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When you divorce in your mid-40s you feel insecure. You worry about not having a partner to navigate the later parts of life. You feel less attractive because certainly, physically, you are less attractive. As good as you feel about the mental and the emotional, you still feel insecure.

Still, you engage with people and you are open and you have a variety of relationships. There was the ex who returned to ask questions about how she got left by the side of the road. You enjoy each other's company for several weeks, even spend a couple of holidays together, because it was the holidays, and you feel nurtured and desirable and she feels closure. There was also the younger girl who loved to sing karaoke and had fakies. She was sweet but you could not have found someone more unlike yourself and you lost interest immediately, even if you did not admit that for several months. There was the age-old friend from high school. You weren't on the same page at the outset but you felt like it really could have been a good thing. There was the girl with whom you had an "age gap," relationship. You let her move in with you, even while your kids were with you half the time. What a crazy year. You became intimate with your insecurities. You learned and gained perspective in that one, and you lost a lot. Confidence. Time. The last three years you have been alone. You, and the kids of course, half the time. You are doing fine. You are not morose when you are circumspect. You find meaning and value in your life.

In the middle of all that you met a girl, also of another generation. You were at the bar explaining to a couple of high school friends, (the christian high school of a young republic,) who lived near you and so formed a cohort at the bar,  how the human species is polygynous. They argued humans were meant to mate for life, it was God's plan they said, and you countered by saying, scientifically there is no way we could be considered monogamous. The girl was serving drinks in the bar and she eavesdropped conspicuously. She interjected and said she could not even imagine being with only one person for the rest of her life. Well, here is woman, you thought. You had seen signs of her rise. You understood that thing about a fish needing a bicycle. Mostly though, you had met very few revolutionaries. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was the dogma or the Air Force, all that stuff you renounced at 28. The women in your life, the partners you had chosen, had many good qualities but none of them were particularly original thinkers.

The girl laughed easily and seemed to enjoy shocking your friends. She was engaged to be married. They asked why she was bothering to get married. She said her marriage was not about monogamy. You thought the paradigm shift, for your friends, was tectonic. They asked if she had extracurricular partners even now, during engagement. She said she was interested in polyamory as a lifestyle. You were aroused by her spirit and her thoughtfulness and her ideas. 

You continued to see her at the bar. You got to know her schedule and showed up regularly because the conversation was fire. She always made a point of acknowledging you right away and then spending any free time she could make talking to you. She transitioned from server to bartender and the relationship transitioned from budding emotional intimacy to one of physical intimacy.

In all, that relationship was as constructive and positive as any love oriented relationship you ever had. You developed a routine with her. You would go in and see her at the bar. You would go home and climb into bed. She would wake you a bit later after the bar closed. You would talk for an hour or two, sometimes have a drink or a snack, sometimes atop your bed, other times in the kitchen or the living room, 

The discussions satisfied your need to evolve. The conversations were balanced. You came to know each other in a way that was patient, and kind. You nurtured an uncommon trust. You even came to know your metamor, through her. Jealousy and possession fell away from you like dry skin, unnecessary, unproductive, counterintuitive. 

Polyamory was a regular topic of conversation. How were you doing? How was she doing? How was her partner doing? It was an exploration and an adventure. The intimacy was intoxicating. It was communion and as it typically followed a deep conversation, the point was to be and to grow close. You enjoyed her selflessly. She made you happy. You were full and you came to learn how not to seek your own. 

That reationship was as unconventional as could be but you never doubted yourself about being open to it, open to her. You could feel the sincerity, the altruism, the courage, the importance of being earnest, the depth of empathy, the curiosity and the growth, the push and the pull, the rhythm and the surprise of the human condition. 

Relatively early in the relationship you did feel some insecurity. She went home to her fiance every night. The relationship was compartmentalized to the nth degree and as good as your conversations were with her, insecurities did get to you. You were nearly 50 and she was 27. You felt like you had no business while she felt like she was open to the universe. When you expressed your insecurities about the age difference she said she found you very attractive in every way. She thought you were wise. She said your sexual appetite matched her own, the two of you were sexual creatures, she said. It became enough, plenty even. On the way there though, you felt like it was not enough. You broke it off even if you did not mean to do that and she brought a friend by your apartment when she knew you were away and threw eggs at your door. 

You talked to her. She believed relationships were made better when they involved work, which was in stark contrast to your ex wife who refused to have serious conversations about the state of the relationship because she said they should be easy. 

So she worked. The two of you decided to stay together, such as it was, because you loved her and she loved you. She made concessions. When her fiance went away for a few days to visit family she stayed the night, which gave you a certain peace. It felt more real seeing her first thing in the morning. Otherwise, she made some time for you outside of the normal late night. When you got tickets to see Neutral Milk Hotel and Daniel Johnston at the Holloywood Bowl she said of course she would go. When you picked her up you could tell something was off and she explained that her fiance had been bothered. She said it was not because she was going out with you but rather that it seemed wrong in some way as he liked those artists and she did not even know them. Later, back at your place you had a bit of a disagreement about something and she accused you of holding out on having sex, which was crazy as you never did not want to have sex with her and at the same time it was so strangely new to experience that role reversal. You talked it out and spent that time being as close as two people can be after which you walked her home, two short blocks down the street, as you did on so many nights around 2 or 3 in the morning. The walk back was always good too. Monrovia, so dark and cool and quiet. 3 or 4 more hours of sleep and you would get up and get ready for work, and work the other compartments of your life.

You realize her life was hectic. She lived with her fiance. She worked five nights a week. She was involved with her family and his. She had her friends, including a couple who lived with them until some months before the wedding, when they moved to the beach. She read. You turned her on to Anais Nin and she could not get enough. Between that and learning everything she could about polyamory and the many experiences she could find documented, she was busy and involved and alive. And then there was you. 

The Saturday night you did five minutes on the seocndary stage at the Ice House in Pasadena, she was there, sitting next to your brother in the front  row laughing at the whole routine you had run by her the night before. 

She called you the Saturday morning she got married, crying. She said she understood but she was upset you would not be there for the ceremony, which took place on her front porch. You talked through it. She was not trying to convince you to change your mind. She respected you. The option to change it was real however but you could not quite get there. It was weird for you. You were okay with her husband. A few times you had even found yourselves at the bar at the same time and even exchanged a few words. You could not however, get over the mores of your time. It felt unnatural or maybe even disrespectful, though when you really thought deeply about it there was no disrespect at all. You loved her. So much in a way you loved him too, because you knew he took care of her, supported her emotionally, loved her. How could you not love him? Later she told you the wedding was perfect. She told you all about it, how she missed you but the morning talk had been enough for her and the rest of the day she was mindful and intentional and she lived in the moment and bathed in the love all around her. 

You know you're challenged when it comes to intimacy and relationships. Until around 28 you had almost no power of woo. You don't know the dynamics of how these things work, (or don't work,) but you know that growing up without ever meeting or knowing your father, and without your mother who you visited in prison affected you. You know how lucky you were to have your Aunt and Uncle take you in when you were 12 but you were keenly aware of the difference in intimacy between your relationship with them and the relationship they had with their biological daughter, your cousin who became your sister. 

From 28 on you had many relationships. Some of them lasted several years, if interrupted years, and sometimes they overlapped. You felt earnest in seeking a lasting, loving relationship. However, you sabotaged the ones with the most potential and engaged in some that were destined to fail. Why did they all end? Most likely because you had no idea how to have a fulfilling, balanced, loving relationship. The women with whom you had the best possibility of having that tried. They tried to engage with you in all the right ways but you were so inexperienced you craved more and more and you had no idea when to stop all that. By the time you decided to have children and get married it was partly because no bolt of lightning had struck you to tell you it was time for all that settling down and also because you never figured out what a good relationship looked like nor how it worked. You never sought counseling. You did not pick a partner who had much of an idea either. 

Your conversations with the girl, (who bristled at being referred to as a girl-she preferred woman,) often involved talk of work, working on your relationship, working on how to have a polyamorous lifestyle, working on ourselves. At first it seemed like much ado about nothing but in time it started to make sense to you. You came to realize she was attuned to everything external and sort of constantly modulating the internal. As much as the generational distance colored her heroic, you were impressed with the workman-like humility with which she conducted her life on the daily. She cried to you about her mother. She told you how she longed for the day her partner would have an intimate relatiosnhip outside of the two of them, how she looked forward to the challenge and all the things she would feel, and how certain she was it would ultimately increase her joy through him and for him. The perspective was so honest and real and if to be human is to be flawed then it was that too, but you could not find where.

It ended with a whimper. You wanted more. You wanted an every day partner. More, you just knew the center could not hold. A feint sense of doom eased into your psyche like a foil just off stage but clearly in your sightline. You met someone and you let her know you were interested in this person. She was excited for you, genuinely, but she was clear that you had to talk to her about polyamory and about her, which you were not willing to do. It ended with a whimper. She was  getting more adventurous. She wanted to add lovers. You wanted to scale back. You agreed to continue to love each other. You scaled back. Two years later you saw each other twice a year, texted every few weeks. Five years later you talked twice a year by whichever mode. 

Still, that relationship nurtured you in ways previously unimagined. You grew. You too felt like an adventurer on the high seas living rather than observing, participating instead of spectating, engaging instead of avoiding. When others talk about polyamory your first thought is, I know about that first hand because I am alive and because I experience.

Why I am Disconsolate at the Failure of the Bernie Sanders Campaign

My friends and acquaintances seem confused or at least bemused by my support of Bernie Sanders.  It is as if they think he is like all the other candidates in so many ways though some of them think the Senator is a socialist in ways they are not, as Americans, in spite of the numerous social institutions we, (as Americans,) support.  Some are frustrated I have not already transformed into a full-throated supporter of Joe Biden.  I am disconsolate about Sanders suspending his candidacy and supporting Joe Biden.  More accurately I am disconsolate at the results in Michigan and the other states Sanders did not win.  Here is why.

My first political icon was Ronald Reagan.  In my teens I was being raised by my aunt and uncle to be a strong, fundamentalist Christian.  At a younger age I remember there was a big hubbub over Richard Nixon getting impeached leading to his resignation.  Later I recall my uncle liking Jimmy Carter because he was a Christian.  I guess he voted for the Georgia peanut farmer. 

As Reagan ascended however, virtually everyone I was exposed to at 15-years-old adored Reagan.  In retrospect it seems strange.  Why would adults vote for a former movie actor.  It seemed like we should demand our best and brightest be dedicated to the craft of politics or legislating for decades at least.

As George HW Bush came to power I was beginning to question the politics of my community as well as my own faith.  I renounced my Christianity at 28 and over about the next five years I did a 180 on many of my core beliefs.  By the time Clinton won the Presidency, even though I voted for Ross Perot, I had concluded that the ideas of the American right were wrong. 

In the preceding years I had been impoverished.  I slept on floors.  I went to jail a couple of times for crimes of poverty.  I came to know what it meant to be disadvantaged and my disadvantage came from being emotionally stunted.  It came from growing up in several households because my mother was incarcerated and it came from fundamentalism being thrust upon me along with the responsibility for choosing my faith.  I went forward on February 23^rd, 1976, as ‘Just As I Am,’ filled the sanctuary of a Baptist church.  It came from not knowing or meeting my father. 

I was pissed off about how expensive being poor was.  I was frustrated at how difficult it was to gain a livable wage, which was complicated by the fact that I was extremely excited about being young and alive.  I used to joke when out drinking with friends that we were celebrating our youth and I felt absolutely entitled to do just that. 

I was surely trying to find my way.  I was focused on meeting a pretty girl who would become my partner and help me navigate all that was foreign to me. I was at ease when drinking.  I was able to laugh.  It was actually more about being with people.  I came to love the democracy of a bar setting, the freedom to move about and say whatever I wanted to say.  My money was as good as the next person’s and I cut my teeth in the bar on defending my newfound values which included being thankful for and defending the social safety net.   

I personally came to know what was wrong with our system of justice and our prisons. Having grown up a ward of the court of the county of Los Angeles and using Medi-Cal stickers to pay for fillings and vaccinations, I also knew the value of of the social safety net instinctively and intimately. I can attest to how ungreatful a kid can be for receipt of free hot lunches in elementary school but also arrive at adulthood in one piece and realize one day how generous and empathetic the good people of Los Angeles county truly are. 

I had little in the way of the power of woo.  I was a rube in the ways of the world.  I was a hayseed on transactional analysis.  I had moved away from a career fighting fire because I was not ready or interested in moving into the next phase of life, accepting a career I had fallen into and moving on to family life or whatever.  I was too irresponsible for all that, so I went back to school to become a journalist.  I took a series of low security, low paying, part-time jobs.  I landed in a bookstore and become an assistant manager, which was really just a title that allowed me to lock the doors at night but otherwise did not pay a livable wage. I lived in a saint’s living room for three years, rode a bicycle to work and took a bus to school. 

And I read.  I listened to Rage Against the Machine and read a biography of Che Guevara, (Companero.) I read the liberal ideas of Robert A Heinlein.  I read HL Mencken.  I read the classics: Hemingway and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I read Tayeb Salih and Chinua Achebe.  I read Shakespeare, Confucius, Hesse, and I read Henry Miller, like everything he ever wrote including his ‘On Writing.” I came to adore Milan Kundera, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Knut Hamsun, Blaise Cendrars-thank you Henry Miller.  I found life truth in Voltaire, Neruda, Emerson, Thoreau, and Wordsworth.  I cried at the end of Richard Rodriguez books and also at the end of Bridges of Madison County. 

I never understood how others could read these books and not be enlightened in a similar manner as me, which is to say to remain an American conservative.  In poli-sci classes I spoke up on behalf of unions by highlighting the strength of the American economy and how it corresponded with the strength of American unions.  I forensically defeated would be foes in class on subjects such as Vietnam, the war on drugs, supply side economics.  I was frustrated throughout the 90s at the inherent inequality in America.  We had become a society where shareholders were valued over stakeholders, factories moved to China as predicted by Marx, (and yes, I read the communist manifesto because I had a need to know.)  American workers were played like pawns in the grand scheme.  Did I tell you I also read John Reed, the great American writer who detailed the Bolshevik revolution?  I concluded that the wealthy class would always use its money to vouchsafe it from generation to generation as well as to capitalize their accounts.  I correlated the age of corporatism with the wealthy class and I deduced the only counterbalance the people had to the power of money was in organization, which is to say if and when the masses could get together, pool their money and vote in masse for the ideas and policies that benefitted them and against those that worked against them, only then could they realistically or effectively push back against the forces of capital. 

Mostly, considering how organized corporate America was, (is,) in terms of owning the levers of the dissemination of information, supporting an establishment of a two, (establishment) party system, as well as being more or less omnipotent the world over.  When Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act I saw that both parties were true to the status quo.  Democrats were certainly not going to make structural changes that would actually alter the fundamentals of our economy nor our priorities in terms of policies around the climate, the social safety net, democracy as it relates to the electoral college, voter suppression, gerrymandering, or justice. 

In the early 2000s I became familiar with Bernie Sanders. He was an Independent Senator from Vermont and he could be heard on Fridays ‘Brunch with Bernie,’ on the Thom Hartmann radio show. For a brief moment there was a feint liberal voice on American AM radio and Senator Sanders espoused my ideals and my ideas as I had formulated them having read Noam Chomsky’s works including ‘The Common Good,’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent.’  He worked hard to take care of American veterans.  He recognized our inequality problem in a time when absolutely no one dare speak of such a thing, (let alone believe it.)

When I first heard the term democratic socialism I found it quizzical both because, what did it mean(?!), and also because why would the good Senator from Vermont openly identify with it.  Later I concluded Sanders did it to conjure FDR and his new deal and also perhaps almost tongue in cheek, as if to shock people into thinking about the meaning so that he could go about defining it for the rest of his career. 

In the nearly 20 years since I’ve been following Senator Sanders career I’ve watched closely as he advocated for veterans, his common refrain being that it was incumbent upon us as a nation to take care of our soldiers after they took care of us by risking it all. 

More he went across the Canadian border with diabetes patients to help them buy insulin at Canada’s significantly lower prices…(and fought big pharma every chance he got.)  He showed up on the strike lines with telecom workers in Boston.  H refused to accept the sorry state of our prison system. As a Senator of the United Stated he openly supported legalization of marijuana. He doesn’t only speak up for the Palestinians, which is again against the grain but the right thing to do, he also works on behalf of any number of underdogs. 

Senator Sanders understands the leverage of capital and he understands the masses get trounced in class warfare unless they can figure out how to band together.  He probably knows that when the masses didn't get together, (the usual,) conditions typically got so bad a violent revolution became the only recourse. 

In the end his run for the Presidency was always an uphill climb.  In 2015 I went to the Hollywood Musician’s Union to listen to Bernie speak.  He talked about all of positions he thought were important and not being addressed by our prominent candidates.  He was in Hollywood, (though far from “in Hollywood,” the way we think of most candidates showing up locally with hands out to the stars,) ostensibly to see if support existed for a candidate like him.  I think we were effusive in our support. 

When the Senator finished his speech I got up from my 2^nd row, (center aisle seat,) and reached him first as he stepped down two steps towards the audience. I told him I hoped he would run and that if he took a quick picture with me it would make my year.  I handed my phone to my friend Linda as Bernie smiled his agreement and we turned for the picture.  Yeah, I took a selfie with Bernie before it became a thing, certainly long before another favorite, Elizabeth Warren, began counting her selfies and reporting the statistics to the news.

Here's the thing.  We pooled our money in a corrupted system to elect our candidate to an especially powerful position.  That has been our primary hope these past six years. Otherwise, as much as I know the younger generation is true to their morals and values while the older generations preach righteousness and justify exporting arms, kids in cages, democracy crushing institutions, three strikes laws, the oil industry, lower and lower taxes on the wealthy class, union busting, and so on with all sorts of moral equivalencies and arguments about complex decisions, we know the system is influenced by money and the older generations have most of that.

We pooled our money because we know we can’t organize well enough to overcome the money poured into local elections and judges and abortion campaigns to win over the fundamentalist votes and against gun reform to win over the gun enthusiast voters and limit the vote campaigns and the torrent of right wing talk radio and the propaganda network that gets overwhelming ratings because their viewers lap up the fear and xenophobia and sensationalism they sell and the major US corporation owned corporate media that plays the foil to Fox News but in reality disseminates establishment, status quo views that may be in favor of some socially open or liberal ideas but protect the institutions and policies that protect the economic structure of the federal reserve and the stock market and the wealthy class. 

I don’t think wealthy Americans, and by wealthy I mean top 1-2%, are in any way bad people.  I do think they use their money to preserve their fortunes and I don’t think they should be allowed political power.  Bernie has been one of the few consistent voices against the Citizen’s United SCOTUS decision because he understands it allows the wealthy class to leverage their money to affect public policy and he knows that can crush the will of the people. 

So, we pooled our money because we thought if we could get one Bernie Sanders into the White House, we might be able to turn our country toward the light. We could have a President talking about the important issues like fixing our healthcare system, raising the minimum wage but more importantly about helping all Americans get a livable wage, transitioning away from fossil fuels in favor of renewables, and a sensible foreign policy based on fairness and collaboration instead of authoritarianism. 

We pooled our $27 contributions in hopes a President Sanders could allow more bright, young candidates to infiltrate our corrupted government at all levels.  We pooled our money in hopes of avoiding another Hillary Clinton.  As establishment candidates go Hillary was and is plenty capable but we know what the establishment candidates do after eight years of Barack Obama, by which I mean Timothy Geithner and the Wall Street bailout and drones and inaction on so many of the issues important to the quality of life of the masses of people on planet Earth. 

We pooled our money for Bernie Sanders because we trust him. He has been so consistent.  He cannot be bought.  One of the things the wealthy class pays to have said about Senator Sanders is that he has not been super successful in terms of passed legislation but we pooled our money because he changed the conversation and we wanted the conversation changed.  If he has been rigid about how he votes in the senate it is because he won’t play ball and we pooled our money specifically for that. 

Did we like the other primary candidates this year?  Well, compared to Donald Trump, of course we did.  We especially liked Elizabeth Warren because she had adopted so many of Sanders’ policies and she understands economy and fights bullies for justice and students and the economically oppressed.  We like that the establishment candidates have embraced so many policies in vogue if because Sanders championed them on a national stage first.  At the end however, Warren was a Republican and she was not there on many of the policy positions we espouse until much later.  Outside of Warren the candidates, particularly Joe Biden, are birds of a democratic feather.  They have been around the block.  They've played ball.  Their positions have changed.  They have secrets mostly associated with what they did for money to get into the gaggle of the powerful to begin with.  As vastly more fit as they are for high office than Donald Trump they could not be more underwhelming to us.  We pooled our money because we trust Bernie Sanders to not govern based on him but rather based on us.

Why am I disconsolate?  I'm disconsolate because in 2015 when we convinced Bernie Sanders to run for the Presidency we felt like a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.  We wanted to change the world.  

What Indifference Hath Wrought

It is easy for the common man, or even a not so common man like Donald Trump, to think fixing immigration is easy.  It seems easy, right?  Citizens only.  Legal entry only. You know where I am going with this. 

The fact is it is exceedingly difficult.  What we are seeing today at our borders is what others have feared and sought to avoid.  At another extreme we might see a massive exodus from throughout the south pouring into our country with riots in the streets, though I have seen no evidence of any politician or group advocating for that open of a border.  Rather, we have children in cages, families dying in the river, a government agency gone thug, and a division of epic proportions in American society.

At the root of all Donald Trump support is our immigration problem.  Yes, the typical Republicans who are either rich or believe they will be rich and therefore want laissez faire economic policies, are mum about all the crimes, misdemeanors and indiscretions so long as the cronyism flourishes and our institutions are rendered powerless, which in turn will be used to support the idea of abolishing them.  Those who vote solely on abortion are also on board.  In their case the opposite is true.  They tolerate the border situation because they see liberal thinkers as against God and capable of killing innocents on whim or worse. 

Still, immigration is the primary wedge.  In the past our Presidents have embraced numerous policies all in the name of curbing or eliminating illegal immigration.  

• Nixon closed the border which did not impact immigration at all, only traffic.
• Carter was strict on immigration. 
• Reagan naturalized 3 million immigrants and hoped they would become Republicans.  
• George H W Bush did nothing, (for an entire Presidency.)  
• Bill Clinton required agencies to communicate in foreign languages, assured Mexico there would be no mass deportations while also asserting our right to enforce our immigration laws, opposed English as an official language and advised of an America 50 years hence when there would be no majority race. 
• George W Bush oversaw a decrease in the average time it took to deport someone of 100 days to 20, ended catch and release, and employed the use of fences and advanced technologies.  That said, on the other side of things he created a guest worker program, softened the GOP position on English as official language and worked to ensure immigrant children received the same free lunch benefits citizen children did. “We must also find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally,” Bush said.  
• Obama oversaw record deportation, employed drones to monitor the Mexican border, connected xenophobia to joblessness, supported DREAMERs, instituted DACA, and sought comprehensive reform, which is complicated and has a multitude of moving parts.

These are men who made it to the position considered the most powerful in the world.  They had considered responses to the problem with varying degrees of success and failure.

What is different about Trump?  Trump sat around his tower as citizen in New York City and armchair Presidented for years.  On Immigration he imagined it an easy fix.  Build a wall.  Stop all Muslims.  Punish our neighbors for their role.  His policy is all stick, no carrot.  It is also utterly untenable.  Had the administration thought this through, like chess, not checkers-had they planned their steps, calculated the outcomes, planned how to respond to those outcomes, imagined what came of those measures, and so on, perhaps they would not have moved so haphazardly.  

Instead they considered a social experiment with the American society as petri dish.  They tested the Muslim ban in the courts, (all while trying to stack as many courts across the land as possible with judges of a similar world view, which it bears saying is not the view of most Americans.)  Trump has tried so hard to have a wall built across our southern border.  Many promises, all unfulfilled.  The President has worked hard at maintaining support, banging the drum at his unprecedented rallies and hiring advocates only to high office.  He has been unbending if unsuccessful. 

What we can know for certain is that it is a complicated problem.  Previous administrations surely considered these obtuse actions the Trump administration has enacted but they shied away from them because of the perceived risk.  The Trump administration proceeded because they are not thoughtful nor empathetic.  Now we have people in cages at our southern border, some who are malnourished, sick, alone, afraid, drinking from toilets, sleeping in disaster blankets, because it is a disaster. 

We don’t even talk about the real reason these people seek refuge in America.  Yes, they are on the run from rampant crime and violence in their countries.  Yes, they seek a better life with real opportunities to labor and reap the benefits of self-determination in the form of stability, health and safety.  The root problem goes much deeper however.  Why is the southern hemisphere dogged by instability?  Why is El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guyana, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil so poor?  The reasons are myriad and the United States is implicated.  From the No Transfer policy of 1811 to the Monroe Doctrine, (1823,) we have sought to render Latin American countries militarily weak while cashing in on their natural resources. There are examples of more aggressive intervention as well, like when we aided in the overthrow of the socialist administration of Salvador Allende in Chile in favor of the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet.  In effect we have worked to keep all of our neighbors to the south relatively weak and open to our brands of commerce. Did we think of the subsequent inequality or how the poor and oppressed would seek emigration in the wealthy north?  Who knows?  (This to say nothing of the morality of our policies.)  

What we do know is it is here and it is now.  The coalition of support Trump has is marginal.  While it was enough to win the 2016 election based on the American value of all votes not being equal, (a.k.a., the electoral college,) Trump received 2.865 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, it is tenuous as many Americans have stopped supporting him based on any number of reasons ranging from 24 sexual assault or misconduct allegations to trade wars to support for murderous regimes to babies in cages.  The wall and the pursuit of the Trump administration's crude means of achieving an unattainable end are like an albatross around Donald Trump's neck.  This is the hill he is dying on.  He chose it because in his simple mind he thought this would be easy to achieve and he has chosen authoritarianism over all else, so he only knows how to double down when he is faced with a setback.  

Trump, however, is not the real loser.  We elected him.  We bear responsibility and we will suffer the effects, the most obvious and immediate one being the division in our society.  Can we overcome this? Can we heal?  I don't think either side cares right about now.  40% of those who vote in the 2020 election will vote for Trump.  When he loses they will be pissed and energized.  They will despise the next President and begin criticism and propaganda against him or her upon inauguration.  They will buy whatever the Koch Brothers and Sinclair and Fox News sells them from pizza parlor underage sex rings to hysteria over emails.

None of this bodes well for our democracy and there is only one antidote: education.  When we agree as Americans to fund the best public schools in the world, including higher education, we can have an informed electorate.  We are a long way from that, but change is always slow.  If you think of how far we have come on social issues to say nothing of the technological advances in the world, change can be scary.  

I watched a documentary movie about Clarence Avent and in it he said Obama was going to lose the election right up until he didn't, and I get that.  That is like coming a long way, baby.  So now when I think about children in cages I think it might be a reaction to the speed of change.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right?  Trump's minority of fearful, white, male Americans, anti-abortion voters and those who can look past the all the indignities in the name of their own financial interests, remain energized.  They typically feel left out and marginalized by the American political process but they feel like their voice is loud and proud right now.  They matter right now and it is preferable by far to being ignored.  After all, as Elie Wiesel said, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.  

Defeating Trump in 2020 will not be enough to restart the advancement many of us strive for where we left off.  The Supreme Court is unbalanced. Trump appointed judges are being approved at alarming rates.  They're organized.  They have the Senate.  Getting back to the evolution of our kind will take time.  

It will be about education and the long game.  Let's  gain universal agreement that we have to value education as a society so much it is untouchable and always well funded.  We have to pay for it.  

Many Americans, perhaps even a majority, recognize the GOP is inclined to give tax breaks to the wealthy class in spite of the fact trickle down economics has been so thoroughly debunked.  Many Americans, perhaps even a majority, recognize the GOP is the party of fear, xenophobia, the stick, authoritarianism, austerity, white men controlling women's bodies, favors for favors, gerrymandering, private prisons, gutting the voting rights act...  (Why do Republicans always seek to limit the number of eligible voters?  It is as simple as what Bill Clinton said. The demographics of the United States are changing and no amount of white supremacy will stop that.  When they keep people of color from voting, through gerrymander or by census question, [fear,] they stem the tide, but they can't stop the tide.  They delay the inevitable is all.  The changes I am in favor of are coming.  I already know that.  It is just a matter of if they will happen in 20 years time or 100 years but they are coming.) These policies of division, fear and hate do not speak to our younger generations.  They are not so inclined to fear and hate.  

A truly educated society would never vote for Donald Trump.  So that is where we need to start, today.  Education will tamp down the various fears the GOP sells their agenda on.  Our youth are already less inclined to fear the other, the different.  Joseph de'Maistre said, "Every nation gets the government it deserves."  We are there.  We have been asleep at the wheel, too unwilling to pay our teachers and fund our public schools.  We valued it at one time but the GOP worked to erode public confidence in its value or that we were doing it well.  

This is where we start.  When we achieve an informed and educated society we will have one that is difficult to fool.  Education can be inoculation against the fear that causes division..

If I Could Relive a Day of My Life

I don't have a lot of memories of my mother because we were apart.  I remember visits to Terminal Island or Pleasanton.  Cold visits in cordoned areas to mingle with inmates were not memorable even when the inmate was your mother.  There was a time when i was 18 however.  She had been out of prison and trying to get her life together with a man 30 years her senior.  She was supposedly clean but her relationship with heroin and methadone was a palette of smeared colors and images, overlapping and smudging one another into a mural of indistinct confusion.  

My Aunt and Uncle told me my mom was coming to take my brother and I to Knott's Berry Farm.  It was an amusement park.  We rode the rides and she waited.  I did not know how to act.  She was my mom and I longed for her but I did not know how to be close to her.  I went through the motions.  I laughed and smiled and enjoyed the trappings of the park.  I didn't know what to say.  At the end of the night we stopped at Coco's back in town before being dropped off at our home with our Aunt and Uncle.  My mom disappeared to the restroom for a long time.  When she finally returned my brother and i had mostly finished our meals.  She apologized and sat down to her salad.  A moment later her head dropped towards the table and her face fell into the salad.  I was 18.  My mom gathered herself and woke up...some.  She drove us home.  I didn't know.  Maybe I should have but I did not.  I always believed every word she said to me.  When she said she was not on heroin I knew it was true.  Only later when my Aunt and Uncle commented did it occur to me she may have lied, even to me.  

If I could relive that day I would tell her I loved her so much she would not need heroin.  I just know she was looking for love in that drug.  I know she was looking for my love in that heroin.  I know the years and years apart had taken a toll on her.  I know she sought love in all kinds of ways.  I needed her love too.  We were both emptier from not having one another.  It was commensurate.  If I could relive that day I would tell her I love her on the ride to the park, at the log ride, in the old west section of the park, at the games and the roller coasters.  I would tell her on the ride home, too, and at Coco's, and she would feel the warmth and that thing from inside her veins that made her disappear into the ether where memories of a son's love and of bonds unattended are too hazy to know or feel would be obsolete and she would stay clean and the overdose that came  one year later would never need to happen because she would feel loved and contented.

4 stanzas from bygone days

faith, in troubled times


my flower, my friend
my ray of giddy sunshine in this place i call imperfection
you give me hope like a serum
like a shot of love to inoculate my world weary soul
you give me beer bongs of hope

my song, my lover
my breath of joyful air in this moment of truth and consequences
you inflate me like an airbag
like a jolt of oxygen to pump up my medulla obligated
you give my life animation

my companion, my poem
my funny little rock 'n' roller fronting our funky quartet
you guide me like a star
like a bic lighter of trust illuminating my night skies
i believe in you

my sparrow, my baby
you are the last sound my ears will ever hear
you are the most recent thing i ever needed
you let me give when i have nothing to offer
my heart is your heart is my heart


http://michaeljjames.blogspot.com/2009/03/faith-in-troubled-times.html

A Stirring

You feel in the depth of you a stirring.  You drive in traffic to work and you feel this thing in spite of the ordinary that is your morning coffee, the freeway route so familiar and the dulcet tones of the podcast hosts as they reveal so many aspects of the invisible.

Oil men improving safety records by 85% by getting in touch with their emotions strikes you as so unrealistic.  Which oil executive would ever spend corporate dollars on such a program?  Still, the idea of rough men talking about their backgrounds with one another, opening up and trying to articulate what they felt as the children of the alcoholic, the impoverished, the dispossessed and so on, was more than intriguing.  America selling the idea of smiling to Russians via the opening of McDonald’s in Moscow, also touches a chord.  The man who was trained and later arrives in America to stay appreciates the smile, likes his new ways, but in the end he comes to see the smile as somehow hollow and this too, resonates with you.  Capitalism forces people to put up a front all day every day.  Customer Service jobs are emotional labor, which has a dark side.  People drink or learn to ignore the incongruity of smiling or acting 40 or more hours a week.

Your drive is unremarkable.  It is slower at parts and faster at others.  When your podcast ends you recall listening to Amy Winehouse at 2am on Saturday night with your closest friends in your living room.  You remember her voice and more, her phrasing.  You remember one of your friends comparing Amy Winehouse to Pat Benatar and how rude you were in making the point of there being no comparison.  He really is so anachronistic for the 70s, you think.  Pat Benetar.  Really…  You verbally scolded him knowing full well he simply was not familiar with Winehouse.  But Ms. Winehouse holds a special place in your heart these days for more reasons than her own tragic story. 

You flip your phone over to your Youtube app and speak Amy Winehouse’s name and Valerie into it.  You play Valerie and you play it loud.  The song permeates you on this day.  It eviscerates you wholly.  You see hear smell and feel your former lover in the soul of Amy Winehouse’s voice.  It stirs that thing in the pit of your stomach and as you close in on your office, amidst so many big rig trucks set much higher on the plane of the road, you let it go.  Slowly and softly at first it gurgles upward.  Your body moves from a strange inertia.  You sense the heat coming to your head.  You feel a congestion forming in your face.  Liquid settles into your eyes.  You realize it’s tears, it’s emotion.  You feel the convulsion of that first major surge and you nearly bark as tears burst forth as from a dam and roll down your face freely like released prisoners racing to sustenance. 

It feels so fucking good to cry, you think.  And so, you cry.  You look away from cars and passersby.  You wipe your face slyly and slightly.  And you cry.  And you miss that girl and you understand she is not yours and you have to let go.  You’re thankful you knew her though. Not because you needed to know another girl.  There have been plenty of relationships over the years-you’re not sure there is anything more to be learned from intimacy, at least, Eros intimacy.  This cry though.  This cry is life. 

Nothing makes you cry anymore.  It feels like an every couple of years sort of thing and you worry about those poisons you heard were in tears because of that study some 10 years ago.  Why does 10 years ago feel like yesterday? Surely that study is still valid.  Surely there is poison, physical, chemical, poison, in tears and surely it is good for the body to rid itself of these toxins and surely that is why this feels so fucking good.  You want to cry for about a day-and-a-half but you know the feeling won’t last.  Already as you think about the fact that this feeling, this ecstasy of depression, will too pass a new bump of sadness pulsates through you at the loss of the loss of the loss… 

Your profile on that change management assessment said you struggled with social bonds.  You feel social as anything.  You love a party.  You’re friendly.  You’re still a little angry at some of your best and oldest friends for letting the friendship go like a waterless lawn.  You’re still friends with them but there is a distance, a void of familiarity and ideas, a gap in dreams and fears that began in your 20s and like a tarred tree branch never grew back but also never got diseased.  You’re still friends after all. 

What is there to cry about anyways, you think?  If joy and sadness are opposite sides of the same stone and we can only feel them to the same degree then the absence of sadness is a sign, right?  I mean, what is it you want anyway?  Drama? 

You’re driving to work and there is no reason for reasons right now.  Tears are falling from your eyes, which are set on the road as you navigate the Pomona Freeway, like splashes of water from an overflowing pool.  They glide down your face and you wish you could see them on film.  You think your crying is art because you’re self-absorbed like that perhaps but also because you don’t move otherwise.  Your face is as placid as a painting, your brow in unfurled whatsoever, your body does not jerk or convulse in any visible way.  It drives and your eyes cry and you feel within you, deep down, a stirring.  You’re sad about this new time, happy about the ability to emote, relieved at the end of the salty tear drought and withdrawn at your own sense of alone, of singularity, of one. 

Dodger Baseball and Me

On the eve of the World Series I am reminded of what the big games and baseball and the Dodgers mean to me.  As a kid living in the shadow of Dodger Stadium I played one year of Little League, (I was on the Giants, sadly,) outside the Elysian Park entrance to Dodger Stadium at the fields across from the Police Academy.  I don’t think I was very good at the game.  It was my baptism really, into sports in general. 

I had a tumultuous childhood.  From birth until I was 12 I experienced moments of stability but where I lived and who I lived with was often in flux.  Melham Avenue in La Puente, Greycliff Avenue in La Puente, Ranlett Avenue in La Puente, Prichard Street in La Puente, N Taylor Avenue in Montebello, Sandia Avenue in West Covina, Melrose and Western in Hollywood, Eckerman Avenue in West Covina, Sunset Boulevard in downtown LA, Quinn Street in Bell Gardens, Santa Maria, Nipomo, Sandalwood in Nipomo, and a few others I have lost track of all gave way to teenage years spent on Calvados Avenue in Covina, California. 

I was staying with my Aunt and Uncle as I had at times before, in the Spring of 1975.  On Monday, April 14^th, I went with my Uncle to the Dodger’s home opener and sat high up in the reserved section on the 3^rd base line.  It was an electric night.  The Dodgers had lost the World Series the year before to a star-packed Oakland A’s team that included Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Bill North, Ray Fosse and Rollie Fingers.  (A more colorful team is yet to be seen.)  The giveaway for the night was a National League Champions pennant and when Ron Cey hit a solo shot off of Jack Billingham the crowd pulsed with excitement.  In the 6^th inning however, with the outcome still very much in question, the Toy Cannon, Jimmy Wynn, came up and blasted one into the left field pavilion and the ravine erupted. 

Studies have been done on the excitement and mentality of crowds.  For me, not yet 10-years-old, I remember a certain ecstasy that had been otherwise foreign to me.  I remember the sound and the fury, the elation and the energy, as if it woke me from a somnambulant state life had been training me in.  It was magical and that Jimmy Wynn homerun stuck with me and carried me really for years.  It was of my happiest moments.  The positivity of life became real to me in the company of Dodger fans.

A few years later when my Aunt and Uncle had taken me in even though I was a Ward of the Court, (or a child of Los Angeles County,) my Uncle had connections to baseball.  First, his company had 8 of the best seats in the house at the Big A and so I got to go to quite a few games and sat in the front row, right behind the on deck circle for the visiting team.  My Uncle also had a coworker who was a scout for the Dodgers and so when the Dodgers returned to the World Series in 1977 and 1978 and 1981, I got to go to some of the games. 

Happy (Burt) Hooton was my favorite Dodger pitcher and he had pitched in many of the three World Series in five years between the Yankees and Dodgers.  For me the Dodger-Yankee World Series was expected and Burt Hooton’s knuckle-curve was virtually un-hittable.  The night of Game 6, I had left my seat in the left field pavilion to go to the restroom but then of course, I ended up at the back of the Dodgers bullpen trying to get Hooton’s attention.  I thought maybe I could get him to give me a ball.  I was 12.  Instead I remember a groan coming from the crowd as I strained to see, through the slight crack where the gate swung, what was happening on the field.  I could not see the players on the field but I did see a fly ball high in the night air and I had a sick feeling in my stomach.  I raced back to my seat to discover the dastardly Reggie Jackson had done it again, another homerun this time off Bob Welch. 

The Dodgers lost the World Series that night and my disappointment was profound.  I remember the drive home, feeling so crestfallen I did not know what I would do with myself.  That my Uncle who would become my Dad got Reggie Smith’s bat for me from his coworker took the edge off in subsequent days.  It went into the family trophy case where I admired it often.

I stayed a baseball fan.  I am a true blue Dodger fan and an Angels fan.  The Angel’s 2002 World Series championship is one of my favorite victories by any of my teams.  I stayed a fan of baseball even through the period of rampant cheating, (guys using PEDs to gain an unfair advantage over those who did not use illegal drugs, or worse, artificially keeping players from even making the big leagues and realizing that big pay day.)  I am well versed on the history of the game.  I think Sandy Koufax is likely the most dominant pitcher ever, though I have only seen old film of him. 

I collected cards too, when I was a teenager.  In the end I sold them to fuel my severe Asteroids habit but I had some great cards.  I remember Topps informing me on the greats of the game, from Pie Traynor to Christy Mathewson to Rogers Hornsby, and the great Cy Young himself.  I remember a Brewer named Kurt Bevacqua had won a bubble gum biggest bubble contest and had the human head sized bubble immortalized on card stock.  I had outsized cards I got at Dodger Stadium of Frank Howard and Ken Boyer.  I loved the nicknames.  Mick the Quick.  The Penguin, (Ron Cey who I just met a couple of weeks ago.  I stood in line with all the autograph seekers then told him when I got to him I just wanted to shake his hand and that when I was a kid he was The Man.  And he was…)  Mr. Clean.  The Express.  Mr. October.  (I embraced him as an Angel.)  Disco Dan.  Game Over.  And of course, Happy, a name given Burt Hooton because of his implacable lack of facial expressions.  Baseball irony. 

Those World Series games along with a couple of unforgettable playoff games, (seeing a ball go under Garry Maddox’s glove in the bottom of the 9^th to win a 5-game series against the Phillies from almost directly behind him in the left field pavilion,) was absolutely amazeballs.  Watching the game from way up in the left field reserve section of Dodger Stadium, nearly at the top, to see Jerry Reuss beat the Astros in a 1-game playoff was similarly charged.

I came to love the nuance of the game.  The evolution brought about by advanced metrics puts all that nuance on center stage.  How will Kershaw pitch to JD Martinez?  Same as ever?  How will all these lefties fare: Sale, Price, Kershaw and Ryu, in the first two games?  Will Matt Kemp come up big?  Will the Dodgers get to the Boston bullpen?  Who will the designated hitter benefit the most?  Which team’s pitchers can the other team steal on?  Will the New England fans cheer Dave Roberts?  Will Dodger fans remember Alex Cora?  

I do.  In the late ‘90s and early '00s my company had four season seats 19 rows behind the visiting dugout.  For a couple of years I was lucky enough to receive those tickets about 10 times each year.  (How I still love my bosses all those years ago at Sparkletts Water.)  Welcome to the Jungle, indeed.  As disappointing as those Piazza and Karros years were and as shameful it was to have been linked to steroids, when Eric Gagne came into the game I would always watch the top of the visiting dugout.  Without fail every player would come to the front edge to stand and watch this guy throw 99 mph with a downward screw on the ball that was practically unhittable.  It was exciting.  One mid-season night, Sparkletts Water night in fact, guess who got to throw out the first pitch in a mid-season game against the Astros.  That’s right, the kid who became the old man who can still imitate the batting stances of all the starters from those 1978, 1979 and 1981 teams, to say nothing of the pitching motion of one Burt Carlton Hooton.  

I don’t know if baseball would have caught fire with me had I not attended those big games when I was a youngster.  I am not sure I would have played through high school and beyond including some high level fast and slow pitch softball right through my 20s and 30s.  It would not have been the end of the world either if I did not become a fan of America’s pastime.  However, it has been exceedingly positive for me.  I’m so, so thankful.

And here we are again.  The Dodgers are in the World Series and now I am a father and my children are 14 and 11.  We were at a Dodger-Angel game earlier this season, (interleague play,) and the kids were given free Mike Trout jerseys and my daughter, who is the sportier of the two, really embraced the Angels and Trout throughout the game.  She liked Ohtani’s deep homerun to center field and relished being the contrarian in the group as the rest of us seemed to represent the Dodgers.  Just a few weeks prior to that we were at a Los Angeles Galaxy game and I saw her adopt the ardor of her friends for the Galaxy and specifically for Zlatan Ibrahimovic.  She asked me if she could go ask Zlatan to autograph her shoes post game.  These are examples of her first real interest.  As if in concert her own soccer game has taken off of late.  In my humble opinion she may have become the best player on her team in the course of the current season, when at the outset maybe she was 4^th or 5^th.  As for my son we will see.  So far he remains more interested in the concessions and souvenirs.  

I may be calling radio stations this week.  The lowest cost for tickets I have seen is $700 per.  I can’t afford to take my kids at that price and that’s okay.  If nothing else we’ll go to the Boat in San Gabriel so we can be around Dodger fans and hear some yelling and cheering as we watch the game.  The other night we watched game 7 at Shakey’s and every time the Dodgers scored a run I gave Mark the green light to do a loud impersonation of Nelson from the Simpsons.  His impression is spot on and hilarious and so, when he did it out loud at the pizza joint, it seemed my friend David and I cracked up but so did some others from around us, which pleased Mark and got him more into the game. 

I’d love them to have an experience similar to my own.  I’d love to find a way to take them to the World Series.  In lieu of such an outcome we are going to enjoy these baseball games like nobody’s business.  In the end I hope the Dodgers prevail.  I want that because I love the Dodgers and it has been too long. The Dodgers have the best and most loyal fan base in sports.  More, they deserve a big win after having endured the bad ownership groups that were Fox and the Mc Courts.  Also, Boston.  Frank Mc Court is from there and Red Sox fans largely suck.  

Most of all I want the Dodgers to win for Clayton Kershaw.  He has surpassed Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana and Fernando Valenzuela and yes, Happy, as the best pitcher I have seen in my lifetime and I want the Dodgers to win one with him and for him and I want him to be relevant when that happens, which is now. 

Let’s Go, Dodgers!