It sometimes frightens me how far the ignorance of youth reaches into adulthood. That was a negative start, I guess... but it's true; myriad examples of stupidity and useless bickering abound in my life after the age of 19, and some of them I look at less as "learning experiences" and more as "detriments to character in an adult world". And all that being said, sometimes, it would seem, that these fleeting (though prevalent) moments of childhood ignorance are useful tools when solidifying the importance and substance of present-day occasions of great weight and meaning.

I cite an instance in the office the other day: I am a lucky individual allotted the privilege of being able to listen to my iPod while working on whatever project needs my immediate attention (a blessing indeed... music ne'er has sounded as sweet...), and seeing as how it is the holiday season, I have been listening most prevalently to music geared toward just such an season. Now, being at work has always had a sobering affect on me... to my detriment, no doubt, but also to my benefit in that it focuses my thoughts and is almost a form of meditation in the sense that my mind generally takes an auto-pilot format. Because of this, I have been listening ever so much more closely to this collection of carols and songs that I have known for many years, and, although some are just as cookie-cutter as ever (no pun intended), some, in all honesty, have taken on a much more poignant meaning in my life.

I was listening to the song "I'll Be Home For Christmas" as sung by Victor Garber on the old 2001 Broadway Cares Christmas Album, and I found myself pondering the lyrics as I heard them (the man sang the song slow enough, I had time to write a thesis right then and there... har har...). The song made me think of my mother and father - two of the most important (if not the most important) people in my life - and how their situations have changed since I first knew them as a young boy; my father's family lived in Austin, and we would more than likely spend the Holidays with them, seeing as how my mother's family (her mother, father, and numerous relatives) lived in Michigan. But the song made me realize it wasn't always that way; my mom used to come home from college or wherever and spend Christmas at home where she grew up, and my dad no doubt did the same. But nowadays things are a little different...

Both of my grandfathers have since passed away, one due to brain and age complications and the other the victim of advanced age coupled with devastating cancer; both of my grandmothers are decidedly different people than when I first knew either of them, as one has had a stroke and is living in an assisted living home in Austin and the other has since moved away from Michigan, leaving her house of many, many years behind for an assisted living home, near my mom's brother, where they are capable of helping her through her advanced dementia. All of this seems like it only just happened, really; this is all so different than any memory I have made since I first began to recall any particular holiday season... and I suppose that made me query just how much the season has changed for my parents.

My father will never be able to go home again... at least not in the sense of Christmases long-past; his father is long-dead and his mother is struggling to hold on to the person that she once was (and doing a damn-fine job if I do say so myself... even without total mobility of the entire right half of her body, she is still an artist, a writer, and a fervent reader); my mother's father is also gone, only more recently so, and her mother is not doing as well holding onto who she really is, living every moment as if she'd never lived before... but still one of the greatest personalities that any one has ever known. And, while pondering on all of this, Garber sang the final line of the song... "I'll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams"...

And that's when it all hit me, and I began to cry.

I cried for my mother and father who were being forced to move away from their pasts, or at least the expectancy of a reasonable facsimile of the past... and I couldn't stop. Lucky for me, no one really saw, as my "office" is out of the way... but had they sat next to me, I'm sure they would have noticed. But I could not help the tears; I suddenly felt compelled to do something - anything - to make Christmases more worthy of past holidays that my mother and father might have experienced, and part of me feels that will be nought but an exercise in futility for the rest of my days... the past is gone; we can never reclaim it.

But as so many have said (including my wonderful Buddhist role model, Brad Warner), the present is all you really need worry about, as that is what is more than likely to affect you at this very moment. You can't touch the past or the future, but you cannot help but touch, taste, see, roll around in the present. And so therein, I think, lies the lesson I must learn from this, my brief fall from ignorance; my parents are my present, and I will cherish that and make merriment there-with. And my brother, and the family I still have scattered about the place... and far be it from me to rob any of them of the potential for a memory or dream that will most assuredly one day be part of their present moment...

... so there.

Yes, I cried. I know, I know... gosh, you're such a cry baby... but it's the truth. I tear up a lot these days... I think it's because growing up is like the phantasm that was the Wizard of Oz... "Great and Terrible"; great in that it's a chance to change, but terrible for the exact same reason.

Bah! The paradoxes that are life will be the death of me yet! (har har...)

FIN!

A vicious holiday conundrum...

I'm torn.

Not like you care, but I feel the need to cogitate on the matter, seeing as how either side of the equation is something for which I feel rather strongly.


I don't give to the Salvation Army "bucketers" any longer; in respect to recent events, I cannot in good conscience supply capital to an organization that may very well willingly discriminate against a person who is either gay or of non-Christian background. I note that the S.A. does state that they give to anyone who are in need of their aid, but they also freely reserve the right to discriminate in the hiring, promoting, or general acceptance of homosexual men and women. Heh, I've even gone so far as to find these little slips you can print off from a SoulForce Website (a pro-gay Christian Group) which you put into the S.A. buckets in lieu of cash that state you will not be donating to them, but rather to a more worthy charity. Of course this little bit of jollity was met with resistance, as every thing is these days...


An acquaintance of mine said "it's just another form of discrimination" seeing as how the slips state that the user will specifically NOT donate to Salvation Army... and I suppose that's true. But in my personal opinion, it is not necessarily the organization which would in turn bear discrimination, but rather (in my mind, at least) the cause. I do wish to give to a worthy cause in these holiday times; what better gift to give than to those who have nothing? And I suppose, worse comes to worse, the Salvation Army would be a catalyst through which one could support the poor and hungry (which is never a bad thing). But lest we forget, there are hundreds of charities out there, some of which are openly pro-gay, and in all honesty, I don't think I could care less to whom I give the money as long as it is used for the same purpose and with the same goal in the mind of the middle man - it just seems that one middle man is less hateful than the other towards the people with whom he chooses to associate himself.


I don't know what to do, because on the one hand, I feel that giving to, say, Brothers and Sisters, or Broadway Cares, or hell, the HRC (in spite of their weak-minded diplomacy in the wake of a conservative in-office regime) would be just as effective and more-so worthy of a good feeling, seeing as how these groups are, while guilty of the same amount of potential for discrimination, make it a point to speak out, as a group, against it.


But then again, I am just a bleeding heart liberal...


Fin.

A moment of poetry...

... inspired by a special someone...

A delicate flower stands daily mid-field

Awaiting what e'er may pay heed.

Surviving cruel indignities of bees

Is a rare sort of strength, indeed.

The flower cares neither for wing nor for sting

Nor for attentions others might lack

For it knows it's found something quite special therein

The misguided bee who comes back.

Fin... for now, anyways...

An un-Buddhist thing to say...

I hate gay activism... or at least I hate what it has a)made some of my friends become, b)caused to occur in this country, and c)brought out in various people that I once thought to be emotionally sound.

Gay activism (and, one would call it safe to assume, ANY sort of activism) affects people in myriad ways from the intellectual to the emotional to the physical; people become self-righteous and short-sighted; while they are more than willing to explain their actions, they are also more than willing to utilize whatever rhetoric or semantic they feel will drive their point home... even if it means driving it home to someone who, for all intents, is on their side. To the dyed-in-the-wool activist, there are no targets "below the belt"... there is only one target... and I suppose that is an enviable tack to take, seeing as how it could be considered a penultimate form of focus, but as with most things that one would consider "penultimate" these days, there are always caveats.

Collateral damage from harsh activism is a real thing, and I think has been let off the hook far too much in the past. In Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in New York (and the main character Ned's descent into a world of activism in the face of overwhelming resistance from all sides) one can easily observe a single man's resentment toward his own activist drive; his cause becomes his obsession, and he drags his friends and family to and fro in an attempt to make them as mad as he is only to alienate them and push them away.

His friends who would be his supporters are driven slightly mad by his great though terrible focus... but therein lies an interesting conundrum - neither party can see the forest for the trees; Ned's friends and family see a man who was once an artsy and loner intellectual spiral into the madness of activism, while Ned sees a populace ready to blissfully shut their eyes to an ever growing dilemma that has the potential to swallow the world whole. Ned cannot see that his friends are good people; that his friends are actually supporting him and loving him and taking the plethora of abuses that he seems to feel free to dole out. Ned's friends and family cannot see that their avoidance of life will more than likely give life credence to dissipate and vanish out from under them; that Ned, instead of blissfully traipsing toward the grave, would rather they be bruised, beaten and bloody... but breathing.

I liken this to my friends... friends who, in quite the bold-faced manner, tell me that should I not be willing to act against oppression in a vocal and physical manner for my rights (ie: fight), then I probably don't deserve any rights in the first place... friends (on the other side) who reprimand and ride roughshod my attempt to do just as mentioned above through whatever means I am able... a family who is supportive and wonderful, but doesn't necessarily understand to what level they could potentially be involved (note: not my immediate family; I would trade them not for the world...)... the list of discrepancies continues ad infinitum

Ugh, makes me sick... there is no middle ground, and that, my friends is the un-Buddhist thing to say; Buddhism is all about the discovery and maintenance The Middle Way... and it simply seems to me that as of present, in this world in which we live, we are unable to see the middle ground. Should one side chose to turn a blind eye, the other side's observance of the middle ground will be all for nought. Should neither side choose to acknowledge the middle ground, then who's to say it exists at all? Damn you Einstein and your crack-pot theorems...

Here's hoping, says I.

I can say nothing more about it... at least not now. Hope has been an important word this past year, and a big part of me hopes that, like when one utilizes a word far too many times in a single moment that it loses all meaning, we are still able to understand just how simple the definition of hope can be.



Fin...

Industry, Nationalization, and Loss of Integrity...

So last night, it would seem, the Senate "KILLED" the bill that would have bailed out the U.S. Auto Industry, and it "DIED" there on the senate floor... I quote various news sources who chose to use such intriguingly sacrificial terms to describe Senate-action which is nothing new in this country and yet suddenly seems to take on an almost holocaustal tone... hell, they might as well have stated "high priests of senate took dagger and stuck the pig-bill as it lay bound on the offering floor, bathed in its warm blood and delighted in playing with its still-pulsating entrails..." I suppose the point here is that, like the first incarnation of the bank/financial institution bailout, this one just wasn't what some people felt like their constituents (however out of touch with them some of the senators might be) wanted (needed?) to hear.

Now, I can't help but suddenly feel a little part of all of this. As much as I would like to do the United Statesian thing and say "not my problem", I think, in turn, it is my problem for two reasons: A) A goodly portion of my mother's family lives in Michigan, a state rife with potential to take the brunt of this national dilemma, and B) my current employment is a financial institution that would potentially be the catalyst by which individuals of varying incomes would purchase would-be vehicles from these auto-makers. I must admit, that makes me a tad nervous...

I suppose what gets me so bothered about this is sheer breadth of it all; the number in question (no doubt with a little rounding here and there) is $14 billion... that's $14,000,000,000... at my current rate of salary, to equal that, there would need to be roughly 700,000 of me working with no vacation for one year; I shudder at the thought of even one more of me, so that would simply be a nightmare. By breadth, I mean these recent introductions to all these gargantuan numbers - numbers around which we can scarcely wrap our brains... $700,000,000,000... $14,000,000,000... $400,000,000,000 (the projected national deficit without the consideration of the Iraq mess)... and my favorite, $10,600,000,000,000, or rather the current National Debt; the breakdown of which is that should every citizen of the U.S. pay an equal share of all the money owed, they would each shell out almost $35,000 (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/)... I'm so excited, I think I might just wet myself.

Georgey Porgey (puddin' and pie) has introduced us to a whole new level of hell what with spending replete with frivolity and recklessness, and in all honesty, I'm somewhat surprised his voting demographic is starting to, well... fall away like the dead skin of their fake-baked faces; the minority leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell opposed the bill in favor a plan that would restructure company debt and bring the wages and benefit packages of United Auto Workers to levels comparable to non-union members (which to me seems rather silly, for if this were the case, why have a union at all?) The Republican opposition positioned themselves as such because of environmental reforms the bill proposed the auto-makers to implement, stating that such implementations would only add to the cost of new models that the automakers, in the U.S. at least, are already having trouble selling. Heh... interestingly enough, there were (according to http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/518196.html?nav=511) provisions completely unrelated to the subject matter written into the bill, ie: pay raises for federal judges - because we have the money to spend and all...

Now, it would seem to me that in a compassionate world, we would realize that the blue collar jobs upon with this auto industry is built are highly important to the basal structure of our society and provide sufficient income for families who have little else, and therefore would see little problem in helping them out... nay, let them keep their jobs. But then again, a modern synonym for "compassion" is "socialism" and the upper-crust shrieks in terror at the prospect of salary caps and pay cuts and "no Christmas bonuses"... and we realize that these, too, are capitalist organizations that are bottom-line driven... just so long as the bottom line makes yacht payments, of course.

Yet again, we come to the ever present blame-game and are stuck with a tab that may quite possible carry the weight of the world and a populace afraid to do anything more to try and heal the wound; and why should we? What better to remind us of a past mistake than a darkened scar on the alabaster flesh of this nation? Might just be a godsend... FINALLY...

... and don't we, as a nation, have a responsibility, too? That's the problem with the Bush Generation: ME, ME, ME... I deserve it... I deserve things... and we now come to realize we have done nothing to actually deserve it. I mean, hell, that's what the credit market is - getting what you have currently done nothing to deserve.

Maybe we should keep the automakers in business for the sake of a million blue collar jobs... maybe we should utilize the mortgage market to purchase green cars... maybe we should nationalize industries and let a governing body larger than the CEO and his immediate underlings decide just how a company should run... in order to keep our country from collapsing in on itself. Not to say it hasn't happened before; Argentina went through a similar situation and actually did collapse economically, and Somalia took it a step further - they've been without an actual government for a while now. I simply opine, however, that the unwashed masses would be none too thrilled with any of the above mentioned solutions/outcomes.

Whew... that's a lotta crap, ain't it? Of course it is... and to my minuscule brain, the resulting pile of excrement only seems that much larger. But I can't help but feel part of it... maybe not directly responsible, but definitely part thereof. It's going to take me a while to organize my thoughts on this, but not like you care, of course (har har)... but that is neither here nor there, so what, me worry?

Fin

Introductory commentary...

No one has to know, I suppose... I could just keep the blog to myself and not let anyone see it; that's always an option online these days: "Yes, of course we'll keep it private - that's what the Internet is all about! Ga-duh!" they seem to say from atop the SoCal plateau on le balcon de la maison. But we all know better, do we not? So I will share eventually...

I do not plan on being too... subversionary, should I say? I really cannot see how I could... yes, I am gay, yeah, I am leaning more and more toward either violent agnosticism or temperate atheism, and yeah, I am a bleeding heart liberal... but that does not always imply deviancy, does it? DOES IT?

I have started this blog in order to finally bring to fruition my long laid plans to journal in some way, shape, or form... and as much as I would love to cling to the nostalgia and romanticism of writing actual script in one of those adorable little Mole Skin journals one can purchase at bookstores in order to emulate Hemingway, I must admit I find it time consuming in a way that makes it un-enjoyable as opposed to fulfilling.

Perhaps it is to chronicle the events of my existence on this celestial sphere for some future generation bored out of its mind on plasma screens and the like, looking for a bit of "old-world-Internet charm", or perhaps it is to collect and organize my thoughts on living in a world increasingly hostile towards thought and reason (as well as towards with whom my instincts tell me to fall in love), or rather maybe it is because I am looking for a way to fill the gaps in between daily challenges... I really am not quite sure... but part of me feels suddenly lucky that "Blogging" might just accomplish all three.

I think I might re-post from other blogs I have scattered about the interwebs; I do feel that some things I have said in the past are somewhat poignant. Of course, I could re-post and comment on how my views have expanded or changed... or disappeared altogether... but the latter is highly unlikely; nothing ever really disappears, merely shifts into a different form with which to haunt you with a startling déjà vu. But c'est la vie, no?

Well, how is that for an introduction? Sufficient, if I do say so myself... as one of my favorite philosophers, Calvin, once said (that's Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame, not John Calvin) after announcing his exeunt from the house in his usual ostentatious and repetitive manner, "... further bulletins as events warrant". Thus it was, as it is now applicable, therefore it shall be!

Fin