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!

Tender Age Shelter

I lived 10 days in a tender age shelter and the trauma remains.  I was 11-years-old.  I had not committed a crime.  I was taken from the home of an Aunt and Uncle and incarcerated at McLaren Hall in El Monte, California.  I survived but I was changed.

MacLaren Hall was a notorious and violent institution.  You can google and read about the Lost Children of MacLaren Hall on many websites.  My mother was a criminal and a heroin addict.  She brought me into contact with a brutal, violent man and my brief stay at MacLaren Hall marked the end of the few turbulent years of my life I spent living with my mother.  The County of Los Angeles had to decide on whom would be my legal guardian.

My youngest years were spent with my grandfather.  He made me live by the law of his belt and I adapted and thrived.  I remember a teacher I had in the 2^nd grade, Miss Moss, telling my grandpa I needed to be in what they called a mentally gifted minors program and that I could do anything with my life.  2^nd grade is early to make such determinations. 

At around 8 years of age my mom got out of prison and persuaded the court to give her custody of me.  It was great.  Her pure love and adoration nurtured a sense of self in me I had not known.  It was also horrible.  I spent mornings hanging around the methadone center and nights avoiding the violence of her husband.  In between I navigated the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Bell Gardens or Hollywood, more or less aimlessly.  I was only with her for a couple of years or so but we moved a lot. 

When I think back to those times I sense in those early years I really could have become anything.  I could have been a scholar.  I might have become a professional.  The tumultuous years with my mother were a blessing and a curse in ways.  They marked me and changed me.  I developed a sense of a bully that is as strong today as it was in my 9-year-old mind when I plotted what I would do to the bully in my life when I reached a certain age. 

At 11 when  I entered my tender age shelter I was in shock.  I was living in  Hollywood on Western just off of Melrose, down the street from KHJ radio.  I had adapted to a lifestyle of sorts.  I stayed out of the apartment as much as possible.  My best friend was an African-American man who had an apartment nearby.  I had a bicycle and I rode it everywhere.   My bully would lose his shit one night and fire a gun at my mom and she would hock her wedding ring the next morning to get him out of jail.  Then one day something happened and my mom knew she was in trouble.  I was out riding my bike and when I returned around sunset there were police all over the apartment complex and two of my uncles were out front.  They said they did not know why the cops were there but that my mom had asked them to come pick me up because she had to go away for a little while.  She was on the run.

I shuffled between the homes of a couple of uncles until that day my social worker came to get me.  I sobbed as I left La Puente for the tender age shelter that was MacLaren Hall.

My arrival was a scene I will never forget.  I was told to walk across a playground and go to a building that would be my dormitory.  When I opened the door to that room cacophonous sounds shocked my ears.  At just that moment a kid who looked 14 or 15 escaped the clutches of one of the counselors and dove under a bed.  The counselor grabbed the single bed and slid it away exposing the boy who scrambled to the next bed.  All the while the Counselor was screaming expletives at the top of his lungs until at the end of the line where there were no more beds, only a wall, he got his hands on the kid.  He pulled him up into the air like a rag doll and through him a few feet in the air at the wall.  I remember the kid bouncing a little off the wall.  The counselor grabbed him again and pulled up off the ground and slammed him two or three more times into the wall this time without letting go of him.  The kid was crying and growling and dazed. 

Me?  I stood there and sobbed.  I have never been as scared as that moment.  I had no control over my life.  A system was telling me what to do.  In this world I had arrived in “Counselors,” could beat children.  I looked outside at the grounds and saw a large concrete wall and yes, it had barbed wire at the top.  I told myself I would find a way over that wall.  That was a pervasive thought for me all the days I spent at MacLaren Hall. 

I saw violence daily at MacLaren Hall.  I cried on a few occasions, which is not an ideal thing to do in a place with a hierarchy of violence.  The Counselors were lethal and the older kids were dangerous.  The older kids were utterly different from me in that they were already hardened.  Their anger was palpable.  I remember vividly how I viewed them and knowing the most important thing I could do would be to guard my sense of innocence.  I grew a hard outer shell from the knowledge of this place.  I did not get beaten.  One night I failed to obey quite right and a Counselor gave me a good shove as he yelled at me to pick up the mess and get in the bed. (or something like that,) and I moved from the push but quickly recovered and survived.  My modus operandi in that place was to make myself invisible.  I laid low.  I hid from  view behind others.  I looked down always.  The hard shell I put on softened the darkness that invaded my being and my innocence and youth and trust in humankind concentrated itself at my core and remained as perfect and golden as ever, if smaller. This is how I remember it.  I was protecting something.  When they asked who was Catholic and wanted to go to an Ash Wednesday service I raised my hand in spite of the fact I had little church background.  There were only three of us but the chance to go the little chapel was time away from the violence.  

I remember walking by a scene one day on the playground when a kid who was certainly no threat to anyone, who walked around most days sobbing and who could not talk back to me the time I tried to talk to him, was on the ground with three bigger kids around him kicking him.  I had somewhere to go and I barely allowed myself to look.  When I looked around for authority figures I saw one watching from a distance and slowly starting towards the malice underway.  So I protected what was inside me with all I had.  And my day in court arrived and I spent several hours focused on my hope that I not have to return to that place. 

My Aunt and Uncle agreed to become my legal guardians while I remained a ward of the court, one of Los Angeles County’s sons.  I was changed after my time in a tender age shelter.  Within a couple of weeks of living with my new family I got up one Sunday night during church and walked to the front as Just As I am was being sung by the congregation to accept the religion of my family and become born again.  Being born again became the driving force of the rest of my childhood.  

I lost so much of my self.  I lived with a fear of ever being in a place like MacLaren Hall again.  I was an agreeable kid, with everyone, at all times.  My Uncle often said I was a good kid.  I was a good kid, because I could not, would not go back to that tender age shelter or anywhere like it.  I was scarred and I was scared by my tender age shelter.  It is likely I have been significantly inhibited in life by my time there.  This is not an excuse.  This is merely a conclusion I draw from my personal experience. 

Tender age shelters, violent or otherwise, are not places kids go to end up stable, law abiding citizens.  Being taken away from your family, from those you love and who love you, is traumatic for children.  It twists and affects us.  We become angry and afraid in circumstances such as these.  I know this personally. 

Artists Against Bullies

Have you seen this?

Or this?

This?

What about this?

I'm thinking about the protest music of this generation.  I'm thinking about how strong these messages are, how smart and polished they are.  I'm thinking about white rappers and black rappers and old Irishmen and all the rest.

This President has inspired an epic resistance.  The last Republican President took us into a war that killed 100,000 people in and from a distant land, on false pretense no less.  Americans cared more about the 5,000 dead Americans, (even though they returned in boxes under press blackout.)  He did not even account for the trillions of dollars spent making war in the national budget.  George W Bush is in fact a war criminal.

However, Donald Trump's Presidency inspires a much deeper sense of dissatisfaction and disgust.  By comparison his actions thus far in terms of Presidential actions, the business of being President, have not been resulted in so much death or destroyed our economy.  Yes, he has set a path to destroy the cabinet departments from within and in that regard he is a Republican dream come true.  Yes, he gave large tax breaks to corporations who in turn showered the money on their CEO's and shareholders while giving a pittance to the stakeholders knowing and trusting they would interpret the largess as a sure sign this is the best of all possible worlds. Yes, the economy appears to be healthy.

Obama bit the bullet and accounted for the previous administrations war while also bailing out Wall Street, which had essentially lied and gambled the world economies into unprecedented peril, to the tune of $700 billion.  The entire eight years of Obama's Presidency Republicans castigated him as if he caused the mess when in fact he was the adult coming in after the fact and making the hard choices to restore order.

After eight years of Obama acting responsibly, what do we get?  Donald Trump.  More military spending and a wall.  Cabinet heads hell bent on destroying their own departments.  An FCC Chairman who is opposed to net neutrality.  A Department of Education Secretary who would prefer to hand her budget over to religious schools and all other manner of magnet head start charlatans and snake oil salesman while destroying the notion of public education.  The Head of the EPA is positively opposed to the environment and in favor of big business. Mentioning these three of course is shooting fish in a barrel.  the sum total of Donald Trump's appointments is equally destructive.  Still, it is not 105,000 dead human beings in  Iraq.  It is not the world economy on the brink of collapse.

At my ripe old age these actions look like a cycle to me.  We will have Democrats in office soon and they will responsibly go about fixing this mess we have brought on ourselves by making hard choices to fund the commons and so on.  The Republicans in turn will blame the Democrats who will then be in office as the corporations cut off bonuses and wages stagnate, (meanwhile shareholders and CEOs continue to prosper-they're immune to virtually any turns in the economy.)  Dumb Americans will lap it up and vote Republican at some point thereafter and the cycle continues.

Donald Trump is reviled and not just by Eminem.  The ire he draws is certainly related to the policies of destruction he is beholden to.  It is more though.  Even Americans who are not attuned to the harsh realities of this Presidency are disgusted by Trump's personal nature.  He is a bad criminal.  He has succeeded in the most temporary manner there is, sucking dollars from fame like a dog at a garden spigot.

Yes, a lot of people like Donald Trump.  Bis businessmen and Christians and mean people mostly, but maybe a quarter of Americans actually like him in spite of any sense of decency or decorum.  Of course there were those who were opposed to freeing the slaves, those who believed in earnest the women of Salem were witches, those who did not want women to vote and so on.

And yes, the economy is basically good right now.  The tax cuts however mean less social safety net, less services, less of the commons.  Americans ultimately like those things.  We don't like opioid addiction.  We don't like rampant homelessness.  We don't like people living in their cars and in their RVs.  My little town in northeastern Los Angeles county has seen a large increase in homelessness recently.  This in part due to the arrival of mass transit, (the gold line made it to Monrovia.) Equally startling and tragic is the number of people I see living in their cars or RV's. 

What we don't seem to get as a people, or society, is that in choosing capitalism we choose a competition. Competitions have winners and losers.  This means both upward and downward mobility exists.  What happens to the losers in our societal competition?  Mostly they end up in prisons, or mental health institutions or homeless.  The homeless are those who could not compete successfully. 

Our society is not completely capitalist however, nor has it ever been.  We have always had a blend of socialism mixed in; the commons if you will.  Government, prisons, cops, firefighters, national parks, the military, highways, these are just a few of our common endeavors our taxes are used for.  As Americans we do not like to see people suffer the indignities of poverty. And so it is when the Republicans get their way and services and commons are cut so that those who would can capitalize, until children are again in the workforce or wages are just so low the masses will no longer tolerate it, when the separation of the classes begins to look like an apartment renter class and an apartment  homeowner class, when the homeless themselves rise up, we will vote again for the policies of those services. The travesty of this cycle is that it is often the impoverished who are the true believers in upward mobility.  They often believe the empathy of society manifested in the form of social services and such is the cause of their bad fortune, (never even considering the military budget, which if they did consider it they would credit for protecting them from other bogeymen who would stifle their imminent success.)  So it is as Trump carries out the plans of the right, of the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, (men who spend billions of dollars to influence public policy so they can wield ever more power,) As the President who is accomplishing this sinister plan at present he is certainly heroic.  Even if they mock Trump for all of his foibles in private they also  praise their good fortune he was elected, even if the only wealth he cares about is his own.

And so it is in spite of the overtly destructive nature of George W Bush's presidency and the relative prosperity of Americans at present Trump's presidency is in fact far more destructive and vile.  His presidency is meant to seal the fate of the lower classes.  If Trump is to be impeached or prosecuted it simply cannot happen soon enough.  The voice of the artists is the voice of the people and it will only get  louder and increasingly pervasive.

Everybody Wants My Money (A Piece of Prose)

The dentist wants my money

She said I need a couple of crowns so we scheduled it

I showed up and she said $1,000

I said, don’t I have insurance?

Yes, but this is your part to pay

Everybody wants my money

I had to pay for the campsite in the forest I am taking the kids to for vacation

The initial investment was modest

Turns out I did not have all the camping gear I needed

REI wanted some of my money

Amazon wanted money for the books we will read as a family

and for the mosquito repellant

and for the inflatable mattress

the gas station wants my money and they collude with the supermarket to get it

if I am loyal to the supermarket I can get 10-cents, or 20-cents, off, per gallon

(again by being loyal to the fuel provider)

What’s the profit margin on that gas?

The supermarket definitely wants my money

And I have been uber loyal over the years

The store is clean and comfortable with great variety

I enjoy grocery shopping and often buy too many groceries

Heads of salad sometimes rot inside of my refrigerator

It’s so good to have fresh fruit around

Until you feel like a consumerist pig because the bananas and tangerines have rotted on the counter

Half used onions turn in my crisper drawer because I never turned, to them

Everybody wants my money

Including the restaurants

When energy wanes and instant gratification spikes I have a multitude of choices

The onion can wait

Mexican food.  Now.

Of course Costco pulls me from the supermarket

My family is not big enough, I am not big enough, to warrant Costco

That won’t stop me

I now buy kitchen trash bags every 2.5 years

I buy granola bars every six months

Everybody wants my money

The roof over my family’s heads costs money

The power in our home

The water

The vehicle I drive

Insurance! 

I have never once in my life made a claim on my own auto insurance and yet…

They want my money

They get my money

What do I get for my money?

Funny commercials with lizards and geckos and Flo

Gee.  Thanks.

Everybody wants my money

Bernie Sanders wanted my money last year

For his, no, our ideas, to compete in a moneyed system

I was happy to give Bernie some money

It is the best money I have spent in years, maybe in my lifetime

So it is that Ironstache Randy Bryce needs my money

Elizabeth Warren needs my money, (and deserves some,)

The men looking to unseat the corrupt Messers. Rohrbacher and Issa want my money

The financial planner wants his cut of my money

Eddie Vedder wants my money

(Or, he wants the Surfrider Foundation to have it, anyway)

When you endure a relentless barrage of moneylust, you kind of need some Eddie Vedder when you can get it

All manner of service employees want my money

I can’t say no

I live in the 18-25% range

Like 98% of the work force, they are not paid enough and oddly, I get to affect that

Wait-am I forced to affect that?

Capitalism is

Capitalism wants my money…and I can’t say no

I won’t say no

I haven’t said no

I’m weak

I admire those who have said no

Everybody wants my money

The bar wants my money

The American Youth Soccer Organization wants my money

The car wash wants my money

The coffee industry wants my money

Frozen yogurt too

Sprint demands my money

I don’t begrudge how necessary our devices have become

I begrudge the profit margin in the telecom industry

Norton antivirus wants my money

iTunes and Spotify and Pandora are in a race to gain my money on a subscription model

an open ongoing source of cash releases corporate capitalist endorphins

The YMCA wants my money

My ex-wife wants my money

After school care wants my money

Ireland and Cuba want my money and it can only be a matter of time

Dude on the bike with the dreadlocks outside the Panda Express wants my money

Groupon wants to give me a discount to get my money

(Did they cut the actual price or was it inflated first in order to sustain the sacred profit margin?)

Amazon offers me everything in exchange for my money

Everything

Walmart absolutely positively does not get my money

Demand Progress wants my money, sometimes for informing me how bad a company Walmart is

Rest In Peace Aaron Swartz – Your story makes my heart so heavy

Holidays want my money

On behalf of See’s candy and Hallmark and firecrackers and Butterball turkeys and Toys R Us and increased wattage and liquor

Hair restoration wants my money

All manner of age remediation wants my money

My money is wanted in the name of family safety and security

Madison Avenue wants my money by fear and by sex primarily

Netflix and Amazon want my money, the unread books on my shelf be damned

New wants my money-Old can pound sand

Technology wants my money

The aftermarket wants my money

Pep Boys and Firestone and Castrol and Tune-Up Masters want my dollars

The fitness gurus and purveyors of equipment want my cash

The vitamin makers will sustain my joints for money

The illustrious businessmen of health care, with some help from the doctors, will help me as I grow infirm, for money

The estate planner wants my money and one day the funeral director will too

I am not planning on paying him

I prefer to retire a grifter

Invisible Hayseeds

There is something about reading this story in this time.  I mean, Invisible Man.  Ralph Ellison.  The wunderkind of letters who penned only the one novel, prolific as it is. 

A moment comes in Ellison’s story when our main character, the nameless Brother, eulogizes the dead Tod Clifton.  He advises the mourners to go home and mourn no more as their mourning is impotent.  He chides them their inaction, their inability to organize and do anything, their complacency and willingness to be subjugated. 

Our nameless Brother, the Invisible Man, is a hayseed, too.  His every circumstance is a product of innocence, which underscores the fact the world has always suffered a dearth of real teachers. 

I prefer the classics and Invisible Man is just one I never happened onto previously.  However, my reading it coincided with the fact I have been in Chicago recently; the city of brotherhood.  The city of unions.  The city of high values and organized corruption.  The people are angry.  Every political discussion I was privy to, on the ‘L,’ on the tv, in the office, at the barbecue with so many Eastern Europeans, was derailed, derided, divisive, dehumanizing. 

My friend said all the violence is happening in six square blocks.  Someone else referred to it as black on black crime.  The morning after the President made a speech as part of the procession of speeches nominating Hillary Clinton for President I told my classroom I was back in a bromance with this President.  I had endured a season of disillusionment but now I was back.  I believed he was honorable.  80% of my classroom was black women and they practically cooed at me.  After all I was in the land of Obama. 

Dee, in the front row, smiled slyly at me and confirmed she would have been nowhere else but in front of her tv the night before. (That she said that felt like an unexpected surprise, like someone coming up to me standing in a long line and offering me a chair on wheels and a cool drink.  I needed to hear that from the people and Dee was the people.)  Dee being short for Deahjahnay, which is of course a pretty name, French sounding and unique and in no way obnoxious.  Other black women in the room nodded approval and I mentioned to Dee directly that President Obama had somehow regained my respect through no fault of his own but as my knowledge and insight grew and shrunk and changed and morphed. 

I am pissed about drones.  I don’t like that he appointed Federal Reserve Insider Timothy Geithner. He was the product of a corrupt campaign finance reform system, too.  He negotiated with unreasonable cavemen who were themselves products of a corrupt campaign finance system and who acted from every interest other than altruism. 

In this speech however he reminded me why I voted for him twice.  He is after all, an honorable man.  He operated within a corrupt system and ultimately succeeded beyond his rivals from the other side of the aisle, they the purveyors of a cruel sense of justice and morality.  He found a Xanadu of middle ground that seemingly did not exist between the establishment of corporate America and the moral right.  He pulled socially to the left.  He followed through on some truly noble ideas slam dunking gays in the military and re-opening relations with Cuba.  There is a real litany of good things this President’s legacy will include. 

On this night he spoke to me and a million other Bernie Sanders supporters of campaign finance reform.  His words?  He said, “Don’t Boo.  Vote.”  Three fucking words and he overwhelmed my ideas on this subject. 

Like many I am so indignant at our system.  How unjust.  How unrepresentative.  Like so many of the falsehoods I was given as an American born child here was another case that might cause so many to throw their hands in the air and choose to just fly off the rails or join the parade of soiled, silly, suckers of greed.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said.

He is right.  In the end it does come down to more than voting.  We have to work at voting.  We have to get others to vote.  We have to work fiercely.  We have to educate the electorate.  We have to invigorate the masses and create a social responsibility that becomes a cultural sea change. 

The people are mad now at Hillary Clinton for being yet another product of a corrupt campaign finance system.  They don’t know how to direct their anger.  They’re so pissed about how powerless they feel with their one vote-they are mad at the one person who has been fighting for the values they espouse, (discounting a few errors in judgment,) and who wins against the truly corrupt fascist pigs of and on the right.  It is as if they are mad at Hillary Clinton for being good at what she does.  They’re mad at her for playing their game and winning as if they want Donald Trump, or John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell, or Lindsay Graham, or any of these other creeps who hate fags, detest welfare, love war, want to sell America for their own personal gain, cheat to win, gerrymander, play to the lowest common denominator, use fear, race bait, bible thump, parade around in sheep’s clothing seeking whom they may next devour. 

“Don’t Boo, Vote,” he said.

Guilty.  I am guilty as charged by the President of the United States.  He got me.  I’m so indignant and yet, he is so right.  (And she is too.)  What a buffoon I am.

Not really.  My error is one of altruism and of not being satisfied with the slow pace of progress.  (I forgive myself.  I’m so big like that.) 

And so in a way we’re all hayseeds, we supporters of Bernie Sanders.  We are noble hayseeds.  Everyone should be a hayseed but still, we are hayseeds. 

This voting President Obama refers to will happen.  Campaign finance will change like Citizen’s United will be overturned like a woman’s right to choose will be safeguarded like our military budget will decline.  Eventually.  Change is slow, however in spite of corrections, moments of retrograde activity, things are getting better and history shows us this is true. 

Ellison’s great novel is as relevant today as ever. Similarly, it is as colorful and engaging and modern as ever.  The enmity between law enforcement and the people they are meant to protect and serve remains a constant in our society.  The hayseed is invisible.  Who listens?  Who knows?  What’s the quote from Baudelaire?  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  (Okay, so I looked.  It’s WB Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming.) I always took that to mean the pure of heart have nothing to feel convicted about or for, while the liars, cheaters, connivers, the unjust and unkind, the wicked and inglorious, petty,  dishonest mother fuckers of the world tend to yell and scream because they're trying to convince you of something beyond fantastic.  They are trying to sell you a bill of goods.

Brother is treated with indignity after indignity in The Invisible Man.  His best nature, his altruism, his earnestness, they’re all fodder for those who would devour.  His intentions are golden at every turn but he is seen, in the South and in Harlem, as breaking from cherished norms or wanting to place himself above others. 

Obama chided us in the same way Ralph Ellison chided us.  Ellison understood what it meant to be invisibly black in America, to be absorbed into a socio-cultural belief system.  Obama understood what it took to ascend to high office in America.  He knew of what he spoke.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said rightly.  He was telling the hayseeds in the room and across America watching on their televisions, stop talking and go do.  He must have had this awakening at one time too, right?  The day he decided if he wanted to do something altruistic, if he wanted to help the under-served and underrepresented black communities on the south side of Chicago he had best go there and try to put some of his Harvard education into practice in the real world for the purpose of helping people better their lives. 

On a night that underscored the ultimate failure of the Bernie Sanders campaign and feeling like an insignificant hayseed I understand Obama’s message, (and Ellison’s too.)  I have to find ways to go do.  We all have to do that.  Ours is a utilitarian society and in so many ways the pressures of life, of economy, will pin us to a station, but the true hayseed must find ways. 

And so, Brother is a hero.  I admire him his gift of altruism.  I absolve him of whatever he has been accused of or blamed for.  Moreover, I am so thankful for reading this book now and not because some professor forced me to read it when I was 20-something and a different sort of hayseed altogether. 

Obama too, is a hero.  His dignity in the face of so much racism and ignorance is an example I hold up to my kids when I speak of emotional intelligence.  He is and has been for my family the Commander of Emotional Intelligence in Chief.  His ability for candor, his grace under attack, his empathy, they all were and are downright Presidential.  Hence why I adore him anew, in spite of the frustration I felt almost from Day 1 of his Presidency. 

Full Circle

I switched the radio as I drove the 60 westbound towards my office to NPR because I didn’t feel like bothering with a podcast or listening to all the NFL games rehashed ad nauseam.  They said a killer had mowed down some 40 or more people and injured hundreds of others at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.  My Aunt works in that casino as a Pit Boss.  So as I listened to details I became increasingly concerned. 

 

A couple of years ago she had gotten me passes to go see some singer at “The Beach,” at Mandalay Bay.  I remember watching and listening to the show and looking back up over my shoulder at the façade of the hotel with all those windows where anyone might be looking down on the spectacle, perhaps unable to hear the music.  I imagined this shooter spraying The Beach with so many bullets from an AK-47.  I thought of my Aunt, who is as fun loving a person as there is, and her affinity for country music and how she always ends up getting a picture with the celebrity who happens into the casino.  (Just a couple of weeks earlier she could be seen on Facebook with one of the big boxers and a couple of years ago when my beloved Kings won the Stanley Cup she sent me pictures of her with one of our players a few days after the victory.) 

 

I worried she might have been there.  I did not yet know the event the monster aimed his weapon at was across the street.  So I called.  No answer.  I texted her: “Aunt Laura-I trust you are okay?”  Nothing.  I called again, this time not leaving a voice mail.  Then after some more driving as I arrived at work I texted her eldest son, my cousin Frank: “Cousin.  Have you heard from your Mom?”  He said he was calling her right then.  I responded by telling him I had called-no answer.  I said it was probably a crazy scene and maybe she had only gotten to bed a couple of hours ago and so she was probably sleeping. 

 

Frank called me 90 minutes later.  He said he had spoken to his youngest brother, Vinny, and that Aunt Laura was fine.  When she was evacuated, he said, they did not let her go get her purse or her cell phone or anything…

 

It was an odd couple of hours to start the day.  I consumed the requisite news stories about the person, the victims and the events around the tragedy.  I knew my Aunt was okay.  I expected she was inside the casino and not across the street at a country music concert.  Still, I contemplated her death and I contemplated my own death and I considered so many deaths and I struggled with the tragedy that was. 

 

I imagined this destroyer and I wondered what he was like as a boy.  He was 64, I thought?  64?  I had rage all the way to 40 and I think I was an outlier.  Men should be angry in their 20s but 64?  What was he like as a child?  Was he a demon-seed?  Did he know laughter and the unbearable lightness of being?  Did he love?  Was he loved?  I mean real love-did he ever feel like he would die for someone if it came down to it, if a deranged man was shooting from atop a perch into a crowd for example?  Did he ever love someone like that?  

 

I don’t want to think of this ghoul of a man as simply that.  I don’t want to just say, evil, and let it be that.  I don’t want to earmark as monster and move on.  I want the gun control but gun control is certainly not enough for me.  When he was a baby was he evil?  When he soldiered into his 1^st grade classroom sans his mama was he a monster then, too?  When he had his first kiss?  I can’t humanize what is  human.  I want to know what happened.  I am quite sure as a baby he just wanted love and to give love back.  What the fuck happened to a man that he meticulously plans to amass a stockpile of artillery in a hotel room for the purpose of reigning fire down upon the heads of so many human revelers, out for the evening with their favorite partners and friends, enjoying the end of Summer with the soundtrack of their lives, killing them en masse?  What twisted him and made him into such an aberration?

 

I felt relief from the mounting tension when I did not know.  I eased back into a project I was working on and finally made some progress.  Right around lunchtime a coworker walked into my office and informed me Tom Petty had died.  Tom Petty, I marveled?  Hadn’t I just watched like a 4-hour documentary on this guy a few months ago on Netflix?  Wasn’t he relatively young?  I googled and quickly discovered it was true.  Cardiac arrest.  Death in heaping portions this morning. 

 

Thing is I am not a big Tom Petty enthusiast.  I think of Refugee as a classic song for sure.  A couple of others were good.  I had put American Girl on a cd we played during childbirth for Terra.  Still, death is.  Tom Petty, cut down at 66.

 

Later after picking up the kids from school on the drive home I played a song by REM; The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight.  Those lyrics.  I explained to Mark in the back seat who Michael Stipe is.  I said this singer is kind of retired now as he’s getting a bit long of tooth, (Mark loves when I use outdated colloquialisms.)  Mark liked the song, which pleased me to no end. 

 

When Mark or Terra likes the song I feel capable of living on.  When I read those rock and roll biographies there is always that step dad who turned Jeff Buckley on to led Zeppelin at an early age, or the Dad who loved opera, or what have you.  I think of my own Dad and how born again he was and opposed to all things rock and roll, but every now and then he would let it slip.  What?!  His favorite song when he was in high school was Time is on My Side by the Stones?!  Or when Bob Dylan went all Christian I discovered he knew all these songs I had never heard of.  Everybody Must Get Stoned, indeed…

 

This is life.  These are the things of life.  And now that Michael Stipe is retired, now that my occasional glimpse is limited to him popping up all tarot card Hermit looking on Stephen Colbert’s show to sing a duet with the host.  Now that I ponder this great American Singer, and think back to the time he wore all those t-shirts on the VMA's, or consider how fiercely private he is about aspects of his life.  I realize now that my respect for Michael Stipe is nothing short of love.  It is ardor and adoration for sure but it is love.  There are a million possibilities for how one conducts himself in public or how one accepts celebrity.  Michael Stipe’s way has been one of utter integrity.

 

Michael Stipe once said his favorite REM song was Fall On Me.  That is my favorite REM song, too.  It is a simply profound protest.  As we headed home I sang along knowing Mark was memorizing lyrics.  He has a gift for that, I think. 

 

“Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial,” I sang.  “A can of beans or black-eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice.”  It felt good to sing these words.  I had not listened to this song in forever.  REM, such artists.  Incorporating The Lion Sleeps Tonight, into their modern pop song and also drawing on myriad references from Americana and life in these times.  “A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading of Dr. Seuss.”  At the mention of Dr. Seuss a mass of emotion roiled in my stomach and chest suddenly, like nausea or joy or a car crash.  I reached inward past the wave of emotion to draw the composure I needed to stifle my Mini breakdown. 

 

I know the reference to Dr. Seuss piqued Mark’s interest.  I could see he was listening intently back there.  Terra was listening too but Mark was dialed in and I know this reference to someone he knows and appreciates resonated with him even if he did not quite understand the context.  

 

So it was I drove down Santa Anita Avenue stifling the urge to cry.  I would cry because I love my son and I want to influence him so positively.  My ego would also cry at the longing to be remembered.  I would cry because Michael Stipe is a beautiful, dignified man of the world I too, inhabit.  I would cry for my Aunt, who continues to be of my closest family and my primary link to a Mother who departed a long, long time ago.  I would cry at the thought of my Aunt crying until noon the following day.  (Her heart is tender-she has always cried so easily.)  I would cry for so many victims, too many victims, lives cut short and interrupted by dark, random chaos, by deep psychosis.  I would cry for their people, so angry and confused and disillusioned and, angry.  And sadsad.  Profoundly sad.  Depression…  I would cry too upon hearing the stories of people who held dying strangers for two hours as they slowly succumbed.  I could cry at the remarkable beauty, the random acts of love seen or unseen but always there with our kind.  I would cry at the consideration of how a person takes on such darkness, contemplates such evil and acts upon it. 

 

The kids asked a few questions about the horror in Las Vegas.  Terra shared something she heard from one of the youth leaders at the Y.  I explained that the shooter was obviously ill in a way that is hard to comprehend and I let them know Aunt Laura was okay.  I showed them the picture of my Aunt next to the CNN reporter in the aftermath.  Terra asked if the reporter interviewed her.  Mark did not recognize Aunt Laura.  And so it is emotional days happen...

Aunt Laura behind reporter mid-evacuation

In the aftermath if I cry I will cry from counting my blessings.  I will cry at the richness of life that is my children and my career and my avocations. I will cry at my good health.  I will cry at the luxury of crying.   I will cry at the knowledge that Everybody Hurts.