Hippy New Year

I’m sitting in the small community of River Meadows, between Sunriver and La Pine, Oregon, on the last evening of 2012. It’s been a hell of a year. Lots of good stuff, to be sure, but I have experienced more death this year than in any other year in my memory. I may look back on this year as The Year of Dying. I lost people very close to me and there were the very public deaths in the News. Wow. I could embark, here, upon a real downer of a story to post. Part of the situation, I’m sure, is my age. I’m currently sixty-two. People start dying right where I’m at. So, it goes with the territory. But still, I’m kind of a rookie at the personal part of it. The public part of it, mass shootings, stabbings, rapes, species destruction, genetic modification extinctions, all that stuff that drives us all nuts, well, it’s pervasive and has put an ironclad protective shield of dangerous cynicism around my normally airy sense of irony. It’s the Way of the World. It’s Nature. It’s Darwin at Work. It’s not about guns, it’s not about knives, it’s not about video games. It’s about people. If you want to stop the bleeding, heal the culture. Heal the people who are so marginalized and disconnected that they pick up a weapon and scream “Look At Me!”

But life is about choices. For this evening, I choose to leave that stuff under the rug. At least, for now and for the rest of this piece. Okay, so it’s a short piece. Bless all you readers. Bless your families and your loved ones. Bless us all. May the coming year be better than you hope and more than you dream. We all deserve it.

A year? What happened?

Yikes. It’s been a year and 12 days since I last posted here. As I attempt to figure that out I can’t come up with a reason. I’ve been writing in fits and spurts, finished a poem, a couple of songs, have been performing (not as much as in the past—see the previous blog entry). Here it is September 16, in the year of our lard 2010. This has been the fastest year on record for me. When I realized that a year had passed since the last blog bit, I was stunned. I remember the night I went through what I wrote about like it was yesterday. And perhaps it was. Time is such a strange invention. It’s like color in that if there is no brain to perceive it, it really doesn’t exist.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting mid-term election year. The Nut Job party is making news. Apparently, people are jumping on the “Masturbation is a Sin” bandwagon. New York will probably ban smoking in Times Square, Central Park, and all the heavily-used public outside areas. I’m just a little confused about that. I quit smoking cigarettes nearly five years ago, but have no beef with people that are still addicted. That’s their business. I just don’t get the ban on smoking outside. Second hand smoke is dangerous, says the Mayor and his council. Say what? Outside? I thought this was a free country. But then I realize that masturbating in public is illegal. I guess smoking is a sin as well. And the Nut Jobs continue, so maybe it is still a free country. It's just getting really weird and I don't mean that in a good Portland way.

Here in Portland it’s raining. “Oh surprise,” you say. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that we didn’t have a summer this year. Poppycock, I say. We’ve had a lovely summer. It just never showed up until mid-July. We had a few days in the 90s and two, I think, days where it cracked 100. This is the second rainy week we’ve had since July. I think that’s pretty darn good. Maybe people are whining because everything has gone by at such a breakneck pace.

My parents arrive today for a visit. My mom will be 90 in November and my dad turned 93 last month. It will be great to have them here. This trip is part of my mom’s “bucket list,” something she wanted to do “one more time.” She wanted to come to Oregon and see all of the friends we have here. It’s been great helping to make this happen. There are also mystery guests who have come from as far away as Connecticut and Texas to see her. She will be very surprised and pleased, I think. For this event we also went out and got a big-screen HD-capable TV so my dad would have something to do. I’ll get him out to the Flight Museum in McMinnville on one of the days they’re here. He hasn’t seen the space side yet and I’ve only seen it once, so that will be a treat.

A year? Wow. I’ve been quite the slacker. I’m hopeful that I can step it up a little. Check back next week and see if I’m still awake.

Rambling Through Friday the 13th

Ah, Friday the Thirteenth. I find it remarkable that there is an actual phobia name for fear of this day: paraskavedekatriaphobia. It’s kind of an Italian superstition that Friday is an unlucky day and that 13 is an unlucky number. Put them together and it’s a double-whammy. My favorite myth for this superstition comes from the old Norse. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

“The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."”

Personally, I’ve always liked memories of free-spirited goddesses of love and fertility. They remind me of my youth. But Friday falls on the thirteenth of the month three times this year: today, coming again next month, and then in November. I cannot recall any grim incidents in my life that landed on a Friday the 13th, but maybe my memory has become selective. I can’t say one way or the other. I do remember that during my sailing days, we never initiated a long trip on a Friday. Sailors are notoriously superstitious and I guess we were no exception.

We went and saw a play last night at the Artist’s Repertory Theater: “The Seafarer.” (How’s that for a segue?) An ensemble cast created an Irish working-class drama with some nice comedy relief. It had quite a few hallmarks of that world. The devil himself was a character. He’d come to collect the soul of another character. It was also a play about alcoholics. Every character was a drunk. In that sense it was very bleak, but the overall slice-of-life look at humanity offered some hope and the devil became, almost, a sympathetic character. God was definitely in control and his love for us “insects” came through on that Christmas morning.

The cast was good. I thought that the first act was a little stiff, but they really got the rhythm right in Act II. I was able to completely suspend my disbelief for almost the entire second act. I mean, it was all good, but those guys really nailed it in the second half. Not that I really know anything at all about play-acting, but I was impressed.

In the last eight months I’ve seen three plays: “Sometimes a Great Notion” (with a couple of the same actors from last night), “Bucky” (about Buckminster Fuller), and “The Seafarer.” I’m very open to seeing more. I think I like plays better than I like movies. That’s a general statement, really. There are movies I will really enjoy, but I don’t go just out-of-hand. The hype has to capture my imagination. I really enjoyed the Tolkien adaptations, once I convinced myself to let go of the books and keep them completely separate from the cinema experience. I loved Will Smith in “Ali.” And I will certainly go see “In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead” It’s an adaptation of the very first James Lee Burke novel I read. Since then, I’ve read everything by Mr. Burke that I can get my hands on. He is the best writer of Place that I’ve ever encountered. His Dave Robicheaux novels are living entities. You can smell that Bayou Teche country. His recent novel “The Tin Roof Blowdown,” is a visceral account of what happened to that country when the double-shotgun blast of Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast.

I’m very interested in who’s been cast to play Dave’s best pal Clete Purcel, who is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Tommy Lee Jones has been cast to play Dave, which works for me. But the only guy we can come up with to play Clete is John Goodman and that’s not exactly right. I don’t know. If I was an actor, I would eat broken glass to get to play Clete Purcel. Both Clete and Dave are guys whose lives are redemption-in-progress affairs. They are two people whom I would very much like to have on my side in any kind of trouble. Every James Lee Burke novel I’ve read has been a moveable feast. I’m just really glad that he continues to write. He’s taken the Hard-Boiled genre and created literature with it. It makes me very glad, indeed.

Changing My Focus

I have decided that I will no longer write about Wall Street, or Banking, or the Economic Downturn. When I think about the unbelievable untrustworthiness and glorified greed that has been evident in those circles I just want to go stand in the shower and scrub myself until I’m raw. I’m going to avoid politics too. I’m pretty sick of that after a two-year campaign, a contentious election, and a fat bi-polar misogynistic pill freak selling advertising. There have been stirring moments of hope, yes. Those moments have buoyed the moments of fear and despair nicely. But now we’re back to day-to-day spin management, obfuscation, and bluster. Business as usual, I reckon.

Will I continue to pay attention? Yes, it’s my nature. I will monitor my perceptions, seek counsel when I’m confused, and if something egregious happens I’ll have to break with my intent and write about it. I suppose something really good could inspire me too, like Cheney shooting his lawyer. So, until it becomes necessary to regress, I will write about fun and interesting stuff, like colonoscopies, bags under my eyes, golf, baseball, maybe hockey, managing my girth, and maybe even sex. That would really creep out my kids.

I feel terrible for Michael Phelps and his family. I think all of the people who have written diatribes about how he’s “defiled” America should go stand under the next booster that launches a space shuttle. Come on, people. Were you ever twenty-three? The same people who wrote despicable things about Michael probably went home and muttered into their cocktails about their kids being on Ritalin. That is the epitome of hypocrisy. For those of you so inclined, go read Terry Southern’s “Red Dirt Marijuana” to get an idea of why powerful elements in our society are dead-set against smoking the weed. It has nothing to do with taxes, morals, or health.

A really bright (or as a good friend would say, “shiny”) spot during the past month is the seemingly miraculous ditching of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River. I’m glad the media have picked this up and run with it, but I feel for the crew who would love to just fade back into the mainstream and get on with their lives. They were, in fact, just “doing their jobs to the best of their abilities” and I salute them for their professionalism, their bravery under duress, and their quiet acknowledgment of the outpouring of interest and affection by a grateful world population. They are truly role models. We’ve had little to cheer about that isn’t partisan and this story has been a blessing. But, as usual, the media will beat this horse long after it has ceased to breathe.

Time to get on with the rest of my day. I’ll be back.

As the Year Turns

How many writers are sitting with their writing tools today trying to squeeze out a ruby? I would guess that most of us have our butt in the chair and are attempting to make something profound happen. Very few of us will be successful. All of us will produce something, even if it never sees the light of day. And that is perfectly okay. People ask me “how do I become a writer?” My answer is always the same: Write. That’s what writers do. It doesn’t particularly matter if you become a good writer. That’s not really for you to determine. Good writing is in the ears and mind of the reader. Some writers never find a readership that passes judgment. Myself, for example. This bloggy thing is read by only a handful of people, but I have earned my living as a writer for most of the last twenty-seven years, so I have developed some kind of competence over that time. My fiction has been published and so have some of my poems. My songs as well. Some of that stuff is pretty good, most of it is meaningful only to me. But that’s okay. It is the work and the working that counts.

My being able to make a difference is extremely important to me, as it is to most people. I think most people want to affect their environment in meaningful and positive ways. I wish I could say that we all want peace, and maybe we do, but we want it on our own terms. From that comes conflict and that is the nature of Nature. Conflict happens. It is intrinsic to our condition. We are isolated by skin and sinew.

What we learn to do to approximate peace is negotiate. I am willing to cede this to gain that. When the balance comes we call it win-win. But we still must all live with the facts of natural selection. Darwin was mostly right. Does a puma negotiate with a fawn? Only in the most esoteric of ways. Predation as part of the symbiotic energy cycle is not war, it is The Way It Is. War is a Human thing, obviously, and it comes when negotiation and compromise are cast aside.

Welcome to History. I don’t think the world will look back at 2008 and notice much. They will notice that a person of color, of both Caucasian and African heritage, was elected as President of the United States. Will that be a big deal in a hundred years? Hard to say. It depends a lot on what happens in 2009.

My challenge to myself is to make a difference, in some small way, every day in 2009. How that manifests itself could be any number of small things: a smile, a courteous gesture, a good deed, a profound use of imagination, whatever. That old bumper-sticker comes to mind: practice random acts of kindness. Focus on the good stuff. It’s been proven again and again that focusing on the negative calls more of it in. Stop that!

We must accept Nature for what it is. We can change that only by our behavior as a species. The only way to accomplish any change at all is through our individual behavior. When it multiplies in a positive way, we’re golden. The reverse is also true, which is why I make the choice to stay positive and count my many blessings. Down that road lies a negotiated peace.