Better is the Enemy of Good

A hiatus due to a dead computer and my own laziness has left me with a lot of events to cover, the most relevant among them being the story of how I killed my computer.
That story, very briefly, involved a pint of Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and an attempt to capture a couple of lesbians making out. I just can’t get into writing about it. As for the other big events; the week I spent hiking the Appalachian Trail with my aunt, my discovery that advertising is a form of begging, finishing Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion, and catching glimpses of b-list celebrities in downtown Boston like Gary Bussey and Rob Schnieder, well, they aren’t worth getting into either. I’ve got something more immeidiate to report.
I’m going home!
It’s great news. Incredible even. But against all the marvelous things I’m looking forward to upon my return there is one obvious down side. I have to give up, at least for a while, on getting better. This decision was recently made by my (former) surgeon in-person in conjunction with my in-high-demand GI specialist over the phone. Yes, Dr. Bootsie himself had looked at me with his cool Republican doctor eyes and declared in reference to the possible operation that “better is the enemy of good.”
Good, of course is quite relative in this case. I’m still going to be in discomfort and at risk of that god damn Barrett’s shit but to explain without getting into a painfully irrelevant repetition of details the possible benefits of the surgery apparently do not out way the potential danger of further damage of my esophagus.
I’ll leave what this might mean for the future for a later blog so I can focus on Dr. Bootsie’s statement, which at the time struck me as very relavent and true. Now, before I get into why I don’t exactly think that anymore, let me say that I truly think of Dr. Bootsie with the utmost respect regardless of any difference in political and philosophical positions. He always gave the impression that he had a genuine concern for my health as well as an honest curiosity about the particulars of my situation. He even insured me that down the road surgery could still become a solution.
So, despite the major downside I considered what the doctor had said and found some happiness with my situation. Just having an answer of some kind, knowing exactly what I had to face helped my health. Even if it was only in a small way. Then there were the thoughts of seeing Sarah and my friends again, which will be another small cure from despair over my health. Dr. Bootsie’s statement was soon pushed to the back of my mind as I began to look forward to long walks and talks and maybe a joint or two (something I’ve avoided completely for over two months). But in the time between now and actually getting home there are still things to deal with such as the transfer of my medical records, sorting out some issues in regards to my new medication and most tedious of all, finding time to spend with relatives.
The first to officially say good-bye was a friend of the family, the brother of the uncle (don’t ask) I’ve been living with for these last eight ardous months. As soon as he found out I was leaving Dave asked me to go out with him for a couple of beers at the IA Club. It took me most of the short ride down to figure out what “IA” meant. Only moments before I saw the big green letters painted on the side of this building next to a baseball field did I realized it stood for “Irish American Club”.
Before I get into the many things that I perceive as wrong with such a place let me first say that “Irish American” is, as America now supposed to exist, a kind of contradiction of terms. This concept includes other compounds. Specifically the “African” and “Mexican” ones. When compared to the non-existant concept of “Canadian American” this becomes more clear and being something of a Canadian-American myself I have thought on these terms before. What I’m driving at is that none of these compound identities with the exception of Canadian-American (because it’s a term you will soon understand as redundant) are in any way meant to denote a country of origin. They’re for labeling skin colors. Examples of less transparent terms would be black-Americans, white (sometimes red-headed and freckled)-Americans, and not-quite-black-not-quite-white-Americans.

When I walk into the bar I am made to sign this registry book. I can’t remember the exact number of members but it’s some number between one and two thousand. If the two dozen guys in there this past Saturday could be taken as a sampling (not that it needs to be) there was not a single Irish-American among them who was not also a white-American. But that quick tally was not nearly as much of a surprise as the six or seven guys hooting away on cigarettes and cigars at the bar. Now, personally I haven’t got too much problem with the idea of smoking bars. I would avoid regular visits to places that allowed it but a night here or there isn’t going to give you cancer. I was still surprised that they managed to be allowed to smoke anything in a bar in this world of strictly regulated . . . well, regulations.
Dave picked us up a couple of Budweisers and we sat down in a booth. At a quick glance Bud or Bud Light were the only two choices of beers. Commercials do wonders (good and mostly bad) on the human mind. One sip of that bubbly nonsense causes me to reflux – its excessive carbonation a clear ploy to sell the product on the basis of that omnipresent advertising word “refreshing” (the consumable cousin of advertising words like“super”, “ultimate”, and “one-time-only”). (Doubters should note that Iceberg Lettuce, orange juice and mountain air, for example, are all sold using the same word, which oddly enough also share the quality of coldness; coldness being one possible origin of the concept of refreshing.) Regardless of the beers’ contrived qualities I still did appreciate at least Dave’s intentions.
Not thinking at the time on the racial (and gender) specificity of the place even though it is located just outside the racially diverse hub of Boston I just sat there listening to Dave’s stories about being a security guard at the Boston Public Library. Dave really is a great story teller. (And before I go on I have to say that regardless of his short comings I am fond of him. We share a love of nature and I could tell that he really appreciated my Appalachian Trail stories.)
The meat of these security guard stories he was telling focused on the job’s persistent exposure to mundane sorrows, something I could personally relate to having been a security guard myself. This didn’t help me though with the difficult time I was having ignoring all his contempt filled comments about the “faggots in the bathroom stalls”. He had all the sympathy in the world for the homeless he encountered (save for one short-sighted comment about how he doesn’t understand why they just don’t get a job) but none what so ever for the homosexuals and the “disgusting” things they did. I had to resist the urge to point out that maybe they met in dirty old bathrooms because people like him think that their natural born sexual tendencies are abhorrent.
Towards the end of our second Bud his stories started focusing on this black female security guard that he referred to as “one of those feminista types”. Apparently she was always causing trouble or something but before he expanded on the thought we decided to leave. This was a relief. I dropped the empty bottles off at the bar and received a very serious nod from an old guy in a fire-engine red ball cap with the American flag on it and the words “God Bless America”. I had to hold back impulses again, this time resisting an eye roll.
The beers began to take their intended effect as we got into Dave’s car. I forgot about where the conversation had been heading and gave him a very appreciative hand shake to thank him for getting the rounds. It was then that I found myself being told about how a couple of black guys used to hang around the club for but that they didn’t stay around for long (obviously). With more than a little pride he stated that there wasn’t a single black person or Hispanic person in the club.
I wasn’t shocked; not by the statement’s matter of fact nature or that Dave said it. I was introduced to American racism years ago (still alive and from a skewed point of view, well). During my first stint working a meaningless job in the good old US of A I was employed as a broom maker in a broom factory. Apart from one equally marginalized Wiccan lady my co-workers were all what is commonly referred to as immigrants, either Hispanic, African or Jamaican. Broom making, a job that requires endless hours of standing, smelling plastic, and breathing in dust and chemicals as well as a slow deterioration of one’s soul is also one that is completely thankless. (To my knowledge there are no bumper stickers that say, “God Bless our Broom makers” even though countless backs of American women and a few backs of men are saved by well crafted brooms and convenient long handled dust pans also assembled by myself and other tireless foreign broom makers.) Some of the guys I met had been there for ten years without much of a raise and certainly no promotion save for one -- Clayon.
Or Klingon as most of the guys in shipping called this Jamaican who had nothing but an abundance of kindness. I had been promoted to shipping and began driving a forklift (which was like getting a Rolls Royce in a country where almost no one has a car) after only three weeks. Nearly every other guy in the shipping department, except for the manager, who was also very kind hearted, referred to Clayon as Klingon – and not at all playfully. It was not only derogatory but whether they meant the connotations or not it completely alienated a guy who was painfully aware of its other meanings. I was nineteen at the time and completely shocked then that there were less-than-backwater racists still walking and working amongst what I then thought of as regular people.
A few years later after being laid-off from the broom factory and regrettably losing contact with Clayon I got that job as a security guard. It was post 9/11. By then I wasn’t the least surprised that one of my co-workers, a mostly devote Muslim from Morocco named Mohammed Ahmar, was also isolated through cowardly behind-the-back comments and a few some what shrouded ones to his face. Of all the people that I got to know in my year at the former Fleetcenter Mohammed was the only one I actually considered a friend. We spent many hours in amiable debate over the existence of God, even his specifically. Not once did I feel threatened. The firmist thing he ever said to me, and he said it with one of the biggest toothiest smiles that I can remember, was “God knows.” Of both Clayon and Mohammed I have fond memories but these stories are what the Irish (I’m guessing) call small potatoes. In neither case was I, nor did I feel I was, breaking new social grounds. Social awareness since the time of that so called “Greatest Generation” has been nothing but improving. Which is to say -- it has gotten better.
Unfortunately, for some, that kind of better is the enemy of their good. Dave’s Irish American Club has changed with the times but only in a very slight degree (it has a women’s auxilliary now welcome during special events on Saturday nights, for example). However timidly, the members still stand by the idea that where ever a woman’s place is it is not in a bar and that black people should have their own clubs (and hell, why not water fountains while they’re at it).
Reflecting on all this and Dr. Bootsie’s statement (let’s not extrapolate here to the point that I am calling the guy a racist because I’m not) I have come up with what I think is an accurate translation to ignorant people speak (or thought). That is that things different are the enemy of things the same.
How does this ignorance-based manisfestation of the idea effect my situation? Well, the truth is I’ll never be able to think in any kind of absolute manner that Dr. Bootsie couldn’t have possibly pulled the surgery off and that I might just have come out a little better. But as he stated, sometimes change can be bad.
One of the hardest things in life can be determining what things are worth altering. This time I went the safer (yet still physically difficult) route. But that doesn’t mean that I think miracles (not of the Jesus sort but just those of a not quite impossible nature) aren’t worth dreaming of. Sometimes one has to be cautious not so much about what promises to be better but of what they consider good.

The Turkey and the Hawk: How I found God and why he was exactly where Captain Kirk said he'd be.

I had made a decision not so long ago that I would be finished, no matter what (famous last words?), with this stomach non-sense come the end of July. All I was waiting on was the results of one last test. Either I was going to get the surgery or walk away from the whole mess and just have to learn to deal with my discomfort and the risk of developing that condition the doctors call Barrett’s esophagus, something I have come to call the ghost of cancer-future.
This past Friday I had my appointment with Dr. Bootsie only to find out he could not provide any immediate answers because after more than a week of waiting for the results they were still not in. Regardless of this Dr. Bootsie continued to seem positive that the surgery was the correct choice barring some unusual and unexpected results. He also assured me that I was doing the right thing in being cautious about delaying the surgery and waiting until I had all the information I could have. Before I left he told me he would make sure that the results were put together that day and that he would call me at four o’clock to tell me either to go ahead with the surgery or forget about it. I was thrilled and ready to celebrate either way.
But his call didn’t come. Not until 7pm anyway. And even then it wasn’t Dr. Bootsie but the doctor who had read the test results. He told me that the surgery was to be cancelled and that there were more tests needed to determine my problem.
I’m not going to get into the details mostly cause they depress me. All that I really need to say here is that I was devastated and had to spend the last two days on the phone with pharmacies, insurance companies and doctor’s secretaries to determine my future. I had little success.
Luckily for me, in the midst of all this disappointment I found God. I have to admit that this was a revelation in the works considering that I have been studying the New Testament for several weeks. Now, my friends (all you good agnostics and atheists), do not be afraid. You will soon see that the god I found has little to do with the god of Abraham. It had much more to do with a turkey and a hawk and the recall of a Captain Kirk line from that theological masterpiece Star Trek V.
I had taken the commuter rail to the small town of West Gloucester to explore the nearby Ravenswood Park for some much needed forest quiet. I burdened myself only with binoculars, some cashews, an apple, a book (not the Bible . . . I’ll get to that shortly), and a very vague map of this park, which I found out is owned and made available by a group of people that refer to themselves quite officially as trustees. So thanks to these executors of the wilderness and my slight provisions I was able to spend a tranquil day amongst the trees.
Right from the beginning of the trip I realized it was going to be a nature-blessed (so to speak) day. Not ten minuets on the trail I noticed a garter snake slithering in the bushes. I became fond of these critters during my days as a river guide on Wyoming’s Snake River (named not for snakes but a misinterpreted motion of the hand made by the local Shoshone Indians meant to indicate their basket weaving techniques (some say to mimic swimming salmon)). A garter snake near the landing, if you could nab its fleeting tail, almost insured an extra twenty-dollar tip. I spent a few minutes crouched down marveling at its delicate flickering tongue and yellow scales lined up in a subtle but beautiful stripe before it slithered off into the shelter of dark New England pond water. Once it was gone I continued into the shade of the forest.
As the sun reached its summer heights the shade became a bright yellow-green glow. The cool morning breeze gone my mood began to shift. I was sweating heavily and grew overly aware of my city softness. Not just my belly either but my skin as well which the mosquitoes sliced through like I was New York style cheesecake. Passing an area called Great Magnolia Swamp I found myself cursing and swatting and cursing and swatting. My two hands clapped together here and there echoing about the silence with a sound like the clop of moose hooves testing a marble floor. What had happened to the me of Alaska who lived in a Yukon style tent and snapped out the lives of mosquitoes with deft one-handed claps and the composure of Mr. Miyagi?
I pushed on and tried to keep my mind off the mosquitoes by focusing on enjoying the company of a few chickadees, a couple of nuthatches and one very brilliant scarlet tanager. As a specter of that weather-crisped younger self returned I was able to let my mind and body wander. When I grew tired I sat cross-legged on an elevated pad of moss for some much needed girlfriend prescribed meditation. It was then that God spoke to me.
Before I get to what he said or more importantly the voice that he used let me tell you about my recent Bible studies. As I mentioned before I have been reading the New Testament. (The reason for this is a top secret writing project that I am not willing to discuss here.) Along with reading all the gospels in their theoretical order (I’m halfway through Luke at the time of writing this) I am also trying to read contemporary books on the Bible and God (or lack of God). The one I’m reading now is written by A.J. Jacobs, an editor of Esquire magazine. Jacobs, a self-proclaimed agnostic at the start of his project, spent a year living as closely as he could by the rules of the Old Testament. Now, I’m reserving a little bit of judgment here as I’m only half way through but so far, at the half way point, it really seems that Jacobs is beginning to “find” God.
Given this and my recent experiences my belief that there is a danger in reading the Bible (and about the Bible) exclusively. It speaks with such high authority that you can’t help, if you are truly an open-minded reader, to start thinking in thou-shalls and thou-shall-nots, which is not unlike what happens when one reads too much Catcher in the Rye and starts thinking phony-this and goddamn-that. In short, you get God on your brain and in this sense I’m no different than Jacobs. I’m just a lot less engaged in my project.
So amongst all the wondrous chirping, surrounded by a new born late afternoon breeze my head was in the clouds hanging out with old JC (as I’ve come to call him in my notes) and my new favorite biblical character (wearer of camel fur, longtime wanderer of the wilderness, and eater of locusts) John the Baptist. When I opened my eyes I noticed a daddy-long-legs had tucked itself into the shady nook under my arm and on top of my leg. Before I stood I let it crawl onto my hand and then very gently lowered it to shady patch of grass. And all of a sudden I heard the words, “that was good." It was the voice of God! I walked away with a lightness of step and a feeling of benevolence. I really was on a kind of high except I couldn’t figure out why the voice of God sounded more than a little like my own.
I chuckled at this thought and continued until, while climbing a small hill, I noticed another daddy-long-legs type insect (the guy with long legs but also with wings and a really long abdomen) limping over some rocks. In the odd sort of mood I was in I bent down and contemplated my responsibility, if any to this little creature. Do I crush him quickly and put him out of possible misery or do I allow him to live knowing that he would be an easy bird supper for say a hungry nuthatch? I decided to let him crawl on, in part because my back was getting tired and I figured God or no god it was none of my business to fuck with the order of things.
As I stretched back and let out a shallow but healthy groan I was startled by what I immediately thought was an unlikely flock of undersized grouse. Six or seven birds had burst out of the brush and flew into the shelter and camouflage of nearby trees. They were hidden so well I couldn’t find a single one. Torn for a moment between startling the birds again and my (amateur) birders impulse to identify I decided again it was best not to disturb things further but as I moved on I heard another sound coming from the brush.
A flesh colored head emerged above the tall grass making a very perturbed cooing noise and I found myself squared off against a mother turkey. With an obviously ineffectual tip of my hat I backed off. As I did I noticed that the turkey’s eyes turned suddenly skyward. There was a rush of wind from above and before my eyes could locate it the bulky turkey was airborne with her surprisingly large talons bared to defend her little ones against an attacking red-tailed hawk. For the next few minuets I watched the battle. All I can say is fuck the UFC because first off, those guys can’t fly and this battle was as equally passionate and vicious with both birds representing their respective species. To draw a comparison it was the Royce Gracie like hawk discipline of swift precise movements versus the Dan Severn heavyweight style of the turkey. (I stopped watching the UFC way back when they set up those interesting scenarios of discipline versus discipline and you watched the fights all together in one sitting on video instead of having to sit through endless masculine power-themed explosive commercials. I don’t care how the sport evolved. It doesn’t interest me. So please, spare me from trying to point out a current comparison because I don’t think there is one and, moreover, I don’t care.) The two birds crashed through tree branches until the turkey seemed to get a topside grip on the hawk and they plummeted into the brush. Feathers exploded into the air and a second later the hawk burst through them to fly out above the trees. Letting lose a cry (yup, that high piercing scream accredited to the eagle) it soared away most likely a little hungrier from the battle.
Incredible.
I quickly left the area so as to not stress the turkey family out any further and began to think on what I just witnessed. For those few brief moments before the hawk had dove in I had started to think about the curious nature of turkeys. As young birds they fly as well as grouse. Now, that’s not to say that grouse fly well but usually well enough to escape onto a tree branch. It’s hard to imagine the enormous adult turkey perching on a branch. I had begun to think in my God deluded mind that there was some sort of intelligent design to the turkey that made them the perfect bird for, say, the Puritans who loved to hunt and then pray over as they expanded their territory. But after witnessing the battle of the turkey and the hawk I realized that I was being a little too hasty and probably a little too open-minded.
Without getting into the details I read an article in the Globe and Mail the other day that a woman in Squamish, BC saved her two-year old daughter from a cougar attack. The cougar was on top of her child and she managed to get between them, scooped up her wounded daughter (who thankfully survived), and ran away. Is this not miraculous? I say yes, absolutely yes. In fact, cheers to all mothers, turkey, human or otherwise. It is well known that a mother bear will defend its young ferociously as often will a mother moose. It is something quite common in this world from mammal to bird and even to some insects (spiders, wasps, etc . . .). Its something not only incredible in each and every case of motherly adrenaline but the connections are incredible as well.
The question is do I credit God? My answer after a few moments of reflection as I began to leave the woods was an absolute, fuck no! I’m sure someone could find something that shows this in the bible but as far as I’m concerned most of the Bible is so damn vague you could justify anything from genocide to spending your life searching for a non-existent unblemished red heifer to sacrifice (check out Numbers 19:2 my friends). No, the answers to the marvels of motherhood in humans and nature, however vague, lie not in the limited Jewish traditions of the Bible but in an exploration of the marvels of evolution.
Every time I these connections in life I am marveled because it really is a sort of mystery the way the lives of animals and man are so often intertwined and yet so often pitted against each other; always playing out a kind of sacred balance (to use the fine fine words of David Suzuki). For me this is so much more incredible than the mysteries of the Bible which often involve such trivial things as whether or not to fast on the Sabbath or whether or not some foods are kosher because they might contain insects eggs (according to A.J. Jacobs on this matter “one hundred grams of pizza sauce can contain up to thirty insects eggs). When I think about this I usually ask myself some truncated version of the following run on sentence (question). Is it more incredible that some self-indulged paternal Greybeard conjured up our planet and put humans on it to brutally execute his son and then spend the next two millennia not only brainwashing but raping, pillaging and massacring in his name or that through some awe-inspiring coincidence random star dust (or whatever) came together right here in this very tiny spot of the cosmos to begin the incredibly ancient story of life that was and still is brutal but that also has produced a wondrous plethora of creatures that are capable of love. (I say “creatures”, plural, because if you don’t think animals other than man are capable of love you are an ass . . . or rather, have your head up your ass. Don’t feel bad though I used to think the same thing not so long ago.) Of course, there are plenty of level headed Christians out there that do not believe in its creation myths but still like to thump that old singular book. For them Paternal Greybeard is still out there if not in the clouds than somewhere else in the cosmos.

Enter Captain Kirk.
In Star Trek V Captain Kirk and his crew, under some duress, found this place. Kirk was introduced to the “all-powerful” being that resided there and, in short, told him to fuck off. This eventually resulted in a lot of explosions, earthquakes and the toppling of some obviously Styrofoam Stonehenge-like rocks. Spock and McCoy were, as usual beamed up to safety and Kirk was left behind to huff and puff his way out of yet another “no win scenario”. Good stuff. Really. In the end Spock, for the second time that movie, saves his captain by boarding another ship that could enter the planets atmosphere and fire directly on said god. The ship was a Klingon Bird of Prey (the hawk might not beat mother turkey but it sure as shit kicked this god’s ass) and the plan worked, which gave the three friends some time to contemplate their “cosmic thoughts”. McCoy quickly asks that puzzling question, “ . . . is God really out there?” and Kirk responds by saying; “Maybe he’s not out there, Bones. Maybe he’s right here . . . in human heart.”

As I walked out of the woods this is what I was thinking and in light (yes I do mean “in light”) of all my bad news and biblical reading of late this is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. Now, I can’t really speculate on what Shatner or Roddenberry’s thoughts really were on that line but for me it certainly does not mean that we have our own little vaporous paternal Greybeard floating about in each of our respective chests. To me it’s more about consciousness in general.
I often hear and it is mentioned often in Jacobs’ book that prayer simply just makes people feel good. I can confirm this. Prayer was something I meant and felt when I was young and loving old JC. But I know now that when someone prays they are just talking to themselves. But so what? We all need to talk to ourselves more, to really look inside ourselves because as far as I’m concerned we can all know ourselves a little better. The unfortunate aspect of this is that people seem (over and over and over again) to find it necessary to make everyone else’s inner voice sound exactly like their own.
Enter religion.
So when I say I found God the other day here’s what I’m trying to getting at. We live in a time of what is perceived as scientific enlightenment. The problem is that now people who don’t explore their inner selves, instead of getting manipulated by self righteous clergy are manipulated by the (sometimes) equally self righteous scientists like Richard Dawkins. Dawkins (I’m being a little hard on the guy here to make a point) effectively and accurately deconstructs the paternal Greybeard but replaces him with a little twirling DNA molecule. The problem is just like the Bible science is still has its gaps. So to me, in a way, they’re not that different really.
Despite its gaps there are still a lot of “true” things in the bible, such as, the concept of loving your neighbor or the idea that prostitutes really aren’t that bad. Science’s merits are, of course, much more plentiful and a lot less self-serving but they still don’t answer everything. (Take the following pertinent example. I estimate that between the eight different doctors that I’ve seen so far about my stomach problem there is nearly 100 years of scientific education (not including their time practicing) and not one of them knows how to help me with my health issues.) For those of us with our eyes truly open there is still an abundance of mystery to this thing we call life and it makes a lot of sense to me to be able to look inside myself for answers, most especially when I am in need of comfort.
It’s odd to me (and by odd I mean obvious) that they say God works in mysterious ways because the very same thing can be said about what we call heart and mind. If you think about it the presence of this kind of inner voice is something that might actually links us together. But for the love of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster we need to try to refrain from exacting on others our unverified absolutes because it is those sorts of inanities that most often split us apart.

Reality is the Fantasy of the Majority

The release of (and now multiple viewings of) the new Star Trek movie has awakened what many would call (and I will refer reluctantly to as) my inner geek. My inner geek – that part of me that is aware of and completely welcoming of the old sentiment that life truly is but a dream – has tuned me into the fortuitousness of a couple of events that have recently transpired in my life. It has also reminded me of a related note that I jotted down several months ago -- reality is the fantasy of the majority.
I googled these words within quotations before starting this blog. Aware that many before me have danced a tune or two around the sentiment (or in the case of Kerouac or Robbins have whirled about it long into the morning) I was concerned that it might not be an original turn of phrase (my turns of phrase generally resembling the wild twists and turns of a child’s imagined treasure map than the straight line constructed by the sentence in question). Only a couple of hits turned up and as a writer (that’s right Kundera, I said “as a writer”) I was relieved to see that they were all presented on my computer in that never-before-clicked Google blue.
The first was a blog by a guy named Dwight Sullivan that goes by the title of “I Always Play the Thief: Reality is the Fantasy of the Majority”. At a quick skim it seemed not unlike my own endeavors and included a link to his movie review page, which is something I myself am entertaining starting. The second link turned out to be part of Dwight’s e-signature in a forum for Marvel comics (I think). Though I didn’t get the attached comment (which read, “Thanks Wytefang and netherspirit for the work getting that up. Man that water in the Heroscape ad looks really nice. Has it been altered graphically?”) I was happy to find myself in good and articulate company. Such is the nature of great ideas. And as far as that goes I always admired Alfred Russel Wallace as much as I did Charles Darwin and am more than happy to play his part here.
But lets gets to my whies and hows and better yet a few stories.
I’ll start with the night after I saw the new Star Trek for the first time. I had turned on the TV in the hopes that I would find some station playing Star Trek II, IV, or V. The closest thing I could find was the Denise Crosby narrated Trekkies 2. Now I could go on about the good and bad of Star Trek fans but I am only going to focus here on a single comment (or group of comments) in the documentary. Crosby had basically posed the question of how far is too far to take fantasy. One of the women interviewed responded with the question of whether or not women who altered their bodies permanently for the sake of ephemeral images of beauty are that different or even worse than die-hard Star Trek fans. The concept related directly to a conversation I had with my old friend Wesley who pointed out that there is no negative term relating to fans of “Sex and the City”. “Sex and the City” (aside from showing the positives of empowered womanhood (something Star Trek was among the first to do in the history of television)) does nothing but depict the fantastical lives of a few super elite insanely beautiful New York women through plots that revolve around buying shoes and not understanding the men in their lives. The results of indulgence in this almost completely superficial fantasy can be seen in the grotesque woman that are often the subject of documentaries about plastic surgery who have been tragically deformed in its pursuit. Now compare that to a little removable Klingon make-up a Star Trek fan might don at a convention or a movie premier.
Oddly (or coincidently or serendipitously) enough I had walked by a geek convention of another sort earlier this week while strolling down Boylston. Colorfully speckled about the street were people, mostly younger, dressed in samurai and ninja like costumes often with really really spiky hair. The closer I came to the Hynes Convention Center the denser these groups became until I was walking amongst pokemon ball juggling anime fans talking about (I presume) DragonballZ. I don’t care for anime myself but I certainly don’t care that others do especially considering the light-hearted atmosphere that surrounded them.
As I was passing through I heard some grumbling and giggling out of place with the jovial atmosphere. Looking to my left I saw three sets of plentiful bosoms bouncing against the support of their black lightweight (recon?) armor as they clip-clopped on the spindly legs of their high-heeled steeds with their faces painted tones of baby blue and pink ready for yet another Friday night Battle of the Barbies. For a moment I found myself wishing I had a plastic sword to trip their spoke thin legs. Yet after they passed I found myself unconsciously glancing back to check out their behinds (the reality of behinds being that they are a lovely part of a woman still subject to more natural methods of beautification). Then, as expected, I forgot that they and their bums existed. Had the event not been connected in my head to Trekkies 2 or had I not gone to see Star Trek for the second time I would have likely forgot the giggling bimbos for all time.
Having seen Star Trek sober the first time around I decided to get a little stoned for the second viewing. As a result I purchased myself a treat, a pack of three Lindt dark chocolates, to enjoy in the theatre. Looking forward to indulging in fantasy and chocolate I took a seat in the back to the theatre leaned back, grinned and thought happy thoughts. After the opening action sequence the slower moving geek stuff began tracing Spock’s childhood explaining why he was the unique Vulcan that he was. It was then that a group of three hooligans, drunk and stoned (I assumed accurately), enjoying their Memorial Day weekend, decided to interject their anti-Star Trek comments. The first couple got a laugh out of me but then they went overboard to the point that nobody in the theatre could pay attention to the film. Not wanting to waste my chocolate indulgence on something so un-entertaining I got ready to say fuck it and walk out to go see one of the many other movies playing at the giant many-theatered cinema in Revere (which, completely unrelated, I had worked in the food court of years ago). Just before I got up though a couple of gruff voices were cast back from the front row. The hooligans bit quickly. After a few more moments of terse comments the two groups were facing off on the stairs. The hooligans were a group of three black guys, which is something I mention only because the other group was two white guys with crew cuts so straight they could have been cut by a phaser who were adding some racial non-sense to the fray that I don’t care to repeat. The hooligans shot back with their own racial comments and the tension rose exponentially. Next, the stockiest of the hooligans spread his arms apart welcoming a punch. Even in the shadows of a theatre you could make out the bulges of his shoulder muscles that pinched together the middle of his t-shirt.
Seeing things escalate the smallest of the hooligans stepped between the two groups. With one arm he tried to hold back his friends while his other arm was against a baseball jersey stretched like Mark McGuire’s over the thick chest of one of the GI Joe’s. The aggressors ignored him and punches were soon thrown. Their heavy dull thuds could be heard easily over Spock’s logical musings. As the struggle continued a sixth man got up from the front row to join the fray while the rest of the theatre whispered and grumbled.
The latecomer was older an older guy probably in his late sixties. He shared the same build (plus a gut) as the two crew cuts and it was pretty clear that he was their father. Along with the peace-keeping hooligan he threw himself in between the fight and with his help they managed to break it up and a couple of them even shook hands before leaving the theatre. A short while later only the three white guys came back.
Ignoring the racial nonsense I was thankful. Soon I was able to forget about the drama and how I did nothing about it and even how the movie fucks up the entire Star Trek universe. It turned out to be even more enjoyable than my first viewing. To show my appreciation of the end result of their actions I found them after the movie and shook their battered hands.
But that does not mean that I condone their actions, only their actions results. Sitting back not completely aware that I was wearing a grin full of chocolate I had watched the drama unfold. The thoughts that all that violence and hate was occurring because of a Star Trek movie or that these guys were defending Star Trek fans had comically crossed my mind. But the real humor went beyond that knowing that the motivation for these fellows was not anything even remotely that altruistic (as I imagined them later when they would be telling the story to their mothers, their wives, their girlfriends and their buddies). No, their motivations were boyish and simple.
And it’s not that I don’t get that. Shit, under the right circumstances I completely indorse it. There have been times in my life when I was rugby fit or drinking lots of whiskey that I too have certainly had the same impulses. In fact, they are the same fighting impulses that underlie one of my favorite fantasy characters. Who but one with the balls and macho grit of Captain Kirk could be stranded on a planet unarmed to fight a seven foot tall warrior crocodile armed with a knife and defeat it by fashioning a cannon out of sulfur, diamonds and a fucking log. With a character like that one might think that there would be more brawls in movie theaters except there is the difference between those goons and the average Star Trek fan. Whether consciously or unconsciously they know that the glory of battle is more of a cerebral concept than a cold hard reality. Even though Kirk epitomizes that boyish bravery his character - reader of Shakespeare, climber of mountains - shows overtime that he is motivated by much more than glory.
So what was my solution to the hooligans in the theatre? Well, as I mentioned I would have eventually left and went into another movie. Now, had I been watching Star Trek for the first time I would have probably reacted in a different manner but certainly my solution would not have been as directly effective (or as hateful) as beating them up. Probably I would have just found someone in the theatre to ask the fuckers to leave. And if I couldn’t do that, well, to quote a sentiment of Kirk’s, “there are always possibilities.” One only needs the intelligence and flexibility of the mind to come up with them. Sometimes, of course, even for Kirk the solution must be violence (which as I mentioned does have the virtue of effectiveness). But in the face of such decisions Kirk’s most admirable quality, fantasy or not, was his ability to judge when it was necessary and when it wasn’t.
As any fool knows, hate begets hate and like fantasy it is a construct of the mind. Good fantasy, that is fantasy like Star Trek that deals with issues like race and gender and beyond, has the potential for great good. Bad fantasy, that is the fantasy of beauty and glory where the ends don’t simply justify the means rather render the means irrelevant, has the potential for great evil. And any good geek knows that.

Let me take you down . . .

Green, Central Park is green.
After three days of partying, concerts, and wandering gap-mouthed about New York City we walked over that relatively thin strip of concrete into that grass and tree surrounded area called Strawberry Fields. All I could feel or think was green as I watched a multitude of tree fleshes wriggling out their subtle happy dance to a light spring breeze beneath a startlingly open sky and a sun that without smiley curve still beamed out an infectious grin.
This happened during another vacation from my problems only this time I was in the company of two good friends of mine who where visiting on a real vacation. So after a couple of quick somber pictures around the Imagine memorial we (myself skipping) wandered into the park to find a place to smoke a joint. We settled on a cove of trees concealed conveniently on one side by a large rock. The spot overlooked, through the flicker of more green leaves, a corner of one of several Central Park ponds. After we crushed out a joint and emptied our pipe we moved to the water’s edge in full view of a busy restaurant and a boathouse. The bustling human activity coming from both these places was not nearly as interesting to me as the animal life in the park. Stoned enough to ignore the implications of an artificial pond stocked with non-native fish I was able to enjoy the company of turtle, grackle and cormorant contained in a place somewhere between zoo and wilderness.
Sully and Ed were around for two very fun weeks. We split the time between New York, Boston and New Hampshire. We saw Franz Ferdinand, Ben Harper (opened for by the surprisingly entertaining Henry Clay People) and the Tragically Hip (twice). We fished in the White Mountains. We made and ate some quality weed brownies and watched zombie movies. We listened to incredible jazz at legendary Wally’s Café. The whole thing was a great and memorable vacation from my but the afternoon in Central Park is the memory most vivid in my mind. The juxtaposition of city to nature has always intrigued me and stepping into Central Park out of the prison of New York with its city block sized cell bars was as striking to me as when I fell asleep on a flight leaving the vast silence of Alaska to wake up (save a quick trance like transfer in Chicago) just before landing in Boston where I stepped out into a cacophony of car horns and grinding construction.
Bored and distracted, last night I walked through the graveyard where Sully, Ed and I went to smoke joints. Once the winter had broke and the hawk at the other park did not return I changed pot smoking locations to an old cemetery instead of the park trading hawk and statue for the company of bat and headstone (and whatever is left of the hundred or so corpses rotting for almost three hundred years down in that peace and silence so elusive in our living world). The ancient oaks that overlook the small square of green as well as a few lumps of tombs provide adequate shelter from cops looking for a couple of guys smoking up or dog walking people who would find hanging out in a graveyard weird. It’s no Central Park but what it lacks in green space it makes up for in soul. The chipped and cracked headstones lined up uneven always makes me think of the grinning teeth of a wise old Indian.
As I walked I was faced with the tedious process of sorting out the scheduling of my upcoming medical tests and surgery. Pleasant thoughts were not on my mind. The weight of it all dragged on me. “Back to real life” Ed had said before I left them at Logan. “Yeah and my real life really sucks” I tried to joke except as soon as I said it I no longer found it funny.
Just before I walked out of the graveyard the evening breeze whispered through the sturdy oak leaves. I looked up into the closest tree. A robin was perched there and it gushed out its evening song. My gaze followed the tree back down from the leaves to the roots where I saw one thick and tenacious extension engaged in the slow and steady process of gently pushing aside a very old and unreadable headstone. I imagined the roots of the tree reaching deep into the ground wrapped about a skull with a mouth full of nutritive dirt and a cracked but toothy grin. Though I had barely thought of John Lennon when we wandered past Strawberry Fields I suddenly remembered hearing that he had been cremated. This might not be true (and I don’t care if it is or if it isn’t) but as I stood there I began to feel a sadness for him and for anyone else whose body’s energy had not been given back to the earth. And then the unmarked grave and what it implied of the body beneath it made me smile - oak food and shelter for singing robin it having become.
I strolled on out of the shelter of the cemetery and found myself singing a line from “Strawberry Fields” that I had never really gotten. “Always no sometimes think its me, but you know I know when it’s a dream, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. That is I think I disagree”. Other than the title the song and that line probably have little to do with Central Park, death or green space but there’s something about it I know I like even though in general I’m not a Beatles or John Lennon fan.
And I don’t like New York much either but whatever Central Park might be with its altered ecosystem and concrete frame I liked it too.

The Bird Rescue

It’s difficult to recall that dynamic instant of silence that the bird I exchanged in our stares right before it lost its nerve. This is because I am sitting in a Boston Starbucks next to three Korean girls who have painted their faces on (disarmingly angled eyes accentuated by dark hyperbolic lines like the immortal eyes of ancient sarcophagi) and who all share the same impulse to chincha each others statements out of existence (chincha being a word roughly equivalent to that annoying conceptless unanswerable English question, “really?”) Only if I slyly cover my ears by leaning my face forward to rest it on my hands can I hear that dull thump of tiny bird skull against glass. When I remove my hands engine, voice, and Beatle’s cover rush in. The images that I had begun to form of an immature pine warbler with its beak opened nervously fade quickly; images connected maybe to that paleomammalian level of my brain; images that might make up the syntax of animal speak; images that for many people and for me in the cacophonous city can only exist as words.
I have been asking myself why exactly I panicked the little bird so much and why exactly I, as a person who has spent much time watching birds, had no knowledge of how to communicate to the bird my intentions to help it. City folk (and TV gobbling country folk who I theorize have identically working brains) might scoff at such a notion of communicating with animals but I feel this is an oversight created perhaps by a lack of non-domesticated (or abstractified domestic) animal interaction. Unlike many of these people there are images in my head that prove such communications are possible. I just don’t have the right words.
In one of those happy coincidences I happened to listen to a Quirks and Quarks podcast while driving back from one my hikes in New Hampshire. It was an interview with Dr. Temple Grandin, the author of several books and dozens of papers on animals. Two of her books mentioned in the interview caught my attention. The first was entitled Thinking in Pictures and the second, the one I picked up as soon as I got back to Boston in light of my bird rescue, was entitled Animals in Translation. What held my attention about her interview was the likeness between how I feel about animals and how Dr. Grandin understands them.
To give a brief example of this in the first hundred pages or so I have come across a large section devoted to animal curiosity entitled “Curiosity Doesn’t Kill Cats or Any Other Animal”. Throughout this section she argues very strongly for the benefits of curiosity to animal life. It was a little less poetic (or so I fancied) and much more scientifically sound than my own take on curiosity’s importance to life yet was still, in many ways, quite similar.
It has always been my opinion that it takes a keenly observational mind to understand animals. Dr. Grandin embodies this idea. Not only is she an exceptional scholar she is also autistic. In agricultural circles across the continent she is known as the cow whisperer for her ability to see and understand the details of a cow’s environment from the cow’s perspective, an ability she links directly to her autistic mind (something she explains with intriguing detail in her book).
I am neither autistic nor a scholar (obvious, I know). I might not even be that much of a keen observer of animals (though I fancy this true too). My hope is that in seeing the world through Dr. Grandin’s eyes I will understand a little better, even if it is just in words, that world of animals I feel so strongly about.
The following is something I’ve extracted from my notes. I hope it shows that my impulses about animals at least come from a genuine place.

She flew into the middle of the three kitchen windows lined up over the sink. It was the one that could not open. It was also the only one without a screen. I approached slowly but from behind her which I think panicked her as she had to alternate between her attempts to fly through the invisible barrier and keeping an eye on what to her must have been a very large presence. When she perched still her beak remained opened. This looked unusual. I had never seen a bird with their beaks opened without making a sound. She was silent. The whole cabin was silent. I wondered if she had any idea that she was perched between two small wooden ducks that decorated the sill. I think probably not though my human brain certainly acknowledged the humor of it.
I tried speaking in a calm voice. This panicked her further and she began to thump against the glass again and again. I knew that I had her cornered but I did not know any other way to help. I opened one of the side windows and removed the screen. My plan had been to step back and leave her alone but after I opened the window she only tried harder to fly through the invisible barrier. The sound of little bird skull against glass was the only one in my head and I began to fear that she would damage herself. I decided to act.
Stepping close again I cupped my hands and tried to put them around her gently. As her wings fluttered against my fingers I felt the soft down of bird feather but also the more rigid presence of bone. Immediately aware of the fragility of bird bone against the dense fist-forming weapon wielding bone of human hand I drew back in fear that I would damage her most important evolutionary structure. She toppled backwards into a plateful of soapy cheese water. I scooped her out quickly moving her to the right of the center window. She flitted off my hands and out through the opening dodging the wood of the open window with astounding aerial agility. She landed on the sheltering branches of the closest conifer.
I watched her for some time as she sat very still on the branch. I tried to imagine her relief or if she felt any. I believe she must have though I couldn’t be certain. Looking at her all I could clearly see was the information my bird watching brain could process; small bird, light brown maybe olive color, largish beak, no prominent coloring underneath (no yellow). Even as a very amateur bird watcher I was fairly certain that it was an immature female pine warbler. Yet when she had fluttered about so intimately close to me I was at a complete loss as how to communicate to her that I meant it no harm. And yet there remained a part of me that felt that such a communication was impossible, a part of me I would link to the perplexity I once felt watching a Korean family happily swallowing a dinner of live squirming sea snails.

As I finish writing I find myself looking at the heels of two of these three Korean girls. The reason I am focusing on their heels is because they are sockless and covered with band-aids where the back of their pink hard plastic shoes meet the skin. The plastic does not look pliable. It gives their shoes an appearance of rigid newness. To me, who considers comfort and practicality to be ancient qualities of excellence in footwear, they might as well be wearing empty tissue boxes. I don’t get it at all. All I can think is that after ten or fifteen minuets in the White Mountains they would likely want to chincha their shoes out of existence. And so, with typically mixed human feelings, I realize that as far as animals are concerned I might at least understand them a little better than Koreans, women, and cities.

Ideas that were like farts atop the White Mountains

Turns out Dr. Bootsie has decided that an operation might help me. In a little less than a month his hands will actually be inside my chest cavity cutting and stitching my inner flesh and organs. To keep my mind off of this I borrowed my uncle’s car to spend a week at my aunt’s cabin in New Hampshire hiking in the White Mountains, reading Gary Snyder poetry, and working on some other writing projects.
It was a good week but now, back in Boston, I realize I have less than two days to meet my self-imposed deadline of two blog entries a month. Having done nothing in the last four weeks except scratch out a few notes I will start quite lamely with things that I wanted to write about but did not.
My favorite of these was a comparison of a recent issue of Philosophy Now devoted to Darwin and a news paper article in the Boston Herald about that Australian cattle dog that swam over nine kilometers through shark (“infested”, of course) waters to survive on an island through the use of (or by “reverting to”) its animal (yes, we are all animals) instincts. The problem was the more I researched the more I realized that my understanding of evolution would be too limited to delve into the comparison with the level of complexity I felt it needed.
In contrast to the primal and joyful topic I had also finished reading Milan Kundera’s Immortality this month and had jotted down a number of incomplete thoughts on this intricate and tricky novel. I had started reading them over but all I could think was, ugh. Kundera is brilliant and insightful, of that there is no doubt, but I find him too old, too tired and too European (as in from the land of the sorrowfully furtive alpha predator and scavenger, that forgotten symbol of a healthy natural ecosystem; the ghost bear, whom outside rustic corners of Romania exists only as a mascot for their football and hockey clubs).
In this novel in particular it was his oldness that frustrated me the most. And by oldness I am referring to his perception of his age. To read it was to often see the world (though not always as Kundera is not without a bright and attentive wit) through tired somber eyes. Almost every time I put the book down I slumped a little in the shoulders the same way my uncle who lent me the car does after his cleft foot and artificial hip struggle up the stairs or after his pupils creak, adjusting to read a pharmaceutical label.
To get a clearer idea of what I wanted to get at here a quick comparison might help. One of my favorite authors who will soon turn 73 will also soon release a “children’s” book entitled B is for Beer. I am fairly certain that this newest novel, much like his others, will leave the reader contemplating their impulses only without all the guilt over their laughter, their joy, their desire to be remembered forever or their multiple bonners (wetness too perhaps?) induced by slightly under-aged girls of the sort that Tom Robbins is wont to lustfully describe. Aside from the brilliant and delightful fictional conversations between Goethe and Hemmingway, Kundera, very simply put (keep in mind he was still in his sixties when Immortality was published), is just too serious for me about his age and the world to touch on that vaguely Zen Buddhist wisdom that I find so appealing these days. Of course, Kundera did not have the relatively safe American youth of Robbins (or Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac for that matter). He spent much of his life dealing with the realities of a war torn country often under the control of a ruthless totalitarian government. The seriousness of this is not lost on me and probably not lost on anyone with even a vague concept of suffering. Nonetheless (or rather in light of this) I think that Kundera could use a little more of Robbins’ joyful leaning insights, an undertaking that I imagine would be figuratively represented best by a scene in which the aging authors take part in a mermaid orgy on a south pacific island somewhere off the coast of Australia followed by a feast of feral goat. Now that's a fictional situation and conversation I would very much like to write someday. But I am neither qualified nor capable at the moment to see into the minds of two great writers whose lives and work reach for an immortality and wisdom beyond my admittedly young self.
This leaves me with the third and final topic I considered writing on, one that I am actually capable of completing.
While packing up the car to return to the city I had left the front sliding door of the cabin wide open. As a result a young bird flew in. I was faced with the very real and somewhat delicate responsibility of freeing it.
But in the words of Jimi Hendrix who had reached his relative immortality by my current age, “the hour is getting late” and in honor (and yes, I do mean honor) of ignoring my impending surgery, I will continue lying to myself. I declare this blog entry finished and complete so that I can very lamely use the bird rescue story to meet my second self-imposed April blog deadline.

To Dr. Bootsie

Two weeks ago, on sage advice from one of my favorite Bill Murray movies, I tried taking a vacation from my problems, or more specifically from my stomach problem of which last week the doctors had informed me that without a great risk of damaging nerves in my esophagus there is nothing that they can do. Thankfully, because of a much needed coincidence, I was able to share this vacation with my brother and his wife, both teachers, who flew to Boston all the way from Victoria, BC (a sleepy city on the west coast of Canada for the geographically impaired) on their own spring break. Though the pace of their seven-day visit was furious it was more than welcomed. We spent some time with relatives, enjoyed a St. Paddy’s Day in the Irish capital of the US (complete with beer and green plastic hats), and had a quality pub meal complemented by glasses of 18 year old Jameson’s. Despite the discomfort the drinking caused it was as passionately nostalgic as sex with an ex. And to have a partner in crime as insightful as my brother to share of a joint with was sublime.
But the week that followed lingered like the howl of the Big Bad Wolf with a belly full of kicking screaming grandmas. I found myself facing the reality of a sojourn not just from whiskey but weed as well knowing that smoking, over time, also intensifies my stomach problems.
Contrary to what might be popular belief were anyone to actually read this blog, I am not what many consider a typical chronic having found that a smoke once or twice a week is more rewarding than being stoned daily. Nonetheless, I will be looking for something to satiate my ever-present impulse for new perspective while my lungs take their overdue break. This is why tomorrow I plan to head up to Salem.
Though Salem is a town often spurned by seasoned travelers outside of October its history intrigues me. Were I to get into my musings on this 383 year old Puritan settlement that created its culture of witchcraft by trying to destroy it before it even existed this already long-winded blog would turn into an even longer-winded essay (one I would expect few to read). Instead, I will reluctantly ignore the infinity of events that have occurred in this grimly enlightened New England town beneath a myriad of celestial events both seen and unseen skipping right up to the most recent solstice during which three people, both friends and family, enthusiastically had their palms read by a Wicca high priestess with an enchanting tattoo in the middle of her forehead.
However vague her insights were they were not inaccurate and varied accordingly for both my brother and I even though, at a glance, our hands are quite similar. She pegged my brother as a musician, myself as a writer; my brother as flexible, myself as stubborn and she detected twins in our family line. Turns out Jack and I are (not identical) twins. She also mentioned that I was not only a leader of armies in a past life but also possibly a king. Now I’m not one to believe in past lives but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t always feel that I had at least a little bit of king in me. Regardless of a lack of specific truths my imagination was pleasantly roused, which is why this week, despite my doubts that cards picked at random can in any way reflect anything about a person, I will visit the high priestess to put more than just a little quizzical faith in her thirty plus years of experience reading tarot.

To write this blog, which you might have just thought was finished, I had to flip through my notebook to dig up some of the ideas that I sketched down about the palm readings. As I did I found the following note that I had wrote some months ago while stoned on the train from Salem back to North Station.

Curiosity did not kill the cat. No my friends, the ever curious cat is alive and well. That old cliché is just an oversimplified exemplum. A farce. It is a story of unwarranted precaution told by protective parents to their ever-vulnerable children on the night their little Bootsie did not return. The children’s mutable nature, made immutable never allows them to question. Had they forgot to ask where poor Bootsie’s body was? Perhaps (just perhaps?), instead of death Bootsie had simply rediscovered the primal pleasure of a squirming fluttering sparrow under its paw or the predator's allure of a night lit by moon. And though it may be true that some of Bootsie’s indirect descendents (fattened by oily tuna and pillows thicker than your grandmother’s pie crust) lost their ancient instincts and met their fate let’s say, during ill-conceived leaps onto stove-tops, in more than a few his spirit (and his ancestors') lives on.
So children, if you really let yourself think about it you might find yourself asking; if curiosity kills the cat, where do curious cats come from?

Yesterday, related or not, I got a call from a particularly inquisitive doctor who had, out of an unwillingness to say he did not know what was wrong, scheduled me for an expensive C.A.T. scan despite the chances that nothing new would show up. Turns out this C.A.T. scan showed a para-esophageal hernia that none of the other tests had revealed. I will be seeing another surgeon next week to find out if it can be operated on. The doctor (I wonder if he would mind me calling him Dr. Bootsie?) seems to have high hopes for its success.

On (or rather off) the Ways of the Bandaloop

I finished my second read through Tom Robbin’s Jitterbug Perfume while sitting in Faneuil Hall chop-sticking my way through a vegetable-deficient chicken-tumored stir-fry. I had a good seat at a table for four around the atrium’s opening on the second floor (a prime spot during the lunch rush with its sparrow-eyed view of the first floor) and directly in the upward path of the many warm aromas drifting from the various vendors -- their collective cuisine as varied as a UN potluck. So despite the inappropriate grub I felt that I was in a fitting place to indulge in the final arcane suggestions of one of my favorite books.
That is until a murder of adolescents ascended the stairs. If only they were crows. In the wake of their cackling came a few haggard teachers or chaperones whose only duty seemed to be to tell the rabble to keep their feet on the floor lest they lean to far over the railing and learn the lessons of gravity for themselves. It was plenty clear that not one of them was interested in telling the pimply individual that usurped a seat and the other half of my table that I was nose deep in an ethereal experience.
The last time (and first time) I finished reading Jitterbug Perfume I was sitting in the loft of a tranquil Alaskan log cabin. The most determined sunlight I have ever encountered came through the windows to rest on the pages. In front of me was half a bottle of Merlot; one of thirty from the first case of wine I ever purchased (nostalgia anyone?). The rest were waiting in the cabin’s basement like a gospel choir waiting in the wings. Outside was Alaska’s alpine jungle with its Devil’s Club blossoming oxymoronical. I had just descended from the mountains that morning surrounded by plant life whispering “prehistoric” (amongst which I imagined there were more than two barn swallows frantically copulating) and was comfortably giddy (led about the dance floor by the wine perhaps) with self-reflection finding myself open to a new concept of possibility.
Sigh.
One of the writhing fashion conscious brood tried to wrestle something out of the seated one's hands. The seated one was not only the pimpliest but also the biggest and retained his trinket easily. The exchange (or lack there of) yanked me out of my romantic memory. Resolved then to deal with the situation myself I decided to say “hello” to this kid who plopped into my company without so much as a nod. He glanced up for about as long as it takes a byte to bite off whatever it is that it chews then went back to staring into the blue screen of the trinket like a chronic into the void thumb typing all the while. I considered smacking (gently like the big wolf’s teeth against the little wolf’s heels) his Red Sox hat (holographic sticker still in place the way the big boys wear them) off his head but resisted in fear that his vacant automatonistic overseers would spark to life at the opportunity to stand for something. Is it not a greater crime to let children grow up retarded (for the inanely politically correct this term is not to be confused with an actual mental handicap)?
While I wondered about this and the time that I saw the director of the school I worked for in Korea karate kick two misbehaving students in the backpacks (he had instructed them to hold the backpacks over their child bellies) I found myself reading the words, “Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.” Finished, I folded the wings of the book disappointed the words did not take flight with the same spirit that I remembered when I was surrounded by that now distant wilderness. Figures, I guess. These days, in the old concrete jungle with its rigid unidirectional view of progress, I have been getting the feeling that my wild duck flying backwards is locked in the crosshairs on the verge of a sidelong plummet back to the stagnant swamp.

Twenty-five Things

I have been trying to write critically about the “25 Random Things” craze on facebook for several days now. My intent was to tie the critique in with one of the issues I have with the site itself. That is its function as a real-time gauge of what is and is not socially acceptable (facebook not only presents cool it also directs it (lame is the new cool if this idea confuses anyone)). But as I read more of these "notes" I found myself engaged in a guilty obsession not unlike my guilty obsession with video games. The latter is a guilt I have almost reconciled with the realization that a video game, created with care and intent, has the potential to be something good, even artful. Laughing unacronymizingly out loud at some of my “friend's” lists I began to wonder if something similar could be said of this self-indulgent phenomenon.
Tom Robbins once said of Leonard Cohen that no one could speak the word "naked" as nakedly as the master poet. However reluctantly, I’ve come to feel that nothing whispers "naked" as coyly as our collected confessions do bundled so snugly in packs of 25 (two baker’s dozens minus one or a shiny shiny quarter). Presented in the right context (a Chuck Palahniuk or Kurt Vonnegut novel?) some of the introspective things people pounded out on the web could pass as creative character descriptions. How far of a stretch would it be for one to isolate a portion of their note to create a loveable protagonist or even a contemptible antagonist? The desire would have to be there and a talent for the written word, which, like a carpenter’s electronic stud finder, provides a writer with confidence and enables proliferation. The proper imagination functions like mechanical intuition. But these tools and skills are mostly utilized to give art its form. The essence of it remains a propensity to suggest the profound. Self-reflection must be a part of discovering the profound and, at the very least, can play the old hammer in the carpenter/art metaphor (head dented like a steel drum, paint splattered on the wooden handle). In an attempt to better articulate this idea I fashioned together a few of my favorite notes. I transferred them into the third person, stylized them only a little and for shits and giggles (at Kundera’s expense) have named the character they created Tamina.

She has virgin hair but does not own knives. She does not cut tomatoes rather smushes them (an annoying tendency to keep doing things inadequately when the solution is incredibly obvious). Tamina likes winter and feels the need to admit this to people. Crisp cool days out in the snow; the burning feeling in your face and hands when you come in from being outside reminds her of being a child. As a child she believed all dogs were males, all cats were females, and that they had babies together. The girl babies would be kittens, the boy babies dogs.

When I reread that bit (contemplating on how we create (and recreate) ourselves on facebook and in our analog lives) I found myself embracing a sentiment not that we are all writers but that we all have a potential writer inside of us.

As expected, even with this thought, a theoretically complete concept of what a writer might be still escapes me. It's something I often struggle with even though outwardly I find myself surrendered to the reality that I will never be paid for my thoughts or my articulation of them. In spite of this, I inwardly embrace the struggle and continue to write, to dream of publication and the power of words.
I strongly dislike the word nice and usually anything regarded as nice. Niceness is often a veil. It obscures truth. Disney, fruity martinis, Sunday school, and sushi are examples of things I passionately avoid because of this.
As nice as they appear fake breasts make me sad. Once, a number of years ago, I spent a short time in the presence of a very large pair. They are still the only breasts in my life that I do not look back upon fondly . Nonetheless I am guilty of (many) erections inspired by these silicon jubblies and am probably, in some people’s minds, guilty of objectifying women; a concept that I also struggle with on a daily basis.
My guilt is probably the most destructive force in my life. It chokes my inspiration the way Seoul’s smog choked my breath and I often find it as oppressing as I do American law. It is directly connected to my catholic upbringing though not necessarily the fault of my parents rather a school system that was probably one of the last denominational school systems on the continent. The change to a non-denominational system happened when I was in junior high but not soon enough to curb my eighth grade teacher’s religious vehemence. She harangued the class constantly about the sin of masturbation. Because of this I stopped these joyful releases for almost six months until I neared a state of self-combustion and xenoglossy not unlike that of a particular burning bush.
I lived in Korea for almost a year. During that time I developed a strong dislike for modern Korean culture. This is not because they sometimes teach their children to dislike foreigners or because many of them believe that if one sleeps in a room with a fan on and the doors and windows shut that it will create some sort of oxygen void vortex that will kill you. It is also not because of the pervasive nationalism that during international sporting events borders on insanity. I dislike Korea because of its never ending cities and its peoples unrivaled love (Japan excepting) of technology. Like no other place I’ve seen I felt a deep tragic remorse for the remaining Korean country side with its rolling hills and temples tucked so neat and beautiful in their wooded crags. On one of my many hikes I was invited into one of these temples. Out of respect I knelt and bowed, dropped some Korean deniro with its excessive zeros into a box then walked back out to watch the sun disappear behind a hill. The sky was an electric orange brightened by Seoul’s drifting pollution. I wept, not for any religious reasons, but for the monks and the infinitesimal blot that their delicately cultivated countryside occupied in a country almost equal in size to my delicately populated Newfoundland.
My travel experiences are not as vast and numerous as I wish they were but I have seen a few different parts of the world. These experiences helped me to realize that if I had to choose a place to grow old I would choose Newfoundland. Not for the people or culture, though I am sometimes fond of both, but for the tuckamore tress and an ocean that fills me with fear and wonder.
I do not intend to "grow old".
At a younger age than most my hair started to fall out. Until recently I always looked older than I was. Sarah insists that the long-term effect of this is that I will appear “timeless”. I do not know if this is true but it makes me happy that she thinks so. In any case, I have never been that attached to my head hair though I like to think that if I had any it would be longish and bedraggled.
I sometimes think of myself as a hippy.
I went to Alaska when I was twenty-one to explore my hippy side. During my first day there, wandering about Anchorage, I saw my first magpie. There is a very acute image in my mind of this black and white bird taking flight (plucky maverick of the corvid family with blue secondaries as flashy as racing stripes). I was aware that it was the first magpie I had ever seen though I did not know it was a magpie. I’ve been intrigued by birds ever since.
On that same day I asked a girl named Cat whom I had just met to go on a date. It was the first time I had ever spontaneously asked a girl out. Subsequently the date ended poorly.
I am not a ladies man.
To convince Sarah to go out with me I had to drive her across Canada. I think I had her attention by Ottawa (on Canada Day), her interest by Banff but wasn’t certain of any of it until we got to Victoria. The trip took seventeen days. Every moment was intoxicating (not intoxicated). It is my favorite love story.
I love to be intoxicated.
One of the most memorable drug experiences of my life happened on the beach near where I grew up. I was in the company of some of my closest friends and a hefty bag of Newfie shrooms. The skies were clear and filled with countless sparkling mysteries. My brother, an astrophysicist, tousled our brains throughout the night with anecdotes of distant planets and galaxy formations.
Sometimes I think that I would have made a good scientist. The problem is that my work ethic peaked when I was in Grade 8. At the end of that school year I received an award for Academic Excellence and another for Consistent and Dedicated Effort. I was utterly disappointed. The only award I wanted to win was Athlete of the Year. It was the last time I received an academic award.
As my academic success declined my true calling in life began to reveal itself. Unfortunately shepherds have become obsolete.
I do not have a profession and have no interest in any (excepting the aforementioned shepherding). In the past ten years I have been employed as a day camp councilor, a breakfast cook, an electrician’s helper, a baker’s assistant, a kayak guide, a river guide, a housekeeper, a security guard, a teacher (ESL), an environmental worker, and most recently (ever so briefly) a fisheries observer.
There was a time when Jack London was my favorite author. I have read “White Fang” several times.
I named my second car Buck. It was my first standard shift. I drove it very poorly. It was a very fitting name.
My first car was a ‘86 Buick LeSabre. I purchased it in Boston for a hundred dollars. My friend Sully and I drove it back to Newfoundland. We made it to the island but just after Deer Lake I turned on the cruise control and fell asleep at the wheel. The Buick went off the road at about 120 km/hr and rolled over twice. I spent three days in intensive care, a catheter firmly in place. Sully still has the scar tissue on his forearm. I thought that this was a remarkable story until I went out into the world and heard more of other people’s tragedies.
I enjoy hearing other people’s stories almost as much as I enjoy telling my own.
The older I get the less concerned I am about whether or not other people enjoy my storytelling. Because of this development I tend to indulge more and more in my long-windedness.
The last time I tried to read the Bible I got as far as the Book of Numbers got bored and had to skip ahead to the book of Joshua. Between the Book of Joshua and the Second Book of the Kings I thought there were some pretty good stories though most of it was just prattle. Somewhere in the First Book of the Chronicles I had to put the fucking thing down.
I don’t believe in god, especially Abraham’s, but I do have a strong impulse to believe that everything is connected.

2012

The year I was born Milan Kundera published the English translation of his novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. An incredibly nuanced work full not of answers but questions of impact, translated into many other languages with numbers likely in the millions for copies sold, it has affected more lives than I could ever speculate on. As the author intended it was a novel of consequence.
Its specific effect on me was likely less intended. As I finished his section on graphomania I found my impulses severed like grass under the sickle and my motivation smashed like glass under the hammer. Kundera damn near crushed my will to write. As a result I have failed to finish a number of blog entries. Thoughts on comedy as tragedy plus time, rants on the world’s reaction to Michael Phelps’ bong hit, and a short narrative on a recent tarot card reading have all been recorded then destroyed. Instead I’ve settled on posting a very short synopsis for a movie idea that I came up with over a year ago.

The year is 2012. Fighting in the Middle East has spread and threatens to become a global conflict. Fear of the release of a massive biological weapon rivals that of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. When everyone’s fears are realized and whole continents are faced with epidemics of biblical proportion the struggle to survive for a multinational group isolated at a remote Antarctic outpost begins. Will they survive and if they do will they be able to face a new world order created out of hate and terror?

At the time I came up with it I believed my idea could rival Titanic for highest grossing and worst disaster movie of all time. All it would need is the only thing that any movie slated (and therefore destined) for popularity needs -- a trailer of epic proportions. The forty-five second clip could start with a panoramic shot of a giant ice field. The camera would then dramatically zoom in until a group of specks seen moving across the expanse become a group of heavily bundled humans. This would be followed by an accelerating and invigorating series of Antarctic action clips (likely culminating in a slow motion dive across a widening glacial crevice (ice picks extended)) that would cause Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton to hang his head in shame. Following this would be a close up of a gapped mouth Nicholas Cage (or some equally wretched but somehow popular actor) ending with an all white screen and complete silence. A moment later, in an icy blue font, the number 2012 would boom onto the screen as the white fades to black. Flash a simple website address after all of that and you would have the basic ingredients for Hollywood success.
Yesterday I discovered such a movie is already slated to exist. Substitute biological warfare with the more marketable idea of environmental disaster, Nicholas Cage with the slightly more talented John Cusack, the Antarctic for the Himalayas and you have Roland Emmerich’s new blockbuster 2012. Or you would at a glance anyway. My movie concept not only lacks the same backing but also the content and expansion. Then there’s the reference to the catastrophic predictions of the Mayan calendar, which is not only phenomenal enough to grab attentions but could also (potentially) offer some relevant historical and philosophical reflections.
After a brief moment of gratification realizing that I might have actually had a marketable idea Kundera’s disapproving voice returned. It reminded me that without the appropriate thrust these ideas are self-indulgent, even inane. We cannot all be writers. And so the never-ending dread that there is much more than the result of our passions that distinguishes me from Goethe continues.
But don’t worry, I’m not one to give up (just one not likely to try hard enough).

Grave Optimism

A computer’s voice warned us all of the unlawful hazard of smoking in the subway station as I descended concrete steps covered in the mucky grey of city winter. There were two thoughts on my mind. Primarily, I was reflecting on the significance and purpose of technology that mimics human speech. My second thought, a little more whole, was that snow is a lot like white underwear as it also does not offer any refuge for dirt. My trains of thought abruptly switched tracks when I noticed Bill lighting up a cigarette and, perhaps a little too proudly, blowing the smoke out into the catacombs.
We made eye contact as he exhaled. He was wearing a once-blue-now-slate wool cap that sat on the top of his head slightly askew the way an old school construction worker might reluctantly wear a hard hat. In his non-smoking hand was a brown-bagged bottle without the cap. His oversized jacket was rotten.
Though I did not know Bill by name at that moment I had a feeing that he was going to introduce himself.
His breath, ailing and alcoholic, came before him in waves and made me immediately think of Camus’ Oran. He wanted to shake hands. I obliged. I do not believe in germs. His fingers lacked density and his eyes, glaucomic, were the color of paint, Picasso’s blues and blacks, cast off the brush and diluted in the wash pan. They searched my face wobbling in their sockets. Everything about him wobbled.
“You’re a good man”, he said in indirect thanks after we exchanged some more pleasantries. A girl with headphones on, flowers stitched into her hat, a guy with a mountain climbing parka and jeans, and a woman in a fur jacket all seemed to give me a glance of sympathy. But once I realized he was not looking for money I was almost happy to talk to him.

What seems like a number of years ago (seven to be exact) I used to know people in Boston but I have never been good at keeping in touch. In an attempt to reconnect I went to the Fleetcenter (now the BankNorth Garden) to see if any of the guys I worked with were still around. Not only had the name changed but the contract for the security company had changed as well. There was no one left there that I had called a friend. Having no other means to contact anyone that I knew I surrendered to what ever random encounters might come my way adrift in this population of over half a million people.
At other times in my life, when I was not on a forced sabbatical from drinking, meeting new people did not seem so difficult or daunting. Not interested in any personal “issues” here, only the reality that when sober I find it undeniably more difficult to get acquainted with random people. In fact, I believe it some what true of myself to say that outside of work, school and the bar scene I have not developed any skills, per se, in making friends. And after three months without peer connection I realized, for only the second time in my life, that I was lonely.
Because of this genuine unfamiliarity with both loneliness (I’ve almost always been able to entertain myself) and non-situational socializing I found myself at a loss. My only friends being so distant I was reduced to taking up much of their busy time with digital communications. And though the best part of my day is (even still) the hour I spend talking to Sarah over Skype it is no substitute for the real deal. As heartening as these conversations can be they are tinged with the bittersweet especially with regards to one element of human interaction that I hold most dear. That is ones vibe.
(Aura, human energy, karma perhaps are all other ways to articulate this idea. It would require a great deal of explaining and research that I am unwilling to explore to fully explain what I mean here. There are likely better words than all of the above to conceptualize what I basically mean to be the presence of peers. I just happen to like the word vibe.)
It was during one of these conversations with Sarah that a genuine solution presented itself. We had been speaking about my search for a job and/or a volunteer opportunity. Previously, she had suggested checking out an internet resource called Craigslist. As we talked I checked it out again. Perhaps because it is located in the upper left corner of the page, perhaps fate (though I’m no fan), I took note of the personals. In her unique clairvoyant-down-to-earth way Sarah pointed out the “strictly platonic” classifieds and suggested that perhaps I might find someone to hang out with there. I decided to give it a try.
Posting a classified ad was an unprecedented event in my life. I was not sure how to approach it. Entitled, “Looking for good conversation” my stab went approximately as follows;
Recently moved back to the Boston area to find that the friends I had here have moved away. Looking for someone who is up for hanging out over tea/coffee, maybe a movie and generally just some good conversation. If you’re 420 friendly it’d probably help to smooth things over.
I got three responses. One person was looking to sell me some weed, and two were females. The first girl to respond, once I gave her the skinny on my situation over email, decided, I think, that I was not the right addition to a group of friends that she could have more authentically referred to as an entourage. Then there was Linda.
It took a few awkward emails, then a glance at our respective facebooks to confirm we were both relatively sane (relative sanity being the single most important characteristic when dealing with folks that (even once) use personal adds). We made plans to meet at a Starbucks near her place but ran into each other on the street where she suggested, quite in sync with my own thoughts, that we go back to her place and smoke a bowl. The rest of the night was convivial and good-humored. Linda listened to my stories and she told me some of hers. Child of flower children, her perspective was as refreshing to me as a crisp organic apple (for example, her insights on the history of advertisement and corporate processes have inspired me to rethink my conspiracy theory of planned obsolescence vis-à-vis multiple blade razors). But in short, the vibe was grand.

I’d be lying if the conversation I had with Bill were as equally gratifying. Bill was not a flower child. He was a machinist. When he told me that the only thing I could think of to say was that he had a skill that many people lack. Then he told me he served on the USS Arizona in the Korean War. So I said that was incredible (I did not tell him that I had gone to Korea to be a drunk). He told me his kids lived in California as he wiped a snotty nose. I told him that they were better off without the cold. He told me if they ever spoke to each other they would kill each other and it was then that I had nothing to say. He bit off the filter of his cigarette in anger. Flakes of tobacco stuck to his lips like dead leaves stuck to windows after a storm.
In all this soul barring I noticed a particular habit of speech. After everything he said Bill would trail off with the phrase “I know, I know” (emphasis on the ‘I’). This sort of habit is likely a symptom of some diagnosable psychological disorder with a complex name that if translated directly to real speech would be called old, drunk and lonely. I couldn't help but begin to plan an escape.
Just before the next train arrived the intercom gave it’s no-smoking warning again, distant and indifferent. “Fuck them”, he said pointing upwards speaking with half cigarette still smoldering “I know, I know.” He was not speaking directly to me at that moment and I took it as a cue to leave. But as I got on the train and took a seat between two people I didn’t know and can’t remember I wondered if what he thought he knew was the same as what I thought I knew.
If he was thinking along the lines of we’re all out here alone then our thoughts were headed in the same direction. Except I’m not old, drunk and lonely, not yet. And I don’t intend to be. As singular as I know we all are, as seriously punishing of character our society and cities can be, as indifferent as natural law will always remain I also know that these realities, balanced not for the sake of balance but for balancing (to attempt to quote the Tragically Hip), must also contain that love and companionship we all seem to seek.

Green Space

There is a small park in the town in which I am currently living that is not so much a park as it is a grassy nipple risen up from a body of concrete. Mostly people go there with their dogs. The dogs play. The people watch. The dogs shit. The people pick it up (and take it home I presume). Sometimes people will briefly detour through off of Main Street. A few stop for a cigarette. For my part I go there to smoke joints.
The wondrous wisps of smoke that I let waft sublime about the park’s centerpiece, a statue of three civil war soldiers, would probably be considered by some an irreverent act. Like I’m wasting the freedom these soldiers and others like them gave their lives up to protect. But lets not kid ourselves. There is likely more than one war during which plenty of American soldiers got plenty high. And more to the point, I mean no disrespect. I’m just there to get a little high myself and to relax in one of the many ways I know how while I enjoy the relative peace and quiet of a collection of trees, grass and as of late some unblackened snow. A humble enough reason, I feel, for such a green space to exist. But the brick monument on which the statue sits suggests that such a reason alone is not enough.
According to one of the mounted plaques the park was established in 1910 and was primarily meant to commemorate the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution. Like most short histories the plaque comes off a little one sided (and reads kind of like a synopsis for a Mel Gibson movie written by Chuck Norris chunked up with a lot of free nation this and struggle for independence that) but I get it, honoring the dead and all. But then it starts in on the history of the town, the majority of which concentrates on priests and pastors who brought “the gospel of Christ from America to pagan lands”. One of the few exceptions is the mention of the local 17th century poet Michael Wigglesworth.
I feel it unlikely that anyone but mental zealots and religious scholars (an unfortunate association) would be aware of old Wigglesworth. As far as I know he only wrote one poem entitled “The Day of Doom”. Despite the great title Wigglesworth’s poem, published in 1662, was not, as one might be wont to assume, a predecessor of our modern zombie movies. Instead, it is 224 fear-mongering stanzas of stupefying iambic heptameter that gets on about nothing more than the wrath of his god. (Well, I’m assuming a little here as I only got as far as stanza eight, stanza eight being a tidy little piece of work in which the poet asks atheists if they believe in his god now that in his apocalyptic fantasy the big boss has come back to reign down some good old fashioned death and destruction. After that I skipped to the end where Wigglesworth tells us that all the good people become kings and priests and live forever in heaven.) Lovely, lovely stuff but unlike the fallen soldiers I have to say that I don’t feel the poet’s efforts are really something to be honored in this slightly more enlightened age.
Then there’s the eagle emblem in the middle of it all. I feel that I would be in remiss to not point out a common misconception about the bald eagle in light of another more heartfelt reason that I have for visiting the park. That reason is a particular red-tailed hawk whose presence, however sporadic, I’ve grown quite fond of.
In movies, used car commercials, and, if I remember correctly, the GI Joe cartoon the sound of the eagle is passed off as a harsh but powerful scream. The “National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America” describes this sound phonetically as “keeeer” but the book is referring not to the eagle’s so-called majestic voice rather the red-tailed hawk’s. So unimpressive is the actual sound of a bald eagle there is no note of it in the guide at all. On my other favorite bird resource, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s impressive website “All About Birds”, they describe the eagle’s call as a “high pitched whistling or piping”. I don’t want to slight the eagle here as it is a spectacular bird but I’ve heard it’s call many times and to me it sounds like a cross between a sparrow’s chirp and a frog’s croak.
This common misconception got me wondering on how few of the townspeople here are actually aware that such a creature as the red-tailed hawk exists. How many even care? The question troubles me. After all, the red-tailed hawk is, or so I’ve been told it is, the most widespread hawk on the continent.
I have also been told that they prefer open spaces. I have a number of specific memories to confirm this having spotted them in places (as they come to me) like Alaska, British Columbia, Wyoming, Iowa, Ontario, and Manitoba. But I have also seen them around cities such as Boston, Montreal, Salt Lake, Anchorage and possibly Las Vegas (due to a hangover and a weekend of getting high I can’t really confirm that the bird of prey I spotted early one morning through a hazy hotel window was a red tailed hawk). One could look at this and suggest that it shows that the hawks don’t actually prefer open spaces. They could even suggest based on this that the encroachment of their habitat is no big deal. In fact, I would agree it reasonable to postulate that hawks could thrive in cities. Full of plump pigeons and starlings and no shortage of scurrying mice and rats there is plenty of food. Telephone poles make perfect hunting perches and have been credited with not only providing a look out but also a nesting area for other birds of prey such as the Osprey. There is even a non-fiction book by Marie Winn entitled, “Red-Tails in Love: Pale Male's Story - A True Wildlife Drama in Central Park” which is noted for its accurate observations of the diversity in a city's ecosystem.
I haven’t read this book and I don’t have the qualifications to back up this next statement but I simply do not believe based on my completely amateur (though numerous) observations that the ecological diversity in a city can compare to the diversity in any of the other more traditional habitats of the red-tailed hawk. Though the city hawks share the same ancient amber eyes as other more distant red-tails their numbers just don’t compare. A reality, I think, that is reflected by the imbalanced abundance of food supplies within urban areas.
If one were to conduct a survey in the town I’m residing in I would wager my left testicle that the number of adults aware of the existence of the red-tailed hawk would be roughly analogous to, though slightly lower than, the number of adults aware of the specific dedications of their civil war monument including the poet Michael Wigglesworth. My follow up question to this unofficial query would be what chance does the red-tailed hawk have when even tradition, in a country that seems so often to subsist on the opiate of patriotism, is so often neglected?
Perhaps Bill O’Reilly hit on the answer when he implied in his interview with Barak Obama that there’s no reason to care if a caribou is scared or confused by a pipeline. With the sustenance provided to us by our eternal economy (whose elixir certainly appears to be oil) what else is there to worry about? One baffled caribou or one neglected hawk truly cannot add up.
Despite that small truth the statement is otherwise a gross trivialization of deeper issues. O’Reilly, as haughty as Megatron, stands so overbearingly by his inflexible opinions that he hints at the same lack of confidence that Wigglesworth himself was rumored to have. They both hide behind the uncompromising rules of their religion, rules that seem to give a disturbing sense of superiority allowing a wish of death and destruction on all those who oppose them (google O’Reilly quotes and Katrina to see what I mean). It’s a seriously limited point of view and the caribou comment is a great example of this. I’ll get to why in a moment.
A similar misconception can also be found in the dogma of extreme environmentalists. Replace Bill O’Reilly with Paul Watson and you’ll understand where I’m going with this. These two zealots, like faith and doubt, are just opposite ends of the same type of conjecture. Like Watson, I do believe it possible that an individual can form a very real bond with say a seal that he or she might physically rescue. But you can be certain that the rest of the herd doesn’t give a flapping flipper’s fuck. They will not consider you a friend. You are not meant to be their savior.
If the hawk I’ve come to look forward to encountering on my trips to the park never shows up again because of an untimely death or encroachment on its territory or whatever else I would be saddened. But it would be a personal sadness, a remorse for a connection lost, and one that should not be confused with sadness for the loss of just any hawk. When the dog I grew up with passed away last year I truly mourned but, to make a comparison, you can be sure that aside from a very distant sympathy I would not feel anything if Paris Hilton’s chihuahua got ran over by her limo. Preservation with regards to the animal world, just like evolution, is a matter of species and has complex implications that most of us, if any, do not understand. This includes Bill O’Reilly, Paul Watson and myself. The only thing I will say with complete confidence is that if you’re only looking at issues from one angle or worse not looking at them at all you’re contributing very little to our understanding.