On Principle

Won’t it be crazy when I post that the FLOORS ARE DONE!!!! YAHOOO! I’M ALL MOVED IN!! Yes, that will be crazy, wild and exciting. Too bad they’re not. Too bad I’m not. I won’t belabor this point. There’s been more delays in getting the product (it’s not easy being green.)

There’s a new cyclery in town. Well, it’s been there for a year but I made an effort to stop in for the first time on Saturday – so it’s new to me. I finally broke down after these several years and bought a pair of bike shorts. I promise I won’t wear them without board shorts – on principle.

Speaking of principles. I am struck that we rarely write about principles (perhaps at this age I prefer poetry to heady prose on principles and political conviction?) What are my virtues? Ah… what a tangled web we weave and what a weave of contradictions are my virtues.

My virtues are that I can be kind and that I can be cruel and that mostly I am wise in using my rulers and meting out right proportions of the two. Unless, of course, you think me too kind or you think me too cruel, then there’s either something wrong with me or there’s something wrong with you. So perhaps this isn’t a virtue at all?

My virtues are that I am fiercely independent and don’t compromise on my values. This is all well and fine unless you don’t fit neatly into my spectrum of good, moral and just and then I’m sure you think on me as rigid and a thought fascist. Yet I try to be open, a relativist and listen – still I’ve been given the gift to think, reason and act and I use these gifts.

I am humble. I have an idea of myself that is right sized. I am small in the face of the enormity of the universe yet my size doesn’t hinder my ability to stand up for what I believe in. While I don’t know if I can change the system I accept that I might not be able to and I try anyways. Not trying is choosing a certain kind of death. I actually have beliefs – not a belief in God per se, but a set of articulated values – of judgments if you will, well conceived, I believe, overtime – an ethical framework or lens for evaluating circumstances and informing my actions within them. Though again, I’m flexible.

To tell you that I have beliefs, however, doesn’t tell you what those beliefs are. You’re to take on faith that they’re interesting, good, sound? And then you’re to take on some faith that I act on them accordingly? I believe, for example, that health care should be a right, not a privilege. I believe that science needs democratizing. I believe that we can experience a greater sense of joy every day if we cultivate and strengthen our community. I believe community includes the people who live next door to me, not just people who look like me, dress like me and/or share my values. I believe the people I have the strongest visceral reactions too (positively or negatively) are most like me and I need to pay attention to both so I can strive to see myself more clearly. I believe that EVERYONE of us believes that we’re good people, motivated by good things, doing the best we can – and given the state of things a good many of us are wrong and we are likely part of that good many errant in our thinking on a spectrum of issues at any given time.

I believe that my government is failing its people. I believe that my president has lied. I believe that many if not most politicians are corrupt. I believe the only way to change the government is by getting involved – somehow. I believe that a small group of people can change the world. I believe a single person can change the world. I believe a poet or a playwright can change the world. I believe an artist can change the world. I hope I believe in the vision of the people with the most youth, energy, wisdom and courage to change the world.

I believe that it doesn’t matter if society accepts me if I can love and accept myself. I have come to discover, over time, that I only care if other’s accepts me until I come to accept myself.

Once someone said, “if you want people to take you seriously, you shouldn’t wear your hair like that, dress like that” etc. I am not a straight white man. On some level it doesn’t really matter how I wear my hair, how I dress, what piercings or tattoos I wear on my face and body – I simply do not conform to what the ruling elite takes seriously – straight white men. We must dig deeper. We must be smart, articulate and strategic. We must speak through the overlay of judgments being meted out and demonstrate that we are a force to be reckoned with. If we dress up in suits and conform we’re becoming part of the problem – because some people don’t have the luxury to hide the colors on their skin in order to taken seriously. And some don’t have the economic means to afford the suits that might engender respect among elite wealthy crowds. We must demand that people listen to what people say and judge us on the merits of our arguments and content of our character – and not the color of our skin, our hair or how we dress. And on the same token, we mustn’t be shocked that some people have a hard time doing this – we must help one another and not judge those who have a difficult time seeing past the superficial trappings of this mortal coil. In the same way we wish not to be judged by the way we look, dress, etc., we mustn’t judge people with a disability to look deeper. (But be aware that sometimes we're not taken seriously because we're not saying anything interesting or valuable and it has nothing to do with how we look!)

I believe in love. I believe that love heals. I believe in intimacy. I believe that trust must simply be given and possibly later lost – that’s it’s an impossible thing to simply have to start out earning.

I believe in the mystical origins of the Church (it is said that the church is the energy created whenever a group of people come together in common worship – that this energy created is greater than the sum of the parts.) I believe that when I am with friends who share common beliefs and we celebrate together, something is created that is greater than each of us – it’s almost tangible. You feel this in the pit at punk shows. It’s the tingling in the back of your neck when you witness the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. On those Friday nights when you’re hanging in the park with friends and you randomly just feel a great sense of kinship, belonging, being part of something – there it is again. Turn a stone, split a log… it is there.

So how do I act in consort with these beliefs? I am an activist and an educator. I sit present and repeat myself to be heard. I keep my eye on the end game – it’s about the goal not always about how we get there. If the devil is in the details then surely it must be true that some kind of salvation or enlightenment rests in them too. I try to gather information and include the concerns of diverse people/communities in my efforts so that others don’t have to come after and fight to change programs so that they better serve their needs. Better that they serve diverse groups of people’s needs from the beginning. I have an open door. I try to cultivate deep, rich and meaningful relationships. I embrace failure. (When I tell myself, or others tell me, “that’s impossible,” my response is, “okay… it’s impossible and I’ll likely fail. Let’s start with that as a given and go ahead and try anyways. Likely the worst we can do is exceed expectations.”) I have sat on the board of a Dance Company. I sit on the board of an international trade/policy organization. I try to buy locally grown organic food. I walk and ride my bike instead of driving, often. I train and walk my dog. I laugh at least once each day.

I strive to see myself objectively.

The most revolutionary, radical and rebellious thing I do is respect and love, to the best of my ability, the people who come into my life – even when I sit in the midst of their judgments.

How To Change The World

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

-Tennessee Williams

Searching for the Soul...

Searching for the soul of America….

There is an interview with Jacob Needleman in the December 2002 issue of The Sun, called Searching for the Soul of America, about his new book, The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders. I haven’t read the book and in fact I haven’t even finished reading the interview. I went to San Francisco State University in the 1980’s, and I took a general ed philosophy course from Needleman, intro to philosophy and religion or something of that ilk. He was an inspiring teacher – one of those rare academicians who wasn’t merely a subject matter expert but also has a natural talent for adult education. I still remember texts we read and bits of lectures, one particular on intrinsic will, even a decade hence.

I sit down at my computer and begin to write this in hopes of forcing my mental grammar and perhaps unsticking my stuckness. Now here is an example of what is happening – when I wrote the first paragraph, about not having finished reading the Needlemen interview, my friend Will’s voice echoes in my head saying, it’s the problem with the left, we don’t read anymore. We read what other people think about what other people think about what other people have written, but we don’t actually read and formulate our own opinion. And upon making the proclamation he asks me what I’ve read or what I’m reading lately and I tell him, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, by Martin Prechtel, his own story of becoming a Mayan Shaman among other things. And it reminds me how long it’s been since I’ve been reading this book and how little time I’ve spent to finish it and how it’s moved from something that I’ve really enjoyed to another task on my to-do list. And it reminds me that I need to take what Will said and consider it more deeply, about how this lack of reading the actual texts cripples our ability to reflect, contemplate and integrate new ideas. And it reminds me that I need to call Will, who called nearly two weeks ago now and I’ve yet to touch base back with him and how awful this is given he’s been in poor health of late. And it reminds me that I’ve always wanted to read the Upanishads. And when I wrote how I’m trying to force my mental grammar and unstuck my stuckness a loop began running through my head, “Slaughterhouse Five, Slaughterhouse Five, Slaughterhouse Five… so it goes, so it goes, so it goes….” This is what it’s been like lately. This is how my mind has been working, or perhaps more aptly, not working.

I started reading the Needleman interview while I was on the Larkspur Ferry to San Francisco. The ferry first passes San Quentin State Penitentiary and later Alcatraz. San Quentin used to be a high security prison, notorious for its hardened criminals and stories of the horrors and atrocities that took place in this prison lead to reforms in the prison system in California. While San Quentin still has a high security wing and houses death row inmates, mostly the prison is what guards call a boy’s camp - low security, non-violent offenders, picking up trash on the hillsides. Alcatraz has a great deal of notoriety, maybe least of which is what it represented in terms of a change in the penal system in America. It was the first prison built for punishment as opposed to reform of criminals. Now one can debate whether or not the prison system, as it stands, reforms anyone, but when you look back at some of the founding principals of America, of what those Europeans were escaping, part of what they were escaping was the European justice system. The Founders, in their declarations of independence and in the Constitution were doing many things - among them was the creation of a penal system based on reform as opposed to punishment. Alcatraz was the first admission of failure to truly embrace and achieve that principle.

The Needleman interview, at least what I’ve read thus far, doesn’t talk about or address the American penal system. But reading the interview and pondering the soul of America and contemplating this rediscovery of the wisdom of the Founders – well, it strikes me that the landscape isn’t exactly an accident. I’ve often thought, on my way to work, traversing the Bay in the ferry, that I’m not suppose to allow these institutions to simply blend into the scenery and I’m not suppose to observe them passively…. Water, sea lion, island, bridge, San Quentin, Alcatraz… or maybe I am. Maybe both things are true, look at the parts distinctly, and also the mosaic they create and learn from both stories. I’m not sure. I just don’t want to grow too accustomed to them, like they’re facts. But they are facts. But they’re not. Both things are true, all at the same time.

At any rate… I was listening to one of my favorite radio programs the other evening, This American Life. I don’t actually listen to the radio. I go to the website (http://www.thislife.org) and listen to episodes - sometimes two or three each evening. I was listening to an April 2002 episode (#210) called Perfect Evidence. Act one, Hawks and Rabbits, was the story of three boys, Calvin, Larry and Omar, convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison. After 15 years and the advent of DNA technology, they were able to get a lawyer to take up their case and were released. The biological evidence did not tie them to the crime. The main interviewee of the boys who became men in prison, was amazingly articulate, thoughtful and intelligent. I’m not saying that people in prison are generally not well-spoken or that they’re not intelligent. As one listens to the program, however, it’s hard not to consider that this man’s references and abilities were tendered and cultivated in the context of incarceration. The interviewer never draws attention to this, never pauses after a particularly brilliant observation or thought by the interviewee and just says, “wow.”

During the interview, the wrongly accused and incarcerated man, Omar, is telling the story of how he needed one of his fellow alleged accomplices, Calvin, to sign an affidavit attesting to the fact that he is not an “O secretor” re: his blood type. Calvin wouldn’t sign. The last time he signed something it was a confession, construed and written by police officers, and this landed him in prison for life. In order to move their appeal forward, his signature was required, and Calvin had developed a new policy not to sign anything. He noted, additionally, that he had found God, found religion, accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and personal savior – that he put his faith in God. “That ain’t the way the God I believe in works,” Omar said. “Your faith in God in good. But act on it. You can’t say you believe in no God and not believe in your own ability to think, reason and understand because he gave you a brain to do just that with.” I thought, “Wow. That’s beautiful.”

Later Omar talks about the Declaration of Independence, which he had read in prison. He says something like this: “When I read that document I was like, wow. How it actually incorporates talking about rebelling against an oppressive government. If the government becomes too oppressive, the power is actually in our hands… That’s why, when you talk to anyone that claims, especially those who speak about the American character and what we should do, you should aks them let me hears youse recite the Declaration of Independence.” And Omar recites, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And you will come to find out that the average American don’t even know it.

In the Needleman interview he says, “In my book I suggest that the deepest purpose of the United States government is to provide conditions under which our society can flourish spiritually as well as materially.”

This is where I want to and all at once do not want to stop. Here’s the mosaic without the mud. But where’s the mud?

The mud is filling the trough that I dug out around the foundation, upon my contractor’s advice, to protect the house. Instead of providing drainage and protecting the foundation, it creates a moat for the water to gather and threatens the stability of things. The mud is filling the ditch Ed dug yesterday in the front yard, to reveal the pipes that have burst coincidental with these downpours that have rendered us without water for nearly a week now. So in the midst of storm front after storm front, winds felling trees and ripping shingles off the roof, hail battering our shelter and water filling the river to its bank, in the house we are dry and parched. For days now I have been contemplating the foundation and I just can’t lightly dismiss the metaphorical implications of all of this.

I don’t put these things together and think that I am a victim or that we’re all victims. To the contrary, I put these things together and I think, “Listen to this story. There are stories being told in our lives and in the landscape and we must listen to the stories.” And perhaps the most resonating words are those reflections from Omar, “Your faith in God is good. But act on it.” How these words arise out of injustices and the pursuit of justice, the landscape of this country, this land, this house – this is not a mistake. This is not merely a coincidence. That the very government of this place, America, might be built on a foundation aimed to inspire spiritual flourishing, that someone would write that and that I would read that while tooling past San Quentin after having just listened to Omar’s words. That is not a mistake. That my own foundation is threatened and how ill equipped I feel to address it, how little I know how to right it. That is not a coincidence.

I’m reading this book that I can’t seem to finish that talks about the Mayan way of life - about how houses aren’t built to endure but to be in a constant state of repair and how this reparation is an event that bonds and strengthens community – ties it together. And I think how the plumber who is suppose to help us fix this leak is my neighbor and how he failed to show up today or even to call despite the week wearing on and his commitment. And I think of how the contractor hasn’t returned my pages or calls for a simple reference for a roofer and how he mislead me around the problems with my foundation. And I think again that these things aren’t merely a coincidence, how these things are not a cosmic mistake – how instead they are telling a story. And this story is both beautiful and shameful – titillating yet difficult to look at.

I am not searching for the soul of America, I’m only searching for my own soul. I work for a non-profit – it’s about the big We. And my inability to work today is perhaps a mirror for how I’m stuck in the big I, how I can’t really find the mud or the glue that holds us all together even when it’s threatening to seep under my own doorway and over my own thresh hold. I see all the pieces, but I don’t see what’s holding them together and I don’t even see the connections between them with striking clarity. I don’t feel my faith in much of anything these days, making it incredibly difficult to act on it.

This really isn’t suppose elicit pity or a sense that this poor girl is stuck. And so here I pause and stretch and look around my cluttered study contemplating that this is not what was intended, this is not how things were supposed to be, and instead of finding my soul I find a stack of paper on the floor, a clutter of this and that, unopened and unpaid bills in little piles amid junk mail and flyers and I think that perhaps I can’t act on my faith, but I might act on clearing the clutter and maybe, in some small way, this will help – but I’m not sure how and I can’t help but think it’s just another distraction. The dog is nestled in pillows on the bed, curled into a cozy ball of warm fur and downy pillows. She’s snoring lightly and it makes me smile.

The Origin of Love

I wonder how many people have actually read Plato’s Symposium.

The last time I saw you, we had just split in two. You was looking at me. I was looking at you. You had a look so familiar, I could not recognize. You had blood on your face I had blood in my eyes. - Hedwig (and the Angry Inch)

Lowering myself off the back of the boat into the deep blue waters I had resolve to just face whatever it was I had to face. The cold made me catch my breath, draw her into me with reflexive conviction – as though my body were saying, one last time. And in she came, doing nature’s bidding with pure abandon. Once in, there was little point or thought about going back. Maybe just a moment of hesitation. I looked at Ed, he looked at me, and we laughed then situated our masks and bit down on the mouth pieces and alone, together, one last glance and smile, we laid our body’s prostate and peered into her soul.

It was the most amazing moment. It was like going home. And home is a hard place to describe, as much if not more of a feeling as it is a place. We laid adrift and stunned – something beyond awestruck, looking down at the reef shelf below us, hundreds, no millions, of brilliant coral as backdrop to millions of the most amazing fish of every color and variation that I could possibly imagine. And I felt my heart skip a beat as I saw what we were heading into -the edge of the reef - dropping down perhaps a hundred feet or more – not into darkness, but into depth. Again I hesitated as we moved toward the edge and then suspended over a huge underwater canyon. At varying layers of depth larger fish lumbered about as next to us in this vast expanse beautiful fish of indigo and emerald swam with us, not below us, through the pristine clear waters. Across this great divide was another reef shelf where a sea turtle glided peaceably, like a bird around us. In every direction there was something. As far as the eye could see, this was an endless feast.

They called this place the Super Highway. I have never seen anything like this before in my life, didn’t know such a place could exist. I’d read books about these places, had heard that the most amazing underwater places on earth were off the coast of Niihau and now I’ve seen and nothing has come even close to describing it. I feel somehow forever changed.

Dumbstruck, afterwards, Ed and I looked at each other. That was amazing, he’d say with a complicit understanding of the frailty of words. I’ve never seen anything so spectacular in my life, I’d say like a fact. We grasped at someway to speak it, but could not. It was holy – sacred.

I’ve been to the Caribbean and was rather nonplussed despite the brilliance of random triggerfish around a sad lump of reef off the coast of Saint John’s. I was much more impressed with the amazing caterpillar of a rather drab moth in the rainforest there.

The shores off Miami coastal waters divulged rather dull sea life and a gaggle of piranhas that I could have lived my life without encountering. I’m not ashamed to admit that the restaurant I went to, in the hotel with the infinity pool, curtains of fabric, two stories tall, wafting in gentle breezes embracing the pool area and a life-sized chessboard was more titillating then the subterranean spectacles I saw there.

In cities across Europe while other young twenty-something’s were chasing beer halls and adventures, I was chasing aquariums and flea markets with my backpack in tow. While rather unkempt and not well attended, in all regards, the aquarium in Barcelona was strangely among my favorites (although the Baltimore aquarium is certainly something to behold). But perhaps it was just that it was in Barcelona – among the most beautiful cities in the world with its magical Rambles, Miro mosaics tiled into the very streets where one walks and melting architecture.

In the great halls of the Hermitage in what was Leningrad, the place they now, again call Saint Petersburg, there are divine works by human hand, in the Metropolitan or MOMA in New York, in the museums of Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, London. I’ve been to all of these places and been witness to their treasures. But nothing, absolutely nothing, even begins to compare with what I saw off the coast of Niihau. It was organic and alive and mutable – a metropolis of color, species – a living art untouched and unspoiled. There was a pain that ripped down to the very heart of me, a deep soulful pain of finally coming into contact with that which makes one whole.

Re-volution

I imagine that looking at the world from outer space it appears to change little from minute to minute. I imagine that you could look at this brilliant blue and green sphere for a good long time and like looking at a marble it wouldn’t appear to change much over the course of say an hour or a day with the exception of the angle of the light (and maybe the patterns of the clouds).

And then we zoom in on this little beach, with its relentless rolling waves and wind. Every time a wave washes in it displaces a little sand, carries something in and something out with it. All and all over the course of a typical hour, while there is a million little changes going on, they’re not tremendously obvious albeit perceptible to anyone paying attention. Sure the beach changes quite dramatically over the seasons. In winters the heavy surf carries the sand out of the tide pools and deepens them. In the spring a river cuts the beach in two and brackish water is home to a bounty of little fish. The longer one looks at this beach, truly the more changes one is apt to see – from the more obvious waxing and waning tides to the more sublime new set of delicate prints left from a crab scuttling across the softer sands. The closer one looks at the details, the more changes are apparently going on.

Put the magnifying glass on a higher resolution and narrow the scope to simply this little tide pool. Nearly every time the water washes in and out the entire ecosystem of the pool appears to change. New life brought in, residents who’d perhaps been there awhile or maybe even just taken hold carried away. Perhaps the only truly permanent fixtures being the lava rocks that bank it and the sea slugs that lay a little more solid for their weight. From the perspective of the tide pool the world is in constant movement from chaos to short-lived order to chaos again. Sometimes, at low tide, there is a protracted period of calm. But even peacetime carries with it it’s own set of threats and upsets. From the perspective of the tide pool, change and movement is incredibly obvious. Turmoil is the natural order of things.

Earth is such a pretty word (I say it in my head and under my breath – air-tha’). I think of all the names men might have given this planet and Earth is a perfectly fine choice, but I don’t think it would have been mine. And while I think about such lofty things as naming the planet, I’m really most thrilled to notice today that my toenails have grown back (a trouble likely due to poor-fitting hiking boots.) Because my toenails, why those are part of the tide pool that is me. My beliefs, those would be something of the lava rock that banks it. Ed, Cassie and a host of others, they would likely be my sea cucumbers. (The funny thing is that when you poke at a sea cucumber they dispel everything from their stomachs. Heh.) Secret Agent Dog, maybe she’s something like a barnacle, sticking to my beliefs.

Is

Revolution is not showing life to people, but making them live - Guy Debord