Funny Animals

via Ezra.

If only I could capture and bottle the moment where the dog realizes he is at the top of the cage, and he can’t get down…..

I write emails

F.,

I’m pretty confused as to what you are arguing here. I don’t doubt that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized some pretty questionable mortgages, but they never actually WROTE any mortgages.

For a quick and dirty explanation

Those that write the mortgages are the banks and the predatory mortgage industry with a plethora of (potentially illegally written) ARMS. These mortgages, written by Wachovia, Countrywide, WaMu are then grouped with good loans. These packages of loans are then overvalued, and insured (by companies like AIG). The package is passed around a few more times in the derivatives market. Not one of the traders knows what he is buying, but each company sure is making a nice chunk of change in a fees.

This CDS market (for credit default swaps) was created in 2000 by former McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm through the Commodities Future Modernization Act and overwhelmingly supported by the Republican Congress. It is a 62 trillion dollar market, up from 900 billion in 2003. And the entire thing is speculation by Wall Street traders. It’s a giant pyramid scheme.

The unregulated (kept unregulated by Republicans) I-banks leverage the money supposedly tied up in these packages of mortgages to buy other mortgages. Soon, everyone expects these worthless packages to be worth something.

The fact that you’re implying that a few desperate, poor minority homeowners caused the downfall of some of Wall Streets largest insurance, i-bank, and credit firms is really shameful. The bets that were made by greedy, unregulated traders playing with money they didn’t have and charging fees right and left is the reason why AIG, Lehman, Wamu, and Wachovia are all either under or bought by other firms.

Municipalities, charities, and individuals have money tied up in these firms. Money they were counting on to build roads, create opportunities, and send their kids to college with.

The implication that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had anything to do with this is just intellectually dishonest.

They were a very small player in a house of cards built by your lords of capitalism reveling in the unregulated orgy of greed and dishonesty.

For a more thorough explanation of FM and FM’s role in this, see here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

questions? I’ll be online.

pics of beardtober are coming soon

-S.

Minority homeowners cause the credit crunch, ACORN’s fraudulent registration allow Obama to be elected.

The insidiousness of these claims is unreal. The insistence on blaming every problem of the world on foreigners, or immigrants, or coloreds. Preying on the insecurities of the undereducated, the ignorant, on the worst of people. It’s what conservatism is all about. It is Nixon’s Silent Majority. It is the National Review campaigning against Brown vs. Board of Education. It is the Willie Horton Ad. It is the accusations that John McCain fathered a black child before the SC primary.

I keep focusing on race and the stoking of racial fears in my political posts because I believe it has so much effect on which lever the relatively uninformed voter pulls. It is ingrained in our history. The constitution was written accounting for 3/5 of a person! Conservatives would prefer we ignore history’s burden rather than carry it with us, reflect on it. The current anti-”other” memes propagated by the National Review or the wall Street Journal are simply the must-have toys for the crier of reverse-racism for this Christmas season. They are the Tickle-Me-Elmos of the right. A marketed, scripted, canned product who’s only intent is hooking another generation of a gullible, insecure populace so that our supposed protectors may beat back the foreign hoards all around us.

Can’t be the only kid on the block that doesn’t have a “blame the ACORN and Reverend Wright and Fannie Mae” talking point to play with!

.

.

and yes, I have a beard. It’s like constantly burying my face in a wool sweater.

without love, for love would be of the wrong thing

If your body is shaking, ease out of the pose and regain your breath. Struggling or fighting against your body and your emotions does not deepen the pose, it simply clogs and compartmentalizes tension and anguish into unseen places. Seek to find greater meaning in your version of the pose rather than struggle to conform to someone else’s definition.

As overheard this morning in yoga practice (slight paraphrase)

6 months ago, 1 month ago, last week, did I ever think I’d be one to quote a yoga teacher in my blog? Hmm. Hell no. And I’d probably stop reading anyone who did manage to quote their yoga teacher.

.

.

And yet, here I am.

.

.

Mind you, we are in pigeon pose when my teacher is saying this, so I’m hoping each sentence is his last before he tells us to release. I have desperately tight hip flexors, thus any poses that involve bending from the waist are often excruciating (even in their simplest form). My left foot is bent underneath me and I am close enough to the inside of my sweaty knee to lick it with my tongue. My right foot is splayed back towards the wall, top of the foot facing down. I’m supposed to bring my hips parallel to the front of the room, but I can’t mange to simultaneously collapse my left hip flexor and stretch out my right one.

I see others lengthening their respective spines and placing their forearms on the floor, dropping their heads between their hands. Here I am, on my fingertips, barely able to place palms on the mat, much less elbows.

My body twitches with the stretch and I bear down even harder, trembling beneath my efforts.

I subtly twist my torso, my hips unsquare, and my right leg gently unscrews out from underneath me so I can plop down on my forearms with ease. A smirk of guilt and embarrassed sadness spreads across my face. I think how I should probably invest in horse blinders to wear at yoga practice.

I think I should be able to do the “full” pose with ease, without cheating. It is a yardstick of my own self-worth and I don’t measure up. I’m the only one who can’t speak up in class, I’m the only one who can’t hit the ring the bell at the strongman carnival game.

I’m the only one who can’t <blank>

It spirals like this in a manner of seconds. All the while I’m still in pigeon. That thought process is so deeply rooted, I don’t have to make the connection anymore, it’s auto-pilot. It is the one thing that has become effortless for me. I welcome it sometimes, because I am so good at it. It is comforting and stable. It provides an excuse for a dark cloud of brooding focus to move over my head. This cloud of pity will open up and I will dance in this shower of self-involvement in my struggle.

I have permission to elevate and indulge my own battles over and over, without letting go. It’s a familiar trip, but I still love the ride. Sometimes I can’t get enough of it, I’ll listen to sad music just to prolong the experience. I’ll create a depressing mood or drink just enough wine to bury me in my own head. I wanted to believe how battering myself would somehow make me stronger. I knew I cobbled together the entire thing out of nothing, but it permitted a retreat into my adolescence. It allowed me to disregard acceptance.

.

Every year, my family would go to Disneyland and every year I would go on the Space Mountain. After ten years of riding, I knew ever bend. I knew exactly where the car would speed towards the wall and drop and turn suddenly making your stomach lurch into your chest. It never changed. It was thrilling, but the danger wasn’t real. There was no risk. It was heightened and comforting. I was allowed to sit back and scream with terror, letting the manufactured anxiety wash over me, year after year.

It’s this synthesized pity, this juvenile inward rage, that makes me struggle and cheat and eventually feel sorry for myself at yoga.

.

.

This storm of thoughts and emotions overwhelms and creates a tangible myopic fog. I find myself thinking: “I won’t be good enough, but at least someone else will think I am.”

At that moment I’ll do anything to get down on my forearms.

.

.

.

This is what rowing meant to me, it was an excuse to indulge in my own struggles. To elevate and dramatize my own battles, with weight, with the mornings, with the erg, and shut out the world. I would never be confronted with reality because I was on a heroic quest that no one could understand. Rowing was my life. It was a way to be ageless and timeless and never grow up.

His own frontal bone blocks his way (he bloodies his brow by beating against his own brow).

-Kafka

I desperately strain in yoga just as I did for so many years in rowing. There is no quest for inner peace because peace is amorphous and impure and irrelevant. All of those concepts are scary and ambiguous…… Measuring out my life in coffee spoons indeed.

I limit myself because I am scared to think where I would be if I didn’t.

.

.

.

I always believed there was an inherent conceit between letting go and failure. It was a slippery slope to stumbling and succumbing and numbing. I saw it as a tempting bargain. I accept, close my eyes, and wake up tomorrow, ten years older but no wiser. I found wisdom in my own manufactured struggles, catering to that at least gave me a purpose.

.

.

.

And yet, something about my yoga teacher’s phrasing this morning held onto me. I came very close to releasing my suffering and the tension that accompanies it. I came very close to knowing for an instant that everything I held onto was meaningless. I shivered with panic. For so long I had compartmentalized myself and others with words of condescension and jealousy. No one’s struggle was as worthy as mine. I experienced it more deeply than anyone else.

.

.

But abusing myself never was (nor is) very brave. I only limit myself in the pose by bearing down harder and assigning value and worth to each benchmark.

“Surgery was your mission,” she said.

“Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission, No one has. And it’s a a terrific relief to realize you’re free, free of all missions.”

-From Unbearable Lightness of Being

.

.

.

I always thought I had to rediscover a purpose after I quit rowing. Even moreso, now that I’ve quit training altogether.

I couldn’t let go of the notion that this new purpose would be my guide, my savior, my rock, my faith. It would help me achieve a proper, full, deep expression of pigeon.

However, appears it is this very belief which keeps my off my forearms.

A work in progress

He delivers the key-card, face up, into the card slot. The LED turns from red to green.

Quickly tugging at the heavy glass door with his left hand-but not too quickly as there is ordinarily a three to five second delay between the green light and the click of the locking mechanism-he wedges one of the shoes that he borrowed (and never returned) between the glass and the cheaply painted door frame.

Paint chips from the doorway fleck onto his shoe. He is strangely annoyed that his borrowed and never returned shoes will be marked up. The borrowed shoes have become his own-even though he feels a pang of guilt every time he thinks how he came upon them-and he takes pride in keeping them clean.

He asks himself why they bothered getting an expensively lavish glass door, but decided against painting the door frame with more than a coat. It bothers him. He’s not really sure why it bothers him so much, it just does. It’s like reading away messages on facebook that confuse “your” with “you’re”. It grates.

Slipping the back of his elbow and then his shoulder into the doorspace, he is careful not to disturb the cups of coffee in his right and left hand. He sets one of the cups down on the counter and takes 5 sugar packets out of his left pocket. There is still one more packet left in his pocket, but he doesn’t know it. He’ll probably rediscover the packet next month, or next year. The pants will have been dry cleaned a few times by that point and the faded pink lettering on the packet will simply say “omin”. The D and o casualties to the barrage of carcinogens that assault his pants every third Tuesday of the month. Every third Tuesday is dry cleaning day.

He tells himself that he hasn’t forgotten much lately. He takes comfort in that fact. He hasn’t forgotten any birthdays (the internet reminds him). He hasn’t forgotten to go food shopping, or to exercise, or to be on time for work in the morning. He tells himself he hasn’t forgotten to have some fun, to have a few drinks, to gossip, to indulge.

He hasn’t forgotten how to be responsible and prudent.

He hasn’t forgotten that he’ll one day be the hero in his own story. Or at least that’s he thinks. And he takes comfort in that fact. How could he not be? It’s what he’s been saving up for right? He sure hopes he’s the hero before Dec 21, 2012. He snickers to himself while thinking about transitioning, about changing, about the world ending. He isn’t directly laughing at the world ending, he chuckles knowing that it doesn’t make him very sad. But maybe it does and he’s just trying to deny that.

He tells himself he should stop thinking about it. These things go in cycles, you know. You can’t really go forward without first going back. Don’t jump to conclusions. Once you’re at the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.

But is he at the bottom? He often tells himself secretly wants to be. Or does he understand what that means? If he really wanted to be, would he be sitting here with his 4 sugars (careful not to have artificial sweeteners), and his reusable, aluminum coffee thermoses (careful for the environment and the possibly toxic plastic nalgenes), and his wrinkle-free, ansley collar, slim-fit Brooks Brothers shirt (careful so the bosses know you are professional and ready to work), and his $40 hairut (very careful, very professional), and his frequent face washing (careful to look the part of a participating member of the upper middle class who must be prepared have their picture taken at any moment).

In one swoop, he neatly tears the corrugated ends of the sugar packets and stirs all 4 into the coffee. He gets an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Or perhaps it’s paranoia. To the matter in his brain, and the nerves tumbling down his spine, there’s no difference. And perhaps that’s all he has, the abstract notion that there is no difference. What he is feeling is not real and does not exist, he is a loose collection of molecules rubbing against other atoms of carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen. He is a cauldron of chemicals occasionally being stirred by the cackling witches of sensory perception.

He enjoys his organic apple and his fair trade coffee. It is brought to him by a complicated puzzle of a maze of a tangle of a system. He thinks about how tremendously large the apple is. In fact, apples never looked like this, ever. In the history of civilization they have never been this large and full and available. They have also never been this toxic and wasteful and extracting. Believing and relishing in this apple means buying into a system that will one day overwhelm him, if it already hasn’t.

He pictures himself as the old man from Ohio being interviewed by CNN about the election. The old man is compartmentalized by CNN as an undecided voter which means he fears confrontation and fears change and yet he supports our troops in Iraq. This contradiction goes unnoticed because it may not agree with the chemicals of the advertisers that pay for the cameras and the mike boom and the makeup and the teleprompter of the news broadcast.

He wonders about this man’s life and his struggles and his triumphs. He knows the old man is also simply a vague gathering of atoms moving through space. The old man probably has children and dogs. Three of them. Each. He takes them for walks and has recently become involved with a local church group that supports going on long walks on Sunday afternoons in support of (in order of importance) Jesus and charity. He fears God, but takes comfort that God probably loves him and knows and wants what is best for him. In fact, it’s impossible for the old man to remember a time that he might have questioned that because that thought is impossible to him and the acids and bases and imines and enzymes in his head. He won’t question what is best for himself because he is important and immortal. His soul will live on if he loves his wife, and puts enough money in the gold-but slightly varnished-church collection plate, and doesn’t indulge in too much alcohol on Saturday’s as he watches his beloved Buckeyes play a Division I-A school that he’s never heard of.

According to the interview, the old man will vote against gay marriage and vote for lower taxes and hates ACORN. These things react well with the chemicals in the old man’s body. There is little precipitate formed, and that is good because precipitate of the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

But he’s not sure how to vote for President. His chemicals don’t realize that the vast majority of his life will probably change very little regardless of who he votes for. He will still watch the same flashing lights on television at night. These flashing lights seem to null and calm any disagreeable molecular imbalance he might have.

He imagines himself as that old man and wonders if the old man also enjoys apples and coffee in morning.

These thoughts float through his head and Procession comes on Pandora and he immediately takes everything back.

There is no end to this
I can’t turn away
Another picture but the scene
It’s still the same
There is no room to move
Or try to look away
Remember, life is strange
The life keeps getting stranger every day
I try so hard but this attitudes
A type that won’t subside
No matter what they say
Remember your heart beats you day at night
Your heart beats you day at night

Suddenly, he again believes in moments and certainty and self-recognition and personal growth and redemption. Just the fact that this song comes floating through the internet at the exact time he is feeling powerless is a sign that, in fact, he has plenty of power. There are guiding forces, benevolent spirits. There are mysteries waiting to be discovered.

A lunchtime, this will change. He vacillates back and forth. His chemicals are the consistency of fermenting goat’s milk, lumpy and reactive. But soon, they will smooth out like rich margarine. The reactions will cease and the matter will simply lie there, compliant and malleable. The moments will end, and recognition will end and he will not care because why would you want to ruin perfectly good margarine?

Flickering in one corner of his brain, a spark plug of recollection rattles a small memory to life. The memory growls as blood and neural fluid pump through it after a long dry spell. Lubricated once again, the memory attacks his brain he is compelled to close his eyes.

He flashes back to a pitching mound. He is playing for the San Carlos Little League Marlins. His uniform is painfully teal and his hat is black. It is bright and sunny and dry outside and the mound is dusty and squishy. He tries to sweep away some of the excess dirt with his left foot while hunching over and staring in at the batter he must deal with next. He is in the fifth inning of a six inning game. He’s pitching well and his team is leading 4-2. He has not allowed a hit but has already made two throwing errors to first on balls that were hit right to him. In both cases, he threw the ball too hard and too low to first. The runner reached second both times. Eventually, both runners come around to score on sacrifice flies.

Nevertheless he’s four outs away from a throwing a no-hitter and the crowd is cheering him. He looks up and sees his mother scorekeeping from the bleachers, smiling silently to herself, but being careful not to look at him. She is proud of him, but no more proud than she was before the game. Her admiration and belief is without contingent and therefore meaningless.

He’s never been totally abandoned, his mother has always been there, thus he has no idea what it’s like to be totally alone. Sometimes he wishes he could experience what true abandonment is. Not for too long, just try it on, this different brain chemistry, this different costume. A difference perspective, for a time.

He fears without this perspective he will never be able to truly thank his mother and properly appreciate her for always being supportive. He fears he won’t be able to do this until she is dead. He will only realize this at the small gathering after her burial as he is about to bite into a cucumber sandwich with no crusts and too much mayo.

He can put on a pretty good show of gratitude for her when he wants to. I suppose that’s all that matters; it’s for her sake anyway.

He looks to his left and his father is sitting in his car. It is 10am and he has been driving for three hours from his upstairs apartment in Pasadena to see the game. He has just arrived and is smoking a cigar- or was it a cigarette?- in the dark, by himself. He grips and peels at the steering wheel with every finger save for the first two on his right hand which hold the cigarette. The beige Honda is cluttered and will remain that way until, some years later, he gets in a small fender-bender on the way to Santa Monica one afternoon, at which point he will have to empty the vehicle of its contents and collect the insurance.

As he is pitching, he suddenly wonders whether he will cheer for him or come down and watch him. His father is brooding, surrounded by a smoky wall of impenetrable tiredness. His father’s eyes appear heavy and there are deep black lines running down and fleeing away from his nose. His knows his father has moments of lonely hollowness sometimes. His father’s chemicals are churning and boiling over. His father had learned to subdue them with alcohol or work or ignorance, but sometimes the reactions come too fast to quell.

Suddenly, he drops into his father’s skull and sees the world through his eye sockets and wears his face like a mask and plunges right in the middle of his chemical memory. His father once believed his life would follow a certain path, have a theme. Whatever his father felt was important back then, is not important to him now; and this will continue to change. His father knows this and simply wishes he wasn’t constantly running to catch up with it.

His father, however, never envisioned having to drive three hours on the wide, gray, lifeless Southern California freeways early on a Saturday morning to see a strange boy play on a small green field unnaturally placed in the vapid dryness beneath an unforgiving desert sun. But he is obligated. It is the right thing to do.

His father, or rather his father’s chemicals, know something has gone wrong somewhere. And they desperately search for an answer. His father peers out at the gatherings of people, searching for shade in the piercing late-Spring San Diego morning and tries his best to drop into their skulls. To mix his chemicals with theirs and hope the answers he is searching for are there and momentarily satisfying.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowlege which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him.

From Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men

Later, the game is finished. He’s completed the no-hitter. His father will remain in the car as his teammates and parents surround him and affectionately touch him. He wriggles away from them, in the same motion hurling his glove against the backstop fence.

Arms swinging wildly, he will sprint across the rocks embankment with his bulky cleats, rush up to doors of the beige colored 1992 Honda Accord with the peeling rubber molding, and beg to be let in.

Fainting Goats!

I have watched this  at least ten times today and still can’t resist audibly giggling when the goats fall down.

My hopes, my dreams, all that I’m capable of. Of all people, I thought YOU would understand.

Daddy knows best

Since the 60’s, the Democrats have rightfully chosen to be a “big-tent”, inclusive party. However, this leads to lots of subtle (and not so subtle, Chicago 1968 says Hi!) fighting between the groups included under the big-top. If you take disparate groups and place them alongside each other, there is bound to be friction. I imagine if you literally took the elephants and the giraffes from the circus, opened their cages, and let them run wild, there might be some chaos (yes, this circus has giraffes ok!).

Witness: African-Americans are the ethnic group that are most in favor of Proposition 8 in California because blacks are often members of religious communities most in favor of a ban on gay marriage.

Note: As much as I’d like to set aside the assumption that distinct racial groups always vote the same way, racial identification still seems to have some predictive value. I will say that ethnic groups don’t vote like the BORG as much as they used to. Why is this? That’s the topic for another blog post.

But back to the wild circus tent.

Diversity is scary. People that aren’t from your neighborhood are foreign and strange. Showing pictures of them on television is even worse. It’s what the local evening news is built on!

This is a theory frequently offered as to why the post-civil rights era heterogeneous Democratic party has been liable to attacks from a mostly homogeneous Republican party. The patriarchs that look just like you do! People find safety in numbers, but those numbers have to be comforting and familiar ( speaking of numbers, I wonder how long till McCain supporters just start painting the numbers 666 all over anti-Obama posters).

So, it’s nice to finally see Republicans having to reap the roosting chickens that they sowed over all these years (or something like that).

As MY notes, Arab-Americans were solidly Republican until very recently. Now they’re pretty much split. The Republican party excuses the racism because that they need the sentiment of racial antipathy to create as much doubt as they can in the minds of white voters. Republicans figure they can control them, and sadly, over the last 30 years, they’ve been pretty effective at it.

But attempting to incite and then control a fearful mob is like kicking a pet alligator and quickly backing away hoping it attacks someone else. Eventually, you’re going to get bit.

At some point, the little-tent, Children of the Corn act will backfire. Limbaugh and the Corner and Palin can only hurl fiery George Wallace-esque rhetoric around for so long before getting burned right?

Back when the Presidential Elections began, I was a supporter of John Edwards. I knew of Obama but figured the country wasn’t prepared to elect a person of color, especially if they were a Democrat. The Republican party has been too good over the latter half of the 20th century at being the caring father who tells his daughter not to go out with the scary Communist/hippie/black guy. I figure since Obama can be tarred and feathered with all three of those, that he’d never make it past the primaries, to say nothing of the general election.

But I am increasing hopeful.

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

From- Keats’ To Hope

Thoughts 10/14/08

1. I am really good at procrastinating. Does the fact that I am reluctant to work on and finish my law school essays mean I don’t actually want to go to law school? Does it mean I don’t want to put in the effort and just want things handed to me?

Does it mean it’s just too dull of a project for me to tackle? I mean, come on, writing 700 words about why I want to be a lawyer is not fun or interesting. Why do I want to do anything? Why do I want to wake up in the morning? I’m thinking the questioners don’t take themselves nearly as seriously as I take myself!

2. I have been discussing dating, excitement, and newness as it applies to love with various people lately. I haven’t seriously dated anyone in a long time, and am one of only a few people I know that are single. I’ve certainly been single for longer than most people I know. Their lives are marked up and crossed through and heavily annotated by the entrance and exit of relationships, mine is briefly colored by flings, romances, obsessions.

I don’t insist on being in a relationship, so it doesn’t happen for me. I lack a neediness. Or, you could say, I lack that ability to let myself go. I selfishly lack a desire to lend any part of myself to anyone else? I can’t see myself in a relationship where I don’t make demands on the other person.

I am unable to create a relationship where I do not make selfish, silly demands on the other person. Like drinking sweet, sticky root beer on a hot, overbearing day, it temporarily stems my thirst, but it’s unsatisfying.

Soon I’ll want something different.

It is completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; She did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor has she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anybody more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

From The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Whatever it is, there’s something clearly in the way of me comfortably being with another person for an extended period of time.

(Clearly I once had that when I was younger, I’m just not sure of where it went. Perhaps I simply purged it from my system)

The question becomes, how do I manage this? And how do I reconcile sex with all of this? Like clockwork, every few months, I need to have sex. I can always feel it creep up each time, like the truck that delivers the morning newspaper. I am neither shocked it’s there, nor sorry it came. I knew it would. Certainty leaves no room for fluster.

Now whether I act on that desire is another question. And I suppose it’s the thrust (no pun intended, i swear) of this posting.

If I’m attempting to be unselfish in my relationships, then this will severely cut down on my opportunities to get laid. As I’ve stated before, I continue to use sex as a weapon, as a goal to be attained, as a mirror of my self-worth.

“I think I understand you,” the chief physician answered. “When I was some years younger, I knew a girl who went to bed with everyone, and because she was pretty I was determined to have her. And imagine, she turned me down. She went to bed with my colleagues, with the chauffeurs, with the boiler man, with the cook, even with the undertaker, only not with me. Can you imagine that?”

“Sure, ” said the woman doctor.

“Let me tell you,” the chief physician said testily. “It was then a couple of years after graduation, and I was a big shot. I believed that every woman was attainable, and I had succeeded in proving this with relatively hard to get women. And look, I came to grief with this readily attainable girl.”

“If I know you, you certainly must have a theory about it,” said Dr. Havel.

“I do,” replied the chief physician. “Eroticism is not only a desire for the body, but to an equal extent a desire for honor. The partner you’ve chosen, who cares about you and loves you, becomes your mirror, the measure of your importance and your merits. For my little tart this was a difficult task. When you go to bed with everyone you stop believing that such a commonplace thing as making love can still have any kind of importance. And so you seek the true erotic honor in the opposite. The only man who could provide that girl with a clear gauge of her worth was one who wanted her, but whom she herself had rejected. And because she understandably longed to verify to herself that she was the most beautiful and best of women, she went about choosing this one man, whom she would honor with her refusal, very strictly and captiously. When in the end she did chose me, I understood that this was an exceptional honor, and to this day I consider this my greatest erotic success.”

…

“Believe me, she has never forgotten me, and to this day nostalgically remembers how she rejected me.”

From Symposium- Milan Kundera

Clearly I must define myself in other ways. And I’ve been fairly successful at that so far (rowing). But, every now and again, sex is my measuring stick.

Were the butterflies I felt when I first met someone just a reflection of the possibility that I might redefine and revalidate myself? Does that mean those butterflies don’t actually exist in an unselfish way? Realizing this, will I never have those butterflies again?

Redefinition is impossible. I’m waiting for a savior that will not come. I know that.

I accept the glorious illusion of salvation is a momentary, teenage fantasy. No one else will make my journey complete, we are alone.

So what do I wait for? What should I expect? What possibility is there? And where is the excitement then? Is the excitement in simple understanding? A wink, a recognition, and a knowing.

“I can’t,” he says, “perhaps because I’m blue,
big-footed, lop-eared, socially awkward, impotent,
and I drink too much, whether because I’m blue

or because I like it, who knows. I want to escape
at five o’clock into an untouchable world
where the top is the bottom and everyone wants to escape

from the middle, everyone, every day. I mean,
I have visions of two green eyes rising

out of the ocean, blinking, knowing what I mean.”

From Identity Crisis -F.D. Reeve

That is all I can expect. All I can wonder about and dream of. And perhaps it will be enough. It has to be doesn’t it?

And yet, at some level, I still I look for the butterflies to reappear. I desperately force it. I make believe and build the relationship impossibly high before it smashing it to the ground.

It’s so ingrained in me. It’s all I can see.

It’s like being blinded by the sun. Once you look away, the imprint of a flaming sphere remains.

You can’t simply rub it out of your eyes. You wait for it to fade.

I’ve started a dozen posts, all of them incomplete, and I’ll start another before the night is through

I’m not working out tonight.

I’m sitting on my bed, my sinuses full and heavy, laundry all over the floor. It smells vaguely like some combination of vicks and B.O. I guess that’s what I would say that if I could smell anything. I wonder where the Nasal Spray is?

I’m attempting write essays for law school. Again.

I know, why am I reapplying? I got into a pretty decent school the first time, and I could always transfer if I was really unhappy there. Why would I put myself through the agony of reapplying if I’ve already done it? Is it ego?

I continue to try and remove my ego from my life, but it keeps popping up. I tell myself I’m far too self-referential and introspective to allow my ego to color my decision making. But yet, there it is.

My socks are really scratchy and I decide to fling them off, adding to the growing pile on the floor. Eventually I’lldo all of it at once. Usually what happens is I just take the laundry from the bottom and wash it, because those clothes have been there the longest. It’s like I’m a vegetable stocker at a grocery store, cycling the apples from the bottom of the shelf to the top. Unless there’s a serious run on either clothes or apples, the stacks really don’t change in volume.

My head feels like I’m in a bubble full of jello. When one of your senses is partially out of commission and the other ones are working on less than full capacity, it’s almost like getting high. I am limitless and free. This body is not my own, and I can escape. When I close my eyes, it’s easier to imagine myself somewhere else. I think it was Milan Kundera who said:

“If you want to be somewhere else, then you are unhappy”

Well Monseiur Kundera, I wouldn’t say “unhappy” I would just say, I’m having a hard time getting used to this.

I’m reapplying because I want to get into a better school. I want the notoriety of achievement. I want the onlookers and the gawkers and the jealous eyes. The fleeting celebrity of accomplishment will satiate me. For a short time, at least.

Which is better: That I want these temporary, shallow things or that I realize they are temporary yet still want them?

A discussion topic: Celebrities appear completely content to us “non-celebrities” because they are, in fact, one person (Or rather, they appear to their audience as one person). If you see 10 different anonymous faces on the internet, on the tv, on the movie screen, exuding the same emotions, they will essentially register as the same person to us. Our brain will say: “those 10 people were content, looking and performing their best”.” All these people are contented, looking and performing better than you”.

See, there I go again. Writing like my ego is completely in charge when it’s really only running the show every other day.

So, if I remove ego from the equation, then what am I left with in terms of these essays.

Uh, why do I want to do this again?

“Life Jimmy, it’s the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come”

-The Wire

I guess I’m just passing the time. I’m running out the clock. And I might as well do something with it.

Without ego, I don’t have much, do I?

I may be drifting a little, yes. I suppose the key is to find a solid raft, some nice scenery, a good sounding banjo, and nice companion for the ride.

Thoughts like this make me want to go drink, work-out, or slam my hand in the nearest doorway. Perhaps I will go to the gym…..

I tilt at windmills

This is from the comments section of another blog…..I am “s”

the ARW says:

“I’m not saying that I’ll be voting for Nader this fall, or that you should consider doing this yourself. In fact, I believe that, if a portion of this population does support Nader, it may detract votes towards a much more likely Presidential nomination (Obama).”

“Although I agree with many of his stated positions, he is able to hold these relatively extreme positions for the very reason that he has virtually no viable prospects to be President.”

R. says

Ah…the typical, sadly ignorant, do-gooder liberal stance.

The only vote for real change is one for a third party candidate. All else is a vote of support for the status quo. Wake up! Obama is the new Clinton, plain and simple. And just look at how much better the country is after voting him in for two terms!

The truth is that by not having the courage to vote for real change, you’re just part of the problem. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Face it, anyone who doesn’t vote for real change out of fear is a coward, plain and simple.

The only vote that really counts is a vote from your conscience.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

S. says….

R,

Your criticism is appreciated, however, I respectfully disagree.

Sentence by sentence:

“Ah…the typical, sadly ignorant, do-gooder liberal stance.
The only vote for real change is one for a third party candidate.”

Actually, I thought ‘change’ would be a move away from the last 8 years of policy. Select any issue: labor, the environment, D.C. lobbying, farm aid, international relations ( I could go on) and Obama lines up as a direct rebuke to policies from the last eight years.

“Obama is the new Clinton, plain and simple. And just look at how much better the country is after voting him in for two terms!”

I don’t agree with many Clinton era policies, see for example: reform, welfare. However, he had to bargain with those that opposed him in order to get what he most wanted, for example, stricter environmental protections and Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. He was a democratically elected leader that had to work within a very limited framework given the mood of the country and the makeup of the Congress.

Do you suggest that he should have been able to exercise some divine power and thwart the will of the people? This is the good and the bad of democracy.

“The truth is that by not having the courage to vote for real change, you’re just part of the problem. Face it, anyone who doesn’t vote for real change out of fear is a coward, plain and simple.

It’s convenient you decide to isolate yourself as a shining beacon of hope while labeling myself (and others that choose to live in the real world) as a cancer on society, while not actually providing any solutions. I don’t much like selling out, negotiating, or compromising either, but governing and running a big system requires those things.

Lobbing insults like hand grenades doesn’t do much to solve problems. Large existential problems like poverty, environmental degradation, mass transit, nuclear proliferation; small, gritty problems like sewage disposal, garbage pick-up, road repair, the court system. All of these require choices and compromise.

In past elections I might have agreed with you (I grant that Clinton was very centrist). But, in this case, Obama is a clear choice over McCain. He will never live up to our wildest dreams, but he just might make things a little better for our real lives.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Robert, I highly doubt Confucius would have us believe that the only journey worth taking is a journey to replace our elected leaders. In his infinite wisdom, I’d say he’d be pretty realistic about the whole thing. He’d recognize a candidate like Obama could never run the campaign he did 15 years ago without being called a Communist from all sides (like Dukakis was). I mean come on! This is a black man who believes in government-run health care? Are these not steps? Is this not the journey you speak of? To suggest the only way we can credibly change our society is by electing a new leader, shows very little recognition of the cultural leaps and bounds our country has made in the past 10 , 20, 30 years. It’s never a linear line, but it’s happening.

You would like nothing more to be a martyr for your cause, dying (figuratively) so the world might be a radically different place. It’s such a romantic version of events. Only problem is, don’t you have to keep living the day-to-day grind on November 6th after McCain is elected?

History works slowly and I recognize that. I love RATM, I contribute to extremely far-left causes, I’m trying to drag political discourse as far to the left as I can take it.

But I’m still voting for Obama.

There was no response from R.

update: the Confucious quote appears in a subsequent posting by R. I edited for clarity thanks to the almostrightword