Onion Cap

People in any historical time have had the tendency to think that they live in unique times, which is of course true; we always live in unique times.  Can there be a time more unique, more significant, more consequential, than any other time?

Oh, you say, what about now! We think we are living in very important times now.  Especially 2010.  Just think of the things that are going on: global warming, overpopulation, digital global communication, rising (or falling) standards of living, a conservative wave crashing upon the shores of Congress.  It all seems pretty important and consequential, but is it more so than usual?

Maybe the world is actually ending.  I saw a billboard along the freeway the other day declaring that we are in the end times.  The sign of course directed me to a website.  Think of it, websites about the end times; just a few years ago, that would not have been possible.  Apocalyptic visions provide an extra layer of urgency to any time, which is why we’ve been having these end-of-the-world visions for as long as there has been a written history.  Nothing gets our juices flowing like a good, old apocalypse.

Thank goodness we find other ways than apocalypse to feel the urgency of time, because if we ever had an actual apocalypse, well, that would be it.  Holidays, on the other hand, give us a countdown we can live through.  Holidays remind us of change by being traditional.  We seek to reconstruct and relive the holiday of our memories as we anticipate and finally land on the next holiday; suddenly the day arrives, and we can’t help but notice that we got older, the people we love got older, and lives and jobs and families changed.  This sense of passing, of changing, creates a sense of urgency, of feeling, of significance, of the necessity of now-ness.

Although I am thankful for the illusion of chronocentrism which gives me a sense of significance and importance, I am more thankful for how the awareness of this illusion allows me to pierce through it for just a moment and see that all we have is now, all we have is each other, and that’s the only way it’s ever been.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I visited Bess in Madison a week or so ago, and somewhere during the visit one of the ear-hangers on my reading glasses snapped off.  I think I have about 10 pair of reading glasses with the ear hanger snapped off.

Bess had the clever idea of taping a pen to the frame to create a replacement ear hanger.  Having been a carpenter who lost many a pencil behind my ear, I could immediately see the practicality of this.

Pen Glasses

So here’s my first attempt.  The pen is hard to use as a pen, as it turns out, because the glasses flop down and get in the way.

What an invention.  You do have to watch that you don’t poke your eye with the pen.  A pen does make for a very comfortable ear hanger, and you do have a pen handy.  Of course you can’t see to write, but then you can’t have everything.

Greg Brown’s song, “Wash My Eyes,” is one of my favorites.  It’s fitting for all times, but especially for the times we are in; but of course, we’re always in a time of some sort.  I spent many years singing and hearing this song with the line “Let the cruel and raging seas. ” I found “seas” a bit confusing, but oh well, it’s Greg you know, and he knows his way around a lyric.  Then, in the Age of the Internet, when all lyrics are found by a Google search rather than patient listening, I discovered that the line is a much more seniscal “Let the cruel and raging cease.”  I still like “seas” though.

This song has always been to me a prayer.  Today it is a very fitting post-election, Thanksgiving prayer.

Here is the whole song:

Wash my eyes that I may see
Yellow return to the willow tree
Open my ears that I may hear
The river running swift and clear
And please
Wash my eyes
And please
Open my ears

Wash this world that is one place
And wears a mad and fearful face
Let the cruel raging cease
Let these children sleep in peace
And please
Wash this world
And please
Let these children
Sleep in peace

The Great Oil Spill is stopped, but the sea is still pretty oily.  Are the whales safe?  How about those coral reefs?

I saw a sail boat for sale a while back and it got me thinking.  What it would be like to sail the seas today in a small ship, like Jack London on the Snark?  Maybe such a sail to Australia is in my future.

Change continues.  Two years ago we were celebrating Obama’s election; two years later some other people are celebrating Boehner’s ascension to power: no one is publicly celebrating the current progress of the human race.

We’ve lost a sense of unity, of common purpose, of mission.  Are we here for selfish ends?  Are we here for each other?  Do we make up what we’re here for as we go along?  Are we here for a purpose that calls upon us to eliminate or dehumanize anyone who does not share our purpose?

Time to restart.  Come on people now.  Everybody get together, try to love one another, right now.

Or, maybe just plan a sailing trip that will take several months, if not years.

Lies and distortion took a new twist with the Shirley Sherrod affair.  Everyone bought the initial lies and distortion.

Now that  BP and the feds have figured out how to do a static kill on the spew in the Gulf, it’s time to apply the technology elsewhere.

Let’s come up with a way to pump heavy mud down the spewing wells of lies and distortion.  I’m thinking something of the nature of hovering airships that dump heavy loads of raw data on Sarah Palin’s appearances, Fox News outlets, Breitbart, and other repinionaters of whatever stripe.  Jim Lehrer and Bill Moyers should be in charge.

The word is in from the feds: BP Gulf Oil Spill 2010 is the worst oil spill ever. Four million barrels of oil has gone missing in the Gulf of Mexico. The other million or so was captured by BP skimmers or burned off.  Perhaps the four million barrels were eaten by micro-organisms?  If they were dispersed, where were they dispersed to?

The political spill has just begun.  Who is to blame?  Who should have known better?  What happened to the oil?  Are the government estimates correct?  Has BP paid its bills?  Why does the name Haliburton ring a bell?

What could we have done with four million barrels of oil rather than spill it?

How many barrels of oil does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

two old men stand and wave their arms and hands in a gentle mid-west kata

what they’ve seen and wanted

whom they both might know

all the change and who has passed

and who’d had that surgery

old friends the other didn’t know

time they spent like nickels and dimes

many loads a day

of egg crates and bottled milk

all the fish they caught

the day OSHA came to the shop and shut them down

for lifting thirty-seven pounds or more above your head

ten years of work and now it stops

and do you know Mueller down by the dam?

my house is there behind the tress, so many tress

some herbal thing she’s drinking to lose wieght

it’s funny who you run into and who you know

in Rapid City, South Dakota, a pretty slow place

I heard they had some good wheat years

she works for my cousin

I drove truck for thirty-five years

but she didn’t really advertise

I haul to the cities

she’s got a couple guys who spread the word

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is turning out to be one of the events of the century.  Maybe of the millenia.

The Blob will likely engulf the Gulf as it swirls and expands into the largest oil slick ever, catches the Gulf Stream, coats the Florida coast, and smears it’s way right up the eastern seaboard.  This oil spill is rapidly becoming an unprecedented disaster:  The Oil Spill of 2010.  Spew Orleans.

Already we hear reports of anger at the oil company and at the government for failing to make sure it didn’t happen, for not acting fast enough, and for not fixing it already.  As it drags on, the anger will solidify into a story of who should and must be held accountable for this mess.  A price must be paid.  It will change the political calculus of the 2010 election.  So much for “Drill, baby, drill.”  And who will Pat Robertson blame for this?

All the while we retain our right to a tank of gas.  How common and expected it has become to stop at the gas station, fill the tank, buy a bottle of milk, and maybe even have a chat with the neighbors.  The routines of many millions of lives include a stop at the local filling station.  We don’t question it.  It’s almost impossible to imagine life without a car or a 4 wheel drive truck.  As for the gas, we don’t want anyone to tax it, we don’t want to pay a higher price, and we most certainly feel entitled to have our gas available whenever we need it just about anywhere we go.

As we watch the slick spread to fill the Gulf from the satellite view, it’s not at all hard to see the reflection of everyone responsible right there in the sheen of oil, events following our collective actions with the inexorable logic of cause and effect.

I know a guy who, if you speak to him, he always seems to be too busy.  It’s like you are annoying him or interrupting something.  This might be expected once in a while, but with this guy it is without exception.  He’s too busy.

Of course it could be me.  He just doesn’t want to talk to me, and so he’s trying to avoid any interaction in the way a person might avoid eye contact with a beggar.  If you don’t look at the beggar, you won’t have to give them any money.  But it’s not me, because I’m not the only person whom he treats this way.  And I’m certainly not a beggar.

I think the guy is really just that busy.  His mind is whirring with his own inner business in such a way that he is completely absorbed in the drama of his inner dialogue.  He is really too busy with his own mind.

I’ve experienced this myself, as the busy one, with students or children that I have known.  I’ve been busy with something as a teacher – some politics of the school or planning for a class – when a student wants my full attention.  I’ve had to very deliberately stop the movie in my brain, make eye contact, and pay attention to the student, perhaps with a big noticeable sigh.

I’ve experienced it while watching a TV show or a movie, and also while reading a book.  I become completely absorbed, and I don’t want to be bothered by an interruption.  I’m too busy.

What is it we are attending to?  Our mind’s drama?  The thoughts and feelings whirling?  We attend to the feelings and reactions to phantoms in our own brain, the stories so compelling we can’t stop paying attention.  It’s like we are in a dark cave watching shadows on the wall – we see nothing but the dancing shadows and light and the drama of their exchange.  Socrates predicted the video game quite accurately.

What could be more real and necessary than a real human soul right in front of you in the here and now?  The answer is our thoughts as they whirl and dance in our mind, more compelling than a flesh and blood person here and now.

I don’t know what the Taliban is, really.  From my limited knowledge, they are a hodgepodge group of fundamental extremists trying to take over their country.  They seek to overthrow their government or at least reduce its influence so that it has very little control or power over the Taliban’s interests – which seem to be guns, money, and religion.  The Taliban seeks to destabilize and upset the nation so that the people living in it actually turn toward them as a the solution rather than view them as the enemy.

No doubt many members of the Taliban are sincere and even well-meaning people.  They may be desperately poor, utterly convinced that their religious values and traditions are under attack, and they may view themselves as the holders of a sacred truth.  Many members joined out of great fear as they listened to the leaders, who frightened them with lies and distortions, but who frightened them out of their wits nonetheless. In any event, they now have lay claim to fundamental doctrines that they will die and kill for.

I suspect as well that the Taliban leadership may use their own members’ religious fundamentalism in deeply cynical ways to exert political influence, maintain access to huge financial benefits, create fear, and promote their own interests that are in direct contradiction to the interests of the most sincere and passionate common member.

Who are these guys?  Obviously, I’m talking about the Tea Party.