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 | Winners and losers, turn the pages of my life
Were beggars and choosers, with all the struggles and the strife
I got no reason to turn my head and look the other way
Were good and were evil, which one will I be today?
Theres saints and sinners
Lifes a gamble and you might lose
Theres cowards and heroes
Both of them known now to break the rules
Theres lovers and haters
The strong and the weak will all have their day
Were devils and angels
Which one will I be today?
Are you happy now with all the choices youve made?
Are there times in life when you know you shouldve stayed?
Will you compromise and then realize the price is too much to pay?
Winners and losers, which one will you be today?
Theres a light and a dark side
Standing at the crossroads, there well meet
Theres prophets and fools there
The lies and the truth, will be at our feet
I got a reason to turn my head and look the other way
Its heaven and hell here, which one will I live today?
Are you happy now with all the choices youve made?
Are there times in life when you know you shouldve stayed?
Did you compromise then realize the price was too much to pay?
Winners and losers, which one will you be today?
Which one will you be today?
Which one will I be today?
--Social Distortion, "Winners and Losers" |
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What's inside is not allowed...
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Aug 11, 2008 11:06 pm
636 Views
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In the past, when I was in college and in the Army, I was a consistent blood donor. I am type O negative, which is relatively rare. I liked the feeling of giving, of helping someone who I would never meet. There was also some pride involved, not being scared of needles like so many are. When I donated, I would run through the list of questions and not even have to think about them--no no no, no diseases, no suspect behaviors, no nothing. I was clean, always had been. Just perfunctory questions, then I would get stuck and get my cookie and juice, and be on my way.
The local hospital has been running PSAs lately looking for blood donors, especially O-negative. I hadn't done it in years, so I figured I would get back into the habit.
I made an appointment, and went in this evening. I sat down with the questionnaire, and---uh oh. "Have you received a body piercing within the last 12 months?" Well, not like they meant... but I have had needles stuck through my chest, connected to rubber bands, and pulled on. And it was great. I left the question blank until the nurse came back.
Okay. A few more, and then: "If you are male, have you had sexual contact with another male, even if only once, between 1977 and the present?" Hm. Well, how do they define sexual contact? Left that one blank, too.
I though that I could probably second-guess the questions, and put down the answers I knew they needed to hear. But I'm consciously working on cultivating more honesty in my statements and my actions, and this was a pretty clear-cut opportunity to do so. I told the nurse that I had been pierced within the last few months. By a professional? (Because they are looking for sterile technique having been used.) No, not by a professional--the guy's not a piercing artist by trade, he's a computer programmer. His technique was scrupulously sterile, but...
So I was denied on that count. For twelve months from the date of the piercing. I didn't tell the nurse that I fully intend to be and am looking forward to being pierced again (because it totally ROCKED!).
I also asked about sexual contact with another male. Basically penetration and oral sex; and he almost sheepishly told me that they are working to revise the donation rules, to narrow that "1977 to present" down to something that more accurately reflects the current state of research into HIV/AIDS, and doesn't just ban everyone. But that's in the future sometime, maybe.
My contact hasn't included penetration or oral (but I'm not ruling it out). So that wouldn't have kept me from donating today. But the piercing took care of that.
So, in the years intervening between the last time I donated blood and today, my life has changed a lot, and some of those changes have made it so that I am no longer a candidate to donate blood. I left feeling good about my choice to be honest, but also really disappointed, and a little sad. This was just a little unexpected. I guess this lifestyle is a door you go through, and you can't necessarily expect to always be welcome on the other side of it afterward.
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Anger
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Jul 15, 2008 10:47 pm
702 Views
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I think I've been angry all my life. From my earliest thoughts right through to today. My anger has had many targets--family members, other schoolkids, strangers, political figures, loved ones, landscapes, society at large--but it's always come from a deep well within me, a well that feels inexhaustible.
I hope it's not. Four decades is plenty. Plenty of time to be venting anger into the world. I want it to stop.
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Radio Show
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Jul 14, 2008 9:28 pm
688 Views
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I'm writing a piece for a local radio show. It's a 2-min. public commentary deal on a local NPR affiliate. This is a first draft--I've been letting it mellow for a few days. I'm not 100% happy with it. What do y'all think? Any of y'all. Or all of y'all. (I just like saying "y'all", basically...) Any reactions are welcome. It's called "Done with Suffering."
A manager at the company where I work, a man in his sixties, recently lost his mother in law. I overheard him taking a condolence call in the officeit was her time to go; she lived a long life. At one point he replied to the caller, At least shes not suffering. Not suffering. What would it be like to not suffer?
Dont get me wrong. Ive lived a rather charmed life so farroof over my head, plenty to eat, a job that pays the bills. Im blessed with enough free time and energy to struggle with the moral, emotional and spiritual anxieties that my life presents. On the cusp of turning 40, Im of a generation burdened with the expectation of constant happiness, and devastated by its elusiveness. But that doesnt mean Ive really suffered. Not like an old woman, frail and in pain, spending her last days in a hospital bed. Not really. Not yet.
But stilla life without suffering? I think about that phrase, and I realize that at some deep level, I want to suffer. I crave it. Suffering is essential to life. Because suffering holds the promise of joy. If we cannot suffer, we cannot feel; and if we cannot feel, we cannot feel joy, and awe, and XXXXX. (Need to finish sentence) If you are a creature that cannot suffer, then you are in some sense cut off from your essential humanity. To be human is to suffer, and to suffer is to be human.
I may feel differently when my time in that hospital bed comes. But I hope not.
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The True Shame of the Iraq War
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Jun 2, 2008 4:40 pm
692 Views
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Once again, someone is telling it like it is. This is by Richard Reeves, writing on May 23rd.
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WASHINGTON -- This is what I thought was the American social contract when I was growing up in the land of the free and the home of the brave: You could work your way through college, and if you got a decent job, you could buy a house within a few years.
And, you deserved a bit more if you served in the military: money or loans for college and something of a break on mortgage loans. The point goes beyond the danger of military service; the important fact is that you deserve something more than being underpaid if you give up two or more years of your life while your peers are working on careers, beginning families, or getting educations that will pay dividends for life.
That's the way it was for me, and I think kids today deserve the same. I could earn enough for college working summers and part-time; the military (Air Force ROTC) paid some of the bills. I got a job as an engineer for Ingersoll-Rand, and six years after graduation, with a little help from my parents, I was able to buy a small house on a lake in New Jersey.
Now, of course, college is more expensive -- as a father of five I have seen those costs rise faster than the cost of oil -- and houses in metropolitan areas are often more than young families can afford. That bothers me, a lot; it is a failure of the American way. But that bother is nothing compared with the screwing the government is giving to the young men and women serving in harm's way in Iraq.
Whatever one thinks of the war and the officials who planned it, those soldiers and reservists out there deserve more than moral support. My stomach literally turned when I read this paragraph in The New York Times last Thursday morning:
"President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A main reason is that it would hasten an exodus from the ranks."
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it this way: "Serious retention issues could arise."
I bet they could. And should. The war is being fought by a tiny percentage of the American people, and many of their lives are being ruined. You want a war, Mr. President? Then ask Congress to declare one. You want soldiers to be retained? Then ask for a draft. You want to support our boys and girls? Then support their education as other presidents and Congresses have done since the passage of the great GI Bill of Rights during World War II -- legislation that is still benefiting this country.
What is being done to our troops in Iraq is more than a failure of political leadership; it is an outrage. Forget the fact that we never declared war, or that we never had a real plan about what to do in Iraq, or that we are fighting on credit, leaving the bills for our children and grandchildren. Remember that only a small number are involved in this -- the same people, professionals and reservists, are being called back into harm's way again and again.
Those young men and women, serving a government without the guts to even talk about a draft, are essentially indentured servants. Worse. At least indentured servants knew when their obligation would be over. This is more than unfair; it is shameful, a stain on the democracy and its leaders. And now the president is considering depriving them of a reward they deserve because some of them might actually take it and not re-enlist.
This is a professional army? There was a time when troops treated that way, no matter how well-trained or equipped, were called cannon fodder. We owe them. The president whose ignorance put them in the Middle East owes them. The Congress, which is ever looking the other way and has not declared war on anyone since 1941, owes them.
This war is not worthy of a free country. And unless we do something for the young people bravely taking the punishment for the failings of their elders, we have no right to claim this is a land of the free.
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Hear Hear!
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May 26, 2008 9:42 pm
726 Views
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This is it. This op-ed piece ran in the LA Times on May 13th. This crystallizes just about everything that I think and feel about our particular moment in history.
For some reason, I feel really really good after reading this. Like a breath of fresh air after being locked in a hot, stuffy room for six-and-a-half years.
______________________________________________
The 'Long War' fallacy:
Iraq has shown the limits of U.S. power. We must change America, not the world.
Donald Rumsfeld is today a discredited and widely reviled figure. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor as Defense secretary, is generally admired for manifesting qualities that Rumsfeld lacked -- a willingness to listen not least among them. Yet on one crucial point, the two see eye to eye: Both believe that the United States has no alternative but to wage a global war likely to last decades.
In the wake of 9/11, Rumsfeld wasted no time in telling Americans what to expect. "Forget about 'exit strategies,' " he said on Sept. 28, 2001, "we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines." Speaking at West Point last month, Gates echoed his predecessor's assessment: "There are no exit strategies," he announced. Instead, Gates described a "generational campaign" entailing "many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world."
For the United States, the prospect of permanent war now beckons.
Well into the first decade of this generational struggle, Americans remained oddly confused about its purpose. Is the aim to ensure access to cheap and abundant oil? Spread democracy? Avert nuclear proliferation? Perpetuate the American empire? Preserve the American way of life? From the outset, the enterprise that Gates now calls the "Long War" has been about all of these things and more.
Back in September 2001, Rumsfeld put it this way: "We have a choice -- either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter." In this context, "they" represent the billion or so Muslims inhabiting the greater Middle East.
When Rumsfeld offered this statement of purpose and President Bush committed the United States to open-ended war, both assumed that U.S. military supremacy was beyond dispute. At the time, most Americans shared that assumption. A conviction that "the troops" were unstoppable invested the idea of transforming the greater Middle East with a superficial plausibility.
Yet by the time Gates spoke last month, the limits of American military power had long since become apparent. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the opening rounds of the generational campaign are now well underway. By historical standards, each qualifies as a fairly small war. In neither case, however, have U.S. forces been able to achieve decisive victory. In both cases, barring drastic changes in U.S. policy, fighting will drag on for years to come.
In the meantime, what has the Long War achieved? The answer to that question is indisputable: not much. Counting on military might to change the way they live isn't working. If anything, the effort has backfired.
Since 2001, the price of oil per barrel has quadrupled, adversely affecting all but the wealthiest Americans. Efforts to spread democracy have either stalled or succeeded only in enhancing the standing of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The much-hyped Iraqi nuclear threat turned out to be illusory. To sustain the overstretched American imperium, we are accumulating debt at a staggering clip. And with U.S. soldiers shouldering repetitive combat tours, the strength of our army slowly ebbs away.
Meanwhile, the immediate danger to the American way of life comes not from terrorists but from our own adamant refusal to live within our means. American profligacy, not Islamic radicals, triggered the mortgage crisis that underlies our current economic distress.
Bluntly, the Long War has proved to be a monumental flop. Yet Gates, channeling Rumsfeld, would have us believe that perpetual war constitutes the sole option available to the world's most powerful nation. This represents a profound failure of imagination. It also misreads our own history.
The truth is that the United States, with rare exceptions, has demonstrated little talent for changing the way others live. We have enjoyed far greater success in making necessary adjustments to our own way of life, preserving and renewing what we value most. Early in the 20th century, Progressives rounded off the rough edges of the Industrial Revolution, deflecting looming threats to social harmony. During the Depression, FDR's New Deal reformed capitalism and thereby saved it. Here lies the real genius of American politics.
Rumsfeld got it exactly backward. Although we do face a choice, it's not the one that he described. The actual choice is this one: We can either persist in our efforts to change the way they live -- in which case the war of no exits will surely lead to bankruptcy and exhaustion. Or we can recognize the folly of generational war and choose instead to put our own house in order: curbing our appetites, paying our bills and ending our self-destructive dependency on foreign oil and foreign credit.
Salvation does not lie abroad. It's here at home.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University and is the author of the forthcoming "The Limits of Power."
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And me = poly, too...
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Apr 12, 2008 10:59 am
830 Views
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I wrote this in response to a blog post by n2theaether called And me = poly. (I would link to the post, but I can't figure out how. Go find her blog, it's worth it.) I have been touched by the struggles she's had with her relationships lately, and never more so than with this post.
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That's twice in your blog, in the relatively short time I've been following it, that you've used the term "kamikaze." And polyamory does seem like that a lot of the time.
Love is difficult. It calls on us mercilessly to be what we are and what we aren't simultaneously. And more love just keeps upping the ante.
I am a complete failure at polyamory. Utterly. I don't communicate well; I follow what I want to the exclusion of what others need; I get wrapped up in guilt; I withdraw into myself and hide when I feel bad; I try to manipulate others to get what I want; I don't let others honestly know what I need; I'm not even really sure WHAT I need most of the time. I'm basically not doing anything right.
But polyamory means you can't hide. You have too many connections, too many eyes on you, too many people who need you. I realize that I have been this way my entire life; I was just able to hide the facts from myself. Just sit back and look at one carefully-cut sliver of my life and call it "me."
It wasn't me. Because me = poly, too. And poly = the crucible that burns away everything that we use to hide ourselves, and lie about ourselves. Poly = honesty. The honesty from which you cannot hide.
Identities crumble. Marriages break. Cherished ideas dissolve.
Poly kills.
The fucked-up and wonderful thing is, that it kills the things that need to die. Caterpillars and butterflies, all that shit. Corny, but true. We are reborn as ourselves.
Eventually. But the stench of death is on us for a long, long time before that happens.
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A gentleman...
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Apr 7, 2008 6:19 pm
757 Views
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The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
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A million people...
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Apr 4, 2008 10:55 pm
835 Views
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A million people can call the mountains a fiction, yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them.
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Imagination
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Mar 23, 2008 10:36 pm
949 Views
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"Imagination collects from the senses the sensory effects of natural phenomena and combines and magnifies them to the point of exaggeration, turning them into luminous images to suddenly dazzle the mind with their lightning and stir up human passions in the thunder and roar of their wonder."
--Giambattista Vico
My wife just commented to me that the modern world has contributed to the death of human imagination by turning it into a cheap, meaningless thrill ride. As evidence for this, she cites our addiction to technology, computers especially. But she could also point to movies and television, video games, drugs, cell phones, politics, and many other modern "ills," as the Luddite in me characterizes them.
Vico, a 17th-century Italian Humanist thinker, was referring to the importance of human imagination in the fundamental creation of history when he wrote the above. He wasn't specifically talking about someone sitting back and daydreaming on a lazy afternoon.
I'm trying to reconcile these two things: imagination in the individual's life, and imagination in the life of humanity writ large. And, despite my wife's cynicism (which she wears mainly to cover a passionate, hopeful heart), I think that the human imagination is pretty well indestructible.
It can be colonized and suppressed, and twisted, as it has been in the modern world to some extent. It can be captured and used for the ends of the powerful, be they political or religious, or corporate, or what have you. This has always been a danger, and is not specifically a modern trait; though the modern mechanisms of control have certainly improved with advances in technology.
But Vico is right, when he draws attention to the power of the imagination to take the raw stuff of sense experience and build it into something to "dazzle the mind" and "stir up human passions." The imagination is fundamental to what we are as human beings, individually and as a race. And it is evergreen, retaining the capacity to burst into radiant life even in the midst of the most egregious crimes committed against it, the most powerful social controls arrayed in opposition.
The German verb for "to imagine" is something I've always loved to contemplate. It is vorstellen, which broken down means roughly "to put in front of." The imagination has the incredible power to create something in the world that wasn't there before, maybe never has been or never could be. (A unicorn, for instance--I'm thinking of one now, and so are you. So, does it exist? The thought of it does...) What's more, the thing "put in front of" one by the imagination can move a person to monumental acts of courage and sacrifice, or callous brutality and evil, or the creation of beauty unparalleled.
We are so unimaginably powerful, we human creatures. Use your imagination well.
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To link to this blog (Howard1000) use [blog Howard1000] in your messages.
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