Jamaica

1 December 2012 RVA 1100 hrs

Jamaica

If you’re like me you probably don’t often have the opportunity to be abroad twice in the same year. Well, that is the fortune that has befallen me this year since after the trip to Spain I waited an entire three months to leave again for Jamaica. 

To offer a musical accompaniment I will post a song by Dennis Brown, the “crown prince of reggae” who I had somehow never heard of. We encountered a lot of his music as well as lots of good music permeating the whole country. The people love music and even the music that they seem to listen to now is good and not lame club crap. It is popular to set up soundsystems, which are massive amps that blast reggae, and play dominoes and hang out in public places. It is not the quietest country, and baying dogs and roosters crowing are common sounds. Goats walk around like they are out doing errands, even if a lot of them are tied up by the side of the road.

So here is a Dennis Brown song, chosen as it takes from Psalm 23 liberally. The song conveys it well, even with its 80's production, but Jamaica is a grateful and positive place in so many ways. I think that a real spirit of gratefulness is everywhere in Jamaica, as people are poor but very content and filled with a sense of grace and wonder at their blessings. The people commonly quote from the Bible and proclaim their faith even as they have very little (possessions, not faith). They also have a strong connection to nature and to the Earth, since they depend on it for survival in a much more palpable way that we do here in a developed and modernized country.

The reason for going to Jamaica is that my brother Justin lives and works there in Kingston, and my mom and I went down to experience a different sort of Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving Day I ate snapper and rice and peas, alongside a Red Stripe. I was wearing shorts and occasional dogs wandered onto the patio where we were eating, and of course ganja smoke casually floated by as well. Our server, a dreadlocked man in an Orlando Magic Dwight Howard jersey, set near our table in silence, then left on his motorcycle for five minutes, and returned to consume a cup of some sort of steaming hot tea. It was not really what you’d call the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, even if I’m sure my cheeks were ruddy since they always seem to be.

Justin has assimilated about as well as a white man (I kept thinking of the Clash song “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” while I was there) with blonde hair can in a country where everyone is quite black. He goes to the market in Kingston on market days and haggles with the sellers for his coconuts and sorrel juice, and whatever else, saying that the market isn’t that different than the ones he encountered in Khartoum, Sudan over the last few years when he was there. For me, I have to admit that I often felt a little on the spot since in certain places they don’t see white people that often, and the language is very difficult to understand at times, even if it is classified as English. One of our drivers, an older man who had a grandfather’s calming air (I am intentionally veiling Justin’s job by the way), who knew him well said that “he moves about this country like he was born here.” One of his favorite customs seems to be stopping for the coconut jellies. Basically, a machete is a tool that every Jamaican household has, and one of their common uses is to chop up coconuts for the juice and the “jelly,” which is the pre-ripe coconut meat that remains inside the shell of the green, young coconut. Here’s how it works: You stop at one of the million wooden roadside huts where they sell fruits, and negotiate a price. It seems to be customary to sort of argue with the price unless it is exceptional, and the coconut seller will usually make up some bogus reason for the unfavorable price, or blame Hurricane Sandy (the hurricane conveniently seemed to have extra supernatural ability to affect everything flawed on the island that we encountered). Once you settle the price the guy/girl chops the coconut in a V pattern on the skin, creating a circle where you can insert a straw and drink the juice, or just dump it into your face, which I sucked at. Luckily there was only one stop sans straw. After you drink the juice you return the shell to the seller who chops it in half with the machete and half chops an “ital spoon,” (a Rasta term for vegetarian with no salt) as Justin called it, which is created by chopping a sliver of the shell itself which can be removed to created a spoon which can be used to scrape out the jelly and the coconut meat, depending on the maturity of the given coconut. 

Coming back to the 23222 here where I in my own way exist in a similar contrast, you can’t help notice that many of the black people are much paler than those in the Caribbean, of course easy to explain based on the racial mixing and history of the two regions. There should be not controversy or any offense taken at this observation as it is patently obvious to anyone that dares allow themselves to admit that they notice the ethnicity of those in their immediate surroundings. In other words, unless you’ve lost your sense of sight you’d agree with me.

So the trip was great even though I am still sick after experiencing a 50 degree temperature change in one day. I also get sick in some way almost every time that I am on a plane. Big deal.

My impressions of Jamaica: A poor country, which can easily inspire pity even as there are instances where vultures descend on you trying to get you to buy Chinese made knickknacks, marijuana, or calabash or bamboo sourced flatware. I was offered to have my hair braided only once, which I declined. The “ganja” is certainly omnipresent and it is very common to just smell it wafting by like it’s no big deal. We didn’t stay at any of the barricaded all inclusive resorts where they keep the riffraff out so we had to fend for ourselves, but we also got to see more of the “real” Jamaica, as we were told by a few people, as if there is a reality contest going on. In my experience in the Third World (yes, an obsolete term since the second world is basically gone) you only want to get to a relative level of “real” until you bleed into the “scary” or “idiotic to be in as a tourist” categories. This didn’t happen and I felt like Jamaica was safer that advertised, but I always feel that way about foreign countries since I like to eschew the paranoia that people lay on me about being abroad. I found that the utmost code of the Jamaican people is honesty and respect. It is necessary to look people in the eye, engage with them, and then firmly reject their salesmanship of coffee bean necklaces or bamboo shot glasses. The customary handshake is one of the weirder ones, where you slap into a handshake like a lot of Americans do informally, except you maintain your grip and rub thumbs, like you’re declaring an affectionate thumb war. The fist bump is also common and the word “respect” is uttered a lot, as well as “let me reason wit you me brethren,” and the like. The “th” sound is not pronounced the way I would but sounds like the letter T so “thing” becomes “ting,” and so on. The accent can be impenetrable and it seems like the younger people speak with the patois whenever they are speaking with other Jamaicans, but not as much with the whites. Justin can use patois effectively, and what surprised me was that Jamaicans do not find that patronizing, nor do they ridicule it like it is “their” speech and white people can’t use it. I guess they see it as a sign of respect and inclusion, and like any foreign language- even though it is just English that has been highly mutated- the people who speak it always like to see an effort on the part of foreigners to speak their language (maybe with the notable exception of Parisians, who of course are world famous for their snobbery, and have the peculiar talent of living in the world’s most visited city and maintaining an overall hatred of outsiders).

I don't have a conclusion here, but it was a great trip, and I managed to needlessly bash Paris while recounting it!

The Ceremony of Innocence Is Drowned

Such a Melodramatic Title

January 18, 2013, Richmond VA USA, 1912 hrs.

Yesterday was the day that the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN, as in “I own your as* and will dominate all media by 2030.”) aired part one of her interview with Lance Armstrong. On OWN, I am reminded of the Sega Genesis game which had the late career #19 Joe Montana, playing for the Kansas City Chiefs, on its cover, called “NFL ’95,” which featured a voice that sounded like Lawrence Taylor trash talking, available after a QB sack or when you were breaking away for a touchdown. One of the trash talking lines was “I OWN you!” To be honest, I didn't know that Oprah owned a network until I heard about the interview, but that didn't surprise me. So I tuned in for this strange mutual bid for attention, as they sat there with two glasses of water with bendy straws between them.

Sega Genesis memories notwithstanding, the Oprah Winfrey Network aired part one of an interview with disgraced and fallen American cycling hero Lance Armstrong last night. “Lance” as I had come to call him, on a first name basis like so many others who probably wouldn't have ponied up more money than is logical for a machine to ride on myself. He has been a hero to zillions of people due to his cancer survival and foundational humanitarian efforts, plus those ubiquitous yellow bracelets. That is not why I considered him a hero, though. I considered him a hero for his cycling. Some seem surprised that he was or is as vituperative as he is, but to me, he always seemed like a bit of a jerk anyway- to ride the Alpe d’Huez you probably have, or need, to be possessed of some level of self-loathing, masochism, and be fiercely competitive. So I am not surprised to learn that so many people found him to be difficult and a bully. I guess many people had a saintly image of him, never had seen his curt, dismissive interviews after stage wins, didn’t know that the French always loathed him anyway, and just saw yellow bracelets and knew that he survived cancer and was “good.” Honestly, the humanitarian stuff had very little effect on my perception of the man; in the current era, many with means feel it necessary to start a charity or foundation that has a cause for goodwill, and I imagine it isn’t that hard, with that much money, to sit on a nominal board and pop in and out of events. This was not exceptional to me, but his cycling was. I judged him on his merits on the bike alone. (Similarly, Kelly Slater is probably the best surfer of all time, but is fairly boring in interviews. Big deal, he's known for surfing, not speaking).

During this current media circus surrounding Armstrong, it is interesting that there has been very little commentary or insight from those that actually knew who Armstrong was as a cyclist. Oprah Winfrey surely demonstrated that she does not know the sport last night, asking nothing specific after Lance claimed it is impossible to win seven times without doping; over on NBC, Bob Costas claimed to Brian Williams that maybe 2-3% of Americans followed the sport outside of Lance Armstrong, and that he enjoys a status different from a baseball player, for example, based on the reasoning that Americans are ignorant of the sport. I’m not sure I agree, but I guess if we found out that Michael Jordan were a fraud, there would be more collective disappointment? I’m not so sure it matters, when you’re talking about a figure of this magnitude. No one “follows” swimming, to speak of, but if Michael Phelps were doping, don’t you think that there’d be some level of disappointment in the air? Costas even claimed that many Americans would not recognize cycling luminaries like the American Greg LeMond or Spaniard Miguel Indurain. I can see that no one knows who Indurain is, a five-time Tour winner in the early 90’s, who also doped, but LeMond- an American three-time winner of the Tour? No one has heard of the now only legitimate American winner of the Tour de France, doing it on a diet of Mexican food and ice cream, riding with no helmet?

I already knew and accepted that Armstrong doped long before this interview, but unlike many in the sports media, at least in this country, who have a cursory interest in or knowledge of what the sport is, and only know vaguely that Armstrong had dominated the Tour for so long, I actually know that there are other events outside of grand tours, that there are actually three grand tours, and that the one day classics (Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, Milan-Torino, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, etc.) are actually equally and sometimes more prestigious events amongst actual cyclists. For that reason I don’t dismissively want him to be executed and talk about the Notre Dame player’s dead girlfriend hoax (that said, that other story shows that the media does little reporting, other than Twitter feed repeating, and shouldn’t you figure out if there is an obituary at least if you are going to report on a death?). All of that said, since I care about the sport, I am ultimately saddened and disappointed. I don’t hate him now or want him to die like so many angry comments on the Internet (never read comments to online articles unless you want to lose faith in mankind). 

I will still say that tactically and mentally he was an exceptional rider, at least to me, since I learned to understand the sport watching Armstrong. It is not for nothing that he won seven times, cheating or not, since yes basically the entire field was doping during that era. The only podium finisher of all twenty one during the seven Tours that Lance "won" who never admitted to doping, be convicted of doping or a related offense, or make a financial arrangement to have charges dismissed was Spanish rider and 2002 second place finisher Joseba Beloki, according to Bicycling Magazine. Floyd Landis, Jan Ullrich (paying 250,000 Euros to a German judge to stay on the podium for years outside of his positive drug test in 2006), Ivan Basso, Alberto Contador and countless others were implicated in doping scandals. In some of these cases, such as Ullrich’s, common European legal practices allowed them to remain winners of races that fell outside of the much less stringent statutes of limitations than those imposed by USADA (The United States Anti-Doping Agency), which of course is the governing body that ultimately provided the legal teeth which brought Armstrong’s story to light. Police had raided the 1998 Tour for drugs, finding them in a team car of Swiss rider Alex Zulle, who finished second in 1999. This was the penultimate Tour prior to Lance’s winning streak, which was partly why Armstrong was seen originally as the Savior. So much for that. The “generation,” as Lance put it to Oprah, is tainted as a whole.

Wouldn't it be great to have 250,000 Euros to throw away? (That's a little over 330,000 USD.)

Anyway, yes, he is clearly a fraud and a liar, and has behaved as such. But he has been treated differently because he won, and here in the United States, he has been treated differently because he is being viewed outside of the context of the sport he practiced, since barely anybody seems to be aware of that context. Costas is correct to a point. One online comment I read said something like, "If I wanted to read about a pr*ck who rode a bike, I would just read about Portland." That's pretty funny, actually, but shows a snapshot of how much people really understand cycling, the sport...Perhaps it is easier to picture the "Portlandia" character, self-righteously yelling that "Whole Foods is corporate!" from his fixed gear. I saw a guy last night riding in the snow adorned with a courier bag, on a vintage steel Motobecane sled, who had to be working quite hard for that affectation...you get the point. Neither of these archetypes of the studied, self-conscious hipster who rides dejectedly down the middle of the road, as some sort of stick it to the man gesture have anything to do with the sport cycling, of course. They have as much as common as "smear the queer" (a football-like game where anyone who has the ball gets tackled; no points can even be scored) has with the NFL. 

Considering that it is an unknown sport, overall, I don’t know why no American journalist that I have read so far (included heavyweights like deadspin.com or ESPN) have done any comprehensive research on the context of the Armstrong era and the sordid history of the many doping cases on the international circuit. I don’t think that diminishes the infractions, but it certainly makes them much more understandable. Does drug use amongst the urban and rural poor make more sociological sense to you? Probably, as it has an understandable context. Performance enhancing drug use is no different than any other societal ill being viewed through the peephole that is the public interest and the 24 hour news cycle- which of course happens all of the time, as the media and the public characterize so many events with glib, attention-deficient, voyeuristic fascination. Also, to an athlete at a certain level, there is not that much difference in their tunnel vision to win between pain killers and performance enhancers. It is further evidence that the drug culture is pervasive and pernicious. Considering that cyclists begin their serious careers at such a young age, how do we expect them to differentiate between druuuugs and drugs, as Homer Simpson once put it to Bart?

None of this diminishes the severity of his behavior, or justifies it. But context has been lacking from so many reports on this, like Lance Armstrong was a top-hatted, caped man with a large Fu Manchu mustache, tying young riders who didn’t dope to the train tracks.

Greg LeMond- who has a little more credibility than me, and won the Tour in 1986, ’89, and ‘90- will disagree with any positive assessment of Armstrong’s actual talents. LeMond, who has enjoyed a professional hatred of Armstrong for years, will say that his talents are average- not a great climber, not much of a time trialist- and that Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton could have beat him on a level playing field. (I’m not quoting). I don’t know if that is sour grapes or acrimonious jabbing in the media, as big personalities and egos are prone to do, or a reasoned assessment of his ability as a rider. If Armstrong is to be believed, which is hard to do these days, then he raced clean after his comeback to the Astana Team. He placed third in the 2009 Tour de France general classification, won a stage, while feuding throughout with Spanish winner and Astana captain Alberto Contador. During that Tour there was manufactured drama that Armstrong, while playing lieutenant to Contador, would mount an attack to capture the yellow jersey. To some it was reminiscent of the great battles between LeMond and Frenchman Bernard Hinault, known as the "The Badger," a 5-time Tour winner who once threw a punch at an obstructive spectator on the race course. Hinault also achieved the rare triple crown in cycling, winning the Tour de France five times, the Giro d'Italia three times, and the Vuelta a Espana twice.

It is impossible to know what would have happened, who would have won, and how anyone, Armstrong or not, would have done without the rampant drug epidemic that consumed the culture of the sport. Ultimately it is a lost decade or so. I see how Lance’s vociferous and acerbic lying must sting so much more for those with thoughts of the careers that could have been, those that refused to dope, and hence never rode a grand Tour- like all sports, cycling is a young man’s game and the window is small for competing at that demanding of a level.

I am reminded that the blessing of life is easily cursed with human indignity and pride: consider Job and Jeremiah cursing the hour they were born, despite their profound understanding of the promises that they were to receive. Why can success and abundance have the same effect, of creating evil in man’s heart? Pride, plenty and success seem to rain down in a pestilence on so many luminous figures through the ages, blackening their hearts and making them mad with pride. Watching Armstrong was almost like reading a less eloquent Solomon in Ecclesiastes, reflecting sagaciously after tasting the ephemeral pleasures of life and the flesh that all is nothing but vanity and chasing after the wind. Similarly, if he was actually contrite, it wasn’t that different than an alcoholic’s admission when they realize that they can’t lie anymore. Have you seen "Flight" with Denzel Washington? The denouement of the film features a similar moment. (Hope I didn't ruin it for you). It is like Lance Armstrong has experienced the apotheosis of a recovering alcoholic who can no longer allow himself to lie anymore. Or at least he is saying the right things. 

I offer these thoughts not as a professional sports commentator, or a professional cyclist, because I am neither, but just someone who admired the man for his ability and achievements in their own moment, who probably wants to find a way to forgive him, who gets a little sick of the fact that American sports outlets ignore everything outside of baseball, football, and basketball, who saw in Lance Armstrong something that was good and pure, performed with unapologetic zeal and conviction, and is now reduced to being a hated fraud…I am reminded of Yeats, possibly bemoaning the fallen state of the world, mortality’s stain: “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

P.S.- After I composed this I noticed that Armstrong said that he thought he could come back to the 2009 Tour and win during the second Oprah interview, which is interesting since he was not the captain of his team and it was his role to pull for Contador. (Again, I wished that she knew the sport better here because a claim like that demands a follow up question). Going back to the Hinault-LeMond comparison, some claimed that it was similar to Hinault's philosophy that LeMond would not become a great champion unless he was able to defend the yellow jersey, even if it were from a rider on his own team. Perhaps it is Pollyanna like to even talk about Armstrong as an athlete anymore, who had real winning ambition, but even in the throes of doping, watching the actual Tours, you saw that there was real conviction and desire in winning, perhaps furthered by a delusion in the fairness of cheating.

On the sublimation of human need and why yardwork should be avoided

27 October, 2012, Richmond VA USA, 1550 hrs.
Yes, this still exists and there is a reason to catalog the world that is intentionally ordered, set up as something normal and predictable. I will keep going, reveling in the fall season which throws oak dust in my eyes, reddening them in the yard when the breezes passes, seeing sticky new orange or brown and crispy leaves scraping over the wood of the ragged deck. Staccato acorn sounds on the bedroom window blowing north, no reason for waking but seeing the darkness tarry in the morning, slow, patient. Fall is a great season, a time to possibly develop a beer gut without trying as indulging season looms. It is a season when you might want to experience and employ the idiom of the nature you see so much of, hating or ignoring or dealing with in some evasive way, not stopping and seeing.

I thought of this poem for the occasion, of which I'll include an excerpt:

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
               placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
                in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
                riprap of things:
Cobble of milky-way,
                straying planets,
These poems, people,
                lost ponies with
Dragging saddles
                and rocky sure-foot trails.

-Gary Snyder, "Riprap"

 25 September, 2012, Richmond VA USA, 2100 hrs.

 A musical representation of the same circular theme (play as accompaniment)

It is a fight to write this, a struggle to see it mean something and to want to see this space survive: The demands of myself and the world are different now, and urgent, unrelenting and dizzying. Tonight I am here in my home office (where I got bitten by a *$^%ing mosquito, as usual) after coming home exhausted and not even knowing why, perhaps the simple idea of having stood in a classroom on a day where it felt like every sentence was a fight to be heard, where people might have learned, maybe something, and I left exhausted, and incidentally encountered every iteration of traffic possible in all the cardinal directions of Richmond. Well, the majority of them were covered, as I happened to come from my chiropractic cult in the West End at 5:00 to my house on the North Side, on 64 as usual the stupid Boulevard exit was closed for no reason so you have to pass perilously close to the Jersey barriers, over the Beirut-quality asphalt of the right lane, east of the Boulevard, passing the comely woman wearing David Yurman/Chik-Fil-A/VCU basketball trio of billboards headed towards Belvidere. Getting off at Belvidere and seeing the same homeless guy that I made eye contact with last night, this afternoon he looked sleepy and didn’t seem to remember me, just a day later. For some reason when I saw him I thought of the Halloween store that looks bigger than it needs to be, bigger than anything related to Halloween needs to be, that seemed to pop up over night near the chiropractor’s office I was in. Passing north up through the usual Chamberlayne Avenue melee of clueless pedestrians and creative U-turns- certainly a different planet than its genteel parallel neighbor, Brook Road-, seeing the world’s most criminal grocery store, “Neighborhood Market,” that could be so much more, who I would support but I have boycotted because they sell nothing but assorted junk food dust and Murray’s frozen meats, and charge criminal prices for anything real like olive oil. Pass them, pass the Popeye’s, always remembering the one time I went there with two friends after my maiden home brewing voyage, high on what was not yet our own supply and starving. 

You didn’t think I was going to post directions to my house on the Internet, did you?

The steady cadence and cyclical nature of the world of work can change, or even chip away at, what you may have thought were any grand revelations, as the dailiness piles up, over and over, and that novelty that you might have achieved before starts to become repetitive, or deadening, and eventually oppressive. It doesn’t have to be this way, as seeing the world in different ways and experiencing something new is vital to existence, even if the world of security that we have constructed here in the good old USA requires that we go to a place, most of us anyway, and do something for eight hours so that we can achieve at least an illusion of freedom and experience away from the shackles of employment and the demands of work and a job. It sounds crazy and completely contrary to most Eastern ideas of balance and the pursuit of unified opposites, because it basically is- we endure the eight hours so we can do other things away from the eight hours. In so many ways we have just achieved a different captivity than those of the other ages. When man is not enslaved by another there is usually a good chance that he can find a way to enslave himself with something. Just give him time to find it!

For most of my life I have known that I basically hate all of the jobs that people have talked about. Being in school, when the guidance counselors would talk about jobs, I found it depressing, uninteresting, and exhausting. I recall doing these interest surveys where I would put outlandish answers just to see what the result would be (I remember saying that I would highly enjoy cutting and styling hair, for instance). Rightly or wrongly, I was never motivated to have a job and the idea of sitting in a cubicle, for example, always seemed suicidal to me. (If you're reading this in a cubicle, please do not commit suicide). I have had one real job where I actually have a salary, and I am also not required to sit down, and I am unobserved and self-directed 95% of the time. (In fact, sitting down would be a bad practice at my job, a lot of the time). Most teachers know that the desk is a crucible and an albatross, something to hide behind and clutch to when you don’t really want to weather what is going on in the classroom (I refuse to just call it a storm). Yes, you can sit down and it is physically exhausting to stand up all day long, but the desk is ultimately a crutch and not the hull in a classroom. (Not sure where these comparisons are coming from, and I'm not worried that literary criticism would have the classroom be a wheelchair equipped clipper ship). 

Other jobs I have had include a lifeguard (at pools, and the ocean in Kill Devil Hills NC), a fitness instructor (a euphemistic position which basically included changing the radio station to not bore myself to tears and cleaning equipment, and discussing attractive girls in the gym with libidinous co-workers), a Jersey Mike’s sub maker, (along with a crew of winners who used to smoke marijuana in the walk in freezer and turn off the neon “Open” sign a half hour before we closed, just to deter customers…they also bought beer for underage people), and a swim instructor (where I actually taught swimming). In Blacksburg VA I worked at a Cajun restaurant, with people who were mostly jerks, for one summer. The highlight of this was the employee parties where they closed the restaurant at midnight and allowed you to use the open bar, and you could stay till about 6AM. Needless to say these were bacchanalian massacres where people would raid the walk-in refrigerator and stuff their pockets with shrimp cocktail and the like before they went home (this actually happened, and I do remember partaking of the shrimp cocktail). There have been others, but all these jobs didn’t seem like real ones. I could continue with a lot of stories, a famous one being when I was wrongly fired from a deli because I switched shifts with another guy, and the manager said that it wasn’t allowed based on what I had written down as my availability. In other words, she knew my own schedule better than I did and thought it was etched in stone, and since my originally scheduled shift came first on the calendar, I didn't show up, and was fired. Brilliant management technique, as she naturally informed the other guy and not me. What is a real job though? Well, I don’t care about the semantics here and am going to rely on the usual assumptions: A real job has a salary, requires shoes and a shirt, and doesn’t let you come in half drunk (like the Cajun restaurant job, whose culture almost encouraged it). There was the board operator job at WXGI 950 AM in Richmond, which included listening to the Richmond Braves’ boring baseball games during the season that they won seven games during the month of June, including the night when they were playing someone who could have been the Toledo Mud Hens, and there was a rain delay, and then the game went 16 innings, which means I got home at 4AM, accounting for the other time zone starting later anyway, plus the delay. There is a level of isolation than can only be appreciated after listening to a minor league baseball game in an empty room all night for a paltry paycheck. This was a job where a woman who I had never met told me that she had drank Sloe Gin the night before and was wretchedly hungover on my first day. We had never met, and this was in an office, during a work day. One time at that job I was supposed to do some sort of menial board operations for a horse race on a Saturday morning, and I slept through it. There were no repercussions- I don’t think anyone even knew. I also translated some warning on an electrical panel into Spanish, expecting to be paid by the word in the target language, as is the norm in the translation racket*. I was paid nothing, and no one even told me thanks. But then again I slept through the horse race. Fair is fair. I wish I could recall this, but I cannot…but there was some sort of clever couplet above the toilet, advising gentlemen to hold their aim true, and I put quotation marks around it and attributed it to T.S. Eliot. No one ever mentioned this either, possibly because I did not add an Eliot-like Latin footnote.

*A common misconception is that translation work is actually free. This is not the only time I have encountered this.

Work is a strange necessity that didn’t really happen back in the hardship periods of history, when people were busy being oppressed, eating broth for dinner without salt, and writing treatises with no electricity on stoicism and ways to endure the oppression. During the Middle Ages you may have been born as a serf or born as a nobleman but that is what you were, and you just did that until you died, regardless of any sense of purpose or contentment. (Of course, minus its romantic notions of courtship and heavy mead consumption, we all know that the Middle Ages generally sucked). Likewise, you could be considered someone with the talent to regale the king or whoever with the latest etude and that is all you had to do, and you were supported, while the king had to attend your performance and attempt to stay awake and bow to people or whatever. Now we are forced to choose and that burden causes (or can cause) just as great of a sense of pain and loss as the old arrangement, since now we have the onus of “finding ourselves.” This in turn creates yet another layer of dysfunction, psychologically speaking, where each citizen in a free society has to fill his or her time and to use it “productively” (I wince at the trite term) in order to attain the material comforts that we expect to make us happy, as well as to take on the existential burden of the outcome of what we choose. The questions becomes: When do we really become happy, and which home project or possession takes us to that tipping point? How do you measure the time to stop? The answer is that you don’t, if you don't let yourself. It is necessary in our society to continue acquiring possessions and to continue improving your situation in order to have purpose outside of the workplace, to carve out a sense of autonomy and to feel fulfilled and sacrosanct as an individual. The unfortunate, or perhaps just realistic fact, is that no one is exactly immune from this groundswell. It takes a conscious resistance to really push back against the culture of material acquisition- and it isn’t automatically negative to acquire stuff (I sometimes catch myself admiring stuff that I own, and I am not materialistic: I have owned the same TV since 2001 or so). It is a cliché certainly that materialism is inherently negative, but those that do not subscribe to it, or claim not to, appropriate just as many false possessions, which are not required to be physical objects, that they prop up in place of the divine. That is the need that we are trying to replace, as we continue to work in the yard and do all of this stuff in order to reach some imaginary finish line where there is completion, contentment, and closure. The problem I have found as a homeowner is that this imaginary place is just that- not real, and unattainable. The striving continues, the ideas to improve continue, and they go on without satisfaction, year after year. In the United States this is usually just called something like ingenuity. If you watch the Home Depot commercials, which make tasks like laying insulation look tolerable, well-lit, and simple, it is hard not to catch some glimpse of the contagiousness of completing hard work. And I agree that this sense of progress and inertia toward improvement of the home and the self is not negative, per se. Really its danger is that it (to invoke the Kerouacian IT here, this isn’t that different: Purpose and calling in the world, a reason to exist, or eventual ecstasy and joy) can become negative and often replaces a search for something more daunting and urgent, the search for eternal purpose and meaning. It is a delicate equation that we face as humans, seeking to commune with a God we might even actively reject as we deny ourselves blessing through self seeking and personal goals. It gets complicated and many philosophers could easily shoot holes in this. I do not care about them and I do not need to believe them- their intellectual walls are the same principle as what I’m talking about, an appropriation of the self in place of communing and glorifying something/one external. Humans will create gods out of their own minds, in other words. Worshiping your own mind and the aggrandizement that comes with doing something like writing this paragraph (look at this clown, writing a paragraph, how vapid!) is rampant in the world we are in, and it can appear sleepily like an idea to work in the yard or menacing like a plot for something more sinister. The depravity of pleasure and our ravenous appetites are also culprits, seeking the same Medusa!

The Medusa reference, for me, was funny. Hopefully that plays well in the Heartland, where Medusa and other mythological lightweights are often forgotten.

In closing, I will say that we are not lost, and there is hope for us as we’re given zillions of chances at redemption and that we are pursued and sought after by one who loves us. Sorry if this is not Kantian enough but the reason there are moral codes is that we protect our own hearts and minds following them, we seek something other than ourselves and we become truly content and full of zeal and meaning. The life we choose is often one without rest and solace, where we want to create splendor out of something that is empty and vapid. The moments we can create based on pleasure or feeling or even brief and fleeting bawdy abandon are all destruction and damage, in disguise. Through ambition, the aggrandizement of the intellect, improvement of our personal worlds, we seek to propel ourselves into self- flagellation and castigation, the way of all flesh.

(Remember, the mind is but another extension of flesh).

Next time you’re at Lowe’s, think about this, and have a beer in your backyard instead. And feel free to invite me.

The zany and lingering penumbra of repatriation

1645 hrs., Richmond VA, USA, 19 August 2012

"Danse Russe"

by William Carlos Williams (annotated with sycophantic, overwrought editor’s suggestions, for fun)

If when my wife is sleeping (GREAT IMAGE OF SLEEPING WIFE OH I LOVE IT…but are you sure you want this marriage to be heterosexual?)

and the baby and Kathleen (Bill- Is Kathleen the nanny? Perhaps include fantastic science fiction themed adultery scene? The saucy stuff is totally selling right now, stuff that makes “Story of the Eye” look G-rated!)

are sleeping  (More sleep. Good!)

and the sun is a flame-white disc  (Would you consider “the glowing rubber ball of Frisbee golf?” I spoke with the legal department and they are experimenting with product placements in poetry now)

in silken mists (I really wish you did this when we could have capitalized on the whole “Lord of the Rings” films and franchise…Hyperlink to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”?)

above shining trees,— (let’s put the Sierra Club plug I called you about here, more revenue and with a conscience! Great PR for the publishing house! Maybe make the line something about “trees going paperless.” So meta, right?)

if I in my north room (Style problem Bill- Is this a manor? I thought you were from New Jersey?)

dance naked, grotesquely ( So universal! Hyperlink to Bauhaus “Bela Lugosi's Dead”?)

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head (see product placement note- We could totally pitch “The Terrible Towel” here- I know you like the Giants though)

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!” (Hyperlink to Hank Williams “Lonesome Highway”?)

If I admire my arms, my face, (Ah yes, the old permissive Humani nihil a me alienum puto…perhaps add a pimple or a dose of jock itch for balance here)

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks (and in walks “Kathleen,” and we both burst out laughing, what with the buttock admiration?)

against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household? (Nobody! You are brilliant Bill!)

-William Carlos Williams (Thinking we should drop the Carlos, too ethnically confusing, maybe change your pen name to Da Willizzys? A little hipper, younger? Market research shows “Da” in front of everything is selling better! (Pronounced “Will-lizzies”) Oh, and maybe make Kathleen a VAMPIRE?)

I know that this is yet something else fleeting, a momentary glimpse of some euphoric place that is circumstantial and not based on any kind of in excelsis spiritual state- still, real it is and feels and the world is still fecund, thoughts are new in old, old places, some of which would have been fine to be dead to me forever, some forgotten loves: Interstate 95 during the typical disaster of Saturday in August in Northern Virginia, a ballpark, the most standard iteration of Sierra Nevada. It is like there is fallout, from an event that no one else may have seen but one that makes me different. I have the same heart and the same patterns, but do I...not always. The patterns are new, there is something bolder and less reticent to be seen. Like everything this condition is temporary, but it feels strangely vital and significant and like I need to seize it without giving a damn how I am perceived, or who understands me or doesn't. Execute a danse russe in front of your mirror, naked- on acid- listening to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass- and the same could happen to you!

These days, this happy genius* of a household can stand naked (I am a nude enthusiast) by his couch, his traditional spot for folding clothes still warm from the dryer, and watch the street, seeing people not see him and feel superior, indoors, civilized, naked, and alive. Zany annotation cannot destroy the sentiment here, even if you may object to this poem’s carnal celebration and seizure of pleasure in the self and human form, and its 'tonomy,' -au or -an. The Latin phrase there, taken from Terence and then recycled by Marx, “Nothing human is alien to me,” what a convenient intellectual defense for recklessness and abandon, perversity and depravity. Still, dismissing the abject possibilities on offer, this feeling- of gleeful solitude in nakedness and the joy of existence which has an ability to take hold of anybody, physically, and can be rapturous when there is concert between the physical body and the health and ingratiating presence of the mind, accompanying the body, fortifying the experience and enriching moments of folding clothes even, or dances in front of the mirror if you like. Whoever Kathleen is need not be contended with, unless she breaks in there is no chance and there is no baby, but is there anything illicit in some form of the personal expression of solitude, without sight from anyone but God, without congress of flawed bodies or that complicated emotional calculus? Peeling sweaty clothes off of your back right into the washing machine, these words come to mind even if the household is empty and symbolic only, in its ordinary solitude, houses and even the President of the United States have to stand naked, as Dylan (Bob) reminds. I bet WCW had to sneak off in the middle of the night to frolic nude, if he even did, relishing that solitude, “I am lonely, lonely / I was born to be lonely, / I am best so!” 

Friday afternoon, the sun was not a silver disk or a flying saucer or any kind of intergalactic image, but full on almost overhead, a Friday afternoon and the familiar promise of free time and the kind of cultivation of thoughts that the weekdays can’t always offer; the weekend is when germination can take hold unfettered. After cycling a familiar route, up towards Ashland, but not all of the way since I am nursing the same geriatric pelvis, and a wobbly ramshackle machination results over my left foot’s cadence, most evident when climbing and when the thighs start to sing, this scene unfolded, wonderful blessing in what has been given to me, and what I am a steward of, in its most simplistic, mundane terms. Feeling the body respond again to physical activity after too much lethargy and Iberian ham feels exhilarating, and with nude laundromat activity inside afterward as a reward, not even some mad genius but just average and extremely comfortable, in the lap of luxury that is so routine and commonplace here; I am struck that our daily American comfort is just perpetual. I have not been in Africa or somewhere undeveloped either. This is a new life here now in this same place, seeing the older experiences afresh through strange, slow and sometimes surreal adjustment. 

As this verbal universe and space is going to continue to have new, familiar life I must first just say that I am forging on without a theme or a set purpose, but that I have discovered that writing is vital to me and that I should have been doing this for a long time, whether or not anyone reads it. As usual the personal becomes (or can become) a bit wince-inducing, when either the corporal, the sexual, and/or the Biblical wants to assert itself but I am alive and I will use the Pablo Neruda quote, and another humanist cop out, even though I would not classify myself as a humanist per se**: “I confess that I have lived.” (Happy Humanist Cop Out Day, aka everyday). So now that the particulars have been established allow me to sing the days of work and routine that people complain about all of the time, even when it affords us such comfort and such splendor that we don’t even realize it. I’m talking to you, probably.

*Genius credentials still awaiting arrival, for now consider me a genius in the Wile E. Coyote sense of the word:

**Per quod as well, as humans are fallible and occasionally flatulent or otherwise odoriferous creatures

This weekend I experienced a wealth of social activity, despite time made for poetic allusion during the wash cycle. After my return to the sport of cycling, which had emotional impact as I remembered the day seeing the riders come down the circuit of the Avenue des Élysées in Paris, seeing the elites of the sport in the world who have lived in the saddle since they could walk, and feeling on some astral level that as a humans with the same interests and passions, there is a kinship, even if they could smoke me with one leg. I was wearing my jersey that I bought in Paris as well, near the Louvre Museum of all places, where they were mainly selling yellow jerseys (this may be redundant) and I found a different, simple French cycling federation jersey (and talked the lady’s price down significantly). I told her that no real cyclist just slaps on a yellow jersey for a casual ride in the neighborhood- people tend not to sport gold medals either. It is sort of like wearing Patton’s helmet when you’re a private in the infantry. It just isn’t done. So, there I was, non yellow-jerseyed and feeling like I had the legendary mystical wings of the maillot jaune anyway. The day included some very basic unrated climbs, as I am just trying to get back in the saddle, pun completely intended. I did 20 miles, which for my condition and the trick knee, I consider an accomplishment. This week’s two yoga classes were also both a bit brutal 90 minute affairs in which I left drenched, humbled, and satisfied. To quote George Costanza, upon recovering from impotence at the taste of a mango, “I’m back, baby!” I felt so grateful for youth (although fleeting, yeah yeah yeah, Old Time or somebody is still a flyin’ / This same flower or convenient beautiful plant metaphor that smiles today / Tomorrow may be dying) and the body’s resilience, and how fast I am blessed to be, and feeling in shape again. If anyone out there wants to get on the fitness wagon, or off the wagon, whichever the good one is, I will add that it was not always that way, even as I am lucky to have the metabolism of a hummingbird, I still must work (like everyone) at maintaining muscle memory (like aging Evander Holyfield against Lennox Lewis in 1999) and cardiovascular fortitude, which can wane very fast. The attrition of time is not to be underestimated, which works both ways. For example, during the upward curve of gaining fitness, persistence will be rewarded, and the body will respond and results will appear, sometime. The common Sisyphean analogy applies because so many people abandon their goals, and their consistency suffers, and they have to get back on the horse again and start fresh. My experience is that once you have established a certain core level of fitness, it degenerates much slower- although it still degenerates as mortality still applies- than when you are just establishing your body’s fitness patterns. In the beginning the body is aghast and confused, wondering what is going on that you are working so hard, rebelling against the notion of an accelerated heart rate. Later, the body will chide you for your inactivity, craving exercise and rewarding you with better sleep and a sharper mind because of it. In addition to that, your tastes will reflect the needs of your body, which means that you will crave healthier food.

To prove this, today I was craving bacon and I ate some. Quite healthy!

Leaving the metaphysical there for the practical, not a grotesque happy genius but Richard Simmons aficionado, sweating to the oldies, back here in the type A world that is insidious and contagious, but probably overall “good for you.” I do not know what other countries, including Spain, really do for fitness and maybe I was just blind to it there, but it seemed like people were fit but the idea of fitness, the Platonic form, was not nearly as praised in the culture, as it is here through glorification of athletes, advertising, and massive budgets and revenues for the sports and entertainment industries. Actually, that’s false. I’m sure it’s the same. Rafael Nadal was on Iberia’s in-flight magazine (boring to read) and Alberto Contador was inexplicably (or his cardboard cutout) in a mattress store in San Sebastian, even as he is currently banned from cycling for doping.

I was able to attend my first Major League Baseball game since about 1996, when I saw the Detroit Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles play at Camden Yards. Cecil Fielder hit a home run to left field and slowly ambled around the bases to the boos of the home team’s crowd. This was during Cal Ripken, Jr.’s campaign to break Lou Gehrig’s record for most consecutive games played. At that time the Orioles were decent, and managed by fellow VA Tech alumnus Johnny Oates, who is no longer living. There were three Ripkens in the organization: Billy, who probably felt ignored and played second base, and Cal, Sr., who was some sort of manager and usually was found at 3^rd base coach. They actually had a shot each season at dethroning the Red Sox or the Yankees in the American League East. The Toronto Blue Jays were also good at the time- a meaner and less vocally inclined bird (Think of the sound of the doo wop group the Orioles, then imagine a blue jay at a birdfeeder, where they always act like jackasses). My favorite MLB team is the “Birds” but I would be lying if I said I knew anything about baseball anymore. Still, I was reminiscing there in the ballpark thinking of how much I loved the Orioles in those days, and how I would stay up too late watching them on HTS, an extinct regional sports network that carried them. Once I was in Camden Yards and they were playing the Seattle Mariners, and Ken Griffey, Jr. hit a home run into right field (I can’t recall any Orioles home runs for some reason) that cleared the fence by so much that it hit the old railroad warehouse that the stadium’s designers were wise enough to leave in place. Yesterday evening in fact, I saw the National League East’s first place team, the Washington Nationals, play the New York Mets. There weren’t many hits in the game, maybe 9, and the final score was 2-0 as a result of somebody on the Mets hitting a home run with one guy on. I clearly followed it very closely. After so much time away from baseball, on top of two months away from the States, It was fascinating to see what “American culture” is like inside that oft-heralded symbol of our national inclusiveness and the spirit of ’76, the ballpark (Benjamin Franklin is said to have invented the dugout, based on a dream about his French mistress and a squirrel***). What follows are some obvious observations, perhaps. So what. For one, the volume of food is incredible, and everyone seemed to be eating (the game started at 7 so what choice do you really have). Everything was gigantic and of course the prices were absolutely criminal- beers ran $8-$9 depending on where you got them, one single hot dog was $5, anything resembling a meal would be $12-$18. More baffling was the fact that entire families, like the one in the row in front of me, where the father who was a large, slightly obese man whose elbow seemed to be magnetized to whatever drink was in my cup holder at any given time, would be eating. All of them would have something, which means that you’d have to spend $100 inside the ballpark just to feed everyone if you brought 3 children, or man or maid servants of your choosing. I bought one round of beers (2 beers) and a Polish sausage (they were out of Italian) and it was $25. Simply put, I noticed the sheer, famous and unbridled American excess. As I said all of the portions were monstrous, but on top of that, I just felt a sense of a general heavy consumption level- people going back for popcorn, ice cream, those Dipping Dots that are everywhere, you name it. Not to mention the sauce- which of course was flowing freely, $9 beers or not.  As the game ended, Third Eye Blind, of all bands, were invited to perform, and the concessionaires opened the beer sales again.  This meant there was all of a 30 minute gap where beer was not sold. (It is customary for ball parks to cease beer sales after the 7^th inning). I’ll admit it, as a creature of habit, feeling the inertia of the place, I too went back and paid $8 for another 12 oz. of Sierra Nevada. (At least the better beer was basically the same price as the Coors Light/Miller Lite varieties). I guess “when in Rome” would apply here, and I am in no way above gorging myself on processed meat products and overpriced beer. See what I mean by your body craving healthy food? Beer and sausages=healthiest combination ever.

In comparison with my memories of Baltimore, the DC crowd was much better behaved, quieter, and not very vociferous at all. During the 9^th inning the scoreboard did its pep talk thing- overdid it, really- with automated sound bites culled from inspirational speeches in movies, and the crowd came to life. Once the inning started, it was quiet again, which wasn’t helped but the fact that the Nationals hitters all got behind in the count and popped out, struck out, or ground out respectively. The crowd knew the Nationals were comfortably in first place in the NL East, and the vibe for the younger set was almost like “bring on the concert/let’s go to Georgetown/Adams Morgan,” while the vibe for the older set was “let’s go home and sleep.” In Baltimore I remember seeing the usual example of the incensed man screaming obscenities at the umpire within earshot of children, like me at the time. Perhaps it was because I was in the outfield seats- there is a bar called the Red Porch in center field, and the people there looked like they didn’t even care if they saw a pitch- but it was a stoic, well-behaved crowd. DC is a place with a highly educated populace, where people seem to talk about where they went to school more often than other cities, and as a city it projects a certain gentility- on Capitol Hill everyone seems to dress like they're going to the Kentucky Derby this time of year, all pastels and seersucker. (I blend well with this, as my complexion is fair). It doesn’t have the competitive feeling of New York where everyone is constantly trying to be the smartest in the room, although it can have that vibe at times. I haven’t spent as much time in Baltimore, but I don’t see it being like that. I spent a rainy weekend there last spring and it was softer, quiet, humbled, with rust, visible and striking poverty, and decrepit and crumbling buildings. Every city has something crumbling, and I guess it is all crumbling, everywhere, in some way, although some cities have a talent for showing it more. You don’t need to brandish your C.V. as much, if at all. Baltimore is a lot scrappier, and known as a maniacal sports town still bitter over the loss of the Colts. 

I will close this epistle: two very different places, two ages of selfhood, two memories of the great American pastime, still alive and kicking even when you let your interest lay fallow for half your life. Again, when I look at the details of the character of life here and at the wealth of blessing, everywhere, in common places, there is something reassuring about being home, the happy baseball ignorant genius of my household.

***100% invented fact