I Used to Be Smart.

Rising oil costs might not be so bad.

Here’s what I mean: if high gas prices localize Americans, then there is virtue in expensive oil.

I believe that localization is a good thing. It is how people were meant to be: connected. Connected to each other, to their communities, to the land on which those communities were built. Connected to their food, the cost of growing that food, the land on which the food was grown.

Cheap oil, largely, has shattered these connections. Cheap oil has allowed us to live miles from where we work. Cheap oil has allowed to us to shop in neighboring towns. It has allowed us to send our kids to school miles from their homes. Cheap oil brings us tomatoes from Mexico in the dead of winter, and apples from New Zealand when American ones will not do. All of this has fractured us.

It’s not cheap oil’s fault. Cheap oil just happened to be around to fuel all of human vices. So, it’s not the oil, or even the oil barons that I blame. It is the basest of human natures. Our desire for the bottom line, our failure to see past the veneers of slick marketing. Our unquenchable need to compete with those around us for bigger and better.

If high oil prices can scale this back, who am I to complain?

If high oil prices mean that it is cheaper to eat the tomato from my back yard than to eat the one “drenched in diesel fuel” (Michael Pollan) from Mexico, then I cannot complain. If high oil prices mean that neighborhood stores close to our homes outpace the big boxes on the fringes of our towns? Then order more fives and sixes for gas station signs. If the price of crude necessitates higher bike sales, a new pair of walking shoes, and re-imagined urban planning, then I’ll pay through the nose. If Exxon-Mobil’s record profits mean that I must become creative in my choices—choices about food, work, shopping, schooling—then keep those stock quotes high. If the life of the futures market means that I must think about what I do instead of taking for granted the ability of my car (and its wake carbon gasses) to take me anywhere I need to go on a moment’s notice for a marginal sum of money, then may some trader get even richer. If expensive oil is what it takes to make us whole again, perhaps we should all be breathing a sigh of relief, rather than plunging drills into our oceans to find a reason for a rollback.

When we live in an unsustainable way, on the foundation of an unsustainable resource, then there will eventually be a correction in our lifestyle. There will inevitably be a difficult time of transition when we are forced to rethink how we do life, because our fundamental assumptions about access and transportation are being questioned. That seems like it’s not so bad.

I didn’t do much last Friday.

I woke up later than I should have.

I cooked breakfast—eggs, toast. Like usual.

I fried some potatoes for lunch. They were quite good.

I read for several hours, and then I went to work.

And it was good. Quite good. I didn’t do much. I didn’t worry about much. I kept peace with the things around me, and I came home tired with full pockets.

Can anyone ask for anything more?

i saw a zombie in the park yesterday.
he lilted along, early in the morning dragging
one foot behind the other, leaving tracks
in the dewy grass, no doubt looking for
some commuter to make his breakfast.
and i saw a zombie shuffling up the street
arms spread wide, shoulders at odd, varying heights
galloping toward some straggler
who will substitute for
cold cereal and stale muffins.

and i remember what it was like that night
when i spun you around to a song i had heard
too many times to even notice that it was playing
and i remember how wevpulled against each
other so that if either of us let go we would
have fallen to a heap on the floor.
and i remembered as we made our circle on
that floor that everything dissolved behind us
and everything was a blur but the smiles
that we couldn’t possibly wipe from our faces.

i should be in bed, but i feel like writing something. so here i go.

i know that’s 2008, and i know that there’s a lot of water under the bridge, but there are certain things that have happened in america that still deserve thought and reflection. seven years later, it’s stuff that we’re still dealing with. they’re events that have shaped the national discourse, and events that are shaping the presidential election.

i’m thinking, i guess, about 9-11, but i feel like i’m thinking about more than that. i feel like i’m reaching further back, and going further forward.

i’ve been, for the last few days, thinking about what i call “american culpability.” that is, how “at fault” is america in the world? our national discourse does not allow this kind of questioning. to ask these sorts of questions still ends up with labels like “unamerican” or “america hating” or “freedom hating” or even more divisive charges of “siding with the terrorists.” thankfully, i’m not part of the national discourse, and i don’t have to speak on those terms.

i heard the question the other day, “what should we have done? if we shouldn’t have gone to afghanistan, what should we have done?” i heard someone answer, “nothing.” i disagree. we should have taken a long look. we should have dropped the pretense of our ridiculous national pride, and asked “why?” in a genuine way. somehow, the terms got all confused. those who controlled the discourse starting talking about “why they hate our freedom” and “why they want to destroy our way of life.” we weren’t allowed to ask what we had done to cause them to “hate our freedom.” we should have, i believe, taken the world seriously. rather than this ridiculous brand of “homeland security” based on fear and paranoia and marginally justifiable wars, we should have engaged in a brand of homeland security that relied on self-sufficiency, that allowed us to remove ourselves from all of the entanglements that breed resentment in so many parts of the world.

our immediate response was to look for heroes and enemies. we needed cowboys and we needed indians. someone needed to shoot the guns, and someone needed to die. rather than engage the radical muslim world as savages who needed to be subdued, our response should have been to engage them as people, and to attempt to understand all of the ways that we had infringed upon their values.

those who control the discourse would have us believe that is impossible. that those people will not stop until the bodies are stacked high the streets of american cities—while we stack the bodies in their cities. when we conduct ourselves without empathy, those who oppose us will respond with the same lack of empathy. too many people would have us believe that is naive.

there must be a solution for american short-sightedness. we must begin to evaluate things based on what they will do to the people of the world, and not simply how they will benefit us. we cannot constantly plunder foreign lands and cultures in order to maintain a lifestyle that is utterly unmaintainable. we must engage in significant reflection on who we are, and how we are treating people in the world.

there must be an alternative to our current brand of existence in the world. we must live in way that it is a defiant superpower that assumes that it can meet any challenge with its might. history has taught us what happens to such arrogance. we simply cannot afford to be so short sighted.

there simply must be another way…

Yesterday, quite by accident, I discovered a Thomas Merton book that I forgot that I ever bought it.

It’s not really a big deal, it’s just a little paperback that has some of his drawings and some prayers from his journals. It’s probably not of interest to anyone but a nerd like me.

But that’s not so much the point.

The point it is, I opened it and read a bit. What I found was something that I have forgotten to have existed.

The faith I found Merton engaging was something more genuine than I’ve been seeing.

I’ve been mistrusting of faith lately. I’m afraid of engaging anyone’s ideas, because they all feel like a trap. It feels like they’re luring in me, telling me that if I accept this set of propositions, then I must become as they think I should be. It feels like a trap for them to tell me that I should stop drinking beer, find a nice girlfriend, and start voting Republican.

When I read Merton, I didn’t see any of that stuff. Merton’s faith, it looks like to me, it willing to let people be people on their own terms. His faith isn’t forcing people into some arbitrary mold of what people should be.

There is room in Merton’s faith for the other, it seems.

That’s a big deal.

with my mind filled with everyone else’s thoughts, i try to find a space that is my own.
most days i’m not even sure why.
when i try to be quiet and find what lies beneath a surface constantly plugged into headphones and televisions, i find that there is not much there.
i consume much, but i exist as very little.
i think very little.
i am affected by very little.
i chew over very little.
instead i devour it. i gnash at it and swallow it and rid myself of its presence.
and after the gnashing of teeth i do not think of it again.
i continue as i always have.
i go as i am pushed.
i follow as i am led.
i take in everything and am transformed by nothing.
i wondered if i have peddled away the most important parts of me for things that collect dust on shelves.
i wonder if i am that man who forfeited what he truly was to get a little piece of what could never do him any good anyway.

is it different now? now that i’m older?
at this place where i’ve got the problem of knowledge without the wisdom of age?
where cynicism has misplaced youthful ideas but is not yet tempered significant reflection?

it feels some days like those people who had it so much worse might just have had it so much better.
they may have died at 45 and only bathed on holidays, but they were freer.
they could retreat beyond this cacophony that is constant connection.
they had no cellular cords to cut.
they did no battle with the constant din of targeted marketing.
the work of their hands was the sustenance of their life.
and it was hard, but i wonder if it was not good.

is it any consequence that all that is billed as the stuff that will make our lives better
is the stuff that makes piles and piles and dollars?
and the stuff that has no place in the “free” market is the stuff that generates no revenue for anyone?
is that just coincidence?
am i just a madman? Ranting about conspiracies to capitalize on the human search for happiness and belonging? is that who i am?
am i crazy to question the assumptions of this thing we’ve built? crazy to wonder if progress is good? crazy to wonder if the american dream only exists in the minds of the people who are selling it? crazy to imagine how life would be if we did it differently?
am i crazy to wonder what life is like in a sphere where i can question the fundamental assumptions?
crazy to think that questioning power is less my right and more my duty?
am i crazy to re-imagine life and wealth and power?
am i crazy to question the cult of marriage and its millions of dollars?
am i crazy to question the cult of children and its million dollars?
am i crazy to laugh at all of these notions of success that shackle us to things that we never wanted anyway for the sake of a life that cannot make us happy?

who knows. maybe i am.

Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and getting all tangled up in my sheets, and I started, as I usually do, thinking.

For no particular reason (or maybe for a very particular reason, who can ever tell?) I started thinking about all this religion stuff that has been rolling around inside my brain lately, but has yet to find a home in anything very concrete, and, in that weird state between puzzling something out and wishing like hell I would fall asleep, I assigned myself with the thought experiment of creating a church. Normally, the things I think in that space just before sleep really are ephemeral, and they disappear. Something about this stuck.

I started with a desire to peel away all pretense. I thought that was essential. Any church I was going to start would be, from the beginning, completely devoid of grandstanding and production value. Those things are entertaining, but I have trouble finding them authentic. That, I thought, would no doubt be the mood of things.

So in that mood of utter lack of pretense, what sorts of things would we be about? Why would we even be undertaking the project in the first place? I came up with (something like) this: we would acknowledge that we are utterly broken people living in an utterly broken world attempting to join with God in his work of fixing that world as revealed in the person of Jesus.

That seemed to say it all. It puts the focus where it should be: on the person of Jesus. It allows to move away from and past all of the truly disgusting baggage of Christianity and focus on an authentic telling of the story of who Jesus was, and how that story should effect our lives. From the start it acknowledges our former and perpetual brokenness, and places that brokenness in the context of a world that is also broken. It looks to be something that can serve as a foundation for a new kind life spent imitating the revelation of God in Jesus, while being cultivated in such a way that it takes a step back from all of the baggage of Christianity that alienates people from the message of Jesus.

We would have to acknowledge that our recovery from this brokenness is a slow process. While some people (even people in the Bible) may have experienced miraculous, instant conversions, we will probably not. We will acknowledge that our transformation happens so slowly, and it such odd, stumbling increments that we may not even recognize that it is happening at all, but our situation in a community of like-minded individuals will ensure that, even when we cannot see how we are changing, the people around us are constantly helping us to become something more like Jesus.

Such a view of transformation will ensure that we value our honesty. It will ensure that this slow process of transformation is not something that be envied, and that those who struggle with even the most elementary principles of the conversion will absolutely not be alienated because they struggle and freely admit those struggles. We will freely admit that we are small-minded, mean, vindictive. We will be honest about our drunkenness, our laziness, our pride. We will stare down the strange animals of our sexuality, admit that part of being exists, and be committed to the work of transforming that essential part of our humanity.

We will be people who acknowledge that we are full of mixed emotions and desires. We will not treat belief as some sacred cow, but we will readily acknowledge that some days we just don’t really think that any of this is true. We will not pretend that we have some fierce love for a God that is impossible to understand. We will admit the ready impossibility of having a relationship with something that is ineffable, and readily embrace all of the difficulties that entails. We will admit that, most days, we stare out into the distance to find the “something more” that we have always been told exist, and that we see only blackness. We will admit that we search our hearts to find some stirring of a fire that we have been told should be there, but instead, we feel only blackness. We will search our minds to find the things that should exist and infallible proof that some being exists, and we will find only more questions. We will not be afraid of using the hard words or facing the hard emotions. We will back down from no intellectual or experiential challenge about faith, especially when those words, challenges, and emotions exist in our own hearts. Yet, we will be utterly committed to the transformative work that we set out to participate in from the start.

In that way, we will be free. We will be free from others’ expectations of our faith, and we will be free from our own expectations of our faith, allowing ourselves to be transformed by our willingness to release all of the things that we take for granted.

Dare we? Even in the place between wake and sleep when the rules of reality have less constraints over our minds, dare we imagine such a thing? Dare we re-imagine the things that become the formative narratives for our lives? Dare we be bold enough to commit to such an incredibly messy project? Dare we commit to each other and throw our lives together in a way that acknowledges that we’re better to go down together, since we’re certainly going down apart? Dare we be bold enough to offer the realities of our very dearest selves to people that we know we can trust with our very lives?

I don’t know.

Dare we?

There is a part in Wuthering Heights where Catherine Linton is preparing to tell a story to Nelly Dean. As she begins the story, she warns Nelly that she must “take care not to smile at any part of it.”

I read Anne Sexton’s Transformations yesterday. As great as Kurt Vonnegut’s introduction to the story was, I couldn’t help but think that if I was an editor, I would only preface Transformations with a single sentence — Catherine Linton’s admonition from Wuthering Heights.

It’s been years since I’ve read any substantial amount of poetry that was written by Shel Silverstein (who doesn’t love hearing about Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out?), so when I had to read Sexton for class, I can’t say that I was overjoyed.

What I found when I got inside Sexton’s work was something I had not expected. Upon learning that I was reading a reimagined collection of the Grimm borthers’ Fairy Tales, I was simply curious. When I saw what Sexton had done with those Fairy Tales, I was floored.

There is a very real way in which Fairy Tales are the formative narratives for our childhood. While perhaps not Grimm’s alone, there are any number of morality tales that are used to shape our values and consciousness, to a degree that the stories are told and retold, imagined and reimagined. They have such a high rate of cultural absorption that finding people who cannot recite these tales from memory alone is a difficult task.

What is unique about Sexton is that she takes these formative narratives, and really does transform them. From the formative narratives of innocent childhood, they become the formative narratives of a messy adulthood. Like any successful artist, Sexton’s poems leave her readers staring themselves right in the face. Whether she’s reimagining “Snow White” as a tale of what happens when an institutionalized pursuit of an unattainable standard of beauty drives people to madness, or transforming the tale of the twelve dancing princesses into a story of innocence stolen, Sexton has an uncanny ability to be true.

As stunning and important as all of that was, what I will keep from this book is something completely different. What it seems like Sexton is really engaging is the reality of being weird. It is abundantly clear that Sexton has realized that there are certain people who exist outside of the realms of cultural norms. For whatever reasons they will not (or cannot) buy into the established cultural assumptions. This seems to be the case for nearly all of Sexton’s characters, and she seems to be intensely concerned with what happens with these characters attempt to exist in a framework whose conventions and assumptions they won’t accept.

On my first reading, I felt like that was where the real power of Sexton’s work was, in the way that she was able to explore those places. In lots of ways, Sexton uses Transformation to name what is unnamable, to explore the places of human experiences that are either too painful, too unacceptable, or simply too outside of convention to name with anything other than the language she uses. She faces what is unsayable, and finds a way to name it. It’s rarely attractive, often awkward, and sometimes terrifying, but it is utterly true, and beautiful, and valuable.

And I dared not smile at any part of it.

I have to start with a warning.

This post involves something written by a Bronte. If you’re anything like me, the mere thought of that makes your eyes glaze over. I understand. Just give Emily and I chance here.

If you’ve ever read Wuthering Heights, then you know that one its biggest themes is the treatment of the other. The novel’s (arguably) antagonist, Heathcliff, is Bronte’s other.

A reasonable argument can be made that the novel’s conflicts all happen because of Heathcliff’s otherness, and how other characters react to that state of otherness.

(Okay, so far I’m writing a lit essay, hang with me.)

Because I’m weird, this idea of Heathcliff’s otherness has been knocking around in my head all day — specifically, the descriptions of Heathcliff, and why his otherness was so unnerving to the characters in Wuthering Heights.

I don’t want to give away exactly where I’m going — but while I describe Heathcliff, think about the current American political scene.

The first description of Heathcliff is physical. He’s of dark skin, and of indeterminate, but presumably gypsy origin. He speaks a different language than the family that adopts him. From the beginning, Heathcliff is undoubtedly the other.

This utterly unnerves everyone around him. He suffers constant abuse for no reason besides his status as the other. He never relinquishes that status. He remains so much the other that even at his death, the question of his indeterminable origins haunt the people that knew him, leading them to view him as something demonic.

Pondering all of this in class today, I wondered if this was something we had moved on from — and I was immediately struck that it is not. I found myself becoming….outraged at all of the ways everyone else still treats the other, and how we, as a culture, STILL have a complete inability to deal with anyone that is different than us. We NEED to construct our realities in certain ways, and when things threaten those realities, we are still unable to deal with them.

As I continued to think of this dark character of indeterminable origins, a thought immediately struck me. We’re dealing with the exact same issue right now. A dark man with murky origins is running for the nomination of his party for the office of President — and we are utterly unable to deal with his otherness. We mask it all kinds of ways — we blame his associations with other controversial figures, point to a voting record, or the tiniest of rhetorical inconsistencies. However, most of us are utterly incapable of dealing with Obama’s status as other. He exists outside of the worldview that we have necessarily created for ourselves, and he threatens all of the ways that we have constructed our world. And, 300 years after Wuthering Heights, we are STILL utterly unable to deal with Heathcliff.

I saw the sticker on your truck.

It was dirty, and half torn off, but I’m sure you mean it just the same.

USA: 1
Iraq: 0.

Is that all you think this cost? Our one to their nil? We found some people who were different and defenseless and bombed them into submission, and that’s a win?

Is there no more to the story? Our thousands dead? Their thousands upon thousands dead?

The trillions of dollars that could be used to do good and war diverted into deception and destruction?

Cashing in any good will we had with the world for the sake of some fool’s crusade?

Or is it still just “Mission Accomplished”? Us: 1, Them:0? Good: 1, Evil:0?

Whatever you meant, I sure as hell hope your team won.

I haven’t been to church in months. I can’t say that I miss it. I remind myself that I should go, but it’s mostly out of a sense of duty and nostalgia.

I haven’t thought much about things like God lately, or approached anything that could be considered a “relationship with God.” (Is that ever in the Bible, by the way?)

That’s very odd for me. Those two things have been an incredibly significant part of my life for a lot of years.

So what the hell happened?

I don’t have any problem with the idea of Christianity. In fact, I still find it quite amazing and the absolute best way to live life. Who can have a problem being created by an utterly loving God who is the ruler of the entire universe? Who has an issue with loving the other with the same intensity as one’s own itself? I could go on for days. Looking at Jesus finds little that it objectionable. It finds things that are tough, odd, and downright impossible, but little that one can object to simply on principle.

But yet I am lately finding myself with absolutely no motivation to participate. At all.

That has to be a problem. I don’t think that once can believe in something without believing in community and participating within community. To believe something in solitude is cheap and disingenuous. If faith doesn’t put a person in dialogue with a community, then I think that faith is pretty useless.

But, I have no desire to participate in any of the incarnations of American Christianity that are around me. I could write a novel (and maybe I should) on why I don’t want to participate in those things and don’t find them faithful to the goals of their namesake.

So I don’t participate, and largely grow apathetic. I wish I could believe myself to be strong enough to participate as a dissenting member of a community with the goal of reform — but I know that I will inevitably succumb to the groupthink and conform.

So where in the hell do you even start with something like that?

(I was tempted to give an apology of this…thing I’m writing, but I’ve decided against that. The writing is the only apology I need.)

For no real reason at all, I threw the thing as hard I could. I reached down and found something violent and I just ripped across the parking lot with abandon. It was my only option. And as I watched it sail through the sky I hoped that someone would step in it. I hoped that they would be walking along innocently and that would step right in the middle of it. I hope that he would curse loudly at some damn fool who had thrown his gum down just where anyone could step on it and I hoped that he would always have that blue stain on the bottom of his shoe. I wished every bit of that in spite of you. In spite of me. I wished it all in spite of a deeply encoded sense of propriety that makes me open doors for the people behind and treat people with respect. I wished it in spite of smiling at strangers and washing my hands after I use the bathroom. I wished it in spite of doing all I could to make sure I did things the right way and treated you the way I thought a person should be treated. I wished it in spite of the way I kept everything together for you to see while I couldn’t hard stand to be close to you.

And there it was. There it all was. As that piece of gum arced across the parking lot in the slowest of motions, I said all that I needed to say.

(And if you read this, and you know it’s about you, I only hope you’ll understand.)

I’m not sure that I’ll ever forget the moment. It was one of the two weekends a month I got to see my Dad. We were spending Saturday morning like we usually did — sitting in his living room, in the middle of some mess that would never be passable at home, gorging ourselves on TV and contemplating some Saturday afternoon activity. I couldn’t have possibly been more than ten. The show was one that people of a certain age will remember well. Trendy (in that neon, early ’90’s, way) hosted a game show that pitted groups of kids against each other in various outrageous games for nominal rewards.

One of these games was some sort of giant crossword puzzle. There was, of course, some disgusting twist — the kids had to sift through some disgusting pile of goo in order to retrieve the letters, or something equally as outrageous. The pairing of teams was….unfortunate. One team was white. The was decidedly…not.

I’m sure I noticed. It was quite a contrast, and I’d like to thank that I’ve always been observant, so I must have noticed. However, I’m sure that I didn’t think it was much of a big deal. Though I grew up in Kentucky, I didn’t grow up in one of those towns that had the “one black family.” I’d always had black friends, and while I’m sure I had encountered racism before, it probably didn’t make an impact.

That day was shocking.

The way he said was so straightforward that I’m not sure if I was even initially shocked by it. “The white kids will win. Just watch.”

Although I can’t remember if I was observant, I do know that I was inquisitive.

“Why?”

“The black kids are dumb. They don’t have a chance.”

You can’t quite process that when you’re ten (or nine, or eight, or however old I was). I just remember being filled with this overall sense that he was wrong. Beyond that, I’m not sure. How does a kid react to that? It is, after all, Dad. He knows more than we do and we do it. While deep in my gut I know that he’s wrong. I do. But he’s Dad. Maybe he knows something I don’t.

What I hate is that he was right. I remember it so clearly. The team of white kids destroyed the team of black kids. It wasn’t even a competition. Almost from the start, it was clear who was going to win.

“I told you so.” Smug.

I just watched Easy Rider, and I’ve had this reading of the Declaration of Independence bouncing around in my head for the past week. I don’t have anything coherent to say about either one, so I’m just going to ramble a bit.

————————————————–

So Tom Jefferson said that God made us equal. All of us. Maybe Tom Jefferson didn’t believe that, but that’s what Tom Jefferson said. And Tom Jefferson said then since we’re all created equal, that the being that created us gave us certain rights that we can’t possibly deny. Some of those are the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to find a way to be happy. Tom Jefferson also said that governments have the responsibility of protecting those right, and those governments exists because people agree that it’s okay to be ruled by people much like themselves. Tom Jefferson knew that sometimes, these governments don’t do their job properly. When that happens, those governments have to be replaced. But, Tom Jefferson thought, while we should think long and hard before we replace those governments, we should also be careful not to keep suffering under an unjust government just because that’s the only government we’ve ever known.

Tom Jefferson was on to something.

I could wonder all day about all the things Tom Jefferson said. I could marvel at the courage of all the men who laid their signatures to this document of rebellion. I could lament all of the ways that we’ve gone astray, I could wonder if our government is one of the governments that needs to be replaced.

But Tom Jefferson rarely lets me get that far.

I get stuck when he tells me that all men are created equal. Tom Jefferson, slave owner, tells me that all men are created equal. Who knows what Tom Jefferson meant? I don’t. I’ll never be able to figure out. Tom Jefferson was a man like a me, and men like me are complex creatures, unable to know what we’re thinking from one moment to the next.

I do know that we’ve done a terrible job of treating all men (and women) equally in this country. Not to sound some great moralistic trumpet from high on my horse. We do a terrible job relating to the Other among us. Hospitality has rarely been our strong suit. We’re more prone to fear, and that fear often leads to violence. We (and I MUST include myself) fear the Other and would much rather exclude what is different from us than take time to try and understand something outside the systems that we have set up to order the world.

So we react with violence.

We “remove” Natives. We dictate the level of pigment necessary to enter certain establishments. We assume that alternative lifestyles are necessarily deviant. We fear the Other. The story of American history can nearly be told by the ways in which we have sought to destroy the Other among us. We can define ourselves by all of the ways that we have trespassed our fundamental belief that the Creator created everyone equally.

Red-faced and screaming, we grab tightly to what we know because the Other is just too much. The fear that something different raises in us is so great, so deep, that we cannot imagine the world ordered differently. We react violently to anything that threatens our tenuous grip on how life should be.

We pretend that we’re free, but we’re all chained to our arbitrary concepts of reality and propriety. We’ve all sold our souls for a flimsy piece of pretend stability.

But, talkin’ about freedom and bein’ free? That’s two different things.

(This is probably me venturing into one of those odd recesses of my brain where nobody will be able to follow. That’s okay with me.)

I have lately discovered that there is a way of doing things that prefers complexity, and it is that preference for complexity that usually gets labelled as “weird.”

It started with reading. Something, somewhere, triggered a way of reading that moves “past the plot.” Books are no longer simply about what happen. Instead, they are transformed into vehicles for how the writer communicates what happens. The subterfuge becomes the focus. No longer is the question simply, “what happened?” A tally of who lives and who dies and where the money ended up is horribly insufficient. Instead, reading becomes a sort of game, puzzling out the motivations for stylistic choices, deciphering motivations, charting character dynamics, finding symbols. Perhaps it is because I’m an English major, and my grades depend on these sorts of things.

Perhaps has maturity has given me a preference for the complex. I start to notice it everywhere. Movies, like books, are no longer about the plot. There is a way, I am discovering, of watching past the plot. There is an analysis that goes deeper than simply what happens, who dies, who sleeps with whom, and where the money ends up.

Music, too, changes. While “past the plot” doesn’t hold true for songs, there is a way of listening that moves past simple catchy melodies and ingratiating hooks (while those still have their place). It starts to analyze stylistic choices, to dig into layers and layers of sound to view a song a vast composition. Sometimes it’s finding how the music serves as the vehicle for lyrics, sometimes it’s finding how the lyrics server as a vehicle for the music. Sometimes it’s songs that are beautiful enough to break your heart. Sometimes it’s songs that are so profane that they make you blush with embarrassment. They’re puzzles, with chords that never resolve themselves, frenetic energy that stresses you out, verdant textures that make you forget the passing of time.

It’s even made its way into other, odder, things. I’d rather drink a complex beer. While something simpler might suffice for sheer utility, and taste good. (Like Soulja Boy may be able to write a catchy melody, or Dan Brown an engaging plot.) However, there is something infinitely more interesting and intense in opting for complexity. Whether it’s a big stout that punches your tongue right in its face and then resolves itself with a thousand subtle notes, a pale ale that confronts with a bitterness that’s almost unbearable and then rewards you with the smoothest of undertones, opting for the complex is ultimately more intense and interesting.

However, if preferring complexity is ultimately more intense and interesting, it is also ultimately harder. In everything — in art, in taste, in relationships — it takes effort. It takes patience and desire. Sometimes, it even takes overcoming an initial objection to discover what lies underneath. (Bob Dylan’s voice, hops’ bitterness.) I think that makes it ultimately rewarding. There is a thrill puzzling through something as arcane as Chaucer and finally feeling like you can get to the heart of 14th century, and realizing that it’s not that far from the heart of the 21st century. There is a joy from getting so deeply immersed into the textures of a song that you’re no longer listening to it, but feeling it, with all of its dynamics, textures, and emotions. There is something joyful in enduring a beer so intense that you’re not sure you can handle it, and coming to terms with all of many ways that the incredibly different ingredients have transcended the sum of their parts to become something that you’ll puzzle over for weeks to come.

In a world of Dan Brown, Fergie, and Bud Light, why wouldn’t anyone opt for complexity?

Is it true what they told me the President said? That he needs me to trust him?

Forgive me, Mr. President, if my access to that resources is low.
Forgive, Mr. President, if I’m cynical to your appeal.
Forgive me, Mr. President, if I remember all of the ways that you’ve broken that trust in the past.
Forgive me, Mr. President, if I just can’t comply with your request.

I can’t say whether I was listening to conservative talk radio on purpose, or just in passing. However, there was no missing the intent of the loud man screaming at me. He was billed as the only man in America who “gets it,” and he was screaming from my speakers: “IF ONE AMERICAN, ONE AMERICAN CAN BE SAVED BY WATERBOARDING, WOULD YOU OPPOSE IT?!?!?!”

I know that he thought his question was rhetorical, and I know that he thought he had phrased his question in such a way as to make dissent impossible, and I know that he was just a disembodied voice traveling over radio frequency to my speakers as part of a diatribe, I had to answer him.

Yes.

If waterboarding — if any torture could save even a single American, I would still be opposed to it. Even if he could have objectively proved to me that waterboarding had saved some specific American life, I would still oppose it.

Why?

There’s an artist I like. I’m sure I’ve never professed my love for his music before, so this will come as a total shock, but Bruce Springsteen can condense it far better than than I can.

That you know flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

If anything is true about this country in which we live — if I’m going to choose not to be cynical, and to believe that this country is founded on principles and those principles are indispensable for how we do life in this country — then I have to agree with The Boss. There are certain things that must define us as Americans, that will tell us who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t do.

I have to believe that torturing people, even if it means that something good comes out of it, is one of those things that we will be utterly committed to not doing.

It’s a funny thing, being an American. Very few of us chose to be born here. However, we’ve all become a part of this great experiment of (as Lincoln would say), “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” So how are we to conduct ourselves? How are those, ESPECIALLY those in executive positions sworn to uphold the Constitution supposed to act?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas Jefferson was on to something.

Before I idolize Jefferson and the Founders, I’m aware of the problems. I am aware of Jefferson’s slave holding story. I am aware of the ways in which “all men”, the Founders, meant “all land-owning white men.” However, I also don’t doubt that we have transcended their inadequacies, and truly transformed the heart of our country into the proposition that every single person is created equal, and that they have all been endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

While our forefathers may have been small minded, can we afford to follow in those footsteps? If we have expanded the definition of “all men” to include all American citizens, can we do them one better?

Can we really believe that all people, everywhere, regardless of nationality, are created equal, and can we treat those people as if they were created equal? If we do that, we will not abide things like tortue.

It seems to be our duty to believe this. The great many of us did not choose to be Americans. We were lucky enough to have been born here. To reimagine that luck as hubris would be utterly disastrous. We are not privileged, we are lucky. We must treat this experiment that is America with great delicacy, because it is still unprecedented. We must not fail in carrying on the experiment.

And if we carry on America in name only, and turn it into something those who have gone before us would not recognize, then we have failed those who have created what we seek to protect.

Perhaps I’m making no sense, but I believe that we must have principles. We must adhere to those principles, regardless of consequence. If we must violate those principles to preserve America, than we have preserved it in name only, and our victory has been hollow.

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

They stood on the corner with their signs. Poster board and permanent marker. They had gone to no particular effort to make their statement. However, what they were after couldn’t be missed. They proclaimed in capitals, “IMPEACH CHENEY.” They seemed happy enough, standing in the rain, hoods pulled tightly around their faces, proclaiming their gospel on a busy corner.

I can’t say that I understood the point. They were in no center of power — not Washington, DC, not New York, not even Los Angeles. They were on a corner in Lexington, Kentucky, begging us to indict a politician who lives and works thousands of miles away. I wondered what they hoped to accomplish. Did they believe that they would ignite a grassroots campaign that would result in the impeachment of a vice president? Did they believe that they would somehow bolster the courage of the faithful and that their solidarity would cause them to rise up and seize the reins of power from the current administration? Did they hope to change the hearts and minds of all of those in the state who had, without doubt, voted in support of the current executive?

I can’t say that I ever figured it out. I would’ve like to stop my car and ask them, but it was raining, and I am terribly lazy. Instead, I did something that I don’t do nearly enough — I started to think. (I hate to use the name “Wendell Berry” like some sort of sledgehammer, but all of this is directly influenced by him, and I would feel terrible if I didn’t give the man credit.) I started to wonder about the notion of place, and I thought about displaced these hooded protesters must have been. They believed that the source of their problems was in Washington, and that in Lexington, they could somehow have an impact on what was happening in Washington, and they could have that effect simply by screaming really loudly. Not only were they misplaced, but they were woefully misguided.

Who knows why they were so upset with Dick Cheney? Foreign policy, domestic policy, energy policy, wasteful spending, bad aim? It could have been anything. Whatever it was, they were convinced, as I often am, that change happens from the top down. Change at the top of pile, they though, must roll downhill, and change has they power to achieve whatever objectives they are seeking.

The problem with such thinking is that it is dependent. While thoughtful citizens might work hard to have their voices hard, achieving their desires is essentially dependent upon someone else’s decisions. No matter what happens, my hooded friends are held at someone else’s behest. The names may change through the years, but the game remains the same.

What we need is to be independent. In our current system, we depend on forces outside of our control for any number of things. The way we consume ensures that we are dependent. If the structures on which we depend break down, we are unable to subsist. We do not gather food on our own. We do not secure shelter, warmth, or water on our own. We do not dispose of our own wastes. We may do one of those things for someone else, but rarely do we do them for ourselves. We have lost the ability to subsist independently.
That inability for independent subsistence has alienated us. It has alienated us from each other. It has alienated from the places from which we have come and the places in which we live. This alienation from places alienates from the consequences of our actions. Because we are placeless people, we are completely unaware of the consequences of our decisions on these places and on the people that inhabit those places.

We are unaware of how our food is produced. (Though, thankfully, that awareness is increasing.) We are unaware what sorts of lives our cheeseburgers lead before we devour them. We are unaware what it looks like to make that cheeseburger become our ninety-nine cent dinner. We have no idea how a cow smells, what it takes to make a cow fat enough to eat, what the cows do to the land on which they live. Our dependency has made us ignorant. This is true of any number of issues. We are completely alienated from the processes and the impact of our consumption. (Sidenote: this is why I love “Dirty Jobs.” Whether it’s the goal or not, it often brings to light some of the things of which we’re completely unaware.)

The solution is to arrive at some sort of independence. That does not mean that everyone should be a subsistence farmer. (It does mean that more people should be subsistence farmers) It means that those who are not subsistence farmers should be acutely aware of their place, and how they affect that place. They should be aware that local farms are good. They should know that subsistence farms are essential because they ensure the future of the land. A subsistence farmer is dependent upon his or her land, and he must maintain the good health of that land to live and thrive. That is, without a doubt, a good thing.

We must become independent of national and global systems and become parts of local systems, able to subsist by work and cooperation inside of the communities where we live. Only by such a connection to a specific places will properly care for the place.

There is no doubt that places need to be cared for. The way that we consumed absolutely cannot be sustained by the world around us. If we will not change the patterns of consumption voluntarily, we will be forced to changed them by crisis. By the time that crisis occurs, our situation may be too dire for our own salvation.

The question of how to become more connected to a place is as broad as are its answers. Some are simple enough — consume less, and consume locally. Buy used things from local people. Work close to where you live. Those are all helpful solutions. However, on their own, they will fail. The only way to become more connected to a place is to become genuinely invested in that place. The analogy of investment may be entirely too weak. Wendell Berry uses marriage as more appropriate metaphor. For Berry, it works well. He has an understanding of marriage (rooted in his own marriage) that allows the metaphor to work. The metaphor of marriage is one of absolute commitment, the inextricable tying of one’s future to some particular thing, be that person, place, or idea.

That binding is the only way that we can possibly find our proper relation to a place. When our fate is utterly tied to the fate in which we live, we will practice a proper kind of husbandry (to use Mr. Berry’s word). When our fate is tied to the fate of the land, we will treat the land as it should be treated. However, more than land, the marriage will change the way we treat the people around us. We will be aware that all the work we must do cannot be done by ourselves, and that we are tied to the people around us as much as we are tied to the land on which we’re living. It is the most appropriate, tangible living out of Jesus’ command to love our neighbors like our own selves. If we marry ourselves to some place, we will not be able to help it. The future of our self and the future of neighbors will be so tied that we will be unable to understand ourselves apart from the place and the people that we have married ourselves to. The cultivation of those relationships will be essential to our future.

To do this is a decided step away from the way that we are told that life should be done. It is a deliberate step to radically alter our consumption. It is a step to fight the seductive forces of advertising that beguile us and convince us of our unworthiness to ensure that the patterns of our consumption continues. It is a step that will subject itself to ridicule. It is difficult. It seems to be without reward. It is the slow work rather than the quick solution. It is radically countercultural. It requires imagination to even know where to begin. It requires creativity to live inside a system and counter its goals, aims, and methods. It requires the support from the community in which we have chosen to invest ourselves. It is an ongoing conversation that we have only just begun.

Question of the day:

If there is a real, systemic problem with the way we do life in American consumer-culture, what does life outside that culture look like?

I’m not sure what to think of him.

I can’t decide if he’s a villain from some sci-fi B-movie or if he’s some sort of Wes Andersen manchild.

To be honest, words fail at an accurate description. A picture might get the job done, but mostly, I think you’d just have to see him.

He’s always dressed all in black. It’s a rule. The last time I saw him, it was quite an ensemble. A suit coat over a black turtleneck that was tucked into black jeans, which tapered down and tucked in to the shiniest black cowboy boots. He had some sort of back slung across his back like a bandolier. Perhaps it’s a bag filled with evil devices with which he plots world domination. Perhaps it’s a more discreetly stowed fanny pack. I never see him without his portable cd player on his hip. The silver headphones, bulky and over his entire ears are the only thing he wears that aren’t black. To describe his glasses as “coke bottle” would not be an inaccurate cliche.

(I don’t know. Just wanted to attempt a description.)