Thursday, October 28, 2010

Easy Principle

Not too long ago I did a bad thing. The details are unimportant, but this bad thing got me arrested. It was an illegal bad thing. After they found me in the nuthouse, charges were filed, and I found myself in the criminal justice system. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but along the way I found out something interesting. Do you want to know the thing I discovered?

A public defender is not free. They don't tell you that up front, they just tell you that it is your right to be defended by counsel. So I said, "Sure." Sort of like Bill Murry in Ed Wood, when he is being baptized and they ask if he rejects Satan. Here it is.

Ed Wood Baptism scene.

That just how I said it, too. "Would you like to be represented by a public defender?" And I said, "Sure."

Little did I know, but the "right" to a public defender comes at a cost. That cost is $150. I'm refusing to pay it for two reasons:

1. The ongoing, and painfully boring, condition of poverty, and;
2. Principle!

The same principle that put 101 Wobblies in prison as of 1919. The same principle that compels me to tell strangers to "Fuck off!" when they tell me I can't feed the geese, or take my dog for a walk (they assume that I don't pick up after her). The same principle that will, with no doubt, get my ass kicked.

To principle!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Spiritual Journey of an Atheist

A little more about that night. That night. That awful, empty night not too long ago. Beyond politics, rhetoric, ego and religion there is a place we all find ourselves. By definition, we get to this place alone. Totally and absolutely and completely alone. It's an ongoing discussion we have with ourselves, and it exists on a primal level.

Look. At the sky, at the pavement, at the streetlight, at the people pouring out of the subway station, at the piece of public art, at your own hands, at photographs of old friends and lovers, at the expression of an exhausted clerk at the package store, at leaves changing and drenched in sunlight. Look at those and countless other things.

And listen. Listen to yourself talking, to the wind, to friends laughing and crying in your memory, to the cars outside your window racing by, to the couple fighting in the flat next door, to the misplaced silence of a public intersection at 3am, to the mother chastising her child in the courtyard, to the person who loves you telling you how she feels about this or that. Listen to those, and so very many other things.

And feel. The scruff on your chin, the hard bench in the park, the soft sand in the playground, the tomatoes ripening in a little urban garden, the cool breeze that finally arrives after days of stifling heat, to cool water on hot hands or warm water on cold hands. Feel it all. Feel everything else.

And think about it. Think about it when you don't want to think about it, when something offends your natural inclination towards empathy and compassion, when you take pleasure in the pain of someone you dislike, when you consider the same question 1000 times in different moods and in different places. Think, think, think until you beg for a modicum of peace, for an empty head.

Look and listen and feel and think about it.

And after all that, grab an extension cord, write a suicide note, and strike out into the night in search of a place to quietly, and with a minimum of physical pain, kill yourself. We all have a story, and that is part of the story of me. The night I did that, I ended up in a baseball field in the middle of the night, faced the sky while lying on my back, and looked really hard. Totally alone. Suicide as a solution, not a cry for help. Totally detached from others. Willing to end every relationship, to leave every story prematurely, to decide to never listen to music again, or read a poem, or laugh...ever again. And do this to end the pain and loneliness that every single one of us feels. Do this as emotional chemotherapy and spiritual chemotherapy. End the self to end the pain. Cut through the healthy tissue to kill the tumor.

As Nancy says, "4 in the morning knows all your secrets." Damn right.

Some of us get to this point and decide that they cannot endure life without the comfort that a belief in god brings. And make no mistake, believing in a god, any god, is preferable to the crushing loneliness of knowing, absolutely knowing, that there is no god. That's what I decided. It's what I decide every time I reach the end of myself. There is no god. Existential nihilism. Good times.

Some of my friends, my best friends, are extremely religious. We have something in common that makes us comrades despite our feelings about god. What we have in common is that we spend a lot of time thinking about the big questions.

A lot of time. A lot.

I've been told, "There is nothing easy about believing in God. God makes demands of you." But it's just not true. The people who love us make demands of us. So if god makes demands of you, he or she or it must love you and care about you. At the very least, you are not alone. If you think it's hard to do what god wants from you, imagine knowing (not feeling, knowing), that nothing matters.

It's the difference between living alone and living with someone you love. Don't tell me that it is harder to endure the demands of someone who loves you and thinks about you and wants something from you and wants to be with you, than to think that nobody and nothing cares, or even knows you exist.

Don't tell me that, because it's just not true.

That night, I put that cord around my neck and simply had to kneel to end it all. My reasons for not doing that have nothing to do with god. Nothing at all. And you know why? Because in that moment of total and absolute despair, as I searched myself and the sky and everything else, god didn't show up. Not a peep. Not a glimpse. And I really wanted god to show up that night, and so many other nights like it. I'm open to the hope and possibility that perhaps there will be a revelation. There has never been a revelation. An epiphany? Never. Why?

Because there is no god. My reasons for taking the cord from around my neck, tucking it into my pocket, and trudging home are my own. My own. Mine. They are my own because they have to be my own. My life didn't end that night because of the love I feel for certain other people, for people I can name. People with Social Security numbers. People I can touch.

Love is an incredible thing. It's even more incredible when it exists without the help of a supernatural force. An accident in the middle of nothing. Nothing in the middle of an accident. Love has to get you through life. The love you feel for others. Certainly not the love that god feels for you. Because if you look closely. Really closely, with an open heart and mind, god is not there.

There is no god.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Of Food Stamps & The Butcher's Bill

Another day, another $25.78.

There are 98,501 American soldiers in Afghanistan, 52,001 in Iraq, and 369,000 troops deployed outside the United States and her territories. Most of them are in Germany, where my father served in the 599th Artillery Battalion out of Schwäbisch Gmünd, and Japan (together, close to 90,000). The sun never sets on the American Empire.

On average, 84 people are murdered every day in the US with a gun of some type, form or design.

51 million people in the US have no health insurance whatsoever. The American Journal of Public Health recently reported the results of a Harvard University study that estimates 45,000 US citizens die every year from ailments that went untreated due to a lack of coverage. The top five health insurers (United, Wellpoint, Atena, Humana and Cigna) cleared $12.5 billion in profit. Membership in those plans dropped, on average, 4 percent.

Over the last decade, CEO salaries of the top 10 insurers added up to $944 million dollars (UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Aetna, CIGNA, Humana, Coventry Health Care, Health Net, Amerigroup, Centene and Universal American).

Almost 2.5 million people are currently being held in US prisons, more than any other country on Earth. In addition to that, about 100,000 children are held in juvenile facilities. Rates of incarceration have skyrocketed.



It costs about $30,000 a year to keep an inmate in Federal prison, annually.

The average Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program ("food stamp") benefit is $1,596, annually.

According to The Budget for Fiscal Year 2008, Historical Tables, total outlays for Means Tested Entitlements in 2006 were $354.3 billion. This was 2.7% of GDP and included food stamps, welfare contingency fund, temporary assistance to needy families, and veterans pensions. (page 133, table 8.1).

As of September, 2010, the War in Afghanistan has cost a total of $350 billion.

As of September, 2010, the War in Iraq has cost a total of $800 billion.

For me, it's another day, another $25.67!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Searching for Wiliam Best

Anyone who knows me also must know that I'm a film buff. My brother is, as well, and we've spent countless hours anticipating, appreciating, loathing, and analyzing movies. It's a bit of an infatuation. I'll happily bore you to tears and ramble on and on about Akira Kurosawa, the Coen brothers, HUAC, film noir, adaptations from novels and plays, bit players, tricks of the trade, the Hayes Code and the rating system, Lee Strasberg, the "body horror"of David Cronenberg, and CGI. Facts, anecdotes and trivia. Movies can be high art, can make you think and wonder and cry and laugh your ass off. Strangely, a bad movie can also make you hate movies for awhile.

Right now, I'm watching High Sierra, the 1941 classic with Ida Lupino & Humphrey Bogart. I've seen it a dozen times, and it has everything going for it; acting, dialogue, character development. All that jazz. But I'm not going to fawn over it right now, though. I'm brooding about the performance of a bit player in the movie, an actor named William Best.

How can you remember, or forget, a man such as he? If you don't know who he is, I'll tell you.

William Best could be called a disciple of Monroe Andrew Perry, also known as Steppin Fetchit. If you happened to be "black" and a talented actor in the first half of the 20th Century, you were presented with a Hobson's Choice; work in obscure movies that very few theaters would show, or embrace the shameful popularity of a clownish, racist caricature.

You're probably familiar with this mocking stereotype. A black man who is simple-minded, affable, lazy, harmless and amusing. The speech is slow, the movement exaggerated and cartoonish. The affect comical, grating, or deeply disturbing, depending on the audience. He is always unemployed, a janitor, or a field hand.

As far as I can tell, Best played this character in every one of his 130 movies, sometimes credited as Sleep 'n Eat, if he was credited at all. At the height of his career, in the 1940's, he was lauded widely as a comic genius.

But nobody wants to remember him now.

It makes me sad in a way that is difficult to put into words. If Best is to be judged for being an "Uncle Tom," those who criticism him are guilty of anachronism. Best did what every artist, and every human being of consequence, does every single day. He did the best with what was given him. And paying the bills in less noble but equally important .

Wikipedia has an entry about best that puts it well, which is rare for Wikipedia.

Best was alternately loved as a great clown,
then reviled, then pitied, finally virtually forgotten.

Recently, a mainstream movie entitled, "The Blind Side" was released and received well. The depiction of a black man as a man-child (played by Quinton Aaron) is alive and doing very, very well. It has to be the most offensive black stereotype since Uncle Remus in "Song of the South." So don't judge William Best. If you're of a mind to judge anyone, consider harshly the throngs of people who forced Best and Aaron to demean themselves as artists, and as human beings.

Friday, October 08, 2010

Familiar Melody

Briefly today I ventured out into the world. The cats needed food, and for myself a small notebook in which to track my medications. So many pills need to be taken that it helps to write them down. Otherwise, my feeble mind keeps an unreliable record and that leads to uncertainty. The notebook was shoplifted by pretending to refer to it like a grocery list. A minor victory against a world that I do not recognize anymore. And I've grown afraid of it. Fear is with me often these days.

Last week, I took some stale bagels and bread to the riverbank where I fed the Canadian geese. Annie didn't seem to pay them any mind, and it was a cool, gray day. Despite the cars rushing by about 300 feet behind me, it felt as if I was at the edge of the world. It was peaceful, and I got lost in the slow movement of the river. A few colorful leaves floated on the wind, which was substantial, onto the surface.

Without my noticing, a middle aged man walked behind me, on the jogging path. He was dressed in such a way as to make me think that he was an athlete. Perhaps warming up before a jog. His feet on the gravel reported his presence, and I turned toward him, then back to the river. As he passed, he told me that I shouldn't be feeding the geese. He had a disapproving tone, as if he knew me. I'd never seen him before.

My response was that of a fearful man. Anger welled up in me. Here, at what felt like the end of the Earth I was being told what to do. As I turned toward him, I said, "I like to feed them. And it's none of your business." He stopped, and I faced him. "Well, I don't like running in goose shit. And it's against the law." was his reply. As he said it, he indicated his running shoes, which were snow white to my eye. I replied, "No it isn't. Even if it were, I would do it. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's illegal. I don't like you in those skimpy shorts." As my face grew red and my temper flared, "And even if it were, I'd do it. There is no law by God or man that will keep me from feeding these geese." I stepped forward, and he turned to continue his walk, "I'll call the police" was his final remark. "Go right ahead," and I yelled out my name, address and telephone number, "...they'll have to shoot me to stop me, you fucking asshole." He ignored me and walked swiftly on.

This is not the way a well-adjusted man acts. It is no secret that I'm not well, emotionally. My anger didn't fade until I got home. Such intensity of emotion. So much fear and loathing, of myself and the world. Annie and I went home.

As I sat down in my study, I reached into my pocket and re-discovered an unusual, white rock that caught my eye. Like alabaster, like the history of the rock in bas relief. Nothing discernible to my eye but bumps and crags. Parts of it glittered in the light. I took no small amount of comfort in knowing that the rock would exist long after me. That I have an end that will go unnoticed by so many things and people consoles like a familiar melody.