A friend taught me a new word today. "Selah" is a word in Hebrew that can be translated as "stop and listen," or "pause and measure," and occurs seventy-one times in Psalms, or so says Wikipedia. It's important to ruminate, to digest and gestate, to learn the ideological ground upon which we stand. So I mentally masticate, and store the leavings here, to revisit, revise, retract and reiterate.
On Patriotism
My mother thinks that Johnny Depp's thoughts on America are distasteful, and he is for them sometimes difficult for her to watch. I agree with her so far as to view them as poor form, simply for his status as a public figure who's made a hell of a lot of money off America, but I also view it the same way I view the burning of the flag. Apart from the fact that it's just a piece of cloth, I understand its symbolic meaning and how important it is to some people and as the icon of this country. So I can sympathize when some people are enraged by its desecration, or by words like Depp's. At the same time, I realize that only a handful of other countries in the world would tolerate the burning of their flag without swift and violent retribution. I know that Congress has made valiant attempts to outlaw flag-burning, but it remains a protected act under the First Amendment. So, basically, because our country believes in freedom of expression, people are free within its borders to express themselves through the desecration of the flag...which is, in its own way, very beautiful. In the very moment of supreme protestation, the patriotism of such desecration is affirmed. Their act of expression became, in flames and ashes and distaste, an act of patriotic bent, because nowhere else in the world would such an inconsiderate destruction go unpunished - or, indeed, protected.
On Contradictions
I read a book called American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, the genius author of childhood nightmares and literary acid trips. American Gods is the story of the old gods, and what became of them in a world that refused to acknowledge them. It is a story full of myths and madness and McDonald's, and there isn't much I can say besides, "Good God, read this book," because it is made of sheer amazing, but there is a passage that stuck with me (page 393-5):
-Avalon
Light up the room.
Joe Henry
My mother thinks that Johnny Depp's thoughts on America are distasteful, and he is for them sometimes difficult for her to watch. I agree with her so far as to view them as poor form, simply for his status as a public figure who's made a hell of a lot of money off America, but I also view it the same way I view the burning of the flag. Apart from the fact that it's just a piece of cloth, I understand its symbolic meaning and how important it is to some people and as the icon of this country. So I can sympathize when some people are enraged by its desecration, or by words like Depp's. At the same time, I realize that only a handful of other countries in the world would tolerate the burning of their flag without swift and violent retribution. I know that Congress has made valiant attempts to outlaw flag-burning, but it remains a protected act under the First Amendment. So, basically, because our country believes in freedom of expression, people are free within its borders to express themselves through the desecration of the flag...which is, in its own way, very beautiful. In the very moment of supreme protestation, the patriotism of such desecration is affirmed. Their act of expression became, in flames and ashes and distaste, an act of patriotic bent, because nowhere else in the world would such an inconsiderate destruction go unpunished - or, indeed, protected.
On Contradictions
I read a book called American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, the genius author of childhood nightmares and literary acid trips. American Gods is the story of the old gods, and what became of them in a world that refused to acknowledge them. It is a story full of myths and madness and McDonald's, and there isn't much I can say besides, "Good God, read this book," because it is made of sheer amazing, but there is a passage that stuck with me (page 393-5):
"Who did kill those men?" she asked.I especially love the part about Schrödinger's cat. But, overall, the passage got me thinking: Humans are made of luscious contradictions. Conflicting definitions and beliefs and attributes and labels that will never be subdued to congruent understanding. I, for instance, am a journalist and an activist; a Christian and a pragmatist; a utilitarian and a humanist; a dreamer and a realist; a philosopher and an anthropologist; a lover of Truth and a "truther;" a lover of dance and a practitioner of reservation; a socialite who sometimes feels alone; a writer who is always up for a plot-less action movie; a comic-book reader who despises small print; a student of communication who texts 300 times a day and has trouble expressing feelings; an inked professional; an overweight proponent of the value of exercise; an oft-disliking adherent to the idea of pure love. We are all made up of conflicting criteria - which is, when you think about it, kind of ironic. Humans compartmentalize to survive. We create calenders and genus and strata and graphs and patterns to categorize and label and sort alphabetically. We like even numbers and major notes and straight lines arranged by size and color. Yet we, ourselves, defy such easy categorization. We defy ourselves. We deny the supernatural and yearn superheroes. We were made to love and yet are capable of incredible cruelty. We seek emaciation and drown in plenty. We work to support our families and don't work on our familial relationships. We believe in people but not in their Creator. We understand inequality, but ignore our spheres of influence. Our minds, made for neat shelves of information, are themselves a jumble of entropic chaos that germinates like tropical plants. It's beautiful and confusing and irritating and incomprehensible and sublime and maddening and exactly what being human is all about.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"I would." She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabarnet right now.
"It's not easy to believe."
"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."
"Really?"
"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want out water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went of to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might was well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.
Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think I'm a nut."
"Maybe," she said. "Try me."
-Avalon
Light up the room.
Joe Henry
