9/11 Four Years Later

I just spent some time on the Promenade, spilled a toast, and thought about the anniversary. They put up lights on 9/11 every year now.

The Quakers had a special meeting, opening the house at 9 for a potentially 3-hour session for those interested. I sat for 2 hours, and two threads came up in testimony that I was particularly interested in.

The first thread had to do with humility. Mostly dealing with a humbling experience, a retreat from arrogance, and the feeling of smallness. Yet as the testimonies were laced in despair, I couldn't to help to think that if we aren't so powerful as we think, as we gain an appreciation for the powers of nature, or moments beyond our comprehension, there should also be a enhancement of beauty. Just as there is more powerful and ineffable forces in our lives, that which we take for granted ought to be more fragile, and thus more cherished and wondered at.

The second thread had to do with ghosts. My term, not others. But it ties in with the first thread insofar as, in the modern era there are more ghost like experience around us, and yet I tend to believe less in them. But besides feeling the presence of the dearly departed, we have artifacts, letters, pictures, movies, recordings and so on. The departed continue to haunt us, but we call it memorial, remembrance, reflection.

This morning for me, the ghost was the Times publishing this letter from Spalding Gray, whom I was deeply fascinated with prior to coming to New York, and deeply sad at his suicide.

They print:

Spalding Gray, the actor and monologuist, died in 2004. The following letter, which he wrote in the aftermath of 9/11, will appear in "Life Interrupted," a published version of the monologue he was working on at the time of his death.

For 34 years I lived with you and came to love you. I came to you because I loved theater and found theater everywhere I looked. I fled New England and came to Manhattan, that island off the coast of America, where human nature was king and everyone exuded character and had big attitude. You gave me a sense of humor because you are so absurd.

When we were kids, my mom hung a poster over our bed. It had a picture of a bumblebee, and under the picture the caption read:

"According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway."

That is still New York City for me.

There are points I could preach on from today, but I'll pass. It is enough to feel heaviness and regret to know that we didn't respond correctly as a country, and it took a far greater catastrophe to put this into perspective.

Thinking about security

This thought came at Friends Meeting today... so called conservative politicos really push a doctrine based on rugged individualism.

Part of that doctrine is people can only acheive their potential if things like regulations got out of the way. Free market is preferable to controlled economy, taxes slow economic growth, and having to worry about externalities (pollution, migrant labor etc) threatens growth. If they're not with us, they're against us; thus we proceed with the coalition of the willing.

The other side of that coin is that factors that threaten our prosperity are being dragged down by people who don't make the quality of choices we make... so they tell us that social security will collapse if we don't have individual retirement accounts; universal health care doesn't control for moral hazzard; the bankrupt or unplanned pregnant, got themselves into their situation, don't look to the goverment for hand out, they need to learn personal responcibility... and so on. This the government the US voted for in November.

But Hobbes had a phrase to describe this life of rugged individualism: nasty, brutish and short. It happens all the time, in the form of chronic disease, poverty, bankruptcy. It was sadly magnified in New Orleans when the most vulnerable were abandoned to the city.

We're witnessing the outcome of the kind of government elected in November... and even back to the GOP revolution in '94. We're starving the beast of government programs... like FEMA, by spending gross amounts for a trumped up war, we're cutting domestic programs... like FEMA, and we're cutting taxes in the face of exploding deficits.

So if a philosophy of individualism has left us exposed, what's the alternative? The alternative is philosphy of mutual need... of social security, universal health care, real international coalitions for conflicts that don't involve oil. We need each other to deal successfully with personal and natural disaster. We can't fear free riders and moral hazzard from providing our communities with real aid, and real protection.

As much as we're going to hear about the swelling of contributions, what New Orleans needed to avoid catastrophe was government aid, the aid the Bush administration has been ignoring since 2001 at least. This goes for our health care, this goes for our social security, and this has to do with homeland security. Charity cannot fully do what government can, and in this case, ought to have done.

This means Democrats have a greater responsibility to expose the Orwellian joke of GOP politics... terrorism is not about Iraq, it is not about about the patriot act; individual health accounts will not save health care, private accounts will not save social security. Voters needs to get real and get skeptical of what they're told. I'm not voting for GOP individualism, I'm voting for liberal communities, and acknowledge that the smartest thing we can do to prevent disaster is spread risk: the tool for that is government. we have every right to expect that from our government and they failed.

Fiction from Fact

It sounds political, but it's not... well not explicitly.

I started reading Jose Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I first read Saramago's Blindness in the FoFBC, the quarterly book swap I participate in and loved it so I wanted to read more of his work, but hadn't really had time between school, love, and The Moor's Last Sigh.

What I particularly like about Saramago's style is how he uses... or expresses some statement of fact or logic which then drives the way the narrative unfolds. In Blindness, it was often some idea of human nature, which led to a simultaneously horrifying and inspiring story.

The Gospel is what it sounds like, a retelling of the Gospels set more as a historical novel. What comes out is an intriguing portrayal of what Joseph and Mary’s lives were like, with gender roles, with Roman occupation, with geographical background. A far cry from the nativity scenes and iconography we’ve grown accustom.

There are departures from the scriptures yes, but scripture departs from its context.The novel is powerful reminder that as much as people believe the Bible is God’s word, it was written by men, and translated by lesser men. It also reminds the reader that though there is familiarity with the Gospel story, there isn’t familiarity with the story’s setting, which can be powerful for anyone who begins to the study the bible not as scripture, but as literature. Therein lies the political.

Lastly, it occurred to me that as I and my friends succeed and flounder in this mortal coil, we are the age at which Jesus began his preaching. Let’s not forget the power a young thirtysomething can have on this world. Again, the political.

I forgot, but Whitney reminded me

So..... I admit I read too much online. So Whitney suggested that I start blogging to vent a bit of what I digest. Little did she know that I set this up oh so many months ago.

So what have I been reading about? Politics, music, random happenings and more, some of which I can try to share here.