"Patriot Day"

Today, of course, was the 6-year anniversary of 9/11. But was I the only one mildly disturbed by its new label, "Patriot Day"? Apparently congress and the administration created this label not too long ago and ensured it got printed into every subsequent calendar.

Perhaps it's the suffocating negative energy surrounding the word "patriot" that gives me such an immediate adverse reaction to it. In the eyes of many, you're either a patriot or a terrorist, and to be considered a patriot involves an almost Orwellian conformity to the cancerous requirements and propoganda infecting the marrow of this country. People who dare go against the word of authority in this endless time of war are considered dangerous radicals who are only several treasonous words away from Al-Qaeda's sign-up sheet.

Am I exaggerating? Maybe. Is this my own propoganda? In a way, yes. But when someone like Ron Paul, a Republican running for 2008, is condemned for boldly standing up and declaring during the recent debate in South Carolina that we ought to take some responsibility for igniting the mentality that led up to 9/11, I see the ominous hues of a pre-dystopian mindset coloring the political dynamic of the nation's media, its political candidates and its public.

The idea that America was wholly victimized on this day 6 years ago is, I believe, shallow and naive thinking. It is this thinking that spawns such beliefs in an absolutist evil, which every terrorist is, right? Riiight. I believe no one does anything inappropriate, given their own model of the world.

The victims of society's ills (and this includes everyone, and every kind of ill) are victims of a Frankenstein's monster they've unwittingly lent their hand to create. For if everyone suddenly took up a small piece of responsibility for creating the terrorists, murderers, rapists, and thieves of our world then I can almost gaurantee you will see a massive shift in consciousness, and an ensuing plunge in crime statistics. The issue is, no one wants to believe they are a piece of the whole pie that creates the problem.

The word "patriot" is also weighed down with a sense of separation. It is this illusion of separation -- and many like it -- to which so much suffering can be attributed. "Patriot" means we are here and they are there. It means we are us, and they are them. We are ALL HERE together. Countries exist merely as abstract divisions in a land mass that knows no actual separation except in that which we give it.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, every form of life is an "unwavering band of light." There is no light greater or less than the next, across races, genders, nations, or even species.

There have been times when we've realized this. Christmas Eve in 1914, during World War I, is certainly a good example, where the British and German troops laid down their arms to share gifts, play soccer and sing a chorus of Silent Night together. Another was the moon landing; when Armstrong and company would visit other countries after having visited the moon, the reaction was not so much a celebration of an American achievement but rather of the new milestone reached by Humankind.

I love the United States. I love the ideals upon which it was founded, that essentially the survival of one means the survival of all, and vice versa. It celebrated brother (and sister) hood, true liberty and true freedom of expression, not just when it was "politically correct" or when said expression was in The Man's favor. George Washington, upon leaving office, adumbrated: "Beware of those who will use patriotism to suit their own personal agenda."

I do not see patriotism coming from the halls of Washington. Rather, I see a rogue beast of capitalistic corruption and greed that sees a ball and is attempting to run with it without proper team consent. Capitalism is, like communism, good in theory, but when mangled by the rabid atavistic need for symbol, status and survival, it becomes clotted with horded wealth that remains in the hands of the upper 1%, never to be implemented back into the system for the people but rather, especially as of late, invested in a machine of progressively imperialistic implications. I'll bet not many even know of the Bush administration's percolating plans for a North American Union, which aims to erase our northern and southern borders in the interest of reaping Mexican labor and Canadian oil. So...what's to become of the USA and its Constitution? Who's the real one being "unpatriotic" here?

I say, be patriotic towards ideals, towards freedom, love, truth, all three of which are interchangable. When the country you're living in begins to deviate from such ideals, use them to raise your voice, to make a change. We are all pieces of the system, all pieces of the responsibility -- so let's employ it.

Do we have true freedom?

We are free in body, but are we free in mind?

No, this isn't some sort of Matrix musing, more an observation about a psychological prison I see many Americans (and people in general, I'm sure) committing themselves to, usually with the help of parental or teacher figures who hammer out their perception of success to which they expect you to conform.

Most people believe the route to success is to go to a good college, study, work your way up, find a spouse, have children, settle comfortably into a suburban home, and retire.

Why is that success?

Honestly, please tell me why that is success. To me, it isn't, because there's a key ingredient that's missing - happiness. If you're happy with who you are and what you're doing, that's success. Or, if you'd like another definition from Winston Churchill, "Success is failing over and over and not losing your enthusiasm."

I question the amount of true freedom we have simply because, with the College + $ + Marriage = Success equation being the most ubiquitous, so many people are conditioned from day one to believe it is the only method through which we can measure our self-worth, and validate ourselves in the eyes of society. We are free to move about wherever we want and to say whatever we want, but what we think is an amalgam of pressing external forces that bombard us the day we take on a physical form. Thus, many people, I am sad to say, are not free in the slightest, not psychologically.

So free your mind. Do what you want and be happy. Fuck society (daily meditation really helps get you to this point -- at least it's working for me). And don't let anyone set your worries aflame about "biological clocks" or anything with the terms "need to", "should" or "shouldn't" attached to them. We all come from and end up in the same place, so the differences between a lawyer and a hippie are pretty inconsequential.

D'oh!

Comparatively, this post might seem a bit trivial, but I've been a geek-caliber fan of The Simpsons since I was 7, when I unnerved the Sunday School teacher by drawing Bart.

The movie was generally very well-received, by me as well (I made sure to pop open a can of Buzz Cola when the clouds parted and those familiar yellow letters came rolling towards us), but amongst fans my age there's a rising disappointment, it seems, in the TV show. Granted, they aren't as consistent as they were in their golden age, which lasted for almost ten years, depending on your taste. But even current episodes get better, richer, and funnier the more you see them and unearth further layers of humor.

The problem is that, as the generation that grew up with The Simpsons, we've seen all the golden-age episodes so often that every line is burned into our quote-and-joke banks. We have nostalgic memories of watching those episodes, the quality of which time has not diminished in the slightest, and we could watch them over and over. Compare this weight of sentimentality to seeing a new episode for the first time...of course it's not going to measure up!

In this age of Family Guys, South Parks, and Robot Chickens, The Simpsons have undoubtedly lost some of their edge. But for those fans who whine of being so disillusioned now with the show, watch a recent episode again and I gaurantee you'll pick up on things you didn't the first time.

We got it a bit tough

I've mentioned a few times before my firm belief that, had I been writing during the 40s, 50s and 60s, the publishing world as well as the general public would be far more receptive to my fiction, and I would probably have a greater chance of success, success for me meaning the fiscal ability to write full-time, or at least to know I have a dedicated audience to write for.

I love living in this age, but unfortunately, it's also the age where 1 in 4 adults have not read a book in the past year. It's also the age where most younger readers are only readers when the new Harry Potter comes out, and once they reach the last line, it's back to TV, videogames and the internet. It's the age where scarcely anyone wants a beautifully-crafted line they can pause on and consider, preferring their stories "never slow down". They want readable movie trailers.

Recently I heard the teacher and author Sheila Finch speak at a nearby library. She made the statement that every generation likely assumes it's living in the worst time to write. While that's probably true, I still think we have it the worst, and if things progress in the same pattern, any writer in the generation succeeding ours will find their voices echoing even further over the sea of indifference, skipping unheard through the heads of people who "can't make time for reading" in the hectic schedule of American Idol reruns.

There are many great authors who, frankly, would have quite a tough time finding a virgin audience these days. In the late 60s, it was a cool, socially revolutionary thing to read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. College students would walk around campus with used copies in their back pockets. Jack Kerouac's work helped ignite the beat movement. You'd never see people reacting to a book like that today, I'm sorry, because nowadays that back-pocket space is reserved for wallets or iPods.

Back then, publishers, agents, and the general public were far braver and more receptive to new material, and publications and presses abounded as a result of it. Much of these publications and presses, of course, have since folded.

In the strengthening blizzard of frenetic media and dynamic forms of entertainment and communication, the novel's power has been somewhat lost in the shuffle. The written word will never die, but it has become something to pass the time on an airplane, or a method of falling asleep. Proposed "tenchological revamps" of the format, such as Sony's portable e-Reader that's being pitched as the iPod of books, don't offer much excitement or hope to me because it's still reading. And reading is the problem. Reading is what turns the cobwebbed minds of many of these people away.

The written word holds vast amounts of power within its ancient simplicity. The author needs no approval of a studio, no $200 million budget, no crew, no producer, no special effects. Hell, you can make anything with a pencil and the back of a receipt.

Hopefully more people of our generation will come to realize that.

Fast-food Novels

Currently I have 7 novels in some form of completion. The oldest is probably six or seven drafts old while the latest is only one. There's also a lot of my own musing (a lot of "the thoughts between", get it? ha!) that go into my longer works. Because it's 2:45 am and I feel like spilling this out, I thought I'd distill the thematic concerns of all my novels to their essence, just in case you either don't read them, don't plan to read them, or, if you have read them, misunderstood them.

These concerns were actually intentional as I wrote them, though they clarified themselves in later drafts once I had the flow of the actual story(s) down.

Vermin Street (1 & 2): Little pests in a little house in a little civilization that they believe is so important. Could this apply on a slightly larger scale to any other species we know of? Hmm...

The Green-Eyed Monster: The ability of pettiness and blind emotion to destroy awesome potential.

Negative Space: Embrace your past, embrace your nature (even the animal) because it's what helps you know and create you and your future.

The Armistan Chronicles: Videogames are not ruining our children, dammit. When executed well they are wellsprings of passion, inspiration, and in the case of this book and my own experiences, a way for outcasts to form relationships with one another.

Students of Synchronism: We're all connected, or, as Vonnegut says, "all in the same machine."

Database Divine: We make our own realities. So do we want peace, or not?

There'll be a bigger thought posted tomorrow, I gaurantee it.

New Review & Mosquitoes

My writer friend Rachel Olivier was good enough to put up a review of my anthology Too Much Dark Matter, Too Little Gray on her blog. You can find it here

As for mosquitoes, have you ever sat and watched a mosquito work? Most people, as soon as they start to hear that tinny whine in their ears, bat them away with a desperate flailing hand. But there's something oddly Zen about watching a mosquito hover around flesh like a tiny helicopter, looking to make a solid landing, then sticking its proboscis beneath the skin as its abdomen slowly reddens. Then, with a soft upward jerk of its head, it removes its proboscis and skirts away.

Of course, I'm watching this mosquito on someone else. They land on me and they're dead ;-)

I've been hiking, so maybe that'll explain this post.

Love is, and always was, there

I have reached an age, it seems, of first marriages.

Many will detect a note of cynicism in that comment, to be sure, and I won’t deny that there’s some lurking in there. I’m working on that, though. But much of that statement comes from observation, and much of the motivation to bleed my brain on this topic comes – one might say ironically – from love. Love for the people in my life, and love for the things this world and the greater world that contains it has to offer.

First off, I don’t consider myself religious, although I suppose in some ways we are all religious. Atheists hold religiously to science. Agnostics hold religiously to skepticism and doubt. Buddhism is undoubtedly the closest you can come to describing my own set of beliefs, though I’m hesitant to slap a label on anything because that only sponsors what I view as an illusion of separateness.

It’s this illusion of separateness that appears responsible for so many folks my age (and most folks in general) suffering from a seeming loss of identity and an acute loneliness that has them fretting over age milestones and spending their time, energy and money on a discomforting dating odyssey, the discomfort of which has probably magnified in these days of online dating. Many of them receive the impression early on that happiness and success can only be achieved through a lucrative career, a marriage and a family, and so that notion hardens in them and becomes a fixed reality that must be realized as soon as the world gives them the 18-and-over permission slip.

A happy bum is more successful than a depressed CEO.

I see a lot of people sacrificing themselves for the sake of self-image, losing themselves at the same time they’re trying to validate themselves. But how can you ‘validate’ something that’s been banished to a shadowy corner? Too often people lose themselves in relationships, altering and mangling their behavior, and they end up drowning and splashing in dark, unfamiliar waters, seldom recognizing the exhausted, embittered person that eventually washes up on the shore.

We can all choose to have loving relationships, with anyone and everyone, anything and everything. Just choose to. The universe is actually loving in and of itself: it wants whatever we want, whether that’s violence or peace. It is the Cosmic Giving Tree, though it doesn’t actually lose anything. How can it? It’s everything.

The idea that the Universe is experiencing itself is not a New Age postulation, but an obvious fact. The cosmos is intelligent – after all, we’re intelligent, right? [Though maybe that’s debatable :-) ]. Labels do not exist. We are one body, seeing itself, knowing itself. The Universe craves experience (don’t we? We want Life!), and thus wants the highest experience of itself, which is the loving, sharing, giving peace that it is. But this peace can’t be known without having been drawn from what it is not – namely, the raw atavistic nature of, well, nature. We are the Universe seeing, breathing, thinking, and evolving, evolving towards the highest experience of union.

Now, many might think that marriage is the highest experience of union. It is for some people, and may be for you, but I personally believe there’s a greater union to strive for and that’s an experience of love and compassion for, once again, anyone and everyone, anything and everything. To not hold one person above the other, to not say “this person is better than that person”, or even to say “I love this person the most,” but to recognize the value of everyone, to bless ‘em all, dammit. Contrary to what religion might have people believe, I highly doubt God (or whatever you want to call Her/It/Him), plays favorites.

Sitting or walking alone, especially in places of natural splendor, I have experienced what I like to call “spiritual” (or emotional) orgasms, poignant tidal rushes of joy for pretty much everything around me, from the glittering constellations to the gum on my shoe. I am not with anyone, and though the experience would also be wonderful with another person, I don't need them, because I'm not alone. I am the stuff of everything. As are you. And you are the stuff of me. And mosquitoes. And tapeworms. And politicians.

Naturally, these joyous feelings don’t stick around at this magnitude, but for some who practice a lifetime and dedicate themselves, they do. There’s a great true story about a Buddhist monk who, when asked how he could go without sex for 30 years, replied, “When you feel like you’re coming all the time, it’s not something you really think about.”

For too many people, especially my age, marriage is a result of fear. Fear of solitude, fear of ‘dying alone’, fear of judgment from outside pressures, etc. Too often the decision to get married comes from a counterfeit call for the highest experience, from an ingrained need to follow an expected societal custom, to following the guidance of the hormonal narcotic running through the brain in streams of dopamine.

You are not separate. You are not alone. You are loved. You are love. And I believe that, in its purest form, love requires no expectations, propositions or deals. It is simply an endlessly giving and forgiving peace. I’m not as close as I’d like to be in realizing all of the above for myself, but every minute is another opportunity to evolve towards achieving it.