More Common Sense

It was long ago, and far away. I was working an extra, part-time job to help keep food on the table. I’ve done so for many years. I don’t remember the discussion that led up to the remark. The rest of the conversation, I’m sure, wasn’t that memorable.

“Shee-it, I hate cops,”my co-worker seethed.

“I hate cops too,” I agreed, as I pushed a board across the table.

“You?! Really, man?”

My co-worker didn’t need to feign surprise. After all, he was black, and I wasn’t. He was in his twenties, and I wasn’t.

I stopped what I was doing, putting a hole in the production line at the risk of getting some personal attention from the shift manager.

“That’s right, bud, me. I have a deeply fundamental problem with anyone who thinks he’s better than anyone else.”

“Right! And that’s the blueprint for a cop!”

I had made a friend.

I’m quite a bit older now, but I still think about that exchange from time to time. The fact that my agreement struck a chord is unfortunate, although I've always understood why it did. I’ve never had a run-in with the police personally, but I’ve had conversations with them, to be sure. I don’t care much at all for condescending personalities. It seems as though candidates for officers of the law are selected based on physical size, and unfortunately, attitude…a dominant one. Luckily, with age has come a necessary change of mind. Cops have tough and very often dangerous jobs. They get to see the ugly underbelly of humanity, and no mere human could do the job and remain unaffected by that. As a group, they know they aren’t well-respected or even well-paid, regardless of the challenges they face. For the most part it's a thankless job. I don’t think I could handle being a cop, and I’m not interested in the least in trying to be one.

But despite my change of mind about police, the problem of people looking down on other people has been a very persistent one, and one that desperately needs to be addressed. I see and feel it on a daily basis, I’ve been judged for my lack of personal wealth once again and quite recently, and I'm damned sick and tired of it. And thus, this piece was born.

It's my observation that people form circles, like wagons in a train. It doesn't matter who they are or where they came from. It's a social phenomenon; it's kinsmanship, but it's also exclusion. Think of it as a precursor to racism, or elitism, or sexism, to name a few of the countless “isms” that plague humanity. On the one hand it seems to be a natural occurrence, something to which we are all entitled. On the other, it perpetuates differences of opinion and amplifies divisions that the family of man could very easily do without.

In the thirteenth century, the first known use of the term "noblesse oblige" occurred. It wasn't a new idea even then, but the French at least distilled it down to just two words. Its basic meaning is that "nobility obligates." It was a step in the right direction, but being just two words it did not address anything specific, just a general idea that the privileged nobility bore a responsibility to those who were, well, not nobility. In particular, it did not advise the privileged to exercise civil, respectful behavior toward the less-privileged, so as not to come off to the rest of the general public like a complete horse's ass. It’s an idea that would have been an extremely helpful inclusion in the thirteenth century. Eight centuries later, the need still isn’t grasped by nearly the entirety of the wealthy, or even the vapid pseudo-rich who are just a bit more well-off than the average citizen.

Recently I had the displeasure of reading just a part of an entire book (I wasn't about to finish it) that attempts to defend elitism. It won't take a book to destroy the notions that book exposes.

Throughout American history, the so-called “elite” have been dragged, kicking and screaming, through each of the reforms that have brought our populace just a bit closer to becoming a civil, democratic society. Elimination of slavery, at least, visible slavery. Ouch. Damn. We'll get back to that one. Labor unions, that at long last provided a voice to the common man. I know nobody alive remembers the “company store” where workers were once required to “spend” their “paychecks,” which were actually only vouchers, given in return for back-breaking, dangerous work. Men who could barely feed their families thus were expected to appreciate the great favor of having a job. “Equal” voting rights. And so on and on. Elimination of discrimination, in employment, education, or housing? It's a work in progress, believe it.

This nation was built entirely on the backs of slaves and underpaid laborers. Its independence was won and its interests have been defended entirely by way of the myriad sacrifices of common citizens become soldiers, while often, the wealthy bought their own way out of the conflicts from which they would profit. If the leaders we have were suddenly and mysteriously to vanish from the face of the earth, others from among our massive, talented populace would step up to lead, and I believe that if it actually occurred it would be of great benefit to us all; for those among us who are most fit to lead just happen to be those who don’t wish to.

But the great bulk of the more privileged among us still tend to think that anyone who is not so privileged, by definition and lack of means is an unworthy moron, and that of course means that they themselves have the better plan for all of the rest of us. To those of you who believe you are part of the “elite,” allow me to ask you: How are the masses supposed to feel about that fact that in this society, the influence purchased with your money has usurped the guaranteed representation that we as United States citizens are supposed to enjoy? How should we feel about the prevalence of crime, allowed to some degree because it profits you? About the fact that slavery still exists, all over the world, including in this country? That there are still homeless people in the streets, that some among us have gone completely uneducated, and that many are still hungry? If I'm right, you don't feel a lick of responsibility for any of that, or for any other injustice or shortfall of our so-called civil society, at all. None whatsoever.

But, hey. Good job. We should all listen to you.

I do understand, though. If I'm so smart, why am I not rich?

I have an answer. I don't care at all for your fucking money. True, I don't have it. Egalitarian arguments aside, if having money means that I would become like you, then I damned well don't want it.

All of this is a big part of the reason the movie Fight Club is so special to me. It isn't that I want to eliminate civilization and to completely return to an age of hunting and gathering. I love it because this short monologue is part of the script:

“Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not, fuck with us.”

The truth is, there are no “elite” people. There are only those who think they're elite. The surer they are of their special status, the farther from any actuality of it they are. Such persons are not to be feared nor certainly, in any manner revered. They are fooling only themselves, and are only to be pitied.

***************

Over the Next Rise

     

      I just sat there in my car for for a while, head down. I had ten minutes to go before I needed to start on another ten-minute walk from the parking lot to my destination, my job, but didn’t feel like bothering. I expected I would...but why? Was there any point? In anything?

     I'd reached a place where I didn’t want to be, not physically but emotionally. There was trouble, and I had no idea what to do about it. I hadn’t lost anything, at least, not recently, but the foreseeable future didn’t bode well at all. After weeks of brooding about all of it, it seemed like a tipping point had been reached. It seemed as though I was about to lose control of, well, just about everything.

     And I was all but certain that I just couldn’t do it.

     Do what?

     Go on. Continue.

     I’m well aware that sounds serious. It was.

     For a Monday, the parking was unusually sparse. I've always tried to get the particular parking space I was in, and I couldn’t exactly say why, except that I prefer it. My hand covered my forehead and my eyes as I slowly shook my head. When I finally took my hand away and raised my head and my gaze, I beheld again the scene that now appears with this piece. The photo was taken with a phone camera more than a year ago; the view had just struck me as being picturesque. But suddenly, it was quite a bit more than that, as I considered what I was seeing.

     Work was to my back, and the rising hill before me blocked the view of some unknown area beyond. I had never walked to the top of the hill to see whatever there was to see. I don't want to, at least not yet. It isn't that I'm not curious, it's that I do not wish to remove that small portion of the unknown from my perception of that scene. I knew what was behind me, the means of making the living that supports me. When I leave that place forever, I may exit over that rise, on foot.

     I considered quietly, as I began to feel a bit better, life is like that. It's a process, a journey. We all live through some tough times, and it's possible that if we knew what was coming, we would be unwilling to go forward to meet it. But we don't get to know, and that's key to existence. We dream and hope and plan, knowing that some things will work out while others won't. No one can knock the props from beneath us if there are no props. I got out of my car and stood on the pavement, both feet firmly on the ground. The world may be moving about me but I'm steady where I stand. I'd done nothing wrong, it was the things that others have done or will do that had unsettled me. Yes they had affected my life, and will continue to affect my life; but like money it isn't everything, by any stretch of the imagination.

     Joie de vivre. Appreciation of life. Peace of heart, which eventually should lead to genuine peace of mind. I turned and headed on toward my workplace.

     When I was a younger man, I used to take off and drive, sometimes for a full day, traveling aimlessly and with no set destination. I took no maps along and there was no such thing as GPS. I covered hundreds of miles and then relied on highway signs to get me to some point closer to my home, often getting back long after nightfall. The objective was to learn about my surroundings. How quickly did the landscape change? How did other people in nearby towns or cities live? What did their surroundings look like, and how did those places compare to where I lived? What should I expect from the world, and from my future?

     That was a long time ago. I've traveled much greater distances, knowing where I was headed and how and when I would return. I haven't seen the whole world but I've seen enough to be confident that it's all there.

     But of course, I don't know what the future holds. I don't know exactly how I'll live or how I will die. But I'm confident that my place in the world belongs to me, and that I have a right to it. I'm confident that if I don't have a single thing to call my own, I will still be able to move on and to advance over that next rise. Beyond it, I will find something I've never seen before.

     And isn't it wonderful, not to know what it will be?

     When the next weekend arrives, I'm going for a hike in the countryside.

                                                                *****

Survival Bacon

 

 

Let’s just see how well you absorb what you read.

I wasn’t out on the road long at all, the other morning, when I passed a tiny fast-moving automobile. I recognized it immediately as a seldom-seen Austin-Healey “bug-eye” Sprite. I hadn’t reached the open highway yet but the other driver seemed intent on tripling the thirty-five mile-an-hour speed limit, as the growling engine wound up to a scream. As I was on my way to work and the guy was headed toward the residential area I had come from, I wondered, did this guy have a day off or was he, perhaps, independently wealthy? Top down in the morning mist, wearing a baseball cap and revving the heart out of the engine of a rare and expensive sports car. What a life, right? Must be nice.

My drive to and from work is fairly long, and I had time to think - almost always a dangerous thing to be doing. Like most people who should probably know better, I did it anyway. The topic of nearly the entire drive that morning became, generally, the many things about the world and about people that I do not understand.

For example, we all know, or should know, that the planet is warming. I know a whole lot of meteorologists and earth scientists, and some time ago I began asking their opinions. None of them ever disagreed that it is. There isn’t room or time enough here to get into the silly argument about why it’s warming, in part because it doesn’t matter why. If you can’t accept that humanity is behind it, then try to accept that the massive daily release of hydrocarbons to which we all contribute, isn’t helping.

So tell me, why are all of the full-sized pickup trucks manufactured today, one and a half times the size and weight of full-sized pickups of two decades ago? If it isn’t style, then what the hell is it? Don’t bother to tell me about the fuel-efficiency of newer vehicles. For the most part, it’s pure hype. That means, in plain language, it’s not just a lie, it’s a damn lie.

I should think that most of us have seen the videos of glaciers breaking up and dropping into the sea, and the time-lapse maps of formerly ice-covered areas that are now dry land. Instead of embracing the obvious direction and inevitable effects of unstable weather patterns and ocean-inundated coastlines, we buy bigger and more powerful vehicles. And we drive faster. Pretty much all of us do it. A few of us have hybrid vehicles, or fully electric vehicles that plug in and recharge. Foolish people. Energy conversion from coal or gas-generated steam to electricity is inefficient. Then we convert it back to mechanical energy, thinking we’re helping to save the planet. More inefficiency. I’ve got news, your carbon footprint is enlarged by your electric car, not reduced. I’ve little doubt that you’ve heard it here first. That doesn’t make it untrue.

I do understand that young people entering the workforce are underpaid. Anyone who believes that economic globalization hasn’t exerted great downward pressure on wages in the United States is a damn fool. So who is it that buys, and runs, those motor homes built on a Mercedes chassis? Good heavens, could it be you former hippies, you ultraliberal-types who now happen to have the cash?

I admit, I have and drive a car every day, myself. But I still don’t understand. Instead of seeking change or demanding change or voting with our wallets when we make a purchase, it looks a lot more like a final party before the collapse of civilization. Former hippies should be good at that.

Our inconsistencies are reflected by far more than the vehicles we drive or how we drive them. Recently I went for a haircut, and the sporting goods catalog from the ‘zine table in the barbershop contained an item that actually made me laugh out loud. I had to explain that to the somewhat overweight barber, who didn’t seem to be nearly as amused by it as I was. I wonder why.

“Survival Bacon!” The ad read. It’s in a sealed can, there’s a lot of it in that single can, it keeps for ten years, and it’s the real thing!

Well now I can’t speak for anyone else, but I haven’t eaten a strip of bacon for decades, and I’m still alive. If I can believe anything at all about the effects of fat content and saturated fats and processed meats, in fact, I will probably live longer without it than with it. If I’m packing away subsistence foodstuffs for an apocalypse, there probably won’t be a single can of “survival bacon” in there. But, hey. I’ll bet they’re selling literally tons of the stuff. Thus came a shift in my thinking, away from things I didn’t understand. So maybe I do understand, after all, about everything. It isn’t about the planet, folks. It’s about the money. Well, now. There’s a surprise.

There is someone out there, or a team of someones, whom we all need. We need to find and identify the person or persons who are responsible for the marketing effort behind bacon. What a job they’ve done! It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago when bacon was universally recognized as a food that is bad for you, that clogs arteries and increases cancer risk and weighs heavily against long-term functioning of the human heart. Today there are “memes” on the internet about “keeping” those women who are willing to serve their men bacon and beer. It used to be beer and peanuts, folks. Now it’s beer and bacon. Oh, I know it tastes good, I remember that, but it isn’t addictive. We need the people who have effectively popularized it to turn their attention toward popularizing new funding for science, because honestly, good science is humanity’s only hope.

But since it’s all about the money, and frankly, all about the self, there would probably be no point at all in expanding my written observations into the world of privacy, which actually left our world some time ago. All efforts to stem the loss of it were stopgap, totally ineffective, poo-pooed and minimized, and that battle has been lost. A geoscientist informed me that the polar bears are fucked too, his words. No efforts will be made to control or correct our carbon-emitting excesses until someone important loses money over it.

Things will never change, unless we make them change.

So, as I at long last turned into the parking lot at my workplace, one final thought arose in my mind that I still don’t understand.

What the hell was keeping that guy’s baseball cap on his head?

 

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: Foter / CC BY-SA

Every Day Above Ground is a Great Day

Remember That.

Why would anyone write, you might ask, if you can paint? Well, I can’t, that’s one reason. At one time, I’d like to think, I was a pretty good photographer, but the frustration of missing shots eventually got to me. Stop the car, grab the Bronica, point, wait, get out of the car, shit, it’s gone! That’s why I write! Because once in a while a moment arrives and it’s a sparkling jewel of a moment, and if you can keep it together long enough to write it down, you can preserve it.

That’s what this is about.

People say, shit happens, and brother, that is so true. It just keeps coming, falling from the sky, boiling up from somewhere below, crap from anywhere, messing things up. You’re good if you can step out of the way, but sometimes the turd trajectory is just unavoidable. It happened to me, gotta face that.

But the road of life is extensive, thank you, and the path behind me is getting to be pretty long. Admittedly there are always new situations to dodge, and thus I am never bored. You think you’ve seen or heard it all but you can never really get there. Someone or some thing will always step up and prove you wrong. And so once again, someone and something has.

I can tell this piece is destined to be a short one, but it’s an important one. At least part of the point is that nothing is ever completely controllable, even those few things that are a part of your life and no one else’s. It has honestly been decades since I’ve tried to reach beyond the events and circumstances of my own life, but I can see I won’t get credit for that. Have I tried to change things? Of course. Have I tried to help people? You bet. In my present state of mind, I’m afraid I can see a bit of harmful futility in even that. Yeah, I got hammered. For a full day and night, I felt like the shit that had hit the fan. Splattered.

However this evening I found myself dancing to Latch while I prepared my supper. A series of thoughts and notes had gone down on paper, so to speak, in my brain. And I knew for sure, everything was gonna be alright. In fact, life is truly great. It was a shining moment.

If anyone at all knew the challenges, that statement would carry a lot more weight than I’m sure it does. I’ll spare you because I’m completely sure you have your own. For my part, some things have just fallen into place like the tumblers in a high-quality lock. That happens too, thank God. Actualities? Not all of them, but if they aren’t then they are attitudes, and in my experience that means the actualities will follow.

Now just in case someone I know happens to read this, which admittedly is somewhat unlikely, nothing else has changed. I have friends and family and I still care about each and every one of them, quite likely much more than any of them will ever know. I wish I could do things or say things to bring that point home, but honestly, I can’t manage even that. And yet, be advised...

The distance between a problem and its resolution is always much less than it will initially seem. I know there’s a plan, I know there’s a place, and I am on my way there, as surely as everyone and “every thing is on its way to somewhere.”

I’ve lifted the last few words of that previous line from whoever wrote Phenomenon, a 1996 movie that starred John Travolta. I’ve lifted my title from a song by Pitbull and Ne-Yo, along with part of my point, that “everyone is goin’ through somethin’.” I wish not to plagiarize in any way. Both are part of the beautiful resolution that has enveloped me like a huge velvet glove.

Whether you know it or not, that big glove is a fit for you, too.

*************

Food for Thought

There will be nothing for your heirs if our species does not survive.

            Perhaps it was an uncommon swirl of cream in my morning coffee, or perhaps it was the gossamer swirl of altostratus wisps in a blue sky, observed as I entered the on-ramp of the local bypass. Who knows? Maybe it was even the missed breakfast, the one I didn't have time to prepare.

            I've written a lot of things, all of them products of observations, past experiences and a productive imagination. I've been advised by one who is more experienced than I that I should write something every day. I can't; maybe I'm different, but for my part I must have something in mind about which I feel an overpowering need to write. And yet, for some time, possibly for all of my life, I've felt that there was something to be written for which I had to prepare. I've waited, puzzled and wondered if there was anything of substance behind the notion, or if it was only vanity. This morning, some of the pieces seemed to fall into place. I began to think about the meaning of infinity - the “physical” kind of infinity, rather than the mathematical.

            It isn’t something I think about constantly, although the staggering expanse of the universe, of which we are a tiny part, enthralls me every single day.

            Recently I watched a documentary about the Hubble space telescope, an amazing technological achievement with a difficult beginning. Some time after it was made functional, its full attention was trained on a seemingly blank portion of the sky for an extended period of time. The objective was to find out how many stars were actually in that space, however distant, that the Hubble might possibly detect over that period. The result: three thousand previously unseen galaxies. That effort was upstaged a few years later, with an image revealing ten thousand. Said one authority, “It was looking at one small piece of the sky, the equivalent of the view through a soda straw.” Well folks, that’s what is out there. I admit, I’m a dreamer; but consider the odd similarity of atoms to solar systems. Tell me, is it just a fractal-like repetition that goes on forever, or might electrons actually seem solid, if one could exist at that level? What if, just what if, there is no end to the levels, such that our solar system is an atom in a much larger existence? And that the beings and planets and stars of which that is a part, are also atoms? Well okay, maybe I’ve carried the imagination thing just a bit too far. How very unscientific of me.

            But what if I haven’t?

            Might such a realization alter your perception of the meaning of “infinite?”

            By whatever means necessary, we believe, we will eventually crack the code. We will advance to a full understanding of physical existence. An object with the predicted properties of the Higgs boson, sought for so long and at such massive expense, has been found. The Standard Model suggests that this object is responsible for all mass in the universe, prompting some to refer to it as “the God particle.” And I must agree with the viewpoint that we shall prevail, given that we will survive as a species for a sufficient period of time.

            So. We dare to imagine a God particle. Imagine that. And I realized, there is nothing, nor could there ever be anything, that humans will not dare.

            Having reached that realization, I checked my watch, noted my progress on the highway,  and re-entered my bubble of thought, which had inevitably been invaded by consideration of the human condition.

            We dare. How magnificent that is! But that “sufficient period of time” haunted me, as it always has. Would that a similar expenditure of human endeavor be applied to ensuring our survival as a species. Extinction of species appears to be an entirely natural process, and that needs to be addressed. By any true measure, we are gods; and yet, many of us cannot even keep food on the table. We are at the very mercy of our home planet. We are certainly not the masters of it, by any stretch of the imagination.

            To those among us who have succeeded in acquiring an excess of money and of possessions, be advised...we are, at least, masters of our fate, not individually, but as a whole. There will be nothing for your heirs if our species does not survive. There are steps to be taken.  You must measure your wealth and determine what portion of our rescue is yours to assume. It seems to me, education could be the fallback priority. To those among us who have not acquired wealth, you have a stake in this that is not one whit smaller. There is something for every individual to do. If there is nothing else you can do, please allow me to suggest that education might well be the fallback priority; any kind at all for anyone at all, including you.

            And there you have it. The realization for which I had been waiting seems so simple to me now. It will never do for just one, or ten, or a hundred or even a million to come to the same realization. Let not those few who have dismissed the possibility of our long-term survival become our prophets of doom. There is a massive, beautiful universe out there to be discovered, and explored, and populated. There is treasure in knowledge and understanding. None of that will have any value at all to a species that has ceased to exist.

            So perhaps it was the swirl of the cream in my morning coffee. Or perhaps it was the gossamer swirl of altostratus wisps in a blue sky. But whatever it was, perhaps, just perhaps, it led to a realization that should not be ignored. Perhaps there is someone, out there, who has been watching, and waiting for it to come.

                                          **********

           

           

           

Beans in a Cup

It isn’t the time for this. I need to sleep. And yet...the cloudburst will not wait for people on the surface to get to cover. The tsunami cares not what lays in its path. The dull ache in my head and the fatigue in my bones won’t stop this from coming, either.

With the arrival of daylight, daunting challenges will confront many. Some of those people already know it, and some of them feel dread. To some it may seem like the end of the world, or they may even wish it was. Most of those thus challenged will make it through. For all I know, I may be one of them; I’ve been there before and I know I’ll be there again. I don’t know what my specific challenges might be, and it scarcely matters; at this point in my life, my only real concerns are for those I care about.

One of those very important people has expressed doubt about the existence of a supreme being. After all, if there is one, why would such terrible things happen to people? If I tried to reply to a question like that in text, you would stop reading. If I spelled it out it might not be grasped, simply because it was stated plainly. That’s too easy to refute, or to pass off as mere opinion. I won’t try.

Instead, I’ll place before you a flood of memories that came from a simple white coffee cup, held in my hand quite recently. The cup was filled with warm baked beans.

I had been doing something else, and I hadn’t taken time to eat. Midnight came and went and still I hadn’t eaten. I don’t own a lot of extra dishes, and it was past the time to wash them. At that hour and with known tasks ahead, there really wasn’t time to stop and do dishes. The only clean container I had in which to heat those beans was, well, a coffee cup. So I did.

I stared down at the food in my hand and I wondered how many others had eaten beans from a cup, or straight from a freshly-opened steel can. Images flashed through my mind like flickering frames of an old movie, but each frame was from a different place and time. There must have been many millions of times, I considered, others have done the same. Sometimes, no doubt, those beans were all there was to eat. At other times, a cup of beans would have been wishful thinking. I saw hobos around a campfire. Cattle drivers stopping for a bite. Soldiers in war-torn trenches, or in quickly-excavated foxholes. A warm cup of real beans beats an MRE, any day or night.

But in my opinion, you haven’t really lived until you’ve eaten the last food you had with others around a campfire while too deep into the forest to get out in time for breakfast. Or until you’ve done it alone. Real desperation is a feeling you get when you’ve no idea which way to go to even get out of the wilderness. Then, your very life is in peril. Imagine the feeling of finally making your way to safety. There are so many ways it can happen...feet pounding, lungs bursting, running for your life. You make it. You become so sick of the fear of death that anger takes over, so that all you want is to make death fear you. And you make it. You live to see another sunrise. The sun sets, and you see another. And another.

You may not know it, but you’re here to learn, and you will. I think the creator of all has a hands-off preference. The world, and life, will be precisely what we make for ourselves. The blame is not on a creator. Any blame to be placed belongs directly on us.

And now I’ll say it, knowing that for those presently experiencing the deepest sense of loss, it could never be enough. There can be no appreciation for life without the reality of death. There can be no certainty without the contrast of the uncertain. There can be no beauty without the things that are not beautiful. Throw eggs at a fan, and guess what? Even consequence serves a purpose. So curse reality if it makes it better for a moment, or doubt it if you prefer. All things must pass. It’s part of what we’ve been given. The other part? Free will.

I doubt that one was ever intended to be misused, or wasted. I have to admit, I’ve done both. But, the day that’s about to begin will be a brand new one.

What will you do with yours?

 

 

***********

 

The Burning Truck

- February 11, 2015 -

 

 

I didn’t know a thing about the accident, or even if there actually was one. The clock on the wall was indicating the approach of workday’s end when a co-worker stepped in and advised me that my usual road home was blocked in both directions by a burning tractor-trailer. “Check it out online,” he urged. “The local paper has it up on their website.”

And so it was. A shell of a truck, its blackened cab a mere skeletal remain with smoking debris of a fragmented trailer behind it, blocking the highway. “The road will be closed for several hours,” the short article declared. “Motorists should expect long delays.”

As the decimated truck was positioned in the narrowest segment of the highway between my workplace and my home, I believed it. There is a ravine on one side of the highway and a mountain on the other. It usually takes me forty-five minutes one-way if the roads are clear and dry as they are now, and if traffic moves well. The alternative was a far less-traveled pathway over several steep mountains, connected by many miles of winding secondary roads. When I say “winding” and “secondary,” that hardly covers it. It passes a wildlife sanctuary and a remote state park, and passes right through an even more remote state park. Then the road becomes treacherous to drivers who don’t know their way around a country switchback, or through the snowbanks and turkey-tracks of horse-and-buggy-land.

Of course I did it. Overall my effort might have been almost a wash, as the trip required two and a half hours to complete; but that was mainly because I wasn’t the only one unwilling to wait until late to set out for home. I had plenty of company, including big trucks, like the one that was blocking the highway in the middle of the better-traveled route.

For the greater part of the trip I felt like I was in a slow-moving caravan. Traffic was moving in both directions so there were no clear passing zones, and of course there’s always an overly-cautious driver who leads such long trains of vehicles. At least we were making progress. Eventually, though, the first real bottleneck appeared up ahead, and we all sat for twenty minutes or more to attempt an entry onto a somewhat better secondary road. You couldn’t see far at the stop sign, and traffic on that road was fast-moving. I opted for the path that I knew would be less-traveled and I made a right turn to get out of traffic. I then turned left toward yet another mountain, and realized it had worked. For most of the rest of the way home, I was virtually alone. And that’s where this brief story really begins.

It was an overcast evening anyway, and darkness would fall by about the time I reached home. For now, it was waning daylight. I had passed the last country church on the way to Jack’s Mountain and was settling into the much more pleasant drive, negotiating the circuitous route that must have been established centuries ago by wildlife and then riders on horseback, perhaps the occasional buckboard. The pictures in my mind were vivid and clear. I wondered for how long each winter these roads had remained closed before the coming of four-wheel-drive trucks with snowplows. I'm sure that thought set the mood for the last turn in the narrow road before it began to ascend the mountain.

And then, there it was. An ultra-clear view of the Appalachians that seemed to extend forever into the blue-white distance; fold after fold after fold of sculptured planet, the trees on each fold contrasting with the snow before it, the scene topped by even higher mountains nestled immediately behind them, those topped with purest white.

All of my cluttered thoughts tumbled to the stony pavement, scattering along the roadside as my little car slowed to a stop. I glanced at my rear-view mirror. I was still alone.

I sat for a few long moments and gazed at the scene. Then I shifted into low gear and began the ascent, my thoughts, my perspective and my world forever altered, yet again.

The township road is fractured, undulating pavement of the roughest sort, angled slightly toward the guardrails. It’s a wonder snowplows can even clear it. I have seen large trucks on this road, probably the reason it’s that way. Any tree of the thousands that stand along it would close the road if it fell. There is an overlook at the top of the mountain, and long before I reached it, I knew I would stop again.

From the summit of Jack’s Mountain there is a fantastic view of the deep valleys on either side. The height and the distance is always breathtakingly beautiful, but neither view is the equal of the scene I’d beheld before I started up the mountain. In the summer that grandeur wouldn’t be apparent either, not without the contrast of the snow to outline the shapes as they extend into the distance. Words are totally inadequate. Tectonics, compression, elevation, erosion. Upheaval, geology, topology, buckling, anticlines, synclines. Call any of it what you wish. “Majestic” doesn’t cover it either.

As I stood and gazed over the snow-covered valleys, I considered my good fortune at having come this way on this particular evening. I realized that my everyday thoughts are organized into layers; one handles my bills, my income and my taxes, another, my workload; yet another, the relationships I try to balance, whether at work, with family or with my closest friends. All of my wishes, hopes and dreams are interlaced with all of those things, everything I know or I'm curious about is in there too. There are names, and statutes, and expectations, and conditions, and properties. Materials, energy, craft, and technique. On and on and on. And I wonder, what exactly are the limits to what we can know, or imagine? Or are there limits at all?

And yet.

All of humanity is so small, so insignificant in comparison to this place. This Earth.

I have long believed that humanity will somehow survive all trials, overcome all obstacles and will endure for as long as the universe exists. I hope we will. Tonight, I finally have serious doubt that we can endure as long as the planet on which we live. Despite our mental abilities, we are so frail. We are so emotional. In our arrogance we do stupid things, and we obsess on trivialities. We prioritize money, and comfort, and sex, and drugs. We attack and kill each other to a degree that exceeds the habits of common animals. As a group, we don’t always look out for our elderly, or the weak, and often, not even our children.

The planet is so unimaginably huge. Take a hard look, and try to imagine the relative permanence of the earth. I have to say. If in fact our planet is a mere dustball in the cosmos, as I’ve heard it said, it’s one hell of a dustball.

And we concern ourselves with so many of the wrong things. It’s not “the way of the world,” it’s the way of people. There’s nothing like a real view of our limited place in this grand world to clear one’s mind, and to press the reset button for one’s priorities. It's as if my maker selected this event to say to me, “Well hey, did you know?”

This morning I learned that the driver of the truck escaped the vehicle before it caught fire. I wouldn’t wish him any worse off because of the fiery event that blocked the highway. I'm sure he isn't happy about it. The pavement where the event occurred was melted and scorched and the highway, I've heard, was closed for twelve hours.

I, on the other hand, was quite fortunate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nickle Rolled Under the Door

Damn right, the nickle rolled under the door. If it hadn't been just about the high point of my day, I wouldn't be writing about it. And actually I'm not writing about it, but rather, the fact that it was nearly the high point of my day. Sort of.

I'm not changing the subject at all when I say, slack time is dangerous. Slack time is wasteful, and it creates time for product developers to egg software engineers into making stupid changes to formerly good programs. Word processing programs just aren't what they used to be. Try highlighting some text. I've made every modification I could find to make, but you still have to try several times to highlight text, and all the while, the damned thing is trying to predict what it is I want to type. And I absolutely hate that!

Oh, I do know how to turn off the auto-complete “feature.” Doing that, however, alters or eliminates other things that I can’t afford to change.

I freely admit, I allow too many silly, stupid things to bother me. But consider, everything is just naturally a trade-off. Example, if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less and to exercise more. If you eat something extra you'll have to work it off, and if you put that off you will lose ground, like it or not. Everything is like that, it's just the way things are. But how much of that sort of thing is directly imposed on us by other humans? Why should that be so? The program worked fine before, but some product developer wanted to keep his job, so he persuaded his software designers to fuck it all up so it would look like he, the product developer, was still working. I say, fire him. Breaking something just to change it is just cause enough. The same applies to an operating system that more than once has failed to improve on the system it followed. But if we leave it alone, why, we won't make money! Folks, vote with your feet. Choose an alternative.

And as usual, I digress.

But not really. Because that particular list is long. The much-publicized computing “cloud” doesn’t even really exist, did you know that? There’s nothing new at all about time and storage sharing between networked servers. They’ve hung a new name on it, and now they’re eliminating your hard drives so that you require access to it. It’s a short trip to being charged to use it, which is the endgame, the objective. Not a one of the players gives a damn about your privacy, but only their profit. And then there are the “content deliverers,” who actually are doing far more than delivering content for their big customers. In actuality they follow you wherever you go on the internet, into your bank accounts, into your email. They want your passwords, they sell your data. My port scanner sees you people, and you suck! I block you, and you interrupt my ability to move about.

I shall continue to block you. I will not purchase any computer that has no storage capacity. I shall never pay for cloud services. No matter what.

So now, there’s a new reason why slack time is dangerous. It gives me time to think, and sometimes, thinking leads to writing it down. And it can become a rant.

Let me tell you just a tiny bit about the human condition that will affect you no matter what you do, and you do need to be aware of it. In order to understand where things are headed and what should be allowed or opposed, first you must know how things used to be. Some things were good, some were bad, but without any understanding of prior conditions, you cannot possibly know what should be acceptable, now or in the future. It isn’t just about history that could repeat itself; it is also about why no one knows what a block party is like, anymore. Why we know nothing about our neighbors. What it was like when the authorities had to get a court order to intercept communications. The “powers that be” can’t handle that they are not yet absolute. Young people haven’t lost sight of real freedom, because they’ve never known it. The generation that follows theirs will know even less. But it’s not because the information isn’t there; it’s because nobody cares, except the people who are taking your freedoms and your privacy and certainly, your money.

Today during my slack time, I happened upon an advertisement (an ad!!) that claimed that “all sixteen U.S. security agencies” were preparing for World War Three. Further, it claimed that this war was expected within the next six months. I’ve seen similar ads (a few months ago) claiming that billionaires were selling off their U.S. stocks in preparation for the upcoming world depression that would begin right here. In neither case is there anything to it whatsoever. My point is, the creators of those ads are human slime. They would love to be proven right, although they already know it’s senseless hype. It’s for the purpose of getting hits and selling subscriptions. Period. If their ad somehow set off a massive war and billions died because of it, what would they care?

Like all power-hungry, money-grubbing profiteers, they would not. And that’s what I wanted to point out about the human condition. Take care of yourself. Watch your back! “Question authority!!!” Trust very, very few. If any.

All of this came together because I had some slack time, and the reason for it was both sad and silly. I won’t get into it. I needed something to do, and I’ve stopped smoking, so I thought I’d lighten the change in my pocket and pick something from the vending machine that stands in the hall. Of course it was like texting and driving, but I extracted the handful of change that was weighing down my pocket and sorted for quarters as I walked. A nickel got away, and it rolled under a door. The door was locked.

And I guess it just kinda pissed me off.