The end of the Iraq War and the Courage of Progressive Convictions

This week's announcement that all our troops will be home from Iraq by the end of the year got me thinking. We've certainly heard the obligatory Neo-Con voices saying that this a mistake, harms our security, harms the region, etc. I haven't heard as many Progressive voices crowing, but I suspect that's because they are so weary from the long years of misguided war that they're just glad it's finally over. That, and a sprinkle of sense and tact enough to know that this is a solemn occasion, suffused with a lot of loss for everyone involved.

But at the heart of this development lies a great irony: the Administration tried for what the Neo-Cons wanted, an extended ongoing presence after direct combat was ended. It failed to secure Iraqi cooperation with that goal, and it is this failure that has resulted in the end result Progressives have wanted for years, a complete end to the war, with all troops home.

This seems symptomatic to me of a frustration I've had with this Administration, the fact that it more often than rarely delivers, or tries to deliver outcomes that match the Conservative policy agenda. This, of course is done in the quite reasonable name of trying to work with the opposing side and achieve compromise. This after all, is actually a key trait of the Progressive worldview, the idea that even those who don't agree with you may have some valid views, and that it's important to find common ground.

Here's the thing: Finding common ground is not a value the Conservative movement shares. They operate in the land of ideas like "we're right, you're wrong" and "if you're not with us, you're against". And they've gotten where they have, electorally, by sticking to their guns (quite literally in some cases!) even when those guns are unpopular.

Wouldn't it be something to see Progressives in power be equally unapologetic?

Apparently, I'm most like the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela

You must be wondering, dear reader, what I am referring to. Perhaps my recent Nobel Peace Prize? No, alas, the Nobel Committee has ignored me for yet another year. And in any case, if they were to award me, it should no doubt be for literature. Duh.

I am referring instead to my score on the political compass test.

It's a nifty little thing that proceeds on the idea that the traditional left-right spectrum we're used to in the U.S. is too limited, in that it collapses together what should actually be two different axes, one for economic freedom/control and one for social-political freedom/control.

I've taken it a couple of times over the years. In my most recent round, I ended up in the middle of the lower left quadrant, adjacent to, as alluded to above, the Infinite Sea of Compassion and first President of a free South Africa. Not a bad neighborhood really, but what I find to be interesting is my drift over the years.

I recall taking the test in the early 2000s and ending up socially liberal, but economically more conservative. Kind of a classic "New Democrat" in the Clinton mold. Later on, say circa 2004/2005, the anti-personal freedom and pro-business control excesses of the Bush years had pushed me further leftward on the economic scale, landing me more in classic Liberal territory, aka FDR and Johnson's Great Society.

And now, a few years later, the corporate shenanigans of the Great Recession, and the chilling proof of the plutocracy's ability to control outcomes throughout the political system have pushed me further leftward on the economic spectrum. This actually makes sense to me in terms of how I currently feel- what I would call a compassion-based world view. We're here to take care of each other while also giving each other the freedom and space to live our own lives. Rather like everyone is everyone else's mom, but the really cool while at the same time totally responsible mom.

How about you? I'd be fascinated to hear other people's scores on the test, and whether the results surprise them or not...   

APOD, NDEs & the Omega Point

One of my favorite web sites is Astronomy Picture of the Day. I think the name is pretty much self-explanatory, but if it isn't, take a look at the site and you'll quickly get the picture. (Heh heh, I made a funny...)

Today's post got me thinking in a meta-science vein. I say meta-science to place my ramblings in a field of thought that some might call pseudo-scientific, but I think of as being science that we just haven't gotten around to yet. Rather like what Aristotle considered "metaphysics", literally, "that which is beyond the physics" as it stood in his day. The clip in question is of what approaching the speed of light would look like in terms of its visual effects:

It occurred to me that what things looked like with all three effects (visual aberration, doppler and intensity) was remarkably similar to what people report in Near Death Experiences- seeing objects from a distorted, "floating above" perspective, shadowy indistinct figures and rushing toward a tunnel of light. This makes me wonder if those visual effects could have something to do with a speeding up of mental process that somehow approaches the speed of light.

If something like that was going on, it reminds me a little of Frank Tipler's speculations about the Omega Point. In short, he saw consciousness eventually permeating the entire physical universe as the universe approached its "end" in a singularity, such that an infinite amount of thought processing could occur, and the subjective time experienced by this consciousness would be practically infinitely greater than the objective time of milliseconds it occupied. Could this be something like what human consciousness is doing in the instant before death, thus producing visual effects similar to what would be observed as one approaches the speed of light?

Don't ask me precisely how, that's for quantum physicists and neuroscientists to puzzle out, I'm just here to point the way. In all seriousness, I think (and history attests) that thought experiments and being open to flights of fancy is often the way that new perspectives emerge. It's a noble pursuit. I just wish I had the nth dimensional math skills to take it further!

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Bonus image! Also from Astronomy Picture of the Day, and having nothing to do with the above topic, but it sure is purty. A mosaic of the MESSENGER probe's images of Mercury from its first "day" there, the Mercurian day being 176 days long:

Weekend with Beats and Beats

This has been quite a fine weekend exploring our new home.

First, Beats. As in, yesterday we got out to Jamaica Plain for a free music festival:

To be precise, it was the first Jamaica Plains Music Festival, a free all-day gathering in the park featuring exclusively local bands. Some of the bands were quite good, but what I really liked was the ethos- a festival in the community featuring the creative talent of the community. I hope to find a lot more of this kind of thing as I become part of the local creative community.

I also thought it was very interesting to see the differences between the crowd at the festival and San Francisco, where Abbey and I got to several outdoor music gatherings in our time across the street from Golden Gate Park. Some pertinent observations:

• The crowd in JP was very much whiter. Not quite exclusively, but definitely into the 90+ percentile.
• It was also much more enchilded. As I think back, most of my close friends in San Francisco were childless, and meaning to stay that way. I guess it's that kind of city!
• Compared to any large outdoor gathering in SF, there was much less whiff of ganja in the air. As in zero.
• Ditto with the whiff of homeless.

That's it for now. Further cultural anthropology of Greater Boston to follow at a later time...

Now, on to Beats. Abbey and I headed to Lowell, Massachusetts today. This is somewhere I've wanted to visit since teenage nights staying up to the early AM hours in my parent's living room reading biographies of Jack Kerouac while drinking kool-aid infused with vodka I'd snuck into the house. Today's pilgrimage to Kerouac's boyhood home featured no vodka (or kool-aid, for that matter), but I did get to see a display including a typewriter he used:

And a beautiful riverside memorial garden with excerpts from his work engraved in stone:

The city itself was poignant. The downtown area was chiefly historical sites from Lowell's history as a mill town and old mill buildings that have been converted to condos. It felt a little sketchy, not because their were ruffians around but more because everything was felt abandoned, almost like a huge open air museum with only a smattering of visitors. Ghostly or not, though, I'll be back- I still have Jack's grave to visit.

For now, I had a great weekend, and am really enjoying exploring my new home with my lovely bride. More to follow!

Boston Day 11

Technically, I'm in Danvers, which is a small town about 15 miles North of Boston. Abbey and I are camping out here in an extended stay hotel because:

A) It's more affordable to be a little outside of the city, especially when you need a room that allows pets as well.

B) We're looking for places in the area (North Shore, as they call it here) so it's a convenient base.

So how is day 11? Pretty good! I had been prepared to have a period of depression right after the move, since it's like that sometimes after you leave a place you love. Or after you make any kind of big change in life for that matter. But so far, while I did have a blue afternoon this weekend, I've been surprisingly buoyant. Still prepared to have all kinds of feelings along the way, but glad to be here.

And I'm super-happy to have the whole family together again. Small space to hold me, Abbey, Sasha and Jinks, but we're doing well:

So far, in-between me working remotely, we've mostly been looking for places to live. But along the way we're exploring too. I can heartily endorse the rocky shell-strewn beaches of Salem:

The big sandy stretch of beach between Lynn and Nahant:

The beaches near Ipswich, which, contrary to what H.P. Lovecraft led me to expect, do not seem to be crawling with hideous half-breed fish people:

And last yesterday we went to check out Gloucester, where an overcast windy day and cold choppy water made me feel very much at home:

As for our home-searching, it's going pretty well. We have a few solid prospects in Salem and Swampscott. More news to follow...

19 Days to Boston!

So, this post is (perhaps) notable for two reasons:

1. It's my first post in 2011, after only a handful in 2010. Versus, say double-digits in 2007, 2008 and 2009. That's something I certainly plan to change as part of...

2. I'm moving to Boston in 19 days!

#2 there is kind of hard to absorb- both for the brevity of the time remaining in San Francisco, and the length of the time behind. I moved here in September 1999, so it will be almost 12 years in the city when I climb on board that plane (with my two furry little carry-ons) to join my beautiful bride in the Far East (coast) on July 29th. Kind of wow. Kind of big. Kind of too big to write about all at once. Which is one reason I need to get blogging again more regularly for the remainder of my stay here.

Beyond that, one of the things I want to be part of this move is a lifestyle shift to more time for creative pursuits. I had a pretty good run of it there for a few years, but then the pace of life, and especially the nature of my job, made it hard to maintain. So I'm going to try and recast that in Boston, and make my creative pursuits a central fact of my life, which work and other factors must be shaped around.

How exactly am I going to do that? I don't fully know yet! I'm doing things to explore livelihood, and making myself open to change. Stay tuned for what this looks like, along with other exciting announcements. And give me hell if you don't hear from me more often!

40 in 40

A little over a week ago, I turned 40. I never particularly figured myself for being the type to get hung up on age issues, but I definitely had a reaction to the advent of this milestone. In fact, turning 39 set off a year-long slow simmering mini-crisis just because 40 was approaching. All the usual things came up: Is my youth gone? Did I waste it all? Is it all decline from here on out? Should I be further along than I am in terms of career? Finances? Achievments? Will women stop looking at me now? Wait a minute, did women ever look at me? Should I get a walker and start looking in to rest homes now?

And the verdict so far…?

Eh, it’s not so bad. The other day, when I overhead a young girl telling her friend that she had $14 dollars in the bank and $16 dollars in her pocket, I felt positively giddy about being in my age demographic instead of hers’. I even had the chance to do some journaling last week and realize that what I have in my life now is everything I wished for during despairing years in my early 30s. It doesn’t all look like I thought it would then, but it’s pretty damn good.

Even the year-long marination in low grade existential crisis had its benefit: I came up with a list of 40 things I wanted to do while I was 40. Kind of a proof to myself that life, far from being over, is full of as much richness as you want it to be.

Full disclosure: I got the inspiration from fellow Mortified performer and all-around superstar Sara Faith Alterman, who did a blog about her own Dirty 30 list to mark her transition to the decade that starts with 3. I figured it would work just as well for 4. So here, without further ado and in absolutely no particular order, is my own Forty in 40:

1. Take rock climbing lessons.
2. Try hang gliding.
3. Go to Burning Man.
4. Visit Nashville & Memphis.
5. Learn to ride a bike.
6. Do a mini-Triathlon
7. Do a 10-K.
8. Finish my 9th Step.
9. Swim in the ocean.
10. Start regular yoga.
11. Go to the Fringe Festival in Scotland.
12. Take a cruise to the Farallons.
13. Go sea kayaking.
14. Kayak on Elkhorn Slough.
15. Do a silent meditation retreat.
16. Ride in a helicopter.
17. Visit a haunted place.
18. Go to the Eureka Springs Arkansas UFO conference.
19. Take a DJing class.
20. Publish a zine.
21. Get some boots. Big ‘ole shitkickers.
22. Do something to explore Native American Spirituality.
23. Finish a draft of my new novel.
24. Finish a poetry collection and submit it for publication.
25. Finish my full-length screenplay.
26. Ride in a hot air balloon.
27. Write a song.
28. Take part in a dream group.
29. Get hypnosis.
30. Go to the hot tubs at Esalen.
31. Try Rolfing.
32. Go to a service at an Orthodox Church.
33. Go to a Santo Daime service.
34. Go to a Spiritualist service.
35. Come up with a career transition plan.
36. Let it all hang out at a nude beach.
37. Visit Alcatraz.
38. Visit the Marin Headlands.
39. Have a show in the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
40. Experience a psychic phenomenon.

I’m also giving myself permission to be imperfect. In fact, I think I’ll be doing very, very well if I can get to half of these. However it plays out, I’ll keep you updated along the way!

August 2010 Writing News

Greetings friends! I haven’t sent one of these updates out in a while. I could tell you all kinds of reasons involving holiday travel, the time and energy-draining misadventure of being both a director and producer on a short film, work getting annoyingly more hectic throughout the year-to-date, etc., etc. But I’ve found I’m usually best served by getting back into action. So here we go with a new update on my latest creative doings!

Film
In June, The Buddhist News, a film that I co-wrote and helped produce, screened as part of the latest round of Scary Cow, the independent film co-op I’m part of. Don’t be sad that you missed it, you can watch the film (and my brief appearances therein) here. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on post-production of Ave Maria, the film I wrote, directed and produced (hence being too batty to post much the first half of this year). It will be screening at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Sunday, October 10th. I want EVERYONE there, so I’ll be letting you know when tickets go on sale.

Performance
Per my being distracted, batty, overworked, etc., I haven’t done any readings in months. But the drought is about to be broken when I take the stage to read tortured poetry from my teenage years for Mortified. You can get tickets here for the performances at the Make-Out Friday August 20th and Saturday August 21st.

Publication
The biggest news: an essay I wrote on my student experience at Berkeley, “Bachelor’s of Armageddon”, has been published in the anthology When I Was There! Should you be so inspired, you can buy it on Amazon. Since last you heard from me, my prose poem “Young Karl Marx” appeared on Opium’s website. I’ve also been writing song reviews for the website Song O’ The Day.

Novel
I’ve submitted my novel Out in the Neon Night to a few independent publishers over the last few months. While they review it, I’m considering getting more input from a freelance editor and/or starting a new round of inquiries to literary agents. In the meantime, you can read a sample chapter.

Blog
My blog has not blogged overmuch so far this year. Perhaps it will more now that I’m sending this out and feel some pressure to have content for people to see!

Chris out for now, but I look forward to sending you more updates soon!

Hello again...

So here’s the deal: I’ve only had one blog entry so far in 2010. While in previous years I never quite met my goal of having an entry a week, I was strongly into double-digits for 2008 and 2009. Not so much this year.

I understand how it happened. I started the year out of town, visiting Abbey’s friends and family in New York for Christmas and New Year’s. Which was delightful, but did get me out of my regular routine. I then jumped feet-first into Ave Maria, the short film I’m writing, directing and producing. In case you’ve never done it, let me save you the trouble and tell you NEVER to both direct and produce something. One or the other is fine, but both simultaneously will suck out your soul and leave you a hollow-shattered shell of a person. And so it was.

Simultaneous with this, my back went out in a spectacular (usually anxiety-provoked) fashion that it tends to do every few years. Credit clean living that I hadn’t had one of these since December 2006, but this one got me out sick from work for several days, and doing chiro and pilates for a month (shout outs to the fantastic Drs. Randall and James at Embrace Health in the Marina!) before I was functional again. And speaking of work, my quiet stable little non-profit job became unaccountably busy this year. Apparently doing an annual budget, long-range projections, finalizing financing for relocation and implementing a new financial software at the same time is a bad idea. This is why I left the for-profit sector!

The upshot of all of this: 39 entries in all of 2009. 1 in the first 4 months of 2010. UNACCEPTABLE. Forthwith, my pledge to you is that I’m going to post at least one entry a week for the rest of the year, even if someone has to die. Maybe me, maybe you. So be careful. I’m just saying…

10 Books in 2010!

Happy New Year all! I can't believe I didn't post at all in December. The holidays always throw me for a whirl... Well, here's to turning over a new leaf.

I'm working on some general intentions for the year, which I'll write about soon, but in the meantime, I have finalized my list of 10 books for 2010. Here are the 10 "long been meaning to read" books I'm going to attempt to get through in 2010, in the midst of other assorted shenanigans (in the order I'm going to read them, corresponding to when they were written):

The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000-1000 BC)

the Illiad c. (Homer, 700 BC)

Paradise Lost (Milton, 1667)

Short Stories of Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky, 1862-1872

the Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1902)

Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke, 1903-1908)

The Big Sleep (Chandler, 1939)

Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951)

Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstader, 1979)

Please Kill Me (McNeil) 1997

I'll let you know what they're like as I finish them...

San Francisco Daze: November

Hello all! Last year I published Jan-Sep of "San Francisco Daze" on the Blog. SFD was an (aspirational) daily prose and poetry reaction to life in San Francisco that I write in 2005. I guess I got busy toward the end of last year, because I never got Oct-Dec out. A week or two ago, I finally posted October. here's November, with December to follow in December....

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November 1

I awake to the visceral horror of the cat scratch on my stomach. Bedroom littered with socks and papers. Empty bottles everywhere. The first morning of the new age. What has God wrought? We shall see, we shall see…


November 2-4

The first few days of freedom from work are too much for me, resulting in no useful scenes of daily life here in San Francisco. No useless ones either, for that matter.


November 5

Rain of the last few days is soaking into my socks through the cracks in my shoes. This tells me two things:
1) It’s time for new shoes.
2) The weather that marked the beginning of these daily snapshots of life in SF is back. I love winter!


November 6

At night, going to the store on Clement Street, rain falling through the sky, caught in the light of the streetlamp, looks like a shower of particles of gold.


November 7

Rainy day
Liquid gray
Monday morning
As I am coffe a’borning
At 7-11
Cute Asian gal buying cigarette heaven
Is asked for her ID
Delighting her and me


November 8

On the ocean side of the city, sun shines through silver ice of clouds, highlighting them liquid gold in the dusk.


November 9

Shafts of gold poured down today through silver clouds as I trudged home for a three hour nap, feeling like I was coming down with something. As long as this rainy weather persists, the metallurgical alchemy of the sky will delight. Achoo!


November 10-12

Of which I have nothing to say, except for parents, thank God for parents. They visited me this three day weekend, and I got untold time to spend with my father. Comforting, given my brothert’s recent passing. That is all. Hopefully you and I all shall all speak again soon.


November 13-15

Not too soon, thanks to the stomach flu. God, this is getting boring, just like a bad online journal.


November 16

The simple beauty of life today was sipping coffee and having a tuna salad in a café on Clement Street while getting back into the swing of daily writing on the NaNoWriMo. BeBopOBombOooh…


November 17

The 3rd day
Of 80 degree weather
In the 2nd half of November
Brought dismay from one man
But a steel blue sky for all


November 18

Aww, the dour looking woman in the seat in front of me on the 38 Geary has a really nice voice. Just another proof that the books, they should not be judged by the covers.


November 19

In the basement of Saint James’ early this afternoon, amid the clutter of a kitchen strewn with pre-school implements and too-short chairs at a too-tall table, two (not quite) strangers went over my finances in detail. I have never felt happier or freer.


November 20

Elephantine white
Massive marble block curved
Halls of Opera


November 21

Writing in my living room as a Monday afternoon gives way to dusk. The 5-CD changer loaded with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Guns n’ Roses, Megadeath and Metallica. Outside, over the backs of the houses that face 12th Avenue, and the trees of Park Presidio, blue has flared into colors and faded into milky white. The next step will hollow violet, and the eternal black high lit by diamond.


November 22

The buildings of downtown
Silver
White
Reflecting
Jut into afternoon sky
Blue
White
Empty


November 23

What always gets me about returning to Prunedale at night is the supernatural darkness, earth trees and sky all black, RV Park and gas stations and small shopping centers huddled against the blackness.


November 24

A kind of homecoming:

I took a walk
Tonight
Down country roads
In darkness and the smell of manure,
With the distant sound
Of barking dogs and Mexican music
Floating
On cool evening air


November 25

More scenes from the home front:

The morning after rain, chimney of small grayish-brown house sending billows of smoke and steam up against green tree hills.
Pacific Grove theatre on a street that smells green and piney.
Ocean a green black and gray irregular swell glimpsed through gaps in the dunes on the drive home.
Dribbled white of Milky Way spilled across the length of the purple-black sky.


November 26

“This is CalTrain 119 departing San Jose, bound for the greatest city in the world, San Francisco!”— heard over PA from conductor on CalTrain 119, departing San Jose, bound for the greatest city in the world, San Francisco


November 27

Bay so clear today
Mt. Diablo looms behind
Transamerica


November 28

Day spent in rainfall
Pitter-pat on the window
White mist in distance


November 29-30

No record survives of the last two days of November. One can only imagine that some catastrophe of laziness and oversleep consumed them.

Project Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

I've been (slowly) blogging an album-by album review of my favorite Bob Dylan albums. So far we've had Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A' Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan>, and Bringing It All Back Home, and Highway 61 Revisited. Which brings us now to what many regard as the jewel in the crown, Blonde on Blonde.



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Blonde on Blonde is where the rubber hits the road. It’s the third album of the transcendent trio that includes Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. It decidedly ups the ante on the album that came before it, as each of those two albums did. And it’s the last album before the motorcycle accident that marked a decisive break in both his music and his public person.

So, all that myth and legend aside, how well does it actually stand up? Really freaking well! The 14 tracks here have a lyrical richness and stunning musical diversity that by and large immunizes the whole from sounding dated even after 43 years.

I often think of the opener, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” as kind of a one-joke novelty that loses its appeal after the shock of “everybody must get stoned” fades, and it’s surely pretty faded by now. That being said, it has a kind of driving stomping rhythm that won me over on this latest listen. This feeling flows into the thick rumbling blues of the next track “Pledging my Time”. “Visions of Johanna” then takes you somewhere entirely beyond, with it’s poetic paean delivered with a world-weary voice and slowly rising tempo of its ringing electric background. Here we the true flowering of an artistic vision, with Dylan adding self-reflection of his own part in the mess and a lovelorn vulnerability to the kind of bitter love song he had long ago mastered.

This song gets inside you and lingers, which could just be a lucky accident, except that it happens again on the next track “One of Us Must Know”. He tries to take himself off the hook by noting that he didn’t mean to do (her?) any harm, and that he was just doing what he was supposed to do, but the underlying melancholy of the song leavens the argument. Similarly, on “I Want You” he’s proud of being put down for not thinking about love, except the line is delivered in the midst of three minutes of yearning wooing of the object of his affection.

And then for something completely different there’s the next two songs… “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” is one of several songs on the album that is called surrealist in its streaming imagery. And so it is on one level, but I think it’s plain enough on another as a portrayal of the derangement of being on the overboard train of fame in the mid-60s, a world where after mixing Texas medicine and railroad gin: It strangled up my mind/ An' now people just get uglier/An' I have no sense of time Followed by the ultimate reincarnation blues: Here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice

“Leopard-skin Pill Box Hat” takes us on an equally bizarre romp, accompanied by ringing electric blues. We’re then back to a familiar misogynist and snide Dylan on “Just Like a Woman” and “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”, but you have to wonder if both aren’t symbols of a larger disillusionment, foreshadowing the break he was about to take from music. Witness: your long-time curse hurts/ But what's worse/ Is this pain in here/ I can't stay in here/ Ain't it clear that--/ I just can't fit/ Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit And: I'm gonna let you pass/ And I'll go last./ Then time will tell just who fell/ And who's been left behind/ When you go your way and I go mine

Following this, “Temporary Like Achilles” slows us down and “Absolutely Sweet Marie” speeds us up in territory more obviously surreal and less obviously personal, but both continue a theme of wanting to drop out of a game the protagonist no longer feels like playing. “4th Time Around” then veers into territory where music and vocals almost achingly melancholy and romantic back lyrics that are alternately tongue-in-cheek and vulnerable. As if to shake the mood, “Obviously 5 Believers” launches into rapid blues rock, but this proves to be kind of a ringer, because the album’s finale “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” is the most disarmed and unabashed love song that Dylan had written up to this point. It’s slow saunter and profusion of cowboy and western imagery is also a prequel of the musical and lyrical space Dylan will be in a year and a half later when John Wesley Harding is released.

Whatever the truth or not of the seriousness of the motorcycle accident that sidelined him for this period, if nothing else he’d earned a break. From his eponymous debut in 1962 through Blonde on Blonde, Dylan had released 7 albums in a roughly four-year space, progressing from largely-derivative eager young folkie to massively talented pop-rock icon. To paraphrase Passover, if he had stopped there, it would have been enough. But as we’ll see next, how bountiful that he did not…

Facecation had to get away...

I've just finished a one week Facecation. I got the idea (and the term) from my friend Roz, who did her own Facecation recently. I don't know what her exact motivation was, but in my case, I thought that Facebook and I needed a little time apart to get our relationship back in balance. The form of our relationship was roughly this:

Chris- Checking it first thing in the morning, struggling to keep up with friend's postings, continually trying to think of witty things to post for my status or in response to others postings, struggling to clear out the constant stream of alerts in my inbox, continually clicking on Facebook throughout the day to refresh a brief feeling of excited contact with the rest of the world, being unable to get to bed at night because I needed to check Facebook one more time in case anything new had happened.

Facebook- Accepting all my attention while otherwise practicing complete disinterest toward me.

You can see what the problem was.

I'm no stranger to compulsive behavior and online addiction, so I could see it too. I also had the feeling that I was increasingly getting cut by the other edge of the double-edged sword that is social networking: it can make you feel connected to a lot of people, but it also prompts shallow and fleeting connections that masquerade as real intimacy. So I decided on a one week break, just to let the dust settle. From midnight Wednesday last week through midnight yesterday, I did not visit Facebook, deleted all e-mail alerts from it unread and even, when I was fast enough to zap them, tried to delete the messages without even looking at their titles.

What can I tell you about that experience? Well, for starters, like most any break from something compulsive, it was pretty much an immediate relief. The withdrawal was fairly light, too. I did have the weird lurching feeling of continually composing status updates in my head about things I saw or felt, and then realizing that if I had thoughts I wanted to express, I had to find a real live person to express them too. That seemed unreasonable! But that went away after a few days, and I had very little of the "what do I do with spare moments?" feeling that I thought I might have. Instead I almost immediately felt more alert and appreciated the free time and free head-space. I also appreciated seeing people at various points throughout my week more, since I couldn't "cyber-see" them in-between. The other thing I noticed is that, after a day or two, the daily 20+ e-mail alerts I was receiving dwindled down to one or two. When you don't constantly feed the beast, it doesn't spontaneously come looking for you too often.

There were a few things I genuinely missed. When I finish reading a book, as I did with a behemoth 515 page tome this past week, I like posting the review. I also use Facebook to pimp my writing, so when I had new things come out here and there, it was a little frustrating to not be able to make use of this practical tool to let people know. And I missed the ability to send quick messages to people following up on things we'd done together over the weekend, which is not profound but is something that online networking lends itself well too. I also found myself with an ongoing strange yearning, when I got a real e-mail from someone, to go to their profile and see their pictures. Maybe not so strange- visual contact is very important to human socializing.

And now that I'm back? I am decidedly ambivalent. It's nice to "see" everyone again and to have the often convenient tools for staying in touch that Facebook provides. But I liked the peace and quiet, the increased time and energy, and the added impetus to make real contact with people that my break provided me. What I think I'm going to do is turn off all e-mail alerts (except maybe for events and pictures, because events need timely response and pictures are fun!), so that I'll only see stuff from the site if and when I go to the site. And I'm going to put myself on an every other day regimen for visiting Facebook. Maybe this will reintroduce a little balance into the relationship, and make my contact with it a more deliberate and conscious.

And so I return...

San Francisco Daze: October

For whatever reason, it recently struck me that I'd never gotten around to finishing blog publishing the next installment of San Francisco Daze, a series of (aspirationaly, at least) daily sketches of life in our fair city that I wrote in 2005. I posted September right at the beginning of October 2008, and then no October, November or December. Here is October, and I'll get out November in a week or two.

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October 1-2

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…


October 3

Madrone on a Monday, and damn but I should do this every Monday. It’s their “living room”, in which people are encouraged to come out and bring games, art projects, etc. that they can work on together. There’s great music, and the atmosphere is very chill— not unlike hanging out in a friend’s living room. Except with a bartender, and cuter girls.


October 4

Why was the door open? Why was there no light coming from inside the apartment? Did the big bushy black and white cat on the doorstep, sinister pudgy Persian face, have to have its eyes glowing yellow? What was this a harbinger of? By such things is the feeling of the uncanny strongly evoked, even on 11th Avenue in the usually bland and safe Richmond District.


October 5-11

What happened to these seven days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…


October 12

To the Snow White Pigeon I Saw On 11th Avenue While Walking Home From the Bar Tonight

Snow white pigeon
I have never seen a pigeon
As snowy
And white
As you
Were it not for your size
And the distinctive bob of your head
When you walked
I might have thought you a dove
I loved
How you jumped up on the curb
And walked quickly toward me
Was saddened
When you veered over in the direction
Of the apartment instead
But delighted
When you perched on its step
And the girl coming down to get laundry
And I
Exchanged bemused glances
I know
Our love can never be
(the inter-species gap is too wide for that)
But I do hope
That I see you
Again


October 13-15

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…


October 16

Eleven stops today in the Richmond District’s Open Galleries weekend, bright blue cloudless sky mercilessly transmitting hot sun onto skin and pavement, only respite in the shady side of the street and the disquieting magic of entering strangers’ homes and looking at their art.


October 17-19

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…


October 20

Weird scenes at the third Tuesday’s at the Academy of Science. Apparently, at their temporary location at 5th and Howard, they have a monthly event in which a full bar, caterer and DJ are set up in the Academy. So, you can cruise around and meet the fish and reptiles and amphibians and see the science exhibits while sipping wine and grooving to Techno. Trippy. And the crowd is mostly well-to-do 20 and 30-somethings. It reminds me of the heyday of the dotcom boom.


October 21

First time in Gaspare’s, despite six years of living in the Richmond District. The Margherita pizza was divine, the Chianti insisted on its purple-reddishness, small wicker flaks hung from the ceiling and the darkness inside the restaurant soothed the soul.


October 22

Crunched coke can, rattling down Market Street, past the US Mint building. Each gust of passing car caught it up and set it rattling a few feet further, even though the road was level. I kept expecting it to get crushed under wheel, but it continued in its merry way. I wished that I had a video camera.


October 23

Land’s End Beach today was foam shooting up over the big offshore rocks and the clattering sound of the smooth rounded rocks as the tide retreated through them.


October 24-30

The last week of my working life is so harried that it leaves very little record. I mean, I certainly may work again. But it will be different from here, I think. Time off for writing here in my lovely city of San Francisco. I will commit to do six months, and then we shall see what’s next.


October 31

While sitting in my parents’ living room
Last night
During weekend visit
Synchronicity
Of sound of
Tapping on the wall
Owl screeching
And train passing in the distance
Tells me
My brother is visiting

November Writing News

I didn’t think enough had happened since the last one for me to put out an update last month. That still may be the case. But the show must go on! Accordingly, here is my November Writing News for your reading enjoyment:

Film- “Deaf, Dumb and Blind Date”, one section of the three-part short film I wrote and produced, “Triptych”, screened at the Victoria Theatre on October 4th. For the upcoming round of Scary Cow, the independent film co-op that I’m a part of, I’ll be directing a film based on a short story I wrote last year, “Ave Maria”. It’s my first time as director, which should be interesting for everyone… While we wait for that, “Deaf, Dumb and Blind Date” isn’t up on the Scary Cow website yet, but you can check out the previous installment of “Triptych” that screened in June, “Geek Wars” (it’s listed as project #33): http://www.scarycow.com/videos/round0008/round008.html

Publication- I’ve cooked up a few things since last time, including a run-down on fall arts events and musings on freedom and responsibility in DIY culture for LEGENDmag: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/09/22/independent-arts-high-holy-days/ , http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/10/20/what-are-we-diying-for/ . I’ve also become a regular contributor to a website named “Song O’ The Day”, you can check out my song reviews so far here: http://www.songotheday.com/?cat=352

Performance- At the beginning of the year I challenged myself to read in public once a month. I won’t quite make that pace, but I have read several times. The latest was something I’ve done before, performing tragic poetry I wrote as a teenager onstage at Mortified (http://www.getmortified.com/ ) on October 23rd and 24th. I’m not sure yet what I’ll get up to in November, but I’ll let you know…

Novel- I’m contemplating revision suggestions I got from a manuscript evaluation I had done by a freelance editor earlier this year. They would mean some major structural overhauls, which I may or may not be up for. While I ponder, you can read the first chapter of my novel, Out in the Neon Night, on my blog: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- One of the biggest traffic generators on my blog the past month has been a piece I did on the increase in right wing violence in the past year. You can see it here, along with other bloggy doings: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/09/rising-tide-of-right-wing-chris.html

November out, stay tuned for December!

Project Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

I haven't done this since May! I hereby pledge to pick up the pace, and publish at least two more before the end of the year. In the mean time, thus far in my sequential overview of my favorite Bob Dylan albums we've had Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A' Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan>, and Bringing It All Back Home. Which leads us to Highway 61 Revisited...

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I’d like to start this review with a confession: my whole life I’ve heard music critics fawning about how rocking “Like a Rolling Stone” is, and I just don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great song, one of the exemplars of Dylan’s “bitter and snarky telling off of a woman” vein of song writing. And I understand the historical significance of his going electric here and what that did to rock and folk from that point forward. But to say it flat out rocks? Compared to other things from the same time period by the Who, the Kinks and the Stones? Or even Dylan himself in many places on the previous album Bringing It All Back Home or here in songs like “Tombstone Blues”?

Regardless, in terms of being a vessel for free-floating resentment, serving dual purpose as an attack on a person and a personification of mainstream society due for a richly deserved fall, and prominently featuring the cheesy rock organ, it’s a strong way to open an album, and a pretty incendiary thing to have reach number 2 on the pop charts in 1965. “Tombstone Blues” then knocks it up to a whole other level. The take on this era of Dylan is that he’s moved from the political to the personal, and is now expressing things in absurdist poetry. Listen to this song though, and see if amidst all the joking references to John the Baptist, Galileo and Cecil B. DeMille it isn’t serving as the ultimate protest, a deconstruction of the society itself that results in: Mama's in the fact'ry/ She ain't got no shoes/ Daddy's in the alley/ He's lookin' for food/ I'm in the kitchen/ With the tombstone blues

Dylan is also aces in track arrangement here, slowing us down after the initial one-two punch of the opening with the down tempo of “It Takes a Train to Cry” bringing us back up with rocking electric blues on “From a Buick 6” and then just weirding everything out with “Ballad of a Thin Man”. On the surface, he’s telling off a critic, and it’s enough of a joke that he actually cracks up at the beginning. Underneath, though, the weird whistling of the organ and slow building tempo of each lyrical turn charges you up and disorients you, the perfect compliment to a song that point-blank tells you it’s attacking your imagination. So personal, yes, but it lends itself to social critique as well, and not for nothing did the Black Panthers listen to this song repeatedly while drafting their manifesto.

Being so firmly tied to an era by these kinds of associations, “Thin Man” can sound dated. The next track, “Queen Jane Approximately” sounds perennially contemporary with its perfect pop song pitch and balance of angry snide that dismisses the subject and weary compassion that invites them back. If this song sound contemporary, then the track that follows, “Highway 61 Revisited” enters the realm of timeless. Listening to it, it’s possible to make a case that it’s poetic horsing around with archetypes of the road, an indictment of the angry tribal gods and cynical commercialism that are pushing society toward a next world war, or both at once. That is what playing in mythic space can do for you, and he goes even further into it on “Desolation Row” where Cinderella, Bettie Davis, Einstein and Robin Hood all have their identities scrambled together in a land where everybody’s making love or else expecting rain.

The other thing that I can’t help but hear in this album is Dylan the person struggling with Dylan the myth (in which wise it’s mind-blowing to realize that he was only 24 when this was recorded). “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” makes clear the weariness and disillusionment that would have him dropping out of the game, and coming back forever altered, after his next album, Blonde on Blonde:

I cannot move/ My fingers are all in a knot/ I don't have the strength, To get up and take another shot

***

It's either fortune or fame/ You must pick up one or the other/ Though neither of them are to be what they claim

***

Everybody said they'd stand behind me/ When the game got rough
But the joke was on me/ There was nobody even there to call my bluff/ I'm going back to New York City/ I do believe I've had enough

10 Books in 2010 Self-challenge (update)

I got this idea lodged in my head that I would challenge myself to read 10 pending "always meant to get to it" books in 2010. I like the symmetry of the numbers, and I figured it would give me a good literary kick in the ass without being such a big list that I couldn't possibly finish. I did a blog about this last month with my list as it stood at that time, asking for particular recommendations. Since then, I've added a few more to the list, so I'm now up to 22. Help!

-the Illiad
-Paradise Lost
-Short Stories of Dostoevsky
-something by Tom Robbins (what?)
-Catcher in the Rye
-Jesus' Son
-Letters to a Young Poet
-something by Raymond Chandler (what?)
-something by Raymond Carver (particular recommendation?)
-the Analects
-the Varieties of Religious Experience
-Aristotle's Poetics
-The Corrections
-Good in Bed
-Pass it On
-something by DeLillo (I'm leaning towards "Libra")
-Godel, Escher, Bach
-Please Kill Me
-The Epic of Gilgamesh
-Jung (either Man and His Symbols or his autobiography)
-Cannery Row
-Tales of the City

Since I've got to get this down to 10, are there any particular plugs for "must reads" from the list? Any specific recommendations for the authors I'm not sure about which book to pick (Tom Robbins, Carver, Chandler, DeLillo)? Your input is appreciated...

Man, still inventing his doom

At the beginning of the year I started keeping track of certain science stories related to genetics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. I wanted to see what developments were out there that might contribute to the following: trends in genetics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, each of them accelerating individually and converging collectively, make it very likely that a fundamental transformation of the human species is at hand. This is likely to happen more or less instantly in evolutionary time. Even on the scale of our day-to-day lives, it's likely to occur well before the end of the century, and is thus something many of us might live to see, especially in as much as these trends involve medical advances as well.

You can see my Q1 and Q2 recaps in previous postings. For Q3, even with me out of the country and not paying much attention for the month of August, several interesting stories have appeared:

Tiny New Battery is Printable
Embryonic stem cells used to create human sperm
Military Develops 'Cybug' Spies
Contact lens can dispense drugs to eyes
Gel heals injured brain and bone
Gene Therapy Cures Colorblindness in Monkeys
Brain scan reveals what you've seen
Micorsoft researcher converts his brain into E-memory

Even in this few months worth of headlines you can see potential for expanded lifespans, mobile robots powered by lightweight power sources and human brains interfaced with computers. To quote the prophet David Bowie:

Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior

The Rising Tide of Right Wing Violence

In April, when a Department of Homeland Security report on the potential emergence of right-wing domestic terror threats was partially leaked, the Right in this country went wild with scorn and mockery. The media widely reported the dissing of the report, but did very little analysis of the relative merits or lack thereof of the idea.

The title, "Right-Wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment", pretty much gives you the thesis. You would think someone in the press at the time might have taken said thesis a little seriously based on:

- Jim Adkinson going on a shooting spree in a Unitarian church in June 2008 because, as explained in a letter he left behind, he “wanted to kill liberals”.

- Campaign rallies toward the end of the Presidential election where a beaming Sarah Palin said things like “You really get it!” to whipped-up crowds yelling “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” when Obama was mentioned.

- An assassination plot by skinhead groups that was broken up shortly after the election.

- Conservative groups organizing anti-Obama “Tea Parties” across the nation including one in which Texas Governor Rick Perry said frustration with the government might run so high that Texas might have to secede.

- Richard Poplawski in Pennsylvania, who frequently fretted about "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" staging a domestic disturbance on April 4th, donning body-armor and loading an AK-47 to then shoot the officers who responded.

By April, was it really that ridiculous to think that economic hardship in the country, combined with a sudden political change and exacerbated by alarmism from Rightist media, might be creating a milieu of violent extremism?

One could certainly make the case that Adkinson and Poplawski were lone nuts, but as subsequent coverage has made clear, they weren’t lone nuts who appeared out of the ether. Officers found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly in Adkinson’s apartment after the shooting. The note he left behind specifically mentions wanting to kill the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37). Poplawski turned out to be a follower of Alex Jones, who used to be a fringe 9-11 conspiracist but by March 2009 appeared on FoxNews.com hailed as “the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," in a segment warning about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away."

If mainstream media didn’t spot any emerging trend in April, you think they might have been on to one this summer, when, in the space of less than two weeks:

- Shawna Forde, a former member of the anti-illegal immigration border watch group the Minutemen, posed with another man as police officers in order to enter the home of a Hispanic family and kill them in Arizona on May 30th.

- Prominent abortion doctor Richard Tiller was gunned down in church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31st.

- White supremacist James Wenneker von Brunn went on a shooting spree in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. on June 10th.

Still not enough trend? How about Virginia Congressional candidate Catherine Crabill in July helpfully noting that, if candidates trying to stop “Marxism” fail to get elected in November, at least we still have guns to affect change? How about the town hall meetings and Tea Parties all fall where Obama has been excoriated in the most inflammatory language? Find Mark Williams of the group Tea Party Express, for example, calling Obama an "Indonesian Muslim and welfare thug".

And then there’s Chris Broughton, who proudly wore an assault rifle and a handgun to an Obama rally in Arizona in August. Far from being a disconnected lone nut, Broughton is actually a member of a church congregation whose pastor, while disavowing calling for anyone in particular to do anything illegal, publicly prays that Obama “die and go to hell.”

Is it possible that a sitting member of Congress shouting “You Lie!” during a Presidential address is the relative ruly tip of an increasingly unruly iceberg of growing radicalization that is implicitly encouraged by leaders of the Conservative movement? Possible enough that we might want to take a serious look at what’s going on?

Before dismissing this as Liberal paranoia, let’s play a thought game:

What if, during the 2000 election, a radical leftist had gone on a shooting spree in an evangelical church leaving behind a note saying he wanted to, “kill conservatives?” Not long thereafter, Gore’s VP candidate had grinned and encouraged crowds shouting that Bush was a fascist who should be killed. After the election of Bush, left wing acts of violence dotted the country in the following months as prominent Liberals organized and encouraged town halls where Bush was described as dangerous and a threat. A Democratic congressional candidate advocated violent revolution if Liberals lost elections and a prominent Democratic governor mentioned seceding if Bush's agenda continued. And then a gun-totting member of a radical Black church congregation whose pastor called for Bush’s death came to a rally that the President was at? How calm, nuanced, reasoned and balanced would Fox News and talk radio be in reporting on this?

Help with my Ten Books in 2010 self-challenge

I've decided to issue myself a self-challenge in 2010: I'm going to try to read 10 books that are on my "always wanted to, but never got around to" list.

Now is the part where you come in- I've started a list, but it has over ten entires, with more being added all the time. Any particular "yea" votes? Or suggestions about something I might want to add? The list so far (mixing sacred and profane, in no particular order):

-the Illiad
-Paradise Lost
-Short Stories of Dostoevsky
-something by Tom Robbins (what?)
-Catcher in the Rye
-Jesus' Son
-Letters to a Young Poet
-something by Raymond Chandler (what?)
-something by Raymond Carver (particular recommendation?)
-the Analects
-the Varieties of Religious Experience
-Aristotle's Poetics
-The Corrections
-Good in Bed
-Pass it On
-something by DeLillo (I'm leaning towards "Libra")
-Godel, Escher, Bach
-Please Kill Me
-The Epic of Gilgamesh

Any suggestions?