Frogger

1/20/08
I am tired tonight.  there were goals I set for the day, and it’s one of those days when I focus more on the unmet than the accomplished.  I cannot rest easy, because I furrow hard.  brow-beating oneself is an indoor wind.   miles, per hour.

this pattern of self-deemed-insufficiency is contagious.  we have crocheted the emotional potholders of life similarly.  regifting not-enoughness can be implicity or explicity, myopic or mitosic.  moment is familiar in descent.

but if you can and will, I can and will climb as well.  as well as a baby recovered from a first flu.  as well as the dart-board amateur who hits a bulls eye on his 10000th throw.  as well as can be more than expected.  climb with me now.  think of the view.

1/24/08
“In the unlikely story of America, there has never been anything false about hope.”  For when we have faced down impossible… it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.  yes we can.  it was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they braved a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights  it was sung by immigrants as they set our for distant shores, it was the call of a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed us to the promised land.”

it is all too easy to live in doubt.  it doesn’t feel good, but it does feel natural.  but that doesn’t mean it is.  ☺  I often criticize my students for over-using “it.”  “Be more specific,” I say.  “Don’t be lazy,” I imply.  Am I talking to them?  Yes.  Are they my audience? 

Doubt persists despite every mirror.  Each word, each person, each step reflects the apprehension I hold within.  Yet, each moment, each breath, each look gives me a second chance to feel secure, whole, full, safe. 

2/4/08
at 4:15 I awoke, having to pee, but then thought, upon laying back down after making the long trek downstairs to the rest-room, that I should send more emails encouraging more people to vote, to come to the rally, to look at dipdive.com.  I should testify yet again to my belief in Barack Obama, to his vision, courage, transcendence of fear, faith in human capacity.  And I will do that in any free spaces today and tomorrow…but know I too have to have faith. 

When I listened to The Audacity of Hope this summer, my primary thought each time I turned off the car (thereby pausing the recording) was “He’s gonna win.”  I just couldn’t believe he couldn’t if people got to his message.  But he warned that the success of political campaigns in our age is based on how mediated one’s message is through the media.  Bill Clinton said that Barack is getting a “free pass” with the media, and the me-dia came down hard on him.  You are not Me(-dia), they said.  Well, it could turn at any moment and that’s where my faith comes in.

In the last year, six months really, I’ve learned what faith is.  The definition will change but for now it’s that occasionally feeling that everything’s gonna be all right.  That isn’t a rebuttal to news of murder or loss in people’s lives.  Rather, this faith is an opportunity to appreciate the trees, the houses, the faces of people walking by.  I did that before, once in a while, but didn’t see it as faith.  I saw it more as exceptions to the door in which we are all encapsulated.  This inner doubt, which I had faith—whoops!—was a big, invisible umbrella, keeping in the universal shroud of pain, colored the landscape, and gasps of light were mistakes.  Now, when I am present in the day, when I helpful to other people, when I meet people where they are, it’s the other way around.  The light of day is the light of day.  If I slip and fall on the ice, if someone flips someone else off in traffic, if it seems like everyone is mad…that too will pass.  There is opportunity to spread the love.  I have a big butter knife.  We all have metaphorical bread.

Barack Obama knows this.  He’s conducting electricity with his spreader.  But it only works if we all turn the lights on. 

Recently, I’ve spoken with a few mentors and friends, especially women, who have expressed their support for Hillary.  They never use her last name or “Senator.”  She is like Madonna or Prince or Cher.  Their jaws tend to tighten a little during our conversations, perhaps because they know I support her competitor, Barack Obama.

These are tricky situations for me, because I want to be supportive of these people I respect and care for, because I am thrilled they are engaged in the process, because I myself voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2000 and was thankful to finally have two Democratic Senators from my home state of New York.  However, I do want to express to them why I now support Mr. Obama and ask about their views of the two candidates policy differences on issues such as the War in Iraq, health care, lobbyists and special interests, and NAFTA.  I want to point out how many Clinton advisors and employees now support Barack Obama from cabinet members to the armed forces to the justice department. 

When these discussions arise, I have usually received responses that fit into three categories:  “it’s time for a woman,” “Hillary is smart,” and the most-oft-spoken “experience.”  As you can see in many recent editorials, Senator Clinton’s experience claim has been dissected.  Both Barack and Hillary have community advocacy experience, both are lawyers, both are Junior Senators, and Senator Clinton has 7 years in public office to Senator Obama’s 11.  Mirrored in their policies, Hillary more often defended wealthy and white clients while Barack tended to support working class people and people of color.  The experience argument often tends to boil down to Hillary’s experience living in the White House, which brings up the issue I heard many New Hampshire voters express explicitly, “We want Bill back.”

This, to me, is troubling.  President Clinton certainly was much better than either George Bush.  He balanced the budget and spoke for the underprivileged.  He brought in our first female secretary of state.  He resisted a conservative coalition that would have made abortion illegal, immigrants further ostracized, and war permanent.  However, US society and media tends to look on President Clinton’s time in office with rose-colored glasses.  He signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which wrote discrimination against GLBT people into law.  He cut welfare, further impoverishing the poor and disproportionately affecting people-of-color negatively.  He brought NAFTA to life, sending thousands of American jobs overseas, encouraging poor, inhumane working environments on foreign soil and helping to further widen the income gap in the US. 

What President Clinton had was great charisma and ability to communicate what he saw as the needs of our time.  Much has been made of Barack Obama’s recent comments on President Reagan, usually taken out of context. Senator Obama, although he disagrees deeply with Reagan’s assault on the poor, spoke to Reagan’s ability to build a majority (he won 49 states) by communicating a clear, inspiring message.  President Clinton had that same quality.  However, after losing badly in the 1994 mid-term elections, he realized he would have to fight tooth-and-nail to maintain his position. 

That is what he is doing now.  Lying about Barack Obama to give voters a false impression.  Attacking Obama’s youth, positivity, and vision as inexperience and naïveté.  Articles that were running just before the Iowa caucuses, which now seem to have disappeared, all spoke to the fact that President Clinton’s criticisms, were, in essence, self-effacing.  By his logic, we should not have voted for him in 1992.

We cannot vote for him now.  Senator Hillary Clinton is running for President, although it might not seem like that in Nevada, or Missouri, or on national TV, where President Clinton clips and quotes dominate news coverage.  Instead of focusing on coalition-building and hope Senator Obama has had to focus on rebutting President Clinton’s slander.  I have talked to folks about this issue who shrug and say, “That’s politics” or who seem disgusted by the arguing, or worst of all, use Obama’s responses to say, “See, he’s just like the rest of them.” 

We have a choice today.  We can choose fearful tactics or hopeful ones.  We can choose a candidate who wants to bring everyone into the fold, or someone who says Republicans need to “see the light.”  We can choose to fight, or to unite.  However, we cannot choose Bill Clinton.  I, for one, would not if I could.

“It’s time for a woman” speaks not only to Hillary’s gender identity, but also to her advocacy on behalf of women and children internationally.  This past work is her greatest strength, promoting women’s rights wherever she’s gone, both through words and example.  As a woman and a mother, First Lady Clinton identified with the minority (of power) status experience by women and children around the world.  She sought to spread literacy, economic development, child care support, and a host of other issues to those in need.  However, her imperialist tendencies overshadowed some of her advocacy, usually pushing for the Western definition of women’s rights and ignoring culture-specific mores (e.g. female genital operations and polygamy, practiced by the vast majority of cultures in Africa).  If asked Susan Okin’s question, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?”, Mrs. Clinton’s clear answer would be, “Yes.”

“Hillary is smart.”  I am befuddled when I hear this rationale.  She’s brilliant!  The need to defend Senator Clinton’s intelligence is odd…perhaps it is an implicit comparison to our current President?  Hillary Clinton is wise, shrewd, ingenious.  The word “calculating” is often used to refer to her derogatorily, but the comeback I’ve heard multiple times, “she needs to be, because she’s a woman,” rings true to my ears.  However, whether changing her opinions on issues as important as war, outsourcing, the death penalty, immigrants’ rights, and health care, based on shifting public opinion, is a calculation that we as a country can afford, is a difficult question to answer.

That question becomes easier to answer because we have Barack Obama.  Barack Obama’s appeal is incredible, in at least two senses of the word.  It is massive; people throughout the world are amazed by this person who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, often shunned by both blacks and whites, who left a six-figure job for a $12000/year one, who defeated a primary opponent in Illinois when outspent by a ratio of six to one, who shunned corporate firms accustomed to hiring the President of the Harvard Law Review in order to become a civil rights lawyer and advocate for inner city, low-income people.  However, his appeal is incredible, too, because he has no political machine.  The man with whom Obama is most often compared, John F. Kennedy, had a political machine.  His grandfathers ran Boston politics long before he was born.  Barack’s grandfathers both struggle to make a living in rural Kenya, and rural Kansas, Oklahoma, and the big city of Honolulu, in a low-income apartment.  How did this man gain such an intense following so quickly?  See him speak, read his books, or march in a parade with him…you’ll know.

The phrases “it’s time for a woman” and “Hillary is smart” both imply a particular message, one that a few people have been quick to remedy in an aside.  The first phrase says that gender is more important than race.  The second insinuates that Barack, is not as smart as Hillary.  I don’t think any of the folks saying these two phrases actually think these things.  As Audre Lorde said, “there is no hierarchy of oppression.”  Both women and black Americans have been discriminated against as long as America has existed.  Both have been portrayed as stupid and less than.  When I speak with people whose views more closely resemble Obama’s than Clinton’s but who are supporting Clinton, I realized that alliance boils down to loyalty.

Loyalty is a quality that I have long appreciated, but not greatly esteemed.  I have always interpreted it as a virtue people hold in the face of evidence that should suggest otherwise.  Loyal to a husband that cheats.  Loyal to a law-breaking friend.  Loyal to a corrupt baseball franchise.  Loyal to an imperialist nation. 

I am learning though, that people who take pride in their loyalty, do not see it that way.  They seek deep connection or identification in life, and use those affiliations to inform their vision of the world.  Loyalists hate their friends’ ex’s.  Loyalists help each other get jobs.  Loyalists defend friends’ when they are accused.  Loyalists feel in debt to those who have helped them.  Loyalists tie their own identity to the identity of those to whom they have sworn loyalty.  They don’t see these decisions as inappropriate or negative, but in fact, the opposite.

Such is the case with many Hillary supporters.  In fact, I read an article about women staffers for the Senator who spoke fiercely of their to devotion to her.  When I talk with people who say they think Barack Obama would make a great VP candidate, and cannot even imagine him winning the nomination no matter what speech he makes, what poor family he defends, what foreign policy vision he states, what way he elevates and influences the debate and nature of politics, I learn what loyalty means.  At this point, I imagine, reading this, you have already been thinking what I have finally realized.  I know what loyalty means.  It is how I feel about Barack Obama.

Empathy

“Like most of my values, I learned about empathy from my mother. She disdained any kind of cruelty or thoughtlessness or abuse of power….Whenever she saw even a hint of such behavior in me she would look me square in the eyes and ask, "How do you think that would make you feel?" … I find myself returning again and again to my mother’s simple principle—"How would that make you feel?"—as a guidepost for my politics…. It’s not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit."   
—Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Before I read this, I was already fascinated with the concept of empathy.  In many ways it seemed a cure-all for the problems in our country, and internationally.  If only people had to feel what others were feeling, then they would not act (or vote) the way they do.  Of course, I did not realize that I should have replaced “they” with “we.”

But Barack has really taught me what empathy means.  His call to Americans to empathize began at the Democratic National Convention when he defied the idea of red and blue states, standing up for the complexities and minorities in each.  In his writing, speeches, town hall meetings, diner lunches, reunion rallies, and other events he speaks to what it really means to be one people.  The education of an elementary school child in Roxbury, MA should be equitable to the education of an elementary school child in Newton, MA, or South Central Los Angeles, or Westwood, CA, or the South Bronx, or Chappaqua, NY.  If there is a fire in an inner city apartment complex it should elicit as much sympathy and community financial support as a fire in a 6-million-dollar-surburban mansion.  If members of our society—whether gay, foreign, female, disabled, or any other identification—are denied civil liberties that the rest of see as universal rights, WE need to feel like WE are being denied those liberties.  The empathy deficit he speaks of indicts the conditions that not only support our widening income and achievement gap between the wealthy and the poor, but also between ethnicities and races our country’s philosophy proclaims as equal.
    This golden rule is well-exemplified in folks who pay the ultimate, and perhaps penultimate price.  In Iraq, conservative estimates say tens of thousands of civilians have died in the last five years, many more than died in the previous 20.  More Americans have died there than died on September 11th, 2001.  Empathy means not taking any of those lives for granted.  If a 5-year-old child dies in Baghdad, he is our child.  If a grandmother is shot in her home, she is our grandmother.  If a solider is killed in a car bomb, she is our sister.  Barack Obama has opposed this conflict from the start, whereas his rivals either still support it, or only ended their support for the war when it became politically advantageous to do so. 
    There are endless examples.  Why is America okay with the idea of one in four black men spending time in prison during his life?  Why is America okay with the shipping of seemingly endless jobs oversees, depriving working people of income and benefits through legislation like NAFTA?  Why do Americans continue to allow lobbyists and special interests to fund political campaigns and pummel Congresspeople with requests that drum out the voice of the regular voter?  Why is the cry against international human and sex trafficking, sometimes into American cities, not louder and more effective?  Why do we think personal responsibility is divorced from interpersonal responsibility?
    The answers to these questions are long and short.  One speaks to the erosion of popular democracy in our federal system over the years, a frightened trend that has slightly rebounded with huge voter turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire.  However, another answer is fear.  We fear that our children or parents will not be safe.  We fear that we will not enough money to go to college, to buy what we need or think we need, or to pay for dinner tonight.  We fear getting into an accident or contracting the flu because we don’t know how we’ll pay for needed care.  We fear losing our jobs, thus settling for occupations that make us unhappy and keeping our voices quiet from power brokers who might appreciate hearing them.  We fear weapons and dictators, and decide that we will ignore the immoral implications of pre-emptive strike. 
    That bully on the playground at recess—an indulgence no longer available to many public school children—was full of fear when he or she pushed us around in 3rd or 7th or 11th grade.  His taunts came from a place of deep woundedness.  Perhaps he had learned that greed was the key to happiness.  Or perhaps she was beaten at home for no apparent reason.  Or maybe he had convinced himself that no one would really like him anyway.  Or maybe she saw everything in life as a competition.  Whatever the case, do you remember seeing a kid finally stand up to that bully despite a mismatch?  That brave kid is Barack.
    Barack realizes that we need to feel what the bully is feeling in order to make headway.  We need to recognize what the bully has to lose, because each of has that capacity within us to turn to fear rather than hope, to competition rather than cooperation.  We don’t have to change our values to do this, nor vote for a candidate who contradicts them.  We just need to feel what’s it like to stand in another’s shoes, no matter who they are.  This empathy is the key to Senator Obama’s political philosophy. 

These three words were the first slogan I remember from when I began
to volunteer for Obama for America in June.  All three sounded good.
What did they mean exactly?  And what did they mean to me?  You are
about to find out.

Over the next month, I am going to challenge
myself to write as many blog entries as I can about Barack Obama’s
views, vision, courage, and call upon us to engage in our underused
democracy.  I have been passionate about social change and progressive
values for a while, but I now find myself with a cause, and a person,
that I believe in more than anything I ever have. 

Let me begin
now and move backwards.  Today is Thursday, January 10, 2008.  Saturday
January 5 through Tuesday January 8 I spent in Hampton, NH, canvassing,
speaking with voters door to door, and calling them to encourage them
to vote.  As you may know, New Hampshire, like Iowa, saw record numbers
of voters for a Primary election, especially on the Democratic side. 

Labor Day

This
weekend was my seventh trip to New Hampshire to campaign for Barack.  I
had kept up a pace of about one a month since July, traveling to
Merrimack, Keene, Portsmouth, Dover, Manchester, and Milford (twice).
My first trip to Milford was to march in a Labor Day parade with
Barack.  We had an amazing band and the largest contingent present.  He
beamed as he weaved his way through us shaking each hand.

Anna Deveare Smith speaks of "presence" in her book Letters to a Young Artist.  That sense that you are within an unescapable aura of captivation.  That someone is filled with the totality of life, as a dynamic
concept.  Mr. Obama had energy.  He couldn’t wait to start marching.
He was FIRED UP and READY TO GO. (More on these words in a later post).

Earlier
that morning I had found myself at the Labor Day breakfast in Boston at
the Park Plaza Hotel.  I was carpooling to Milford with a Boston
political operative and before we left I had the chance to see Mayor
Menino, Secretary of State Galvin, District Attorney Coakley, Senator
Kerry, and Governor Patrick line the stage.  I knew that Mayor Menino
had endorsed Senator Clinton, much as he had Thomas Reilly against
Deval, choosing the candidate of the entrenched Democratic machine over
the grassroots upstart.  Today, January 10th, Senator Kerry endorsed
Barack Obama.  Of course, in October Deval bravely chose Barack as
well.  Both did so in the face of the Clinton machine, a machine had
helped them in their campaigns.  Deval had served as head of Civil
Rights for the Clinton Administration.  Why might you ask would they
take such a risk?

Hope.  Senator Obama speaks of it eloquently in
his speeches, harkening the wounded and the weary throughout our
country and abroad.  It is a term of idealism, but Senator Kerry,
Governor Patrick, both Democratic Representatives in  New Hampshire,
Senator Daschle, Senator Bradley–whom I met on Saturday; a m a z i n
g–all realize this is a moment like we’ve never seen.  A moment where
we have a candidate who attracts independent voters and some
republicans.  Who gets people to vote for the first time who have spent
much of their adult life not voting.  Who inspires young people to
become interested in service and civic engagement.

Action.
Barack had many fortunate moments in his young life that paved the way
for success, and he has chosen to give back.  One of the only black
students in his high school, Barack was able to attend one of the two
elite Hawaii high schools because a friend of his grandfather’s knew
someone who might help.  This was a long shot that came through.  Had
this not happened, he might have suffered the same fate that he wants
to eradicate for students now–an underfunded public education devoid
of holistic leaning and supported teachers. 

In college he grew
disillusioned, never accepted entired by whites or blacks because of
his mixed heritage. However, he connected to a few students working on
the South Africa divestment campaign and gave a speech he’ll always
remember.  The feeling of inspiring people to work against injustice
stirred something in his soul.

In the real world, he got a job in
finance in Manhattan, but longed to be a community organizer.  Finally
he found a position in Chicago…and the rest is history.  A history
that involved fighting for workers laid off by steel mills.  When I see
labor endorsements like the one from yesterday in Nevada, I know they
spring from these early experiences, bringing people together, choosing
hope over despair, courage over fear.  I know, when we were marching
together on Labor Day, exactly what we were marching for.

In
many of these key moments his mentors were woman.  As a child his
mother’s anthropological work in Indonesia, where he spent his early
formative years, and elsewhere informed his worldly perspective.  At
Occidental College, a female friend encouraged him to get involved with
fighting South African apartheid.  In Chicago a local woman organizer
fade him feel valued and the "answer to their prayers."  Ultimately,
Michelle Robinson, showed him the power of a secure, centered home in
contrast the his mobil childhood.  And you know that his two daughters
are his true teachers day in and day out these days.

Change. As
we move into Nevada, and I reflect on some of my time in Hampton, I
remember key women I spoke with, especially on the last day.  There was
Mary, an elderly woman undecided but "certainly inspired" by his words
and the epicly long lines that folks waited in to try to experience
this seizmic American shifting from negativity to positivity in
politics, from frustration to aspiration (aka fresh air).  There was
Tricia, thrilled at the prospect of voting, but home taking care of
three kids waiting for her husband to get home from work.  There was
Janet, first about to pick up her child from school and then about to
make dinner who I pleaded with to vote and be counted.  There was
Stephanie, whose son was supposed to drive her to the polls and whose
mother had already received a ride earlier in the day, whom we arranged
a ride for so she could cast.  And there was Patty, our team captain,
who had supported Edwards in 2004, but was won over by Obama’s
abandonment of the policies of Wall Street to become a Community
Organizer on the south side of Chicago and his turn away from lucrative
job offers after being the first Black Head of the Harvard Law Review
to become instead a Civil Rights Lawyer and Constitutional Law
Professor.  She, like I, could not get over the drastic policy
differences Barack and Hillary held and the conservativism of the
latter.

We are long overdue for a woman President.  Pakistan,
Chile, Britain, Liberia, Germany, Argentina and many others have shown
that traditional parchiarchies can welcome a female head of state.
Sexism in America is alive and strong, institutional and pandemic.  I
voted for First Lady Clinton in 2000 as a New York resident.  I had
liked her for a while and felt she got a raw deal by the media, by
Bill, and by men in general.  Giuliani and Lazio were both horribly
negative in their campaigns.  Gingrich, Dole, and every other person
who put out the Contract On America had been evil and unyielding.
However, soon after being elected, having never previously served in
public office, she sent a letter in response to a form I completed
online opposing the death penalty, describing her support for it. 

This
had been one of the ways Gore had let me down in 2000, during a debate
I thought he was winning. Having drawn stark contrasts to Governor Bush
on a number of issues, he said resignedly that he thought killers
should pay the "ultimate price." Newly elected Senator Clinton, a month
before September 11th, expressed a similar sentiment in her form
response letter that would serve as a harbinger to her hawkish views to
come.  She said that although there seemed to be a racial difference in
who ended up on death row, murderers should be terminated by the state.

I
wrote back a scathing eight-page, handwritten letter (because I heard
those are statistically more valued by political operatives and
pollsters).  As soon as I mailed it, I immediately feared the Secret
Service might come get me the following day because of my scathing
criticism.  I just couldn’t believe, though, that a person who had
championed the impact of people of color and written and discussed
issues related to the poor, could support a measure that has so clearly
and so regularly been proven to discriminate against those groups. 

I should have believed it though.  The next year Senator Clinton voted
to give President Bush the authorization to begin the second war with
Iraq under a Bush President.  Then she supported the war for four years
until it was no longer political wise to do so.   

One thing I
love about Barack Obama is that he won’t give an oversimplified answer
to a tough question.  I watched his interview with the Nashua Telegraph
and he spoke about the complex nature of so many issues, and how we
need to break them down piece-by-piece (www.nashuatelegraph.com/obama).
For some that inspires fear that his message won’t be clear enough to
confused voters.  When you have the courage of your conviction, you
don’t have to live within that fear.

Thank you for reading.  More to come, soon.

i am asleep.  sometimes i’ve found/think that it’s better/best to write at that inbetween time because my intuition has more powere, and my internal editor is weakened.  just like my lower back.  all this sitting causes physiological manifestations of anxiety in my body espesh lowah back. 

went to mass tonight.  with my mom.  hmmmm.  there are some elements i like.  the present was cool, tho my gaydar went off.  i’m i allowed to have gaydar?  is that offensive?  maybe that’s only my effeminate-dar.  either way, it’s probably wrong.  the -dar that is.

went to a great indian buffet yesterday at a quality inn in rotterdam.  ate too much.  that’s part of my genetic makeup.  too much.  not just food, or alcohol, or whatever…just tooooooo much.  it’s a’ight.  better than too little.  not that it’s a competition.

moving vurrry slowly through the final exams.  perhaps, the last i’ll e’er grade.  who does that?  who fires themself from a college teaching job?  this guy.  i do. 

the distance from the movie theater…today i saw august rush…to the room where my tools can manifest the creativity of my inner soul, and mind-brain mind you, is immense.  holding onto the yearning, sifted from the cheese, of the main characters and feel the innocence, but NOT naivete of the young boy made me believe in something more powerful than my bad mood.  arms uncrosses.  jaw muscles relaxed.  my heart rose taking my ccrumpled back with it.  for a hile i wasn’t alone. 

so i isolated.  here’s where you laugh.  i hid from all the conversations, emotions, awkwardnesses pauses.  yes, i unhid at one point and had a nice talk with jim.  ayn rand?   brian (would have) shrugged (if he could move his shoulders. 

marvel and conserve and reflexive

let me first say i haven’t marveled much today, but…
I
was marveling that you can just turn a handle, say, in the bathtub (or
the sink) and the water will get hotter incrementally. how does that
internal gadget work? is there a gauge connected to a thermometer? i’ve
never thought much about it, but was very thankful today that it could
happen. my knee has been hurting and i try to conserve it all week so i
can play soccer on wednesday nights but i know i should be running or
exercising some way.

i thought about swimming, but then…"Would
I go in the morning? In the evening? What would get bumped from my
schedule so that I could swim? Something!" it would be good though
because it’s low impact and aerobic. gotsta gotsta.

also, do you
think Al Gore takes baths? I was feeling bad about using a lot of
water. It doesn’t happen often. I am thankful to have one, and that
some times I am home when my three roommates are not.

btw, if
anybody reads this, feel free to suggest topics that i might blog about
and if i write a really good one, maybe i’ll think of turning it into
an essay or article and try to get it published. k? k. (cuz that’s what
i really want/hope to do)

i have to put it in quotes because of the cleeshay, but i feel it without them.

when you have to look at yourself without a mirror it can be lonely.  the lack of reflection when you’re really digging within, abandoned.  but those moments, when you feel in the sand, a jewel, one you’ve been searching, one you closed your eyes to better feel, it doesn’t matter that you have to swallow it.  because you found something, you ran 5 miles, you made it through the school year, you spoke to her, you got enough sleep, you breathed deep you read, you lingered on a sunset.

where the inability to regularly do that come from?  that answer is long and probably only partially findable.  but journeys can satiate.  journeys can satiate.

i hope.

August 29, 2006

I just walked out to my car in my green robe to check the odometer because I knew I couldn’t write this well without it.
I have 8 things on my todo list today. Todo as in Dorothy’s Dog. Not as in everything because everything is more than 8, in more than an obvious way. 8 musts. I’m hoping to complete 4 of them.
but b4 I do, I’m taking charge. since returning from Maine, and each time I’ve visited the ‘ville in the last six weeks, time has sped up. everything feels saturated and wound like a jack in the box. the way I was is multiplied, rather than the way I’ve (hoped to have) come to be. No te preocupes, I am still the same Brian; there is no new me, I really do mean “way.” My way is more paced, productive, easy, and alone. My way is inklings, and this return is the test. But in my new way there is no failure; every thing is a victory.
If you count my 27-hour round trop to Pocahontas County, West Virgina in late June, I have driven well over 5000 miles this summer. But this story will just be this goal-laden plan, carried out without too much pressure.
Departing on July 14th, I aimed to beat the traffic and I mostly did. First I had to pick up my unknowing partner for my journey/self-reflection/visionquest/summer solace/artist retreat. Spriggy. Spriggy is two years younger than I am. Spriggy is a black cat, and she’s the boss.
Remember, July was not like August. July was a scorcher, and spilled over into the beginnings of August until humidity’s back started breaking again and again, until almost fall chill, swollen in today’s rain, took hold. My car’s air conditioning is broken. My car now has over 205,000 miles on it. Spriggy does not like the heat.
It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her pant and she really doesn’t like her retro-before-it-was-cool-to-be-retro carrying case. I tried to get her to drink water at the first Maine rest stop. She was too mad.
I made it to Turner before dark, and Wally great me, tromping down the hill with welcome. The “hottest day in Maine in two year” left us behind upon entry into the almost frigid barn-converted-into-guesthouse AC. the place was beautiful, if it weren’t the only place I paid to stay this summer, I would’ve felt like I was stealing it. Blue and red walls. Black and white diamond bathroom floor tile. Four beds essentially. Cute, tiny, widescreen, high def TV, but without cable (big rule of the trip). That first night, Wally and Jodi and their best couple friends treated me to amazing dinner (smashed potatoes, succulent chicken breast, sautéed asparagus, and raspberry pie).
highlights.
Emily joined me to visit her alma, Colby, where we saw Bob (my boss Robert Gardner) and poet Ira Sadoff discuss The Impulse To Preserve, Bob’s memoir whose title comes from a Phillip Larkin quote. We got Gifford’s ice cream—all this on the first full day. Sunday was a state park with swimming space and more quiet than I’d had any day from recollect, esp. with company. We read and enjoyed “the outdoors.” But then she left me to me, solito, and Sunday night I finished the music to lyrics I had written in West Virginia. “I don’t need to be more of a man,” #5 in the BDS collection.
Monday I took the canoe out, after braving cold lily pad swim before Emily’s arrival. The Nenziscott River was beeeeeeutiful, and I didn’t see a single sole the whole hours I was out. It’s murky but just the right amount of distant. Tuesday I got myself to run despite a major hill, and later figured out it was three miles—I turned around halfway when faced with another steep climb.
Although no cable and no internet lay on the second floor, and I was able to ignore the freezer full o’ vodka (one of an egregious amount of amenities in this stunning first-summer renov), there were a ton of DVDs sitting, baiting me on the shelf and the aforementioned tiny but sharp TV with a built-in DVD player. oh jesus.
Most of the movies weren’t that great, but this summer I have begun to reappreciate the comedy. There was nothing I needed more than a good laugh in the quasi-wilderness—full on wilderness to alone me—and these films evoked: Failure To Launch (not a misprint), Intermission, and on one of the brief late-summer soirees with city life, Little Miss Sunshine, from which I came bounding out of The Coolidge and up onto elevated sidewalks as if they were in wilderness and I was the kind of the woods. Also, feel good movies sometimes made me feel good. I esp. recommend the Swee dish high school girls in love film Show Me Love.
Sometimes I took naps in Turner and they gave me headaches. Sometimes the bugs got to me shortening reading stints beside the pond. But mostly, five wonderful dogs, all rescued, all different, snuggle next to brightly painted colors and me on wooden Adirondack chairs, and I listened to the diminishing choir of toads, holding on to an illusion of spring. I tackled that second hill twice finding the church in East Hebron, one day casting its shadow out upon a triangle of grass I was trying to claim. Four miles to get there and back. Lungs still pumping, hope simmers.
Day trips to Bates and Bowdoin, to complete the trifecta and nourish my somewhat obsessedness with college architechture, a night in Portland when I for the second time unknowingly crashed a date of a friend when hoping to be on one (WHAAAOOOPS), and one time to Arlington and back for a meeting with the Esther Kingston-Mann New England Center for Inclusive Teaching Student Awards Committee broke up the trip so that when Monday night came, and I for the third time ate dinner at the big house up the small hill, I couldn’t fathom that my first leg was over. This time they had family visiting from Florida, too, and told tales of Floridian and Virginia intense racism. Once, Wally sublet his house in central Virgina to a black family in an all-white neighborhood, and when he came back at the end of the summer, the neighbors sprayed N—– Lover! and other profanities on his car. When he complained to one of his neighbors, a local judge, the judge said, “You shouldn’t be bringin those sorts of people in. Serves you right. This is a nice neighborhood.”
Full of hospitality, and tasting initial triumph, I set off for North Adams to meet up with Moonlight Picnic Excursion 2006. Spriggy, with her usual subtly, crept quietly around the guesthouse, and made the red-blanketed bottom bunk of the kids room her own, but I could tell from out trip up that she wasn’t ready for the stops to come. My now-former roommate, Rachel, reunited with her boyfriend and affianced en route to San Fran, offered kindly to cat-sit the Spriggster until her departure. So I dropped the boss off in Somerville, reunited with her tough love friend yellow lab Max, and sought the Berkshires.

I don’t have time to write this
I don’t ever have time
to write this
but I write this
to believe in
me
there’s
a window
I forget to open
which needs windex
and caress. there’s a window
this window that you see unclearly

camp just outside it. find the indoor
shadows of afternoon wind
with a peek. make pale
your knuckles.
make pale what
you’ve known.
grow
anticipation
without held breath
and sweat unevaporatable
sweat, cling, but don’t protect.
there’s an open window, open anew

open again

This weekend I traveled to Buffalo. Apparently, as my aunt pointed out, I hadn’t been there in four years. Last time, I was there, we went to my aunt and uncle’s best friends’ house for dinner and I thought they said something that made me think they were Republican which I decided made sense because they were rich. Last night, that guesstimate was disproved, but I was welcomed again to the world of conservativity.

My uncle turned 60 and two of his best friends from college—who only looked grayer and wider back to front, then they did as groomsmen in a superb wedding photo—came to the party from out of town to surprise him. At the end of the night, the 27 year-old, head-recently-shaved/buzz-cutt-ed, nephew from Boston got to listen to three couples talk about the politics of the day.

My aunt surprised me. She went to bat for Hilary and said the 2000 Bush election was a sham. My uncle didn’t like that McCain is now courting “extreme conservatives.” One of the couples lived in Atlanta and was conservative democrat, a little more conservative than my aunt and uncle. The other couple lives outside Washington, D.C. and have worked for the government (military and foreign service) all their lives. The wife seemed to be somewhat neutral, but the husband was a republican.

Lately in these situations, I enter with a mix of interest, cowardice, and restraint. If I start raging about my opinions I find that people whose thoughts I want to know about, and why they came to them (since I don’t agree with them on the whole), will shut down or write me off. This is true to a lesser degree with diplomatic disagreement—I have to pick and choose my moment—and the first 45 minutes of the conversation was about retirement and how no one in my generation is going to be able to do it unless we start saving now.

There was a lot of mistrust and criticism of the government from all sides, and the majority of people, after a discussion of recent US Presidents, decided that good people make bad presidents, and vice versa. Although nobody seemed too hot on W.

The Republican chose his moments to exert his opinions, “You want to elect Democrats?? Then my taxes will be higher than they already are!” or when the group talked about a group of muslim fundamentalists that had been arrested in Buffalo or Toronto tied to a terrorist ring, he said, “Well they came from a terrorist camp in Egypt” and someone else said “I think they had actually gone to an Egyptian University” and he replied, “Like I said, a terrorist camp.” Then he went on to complain about “the Muslims” for a while until he got a confused look on his face. “How can you tell a Sunni from a Shiite?” And then the group went on to debate this for a while in an exacerbated, but jovial way.

Unfortunately, they turned their attention to immigration and bilingual education. The long-time school teacher said, “My father came here from Italy, spoke Italian at home, kept his Italian, but learned English at school. My grandparents learned English quickly as well.” She must know cuz she was there…oh wait…

I’ve heard this argument recently from other White adults whose parents had a similar situation but still did fine learning English and making a great life for themselves out of nothing. Thus, “Hispanic or Spanish or whatever they are” immigrants should do the same. “This is America. We speak English.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.

The Republican, who despite his ignorant, hateful earlier comments, seems to know the most about politics and history, probably following it closely for his work and the Beltway chatter, pointed out “the inundation we have of one group of immigrants now from Latin America is much higher than any one language group in the past. I’m worried that we’ll just have so many English speakers and we’ll have to conduct government like in Canada where you have to translate everything.” He kept coming back to this point, and although he, like seemingly all six of the old friends in the room, supported English only programs, I could tell from his extra wincing that maybe he didn’t know if that was realistic.
The conversation eventually turned to the fact that many Latino families don’t speak Spanish, and that too often people assume that they will. “Learn English and Keep Your Spanish” must be the motto they’re espousing, with the undercurrent “Learn two languages (even though I only know one!)”

The teacher pointed out that students should either sink or swim within English language programs. I couldn’t hold back.

“But they sink. Many of the students sink.”

“It’s true,” she said. “It’s a shame.” She seemed to think that bilingual education coddled the non-English language students and left them behind.

The big birthday party early in the day had over 100 attendees, and I noticed one Japanese man. None of the other people appeared to be people of color, although some might have been.

My uncle, the night before, took me through a neighborhood that he described as “predominantly Black, predominantly lower middle class” where the Bills (pro football team) used to play long ago. After they moved a minor-league baseball team had played there and he said that day games were attended well, but that at night “people wouldn’t come to this neighborhood.” We were driving through at dusk on the way to a classical music concert that was very well attended.

Be like us. This is America. Be as white as you can. Learn English. Be a legal immigrant. Don’t worry about historical perspective, or racism, or your community. Don’t worry about your race, especially if you’re people “choose crazy muslim names” or god forbid, want to vote in their own language “Oh, I don’t support that at all!” said my aunt. Just blend in. That’s what we did (or at least one of our ancestors did). Never mind White Privilege, Classism, and all that other jazz. It was just as hard for us as it is for you. It musta been. It was hard (and I refuse to believe some other immigrant had it harder). And don’t make us pay taxes for you, ok?

That’s what I heard. But I couldn’t tear into them. Because I felt like I was hearing why people vote how they do in this country. And that maybe the major difference isn’t between way right and way left, maybe it isn’t even major. Maybe a bunch of people in the middle (and I realize I’m only talking about reasonably wealthy white folks here) just sway on a few issues which sway their vote. Bill Clinton would probably say so, his centrist model seems to have proved it. Believe me, I expect Hilary to be the same way. She supports the death penalty, you know.

Wish I had a tape recorder but wouldn’t have known how to diplomatically use it. Luckily my mind is still spinning with each of these people’s truth and how whatever they read in the news, they believe. Maybe I should become a journalist.