Day # 257 Strike

I was sitting in one of the two lounge chairs on the tiny patio of my favorite coffee spot when a woman and her daughter stepped up, looking for seats.  The utilitarian thing to do was offer them my seat, along with the empty one, and move to the tables, squeezing in with some other folks.  So that is what I did.  I settled in with my coffee compatriots and began soaking up the caffeine and the conversation.  And the conversation was revolution. 

The first coffee house appeared in London in the 1650’s, as coffee made its way from Turkey northwards across the continent, carried by traders and commerce.  Coffee shops soon became the gathering point for merchants seeking a buzz and news of business, and the citizenry seeking news of the English revolution or the restoration of the monarchy.  Coffee, Cromwell and conversation.  Coffee houses became the engine of revolution, a tradition that continues to this day.

Back at our table, coffees in our hands, I was the oldest of the gathered by a good two decades.  The talk was earnest, driven, and from youthful mouths.  Topics ranged from conspiracies of corporations to the evils of Monsanto. 

When the conversation came around to the financial world and its control of citizens lives, I had to pop in my tuppence worth.  I asked my fellow imbibers if they really wanted to strike a blow against capitalism.  Heads turned and since I had now opened my big yapper I plunged on.

Paraphrased from my feeble memory, my harangue went something like this…..

“I don’t think revolutions are started or won by grand sweeping gestures.  They may have been at one time, but the old model of taking to the streets or barricades to march or picket is just not getting it done.  It worked for awhile in the 1960’s, probably because it took the established powers by surprise.  When they recovered, they learned to co-opt the forces of change and use those forces to sell products.  That is what they have been doing ever since.”

“If you want to strike a blow against capitalism, if you really want to send a spasm down the place that their spines would be if they had them, eliminate all of your debt.  Pay off all of your credit cards.  Drive a car that is paid for.  Better yet, pay cash for it.  Buy serviceable, used, things instead of new crap.  There is an immense power in the hand, or the pocketbook, of the American consumer.  Corporations court us and seduce us.  They depend on us for their livelihoods and their existence.  Banking institutions thrive on public indebtedness.  Strike a blow directly at their control.  Pay off you debt.  Not only does it free you, it gives you control over them, instead of the other way around.”

“Eliminating your consumer debt strikes a blow and frees you at the same time.  Convincing some of your friends and neighbors to do the same strikes a sharper blow and makes your neighborhood a richer place.  Convince a segment of the population to eliminate their consumer debt and you start to unravel the system.  Modern capitalism is based on consumer spending and debt and the dream of an ever increasing cycle of both of these things.  It is impossible to sustain.  So go ahead, pay off your debt, free yourself.  In the process you will also be raining blows on the ill-conceived props that are holding up this house of cards.”

Day # 256 Possessed

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouth’s.
Drank 'em in the car on his way to the
Shell station; he got a gallon of gas in a can.

Drove home, doused everything in
the house, torched it.
Parked across the street laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red.                    Tom Waits  “Frank’s Wild Years”

If I, like Frank in “Frank’s Wild Years,” have that final break with consumer reality and domestic life and set the whole thing ablaze, there are very few things that I would, following a sudden pang of regret, brave the flames to save.  I would not put the guitars on the pyre to begin with and I can fit them all in my truck, more or less.  Barring that, really, what else is there?

There is one thing that would cause me to risk a good singeing, and that is my pocket knife.  I was given this knife from the hand of Leslie E., my first true love.  (Wherever you are MS E., I still love you!)  The little Old Timer had been her grandfather’s.  It is a small two-blade folding knife with a stag handle and is of the variety known as a gentleman’s pen knife.  I received this petite implement in 1980 and it was at least twenty years old at that time.  I have had it ever since.

While unimpressive as an object, the power stored in this little tool is amazing.  The knife is endowed with the impish spirit of some long-passed Buddhist master.  Why the spirit of some long-departed lama would hang around in my pocket knife is just as much a mystery to me as anyone else, yet this is nonetheless the case.  I know this to be true because the damn thing likes to teach me lessons on the nature of attachment and suffering.

As we are all clear from our Comp-Religion classes, some of the most basic principles of Buddhism are that “Life is suffering” and that “Suffering is caused by attachment (desire).”  Like any other distillation of complex ideas, this one is fraught with simplistic peril, but hey, it’s a blog not a treatise.  Still, the simple idea is that when one becomes attached to something or someone, one is bound to suffer when that thing or person is no longer there.  Because all things are transitory, all things will eventually cease to be and when that happens one’s attachment to that object will cause pain in the object’s absence.

I know, I know, “Thank you Mr. World Religion…the knife?”  Yes, well…

My knife has the most annoying habit of disappearing.  It knows exactly how attached I am to it.  It knows that I prize this one object above all others in my possession.  No other physical object has the emotional power for me that this bit of steel and bone and brass has.  From time to time, whenever the knife feels like I am getting too attached, or to un-mindful or maybe just out of a capricious pursuit of mischief, the knife disappears.  It will stay gone for days, or weeks, or months.  The only way the knife will reappear is when I have given up hope, passed through regret and fruitless searching, and released myself from the attachment.  Suddenly, with an imagined smirk, the knife will appear in a place previously searched a thousand times or in the most unlikely of places that defied even the thought of search.

The most recent example of this has just ended with the joyous reuniting and the renewal of my attachment, which, of course, will only lead to another disappearance.  I never learn.  The knife had been carefully placed in the fob pocket of my leather moto pants, where it lives when I am riding.  When I arrived at the temporary illusion of home, the knife was gone.  Despite patting and searching and rummaging, there was not a sign.  It had, I concluded, fallen out of my pocket on the road and was now gone forever.  Eventually, after walking some of my route searching the gutters, I gave up and purchased a new knife, a beautiful little Bear Brothers made in Jacksonville, Alabama. 

It has been a wet summer here so I have not worn my leathers since that day.  This morning I slipped on my pants and then my boots and felt a lump in the boot.  After checking the boot and finding nothing I checked my pants leg for a bad zipper and felt the tell-tale shape of my little pen knife hiding in the lining of my leather pants.  It had fallen (or burrowed) through a hole in my fob pocket and dropped away into the depths of the lining.  Once hung up in the closet, it had fallen to the hem of the leg and waited there, chuckling to itself, whilst I searched in vain.

O frabjous day!  Callooh! Callay!  Jabberwocks and other creatures that need slaying ought to be aware that I am once more united with my precious vorpal blade and unless they want their heads departed from their shoulders, they had best be on their best behavior.  (My apologies to the late Mr. Carroll)

And I will never be parted from that which possesses me again.  Never, never ever.  

Day # 255 Leaks

What news stories transcend the delivery by media outlets and become word-of-mouth stories?  In recent days, during the immolation of all other things personal, I have had a few interesting leaks to ponder.

The death of the singer Amy Winehouse immediately became, literally, a public discussion.  Within an hour of the discovery of her tragic death, the tweet world had alerted the waiter where I was eating and I quickly overheard the conversations regarding her untimely passing.

Our celebration of the cult of celebrity has led to a fascination with all aspects of the lives of the famous or infamous.  Add to that the terrible irony of some of MS Winehouse's song titles and her frequent public binges and there is certainly something for the paparazzi to sink their bloody teeth into.  Yet without a hungry audience, the paparazzi would drift off into their deserved ignominy.  Our collective hunger for a window on fame creates an engine for information that quickly bypasses the mainstream media.

Even with a complete news blackout, I cannot help but hear about the complete lack of leadership (my interpretation) in Washington, DC, that has led to yet another budget "crisis."  I have to question whether this even qualifies as a news story, for as ineptitude and what Mencken would call "boobery" have become the status quo in the US Capitol, why would it be news?  Partisan brinkmanship and threats to shut down the government's finances have become a routine so devoid of content as to become a definition of demagoguery.

The last and most serious news story that quickly became the talk on the street was the massacre in Norway, an almost unbelievable act of barbarity.  I heard of this within hours of it happening and details continued to be discussed around me, the most telling being America's amazement at the sentencing structure of the Norwegian judicial system.

These were three news stories, as distinct from one another as could be imagined, that could be heard from mouths of the citizenry in the last few days.  I am not sure what conclusions to draw from this so I will just present this in the form of observations.

The list of rants to come, under the loose heading of "Strike a Blow" will start tomorrow.  In the midst of moving and schlepping and "watching it burn, all Halloween orange and chimney red", 
I have let writing and music slip to the wayside.  But no more, no more chants he.    

Day # 240 Exile

While it is not exactly Elba, or Ile du Diable or the Siberian Gulag, the town of Southworth, Washington is not exactly the Great White Way either.  Yet as I begin to sort and pack what will hopefully be the smallest possible amount of personal possessions, I realize that this is where I'm bound.  I will be miles and a ferry boat ride from any major metropolitan area.  Can a good urban creature such as myself survive this ignominious banishment?

I have spent the vast majority of my life, at least the portion that I had control over, living in the midst of several of America's cities.  To be sure, I have dwelt in far-flung hamlets, some even without benefit of traffic lights, but this was mostly in the course of my employment and always on a temporary basis.  I love the forests and mountains and often retreat there, but my heart always answers the smelly call of the city.

I like big cities.  I like the excitement and the smell and the noise and the culture and the bustle of a good city.  I seek out and treasure run-down bookstores, corner cafes, eclectic coffee houses and neighborhoods with foods from all parts of the globe.  I love hearing languages other than my own spoken on the streets of my home city.

When I travel, I often wander the countryside, but it is the cities that I remember.  The frenetic energy of Bangkok, the grit and electricity of punk-era London, the awe-inspiring scope of Mexico City or the foodie nirvana of San Francisco; all of these places pull me back.  I heed the urban call.

Soon I will be living on land that was once an orchard on the wrong side of Puget Sound.  I will be able to walk for miles, literally, in any direction and arrive at:  nothing.  Trees, to be sure and lots of houses here and there, set back from the little roads on their two or five acres or clustered tightly along the shores of Puget Sound wherever the cliffs aren't too steep.  Nothing else.  No cafes, no stores, no coffee kiosks and most certainly no damn noodle shops.

There are things to add to the credit side of the ledger, to be sure.  There are new places to paddle, circumnavigating Blake Island or getting epic and paddling across the shipping lanes to West Seattle.  Yes, that's it!  I can plan my escape by sea, slipping into the waters of the Sound and paddling my sorry ass all the way to the beaches of Lincoln Park.  How I will enjoy the blessings of urbanity while toting my board around I do not know.  At least I'll be close enough to smell it.

Day # 235 Lazy

I have strayed so far from caring about the news of the day, or even commenting on it, that I suppose I should start another blog, something to do with my rants, and let this one lapse.  I am, however, lazy by nature.  Therefore you will just have to deal with this lack of continuity as I bumble along.  There is, of course, always the chance that I will slip up, like the good addict that I am, and suddenly relapse into news gathering.  If I do, feel free to "nyner-nyner" me.

Since I have added "College Student" to my list of roles, I have to write a paper now and again.  As we have established, I am a lazy sod, so I chose King Charles the First, and his lack of head at the end of his life, as my subject.  It may not sound like the lazy man's true path, but I have studied this period of history pretty extensively so the research is mostly walking over to the bookshelf and pulling this or that tome down.

What piques my interest, as I venture back into this time period, is how soft and lazy many of us have become. The Reformation struggled on in blood and fits and starts for 130 odd years depending on how you count it.  During that time, one had to choose a religious belief and then hold it so closely to the heart that when faced with a bloody or fiery death one could derive comfort from the brand of dogma one had chosen to live with and die for.  This was not a rhetorical or theoretical possibility.  Good citizens all across Northern Europe and England, both prominent and common, went to the scaffold or the pyre with regularity.  They were escorted to their end by other good citizens who believed just as fervently that they were doing the right thing as did those about to bleed, hang, choke or burn.

During the Reformation, Religion was a serious business.  More accurately, for this discussion, Christianity was a serious business. There were no other options for most of the populace unless one moved very far south and embraced Islam.  Way south My Brother.

Today, I can be as blasé as I wish with regard to my religious beliefs and no one is going to tie me to the pyre and set me alight while ooo-ing and ah-ing as I scream my pathetic life away.  I have never been set alight, but I think I can rightfully assure you that if I were, religious pleading would not be the first horrible sounds issuing from my big fat mouth.  But I digress.  The point, if there is one, is that I can be whatever I claim to be, going so far as to invent my own sect or creed and I probably won't die for it.  I am not required to have the fierce conviction of old that I would hold to my end.  In fact, today I am free to change dogmata at a whim while still avoiding the flames, at least of this world.  I can be a Bokononist today and a Buddhist tomorrow and suffer not the slightest singe, even to my conscience.

Rest assured, there are still vestiges of the pyre-builders at work in the world.  While most sects and creeds have adopted an almost universal "no-burning of other people" policy, there are those that would like nothing better than a big infidel bonfire.  Before you rush to the conclusion that I am pointing my heretical finger at my Islamic brothers, I would tell you that I believe there are just as many closet pyre-builders amongst the so-called Christian Right in America as there are amongst Jihadists elsewhere.

Even with these deluded fanatical manics lurking about here and there in closets and governmental positions and behind pulpits, I have become soft and lazy.  The odds that a group of these ignorant nutcases will actually take the time to find me, drag me into the park across the street and try to immolate me with damp Northwest firewood are so small that it allows me to continue to live a life of lazy impunity with regard to dogmatic choices.

And so I remain a lazy man.  Perhaps not as lazy as Jefferey Lebowski, quite possibly the laziest man in Los Angeles county, but lazy enough in my amateur standing.  I do not fondly remember, or long for the days, when one's creed was one's ticket to the fire or eternal salvation, or both.  I will take the course of Taoist water, around the rock, or whatever colour my water chooses to be today.  When I am standing in it, I can chant my simple mantra:  "Water good, Fire Bad"

Day # 234 Certainty

Charles the First, King of England, was beheaded in 1649.  By the time he went to trial before the High Court of Justice, he knew what the outcome would be.  Charles had alienated almost everyone who was in power and his cause was lost.  The Roundheads were pissed and they wanted vengeance.

Maybe Charles held out some hope that Parliament would not actually lope off the head of the King of England.  Kings had been killed in the past, but usually in battle or at the hands of powerful conspirators.  No Parliament had actually passed a death sentence on a sitting king and then brought it about.

Charles refused to answer the charges brought against him, perhaps knowing that he was a dead man.  My question for His Majesty, if I could talk to him, would be "Your Highness, was it a relief to hear the sentence."

Sometimes the train of the inevitable slowly chugs our way, the iceberg inches closer, and finally the process takes so long to unfold that the natural fear of the conclusion turns to relief.  Ray Charles (not the King) could have seen that one coming from a mile away, finally!  That's what I'm wondering today.

At least the scaffold has clarity.