Butting Heads

R.I.P. Jdimytai Damour

2008-12-02T10:07:00.001-08:00

A man was STOMPED TO DEATH BY MAD SHOPPERS in a WalMart on Long Island in the early morning of the day after Thanksgiving.

I keep trying to write more about this, but each time I sit down at the keyboard to take another crack at it I just stare at the screen and shake my head; speechless in astonishment.

Right now I'm playing my own little collection of iTunes Christmas music, something I generally start as soon as Santa comes riding along Broadway at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Watching the parade is for me a sort of guilty pleasure every Thanksgiving. I love the hour of Broadway previews and dancing that takes place in Herald Square as the parade inches its way toward Macys. By the time the Rockettes literally kick off the parade presentation itself I am already a hopeless mark for the forthcoming orgy of marketing miasma, and I know it. Nonetheless I watch, I tear up at the programmed moments, and I grin stupidly at each hyper inflated balloon soaring above the street like the hopes of retailers everywhere.

I am a hopeless shill for the capitalist holiday season. I'm not really comfortable with that, but it happens... and it happens every year. Most of the time, the way I shop for Christmas is to look at things along the way and then go out in a last minute shopping frenzy that makes me feel like one of Santa's elves. It's a stupid personal tradition, but it's me.

This year I have seen a number of people, like my old friend Rev. Billy, call for not buying and for learning a new way of caring and festing, and I've listened, and at least partly agreed with, the desperate call for people to shop enthusiastically in order to bolster our stumbling economy. To me BOTH of these perspectives have validity.

At the same time, I absolutely agree with Rev. Billy when he declares that "you don't have to BUY a gift to GIVE a gift."

But this thing that happened on Friday... It's a whole different beast. People in a feeding frenzy at a "door buster sale" who literally busted the doors and trampled the man standing behind them. There are calls to stop such sales and there are attacks on WalMart (and heaven knows that I am no friend of WalMart) but to me, this isn't about stores, or sales, or shopping... it's about people and greed and an uncontrollable addiction to STUFF.

Something is desperately wrong in our brains when this kind of scene can be played out so easily and with so little astonishment.

I still haven't figured out how to respond to this, but I know that I, somehow, must respond.

What will YOU do? Give it some thought... Let me know.

In the meantime, from Bruce Cockburn's album "Life Short Call Now" here's a song for your Xmas Shopping Pleasure.

Erase My Name... Or Write It As You Will

2008-11-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

Last night Keith Olbermann made comment on the collapse of Prop 8 in California and it's worth SEVERAL watchings.

I have been mulling over some kind of response to the issue of prop 8 in California since it first appeared on the ballot (along with laws which passed in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas as well), and I have yet to come to terms with the wording to explain how I feel. Most basically, I feel like Olbermann hits the nail soundly on the head. It is completely incomprehensible to me how people can begrudge other people the very basic reality of acknowledging, with full celebration and heart felt joy, LOVE.

I am particularly at a loss when considering the response of people who claim to be followers of the "Prince of Peace," a man who specifically declared the fundamental basics of loving one's neighbor as one's self.

I agree wholeheartedly with my friend Zach, who writes this morning of the need to remove the concept of marriage from the constitution entirely... though I disagree with his proposed methodology. THAT however is for a different (and perhaps shared) blog.

As for me... I take heart from the words of Clarence Darrow (and Omar Khayam) that Olbermann uses to close his commentary (and posted in the title above).

After a lifetime in "the church" I'm done. You can remove my name... erase it from the book... I want nothing to do with a community of people that choose to live with such hypocrisy and hate, and I want no more to do with trying to "bring them around." I would prefer, for all time, that my name be written "in the book of love" rather than in any book of exclusivity and division. I will not join in fellowship with those who choose to exclude people for who they are while claiming to love and welcome all.

I will continue my personal spiritual quest, for that is a part of who I am and I most certainly can't let go (whether because of temporal lobe epilepsy or a deeper apprehension of the truth remains to be seen). I will continue to fellowship in the churches like Glide Memorial where I am a member and Grace Cathedral where I regularly attend because they are open and affirming and welcoming to all, but I will not even darken the doorways of "houses of worship" who seek to exclude - by sentiment, declaration, or vote - those whom they have chosen to disfavor.

No more... I will not sit at a table where others whom I love are not welcome.

ONE Nation (and one world please)... with liberty and justice for ALL.

The Debate from A to B

2008-10-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

On Giving Up Golf...

2008-05-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Tide IS Turning

2008-03-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca has created an amazing video mashup from Barack Obama's recent speech in Pennsylvania and Roger Waters' song The Tide Is Turning.

There is really nothing more that needs to be explained. Just watch it

THIS is what art, politics, and life in these United States is SUPPOSED to be about.

It is what they CAN be about if we accept the challenge and go forward in HOPE.

Taco Benders Beware!

2007-08-22T10:55:00.001-07:00

So the last of the Taco Trucks is barely hanging on in Jefferson Parish. The big solution to post-Katrina “blight” in the suburbs west of New Orleans is to get rid of the taco trucks that have moved in to serve the Mexican and Mexican-American workers who have arrived to do work, and to make money, helping to rebuild during the recovery. These are the folks who came in pretty much before anyone but the true die hards came back. They stood on the street corners surrounding Lee Circle in downtown NOLA and at intersections and vacant lots in the outlying areas as well. The taco guys, like the ubiquitous vendors in California, followed shortly thereafter. Of course… at the time they first arrived you couldn’t find too many “legitimate” places that were actually open. If you wanted to find a grocery store oor a restaurant, well… good luck. Best check the times an dthen subtract about three hours. A number of times I went hungry in those first months after Katrina because I didn’t make it to the store before it closed and I couldn’t afford to eat in the only places that were open. In a grand American tradition, the Taco Trucks found a need and filled it.

In an area where getting any kind of business up and running is a challenge right now, the answer by the Jefferson Parish city council is to outlaw the mobile entrepeneurism of Mexican food vendors, primarily because they remind city council members of Katrina. The good news is that, at least for now, there seems to be a little bit of clarity (dare I say sanity?) on the part of New Orleans politicians. They’ve decided to let the trucks stay for the time being. Perhaps they’re still formulating a plan for a personal benefits program from vendors rather than forcing them out of business. Perhaps someone should consider making Oliver Thomas the Taco Truck Czar for Orleans Parish. That would solve the problem for all concerned and Oliver could raise the money for his fine.

In California (and elsewhere) the trucks represent a market force to be dealt with. They face competition, restrictive health department regulations and the like, but they are at least seen for what they are, a driving economic force and an interesting culinary reality. If there was ever a food enterprise that reflected the American tradition of ambition wedded to necessity it’s the reality of the Taco Truck. In Southern Louisiana, where the bizarre commingling of gastronomic traditions has resulted in some of the most interesting food on the planet, one would expect a certain amount of understanding, cooperation, and even welcome. Instead the businesses are seen as a blight, as a reminder of Katrina (as if without the trucks everything around New Orleans would be sparkly, productive, effective and “normal”) And perhaps that is really the underlying reality of the battle in Jefferson Parish. It’s certainly not for nothing that the trucks were all fine until earlier this year as their more established competition began to return and reopen. Could it be that the trucks represent an imaginative approach to problem solving that the more established and entrenched businesses, citizens, and “city fathers” of the area are just simply not prepared to deal with?

It seems to me that this is the reality of the immigration debate throughout the country. The overarching response tends to be something like “how dare they?” How dare they come in here and work harder than “we” do? How dare they come in here and change the way “we” eat? How dare they come in here and try to do the very same thing that everyone who has ever come to America (which on some level means ALL of us, for even “Native Americans” came from across the Bering Straits) has tried to do?

It’s time we started to recognize – as local citizens, as Americans, as HUMAN BEINGS – that everyone of us, on some level, wants the very same things. We all want that basic trio of elements offered up in The Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We need to start remembering that the best way to get that for oneself is usually to help someone else get it for themselves (I think that’s in The Secret somewhere… I know it’s in the Bible). Like Robert DeNiro, as the crazy mercenary repairman in Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil, comments just before zip lining off into oblivion… “We’re all in it together kid.”

There is no place on the planet where that is more true right now than in New Orleans and the surrounding area. The fact is it’s true about the rest of the country (and world) as well. If we don’t start seeing each other as companions on the journey and assistants to the task we’re going to drive each other into the ground. The battle between taco vendors and “real” restauarants in Jefferson Parish is not that far removed from the battle between Shiites and Sunis in the neighborhoods of Baghdad and the guys (for they are indeed mostly guys) who are making money hand over fist by keeping us all separate and unequal just love it when we bicker. So how about we throw em a curve?

Anybody want a taco?

Send in the Clowns

2007-08-09T06:45:00.001-07:00

We are less than three weeks away from the second anniversary of Katrina and the related disaster of the levees.

Harry Shearer has an, as usual, excellent piece on the current situation and the soon to be photo op of presidential candidates in The Huffington Post this morning. In that piece he points to an article in the Times-Picayune that details the people - important people - in Congress who have not been down to see what happened (and is happening). One could make the case for the fact that with tv and news coverage a person would not have to be in New Orleans to see what's wrong, but if yo made that case you'd be wrong.

The difference between what you are able to pick up from even the best news coverage, or from films like Spike's "When The Levees Broke" is not even a fragment of what you see and, more importantly, feel, by actually being here. For congressional leaders, elected fro, and charged with, managing the funds that run the country to simply skip out on the responsibility of viewing what government mismanagement (at all levels, but most aggregiously at the Federal level) has done to this city is absolutely shameful.

Additionally... today's TP, also features articles on the Corps of Engineers continuing acknowledgement of failure pre-Katrina, and its problems with coming up with a system to protect this city post-Katrina.

The later piece makes reference to a National geographic article in the August issue of that magazine, which offers the suggestion that New Orleans should perhaps no longer exist.

What the F@#K!?!?!?

Does anyone (especially The National Geographic) ever suggest that perhaps it's time for Venice to fade into the sunset? Or The Netherlands... or London?

Or Sacramento, where the same Corps of Engineeers has built similarly unsatisfactory levees? Or... any of the long list of problematic levee locations in every state of this country?

I have a friend in California who only half jokingly suggests that we should not spend money to protect people who live below sea level, but he's never really answered my corresponding question about people (like both of us) who choose to live in a place with a very high probablity of a huge and catastrophic earthquake.

The fact is... we are all... and I really do mean ALL... in this together. And it really is well past the time for people to start actually paying attention to something besides baseball.

Who Knows... But?

2006-09-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

I have always had an attraction for the bible verse in Esther in which Mordecai comments to Queen Esther that "perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this." It is probably my favorite verse of scripture. Mordecai is reminding Hadasah (her original name) that she can't sit back on her silk cushions in the royal bedroom and watch her people taken down by evil men when with a wink, a nod, and a little bit of well placed perfume she could save her people.

I love the women of the Bible, but I love Esther most of all.

----

I am in one of my regular situations in which I need a significant infusion of cash and I need it now. Despite the fact that I didn't go to bed last night until 12:30, I've been awake since 6:00 trying to figure out how I am going to put tires on my car, pay for my insurance, and pay my taxes, rent, and debts while having basically no income and few prospects.

I spent a good long time composing a confessional letter in my head and thinking about the ways that people think of me as having everything I need (or at least much of what I need) while the fact of the matter is I am nearly homeless and despreately broke. Then it occurred to me that the very things I was trying to write about are the things that I am certainly not the only one facing. It's the story of thousands of people in New Orleans; it's the truth of life for people in Oakland, and Managua, and Baghdad, and London, and Ladakh.

How many people would create a business – an interesting, engaging, productive and profitable business – if they only had the sense that they could? How many people with the resources – emotional, informational, financial – would help such people if they only knew that the person needed help and that they could trust (more or less) that their money would come back to them; that what they could sacrifice to provide would come back to them safely? It struck me that the biggest reason most people hold back what little they have is that deep reason most of us do almost everything (from hurting our loved ones, to dropping bombs on strangers); we are deeply, desperately, permanently afraid.

It seems to me that many people would help out the small entrepeneur with an investment or a loan if they weren't afraid that they would lose their money. The very same people are perfectly willing to hand over their entire liife savings to crooks and charlatans and to cross their fingers and hope that "the market" will treat them well. I know many of those people personally (though I have never been one myself) and most of those I know have lost large sums in the downturns of recent years, yet they still trust the market more than they trust their friends. Their perspective, it seems to me, is one that is goverened by fear.

If you could reduce the fear and maximize the opportunity, there are millions of people – rich and poor alike – who would jump on the bandwagon and seek to partner with people who could be helped into a self-sufficent world of business opportunity. People who would find a product, a service, or a dream and bring it to fruition.

So… with that thought, and the image of Esther in my head, I came up with an idea; an idea for a business coalition, conceived out of my own personal need, but with the world's need in mind. Mercury Ventures Partnership – MVP.

In my mind, it's everything I have come to know as an adult. It is my belief in entrepeneurism (it's why I stayed up last night and watched Richard Branson talk to David Letterman), my belief in social action, social achievement, and social advancement. It is my belief in small business and entrepeneurial socialism. It's George Washington, and Adam Smith, and Che Guevara.

I think that if I paid attention, stuck to the through line, made connections with people I am already doing business with (and have done business with in the past) I could make this thing work. It could work for me, for New Orleans, and for the world.

It's a big idea… a BIG idea… and it's the kind of idea that BIG thinkers like to give attention to. Micro-loans, small investment, and achievement assistance for people who really want to make use of the opportunity to build a business.

Why the hell not?

How about you join me?

Leave a comment... or drop me an email at thom@mercreate.com

The Fire Next Time

2006-07-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

I am sending this post from the Petaluma Public Library (great WiFi and good air-conditioning), where I just passed by a book on the shelf of new books; a book about Katrina.

The book is called "The Storm That Changed America" and while it's a nice title and all, I really don't think that it has any relevance to anything, because as far as I can tell in my year of meandering (and even in my most recent trip to the heart of the south) I don't see much CHANGE in America. Frankly, what I see all too much of is simply the same old same old... waiting for more shit to happen, more crap to run downhill. Who is going to be the next victim, who is going to be the next person hit? Just last night someone mentioned to me the, by now all too obvious news, that from now on "FEMA isn't just going to hand out $2000 checks." This person, a relatively well-educated, fairly awake and aware individual, was simply spouting the same message as everyone else; he wasn't gloating about it particularly, but he clearly wasn't outraged by the reasoning behind it either.

You see... I got one of those $2,000 checks and frankly, it meant, at the time, the difference between survival and collapse. For the most part, that is the reality of everyone I know who got one of those checks - and I know a lot of people who got them. The reasoning in the general population goes something like, "well... a whole lotta them folks wasted that money..." or, "a whole bunch o' them people were criminals who shouldn't a gotten that money in the first place..." or, "I had a problem a couple years ago and I sure as hell didn't get any o' that money..." or "well, ya know... all those folks in Louisiana, they're all a bunch a crooks anyways."

Two weeks ago in Atlanta, among an amazing crowd of caring and giving people, the questions all came up...

"If I am going to give to this cause, how do I know that my money won't be wasted when the next storm comes along?"

"Are groups joining together? Are there coalitions that we can count on to do the work that needs to be done?"

"When I hear about all the money that has been wasted... how do I know MY money is not going to be wasted?"

Here's the bottom line baby... where the rubber meets the road, as they used to say... Just GIVE... Just DO... Just CARE... The amount of money wasted, stolen, lost, or misused is so small compared to the amount of need that the questions are just painfully ludicrous in the callousness of their context. And these were questions from people who who ACTUALLY GIVE A DAMN!

The most painful thing for me in all of this (amid a whole long list of painful things) is that I am very clearly aware of the fact that I am just as much one of the guilty parties. If I had not LIVED this reality for the last year I would not be screaming about it right now... I would probably not even be very much aware of it.

But I AM AWARE OF IT... and like the Quaker adage that once you have seen the truth you bear the responsibility of DOING something about it, I bear the responsibility of both DOING something myself AS WELL AS the responsibility of making it known to those who have yet to see.

We can't live like this anymore. We can't go placidly along and pretend the world is somehow out of our control. It's OUR world... if it's out of our control it's OUR FAULT.

So... the final point here is that I... you... we... need to damn well DO SOMETHING about it damnit! And we need to do it now.

People are still dying, people are stilll starving, people are still homeless (including me), people are in need and WE have the resources (individually, collectively and societally) to HELP... NOW.

You can give... you can question... you can DEMAND that the promises made by the president, which after 10 months remain unfulfilled, ARE fulfilled.

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign, / No more water, the fire next time!"

No Islands in the Stream

2006-05-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him. Even when he tries to do good for others his efforts are hopeless, since he does not know how to do good to himself. In moments of wildest idealism he may take it into his head to make other people happy: and in so doing he willl overwhelm them with his own unhappiness. He seeks to find himself somehow in the work of making others happy. Therefore he throws himself into the work. As a result he gets out of the work all he put into it: his own confusion, his own disintegration, his own unhappiness.

-Thomas Merton
No Man Is An Island (1955)

I found this passage from Thomas Merton in a little pocket collection of his writings that is published by New Seeds Books and which I picked up at the Catholic bookstore in Old St. Mary's Church in San Francisco's Financial District (as oppposed to New St. Mary's Cathedral… down the hill on Geary) where I was on Palm Sunday looking for a small pendant that a friend of mine has and which I have been trying to find for some time. The pendant is a beautiful miniature metal sculpture representing a crown of thorns, and my friend wears it every year throughout Lent as a reminder of the suffering of Jesus and the call for us all to take up our share of that burden as well (at least that's how I interpret it, Mary may have a different pespective, and after all, it is her pin).

I never did find the pendant, but I did find this little book, and though I almost didn't buy it (I've already got quite a Merton collection that I have amassed over the last 30 years) I decided to plunk down the six bucks and take it along with me to read on the ferry as I road it over to Marin.

In the eight weeks since, I have read bits and pieces throughout the book, picking it up at odd times of the day when it sort of leaps out at me for some unconscious reason or another. This morning I began reading in a section that I started yesterday; a section entitled "A Theology of Love." It starts out non-threateningly enough with a look at the basic ideas that a theology of love would require, a sort of soft-edged liberation theology where the powerful are expected to live peacefully just like the poor are always forced to. It's a lesson that, it seems to me, should be taught right now to all the rabid christian activist types who keep proclaiming a "culture of life" while advocating everything from more war to a greater enforcement of the death penalty, to an anti-abortion stance that doesn't answer the basic question, "what about the baby after it's born?"

That section, coming from the book "Faith and Violence," and published nearly 40 years ago, was something I could shout "Amen" to while pumping my fist in the air and pondering the many ways I would like to see this gospel preached in our time. I could also picture any number of people I would like to personally confront with the idea. It was a satisfying image, a well-conceived rant.

It wasn't until this morning when I picked up the book after my morning meditation and paged through the next part of that section to find a new crucible for the day that I hit the passage above.

It stopped me dead in my proverbial tracks.

In one hundred twenty seven words, written a year after I was born, Merton has pinned my tail on the donkey. This could be my mini-biography, my lifelong manifesto, and my epitaph. Ebeneezer Scrooge, cowering at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, begs him to explain his vision: "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, but if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

I look at the words and my life literally flashes before my eyes.

I see the day in Arizona when I shuttled everything I owned out of my parents' house and into my little car with the determination to be out and done… to get on with my life and away from the oppression and restriction of my parent's house; a task which, on certain occassions, my parents no doubt wish I had more adequately completed.

I see the day on Waller Street in San Francisco when I picked up a large bag of laundry and slammed it on the ground while screaming at my wife at the top of my lungs (about what I have no idea)... she walked back into the room, centered me with a look straight in the eye and said, "You're an asshole." She was right.

I see a night – a series of nights – in Sonoma where I screamed and raged with a fury that frightened my lover, and her children, so much that they felt the need to escape me, to run away and stay somewhere else. It frightened my own daughter so much that she recently reminded me of those nights and how sad it made her feel that she had been left behind with the monster that was me.

I see another occasion, when in a similar fight, I raged through our bedroom breaking things… lifting up a large beading table and smashing it to the floor. The rage was so extreme that Jennifer came to the door of the bedroom where I was slamming things around, and crying she screamed at me, "Please stop daddy!"

I see times when my daughter was unable to open her mouth to speak as she sat next to me in the car on our way to some supposedly important thing or another. She wouldn't speak, because she couldn't speak; her father screamed at her and berated her for being silent so much that the words she might have formed if she'd been given the chance, if her angry father could have been silent himself, were stolen from her, leaving only silence and a fearful tear in her eye.

I see bad decisions in business and horrible fights with old and dear friends. I see arrogant and selfish proclamations and self-involved angry, sometimes (but not always so easily explained) drunken declarations about what's obviously right and wrong. I see more misery than it's possible for me to even contain in the box of my life that I've been carrying around with me for the past ten months. And rightly so… because I've really been carrying it around for 52 years; I've only begun to catch a glimpse of what's really there during the last ten months.

It's not like these are the only scenes I hold in my mind; these aren't the only realities of my life. There are wonderful, celebratory meals, joyous laughter, good jokes, fun games and funny times. We had a lot of laughter stuck into the middle of so much sorrow and anger. I know how to celebrate as enthusiastically as I can argue, or at least almost.

But the thing is, it is in the words of Merton that I find the source of both the joy and the pain, for he's right; my motivation was to make other people happy. My reason for living, for as long as I can remember, for what seems like every day of my life, has been colored by that goal, and that complication, that Merton describes when he so perfectly describes what I have done so much, because I could do nothing other than "overwhelm them with [my] own unhappiness."

In another passage from the little book, this one taken from his 1971 book "Contemplation in a World of Action," Merton expands his analysis and in so doing, gives a glimpse at what can – what must – be done by a person like me. "He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others." Clearly, this is the key. In order to have something to give, one must find it, and nurture it, inside oneself first.

As I have been working on this reflection, I've been listening to Springsteen's new album of American folk classics, "We Shall Overcome." One of my favorite songs on the album is the old spiritual, turned civil rights anthem, "Eyes On The Prize." Beginning with the story of Paul and Silas in prison and then magically released, it moves to a declaration of both the personal and collective grasp at freedom: freedom of mind, heart, body and soul.

"The only thing I did was wrong
Was stay in in the wilderness too long
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold On
The one thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight.
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold On"

I have indeed been in the wilderness too long and I've packaged it up and brought that wilderness out to too many people, in too many places, over far too long a time. I am sorry for that, and I want to aplogoize to everyone of the people who I have hurt in ways that only they know, whether it happened long ago or just last week.

Today I am beginning that journey again. The thing I know (from studying the labyrinth and living my life) is that the journey won't be a straight line or a smooth road, but today I am seeking to do that one thing right. I will fight a new fight; the fight to see the good, the true, the joyful, the hopeful and the best, inside myself and out in the world. The fight to live it out… every day. I really have very little idea what all that actually means, and I have some big questions about some of it (for example how does one express the sort of peace that Merton is talking about while also keeping a personal edge… an edge which I happen to value as a particularly significant part of my personality).

I also don't expect it's a fight that's easily, or rapidly, won, but it's got to be better (or certainly no worse) than the one I've been engaged in for the past 52 years.

Hillary Clinton runs for mayor of New Orleans

2006-05-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

The great debate happened on Tuesday night and it might really have to qualify as the worst hour of television ever conceived... even more bizarre, and certainly far more boring, than the last episode of that weird show where they buried a group of people underground and made them argue about who was going to get a million dollars.

Slow Hand

2006-05-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

I actually wrote this piece a couple of months back and I wasn't really sure that I wanted to put it (and it's somewhat depressing message) out into the world... but sitting here on the edge of hurricane season, following what I am sure will prove to be the last great hurrah of New Orleans before sometime close to Christmas, it feels as appropriate as it was back then, and perhaps more so.

The basic theme remains for sure... "Ain't nothin' rapid in New Orleans."

I heard that line on the street car on Canal Street back about two years ago on my way out to Jazz Fest one morening. You see the official name for the New Orleans Tranist authority is the REGIONAL Transit Authority… or RTA. When you come fomr other parts of the country and see RTA in reference to public transportaion you tend to think the "R" stands for Rapid (e.g. BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority), but not in New Orleans. When a person on the streetcar made the comment that RTA must stand for Rapid Transit Authority, a local sitting next to her laughed and commented with the line above.

The good and the bad reality of the statement, is that it is absolutely true. Somewhere areound about the same time that I heard that comment I was given a book by Lafcadio Haynes, a french writer from the 19th century who wrote what was, at the time, a definitive look at New Orleans that continues to this day to be an extremely interesting window into the reality of the Crescent City. Early in his book, Haynes says essentially the same thing. He even uses a sort of pseudo-scientific analysis that suggests the fact that the heat in summer is so extreme that it absolutely requires a person to move more slowly and once you begin to move in this way, it becomes virtually impossible to change it.

The fact of the matter is that this is pretty much true.

It is both the boon and the bane of The Big Easy. Whether battling the all-encompassing oppressive heat of summer, or the infuriating sluggish resistance of FEMA, thre is something to be said for taking it easy. If you take a breath, sit a spell, or have a drink you can gain a better perspective, you can gain a sense of rhythm. As a former anxious obsessive, this was a lesson I first learned 6 years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, when my daughter lectured me about not having a heart attack over my interaction with an asshole bus driver.

This lesson, which I only partially took to heart at the time, has been reinforced for me on the long term training program that I have been subjected to for the seven months since Katrina attacked my home and the federally built levees failed and flooded the city.

In any case… as I was saying… I have over the seven months since Katrina learned a real lesson in patience and slow progress. It's a way to stay sane when nothing is going on or getting done. It's a survival mechanism in this situation as much as it is in the heat of the dog days of summer.

BUT… and here's the kicker… it is also the death knell to progress.

Walking around New Orleans on this beautiful sunny but cool weekend I was astonished (as I always am) at the ridiculous amount of trash that is still lying around. Debris that coulda, shoulda, woulda been picked up six months ago in any city where people actually possessed the ambition to make their city look good. Maybe I'm talking through my hat here, but I don't think so.

When the storm hit on August 29, I had evacuated to Hattiesburg, Mississippi and the house I stayed in was completely inundated by falling pine trees. The house itself lucked out and sustained almost no damage, but the surrounding yard was a complete jumble of uprooted trees, and broken limbs; a tangle of debris like I had never seen before in my life (and as bad as anything I've seen in the non-flooded areas of New Orleans). The very next day (while New Orleanians were just trying to survive the rising tide) I was out in the yard (in 95 degree Mississippi heat and 90 percent humidity) with three other people, a 51 year old woman, an 80 year old grandmother, and a 20 year old man. The four of us together, over ten hours one day and about eight hours the next, cleared all that we could from the yard, chopping, raking, and lugging everything from bags of leaves to huge stumps. Without air conditioning, enough water, ice or very much food, we picked up everyting we could. By the third day, when I left Hattiesburg for my trek north, a small crew had been hired to cut the rest of the debris and haul everything away to the dump. The place was fixed up before the end of the week.

There's only one reason for this (and I didn't have anything to do with it). The homeowner - the aforementioned 80 year old grandmother – was determined to get back to normal as quickly as possible. She took the devastation in her yard PERSONALLY and decided that she was going to do some PERSONAL about it. It was an astonishing (and sometimes annoying) demonstration of determination, but it was motivating and revealing. Hell… if the other three of us hadn't gotten out there to help her, she would have done it by herself and then we really would have felt ashamed. Her neighbor from across the street kept wandering over and staring at us in disbelief. He even tried to convince us not to work so hard. For all I know, the big tree in his yard is still there.

In New Orleans right now there is an abundance of large trucks that could haul 90 percent of the remaining debris from the houses, curbs and yards that still stand piled ten feet high in garbage, but on a cool, comfortable day like this past Sunday, I saw not a single truck moving through the city hauling anything. There are some folks who are putting their backs into it and cleaning up large sections of the city and the day that I volunteered with Katrina Krewe to cleanup a section of Claiborne Avenue it was extremely exhileratinng and enjoyable. I keep planning on going back to help some more, but even I succumb to the overwhelming tendancy toward lethargy. There is just so much to be done, and far too few people actually bothering to do it. Seven months after the storm these piles of debris really have no reason for still being here except for the fact that the ongoing perception, whether local, state, federal or personal is that somebody else, at some other time, will take care of it.

In three months the weather is going to be hot as hell and the work will be moving even more slowly than it is now.

The piles on the street will still be there.

Ain't nothin' rapid in New Orleans.

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[SIDE NOTE: As Harry Shearer continues to point out on his radio show and in his blog on HuffPo, it wasn't a hurricane that killed New Orleans… that would have been bad enough… but it was the protection system built by the Army Corps of Engineers, a protection system which they continue to discover faults in, that failed the city.

People in other areas who condescendingly view New Orleans with disbelief and can't figure out why we haven't gotten over our issues need to remember that these levee systems, built and maintained by the federal government, were what failed New Orleans (followed rather closely by the complete inability of FEMA to step up to the emergency and help). YOU ARE IN DANGER… Whether from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or terorism… The feds are your line of protection and their protection is none too good. So, before you start (or continue) to spout off, like the guy from Berkeley I read on Sunday, about what OUGHT to be done with New Orleans… put yourself in our place. You may be there sooner than you think.]

The Yin and Yang of Spirit and Flesh

2006-03-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

The celebration that is Mardi Gras has come and gone for 2006 having lived out its fortnight long existence only to be blown away as if it were a magnificent Buddhist sand painting created from living elements and plastic. Even the street cleaners are nearly finished with their jobs and in this city where large piles of trash have been sitting on the curbside for the six months since Katrina, the garbage of Mardi Gras is already mostly a memory. That is really the genius of Carnival. We are reminded again, in that way that folks in New Orleans remind each other over and over (at second line parades, funerals, music festivals, impromptu get togethers and big planned parties… and at Mardi Gras) life is ephemeral. Your days are not long, but they are to be loved, enjoyed, and celebrated. Always.

It is, as they say, better than the alternative.

Mardi Gras has its origins in the giant festivals of medieval Europe, the Feast of Fools was a time each year when the tables were turned on the high and mighty and for a brief period of time the peasants could act like Kings and Queens (and Priests). About the only thing that bothers me about the celebration is the fact that while most of the Mardi Gras parade Krewes celebrate this turning of the tables, most of them are made up, exclusively, of the high and mighty, the movers and the shakers in the town. Because of this fact, the tradition in a sense reinforces the very top down hierarchical structure that it is supposed to be tossing on its head. I'm guessing that this is not something really new. On some level, like so many forms of modern entertainment, the barons and dukes and kings of old granted their permission for such celebrations as a way of letting off the steam that might otherwise explode into fully formed revolutionary fervor. The same thing is going on today and that may be one place where the celebrations of Mardi Gras are in fact harmful to the cause of justice, peace and human equality. In addition to being a big party, there is something in Carnival that serves as a pressure release valve on the inequities of society. It's always been this way, and very likely always will.

There are of course exceptions to this… Krewe du Vieux for instance is a little parade that makes it's way through the Marigny and the French Quarter and truly celebrates the throwing over of the order. It's baudiness and farcical humor is much more in line with the origins of the Feast of Fools and, to me, more appropriate to the purpose of Carnival. The celebrations on Mardi Gras Day in the French Quarter where anyone and everyone dresses for themselves and others and on St. Charles Avenue, where the more formal parades are preceded by the impromptu celebrations of groups like Mondo Kayo, who take advantage of the already prepared audience and set themselves up as the opening parade in a day of parades.

Possibly my favorite tradition is that of the Mardi Gras Indians, who celebrate the connections that former slaves had with Native Americans, but with a flair of their own that makes the celebration more African American than Native American. There is a true turning of the tables when a macho lathe worker spends weeks and months sewing feathers and beads to a giant costume that will then be worn to determine who is the "prettiest" Big Chief of the day. On Tuesday the Indians mostly massed in the ninth ward as a way of paying respect to those in the communitiy who lost houses, possesions, histories, relatives, friends and even their lives to the hurricane, and the accompanying aftermath of a government that was out of touch with reality.

What were the particulary poignant and/or delightful images? What was the "best stuff" of Mardi Gras 2006?

That's easy… Katrina, FEMA, and ubiquitous refrigerators. There was a definite gallows humor expressed over and over again, from the people who dressed up as people on top of houses accompanying their Fat Tuesday parade down Royal Street with a boom box wailing "Up On The Roof." There were Looter Girls (complete with custom designed versions of the Hooters T-Shirt uniform) in the Krewe D'etat parade, and one of my friends and clients walked the streets on Tuesday as the Mold & The Beautiful. Even the mayor played out his mid-Katrina fantasy by riding in a parade as Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the only person Nagin could bring himself to honor during the long days immediately following the breech of the levees and the flooding of the city. Of course, if he had more of a sense of humor, a more complete grasp of the chaotic humor at the heart of Mardi Gras, he might have gone as one of the many Willy Wonkas out for the day, but I suppose that's expecting a bit much from a politician running for re-election, especially in the current climate.

So the strange crazy sand painting has had its day, been blown to the winds and swept up with the trash. We now begin the season of Lent, a time for reflection, repentance, and renewal. Forty days set aside for the purpose of introspection and personal realignment. It's a period that goes hand in glove with Carnival. This is who we are as people; life is crazy, unpredictable, thrilling and funny. It is also deep, dark, demanding and hard.

I used to be more of a revolutionary. I used to believe that the suffering of people needed to be played out completely. Without following the outcomes of inescapable injustice to their final conclusions change could never come. These days I'm a bit more patient and a lot more positive. If Mardi Gras provides the opportunity to face into the heart of the chaos and find relief in our ability to laugh and cry simultaneously, perhaps Lent can show us the way out of that chaos through discipline, dedication and heart.

Corey's Comin'

2005-12-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

Six months ago, just before the dissolution of my long term (17 year) relationship, I was waiting for Marsha to come back "home" to California and I wound up playing an old song by Harry Chapin over and over; in the car, on my iTunes… in my head. The song, Corey's Comin', relates the story of a young man and an old man and the magical (perhaps imaginary) woman who lights up both of their lives. It's a song I have been deeply moved by every time I hear it ever since the very first time I found it on a record album in a friend's closet on the third floor of a big house on a small street in San Francisco; I even preached a sermon on it once. Six months ago, it expressed precisely the hope and healing I longed for and expected with the soon coming of my long gone lover. Over dinner one night at the end of May, I described the feeling to Marsha with the phrase, "You are my heart."

She wasn't having any of it. At the time I had royally screwed up the far too many financial responsibilities I had taken on with her move to Mississippi and, afraid to let her know of my complete (though well-intentioned) ineptitude, I had lied to her about it. She was not happy about this set of less than desirable circumstances. Sitting across from me, at the last of thousands of dinners we had shared with each other across similar tables, she looked me in the eye and said, "How can you say that, when you then do this?"

It was a good question, a significant and important question. However, it was an impossible question to answer. In my mind, the two things were really not related. The statement,"You are my heart," was an expression of the ineffable gravity of interpersonal connection; a linking of souls and the holding of essence. It was an expression of lucky connection, depth of feeling, shared experience, and a never perfect, but always present intermingling of goals, dreams, hopes, values and life. It was not something that could be destroyed by stupidity, ineptitude, economic crisis, or even deception (well-intentioned or otherwise). It is, in the more formal ceremony of marriage, what we theoretically mean when we say, usually with a total lack of understanding, "…for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to death do us part." It was not, as Marsha chose to suggest, an empty phrase, nor was it simply wishful thinking. It was a statement of basic fact. I was saying to Marsha, "You are my soul mate. You complete me."

What I am coming to understand now, is that this sentiment was also thoroughly misplaced. This is something I should have understood long before now. Hell… It's even in Chapin's song. Corey wasn't, isn't and couldn't possibly be a flesh and blood woman. It's simply too much of a burden to bear for any human being to be someone else's heart; to carry (willingly or unwillingly) another person's other half. It's a great line, and it plays really well on screen and in song. Frankly, that's exactly where it should play, but it's simply not possible for another flesh and blood person to complete me. No healthy person would desire it, and no healthy person would be willing to try. Corey doesn't exist in the real world, she exists outside of time and space; she exists in myth, and hope and deep in the mind.

In Jungian psychology this opposite is known as the anima (in men) and the animus (in women). He/she is the individual's opposite, the deep part of our psychological make up that most of us, to varying levels of success and failure, are almost perpetually trying to find outside ourselves, in the flesh and blood men and women we have dinner with, make love to, and spend our lives attempting to understand. Anima and Animus are created out of a clay formed deep in our psychology and composed of everything from the ancient imaginings of people throughout all of history, the cultural expectations of our own society, and the ways in which our parents (particularly our opposite sex parent) raised us, treated us, and laid their expectations upon us. Psychologist Robert Johnson, in his book, "Lying with the Heavenly Woman," makes the case for the fact that we cannot be truly whole until we remove our anima/animus expectations from the flesh and blood humans around us and deal with the one who really is our heart, that inner opposite we usually spend our lives running away from.

This is the real lesson of the last six months in my life. First Hurricane Marsha and, shortly thereafter, Hurricane Katrina succeeded in sending my life into a tailspin dive that, for a while, it was looking like I might not rise back up from. But as I was spinning straight down toward the dark psychological waters of my personal deluge (waters that are as toxic as those other ugly waters we saw so much of on television back in September) I caught a glimpse of light at the bottom of the pool. Whether it was a glint from Arthur's sword in the hand of The Lady of the Lake, a twinkle in the eye of Venus rising from the waters, or just the reflection of the moon behind me springing back from the dark surface below, I don't know. Whatever it was, it startled me and it woke me up. When I pulled out of the spin, landed on the shore, and placed my feet on dry ground, this strange and lovely woman was standing before me. She looked familiar, at least a little bit. I know I've seen her in dreams over the years as she has flitted about the edges of my psyche waiting for me to slow down long enough to take her hand and ask her name.

I have a photo of her on my computer. It's a picture by Imogen Cunningham that I have been captivated by since the first time I saw it in a gallery in Carmel over 30 years ago. She doesn't always look like this; she changes shape and personality pretty frequently.Sometimes, she stands to the side, dark and mysterious and removed, daring me to approach and waiting for me to understand something hidden and soulful and new. She's interesting and difficult and engaging, and sometimes just a bit scarey. She's absolutely real, that's for sure.

So now I'm spending a lot of time with this new woman that I'm finally coming to know after 51 years of cohabitation in my being, and it's a very interesting experience. I see in her the personality features, the priceless magical qualities, and the frustrating annoyances that I have spent most of my life pinning to the unsuspecting forms of all the women I have ever known like they were wrinkled up paper tails tacked to a birthday party donkey's ass.

I don't really know her very well yet and she goes by many names, but lately I've just been calling her Corey. I think she's helping me come to a place where I can relate to the real flesh and blood members of her sex with a better understanding of who, what and why we are who, what and why we are.

She is my soul mate.

She completes me.

Let the Butts Begin

2005-12-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

I have been writing 1,000 – 1,500 word essays on pretty much anything that crosses my mind for the better part of twenty five years. While I have occassionally published these in magazines and newspapers (though usually in some adapted form more fit for human consumption than they started out) most of them reside in multiple mangled versions on the hard drives (and skeletons of hard drives), pads of paper and large black blank books scattered just about everywhere I have ever touched ground. I have for some time wanted to print more of these than I can typically get past editors (or have the time to mail out to editors), but with the beginning of my SpeakLo blog back in July and it's brother blog, Washington's Cousin, shortly thereafter, I began to have a sense of what I can do with some of this stuff.

Hence… Butting Heads.

With a name like Butler, I have been subjected to any number of obvious perversions – butthead, butthead-ler (as a friend in California refers to me with an inordinate amount of self-satisfaction in the thought that this was somehow an original idea of his own) and, of course, Ass-ler, were many of the choice favorites. My own favorite nickname in high school and college was the shortened Butts. I think it was a way of end running the insults by embracing my own sanctified version and owning it with enthusiasm. I even had a football jersey with that name on it from my freshman year at Oral Roberts University (that's another story of its own). This name had only one downfall. At the time, I shared it with the somehwat less than enlightened Secretary of the Interior during the then active Nixon Administration. In any case… Butt.. Butts… Butthead and all the other derivations have been a part of my identity my whole life. I figure I might as well claim them for something of at least semi-value.

The name is also atrributable to the awareness that most of my philosophical meanderings are as pointless as the activity described. Their biggest advantage to me personally being that the pain of the head butting draws my attention away from the pain of the awareness itself. I may not be able to do much about most things in the world, but I can at least scribble down my feelings about them and hope that somewhere, somehow those shared experiences bring at least a little bit of light and life (and maybe an occasional free beer) to the subjects at hand.

Of course… the biggest advantage of all this to me personally, is simply the writing practice. What you get out of these meanderings I will leave to you. You should of course feel free to leave them for me (and other readers) through a liberal use of the comments feature.

One of my favorite books of all time is a little book by Thomas Merton that is difficult to find, "Raids on the Unspeakable." It sits on the table where I write and I pick it up and read short segments on a regular basis. I've been doing this, almost daily, for the last 27 years. In the prologue to the book, Merton begins, "WELL, Raids, you're grown up now. It is time for you to go out and meet people as the other books have done." I'm not sure that the reflections I expect to publish here will be "all grown up," in fact, it's pretty likely that many of them won't be grown up at all, but that's the chance I'm deciding to take.
Finally, a disclaimer and a warning:

Caveat Emptor…

In some of these entries, you may find out more than you want to know. I guarantee that you will find out more than I want you to know, but I am determined that if the most basic rule of writing is "write what you know" then this writing is going to require an honesty on my part that I am generally less than enthusiastic about engaging in such a public way.

For the sake of a certain amount of propriety (and the fact that my mother, sister, daughter and other people who are sometimes too close for comfort read this stuff) I will be at least somewhat circumspect about sharing any truly ugly details, such as they are.

With that said… to quote Dubya's favorite phrase…

Let's Roll.