Nobody reads this crap. I examine it with fascination after placing it here, I note the shape and consistency, the colors and texture, and the density or lightness. Sometimes I recognize a vulgar remnant of reality. Then it swirls in the bowl and I watch it all go away.
Life, death. Sex and loneliness. Joy, sorrow, heat, cold, day, night, sun, rain. Love. This is just a tiny excerpt, made grotesque in magnification, from the beautiful awesomeness of the never ending cycle.
The music was released in the Eighties. I was young; a former lover from the Eighties visited me a year or two ago, after not seeing me for ten years, and kept saying in amazement, “You used to be so hot.”
I guess I’m not hot anymore, but I used to be. I was 30, (in 1988) and still couldn’t grasp that the hot young men who were willing to sleep with me were not doing it out of pity. I was so much more comfortable thinking of them pitying me rather than recognizing that they were actually just hot for my treasure trail—or even worse, acknowledging that they simply liked me. A lot. And when we were done with each other, and I was alone again, I would listen to the mellow Autumn light of Free Fall.
It was the music I went to sleep with before I was positive, and I still hold it close, now fifteen years after that test.
I fell in love with a boy named Christopher the year I worked on the Cape in 1989. He was beautiful, and taught himself piano, and what he played for me in Chatham that year was at least as good as anything David Lanz ever played anywhere. We knew we would never see each other again, and I sent Chris the album, Christofori’s Dream. In a note I sent with the cassette, I wrote, “This is the tape, you are the dream.”
He really was.
Now is about the right time for Lanz’s version of A Whiter Shade of Pale.
What the hell is wrong with Humankind? Don’t we ever get it? These monsters are not imaginary; history proves this again, and again, and again. But we recoil from that truth, and we insist that people who look like you and me cannot be monsters, really. Can they?
The problem I grapple with is how to concentrate reality into a bite size morsel, a consumable for a consumer culture. I struggle to find a particular link, or a concise excerpt, a quote maybe that captures it all, that will leave everyone nodding in recognition and gazing into the middle distance thoughtfully as they walk away, the whole world thus changed.
This is not possible. The monsters are real, the peril is mortal. And the reality which confronts us—the world—is not reducible to a single bitter pill. The terror which we MUST face seems far beyond our capacity to absorb in anything less than several lifetimes. But for the love of humanity, we must not only confront the peril within our lifetimes—within the next several years—but we must conquer it as well.
What is right with Humankind is that they always amaze themselves by overcoming challenges which they ‘knew’ were insurmountable, by accomplishing in their own flesh miracles which they believed none could achieve but the hand of God. Recently, I have discarded most of my former anti-religious rhetoric; I find my attitudes are greatly moderating as I wake from my foggy delusions. Current circumstances have revealed to me a belief I never knew I had, and it is this: I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will not be given one iota more than we can handle. Call it faith if you wish, though for my part I defer.
I very well may profess a newfound faith, with a still undiscovered voice, well before this nightmare is over.
The most powerful nation this Earth has ever known is being used to rabidly terrorize all of Humankind. The crimes of these over-takers are legion. They have co-opted every one of us as unwitting co-conspirators by cultivating our passivity and by developing among us a tolerance that seems able to ignore any atrocity conceivable. You think those are overstatements? Let me introduce you to the woman who doesn’t know that the black eye she got from walking into a door really came from the man she sleeps with. Denial is the most insidious deceiver of all. And chief among these monsters’ crimes are their cold-blooded and vile machinations to deceive billions of innocents.
If there is one thing that is mind expanding, it is experiencing extremes. For many who endured the administration of George W. Bush, and began to see the facileness of government during his illegitimacy, the advent of Obama was a hope that spanned from the kernel of our souls to the outer space of our dreams. To witness the depth and breadth of those dreams—nearly infinite, but not quite—to see that devoured with apparent ease into the gaping, salivating maw of deceit, reveals not only the breathtaking scale of evil, but hints at the heretofore hidden magnificence of good that by definition exceeds evil. For many who have seen the Alex Jones’ film, Obama Deception, it expanded our minds in just such a monumental—and terrifying—way.
These petty words mean little in the crisis of our ignorance. A small fraction of a percentage recognizes the evil that is upon us, and they are throwing stones at the tanks in Gaza, and dying for it. Others are losing farms, homes, and lives to CIA funded thugs in Afghanistan, or just losing lives in black-op fomented violence in the cities of Iraq. Still others who cannot hope to understand why, are the children in the smog of LA, cut off from medical care and dying of asthma. It is not only the relative few forlorn individuals on this planet who know of these dangers first-hand, but also nations, besieged, yet proudly defiant, like Honduras and Venezuela. They tell the truth, and truth cannot be rejected from any quarter, especially in a world where death-dealing lies come from almost every quarter.
I think Marie Antoinette was not so much flippant in her famous retort, “Let them eat cake,” as she was being scornful out of frustration with peasants who, at the time when she spoke those words, had not stood up for themselves, and had largely tolerated intolerable lives for a generation. She didn’t want them to kill her, one assumes, but some kind of revolt was certainly in order, she must have thought.
Your economy has been gutted, your children’s future is in the hands of a very few immeasurably wealthy monsters who are allowing a tiny fraction of their wealth to be used—at their pleasure—as the entire economy of this nation, until they are ready to pull the plug. They are not worried about a revolt. Indeed, they want a revolt; they have planned for it. And they will make it happen when the time is right for them. And your children’s debt will never be paid. You are dooming them to a life as wage slaves, where the only way they can get ahead is to be more evil than the next guy. But even magnificence in evil won’t get them very far because the competition will be fierce. The masses will all be evil, soullessly evil, just to survive. And if you hope for success for your progeny in that kind of world, I cannot imagine what you will hope for that success to be. “For if a man gains the whole world, and loses his soul…”
I say, let them eat cake. In fact you might as well start eating it right now. Either that, or you better start doing something very different, very soon.
Remember the post World War II movies which demonized the Nazi bad guys, and glorified (rightly so) the heroic actions of the few who stood up to the Nazi’s, running underground resistance groups and providing escape routes to those who were ‘wanted’ for ‘relocation’? I remember them. I watched from the comfort of my unchallenged 1960’s adolescence, and imagined myself—against all odds—doing the right thing in the midst of grave threats and terror from evil authoritarians all around me. It was clear to me then what would have been the right thing to do during the late 1930’s in Nazi Germany, and I hoped that I would have had the courage to do the right thing had I actually been there. I actually lamented the dullness of my life when I was eight, and how, from that vantage point, I could see no such heroic challenge visible anywhere in my future.
What a failure of imagination!
We are there, now. Except that the current economic meltdown is not being caused by a draconian Versailles Treaty, which is what bankrupted Germany and impoverished her people after WWI and set the stage for the birth and subsequent domination of Hitler’s Third Reich. The significant difference is that ours is an ad hoc economic meltdown, conceived, implemented, and executed solely for the purpose of forcing otherwise unwilling free men and women to subvert their common sense and goodwill to the demonic state in exchange for a pittance of relief from the state’s threats of overwhelming harassment, illegal imprisonment, certain impoverishment, and inevitable death only after unfathomable suffering. Free speech will soon be illegal, and is largely so now. Due process is already severely marginalized in the zeal for imposing extra-judicial consequences for activities which heretofore have never been illegal, like owning a gun, having a baby, or refusing a vaccination.
When they come and do what we know is wrong, we will look the other way again and again until there is nowhere else to look. And then, when we have no choice but to face the truth, it will be too late.
Seek out the wrongdoing now! Confront it before it confronts you. And never look the other way. Never. Do something oppositional—no matter how small—every time you see an injustice, especially when those injustices are perpetrated under color of authority. And after one encounter, the second confrontation is just as difficult, but much more effective. Every moment of standing against what is wrong empowers you, advances freedom, and uplifts the human condition to the benefit of us all, not to mention the power of your example inspiring others to do the same. Eventually, standing up for what is right becomes a thousand times more effective than the first time, and the sooner we get that first confrontation done, the earlier we achieve total effectiveness in resisting the abuse, oppression and tyranny that these injustices are designed to impose.
Morality is the final law, and in times like these our consciences can be our only guide. And these truths are self evident, that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We are the new Greatest Generation, like our fathers and grandfathers in World War II, and the times we live in today presents us with the same great privilege they had—to save the World. Again.
Senator Kerry,
Please oppose the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
You are from Massachusetts. If this bill passes, it will mark the demise of the very freedoms which Massachusetts was a leader in achieving 240 years ago.
I’m sure your mind is already made up. But as a constituent I am ethically obligated by the seriousness of the threat this bill represents to register with you my opposition to it.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act known as HR 2454 was narrowly passed by the House of Representatives on June 26, 2009 by a vote of 219 to 212. It is going to the Senate, but it is not clear when. The available info about a schedule for this to come up for a vote in the Senate has been impossible to find. Announcements have been made that this will never pass the Senate, which seems to me to be a smokescreen to allow it to be passed with little attention from the public.
E-mail your senator.
Hi again,
(So tedious, isn’t he. Give him some time off and all he does is plague us with giant e-mails, and fantastical ramblings. We’ll be rid of him soon enough.)
It’s me, the tedious one. Asking tedious questions, and suggesting unpleasant realities. Suggesting? Yes, for we have many realities to choose from. Some realities are more pleasant than others, but are, unfortunately, not real.
I suspect you are all aware of the first part of the Declaration of Independence. You know, the part that starts with “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Famous words, those, penned by the good man Jefferson himself. For me, and I suspect many others, they have come to represent the entire document. But, today being Independence Day and all, I decided to read it.
OMFG!
It sounds like something spouted by one of those wacko, anti-New World Order, anti-Bilderberg Group, anti-imperialism, anti-elitist, anti-gun control, anti-Patriot Act, anti-… well, anti-American fringe groups! Imagine my surprise!
Throughout the document, the ‘He’ referred to is King George. I trust you will be able to replace him with the person–or group–who fits that bill today. It is scary how prescient this document now seems. In its sincerity, and brutal honesty, it named the demon, and called him out into the light were he could not survive. That is the genius of this document, and also the genius of this Great American Experiment of which we are all a part, begun in the Summer of 1776. And it is as revolutionary today–perhaps even more so–than when its ink was still wet.
Let me give you an example. (Didn’t think you’d get off the hook that easy, did you?)
- For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences
Guantanamo? Secret renditions? Torture? Abu-Ghraib?
I won’t go on; this could get very messy. But I think you might find other similarities to current events.
So, I leave it to you: Here is the document, first the text of it as it appeared in the Dunlap Broadside, then an image of that same document, and a couple links. Read it, all the way through.
Then tell me: Is it not as applicable today as it ever was?
Happy Independence Day.
In Congress, July 4, 1776.
A Declaration
By the Representatives of the
United states of America,
In general Congress assembled.When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
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, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a 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. The History of the Present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People; unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.
He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislature.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule in these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Powers to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress,
John Hancock, President.Attest.
Charles Thomson, Secretary.
The Declaration of Independence at Wikisource, and at Wikipedia.
Today, an article titled, “Why Saddam Hussein lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction” appeared on the Christian Science Monitor‘s Global News Blog. I immediately smelled a rat. The smell got especially strong when I read the part about how Hussein believed Iran “will be a greater threat” in the future. How nice of the doomed head of state to play into the hands of his murderers so neatly.
Hussein may have been a monster, but he was the head of state of a sovereign nation which we illegally invaded, and no one in Iraq is better off now than they were under Hussein. Arguable most Iragis are worse off. Frankly I don’t see a lot of distinction between Hussein and George W. Bush. Except Hussein is dead.
Back to the article. The only good rats are dead rats, and the rat I smelled is not dead; it is the NSA, the National Security Administration. I am sure they will read this before anyone else, because no one else reads what I write here. (Jeesh, the things you have to do for readership!)
I left a comment there, at the Monitor’s blog site:
Not that I would ever be suspicious of a project called the National Security Archive (smirk), but isn’t the real issue the unconscionable manufacture by the US of disinformation, codified as ‘intelligence’, with the treasonable intent of justifying a criminal war?
The story of Hussein’s handling while in US custody is undoubtedly an interesting one. Unfortunately the custodians of that information are cold-blooded liars. The Monitor would do well to keep that in mind when reporting information obtained from them.
They post comments only after review. We shall see if it gets posted. (It probably will.)
This is the most egregious example, that I can imagine, of the axiom, “the winner gets to write the history.” To the careful observer it is a cautionary tale. The rats intend to overthrow Iran as well.
Since my paranoia-addled mind is convinced that they will find a reason to lock me up, is there anyone out there I can rely on to uphold the truth? Is this why desperate people, feeling truth has forsaken the world, appeal to something other-worldly for aid; God help us? Isn’t there someone here who can help us?
Isn’t it us?
Maybe my paranoia is not a delusion.
There is a woman sitting in the doorway at the back of the house directly opposite my kitchen window. She caught me staring through half opened blinds at her. It is after 6:00 PM, and I still had not changed from my bedclothes. Slowly, I closed the blinds.
Maybe someday I’ll know that this isolation is unhealthy. No. I know that already. Maybe someday I’ll know better than to accommodate this loneliness, maybe I’ll flee from this urge to isolate every time it returns, having learned, by then, where it inevitably leads. Assuming, that is, that I survive.
Yesterday, at 1:45 AM EDT (or 6:45 AM UTC) the Earth reached the point in its orbit where the inclination of the North Pole toward the Sun is most extreme. From an Earth-centric perspective, the Sun has moved as far north as it will this year. Today the Sun begins its long journey south, and the days in the northern hemisphere begin to shorten. Likewise, today is the shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere with days steadily lengthening until midsummer returns there.
I find it curious that the Summer Solstice here is the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Or that the Summer Solstice occurs twice every year—once in the north, and once in the south.
Everything is meaningless. Everything is an aching endless agony of unfulfilled desire.
Not much time. The chemical restraints are tightening, the floors and walls are doing a slo-mo undulation. Light and dark are trading costumes. And everybody’s cool. There’s a tiny Philharmonic Orchestra playing just under the hum and whoosh of the A/C and the computer fans. You can’t hear it unless you listen carefully, and focus on it.
The roses, a few, are in full bloom; several hanging very near the ground, and an occasional one about midway on the bush. None on the tops of the bushes are blooming, but everywhere are dozens of splitting buds. Nearby, the rhododendron stands embarrassed by the youth of the roses, its own lacy pink garments lying torn and soiled on the ground beneath it, like delicate silk panties at a rape scene.
I have to get up early to start capturing these once-a-year beauties which will only bloom this week, and then they’ll be gone.
When I start to brood over what to write here, I never get started. Saying so gets me started.
I never read. My ever-soothing friend Lynne says, “That’s OK,” and then says (I can’t really remember) something about how most people don’t, or how it is not really necessary, or something just generally soothing. But I still think I should. Read.
I buy books. Usually something fad-y; a physical health or emotional health book, an obscure book related to an unusual incident, or several books on the revision of prehistory. But I never read them. I can’t find any classics in my house, and only a few by writers I like—Mailer, Capote, and maybe one other. Those I have read.
I know about The Lord of the Flies, and even handled a copy in high school, and actually started reading it but never stayed focussed long enough to finish. I did read The Hobbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s subsequent trilogy, Lord of the Rings, long before those novels became a novelty. No Shakespeare, no poetry–though I do have two ancient books of poetry of unknown provenance into which I have fallen entranced once or twice. And magazines, like books, I buy but don’t read. Though I was getting—and reading—National Geographic for a couple years. I’m almost ashamed to admit that.
Which, as always, brings me to now. I am semi-stupefied from having taken an Ativan last night. Likely the reason I was so slow getting started up at the top there. Ativan, the insidious chemical soother. It makes going gently into that good night as easy as pie. Just another reason to both love and hate it.
There is a precious discontent, an anxiety about all things—whether it be not reading while one has time, or not socializing when one has the chance, or anything to do with living for that matter—that is both ally, and enemy. I have an anxiety disorder but I think that is a misnomer, as it really is a resistance to anxiety that is the problem. If one sits in the street, one feels anxious at the approach of traffic. One focuses on only the anxiety and wishes for it to go away. Failing relief by death, since traffic stopped, one now becomes the object of the great consternation of many who have been inconvenienced. One focuses on the resulting anxiety and wishes for it to go away. Police come. They yell loudly. One’s anxiety increases even more, and one wishes it would all go away. One covers one’s face and curls into a fetal position. One is picked up by the police and removed to jail. One’s anxiety increases.
A patterned response to anxiety develops in which anxiety initiates a paralyzing fear which, in our little vignette, worsens the situation, increases the anxiety, and perpetuates the cycle. Without modification, such a patterned response can only end when one dies, though it will probably not cause that death. But when the anxious one dies, who will know? And will not the end of his agony be a relief not only to himself, but to the whole world as well?
Anything is possible. But what is likely? A fly stuck in a glass of milk swims around, claws at the glass wall, might get a wing free of the sucking surface tension. He might even, miraculously, fly free of his doom. But most likely he will die, drowned in a sea of nourishment.
That post yesterday was not about what I wrote, exactly. It was about the ecstasy of walking onto the beach, after the ordeal, not dead. I had responded effectively and intelligently–cleverly, even–to the anxiety of my near-drowning. What an exhilarating joy, not only to have survived, but to have joined in intimate battle with anxiety, my perpetual abuser, and won.
I have spent my entire life avoiding conflict, hiding, isolating, and letting anxieties dictate my inaction. Unfortunately, it is not a life and death kind of conflict, for if it were, I would have handled it promptly and without hesitation. Instead I am this; inactive, avoidant, and un-actualized. Something is lacking, and I don’t think I need to be in a perpetually life-threatening situation to be cured. Indeed, the cure is to find a cause for action that is something less than life-threatening.
Still looking.
So much for writing a little every day.
I have been intractably depressed for ten days. I am not managing life very well–and have not been, for many years.
I picture a surfer on a medium-sized wave, his movement is swift, but not heart-stopping. He has control; he seems happy. I see myself floundering in the froth of a breaking wave, not far from the competent surfer, not moving any faster than him, but flailing about, and headed for the rocks.
I got caught in an undertow once at Hampton Beach. The livid panic was amazing. The beach there at low tide is shallow for quite a distance. I was easily a hundred yards from shore, but even at that distance, the water was only just up to my neck. I had been hoping to body surf in some of the waves, which were considerable that day, and were breaking at about that distance from the shore. The first wave I chose to ride tossed me up–which is the joy of body surfing–but then under when it broke. I was swept away, literally, by the massive flow of water near the seabed and caught in the churning caused by the inbound breaking wave and the outbound receding flow. In the moment of hesitation between the two conflicting flows, I was barely able to get a breath before I was flipped under and tumbled by the next wave.
The first time this happened, I am sure I thought my desperation was embarrassing, but that I should probably move a bit closer to shore. By about the fifth time I was sucked under, my desperation was in earnest, and it was clear I was moving much further out, into deeper water. If I had the breath to call for help, I would have. But I was being so frequently overwhelmed that survival lay in being seen from shore, or saving myself. Since rescue was not assured, I resolved to save myself.
Standing on the seabed is what got me into trouble, with an inbound flow near the surface and a ferociously outbound flow deeper down. And since I didn’t know how to swim any other way, I got into a position of floating on my back, and using a modified backstroke, started splashing away from death, vaguely toward the shore.
In the dynamics of the undertow at Hampton Beach, which sent three victims to the hospital that day, my rescue was realized by simply staying near the surface. My feeble swimming efforts helped, but honestly, swimming was just something to do while I stayed out of trouble, which was deeper down.
I took a picture of my belly.
Now I have thought—for the longest time, it seems—that my fattness is a recent development. You know, one of those vague assumptions you make about reality that is far from it. Like the mildly hot (and significantly younger) coworker who you think might be interested in you. Not reality. Or the jeans you order online that you were sure would fit…
Although, from wearing pants with less than adequate waist accomodations, I have developed a figure similar to that of a black ant. Like an ‘8’ with arms legs and a head.
Anyway, back to this picture. Reality is neither cruel nor kind. Ditto for Time. They are both abstractions, in a way-out-there sense. I’m not being facetious. What we call Reality is really the sum of our perceptions; same for Time. So, pictures, in the way they link a particular image with a moment in time, are neat little documents of perception. This picture of my belly I thought was recent. Since I took it, it has been hovering in the back of my mind, untethered from time, as if I was trim not long ago.
Thinking about it requires that you insert huge amounts of time which you hadn’t acknowledged were there. Like, I obviously didn’t gain that weight overnight. So, there was a while that I was fat even before the picture was taken. And the picture, so recent in my mind, is over 17 months old.
Everybody sees me, except me.
Why?
I am considering taking a photo of everything I eat. Kind of a phood-o-log. Maybe it will embarass me into dieting, or maybe it will escalate my self-contempt to a satisfying crescendo.
What else would I do? I’m a ‘rich’ American. Clean water everywhere. Lots of food, so much food, we call it junk. Lots of safe shelter, personal space at home; so much space that I fill it with junk.
We can do anything artificially. It’s being genuine that is the challenge. We are like rare and finely crafted musical instruments, once in perfect tune. Now, padded and put away, to be ‘safe’ (or something) our opiated haze (whether or not due to actual opiates) leaves us blazé, out of tune, and out of play.
Or, to switch metaphors, we float in quiet pools of water, perfectly neutral in temperature, under a sun neither hot nor dim, caressed by whispy breezes that are exactly as warm as our skin, and we have some pleasurable diversion nearby to relieve us of any effort whatsoever—in my case a silken-skinned pool-boy to fetch drinks and swat flies. And smile at me.
How about a little genuine desperation? Or some effort at least?
I like to dream. It is when I wake up that anxiety starts. I suspect anxiety is merely a symptom of un-exerted capacity, the result of a neglected effort, the natural effect of artificial living. The remedy which springs to mind is physical exertion, like chopping wood, or climbing mountains. But that is not all that is missing. We are not that simple. We have minds and intelligence, and awareness of ourselves and the world: I am fat; the US is a terrorist state; I don’t need all these toys; oil is running out; my life is limited. And so on. These perceptions suggest to me—and sometimes demand—certain actions on my part. These perceptions are not always clear about what it is I need to do, but they are insistent that I need to do something. What to do exactly is for me to decide. Sigh.
I find that something sweet usually makes the feeling go away.
There. I wrote a little. Maybe, if I keep this up, I will eventually get sick of this babbling and finally write something meaningful.
