Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Five Years Later

So September of last year came and went.

She was so quiet about her business I didn't even notice as she passed by my window.  

Perhaps I was simply too busy with my life of perpetual forward motion.  Perhaps I was just oblivious.

Upon closer inspection this might be considered somewhat odd since September was the five year anniversary of my remission from lymphatic cancer.  Five years out and you are mostly considered "cured".  So some would think it strange that I should let such a momentous occasion slip by unremarked, even overlooked.

Because I didn't celebrate at all.  I didn't have a small gathering of my closest friends.  There was no sedate, reflective dinner party or a raucous all-nighter spent ingesting spirits with wilder acquaintances.  Nor did I venture forward on a camping trip, taking my girlfriend out for a chance to stare up into space, remarking on stars and time, pondering the World and our places in it, discussing deeply our future life together and the final definition of love.

There was none of that.

This is somewhat out of the norm because most people, many people who get to their five year mark go balls to the wall in some way, shape or method.  They buy themselves something outrageous, they go skydiving, they take an amazing trip or maybe they finally, blessedly just let themselves breathe for the first time in a long time.

Maybe I'm not built like that.  Or maybe the wait took it out of me.  

Because let's face it - five years is a long time to live in fear of death - 43,800 hours to be exact.  These are the months, years where you eke out a smile or two between cat scans and hope against hope you will be one of the lucky ones.  Five years is half a decade.  It is a long time to be robbed of real joy, to not be able to count on anything, to not feel able to make long-term plans.

I was told I had a 40% chance to live this long.  Imagine how that can keep you up at night, especially the first thousand hours.

So partying down hard-core just doesn't feel right to me.  Partially because I feel angry, like I was robbed of a tremendous amount of inner peace for a long time and also because I'm not sure my life is anymore important than anyone else's or even that a huge party would be a correct and proper way to reflect and honor what I've been through.  

In fact I'm sure it's not.  So what is it I can do to stamp this moment?

Plenty.  I start by celebrating it here, not with an artificial blowout surrounded by people special and not-so-special to me.  Here is where I reflect on what surviving the last five years has given me and I do it with words because when all else failed me, when my body turned traitorous, when nothing worked but my eyes and my mind, the only thing I could count on were words - prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction.  

Language was my salvation then and so I use it now to exalt in all that has happened in the last 1,825 days, all I would not have experienced had I expired at 29 instead of the day sometime in the future when I will fall fast asleep and cease to awaken.

So let me share with you what I need to share.  Because these are the things I know and a man should always tell you what he knows.  Of that I am certain.

Because I know that even if I die tomorrow I fell in love again.  No one, no disease can ever take that from me. 

I  know that I can also celebrate the gains I've made as an artist.  For I am better now than I was then.  

That is all an artist can ask for.

I know that I have seen Australia, New Zealand, London, Paris, Ireland, the Middle East, Africa, Canada and almost every state in the union.

I know that I have learned to love and feel for others on a level I did not think possible.  Perhaps the greatest gift of this extra time has been being able to read a very special four year-old and two year-old girl the "Ferdinand the Bull" children's book at night as they fell into a deep slumber on my chest.

This was all truly grand.  Every minute, second and hour of it.

But don't get me wrong.  Life has not all been sunshine and roses.
These past five years have been extreme at times. Because life always is.

I've been lied to.  I've been told the truth.

I've made the right move.  I've fucked up beyond repair.

I've heard music that makes me want to live forever.

I've been so full of hate and pain I thought I would combust if I had to go on another second, another mile, another night.

I've seen places so beautiful even Wordsworth, Donne or Dylan Thomas wouldn't have been able to describe them if they'd had Will Shakespeare as a co-writer.

I have gone through hell, loneliness and sorrow, joy, elation and an undeniable closeness to something larger than this World all in the space of a 15 hour road trip alone in my car.

I have dedicated myself to learning as much about this planet and the people who have lived upon it with a vigor I never knew I possessed.  

Through it all I have been alive.

I desperately hope to continue as such.  

But that is all I will say about it for now.

Goodbye September.  Thank you for treading so lightly on my little existence.

I hope to welcome a hundred more of you.  But whatever number I get to see I yearn only that I can accept my fate with a dignity befitting the men and women who did not make it this far.  

Because I need to honor every day the people who did not get to join me here at five years out.

You were the brave ones.

So I will try to live my life in a manner befitting the days I have been blessed with.

It won't be easy.  Rather it is a nigh impossible task.  

Because how do you do it?  How do you possibly pay back the Universe for sparing you?  

How do you ever live fully and completely enough to make it all make sense?

I have no idea but for now I  know one more thing - I shall have the opportunity to try.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

FDR, George W. Bush and the Lure of Authoritarianism

It was early 1933.  

FDR was set to take office in March. 

The country was in dire condition (worse than now if you can believe it).  

People were panicked, scared.  A persistent fear akin to the days immediately post 9-11 only on a deeper, more desperate and fundamental level.  

The future of everything was up for grabs.

You must remember the context...

Banks were failing everywhere.  Some hadn't been open for months.  The ones that did open their doors risked being wiped out in a day by depositors withdrawing all their money immediately.

Unemployment was 25%.  Only 50% of the country had a full-time job.  

We were an agrarian society who at this time had no market for our crops.  Europe had crawled out of the wreckage of WWI and was no longer importing our food.  This caused the bottom to drop out of the price of everything you could possibly grow and family farms were being foreclosed on at a breakneck pace.  

Capitalism was perhaps in it's death throes and other options were seriously being considered.

This may sound crazy to the modern ear but in the 1930's Fascism was still fashionable.  

People admired Mussolini because of Italy's high employment rate. 
People admired the Soviet Union because it too had a high employment rate.  

Italy and Russia seemed to be worker's paradises where if a man wanted to labor for his daily bread he was guaranteed to get it.  The same could not be said for America.

Make no mistake - the future of democracy was in doubt.  

FDR knew the stakes.  When told that if he succeeded in rescuing the country he'd be the greatest President in history he remarked that if he failed he would most certainly be it's last.

At this time many newspapers, intelligentsia, cultural elite and just regular ol' American folk wanted, perhaps even yearned and hoped for a dictator.  They desired a strongman to lift us out of the miasma we were in without any bureaucratic dilly-dallying. 

Just do something, anything they were pleading of their leaders.  Yet their leaders remained motionless, as frozen with panic as the people they claimed to represent.   

Everything seemed to be falling apart...

So when Roosevelt was inaugurated that March of '33 he had the public support to take his role as a strongman, as a leader of unlimited authority whom no one dared refuse.  He might have been our Caesar, our end of the Republic if he so desired.  He could have had it all.

But he chose not to go down that road.  He did not work outside the Constitution.  He worked with Congress.   He took his time and broke no laws.

He harkened back to the tradition of George Washington.  An American man offered almost unlimited authority who instead chooses to lay down his sword and work within the existing structures to accomplish what must be accomplished no matter how hard.

So how did FDR's decision to preserve democracy play out?  Did he make the right choice in turning his back to the siren song of unrestrained power?  

I believe you know the answer to that.  

The US government still exists in the same checked and balanced form it did before he took office.  We do not live in a dictatorship and capitalism still creeks along - aging, changed in it's form but viable nonetheless.

We did not go the way of Europe in the 30's, rather Europe has gone the way of us.  There is trade, a healthy interdependence and freedom across most of that continent.

Had FDR made a different choice I wonder what the World would look like now?

Roosevelt's most famous aphorism is without a doubt that great line from his first inaugural address, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Contrast this with George W. Bush who has tried to keep us as scared as possible for eight long years.

Bush used a single (admittedly horrific) act of terror on our soil to declare that we were in a state of permanent war.  

He  used it to win reelection by declaring terror alerts every time Kerry got close in the polls.

He used it as a rationale for spying on Americans without warrants, to destroy political enemies and whistleblowers (Valerie Plame).  

He used it as an excuse to wage an unnecessary war in Iraq that has bankrupted us.

He repeatedly used patriotism as a bludgeon against those who would thwart his authoritarian ambition as America's "decider" in Chief.  

In the carrying forth of this last action I think he accomplished his most egregious (perhaps unintentional) goal -  he has managed to confuse nationalism with patriotism in the minds of many an American.  

Nationalism is not patriotism.  

Ask the the innocents in Nazi Germany who decided not to join Hitler if I'm right about that.  If you can find one who wasn't executed I'm sure they'll back me up.

This is very simple, actually.

To quote Mark Twain, "Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it."

Therefore dissent is not treason or even dangerous.

Rather it is necessary for a healthy republic to survive.  Democracy should be noisome, boisterous and messy.  

If it is not your country is in more trouble than you can imagine.

By drumming up a "support your country at all costs" attitude to a fever pitch Bush ironically brought our nation - this supposed beacon of freedom -  closer to the mindset of the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany than any previous Chief Executive.

Don't mistake me, I'm not comparing Bush to those men.  That is reductive.  He is far less dangerous than them - in the main because our Constitution thankfully requires a peaceful change of power every eight years.

No I'm comparing the role his fear-mongering, power-grabbing actions have played in harming our national psyche to the similar deleterious effects those 20th century leader's actions had on the minds of their respective countrymen. 

So what, finally has all this wrought?  

What has Bush's "strong leader" style of rule brought us?  What has fear and nothing but fear given to this country as a lasting legacy?

Bush now ends his Presidency with our nation in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since 1933.

Have we come full circle or what?

I think to show we have learned a lesson from all of this our new mantra for the 21st century should be, "We have nothing to fear, no matter what your government tries to tell you."

Perhaps this will serve to remind us (and Obama) that this country was once populated by men who were offered great, almost unlimited power and who had the strength of character, the fortitude and the wisdom to turn it down.

How very American that idea seems to me at this moment.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

How Gay is This?

Obama's invitation to Rick "Homos are the same as pedophiles" Warren to perform the invocation at his inauguration is indefensible.

I feel betrayed and embittered.

I feel disappointed and discouraged.

I feel like someone invited my worst enemy to a celebration I've longed for my whole life.

Talking to my fellow Obama supporters I'm getting the same feedback from them.

Contributing most of all to our collective migraine over this affair I believe are the multitudinous ironies involved, almost all of which are seemingly, ubelievably unintentional.

I mean for Christ's sake - we're liberals.  Obama's gang is a team of liberals (I'm hoping?).  We're supposed to do intentional irony, not unintentional.  That's what the GOP does when they rail about declining morals and get caught the next day with a hooker under their desk sucking the family values out of them.

We're supposed to be smarter, dare I say snarkier than all of this messy business.  Yet Obama seems to be willfully oblivious to how he has allowed cynicism's ugly shadow to loom behind what should be the most optimistic American day in a generation.

Let's have an irony run-down, shall we?

First and foremost there is the irony of the guy in this beefcake photo being super-friendly with a homophobe.  Because if this picture were any gayer it would be blowing George Michael in a public bathroom.
Second and more tragically there is the enormous irony of a bigot being invited anywhere near the inauguration of our first African-American President. 

Call me crazy but I think the first black President's swearing in ceremony should be a bigotry free zone.  Don't know why but that just makes some sort of cosmic sense to me being that African-Americans have historically been the most oppressed minority in the USA.

Third, for the life of me I cannot figure out why there is a prayer allowed anywhere near the swearing in of someone for what is Constitutionally a secular office.  

Folks it is a fact that there was no publicly sanctioned invocation at any inaugural until 1933 which means we swore in 31 Presidents (including Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln) without so much as one shouted "hallelujah" or muttered "amen".

Well it seems to me the country hummed along just fine unless you want to somehow blame the Civil War on a dearth of inaugural God talkin'.

There is also a "benediction" to be given.  A fricking benediction?  OK, are we at a church service now or a secular, civic ritual?  What's next?  Will we all be asked to sing along with the new "National Hym"?

I'm getting confused and I bet the rest of the people who believe in the Jeffersonian "wall of separation of church and state" are too. 

To quote the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

By having a Christian prayer are we not thereby governmentally endorsing Christianity as our state religion?

Don't think so?  How would you feel if there was a Muslim Imam praying instead of a pastor?

I rest my case.

You see I believe what happens between a man and his God, lack of Gods, or 457 Gods is between him and whatever he believes or doesn't believe in.  However this has no place in the public square and the laws of this land would back me up.  

So as an agnostic I find it frustrating that there is an official prayer at the swearing in of the most powerful secular office-holder in the country.  

I suppose it raises the question though - are things so bad now we that we have been reduced to publicly abdicating responsibility for our future and instead begging an imaginary man in the sky to bless us with 8 years of prosperity?  

Why don't we just do a fucking rain dance while we're at it?

The point is we are not a "christian nation" and any public official who leads us down that slippery slope even one inch by lending tacit credibility to this repeatedly debunked notion is playing a most dangerous game.

Fourth and finally -  Obama has praised Rick Warren's AIDS work in Africa over and over as justification for his presence.


Substitute the word "Jew" for homosexuality in that last sentence and you'll begin to understand how repellent Warren's associations are because make no mistake - Ssempe wants to purge gay people from Ugandan society the same way Hitler wanted to rid Germany of "the Jewish Menace."

That is hatred of an unconscionable measure and Obama should disavow Warren immediately for this connection alone. 

By the way, since the born-again Christian First Lady of Uganda basically gave the reins of the country's anti-AIDS program to Ssempe the infection rate there has shot up there by an average of 7 percent.  So instead of Rick Warren helping the AIDS problem in Africa (Obama's ancestral homeland!!) he is in fact making it far, far worse by pushing ineffective abstinence-only programs and encouraging discrimination against homosexuals.

In fact with his hateful rhetoric and associations one could very easily say Warren is encouraging violence against homosexuals, especially in African countries where the idea of masculinity is supreme and where the weak and the minority are not always guaranteed liberty or protection.

I could go on and on however I am going to try to go to bed and forget that this is happening.  

But I do desperately hope that Obama's office and staff are flooded with enough emails and phone calls so that we never have to see anything like this from him again.

Unless of course it's in another four years and the economy is rocking.  Then all will be forgiven because as Obama obviously thinks, hey, they're just queers.  Nobody cares about them anyway, right?

Right?

Wrong.