Imagine All the People, Living Life In Peace

What if the United States chose to lead the way to a world free from the threat of the dreaded "weapons of mass destruction" by disarming and destroying it's considerable nuclear arsenal? There are some schools of thought that think this would be playing right into the hands of the terrorists who "hate our freedom". Others might say that our having nuclear weapons is the only deterrent to all out nuclear destruction by one of the world's other nuclear powers. I don't know about all that.

I think it's possible that countries that don't have the bomb would be in less of a hurry to get it if WE didn't have it. It's also possible that at least some of the other nuclear powers will follow our lead. Hell it's even possible that we really could disarm the world by leading the way. Maybe not, but who knows?

What if we chose to "stand down" our military not only in Iraq but all over the world. What if we said "we will not be an aggressor and we will not retaliate to attacks on our nation but instead will promote a world of peace and prosperity"? Would we be attacked immediately? Would the Taliban or al Queda rule our country by the end of the week. How much good could we do for our own country and the world with the billions of dollars that we currently spend on national defense?

I know that these questions are idyllic at best and dangerously naive at worst but, maybe what the world needs is for somebody to step up and take a chance. I'm not a Christian but, I was raised Catholic and I do know that the bible teaches us that retaliation is wrong. It teaches that we should "turn the other cheek" in the face of an aggressor. I AM a Buddhist and, for me, part of what Buddhism is about is wisdom and compassion. Compassion for both sides in a conflict and the wisdom to follow a path to peace. The wisdom to accept things as they are even though they are often not as we wish them to be.

I may be completely out of my mind but, I don't believe that refusing to engage in war would mean an end to our way of life. I am aware that there is evil in the world but I'm not entirely certain that the constant cycle of threat and aggression doesn't play a role in creating that evil. Would it be worth trying something dangerously crazy if it could lead to an end to the insanity of war?

"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..."

from "Imagine" by John Lennon

The Dreaded "Nuance"....again

There's an interesting thing that happens in every congressional election (House of Reps or Senate) as well as every time a congressmen runs for another office. It seems to me that in every election there is an increase in advertising which blames the candidate for voting either "for" or "against" a specific issue. For example, in Ohio Mike DeWine is running a series of ads, with the taunting, school yard refrain of "Sherrod Brown let us down", that say things like "Sherrod Brown voted against body armor for our troops ten times".

There are a lot of things that bother me about this approach but, chief among them is that the success of this advertising counts on the voting public having no idea how the United States congress works. If you're paying attention at all you know that bills in congress are never so simple as to be simply "for" or "against" any one thing. This is especially true of complex bills like those for military spending. It is offensive to me, and more than a little depressing, that this type of advertising is not only widely used but also seems to be extremely effective.

There is always more detail behind any vote in congress than the black and white world portrayed in these ads. This is the dreaded "nuance" that seems to be increasingly absent from political discourse. If you read back to the beginning of this blog, you'll know that I supported John Kerry for president and I will say now that I still think he would have made an excellent president. What really hurt him (other than the fact that the Republicans basically stole the election in Ohio, but more on that another time) was nuance. I had numerous conversations with people where they were unwilling to listen to any detailed analysis of Kerry or Bush or even to engage in a critical discussion of their stances on the issues. The opposition to John Kerry was entirely distilled to simple sound bites about swift boat veterans and Kerry being for the war before he was against it. The fact that it worked so well makes it even more reprehensible.

All I can say is that I hope people begin to pay more attention and be less willing to allow their politicians to boil complex issues down to meaningless slogans. As a nation, we should accept nothing less. When making your voting decisions this fall, take a little extra time to look into the details, the nuance, if you will, behind the candidates views. It's time we made our representatives understand that we are smarter than they've been giving us credit for and we are unwilling to accept their bull shit.

Talking Bob Dylan Blues

I've been spending a lot of time listening to "Modern Times" the new Bob Dylan record and it has been a truly rewarding experience. I am always fascinated when an artist is able to summon the courage - or maybe resolve is a better word for it - to create a piece of work that stands with his incomparable past. Dylan is sixty five years old and this album not only shows that he still matters, it stands comfortably with the best work of his career.

There's a great interview with Dylan in the newest issue of Rolling Stone in which he talks about wanting to be compared with the other music of today instead of always being compared to his own work. I have to say that "Modern Times" rises to this comparison well. While he's not the same as, say The Raconteurs or Audioslave, to name a few artists with amazing recent records, Dylan's newest music is every bit as vital as any of the "modern music" currently being produced and more vital than most of it.

I don't know if it's a bi-product of the baby boom or what but, there is a tendency to compare so called "classic rock" artists of the 60's and 70's to their own best work. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, The Who, all of these artists have touchstone moments in their careers by which all of their work afterwards is measured. In Dylan's case, it's "Blood on The Tracks". It seems that every album he makes is referred to by at least a few critics as "Dylan's best work since Blood On The Tracks." Every time I read this, I am struck by just how ridiculous it is. It not only discounts the excellent body of music that Bob Dylan has created SINCE 1975 (the year "Blood on the Tracks" was originally released), it also discounts the place his music holds in the current music scene.

Often we think of older artists as being "past their peak". We are forever looking back and saying things like "I LOVED their early records" or "this new album is good but it's NOT as good as their early work". Sometimes, these statements are actually true but often I think they are colored by nostalgia. I think that nostalgia will always play a role in how we experience music because, after all, it is the soundtrack to many of the big moments in our lives. However, when we become too bogged down in looking back we run the risk of missing what is right in front of us which, in this case, is the depth and beauty of this stunning record.

"Modern Times" is easily one of the best albums of the year and, surprisingly, it looks like it will also be one of the most successful. I was shocked last week when I looked at the Billboard charts and saw that it had ENTERED the charts at number 1! This week it had only dropped two places to 3. Way to go Bob!

If you haven't heard this album yet, stop reading this and go get it now. Better yet, just open your iTunes and buy it from there so you can hear it right away. Albums of this magnitude don't come along every day and when one does, we owe it to ourselves to experience it.

Automatic Fiction #1

Yesterday, I ran across one of the best blogs I've seen so far. It's called "The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy" and the author writes short fiction based on random photographs found on p2p sharing networks. This is a fascinating idea to me. Whenever we look at a photo of people we don't know, I think we ponder what's going on in the photo or more accurately, what went on just prior to and just after the shutter snap of the camera.

In a way, this reminds me of the "automatic writing" practiced by the Surrealists of the 1920s. I don't get the sense that these stories are written "automatically," - I think they are carefully considered and written but, there is something, I don't know, improvisational about the idea of building a story from a randomly obtained photograph.

In the spirit of this, I'd like to try something similar. I'm going to call it "Automatic Fiction". The idea is to write a brief short story without first considering what I will write. I guess the idea is to "improvise" the story and revise it only subltley to correct any grammatical errors and make sure that it is readable.

So, without further adieu, here goes my first shot at "Automatic Fiction", at least for public consumption. I'm just going to clear my mind and start typing, wish me luck!

______________________________________

She woke up when she heard the car pulling in the driveway and immediately felt threatened. Glancing at her watch, she sat up on the couch and tried desperately to wipe the sleep out of her eyes.

"Carol! I'm home"

Jerry sounds edgy, she thought to herself as she flipped on the bathroom light and began brushing her hair. Jerry ALWAYS she sounds edgy she added as she looked briefly at her mostly faded make up. She decided she didn't have time to do much about it and flipped off the light.

"What's for dinner?"

He was standing in the hall, shuffling through the mail she had piled neatly on the table earlier that day.

"I..." she started and then changed her mind. It would never do to just tell Jerry that she'd fallen asleep and that there was, in fact NOTHING for dinner.

"I thought we could walk down to Tony's for pizza, it's been ages since we've done that. Remember how we used to stroll around the neighborhood when we _ "

The back of his hand struck her cheek hard enough to leave a mark and she fell back against the wall.

"You stupid cow!" he shrieked at her "I work my ass off to make a nice life for us and what do I get when I come home? A walk? For freakin pizza?"

It always amused her when he said that word - freakin. He sounded like a catholic school fifth grader trying to swear and not get yelled at by the nuns for it.

"Don't you mean a FUCKING pizza Jerry?" she said to him in a calm voice, almost not even realizing that she was speaking out loud. "Well, don't just FUCKING stand there, let's get a FUCKING move on and walk down to FUCKING Tony's for our FUCKING pizza. You don't want to FUCKING starve do you?"

He stared at her in disbelief. For a moment his mouth moved as if he was going to speak but no words came out. In fact, no sound at all.

"What the FUCK is the matter Jerry? Cat got your FUCKING tongue?"

***

She woke up when she heard the car pull in the driveway. For a moment, she lay on the couch, blinking at the ceiling, trying to decide if she was really awake this time. Was that really just a dream? God knows she'd never talk to Jerry like that in real life. Her life wouldn't last to long if she did.

The front door slammed.

"Carol! I'm home....CAROL!"

Calmly, she walked the short distance to his desk in the corner of the room, opened the top left drawer and took out Jerry's pistol. Just as calmly she waited for him to emerge from the front hall.

"Carol! Where ARE you! Did you remember to cook_"

The gun exploded in her hands and Jerry's hand went to his chest, his eyes bulging as he slumped to the floor.

Calmly, she dropped the gun on the coffee table, sat down on the couch and flipped on the television to catch the evening news. She thought about calling Tony's to have a pizza delivered but then thought better of it. Instead, she picked up the half eaten can of Pringles she'd been munching on earlier that day.

____________________________________

Well, there you have it! I don't know if it's any good or not but, it was fun to write. Thanks for playing along, I will definitely be trying this again.

Incidentally, there's a link The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy site on the left side of my page under "blogs and links of note."

Hello? Is this thing on?

Sometimes I find myself wondering if anyone reads this blog. Anyone, that is, besides my buddy Jim who has told me that he reads it. I guess it really doesn't matter that much but, I guess it does bring up the question of why I bother writing it if I'm not even sure that anyone reads it.

There's a lot of reasons that I write this blog. Probably the main reason is that it gives me an opportunity to flex my prose muscles and keeps me writing. Well, it keeps me writing when I actually bother to post here, which has actually been a fairly regular thing lately. I also write this blog as sort of a diary or journal. It's probably a bit too public to actually function as a journal but it is sort of a running dialogue on what goes through my head and is very similar in tone to my actual journal (which is written on PAPER of all things). As the title of the blog states, I also write this blog because I got a lot to say. I don't really know how true that is, after all I'm writing a post about writing a post today, but I guess it's part of it. We all think we have a lot to say until we actually sit down to try and say it.

A few weeks ago, I started posting to this blog again after a few years of ignoring it. Since that time, I have also started to read other blogs as I run across them. Mostly I find them through the "recently updated" links on the main page of blogger.com or by clicking those "next blog" buttons that appear on many of the blogs hosted by blogger.com. I've read a lot of them and have added a few to my list of favorites and continued to read them on a fairly regular basis but I think I'm fairly invisible to the writers responsible for the work that I am reading. Blogging should give us an opportunity to interact with our readers as well as the writers that we read (that was a very crazy sentence, I know, but I'm going to resist the urge to edit it).

I'm wondering, if there is anyone reading this, who are you? This question is not for you Jim, I KNOW who you are. I'm speaking to the other readers that may or may not be floating around in the ether of the world wide web. How did you find my blog? Do you have a blog of your own that you think I might enjoy checking out?

So, if there is anyone reading this (besides Jim, of course) post a comment and tell me how you found it, what you think of it and if you have a blog of your own. Even though I've had this blog for a few years, I'm still new to this in a lot of ways and I'd really like to know if there's anyone out there.

This may lead to an embarrassing moment if NO ONE posts a comment but, again, if no one's reading it who do I have to be embarrassed in front of? In fact, if there are no comments to this post, I may just start posting my perverse sexual fantasies here. After all, what would be the harm? Who would know about it? Somehow, even if no one's reading, it seems unlikely that I will resort to using the recesses of my sexual psyche for material (sorry Jim).