Where's Writer Been?

Here's my video creation by way of explanation. I tried to embed it, but alas, you'll need to copy and paste the link:

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090320153215600


Also:

Sonnet: Love Is Not All

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pain and Peace by Moonlight

Yesterday, as I went skiing just after work, I came across a clearing I’ve seen hundreds of times before. A bad storm cleared this bit of forest a few years ago, leaving piles of trees like badly hacked grass. Even today, we’ve really just become accustomed to the turns around some still downed trees.

On that particular evening, though, as the sun set through the spruce behind them, several remaining dead trees stood highlighted, jagged and tall, rough sentinels to the almost forgotten storm, abrupt reminders that the “clearing,” while lighter than the surrounding forest, is not truly clear--and it never has been.

Things long since settled, almost forgotten, appear unbidden, apparitions dragging their shadowy history, rattling never attached chains in mockery. Past pain is suddenly present, and for no apparent reason, no visible trigger, and without welcome. Not as clear as it seemed. The jagged sentinels stand witness, the past not truly past, remnants of ancient storms uncleared.

Tonight, darkness beat me to Stoney Pond, but with a clear sky and a bright moon overhead, I decided to ski anyway. With slick, sleet-like conditions, the skiing was fast and not a little harried at times, especially tethered to a husky…but I’m glad I went, despite some spills. It was such a peaceful night, the forest so beautiful, a great night for a leisurely ski, just letting thoughts slowly sort themselves out, if not resolve anything.

I think about the quiet, watching the moonlit trail. I think of sharing these experiences, how nice it would be, how odd that so many people would think it strange, or place it beyond anything they’d want to do. Some paths just seem to want to be traveled alone.

Why is that, I wonder. People wonder why they can’t find love, for instance, but the truth is they don’t want it--they would rather be independent. The song “Nature Boy” is correct: “The hardest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love”--and here’s the hard part--“and be loved in return.” Or more specifically, to allow ourselves to be loved in return. Joni Mitchell is right: “And you love your loving…not like you love your freedom.”

I look at the stars again, back at the car, and strap my husky in the back seat. She’s an independent creature too--but she’s also a pack animal, one who knows without thinking she belongs with others. Humans are also social animals. Why do we fight it so?

A couple times in my past I disappeared for a while, not even close friends knowing for sure where I was or how to contact me. Just time for me and my thoughts, finding myself, sorting things out. I’m starting to feel the need to do it again.

Writer

Sparrow and Horse

The horse wandered lazily, stepping moment to moment, grazing, seemingly oblivious to all around it. The two sparrows hopped behind and beside it, picking at insects, seemingly oblivious to the horse.

One casually careless hoof would easily dispatch a fragile sparrow. But none of the trio seemed concerned. The evening was cooling, insects were about, and insects tend to gravitate toward horses. Or perhaps the horse’s slow promenade simply stirred up the bugs in the grass. Either way, or maybe for other reasons, the march across the pasture proceeded peacefully.

Balance. Even among seemingly impossible things.

Writer

Yell--it ensures you won't communicate

Yelling--the ever so effective conflict resolution. Where do people get this idea?

Remember all those times your boss yelled? Did it work? Or just until the boss left the room? What happened to productivity? Turnover? Profitability? Employee theft?

So why do people get the idea that yelling themselves effectively addresses anything?

I can think of only one answer--without any valid points to present, or without the patience to present them, yelling is expedient. It replaces the unwanted conversation.

Granted, I can think of appropriate times when speedy communication takes precedence over discussion. I can imagine a shop teacher, for example, yelling, "Put that nail gun down NOW!" But usually, it's the opposite of communication.

Even yelling at a dog isn't effective--the dog just learns (and quickly) to avoid you (and don't confuse this with shooing it away), making up its own rules and changing strategy.

Perhaps this just reflects my personality, but over the years I've had relationships end this way. She screams at me over the phone. I don't do yelling. I hangup. She's furious or sorry, but my passion has chilled. I like peace and cooperation.

This, of course, has always been my problem. I like to work somewhat independently, but as part of a team. Unfortunately, I live in a world where the thinking seems hardwired toward "every man for himself." Counterproductive, since we spend so much of our time competing instead of accomplishing, but things are what they are. So I usually work alone.

I'm no saint. I've lost my patience and yelled at times--and always regreted it later, as I achieved nothing by it. When I do, people freeze--partly because as a classically trained wind musician, I have quite a bit of lung power and vocal projection, and partly because I'm normally soft spoken, so the yell is a shock. And people just learned to avoid me, cooperation over.

Writer

A Hatred of Silence

I went for my daily run this morning, choosing as usual to run through the state forest surrounding Stoney Pond—a useful strategy when running with a husky, as I do regardless of weather, including today’s cold drizzle.

I was not alone. Some kayakers also decided to visit the water, choosing to shout and howl at nothing, an annoying if not unusual addition to a generally peaceful exercise, the sound heard everywhere. After all, why not venture into nature if not to disturb it? Campers blare radios, college students leave broken bear bottles as a record of a raucous party—aside from the understandable (to a degree) screaming children.

Why do people oppose quiet? Car radios boom enough to deafen not only the occupants (dangerously), but also anyone in the vicinity. Isn’t life agitated enough to want a little peace? Apparently not.

I can think of meeting after meeting, with both business people and academics, featuring mostly people talking to hear themselves talk, ignoring that someone else has already raised that point. Why? Such a practice only keeps us at the meeting longer, without progress. Richard Russo, in his novel “Straight Man,” asks about the last time someone changed thinking after hearing a cogent argument. The answer is satirically clear. We think what we think, shouting too loud to hear other voices.

I’m reminded of the movie “Jarhead.” The two Marine snipers featured have an opportunity to take out a target when they are supplanted by an air strike. They beg to be allowed to shoot anyway, despite that their action would mean nothing overall. When the war (the first Gulf conflict) ends, they lament that they never got to fire their weapons. Winning wasn’t enough—they wanted to make their mark, even if pointlessly. Needless emotional noise.

Think also of the political accusations over the past few decades amounting to “They stole our issues!” This is distressing—public admissions that the issues were never the point, only the credit for them and the ensuing power. [For me, if you can take one of my issues and see it achieved—you go!] It’s just ego.

Shouting to hear ourselves shout. Not discourse, is it? Why do we so oppose peace?

Writer

An Open Letter to the Hawks

Dear Red-Tailed Hawks:

For quite some time, I have enjoyed watching you circle above the land, floating on the thermals, presumably looking for prey. I’ve even seen you sitting on the utility wires, and a few times standing by the side of the road. Given your strong numbers, your clear proximity, and your superior vision (eight times greater than human eyesight!), I can’t help but wonder a few things about your behavior.

My land is increasingly overrun with voles. The unsightly valleys they dig, yards and yards and yards of them, exacerbated by erosion, just get worse every year. They’ve even killed trees, and my neighbors tell similar stories, including that the problem just gets worse every year. We also all complain about rabbits, and again, they are worse every year. Last year, they destroyed my entire orchard, save one apricot tree. This year, we are all growing large gardens, even those of us who decided in past years that we just didn’t have the time, largely because the high price of gasoline has pushed the price of produce so high. We’d hate to lose this to rabbits.

The encyclopedias report that your primary diet is rodents and small game like rabbits, so we were wondering—what’s the problem? Why don’t you swoop down and help yourselves? Granted, some prey, like birds and chipmunks, keep the cover of the trees, but I can’t walk across the lawn to the garden without seeing voles, and as I strive to keep the grass cut—why don’t YOU see them? Rabbits too—they get hit in the road everyday. Is your vision overrated? Or do you just not care?

I admit my species can’t do much better. Just as we can’t seem to control the voles and rabbits, the hawks in Washington circle above the country seemingly just as aloof as you to our persistent and growing problems. A quarter of the country’s people have no health insurance, and as costs rise, that percentage does too, so people wait until they must go to the emergency room, a much higher cost to the nation than preventative care. Funding and management for natural disasters remains inadequate, and past victims are still coldly left to fend for themselves. Social Security will need some adjustments, and even though it now shows a surplus the government uses to fund its debt in other areas, and even though preventing a crisis still a few decades away is readily achievable now, the will to do so seems absent. Pollution keeps getting worse, but the government continues to study it, deny it, whitewash it, excuse it. And education is so bad that we even graduate college students who can’t write correct sentences—and yet we keep cutting funding for education.

Our hawks ARE good at attacking things when they want—but only attacking. Going after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was one thing, but invading Iraq seems so ill-advised that even the administration’s party big-wigs advised against it; brushing off such seasoned advice, the administration arrogantly attacked anyway, confident of quick victory and ushering in a peace that would spread throughout the region, even to Palestine. Instead, we now see endless civil war in Iraq, thousands of deaths, and a drain of billions of dollars—all likely to continue for several years.

These hawks even blindly attack their own allies in their own partisan operations, to their own detriment. After hiring a well-respected Secretary of State, a seasoned general of the FIRST Iraq war, the administration side-lined him, replacing him with a Sovietologist—who has managed to sour own relations with Russia to the point where their President has threatened to re-aim missiles at Western targets. Although elder party leaders have stressed the importance of talking to regional players like Syria and Iran, the administration refuses to negotiate unless absolutely forced to do so. And when one good public servant accurately questioned the administration’s distortion of “factual” evidence, administration officials rabidly turned to punish him by destroying his wife’s CIA cover—an act of treason. They followed up by lying to the grand jury, in strict violation of the U.S. law they’re sworn to protect.

When anyone questions the hawks, those critics are ridiculed as advocating “cut and run” policies—even seeing their patriotism attacked. This is an old game, of course, as even early presidents like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were attacked as cowards when they opted to build trade with other nations instead of attacking them. Ironic that we refer to a strongly constructed woodworking joint as a “dovetail.” Building is so much harder, and takes so much more long-term courage than attacking things. No wonder that Jefferson famously observed that given the choice between government and the press, he’d prefer the press—and no wonder that the administration so hates and mistrusts the press. After all, I’ve frequently noted small birds chasing hawks away.

Perhaps, then, you hawks are simply judicious, knowing when to pursue, when to back away. Perhaps you simply choose your targets carefully, seeking balance, not vendetta. And, I suppose, you could fairly ask that since I have a dog who has already proven her competence against both vole and rabbit, why don’t I simply let her loose to address the invasion? The answer is that she wouldn’t be so focused, but would hunt indiscriminately, wandering far off our home turf.

Come to think of it, maybe we don’t have hawks in Washington after all. Maybe we have dogs.

Writer

When Patriots are Blind

Remember when George W. Bush invaded Iraq? How people lined up to insist Americans must line up behind the president? Now, thousands of deaths later, and with no end in sight, we still debate the issue, long after Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” bravado—bravado his administration still embraces while pointing to the flag and couching any debate in terms of winning or losing the war.

When will we decide that ego isn’t the way to conduct policy? That opponents to those polices serve an important function? Here’s what I wrote shortly after the second U.S. invasion of Iraq:

Imagine the U.S. and Iraq had made a deal: each country kills X number of their citizens, and in return, Iraq’s leaders step down.

Certainly no one would agree to such a horrific plan. Yet how is war essentially different? What comes from armed conflict that’s missing from a simple exchange of sacrificed lives?

The Bush administration wanted this badly--so much that to challenge Baghdad was worth killing Iraqis and losing American lives. And many Americans approve. Why?

The decision was hardly altruistic. America, self proclaimed defender of liberty, isn’t interested in helping the people of Burma, for example, despite their severely repressive regime. Rather, Americans seem motivated by a combination of poorly focused anger and a lack of foresight. Nobody defies America! Time to kick butt. Damn the logic.

The counter argument? “You unpatriotic bastard! This is the time to support our troops!” But this is a red herring. Everyone supports the troops--that was never in question. They’re doing a remarkable job in extremely trying circumstances. Back home, Americans aren’t doing so well. Apparently, it’s OK to protest a war as long as there isn’t a war. Right.

So blind patriotism rules the day, unblinking in the face of senseless rhetoric and obvious fallacies. “You’re either with us or against us.” False dilemma. “Iraq has to prove they don’t have these weapons.” Inappropriate burden of proof (can’t prove a negative). “Changing the regime in Baghdad will bring peace to Palestine.” Now THERE’S a non sequitur.

Consequently, instead of examining French and German reasons for their opposition to this war, Americans rename their deep fried potatoes. Instead of improving the search capacity of weapons inspectors, America takes on the job, with no better success. Can peace in Palestine be far behind?

The cost will be high. The Bush administration has made it clear that negotiating with the United States is useless--agree or move aside--and honors agreements only when convenient. America has invaded a country, ignoring United Nations objections, and is now viewed, quite understandably, as a threat to security. Since neither treaties nor refraining from aggressive actions will help against such an arrogant nation, the only solution is to acquire nuclear arms, the only thing that seems to get American attention.

Not much occasion for pride here.

Writer