Modern Madness

I'd like to juxtapose a few things here that go along with my post from last night "The Bus Stop" and the theme of "true moments."

The following is the lyrics to Rammstein's "Stripped." Though they normally sing in German, this one is in English.

Come with me
Into the trees.
We lay on the grass
And let hours pass.

Take my hand
Come back to the land.
Let's get away
Just for one day.

Let me see you stripped.
Let me see you stripped.

Metropolis
Has nothing like this.
You breathing in fumes
I taste when we kiss.

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Where everything's ours
For a few hours.

Let me see you stripped.
Let me see you stripped.

Let me hear you make decisions
Without your television.
Let me hear you speaking
Just for me.

Let me see you stripped.

The song greatly recalls to my mind the novel 1984 where Winston takes to the woods in the countryside to make love to Julia, their great act of rebellion within one of the most totalitarian states ever imagined. He fumbles, hesitates at first, but before long they are lost in the most natural of acts in a way he was never able to experience with his frigid, Party-loving ex-wife back in the city.

The idea is that you can't truly share intimate moments while you're still plugged in to today's thoroughly mediated world; it is its own kind of totalitarian state, not as physically brutal as in 1984, but just as vicious and implacable in its efforts to destroy and deny what makes us human. You can't truly know another person with the television blaring, advertisements jumping out at you from all angles, incoming texts beeping for your attention and begging for response, Facebook updates that need to be made and all the millions of other distractions of modern society that prevent you from truly experiencing, from truly being in a moment. You can never truly know yourself in such an environment, either.

What to do? Well, first it means limiting your intake of all that. I don't have cable, I don't follow celebrity gossip, I don't follow sports and I don't listen to pop music. I go to the movies two or three times a year. But that isn't enough. You must attempt to create small bubbles, like pockets of air, inside it like I described in "The Bus Stop," or escape from it altogether from time to time like in "Stripped," even if it is "just for one day" or only "a few hours." It amazes me how refreshing and renewing a simple walk in the woods is for me. I'm lucky to be able to live in a city that has such wonderful national parks. DC is pretty great in that way. I leave my building, round the corner and within five minutes of getting off my couch I'm walking on an offshoot of the Glover-Archibald Trail. The trees envelope you after a few dozen yards and you may as well be out in the wilderness up on a mountain. Only the occasional sounds of planes overhead pull you from the natural world. The place is filled with insects, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, raccoons and deer. And of course dogs walking with their owners.

It is right there, so close. And yet so many of us rarely, or never, enjoy it. Putting on your running shoes, sipping a Gatorade and pulling out the stopwatch to make sure you keep your pace as you blow through the trail, thinking only of whether your new exercise shorts make your ass look fat, doesn't count by the way.

In fact, I just remembered a kind of perversion of the Prometheus story I witnessed within the last year. A deer had run out of the woods and into the business district a little south of Dupont Circle, bringing the gift of natural wonder to the Washingtonians' dreary morning commute. For its audacity and defiance of the set order of things, the deer was struck by a car on Connecticut Avenue and killed. I was walking to work and only saw the immediate aftermath of the event; the deer was already dead by the time I cam upon the scene. But there was the man looking forlorn sitting in his car, which was all smashed in the front, including the windshield. He was pulled over to the side of the road with a phone in his ear, no doubt calling his wife and AAA. And there was the deer, lying in the middle of the street behind a traffic light pole, more cars ambling past on either side of it, an obscenity, an indecency far more shocking than any nipple popping out during a concert or a curse word let slip on a morning talk show.

From the appearance of things, it didn't seem that mankind had accepted the gift this time around. We made sure to mete out the punishment ourselves as well, not trusting the gods to do so properly anymore.

But we must embrace that gift. Bathe in its purity from time to time and then carry around its residual glow. Hold at least some small portion of it until we can make our way back to such a moment again.

The alternative is a life of this:

Fleeing through dark tunnels,
Underground we make our way.
Vaguely smelling of a hard day’s work,
Our car sways and whines under our weight.
Brakes scream the story we dare not
Tell ourselves, lest we frighten the children.
We try too hard to avoid eye contact,
And instead tell ourselves stories of home.
Lovers waiting, children playing, tails wagging,
Comforts of couches and dinners and sleep.

Make tomorrow another day, please.
Not like the one that came before.
How long until home?
I make my way underground.

That is a poem I wrote about a year and a half ago that was published in Adbusters magazine, Issue #78 (July/August 2008) and which can be found on the third page if you start counting from the inside cover. The object of all this is well summed up by a quote from Thomas Merton that is found near the back of that issue:

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we can see, we cannot think.

And he died in 1968, never knowing about cell phones, texting, Facebook, Myspace or Twitter. Skip ahead just a short bit to 1976 (still in an age without all those things) and one of the greatest movies of all time, Network, and we have Max, an old news man, breaking off his affair with Diana, a young television producer:

Max Schumacher: You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.

Diana Christensen: [hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.

Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.

"Diana" is now in her fifties and probably looks upon us (my fellow under-30's) in much the same way Max once looked at her; from across an unfathomable gulf between meaning (diluted as it is in her) and madness. Not that she has improved at all, just that we've gotten so much worse. We have a lot to overcome, but it is not impossible.

The Bus Stop

Note: I wrote this last night (Thursday 9/24/09 for the record) and I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. It feels like poetry, even though it is in prose form. That ambiguity intrigues me.

As I stand at the bus stop, waiting to complete my journey home from work, having already walked nearly a mile, I can’t help but become acutely and intensely aware of the bustle that swirls around me. Night after night, I see the people swish past, some arm-in-arm and some alone, the latter often with headphones stuck in their ears. Some of them even have hands dedicated to texting, between skipping songs they’re not in the mood for and other ones they’re not even sure why they ever downloaded, while they walk and try to keep half an eye on the way forward. I hear snippets of their conversations with each other or to people on the other ends of phones. The ones speaking on headsets appear to be insane at first, of course. Cars trundle past on their way to everywhere, weaving around the buses that loudly proclaim their adherence to their set route and schedule. Bicyclists dart here and there, their flashing red lights blinking away under the constant gaze of street lamps and headlights.

And I am there standing still. An observer of so much, I can forget that; that I am really there, inhabiting a body that can interact with what is before me. It reminds me how disconnected I am, how apart from so much of this society I stand. It is almost as if a metaphor I once imagined was brought to life. There is a bittersweet sadness; a primal longing to belong that inevitably rises up in these moments. But there is also a peace; a kind of warmth that settles over everything inside me. It is not truly loneliness that animates me at the bus stop, though the feeling is similar, but a sort of sadness that the world has placed us all where we are and that we all stand apart, even the ones who are walking together, so close they can whisper and hear without being overheard. At those moments I feel that I could be standing with someone who has known me all my life and still be alone.

But there is so much beauty there, too. The way the thin branches of a dead tree encircle the stars when I look up; the rotting boughs still stretch forth with elegant determination, powerful even in death. The dissonant strains of music from car stereos mix with the cacophony of rumbling engines, the occasional horns and myriad human conversation to form a song of pulsing life that would make John Cage smile and tap his foot to the nonexistent beat. And, on second thought, maybe that couple is sharing a true moment of love as they move on out of sight. Maybe they are not so far apart as they first appeared. Maybe it is possible to experience true moments these days; maybe this is one. And the inner warmth grows. And sometimes it makes me smile. Does any passerby, reflecting my position and observing me, have an inkling of why? Do they feel it, too?

Laws of Motion

There are several minutes left.

I see the tall grass,
Waving in the breeze along the highway,
And all I can think of is her hair,
Gently flowing through my fingers
As she lay by my side.
The moonlight flooding our bed.
My love. My wife.

I see the date trees,
And the only image in my mind is of my daughter as a young child,
Offering me the seed in her little palm.
Done with the fruit, she thought I would want the remains.
“Here, Daddy!”
We laughed about that for years,
Even when she went to university.
She was my greatest joy.

I hear the birds,
And my mother is with me again,
Whispering that you can hear God in their singing,
If only you listen closely.

And that is why I am here. I can’t forget.
I used to have love and friendship in my heart.
Now all that remains is grief and hatred.
I used to have faith in God and goodness.
Now I know only loss and a pain that will not fade.

There can be no God.
There can be no God when that day was just another day.
When the world can still go on.
Just another day.
Just another day when they took my mother to the hospital.
Just another day that I couldn’t go with them, out trying to get work.
Just another day with nervous Americans at the checkpoint.
Just another Arab woman confused by their gestures and shouts.
Just another car they filled with bullets,
And just another slow crawl at the bottom of their news screen:
“Baghdad gun battle leaves 3 Iraqi civilians dead…”

There is no God, but there is physics.
Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.
I was an engineer before the war, I know how this works.
In an instant all of my pain disappears forever,
And is transferred to the Americans.

So now I see it in my rearview mirror.
The convoy is slowly getting closer.

I am not afraid of death. Not now.
I long for it.
It is the only thing that can save me.

The jihadis thought that I was calm because of my faith.
They exclaimed, “Omar, God will welcome you to Heaven very soon! Be glad!”
They don’t know that I don’t believe it.
I had to play the part otherwise they might not have let me go.
They need holy martyrs.
I only need to get close to that Hum Vee.

And here they are, arrogantly pushing everyone over to the side of the road,
The soldier on top pointing his machine gun everywhere.
I’m driving slowly and quickly they approach on my left.

I want to look them in the eyes,
So I hesitate for just a moment.
The soldier in front is an Arab-American.
We make eye contact and I can see a rush of fear;
He must see the resolve in my eyes…or the detonator in my hand.
He begins to shout, but it is only a second that I have waited.
In my last moment, I wonder if he is praying to God to save him.

That will not work.
God is not there to hear.
We will not meet again in Heaven.
It is over.
Now.

"Peace Train" derailed by hail of bullets in Baghdad

Okay, I know this is pretty old, but I think it is really remarkable and deserves to be shared. This story is from Nabil's Blog, written by an Iraqi who is now exiled in Jordan. He hasn't posted in a few months, but it really is a great blog and I used to read it very regularly. I originally found out about him through a BBC story a few years ago that featured a series of talented Iraqi bloggers.

In this post from April 7, 2007 Nabil writes about an incident that he thinks is funny, but admits that we may find disturbing. Living in Baghdad at the time, he was sitting in his room, playing guitar (he's pretty damn good; check out the link on his blog to his recorded songs) and trying to put together a recording of the Cat Stevens song "Peace Train."

[A]nd after about 30 seconds on starting the song, when reaching the first line in the song, which was "Now I've been happy lately," a random bullet entered my room, crashed the window and broke all the glass and a heavy shooting then took place in the street.

With his home suddenly a war zone, Nabil hastily turned off the recording before moving further away from the window to avoid getting hit by stray bullets and marveled at the irony of what had just happened.

It's like no one should be happy in this country, because if you say that you're happy, a bullet will come and smash your head right away.

This is a direct link to the audio file he recorded.

I think it is important that small incidents like this (as well as the huge massacres and atrocities) are not forgotten as we withdraw a significant portion of our troops and the American public moves on from thinking about Iraq. It is our responsibility for what happened there and the blood and tears of millions will always be on our hands. If we can remember this, I believe that it may help in some small way to prevent us from launching another brutal, unnecessary war someday. I can only hope.

To Market

A short preface to this poem is in order, I believe. The main character, if you will, is a widowed, young Iraqi mother living in Baghdad during the worst violence of the civil war and occupation. It is about the horror she faces on a normal trip to the local outdoor market. She is just trying to get food and other necessary goods for herself and her children, but a suicide bomber packed among the civilians sows chaos soon after she arrives.

While atrocities like this do not happen as often now as they did in past years, they do still occur. There is a kind of low-level violence that can be compared directly to the 15 year civil war in Lebanon in terms of lethality. Iraq is still a terribly violent place by world historical standards, but things are not nearly as bad as they were a couple of years ago.

This relative calm has mainly settled in because ethnic cleansing has been almost completely achieved, most importantly in Baghdad, but also throughout Iraq. The different sects are separated into fortified neighborhoods, many in Baghdad surrounded by high blast walls. The US has also successfully bribed many Sunni tribal leaders (known as the Sons of Iraq or the Sunni Awakening Councils) into supporting American efforts against al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has reduced the suicide bombings - al-Qaeda's favored tactic for stoking the fires of sectarian violence.

How much longer the Sons of Iraq continue to fight against other Sunnis and not against the US or, most importantly, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, remains to be seen. The US or the Iraqi government must continue to pay them until and unless they are given some kind of legitimate role in the government, which the Shiite leaders are very reluctant to do. The provincial elections at the end of this month will be the first elections the Sunnis participate in en masse and will result in new power dynamics, possibly undermining al-Maliki's legitimacy if his coalition does poorly.

Really, the armed factions (a.k.a. everybody - every political group must have a militia [or an army] to survive in Iraq) are just waiting for the US to leave so that things can really be settled and the true power of each group can be determined. The longer the US stays, the longer this is put off, but it has to happen eventually. The only question is whether it will happen relatively peacefully (through the rise and fall of coalitions and other political wrangling), or whether the resulting violence will make 2006 look like a good year for the ordinary Iraqi.

Without further ado, here is the poem.

Feet swift,
Head down,
Fists balled,
Eyes averted,
Teeth grinding,
I walk to the market.
My family must eat.

Not harassed today,
I wore the proper garb,
And moved quickly,
But not too quickly.
Took the right route,
Crossed the right streets,
Whispered my prayers,
And made it to the square,
So that my family may eat.

Among the other women,
Among the children,
Among the old men,
Among the animals,
I weave and bargain,
Carrying the things that,
Will allow my family to eat.

My hand extends out,
I am trying to pay,
But there is a roar,
For just a brief moment,
And now I am deaf,
Except for a ringing;
Mosquitoes in my ears,
As I am jerked through space.

The world is in chaos,
As the brief moment expands.
My feet can find no ground,
My eyes can make no sense,
My body is in no pain,
Until I suddenly stop,
Grasping in vain for what I held.

Now I can feel the piercing wounds,
Now I see the carnage-strewn ground,
And the bodies I lie among, but smoke burns my eyes.
Now I can hear only faintly, muffled,
Screams wafting in through great walls,
Of stone and cries miles away, but pain wracks my head.
I am crumpled and I can taste the blood,
Pooling in my mouth.

A boy crouches over me,
Fiercely searching my eyes.
He sees I am not his mother,
And so he hurries away,
To turn over corpses.
One consolation I now have:
That I will not live for years,
To be haunted by the child’s face.

Though, I am left with one thought,
That contains horror to match his:
Now how will my family eat?

Can You Tell Me?

Can you tell me how long
it takes tale to become song?

Can you tell me how long
it takes widow to move on?

Can you tell me wherefore
father rushes off to war?

Can you tell me wherefore
this bullet he cannot endure?

Can you tell me where now
son lies in grave so shallow?

Can you tell me where now
daughter rests in fields fallow?

Can you tell me how should
this be for some greater good?

Can you tell me how should
this endless death be withstood?

For I will not know peace;
in my grave restless lay I.

Mother will not know peace;
empty home to occupy.

Family broken, gone;
not one could save another.

Hope deserted and dead;
sister could not mourn brother.

So please, spare us your shouts
of victory and glory.

We will not join in your
rabid dance, song, or story.

For we know that in time
lust will overtake these men.

And we will be dying
over and over again.

Sleepwalking My Way to Victory

I don't know about you, but I'm going to win.
I'm going to win it all.
I don't know what it is I'm winning,
But, my gut tells me, I'm going to win anyway.
You can't stop me.
My feet will not drag and my spine will not bend.

I'm going to win, even if you don't like me.
I'm going to win, even if you have to die for it.
I'm going to win, even if I have to yell.
I'm going to win, even if I have to lie.

Losing is not an option, so it won't happen.
If you talk about losing, you're a traitor.
If you talk about losing, you're a coward.
My ears and eyes can't hear and see losing,
So that makes me better than you'll ever be.

You'll know I've won when you hear me screaming,
"I've won! I've won! Look who's won! It's me!"

Don't even try to tell me I've lost.
I never lose.
Maybe you lose.
Other people lose.
I never lose.
I never run away from a problem I can't fix.
I destroy all of my problems.
I destroy them.

I will win if it's easy.
I will win, even if it's hard.
I will win, though it's impossible.

Hey, I see you're sleepwalking, too.
I'm going to win, how about you?
What? It's not about winning and losing?
You don't want me to win, do you?
That's what you're getting at, isn't it?

Well, I'll win for you, too.
I'll win for everybody who deserves to win.
I dreamt it would happen,
While I walked past the sink,
Right before I bumped into you.
Now get out of my way,
I have something to win,
Though I don't know what it is.

Torrential Rain, Wars and Football...Whew!

Wow, what a day...so much has been happening in the world and in my life lately that I'm not even sure where I'd begin. Well, where I'd begin maybe isn't tough...it's where I'd go from there, and from there, and from there without being too damn random.

I guess I'll start with the usual conversation set piece. You know, the thing that people with nothing to talk about always wind up talking about...the weather.

Yea, so I live in Washington, DC...otherwise known as Flood Zone #1. The rain has been absolutely ridiculous around here lately. I was walking down Wisconsin Avenue this afternoon and got caught in this downpour that was straight out of a Kurosawa film (think Rashomon). It was incredible...I actually saw the rain approaching me from further down the street. Granted, I knew it was coming by the wind and the heavy, dark clouds, but right before it hit I looked up the street and saw that this gray curtain had descended over the scene a few blocks ahead of me. My jaw dropped as I realized a near solid wall of water was rapidly approaching me.

Within seconds I was drenched. Nonetheless, I quickly darted under the awning of the nearest shop, which happened to be a little place that sold Persian rugs. So there I stood for a full fifteen minutes admiring the beautiful rugs, poofs, and clothing with one turn, and the awesome torrent, the actual streams of run-off rolling down the sidewalk, and the vast lake that had formed at the nearest intersection with another.

I really enjoy storms. Never mind that I was going to be late for my other job.

So, then I check the BBC News website later tonight and find out...Israel has invaded Gaza. They almost stayed out for a year. Almost a whole year! I shudder to think of what the abducted soldiers' captors did with him once they heard that the IDF tanks were rolling in. Do they really think that they'll find him alive? I hope they do. I hope he is shown mercy...he's just a kid. I also hope that Palestinian civilians are not harmed in this incursion...my hopes are dim, however.

The chances for peace are also fading rapidly. How many more will have to die? It pains me to think that the United States may be creating another seemingly intractable conflict by its actions in Iraq. The sheer ignorance and incompetence of the Bush administration with regard to Iraq is simply staggering...and appalling in its consequences. Tens of thousands of people have paid with their lives because the administration did not want to bother with such silly things as "facts" and "knowledge" and "experience in the region." They knew nothing about Iraq, but, by golly they were going to bomb the hell out of it and call in Halliburton to build a nice new Mall of America over there...or...well, maybe a Mall of Iraq, too to please the locals. C'mon folks, that's what democracy is all about!

They make me sick...I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about them later, but I don't want this to be solely an anti-Bush blog. There are a ton of those, I'm sure, so I'll try not to let my rage boil over onto the "page" too often. Once I get started, though...

Finally, I'm so psyched for the quarterfinals of the World Cup!!! Germany vs. Argentina should be one of the best games of the tournament, while I think that, if they keep it up like they did against Spain, France may give Brazil a run for their money. England vs, Portugal promises to be a hard fought match and you never know with Ukraine...will they pull off the upset? We shall have to see what Italy has to say about that. Zidane, Henry, Beckham, Rooney, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Klose, Podolski, Messi, Totti, Shevchenko...this is what the World Cup is all about!!!

Inaugural Address?

Hear ye, hear ye. This blog is now in session. Blah, blah, blah...some more nonsense...*shuffling noises*...facts and figures...*sounds of stultifying boredom*...pompous promises...obscenities...wait, what? Eh, that's enough of that.

So, this will be my attempt at sharing my own personal thoughts (both random and those that have spent countless years in gestation) with the wider web-world. More to come...