Shadow Play
“Do you like my puppets? If you want to understand Java you have to understand the Wayang, the sacred shadow play. The puppet master is a priest. That’s why they call Sukarno the Great Puppet Master, balancing the left with the right. Their shadows are souls, and the screen is heaven. You must watch their shadows, not the puppets. The Right in constant struggle with the Left, the forces of light and darkness in endless balance. In the West we want answers for everything. Everything is right or wrong, or good or bad. But in the Wayang no such final conclusions exist. The prince, Arjuna, is a hero, but he can also be fickle and selfish. Krishna says to him, ‘All is clouded by desire, Arjuna, as a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. Through these it blinds the soul.’” —Billy Kwan (as portrayed by Linda Hunt) in the film The Year of Living Dangerously, screenplay by C.J. Koch, Peter Weir and David Williamson
17 June 2008 | Comments [0]
“Just Like That…”
While watching William Wellman’s classic oater Westward the Women I decided a good old fashioned bullwhip is essential to the success of any romantic relationship. The minute Robert Taylor cracked one in front of Denise Darcel, love was in the air. In seconds, they were confessing their mutual affection; and when Taylor got drunk a few scenes later, he didn’t brag to Henry Nakamura about tenderness, but about the rough stuff. “I want to make the bullwhip crack—just like that,” he said over and over, his eyes glazed with lust. What a western!
Funny, how those S&M overtones escaped me the first four or five times I saw the film.
14 June 2008 | Comments [1]
Ode to Aram Saroyan
You’re dedead and I’m not
13 June 2008 | Comments [1]
Janiva
Sometimes a song will cut straight to the heart of a situation as easily as a skilled surgeon scalpels through flesh to arrive at bone and sinew. Today Janiva Magness split me wide open with her reading of the Delbert McClinton standard, “You Were Never Mine.” I’d try to explain, but there’s simply no way. Go listen.
09 June 2008 | Comments [1]
Torpor
Sometimes life overwhelms. Then there is little or no recording of things. Unlike friends who do and spew, I need time to ruminate and ponder. Not that I have anything at all against those who do and spew. It simply doesn’t work for me.
Besides, late May and early June in eastern Tennessee are torpid months, meant for lazing under ceiling fans and reading the prose of John Steinbeck and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I am so lethargic I have a new box of 64 Crayola crayons I haven’t yet touched except to sniff their waxy goodness and be hurtled back to childhood.
Things are lush green, but sagging. Not yet burned by the hard summer sun, they have an appearance of the tropics. In the backyard jungle, orange-and-black tiger lilies roar at me.
I roared, too, this weekend, in air conditioned darkness.
There is ice cream too delicious for words, so we keep its frosty memory locked in our heads until we are desperate for it in July or August, when Dog Days come howling out of hell to parch our bones.
Yes. It’s hot now. But it will get hotter still.
Some things are best left unspoken.
09 June 2008 | Comments [0]
New Eyes
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” —Marcel Proust
05 June 2008 | Comments [0]
Versus
Lately all reality is teeth and tongues, esophageal processes, stomach acids, large and small intestines, colons and anuses. Everything is being devoured and digested, sucked dry, broken down into waste and passed into stagnation.
All my dreams are fragile wildflowers.
Lately all my iTunes are “...the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the ants play pinocle on your snout....”
All my dreams are fragile wildflowers.
Lately my palette is shades of black; I paint ministers with smiles of demons and eyes of jackals.
All my dreams are fragile wildflowers.
Lately all I trust is grass.
In dreams I am a crow.
In dreams I have this human intelligence and that crow intelligence and I cannot decide which is native—or which is most helpful.
In dreams the philosophy is union, evolution, growth, spontaneity, construction and genesis. Picture Eden.
In dreams I soar.
04 June 2008 | Comments [0]
On Marriage
A pair of stories in today’s New York Times examine the new directive by Gov. David A. Paterson instructing state agencies to “recognize what he called the basic common sense of allowing gay men and lesbians married elsewhere to gain the same rights ... as heterosexual couples.” The first, “How Governor Set His Stance on Gay Rights”, traces the route Mr. Paterson took to arrive at his decision; the second, “Gay Marriage Opponents Consider Ways to Fight New Policy”, looks at the controversy the decision has sparked.
Not long after Mr. Paterson made his decision public, Jim at of KINGS & carnies came to the following conclusion in his entry “The Gay Man, Marriage, and Me”:
It just makes sense to me that all pair-bonded couples have the same benefits and rights. The pair-bonded homosexual couples ought to legally be married.
In principle, I agree with Mr. Paterson’s decision and with Jim’s conclusion. Where we differ is best summed up by of KINGS & carnies:
Religious organizations, especially Christian ones where Jesus has already given us an example of staying out of governmental affairs, ought not have a say in the government’s role in gay marriage. It has nothing to do with them. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Jim’s premise is religion should stay out of government, and he quotes Jesus to make his point. The problem is, not all religions opposing gay marriage are Christian, and many would be equally offended by the notion that they should obey Jesus’ teaching.
Marriage is a loaded word, as much implying a religious rite as a civil contract. In many faiths, marriage is a sacrament, a holy thing; and even non-sacramental faiths consider the ceremony ordained, sanctioned and entered into by God. Asking believers to accept gay marriages is asking them to condone what they consider sin. It simply won’t happen as long as religion is central to American society.
Government has no business administering religious rites anyway. The United States Constitution is, after all, a secular document; the laws it delineates are ratified by “we the people”, not a supernatural authority. Ideally, those laws do two things: They protect weaker citizens from being preyed upon by stronger ones and they prescribe the contracts by which we fairly interact.
Among the contracts are those extending certain rights and privileges to citizens who unite as life partners—or as Jim calls them, pair-bonds. These contracts have everything to do with civil law and nothing to do with religion. They govern things like inheritance, personal authority and the protection of family units. In the past they have been called “marriage laws” because their protections were available only for heterosexual couples.
Since civil law, fairly administered, should be blind to race, religion, age, sex or sexual preference, those protections ought to be offered homosexual couples as well, not as part of “marriage”, but as any contract protects a civil agreement. For lack of better terminology, we might call it a civil union.
Civil unions should be as easy to administer as signing names to the bottom of a contract. They could be dissolved by the courts system. Any ceremony attached to the union ought to be outside the realm of government, so that these laws and protections are not considered “marriage”.
Instead of turning to religious authority, we ought to turn to the First Amendment of the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” Marriage is a function of religion; Congress is prohibited from sanctioning it by law. It is the domain of priests, preachers, shamans, imams, sorcerers and soothsayers (and their female counterparts, if they exist).
So if same sex couples choose to form family units, they should be extended the full protection of civil law. Whether they—or any other family units—are offered religious sanction is outside the responsibility of secular government.
30 May 2008 | Comments [4]
Billions
1
Second-year high school algebra class, my instructor was an iron-haired, iron-willed Conservative, hawklike in appearance, peering into the mysteries of higher mathematics and fidgety teen psyches. One day, in an effort to wrap the class’ mind around truly large numbers, he asked, “If you had a billion dollars and spent a thousand dollars a day, how long would it take to exhaust the fund?”
I bent to the task, tongue tip sticking out of the corner of my mouth, pencil flying over the page, scratching out graphite numerals, “Let’s see. One billion divided by one thousand. Now divide that by the days in a year. 2739.73. That can’t be right. Try again. One billion divided by a thousand. Divided by seven days in a week. Divided by 52 weeks in a year. 2747.25. Holy God. Maybe it is right. Say there are 72 years in a lifetime. That’s 38 lifetimes! To spend a billion dollars, a thousand a day. 38 lifetimes.”
The enormity of it staggered me, which, I am certain, was my instructor’s intention.
“Now,” he said. “Consider the current United States budget is more than $11 billion.”
At the time I was stunned: 11 billion was an astronomical figure. Now I’d be delighted if it were the national debt total.
I’ve often wondered, hearing the current budget measured in trillions, whether my former teacher is turning over in his grave.
2
For years I have been puzzling over the definition of “conservatism” as a part of fiscal conservatism. Wikipedia defines fiscal conservatism as “a political phrase term used in North America to describe advocacy of lower governmental spending practices and a lower federal debt....” If this definition is accurate, then Neoconservatism must exclude it from its philosophy, because the neocon Bush administration spends money as recklessly as a teenaged boy drives a turbocharged Ford Mustang while liquored up on Wild Turkey.
That isn’t entirely accurate. The White House has been parsimonious when it comes to healthcare, social programs, public education, veterans affairs, and humanitarian aid. Scrooge himself could not rival George W. Bush when spending might benefit America’s poor or working class. But corporate welfare and military spending has never known a more generous friend.
Consider the following from the New York Times story, Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says”: “A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.”
Hmmm. 38 lifetimes X 8.2 = 311.6 lifetimes.
Perhaps I should be trying to define the word “obscene” instead.
3
The meme item reads, “Things I’d do if I were a billionaire ...”
So I get to decide what sort of billionaire I’d be; I figure if I’m going for the brass ring, I may as well go all the way. I choose Warren Buffet wealthy, a net worth of $62 billion. That’s a billionaire. Everything else pales by comparison. At 38 lifetimes X $62 billion, I’d be reincarnated 2356 times before spending all of it. That is, if the money didn’t corrupt me.
Because when you control billions of dollars, there’s a good chance it will fundamentally change you, and not necessarily for the better. Unless a person had extraordinary character, the money would weigh constantly on his mind. He’d never be sure who was his friend and who was after his fortune. He’d be forced to associate with people like Bill Gates. He’d wonder whether his kids were looking forward to the day when he’d kick off so they could divide the spoils. He’d never have certainty in human relationships.
He could make and break people. Hell, he could make and break corporations. He could buy Senators and Representatives, private armies, whole Third World villages. He could affect the course of history. He’d have Power. With a capital “p”.
I couldn’t be trusted with it. It would eat away at my soul as the Ring gobbled up the soul of Frodo Baggins. I’d likely emerge from the encounter a venal, wicked man.
4
Here’s the problem: $62 billion can’t simply be spent, because you can only have so much stuff.
I could spend millions easily enough. Maybe even hundreds of millions.
I’d own a home where everything was six inches taller than standard. I’d never conk my head on a low-hanging cabinet door or stoop over another sink. There’d be big toilets like the ones found in handicapped stalls of public restrooms in every bathroom.
My den would be full of complicated stereo equipment, huge-screened televisions, and gadgets of every shape, size and color. My cell phones would have cell phones. Apple corporation would love me. I’d have dozens of computers. Jeff Bezos would call me “friend.” My library would be enormous—and wasteful, because I’d never have the time to read all the books I’d own, nor hear my entire CD collection, nor use all my software.
An odd menagerie of animals would live on my estate; I’d rescue wild horses, burros, dogs and cats. There’d be fainting goats and pygmy goats, and if a stray lamb wandered up on my friend Kathy’s porch, she wouldn’t have to worry about who would take him in.
My kitchen would rival Emeril’s, and the larder would always be filled with good things to eat.
I’d tool around in a Volkswagen Beetle convertible, and I’d make long trips in a Lincoln or a Cadillac. I’d own a restored ‘57 Thunderbird and an immaculate ‘57 Chevy because I could.
I’d never have to scrounge for paints or film, guitar picks or strings, paper, canvases or Post-It Notes.
Each of my immediate family members would become overnight millionaires (and they’d bitch and moan that I should have made them billionaires).
A handful of friends would never want for anything. One would have a beautiful garden and decorate her house with cut flowers every day; her church would get its own building. Another would play with a roomful of computers while his wife ordered someone else to run all the errands she now runs. My longest online friend would bow a Stradivarius violin, and her husband’s business worries would end. My best friend for life would play the blues on a roomful of rare guitars, some made of woods aged by rubbing the bodily secretions of virgins into their grains for 20 years. We’d rent a recording studio and lay down the CD we always threatened to make. An artist in Kansas could choose from an endless supply of Golden paints, film stock, and odd plastic cameras; she’d drive a sturdy, unrented car. Jim would get a gymnasium. The manager of a bookstore in New Jersey would find all her stock sold in a single day; the books would wind up in libraries all over the nation.
I’d visit acquaintances and leave a few hundred thousand behind as a thank you for some small kindness.
A free medical clinic in Georgia and a Salvation Army outpost in Alabama would suddenly find they had a generous (and anonymous) angel.
I’d live a month in the Ritz Carlton in New York with my constant companion, and we’d gorge ourselves on culture and Nathan’s hotdogs. Then we’d take a trip around the world.
And I’d still have billions and billions of dollars to spend.
5
Jacques Ellul, the French sociologist, philosopher, theologian and Christian anarchist, once wrote in a book entitled Money and Power that money is sacred, and that people—especially those in capitalist societies—worship it. He claimed it was no accident that Jesus called money an idol, and he cited dozens of ways that people’s lives were ruled by money.
He said there is only one way to desacralize money: Give it away.
Would I have the strength of character to give away billions of dollars? Probably not. I am a weak man, and all that wealth would begin to represent my security and my great passion. It would become my god.
But maybe—just maybe—there is a shred of decency in me. And maybe—just maybe—it might grow until I would give most of my fortune away.
6
Not long ago in an op-ed piece entitled “Clueless in America”, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert lamented the state of United States education, citing the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who said roughly a third of all American high school students drop out, and another third graduate but are unprepared for productive work or post-secondary education.
What they mean, of course, is two-thirds of the next generation is functionally uneducated. That’s scary.
It means No Child Left Behind didn’t leave children behind—it ran over them with a school bus.
So what has this to do with my $62 billion (minus several hundred million—a guy has to pay the electric bill)?
Simply put, my $62 billion wouldn’t begin to solve the world’s problems. It wouldn’t even come close. A thousand times that amount couldn’t bring an end to the world’s suffering.
But $62 billion would go a long way toward repairing the U.S. educational system, and it’s exactly where my money would go.
I’d endow public high schools willing to ditch NCLB in favor of a good, old-fashioned liberal arts approach to teaching. I’d reward schools that taught kids to think, and not merely pass tests, with the books and tools necessary to hold students’ interests and to stimulate their imaginations.
I’d give cash awards to good teachers.
I’d lobby Congress in favor of educational spending. I’d press them to pass legislation that would provide federally funded college educations to every student who made the grade and wanted to continue learning.
I’d create scholarship programs that rewarded students who stayed the course.
I’d hire an advertising firm to create engaging television commercials that promoted learning.
I’d bust my ass and exhaust my fortune in an effort to make the next generation of United States citizens the brightest and best in the nation’s history.
I’d put my faith in them, believing that while my fortune might not solve the world’s problems, those young minds might do what my money could not.
Instead of devising new and better ways to exploit young Americans, or new and better ways to use them as cannon fodder, I’d invest in their talent and their native intelligence, and I’d trust them to make the future utopian and not dystopian.
And if it didn’t work, I’d still consider the money well spent.
Especially if it turned out another teacher like the one who lured me into thinking seriously about how big a billion is.
26 May 2008 | Comments [3]
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Here’s how long my hair was until 11 this morning: I had not cut it, except very minor trims, in roughly five years. It now comes almost exactly to my shoulders. Debbie at Great Clips cut a 10-inch ponytail off the original length and I donated the hair to Locks of Love. That alone made growing it worthwhile. The stylist called my new cut “70s length.” I am unsure whether she meant 1970s length or the length 70-year-olds are now wearing their hair. Either way is fine with me, so long as I never have a Republican haircut.
Am I still a hippie? Of course. Maybe a little less hip.
Maybe not.
22 May 2008 | Comments [2]
