Chronicles Of The Return

Since I’m feeling wicked sorry for myself today, I offer up these two links. The first one is Krugman’s latest column on the Third Depression. This doesn’t surprise me. Enjoy it. The second link is Joe Bageant’s latest post on, well, who knows, really. I’m only half way through and it’s done nothing to life my spirits, spirits that began a nasty descent yesterday and don’t look as if they are going to make an ascent any time soon.

I miss cold showers in India. I miss sleeping in cheap, five dollar a night hotel rooms with no AC. I miss eating strange foods then getting sick. I miss being out of my comfort zone twenty four hours a day, strange stares and even strange languages. I miss being dirty. I miss long bus rides across impossibly magnificent landscapes. I miss the colors of people who live close to the land, with the land, on the land. I miss strange sounds.

I miss the world.

And every day I grow more and more tired of this anodyne, fluorescent light-bulb existence.

Every day I drive to work. Once a week I pay close to $40 to fill up my tank. When I am not driving to work, I try to ride my new bike everywhere I go, even in the almost 100* Texas heat. And when I drive, I think about the oil-soaked pelicans in the gulf, the porpoises washing up on Alabama beaches, literally oozing oil from their insides-out. I feel the weight of the guilt each time I shift gears, and remind myself not to gun the engine too much, better to save oil.

My carbon footprint is lower than it has ever been. Some nights, when it’s cool and overcast I open the windows in my tiny garage apartment and sleep in the warm Texas night. I’m used to the discomfort, having passed many nights in Southeast Asia and India without any form of air conditioning. I take cold showers, better to save the natural gas. Again, I’m used to cold water, having learned to like it while traveling in India and Southeast Asia. (Of course, I use hot water in the winter months.) When I wash my clothes, I don’t use hot water. When I dry them, I use a clothes line.

But every day that passes with dead birds washing up on shore I ask myself what more I can do?

I try and eat vegetables and such that don’t require cooking in the microwave or meats on the gas stove. I still can’t give up meat totally–I’m not that good of a Buddhist yet. I separate the aluminum cans, glass bottles and paper, from the food waste, better to recycle. I don’t have any toys, other than an iPad, a MacBookPro and an iPhone. They are toys, but they have other, environmentally friendly uses, as well. For example, I don’t own a TV, flatscreen or otherwise. I try to live as frugally as possible, going so far as to buy the majority of my books in electronic format now, better to save the trees. (And this is probably the biggest sacrifice I’ve made because I love the feel of books.)  One reason I bought my iPad was so I would stop printing up news stories on the internet, again, better to save paper.

I don’t own any power tools. No gas powered grills. I take my shoes to a cobbler. I have my old clothes, suits included, altered when necessary.

But every day I ask myself, what’s my responsibility?

I don’t live the American dream, although with my job I could probably buy a home and a big SUV just like everyone else here in liberal Austin.

I have to get to work. I’ve asked to be able to work from home two or three days a week to save energy. My requests have been declined. I’ve looked for a small efficiency apartment near work to lower my gas bill, but when I sit down to figure the costs, it would raise my carbon footprint to live in a bigger place. Personal conservation is a virtue, I suppose, but it isn’t easy when all of our living arrangements are stacked against me. It’s hard to break free from the system.

I’m not some kind of get back to nature, dirty hippie, or a survival nut. Just a guy living in a modern American city trying to be responsible.

And yet, every day I ask myself, what more can I do?

A friend writes:

What’s happening in the gulf is a sign that things are just a horrible mess, and I don’t just mean the oil spill. The stuff BP is pulling is just criminal, totally criminal. But, as usual, corporations get to do whatever they want and the people have to put up with it, and do the suffering. What I don’t understand is why isn’t there mass outrage? A 20% real unemployment rate? The destruction of thousands of miles of coast line? Corporations that are allowed to do what ever they want in the political arena? It’s madness, but it hasn’t run its course yet. Not even close.

Let’s recount a little bit more: US government assassinating American citizens overseas, Katrina, Gitmo still open and a stain on our nation, a renewed push to bottleneck the internet by corporate interests, the Financial Crisis and subsequent bailout without any accountability, two ongoing and pointless wars, corporations and police departments cooperating to prevent journalists access to the disaster in the Gulf, degrading and faltering transportation and energy transmissions infrastructure, failing schools, rising crime rates, distressed and poisoned food supplies, and American is a country that is not ranked number one in anything, in any real global survey of education, health, manufacturing, etc. . . except for military spending.

Have I missed anything?

So, what kind of outrage do we get? This: a carnival at a BP station in New York City? Is this the best we can do?

Apparently it is.

Now, I’m not opposed to violent protests. There is a time and a place, but in contemporary America it simply won’t work. Why? Because we live in the most violent country on the planet and violence would be met with a brutality few of us could imagine. The only way to change America is to engage in serious and sustained non-violent protest.

What I’m not for is non-violent, weekend outings with guest appearances by people like Joan Baez. If protest is to work, it has to be serious, deadly serious. And Americans have to be willing to sacrifice. And die. Because there will be deaths. It has to be something more than a ‘Million’ whatever march on the Mall in Washington or a carnival.

We need protests on Monday.

We need protests on Tuesday.

We need protests on any day of the week that ends in a ‘y.’

Weekend outings won’t get it done. It has to be more, much more than just a march. A march is a culmination. Marches didn’t bring civil rights to the South. Sit-ins and civil disobedience did. In our time we need the following:

Freeways have to be shut down.

Government buildings surrounded. Access blocked.

Schools shut down.

Refineries blocked.

Airport security lines halted by travelers unwilling to undergo the indignity of being x-rayed.

Sit ins.

Television stations surrounded.

Sit-ins at Wal-Mart, COSTCO and Target.

People have to be inconvenienced. They must be challenged.

“But this stuff is illegal, and it will just anger people, more than change their mind,” you might say.

Well, give me other ideas? How else do we challenge people? How else do we prove to Americans of all stripes that our country is being driven into a ditch. A little inconvenience in exchange for an end to some seriously egregious abuses done in our name every day seems like a good trade-off to me. Besides, picking up a gun is illegal too!

People must be challenged everywhere. Not just in DC, or NYC, or Berkeley.

It will require real sacrifice on the part of the protesters.

Why? Because the reaction of the Establishment powers, even to non-violent protests, will be violent. It will be brutal. It will be unjust. And it will make Kent State look like a picnic. Protesters will be jailed and others will be harassed. Groups will be infiltrated.

They will tell us we are hooligans, but will will not destroy. We will protest to rebuild our nation. They will tell us that we are unpatriotic, but our love of country will be richer and deeper than the faux-patriotism of the corporatists on Wall Street or the torturers in our government. They will tell us that we are fraying the fabric of American society. But they will be wrong, we will be weaving it together even stronger.

There is no other way.

If it is to succeed it will have to terrify the Establishment, but more importantly, it will have to cost them.

There is simply no other way.

Alas, it won’t happen, because our outrage is drowning in an ocean of cheap Chinese goods and anti-depressants, bad cable television and fatty foods, fat-cat banksters and mendacious politicians.

But you know what? I’m willing. Are you?

All is right in my world this morning as I sit on the patio of my favorite coffee shop reading the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books. I only recently renewed my subscription, as I was uncertain how long I was going to remain in the US upon returning home in late June of last year. But here I am, and while I do hope to travel again in the near future, it’s strange to say this, but I think I’ve found a home in Austin–or at the very least, a home base.

In my opinion it is the single finest magazine in English. Where else can you get esssays on particle physics, Dickens, a detailed deconstruction of the baleful influence of Israel on US foreign policy, a lengthy exposition on the differences between Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia? All of which are grounded in reality, not Fox News fantasy?

The New Yorker is a fine magazine as well. But my problem with it is that it’s not nearly as comprehensive, nor, in a sense, is it as curious. Generally speaking I think the flaw with the New Yorker is it sees the world from the prism of New York City (in itself not a bad prism, just limited.) It’s gravitas comes from the City, not the world, like the New York Review of Books.

Of course, the New York Review of Books is most certainly not a propaganda mouthpiece for the neocon/Likudniks like The New Republic is–and Walter Lippman is spinning in his grave, I tell you. I was a subscriber to the New Republic for ten years. It was the first serious magazine I read in college. It was hard to let it go, but by 2003 the magazine had changed so much it wasn’t worth my time or money only to read one or two essays an issue.

I also subscribed to the New Yorker for a few years, but canceled my subscription when I realized I was only reading one or two articles a week from it. Not a good return on my money. As a general rule I read the New York Review of Books from cover to cover every two weeks. And with that I don’t need to read the newspaper and all its attendant noise, daily. I get signal from the New York Review.

And that’s the beauty of The New York Review: I read it from cover to cover and I learn something new every two weeks. Where else would one read an essay on Tennesse Williams followed by an excellent essay on the emerging food movement? Or a long essay on biology, or the glaciers, or evolution, followed by an expose or sorts on George W. Bush? You don’t get anything like the intellectual diversity in the New York Times, much less the Austin American-Statesman.

And don’t get me started on McPaper: a simple paper for simple minds if ever there was one.

Waitress: “Clem, Can I help you?”

Oldtimer: “What?”

Waitress: “Want some coffee?”

Oldtimer: (Cupping right ear with right hand.) “Speak up, young lady.”

Waitress: (Much louder this time.) “Coffee. Clem. You want some?”

Oldtimer: (Smiling mischievously.) “Don’t yell at me!”

How many of us have had the thought that somewhere in the universe, or perhaps in an alternate reality we have a doppelganger, an identical twin, doing the exact same things we are doing, making the same mistakes and pondering the same thought of a doppelganger at exactly this moment?

Perhaps it is a measure of the new relationship I find myself in that makes this particular bit of graffiti reach me, but I confess: the idea of doppelganger poetry is too fun not to comment on.

They are not poems written by “us” but poems written about “us.” As if they exist on their own, in their own reality–and perhaps all good poetry does this?

And do “we” really exist? What is it that happens when two individuals collide on some random Tuesday afternoon? How do they manage to break through the inevitable small talk and reach a deeper understanding of each other? It’s all so random, but like a virtuous circle it feeds on itself until one of them takes the ultimate risk and says, “I love you.” And then that love is reciprocated.

Perhaps somewhere in the vastness of existence, the dual reflections of these two people reflect off a mirror and then by chance their visages carom into some alternate reality where a poem writes itself.

Where can I find this cosmic archive of doppelganger poetry? Who’s the publisher? More importantly, who’s the editor?

Found poetry on a bathroom wall:

“I wanted only to try and live in accord with the promptings

which came from my true self.

Why was that so difficult?”

Because Jesus hates you!

Another Casualty

cat got run over
now silver screw holding together a broken
femur
right leg
bound in bright red
bandage

got cat home from vet’s
took my eye off
him for
a moment

he ran across floor
dragging his red
leg
chasing the female
cat

worst thing the
fucker could
do

he’s in the penalty
box
now
sweating it
out

he’s just like the
rest of
us

he has these large
yellow eyes
staring

only wanting to
live the
good
life.

~by Charles Bukowski

It’s the first weekend I’ve had in about two years. It’s not like the recent past has been one long party, but the days have had a tendency to blend together, Saturday being no different from Tuesday and that sad, depressing feeling on Sunday afternoons is something I’ve forgotten. I suppose tomorrow I’ll be getting in touch with it once again. This morning laying in bed was odd: it was just before seven and the voice of discipline was telling me, “get up you lazy bum, shower, eat and then head to the coffee shop and WRITE!” But then there was another voice that said, “wait, wait, wait, enjoy the morning, take your time, don’t hurry. You worked hard this week.”

Soon both voices collapsed into a cacophony of dialogue and argumentation, most of which was about the show I saw last night.

Darrell Scott played at the Cactus Cafe and it was one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve been a fan of Scott’s for several years now. I’m not sure what it is about his music that moves me and touches me so. I grew up decidedly upper middle class: my father is a CPA and my mother was an executive with the State Government. Early in life we lived on a farm, but as my father’s career took off we sold it and moved into the city. Of course, we never really struggled–sure after the divorce things were rough for a couple of years, but we never wanted for much. So, it’s odd that Scott’s songs of working men and women, bruised and scarred lives, filled with doubt, alcohol and disappointment capture my imagination the way they do. (Oh, there are more reasons for this, but reasons I’m not willing to disclose just yet. Disclose is not the best word here: it’s story I’ll tell in due time, just not yet.)

Perhaps it’s kind of like my attachment to Bukowski and his story as well. Singing songs and writing poems about the hard edges of life in modern America. I certainly think a lot of it is due to the fact that while I went to school in Austin as a child, I was bussed over to the East-side schools and I learned early on that I could relate to anyone; anyone’s pain, or joy for that matter. I learned early on in life to value all life as a triumph of experience over hope–that the simple act of enduring for many people is vindication enough, like Faulkner’s ‘puny, inexhaustible voice’ echoing loudly at the ‘last ding-dong of doom . . . still talking.’ And while hope is that most essential of ingredients to life, in my opinion, and I have much–ever the eternal optimist am I!–for many hope is luxury they can ill afford. It’s the divergences that make life so rich, so potent and so full of potential.

But, I digress, back to Darrell Scott.

I smiled most of the show. It was just Darrell and his guitar up on stage telling stories. About half way through the show Scott played my favorite song of his, called “Uncle Lloyd:”

He was not my father’s brother
But he wished that he could be
Told us kids to call him uncle
And we would be his family
He had a wife and kids in Fresno
The youngest one was twenty-four
Dad had brought him into our house
They didn’t want him anymore

He helped us work the family business
Building fences in the sun
Worked just like a man of twenty
‘Til the working day was done
He and Dad would spend their evening
Sitting in lawn chairs in the yard
Where they’d drink a toast to Seagram’s
Seagram’s never went down hard

Won’t you wake up Uncle Lloyd
Got a lot of work today
We’ll get Don to make the coffee
Load that truck and be on your way
Friday night you can drive to Vegas
Maybe this time you will win
Buy a trailer by the river
And you won’t have to work again

He was sleeping in the workroom
With a mattress on the floor
When one night I heard him crying
As I passed outside his door
He cried, “Rita, girl I love you
Rita, Darling please don’t go
I’ve tried hard to make you happy
I’ve done everything I know”

Then I heard the bottle open
The tipping up and putting down
Heard the rustling of the covers
Then he did not make a sound
I thought of thirty years of Rita
Standing sternly by his side
All the years of hanging in there
All the emptiness inside

Then I thought of how their children
Have children of their own
And how a man at fifty-seven
Winds up living so alone

In so few words Scott tells the story about a broken man, who finds solace in his friends and his friend’s family. The most potent single word in the entire song is “want: when they didn’t want him anymore.” It sets up the entire story, the fulcrum the song launches out to us from, for us to earn it, or own it or just drink away our sorrows with. Sometimes people just don’t want us anymore and we become discarded like things. It’s this human land-fill which Scott mines for his best songs.

The whole night was like this: a veritable story-tellers feast. He played his standards, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” and “My Father’s House.” But it was “Banjo Clark” which blew me and the rest of the audience away: it was the consummate skill with which Scott played the guitar, one of the most amazing acoustic guitar solos I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to. It was rich, not limited to any single genre, a touch of folk here, a pluck or two of jazz, bluegrass spilling off the frets and then the ever present Scott mix of blues and country. There were moments between verses where he just got lost picking away at the guitar, strumming, picking, plucking, hands moving up and down the rosewood-fretboard like a man finding love between the steel frets and the mother of pearl inlay, dare I say he was making love to the guitar. There wasn’t anything self-indulgent about the music, at all: even while he was lost in the music he carried the entire audience right along with him. Seldom do I leave a venue with such a large smile on my face. I felt like I’d been in the hands of a master-story teller, or better yet, a Celtic bard in the Middle Ages.

If you ever get a chance to see Scott do an acoustic set don’t miss it. Trust me on this one.