"Tepid disinterest. I guess I expected fire or ice."

So an old flame looked me up on Facebook and got in touch with me a few weeks ago. Not being sure of her motivations (but knowing something of her current situation from a mutual friend), I answered her correspondence with pleasant, if somewhat terse, aplomb. Her response is above. Her no nonsense assessment, and our ensuing conversations, left me wondering about the same things she did.

Let me be clear: this woman was a flame back when I still knew what fire was. Ours was not a casual relationship, and neither of us were casual individuals. In our youth and foolishness, we managed to break both of our hearts, but I thought until quite recently that said phenomenon had no lasting effect on me.

Also to be quite clear: she is now very happily married with a child and contacted me only with the (conscious) purpose of catching up after 14 years.

Through the course of our back and forth, I was reminded than this chic was not only wicked smart, but that she was, as always, bold, direct and uncomfortably perceptive. It has been many long years since I looked at a woman with an idea of long-term discernment; since I have reflected upon the necessity of passion in myself and my peers, and actively searched for it in another person. To be quite honest, in the last decade or so I have consciously preferred a sort of detached and world-weary warmth in my associates.

Our correspondence was a serious splash of cold water in the aforementioned warmth. Given our history (I up and moved to Chicago for her), and the tumultous nature of our separation 14 years ago, I owed her something more than just clever rejoinders, and I soon found myself drawn into actual real (and revealing) communication. Just like old times, sort of; but with some boundaries. Nothing inappropriate, nothing I would worry about her husband reading; just real remembered intimacy resurrected in the here and now. I was a little unsettled by the ease with which I gave up the goods, and by the fact that she apparently still operates with an openness and intensity I lost (or at least eschewed) a long time ago.

Whether or not she was someone with whom I could have shared my life is not the central question (though I did allow myself a moment or two of self-indulgent regret for what might have been, and it might have been extraordinary, if I had had the maturity or awareness to see it). What I find disconcerting is the conspicuous day-today absence of the intense and open person I used to be. My correspondence with my ex reached a natural and necessary conclusion, but I find myself hungry for that level of communication and intimacy, and I wonder at the habit of resignation (she called it being placated) I have chosen. I wish her all the happiness she can manage; I am left wondering how much I myself can handle.

Much peace,
thomasj

Thank Goodness for Amy Goodman

I know, I know....lazy post; but not enough people follow Democracy Now! We hate independent media in this country. Check this story.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/5/maverick_author_paul_waldman_on_free

"...and the amber fields all laid to waste, and the revolution failed....at your coming forth..." (from "Salinas," copyrighted 2008 by this blogger)

It's easy to rant about politics or unions or religion. Even though the things I say (unskillfully) are without question my own, it is less costly to be honest (even with myself) about things and issues external than things true to me. See, there are variables I cannot control, and facts of which I can comfortably claim ignorance, that influence U.S. foreign policy and even Omaha leash laws. Not so in my own mind and body, where I am solely responsible for content and editing. No press releases for me to miss, no fair and balancing act; just a question of how much accuracy will be allowed.

So I am a father of 28-month-old twin boys, and I am not in a romantic or physical relationship with their mother. I am, however, as involved as possible in my son's lives, by which I mean that I am with them a large portion of their waking hours. I am imperfect, to be sure, but I am not a sperm donor or a child support check. I make breakfast and lunch, we practice our letters and numbers, we go for long walks and learn the names of different bugs and flowers. Last week we learned the word gravity, and the accompanying physical law (water goes from the top of the fountain to the bottom because of gravity. So saith my beloved sons). I give them tons of hugs and kisses, and I sing to them (poorly) before their midday nap. In short, I do the things a dad is supposed to do. I don't say this to garner any credit, but simply to provide an accurate description of my daily life and priorities. My sons come first, period.

First place is decided and is not negotiable. When I am not with my sons, however, I am by all rights single and reasonably attractive, certainly not without some rough-hewn charm. So given the fact that making love (or whatever you call it) is a healthy and necessary function of human behavior, why am I so reluctant to take part? Some of it is time, I suppose. I definitely don't have the time to invest in a relationship with a woman. I guess another part is the emotional fatigue inherent in raising a couple of energetic kids. At the end of a long day of fatherly attentiveness, my emotional beer mug is just mostly empty. Anyone doing it right, though, will argue correctly that sex for its own sake is rejuvanating to body and spirit. I also don't think the act necessitates marriage or even a commitment, as long as all parties involved are open-eyed about the situation.

I think, right or wrong, it feels as though I would be alienating attention I owe to my sons. That sounds weird, I know, but I know for a fact that I have never felt a visceral sense of duty to anyone or anything before my boys were born. Sure I respect my parents and feel some attachment to my family and a couple of friends, but this is different. I have no problem not getting married for my own selfish reasons. I don't want to deal with the passive-aggressive behavior that is the hallmark of every relationship I have ever seen. I won't resign myself to either a total loss of sovereignty or to the alternative stupid and underhanded struggle over who gts to be in charge. I don't want to have to cater to another grown-up's irrational neuroses for the next 50 years. With my sons, though, it's different. They don't have a choice and neither do I. They are mine and I am theirs, writ in letters plain as day. I therefore have to be as broad and as deep, as sharp and as soft, as they need 100 percent of the time. I find it difficult, therefore, to move from that uncompromising fealty to simple enjoyment in my life apart from theirs. It's a problem.

Much Peace,

thomasj

"Sweat Combustion Engine"

Whether it's called reducing overhead, streamlining, or "operational excellence," it is managment's goal across all industries to get the fewest number of people to do the greatest amount of work for the lowest possible wages. That's not a secret; it's almost invariably a stated business goal. In the bad old days BEFORE unions, this deliberately adversarial (and often murderous) approach by management was simply accepted by a workforce with no recourse. The adversity was all one way. If you lost an arm working for the railroad or the mills, then by God you just gave an arm to the cause of the great American Elites. Fuck you and your starving family, you were just a tiny cog in the blood-drinking machine that built the Rockefellers and Mellons and DuPonts. The American Oligarchy (or Plutocracy, whatever you want to call the moneyed folks who ran and still run the show) was not answerable to anyone for their abuse of men women and children in the workforce. If someone thought two cents per bushel of tomatoes or artichokes was a little low, the machinery of law enforcement would simply be brought to bear against those "agitators" who posited that five cents and a water break might be more humane. That machinery, of course, was quite simple: guns and clubs.

Then slowly, like ripples presaging a tsunami, workers started calling bullshit on their overseers, and doing so in numbers. The barons running the show still had cops and national guard beat the fuck out of and murder folks crying for something approaching a living wage, but enough workers were abused and desperate enough that production began to be affected. Let a field of artichokes begin to rot, and management would finally put down their lobster forks and take notice. Organization. Fraternity. Solidarity. The highest of human virtues. Abused and beaten people coming together for the good of the whole. Anyone who thinks the murderous fucks of United Fruit would have responded to anything but a kick in their wallets is hopelessly (and possibly deliberately) naive. Anyone who thinks that management today would treat workers like anything but cattle without the continual threat of a work stoppage is hopelessly (and possibly deliberately) naive. The Oligarchy has no conscience or goal beyond making money and sharing that money with as few people as possible. I make a living wage in humane working conditions ONLY because workers before me stood up and folded their arms. What the organization of workers did was create an opposition to the adversity visited upon them by their owners and operators. It is unfortunate that said relationship has to exist, but to pretend, as Maury does, that it doesn't exist, and that workers should just take what's offered and shut up, is, again, hopelessly naive. Let the unions dissolve and the threat of work stoppages disappear, and you'll see how fast wages drop and workers' protections go away. To posit that our ruling merchant class would act in a fashion other than predatory is to ignore the whole of American business history.

The logic that says workers should not organize and fight for wages or pensions or health insurance ultimately ends in slavery. Of course it is vastly more efficient to just own slaves, stop paying wages and give them just enough bread and water to keep them alive and working. Very low overhead, no regulation, and you can just beat or shoot problems. Maury and folks like him should just follow their logic to its conclusion and advocate the legalization of slavery. At least they would be intellectually honest for a change.

Much Peace.

"I find it very, very easy to be true/I find myself alone when each day's through." (Johnny Cash)

Horrible, wracking, crashing waves of child-abandoning guilt. Preparing to begin the pilgrimage North towards our annual fishing trip. Ely, MN this year, and the Boys are too young to go. They will be in daycare all day this coming week, and I am a terrible, rotten, faithless father because of it. This biological imperative results in temporary amputations; but I desperately need some time in the North and on the water.

More on why my attachment to my kids keeps me from getting laid, and on the absolute necessity for workers to fold their arms and organize, when I return.

Much Peace

Glacial Change

So I was asked for whom I am going to vote in this year's presidential election. The factors I am (or am not) considering are as follows:

The Economy. To be frank, the economy barely figures into my decision-making. For one thing, the President has little practical effect on the economy, regardless of what the spin doctors say. We have become a petroleum-based economy, and our major recessions are inextricably linked to the cost of petroleum, the deflated housing bubble notwithstanding. That is not going to change until we as consumers make it change, or until there is a significant collapse due to a worldwide shortage of petroleum. There are a few regulatory positions with which I generally side with the Democrats (such as requiring banks to be honest and careful with people's money), but in general, I believe that there's not much government can do to change the economy.

Abortion. There is not a politician at the national level who is going to seriously attempt to criminalize abortion. Enforcement would be impossible, given the number of providers, and it would be political suicide to try. While I personally think abortion is just one more way for folks in our culture (particularly men) to avoid responsibility for their actions, I am forced to consider it a political non-issue.

Religion. I don't think we have, as our Monkey-in-Chief posited, "a mandate from beyond the stars." If people find comfort in the belief that a sentient and benevolent overlord cares about them, and if that encourages them to treat their neighbors well, then I am all for it. If, however, they think their religious identity gives them the right to wage war, or to commit genocide, or to diddle kids, or to fly planes or drive trucks into buildings, well then they and their respective bearded sky fairies can go fuck themselves. Religious arguments effectively end debate. How can anyone advance a practical position against the infallible holy word of the gods? So I guess I could care less to what abstraction our President prays, as long as Christ or Jehovah or Allah isn't informing his or her policy decisions.

(In answer to a previous query, I suppose I am atheist, if I am any -ist at all. I would need to see the pillar of fire or put my fingers in the nail holes.)

The Environment. I am almost exclusively sympathetic with Democratic policy positions in regard to the environment, as those positions are absolutely more conservative than those of the right wing. It just makes sense to conserve, look down the road and have back-up plans should things go awry. Any energy policy that does not begin with the acknowledgement that fossil fuels are a finite resource is just plain silly. The whole idea that we can drill our way out of high gas prices or foreign oil dependency makes zero sense. Let's allow for the sake of argument that there is significant recoverable oil off our shores or in the Arctic. When Texaco extracts that oil, are they somehow going to sell it at discounted prices exclusively to U.S. consumers? Only if we nationalize our oil industry, which is something we've overthrown other governments for doing. Truth is, Texaco and Exxon would sell that oil on the world market at market prices, and there is simply not enough extractable oil to make an appreciable dent in those prices. Beyond the short-term pricing concerns, it is fact that we will ultimately run out of oil, whether it happens in 20, 50, 100 or 500 years. Rather than desperately freebasing the last of those supplies, why would we not devote our money and energy to conservation and innovation? I mean, Jesus Christ, have we lost our fabled American ingenuity?

Foreign Policy. I'm not like that college professor who called the folks who died on 9/11 "little Eichmanns," but I am also not an anti-fact Hannity drone who thinks 9/11 happened in a policy vacuum and was the work of folks who hate us for our freedom. If our foreign policy is fundamentally exploitative (as it has been for over a century), those who are exploited will eventually do whatever they can to strike back. Does this mean that the people in the WTC deserved to die? Absolutely not. It does mean that 9/11 was predictable. Drawing correlations or positing causation btween U.S. actions in middle-eastern countires and terrorist attacks by middle-eastern men on U.S. soil is NOT unpatriotic. Quite the opposite, it is responsible and necessary. It doesn't mean, as the right wing would have you believe, that we have kumbaya moments with militants, or that we stop fighting terrorists. It means that we should consider the repercussions of our actions in Muslim countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. I love my country, and I am pretty goddamn pissed at some of the things being done with my flag and in my name. Again, I lean towatds the Democrats here because I think a thoughtful considered approach is more conservative and effective than the current shoot from the hip and devil take the consequences mentality. Everybody is going to spend a shitload on defense and security. That infrastrucure is not budging (see Eisenhower's farewell address). I think Obama represents a micro-departure from previous administrations, and a broader and longer-term view of what really constitutes "U.S. interests."

Both of these candidates are owned by special anterests and lobbyists, whatever their arguments to the contrary may be. You don't reach that level of politics without being beholden to a bunch of people, both good and slimy, so don't kid yourself that these guys are free of slime. They're not. I am voting for Obama because of the differences in environmental and energy policy, and because I think he will be smarter and more deliberate in regard to foreign policy

Here's the real thing, though: Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are going to visibly change the direction or dynamic of our culture. As a people, we are driven not towards freedom or harmony or love, but towards luxury. By luxury I do not mean an abundance of food, water and shelter. Every culture since the emergence of Homo Sapiens sapiens has striven for secure food sources and safety from the elements. Our pursuit of luxury does not end with plenty. It's not sufficient to have enough to eat and clean water to drink, or to have different clothes for every day of the week. It's not enough to have shelter from the elements and soft beds in which to sleep. This belief that more things will improve one's life is the fundamental crisis of our culture, and is addressed, generally, by neither left nor right. So if you want change, if you really want to create a healthier and more sustainable world for your kids (or for my kids, who are ridiculously smart and funny) than we're going to have to do it our own goddamn selves.

Much Peace,
ThomasJ

Your Kids Are Not Special

600,000 Iraquis are dead because you spoil your kids, or more accurately, because several hundred years worth of western Europeans, including you, have spoiled their kids. The fundamental dynamic of these European United States is not freedom or opportunity. It is still Manifest Destiny. Just like a spoiled little child, "waaaaah...Saddam kicked out BP and Texaco," we throw a tantrum until we get what we want. Rather than beating our heels against the floor and crying, though, the physical effects of our national tantrum are cluster bombs and widows and orphans. Like a pampered 3-year-old in high dudgeon, we simply cannot comprehend the fact that another nation may have the right to control their own natural resources. So we overthrow Allende and install Pinochet. At the behest of British Petroleum, we overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install the Shah. Through military and economic force, we make certain that a populist uprising in Cuba will fail. Our goal is not (and has never been) to spread freedom. Our goal has always been to make sure that all significant economic markets and natural resources are open to our exploitation. Was Pinochet's government democratic? Was the Shah's? Democracy is cosmetic in our corporate war on people that want to live differently than us. Sure, they can determine their own destiny and establish their own governments, as long as those governments put European-American economic interests first and their people a distant second. The threat of a Euro-American napalm tantrum is enough to keep most of them in line. Unfortunately, over a century of slash and burn foreign policy has resulted in our current day to day terror threat.

....and it all comes down to you spoiling your kids, teaching them that they're "special" and instilling a sense of bottomless entitlement. Kids are mammals and, contrary to the teachings of most Eastern and Occidental religions, part of the large and interdependent community of carbon-based life forms. Feed them, protect them, take care of them, but for chrissake don't teach them that they're little gods. I have a biological responsibilty to my boys, a genetic imperative simplistically labelled "love," but I hold no illusions that they deserve more than anyone else because of their race, nationality or baptism. If they grow up thinking they're better than the kids they meet at the playground, then I will have utterly failed as a father. I will also have passed on, in the most fundamental and binding way possible, the Western European ideal of imperialism, the concept that through some inate function of identity divorced from action or rationality, we have the entitlement to whatever we want, even if sating our want means taking its object by force from those who lack the might to stop us.

Much Peace