I Apologize in Advance

I don’t think many people hear themselves from outside themselves.

 

I speak of politics. Of course. Sadly, of course. I am a former junkie trying not to relapse. You see, this is the first big election with social media in full bloom. I read a lot of posts. Your posts? Some are fine. Engaging and educating, even. Others …

 

Our voices are so beautiful reverberating inside the chamber of our skulls.

 

I want to comment on a lot of political posts/tweets/whatevers. I don’t do so because what I want more is to avoid avoidable arguments. But, were I a man more comfortable with confrontation, I’d say: Do you realize how snotty you sound? Yes. Snotty is the word here. Dismissive. Obstinately certain of one’s own bearings. Snotty.

 

My voice, in particular, is very rich as it vibrates around the meat of my brain. You should hear it. A gorgeous thing.

 

Just because you (and by you, I don’t mean you) find it immensely easy to choose a candidate—and just because you find it even easier to label the other candidate as grossly unacceptable—doesn’t mean I do (although, I do this particular time, but this isn’t about me … much … yet). What I mean is: you make it sound like anyone who disagrees with you is clearly ignorant and quite possibly malicious in their intent. And this achieves what? A sense of self-righteousness? A flurry of Likes?

 

I always have perfect pitch when the noise remains contained within me.

 

Let me avoid equivocation: neither candidate is an ogre and neither candidate’s election will bring about doom. Real change—and, yes, real hope—exists far outside the office of the presidency. If you are prone to follow politics like people follow sports—if you root for the failure of the “other” side and celebrate the success of “your” side regardless of how those successes came to be—you’re doing exactly what the parties want you to do. They want you to be tribalized. They want your face painted and your shirt stripped off. They want you rejoicing whenever a guy from the other team breaks his leg and booing loudly whenever the guy from the other team does well. This is the way they make sure they can always count not only your vote, but on your willingness to repeat their talking points and cheer them on publically, year after year. This is the way they ensure they never have to do much other than make sure you still dislike the other guys.

 

Yes, my voice is a powerful thing when I hear it, alone. Damn, it sounds righteous.

 

I’m blue with this argument. I’ve made it for so long I wonder if I’m just a contrarian at this point. A friend recently called me hyper-sensitive to partisanship. I am. It’s true. I don’t like what it does to otherwise brilliant, loving people. I don’t like that when I sit at a bar and talk to you, you’re completely reasonable about every issue. But then you go post things online that are full of partisan talking points. And are snotty. So snotty that I know anyone of a different opinion is going to dismiss you outright. This isn’t a small thing. We are this nation. We form parties. We elect our government. If we allow a few powerbrokers to direct our emotions and opinions, we, all of us, lose. Dialogue is silenced. Entrenched powers remain entrenched.

 

Oh, I’m singing now. I am Pavarotti inside this skull.

 

I guarantee none of us agrees completely with the other. I support gay marriage and I support the rights of the Second Amendment. I support unions and I’m not a big fan of the healthcare bill. I support the privatization of Social Security (insert a thousand caveats here) and I support the trust-busting of our nation’s largest banks. I think the far left has a disturbing habit of moral equivocation that paints America as far, far worse than it is, and I think the far-right is willfully and dangerously ignorant about economics and science. Anyone agree with me 100%? I’d be very surprised.

 

Boom. Boom. High note. Boom.

 

We should all have principles. But we don’t need parties. What we need is intellectual curiosity. What we need is a willingness to seek out those things that bind us rather than carelessly making statements that do nothing but divide us. Leave the tribalism for sports. This is our government. This is serious shit. Don’t let the parties direct how we, the people, interact with one another. We don’t need them. They need us. And we can tell them both to go to hell if we have the will to do so.

 

And now it’s quiet in hear. Just a ringing. Faint and fading.

A Political Rant of Sorts

We are the language of propaganda. We use words like “abomination” and “unconscionable” and “unforgivable” to describe what is really just “unpleasant” and “concerning” and “imprudent.” We choose anger because anger is simple. Or we choose to be oblivious because oblivion requires nothing in return. When we gather, we do so in tribes, and we do so with chants, and we mistake our camaraderie for morality and our obsessions for principles. The other tribes we see only from afar and only in the shadows cast by their fires. We paint those shadows in all their deformities and we call what we see an abomination. “They will destroy us,” we say. And we believe the words. For the words are we.

Occupation

There are people on Wall Street who aren’t normally on Wall Street. Doubtless you’ve heard because the media coverage has been non-stop. If by “media” I mean “a bunch of my friends on Facebook.” Of course, some days, that is my media.

I don’t have time to have time. This isn’t an excuse or a complaint. It’s a statement of my state. I’m a parent and a freelance writer and someone who, when given a few moments, very much enjoys having a good meal or going to a movie. I’m not going to occupy anything but this chair where I work and where I hope to write something worth something. And by worth I don’t mean worth money. I mean worth my presence here. I mean: writing something that makes me worth having around as a writer.

I spent a few hours yesterday pining for a more innocent me. That innocent me believed that Tony Romo was a top NFL QB. These are the things that sometimes occupy me. I’m not ashamed of this. Without our diversions, we tend to be pricks.

But about Wall Street. I am not a rich man, but I am not hurting. I have a well-stocked bar and two working cars and I pay someone else to cut my yard. But there’s a stagnation here, a sense that my hard work—or, really, my wife’s hard work, because, God knows, she brings home the proverbial bacon—isn’t worth what it might once have been worth. And this time, by worth, I do mean money.

Let me just say this: when a small number of individuals or entities control large portions of the market, it’s not a free market. And you’re either for a free market or for a controlled one. And if it’s controlled, who breaks it up and spreads the power back around?

Seriously, Tony Romo hurt me yesterday. Cracked me.

But this Wall Street thing. Shit. I don’t even know if they want what I want. I suspect that they don’t. But for the love of God, do we not want something different? I mean, isn’t this the kind of moment where the best of us make us better? There ain’t nothing wrong about finding our diversions. But at some point, we’re going to have to find our purpose, too.

And Now?

I write this not because I’m unique, but because I’m not. Because I’m just another American who remembers that day and can’t quite shake free of its grip.

There’s a rawness here. Still. So I’m not going to claim that I am blessed—as are some—with that enviable ability to lean back and observe this all from a morally pure point of view. I can’t do that. This thing. It did a number on me.

That day? I was just at work. A lot of people were just at work. That was the thing, I think. It was so easy to imagine ourselves there.

A few days after, my wife and I decided to lay flowers somewhere, but we didn’t know the right spot. We were living in DC, so we walked down to the National Mall and wandered the vacant spaces between those memorials. We finally chose the statue of Roosevelt sitting in his secluded site. What we wanted was wisdom and strength.

You know what we’ve ended up with instead.

How about this: The bodies from the Pentagon traveled in yellow helicopters. They passed low as I grilled burgers on the roof deck.

That’s what I tell people when they ask for a story about being in that city, at that time. I also mention seeing a machine gun mounted on a jeep that drove down my little street. And the smell of a building and bodies burning for days.

But those aren’t stories. They’re fragments. Ash. And we still live in that debris, I think. A man falling. A fireball. A bullhorned voice and grainy images of dark-skinned men running an obstacle course. It all drifts down around us. Coats us, still, and makes it hard for us to see.

“Perhaps the most heinous act of terrorism in history.” A columnist wrote those words for my local paper today. He’s wrong, of course. People, throughout history, have terrorized one another in far worse ways. Unbelievably worse ways.

And yet...

What happened was horrific and frightening and angering and, despite what I just wrote, I get a little ill when I hear fellow Americans trying to minimize what happened, trying to act as if our national obsession over those events is somehow a sign of moral weakness or intellectual dimness. What it is, I think, is a sign of our humanity. As much as the horrors elsewhere in the world might make us ache, we Americans felt the scorch of those fires ten years ago. The worst atrocity is always the one that happened closest to you. It’s the way our minds operate. It’s understandable.

And yet, again...

We’re here. You, me. Ten years on and we’re still here. And I sit in a house I didn’t own back then, with two children who hadn’t been born back then, with a decade beneath me that couldn’t have been imagined back then—I sit with all this newness and know you sit with a newness of your own. And I wonder: where to now? If we can still feel so connected to people who were just at work—whom most of us didn’t know—can’t we feel connected to others as well? Can’t we sense those strands tying us together? In this newness—in this continuance of life—so many seem so focused on dividing themselves from others, on withholding compassion for reasons often as narrow as a difference in political affiliation. But to what ends? Truly. If we refuse to admit we're all journeying forward together, where do we think we're going to end up?

Because, you see, there are names in bronze lining two pools where towers once stood. But there are so many other names in this world that no one will ever inscribe. And there will be more. A lot more. And what are we going to do about that?

Because It Can't Not Be Today

Sometimes I make the mistake of reading the comments sections of news stories. The anger is a sickness. I can feel it working its way into my blood.

I’ve heard we shouldn’t use clichés because they are lazy. I’m pretty sure they can also be dangerous. At least when enough people believe they’re true.

Amazing how language can become drumbeats, subtlety stripped and meaning stretched into a thinness that sounds hollow and repetitive yet nevertheless makes feet fall into line.

But, seriously, I mean, come on: at what point did so many people of modest means stop caring about the condition of those most like themselves and start fighting for the interests of the wealthy? How does something like that occur?

There is a myth of martinis and cigarettes and there’s a true story of fire hoses. If only it could be reduced like that. History as some pretty old Christmas card, or history as some righteous progression. We think we’ve lost something or we think we’ve valiantly moved forward, but you know what I think? Sometimes I think we’re just spinning.

Today will be a fragment of my children’s past. You and me, though? This is the middle. This is what we’ve been given. Work with it or just turn on Jersey Shore. You know?

Something Something

Something cool: Hazel Foster talks about my story “Leap” at Matt Bell’s blog, here.

Something new: I finished three stories this week and sent them into the world. They are all at just one or two places. I find that I prefer this method to the scattershot. Of course, this method may also be why I have so little coming out right now.

Something old: Novel. In rewrites. Thought I was done last summer. Turns out: not so much. This could be a post all its own. I have a second novel just banging itself against my skull, but the first one is still something I want to pursue. Oh the complications...

Something worth buying now: Like poetry? Buy Lauren Schmidt’s new chapbook from Main Street Rag. It’s Voodoo Doll Parade and you’ll love it. Find it on this page. Lauren was in my MFA class and I can more than vouch for the amazingness of her work.

Something worth getting ready for: The one-and-only Roxane Gay has a book of stories forthcoming. Ayiti. Preorders from Artistically Declined Press begin this July!

Something else: Saw a bunch of shiny, youthful Mitt Romney supporters in a Las Vegas casino. They were standing around in a cheery sort of way, apparently anticipating Romney’s arrival. Politicians and slot machines. Plenty can seem bright and alluring. Then you put some money into one and ... well ... yeah.

What Shall Not Be Disliked

Jason Jordan wrote this post about some writers he doesn’t much care for. Indie lit world (is that the proper terminology?) went all flamey. Maybe it still is all flamey. I was away and missed the beginning of this and so I’m not sure where we are on the outrage arc. At least far enough to have passed through immediate attack against Jason and the following stages of various defenses.

(I would link to all this talk but I am lazy and if you read this place you probably read other places and I’m recapping what doesn’t need recap. Which I hear is excellent writing.)

Anyway, this is all interesting. I used to political blog. A lot. And if you are ever inclined to find reasons to dislike me, feel free to Google my political pieces. I wrote from the contrarian center and almost certainly wrote an opinion or fifty you’ll find obnoxious, even ignorant and callous. I’ve been called a supporter of evil – from people on both “sides” of the spectrum (I consider this a feat worth mentioning). I’ve been emailed hate mail so vitriolic, so dismissive of my humanity that I’ve questioned the very stability of our national psyche.

But that’s how it works in the political blog world. Bloggers going after each other with high-tech rhetorical weaponry (and low-tech vulgarity). It’s free speech at its most audacious. Not for the thin skinned.

I mention all this for what is probably an obvious observation: the indie lit world (still don’t know if this is the right word combination) operates under very different “rules”. We praise effusively that which we like and stay mum on that which we don’t. I imagine this is out of some shared sense of fragility, that our community needs protection and encouragement because we’re cultural outliers and already suffer under the weight of constant rejection, not just from journals but from all those who look at us not-famous writers and say “have I heard of anything you’ve written?” as if such a thing is the only conceivable measure of our worth.

That said, I tend to think too much carefulness is stifling. Too much tending of the walls means not enough tending of the sheep. (I don’t know who the sheep are in that metaphor, but go with me here.) If the indie lit world can’t suffer a guy listing some indie-ish writers whom he doesn’t like, how can we expect to survive the metastatic dismissiveness of the greater culture? Who even cares if Jason Jordan gave fleeting rationale for his personal tastes or not? Are we not allowed to dislike something publically? Do we really feel such a thing will topple our walls?

I think the proper reaction to Jason Jordan’s post is to debate his opinions not attack him for having one or hide behind attacks on his chosen style of critique. This is the first and almost certainly the last time I say this, but: we could learn from the world of political bloggers. There’s something to be said for sucking it up and moving on.

Symbols and Death and All of This

Horrible things happened in Tucson this past weekend. You know this, of course. And you know what followed – the mourning, yes, but also the finger pointing, the political gamesmanship of fixing blame. This wasn’t just the usual human need to find something to repair whenever something so tragically breaks, but a markedly political need to “win” something or to “not lose” something, both “sides” turning tragedy into an opportunity to play politics, to “prove” the veracity of their particular world view, or prove the invalidity of their opponent’s.

I use quotations there. Because there are no sides except those we artificially impose and there is no proof for ideology. We create these concepts because, without them, there appears to be no order . We generate symbols (these right here that I’m using to write with and other symbols like flags and peace signs and entire people and movements) and we manipulate these symbols to force meaning into our world. And this is okay, of course. Necessary. What is writing but the creation of meaning out of abstraction?

But here’s the thing, here’s what I believe: nothing is as simple as our structures often lead us to believe. A human being doesn’t walk into a grocery store and shoot another human being in the head because yet another human being used gun sights in an advertisement. Sure, those gun sights and other symbols may have filtered in to the killer’s paranoid psyche and maybe in some unknowable, unverifiable way those symbols contributed to the act.

It’d be easy to believe this. Because symbols are power, right? Because symbols are the way we organize our reality? But let’s not fool ourselves about what words and symbols really are. It’s all nothing more than artifice. Than construct. What truly exists can never be captured in symbols. Yes – hell yes – we need more civility, more consideration, more compassion in our modern discourse. And, hell yes, hate breeds hate and there's never a wrong moment to condemn those who demonize, who divide, who callously ruin. But in all this conversation about the power of words – of symbols – I think it’s important to remember that all words and all symbols will always fall short of truth.

Some things defy our attempts at order. Some things exist outside categorization. Some things are, by their nature, incomprehensible. And I think it’s okay to admit that.