Attoning for Sin

I guess I'm an attention whore. I was thinking the other day as I walked around that I hadn't been writing much because I had no focus anymore. I mean I guess I did, I love writing about politics, but the truth is I don't because I really like comments, and no one comments on the snooze-fest that is my electoral prognostication.

But in this confession I think I'm going back. Because I'd rather write than not, and I'd rather have no one following, and have all my comments be ads for male enhancement than hope I have an audience. Its a shameful thing to realize you're a shill, but at least the healing can being.

Who?

I feel awkward talking about my intent to pursue a political career someday. It sounds childish to me; equivalent to wanting to be a famous dancer or movie star. Not that I think either are necessarily comparable in obligation, but they seem to share an arrogance. I cringe a little when I hear myself say it because I know subconsciously I'm thinking "who do you think you are?"

Thankfully, at the end of the day I don't need to think I'm good enough. I think for me its good enough to say at the day's end that I went at it with the best intentions. To that end, I read this quote the other day and it struck me fairly hard...

He was no saint. Win or lose, there would be no canonization of Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. In a lifetime in politics he'd gouged eyes, thrown elbows, bent the law and befriended rogues and thieves. He could be mean and small-minded. But at his core there lay a magnificence of spirit, deep compassion and a rock-hard set of beliefs. He had a sense of duty that he refused to abandon for those whom Heaven's grace forgot - and he would sooner die on the floor of the House, or watch his party be vanquished and dispersed, than desert them. "You know you're right?" Millie would ask him, as he adjusted his tie at the door in the morning. "Yes," he would say, and he knew it -knew it- knew it like he knew the streets of Cambridge, the liturgy of Sunday Mass or how to stack a conference committee. "then do your best," she would say, and off he would go.

- Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century...

We've all read that quote or passage or something where a confluence of ideas we've had become clear, like the forged grains of our own constitution. For me, this passage might have summed up my political intentions and in those political intentions, a lifetime's worth of feelings, philosophies, and visions. We're never the product our grand ideals would call for us to be, but its good to know that great men before have achieved that greatness while falling short as well.

I don't need to make it a sap's story here, but I've been on the losing side of plenty of battles in my lifetime. Too poor, too ugly, too late, too unaware, or too bad - you sit there awake at night sometimes and wonder what you did to make something that shitty happen to you. I'm lucky enough to be able to bounce back, but I still burn up when I see it happen to someone else. That socially awkward kid who just wants someone to talk to them, or that poor son of a bitch who just can't seem to get some momentum going.

I didn't really get into politics until I was 17. Before that it was just my mother and my uncle reciting diametrically opposed platform planks while we went to get pizza, or for Christmas shopping. But politics to me is a cause you know before you understand it can be addressed in politics. So maybe I have my flawed days where I can be small-minded. God knows I can be vain and lazy. But for every moment I cringe at some social function when I tell people what I'd like to do, there are countless other times where I come around to find someone down and out, needing a job or struggling to get help moving out of their place and I remember that its a pretty shitty place out there sometimes. I can't say if I'll be a pol some day, and if I am what sort I'll be but I do know I've seen the face of Alzheimer's, and of single-motherhood and I know that I can at least do my best for those Heaven's grace forgot.

That justice is done, that mercy prevails. - Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr.

And again I tried to explain distance

Writers attempt to express emotions in innovative ways we've all felt before. If I die tomorrow, it could be said that I spent my life trying to express distance but never really could. Like all writers, trying to has been the most fun I've had with a pen.

What I think most of us strive to do is draw from memories that we've come to obsess over. I've been there when I was furious and starving and devastated and used up. Those times you don't have a choice but to focus on your emotions like a hawk on a field mouse. There’s nothing pleasant about it. As those instance fade, there’s a warmness to them that you never see up close. They're badges and hallmarks of the road you've been on. The distance from those memories softens the blow, enhances the worth, and strengthens bond. But this is a distance of time. We can't help but end up there.

I mean to speak about the distance of emotion, that proverb that says it makes the heart grow fonder. Bobby Kennedy was fond of quoting Aeschylus: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." And that’s where I mean to be. Not describe the action, which the ancient Greek did well, but what stirs in the soul and mind when that happens. When the bodys pain becomes the souls wisdom, there isn't another time I can think of when that happens; a perfect marriage of the animal and the spirit.

In distance the hurt is not erased, but the wisdom of the entire providence shows us why there was pain to begin with. It is an overly articulate emotion that I've never been able to express. it might be the some emotions are inexplicable with the tools of English. It might be that in that pain, we still find a lack of wisdom and I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

In the past there was color, and a goal. Things seemed virtuous because our emotions were clear and raw. We could drive toward the end without concern about the small things. There was no responsibility or duty there, it was a satisfaction for the id of two people and when emotions can be legally satisfied, there is an intoxicated effect unattainable in chemistry.

Somehow, in all the distance of emotion, there seems to be a magnified distance of everything. The world has seemed distant, and there were no dead ends. The world seemed like it went on forever.

I have, in my mind, an imagine of what seems like a merging of multiple places. the rotten-wood fences that divide dune from grass on those Cape Cod beaches that always seem abandoned come 3 pm on an August afternoon. And as you drive out along that dying peninsula, the world seems to climb, and the entangling growth of some berry bush covers the land in the girl doodled swirls of overgrowth that tells you you're alone; no one comes here and no one cares enough to clean it out. And the wind is always singing and it makes it hard to breath and on the best days it still rains with ocean mist. In the distance, someone’s created a camp fire in their own world, and the flames lash out of a makeshift pit and the seagulls cling to stay in flight.

Every now and again I'm there, inadvertently, the world just throws one at me and I'm there. Its not scene perfect as I've seen it before, but I can't help but thinking about everyone I've lost. Those winds, on the beaches and the highways at 3 am, they close in around me and my emotions become remote, there in front of me to explore in fine detail like an ape searching for insects on the back of another. Meticulous and with an intensity of hunger, and survival, and love.

And then its all gone again. We've moved on, or it was a passing scene on the horizon or someone calls me back to reality and I'm in the here and the now. I can feel things again as they are, and the cold clammy distance is gone. I'll never catch what I see there again, just as I'll never explain distance as acutely as I see it, and feel it. Its as defined by what I feel as what I can't feel when I'm there. There are no smells in a fading memory, I can't tell when you touch my arm. There’s just the numb sensation that two objects have collided into one another. Unable to breath. Off in a place the worlds forgotten.

I wrote this off the cuff in a deabte we were having on MusicBanter. Theres a link at the bottom if you want more context but I thought I'd just put it here and see if there were any other Tools out there who enjoy them as much as I do...

Tool has, for me, always been something of an anomaly. Because while every other shit band out there was writing the same old things with the same distorted power chords, TOOL was out on Mars. The topics might have been bumper sticker politics, but the lyrics were such a massive diversion from the same stupid "i'm going to be politically active by yelling angrily as a name-less 'you'." lets take Stinkfist for example:

Every band was warning us about oversaturation, about letting the television tell us what to do, how we're all just becoming whatever, and then Tool, who takes that concept and marries it with an even more meathead topic, anal sex, makes a masterpiece by never really mentioning either. I'm not going to call MJK a poet because I don't think thats what he does on albums (he may be privately, who knows) but he's got a poets eye for the world. This device that he uses in Stinkfist, take a character doing activity X and basically talking about Y (and X i guess) at the same time is exactly what Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath were doing while writing poetry.

Beyond this, while other bands were out there following a formula well treaded by everyone else, TOOL was trailblazing through uncharted territory, making music that was more identifiable by its erratic "mistakes" than its solos or riffs. Who doesn't always remember Sober's feedback at the beginning, or Eulogys highhat work around the end of the song (minute 5 maybe?). TOOL was strange as an entity back in 1996. The bridged the gap between Distrubed and Soundgarden, between Korn and Primus, Between Ozzfest and Lollapalooza and the art gallery opening down the street. TOOL's most major and underrated accomplishment to me was that the showed everyone what was really possible if you just did what you loved. Loved enough to really learn it, and put effort into it.

They followed no trend, and while they weren't an end point (I wouldn't say TOOL is the final stop on anyones musical progression) they certainly were a boarding pass to destinations previously seen as well beyond the reach of many young nu-metal heads. To leave them out of the best of the 90's is inexcusable and ignorant. its not a question of whether or not you like them, its a question of whether or not we need them, and if any act was the rope thrown to a man drowning in a well of fecal matter, TOOL is that rope.

Read more: http://www.musicbanter.com/rock-metal/43681-official-tool-thread-31.html#post871090#ixzz0orW0rAzG

I prefer my founding fathers to be elitist.

Is it me, or were politics more enjoyable before Joe Dipshit got involved? Now I have to listen to someone who gets his U.S. History from a cereal box and every would-be king cry about term limits. There are exactly two things you should know about Term Limits; they prevent you from voting for people, and no one who ever said they believed in term limits and would stopping running after 2 terms ever has...Lindsay Graham, Bob Bennett.

Somewhere along the line, people got the idea that everything is political. And the right co-opted the Lefties "The personal is political." It isn't. It never was. And when people try to make the personal political I have to listen to diatribes about the subversive adminstration, liberal media, and imperialism to rule an oil empire. If you've said any of this, for what its worth, I think you're an idiot. And I think you're an idiot empirically.

This country needs to start looking at policy like a math problem. Does it work? What doesn't work? What do we need to make this happen. There are, by and large, far too many emotions in politics and it turns everyone into a would be Jesus on the Mount. It should be said that I wouldn't outlaw sensititivties to plight. We have always operated on good moral principles. But if I seen another Presidential Candidate cry on stage, and I mean cry literally, about how they just love their country/religion/family/ et. all I promise to spread every filthy rumor about them and their families. Yes I think that makes me a horrible person. Yes, I think it would save lives. Watching a Kennedy documentry one time they said that before JFK, politicians were boring, sexless. They wore gray suits. I want that back. At least in part.

Having passions has even ruinined the way government works. With everyone a full-throated partisan, even deal making has become a dirty word. DEAL MAKING. How can everything get without making deals? When you condem deal making you essentially ask for a room full of grown men and woman screaming at one another until eletion time when maybe the otherside gets a majority. This is why I think you're an idiot. For the record, I like what Rush Limbaugh does, despite not agreeing with him ever. ever. The only thing I don't like about him is that he's so successful that he's spawned a bunhc of know-nothing morons who cry abotu family values.

You know what I think is a good family vlue? Basic cable 24 hour uncensored porn channel. It isn't liberal, its a parental litmus test. If you're such a god damn idiot that you can stop a 5 year old from watching television then you ought to have your children taken away from you. And not for a little bit, for good. I'm all for putting into place permits for breeding. Christ, yesterday we had a guy in Northhampton try to trade his child for beer.

And another thing. I know a lot of you went out and got liberal arts degrees, but somethings just are what they are. Like science. There isn't a liberal bias in science. You think that because you haven't met scientists. This is obviosuly a generalization but they aren't the most empathetic group. Unless by empathy you meant autistic. Rules matter. Physics matter. Just because Al Gore works for a party you don't like doesn't mean we can start challenging the laws of the universe. Admit that you got a C in chemistry abck in highschool, that you don't know shit about science, and that you just don't like certain people or policies.

And before you scream about jobs, let me remind you that its Economics that deals with that. Not Sociology...which is what your degree is.

Politics is a job. Like most jobs, it requires people to put in effort and thought. We don't let joe six pack up in a space shuttle, we shouldn't let him into the Senate either. it leads to terrible, terrible things. We had a Senator in our state, repping my district and he was the biggest scum bag you've ever met. So we voted him out against a guy with the political skills of a garden slug. And he cost us countless dollars in government funding because he spent his time saying and doing what he thought was popular. He passed out countless times on the chamber floor.

This is what we get when we elect your neighbor. Too often people think the Founders wanted every man to serve his time. This isn't Jury Duty, there is a great deal of long term responsibility. The founders assumed we'd pick from an upper crust until Andrew Jackson shattered that notion. And now Joe the Plumber, who embodies the worst of everything we have to offer, is an elected official. We congratulations Ohio. At least he doesn't need a permit he won't get for that job. If you ask me, we need to start tossing out every idiot with an agenda. You want to elect Farmers, fine, elect them. But only elect the ones who've never voted before because those are the only guys willing to listen to reason. The rest of these assholes are just waiting to be Majority Leader.

Going to Museums in Boston

its Sunday and with the power still being out, I somehow figured myself into going to a museum. I'm not sure what came over me, because if theres any city you shouldn't go to a museum in, its Boston, Massachusetts.

Some guy wrote in the paper once that he'd never go see a Woody Allen film in Cambridge because people can't laugh loud enough. It lets everyone know that they got the joke and that they thought it was a riot. Same goes for museums in Boston.

No one really laughs, but everyones so fascinated, and they all stand in positions that suggest that interest; arms folded with their hands on their chin, and an index finger running up the sides of their faces. They'd argue to hot hell that I was wrong, but all that feigned interst ruins it for everyone else.

The walk to the museum only drives this issue home. The city itself is one big posture. The walk along the Fenway is filled with females-only college and their high fences, telling me I'm excluded because my morale compass is questionable. I catch the patchwork conversations of the women on the front stoops as I pass by, sitting 10 steps up and conversing about god knows what, but they've all got a tone.

The problem with a city full of college kids is that they all think they've seen the light. They know the truth and the rest of us are ignorant. Theres a truth alright, and its sitting on the otherside of those cast-iron gothic fences. But what there isn't is a light. The reality of struggle exists out here, down off the steps and out on the bus route, and the freeways. I take a deep breath and tell myself they'll all come down from that cloud someday.

The Gardner museum is a collection of works from Isabella herself, mainly untouched since 1924. Years before the depression, and Roosevelt, when Boston was dominated by Brahmin Yankees. The ghosts of old aristrocacy still linger here, where all the mansions became galleries and historical societies. Their upper cicrcles of society never left, they just became more unattainable. These days everyones chasing them.

The reality here is that everyones lying about their station. The old money trust funds exist for very few, still too many people vacation in the south of france, and take in shows at Tremont - or at least claim to. I wouldn't bother me if I thought it was a few people, but this is what Bostons become. Theres no middle ground here. We're all still looking to rehash 1949, the upper crust against the waves of immigrants. Boston has become an affectation of reactionism. Everything is hammed up. Your diction is sharpened or dulled depending on which group you hate more.

A brief respite comes from a New York man who speaks loudly about something he likes, and laments its lack of lighting. You can almost hear the aghastment as people begin to rattle off how it would damage the work, or how gawdy it would be. You get the idea he hasn't said this about every piece in the museum and its refreshing to see, amongst the professors and the doctors, a middle class man on vacation, confident in his skin, apprecaiting something for its inherent value.

My fun is shattered when i come acorss a woman, speaking to a viola player who'd just performed in the concert hall, "it must be so intersting..." she says before I exit and she fades.

Right before the gift shop I come across a bust of John the Baptist. The wall says that prior to aquisition, the piece had been painted over more than once, and its vibrant colors are not reflective of its creation. In fact we can only be certain its john the baptist because he's wearing an animal pelt beneath his robes and his mouth is open to signify testification.

Such is Boston.

I grab a postcard of the garden and head for home, hoping the electricity is back together. The trolley darts out toward the leafy suburbs and I've had my fill of memories for the day.

I saw this; I thought I'd share

I saw this on Bronx Banter Blog. I hope you like it as much as I do.

From E.B. White’s Here is New York:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter–the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last–the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. . . .

The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions.

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.