been on your skin at least an hour; the top note—consisting of the most volatile ingredients, the ones that give the initial impression of the perfume—should've had time to develop and give way to the middle and base notes by that time.

If you want to know how a good perfume will smell on you, wear it all day. The base notes, which are usually the “deeper”, more woody, leathery, musky, or incense-like components—though for perfumes containing rose or jasmine absolutes, or vanilla, they can be flowery or spicy as well—take a long time to develop fully, and last the longest. This is the “finish” of the perfume (in perfumery, the "drydown"), the lasting scent impression you and others will carry with you, and it's worth knowing what that is before you commit to it.

One exception to this (there're always exceptions) is that knowing what notes smell best on your skin may enable you to choose certain perfumes sight unseen. For example, ten years ago I realized that every one of my favorite perfumes had a tuberose medium or base note (though that's no longer true). That enabled me to determine that Boucheron's signature fragrance was one I should try—and I adore it. I've lucked out on buying other perfumes without testing, too, but it's always a gamble—don't do it unless you're prepared to toss the bottle you buy.

5. Take care of your perfumes: Keep them away from airflow and out of the light.
The thing which allows perfume to smell so good is that its most aromatic substances are volatile: they release odorants in response to the heat of your skin (and sometimes in response to its acidity). This means that they're inherently unstable: heat, and light of any kind (but especially sunlight, because of its UV content), cause the aromatic components to degrade.

Furthermore, because most perfumes are sold as blended oils and absolutes in a base of alcohol and water of varying concentrations, airflow of any kind around the perfume bottle will cause the alcohol to evaporate—thus altering the concentrations of the blend and throwing off the scent. The combination of these facts means that the time-honored tradition of keeping your perfumes on a toilette tray on the dresser is the best possible way to ensure them a very short life.

Keep your perfumes tightly covered and in the dark—in a drawer, if possible. The satisfaction of being able to use a good scent for an extremely long time—the standard shelf life of a well-cared-for perfume can be anywhere from two to five years, and some can last much longer—will more than make up for the lack of decorative bottles littering your dresser. If you decide to go the tester/sample/decants route, place the bottles/vials in zipper-seal bags before putting them in that drawer.

6. Buy perfume from couture and jewelry houses, not cosmetics houses.
(This is the point at which outraged Estee Lauder and Clinique and Shiseido and Your-Cosmetics-Counter-Here fans will hit the back button, skip down to leave a scathing comment, or come looking for my house.) You've seen the five things I want from perfume. Keep them in mind when I tell you that every fragrance I've tried from a cosmetics house has been of lower quality than those from couture or jewelers' houses.

There are perfumistas who swear by some cosmetics' houses' scents—but I don't know any personally. For my friends, family, and acquaintances as well as for myself, cosmetics-house perfume is a worse value than any other kind of perfume (including drugstore perfume). Though their prices are often the same, the cosmetics-house perfumes' substantivity, their intensity—even their complexity and originality of accord—pale when compared to couture and jewelers' perfumes.

This comes down to ingredients, not design. Many of the top perfume designers design for couture, perfume-only, jewelers', and cosmetics houses. The difference is in the range, cost and quality of the aromatics they're allowed to include in their scents.

This isn't me playing favorites; the higher quality of ingredients is generally true of couture perfumes—even of those I don't like. Balmain, for instance, has never produced a perfume I like; neither have Gaultier, Armani, or Versace, or a half-dozen others I could name. Their perfumes are, however, made with middle-to-high-quality ingredients, as well as being well-designed.

I've recently begun trying perfumes from perfume-only houses again (including the Very Good ones listed above). The results have been generally outstanding—not surprising, really, considering the houses I chose. Still, I haven't tried a wide range yet, and given some I've tried in the past, I judge most houses on a scent-by-scent basis. After all, one of the first fragrances I ever tried and loved, perfume-only giant Guerlain's classic Shalimar, has almost no staying power and a nasty of habit of turning on the skin when the bottle is more than a year old—but their very simple Aqua Allegoria line contains several fragrances I love.

7. Wear the perfume as it's meant to be worn.
This should probably be number three, under "buy good perfume", because how you wear a perfume can turn a decent perfume into a good one—or vice versa.

Perfume should be worn so that you (and others) can smell it. The aromatics are released by body heat; the more skin you cover, the more intense the scent will be and the longer it will last. That means that touching a dab to your wrists and behind your ears is a great way to waste a good perfume.

There is, however, a skill to wearing enough perfume to be able to bask in the scent without assaulting the noses of your coworkers or companions. The balance between the sillage (the amount of “waft” of the scent around you) and the intensity of the perfume you choose has to be carefully managed—I don't recommend Parisian-style wear (which involves atomizing the perfume and then walking into a cloud of it naked, in order to let it settle evenly on your skin).

“Layering” a single scent with perfumed lotion and bath gel can help it last longer, so layer when it's possible. A good perfume with moderate sillage should be applied immediately after you shower, and at least 30 minutes before you go out. Stroke it along the insides of both forearms and at the base of your neck, front and back (cleavage can be included or not, depending on occasion, intensity—and on what you're wearing; perfume oil stains permanently). If you want more scent—and more complexity—spray perfume into your hair.

But be careful with this. All of the times I've screwed up and suffocated people with my perfume have been because I did this without thinking about how long my hair is and how much scent clings to it—and how much more slowly it fades when applied to hair, since the heat level is so much lower. Done carefully, wearing perfume in your hair will make even a wimpy fragrance last quite a while, and for a Very Good perfume it can be a great way of “staging” your scent—drawing out the top notes so that they float over the medium and base notes instead of fading immediately.

Which brings me to the next rule.

8. Be careful about reapplying your perfume.
In fact, I have a firm stance on “touching up” perfume: Don't.

Seriously. Unless it's a Very Good perfume or a soliflore (or other one-note-focused) fragrance, you risk dissonance between its top and base notes. The former are designed to be completely gone by the time the latter begin to emerge; perfectly-harmonized top, middle, and base notes are one of the things which set Very Good perfumes apart from the rest.

Layering a Very Good perfume on hair and skin, or reapplying it midway through an evening, can give you an intriguing and delicious mix of notes—a tunefully fragrant jazz of scent.

Layering or reapplying anything else risks colliding, discordant scents—Stravinsky perfume, if you will. Which I won't.

Again, there are a variety of views on this topic; those who like scents which fade quickly really have no choice but to touch up. But from my point of view, if you're wearing good perfume, you shouldn't need to reapply it during an evening out—even on a heavy date. A good perfume's Edp should last 7 to 10 hours on your skin; a Very Good perfume's Edp will last anywhere from 9 to 14 hours without losing its substance (though of course the intensity fades gradually over time).

If you're in love with a perfume that fades quickly (or are one of the unfortunates who has skin that "drinks" the scent you love), test the scent during staging by wearing it at home one evening, and reapplying two hours in. You'll avoid any nasty surprises while out on that heavy date. (Well...nasty surprises from your perfume.)

9. Dress (up) to match.
This is a wee bit hypocritical on my part, because there've certainly been a few times when I've wound up wearing an exotic, complex scent with jeans, a geeky t-shirt and Doc Martens. (Mostly in law school. Sorry, guys.)

However, I do try to abide by it in general. Believe me when I tell you that it is confounding to the senses of the people you're around to see you in your Chuck Taylors, favorite purple denim dungarees, and Misfits t-shirt while smelling the luxe, classic glamour of Chanel No5 all over you. Do it if you want to screw with people's heads (hey, that can be fun once in a while), but don't do it consistently, or you'll confuse people's senses, and sense of propriety, enough that it makes them subconsciously irritated with you. (I've seen this happen to more than one person, more than once. And yes, I was one of them.)

I say “dress (up)” because this rule doesn't always hold in both directions. It's possible to wear a very simple scent with very dressy clothes. (As with everything concerning fashion, you can do almost anything you want— if you know how to pull it off.) For most of us, however, whether simple or not, whether for day or evening, clothes should match the “feel” of the fragrance you wear. This means that you're going to look gauche wearing something fresh and grassy like Sisley's Eau de Campagne with that red velvet evening gown.

But if gauche is what you want, then hey, go to it. If matching clothing to scent steps all over your artistic license or anarchist ethos or whatever other flavor your amour-propre comes in, then wear whatever placates your sensibilities. Just don't get offended if those around you aren't equally placated.

There are many more things I could say about how I choose and wear perfume. I could talk about how it's made. I could lecture about olfactory groups and manufacturing techniques and maitres perfumiers. I could hit highlights in perfume's 6,000-year history. I could tell you that the world's first recorded chemist was a perfumer—and a woman. (And I just did.) I could, in short, go on at you about perfume for weeks.

But instead, I'll end this little jaunt into the arcane world of perfumery by saying that the delicate and precise blending of different substances to produce a specific olfactory “flavor” is, in the case of the very best perfumes, a work of art equal to anything that hangs in the world's major museums.

That it can be even better, in some cases, because of the intensity of the sensual experience a truly sublime scent can render.

That smell touches some of the oldest and most primitive parts of ourselves. That it connects us more intimately to our bodies and our pasts.

That being able to indulge one's senses in this fashion is a very, very great gift—one of the glorious sensate privileges that comes with living in a human body.

And that this is one of the parts of being human that should not be missed.

BEND AND NOT BREAK (or, Swimming in the Hague)

2010-04-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a disclaimer/warning/for-Pete's-sake-don't-read-this-if-you-don't-know-me:

This essay won't tell you much about international law or politics, or ethics, or science, or literature, or art of any stripe. It won't, in fact, tell you about much of anything except my life—a very great deal about my life and my thinking, actually, more than I thought I'd put to paper and certainly much more than I ever thought I'd make public.

So much for me making fun of people who make their diary entries public on blogs.

But having already served my guts up on a plate (my description of what it's like to publish poetry, and the reason I've never published any between high school and now) in SCOPE three days ago, I suppose I'm getting into the habit. So here, for the delectation of what is probably a very small number of people who actually care enough about me to take the time to read this—and thus an audience much smaller than my ego and/or fear has pictured—is an explanation of some of the rather...odd...things about me.

And why, for good or ill, they—I—will go on being odd.

_______________________________________________________

Today I took a dip in 19th-century Switzerland for the first time in a long while. It hurt.

But then, it's always hurt.

I've been helping a friend with a paper on international humanitarian law, so I've been swimming in Hague and Geneva, Common Article 3 and Protocol I, for the last two days. Having a refresher, even a small one, in this body of very specialized knowledge was definitely a good thing. It's been a while since I took that dive, for several practical reasons.

But having done so, I was face-to-face once again with the uncomfortable suspicion that those practical reasons—medical school, law school—might have arisen for precisely that purpose.

I think—I'm fairly certain—that I'd want to be a lawyer or doctor even if I hadn't studied humanitarian law. I wanted both before I studied it, after all. But the about-face from studying international humanitarian law—a synonym for “the laws of war”, and thus for laws applied primarily in situations of atrocity, torture, and genocide—to studying the benevolent and practical application of science to individual human beings is profound and marked. They're far too divergent for me to have done it purely by accident or serendipity.

International humanitarian law is comprised of a body of historical fact, treatises, and treaties which date back to the Roman statesman Cicero (if not further); it includes works by early Church Fathers and Dutch jurists as well as modern-day treaties. Modern medical science, on the other hand, though the medical profession started in antiquity, began only with Pasteur in the 19^th century; although the incredible bulk of information involved in learning medicine beggars description, it's a very young and relatively coherent field.

Studying international law, with its documents and thinkers by turns abstruse and archaic, is an exercise in cobbling together political philosophies in a way that might provide an opportunity for useful application by other people (like statesmen and judges). It's tessellation on a grand scale—no two persons' mosaics will turn out the same. Contrast this with the incredibly detailed practical application involved in medicine—application that is based on proven results and replicability, and comprised of skills and knowledge that are graded on a minutely calibrated standardized scale.

The plain fact of the matter is that after 4 years of undergrad spent studying all the worst things human beings do—have ever done—to each other, of talking to Holocaust and other genocide survivors, the opportunity to make other people's lives better in small but measurable ways—ways that can be seen and experienced every day—is my idea of a life well lived. And if that were the only revelation I'd had—the only conclusion I drew—my recent plunge into Geneva wouldn't have hurt at all.

But it wasn't the only thing that happened. I've always known that my undergraduate career dramatically affected my view of the world and how I relate to it—one of my professors, a brilliant man who advises governments on international law, looked at my transcript and asked incredulously if I were “majoring in atrocity”. That kind of study does tend to leave a few dents.

But over the past year, as I was surrounded by so many positive, outgoing, energetic (and just-out-of-undergrad) people, I found myself repeatedly explaining what I'd studied to colleagues as I grew closer to them—and even explaining it in detail for the first time to people whom I've known and loved—because it was the only way of explaining idiosyncrasies made glaringly apparent by the more typical behavior of my classmates.

Things like why I don't watch or like professional sports, or even watch school sports when I don't know anyone on the team. Like my aversion to joining clubs of any kind except human rights or cultural interests. Like why I won't watch movies based on certain subjects or themes, or with tragic endings. Like why I'm a skeptic when it comes to politics and religion—why I tend to view them as versions of each other. Like why I all but stopped reading modern literature for a very long time.

I was met with silence and respect for my point of view in all but one case. That silence had, on many occasions, a somewhat appalled undertone. But I couldn't ease it.

It is appalling. Appalling for them, because these things are truly frightening to think about. And appalling for me, because facing up to the fact that your own intellect and stubborn honesty might have done a great deal of damage to your own personality is a dreadful thing to have to do.

And here's the really awful thing—the very really most basically horrible thing: I didn't even know—had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was an idealistic 18-year-old, a victim of my own intellectual honesty and my interest in human rights. What I wanted to figure out—set out to study—was how to secure those rights. Figure out why such terrible things happened, and how to stop them.

And when I studied humanitarian law, and saw all it entailed—all the pain, both for those I studied and for me—I cringed. In horror, and the kind of hammering terror that makes you taste your pulse and jerk yourself awake...only to find that you already are.

And something in me whimpered. And now I think, I see, that maybe—quietly, gradually, inexorably—several things might have curled and angled and bent.

But I still refused to look away.

I would've been much happier as just an English major. No question. Which begs the question of why—curse my mental rigor and “truth is what makes us human” dogma—I'm still glad, despite all of this, that I chose to study a broader canvas.

Would I be happier if I didn't know about the worst things people do to each other, and why they do them? Absolutely.

Would I have fewer moments of fear as I see the small, near-invisible beginnings of avalanches of dreadful occurrences while reading about politics? Unquestionably.

Would I have less interesting nightmares, fewer images and stories and memories-that-aren't-mine of undiluted agony to haunt my dreams when I'm troubled? Undoubtedly.

Would I be a more social, more relaxed person—someone who could go to a game and cheer, sit around joking about how the other team sucks? Yes.

Would I be able to see this world as clearly—the skittering, cannibal darkness under its skin; the splendor, the thundering, limitless fire of its beauty?

No.

So I'll continue to be a little different. A little odd.

A little bent.

Because—after all this time—I'll still take the pain. I'll take the beauty. I'll take it all—and yes, I'll bend.

And not break.

Mad Hatters, White Rabids, March Harebrains, & Other Tea Party Delights

2010-03-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

{Some people have friends to dinner; I have friends to tea. So, gentle reader, I'll start my observations on the attempts of some of the more infamous recent Tea Parties to conform to their bottom-of-the-rabbit-hole prototype by pouring you a cuppa.

May I offer you milk? Lemon? Sugar?}

Or—in possible emulation of today's most notorious Tea Partiers—mercury?

One does wonder, after all. The Hatter at the original Mad Tea Party had Mad Hatters' Disease—the neurological disease which afflicted 19th-century hatters because of the mercury used in hats' manufacture. {Have a scone. I bake them myself.} Symptoms included aggressiveness, mood swings, and antisocial behavior, but one might as easily use whatever other descriptors are serving as the euphemism du jour for “hurling epithets, abuse or bodily fluids on minority government officials, men with Parkinson's disease, and political opponents.” The most, ahem, notable Tea Parties held of late seem to be centered around—nay, held to extol—such symptomatology. That is to say, behavior. {Butter or jam? Strawberry jam goes well with these.}

Indeed, some of the other signs of mercury poisoning—loss of ability to learn new information, twitching, inappropriately repetitive actions—have been prominent at these Tea Parties as well. The repetition of phrases like “death panels” and shrieks of “private insurance becoming illegal” after the text of the bill was finalized, by both those at the Tea Parties and those in power who were, ah, encouraging the Parties—Queens of certain Red suits—do demonstrate some deficiencies along these lines as well. {Would you like some strawberries? Grapes?}

There has also been an excessive amount of frothing at the mouth at these Parties. It is a phenomenon associated heavily in the popular mind with rabies, the symptoms of which—violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, and mania—have been prominent at these affairs too. {And have a slice of manchego. No? Well, cheddar goes well with grapes...} I am uncertain as to how much biting has been occurring at such parties—but there certainly has been profuse salivation; and many of the attendees do seem, at least in passing, to be warm-blooded. {Butterscotch cake? The icing is my own recipe.}

There is also the question of whether such behavior may legitimately be called “hare-brained”; though that is, admittedly, a far less viable hypothesis. Hares were indeed supposed to behave madly in March—jumping excessively high and 'boxing' each other—but March is the poor things' mating season, after all. Given the utter lack of restraint of the Tea Parties' attendees, it is obvious that if the same had been the case for them, their doings would have been enough to make the viewing public blush. Well, enough to make them blush in offense. That is to say, enough to make them blush in offense at the attendees' overt, er, lasciviousness rather than at their pathological behavior. {Here, let me top up your cup...oh, dear, the teapot's empty.}

I am morally certain that there are more parallels between Tea Partiers and pathologies to be drawn, gentle readers; but the last of the tea has gone, and alas, we must return to normal life. Draw your minds back up the rabbit-hole, and leave our speculations to rest in the land of these tawdry affairs and their attendees.

...What's that? They live here?!

Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting...

DJ, Blow My Speakers Up: Ke$ha and Jay Sean

2010-02-11T22:29:00.000-08:00

You'd probably never guess this about me (or hey, if you saw me at the med school prom, maybe you would), but I keep up with pop and rock music. (There's less of a distinction than I'd like, nowadays.) For “pop”, read “dance, hip-hop, contemp, some rap”—or, more accurately, Billboard's Hot 100.

I owe this, like so much of my muscial education/experience, to Drew. I've said once before that he has the most encyclopedic knowledge of popular music of anyone I know—only Mixy Spinha even comes close—and he's been reading Billboard every week since grade school (so far as I know—it might be since kindergarten, which wouldn't surprise me at all). I used to pride myself on some knowledge of popular music, and a near-comprehensive knowledge of current cinema and publishing (often but not always contiguous with 'literature'). So when I started to lose my grip on cinema (publishing, believe it or not, went sometime during law school—my acquaintance with it now comprises med school and the 653—at last count—non-school books on my shelves), I decided that music was something which I could not let slip. My last desperate fingernail-hold on any claim of being cultured, as it were.

So, to make far too much backstory short, I check up on new songs in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 at least once a month.

But “check up on” doesn't always mean “listen to”. Or at least, not all the way through.

There're a few songs that've gotten by me—the ones that didn't grab me at the beginning—and Ke$ha's “Tik Tok” is one of them. Considering how long it's spent at number one, that's some severe not-grabbing, but until it hit its 7^th week, I avoided it. I was somehow certain that, when I listened to the whole song, I wouldn't like it.

I am so right.

I YouTube “Tik Tok”, listen to it turn over, watch it start to rev, thinking, Okay, matches the single cover art, and then—

And then Ke$ha comes onscreen and opens her mouth and I swear to god, the first 5 seconds I see her—even before the boots—I think, Whahuh? Redneck white-girl rap? (Similar to stoopid-girl rock—except, y'know, not. Because hey, Fergie can actually sing, even if her solo lyrics are total crap.)

The rest of the song doesn't improve my opinion. I listen to the hook—catchy as all hell—watch her and wince at her efforts at any kind of rhyme, and think, Wow, suburban girl trying to slum. And failing. Seen her up and down Third and Broad back home in Nashville—hair, boots, all smirk and no smoke. And what's with the faux-trashy?

Remember, this is before I know anything about her. Definitely don't know she's from Nashville. Or that she lived in Brentwood. (Posh suburb of said hometown.) And when I find out all that, I think, I feel so disloyal, and Damn, she's our first big hip-pop hit? I've seen better on my street corner, literally, and How can you live in LA for 5 years as a singer and not know what real trashy looks like?—okay, except for that gold Trans Am...

Her voice is okay, her rhythm marginal, her lyrics abysmal. And a sense of showmanship? Forget it.

But her production is stunning. I can understand why, even as a rookie, Dr. Luke and Max Martin wanted her—they're superstar producers, sure, but you don't get this kind of infectious groove without solid input from the artist. She has talent, all right. She just shouldn't be behind a mic.

The things that make me flinch, though—and what prompted this wrathful little outpouring—are some of the reviews. Ann Powers comparing her to Salt-n-Pepa? Really? Really? The song is danceable and slick, and cherry-sweet-and-dirty as a dropped lollipop—but that kind of lyrical flow? Of talent? Really? Comparing her to Lady Gaga (on whom more—much more—at some other time)? Fergie's lyrics are better (not to mention her voice).

When your rhymes can't stack against “Fergielicious”? Go do something else.

James Reed is the only one who got it right: Compared to “Tik Tok”, “Party in the U.S.A.” is practically a Bob Dylan/Phil Spector song. Yeah, Miley as Mournful Prophet, baby. All the way.

Ke$ha. Quit singing. For god's sake, don't ever try to drop a beat. But produce some pop for someone who can write decent lyrics and has a really good voice. It might not hit the top, but it'll probably be something that won't make people shudder in disgust 2 years from now.

Which brings me to Jay Sean. But my problem is less with him and more with, well, us.

If I were British (which I'm not), or Punjabi (which I'm not), I could sort of claim him as a homeboy. As it is, the best I can say is that I feel some kinship because his folks are from the same subcontinent as mine, and that it's nice to see views and stereotypes of Indian culture and descent shifting. (So okay, the violent, seismic part of the shift came from MIA, whose parents aren't from the mainland, and Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, a couple of Brits. But hey—gifts, mouths, horses, and so on.) I spent way too much of my childhood as the only Indian kid within a 10-mile radius, answering questions on Indian culture based on “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”—though I do give the people who asked credit for at least asking, instead of assuming. And no, I'm not joking. Oh, how I wish I were.

...Where was I? Oh, right. Jay Sean.

“Do You Remember” is totally forgettable (what the hell happened, Lil Jon?), but “Down”'s slippery synth hi-hat and sliding hook are impeccable, and the melody is the musical-note equivalent of Ebola. The song is an example of why formulaic production standards exist: it works when it's done right. (Though WTF is up with the Autotune? As my brother Sunil observed, it was tired 2 years ago. Find a new effect or—here's a thought—let us hear your voice. And speaking of which? Having Lil Wayne on your lead single is great and all, but he showed you up.)

Jay Sean's cute, occasionally bordering on hot; he's got a nice voice; his lyrics are, um, okay (a small step above Fergie's...maybe, sometimes); his tunes are virally infectious; his beats pop; his feel for showmanship is edgy and opportunistic. (Nice mansion, man. Get yourself a better choreographer.) All of which means he knows how to make himself look and sound good. Really good. Not surprising he hit number one with “Down”.

What's bothering me is something utterly tangential that I found out today, and it's this: The last time a British male artist sold this well in the U.S., it was Elton John with “Candle in the Wind”.

Another Really? moment. But worse: Hello, Cognitive Dissonance. And here I thought the conversation was going so well.

Elton John. One of the greatest songwriters of our time. More importantly, his gorgeous, aching tribute to Marilyn Monroe—the one that acknowledges her immense frailty while mourning her beauty. The one that became an elegy for all lovely things lost beyond regaining.

And “Down”.

Really? Really?

This one's on us. Our visual arts have gotten immensely more polished—and more shallow. Of course they have—the advent of instant visual communication could portend nothing else. But that shouldn't affect music, the stuff we carry with us in our heads in a way (as we're learning this week in med school) that's not well understood, but that wields incredible power over our feelings and behavior.

And while it's true that muscial styles shift and “Candle” is very clearly of the past, we measure musical talent and the durability of music across decades, if not centuries. Hence comparisons between Stephen Foster and Bruce Springsteen—between Cole Porter and the White Stripes. Cross-comparison is what gives the spectrum of music its continuity.

I'm not suggesting that any fill-in-the-blank next-British-male-artist's hit release could easily measure up to “Candle”, whether in content or style. The Brit-male number one between “Candle” and “Down”, “You're Beautiful”, didn't measure up either (and I didn't particularly like it); but Blunt's deeply emotional and lyrical craftmanship is evident throughout the song. It doesn't measure up to “Candle”, but it displays a level of word- and tunesmithing that acknowledges the songwriter's role as an artist focused as much on creation as on performance.

The contrast between “Candle in the Wind” and “Down” is—agonizing. A Roman aqueduct versus a beautifully-painted water tank. Cringeworthy, at the very least.

And not because Jay Sean should've made it differently.

No, it's because we value both equally.

Like I said—this one's on us.

Epistolarian (& Eavesdropping), Part 2

2010-01-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

Another installment of the European emails/letters; these begin on(or about) the train from Munich to Innsbruck.

Once again, then, you have my permission to eavesdrop—if you wish.
______________________________________________

INNSBRUCK

The train left on time, of course (no German anything would dare do otherwise). But I almost didn't leave with it.

Two suitcases seemed reasonable when I was packing. But the looks from the other passengers... The compartments are built to hold one—small—suitcase a person. I had to go put my second one in another compartment; and my fellow passengers were not, um, appreciative.

There was a very disapproving older German couple in my compartment. (Right across from me, actually. Joy.) The lady was the image of a hausfrau—short, stout, white-haired, reserved, no-nonsense—and her glare was almost enough to blister my skin.

That humiliation (accompanied by profuse apologies and sheepish looks) over, I settled back into a rather plush seat. The trains in India aren't near this comfy—way more crowds and sweat, for starters—but all trains have the same charm: actually being able to observe the land through which you're passing. They provide a continuous journey, instead of a suspension between destinations.

And this one... It's the Kufstein/Rosenheim route, the faster and more “boring” one. (Or so I was told—funny, the clerks at Wombats didn't look irretrievably jaded...)

So I wasn't expecting... Well, this.

The track runs through the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, and my neck literally hurt by the time the hour-and-45 trip was done. My seat was in the middle (I didn't dare ask anyone to switch); I was craning my neck to see out the window the entire time—and ignoring the very nice man attempting to have a polite conversation with me in the process. *looks abashed* Horribly uncivil of me, I know.

We pulled into the station at Innsbruck and I still hadn't caught my breath—the view from the station didn't help, not to mention wondering if I'd be able to get all my bags off the train in time—and then came something smaller than the mountains, but almost as lovely.

The male half of that old, stout, disapproving German couple helped me with my bags. I was so grateful—I couldn't've gotten off the train in time without him—and it was so unexpected. Even though their faces had softened during the ride, the two of them had been so utterly irritated when I was getting on. (I'd felt as though I had “spoiled, inconsiderate American tourist” tattooed, somewhat accurately, on my forehead.)

Then I straightened from lugging the second bag from the rack overhead. And that grim, proper, reserved old German lady reached out and straightened my (long and somewhat the worse for wear) t-shirt.

I turned in surprise, to thank her, and she gave me a smile that went all the way to her eyes.

I felt like I'd won a prize.

That admonishing smile—it was like she'd decided that the annoying American student wasn't totally without merit after all. Or at least that my small (but perhaps developing) virtues deserved some encouragement.

I was still beaming as the train pulled out.

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

Quick update on my first day of class.

Scalia is amazing. So funny, and so forceful. The assertions he makes are not the whole truth, but they are so impeccably supported and stated with such conviction that if you didn't know the holes already you'd never see them. Now that I've been taught by him I can understand why his opinions are masterpieces of syllogistic logic; if you don't have the background to understand his logic—or someone of equal brilliance, like Rehnquist, pointing out the holes for you in a dissent—you will never, ever, ever find them.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, F***ING brilliant. I'm going to love every single freaking second of this.

Oh, and I'm apparently one of the only people in his class who belongs there. *smirks smugly*: "How many of you have read the Federalist Papers? No, not just 48 and 72, all of them. Three? Disgraceful. How do you expect to understand the Constitution or the country you live in if you don't understand the thought process that went into it? Read them. All of them. Then review your notes from this class and maybe you'll learn something."

...So my Crim Pro prof is great too—he's a genuine comparative scholar, absolutely hilarious, and very critical of the jury system, all of which I appreciate greatly—though Comp Torts promises to be dreary as all hell. But honestly, when you start the day with Scalia, having even one class be as good is amazing. (Besides, I don't really like Torts- I just needed a 6th credit hour.)

Nom de dieu... I got caught in the rain—a downpour—on the way home from class, so my front got soaked because my raincoat wouldn't close because it was wrapped around my backpack too. (I'm drip-dry; my computer isn't.) I'm wearing a salwar kameez and had the scarf wrapped around my front, so it was the only thing that got soaking wet; but by the time I walked into the lobby I'm sure I looked like a drowned rat. I just avoided the incredulous looks and headed straight for the elevator. (Gotta love salwars; the damn things dry like nobody's business.)

Good thing too; need a shower before the Big Damn Reception tonight, though the one I'm really looking forward to is the one with Scalia next week. This one's at the Schloss Ambras, which is a castle, so it should be pretty spectacular.

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

...No, I haven't changed my mind. But you do have some justice on your side. There are times when my sensibilities consternate even me.

There was a lanky, soft-spoken man named Max sitting beside me on the train; he was from the area. We could've had a fascinating conversation—we talked about the Tirol and my plans and my schooling and his hometown (near the Zugspitze) and his job (he's a photographer) and tennis (he's a player)—and, oddly enough, Scotch and apfelschnapp (?!)... but I kept breaking off to turn my head and look out the window.

Execrable manners. I felt bad even as I did it. Max was obviously a gentleman—so courteous, and so genuinely interested in the conversation. And it held such potential—I could've learned so much about photography from him, not to mention the local culture (including the apfelschnapp, which he makes!)...

But I couldn't help it. Literally. I felt like my head was on a leash and my neck on a pivot. Idle talk in the presence of majesty like this is like—like deciding to brush your teeth while standing in the middle of the Roman Forum.

Yeah, you should probably do it at some point—but now?

...And lately—just for added irritation—random, totally irrelevant and inaccurate thoughts keep intruding too. I'd explained to Max why I kept turning away (leaving out similes involving toothbrushes). He smiled widely, and I felt guilty enough to try and turn my head to talk to him again at least a couple of times after that. When I did he was already looking in my direction, and a small part of me wondered uncomfortably if he was looking at me... before I realized that the Tirolian Alps were also in that direction. And that he's from the Tirol—and a photographer.

Talk about ego. Or rather, paranoia. *snarls at the jackassery of Aussie surfer geologists*

...I think I might have to concede your point on this one.

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

P.S. Funny thing happened just before Torts; a couple of the women sitting behind me asked, "Are you Sumi?" Somewhat startled, I smiled and nodded, and they said "We heard through the grapevine that you were an MD-JD...?" with the rising inflection that invites one to elaborate. So I affirmed it and discussed it with them for about 2 minutes. They said, when I asked, that Mike D***** told them.

I said, "I don't think I've met him."

The GRAPEVINE? I've been here for 3 1/2 days and know like 10 people out of a program of 90—and out of those, only four have I actually told what my dual-degree is in (I generally say when they ask where I'm from that I'm doing a dual degree at SIU). I've learned through experience that it's not the first or even the second thing I want people to know about me if I want them to be comfortable around me; normally it takes days for people to act normal around me after that.

How would random people I don't know even by sight know this? More crucially, why in hell would they even care?

Just—weirdness. Again. Dude, thought I was safe with fellow Yanks.

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

...He's not just any Justice. Antonin Scalia is one of the most senior, and his opinions are masterpieces of syllogistic logic. Not a hole in any of them, and now that I've been taught by him I can understand why. He is one of the most brilliant—if not the MOST brilliant—American jurists alive. The fact that he adds wit, charm, and force to that makes for a very potent cocktail indeed.

And this is not to mention that I'd be hard-put to find a single opinion of his with which I agree. More—that I don't vehemently dislike.

As for tripping my trigger—you're damn straight he does. Just like any teacher whose virtuosity I admire, he sets my mind ablaze.

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

Of course I'd expected it to be beautiful. But I can't—I didn't—it's nearly impossible to explain... I wasn't expecting this. Had no way of even guessing this.

Yes, the Alps are storied. But I grew up amongst mountains—the Smokies, the Nilgiris—and I always thought the praise was overblown. You know, the sort of raptures born of rubes traveling away from home for the first time.

I owe an apology to those non-rubes. As soon as I can catch my breath to give it.

The mountains are overpowering, overwhelming, overaweing—whatever superlative you can come up with—whatever description will carry them above and beyond any idea of stone, sky, and vision you've ever had—that is what they are. It's not just that I can't ignore them. Or more accurately, that I can't tear my eyes away from them—that I lose pieces of my lectures gazing out of the classroom window.

It's that I'll never forget them. I have enough ineradicable mental images of deathless beauty to be able to recognize them when they take up residence in my head. I'll never be able to leave them behind. Never get over them. (Not literally. Perhaps one day I'll be lucky enough to summit one. One of the lower ones.)

Never fall out of love.

That's what it was: love at first sight... if a sight could be said to be like drowning. The mountains washed over me like a riptide. It's a roaring, thunderous enchantment.

I don't want to surface.

Which is just as well. Because I don't think I ever will.

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

The reception was amazing—Schloss Ambras is incredibly beautiful, and I'm planning on spending an entire afternoon there sometime soon. With a camera, this time... though on of the girls on my floor was fooling around with mine after we got back to the hotel, and snapped a couple of pictures. They aren't very good, though.

The reception was beautiful too, but I don't think it was as you're picturing it. There was no dancing—it was more of a dinner party sort of thing.

...Also, it just brought some of my mental/cultural tics home. What I was wearing covered more of me than any of the other women students' clothes; I've never seen so much skin in weather so chill. For the most part the women looked great (you know I've no objection to skin, I just don't show that much of mine), though there were a few outfits that made me flinch on purely (lack of) aesthetic grounds...

I enjoy most formal receptions, but this one was slightly awkward; I didn't know most of the people, and St. M's students are fairly clique-y. I generally don't worry about that sort of thing, though; and I had a good time—there were several very friendly people there.

...Yes, I love that outfit, and I think it did look nice. One of my colleagues used the word "princess", and I think he meant it in terms of looks, not attitude; it made me regret not having pictures, later. Next time I'll try to remember, okay? Promise.

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

And what on earth does this sentence mean? "So it's like the same thing but... well... more...ish." Given the spelling, I'm assuming you're not referring to stylistic resemblance to outposts of the Ottoman Empire... Confused. Help me out here.

Salsa dancing! I'm so excited—salsa is awesome and I've never had the chance to learn before, much less to learn from someone who grew up doing it. I'm ridiculously happy about it, and my only regret is that I didn't bring any "club clothes". Damn. Jeans and a spaghetti tank, I guess...

By the way, Bea says you sound "bueno macho". (She asked about you and I told her a little. Thought I'd pass on the compliment.)

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

Got drenched AGAIN—bloody Alpine summers (though truthfully if I didn’t insist on carting my computer around everywhere I’d have a raincoat that closed; still, I’d rather be drenched than computerless)—and came back to shower (the water may be some of the purest in the world, but that doesn’t mean your clothes don’t itch on you as they dry) and missed the times for the Hofburg Palace. Curses! Foiled again!

Decided then to put my free time to good use and give myself a pedicure (the shoes I may have to wear to Scalia’s reception are sort of strappy) and discovered that it was far easier said than done.

Tip: Never try to give yourself a pedicure in a European shower stall. (No doubt this will be of great use to you in your life to come.)

...Ah, writing. If I could bottle it, I could sell it like cocaine… well, perhaps not. The only persons who would buy it are those who could appreciate it already, I suppose; and that’s somewhat redundant.

Why is it that my get-rich-quick schemes always wind up involving things in which only I’m interested? —The last was a romance novel involving Optimus Prime. *shakes head more in sorrow than in anger*

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

The countryside is amazingly beautiful; so much so that it's literally impossible to describe. I've never been in a place that rendered me powerless with its beauty, but this place does—Innsbruck is in a long, narrow valley in the Alps, and nothing you've ever seen or been told will suffice to describe the effect of them.

This city is lovely, as well; I hadn’t realized that the town of Innsbruck itself has been around for more than 800 years. 800! Holy cow. Knocks my Eastern uppityness into a cocked hat- Bangalore wasn’t founded till around 600 years ago, no matter what the official histories say. The history connected with this place is simply amazing, and more than a little overwhelming. Not to mention the surroundings—well, I took some pictures out my bedroom window last evening, and should post them soon. Everywhere you look you’re overawed. I find it hard not to get a crick in my neck from craning to look at the mountains and buildings at the same time.

The folk museum, though, was more than a bit dreary—the best part was the bit with the crèche scenes… some of them were incredibly elaborate. Still, I could have saved myself a few Euro (and study time some other day) by heading straight to the Hofburg.

I'm getting along, but the first two (and so far, only) people to have been rude to me because I was an American were a bus driver and passenger here in Innsbruck. *shrugs* Not a big. Everyone else is friendly, and very kind. There’s a troubling bit of xenophobia, though; it’s much more insular than Germany (who’d have thought, really—but I suppose it IS much smaller—Innsbruck is only 150,000 people). There’s a genuine bias against foreigners (which is funny in a pathetic sort of way; this place’s livelihood is tourism) and those who don't speak German. There are immigrants holding terminal degrees and working menial jobs because they don’t speak German—I was reading a story about the Nigerian population here, and there are many such people in that community.

It seems illogical—why drain your own brain pool?—especially since Monica told me that in Tirol all schoolchildren start learning English at 6. Most people here speak some; there should be a way to accommodate highly qualified workers until they learn the official language…

Strange, and not a little irrational. The only upside to this very depressing confirmation that, yes indeed, human beings are idiots, is that I know for certain it’s not just we Americans, or Indians, who are jackasses about such things.

_________________________

A/N: That's all for now; more from Innsbruck—and side trips—some other time...

Epistolarian (& Eavesdropping)

2009-12-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

Letters are outdated.

Or so I'm told. Every time I mail someone a letter or card (other than a postcard), the response I get is delighted surprise. But the sensuousness (as in “of, concerning, perceived by, or appealing to the senses”) of paper and pen continues to please me. The smell of good paper, the way an ink pen scratches over it, the way stationery takes the ink...it's a physical record of my thoughts of, and attachment to, the person to whom it's sent.

Email is now my primary form of communication, though I swore when I started using it that that would never happen. Most of my letters now take electronic form—they're written and mailed as epistles, narratives of my stream of consciousness and salient events (and not mere communications of quotidian fact) in the same style as my physically written communications.

I think about letter-writing every time I do it—especially when it happens on paper, as in my now-15-year correspondence with Maria—because it's a dying art. And it is an art: the art of conveying your thoughts with an immediacy that reminds the person reading the letter of conversations with you, while maintaining a style and narrative structure that allows the reader to enjoy the story the writer's thoughts tell. There are many, many classic examples of the letter-writer's art: from the Biblical Epistles to Napoleon to Beethoven to Dr. Samuel Johnson, from Benjamin Franklin to Jane Austen to Isaac Asimov...

But I hadn't really ever thought of my letters as a consumable art form.

That's been changing in the past few months.

Friends with whom I've corresponded for a long time have pointed out to me that my essays follow the structure of my letters (and not the other way about; I've been an epistolarian for far longer than I've been an essayist), which are more personal (and funnier, though honestly given my brand of humor and the scarcity of response to it, I don't think that's saying much). By what is no doubt an odd chain of coincidences, within the last 3 months I've had 3 different people urge me to publish (the publicly-consumable) parts of my emails.

Part of that urging is that I've very little time for essay-writing now. I've given up my outside reading entirely (and I honestly never thought that could happen); and my writing time—what precious little I can salvage over long weekends and holidays—must be spent on high-priority academic projects and fiction. Publishing one's letters requires editing, of course, but the amount of time spent rereading and editing is much smaller than that spent writing, rereading, and editing.

So I've been rereading a few of my emails, and have come to the conclusion that some of the things they say might entertain people other than those to whom I originally wrote.

Anything I publish will be a missive I've written. If it contains quotes from the person to whom I'm writing, rest assured I've gotten that person's permission to publish it. (And in any case, chances are that if you see and recognize something you've read from me before, I've already discussed this project with you.) Because the privacy of current correspondence is something I value, no correspondence less than 2 years old will be edited or published; and so far as it's possible, I'll be removing any reference which would allow anyone but the person who's already read the epistle to identify the recipient of it.

I send some of my longest emails when I travel, so the ones with which I've decided to start are from the time of my trip to Europe 3 years ago. These will, no doubt, be the most chronologically coherent set—the rest will move forward and backward at random.

They'll be published in fits and starts, of course. And though most of them contain some useful information, most of what you'll be reading is a conversation with a friend. Eavesdropping, really.

But with my permission.

On form: These are to different people, at different times, though they're in (rough) chronological order...Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Florence, Venice, Vienna. A row of asterisks indicates a separate email.

You may begin in Munich, then, if you wish...

MUNICH

In from Das Alte and Neue Pinoktheken—won't have a chance at the science museum today. Not enough time for me to sail on the ships and walk through the coal mines plus see all my geek-pilgrimage goodies. Oh well. Munich is only 2 hours from Innsbruck.

Off to the Schatzkammer shortly. Gold and jewels from 800 AD on. Yum.

What are your favorite periods in terms of European art? The Alte Pinokthek is outstanding in terms of everything from Ren on up; the Neue Pinokthek likewise from 1850 on up. Not a big fan of modern, so I didn't hit the Moderne Pinokthek.

Yes, of course I'm having a great time. I'm in a new and beautiful place with a bunch of kind and interesting people—how could I not be?... Know what you mean about the museum time—I'm about to be surfeited with it, but that takes quite a bit of doing. Two months in Europe should just about do it, though.

Then again, maybe not...

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

Wandered around the Schatzkammer, got a few decent photos and a lot of crappy ones, totally need a nap and am going to crash.

...Nifty new roommate in the dorm—Aussie named Ben who works in geology. We swapped stories—he asked initially if I was a geologist too—and I explained I was able to ask intelligent questions because I retained my childhood interest in dinosaurs long enough to take a paleontology class in college. Whereupon he said he was interested in paleontology too, but had ditched it for more lucrative commercial work.

Also said, as soon as I explained what I was studying, that he would have "pegged me for a doc" even if I hadn't said anything. When I asked why, he shrugged and said I looked and talked like a very intelligent person. Which didn't answer my question, as I pointed out. He just grinned and said he'd a friend who was gonna be a doc and I "had the look". With which unsatisfactory reply I had to be content.

He's an avid surfer, and there's apparently a place here where people surf inland, so he asked if I wanted to go with him—he was heading out at the same time as I. I said no way in hell am I setting a toe in the Isar when the AIR here makes me cold. Which made him laugh and inform me that he knew my Yank-ness (i.e. inherent delicacy) had to come out sometime.

I told him that yes, an aversion to hypothermia was a quality inherent in all Americans other than those from Minnesota, and was one of our more admirable traits, and that Aussies should consider emulating it. Which made him laugh more. Rather off-putting when you're trying to insult someone back.

Anway, the upshot is that I'm promised a dino tutorial before we both leave tomorrow. F***ing WICKED.

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

Oh yes, the backpack.

The coat-check women at the Schatzkammer didn't believe I actually carried my backpack—asked where my 'boyfriend' was. Shrugged, said, 'no boyfriend, it's mine', picked it up, put it on, and tightened the straps as they—and one of the two Schatzkammer guards, the one with the automatic weapon (the whole museum is a steel-lined vault)—made disbelieving 'Ooooo' noises and flexed their biceps. I flushed red, smiled, said thank you, and managed to make my way out without tripping.

Not one of my more graceful exits, but honestly, how am I supposed to respond to that?

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

The band playing in the Winter Garden totally stole this bassline from 'My Sharona'. Bet they didn't credit it either. Wankers.

Yes, Osterreich beckons, and I leave tomorrow. The trip is by train, so hopefully it should be worry-free, and classes begin on Monday. The good time is optional, but I hope for it too.

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

I stayed in Munich for one more day. Had a message from Heather this morning that the Karwendel "may not be able" to be open for reception this afternoon, so rather than take the chance of getting down there and having to pony up 70-100€ for a room in Innsbruck I chose to stay in Munich for another day. So I extended my stay at Wombats, switched my ticket, and took off for the Deutsches Museum.

Ah, the Deutsches Museum.... *gibbers incoherently* Been to the Smithsonian, the National Gallery, the Art Institute, the Field Museum, the Monterey Aquarium... you get the idea. But this is the first museum I've ever found that I could literally spend two weeks in, still not see everything that was there, and still not want to leave.

The things they had in that place.

Original laboratory equipment from Joule to Coulomb to Watt to Kelvin to Faraday.

The lab bench on which the first atom was split.

The first steam engine.

An enormous 3-masted sailing ship, space shuttles, airplanes, a Foucault pendulum, salt and coal mines so realistic that my claustrophobia started kicking in, materials physics... I think I actually nearly fainted several times. (Though that could have been low blood sugar. Who can be arsed about food when the giants of science are looming around you?)

Oh, I'll be back to Munich. Someday, sometime. I could have told you that before, but this afternoon confirmed it. What a wonderful introduction to Europe this place is. Even the natives are friendly—my stilted and mispronouced mishmash of a few German words seems to produce nothing but amusement, but genuine courtesy seems to surprise and please these folks. Not a soul in this entire place has been less then kind to me in my time here.

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

...There was a woman on the subway who was staring at me today, and I wondered why. Her face looked as though it'd been through a shredder, and it took all my presence of mind to maintain a pleasant, neutral expression as I met her eyes—I wanted so badly to flinch. But I didn't—I smiled at her, and she looked very surprised, then smiled back.

Odd, the things that make a deep impression on one—as much as anything else I'll remember from Munich I'll remember the surprise and pleasure on her face, showing even through the bloody scrapes, as she smiled back at me.

S4, from Ostbanhof.

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

Glad you like reading what I write. We've always discussed my prolixity, both orally and in writing—I'll probably have to cut back once I start class...

Being chatted up by a 19-year-old who is too drunk to talk or walk straight and who I've been trying to tell—politely—to go away as I type and who just offered to let me slap him for bothering me. (!?!! Original, though daft.) Poor lad. 19 if he's a day, actually. No, kiddo, I ain't going to the bar and I wasn't at Bonnaroo just because I'm from Nashville. Sorry.

Most of the police and guards here don't carry submachine guns. And I don't agree that more heavily-armed gendarmes lead to a more pacific police force... Like I said, the Schatzkammer is a museum entirely located in a locked, metal-walled vault. The guards there carry submachines because there are more diamonds in there than in the f***ing Antwerp exchange. No kidding.

Just interrupted my typing to check scores on the Met game for a guy who was desperate to see them—poor fellow, he reminded me so much of Bill in the throes of his mania that I couldn't ignore him. He was ridiculously grateful, which was nice, but I don't know why guys have to touch you to say thanks. I'm not deaf—don't really need physical signs. Words'll do just fine, thanks.

I really do want Joe here. In addition to the joy of his company, his presence itself—large and THERE—could be useful. I usually give off the 'go away' vibe pretty successfully—it just seems to be short-circuited here for some reason. Hrm. I'll have to work that one out.

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

...I think I figured out why my 'go away' beacon isn't working as well—in an unfamiliar milieu, people seem to tend to overinterpret friendliness, especially when feeling insecure or unsteady. A lot of these guys have never been out of their home country; add to that the appalling fact that a lot of women seem to come here and utterly forget all commitments at home...

(Yesterday I was sitting and typing an email when the girl beside me said calmly to her companion, "Yeah, if I stay here I'm gonna cheat on him. It's more or less inevitable"; why this sort of thing still disgusts me, after all this time, confuses me, but I find it so revolting that it was all I could do not to give the girl some sharp words—restrained only by the thought that if such things are acceptable enough to her to be a topic of casual public conversation then no words from a stranger would make a dent anyway—and my goodness, another parenthetical longer than the original sentence; I have a talent for these.)

...and the entire phenomenon becomes easier to understand, though not less repulsive.

Whew. Inadvertent rant on fidelity while inside foreign borders over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled stream of consciousness.

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

...I would have said "of course" but for something that had happened earlier—I mean, based on my assumption of Ben's lack of interest in the manner which you seemed to be positing. I was blithely assuming it was limited to semi-informed paleontological discussion.

That was the story I said I'd tell you later... and given the time constraints I'm under at the moment (to check out, buy my tickets, etc.) it won't be in this email.

Brazen, huh? Yes, there seems to be a lot of that going around here... I have to confess that in the case of Ben I found it surprising. He didn't seem the type—and I have types pegged pretty well. *shrugs* Chalk another one up to the specimens displayed under 'experience'.

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

Leaving for Osterreich in a little less than an hour and a half. Getting myself plus bags down to the station and onto the train should be fun. The people who said, "putting your books in your bags should be no problem" were big fat liars.

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

Okay, got myself checked out, luggage sorted (for now), train doesn't leave for 3 1/2 hours—I'll tell you this story before I leave to wander about the English Garden/Karlsplatz one last time.

Yeah, okay, so. Ben. (And save the admonitions as to my cluelessness, please. You and Joanna—and Joe, and Vicki, and Becky—can have a great time belaboring me later.)

Went up to nap after beating myself to shreds in the Munich museums yesterday, and woke to Ben coming in the room. (VERY light sleeper. I'm sure you remember.) He was moving around, so I closed my eyes and waited for him to stop.

After a minute he stopped and I started falling asleep again, but it sounded like he'd stopped close to my bunk (upper bunk) so I turned my head—and found him looking at me from about 2 feet away. After which I was, of course, wide awake. I quirked a brow and didn't say anything and he looked at me for almost another minute. When he kept looking at me without saying anything I said, "G'night", turned my head, closed my eyes, and waited for him to go away.

Which, eventually, he did.

That was enough for me to go, "Hey, wait a minute,"—I'm not completely clueless, just a bit slow on the uptake—but when I got up and was pondering climbing down from the bunk and checking my email Ben was in the room again, lying on his bunk and reading "Slaughterhouse 5". I got up, climbed down, grabbed my bag and was about to leave when he asked me to hold up a minute. So I waited.

He then asked me if I was a one-night stand kind of girl.

This made my eyebrows soar, not only because it is or should be patently obvious that I'm NOT, but it had also seemed that he wasn't either. Shrugged off my evidently faulty judgment and said, "No", to which he said, "Well, I'm not either."

This left me puzzled and utterly lacking any sort of response, so I said nothing.

He then asked me if I had a boyfriend. This—curse my compulsive honesty—left me sort of searching for a response. So after a second I said, "No, but there's someone I'm attracted to and I'm really not interested in anyone else." (Okay, so it wasn't totally true. But it has been, until recently. And yes—yes, I know. But the 'terminally monogamous' discussion goes well with the 'terminally clueless' one—and a bunch of red wine—so you can just bite your tongue for now on that one too. Sigh.)

And he said, "But he's not your boyfriend." And I lost my temper just a little at his persistence (and the somewhat bizarre bunk thing) and snapped, "It doesn't matter." To which Ben said, "Tell him I said he's a lucky guy." To which I glared and said, "I won't," and left.

*winces* Except, of course, that I did...

_____________________________________________________

That's it for Munich. On to Austria, at some point...if anyone is interested.

Grown-up Gift Lists: e-Cards, Body Balm, Heifers and Chocolate

2009-12-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

With the advent of Black Friday and the mad stampede of those who nurse a secret passion for melee warfare (please don't kid me that the feeding frenzy spurred by the chum of Black Friday deals is anything else), those of us less inclined to physical battle go online for our gifts.

This also, not coincidentally, marks the beginning of the “season of giving”—a time when many pay far more attention to the marginalized and less fortunate than they do during the rest of the year. So this is also a great time for paying attention to organizations who do wonderful work, desperately need money, and offer either products or tokens of remembrance which make wonderful gifts. Everyone wins—you, your gift recipient, and others in need of help.

Thusly, I present for your delectation a list of organizations (in no particular order) which do extremely valuable work, and which offer appealing merchandise and/or commemorations. Please consider them as possibilities for your gift-giving this holiday season.

1. Magdalene House.
This is an organization which provides a 2-year, residential rehabilitation program for prostitutes. I've written about Magdalene before; it is extraordinary. The women it serves usually start life with every possible disadvantage, and their stories—told without an ounce of self-pity—are literally enough to make rooms full of upper-middle-class, rather self-satisfied, people weep.

Its success rate is remarkable, both because it is run with intelligence and discipline and because the program (unlike other 2- and 4-monthers of its kind) relies not on religious or other indoctrination but on a 2-year long program of education, therapy and job training. The program is dedicated to giving these women the tools with which to realize that they have something worth giving to a world which has treated them as worthless—and the skills with which to give it.

Their shop is called Thistle Farms, and its products—candles, bath oils, lotions, and other such products—are handmade by the residents of Magdalene House, out of the highest-quality ingredients. I both use them and give them as gifts (their Citrus Vanilla scent is a particular favorite). They're a wonderful value, the equal of anything I've ever purchased at The Body Shop, and a great deal better than Bath and Body Works products, both of which retail for the same prices.
Indulge your (or your recipients') senses and soul here: http://www.thistlefarms.org/inventory

2. UNICEF.
On the off chance that you don't know what the United Nations' Children's Fund does, it is the biggest financial source for help—whether nutritional, educational, residential or medical—to children in every country in the world. Founded after World War II to help children in regions devastated by the War, dedicated to the welfare of the children it serves and to an avoidance of political affiliation, it has continued its work for more than 50 years.

I personally buy the Christmas/holiday cards almost every year, and generally send them to my favorite people (forget Hallmark; for greeting cards, UNICEF is the very best). Many of the cards' designs are based on art created by children whom the fund has helped; the gifts are a lovely selection of items from jewelry to calendars, all based on designs by people who have benefited from the program (both child and adult). It is an exotic collection, lovely and vivid, and when one considers prices for similar items in specialty boutiques and even department stores, the items in it represent a wonderful value.
Send the very best from here: http://www.shopcardsandgifts.unicefusa.org/

3. Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
As the wording of the name implies, Doctors Without Borders was founded by a group of French doctors with the goal of providing medical care to persons without access, regardless of race, sex, religion, or political boundaries. The organization of the group is a model of associative decision-making, and their funding is without governmental or political influence (80% of their funding comes from private donors, much of it in the form of volunteer work by medical professionals).

MSF's accomplishments are legion; they rehabilitate infrastructure and train personnel as well as staffing clinics and providing emergency care. It also works with local authorities to provide clean water and sanitation; indeed, in many regions of Africa they remain the only source of medical care, food, and water. These and other accomplishments were acknowledged by 1999's Nobel Peace Prize.

Because of their adamant refusal to ally with any commercial or governmental entity, they do not offer products in commemoration of donation, but acknowledge donations on behalf of others with both e-cards and letters.
Make more borders vanish here: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/

4. Adopt-A-Classroom.
This organization is very nearly unique in my experience; its time and expertise are all donated, and it sends 100% of your gift to the teacher of your choice. It is aptly named; you may choose a classroom on the basis of personal knowledge of need (fill in the name of the school and teacher to whom you'd like your donation sent), or look at classrooms in various areas (including your place of residence—I picked a classroom in the population-of-2,000 village of DeSoto, IL this year), or allow Adopt-a-Classroom to choose for you. Given the fact that education in America is desperately (and I do mean desperately) underfunded, and that (horribly underpaid) teachers spend an average of $1,200 of their own money on classroom materials every year, this is one of the best ideas I've heard in ages.

Though the organization itself recognizes donors only, the teachers who receive donations have their classes send cards or letters or drawings to the donors and their gift recipients, who are welcome to visit the classrooms if they choose. Any amount you send will be welcome—and used for classroom supplies.
Books, crayons, and posters ahoy! The voyage starts here: http://www.adoptaclassroom.com/adoption/

5. Modest Needs.
This (aptly named) organization is a small charity which helps low-income but self-sufficient families and individuals, and non-profit organizations, with one-time grants of financial assistance—sums of less than $200. They use the funds to help families defray sudden, unexpected expenses—unusually high heating bills, trips to the doctor, auto repair—which might otherwise cause them to fall below the poverty line financially or through loss of work. They also offer payment to the creditors of community organizations whose programs can be broadened because of the lessened financial burden.

The micro-loan concept (a misnomer, since often the funds are not meant to be repaid), first applied in Third World countries, finds a well-run and compassionately administered home here. Though the organization runs on only $24,000 a year, they were able to fund only 7% of the grant applications they received last year; they need funds, and yours will be very well-used. The founder said that his main goal is “providing a vehicle for human kindness”. This one runs soundly, and with your help, can go further. The site allows you to create “gift certificates” to send to those in whose name you're donating.
Modest Needs' vehicle for human kindness fuels up here: http://www.modestneeds.org/donation/

6. Southern Poverty Law Center.
This organization was started as a small civil rights firm in Birmingham, AL in 1971, by one of my personal heroes, Morris Dees. It offers free legal services to victims of discrimination and hate crimes (largely the latter), and monitors the activity of more than 200 extremist groups (including Aryan Nation and the Klu Klux Klan). Its Intelligence Project offers training for law enforcement officials, including an online course on hate crimes; its Teaching Tolerance program provides free classroom kits to teachers, both for childrens' and teachers' use (the latter primarily with its Teaching Diverse Populations toolkit).

One can judge the Center's success at shutting down and calling attention to the activities of hate groups by the number of times hate group members have been convicted for plans to firebomb or destroy the Center's buildings—or to assassinate Dees and his associates (30 different people; firebombing succeeded once, as did an assassination).

The SPLC does not receive any portion of its clients' judgments, but instead is funded by private donations. You can send e-cards to those in whose name you're donating.
Fund a source of tolerance and justice here: https://secure.splcenter.org/donate/online/

7. The Heifer Project.
This is a simple and elegant concept, and like so many others of its type, a very effective one. Only a farmer, I think, could have realized the amount of difference that owning a single (livestock) animal can make in terms of sustenance for a family; only a person who'd volunteered in relief work and dealt with the frustration of allocating scarce food could have realized what that difference could mean for poor, rural families. Dan West, the farmer who founded the program in the 1930s, was both.

Heifer International provides region-appropriate livestock as well as tree seedlings and training in sustainable farming. Its program requires that recipients donate some female offspring of their livestock to other families they know who are in need, who will then undergo training and donate other animals, and so on. In this way, entire communities can become self-sustaining. It is a beautifully simple concept, one that has been effective in over 125 countries for more than 75 years.

The site allows you to send e-cards and print gift notice cards: there is also an option of personalizing your Christmas cards with special Heifer International themes on Shutterfly, or to order gift cards to be mailed directly to you as you donate.
Give a community llamas (or geese, or cows, or...) here: http://www.heifer.org/site/

8. Human Rights Watch.
The first step in addressing a problem is realizing that one exists; and it's there that HRW comes in. Founded in order to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki accords, it's stuck with its highly effective policy of “name and shame” ever since.

HRW's mandate is research into human rights violations, including identification of root causes, means of perpetuation both domestic and foreign, and aggravating factors both internal and external. The same set of criteria is brought to bear on every country and every possible rights violation: unlawful imprisonment, torture, genocide, persecution.

Their reports are published and disseminated to governments, treaty organizations, major NGOs... in other words, any entity with possible power over or an interest in rights violations. Their reports are lengthy and detailed, including analyses of political, economic, social, and historical backgrounds of conflicts and abuses—scholarly and thoroughly documented research, which is often published in academic journals. They are the free press of human rights organizations: the ones who recognize, analyze, document, and report problems.

Your recipients can be informed via e-card of gifts made in their honor.
Fund recognition of rights gone wrong here: https://www.kintera.org/site/c.nlIWIgN2JwE/b.4546833/k.471F/Give_a_Gift_in_Someones_Honor

9. Habitat for Humanity.
This organization has built more than 300,000 houses in its 33 years of operation (the 300,000th was in Collier County, FL and the 300,001st was in Zacapa, Guatemala). Volunteers and future homeowners construct the houses Habitat builds; the homeowners repay mortgages for the cost of construction, with no interest—and their payments are used to build other Habitat houses. As with many wonderfully simple ideas, this one works beautifully.

Habitat is one of the highest-profile nonprofits in the US; it has an enormous amount of support from corporations, celebrities, and the general populace. I'm not recommending it because it's desperately in need of money; I'm recommending it because human beings need places to live, and as fast as Habitat builds, there are never enough homes to meet the demand. I'm recommending it because the simple dignity of owning the place in which you sleep—in having a stake in the place in which you live and a specific part in the lives of your neighbors—is one of the best, and least accessible, ways of building families and communities. Habitat builds houses, yes. And lives, for the people who build them, live in them, and surround them.

HFH's site has a store with merchandise from soup cups to stationery to stepstools; all profits go to Habitat.
Build and bestow here: http://www.habitatstoreonline.com/

10. Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.
Begun by an NYC court clerk in 1904, this is one of the oldest continually-operated charities in America. It is also one of the most highly rated and successful—and, in my view, unique. Many programs are able to give a great deal of help, much of it invaluable—as witness the rest of this list. But this is the oldest of very few organizations that support the establishment of one-to-one relationships between people who need help and people who give it—in the most potent form possible, that of sharing parts their lives and selves.

This is the most direct response to human need, the currency in which we deal with other human beings on the most basic level. We are social animals, and we learn by watching and by doing. Big Brothers Big Sisters knows that, and that the best and most lasting way to learn a lesson is to have a teacher focused on giving a single student whatever s/he most needs—whether that's arithmetic, or valuing oneself and others enough to make good choices. The organization works in every one of the 50 states, offers its services upon request and free of any charge, and thoroughly vets its volunteers. It is the first mentoring program, and it is also a model of its kind.

'Tribute' donations are acknowledged by a card sent from the organization to your gift recipient.
Contribute to the socialization of young humans here: ">https://secure.bbbs.org/site/c.diJKKYPLJvH/b.1720657/k.615A/Memorial_or_Tribute_Gift/

_______________________________

Note: All of these organizations' 'vital stats' can be checked on Charity Navigator at http://www.charitynavigator.org/ .

UP

2009-11-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra didn't invent the Hero, nor yet the Quest. Even the somewhat-bumbling sidekick came on the scene long before Don Quixote's squire Sancho Panza came stumbling across it.

But Cervantes gave to the Quest something new. The idea that a goal which meant nothing to anyone else—which the rest of the world mocked and scorned, and would always mock—could be immensely valuable and ennobling. That dreams did not have to be approved by others to make a man's life worth living. To make a man a hero.

Pixar and Cervantes aren't (to me, at any rate) the most obvious of bedfellows. And animated film is a medium which has been around for so few years, comparatively speaking. So it was odd to me that Pixar could pick up Quixote's (much-abused) banner so skillfully. Could illuminate the Quest in ways that even the Don himself could not.

UP is visually stunning—one expects nothing less of Pixar. Ed Asner's voice emerges out of a square, set face that somehow manages to capture the essence of the word 'curmudgeon' without once seeming bad-tempered or ill-natured. Russell the Wilderness Explorer is inept and bumbling and inoffensive while simultaneously giving the impression of unfaltering determination and courage. Kevin the (giant, chocolate-loving, exotic) bird is an unbelievable mixture of toucan, velociraptor, and shrill, feathery rainbow.

And it will be a very, very long time before I see something that makes me as breathless with delight and wonder as the sight of Mr. Carl Fredrickson's modest Victorian sailing joyously through the sky under thousands and thousands of translucent, jewel-colored balloons.

Carl's blunt, square face and blunt, square glasses also somehow evince a hint of pixielike mischief that he very clearly got from his indomitable wife, Ellie. The story of their long and loving marriage—one full of joy and excitement and unfailing hopes despite its griefs—is told in a spare and silent montage that ranks high as one of the most quietly effective love stories ever shown on a screen.

Ellie meets Carl when they are children—the time at which they conceive their dream of living a life of Adventure. She tells him all about Paradise Falls in South America, the object of their childhood Hero's latest Quest. Then she makes him “cross his heart” to fly them there in his plane when he grows up.

And she dies without their life-long dream coming true.

Condemned (literally) as a menace to society, and thus to “Shady Oaks Retirement Community”, Mr. Fredrickson plucks up his determination, and his house—and, unwittingly, Russell—to set out on a Quest which means nothing to anyone else: to take himself, his and Ellie's house, and memories that literally span a lifetime to Paradise Falls.

Once there, Carl does eventually become a hero; he saves Russell's adopted bird Kevin from capture by his megalomaniacal childhood hero, Mr. Muntz. But the sweetness, the heart, of the story is the fact that in seeking to remain faithful to his wife's endless delight in and quest for adventure, Carl Fredrickson almost misses the fact that he already has. Carl finds Ellie's loving encouragement towards “his own adventures” just in time to stop him from failing their lifelong dream... because until he sees her message, he doesn't truly understand what that dream was. And it is because of Ellie's urging him towards his own adventures as well as because of his own caring for Russell that Carl Fredrickson finally chases and rescues his own Sancho Panza.

Carl Fredrickson and Russell abandon their first Quest. And yet they are heroes: it is because of that abandonment that they can save Kevin. And they save each other by it as well—at Paradise Falls, and then again once they come home.

Theirs is an adventure bigger than even Ellie could have hoped for. It begins as a Quest, a search for the near-impossible across distances and barriers that are almost insurmountable. And true to the legacy of Don Quixote, Carl Fredrickson's Quest is a gesture of faith and hope in a dream that means nothing to anyone but him.

But Mr. Fredrickson is different from—better than—the traditional Hero, and in the end, even better than Don Quixote. Because Carl is truer to his hopes than the Don, who relinquished his Quest only to die brokenhearted at its loss. Who never understood that a single quest could not contain all of one's dreams and hopes.

Mr. Fredrickson, on the brink of achieving his Quest and proving true to the vow he swore to his lady fair, realizes that some Quests must be laid aside if one is to remain true to their object—and to preserve those dreams which make it worthwhile.

That Ellie was, and he and Russell are, adventurers not because their adventure has an end that must be achieved, but because they venture.

That the company of one's fellow adventurers, and the joy of the dare, are the best and truest prizes of any Quest.

That Quests change and end, but love and dreams and hope endure.

That these things are the stuff of which adventures—and adventurers—are made.

__________________________ ________

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
-Helen Keller

Paintings & Pipes, Maps & Territory...Venice & Carbondale

2009-10-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at my kitchen table in the grey of a cloudy autumn midmorning and remembering Venice: the pristine, near-effervescing colors of a sunny morning on the Adriatic coast, with Lombardis and turisti alike raising their faces to the perfect sky.

But this is not an essay on Venice. When I (finally) have time to construct one, it will read like a half-dream- one whose retelling strains at the edges with the knowledge that the dreamer seeks to impart a vision for which language itself has no capacity.

Venice is the utmost, and immaculate, embodiment of tangible magic.

And for someone who has watched a baby elephant peek from behind its mother on an Indian mountainside and swum in a mangrove forest in the Caribbean and sung Compline at the Couvent des Ursulines, that's saying a lot.

The sum of those experiences is a big part of why I'm writing this. One of the many reasons I love traveling is that it gives me so many places to go when I don't like my current surrounds. And yes, I'm fully aware of just how mad that must sound, and I can't be arsed to sterilize the explanation for those who demand strict rationality in their descriptions of thought (and if you are such a person, you may very well find you're in the wrong place).

Mad or not, it's true. When thinking of other things- school, studying, friends, family, reading- I have little leisure to consider where I am and if I like it. But such intense concentration fades with completion of thought or task, and I once again look about me- orient myself to my physical surrounds. Ground myself in my body and the sight and sound of the things around me. And when I do that, that locale doesn't always please me.

I like my apartment; I've gone to great pains, after the last place I lived, to make certain that I can and do enjoy this one. But, rich fabrics and bright colors aside, it's a hell of a lot more appealing on a sunny day than a dull, drizzling October one. The fact that the apartment is located in Carbondale doesn't greatly help, either: I've resigned myself to living in small towns for the near future, and Carbondale has many charming and engaging features. But it is not my preferred environment, and it is impossible to set foot outside my apartment without being reminded of that.

So, Venice, today. And now that I've mentioned them above, Kuttikayam and Guilligan's and New Orleans as well. Places that are part of my mental landscape: a wide world in which I live as surely as my body lives on physical terrain, a world mapped from the mundane but containing experiences, memories, feelings: information that the workaday topographical world can never accomodate.

It does sound mad, I know; but we all do it to a certain extent. There are the things we see in front of us, and the vast rich jigsaw of the place in which they fit inside of us. They are not the same place. For we humans, the map and the territory are often inverted; the images we have in our head, the memories and current assimilations: these are where we live. The physical world is a map to consult. It is a source of input which often fades into the background when we occupy our own internal landscapes.

Differentiating what is real from what is not is important. Is what separates the sane from those who are not. But the things which make us unique are the mental territories we construct, the record of discoveries through which we move. And if those things are not real, then neither are we.

Magritte's painting, 'The Treachery of Images', is a perfect example of this: A large pipe with the legend 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' ('This is not a pipe') beneath it. Magritte's point is well made: the painting is not a pipe. It is an image of a pipe. It cannot, as Magritte once pointed out, be filled with tobacco.

But it is Magritte's pipe. It is all the pipes he filled with tobacco over the years before his brush spilled their amalgamation onto a canvas. Ceci n'est pas une pipe, c'est n'est pas notre pipe, mais c'est son pipe: It is not a pipe, it is not our pipe. But it is Magritte's pipe, in a much larger sense than that in which he owned the labor of its making and the canvas on which he spent it. It is Magritte's idea of a pipe, and it was as real to Magritte as the image of it is not to the rest of us.

Paintings and pipes, maps and territory. We navigate them constantly.

I occupy a given latitude; whether in Venice or here in my kitchen, I am always somewhere real. But my place of residence changes. In that sense I am a citizen of several different countries: the Here and Now, the Once Before, the Future Dwelling, the Nonexistent Ideal. Their borders are blurry, but they are all distinct. All real.

And the Here and Now, my grey-washed kitchen in Carbondale, is too dim a place for me to stay at the moment. I've no reason to linger.

So I'm leaving it, and you, for a marocchino from Caffe Florian, drunk in the open air of the Procuratie Nuove. For a seat amongst the ghosts of Casanova and Goethe and Byron, for the feel of the warming sea breeze and a view of the scintillant colors of the Piazza de San Marcos. For a place to revel in the endless vibrant jostle of the world surging past me across the piazza.

Arrivederci, Carbondale. For a little while.

Metousiosis*- Law and Medicine

2009-10-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on the Saturday after my first week of medical school. In a gesture of hope and intent, I'm posting it now, 8 hours away from my first medical school exam.

_____________________________

The relationship between law and medicine is that between the things to which we belong and the things which we own. And because we live in our own bodies, live individual lives in the midst of others who do the same, the relationship between the two is inextricably intertwined.

I didn’t think this way when I set out to study both. I merely observed that all the most basic human rights—the ones that had concerned me, literally, since I was a child—sat in these areas of human effort. Bodily integrity. Mental health. Food, clothing, shelter. Safety from fear.

Having studied law—been at odds with its study and also been wholly subsumed in its intricacies and its brilliancies—and now, entering upon the study of medicine, preparing myself for a career in medical practice, the consideration of both fields has become weighted. Not biased; never that. My love of language and reverence for the march of law and the advancement of justice in human history, my gratitude and awe at the singular genius and great-mindedness of those who’ve shaped law in the last 400 years, precludes that.

But I want—intend—to practice clinical medicine. My activities within the law will always be linked to that practice. And it’s in this first allegiance, this concept of medicine as a personal undertaking as well as a central necessity of human life, that the difference between law and medicine is most important to me.

Law is the language of the things that own us—those things to which we owe allegiance. Our families, our communities, our countries, our world: they are governed by the rules to which groups of people, not individuals, agree. Of course our personal proclivities and mindsets dictate these interrelationships; but the rules which govern them absolutely, the rules which can be enforced, are set by us as parts of a whole. They are an ongoing negotiation, a discussion in which rules and premises are fluid and understanding of meaning is set by the culture in which the conversation occurs.

Medicine is the language of the thing we own—the single thing within our possession and over which our powers are (or should be) absolute. I have had a life that convinced me, from very early on, that the only things we can ever truly own lie within the limits of our skin. That whatever our bodies can do and our minds can know are the only permanent possessions humans have. The laws which govern what we can do with our bodies can be enforced only to a certain point: we are constantly in possession of that which lies within us. Such possession is a realm into which only the harshest and most abominable societies trespass.

I’ve chosen to be one of those who treat and nurture the latter entity—who live in the latter language. One of those who participates in a conversation governed by physical rules and realities, ones which no amount of negotiation will change or blunt. That we are still discovering those rules and their operation makes the conversation incomplete and oft-corrected, but the acknowledgment and frequent correction of mistakes are a hallmark of those whose main concern is the well-being of those for whom they care, and not for others’ perception of their omniscience. Acknowledgment of one’s limits is the surest sign of honesty.

It’s not this simple, of course; few things ever are. There is significant intermeshing between law and medicine, a great deal of dependence upon the understanding one of the other, even in the absence of any more exigent need.

Yet my understanding of these two fields centers around this dichotomy. My understanding of my own study, and my own approach to both these central areas of human effort, centers around the allegiances we owe others and the rights we have over ourselves—over our one absolute possession. Between a sense of self and a sense of self's place in the midst of those around us.

I want to nurture the former while respecting the latter. And it is the effort of learning to balance both which will occupy the next eight years of my life. The rest of my life, however long it may be, will be spent in maintaining those skills and that balance.

This is how I think, who I am, what I wish to become. It’s a journey that, in many ways, I’m only just beginning.

I can’t wait.

_______________________________

*Metousiosis (uμετουσίωσις): Greek for change of ουσία (essence, inner reality).

Machiavelli, Gandhi & Empedocles

2009-08-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

This was written a year ago, prompted by a Facebook Note by my friend Will Reilly on the subject of hypocrisy in conservatism versus liberalism. (Will's Notes are well worth a read. They are lucid, concise, scathing, often humorous, and very well written.) The assertion which prompted my response was that conservatives “understand that the only ethical options available to human beings are hypocrisy and evil.”
_____________________________________

A reply on the specifics of human ethics would be futile—as much because of my borderline fanatical insistence on precision (insofar as it's possible) as because of Will’s prowess in the area. Therefore my response focuses on the different definitions of hypocrisy, its expression in both liberals and conservatives, and the larger question of human perfection which underlies both.

I dislike the stances of the current Republican Party (RP) as well as disagree with the general philosophy of conservatism (by no means the same thing) because of a set of fairly marked ideological differences. It is essential to my point of view to note at this juncture that I draw a distinction between baseline personal hypocrisy and deliberate and intentional political lying.

My definition of personal hypocrisy is, roughly, the maintenance of a personal image which is deliberately inaccurate with the primary goal of obtaining the esteem of self and others. My definition of deliberate and intentional political lying is—again roughly—the deliberate misrepresentation of facts and situations which affect large numbers of people, which utilizes esteem and belief as tools for a larger manipulation in order to obtain a specific and desired political result.

The current Republican Party is not conservative in any formal sense of the term. Classical conservatism has to do with the maintenance of current power structures as well as current MOs—economic, political, social, etc. Anyone who attempts radical revision of any of these aspects of society—by whatever means—is ipso facto not conservative. There is no accurate characterization of the RP of the past 20 years which does not include such attempts. It has not, however, ceased to bill itself as conservative.

It taxes my credulity to believe that those in charge of the public’s image of the RP do not understand this basic tenet of political science. This sort of misrepresentation is not personal hypocrisy. This is a deliberate and intentional political lie—a deliberate misrepresentation of facts which utilizes belief as a tool for a larger manipulation to obtain a specific political result.

Personal hypocrisy, on the other hand, is often conflated with the choice of a given moral code and any subsequent failure to meet its demands. I could not disagree more entirely. I classify any failure to meet a chosen moral standard as a failure, neither more nor less. It can also, depending on circumstance, be a severe dereliction of ethics with dire circumstances for self and others. However, defining a failure to meet an ethical standard as hypocritical presupposes that humans are capable of perfection and that failure to meet a chosen standard is therefore deliberate.

One may fail one’s standards without being a hypocrite. Hypocrisy resides in the representation of oneself as the exemplar of an ideology rather than as a follower of that ideology; failure to meet one’s chosen standards is hypocritical only if one advertises perfection in them. There are public personae on both sides of the line who are definitely guilty of this; there are people in every part of the political spectrum who do it. Most do it deliberately, and it’s reprehensible—not only can it severely discourage those trying to meet the same standards, it’s profoundly disrespectful of other human beings as equals.

Any lie is disrespectful, but some forms of disrespect have worse results than others. I do not, for example, respect C’s (not his real initial) taste in hairstyles. Its result is invariably a miserable affront to the sighted public. I also routinely lie to him about my opinion. This is undeniably an expression of the fact that I do not respect him as an equal in matters of taste. My firm belief that C’s judgment in this area is vastly inferior to mine results in a mental grimace, a bold-faced lie, and my badmouthing his taste to vast numbers of people he doesn’t know.

A belief that certain of his judgments in other areas are vastly inferior to mine—say, political judgments rooted in his economic circumstances, as they affect his right to vote—would result in all of the above, as well as in an undervaluation of his rights as a citizen. The latter is, for most sane people, rather more detrimental to their well-being than the former.

Characterizing recognition of the basic fact of different levels of hypocrisy as essentially conservative in nature is inaccurate. I don’t think realism is limited to the conservative end of the political spectrum; indeed, science is conspicuously absent from it in America at this time.

Such recognition is neither more nor less conservative than, say, the periodic table. Hydrogen has one proton and no neutrons. People have different rights and standards of judgment, all of which they screw up on a regular basis. Anyone who argues with either of these facts is, as we say down South, drivin’ on fumes.

(Reading past the asterisks puts you in the realm of a bit of philosophy—Catholic dogma, Greek philosophers, mathematics, etc. If concrete and personal conclusions are the reason you’re reading this, you can skip to the second line of asterisks without missing all but a few of those.)

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

On a personal level, I dislike the idea of failure to follow perfectly one’s ethical standards constituting hypocrisy because I do not think that people can be perfect. One of the two main reasons for that is that the concept of attainable perfection is based by definition on a knowledge of flawlessness. If you were flawless, would you know it? If you knew it, would that be a flaw?

There are philosophical as well as scientific ways to frame this—quantum chromodynamics and circuitry, ontology and Euclidean math. But because I’ve not the time, patience, or expertise for involved expositions—on Aristotelian teleology, Aquinas’ substantio, Nichomachean numbers or semiconductors—the shortest way to frame this question is in terms of the catechism of my traditional Catholic upbringing: Is perfection attainable? Yes—paradise is the perfect union with God, who is perfect. Is knowledge of that union attainable? Yes. But as soon as one recognizes one’s perfection, one is no longer perfect. Belief in one’s own perfection is superbia, a deadly sin—one of the Seven, in fact. Therefore perfection is only attainable in the absence of any sense of self or knowledge of self-perfection.

This is a logic loop with no way out. (There are a lot of those in the Boston Catechism.) It also eviscerates any meaning of the word ‘perfection’ as something a human can pursue. Perfection, once reached, involves giving up one’s humanity—one’s knowledge of self as a separate entity. (Pure biology. We are not eusocial animals, like ants, with only a sense of the larger community and no personal drive to survive.) Therefore, by definition, humans cannot obtain perfection.

It’s a conclusion with which any number of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and artists would agree. In fact, many of the above practitioners whom I most respect valued perfection as a pursuit rather than as an end. It was desirable because it was not attainable—would never be attainable—and was therefore a spur to an endless ascent of effort and accomplishment.

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

Expositions on knowledge aside, I do not believe humans can be perfect. I don’t believe it for the very simple reason that I tend toward empiricism in most things, and I’ve never met or heard of a human who was. I do, however, believe that humans can become better than what they now are, both individually and societally. Perfection as an idea is a useful tool, no more—but it IS useful. And the definition of perfect in many things shifts over time. Carl Lewis changed forever what the world thinks of as a perfect run. Mozart changed forever what the world thinks of as a perfect musical composition. Such changes reflect progress in human understanding as well as goals for which to strive.

But the best refutation of the idea that liberals strive for perfection because they idealize the world and the people in it into useless abstraction is my own point of view and my own experience.

Because I’m a liberal. Really liberal. Really really liberal. More liberal than almost anyone I know, in this country anyway. And I don’t believe that perfection is possible in individuals or in human societies. I don’t think that guys or race or class or environmental trauma are the wellspring of the world’s ills. I sort of think that humans are. And I don’t think that only liberals, or only conservatives, are the sole parties to this sort of oversimplified doltish one-track stupidity. And I think that most ills are caused by flaws which are endemic to human nature and which are not ever going anywhere.

But I also think we can behave better than we do, that other human beings can suffer less than they do, both in everyday life and in society overall. I think that because I have a personal acquaintance with suffering and don’t like it, and I think that humans are equal in rights and worth, and therefore think that if suffering is bad for me then others probably shouldn’t have to endure more of it than is absolutely unavoidable either.

And I think that that goal is worth pursuing. Holding up an ideal way to behave is worthwhile because it gives one something for which to strive, in the same way that a relatively musically illiterate schlub like me can listen to Mozart and then seek that kind of harmony in other music or sounds. Perfection is a concept which can be both specifically and generally applied.

Societal change takes time. Slavery caused much suffering. Most of the world now thinks it’s wrong, and those that don’t at least have to lessen its use because they have to cover it up. The same goes for acceptance of suffering from disease and poverty. Basic biology doesn’t offer much hope for societal change. Indeed, human biology doesn’t offer much aside from hope for small kin-based clans killing each other over scarce resources. But I jive with Dawkins, evolutionary biologist extraordinare, who suggests that just because something runs counter to evolution it’s not necessarily a bad idea.

For example, I like the idea of justice. It’s totally unnatural; biologically, fairness is as relevant as, well, Hermès scarves. But I think it’s a damn good idea nonetheless. Over the millennia, more and more people have been of that opinion. And if it weren’t for people who insisted on pursuing change or betterment on a level unattainable in their lifetimes, that shift in opinion couldn’t have happened.

Machiavelli saw the world as it was. Gandhi saw the world as it could be.

Was Machiavelli right? Yes.

Was Gandhi right? Yes.

One must see the world as it is before seeing it as it can be.

That fact is neither conservative nor liberal. It is what is done once one sees what is possible that makes the difference.

Thrill, Thriller, Thrilling, Thrilled

2009-06-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason I’ve thought often, over the last year, of Michael Jackson. He was so controversial that I was reluctant to post any of my thoughts—so this has been living on my hard drive for nearly six months.

I wish I’d posted it before; but it’s still—it's more than—appropriate now.
_________________________________________

One of the few things that makes me feel the true generation gap between myself and my younger friends is their attitude towards Michael Jackson.

He’s an object of fun in the press now. A “freak”, deeply disturbed, with an appearance that gets less human with every appearance in the public eye.

But to my generation, and even those before? Also a legend. A titan. A glorious, glorious star.

Michael Jackson changed American music—and culture—forever. I will always love his music. No revelation of freakish personal habits or psychological imbalances will change that. He is extraordinary, a force to be reckoned with in this or any other time period, and he most certainly ranks in the top ten musical artists of the 21st century, if not the top five.

I’ve said this to younger friends, and have gotten an uncomfortable shrug or the verbal equivalent thereof, followed immediately by a “But…”

But nothing.

I was 8 when Thriller came out. No-one not remembering it can understand the extent, duration, and depth of the utter frenzy he induced with that album. No one had ever seen anything like him before—the way he moved, the way he sang. It was magic, a sorcerer’s spell he cast over the entire world.

There were replicas of that silver-glittering glove in every store—and not just in children’s sizes. Penny loafers flew off the shelves; pant hems shortened dramatically. If you watched MTV for an hour, you’d see one of his videos—depending on the time of day, perhaps more than one. Hordes of women of every age bought his albums in multiples, screamed and cried at his concerts, fought over the tickets. Posters of him were plastered in bedrooms and living rooms and offices and street corners. He met with President Reagan. Gang members wore imitations of his coats. He was everywhere.

And he deserved it.

Deserved it in the same way Frank Sinatra deserved it; the same way the Beatles or Elvis Presley deserved it. He was a phenomenon not just because he was new but because he was brilliant: a superbly gifted entertainer. No one who watched him came away unimpressed; classical musicians, hard-rock artists. His supremacy was undeniable.

And those are my subjective impressions. The facts, if possible, are even more stunning. Thriller sold a million albums a week while it topped the charts. Released nearly 30 years ago, and leading the advent of MTV as a primary marketing vehicle for music as well as most major mass-marketing techniques now in use, it remains the best-selling album of all time.

No wonder the New York Times said, two years after Thriller’s release, that “in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else.”

I defy you to name one pop artist since him of whom that could be said. Just one.

And he didn’t stop. While no album afterward reached the mind-bending success of Thriller (and no album, his or otherwise, ever will), Michael Jackson won a “Living Legend Award” Grammy after Dangerous. Only 15 have ever been awarded; he shares it with figures such as Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Luciano Pavarotti, and Johnny Cash. He was 35, and he remains the youngest artist to whom it’s been granted.

He. Is. A. Legend. For. A. Reason.

There’s a reason he’s still referred to in the industry as the King of Pop. A reason he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. A reason he holds the Guinness World Record as “Most Successful Entertainer of All Time.”

Do you understand? The unhinged man you see in the tabloids, on the news—to those of you who didn’t live through his successes, that’s all he is.

But it isn’t all of him. Nowhere close. And it is because he is also a giant, a colossus, that the depth of the footprint he’s left on our music, our culture, our lives, is one that even his own psychoses cannot fill in.

His work, and talent, are magnificent, and nothing and no-one—not even himself—can ever take that away.
__________________________

Postscript: I can’t believe, really, that he’s gone. It feels personal. It is personal. Because some people, though far away and personally unknowable, change our world so much that they change our lives forever as well.

He was one. One of the big ones. I wish he hadn’t been (I had to correct that from ‘weren’t’; I really don’t believe it, you see) so deranged. I wish he had gotten the help he needed. I wish he’d made more music.

I wish unobtainable things.

I wish Michael Jackson weren’t dead.

Storm & Sail

2009-05-23T18:39:00.001-07:00

Luke Valiquette committed suicide this past Wednesday.

I knew him in high school, sort of. Short, quiet, kind.

And so very, very talented.

Paul told me of his death, and it was Paul who sent me lyrics from “Sailmaker”—the song which won the first talent show Luke entered, in his junior year of high school:

He said, “Son this great sailmaker's
Gonna hang it up one day...”
Daddy is my sailmaker and mommy is the wind.
My brothers in arms could never do harm
To the sails that we mend…

Him and his guitar and a microphone, his glasses glinting in the stage lights: it was all he needed to blow everyone else—myself included—out of the water. Eighteen years later, I can still sing the chorus.

Every death steals something from the world. Twice before I’ve written of Millay’s “Dirge Without Music”:

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

For me Luke’s formula is a simple, loving tribute, honed by a talent that seemed too big for his body. His phrase is a four-note refrain, sweet and true and haunting. Daddy is my sailmaker and mommy is the wind…

His sail has vanished over the horizon.

But whatever darkness drove him there, whatever tempest he battled, anyone who knew him or his music holds the melody to which he gentled the thunder.

Thank you, Luke. And goodbye.

Abyssus abyssum invocat

2009-04-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

I am not a particular fan of innocence.

Make no mistake: I value clarity of conscience, compassion, kindness.

But the traditional idea of innocence—simplicity, inexperience, naiveté—leaves me cold.

Perhaps it’s because of the fact that I love fairytales, and I know that the ‘fairytale’ idea of innocence so often purveyed has nothing to do with the true, the original fairy tales. Honor was valued, yes, and virtue, but they did not have to do with lack of experience; they were active principles. Cendrillon devised her own dresses and a way to get to the ball. Gretel murdered the witch and saved her brother with a cunning trick.

In the black forests of the Brothers Grimm, the innocent were food—mere fodder and inspiration for the great deeds of more knowing heroes.

My love for myth and mythology has something to do with it too. My favorite hero—the Greeks’ favorite hero—was not Herakles, the strongman, or Theseus, the cold and valorous prince. It was Odysseus, the clever and cunning, wily and deceitful, lusty and devious king. The man who thought the Trojan War was a fool’s errand, but won it for the Greeks. The man who from exile and repeated defeats schemed his way back to his kingdom.

The epitome of knowledge, Odysseus, his journey a long sharpening of wisdom that shaped him as surely as it strengthened him.

Knowledge is power. The Greek word επστσθα, epistesthai, from which we derive epistemology, “the theory of knowledge”: it is to “know how to do, understand”. It is, literally, “to stand over”: epi, “above”, and histasthai, “to stand”.

To know is to stand above. The subsequent inversion of the term in English, “understand”, is one of those piquant etymological ironies. But it too has its—inflections.

This train of thought pulled in because I stumbled across the titular phrase in a story, translated in the same work as “hell calls to hell” or “error calls to error”.

Ah, no.

Abyssus abyssum invocat: Deep calls to deep.

The phrase is from Psalm 41:8 in the Vulgate (the Latin Bible): “Abyssus abyssum invocat in voce cataractarum tuarum; omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt…” Deep calls to deep in the voice of your torrents, and the swells of your waves have washed over me. It is an entreaty from beside the rivers of Mt. Hermon, in the far northern reaches of the Israelites’ kingdom.

The cresting rush of knowledge does have a way of knocking one under. But unlike water, humans can swim in knowledge as surely as in its lack. And one can, in submersion, become a breathing part of the deeps.

Knowledge calls to knowledge, river to river, ocean to ocean.

Depth to depth. Abyssus abyssum invocat.

Statement of Personal Values

2009-02-24T23:23:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here, and because of my current scholastic responsibilities and personal writing projects the drought is likely to continue for some time. But as I was clearing out my email I stumbled across this class assignment, and after some consideration have decided to share it.

It is a 'statement of personal values', written for a class on legal ethics, and while rough (the essay remains as I wrote and submitted it to Professor Rudasill...3 hours before it was due) it is nonetheless a very good encapsulation of several of the most important things about me. Though not 'personal' in the conventional sense, most of them are not things I normally share.

Read it if you wish. It is, at the very least, informative on one subject: me.
_________________________________

Sumi Rebeiro
Personal Statement
Legal Profession 1/15/08

My personal values and beliefs. Hmmm.

That’s a sticky wicket, partially because I reject most conventional systems of values despite having been influenced by them earlier in my life, and partially because the word “values” in this country has turned into a loaded term which conveys a near-demand for some religious sentiment.

Nonetheless, the account of which source or sources yield my personal ethos demands a brief recounting of certain aspects of my personal history. To wit: I was raised as a staunch Roman Catholic—Catholic schooling, lector at Mass, the works—and for my mother and the pastor of my church, that included a great deal of volunteer work, all of it targeted towards social justice.

As Mom told my brothers and I repeatedly, “You are your brother’s keeper.”

To that end, I’ve been working in soup kitchens and babysitting for single mothers and running food drives and working at shelters for battered women and writing letters for Amnesty International and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, since I was 12 years old.

That same mother, however, also told me when I came to her with questions about the Baltimore Catechism when I was 11, “God gave you a brain. No matter what the nuns say, you should use it.”

In great part because of both these admonitions, when I was 18 I went off to college determined to understand why it is that human beings do such terrible things to each other, and to that end majored in Political Science and minored in Psychology. Unfortunately for me, I got exactly what I wanted. (Professor Beres, a brilliant man who advises the Israeli High Council on international law, who “read” my senior thesis, and with whom I argued through two years of classes, once looked at my transcript and asked me incredulously if I was “majoring in atrocity”.) Put briefly, my studies in politics, psychology, and history utterly destroyed the religious faith which had previously helped to shape my views of the world.

My studies also reinforced, however, my conviction that personal responsibility for the world around us is a fundamental characteristic of a responsible human being, that human effort could and does improve the world, and that compassion for others is a hallmark of the human psyche—the flip side of the terrible insecurity and insular aggression we display. International law and history, along with the dreadful realities of the depths of human capacity, confirmed these shining and irreproachable truths.

And so I embarked on a view of the world at once more bleak and more complex than any I had known before.

My in-depth study of science, undertaken once I had reached adulthood, confirmed to me that there are other articles of faith for me, most based around the authenticity of verifiable observation and the ability of human beings to know things about the universe. It did not reshape the content of my ethics towards other human beings, but it did shape the way I parse information and the standards of veracity to which I hold opinion and knowledge.

‘Values’ and ‘beliefs’ may be verifiable or nonverifiable, empirically based or faith-based. Since I was sixteen, I’ve said that everyone has a religion—a way in which they explain the universe to themselves, a way in which they bring the world together into a coherent whole. For most people, this process stops at a young age—analogous to those who, in putting together a puzzle, find a way the pieces fit together to make an understandable picture, and conclude that the puzzle is finished, disregarding any extra pieces which later fall into their hands.

There are also those who, in receiving those extra pieces, try to fit them into the puzzle—even if it means disassembling some of it entirely and finding new places for pieces whose location they’d thought certain.

I try very hard to be one of those people. I don’t always succeed—but life is an exercise which demands perseverance.

Everyone also has articles of faith—beliefs which are difficult to logically justify, but which they nonetheless hold to be true. Some of my beliefs on the value of science, the worthiness of striving for justice, and the incontrovertible personal responsibility that human beings bear for the world around them derive from these articles of faith.

• I believe that human beings, through observation, can learn facts about the world around them.
• I believe that the only changes which occur in the world, especially in human lives, are brought about through the actions of forces of nature or of other human beings.
• I believe the scientific method of observation, testing, and disproving is the best method for learning about the world around us.
• I believe human beings’ characters should be judged on their actions towards other people, not their professed beliefs, their skin color, their sex, their sexual preferences, or anything else.
• I believe that every person has the ability to be both extraordinarily creative and extraordinarily destructive.
• I believe that justice for the human race as a whole, though an artificial construct that has no real place in our evolutionary biology, is a worthy invention and deserving of fierce defense.
• I believe that small actions, whether of caring or unconcern, have wide-reaching effects on the lives of both those around us and those we may never meet.
• I believe that human love and hate are as active and effective on human lives as gravity or electromagnetism.

I try very hard indeed to make sure that my treatment of the people around me—including colleagues, professors, patients, administrators—reflects at the very least courtesy and basic respect for them as people.

My beliefs guide—have guided—both my choice of career as physician and my ongoing desire to affect the policies which most affect those with the least power to change them.

As far as tests are concerned, I’ve encountered many already. As someone who has worked and volunteered for well over 2/3 of my life, I’ve encountered thorny ethical dilemmas to which there is no good solution—only a choice between worse and worst. In those situations I do the best I can: I try to hurt the fewest number of people while keeping to the promises I’ve made.

I try my best, in other words, to be honorable.

I don’t always succeed. But the Chinese say that “the glory is not in never failing, but in rising each time you fail.”

That isn’t an article of faith for me. But I still hope it’s true.

?!?!

2008-11-28T18:50:00.000-08:00

So yeah, I took the text of this blog post down. I don't often do that, but in this case I had always planned that it be temporary.

It's rare that I post things that I don't want associated with my name. But honest opinions are one thing; me gratuitously cussing at a group of spectacular idiots is another.

Oh, sure, it's commentary. But it's not the kind of commentary that I find legitimate when others do it- why would I make it a permanent part of mine?

So it was a glimpse into the equally concerned, but somewhat less rational and logical side of my brain. It does exist, you know- as some of the folks reading this post have experienced, quite possibly to their rue.

Hope ya'll enjoyed it, at least a little. I certainly enjoyed the change of pace.

Evolutionary Theory of Rights

2008-11-22T23:20:00.001-08:00

A friend wrote a blog the day after the election, a blog expressing his hurt and anger and disillusionment and near-despair at the passage of Prop 8 on the very same day on which we elected Barack Obama.

I commented on it at the time, expressing both sympathy and anger and my hope for change, but, I think now, in a somewhat shallow manner. I've had a little bit more time to think about what he said.

As a dark-skinned person growing up in the South, I experienced a level of unreasoning hatred and bigotry—especially as a young child—that very few people know about, because my family and I simply don't discuss it with our friends.

First, because we don’t want it to affect how we think of ourselves or others think of us. We are no-one’s victims. And second, because we know perfectly well that anything that happens to us is mild in comparison to what routinely happens to others—to black men and women—around us.

I may blog about it someday, but for now suffice it to say that, though it faded somewhat for me as I grew up—I still have to be aware of it every day, and it affects how I dress and behave in many public situations—I’ve had to watch my brothers endure treatment that (still) infuriates me no matter who experiences it...much less my beloved little brothers.

And so I thought about my friend’s feelings in that context—about how I'd feel if the situations were reversed.

And I sympathize with him nearly entirely.

I'd be mildly encouraged by others’ success, sure, but for the most part I'd be furious, and hurt, and betrayed—dispirited and disheartened and...well, wounded. What I'd say would be bitter and as wildly inflammatory as my post on Obama's victory was wildly hopeful. The feelings of disenfranchisement and marginalization I’ve felt over the past 8 years would intensify—moved me further away from identification with this country and towards depression at how it'd devolved from the extraordinary accomplishments of those who founded it.

I'd think, as he does, that living here isn't enough of a reason to believe that America can hold to its ideological heritage.

The part on which I think (of course I can't be sure) that I'd disagree is the part where I'd lose all hope of justice. I might not hope in America—not necessarily. But I’d still hope in the idea that people can act on ideals that we consider to be American, whether America fully embraces them or not.

I've always believed, you see, in incrementalism. A large part of that is my study of science—humanity assimilates ideas much more slowly than it discovers them. Microscopic organisms? Okay. And 150 years later, 50 years after it's noticed that they hang around people with diseases much more than normal people, a short French guy manages to break through the thousand-year-old beliefs that disease is caused at random, or by an inherent flaw, or by a deity.

And hey presto, a vaccine for rabies.

It’s not just our view of the world, though. It’s our view of each other too.

We’re at our most dense, afraid, and resistant when it comes to looking at and recognizing each other as equals. But still, that sort of gradual awakening has happened over and over.

Humans equal under the law?

Okay. We’ll start with members of the nobility. Male, of course. White goes without saying. But they still have rights that even the king can’t overrule.

Then landowners—still male, because women can't own property—have rights under the law.

Then women can own property, even though they're still too dumb and too emotional to vote.

Then comes the idea that all dark-skinned people, all slaves, are human and not animals. Not objects. Not equal—not that. But human.

Then slaves—because they’re human, and humans shouldn’t be property—are free men.

The former slaves have “equal rights under the law”.

Then former slaves are citizens.

Then it’s illegal to keep anyone from voting because of the color of his skin.

Then women can vote.

Then dark-skinned soldiers can fight with white soldiers—not just be led by them.

Then black kids and white kids can go to school together, because keeping them apart is a mockery of equality.

Then it’s illegal to hire or refuse to hire someone because of his or her race or sex.

Then it’s illegal to hire or fire someone from the federal civil service because of his or her sexual orientation.

Then laws enacted or enforced just to ban homosexual sex are unconstitutional.

Tiny steps, all of them. In context, “baby steps” isn’t too much of an exaggeration. It’s the incrementalism that all evolution shows—small, nearly undetectable changes, culminating in a change so apparent that it’s visibly and unmistakably transformative.

And in all cases but a few, the passing of the law or judgment in a court case follows decades of shift in attitude amongst the general population, so that the legal right, when it’s gained, is a legal acknowledgment of a right already considered legitimate by the majority of the population.

But every now and then, there’s an incredible shift, a surge forward, a societal demonstration of the inimitable Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium—of the idea that evolution progresses in tiny steps and then, every once in a while, a giant leap.

Leaps like the declaration of Lord Mansfield in Knowles ex parte Somersett in 1772 that slavery “is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law”, like the Emancipation Proclamation—both of which preceded by decades national acceptance of their premises. As did SCOTUS’ declaration in Brown v. Board that “separate institutions are inherently unequal”.

All of which is a very lengthy way of saying that we’re capable of another such leap.

That we’re long, long overdue, but still capable.

And now, with the Supreme Court of California agreeing to hear the Prop. 8 cases, we’re ready for and hopefully nearing it.

The people in California who want to be the arbiters of others’ beds, hearts and lives have spoken. But they’re not all of us. And their bigotry and insularity and their small minds are not ours.

And if the Supreme Court of California fails to do the right thing—to take the leap, to bring those who are held back forward until we can walk beside each other, to drag the California kin of those who howled at Somersett and Brown along with the rest of us on our journey—still we are capable of making the change.

We are capable of ensuring that the demeaning and devaluing of human love do not persist.

We are capable of making certain that the cold fiats of blind bigotry do not overwhelm the small flames of honest joy.

We are capable of guarding the rights of others’ hearts and lives as carefully as our own.

We are.

We can.

We will.

Timeline of Selected Rights in North America, France, and England

2008-11-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

There IS a point to this, and in a day or so you’ll see what it is.

It came about because I was troubled by and thinking about something one of my oldest friends said. And since research is my reflexive response to nearly any form of brain activity, I did some research.

I looked for a chronological progression of major groups’ human rights under law—and couldn’t find any. They were fragmented into a dozen different lists.

So I bloody well made my own.

It isn’t comprehensive, but I intend to keep updating and expanding it.

Those rights for which I could find listings or information are here. Each right is listed only once (not once per country).

Only the entire country first granting national rights that it did not later revoke is listed (states and territories are not).

References to the actual documentary or proclamatory grant of right are only listed where I could confirm them.

Human Equality Under the Law

1215 AD. England. Male members of the nobility have rights that even the king can’t overrule. (Magna Carta.)

1275 AD. England. All male landowners—women can't own property—have rights under the law. (Statute of Westminster 1275.)

1772. England. Slavery is illegal. (It is "so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law."—Lord Mansfield, R. v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett, Court of King's Bench.)

1776. France. Women can be admitted to trade guilds.

1788. France. Widows of noblemen are allowed to vote, without a male guardian’s presence, in the Assembly of the Estates.

1791. France. Homosexual sexual activity between consenting adults is legal. (French Penal Code of 1791.)

1833. Britain. Slavery and the slave trade are criminal. (Slavery Abolition Act, 3&4 Gulielmi IV, cap. LXXIII.)

1839. Britain. Mothers can be the guardians of their children after a divorce. (Custody of Infants Act 1839.)

1859. Canada. Married women can own property in their own names.

1863. United States. The military service of former slaves and free men of color is acknowledged and formalized. (A separate Army department for “Colored Troops” is formed.)

1868. United States. Women are allowed to study if they wish to and if a school will admit them.
1868. United States. All persons born in the US, including freed slaves and people of color, are citizens. (Fourteenth Amendment.)
1868. United States. All citizens have the right to due process and equal protection of the laws. (Fourteenth Amendment.)

1869. Britain. Unmarried women may vote in local elections.

1870. Britain. Unmarried women can attain legal majority (legal recognition of adulthood—of control over body, decisions, and actions).

1870. United States. Male citizens are eligible to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. (Fifteenth Amendment.)

1874. France. An all-female workers union is acknowledged.

1878. Britain. A woman can cite abuse as grounds for a divorce.

1880. United States. It’s a violation of Equal Protection to exclude black men and women from juries. (Strauder v. West Virginia.)

1882. Britain. Married women can have independent property and legal majority. (Married Women's Property Act 1882.)
1882. France. Women and men both have a right to elementary school.

1884. Canada. Married women have control over their own property.

1894. Britain. Married women can vote in local elections.

1896. United States. Women can be admitted to the bar.

1919. Britain. Women can’t be barred from any profession, post, or civil office on the grounds of sex. (Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919.)

1920. United States. Women have the same voting rights as men. (Nineteenth Amendment.)

1935. United States. All subjects taught at state universities and professional schools must be available to all students. (Murray v. Pearson.)

1941. United States. All employees of defense contractors are entitled to equal treatment and training. (FDR, Executive Order 8802, the Fair Employment Act.)

1942. United States. Depriving a person of the right to marry a person of the same skin color and opposite sex is unconstitutional. (Skinner v. Oklahoma.)

1944. United States. All registered party members are entitled to vote in party primaries, regardless of skin color. (Smith vs. Allwright.)

1948. United States. Conditions of land use that restrict land ownership or tenancy by race are unconstitutional. (Shelley v. Kraemer.)

1951. United States. The US Army begins racial desegregation.

1954. United States. Laws which enforce racial segregation are a violation of Equal Protection. (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.)
1954. United States. Equal protection extends to all racial classifications, including those not “Black” or “White”. (Hernandez v. Texas.)

1964. United States. Racial or sexual segregation in employment, education, government or housing, and on public property, is illegal. (Civil Rights Law of 1964.)

1967. United States. Depriving a person of the right to marry on the basis of the skin color of the chosen partners is unconstitutional. (Loving v. Virginia.)

1969. United States. Native Americans are protected under the Bill of Rights. (Indian Civil Rights Act.)
1969. United States. States can’t assume jurisdiction over Native American land. (Indian Civil Rights Act.)

1973. United States. People can’t be institutionalized based on sexual preference. (The entry on homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder is removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.)

1982. France. The age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sexual activity is the same.

1983. United States. Private schools with racially discriminatory admissions policies are not tax-exempt. (IRS Revenue Ruling 71-447.)

1985. France. It’s illegal to deny employment or services based on sexual orientation.

1988. United States. Recipients of federal funds must comply with civil rights laws in all areas, not just in the particular program or activity that received federal funding. (Civil Rights Restoration Act.)

1994. Canada. Asylum is granted to homosexuals fearing for their safety in their home countries.
1994. United States. Programs aimed at “converting” GLBT men and women lose medical backing. (The American Medical Association denounces therapies “based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”)
1994. United States. Heavier sentences mandated in convictions resulting from federal prosecution of hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. (USC: Title 28 §994.)

1997. Britain. Same-sex couples have the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples.

1999. France. Same-sex couples can have recognized civil unions.

2000. Britain. Openly gay individuals are no longer banned from serving in the armed forces.

2003. United States. Laws enacted or enforced just to ban homosexual sex are unconstitutional. (Lawrence v. Texas.)

2005. Canada. Same-sex marriages are legally recognized.
2005. Canada. Same-sex couples’ adoptions are legally recognized.

Clinton, Clearsightedness, and the Cabinet

2008-11-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

I have something to say on the subject of Hillary Clinton.

And it’s too bad that Dave’s in the “out of love” phase of his revolving-door romance with Facebook, and that Bill has steadily resisted its allure. Because they’d be able to confirm that what I say here is what I’ve said over the past two years, as the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton evolved.

Obama, as I’ve said, has had my support since he finished his speech at the convention in 2004. I’ve never wavered from that conviction.

Nonetheless, I was troubled by much of the venom spewed towards Hillary by my fellow Obama supporters during the primary—and indeed, during the campaign. First and foremost, because being pissed off and vituperative at the other guy’s antics has never been what Obama represents. But also because, though some of that spite was deserved—she ran a needlessly long and strident campaign—the resentment was exaggerated.

I felt, and said, that some of the acrimony was gender-based. Clinton was a jerk, but that’s SOP, especially in presidential primaries and campaigns—pure spite is a tradition as well-established in American political history as folksy rhetoric. For example, in one rather famous 19th-century presidential campaign, a candidate was described by his opponent as “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father”.

The camp that issued that statement? John Adams’—about Thomas Jefferson.

Barack Obama’s different from other politicians not because they're especially mean and nasty about him (though Palin, as I’ve said before, dug straight through the bottom of the barrel), but because he avoids being mean and nasty in return as much as is humanly possible.

So when Clinton gave her concession speech, I found it both admirable and well-phrased. And I said to Bill the next day, “He should choose her for VP.”

Bill was horrified, as were the fellow Obama supporters to whom I said the same thing at the law school. VP? After that campaign? She was horrible, damn near evil, and she’d slammed Obama too much for it to work even if he did it.

I maintained that they’d be a dream team, a team with the kind of potent brainpower and imposing, intimidating, overwhelming talent that blessed Augustus, Marc Antony, and Lepidus.

Obama chose Joe Biden—a choice I could happily back—and I told Bill the next day, over burgers at Steak n’ Shake, that Obama should choose Clinton as his Secretary of State.

Again, Bill was aghast. Did I remember some of the things she’d said?

I cut him off with three words: Team of Rivals.

For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it’s the title of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning chronicle of Lincoln’s Cabinet—a Cabinet composed of all his major rivals for the Republican nomination.

Sound familiar?

Lincoln, my worship of whom (yes, worship; ask Dave about the look on my face as we stood in the Lincoln Memorial on the 4th) would demand tens of essays to contain, was brilliant enough to realize that the people most qualified to advise him on national affairs were those who, like he, aspired to run the country.

And he was dedicated enough to his country’s health and success, and confident enough in his capacity to meet the challenges such appointments would bring, to act on that realization.

I’ve long said—only Bill, to my knowledge, has said it for longer—that Obama, in terms of the quality of his governance, truly has the ability to be the next Lincoln. And that holds true for Obama’s Cabinet appointments: he has the requisite brilliance, the strength of will and force of personality, to both realize the same thing Lincoln did and to put that realization to work.

Hillary Clinton would be a fantastic Secretary of State. Period. She’d be fantastic for the same reason that she’d be a formidable lieutenant in anything: when Hillary Clinton walks into a room, everyone in it sits up.

Secretaries of State are most often diplomats and, in fact if not in appearance, negotiators—and both on a global scale. Scalpel-sharp statecraft is their stock in trade. The people on the other side of the table from Clinton know she’s walked into the room to do business, and that behind the gracious smile and perfect composure are both a calculating intellect and every fact, figure and authority on the subject they’re there to discuss.

She’s a force to be reckoned with—one who’ll do everything that needs to be done to achieve the purpose for which she walked into the room—and everyone in the world knows it.

Obama is a man of both vision and logic. He has the wit to recognize that those with that kind of relentless faculty, that kind of powerful capability—even, and maybe especially, if they think differently than he does and have the spine to tell him so—are people who will serve he, his Cabinet, and his country best.

To quote: “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation…”

Barack Obama has always said that we need to work together, and has always behaved as he asks us to behave. Always.

And he’s always applied his mind to a problem, found the best possible solution, and held to it—even if others found it outrageous.

Why should this be any different?

Rachel Maddow and Recanting

2008-11-16T16:09:00.001-08:00

I watched the Rachel Maddow show with my mom and brother tonight (they're two of the approximately five people on earth who can actually get me to watch a TV show from start to finish). I was surprised (because I generally hold TV "news" in contempt for the extraordinarily limited amount of information it provides) to find that I enjoyed Ms. Maddow's commentary. She's whip-smart, wry, winning—and has a sharp eye for the absurd.

There was one thing she said tonight that irritated me, however (though again, unlike other news personalities, it was the only dumb thing that came out of her mouth during the entire hour).

She was talking about "leaks" from the Obama camp, and she repeatedly used the word "recant" to describe his official statements correcting the reports of the leaked [dis]information.

Foul. (And two foul shots.)

The statements issued by Obama cannot be described as "recanting". Here's why.

Per the American Heritage Dictionary:

leak
v.intr.
3. [Informal] To become publicly known through a breach of secrecy: The news has leaked.
v.tr.
2. [Informal] To disclose without authorization or official sanction: leaked classified information to a reporter.

recant
v.tr.
To make a formal retraction or disavowal of (a statement or belief to which one has previously committed oneself).
v.intr.
To make a formal retraction or disavowal of a previously held statement or belief.

Don't hurl words like "recant" about. The word is by both definition and context pejorative—an admission of error, often interpreted as admission of a lie (a witness recanting his/her testimony). Terming the corrections "recanting" connotes that the "leaks" were in fact authorized and intentional.

If that's what Ms. Maddow intended (she most certainly has the verbal facility to imply that or anything else she wishes), I'm offended. Since when has Obama been coy about enunciating his views and intentions?

If she didn't intend that, I'm irritated. (Though again, almost as much because of Ms. Maddow's extraordinary charm and dexterity in every other minute of the broadcast as because of the implied slur.)

To recant a statement is to disavow a statement to which one has committed oneself. Only the party making a statement may recant it.

A leak is an unauthorized statement, i.e., a statement which a party does not want to—and barring multiple personality disorder, does not—make or commit to.

If a party does not make or commit to a statement, it cannot recant that statement.

To review:

If recanting is a formal disavowal of a statement one has made and committed to

And Obama did not make or commit to the statements he later disavowed

Then Obama cannot have recanted those statements.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

And good night.

This is why I'm here in Ohio. THIS IS WHY.

2008-11-16T16:07:00.001-08:00

Why I, who admire Machiavelli and am skeptical of all human political systems, all hegemonies, am here in Parma, OH working 17-hour days for an American candidate.

I can say it no better than the LA Times, a paper that has never, in its 126 years, endorsed a Democrat for president.
__________________________

___

Barack Obama for president
He is the competent, confident leader who represents the aspirations of the nation.

October 19, 2008

It is inherent in the American character to aspire to greatness, so it can be disorienting when the nation stumbles or loses confidence in bedrock principles or institutions. That's where the United States is as it prepares to select a new president: We have seen the government take a stake in venerable private financial houses; we have witnessed eight years of executive branch power grabs and erosion of civil liberties; we are still recovering from a murderous attack by terrorists on our own soil and still struggling with how best to prevent a recurrence.

We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty.

The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.

Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

These are qualities American leadership has sorely lacked for close to a decade. The Constitution, more than two centuries old, now offers the world one of its more mature and certainly most stable governments, but our political culture is still struggling to shake off a brash and unseemly adolescence. In George W. Bush, the executive branch turned its back on an adult role in the nation and the world and retreated into self-absorbed unilateralism.

John McCain distinguished himself through much of the Bush presidency by speaking out against reckless and self-defeating policies. He earned The Times' respect, and our endorsement in the California Republican primary, for his denunciation of torture, his readiness to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his willingness to buck his party on issues such as immigration reform. But the man known for his sense of honor and consistency has since announced that he wouldn't vote for his own immigration bill, and he redefined "torture" in such a disingenuous way as to nearly embrace what he once abhorred.

Indeed, the presidential campaign has rendered McCain nearly unrecognizable. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, as a short-term political tactic, brilliant. It was also irresponsible, as Palin is the most unqualified vice presidential nominee of a major party in living memory. The decision calls into question just what kind of thinking -- if that's the appropriate word -- would drive the White House in a McCain presidency. Fortunately, the public has shown more discernment, and the early enthusiasm for Palin has given way to national ridicule of her candidacy and McCain's judgment.

Obama's selection also was telling. He might have scored a steeper bump in the polls by making a more dramatic choice than the capable and experienced Joe Biden. But for all the excitement of his own candidacy, Obama has offered more competence than drama.

He is no lone rider. He is a consensus-builder, a leader. As a constitutional scholar, he has articulated a respect for the rule of law and the limited power of the executive that make him the best hope of restoring balance and process to the Justice Department. He is a Democrat, leaning further left than right, and that should be reflected in his nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a good thing; the court operates best when it is ideologically balanced. With its present alignment at seven justices named by Republicans and two by Democrats, it is due for a tug from the left.

We are not sanguine about Obama's economic policies. He speaks with populist sweep about taxing oil companies to give middle-class families rebates that of course they would welcome, but would be far too small to stimulate the economy. His ideas on taxation do not stray far from those put forward by Democrats over the last several decades. His response to the most recent, and drastic, fallout of the sub- prime mortgage meltdown has been appropriately cautious; this is uncharted territory, and Obama is not a master of economic theory or practice.

And that's fine. Obama inspires confidence not so much in his grasp of Wall Street finance but in his acknowledgment of and comfort with his lack of expertise. He will not be one to forge far-reaching economic policy without sounding out the best thinkers and practitioners, and he has many at his disposal. He has won the backing of some on Wall Street not because he's one of them but because they recognize his talent for extracting from a broad range of proposals a coherent and workable program.

On paper, McCain presents the type of economic program The Times has repeatedly backed: One that would ease the tax burden on business and other high earners most likely to invest in the economy and hire new workers. But he has been disturbingly unfocused in his response to the current financial situation, rushing to "suspend" his campaign and take action (although just what action never became clear). Having little to contribute, he instead chose to exploit the crisis.

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

McCain, Palin, and Parma

2008-11-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

I leave for Parma today.

It occurred to me, somewhat belatedly (but luckily, before I posted it), that I should probably wait till I'm not working for Senator Obama's campaign (i.e., till after the election) to post the essay I wrote on Senator McCain and Governor Palin. Essentially, it's a challenge of Senator McCain to single combat- to avenge the grave insult the honor of all womankind has suffered at his choice of Governor Palin as an exemplar of womanly accomplishment. (That's rather a mild description. The substance, however, is accurate.)

I think, however, that there's little harm in what I'm writing today.

I used to respect John McCain. No, really.

He and I disagree about 97% of damn near anything you can name. I think he'd make a horrible president- besides his views, which I consider to be (and which, economically, are working out to be) ruinous. I think his intellectual/emotional makeup, as evidenced by his personal behavior and his political career, is more suited to commanding a small, elite company than to being a general or a Commander-in-Chief.

Nonetheless, his behavior until eight years ago was largely that of a man of integrity- one who acted consistently, according to his views, and who spoke up firmly and audibly on the rare occasion when a colleague said or did something with which he disagreed.

Even though he wasn't my candidate, or even from my favored party, I was furious at the insults Bush threw his way in 2000- and not just because Rove all but used the word 'miscegenation' (or even because hearing the word 'Rove' causes me mild nausea). I was furious because those statements were lies from start to finish, and because they took the best of the dignity and ideals of someone who tried to live by them and trod them into the dirt. McCain didn't deserve that kind of abuse.

When he stood beside Bush in 2004, a lot of my respect for McCain's integrity vanished. But I still thought he might have retained some of it, even as he was turning into a sort of neocon functionary.

I've watched the progress (if indeed anything so backwards and intermittently moronic can be called that) of this election with mounting horror. I truly believe (and have for nearly 2 years now) that Barack Obama will prove to be one of our great presidents; that he has the intellect, the aplomb, the statecraft, the tact, and the ingenuity to handle and to improve the dire morass of a country whose reins he'll take. For that reason alone some of the things that were said about him, during the primaries and afterward, repulsed me.

But with the advent of Governor Palin the presidential election reached a new low. Bored through the bottom of the barrel, in fact, and it's just kept going. (Perhaps it's an Alaskan cultural tradition of which I'm ignorant- a compulsory personal quest for oil...?)

It shouldn't have been unexpected. Palin's attacks on Senator Obama's trustworthiness and intentions as an American citizen (nothing she's said can be interpreted as any less)- her nearly explicit allegations, in fact, of treason- are, as her record shows, what's to be expected of a woman of her intellectual and moral accomplishments, upon which I'll refine at a later date.

And please don't think that said refinement will consist of insults to Governor Palin. It is not possible to insult Governor Palin.

Her behavior is no longer capable of shocking me, but her behavior in the context of the fact that she's John McCain's running mate has filled me with dismay. This, this is the campaign of the man whose strength- whose ability to withstand years of torture- I'd admired since grade school?

And then, yesterday, that man emerged from the welter of pandering he's done for the last eight years- from the degradation he inflicted on himself to become a 'viable candidate'. For a moment- a moment when his integrity and his conscience were so outraged by the lies being told in his name that he had to correct them, even though it cost him the approval of his audience- he was the man I'd known about since seventh grade.

For a few minutes last night, the man I used to respect appeared.

And unless he acts to rein in his campaign, acts now, he'll be remembered, after a lifelong career of government service, as the man who, because his opponent was winning, accused him of treason based on his name. Palin may have uttered the words; but what the history books will record is that they were said by McCain's campaign.

John McCain- the McCain who spoke up in defense of the patriotism, if not the governing credentials, of his opponent yesterday- doesn't deserve to be remembered that way.

I wouldn't vote for him. I don't want him running the country. I think he'd be a very bad president- again, his policy views are proving disastrous.

But yesterday I really was glad to see, for a little while, the John McCain that existed until eight years ago .

I miss him. I really do.