Sunday, March 13, 2016
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Thursday, November 12, 2015
This Way
I am in the car with my father. He’s at the wheel and he’s going
fast. We’re both enjoying the speed. On the side of the road, the
sagebrush is a blur. The high desert plain reaches off, flat and cold
and dry, heaped with lava rock cairns. The mountains battle a pale
sky. It is November and the peaks are powdered sugar. Ahead of us the
road stretches out, straight and narrowing until it disappears in the
distance.
My father has been working on this car for years. It’s a Volvo 544
coupe from the sixties. His care is evident in the gloss of the
paint, the fabric of the seats, the dash console with its stark white
numbers. I think it looks like one of those gangster cars from a
black-and-white movie, with the headlights in the lobed wheel wells,
the sloping tail, the hood like the nose of a surfboard. I told him
that once, and I think he liked it, because he gave a little smile
and then went back to talking about the exhaust manifold.
We aren’t talking much, just leaning back in the seats. The wind is
howling over the hood. I think my father is slowly pressing harder on
the gas.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Progress, or Civilization, As We Know It
Then what is the answer? –
Not to be deluded by dreams …
I. A Narrative
Before the advent of civilization as we know it, human lives were
nasty, brutish, and short. We lived, in fact, more like animals,
unable to exert any control over our environment, fearing death and
privation at every turn. We had only what nature supplied in its raw
form, wild animals and uncultivated plants for food and clothes,
caves for shelter, broken stone for tools.
In this natural state, we ourselves were brutal and violent. The
strong could prey upon the weak, might made right, and there was no
other law. We had no incentive to develop higher culture, because we
were always consumed with protecting ourselves and anything we might
produce could easily be taken away.
At some point there was a shift, and we decided to settle in one
place. We took control of our food by
managing it through agriculture and domestication, and we took
control of ourselves through laws and social contracts. This made us
safer and more willing to cooperate, and so we were able to innovate
in art, technology, and society. We multiplied. We began to dream of
grander edifices than the small buildings we had made. And certain
men among us rose up as talented leaders around which we could
organize ourselves.
Of course there was still danger from less civilized persons. So we
built walls to surround our living space, and we built massive
buildings to house the people, and to demonstrate that we could.
We had created the first city, and in it there bustled all the
activity expected from cities. We made further laws to govern it, we
divided up our labor to be more efficient and masterful, we brought
the fruits of our agricultural labors into the city to trade. We
invented writing to keep track of our possessions and who owed what
to whom. Soon, in the natural course of things, we created money,
debt, and taxes. We had the time and space to develop high art, to
further refine our architecture, to deepen our studies of the
mysteries of religion.
We prospered. We were safer, better fed, more productive, happier.
Seeing how we lived, the less civilized began to emulate our way of
life. In this way, civilization spread, out of the fertile crescent,
around the Mediterranean, into Europe and Asia.
As more of us joined the ranks of the civilized, we developed higher
and higher technology. We sailed around the globe, began the project
of exploring every dark corner. We often encountered people living in
squalor, naked, as animals essentially, like the stone age people we
once had been. Though they had to give up some of the older ways to
which they were accustomed, it was clear that our high technology was
the wave of the future rolling in. Though there were sacrifices to be
made surely, in the broader flow of history they were necessary to
allow for forward progress.
Over a few centuries, technology and social systems developed apace.
The inherent value of every human life became apparent, and we worked
to bring the products of modern culture to everyone. We began to
conquer war, disease, and famine. Around the world, people were
living longer, healthier, happier lives. We performed incredible
feats of science and engineering, gaining insight into the unseen
building blocks of the universe, its vast expanses. We began to dream
of taking our civilization to other worlds.
And
here we are. We are the height of the human project. There have
certainly been some hiccups along the way, some engineering problems,
some steps backward. But technology has advanced so quickly in recent
times, we have things now that would have been unimaginable fifty,
twenty, even ten years ago. That technology will surely permeate
every part of life, and iron out any kinks.
We’re on the cusp: all this time, civilization has been steadily
advancing, making life safer, happier, more just. If we can just
stick it out over this hump, everything will be perfect.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Answer by Robinson Jeffers
Then
what is the answer? ˗ Not to be deluded by dreams.
To
know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and
their tyrants come, many times before.
When
open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the
least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To
keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and
not wish for evil; and not be duped
By
dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not
be fulfilled.
To
know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the
whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is
an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and
his history … for contemplation or in fact …
Often
appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the
greatest beauty is
Organic
wholeness, the wholeness of life and things,
the
divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart
from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or
drown in despair when his days darken.
Monday, May 11, 2015
About to Fly
Some thoughts I penned in the airport before leaving South Korea, after two years of living and teaching there.
So, you sit in a cafe.
You speak Korean to the barista; she understands you and you
understand her. You do not know when next you will say these words,
have the feeling of them on your tongue.
The cafe is average and
the coffee bad. It is loud and full of patrons. A young woman spills
a drink, rushes for napkins. You have learned to appreciate coffee,
both when it’s good, and when its bad just for its presence, hot
and bitter.
The cafe is nestled
deep in the airport, in the international terminal, past the security
check point and immigration, where the officer took away your Alien
Registration Card. He asked simply, May I keep this? And
you nodded because you expected this, and in fact the process in this
bureaucratic country was in this instance surprisingly simple. Still,
a filament was broken then, one more strand of the many that tie you
here, parting like piano wire under great strain. Many of these lines
are stretched taught and you feel their hooks pulling in the muscle
of your heart.
These
are your last images of this country: a sticky table under globular
lights, everyone around you in transit, unmoored, the sunset over the
wing of the waiting aircraft. The ceiling of the terminal stretching
low into the distance like an inverse runway. Duty free shops lit
like upscale bars, egg-shell lamps, all products seemingly false.
Behind
you are the green monsoon mountains, furred in pines, and the granite
islands heaving from sea-glass breakers. Salt off the sea in the
wind. Warm night air and calm sea, swimming naked. Herons and egrets
hunting in the damp evening through the green rice paddies. Dish upon
dish filling the low tables, pallets of colors and flavors in food,
each precise. Coffee and beer and rice wine and liquor. Nights danced
down to morning and the hot sun coming. And all those friends, each
face and voice distinct, unique.
This
is one of those terrible wonderful moments, when its clear that not
one of us can be replaced. Not a moment with another person can be
replaced. Yet the past persists this way, in flashing clarity of
memory, in the deep tug in the heart of your heart.
Remember
this. Even this moment, when you feel adrift and countryless, when no
one near you will you see again, when you are in transit to another
life. Remember the feeling of your friends face against your chest,
her hot tears. Remember conversations in the night by the sea,
hearing the waves. Remember reading Spanish poetry, remember singing
in harmony. Remember friends and friends and friends.
You,
lonely and hurting, you have memory, as you fly to another country.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)