Rattlesnake (revamped, from high school)

Rattlesnake

For much of his adult life many of my childhood years, my father’s family was flung far and wide, spreading to all the corners of the United States. For some time, the nearest relatives he had were my Grandpa Leonard and Grandma Lucy Sanford; and by “near,” I mean in the same general region of the country—it’s nine hundred miles from Denver to Tucson, more by car if not crow. Every year, we would visit my grandparents, preferably in the tolerable heat of spring, avoiding the summer desert broil, to spend a week or two with them and generally keep close knit those ties of kinship that are delicate and precious in their shared pleasures, and which must be maintained against the dissolving forces of distance and modern life.

So every year, from the fourth to eighth grade, my father and I would pack up all that we needed—our bags of clothing and personal diversions, a big cooler filled with food and drinks for the long journey Southwest—and load up into the car. Some years, the “car” was a black Toyota truck, with a furbished hatchback, immense in comparison to a normal compact, but minuscule against some of the sextuple-wheeled monstrosities you see on the roads. Other years, the “car” might be a cherry-red VW Bug, a white truck (I forget which make), even, one time, a red Jeep with a soft top and no seat belts.

My father would pick me up on the eve of our trek into the desert lands, usually at the start of Spring Break. A faring-off from my mother, my stepfather, my brother Tim: “I’ll miss you’s” and “Call me’s”; and then we were off, my father and I.

It's a long drive from Denver to Tucson, following the colossus strip of I-25 along the purple-towering Front Range to Raton in New Mexico, trekking alongside the Rio to the dusty pit stop of Las Cruces, the big turn right towards Arizona, then the last leg to the Grand Canyon State’s second city: a long, sparsely populated drive. There’d be a fair amount of traffic around the towns along the way (Castle Rock, the Springs, Santa Fe, Albuquerque), thousands of suburbanites cruising from office park to ranch house to strip mall in the autopia that is modern America, twenty four speed limits a day.

But outside the prairie dog towns of sheet glass and plywood: very little traffic; sometimes no other vehicles in sight for hours on end. So it was lonely, in a way; nothing but shrubs outside the mobile front porch of metal and rubber, chassis and tires.

And yet, not lonely at all, not really. In some ways, it was perfect: an entire world to ourselves, fifteen feet square, my father and I and not another soul. We’d listen to the various shades of alt and classic and hard rock pumping out of the stereo, CD holder whirring in the trunk, and sing along, loudly. (Our musical tastes, still similar even now, were near identical back then; Dad’d pick up a CD, and what do you know, but it would become my favorite of the month?) But mostly we’d talk, the whole long night through.

Not just the general talk that you might expect between American males, sports, the movies, the hundred comedies of daily life; there was some of that, but much more besides. How Slavic culture is fundamentally different from that of the West, Byzantium and Orthodoxy and Renaissance (or lack thereof; Turks from the desert lands, nipping Cyrillic Enlightenment in the bud with fundamentalists' fangs). The intricacies of American policy in the Middle East, how solar power might enable us to finally tell all those corrupt Saudi sheiks to “go forth and multiply”, so to speak. Going further down the line and further down the road: how Clinton was such a scumbag! How lazy Americans deserved him, the “Well, I’m gonna get my aaown kicks, ‘cuz!” Generation (an exaggerated “ghetto” voice). Especially women, who were so mindless sometimes, so coy and manipulating (a recounting of those who had betrayed his trust, also ones in the Air Force who had been treated ever-so-gently, or promoted after becoming very close with an officer or two).

We’d barrel down the empty highway at eighty, a rolling bey of laughs and tirades against America's spoiled, lame limousine liberals. Dad was so funny, so eclectic of facts and knowledge, so wise and shining in my twelve-year-old worship. Reagan had won the Cold War for us, and secured the prosperity that Americans didn’t really appreciate for what it was (now, Dad’d been in some recessions, let me tell you!). A strong, conservative America would spread joy to everyone hard-working enough to deserve it (Americans first, everyone else later); I just knew I would be a fighter pilot, or submarine captain, or even President! for such a good and noble country.

Now, as I’ve said, it’s a long way from Denver and Tucson; and though my father was a stalwart soul (a few times he drove nineteen hours straight, and he always worked at least ten hours—or more—a day), it was agreed that some rests were in order. Two, usually: one in Albuquerque, at a truck stop, just snuggle up in your sleeping bag in the back, let your eyelids shield out the glaring white lamps, for a few hours at least. Another at a rest station on the last stretch, just across the Arizona state line, on the sea of sand with islands of mesquite and cacti: head to toe, shrouded in plush nylon cocoons.
“Good night, Sean. Love you, buddy.”
“Good night, Dad. Love you too.”

The rest station was fairly bare bones: a gravelly parking space for dozens of horseless wagons on their pioneer trek to hotels in either direction, an actually quite nice and new building equipped with clean bathrooms and drinking fountains. Like I said, nothing much to it.

Usually, with the first winks of Sol over the distant arid hills, my father would awake from slumber, and prod me to follow suit. A groggy, shifty-foot meander over to the rest station, wiggling between parked cars to the porcelain altar of the long-distance motorist in automotive Nauvoo.

Along the way to watering the morning-glory flower, I hear a faint rustling, restlessness—rattling. Tsisisisi, tsisisisi, the barely perceptible noise screaming across the alarm-pink sunrise of my mind. I’d seen the signs warning for rattlesnakes, and the Southwest is (literally) crawling with the buggers; could that be a big viper, disgruntled by my still-numb foot? Waiting to sink alabaster fangs twelve inches through leather and flesh and bone, pump gallons of milky venom into my bloodstream?

I stop, scared stiff: never, ever move around a snake (I remembered the advice), except away from it. Slowly, carefully, I turn my head as far as I can, one degree at a time; nothing there. I wait an hour (ten seconds), waiting for a recurrence of the serpentine alarm bell: nothing. Heart beating again, lungs exhaling a minute’s worth of carbon dioxide, I walk to the toilet, relieve myself, tiptoe with trepidation back to the car, sit back down, tell my father of the near brush with scaly Death. We laugh about it, continue on our way as the yellow sun started to rise over the pink desert horizon.

Those trips to Arizona one day became the marathon trip to visit Uncle Clark’s family in the Bay Area, then cross-country to visit Aunt Mary Jo’s brood in Champaign, Illinois, with thirty eight hours of driving and eight hours of slumber in-between. The summer after eighth grade; the summer I left with my Mom, Dave-Dad, and Tim to live in England for two years. Dad wasn’t happy about that. Didn’t want me to leave Colorado, for another country, another hemisphere, no less! And neither did I relish the prospect, of leaving the company and guidance of my father.

Yet in England, I enjoyed a transformation, a new awakening. I perused great works of literature, devoured books espousing the unconventional life, the sensitive man, the people’s revolution. British people are generally tolerant of eccentricity and questionable sexuality and other amusements. I was no longer Sean, awkward nerd in a rough American middle school; I was now Sean, the teenage philosopher, tearful and silly by turns, generally ribbed for being a Yank, but more comfortable among British kids than I had been among my American “peers'

And I was no longer Daddy’s little boy. I was becoming more independent, more my own man. Perhaps too much so.

Dad was center-right in his politics? Republicans were quasi-fascists—long live socialism! My father a little uncomfortable around minorities, homosexuals, women? I was the great crusader for all the world’s dark-hued, female, “pink” peoples, against the oppressor, the evil Straight White Man! Dad was angry and macho and racist and insensitive and manipulated me, making me mimic what he said, become a sycophant! I could hardly denounce “Middle America” (Dad) enough, and I psychoanalyzed him mercilessly. Certainly, he (the twenty-year veteran of the US Air Force and aerospace industry) was nowhere near as enlightened or liberated as I, the self-proclaimed adolescent Renaissance Man. It was all quite silly and ridiculous, really.

I visited Dad a couple of times while I was living in England; flew over with the ticket he paid for, just like the MP3 player he paid for (which I never asked for), the computer games he paid for (which I never used), the guitar (still broken-stringed to the day I gave it to my brother). Had weeks of fun with him in the golden sun of summertime Colorado. But tense, so tense, with my unspoken resentment of all he seemed to stand for, bridling at his “suggesting” I spend the last two years of high school with him—followed by attendance at an in-state university, studying engineering or some such practical science, and then on to a career in architecture or another things that “I know you like so much”. (I had, in eighth grade; now, I wanted to be a great intellectual, a writer). Tense, with the barely realized fear of failing to meet the standards he must have for me, to be a good chip off the old block.

Flash-forward two years, to my senior year of high school. I've moved again, to Misawa Air Force Base in rural northern Japan. I watched the Twin Towers fall in New York after our flight was grounded in Anchorage, Alaska; have started to read something other than Commie literature; and am on the cusp of adulthood (as I see it), preparing to graduate high school and go to college.

I've spent a few summers visiting with my father, and I've been surprised how laid back he really is, considering his lifestyle (so many hours at the office!). He’s funny, and jovial, and likes his fun out of doors, in the mountains and rivers. I can joke easily with him, about women, about all the “guy things”. He’s not half as evil as I had thought, in the heat of my initial youthful rebellion.

Some introspective, and retrospective, is in order. Lessee: Dad helped build my foundation as an intellectual, with those endless political discussions. He always encouraged and supported me in my endeavors. He taught me how to have fun through physical activity, on nature hikes. Never yelled at me, never seemed angry at me. And half his manipulation, or anger? My own illusions, the paranoid projection of a teenager with something to prove.

Yes, he is relatively tense; comes with his life, with his job; school, and life, have taught me a little about stress. He can come off as a little unreconstructed, particular towards women and homosexuals. And I have always feel dominated by him; and yet, all little boys worship their fathers, and are supplicant before them; what surprise that I emulated his philosophy of life, before beginning to find my own?

On reflection, as a teenager I have been rather cruel to my father, unforgivably unforgiving and intolerably intolerable; funny, how such a self-congratulating “liberal” should have sympathy and understanding for everybody but his own flesh and blood. And now, my eighteen-year old self feels so distant from him. I have been a bad son, in some sense, but I know Dad would torture himself, for divorcing my mother, for not always being there for me (he always has been there). I feel so separated from him, geographically and emotionally, even mentally, and a little empty as a result: missing the bond of masculine affection that can only really be shared with one's father. I hope for a reconciliation, someday, to have the manly discussion of our relationship and our feelings, and to resolve the matter openly, for once. I hope to get my father back, and to be his son once more.

And in the distance, I hear a rattling.

Reflexive Libertarian Liberal-Bashing

As some of you may know (hell, I've been trumpeting it annoyingly), over the last few months I have taken a much more libertarian view of things. I have many reasons for this, which I'd be more than glad to get into sometime.

So, I identify as a libertarian, and I consequently disagree with much of the conventional liberal agenda. However, it disturbs me a little bit when libertarians reflexively bash liberals/Democrats. It's understandable; after all, that's the party in power, and they are pushing many things disagreeable to libertarians (mandatory subsidized health care, massive economic bailouts, increased regulations, etc).

But I generally think liberals/Democrats/progressives mean well, and even have most of the right values and ideals, even if they misdiagnose the problems, or prescribe the wrong solutions. After all, I spent most of the last ten years being a socialist/progressive.

Perhaps more importantly, libertarianism originated as a movement of the Left, ie, classical liberalism; and I think it would be a mistake to get too cozy with the conservative/Republican crowd (after all, look what THEY do in terms of individual liberty, sane foreign policy, and economic laissez-faire). As Dean Russell noted in 1952:

"The first leftist would not be popular in America today. That is true because the original leftists wanted to abolish government controls over industry, trade, and the professions. They wanted wages, prices, and profits to be determined by competition in a free market, and not by government decree. They were pledged to free their economy from government planning, and to remove the government-guaranteed special privileges of guilds, unions, and associations whose members were banded together to use the law to set the price of their labor or capital or product above what it would be in a free market." http://mises.org/story/3425

Just a thought. Libertarianism should be more a left-wing (ie, forward-looking, open-minded, creative and liberating) rather than right-wing (backward-looking, defensive, hostile) movement.

Jacked (A Poem)

A door slammed shut, and then shrug off
threads of the cares of day
Sit down before the altar of
The drug, the beckoning Fetish.

A lilting siren song invites
The user to begin his session,
He swears he'll get just this one, quick hit
even as the light begin to number his eyes.

Tap the veins, depress the plunger,
And he is taken out of this world:
Jesters and troubadours, the movements of faraway rebels and kinds.
The chatter of friends, and the lure of effortless
Flesh.

He goes deeper down now, racing as each vision passes
To find the next high.
The world passes by, each sound pressing onward
To the final stroke of night.

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

The junkie slips off the needle, stands up.
His mind befogged,
His eyeballs burning,
His very sinews whining and strung out.
He has overdone it again.

To be free of that Fetish, that Drug,
Would be to free his Mind, his Time, his Life
To an ever-expanding world
Of physical possibilities.

The user asks himself a question:
Does he truly master the Machine?
Or, is he plugged into It?

Universal Inclusive vs. Sectarian Exclusive Values

One argument that sectarian fundamentalists make--Christians, Muslims, or, for that matter, militant atheists or Marxists--for their particular ideology is that under their preferred set of values, ideals and principles, everyone would benefit equally,and a new and complete utopia would be enjoyed all. Even putting aside whether any of these ideologies could actually work, this is a logically flawed statement. This is why it is flawed:

Certain values can be said to be universal, and essentially inclusive of all people, of all human beings. These include such values as freedom; equality or at least equity; individual choice and autonomy; compassion; friendship; reason; and creativity, imagination, and/or enterprise. These values are universal, and inclusive, because all people can embrace them and realize them in the world, even while experiencing very divergent identities and situations otherwise. To believe in liberty, justice, and other humanistic values, there is no obstacle in being Christian, Muslim, pagan or agnostic; in being American, Chinese, or Somali; in being young, old, rich, poor, handicapped, or gay. All that is required is that you are a human being, who desires for oneself and other human beings the best things that life can bring: love, freedom, happiness, fulfillment, self-worth and dignity. That is why these are universal values: they are "basic common denominator" values upon which everyone can agree, regardless of particular demographic or other traits.

Sectarian, exclusive values, however, are of a different nature. If you are a fundamentalist Christian, and insist upon the acceptance of Christ and the practice of Christianity as the sole route to heaven and obtaining real human happiness, this is by definition a particularist and exclusive claim; for it allows full happiness, full value, not to any and all human beings, but to only a particular category of humans, that is, practicing, devout Christians, to the exclusion of non-Christians. If you are non-Christian, you may be tolerated, prayed for, even loved and accepted after a certain manner; but an exclusive claim for Christianity as the path to happiness cannot allow for you as a non-Christian to be entirely fulfilled, or to be fully loved and respected as you are, because the assumption is made that these things are contingent on the belief in Christ. The same holds true for an exclusionary Islam, an exclusionary Wicca, or an exclusionary atheism as well.

This is not to say that one can't follow a certain religion or ideology, and even believe it to be the best choice or path for oneself and others, while simultaneously upholding the universal, inclusive values. It is more a matter of how you are a Christian, or Muslim, or so forth, than necessarily whether and which you are in particular. If you are a Christian, and worship Christ and believe in Him as the best salvation for all humankind; yet can still recognize other positive, viewpoints as being valid, at least as applies to the material world; and therefore work for liberty, justice, and fulfillment for and with all people, irrespective of their particular religious or ideological choices and beliefs; then you can be both a devout believer, and a humanist as well.

Thus, humanist values supersede particular sectarian values not only because they are universal in their enjoyment and application; but for the specific reason that, while a fundamentalist claim necessarily denies a full and universal humanism, humanism does not deny but rather allows people to follow any number of additional belief systems as well, provided individuals do not deny full worth and dignity to followers of different beliefs.