politics again

I find myself both watching Tony Bourdain lip his way through a conversation with a heavyset Russian waiter and looking through the stock markets, trying to see some sign of a larger trend.

God knows the papers have been full of some pretty sky-high rhetoric, describing this as a "crisis" and introducing economists who assert that they can't say with certainty that the American financial system won't collapse by the end of the week.

Maaaaaan.

Whatever. What I especially like about the current national climate is how so much of it seems to depend on the analysis of past trends. In direct contradiction of one of my recent posts, I have to cop to wondering whether or not it's totally pointless to try to assume that things are going to happen the same way they happened last time.

One wonders. Have we reached a point at which historical trends no longer apply, and the future is beginning to pick us up and carry us off to a vast unknown? I think sometimes when I look at the current state of the economy and the stock market that we're in for a disaster, not necessarily just because we screwed up, but because it's what's needed. Then I remind myself: the human species is a creature predisposed to change; though the course of social evolution may be arrested in one part of the world, it nevertheless proceeds in another.

I used to subscribe to a theory that the United States can't--must not--exist for much longer. The founders of the country, the framers of the Declaration, the writers of the Constitution, all of those people embarked on their journey based on principles they had developed over the course of their lives under the boot of British imperialism. The newly-minted United States was a largely agrarian economy, in which farmers living on large, isolated properties predominated, and their collective will was that they be left alone to tend to their own affairs.

Is such a thing even possible anymore? Did the founders ever anticipate the growth of our cities, the swelling of our population, the clearly-visible upper limit to our expansion? Did they foresee the Internet, computer networks that enable surveillance, people so mindlessly rich that countries are bought and sold on a black market?

Consequently, I felt sure that the end of the United States would come in a sort of Balkanization. The cultural fault lines are there still. At least five superstates east of the Mississippi, three west, dominated by L.A., Vegas, and Seattle. Even now, I'm still unsure how unlikely such an occurrence really would be.

The world has changed.

Is the Constitution even, in any sense, applicable? Following from that, does the United States as envisioned by its fathers exist at all? I wonder what people like Hamilton or Jefferson would say if they took an educational constitutional through Washington, DC, with every single federal building pointed out to them along the way. Would they admire the White House or see it as a symbol of imperalistic power? Would they look at the Pentagon from a helicopter and wonder at a future so laden with import, creaking under the weight of its own iconic nature? Would they see Congress and see another King's Court, full of landed men greasing each others' backs?

In the end, one, I think, needs to savor the heavy air of significance that belabors our era. I think people sense that we exist at a crossroads, that the future begins--if not now--soon. They treat each little blip in the trendline as a looming crisis, because they think the Big One is inevitable. The apocalyptic themes running through nearly every creative pursuit over the past decade or two makes this abundantly clear. The question is, will we be prepared for it? After all, nobody has the faintest idea what it is, or even whether it'll happen at all.

Truthfully, these questions frustrate me almost constantly. They're more of an examination of my own feelings, of my own sense of what's happening within the world at large. Regardless of what happens from this point on, we dwell in turbulent times, and, as such, we think turbulent thoughts. I often end up being of two minds regarding the matter: one attacks the issue enthusiastically, never shy of speculation; the other sighs and ignores it all, happy merely to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I went to the parking garage this morning and the sun rose and I couldn't help but think, Man, this happens every day.

Think about that.

disentanglement

It's a beautiful fall morning outside, much like the morning of September 11, 2001.

I have the strongest urge to jump into my truck and head over to the parking garage and drink in the day. Then it'd be a couple hours at the bookstore, and then--what do you want to do today?

I turn around, and there's nobody there, like an arm recently amputated. My visitor of the past six days, known only as Toronto Kim, flew home yesterday afternoon. I'm having a hard time adjusting to her absence. The last place I want to be today is work. I should have asked for today off as a buffer between the visit and the return, just to laze around and not do much of anything while I snap out of this uncommon funk.

It was, by my standards, a fantastic week. We shopped, ate, visited, saw, talked, and enjoyed. I saw more of my city in one week than I have in the eight months I've lived here.

I learned the Dali Museum is free to anyone with a student ID from the local university. The Baywalk parking garage has an unparalleled view of the municipal marina--once you get over the monolithic condo tower to the east. Some people don't react well to the word "spanakopita." The view on the other side of the lake is equally nice, and fellow walkers are unfailingly polite. I'm terrible at minigolf, and the disappearance of Albertson's has a knock-on effect. The kitesurfers love the Skyway passage and the launching point off DeSoto looks like an alien planet when they're thick on the water. Ferg's is thinly populated at midday but has terrific food and plenty of room to stretch out alone with a book. The Haslam's cats are fond of high places. The Gallaudet student protest of 20 years ago represented the only complete student takeover of a college campus in the history of American student protests--and in the heart of Washington, DC, no less. The outlet mall at Ellenton has some awesome shopping and a comfortable Starbucks to escape to when rain arrives.

Most of all, though, it seems like it was just the sleeping form in the mornings, the mock-petulance as I returned from the bookstore, the feet kneading the arms of my recliner because of a small living room. The total honesty, the lack of pretense, the refusal to pull punches, the ability to cut someone else up behind their back with no remorse in order to blow off steam after a particularly nerve-wracking first meeting. Always having someone by and on your side. Getting the jump on each other's thoughts, and the promises of a paid-for dinner in exchange for a walk around the lake.

The urge's been recurring all day. Just hop in your truck, it says, and find a better place. I just keep feeling as though I'm not actually here in this office, like it's all some kind of dream or joke.

It really is kind of the most horrible feeling I've had in recent history. The breaking of an attachment, the acclimatization to singularity, the return to reality. At this point, I'm not really sure if it was because of her in particular, or because for the last six days, I wasn't alone.

Making it worse is the arrival of fall in a few days. Already I can see the light changing as the Earth swings away from our sun. Already I can see the fall themes emerging in the Bay area's department stores. There's kind of a sweet darkness to the arrival of the harvest season, a shadowed corner where the dry leaves blow and the smell of bonfires hangs heavy in the air. The sky gets bluer and the sun gets whiter and the days get shorter. It's both thrilling and sorrowful, as though I were laboring under the weight of a malignant star.

Fuck, man. I'm depressed.

the sun rises

3 What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
8 All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
--Ecclesiastes 1:3-9, King James Version

As I was growing up in my parents' Protestant tradition, I would give one of two answers when I was asked what my favorite book in the Bible was. If I were in a particularly sycophantic mood, I'd pick a Gospel, usually Mark or Luke. The life of Jesus Christ is always a good choice when wishing to please your fundamentalist elders. If, however, I were in a more dour, legalistic mood and wanted to take the questioner off-balance, I'd pick Leviticus. It's one of the more stringent books, full of rules and irrational proscriptions. I dug the bits about animal sacrifice.

The truth is, I didn't have a favorite book. I didn't really understand the Bible, although I spent every Sunday for the first 17 years of my life learning about it. Sunday School was less about truly internalizing Scripture on every level than it was about reciting what it told us to do.

As I get older, though, I find myself drawn more and more to Ecclesiastes. When I feel as though the person I'm speaking to won't quite get how I feel about the Bible in general, I explain it away as the result of Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes, quite possibly, I think, one of the greatest SF short stories ever written.

My quasi-religious streak may surprise some people. Don't worry: I'm not a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Jew (yet). I'm still strongly secular, and thumb my nose at Messiahs, prophets, and blue-skinned musicians.

Ecclesiastes, though...hmm. It's one of the only books that fares much better in the King James translation than in more modern versions; the passage above illustrates this. Verse 5 in in my copy of the NCV says: "The sun rises, the sun sets, and then it hurries back to where it rises again." It falls flat, having been translated into something much more straightforward and decidedly less poetic.

It's also one of the more depressing and anti-materialistic books of the Bible. The whole point of the book, essentially, is that history flows in an eternal circle and the individual lives of men leave little imprint. It is therefore foolish to waste time and energy on the outward trappings in the pursuit of imagined external distinction; one should focus inward, cultivating the spiritual inner life, because that's the only thing that matters in the face of physical ephemerality.

Truthfully, I like the historical perspective. It's a long-run sort of thing; it's not like you can take that 50-inch plasma with you when you die. Of course, it all presupposes an afterlife of some sort. After all, if we end when we die, it certainly isn't going to hurt anything to get that 50-incher and slobber in front of it until your final keel.

My attitude toward the Bible in general is a complicated one at best. I don't approve of the structure that's grown up around it, and I flat-out hate the idea that it was meant to be taken literally. Especially--leaving aside the whole Jesus Christ potboiler--the creation story.

It's beautiful. Imagine a mind in the void. It's utterly alone, but it has a singular purpose. It kindles a tiny spark in the vast nothingness, which then explodes outward into a formless cloud of matter, which is immediately rent asunder. Suddenly, light blazes, and is abruptly cut off before pouring forth again, becoming night and day. Water is formed and also torn into two, a small part blown into the sky and the rest poured out onto the earth. The land arises and blossoms, and the light is gathered into the sun and the moon, and animals spring forth.

It really is a lovely story, and, in my opinion is not too far off from the actual history of the universe. I find it interesting that the Bible takes particular note of the creation of water and its placement both in the sky and on the earth. The only problematic part is the presence of a creator, the expression of a divine will, the impetus of deliberate action. In spite of that, and also because of it, it becomes something much more than literal truth, a story that expresses a deeper meaning intrinsic to the human species, the creation of meaning underneath prosaic appearances. It becomes a form of high art, something more than simple fiction and a form of truth that strikes even deeper than quantifiable fact.

That's why it makes me sad to see the story of creation perverted into something that should be taught in schools as 'fact.' That's exactly what it isn't--and that's why it's so important to us as a species. We need to know the difference between the real world and our dreams, but more importantly, we need to be able to understand ourselves better through the examination of that which makes us more than simply the sum of our parts: belief and art. What does the creation story--in all its forms across all of history--say about us as thinking animals? Is it that we seek a divine authority, something higher to which we need to be accountable? That we have an intrinsic need to extract meaning from our daily lives? If so, why? What does it say about us that so many can't muster a simple acceptance of things at face value? Is that, in the end, what separates us from the beasts of the field? What about those who shun such deep examinations of their lives in favor of simple day-to-day living? Does it mean they're more like the lower animals than human beings?

That last question presents an interestingly slippery slope, but I think I've gone on longer than I'd planned. Bible shit always makes me sleepy.