9/11/2016

How do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit down here, by your graveside,
and rest for a while in the warm summer sun—
I've been walkin' all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,
when you joined the great fall-in in 1916;
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean—
or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

This installation currently occupies St. Louis' Art Hill, from the art museum itself all the way down to the Grand Basin. Flags—7021 of them—pay honor and tribute to those US military service men and women who have died in the War on Terror since 11 September 2001.

As long as there are humans, there will be war and violence. Diplomacy only seems to work for so long—then there's a war 'reset', and the whole abhorrent process begins again.

Wars about land, wars about money, wars about political ideology, wars about dominance—violence committed to prove a religious or political point. There's probably always going to be some ethically-stunted opportunist who thinks the best—or only—way to make himself or his chosen cause relevant is with a gun or a bomb, dressing hatred up as political comment or freedom-fighting.

Violence, whether sanctified as a 'just' war or not, is as necessary as it is futile, unfortunately. I'm old enough to remember clearly the domestic violence of the late 60s, and the war in Vietnam: on the home front, we had monsters like the Weathermen, who couldn't shoot straight but managed to kill an innocent young professor anyway. Abroad, we wasted our young men on a debacle that had no chance at all of any good outcome.

The horror calling itself Isis today is no better. They're simply people looking for an outlet for hate—cowards who hide, pop up to do their evil, then disappear, protesting man's inhumanity to man by killing more people.

War never again? Tell it to the aggressors of the world—those who kill others  for the sake of a depraved ideology no reasonable person could credence for a nanosecond. Build bombs, missiles, and warplanes we say we won't use, for the war machine? Possibly. If such things scare even ONE monster into not starting a war, if they protect just ONE brave man or woman serving in the military, they may be worth it. If they stop some barbarian in his tracks after one vile, aggressive, deadly act, then maybe—just maybe—yes. I'm neither a war-monger nor a pacifist. I hold with no political party, no canned ideology, no religion. I vote by the candidate, and by the issue.

I do think some things are worth fighting for. Liberty—anyone's liberty—is worth fighting for. To the death, if that's what it takes. Even so, war is still a repulsive waste.

I have nothing but respect for anyone willing to give his/her life for someone else's liberty--as opposed to a suicide bomber, who obliterates others to serve his perverted purpose, and himself to avoid being judged and punished for his wicked act.

No matter your perspective on it, war is a sickening waste, an outrage we keep repeating. Those who died 'quick and clean' died just the same—useless, senseless deaths in some godforsaken corner of the globe, whether those who died turned to clay in some anonymous rice paddy in southeast Asia, or mummified in a Middle Eastern desert no one ever heard of.

Great swathes of France...Belgium...Turkey...are still left as necropolises from the atrocity of World War I a hundred years ago. Honestly, I think parks without corpses would serve the living far better, and I'd sooner go myself than send my sons—or anyone else—off to war. Life or death isn't a decision I can make for another human; for myself, only.

Chile...Vietnam...Syria...all made the decision for others the wrong way, for the wrong reasons. And it isn't just the loss of life that bothers me: the collateral wreckage—the soldiers and support personnel who came home changed forever, bent beyond recognition by abominations they'd been through continued the damage. The families who couldn't understand what had happened to their fathers, sons, brothers suffered along with them. 

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? 

In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?

And although you died back in 1916 

To that loyal heart, you're forever nineteen.

Or are you a stranger without even a name 

Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane

In an old photograph torn tattered and stained, 

Faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

And then there are the faithful, patient souls left vainly waiting for word one way or the other—and never knowing for certain, until time and despair draws them, inexorably, to the conclusion that death came for their loved ones without anyone noticing, or remembering.

Last and least are the humble physical reminders....dog-eared photos and letters that are the only evidence these men ever existed, until those fragile things, too, disappear, and the men they bring to mind vanish from memory altogether. 

The sun shining down on these green fields of France 

The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance...

The trenches have vanished long under the plows, 

No gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now,

But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's land, 

The countless white crosses in mute witness stand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man, 

And whole generation were butchered and damned.

I remember—so vivdly—my own horror as my sons were forced when they turned 18, to register for the draft like every other young man that age. There's little chance that either would be drafted, but is anyone foolish enough to believe there will be a world without war? Maybe someday there will be—not in my lifetime, or that of my sons...but someday. Maybe someday.

Good, bad, and indifferent, this is my country—my home. For all her faults, flaws, and foolishness, I love her, and I would, indeed, fight to protect her. Underneath the boosterism, ballyhoo, and outright bullshit, there's an enormous energy and generosity here. 

I've seen grad students thin enough to read through give their last $5 to homeless people, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't share with another creature—human or animal—in need. We have the freedom to choose for ourselves who and what we want to be, and to choose whatever means seem best to achieve that.

Are these things worth war? You tell me. 

We've gone to war for hope, oddly enough. The hope of ending war for everyone, and making freedom a reality for ourselves, and others. Has anyone ever gone off to war actually believing that his would really be the last war ever? Anyone doing so must surely be living in a dream world. 

I can't stop a bomber, or a war, and I don't intend to try.

So how will I fight back? Not with a gun. Not with a war plane. Not with a hidden bomb, or a suicide bomb gizmo. Not with hatred, or with violence. I can refuse to be cowed. I can refuse to be isolationist. I can fight back with kindness, and assistance to anyone I find who needs it.

I can, and I will.

I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,

All those who lie here, do they know why they died?

Did you really believe them when they told you the cause,

Did you really believe that this war would end wars?

Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, 

The killing, the dying, was all done in vain,

For, young Willie McBride, it's all happened again— 

And again, and again, and again and again.

Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they play the fife lowly, 

Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

Did the band play the last post and chorus?

Did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest"?

Jail, Justice, and Junk Food

I'm angry.

I'm angry because I'm sitting here eating crap I don't want, and don't even particularly like—a load of fat and sugar, with a dessicated blueberry or two floating around in it.

I'm angry I'm upset enough to be eating it, because I haven't a better way to deal with being angry at the moment.

I'm angry that the guy who mugged me five years ago is up for parole.

I'm angry I'm writing this when I should be working.

I'm angry I'm wasting my time writing a victim statement, of all things. A victim? ME? No fucking way.

I'm angry because I doubt he was roaming the streets looking for a victim in broad daylight: I think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—he probably thought I looked like easy pickings. An easy mistake to make.

I'm angry that, after 30 years in prison for murdering another man in a fight over a female, he'd been out for one lousy week when he laid hands on me as I left work that hot June afternoon 5 years ago.

I'm angry that he laid hands on me on the grounds of a school for sixth graders—kids of 11 or 12—though I'd far rather he grabbed me instead of one of the kids. The security footage showed he'd been lurking around the building about the same time of the afternoon for a couple of days before he made his move....sizing up the place? Pure chance?

I'm angry because I'm absolutely certain that, if he'd gotten me up into the woods behind the building, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this now.

I'm angry that I still remember exactly how the dirty flesh of his hand tasted when I sank my teeth into it to make him let go of me.

I'm angry because I've never been inside, outside, or anywhere near a prison—but I must spend a day at Missouri's "Correctional Center" (for which read 'jail') in  Potosi, wherein reside 800 death-row, maximum-security, and high-risk male inmates.

I'm angry because, if I don't go give a statement, they may let him out this summer to attack someone else—someone who might not fight back as hard as I did, or be as lucky as I was. Lucky? Absoutely. The head custodian, Keith Chatman, heard me screeching, and came running—no thought for his own safety. Chatman's what a hero looks like.

I'm angry that I wasted a whole day at the county courthouse in Clayton for the last hearing about this.

I'm angry they couldn't get him out of the holding cell and in front of the judge because he fought like a lunatic, claiming later, as he admitted attacking me, that he was violent because his meds were 'out of whack'. (Really? Then he needs to be in a nice, safe prison where his meds will be properly overseen.)

I'm angry because someone in an official capacity might be stupid enough to think taking a course while in prison will make this guy not attack people. What a crock—he murdered a man; he assaulted me; taking a course will make him the soul of reason and rectitude? Bullshit.

I'm angry that when his sentence is up, this piece of walking excrement gets out—even if I do manage to keep him behind bars for its full duration.

I'm angry, and I'm determined. Parole hearing? You'll see me. Release review? I'll be there. As long as he still has time to serve, I'll do whatever it takes to see that he stays right where he is. Write statements? Fine. Face him at a hearing? Bring it. It's worth the time and stress to keep him there.

I'm determined.

Not-so-Social Networking

Online friendships are great. Social networks, and, in a larger sense, the Internet itself, give us the opportunity to join a virtual community and meet people we otherwise might never have known existed. Granted, one does need to exercise care in forming friendships online, since visual cues are mostly missing, but with time, sometimes, online friendships turn grow into real ones, strong enough to even translate themselves into 3D relationships. Even more care needs to be taken in meeting up with online acquaintances in person, of course; most often, though, I think people who are nice online are just as nice face-to-face.

I've spent the last couple of months watching a good friend struggle with a group of his online 'friends'. My friend, a man I’ll call Charlie, is an online buddy repurposed as a 3D friend. A really nice guy, he has hundreds of online contacts. He’s cheerful good fun, able to make amusing and intelligent conversation on a dozen subjects—everything from music to technology to the country’s health-care quagmire.

One particular group of his friends had kept a steady conversational thread going on a daily basis for some months before things began to get a bit strange: oddly barbed little comments, people being left out of the thread, and seemingly random unfollowing/blocking, followed by equally random returns to friendliness. Charlie couldn’t get a straight answer out of any of the others about what was going on, and eventually, the whole thing had degenerated into little more than trolling. After a few months of puzzlement and frustration, he unfollowed the others, and locked his account down.

He’ll probably never know what actually went wrong. 

Seems to me some folks regard online friends and acquaintances as somehow disposable. Strange, since there are real people at both ends of the wire—but it’s alarmingly easy to block another person thoroughly, and edit them out of your life as though you can make them cease to exist entirely. Not hard to convince yourself it wasn’t ‘real’, too, since online communication seems so ephemeral. 

What a waste, and what a shame. Friendships shouldn’t, I think, be regarded as disposable.

If friendships are worth having, they’re worth fixing—whatever their format or medium: I hate waste, and I hate unnecessary hurt.

So…why nursery-school behavior online? I always wonder if the folks who behave so childishly online are that way in person—does it make them feel powerful in a way they don’t in their 3D life? Some seem to regard online interaction in light of an old-fashioned masquerade party: if you can't be identified, you can't be held to account—and never mind the cost, in terms of your own integrity. Frankly, I think that sounds more like a drive-by shooting than any other form of social intercourse, and I can do without it.

There’s also a significant underbelly of folks who use social networks for casual, indiscriminate sexual activity. What they do is their own business, until it impacts others. (NB: Make that kind of approach over here, honey, and I'll kick your sorry ass clean to the curb...!) There are good-sized grey areas where all these things, and a great many others, overlap.

Negotiating relationships is an art, a delicate process requiring the four F’s: finesse, forbearance, forgiveness, and faith—trust, if you’d rather use a homelier word.

Give everyone a chance to fix problems—or two or three chances, if you’ve the guts, and the time. I do understand that some things can’t be fixed. Repeated bad interactions or patterns? Reruns of thuggish or cruel behavior? Chuck the offender, and make better friends instead. Lord knows there are enough people out there; most of them are well worth getting to know. Anybody who makes you feel like you’re standing on a cliff edge with a stiff wind blowing at your back needs to be rethought. So too with the people who insist they’re your friend, but will cut you dead to ‘support’ someone else, or those who don’t have anything to say to you anywhere but via private message. Do they think others might think less of them because of the company they keep? 

As Charlie himself put it, anyone who isn't your friend in public isn't your friend period. I agree. 

Trust is hard to re-grow, since it’s never quite the same after it’s been damaged—better to keep it in good shape from the start. You’d have to go a long way to beat Tommy Clifford’s everyday eloquence: he says trust is a hard issue, and he’s right. Without it, though, you’re nowhere, because honesty is the core of life. 

How real is anyone, really—especially online, where people may hide behind made-up names and avatars? The only proof of what another human is actually like is how he behaves. This is exponentially true of folks who put nothing of themselves into their online presence—no name, no location, no nothing real? No chance.

Putting someone in the deep freeze socially may make sense—temporarily—if you've tried talking with them about behavior you find unacceptable, and they've been unreceptive to your concerns. Occasionally, it’s necessary to take a break to let tempers subside. If you just can’t get through, or—worse—if they blame you for their behavior, it’s probably time to cut them loose, as Charlie finally did. The decider is this: do your friends bring you down, or do they help you to be your best self? Tommy’s right on this one, too: “When you surround yourself with people who want to make you better, it's infectious. You thrive off each other.” 

At its best, friendship is a kind of love, building bridges between, sometimes, the most unlikely people. No, it doesn’t always work, and doesn’t always last—no matter how hard you try. Even when things don’t work, though, it’s worth it. As the wise Elizabeth Bushey once wrote, “Love is never wasted. It is creative and good. It makes us better. It makes us better to each other. Whether or not it is returned matters not.” 

Relationships as training for the soul? I don’t know about that, but I agree with her. Win or lose, friendship, like any other kind of love, is an opportunity to be more than you were, a better version of yourself—for real.

I doubt Charlie will stay locked down forever. He’ll probably re-evaluate, after he catches his breath, and refuse to let bent people make him be less than his best self. Smart guy, that Charlie.

Boats, Bridges, and Murphy's Law

Six o'clock in the morning....Madam Neu's still asleep, so, since I'm awake, I'm out on the terrace enjoying the peach-tinged sunrise. The seagulls are conducting a vociferous argument—when really vehement, they sound like squalling cats. The pigeons provide a soft counterpoint, cooing to each other along the roof edges.

We finally solved the luggage problem by going back to Marco Polo Thursday morning, and bullying the troll in the lost-baggage office until she let us loose in the baggage graveyard (a cavernous room filled with baggage of every possible description) to see if we could find our stuff ourselves. We did, and got back to the hotel with it somewhere around 1:00. I found myself wondering, on the return journey, if perhaps Murphy had worked for US Airways......

A quick visit to a small shop by the Rialto Bridge left us with olives, prosciutto, cheese, and a loaf of lovely crusty artisan bread, which we paired with a bottle of fruity Chardonnay in a celebratory picnic out on the terrace. There's a small lizard who lives in a crevice just over the railing, who came out to enjoy the sunshine with us. So far, the weather's been perfect—sunny, low 80's—punctuated by a fine thunderstorm yesterday evening.

The last couple of days have been a fantastic jumble, completely and not at all what we'd expected.

We both find the gondolas endlessly fascinating. We spent several hours one afternoon sitting at the water's edge beyond San Marco, watching them go by—sleek, shiny black craft, loaded down with camcorder-toting tourists. I dangle my feet in the cool green water, which activity Madam Neu eyes with the kind of wariness most people reserve for observation of hazardous waste. The gondolas themselves are largely the same in design: constructed of something like 280 pieces of 9 different kinds of wood, from what I've read, they all have a ferro, or prow, the same shape. However, their owners individualize them with what amounts to a hood ornament. We saw a number of winged victories, some carrying flags or flowers, others that look like statues of saints or other notables, but the one that put a huge grin on my face was a hood ornament that had originally graced the bonnet of a Jaguar.

The gondoliers wear traditional dress—beribboned, broad-brimmed straw hat (shady!), a shirt striped in black or red and white, and black pants. The gondoliers seem to be as diverse as their decorations. Some do a running monologue for their clients; others row in stolid silence. One or two rowed one-handed, using the free hand to hold a cell phone, into which they gabbled volubly. I'm a tad surprised their passengers didn't seize the offenders' phones and fling them into the canal!

Madam Neu's thoughts: We've only seen one gondolier singing, but they all wave and say hi—we must look like easy marks!

It's impossible to talk about one meal or another as discrete units, since the city itself is a feast, and we've been cheerfully willing to founder on everything we've eaten. Our first evening, we ate dinner in a little place in a small courtyard that was no more than a wide place in one of the narrow alleys, bordered by several hotels. Cindy had pasta with seafood that was incredible...clams, shrimp, scallops, and a few other things, in an oil-and-garlic sauce. I had something lurking under the humble name "mixed fish" that turned out to be a plateful of heaven. I could identify calamari, shrimp, very small sardines, and several other things, all thinly coated in a nearly-sheer batter and deep-fried crisp. It hadn't the faintest hint of oiliness, and I pigged it on down despite the fact that the little fishes were whole, and looking back at me.

Cindy's dessert was tiramisu. It arrived on an oblong plate, elegantly garnished with chocolate curlicues and whipped cream—it was, she insists, the best she's eaten in 22 years. I had lime sorbetto—tart enough to have a distinct bite to it, and sweet just enough to cut the acidity, it was perfection, served up in a tulip-shaped glass.

Waiters have been as entertaining as the food has been good—one, a cute little guy of 20 or so named Mario, with hair styled to resemble a hedgehog, had us rolling on the floor with his descriptions of "one of his exes" (!) having made a thoroughly creditable attempt to run him over—with his own car.

We've fallen into a routine of going out directly after breakfast, either to see something in particular or to follow one of the walking tours in Madam Neu's app. We come back to the hotel around 12:30, with bread and cheese, meat and wine, which we consume at our leisure in the shade on the terrace—thereby avoiding the worst of the crowds and heat. It's as humid here as St. Louis, but the sun is far more intense—more like New Orleans. Out again after, until 6:00 or 7:00; dinner around 8:00 until whenever. We're entranced by the separation imposed by canal and culture—Venice was originally something like 118 separate islands—and how the city's 60,000 locals and hordes of foreign visitors overcome it with connections made via boat, bridge, and conversation.

We're enjoying very much learning from them.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Madness

Originally posted on Posterous, January 29, 2013

I saw a most unusual, and impressive, thing, a week or so ago.

I'd had lunch with a friend, and was coming from Kirkwood back to Webster. Going the opposite direction, rolling west up Big Bend towards Kirkwood from I-44 was a cortège, for the funeral of an iron horseman, it appeared. Something like 60 or 80 Harleys, all gleaming chrome, passed, moving two by two at a surprisingly sedate pace. The riders all wore black, and rode, eyes forward, with silent decorum, followed by a hearse. A Victorian Gothic glass-sided affair, all scrollwork and decorative black festoons, it was pulled by what has to have been the biggest bike I’ve ever seen.

The guy riding it could have passed for Hagar the Horrible: he was enormous, wearing battered jeans and a studded black-leather vest; bare arms; bare chest; copious tattoos. World-war-I spiked German army-style helmet, coal-colored aviators, and a long, rust-brown beard blowing in the bitter wind.

It was 27F that afternoon, with a stiff breeze blowing: braving the elements on a motorcycle in jeans and a loose vest was no mean tribute to whoever was riding in the hearse behind him.

Anyone who’s ever been to one knows funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living. They’re intended to provide comfort for the bereaved, as well as a suitable send-off for the deceased. This was surely a man who lived—like the people laying him to rest—after the fashion of his liking, in a way considered outlandish, possibly even threatening, by more mundane folk—a freedom few people achieve.

Bikers aren’t famous for caring what other folk think, and y’know, there’s a lot to be said for refusing to be constrained by someone else’s ‘shoulds.’ Choosing instead a lifestyle that allows room to be the most you can be, in a way that feels authentic, without hounding or hindering others.

Doubtless the guy pulling the hearse grew up being told, “Don’t go out without a jacket in this weather!” by his well-intentioned mother. His willingness, and that of his companions, to suffer the bitter cold to honor the dead man behind them, told me all I needed to know about them. With a dignity befitting their chosen mores, rather than looking ill at ease in unaccustomed suits and ties, they saw to it that their comrade’s exit matched the way he had lived.

Being, and staying, true to yourself, and to your values—however outlandish that might seem to someone else—while allowing others that same privilege, is an art form few people master. If more of us did so, in our own chosen ways, I think the world might well be a better place.

Go for it.

F-word 2.0: The Graveyard Shift

Originally posted on Posterous, May 31, 2012

Stephen King may be a master at delivering ordinary things that have somehow been transmuted into the unspeakable, but he missed one biggie: a nursing home at 2 a.m. The muted colors (so peaceful during the day) blend into creepy indistinctness at night, and sounds that aren't nearly so noticeable at during the busy daylight hours (various creakings and moanings; near-silent footsteps; someone screechy-sobbing down a distant hallway) become arrestingly, conspicuously, sinister at 2 a.m.

Why the macabre mood?

Some (probably) well-intentioned, but thoroughly misguided, person seems to have given me a subscription to the Death of the Month Club. In October, it was my father. In March, my mother-in-law; in April, my aunt. We're nearly into June now, and my mother's been seriously working on not getting it over with for the last four weeks.

Like everyone else's, my life is already crammed to bursting with work, family, and a bazillion more-trivial things. But, as Emily Dickinson put it, 'because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me', although I heartily wish he'd go stop for someone else. So many people gone, and in such swift succession, leaves my heart an empty house—windows shattered, door swinging crazily from one hinge—abruptly vacated by occupants I loved.

Seems to me there must be as many ways to go about dying as there are people who do it. For some, it seems to be as easy as walking from one room into another. It was that simple for my father, who went at home, in his favorite chair, in his sleep, with a stomachful of cake and ice cream. (Sign me up!) Others, like my aunt, make up their minds, and depart with the same grim determination with which they made the decision to go.

For others still, it's a protracted, ugly mess that pulverizes everyone in the vicinity emotionally and physically. This is the slough in which my mother is stuck. Terrified of death, 80 years worth of Christianity has been no comfort to her. She's so worried about what to say to God, when she gets there, that she wants her hand held constantly. She simply can't cope with the fact that her body is failing, shutting down.  Nights, her mind roams free, into nightmare territory: there's a huge black man standing in the corner, she says. He's got blue stuff in his eyes. I'm to get the rake from the closet, and chase him away with it. Needless to say, there's no man, no rake, and no closet.

For a week and a half, she ate nothing, and is so diminished she looks like a mad scientist's biological experiment. In plain terms, she's dying. And she's too frightened to talk about, or face, that fact.

It's a Catch-22, and not just for mom. Though it's our natural end, talking about death is frantically bad form. "Funeral" seems to be the new 'f' word. Astonishingly pointless, this attitude: refusing to think about it won't make death go away, any more than willful ignorance will halt any other inevitability. The bottom crust is the end of the pie, and nothing's going to change that.

Keep your mouth shut, though, and people will tell you you're not dealing with it. You're emotionally repressed, or (my favorite) you're in denial. Fact is, you just get tired of giving an honest answer to a question and then watching the concerned person who asked sidle off, stage left, oozing witless discomfiture.

We have no proof of heaven, only of hell—this is it, for all parties concerned.

(End note: we finally lost Mother in the small hours of New Year's Day, 2013.)

The Gothnik on the Green: Trinity

Originally posted on Posterous, May 3, 2012

Another slow start today; I sat up most of the night editing a friend's dissertation, and felt deserving of a lie-in. Upon achieving full functionality, we decided to reconnoiter Trinity College. I want badly to see the Book of Kells, but not today; today, I just want to soak up the school itself. It's odd how much Dublin herself FEELS like a college town....she's about the size of Kansas City (well, that <does> make pigeon-holing it easier for a native Missourian), and I gather the average age of her citizens is something like 30. All of which neatly explicates her air of friendly energy.

Anyway, Trinity. We started by just walking the campus, looking at the gorgeous detailing of the Victorian buildings, and their ornate contrast with the grey concrete of the newer buildings, those housing the sciences. Trinity's science department, if memory serves, is known for her non-linear optics, though I don't know what else. Amongst the buildings was all kinds of artwork—particularly striking was a huge gold globe, interestingly riven with fissures.

Done walkabout, we went to have a look at that seldom-noticed treasure, the gift shop. Those in museums are high-order sources of all things wonderful. Forget the clodagh doorknockers, clairseach pins, and all the other kitschy stuff, head for the books and posters: there's a particularly good shop at the V & A in London, where I once bought a fascinating treatise on Victorian poisons, and the shop at Trinity's library didn't disappoint. If Tom hadn't gotten in my way—uh, I mean, been so thoughtful, I likely would have bought more books than two donkeys could carry.

An hour and change later, done with the gift shop, we stood for awhile, taking in the green in the late-afternoon sunlight, the other gawking tourists, and the students who belong here. Tucked away in one corner is a pale guy of something like 20, curled into a corner of a bench with a battered paperback—Jack Kerouac's On the Road, no less.

He's teeth-to-toenails black leather, studs, plaid, and odd piercings, topped off literally with a determinedly antisocial haircut—half Goth, half reconstructed Beatnik; how do you categorize such a person? Which is precisely the point: his studied Bohemianism is a means of rejecting society's standards, and creating his own. Neither genre is original, by now, but the fusion of the two is insouciant and entertaining. Is he a Beat-Goth? A Emo-Beat? A Gothnik?

The most important tenet of hipness does seem to be liking (or professing to like) things nobody else can stand—long-winded, tuneless jazz, grindingly dull 'poetry', and other such horrors. Taking a wider view, such earnest dullness is an attempt to arrive at an understanding of how societies work, and how individuals fit into them. Entirely appropriate, for an unusually intelligent young man growing into his full adult self; once he arrives there, the freak-show clothes probably won't be necessary any more. This young fellow was simultaneously looking for both ways to stand out, to define himself as unique among human creatures, and ways to fit in with others that neither stifle nor prostitute him. Get right down to it, isn't that what we all want from life?

Here's to his success.

Zen and the art of the Layover

Originally posted on Posterous, April 28, 2012

Here in the upper-central US, you can't go to hell without going through Chicago. I don't really mind O'Hare, or the delay; time was, though, either would have driven me bonkers with frustration.
Age? Experience? A little of both, I suppose, mixed with exhaustion. I'm thankful, just now, for an enforced opportunity to do next to nothing. Nothing but watch the world go by, that is.

The best people-watching spot anywhere is London's Victoria Station—the entire population of the planet goes through there in the course of an afternoon—but O'Hare isn't half bad. There's a lady with striped orange hair, wound into a slip-shod bun, bleating on about her last conversation with her therapist; an Indian guy in a green turban, exuding imperturbability; and some wacko doing yoga off to one side of the concourse. No screaming child anywhere (amazing; clearly, Central Casting slipped up today).

I'd say two third of the people around me have some kind of electronic device they're absorbed in. iPads are the hands-down favorite, and most of them are the current model ( including mine), though there are a great many iPods as well. Interesting how the technology facilitates conversation—the people with paperbacks (lot of Clive Cussler, a James Patterson, and one dreadful bodice-ripper) are absorbed entirely, but the electronic folk enjoy comparing devices, apps, and sharing opinions. Mostly, they're using the gizmos to read the news, check email, and do social networking (I seem to be the only one fooling with iMovie); they're connecting outward, doing stuff. Wonder if electronic activity is as refreshing an escape for most as hiding out in a good novel can be? On reflection, I'd guess that's why most of the paperbacks are some kind of suspense/action subject matter—they're good, riveting reads that take the reader <somewhere> to occupy the time. Looks to me like the tech-based folk are enjoying their arguments, comparisons, and conversation as much as the readers their books.

Boarding now—onward to Ireland.