On Tuesday November 4th when Barack Obama was elected the 44^th President of the United States, analysts proclaimed that American people had at last transcended the culture wars. Yet on that same night Proposition 8 in California was passed restricting the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman.  The law overturns a recent court decision that had recognized same-sex marriages in California. Perhaps the culture wars aren't entirely over after all, perhaps they've simply shifted focus.  

A recent conversation I had with two of my friends got me thinking about the issue of gay marriage. Their viewpoints are summarized below. 

Viewpoint 1:

My friend Tom* felt that gays should have a right to the legal securities offered by marriage. He felt that marriage was largely a symbolic word, that what mattered was whether or not a same-sex couple received equal treatment under the law as a heterosexual couple; so he felt civil unions were an adequate substitute for gay marriage. He felt that the population of the country was too conservative and that civil unions were the best gays can do at this moment in American history and the best way to see future progress. Extremism, he said, has a polarizing effect and in such moments compromise is the best alternative for factions that can't arrive at the same viewpoint.

Viewpoint 2:

 My friend Kim * had a different take. She considered marriage a religious and not a legal term and suggested that gays wanted not just equal protection under law but equal recognition by society and religious institutions. She cited the spiritual pain of many of her religious gay friends as a reason to allow gay marriage.

Unlike Tom she felt extremists moved policy. In her opinion gays who vociferously demand equal recognition see compromise as a form of settling, not as win/win for all sides at this particular moment in America's socio-political history, and not the best outcome. Protestors shouldn't stop instigating because gays have a civil union option. Political progress depends on agitators. She compared the struggle of gays to the struggle of the African-American to obtain political rights and social equality. She felt that one day our descendants will view this discussion as moot and our early 21st century cultural understanding o f marriage as primitive as the 19th century's understanding of black rights.    

I must admit I hadn't given much thought to the ramifications of Prop 8.  Now I'm left with a number of questions. What do you think about the following:  

Are civil unions adequate to recognize a same-sex life partnership?

Is the analogy between the gay experience and the Negro entirely valid?

Will we someday accept gay marriage the same as heterosexual marriage?

Does writing the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman into law violate the separation of church and state?  

Is marriage a religious term or is it a social and cultural one?

If gay marriage is written into law should religions uphold it?  

Will this case go to the Fedral Supreme Court?  

Is defining marriage discriminatory?

Are the culture wars over or simply shifted focus?  

* The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Personally, I don't believe on the whole individuals know how to love.  I think we make poor choices when it comes to potential mates.  I remember having a conversation with my English professor in college about marriage. He said to me that he didn't think anyone under the age of 26 could make a serious commitment. And yet it seems we are hurled headlong into relationships.

Our culture convinces us that there is something diseased about the single person, that if you don't have a date or a mate, you've somehow failed as an individual.  We're led to believe by popular films and media culture that only another can "complete you" that you are only half of a person without that partner. But if you partner too soon, it seems to me, that you really do become half a person.

 You assume an arrangement and the arrangement become you. Suddenly, you are no longer a person with dreams and longings of your own; you're a boyfriend or a girlfriend carrying out the ceremonial duties of the role. Chatting and texting back and forth, giggling and laughing at each other's clever banter are just some of the obligatory boyfriend/girlfriend duties. As you come into contact more and more you are slowly drawn closer into each other gravitation. You are like binary stars orbiting around an unseen axis. You become a full-fledged couple.  Then you get married and then you assume the additional role of husband and wife, and carry out that social duty. Not long after you bring a child into this world and then you and your hubby add one more title to your resume, that of mother and father. 

You set up shop, go about the business of living and you account for everything.  You factor it all in there the children, the vacation getaways, the career, the domestic duties, the carpool time, the down time, and of course, the bedroom time. You factor it all into your quadratic equation for successful living, everything, that is, except the living part.

And then one day, unawares, it strikes you.  Something doesn't seem right. Not so much not right as.. You go about your daily "to do's" you check them over. You inspect everything with an eagle eye, the eye of a scrupulous jeweler looking for any tell tale signs, any hairline flaws in your beautiful crystal. But you find none. Everything is in its precise and proper place.  Everything is perfect as it's ever been and yet, yet? The word dangles there in your mind looking…something is missing? But how could something be missing that never was? The possibility mystifies you. 

Where have you gone wrong? Are you losing faith? Is it your partner?  Obviously, you aren't loving enough. So you make post it notes to remind yourself.  Love, after all, is what turns a house into home. But everyday you home seems more like a house. And then slowly you begin to think the unthinkable: What if Love wasn't really love? The idea shocks you so much that you dismiss it as mere ridiculousness; you even chuckle at the notion. 

After all you have existential proof, that kiss, and that night, the one that changed everything. When your partner took your hands in his and with tears streaming down his handsome face explained how he feared he'd never find the right one and how with you the world made sense and how he felt so alive and how he could be all of who was and how being with you made him so "unbelievably happy" because, because for the first time in his life he knew he was "no longer alone." Thinking of those words, the impact of that instant even now more than 20 year after has a startling power to affect you.  Nothing but love could do that. Nothing.

And just then you recall that conversation the one where you and your friend sitting about the moon and the stars, sipping your sherry swapping stories of how each of you met. "The heart wants what it wants" one of the wives said to the group was the only logical explanation to explain how despite all the relationship adventures, all the doubting and duplicitous behavior the two ended up together against all odds. And you remember how you felt exactly the same about your relationship and how at that moment you reached over and squeezed ever so lightly your hubby's hand and smiled that smile. "Yes, it does, yes it does."

The heart wants what it wants. But what exactly does it want? That is the question you are now trying to form.  Could your, heart that devoted disciple of fate itself, actually lead you astray? Could your heart actually lead you away from fate? Could your heart lead you to your own demise……

I saw The Dark Knight on Sunday. This film left me with so much to ponder. The storyline is complex and there is depth and gravitas to the story that leaves you pondering the meaning of the film long after you leave the theater. It is now nearly Thursday and I can't stop returning to the images and ideas this film left me with. (I intended to write a review of the film at some point).  It is to put it simply a cinematic masterpiece.

These are just some of the questions this film has left me pondering: Are human beings essentially good or evil? Is there a morality that transcends morality? Are criminals more existentially free than heroes?  When public institutions are threatened and public safety can no longer be guaranteed will human beings remain civil and rational or will they degrade into a "Lord of The Flies" mentality?  Are heroes essentially tragic figures that are doomed, as Harvey Dent puts it in the movie, to "die a hero or live long enough to become a villain?"  Are extraordinary measure sometimes needed to preserve public safety? In the service of truth, is lying sometimes necessary?        

There are shades of Shakespeare in this film. There are resonances of Aeschylus.  But there is so much here that has never been seen before, at least not quite in this way.   In Batman we see an existential hero, one through his own will and choices, creates his own fate.  In the Joker we are reminded of Seven's John Doe's genius for orchestrating events and No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh's amoral bloodlust. But John Doe is a serial killer with a message and Chigurh is a threat only to those that cross his path. The Joker has no message to send, as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred puts it just "wants to see the world burn" and is a threat to the entire city of Gotham.

He is a frightening figure, a man who lives by no philosophy whatsoever. And he plays by none of the established rules. He has no regard for anything including his partners in crime or himself. He routinely disposes of his associates. He puts himself in harms way. He doesn't even value criminal constants, like power or money. In one scene after he's received his reward for getting batman off the streets he is seen burning his mother lode of cash (neatly arranged in the shape of pyramid) He says that criminals worry too much about money and what Gotham needs is a "better class of criminal" and that he is going to give it to them.

Perhaps not a better class, but definitely a new class; one that makes even the organized crime syndicates shudder. He is the greatest of threats.  Because he values nothing, he can't be turned, can't be minimized, can't be bought off.  He is existentially free as only an amoral, psychopathic deconstructionist could be. He is the worst-case creation of an age saturated by postmodern nihilism and moral relativism.

 He is a true wildcard. He is a joker but there is no joking, only a sadistic sarcasm and an irony laced with nihilism and malicious misanthropy. There is no psychological origin or rational justification given for the character.  He is just dropped into the story with no context.  (He tells us that those scars he make-ups over or are result of his knife-happy alcoholic father desire to teach his serious child to smile, but then later tells us they  are the result of a knife wielding ex wife)

He is a self- invention, a creation of a megalomaniac psychopathic killer who leads the inhabitants of Gotham to the 9^th circle of hell.  And yet he does not resort to the uber-villians tried and true super weapon, just standard explosives, detonation devices and the element of surprise. He is able to do more with less than any villain before.  He picks the right targets, those that he knows will threaten the city's vital institutions but also serve as symbols of public civility- Judges, Police Commissioners and District Attorneys.  For it's never the institutions the Joker is after but the public's faith in those institutions, its confidence.    

As he grows as a public threat his terrorist campaigns become more daring and more visionary.  His criminal enterprise goes interactive as victims- in a sadistic parody of reality shows and interactive TV culture- are asked to decide their own fates.  At one point passengers on two stranded ferries take part in what the Joker dubs his little "social experiment." The two ferries are each rigged with explosives that will be detonated by the Joker at midnight. But the passengers can save themselves by blowing up the other boat. He gives each of the boats detonators. And then ask the participants on board to make their choice.  Can anyone think of an act so simple in its construction and so fiendish in its consequences?  It's a genius maneuver.  Sheer genius

Heath Ledger's Joker just may be the most amazing villain ever created for the Silver Screen, more evil than Darth Vader, more cunning and clever than Goldfinger, and more disturbing than even Hannibal Lecter.  

It's been a while since I've done some verse. But listening to Wagner's Opera Tannhauser and reading CC's poem Click here to read CC's poem. inspired me to write this short poem on a familiar theme.

So here you go...  Have a Super Sunday...

After Eden

So is there no space without despair;
No garden that isn't still a lover's lair;
No promise-land that can reconcile,
Where mortal manners can retire?
NO place where sensuality gives way to symmetry
Or the clock-hands strike to shriek: INFINITY?
No place without contradiction or contraction,
Where action leads at last to satisfaction
And doing doesn't disappoint
Or its antithesis anoint?
Someplace where differences undivide
And coincidences converge and coincide.

Somewhere-that's not some place-
That's lost the need for human taste?

If we are to win freedom for the world than we must first declare our independence from the limitations of the ignorance that we have taken for unconditional truth.  We must declare our own independence and set about our own emancipation, once and for all. Cast off the chains of doubt, those manacles of ordinary madness that you've secretly longed for. For if we are to advance the freedom of one person in this world, then we must first advance our own freedom.  How can we give to another what we've yet to claim for ourselves?  

What is it I want for myself? What is it I want for others?   Only to live a life of freedom, not the patriotic variety, the kind that's trotted out every 4^th of July. Or the kind that rallies around a flag rather the principles and ideals that the flag is supposed to represent.  Which flag is it we should rally around-the one that was bravely raised by the Marines at Iwo Jima? Or the one that accompanied the calvary as it mowed down innocent Native Americans at the 'battle" of ..Wounded Knee? America, I've learned, is not a place I reside but an attitude and insistence that resides in me, that calls me to continually question. 

This attitude works to secure freedom for all.  It works to realize all those self-evident truths, truths that ..Jefferson.. wrote about over 200 years that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with "unalienable rights" that include "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  But if these rights were self-evident, than we would have achieved them a century ago.  The fact remains, that they are not self-evident.  They were self-evident to propertied land owners for propertied land owners. But there is no mention of women in the Declaration.  And there was certainly no liberty let alone "pursuit of happiness" for the thousands of slaves that financed the fortunes of Southern plantation owners. For these slaves freedom was a dream that died in the dust of those cotton fields. Political freedom is forever a work in progress.

Personal freedom is exactly the same. Freedom is not given to us once and for all. Instead freedom is something that is slowly acquired and acquired only by a commitment to question the complacency our present ones.  You've been granted political freedom. But does that mean that you are now free? What is freedom? Does freedom mean I'm given political space to make a material existence? What about financial freedom, personal freedom, sexual or psychological freedom? I know plenty people who have political freedom but they are slaves to their own self-destructive behaviors.  I know people who are financially free but who are caught in planetary patterns of consumerism and materialism.  They were freed by one master only to become slaves to another. 

And yes, I know people who are sexually liberated who are certain that emancipation from carnal moralities leads to a freeing of the spirit and enlightened wisdom. But these people remain unconscious slaves to surfaces and addicted to appearances. So at what point can one declare himself/herself free and independent?  The answer is not as easy as it seems

Freedom is something that must constantly be explored, questioned and reexamined.  Will you exercise your freedom responsibly and with forethought? Or will you use it only to adore your own ego? Will you insist in your own advancement above others, convinced that you owe nothing to another?

 Or will you use your freedom to elevate and liberate others?  Will you like our political forefathers use your freedom only to advance those amongst your own peer group, your socio-economic status, or those with similar beliefs and worldview.  Or will you work tirelessly for the freedom of all and give of yourself selflessly like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela?

Will you join our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?  

Beyond the barricades,

Is there a world you long see?

Then, join in the fight

That will give you the right

To be free.

.. ..

                                   Do You Hear The People Sing?      Les Miserables

 I was tagged by Marion. (What can I say I didn't move out of the line of fire fast enough.)  So here you go 15 random ass things that won't help you, won't harm you and you probably never cared to know about the inimitable, indivisible me.

1. My favorite Opera Singer 

No it's not the next big reality to show to hit PBS or A&E, or Bravo. It's me. It what I always wanted to be before I didn't know what I wanted to be. Some kids wanted to grow up rock-stars. But for me it was all about Opera.  I actually was in a professional production of Mozart's Die Zauberflote  (The Magic Flute).  And then I discoverd allergies..

2.  History: It's not a mystery to me  

Yes I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. At one time I could tell all about the French Revolution, the Middle Ages, and early 20th century America. My favorite area of history: 19 century American diplomacy.

3. I was all I could be

 Before there was an Army of One, and Army Strong. I was being all I could be in the Illinois National Guard.  I spent 7 strong years as a Water Purification Specialist turning out not so tasty but potable water to the thirsty troops. During the great flood of 1993 I spent over a month on Active Flood Duty.  I tossed sandbags and was on a Mississippi levy when it broke. Bye Bye Miss American Pie.

4.I don't turn on 

I have an MP3 player but find a rarely use. I have a cell-phone (pay as you go) but rarely carry that too. Only if I have to meet someone or go on an extended trip other wise I use can take em but I leave em..

5. I'm an aspiring vegetarian

I say aspiring because I've never quite made the leap to lettuce.  I've tried more than a couple of times but have yet to find a diet that doesn't have me dropping weight as fast as a ship lost in the Bermuda Triangle.  The last time I did the purley veggie thing was a week long meditation retreat that left me about 10 pounds lighter.  I do populate my diet mostly with whole grains and veggies and I rarely eat milk products.   

6.  I maintain radio silence

Untlil recently, I drove with my car radio off.  Previously owning a car in my youth with no radio prepared me for my act of abstinence but it was seeing how mindlessly people take to the tunes that turned me off.  So in effort to be more musically minful I said sianra to radio on the go. I found after a short while I didn't miss it and conversations with passengers were easier on the throat. 

7.  I'm a certified Life Coach

In 2005 I took the Core Essentials course for Life Coaching with Coach U.  The company founded by the father of coaching Thomas Leonard.  I've coached more than a few people in my day- all of whom say they benefited greatly from my coaching.  My strengths: asking powerful questions, being fully present for the client, and affirming greatness.

8. No Ablo, No Problem

I taught English as a Second Language for an entire year as adjunct ESL professor at Colorado Mountain College when I lived in the mountains of Colorado. I could have formed a model UN with my students. I taught students from Mexico, Mauritania, Russia, Japan, Brazil, El Salvador.. to name a few. My aid was from Costa Rica.

9. The River Wild

I've been white water rafting 4 separate times. 3 times on the Snake River that runs through Jackson Hole in Wyoming and ran the rapids once on the Arkansas River in Colorado. The trip down the Arkansas was on a stretch of rapids that contained several class 5 rapids ( class 6 are considered unnavigable).  Helmets were a requirement on that trip and with good reason as flipping a raft wasn't at all uncommon.  It happended to a couple of rafts with us.  Our group made it through with no problems.

10. I was Indiana Jones in a past life

During my summer stay in Grand Teton National Park. I went hiking, rock climbing, and canyoneering. I even explored a wind cave in adjacent Idaho. We visited the cave twice ,the second time required each of us to pull ourselves one at a time over a 20 foot wide depression with rappeling gear. ( I've got the pictures to prove it)  

11. It's no dessert; it's the desert

My friends and I spent the night camping in the Great Basin in Southern Utah during an impromtu road trip through Moab, and Arches National Park.  Some of the highlights on a desert derby: seeing a fossilized dinosaur print, viewing  petroglyths and scaling a sandstone arch.

12. It's  AMAZEING

Before cornmazes were cool I was deciphering them.  The product of  celestial beings with too much time on their hands, these mysterious signs provided fun for high schoold students with disposable income. I went on two separte maze adventures, one in Idaho and another in Utah.

13. Fed Ex

I love watching professional tennis and my favorite player currently is Roger Federer. I'll be rooting for him to win his 6 consecutive Wimbledon and 13th grand slam tennis tournament. 

14.  21 It's not just a game of blackjack 

21 was my cumulative score on the ACT college entrance exam.  While many of my classmates were in the high 20's and low 30's, I barely made the grade.  Ironically, my lowest score was on the English portion of the test, 15.  I found it particularly satisfying winning the Univesity English Department Essay Contest and racking up A after A in my literature classes. The Morale of the Story: Don't belive what the experts tell you.

15. I was Screech before screech was screech

Ah highschool, girls, partys and nicknames you hate. I earned this nickname because of my high tenor voice. My voice didn't change until I was a junior in High School.  From then on it was a slow descent to baritone.  

Ok there's 15 random facts about me. Now the other part of the deal is I've got to come up with 10 people of my own to come up with 15 randonw things of their own.  Here goes. 

Deidre

I Love My Imperfection

Confessions of a Disease

Princess Loretta

Contessa

Authentic Kate

MoonGoddess B

Michaelangelo

Kelly

Alicia

Is this the Real Life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide,

No escape from reality…

                                  Queen   Bohemian Rhapsody 

I've often been accused of being naïve, idealist, a "head in the clouds" type person. A  charge that- by conventional standards-is probably true.  Just the other day a coworker remarked to me that I truly was "a glass half full," to which I wittily replied, only "if it's half full of vodka."  It was my attempt to inject some humor into the situation.(Even at work people too often see me as overly serious.)  Those that truly know me know that I'm anything but. I'm generally a light-hearted, whimsical person who loves to play whenever possible. I'm only "serious" in my writing because no one else seems to, preferring instead to live a life that worships levity and lack of consequence and believing, in the most misguided of manner, that the sole rationale for living is to have fun.

It's no so much that I'm a half glass full person, as a person who deliberately chooses to see the best in others, and not add pessimism and cynicism where none is warranted. I tried to explain this to a coworker just yesterday in a discussion about road rage.  She insisted to me that she found relief in getting angry at drivers who cut her off or didn't follow some unstated automobile protocol. But I told her that getting angry at another driver only succeeded in doing one thing:  in making you angry.  She went on to tell me that expressing her anger worked for her at reducing stress and that I couldn't know for certain because her experience was hers and not mine. At which point I conceded this was true.

No sense beating a dead horse.  (Of course what I thought later was that it may be true or it may be your own personal delusion that you've yet to see through. And that, while it's been scientifically proven that getting angry over insignificant events only makes you more  susceptible to anger  and sets you up to experience the world in a way that is unduly hostile, you are the one scientific and statistical anomaly?)  So what is the fantasy and what is real?

Rather than being an optimist, I consider myself a genuine realist. The idealists of our age are, I believe,  those who arrogantly believe that the current realities are the only possible ones and that their philosophies won't someday go the way of the dodo bird.  Yes, even the idealist of the present can't stop the march toward the future! This despite their continuous backsliding. 

Fantasy or Reality…which is real?   Looking at the above, it seems that our present reality is not so much a fixed actuality as simply a choice to believe in a present fantasy and that that particular fantasy will continue and endure. And that reality- for all its permanence- is simply the logical outcome from following the unconscious impulses and thought streams of the conventional culture and our petty personhood, in other words, reality is in reality swearing allegiance to the current fantasy.   By doing so you become exactly what society makes of you: a respectable and reasonable person. The reasonable man calls this bizarre allegiance "sanity." 

The author Cervantes called such sane living "madness." The "maddest" thing of all said Cervantes to see "life as it is and not as it should be."  And George Bernard Shaw once remarked that the future depends on the "unreasonable man," the one who won't bend his principles to match the bend in culture current, but chooses, through resourcefulness and character, to bend the river to match his unreasonableness so that he may bring those life-giving waters to many more.  It seems many of our politicians and business leaders haven't been reading their Cervantes and Shaw.

In the spirit of Shaw and Cervantes, I've chosen to use this moment to voice a bit of my own unreason and let you decide what is reasonable and what is not.  I have no desire to trick you or deceive; I have no desire to dictate to you how you've failed or how you are a product of a generation that is leading us to nowhere.  Rather I simply ask that you do as I am beginning to do: believe in possibility, believe in hope and the power of goodness to overcome and prevail. What I'm asking for most is that you begin to believe in the life that "should be" yours and not the one that is because the future depends on you. 

So without further ado the list of just some of the things I find unreasonable:

1.That we arrive at our success only through our own gumption and guile,

2.That our success is ours alone

3.That freedom means I don't owe anything to anyone

4.That thee past is passé and tomorrow is all that matters

5.That diversity and not unity is what matters most

6.That personality is profundity and image is inspiration

7.That Cleverness is wisdom and sophistication is substance

8.That it's socially acceptable not to care

9.That success is an acceptable substitute for greatness

10. That it is better to have an effect than actually affect                        

11. That our destiny is in our control and if we fail to achieve it it's our fault

12. That I'm only successful if it's in the socially-accepted sphere.

Now is the time.  Now is us.  We are the only ones who can stop the steady slide into mediocrity and pointlessness.  We are the only ones available. There is no Washington, no Lincoln, no Jefferson, no Martin Luther King, no Jesus, and no Buddha.  There is no one but ourselves to help us with our task.  So let us begin now, you and I, to create the world we imagine and never settle for the one that is. .

So much depend upon our efforts, not just your personal salvation, not jut this nation's salvation, but the salvation of the entire world.  While watching night-line the other night I was disturbed to hear about the precarious situation in The Congo.  The children there are dying of starvation; villagers are being slaughtered and murdered as groups of militants fight for control of the countries government. On the episode Ben Affleck interviewed a woman who was severely burned and her face completely disfigured after the hovel she lived in was set ablaze and the inferno collapsed on her and her son, killing him and burning her.  And disturbed how little I knew about it and how it probably took the clout of A-list Hollywood celeb to get it on late-night television. ( Strange how the only carnage that we care for is our own?)

I know what's coming next. " Jeeze, I'm paying almost $100 a week to keep my SUV filled with gas so I can commute to my job that barely allows me and my family of four to  make ends meet  and YOU want me to care about some villager in a remote part of Africa who I'll never see and probably never hear of again ever?  Life is difficult for us all ain't it.  I'm really sorry for your African mother there, but I got more important things to worry about."

We'll do you? What could be so important about this stranger, you say?  Because in closing yourself off from this stranger you are closing off yourself. Because in closing off this woman you are in fact actually closing off your friends, family, and those you truly care about, those for whom you could genuinely make a difference.  Because in closing off to this so called stranger's pain you are only protracting the system of indifference that keeps you stuck in the economic and financial and emotional bind you are in.

The reality is we aren't suffering from an economic downturn but an empathy downturn.  The reality is we are suffering from a deficit in community that devalues virtues like compassion and care. The reality is we are suffering from a deficit of imagination that fails to imagine the future, our future, as anything but the past.  The reality IS we suffer from an economics of indifference disguised in the regal gowns of self-reliance, positive thinking, optimism, character, fortitude, passion, empowerment, opportunity and all the other buzz words that the marketers and self help gurus manufacture to "elevate" our collective consciousness.  Words, that in my experience have not elevated so much as desecrated and gutted the best of what our past had to teach us.

Now how can I express my take on our current reality in a very sophisticated and erudite manner?  I need a phrase a word, a word that truly encapsulates the whole of what I think, that articulates our existing frames of reference and ideological understandings, an understanding that speaks to intellectual and politician alike, that is profound yet potent, a word…. a word…………………………………………………...........BULLSHIT.

Be sure to check out  The Group Blogging Experience (Thanks Alicia!)

Chaos is what I crave, he thought to himself.   The randomness, the pointlessness, the measurelessness of it all.  Figures and fragments streaming out in infinite distance, making infinite connections and all in infinite directions, of course in infinity there is no distance no measurement, no signpost to the future. The future is now and ever was and thou and so because.

What the hell did that last part mean? Gobbledgook, nonsense.  That's the point of it: no point. No order, no rhythm, only those remembered tracts of experience lay down by a being of inexperience. So if our present behaviors are only a compilation of our past ones, how could they be at all reliable?

Order is full of inaccuracies and gross exaggerations.  Order is simply the instant amplified to extremes to the point where its one glimmer of truth becomes an infallible law of progression. But chaos has no progression, relies on no rhythm and the future has no fundamental form.  So the two remain irreconcilable, what the novelist Broch would term a terminal paradox. There is, he thought, no way to remedy our world.  All you can do is take up sides.  Do you stand with order? Or do you stand with chaos? Shakti or Shiva?  Pick your poison.  And then, once you arrive at your decision fight like hell to realize your vision of the world. 

Wasn't that it?  Wasn't that what all the greats have done?  Surely their life wasn't about discovering so much as ordering, offering clever calculations and extrapolations that  brought a  way of comprehending and understanding into the world, that is until the age eclipsed understanding and freedom began to feel like fetters and the room with a view became nothing more than an egghead's jail cell. Then another genius would come along and create a new order, a shadow under which everyone would linger, a shadow mistaken for a sun. And the cycle would begin again.

He thought about that idea of the shadow and it led him back to Plato and that parable. What was it, that question his freshman philosophy professor had posed to his adolescent brain?  Was it possible to exit the cave? Insight, aspiration, freedom-are they real or simply archetypes of extinction, more sophisticated forms of shadow?  How different life seemed to a middle-ager than a teenager. Clearer- clearer without a doubt.  And that was the shit of it, he thought.  All those ideas, all those emphatic aspirations taken to be inspiration were little more than "space junk" fallen from the firmament of philosophic discourse.

Those jackasses, thinking they were doing something so original and merely setting the world on fire with someone else's flame.  He laughed at his adolescent arrogance. Freedom and self-expression: the last great illusions to overcome.  Order didn't lead to greater clarity only to greater certainty; the future he realized was not one ecstatic jail break, it was simply the warden come to lead you to a new jail cell.    

And that's why he chose chaos. Help me Obiwankanobichaos you're our only hope.  At least with chaos on our side we might at last be able to execute a true jail break. But, what if not? What if chaos too were nothing more than a karmic upgrade, the latest expression of order? Then there would be no way out.  Never, ever NONE. 

"Instant Karma's gonna get ya," he heard the lyric wafting through the placeless present. Lennon was more right than he'd thought.      

I saw the Bucket List last night. It's an interesting variation on the buddy film.  Usually a buddy film features two characters opposite in temperament who are brought together by their profession. They are usually comedies, Running Scared, MIB, Night Shift. The buddies are usually male. But the bucket list is different. The two main characters are not brought together by profession but by diagnoses of death, each is given only 6 months to a year to live. They become roommates in the cancer ward of a hospital. 

The characters are not too far from the stars onscreen personas of the two leads Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, Nicholson plays Edward the high-powered businessman-flamboyant, hedonistic, married 3 times and divorced 3 times. As Edwardly wryly puts it: "I like being married, but "I like being single." He is a man of action and sarcastic one-liners-at one point he wittily refers to his second wife as "the sequel."  He built his business from the ground up.

Freeman, meanwhile, plays the earnest Carter a man of integrity and simplicity.  Carter could be an everyman from first impression, but his discussion with a junior mechanic about the actual inventor of the radio, whether it was Guglielmo Marconi or Nikola Tesla, reveal a man who is articulate and intelligent.  He wanted to be a history professor but life intervened and short-changed his professorial destiny. He married the only woman he'd ever been with and gave to his wife and children selflessly for 45 years.

The two thorough mutual pain and suffering slowly become friends. And begin a series of amazing adventures financed by Edward's bankroll: skydiving, stock car racing, Africa safaring. They're all part of what Carter calls a "bucket list."  In the process each seems to inhabit more and more of the other's character. Carter becomes more adventurous and fearless and Edward more kind and giving.

It's an interesting dynamic, one that reminded me of that between the narrator and Zorba in Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek though without any of the novels heavy metaphysical discussions or deep philosophical musings. We are only given a taste of these. At one point while the two are jet-setting over the Arctic Circle in Edward's private plane, Carter remarks that the stars were one of "God's good ones." This set off a brief discussion about faith and the existence of a supreme being.  Edward saying he never could buy into the man upstairs belief. Carter response is short and simple- that's why they call it faith.

But the movie is not meant to be a metaphysical discussion about the afterlife but a story of two men bonding and about what it truly means to live a good life and how we can do so here and now, this despite whatever condition we find ourselves.  The two men come together grow; in the process we are shown that even sorrow can give way to joy.

There was nothing particularly striking or artistically inspiring about the film. The plot is conventional, the direction effective but hardly visionary.  There are a few memorable lines, some that reach for the poetic, mostly though it's just entertaining banter between Freeman and Nicholson. And yet I liked this film because it is moving and reminds us what life should be about. "Don't you want to go out with guns blazing?" Edward says to Carter trying to get him to up the ante on his bucket list. We'll don't you?

Surely living in the now, living with gusto and verve is one of the main takeaways from this film. The other: that our joy is somehow dependant on the joy of others; that what truly brings us joy is not unbridled hedonism and narcissistic pleasure pursuits but contributing to welfare of others. The goal: to die "with your eyes closed and your heart open." The ancient Egyptians understood this. According to the scholarly Carter, they won heaven by answering yes to only two questions: 1) Did you find the joy in your life?  2) Did your life bring joy to others?

Two questions we should ask ourselves everyday.   

"All who find happiness in this world have done so by wishing for the happiness of many others.  All who find unhappiness in this world have done so by aiming just for their own happiness."

                                                                                                              Shantideva

There is something to be said for the discipline of publishing a new blog everyday. I've done very well only missing a few days-other than the weekends which I decided to intentionaly take off.  I have, however, written everyday with the exception of the weekends, even when I haven't published a blog.  As a general rule I've noticed the blogs toward the end of the week are stronger than those at the begining. Is it because I've once again found my form after taking the weekends off? If so, maybe I need to keep writing even if I don't publish something on the weekends.

Anyway, I have many questions to consider. I'm working on a blog about honesty and truth but it just hasn't quite come together.  Rather than try and force the issue I usually allow things to develop organically and resist the temptation to mute the voices and limit the multitude of possibilities that arise while writing and instead try to follow that barely perceptible stream of ideas that can unify a piece and give it unique voice. I admit this isn't always easy and sometimes the signal is clearer than at other times. 

 Sometimes I'm left to question why it is that I make writing so difficult-writing always feels so easy when you are locked in and focused on a theme or topic; but often I'm left with the question of how could I ever think this could ever be an easy endeavor. All you need to do to write is stare at the page until you begin to bleed. Not an easy task. 

Perhaps I still haven't found the proper technique for allowing or perhaps writing is not so much about creating as it is about absolving or purifying. The process of writing is a bit like bleeding or blood letting to remove all the toxic notions.  And maybe writing isn't so much about creating something as removing as purifying, of clearing the mind of all distraction. I once thought about this and thought about the act of writing as prepararing a space for infinity to reside- a clear mind, a consciousness emptied of preconceptions and assumed truths. 

This is probably not a typical view of the function of writing but it's one that occurred to me one day while writing a poem.  I tried to fashion the vision I had of this space into form but was unable to.  I've always liked that line "preparing a place for infinity"  It brings me back to the devotional aspect of the craft, to the simple discpline and turns writing into my own spiritual and religious practice. Ultimately, I'm writing not to be heard by another but so that I can better hear myself. With each word I write I become more attuned to the silence at the center of the words,  the "pregnant void" and the womb of artistic creation.

Listening  is such a necessary part of writing.  This is the things most writers seem to forget. Instead they are so thankful to be writing anything that they often  grow overly ecstatic at the first ideas that appear. I know, many people feel that the first expressions are the most powerful that what is needed is the raw, the rude, excavated from their backgrounds still fully alive. But a good writer knows not to trust the overly exuberant.  Passion unmated with precision breeds only sentiemtality, a string of cleiches and second-hand style.  

Often the first ideas we arrive at our not even ours; they are simply the recycled response pulled from the gestalt of background noise and banality,ideas that belong to others or to older version of ourselves. If we are to write anything original we must not be duped by the first fickle trickle of water ushering from the well. Instead, we must wait patiently and persistently for the water that comes from our unexplored deep.

This takes a great deal of "blood letting" and a great deal of waiting.

How do you arrive at your subject matter?  Do you write to create or relate? What's the one question you most want to ask?