taffy-stuck and tongue-tied

I am trying my hardest to scrawl out lyrics that I like, things I could sing, things I could believe, things I wouldn't be embarrassed to say in front of anyone, and everything I write doesn't feel so far from all my stupid teenage poetry that probably would have sent me for counseling if anyone had seen it back in the day. I never liked the lyrics from previous bandmates' projects, which were mostly breakup songs and overly dramatic in a way that I just didn't get. I'm starting to wonder now if mine are all that much better and that's humbling.

What does come pouring out of my pen is heavy-handed and rambly, like the creative bastard child of Patti Smith and Bono, both of whom somehow make it work, though this is just too  accidentally pretentious. 

I don't know why this is such a struggle, because I know I'm not a total failure at writing, but something about the sharing process, the creative process, makes me choke. I took a creative writing class a couple years ago in an attempt to get writing and dropped out halfway through. I just couldn't come up with anything when I needed to that I felt confident enough about.

I know I am my own worst critic. I know he'll say that anything I do is fine because he's too shy to share his scribblings. I don't know why this is because I've blogged for 10 years and even have a piece that's been published, so what the heck? What's wrong with me? I used to wonder why it took so long for bands to put out records, or also how some come up with them in 6 months. It's taken us 6 months to even come up with a bunch of skeletal little parts that need to be worked into songs. I feel like I have all these embryos and no children.

blood and roots

A late afternoon dentist appointment led to the discovery of a nice little fistula beneath one of yours truly's molars, which meant that yesterday morning was spent in the dentist chair rather than the office chair and there's a dull little throb there now. I guess it could be worse if it continued.

It hovered between rain and sun this weekend, and I hung out with the neighbors, slacked by the lake with my parents, and ended up at a baseball game where I watched the Indians lose of course. On the way back from the islands to Fair Clevelandia, the sky was that amazing combination of dark clouds and intense sunlight and at one point I was driving beneath this rainbow that started at the highway median and arched over into the farmland on the other side. It was so beautiful and I wish I could have stopped and snapped a shot to even try to express it but it's hard to do that kind of thing when there's no place to pull over.

As the swelling and the numbness went down, I ended up in the garden most of the day, rearranging and putting in everything that I hadn't gotten to before, with an in-law of one of my neighbors, who expounded on theories involving religion, homeopathic medicine, and the current state of affairs as a giant C-O-Nspiracy ala Dave Mustaine and Alex Jones, and while I can agree to some extent that things are really messed up in this world, I found myself inevitably punching holes in said narratives about conflict between people (because I believe that the Irish would still be mad at the English and that Shia & Sunni would still be going at it whether or not the CIA existed),  because while our meddling doesn't help, people seem to do a good job finding reasons to go to war with each other on their own.

I don't think the CIA or whoever is behind everything, or that they're poisoning the water/vaccinating us to self-destruct early/whatever. I'm sure that the building I work in and the computer I sit in front of and the cell phone I own aren't doing wonders for my health, but I don't know what the point is in living forever as it is.  It's not that what's going on isn't important, it's just that there's battles I don't see the need to fight and I figure that if the state wants you gone, it's pretty evident that the constitution these folks value so highly isn't going to be one's salvation or protection.

In theory we have similar religious leanings, but I wonder where the trust in God is when it's all about ME AGAINST THE MAN or how one heals oneself or flipping out so much about the guvvermint. I remember my dad saying something similar when some of his friends were going into survivalist mode for the inevitable Clintonian Martial Law Y2K Takeover and would argue about paying taxes and such, that last time he checked, first-century Rome was some lousy overlords and that the religious folk were generally law-abiding citizens paying taxes to an imperialist state that wasn't averse to setting them on fire or throwing them to beasts, and that they didn't run off to the woods with a bunch of weapons waiting for the end to come and for everyone to get theirs. So I listen, and occasionally interject, and the theories grow increasingly more bizarre, but it is what it is, and she is generous with her plants and who am I to judge.

So we get the garden plots done, I've got kale and tomatoes, eggplants and peppers and herbs, hills of squash and rows of beans waiting to germinate, a bucket full of Jerusalem artichokes by my back porch and flowers that will go somewhere, plants that I'm sharing with other enthusiasts for digging in the earth and growing things. 

And I wish I was out there instead of here, because there's something so life affirming about it, nurturing is so addictive. I have so many other things on my mind that social interactions get awkward because I'm less concerned about saving an old building on the other side of town, or the politics of fiefdomery, isn't life more than, food, isn't the body more than clothes? Especially when there's drones laying waste to other lands and people getting shot by cops and kids can't read. I don't know, I don't know what I'm trying to say here.

springbroken

The Kids are reprieved from their studies this week, Randal is a-darkthroning through Parmastan, and yours truly is continuing on the daily grind with the usual inherent after-work straungeness and such. I'm finding this whole daylight savings time a bit of an adjustment, though I like that extra hour for my wanderings, and it's never made me as ragey as others.

Still, the caffeine consumption has continued to rise, there's snow blowing outside, I'm digging through piles of 1980's local newspapers full of strange ads and figures from a different time... Rick James, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Tawana Brawley, World B. Free, a Cavs team with Mark Price and Brad Daugherty, vaguely remembered names and faces from my toddlerhood, now-disgraced Clevelandia politicians.

But last night, my neighbor and another college radio DJ was in the mood for a mini roadtrip and some live tuneage and so we ended up driving out to Oberlin to see Cult of Youth, pondering punk rock and politics on the drive there and finding it supremely ironic that a neofolk band was booked by the college to play in their student union within a week of certain, well, incidents. 


Oberlin's got a fascinating history and aesthetically it's a beautiful little college town. One of my friends from high school got married underneath the arch commemorating martyrs from the Boxer Rebellion, the village green is beautiful, the architecture lovely, the free art museum is quality. On the other hand, it sometimes feels a bit like a Portlandia episode in its overcompensating earnestness and general rich hippieness that reminds me of the targets of Camper Van Beethoven songs.

I learned from my previous roommate and her brother that black residents on the outskirts refer to the college itself as "the plantation," and the school itself has a secret list of people who aren't welcome, which makes me wonder if things aren't quite so kum-bay-yah to begin with. So while I think racism and other -isms are as bad as the next person who has any empathy, I find things like this a bit over-the-top, given the overanalyticalness and the presence of uber-helicopter parents. Most of us can point to something in our background that marginalizes us but sometimes this seems like firstworldposturing more than anything else. Those of us who live in craptastic neighborhoods and don't have rich parents and aren't hermetically sealed deal with these issues way more.

Part of this maybe has to do with working at a very racially and economically diverse place where we  have to peel off National Alliance stickers from the black history books and deal with all sorts of clownery, and some people did get shot here a few years back by some neo-nazi freako who wanted to start a race war.

Still, most of these clowns want attention and making a big stink only gives them what they want and while I appreciate the ideals of The Kids, it's hard for me not to roll my eyes at the usual tropes of 1960s protest with the bongo drums and whatnot. Perhaps we Clevelandians are tougher? Or just not as enlightened? Who knows?


Anyways... neofolk. We've had the new record up at the station, and I've played a few cuts that I liked and didn't find any red-flag moments in the liner notes, and they don't seem to play that up as much as certain other parties, but my compadre told me that there were a lot of shaved heads at their last jaunt through our city and the songs translated to a live setting were definitely more punky, or shoegazing with dubby basslines and some stomp to it that I enjoyed. The girls in front of me seemed a little freaked out, it seemed like more people were there to be there than anything else but what do I know except I was feeling pretty damn old and like I'd walked into an H&M commercial. Still, sometimes it's nice to get out and be somewhere else.

things and people

There is something about being in an unfamiliar place that used to scare the daylights out of me, but now, with some degree of fiat, knowing that I have my car parked out front to take me away if it gets lame, knowing that I'm never stuck, it's made me more bold, and I take more things into consideration, if only for anthropological observing. The National Geographic narrator voice deep within my psyche kicks in as I observe the cultural habits and mating rituals of some tribe or another, be it in exurbia where there's a minivan in every driveway and chinos on ever male over thirty, or a swank condo with a glittering view of downtown where I am profoundly underdressed in the punk rock t-shirt in a sea of party dresses and sweaters, one drink (and one drink only as I designated-drove and I'm all Mary-Mary-Quite-Contrary somehow going on about how the garden grows is important as hell. 

 Don't get me wrong, I've got little patience for the local food cultists, but I do think that we need both the city and the country to exist. Cities where everyone moves tend to be awful and difficult places for the poor and middle-class who become poor by default: see almost any Real City anywhere: Mumbai, Shanghai, Dubai, Rio, London, NYC, DC shall I go on, or places like Paris where the city is a playground for the affluent and the tourists and the immigrants and other folk are stuck in the suburbs isolated from everything.  Hell, even when my burg was really populated, life was great for the Rockefellers and Hannas, but sucked pretty bad for most of the working schlubs crowded into slums and ethnic ghettos, getting poisoned by factory smokestacks and sick when the slaughterhouse reek blew downwind. No wonder people wanted to get the hell out.  THIS IS WHY PEOPLE MOVED TO PARMASTAN FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, this is why the suburbs existed even before white flight.  

I'll probably be a city kid til the day I die, but I understand why people live in the suburbs, or why people live in the country, and that even if we go back to a mythological "way things were" that things won't be any better. Sure, there were streetcars back then that ran all over the city, but my grandpa was picking up coal from the railroad tracks so they could be warm, my grandma came up here to work as a domestic and then quit to work in a factory after the man of the house tried to take advantage of her. This was the way it was, and neither of them ever talked about "the good old days."

 But I read too much, and I'm not very cool, and I'm not voting for Obama and even though I take the bus to work, I love driving my car because it helps me help out other people and gets me from my house to Parmastan to see the folks and shows that I go to by myself, and home from places after dark where the bus doesn't run. I had no social life before then, and it's made life much better now even as I know that this isn't necessarily good. 

And so then Saturday, I handed out candy to kids that came through the doors at church to play games and drink hot chocolate, despite the mayor cancelling the holiday for good, 600 people came through the doors and then back out. Tangerine joined me and we decamped to the Big Egg for late night diner breakfast food, for girl-talk and life-talk and wondering why people create dubstep remixes of "Sweet Child O' Mine," and my sister's life drama hit the fan even more thanks to the Internets, though it seems such slander was redacted, and I was full of thoughts and ponderings and decided to join my old Parmastani homies for foodage and laughter to end the night and restore the equilibrium. Politics was skirted and thankfully not discussed, one more day and all this crazy will be back to the stupid normal.

What I've concluded over the past election cycle is that ultimately we as a society consider things and concepts as more important than human life or even the life of the planet. We might "buy green" but we're still conspicuously consuming, and job creation involves consumption of unnecessaries, and I know I'm complicit due to my love of books and music and art. The blood of women and children in countries that worship Allah are considered a worthy price for the freedom that we're continuing to lose, to keep the money for our student loans flowing, to maintain the cars we drive. We're willing to prop up regimes that stone women for adultery and don't allow them to drive because there's a supposed "War on Women" going on here. I kind of feel sick sometimes if I think about it too much, the lack of love and compassion and seeing outside of one's own sphere and perceived needs and comfort is profoundly disconcerting. I wish I had more love and compassion than I did.

I read some apocalyptic stuff the other night out of Ezekiel where God goes on a big rant about religious people screwing others over, and people using power and usury to take advantage of society's vulnerable, and rulers enriching themselves and their friends at the expense of the people, and those who prey on the women, the children, and the immigrant, and I can't help but think "Oh jeez that's us completely," when I think about mourners being bombed at funerals, and the cruelty shown to those who have darker skin than me who live here and work our crap jobs and speak Spanish or Arabic or whatever. The powers that perpetuate such suffering, and those of us who get enough bones thrown our way to keep them doing what they do best.
 

heartbeating

So some conversations had last night, between laughter and plumbing the serious depths, made me think and ponder, this theme over the past few weeks, upon observing the trickles of partisan insanity, of seeing the more close-to-home troubles in a world that brushes up against my own so frequently but yet that I am not a part of, trying to see beyond the surface, to see the humanity and the hurt beneath such externals, so easy to judge and sometimes justifiably, and then to ponder a God who hung out with the lostest of lost souls that I find it hard to even look in the eye.

There are kids in my world where I've never met the parents, or I know who the parents are and see the fronts of respectability that fail to mask the damage done by hard drugs and hard living. It's hard for me to not get angry when I deal with these adults who don't let their children be children, to see kids who've never learned to read cop an attitude to hide the shame, who don't have crayons at home but the TV's always on, who don't know where their children are and are too busy working a corner or scoring another hit to care.

 I've never walked in another's shoes and should not presume to condemn, this continual re-evaluation of attitudes dredges things I'd rather not see, that pharasaical attitude of I've-got-my-shit-together-why-can't-you instead of let me walk beside you. I can't stand by necessarily, and last night we talked, we grieved, we raged and laughed, and pondered and planned. There's no guarantee that you can help pull someone out, but it's better to try than to turn away. We may not have widows in our world but we have women who are alone, not so much orphans as much as those who might as well be, and fatherlessness at this point is assumed. If this is who God loves, there's no way I can't too.

a case of the Mondays

I didn't want to wake up this morning, wanted to roll over again and again. A few pots of coffee later and I'm rolling my eyes and being more abrupt than usual as it seems that everyone who walked in got hit with the stupid stick a little bit extra, got especially exasperated with the males who just stood there slackjawed and couldn't seem to remember what they came in there for. Almost fell asleep in class, retreated to the Batcave to listen to sludge metal and attempt to drown out the chatter ala valley girl. Some days are better than others I guess.

that's why flags are such ugly things

Taking off yesterday to decompress and think and plant, reading Dorothy Day to get some perspective as to the living out of principles, because I have no use for platitudes, have seen too much to be an idealist, and want to know what the hell I should be doing or how I should be responding to the way that things are going here.


I can see through this expression
And you know I don't believe...

 We have a short historical memory as a country. The same things that are said about people in the Middle East are what was said about the Japanese sixty years ago, and it's often forgotten that FDR signed an executive order to intern thousands of citizens based solely on their race rather than anything else. To this day, there is next to no evidence that any of these people detained who lost almost everything were doing anything wrong or "unpatriotic."

But they hate us. You can't reason with people who blow themselves up for a cause. 

That is what was happening, right?   Kamikaze pilots were the suicide bombers of the 1940s. Kids were raised to die for an ideology if need be. People still justify the nuking of two cities, and no one remembers the devastation of the firebombing of Tokyo. Now things are more or less okay between our two countries, if only because history on both sides has been swept under the proverbial rug.

And we love to wear a badge, a uniform
And we love to fly a flag
But I won't
Let others live in hell
As we divide against each other
And we fight amongst ourselves

And I'm reading about police brutality, about scapegoating of anyone and everyone for the convenience of having a bogeyman, because in every movement, be it animal liberationists, Occupy, pro-lifers, whatever, there will always be unstable violent people that make everyone else look bad.  The faces might change, the movements have different names, but these principles are still the same.

Man's freedom stems from his free will, and he must respect the freedom of other men because they are made to the image and likeness of God and are temples of the Holy Spirit. To build up fear of other men is to build up hatred too. "Perfect love casts out fear." Such a witch hunt as has been set loose in the country today, serves to distract the mind from our own militarization and enslavement, our growing materialism, and to set us in the self righteous position of rooting out the evil in other men, paying no attention to the beam in our own eye. It is always so satisfactory to find a scapegoat on which to heap our sins. During the depression it was the international Jewish bankers. Now it is the communist.

And depending on what side you are, this scapegoat could be someone with an Arabic last name, the crusty punks on the public square, or the evangelical Christian with some weird views on fetuses and how the world came to be that you read about on the Internet and revile because you don't actually know any of these people in real life. 


The teacher is afraid to speak of interracial justice, of peace, of social justice these days, for fear he may be considered subversive. Loyalty oaths are beginning to be required at some state universities before a speaker can give an address to the students. This last month, Fritz Eichenberg, Quaker, who does magnificent illustrations for The Catholic Worker, refused to take the loyalty oath at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he teaches. I suppose that means he loses his job. One must accept voluntary poverty these days to keep his integrity.

I used to roll my eyes at this rhetoric when I was in college, but then I see this fly the flag and show your loyalty to the state business that's been resurrected and it starts to not seem so crazy after all. I stopped saying the pledge long ago, because I don't need to pledge allegiance to anyone's damn flag, because what it stands for goes against everything that I believe, cultural religious trappings be damned. One nation under God? The whole damn universe is, not just us, and not everyone believes in said higher power anyway. Liberty and justice for all? Ya think? And so I live here and obey the laws that don't go against my moral code and do my best to treat others the way I'd like to be treated, treat the land with respect. In theory this should make me a good citizen, but I'm sure that others would dispute this.


The occupied countries became the occupied countries because people were terrorized into saying yes, when they should have said no. Hitler and Stalin, Mussolini and Franco--this is the age of repression and McCarthy, in the guise of fighting Communism, is finding it in any honest criticism of the status quo?

Neither system proposed by the overlords or the economists or the protestors is working. Humans as a rule are broken, and therefore it's inevitable that our systems are too.

Angry words won't stop the fight
Two wrongs won't make it right
A new heart is what I need
Oh God, make it bleed
Is there nothing left?

oh where can the love be found?

It doesn't feel like the weekend is imminent when by a stroke of misguided and convenient comp time altruism, I'm back here tomorrow. Words mean little when the actions are so oblivious and petty, when one wonders why no one confides in you because of your habit of betraying confidence and backstabbing. Any morale we have comes from our fellow peons not the middle management.

The Powers That Be are who they are, and while I try to remember that they too are human and in need of the love of God as much as anyone, it's really hard to have empathy for souls so profoundly calculating and cold. 

In this house of suffering, I'm just as much in need of re-ignition as anyone.