Strength

Strength without wisdom falls by it own weight;
The strength that wisdom tempers, the gods increase;
The gods abhor that strength whose heart knows nothing
But what impiety is, and it is punished. - Horace

The Difference

"The difference between us is fundamental. You don't care for humanity but think they are to be improved. I love humanity but know they are not." - Joseph Conrad to H.G. Wells 1908

The Eyes Have It

When the spaceship landed, the beings that got out were, well, hard to describe and I'm not going to. The main point about them, as we slowly came to understand was that they only had one sense, sight. So we called them The Eyes. The couldn't feel, or hear, smell, or taste, only see. They didn't understand hunger or cold or music or even dance although they could see it.

We tried to teach them our written language but they spoke and apparently thought in geometry. When we brought in our best mathematicians to try to talk to them we still only understood a little of what they had to say and they made it clear that they didn't understand us.

They could not see love, they could not see hate but they could see the results of both in a way. All that they saw was babies and killing. They asked why we would kill our own babies. They could see things like poverty, but they could not understand it. "Why does this person have so much while this person has so little?" they would ask. They saw only what we did, and not what we said about what we did

We could not translate cruelty, or kindness, they reproduced asexually so even family was foreign to them. We could not even explain prejudice even though we had always assumed it was about how beings differed in the way they looked.

We showed them Art, but pictures of humans or trees did not interest them. The feelings the Art represented did not mean anything to them.

We showed them scenic wonders and they replied that they understood the laws of physics well. If we were trying to explain gravity and such by sowing them Niagara Falls we were wasting our time, they knew all about gravity.

We showed them maps, but only the geologic ones made any sense to them. Dividing the world into countries, states, counties, cities, districts, townships and neighborhoods didn't make any sense they said. According to them we were obsessed with dividing thing s into smaller and smaller bits. The way we organized government and work and most of our lives into managers and bosses and committees and teams and supervisors is all quite unnecessary. It was bad geometry. They just didn't see it.

We showed them architecture, but they didn't like our architecture. We ended up explaining how it evolved and that led to religion and wealth and government and other subjects that they had already said didn't make any sense. Clubs, jobs, religions, sports, gangs, business, rock and roll bands, and any other form of social organization were all just forms of self imposed government. They didn't understand why we couldn't all just think for ourselves. It was about communication and exchange of ideas with each other, not dominance and subservience. They pointed out that we had a government of some kind for every grouping of people bigger than two. At this point the translators didn't have the heart to bring up marriage.

We tried to show them our finest scientific achievements but they said most of it was wrong. We were just babies when it came to anything that counted. To them.

Eventually The Eye people said that we were very stupid and they left. They said they were sorry they came.

We were very embarrassed. We began to look at ourselves differently and were ashamed. The first sentient beings ever to visit and they didn't think much of us.

Then everybody that could, went away to brood, and most of them ended up making love to each other with all five senses and then they felt much better about it.

You can see that.

Redneck

When did "Redneck" become an ethnic group? Are they not "white people" anymore?

You can see it in the way radio stations are programmed, magazines are sold, or TV stations are listed. If you have cable or a satellite dish you know you have the "everybody" networks, some would say "white", then you have sports, chick stuff, news, old movies and then you get to the ethnic groups: Black, Hispanic, and Redneck and maybe Asian depending on where you live.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do we blame the corporate conspiracy or Jeff Foxworthy? Is it a recognition of something that exists, or is it something foisted on us by Madison Avenue? Is this a way of letting the peasants know who they are, and that they shouldn't attempt to advance beyond their class?

Are they going to continue to group us? Get words for the difference between people of color that live in the suburbs and drive Hondas and the ones that... well, don't.

Are we going to develop a ridged class system like Victorian England? Ours of course would be based on money instead of social class. It's the American way.

And while I'm on the subject of the word "Redneck", I'd like to bring up "white trash". I find it amazing that people let this word be used regularly on TV and such in a climate of such incredible PCness. Not that I'm generally a fan of the PC movement, but whoever it is that's in charge of it, missed one. A big one. Perhaps I'm on the wrong track, but what I take from it is that here is a person who is white, and yet, amazingly enough, they're trash. Does this not assume that people who are not white are automatically trash? That's what it sounds like to me. I dunno.

But have fun you rednecks! And maybe if the rest of you try hard enough we can have black-necks and brown-necks too. It's a big country!

Model Car

It was the kind of a bar, where they aren’t going to offer you a glass with your bottle of beer.

Some bikers come in, but that didn’t make me want to head for the door.

It’s strange to me how white hair seems to go so well with the Harley Davidson look. Eventually they’re going to run out of baby boomers to sell them to.

There was a time when tattoos and all that meant something rough. Something mean and nasty. Hard experience. Carnies had tattoos, and sailors, marines, people who had been to prison. I especially found the non-professional kind the most amazing. That you would entrust a cellmate or some equivalent, to decorate your one and only body with something so permanent and obvious to the world was either an extraordinary commitment, or a really dim bulb. And they were always cliché, love and hate on the knuckles, sweet and sour on the nipples. Now it just means… hell, I don’t know what it means, but isn’t good. It says here is a person that is willing to make a rash decision but at least they’re willing to make it. They may inhabit a world where the future is only next week and after that unimaginable, but they are going to make a decision based on that and stick to it.

Oddly, it makes me think of a model car I put together once.

It was a ’49 Ford by Revell, or it could have been a ’50. I had to decide if I should use the decals that came with it. There it was. This is the big decision. Stock, Hot Rod, or Custom, these are life’s choices I guess. Right there in the box. Do you leave the body smooth and shiny and let the lines of the fenders do all the talking, or do you decorate and transform your car into something other than what God, Ford, or in this case Revell gave you to work with? Are your ideas better, or more relevant than the original designers’ intent? Are you worthy of that kind of bravado? Do you really think you can improve it? Or is it more a question of making it your own? Taking it back. Proving that you are the designer of your life. Your body is a tool for your expression, not anyone else’s, not even God, not even Ford, not even Revell can tell you what is right, or what is your right. Life is a test with no wrong answers and if your choices turn out ugly, or regrettable later, at least you made them.

If you take that step, and put on the decals, which ones? There are two more choices in the box. If you eliminate Stock, do you use Hot Rod or Custom? The Hot Rod-race car look with big numbers and corporate advertisements, playing the game, making the big money. Fame, fortune, the mainstream who are the winners in life because they proclaim themselves so… or Custom, flame jobs and baby moons, the cool, the hip, the alternative, the counter-culture who don’t see the winners as winners because they have a different idea of what the race was all about. They weren’t even on the same course so how could winners call themselves winners? They can’t even find the track. Once you get the ink, you've pretty much given up the other way, you have to decide and stick to that decision for good. You're not just putting the decals on your body, you're putting them on your soul.

I’ll admit I’ve always been a stock kind of guy. Maybe I like to hedge my bets. Maybe I'm chicken. Or maybe i just like the smooth lines of the aerodynamics better than the clutter and flash of the racer and even though I like a good flame job, in my book the guy that designed the body is closer to an Artist than the guy with the spray can.

That’s just the kind of guy I am I guess. But then I’ve always wound up with a drawer full of decals I wonder if I should of used.

Our time

Genetically, or physically, or however you want to put it, we, as a species are only built to live into our 30's or 40's. Mother nature, or whatever, or whomsoever you happen to believe devised this system really hasn't much use for us after that age. The system doesn't care a fig about us as individuals, it's interest is just in keep the bunch of us, reproducing, and making more of us, so that the world continues to be blessed by, or plagued by, us as a thing. You wouldn't want to run out. But physiologically, after we've had our chance to spread some seed, we start to go bad. We're only engineered for a short lifespan really. Prehistoric man didn't live that long, and it's no accident that his lifespan is about the time when you start to have things go wrong. Anybody that's over a certain age will know what I'm talking about. You can refrigerate all you want, but some jars you don't have to open. You don't want to smell it, you just toss it out.

It's only by our overly large brains that we've devised ways to thwart the system, to tweak God's nose, fool Mother Nature etc. and live to what we now consider a ripe(Is it a coincidence that the word ripe also refers to a bad smell?) old age. We consider this our due, but it's not, it's cheating. It's because we invented writing and doctors and such and we can pass on the really good ideas like, 'don't eat that, you'll get the Hershey squirts and die' or 'wash your hands once in a while'.

So as long as we, who have lived past our true usefulness, beyond our creators plan, lawless rebels slipping between the bars of nature's cellblock door, we should consider this our time. It is ours, we invented it and we can do with it as we like. It should be a time for spiritual searching, or intellectual pursuits, or carousing and drinking yourself to death, your choice. It is the gift of our ancestors, and I think you should feel free to to do whatever you want with this time in your life, because we as a people created it, now we as a people, have to figure out what to do with it.

Someone took the moon last night

Someone took the moon last night
I listened, I stared
All the light had been stolen from the sky
And all the lands were bare

Go into our fields and reap your weary grain
We cannot fight you

The buds grew into madness with promises of glory
The solitude of elegance
Spring leaves in the summer sun
More dusty every day
And every day more barren
You needn't tell me your lies

Someone took the moon last night
And hid the sun in shrouds by day
As if to blur the definitions

Pale Gray the sky, with bits of blue and amber
The field rose to meet it, pale in green atonal somber
A season's thunder held in grasses, clothed in gray

Someone took the moon last night
I missed it, I missed you
How it danced upon your features, ballet in black and white
The wind and night were steps in some routine
Dancers rehearsing scenes
The song gone missing

Withering notes of long dead hopes
Beat ceaselessly upon the shore of reason
The soul of my own free sung line
Embattled, becomes a cry

Someone took the moon last night
I wonder, I care
I cast my feelings to the dried white recollection
My grasp upon the past paled to transparency
Someone took the moon

To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to enjoy the present, this is the rational insight which reconciles us to the actual. - Hegel

An alliance with the powerful is never to be trusted.

"Oh this age! How tasteless and ill bred it is! - Catullus 57 B.C.

Stuff

People love stuff. It's more than a simple leaning, getting more stuff because we can afford it, it's a part of our being, it is what makes us who we are as a species.

Most of us control our need for more stuff, some of us don't. It's an obsession we all have, it's the root of most of the other obsessions, gambling, alcohol, drugs, sex, it's all about getting more. It's the first sign someone is losing control, they have too much of something. Too many cats, too many books, too many women, too many men, too many drinks, too much stuff.

I've worked on a bookmobile for the library. The kids at each stop would march on and each was allowed two books. Some took great care in picking them out, but even those who didn't were happy and excited about the prospect of getting some free stuff. And they didn't even know what money is about. It wasn't that they get to read, you have to force most kids to read, it was free stuff.

When you're downtown and you see the homeless people and the nearly homeless, they have a lot of stuff. They have it with them. Some of that is practical, when you see a guy in August and it's ninety degrees out and he has his winter coat under his arm, this is a guy who is planning ahead. He isn't expecting a change in lifestyle in the next six months, but that doesn't explain the shopping cart full of stuff. Or sometimes it's bags. Lots of bags, plastic bags, paper bags, canvas bags, backpacks, luggage. It's nice to see that the modern wheeled luggage with the extendable handle you see so much in airports has trickled down to the homeless. Reaganomics. They lack a storage facility, i.e. a house, but they want their stuff.

The first sign that a person is missing a fencepost is that they have too much stuff. And I'm not just talking about the crazy street person here, watch the folks on their way to work. Half the people you see are carrying several bags. Now they may be nicer bags, but they're carrying for more bags than makes sense. A woman has her purse of course, that's been the case for a long time, but now so do a lot of the men. They don't call it that, and they look a little different, but come on, it's a purse. And I'm not talking about the briefcase either, they have that too. So that's two bags. But these days that's apparently not enough. You've got to have a big bag hanging on your shoulder, and maybe a backpack as well. And maybe a couple in your hands. Lunch bags, a box of files you took home to work on, whatever. Now everyone of both sexes has three, four, five or even more bags they're toting to work every day. Every day. They look like well dressed homeless and I think there's a connection.

Let's talk about SUVs. When you ask most people that have one, the response you get is that they have kids and they need the room for their stuff. How did people get along before the SUV? Not everybody even had a station wagon and they didn't seem to have a problem with even large families.

I believe that people often buy cars to be what they are not. Middle aged fat guys buy sporty cars because they aren't, cube farm guys buy pickups to pretend that they work for a living. It allows you to live a little bit of a fantasy.

By the way, just as a side note, have you noticed how many people that drive completely "me first" cars have "kids first plates"?

But back to my point. If you look, there are an awful lot of short guys, wimpy guys, and women who are driving these enormous cars, or trucks or whatever they are. I can see the desire to be seen as athletic and powerful when you aren't, but these things have gotten so big, it makes me think that these people want to be fat. That's a lot of money to spend to let everybody know you want to be fat. Just get fat. It isn't hard.

It doesn't make much sense until you go back to the crazy street people toting around all that stuff. There is something in our evolution that made us hoarders down at the deepest level. And when our brains aren't working quite up to snuff, it's one of the first things to kick in. Or the last hard wired program to give it up. At some point it must have been in our best interest to be acquisitive. A survival technique I guess. Saving your nuts and berries for a rainy day. So we do it. Even when it's pouring out.