Jury Duty

Today I am serving my first-ever full day of jury duty.  I actually arrived several weeks ago for my first jury duty service; however, after taking in the full breadth of what that service meant (at least 1 day, and I had to stay all day no matter what), I asked to reschedule my service.  Today I came prepared: I have my work laptop, food, and I at least tried to get here early enough so as to get prime placement (a) at a table and (b) adjacent to a power outlet.

I have mixed feelings about jury duty service.  It is inconvenient for one thing; however, I fully recognize the importance of this sort of service.  Though I am a "public servant" by day, I feel as though this sort of service is more visible than the important work I do on a daily basis.  Yet, the thought of sitting in this juror's lounge for the entire day--and the possibility of having to stay even longer--leaves me with a feeling of uber dread.

That stated, here I am.  I wanted to share that embarking on this day of service, snuggling up to this well-worn table someplace in the Judiciary Square District of DC, harkens back to the days when I would go into my mother's work for the day.  I cannot remember the circumstances when I would go in to her work.  But I do remember the process of trying to fight boredom while waiting for her to finish her day.  The nostalgia of that experience is not entirely unpleasant.  Perhaps that will temper the dread today I bring with me to this service.

Tare

I doubt I was a very good student in Mr. Sak’s Chemistry class.  Not from the standpoint of behavior; more on account of a lack of drive to work, and, I’m sure, my lab partner (I think her name was Becky) probably suffered as a result of it. 

At least I was dependable for procedural aspects of the lab.  Not having really prepared for the assignment or wanting to work on the calculations, I was, however, proficient at setting up the equipment: pulling out rubber gloves, finding the right erlenmeyer flasks, hooking up the Bunsen burner (gas actually fed from nozzles in the lab counter), fetching pipettes and spoons, and, finally, setting up the scale.

We received instruction on how to set up the scale.  I can’t remember if they were battery powered or powered by a direct source, but I do remember the importance of taring the scale prior to its use.  This process was about as straightforward as it gets: once powered up, you just hit the “Tare” button on the scale to set the “tare weight” (in case you needed to tare the scale at some level offset by the weight or your measuring instrument).

Powering on the scale, I wondered about the weights that would first appear on the scale’s screen prior to hitting tare.  Some days it was already at zero.  But other days the scale would show an existent positive or negative weight; sometimes by as little as a few milligrams and other times by as much as a kilogram.  It’s just anomalous behavior of the scale, I know.  But often I imagined that something was really there despite our inability to see it, and I wondered at its form and fluctuation in mass.  Sometimes, on my more melancholy days, I imagined it was the weight of my spirit or soul, measuring the void of my full state that day.  The embodiment of life out of balance.  How was this void manifested between a deficit of a few milligrams of spirit compared to a few grams or decagrams?  What did I need to do to replace that void—or to tare my soul?

Older, I have more thoughts about answers to those questions, and a prominent one lately has been the (probably trite) thought that we are only but the ideas that we accept, have and hold.  These ideas, however, never cease to change from the moment they are formed (either willingly or unwillingly)—and they might even defy the conservation of mass, as suggested (at least metaphorically) by my observations of the scale.  Some days, my emotional or mental state is such that I can barely endure their change: I shrink from how they, life, change(s).  Other days, I am able to appreciate the vibrancy of life: the chaos that allows us to appreciate the excitement of an entropic existence.

Somewhere in that state of flux do I find myself these days, and particularly as I ponder that about which I can write for my (sorrowfully neglected) blog.  I am inclined to expound on how maddening I find my nation’s current political and fiscal state, or how joyful I am at having moved in with my special lady friend.  All in due time, I am sure.  As for right now, tare.

End of Days (by Marge Piercy)

Almost always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you—
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot
rise—sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.

Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.

That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly
fading to black like an old-fashioned
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.
I want to click the off switch.
And if I can no longer choose

I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.
Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our
parents? Death is not the worst
thing; denying it can be.

"End of Days" by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980 - 2010. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. (link)

Argentina

Someplace in my list of draft posts are thoughts on a trip I took to Turkey last April with my best friend from high school.  Maybe someday I'll finish that post.  But the general sentiments I would impart are these: it wasn't a great trip. The company was great, but we didn't love the Turkey travel experience (noting that a serious compounding factor was getting stuck in Turkey due to the eruption of that volcano in Iceland).

In stark, drastic contrast to that experience, DD and I just returned from a trip to Argentina.  Argentina was fantastic.

Blood Meridian

I want to start with this concept, taken from a (what I thought was) brilliant online commentary written by Stanley Fish on the New York Times's website discussing the differences he saw between the original, John Wayne adaptation of Charles Portis's novel, True Grit, and the most recent Coen brother's version:

... there are two registers of existence: the worldly one in which rewards and punishment are meted out on the basis of what people visibly do; and another one, inaccessible to mortal vision, in which damnation and/or salvation are distributed, as far as we can see, randomly and even capriciously.

Hazarding a summary and oversimplification, the faith one has in God matters little in determining our course through our present existence; if such a supernatural force exists, it likely doesn't score the rights and wrongs amassed by humans as they toil an existence.  Instead, what matters is the faith one has in his or her own existence, and the extent to which he / she adheres to that faith.  Only through that sort of resolution of conscience, drawn out over a long and varied life, can any sort of reconciled redemption be found.

I read Fish's commentary shortly before I read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a bleak and powerful novel.  From one perspective, the book is a study in the creation of (what I agree is) an American classic.  McCarthy's 3rd person, narrative writing style; his lack of the use of quotations; and his expressive punctuation (as though he were sitting in the room with you, telling you this story in person) was extremely compelling.  Granted, it took me a few pages to get used to, but I quickly learned to love and devour it.  Then you have the contents of the novel.  His ideas and interpretations of man and nature were stark and unremitting.  The speed and depth of his character development was devastating.  And the resolution (if you can call it that) of his story left me in a state of profound thought, leaving me to mull meaning from his passages still even a week after I finished the book.

I opened with the Fish quote because it resonates with the tone of McCarthy's book.  The West in which we find the Kid is a cold, sensible place; yet it is also abhorrent, particularly if you seek to compare its existence with norms of culture and society developing in settled, more urban areas of the East and West.

You don't get much dialogue from the Kid, nor does the author provide much in the way of a window through which to see the Kid's reactions to the scenes that pass as his days in the West.  However, indirectly, you learn much in the way of the things the Kid is willing to accept and not accept through his acquaintance with the Judge.

The Judge (Judge Holden) is a character who's mark has likely been left in the annals of literature much as that left by Iago, Jay Gatsby, John Galt, Mersault, and others whose force of philosophy stands both alone and inclusive of the greatness that has become the text to develop them.  You are simply forced to accept the Judge's existence, since you are unable to reconcile his existence with any conventional justification provided by religion, science, or rationality.  He may be God or he may be the Devil.  He could be both.

Appreciating Blood Meridian for more than its bloody story, you are left asking "how could this have transpired?, wondering whether the sum of human social development really could be condensed into the metaphor of "War is God."

In developing his brutal homily, McCarthy invokes "total war" as exhibited by Stonewall Jackson's "march to the sea" or through the eyes of Charles Marlow as he searches for Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Barbarity and compassion are found almost equally, and the reaction shown to either is almost the same, exhibited by the kindness shown the Kid and the Priest by some Mexican settlers as they are fed and housed as by John Joel Glanton's head being cleaved (to the Thrapple) by a Yuma Indian.

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible.  Have you not seen it all from birth and there by bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate distinction after many a pitch in many a muddy field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. (256)

The point: neither compassion or barbarity really matters in the context of "life."  What does matter is the philosophy by which the Judge, Glanton, and the Kid lead/led their lives.  I'd hazard such a summary: (echoing Fish) it matters little how society or a compassionate God might judge acts of man.  What matters more is the resolution of man to exist and to dominate within the world he finds himself, and in no other situation can this resolution be tested than in that of violence and war.  In this context, the simplicity is clear: live or die.  It is the ultimate test, and it seems the Judge views that to be about as good as man will get it in life.

Despite the shadow cast by the Judge in the book, the Kid really is the main figure; therefore, I believe some final meaning must be resolved from the arc the Kid's journey portrays through the story, and perhaps it is this.  Survival matters; the Kid did and more-or-less accepted what he had to to survive.  Yet, in the end, he chose a different path, one that was not typified by a morally blind brutality, which is why his end was such that it was.  I'd like to believe that, in the end, despite the likelihood that neither good nor bad really matters in the reckoning of one's existence, the morality we place in life and death does matter, and that we can accept compassion as almost equally as significant a precept of life as survival.

I'm sorry to mix in the pop culture with these thoughts on a very important, poignant novel, but I thought a parting thought from the movie Shutter Island relevant--and it goes right to the importance of how we perceive the life we lead (regardless of survival): "would you rather live as a monster or die as a good man?"

Leave Your Livestock Alone

[Writer's note: I started this shortly after the New Year and am now returning to it shortly before the end of January... The New Year is assuming a brisk pace!]

There were some unfamiliar faces that I saw while on my run today.  I could probably explain many of those unfamiliar faces on account of the fact I was running during the day (I typically only run during the morning).  But I suspect that many of those new faces were people recently-resolved to start running (or to run more) this New Year.

The New Year is an interesting time.  The run afforded some time for me think about this time of year, a time when many people take stock of their lives and resolve to change something about them.

There are the traditional, possibly cliche resolutions:
- I'll eat / drink less
- I'll go to the gym more
- I'll find a new job
- I'll finally do something about that part of my life that seems to irk me so

Part of me thinks we are so prone to imagine a change around this time of year due to the odd month that is the American December, full of holidays, gluttony, strange weather and other stimuli.  Who really looks forward to the start of January?  Maybe we all enter the New Year with both an existential hangover as well as a real hangover.

But I think there is something deeper amidst this (my observation) rampant ennui.

The urge to change is something I have struggled with many times (and continually, even unto this day) over the years.  In my humble observation, there are several main-line vehicles typically used.  The most common ones:


1) You can go back to school
This is a good one--particularly for the mid- to late-20 something.  You're on your own, trying to chart your course, and you just feel like you could do better.  So you go back to school and get a professional or graduate degree.  The catch is that you should really have a strong sense of what it is that you actually want to do (other than just "to make more money").  This expensive ploy can pay great dividends or saddle you with debt (inducing a panic, typically causing you to take a job that you don't love so that you can pay off those school loans).


2) You can try and escape
Who hasn't read a great story of travel--and escape.  I'm thinking about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Eat, Pray, Love or In Patagonia (though Chatwin was really a travel correspondent; still, he pretty effectively got the hell out of wherever he started, didn't he?).  During those tech go-go years of the 1990s, I remember many a story about people who--fed up with their lucrative tech jobs--sold the farm and bought a round-the-world ticket.  There's something to dropping everything and putting yourself out on the road.  My experiences studying and living in Denmark and Poland certainly comprise some of the most formative years in my social development.  But something I eventually realized (after my third or so escape plan ended) was that you almost always have to return to some aspect of the life that you began prior to your journey.  You can recast yourself in a new place, but until you've made peace with that whom you are "at home" you are never really going to escape anything.  If by traveling / adventure / immersion in an experience you can come to peace with yourself, that's another thing.  But many fail to do that; instead, they spend a great deal of money--albeit seeing some cool stuff--only to return to the same issues from which they fled.


3) You can try and throw money at the situation
Well, see numbers 1 and 2 above for ways to try and throw money at change.  Apart from throwing money at more school or at travel, I've seen many people throw money at material objects to distract them from immediate challenges or at food / drink.  This one can leave you feeling particularly hallow--a wraith of the (now, because you are in consumer debt) self-perpetuating, negative feedback loop that you created.


4) You can try and throw relationships / sex at the situation
I always slightly cringe when I hear Coldplay's song, Fix You (off of their X&Y album).  It's a nice sentiment but a terrible idea. Why?  Because after many a good and bad relationship, I've come to the conclusion that you can't fix someone--and they can't fix you.  You don't go into a relationship (hoping for a healthy relationship, that is) with the intention of improving yourself (or another).  All that relationship becomes is some object for a new obsession: fixing someone.  That's a job, not a relationship.  The (hopefully) healthy sex life that relationships bring will distract you, but eventually you will want for for the emotional connection that the relationship will forever lack because it is a relationship built on a connection between two people who don't know themselves well enough to--or who just don't want to-- share the good and the bad things about their real selves.

Relationships are actually a great segue to talking about what I think is at the heart of all this New Year change and self-improvement.  I think it all comes down to confidence.  Most importantly, the confidence about which I write is the confidence one feels from believing that--regardless of what is going on around you--at least you know yourself.

Dating is a great test of confidence, because it is fundamentally what you date.  I think you essentially date the the confidence that another projects (or fails to project) that they have confidence about who he / she is.  I understand the impulse with number 4 above: many people are trying to fill the void they feel inside themselves where some sense of self or purpose should be.  But I am highly skeptical that you can find it through a relationship (well, maybe if it is a really bad relationship that causes you to bring into focus the things in which you know you believe (in visible contrast to that of your partner).. this is called a [very] "mixed blessing").

So those are some of my broodings on resolutions in the New Year, change, and whatnot.  In summary, I think the New Year can bring equal parts crises in confidence and inspiration to aspire to something greater than what we currently are.  Maybe that's existence: a tension between acceptance of what we perceive as our reality and confidence in it.

I like a quote from the movie Gross Point Blank on this subject (though the context is about going to a high school reunion and not surviving transition to a New Year):


Hey, I know everybody's coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone.

And one more from a t-shirt I saw a while ago while running (on the subject of adopting physical fitness as a New Year resolution):

"Be well; stay fit; die anyway"

The Dark Ages

As I watch John Boehner on the nightly cable news programs ascend dais after dais, I cannot shake the sense that America is simultaneously descending, with each step Boehner takes, into its Dark Age.  I won't pretend I had the philosophical thought or wherewithal at whatever grade school age I was when I first learned about it to question just how Europe, after such a period of prolonged advancement, careened into the Dark Ages, when knowledge, science and general human development was lost (I mean, how does a society forget the Renaissance??).  But now that I am older (imbued possibly with more capacity for philosophical thought than when I was sitting in Ms. Eppich's 3rd grade class at Mercer Elementary), I find myself wondering about that.

America does seem in the midst of a profound societal shift.  I say "seems" because I am aware that the passage of time and progress may always seem this way to those who live through those times.  Yet, with some grounding in history and social-political development, I think these shifts underway are more significant than just the growing pains of natural social evolution, and the midterms may have been a good indicator of that.

Simplistically, I have always believed that democracy, particularly in its incarnation in the U.S., was about a fundamental choice between small government and big government.  Small government is defined by less Government (big “G,” notice.. ) regulation and by fewer Government social programs that amount to a broad social safety net.  Big government is defined by a greater degree of regulation and a strong social safety net.  The platforms of the dominant Republican and Democrat U.S. political parties do not break neatly between these two choices, and I find it difficult to draw a conclusion about what Americans really want from their Government (or in terms of what direction they desire their Government to proceed) based on the midterms.  However, despite my take on the blurred lines that actually divide the Republican from the Democratic ethos, the rhetoric is still there: Republicans traditionally stand for smaller government and less regulation, and the Democrats stand for larger government and more regulation.  That the hooey of this real choice actually existing anymore has dawned on many people, I think, and from that observation I proceed with the rest of my thoughts.

Sickness and Spite
It was Election Day, and I was in Panama City, FL.  I was stopped behind a pick-up truck at a stop light, when I noticed its bumper sticker: "Don't Re-elect ANYBODY."  Like most people with cable tv service, I had spent the past several months watching the cable news channels, listening to predictions on the outcome of the looming election and the possible impact of the Tea Party.  What did it all mean?  Voter sentiment seemed to be polling away from incumbents and towards Tea Party (and Republican) candidates.  Were Americans choosing smaller government?  Was this a repudiation of Obamacare?

That bumper sticker made the most sense to me.  Americans were just fed-up with cynical American politics.  Moreover, as echoed in several articles I have recently read, Americans felt a strong sense to spite the establishment through their vote, and the Democrats currently held the majority in that establishment.  On Obamacare in particular, I thought the following sentiment from an article in the October 14th, 2010 Economist Magazine seemed most plausible:

Perhaps the most convincing reason to think Republicans will not win as much applause as they hope comes from Drew Altman of KFF. A recent poll by his organisation found 49% in favour of the new laws and 40% against. Crucially, of those who were angry about the reforms, 77% said it reflected a broader anger about the shortcomings of the federal government—and only a fifth had specific grievances against Obamacare.

Some Sense of Direction?
I don’t offer many data points here to support this suspicion, but I think that Americans are trending toward a choice between big and small government, and that choice is towards big government.  The rise in the level of benefits and the amount of regulation presumably demanded by Americans strongly supports this suspicion.  On top of that, I offer two other fundamental arguments.

The development of the state and its interaction with a society serves one primary purpose: the conservation and perpetuation of wealth.  The state (i.e. laws) and its maintenance and regulation of a market reduces risk for those who own capital.  It is classic development theory and it is as good as gold.

The second argument comes from the sage prognostication of economists much wiser than myself, specifically Schumpeter and (wait for it; hold your boo’s) Marx (yes, his social commentary was actually rather astute).  Both of these economists picked up on the trend that, as a society ages and more wealth is generated—wealth that those wealthy want conserved—the apparatus of the state seems to develop appendages and digits most suitable for the execution of a flavor of socialism than a more Adam Smith-like / Ayn Rand-ian free market democracy.  Why?  My simplified assessment: as the risks to the conservation of wealth become more numerous and complicated; as a society’s population grows; the mechanisms required to keep the majority copacetic enough to maintain a certain production / consumption dynamic require a bigger state offering more robust social services.  These services fundamentally level standards of living, reducing risk of near-term social unrest.

The Bad News
The bad news is that—although I do think that the role of the state and furthermore of big government makes sense—the “boorishness of the masses” (Marx, I think) should not be overlooked.  Stability is a pendulum: the state might try and reduce its rock, but, as our boy Einstein noted, things get interesting when the pendulum accelerates and gains momentum (i.e. the mass of an electorate).  This might be a good time to give From Dawn to Decadence another earnest try.

And I predict pushback from my invocation of Marx up there.  To that, I’ll just say this: Communism wasn’t Marx’s bright idea.  To understand the folly that was (eventually, finally) Communism, an historical understanding of how some Marxian principals were borrowed (and then altered) by Lenin, Stalin, and then a host of other Communist party bosses is needed.  To clarify: in no way is this any kind of an endorsement of either socialism or Communism!

Rather, I am trying to make a point, and that point is two-fold: Americans should recognize this fundamental choice they need to make, and that the political choices they may choose need to represent more clearly this spectrum between big and small government.  What is so frustrating is that this election has become more an indication of the spite of American people than some referendum on the path voters want the U.S. to proceed.  Frankly, either path is acceptable.  That the dominant U.S. political parties don’t seem to offer a platform of vehicle on which to approach either is just maddening.

For now, I think I will do some reading about the fall of European societies prior to the Dark Ages.  Hopefully, I will not find signs similar signs in the development of our modern society.

The Boy Who Lived

The overall story begins with death. But love, pain, fear, loss, joy, surprise, disappointment, courage, patience, diligence, trust, wisdom, acceptance / fear of death, friendship, faith, betrayal, forgiveness, and finally triumph through perseverance (some might say redemption)—and more, I am sure—are all experienced as well.

I would be a little ashamed to find myself writing about the Harry Potter series were it not for the fact that I enjoyed it so. I think it’s fair to repeat a critique I had heard as I embarked on the effort (joy, really) of reading the seven-part series of books, one after another: Rowling’s writing is rather poor (particularly at the start), though it improves (as does the complexity of her story telling) the further the reader gets into the series. But after reading all seven books, I find that questions about the quality of her initial (or general) writing do not really matter to me much. Instead, I am left in awe at how richly she draws the long arc of the story, as objects subtly and inconsequentially introduced in early books (such as the cursed necklace Harry finds in Borgin & Burkes in the first book, or the diadem he finds in book six) make more prominent appearances later in the series. Moreover, the extent to which the characters develop over the seven books is truly satisfying. In keeping integrity to as organic a development of particularly the younger characters as she can, Rowling seems to capture perfectly so many of the then-tumultuous moments of young childhood and later adolescence that I still vividly remember.

But what sticks with me the most is this notion that Rowling attempted to write a story that could pass on to her children the many things a mother might have learned about “life” in a way that it likely both to entertain them and to stick with them for the rest of their lives. Her attempt to do this has probably been documented as such; it wouldn’t surprise me if it were overt. Still, it remains, intentional or not; the stories are very effective drawing out value lessons from difficult situations.  Moreover, I would speculate that her effectiveness inducing such value lessons will only be appreciated as time passes, since it is the parables of our youth that continue to instruct us through life until the end of our days.

As employed by many authors, part of Ms. Rowling's effectiveness spinning the Harry Pottery story comes from her ability to simplify components of what can be very non-simple dynamic: the difference between (and discerning) good and evil.  Lord Voldemort = evil and Harry Potter = good.  The distinction is clear; yet, Rowling does muddy the boundaries a bit, particularly in her later characterization of Professor Dumbledore's early years; possible motivations for Tom Riddle's development; and even through Harry's own struggles living up first to his notoriety and later his prophesied role.  A point I gathered from these struggles is that so many of the good things we can take for granted in heroes, from bravery to courage to fortitude, are simple concepts that can be extremely difficult to uphold in real life--even for those of us who do not possess magical abilities or who are not predestined to be a hero.  Simple, undramatic decisions underlie a larger attempt to be "good," and one constantly has to consider whether the means justify the end (think of the failures of Dolores Umbridge, deigning the stain of using the cruciatus curse was justified by her attempts to discover information or instill order).

I am sure it is fodder for sneers from those very sophisticated and enlightened readers, but I also appreciated the time and care Rowling gave to stress the importance of love.  The power that Harry possessed that would ultimately permit him to destroy a more powerful (magically) Lord Voldemort was Harry's power to love.  The presence and power of love penetrated all corners of the story, in fact, from its ability to save Harry's life in the opening scenes to its role protecting all of the non-Death Eaters at the end of the story.  I also saw a clear distinction drawn between those characters in the books who had some component of love in their lives versus those who did not.  The Malfoys are a good example.  As loathful as the Malfoys as a family seem to be, they still had the capacity for love, and that saved them in the end.


I think in the end, the clearest distinction Rowling drew was between Voldemort's inability even to have real relationships (epitomized by his inability to love) in contrast to the many relationships that Harry had that both sustained him and enabled his success.  I can only imagine that, as a kid growing up, the values of many relationships can seem dubious.  Even for adults, there are so many opportunities to eschew the complexity of relationships; for failing to learn how to trust and to believe in friendship.  Perhaps one of the most satisfying continuities throughout the stories was Harry's friendship with Ron and Hermione.  As I have written previously here--and as evidenced in the story--these friendships ultimately were Harry's greatest strength, weapon, and treasure.