Eli Walks

It moves! It walks!

palin should have won

at the end of the day, obama cannot be all of the things he promised to be, be the person we imagined him to be, or create a world that mirrors our dreams for an obama-lead nation.  he has already failed to deliver on much of his platform, from his promises of openness and transparency to his pledge to drive reform like a wedge into the body of this government.

at the end of the day, he may very well stand a good president; but i think we needed a palin to take us into ruin before a true obama could be realized.

a palin would have let the house burn to the ground while selling furnaces and flood insurance. obama will keep us floating for another four to eight years, at the end of which we'll question why we weren't sailing instead.  i fear that the best he can offer us is a quiet place to weather a storm.  the storm must come; but as humans, we'll mistake the brief respite over the next four years as the best effort of a failed president.

ironically, he has little choice.  our monetary policy has decided a philosophy of consumption, and we look toward a vision to fix the symptoms without altering the patient.  obama cannot do this.  palin could have pushed the patient to the brink of death, and the patient could have seen the other side.  instead, we missed our chance at bright lights and second chances.

we must wade through purgatory a little longer.

Balls for the World

wishing and unwishing

my uncle once said something true.

the air was crisp about us. i felt good breathing it. it was clean and ripe and ready to become dioxide carbon. the air had settled with its fate and embraced the inevitable chemical transformation in my lungs. i knew this. the air knew this. the cold ushered it down the aisle.

i have always loved him. i could not have said why, with precision, before this moment; but, in the moments prior, i suspect it had something to do with a perceived (on my part) confidence. not a confidence in himself, which might become arrogance; but a confidence in the framework that permeates our being. like an einstein that saw the bridge beneath him not as concrete but as algorithm, Jim walks upon the formula of existence.

so on this day, almost two years past, we sat outside a coffee shop in ithaca. he, having never met heather, knew nothing of my own personal life; and i knew nothing of him, save that he still believes in that which i do not.

Jim: So how is life?
Me: Well...
(I paused and considered all of the possible responses to this question. Then I fancied trying Truth, and I toyed in alternating moments between supplication and exacerbation before settling on ambivalence)
Me: ...Heather's pregnant.

Enter thoughts and words and dialog, stage right.

Jim: When I was young, I had a wide variety of absolutes I clung to as absolute truth. As I have grown older, I have sacrificed more and more of them. Now, I cling to almost no absolute "truths", but for the few that remain, I clutch them tighter than ever.

i wish not to be young and optimistic; i would rather be Jim and young.

i yearn to know what are those absolutes and what makes them indisposable; but i also thirst for the journey, whether i find them or not.

at the end of the day, i must entertain the suspicion that all of my beliefs are privy to folly. to survive, i must try myself as an enemy in my own house, and i must judge me right.

every day is such a trial.

year, new

I still remember the faces of the men we killed.  Men, women, children.  Chicken farmers, most of them.

Locked in tents beneath the unabating sun.  Blown to pieces by missles poorly aimed.

Men I helped die.

I try to stay awake as long as possible.  The dreams surround the dead.  I yearn for life, but death prevails.

I almost yearn for the day an account is held.  None of us will be forgiven.

Please, judge us.

Years pass, but not the guilt.  The horrible guilt.

a moral

in elementary school, the 'they' that we remember vaguely as anything other than 'me' called me Son of Thunder.  i remember the chanting, like a mob of monks echoing a boomful curse, 'Son of Thunder! Son of Thunder!' i needed anger then, as a shield from all the pain.  no matter that we were poorish or dressed badly, always behind or obtuse to the current fads--i had no self awareness of this condition.

a bystander, i watched myself pushed and kicked and hurled, thrown and dragged and tossed.  later, i would learn that my kin were robots; that of robot descent i too had buttons which could be manipulated.  i must learn to safeguard these buttons, keep them secret, safe.

anger and oughtness.  these are the emotions.  in the beginning, i was angered by that which i felt i ought but did not receive.  later, i learned that i ought receive nothing but that i was due opportunity.  i ought not be carried to the finish line, but i am due the opportunity to run there--so i believed.  this reformed my notion of oughtness.  i ought be given nothing, but no barriers ought obstruct my ambitions.

still, i troubled over this.  for some, no caravans to safe harbor traveled and obstructions to free range obfuscated escape.  what of those with no means faced against a conscious will?  surely oughtness should dictate that obstacles be overturned and paths be paved for the safe pursuit of dreams and goals.

then, of course, the conflict begins.  man ought make himself; but man ought not unmake other men.

i am then angry.  angry that life does not unfold as it ought, and angry that i do not as i ought in life.

like father like father

heather and i ran into a woman who attends my father's church at the mall today.  "you don't look anything like your father," she said, "but you have your mother's smile." 

i don't know how to respond to that.

to some, this might only be the most fleeting of thoughts; but my identity, from my own perspective, is so tightly woven round the husk of my youth that a threat upon any part of it is a threat upon all of it.

i see it, when i look at pictures.  there is a face that transmutes between frames.  the father becomes the son and the son becomes the father.  it is there. 

yet with increasing frequency, i hear surprise at the comparison.  several times in the last month: "why, you don't look anything alike."

what does that mean?  anything?  nothing?

we want roots.  i want roots.  i suspect the roots want roots but can't, and therein lies the rub.