Distracted

We are an odd group. As a people we have learned to live in the tiniest of things.  With our focus on the small details of comfort have lost a sense that we should be looking at the longer perspective.  Each day at lunch I slip out to but a cheap coffee refill and steal some Wi-Fi.  As I sit here I realized how this culture, i.e., the coffee shop meeting space with its lattes and mocha chinos did not exist 20 years ago.  When I was coming up in the late 1970s there really was no equivalent. But it is sooooo damn important today.

Most of my socializing up through the end of law school was done sitting in mostly vacant parking lots with three or four cars pulled up and people drinking beer out of their trunks, in study lounges or in bars.  There were some dive restaurants with a counter and stools where older people bought a burger and a donut and some black joe.  But they were for a select few.  If we weren’t drinking we were sitting on the empty steps of a buildings.

It seems like what we have now focused on is something akin to a Japanese tea ceremony but without the formality.  We are diverted by short moments.  We are isolated by our tech. Perhaps not coincidentally our attention spans are so very tiny. About all we can hold in our mind is the thought needed to order using the phrase extra hot with an extra shot and half soy/half cream.

Nobody here in this aromatic box is talking about God or the lack of God.  Nobody who is listening to the hissing of coffee being steamed is talking about personal accountability.  Nobody here is talking about anything that will matter more than 24 hours from now.  What happened to make us so short sighted?

More importantly what can we do to move ourselves back to a point where we are wondering about obligation and duty?  What will trigger us to look at what it means to give of ourselves for the common good?  Damn if I know but I hope we figure it out. 

Justified, the meaning of a hat

The Cure is playing as I sit down to type today.  Nice touch.  

Last night my favorite television program, Justified came to a conclusion.  Justified’s writers crafted a very nice closing episode.  Some of what would happen (and what did happen) I had guessed.  Boone had to die. Rayland had to carry out some larger act of morality beyond what the law would allow. Some of the plot twists I found surprising but ultimately satisfying.  I now don’t need to keep up cable television any more.

Over the past several months I have been rushing to read the New York Times synopsis of what had occurred.  I do find it humorous that one of the most prestigious papers in our country runs synopses of all the major alt soap operas. The person who did the weekly synopsis seemed to have a very good eye for the themes that were developing during this season.  To my mind the season was about real street level justice in a flawed and dirty world. In the closing Times’ post the author talked about how every character’s moral code, from the most peripheral bit player to the three leads, led to the conclusion of the tale.  I think this was a valid and astute point. Belief in certainties and the rules those certainties demand seem to run through every character that populated these last few months.

No matter which side of the line we stand assuming there is a valid division between right and wrong, good and bad or sin and virtue we have rules, we have our code.  There are things that you and also things that I won’t do. In philosophy this comes under the rubric of ethics.  In the Christian religion many people derive their code from the Ten Commandments and the admonitions of Jesus and the preachers who have followed him. In ethics there is no God who sets absolute bars of what is and what is not holy and sacred.  In a world without God, a world that humanists populate coming up with a basis for behavior that is not totally self-centered and without common rules can be a challenge.  Perhaps the mere survival of life is a starting point, perhaps. 

In Justified the codes came from both sides of the spectrum.  Although there was a healthy degree of Bible belt upbringing infused in most of the characters each carved out rules that as a viewer seemed to make sense given their life experiences.  In the end the humanity of the characters was the story.  Yeah there was some T &  A and lots and lots of violence.  Still the story was ultimately about people and what created the boxes their own rules constrained them to live in. Life is complex. People are complex. White hat or dark hat it is what is under that hat that creates the reality of our code.

Buds

The day is growing ever more beautiful.  While dead leaves lie about in the spaces where the snow banks finally melted just feet away buds are appearing.  In the trees outside my office the buds are wearing that pink toward purple color.  Nailing a perfect descriptor of the color really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the color is not grey or brown.  Grey and brown are dormant winter colors.  There is promise in these buds of at least one more spring and possible one more summer. 

Walking outside at noon into warm sunlight is like listening to a radio jock playing a string songs that just flow from one to another.  From Howling Wolf to Suzanne Vega to a word jazz from Ken Nordine to a silent meditative piece by Bill Evans each song hitting themes or rhythms that just make them fit.  Feeling that sun pour down on my face is the perfect segue from the cave and hibernation existence of winter to real life.

April Rain

April 13, 2015/April 1972 

My life began in 1972. Who I am came to be just as the Grateful Dead band was touring Europe on their legendary Europe ’72 tour. Funny thing that I was touring Europe myself. The Dead were a rolling ball of complete and utter anarchy. Playing wild solo guitar jams and getting gritty singing old blues tunes they were ripping through a wall between what is and what could be. 

Just as consciousness altering for me my travels were part of a prepackaged tour of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Me, I was my own ball of rolling clusterfuck even if I didn’t know it then. My head was so screwed on wrong it is amazing someone didn’t beat my ass to death in the years before I got on board for that transformative airplane flight. 

 Why do I remember this? It is the smell of April rain. As I walked out of my office today I found the clouds grey and spitting little bits of rain. There is nothing going on out there they would stop a long walk about. It is warm and the grass is greening. Yeah, the smell that comes with rain and green grass screaming an affirmation that life exists and winter is dead that is the smell that pervaded Europe when I was there in 1972. 

Austria, Germany and Switzerland can be gloomy in the rain if you are not ready for change. And while I remember a great deal of rain it was no bother. Those showers brought growth. 

You may wonder how it was I came to life that 10 day period we traipsed from castle to beer hall to museum after museum. Over that seeming short period came a moment of separation from everything I thought I knew. Torn from the social role I lived at home there came a moment where I had to take account of myself and my own actions. I could have fucked up colossally but I didn’t.

 

For Christ’s sake I made some friends. I interacted with women. I got drunk. I found a group on that tour bus that was as confused and befuddled as I was. Every single person on that trip was as lost as to role and social order as I was. We had to reinvent who we world for 10 days. 

Maybe you had a seminal event that showed you what was possible for you. It could have been a grave situation. Maybe it was somebody mercy fucking you. Maybe it was that trip to boys or girls state. Perhaps a ’la American Pie it was a stint at band camp. For you the smell that trips you back to that moment of transition might be the stale smell of steam heat in a public building or the humid verdant smell of the woods near the lake’s edge. Who knows maybe it is a song or a sound. For me it is April rain. 

It was on those days I spent on that trip that I realized I didn’t have to be what my parents wanted, that I was a being separate and distinct from them. It was on those days looking at the Lions Monument in Lucerne that I realized I could be someone different from everyone I knew. Damn that was a good thing. Sometimes I think I should have kept going constantly reinventing myself. 

Enough of this I have to take a walk out and savor what the April rain has to offer.