the lowercase blog

a conspicuous counterculture

2012-02-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

in a conversation last night i caught it: a little sense of what it's like to be loved and respected. it's nothing like being talked at about ideals of love and respect.

prizing ideals of tolerance has lifted many people to a precipice of objectivity from which to judge the masses in the valley of the shadow of real-life decisions. and holding onto tolerance, people have found a way to dismiss their friends and neighbors as less and less important.

astrokid by madéleine at little love monster.

but my friend talked to me out of love and mutual respect, never looking down on me for my (often polemical) comments we so obviously disagreed about. he really cared about who i was beyond contextually hypothetical subjects like religion or politics. he loved me, the human.

i try hard to love humans too.

at a dinner party (hate those). i was recently asked by a european professor to talk about my experience with occupy. i started giving account of divisive violence in the camp i had been living in, about drugs and wasteful living; and then i mentioned the violence of the city - the police would hunt the houseless down on the freezing streets and harrass them, chasing them out of parks and public areas in the freezing

i told that professor that everyone deserves a plce to sleep, that everyone deserves to have the opportunity to live in community because they are human beings. i mused at somehow making this happen through a culture of love and dignity...

"you are a christian," she said. "what you're describing is christian love."

and what if it is? but surely i can't be 'defending' christianity...

maybe 'christianity' is a place that people are born, with no control over who will conceive them and birth them, with no sort of mandate with which to direct who will teach them to speak

maybe many parts of 'christianity,' when taken to their logical conclusions, are hateful, spiteful, destructive and represent a horrific doctrine on which to build a brand new world...

and yet in so many christian milieus those potentially destructive claims and mantras are never taken to their "logical" conclusions, and the law of the land is "love one another" rather than "stone the gays." what then?

what if philosophy has never been the underpinning of culture, if theology has never mattered in a practical sense to practical people?

if i never grasp another concept, i want to keep this one in mind: what is done trumps what is idealized.

what if love knows no 'other's?
as ever,

joel

sopa, protect ip

2012-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

wikipedia is dark today to protest sopa nd protect ip.

if you haven't heard of sopa and protect ip, please feel free to read up on them.

the two pieces of proposed legislation represent an enormous lunge for u.s. security organizations to end online piracy and a grasp at effective methods through which to censor the internet.

craigslist, mozilla and google all have banners protesting the both bills. sites like wikipedia english, reddit and boing boing have gone dark today in hopes of catching people's attention.

you can send a letter to congress from the google page here.

the oakland police

2011-12-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

"i see how dirty they rollin'."

mary is telling charlie and i about her 3 a.m. experience of being trapped in an alley by the oakland police. "they just show up, and they say, 'now you got five mitutes,' and then they jes' throw that [the tear gas]."

a berkeley resident who showed up to visit some friends, mary ended up staying at the occupation at oscar grant plaza until 2 or 3 a.m. "i'm just looking" she repeats, indicating she did not participate in any activism. she notes how she was impressed with teachers and lawyers taking care of the homeless.

a 61-year-old small-framed woman, mary sure doesn't look like a threat to the oakland police. yet right as she was leaving, the police surrounded the camp and wouldn't let her go. they gave everyone a five-minute warning, and began to tear-gas them.

this was the raid that inspired the first occupy riot in oakland. the rest is history - tear gas, concussion grenades, scott olsen... these stories are old news to people in the bay.

and mary's experience is not entirely unique. my friend stefanie, an old-guard disabled-rights activist, got tear gassed in her wheelchair. "i was just sitting there and praying," she later told me. "we weren't doing anything illegal, although they declared it an illegal gathering."

i've always been interested in street politics, but stories like theseinspired me to see for myself what things were like during a policeraid in oakland. yesterday i got a text alert on my phone that thepolice were about to raid oscar grant plaza. i hopped on the bart todowntown oakland, and this is what i saw:

i arrived in time to see a raucous crowd of about 40, screaming and cursing at five stern looking police officers. a tree-sitter hovered above. at least as many people were hanging around the center of the plaza eating, playing foursquare, smoking cigarettes and chatting with each other.

the word was that people had trickled down here from other occupy locations around oakland that had been raided this week. as a result, the oscar grant protest had once again swelled in size. the 24-hour vigil, the police said, had no permit and had to go - at 2 p.m.

about 2:15, more police came around the back of the plaza and told people to move their belongings and the food stores. the ensuing shouting and refusal provoked six or seven rather violent arrests. but what were the official charges? loitering? disorderly conduct?

a lot of occupiers around here have been getting arrested for "resisting arrest." can someone tell me how that works again?

i was pretty sure that the oakland police weren't acting in anyone's best interest, so i joined the effort to block the police van from leaving the plaza. a soft-spoken police officer shoved me back, and they were on their way.

anger

2011-12-26T01:38:00.000-08:00

29 degrees fahrenheit.

at people's park we found that more than a dozen people were visible sleeping in the landscaping and out on the sidewalk.

people with clean records and no substance abuse problems, friends of mine, are sleeping outside. on christmas eve.

i'm calling you out berkeley interim city manager christine daniel. your christmas week eviction notice made dozens from our camp sleep on sidewalks and in alleys, separated from the only family they knew by the city municipal code. it's sickening.

being houseless isn't necessarily psychologically damaging, but beingrobbed of shelter and a place in a community is. shame on the citymanager for evicting us.

and shame on the berkeley police officers who hit unarmed women with their clubs without warning. eviction is a nasty business. i'm writing the city! does anyone have a pen?

no more camping bans! write:

christine daniel

professional proliferator of classism

(510) 981-7000

manager@cityofberkeley.info

also: here's a photo essay of the city-mandated shutdown of the occupy eugene encampment.

how we (almost) saved #occupyberkeley

2011-12-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

late at night on the corner of center and mlk, phoebe sorgen and i are sitting in her bumper sticker-plastered car, staring down a city map. it's been a long day. the view from phoebe's windshield looks out on around 100 tents, crispy in the late-night frost that plagues december in berkeley, california.

on september 17th, an occupation protesting corporate greed and the hi-jack of our republic by corporations started in manhattan, the first in north america. berkeley followed suit 3 weeks later with an occupy protest outside bank of america. it is one of the longest standing occupations in the united states.

a lot had changed since protestors first set up here on october 8th. numbers had grown dramatically, and a gradual move down the street to mlk park was undergone. american police had dismantled all of the bay area camps, including the neighboring occupy oakland camps, which had served as an unofficial west coast capital to the movement. we were the last camp standing in the bay.

we are trying to save this cause.

as members of the occupy movement, phoebe and i had been attempting desperately to find a way to de-escalate the violence within the this camp. phoebe is a local activist who spent hours every day volunteering with and caring for the residents of this park; and i lived here.

the occupation at the corner of mlk and center was a bit of a paradox - so much strife bleaguered it, and yet the police did not once raid the camp. in contrast to the violent and anti-human city policies of neighboring oakland and san francisco, the city council here endorsed the occupy wall street movement, and suspended the park curfew to at least give the camp a chance to flourish. the police policy was strikingly hands-off.

but the camp had internal conflicts. a relatively friendly crowd during the day, many in the camp would turn violent and start to brawl at night (my account of my first day in berkeley). rapes and attempted rapes were committed. resolutions made by the general assembly, this camp's autonomous government, were largely ignored by rowdy campers. drugs and drug trade abounded.

the berkeley p.d. received hundreds of incident reports, and eventually resorted to walking through and ticketing defiant campers who refused to stay sober or smoke on the sidewalk rather than in the park. despite the efforts of activists in berkeley to restore order to the camp, a largely alcoholic and drug-abusing population of houseless refugees refused to cooperate. the camp was out of control.

within a few days of arriving, i was working hard to save the camp. i talked sympathetically with different groups, listened to stories and encouraged folks, cooked food, fetched water and cleaned up trash. and i also started strategizing for a new drug-free camp where everyone involved in the movement could feel safe camping.

we settled on ohlone park, a quiet location just a few blocks away. proposals to activists garnered mixed reactions. we moved ahead. unfortunately, so did the police. tuesday night, without the knowledge or consent of the berkeley city council, the police served up an eviction notice - the park curfew was to be enforced wednesday night, they said.

so we blitzed. phoebe and i, along with russ, christine, maxina and many others started pro-active negotiations with members of the out-of-session city council. what we heard surprised us. council members jesse arreguin and kriss worthington informed us that the police were refusing to communicate with them. by the end of the day, we had no grounds to believe that the police would not try to raid our new camp as well, should we succeed in establishing one. our plans began to spiral down the drain.

the police attacked a half-way torn down occupy berkeley camp late on the night of wednesday, december 21. non-violent resistance to the raid led to violent attacks from the police. the kindness and respect we had received from them was done with; the city cleared tents out in the morning.

taunting was occurring on both sides.

it was sad to see the police take immature and violent actions against immature but non-violent protestors. it's sad, but the camp had to go for now. however, i have hope for the future. even though the camp is gone, i know the movement will live on.

p.s.
i am still trying to find places to sleep for several safe and sober people involved in the movement who were just evicted from the park by the police. email me (joeldevyldere(at)msn(dot)com if you have any leads on that.

berkeley

2011-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

the stars are always smirking on the east bay,
under chuckling
clouds, faux rivers flow, where thunder interrupts the stereo:

turn off the creek! put out the smog!
stop living large and start
seeing God

defense authorization act

2011-12-14T20:54:00.000-08:00

detainees at guantanamo bay military prison

quick update on the world:

the defense authorization bill can be studied at a glance here.

the obama administration seems poised to sign it in to law, possibly today.

you can contact your representatives using this directory. or on twitter ( in oregon, @reppeterdefazio @barackobama, etc.).

port shutdown

2011-12-13T02:46:00.000-08:00

today
karyn and i made shoddy fake press passes, packed snacks and cigarettes and hopped on the bart to west oakland.

from oscar grant plaza we marched with thousands people of all ages down to the port where occupy oakland had already succeeded in shutting down all of today's operations. we took picture and asked questions.

the atmosphere was electric - music and dancing were the activities of the day. people chanted political slogans and we heard from boots riley, angela davis and famed police brutality victim scott olsen.

once we arrived, a general assembly was called to decide what would be done. the decision was made to hold the port at least until 3 am.

police were scarce. there were no arrests, and all roads leading into the port were guarded by officers. there very few cars on the roads, but a few large vehicles loaded down with dancing protestors blasted dance music for all to hear.

many oaklanders lined the streets, and treated the protest as a parade to watch. some joined in.

the defend oakland tent. these folks occupy foreclosed homes.

and...
not just here in oakland, but all up and down the coast ports were shut down. people were attacked by police in seattle, arrested in houston. in portland people danced and played games of ninja destruction while protesting corporate greed at the port.

you can check out what's happening with the oakland port shutdown by searching #occupyoakland on twitter.

letter to the instigators

2011-12-10T15:20:00.001-08:00

unlicensed protest in russia

dear readers,

what is the nature of our rebellion?

i tried but couldn't entertain coherent thoughts about the substance of our revolt. the only message that i hear, five little words:

who made us your slaves?

who engineered post-lockean consent? who closed the public space and opened up the prisons? who tapped the phones and locked the doors?

who cranked up the tariffs and turned on the licensing fees? who defined corporations as people and money as free speech?

and who do they think they are?

this is only the middle of tyranny. we are running out of these woods, dancing in the intersections and singing revolution songs.

as ever,

joel

p.s.
"i think the word 'security' is one of the most dangerous words that can be used by governments... security is all right, but freedom is even more important." - stephane hessel
(full interview)

absurdity

2011-12-06T11:50:00.001-08:00

in headlines this week:

$500 million in u.s. military weapons, including helicopters and m-16's have been given out to police forces. doesn't sounds so bad, except...

there is no opposing military force in the u.s.

that's right, despite a remarkable drop in the rate of violent crime nationwide, the u.s. military is now arming local p.d.'s with grenade launchers.

the pentagon's 1033 is the program under which war-ready weapons are being dispensed to any law-enforcing agency with "powers of arrest and apprehension." 2.6 billion has already been given out, and the daily reports that "orders in fiscal year 2012 are up 400 percent." but why?

micah silfry reports that searches for the word "revolution" are beginning to peak on google search trends, just like they did in greece with the with the may 5 protests, in spain with 15-m and in egypt with the original taking of tahrir square. many in the states have called for an all-out revolution.

the pentagon is not ignorant of this, though a debate still persists on what constitutes conclusive evidence that the department of homeland security is coordinating attacks against the u.s. occupations.

wait... why are police departments around the country gearing up for war? oh, well maybe this:

bloody triumph of the republic

2011-11-19T19:15:00.001-08:00

"in a single republic, all the powersurrendered by the people is submitted to theadministration of asinglegovernment;" - james madison, federalist no. 51

occupy wall street

in the history of the united states, there is a precedent for warning against a single body of government holding all of the power in the nation.

after the civil war, however, the power of the states was largely absorbed into the federal government. when the united states declared and carried out a war on the confederate states, it effectively demonstrated that individual states had no right to leave the union, and thus ultimately had no rights at all.

similarly, the rights of the individual to express dissent in these united states has been largely lacking for decades. despite pervasive rhetoric citing "freedom of speech," people who attempt creative free speech that is opposed to government policy are often violently attacked by government agencies.

occupy wall street

but this is nothing new. the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement and the vietnam war protests all faced violent opposition from the state.

since the industrial revolution, almost any protest large enough to cause a scene has been violently suppressed and covertly combatted by the u.s. government.

occupy wall street protests. photo: @samglewis

true, we no longer have soldiers shooting live rounds at non-violent protesters in broad daylight...

we do, however, have conclusive evidence of a nationally organized police assaults on the occupations from oakland to denver to new york.*

you can also read my eyewitness account of the eviction of occupy portland and see video of the police beating of the non-violent protesters there, one of whom was put in a wheelchair.

these efforts resulted in a wave of city-mandated tax-payer violence across the united states in recent weeks. police have repeatedly beaten non-violent protesters into comas, while shooting others with rubber bullets and tear-gassing hundreds.

video after video depicts police officers dragging unarmed women by the hair (for instance, here and here and here).

there is also some evidence that the federal government is engaged in an ongoing violent campaign shut down the occupy protests nationwide.**

most troubling of all, many images and stories of police abuse may never reach the public. the policy of the nypd at times is to keep reporters as far away from the action as possible, even when that includes violence against reporters.

through taxes and student fees, u.s. workers, journalists, students and educators now pay for the privilege of being beaten and pepper-sprayed, both on campus and in the streets. peaceable assembly is now limited to football games and shopping malls. free speech has an asterisk indicating it no longer includes parks, streets and sidewalks.

occupy davis students sit peaceably while police assault on nov. 18th.

there is a remarkable failure of the republic to serve the needs and interests of human beings, for "representatives" to represent their constituents. worse, there is a profound failure of a government that claims to be by the people and for them to show any signs of being human at all.

*in an open letter to the portland's mayor sam adams, former occupy portland police liaison alaina melville criticizes the mayor for lying to msnbc about support he received from other cities in preparation for the beating and jailing of the occupy protesters on november 13. at least one other mayor has come out and admitted that a group of representatives from cities across the u.s. strategized against the occupations on a national level. also: the ap reports the collaberation as fact here.

**the extent to which the federal government is directly involved in what has been called a remarkably similar outbreak of attacks against the occupations remains in question. both the fbi and the department of homeland security assured media organizations that they were not involved, huffington post reports. additionally, portland mayor sam adams seems to have alluded to contact with the department of homeland security in a tweet earlier this week.

analyses of these united states

2011-11-19T17:29:00.000-08:00

photo: mars2o84

'free speech' is a joke we tell at american parties.

and it is widely held that there are only two - the war-mongering republicans and the war-mongering democrats. american democracy is an anti-humanitarian process. here's why:

'the republic' was the formal term for the form of government in the us when it was founded. "republicanism" is a process which facilitates the consolidation of power into the hands of a few representatives.

founding father james madison hails the republic as a form of government which becomes stronger as its size increases in the federalist papers.

we now live in what many people call a "democratic republic." it's a republic, with the word "democratic" added to the beginning of it. we do not have a democracy, and never have. as madison points out:

"the two great points ofdifference between a democracyand a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in thelatter, to asmall number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greaternumber ofcitizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may beextended." - james madison, the federalist no. 10

the "democratic" republic of the states is also at times called a representative democracy. this is because the bulk of the decision-making in the republic is conducted by elected and (subsequently) appointed officials.

the intentions of the founding members of the nation, if they can be guessed, are to form a strictly elitist republic. it was their aim that someday every affluent male caucasian would be free to participate in electing a representative to make the country's decisions on his behalf.

the current structure of the federal government is contingent on the notion each person is best served by representatives, "whose wisdom may best discern the trueinterest oftheir country" (madison, federalist no. 10).

the problem for the u.s. propaganda machine then becomes convincing the poor and working-class public of how an elitist rich person with a law degree and military training best represents their interests.

this has been a relatively simple endeavor. the task was simply to create a diversion, the dramatic scuffle presented to the public by democrats and republicans jockeying for political positions and grumbling endlessly about the other party.

this distraction effectively diverts the attention of many u.s.-ians into concentrating on shooting down the ridiculous ideas of one of the parties. the rest are so bored that they become absolutely convinced that they will never want to participate in or learn about the manner by which they are governed.

all elected politicians have this in common - that they don't believe in democracy. if they did, they would either quickly resign, or use their communication skills to help the u.s. transition from the oppression of an elitist republic to the liberty of a democracy.

p.s. in case you're wondering, there is a direct democracy functioning on the streets of nearly every major city in the world. these movements don't need the tyranny of taxation or the oppression of "representative" governance to function, but serve as a government by the people and for them.

- see how one group has made direct democracy work for them.

laws of the city

2011-11-18T13:13:00.001-08:00

http://bit.ly/tOfEH9

destruction of property:

http://bit.ly/vovfaP

rioting:

convening without a permit:

new york, thursday

assault:

berkeley, nov. 9

misconduct:

portland, thursday.

#occupy protests violently dispersed in portland

2011-11-13T23:58:00.001-08:00

protestors push police back on
3rd street saturday night. image: cbs news.

thousands of protestors lined the streets, cutting off almost every line of escape. dozens of police held formation, brandishing batons and flipping down the face shields on their riot helmets. some looked menacingly into the crowd. with one voice, the mob exclaimed their admonition to the officers:

"you're sexy! you're cute! take off your riot suit!"

this was the scene in and around lownsdale and chapman squares last night as hundreds of police came to serve up mayor sam adams' 12:01 a.m. eviction notice to the stragglers who still inhabited the park blocks between salmon and madison downtown. literally thousands gathered in the middle of the night to stand in the way of the police attempts to take the parks.

some gathered inside the encampments, where many people stood on benches to observe the happenings in the area. free champagne was passed out at at the occupy cafe, which for the last month has been serving coffee free of charge to anyone who wants it. on the corner of main and fourth, about 75 people were gathered around a drum circle, dancing away.

the encampment at occupy portland, which has held the park blocks in the financial district downtown since october 6th, had dwindled slightly as of late. the surge in late-night participation for these winter-weary camps was in response to an ultimatum lately served by mayor adams, who announced that the city would temporarily close the park blocks "to put an end to safety, health and crime problems, and to repair the park land."

"we must balance people’s rights to free speech, with keeping the city safe and moving," adams said in an open letter to the city.

a standoff ensued. the police donned riot gear; the protestors broke out drums and megaphones. cops brought out tear gas, and protestors broke out the gas masks.

"don't shove," said a lady in her thirties to the teenagers standing around her. "when they push forward, we stand our ground."

chants proliferated, mostly aimed at the portland police officers who advanced on the crowd. "peace-ful pro-test!" was oft repeated, as protesters held up peace signs to the street. repetitions of "who do you protect? who do you serve?" also rippled through the crowd.

others shared defensive tactics. "if they throw tear gas, pick it up, throw it back!" a man shouted to those standing around him.

another man made the rounds handing out rags soaked in apple cider vinegar. "when they tear-gas you, wipe you face with it!" he shouted above the din.

but the police did not tear-gas the crowd. they advanced several items on the mob, before being turned back by a surge of steadily advancing protesters. signs were waved and a peace signs were held as the occupiers advanced unarmed at the riot police. at least one beach ball bounced above the ecstatic crowd.

the first to retreat were the mounted police, followed by the riot police, who held formation as they slowly gave ground; they were pushed by the crowd all the way down third until they reached madison street.

"i support a lot of what the encampment stands for..." mayor adams said on cnn. "(but) it shouldn't be focused on port-a-potties and tents and encampments attracting criminal elements. i think this movement needs to evolve."

meanwhile, many felt betrayed by a city that spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars enforcing last night's curfew.

despite the city's efforts, the camps still remained sunday morning.

"bag checks are going on. people are still mad about that. it's ok," a protester commented on the occupy portland livestream. the crowd had thinned. occupiers calmly ate brunch while police began to systematically taking their belongings. a man went to do dishes, only to have his water-fetching bucket pulled directly out of his hands by an officer in riot gear.

but a few hours later, the easy-going atmosphere was completely gone. a group of police had surrounded the remaining protestors, beating them with clubs while they chanted "peaceful!" and "shame on you!" (watch the video)

more than 50 people were arrested, according to the associated press.

by nightfall sunday, a temporary fence surrounded both the parks. mayor adams' evition notice had been served.

a chain-link fence now borders lownsdale and chapman squares,which
until last night were the site of occupy portland. image: @occupyportland

p.s.
you can reach sam adams at mayorsam@portlandoregon.gov. his twitter username is @mayorsamadams.

you can reach portland police chief mike reese at 503-823-0000. the twitter username for the portland police bureau is @portlandpolice.

todaythoughts

2011-11-08T17:08:00.000-08:00

what is the nature of our inquiry?

maybe it's disparate and varied like ourselves, and maybe it is ourselves. are we only concerned for our own self interests?

it's hard to say.

there's a scenario that's been set up in my mind and so many others: either we acknowledge that there are natural moral laws communicated to humans directly from a transcendent god, or every person will do, to paraphrase the judges record, what's right in their own eyes.

it's believed to be inherit that the natural state of man is to be, to quote the genesis record, "only evil all the time."

is this true?

maybe our own well-being is buried in the practice of engaging openly and vulnerably with community. can we be individuals? .... were we ever individuals?

these are just a coupe of my todaythoughts. write them off with your very own stern-minded replies, won't you?

i'm just sayin'

2011-11-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

portlandic street singers of balkan gypsy jazz.
don't let this photo fool you,
these guys were twice as blurry in person.

economies of street can be disparate and diverse. if you've got to live on it, the sidewalk can seem formidable. but if you're just out for a stroll between shops, it can seem lovely and refreshing.

'i'm so glad they keep the air out here on autumn evenings,' many-a-tourist has been known to probosculate. 'i'm not entirely shure about these street folk, though.' and then they get mugged, and then everything continues as usual.

and this is the game we engage with, everyone misunderstanding each other in the comical mass-mis-communications of massive greed and misanthropic displacement.

nakedness, for instance, is not allowed on the sidewalk, which is, strictly probosculating, a clothes-only zone. and horses from far and wide, are shivering, because all their blankets got gaave out to no-good and hella-stoned anti-(trojan)war hobos.

now, we might probosculate, if it tickles our chins and shivers our elbows, that each of these disparate street creatures are simply being human beings...

horses, however, would like to interrupt here, and readily assert that they, for one, are not;
and neither are the drinking fountains, which congregate in large numbers on the sidewalks to serve humanity in a categorically racist fashion. but they are so unlike like the spange-heavy fountains which bore them, and, if memory serves, raised them from a knee-high grass-hopper, or so they tell them. often.

be that as it may or may not be, i think it's high time for people who are street singers to start working on exclusively and explicitly barter terms. there is opportunity here, people!

what do people say when you refuse their money?! they are seriously puzzled like all birds, and like all chipmunks think that you are nuts, and too good to be true.

i'm just sayin'.

p.s. i (really) love this post.

no prose november!

2011-11-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

the challenge

good question, cardboard.

hey guys! we are doing something fun to commemorate the shave-less month of mustache - a poetry dare ("how rare!" - laurel). our aim is to throw down some stoopid phat rhymes every day of the month: poems with class and rush and candor; poems that never under any circumstances incorporate the phrase "stoopid phat."

and now you can join us: write some sick poems, and share alike with a community of amateur artists. just drop somebody a line, and we'll add you to the facebook page.

unsure about this whole thing? follow along with megan, jordan and me, for starters!

poem, day #1

make believe

i want to hear about the first adam and

the first

eve

they were naked in the garden

did they ever want to leave

paradise?

i want to know

when the cold comes in

the virus hides the sun

and my nose tries to run

(down my cheek)

unapologetically!

in the wake of early morning,

in the dusk the that settles slow

there's this story that you told me

it's the only one i know

can it be?

p.s.
in other news, this group is no-shaving for yes-charities (and so much more!)

uo goes three-and-out, punts #occupy

2011-10-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

uo 'cannot accommodate' #occupy

the occupy eugene protests moved to the uo quad thursday morning, and wer met with considerable resistance from the administration.

by 2:30 pm, every student on campus had an email in their inbox denouncing the relocation as incompatible with general mission of the university, and noting that camping is not allowed on the uo campus. "it would be very disruptive to the university’s core mission of teaching and research," offered acting provost lorraine davis.

unless they bring in sports money too

evidence that camping has not been disruptive to the "university's core mission" surfaced just two weeks ago when the university invited espn's college gameday to set up an enormous structure in the center of the quad from which to host their show.

though the administration insisted that "the uo cannot accommodate a campground," it hosted an event that encouraged hundreds of students to stay out all night for a chance to get on the show; many camped in tents in the exact same spot where the occupy protestors were threatened with arrest this thursday:

photos: oregon daily emerald

occupy in the quad:

protestors speaking out against
government corruption.

department of public safety and the eugene police department threatened arrests by 11 p.m.

p.s. this is my letter to acting provost davis, thanking her for her kind and informative manner. enjoy!

dear actingprovost davis,

thank you for addressingthe issue we all faced of having occupy eugene congregated in the quad. it wasindeed troublesome to have all those dirty hippies standing around innocuouslywhile we all walked to class and the library.

i also want to thank you also for notifying prominent occupiers that"camping is not permitted at the university of oregon." i think it'scritically important to make it excessively clear that such a mass oftent-toting loiterers would be "very disruptive to the university's coremission of teaching and research." that is, of course, unless thosecamping are waving foam fingertips and "go ducks" signs in hopes ofappearing on espn.

erecting structuresin the quad is very obviously contrary to university policy, unless you happento be a giant multimedia corporation that brings in a significant amount ofpublicity and cash.

thank you most ofall for making it crystal clear that the only thing that matters to this university's"mission" is it's actual and potential cash flow. if football isenough reason to suspend all university policies, and student-driven socialaction is not, then we are headed down a dark road and into and even darkeralley.

sincerely,

joel devyldere (senior studying english andphilosophy)

feel confused? misrepresented?
you can email acting provost lorraine davis at lgd@uoregon.edu (202 johnson hall), and uo president richard lariviere at pres@uoregon.edu (110 johnson hall).

universal

2011-10-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

what is the essence of our pursuit?

as human beings, is there something that we're all oriented toward? i have heard it was God.

other examples of proposed objects of the universal pursuit include 'truth,' 'wisdom,' and the ever-popular 'love...'

and then there's acceptance - respect, love and belonging from other people. i've been starting to see that maybe this is want i want the most...

hey! what if there isn't a universal desire among us homo-sapiens, among us two leg-walkers and pizza-eaters... wouldn't that be revolutionary?

i actually don't know. but in myself i seem to notice deep longings for truth, wisdom, love and acceptance. and sometimes when my wants for each of these begin to trip on each other i start to feel morally conflicted. but which desire to choose? is there one that's more important than the others?

does anyone have any insight?

#occupy

2011-10-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

#5 protest government corruption

on saturday, i hopped on the downtown-bound emx with some friends to participate in an occupy eugene march. but first, nick and i made cookies:

free cookies for the revolution.

we caught up with a very vocal crowd of oppositionists while they mingled at wayne morse plaza, right across from the eugene farmer's market. hundreds were there; more than one was dressed as guy fawkes.

from saturday market, hundreds (the register guard estimates 1500-2000) walked a highly visible route downtown, marching, chanting and waving signs in opposition to wayward policies in the states. i was very curious to see what other people would have to say. here are a few pervasive characteristics that i noticed at the occupy eugene march:

diverse 

armed with a box of no-bake cookies, a friend and i set out to informally interview various marchers as we walked. what we discovered was an impressively diverse collection of eugenians - from old-guard activists to fiery students to young-and-possibly-homeless drug addicts. some people marched carrying young children. all of them had something to say.

articulate
among those marching, the diversity of opinions was significant: some were protesting corporate personhood in the states, while others were disputing the wage gap between workers and corporate officers... one guy was promoting the awareness of psychoactive mushrooms.

for the large majority, however, there was continuous thread - a central government had dispensed their taxes to banks and squandered them on militaristic endeavors elsewhere in the world. that same government, any occupier will tell you, is defiantly neglecting to dispense those taxes to those in need in the states and largely refuses to impose reasonable taxes on its largest corporations.

courteous

estimates cited on a new york times blog report that the eugene protests on saturday involved more than eighteen hundred people. yet the scene was curiously benign - no destruction of property, virtually no hate speech and no violence. protestors walked respectfully, careful to avoid even jay-walking, while dozens of police officers looked on ominously.

determined 

while excited, ecstatic, and sometimes downright annoyingly persistent in self-celebratory chants, these protestors also showed resolve. three days later, somewhere around a hundred are still camping in the plaza downtown.

while wandering through the camp with a friend at 4 a.m., i was stopped by a student who talked optimistically and frankly about the movement: "we are prepared to be here for at least a few months; and if not here, then somewhere else."

revenge, revenge

2011-10-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

"the body gaped at the stroke dealt to it after death: beowulf cut the corpse's head off." and the blood bubbled to the surface of the sea, coming in full view of those who had watched the hero descend.

the first hero of the english language, "the warrior determined to takes revenge for every gross act grendel had committed... beowulf in his fury now settled that score." his revenge was gory and unremorseful; but of course it was! he's thousands of leagues below the sea, in the lair of a pre-historic and satanically motivated monster.

even so, beowulf defends revenge between people. he assures the casual listener that "it is always better to avenge dear ones than to engage in mourning." not that they needed much convincing - beowulf's entire culture is anchored by an honor code of cyclical revenge. if someone is killeed, even accidentally, they must be avenged. it is highly shameful to refuse to kill in kind.

on another level, these speeches become very important. the poet, not a member of the germanic bloodbath era in which beowulf is set, is himself an anglo-saxon christian, who anachronistically frames this ancient germanic saga with vehemently christian characters. the speeches of these characters teach reader and hearer alike of the wonders of the vengeance of the christian God.

God gives beowulf his strength, the narrator tells us, and it is He who upholds this cycle of revenge.

so you might blame God for the fact the original readers of this epic poem (and arguably the modern readers) continue to stab and slash each other in torturous repetitions of a morbid assertion of justice. but we can't go judging a hebraic God for events that occur at least three thousand years after He's first recorded. how hokey is that?!

it seems as though we shouldn't, and though i won't attempt to gloss the theological aims of the beowulf poet here, maybe we can trace his eerie fascination with vengeance back to a legitimate source. who is the first revenge killer?

"the Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil... and the Lord said, 'I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth.'"

the first revenge killer is the hebrew God.

it is God who at first decides to take his holy justice out on someone by killing them violently (in this case primarily drowning them). and he is the start of a never-ending tradition of violent attacks and violent reprisals.

at the foundation of western literature stands the tradition of vengeance killing; and vengeance continues in that literary line to this day - the two have never stood apart. and we, as westerners, have always been fascinated with retaliatory violence, as the literature has led and reflected us; as our students have read and our writers have expressed - we want revenge!

now this may sound as if i'm trying to misrepresent a mythological character, but the hebrew God here is proud of what he's done. he encourages the few humans who survive the flood to follow suit, saying: "if anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. for God made human beingsin his own image."

and so legend conceives of the origins of revenge. indeed, as long as we can blame God(s), then there will be no need to live in anti-homicidal community.

"'vengeance is mine,' says the Lord." and now, it's everybody else's.

beowulf, trans. seamus heaney
bible, new living translation

the week of vegan

2011-10-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

#4 try going vegan.

veganchallenge week: seven days of the not-eating of animal products: no milk, no cheese, no eggs, no meat and (sadly) no honey. this turned out to be a bit a bit of a legitimate challenge for everyone involved.

this summer i started to realize that i had made it my habit to eat meat at almost every meal; food felt incomplete without it. i felt that this was unhealthy in a few ways. but was it feasible to up and quit my carnivorous ways at 21?

my first couple of attempts were largely unsuccessful. at first i was traveling on the east coast, and tried to be vegan for a bit. i remember the look i got from the girl at the sandwich shop when i ordered a veggie sub with no cheese. it was a lot at once. i was trying...

but i would start to feel weak with the absence of meat from my diet. i halfheartedly attempted this same endeavor again on the west coast, with similar results. one thing that eventually helped was a for-fun attempt with friends. about a dozen people expressed interest when i told them about it; and three of us who committed to it lived together. so we started planning. we made lists of possibilities, schemed out some necessary ingredients and reorganized our food. we even had a facebook page:

we were impressed with the need to eat meals together, to combine ingredients, blowing steadily on sparks of imagination in each other until we were ablaze with new culinary creations. many of the meals were suuuper good.

all in all we had a great experience. we grew together as friends and we learned that maybe we can survive and thrive without animal proteins. this might sound intuitive to some of y'all, but for me it was kind of surprising. i feel empowered to embark on a few more adventures. onward! : )

the quiche that (basically) ended it all.

questions

2011-10-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

jacques-louis david's the death of socrates.

barefoot in the back of allejandro vallega's lecture, i was re-introduced to some fairly fundamental questions. among them was a big ol' western philosophical gem that has got me doing mental double takes:

how can we become human beings?

simultaneously curious and defensive, i reacted against this question, even as its premise was still being glossed:

'what do you mean we're not inherently human?' i fumed silently.

"we are potential human beings. we're not human beings until we are ethical." vallega's serendipitous explanation resounding in my mind, i wove my way through the crowd of freshmen and strode away to meet a friend.

'are we inherently human?' i assumed so. why didn't the greeks?

walking past the library, i shudder through aching memories of a text message i sent in frustration so long ago. "you have to tell me when we're done. it's called being a human being."

i've been saying that i regard everyone as valuable because they exist. all this time, maybe i haven't acted like it's true. i can point now to times in the past when i've decided when people were worthy of respect as human beings and when they weren't.

can i break out of my insecurity, and learn to love each person for who they are, and choose to respect them for what they are? can i retreat from self-focus and engage wholeheartedly in the pursuit of understanding the perspectives of my neighbors?

maybe so, and maybe this sort of thing is vitally important...

and this is how a mind forms, of molten cosmologies and into universal claims. but i don't want to be right. i pretty much only want to be alive.

p.s.

if you haven't already, check out occupy wall street. what a fascinating twist in the largely unprecedented drama of our times!

running errands

2011-09-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

#4 running errands.

lately i've been feeling a little short on hours. this idea definitely helped.

when i exercise, it's commonly by running; and usually all that running is done in the neighborhoods around my house. i also tend to shop at the market on hilyard, which is pretty conveniently half a mile away. so i took my run at night, and picked up groceries on my way back.

it is a little weird walking around the grocery store a little sweaty and wearing workout clothes... but i like to think of it as a great potential conversation starter. a lot of people run in my neighborhood, but even if they didn't, it's not really that big of a deal.

this is a super convenient way to save time (one trip instead of two) and energy (no bus or cars involved). do you have a market near your house? try it out! : )

secondhand

2011-09-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

it has long been my intention to read stuff. i wanted to earn the prestige of being a casual reader... and i wanted to be smart too.

i longed to be a quasi-academic consumer of info, and began (almost) daily turning my attention to such renowned gems as google news and the new york times. lately, however, i've taken recourse to focus on my followship of the blogs of a couple of friends.

'why so backslidden?' you may ask.

i don't know. but reading local is surely good for your brain, and there's a lot fewer pesticides for sure! check out these wonderful willamette valley writers:

the substance of one step big shot  is a scavenger hunt for visual art in eugene, oregon. osbs's jordan eddy is a student of the uo school of journalism and communication and now blogs for the on-campus jordan schnitzer museum of art. jordan certainly has an eye for enthralling images, and some pretty great suggestions for what they might mean to the reader. 

natalie brooke photography centers around the photographic adventures of one natalie poindexter, formerly of eugene, or. documented in these pictures are not only geographically disparate novelties, but also culinary adventures and serendipitously captured journalistic shots. natalie has a sharp focus on human-centered portrayals; watching people react, while the world spins behind them.

i don't know anything about wished upon a sun, but it's lovely. the author is somewhere, from the looks of things, the author is somewhere in corvallis, or. come claim your blog! you have lovely poetry, and a funny little tendency to repost the silliest little bits of nostalgia.

old ideas

2011-09-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

parmenides was so stoned
that he survived ensuing centuries
in statue form. (image: wikimedia)

mr. arola asserted today that "the idea that history is getting better and moving forward has only existed since the enlightenment."

this highlights another of the major perspective rearrangements that have occurred to me recently: a realization that my patterns of thinking, my notions of correctness, and even my ideas of what constitutes a truth are drawn from and contiguous with historical movements of culture and philosophy.

this realization not only encompasses the substance of the things i think about but also their framing. "i think, therefore i am" just like descartes. but i learned today that i also conceive of that "am," that being, in a sense that is concerned with exclusivity. i assume that something that is contains in its definition the qualities of being exclusively opposed to everything that isn't (correspondence theory).

lately i've been thinking about the vast and seemingly never-ending inventory of cultural arbitrations with which i have framed the world. here are a few that i've noticed so far:

positivism - wikipedia calls this the collection of "epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the scientific method is the best approach to uncovering the processes by which both physical and human events occur." i keep hearing that its modern form was developed in the 19th century... does this mean that my way of conceiving of the world, something i thought inherent to all human beings is less than 300 years old?! perplexing.
capitalism - no, not just capitalism, but a fun little strain i like to call neocapitalism. this is the idea that community is best served, individuals are best protected, and resources are best managed by a sizable oligarchical governing body. until recently, i assumed that this notion was well believed by any sensible person. cultural precedents may have had a lot to do with that...
theism - the assertion that a personal god actively engages with the universe. "theism... conceives of [g]od as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe." (thank you wikipedia) while i am not against the idea of theism per se, i am in conflict with my old ideas about theism. i have previously naively assumed that everyone in their lifetime comes to a knowledge of something called "the sovereignty of God," and those that claimed that this notion is not the best description of the known and unknown universe were simply in denial.

so there are a couple of examples of how i can trace what i thought were the inherent facts of life and the obvious ways of thinking about it back to historical movements and specific schools of thought. i now have a harder time excusing a thought process or an action as "simply human," because there are and have been millions of smarter people who thought a lot differently. go figure...

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

adventure coasters (c. 2011 ce)

#3 functional art.

the epic of the adventure coasters must not be lost to man! i will tell of an ancient house, a place of learning (and also a place of trying to learn while someone plays loud rap music in the next room). herein there were no coasters. the residents yearned for coasters as they yearned to write their parents and yearned to take out the trash. basically: they yearned a lot.

but at least three brave residents engineered a plan: they would build that everyone was always yearning for. and stuff. two of these residents broke out their shredded magazines and used stamps. they slew the monsters in their heads that told them they should be doing their homework. it was time.

they cut up some cardboard squares, and began to paste the snowboard magazine images of yesteryear on city maps, ticket stubs and old-school decorative envelope fragments. they worked into the night. "adventure is out there!" quoth one. it was pretty cool.

a tragic hipster works furiously (and tragically)
to engineer a cozy coffee coaster.


adventure coasters: they could happen to you.

smallish step #3! cook up some functional art
cost: paste($), lamination ($), and a little time : )
benefits: form, function, decoration and fun!

card tricks

2011-09-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

flickr: @stewtopia

i have adam arola (this guy) for ancient philosophy class this term. first lecture, he made the statement that "the willingness to admit ignorance is the condition of learning."

i could not have learned a more difficult lesson over these past few years. my worldview, what i described three years ago as a precariously balanced house of cards has full-on collapsed, and left me in absolute shock and wonder.

i have since set out to see if there was anything left of me. maybe there is, and maybe i'll come to see how that shifty-sunken house was only a game i was fiddling with, an elaborate card trick i was playing on myself. then again, maybe not.

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

jt. this was not his most full-color day.

#2 baking together

while being efficient with my time is definitely a goal, it's nowhere near the top of the list. more than anything right now, my focus is on developing good relationships with people by serving them and sharing life with them.

so jt and i slightly modified a scone recipe. we began a-baking with enthusiasm and candor (and coconut oil)!

"the consistency is off," i observed. "i'll be right back." i sprinted to laurel's room and stole her hair dryer, certain that a couple minutes beneath the heat would amend our pastries' awkward texture.

as it turns out, the substitution of key ingredients in the making of our scones greatly affected the outcome of this little culinary adventure... but who's to say for the worse or the better?! we soon had a plateful of extra-crumbly dairy-free scones to share with our housemates. who could ask for more?

smallish step #2? find a friend. make some shareable food.
cost: baking supplies (a little $)
benefits: a great time with friends, scones a-plenty!

these super-yummy scones are almost never
frizzy after they shower.

p.s. check out jt's blog!

back to

2011-09-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

... commitment and routine, but not back to stress and confusion.
back to schedules and timelines, but not back to loathsome mundanities.

we in the oregon university system are back to school. the term structure (weird, i know) has got us doing ten weeks of condensed lectures, excerpted readings and value-packed discussion sections.

this summer:
i traveled as a homeless wanderer across the states, observing the mad realities of my culture. seriously, i thought to myself. this is depressing.

shoving those italics aside, i rushed and stumbled back to oregon equipped with a cursory knowledge of the specifics of survivalist dumpster-diving and excited for the possibilities that home-ful-ness would afford me.

maybe i can live in a way that's not so arbitrarily wasteful and lonely... maybe we all can.

smallish steps

(tiny little miniscule footfalls toward living in a way that actually makes sense)

#1 hanging out the laundry.

in ithaca, where my silly little barefoot self realized the
benefits of more efficient laundrification
(and not in the urban dictionary sense of the word).

there was a super obvious discrepancy between the way i thought about laundry and the way i was actually cleaning my clothes. but it took a change of circumstance to motivate me to be creative in this area. the circumstatntial shift occurred when i was dirt-poor and homeless in ithaca, n.y.

i realized upon entering a local laundrypalce that i had loads of time on my hands, and very little money. it didn't any longer make sense in this situation for me to pay a time-saving machine to clean my laundry for me.

i borrowed some laundry soap, and set to it, cleaning my clothes in the utility sink, before wringing them out to the best of my ability. in this specific situation, it was expedient for me to use the dryers, making sure to conserve quarters for coffee money as i went.

another common sense thing that hadn't occurred to me was a strategy for dealing with the time i spent waiting for my clothes to dry. i pulled out a couple magazines, and started to read about the struggle for social justice (inefficiency diminished).

since coming back to eugene, i've found that it makes more sense to dry my clothes under the eaves of my house. it saves me a couple dollars a week (plus a lot of previously wasted energy), and, contrary to popular opinion, the hobos don't steal them while they're drying. as an added bonus, my clothes smell like the autumn air. they even dry when it's raining out, so long as they don't blow out from under the eaves.

step number one? do smart(er) laundry.

systems

2011-09-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

right now i feel as if mysticism is the only kind of spirituality that could ever make sense. any assertion of transcendent truth will inevitably step on toes, ruffle feathers, and cause violence.

hand-me-down truth claims have emerged as epistemological car crashes in the ambiguous turn lanes we somehow left unmarked.

... and then it occurred to me that judaism and christianity are perfectly adjusted means of atheism, two towers of systematized didactic addenda for the cryptic musings of an enigmatic God.

and then it occurred to me that i could be wrong. what do you think?

inconclusion

2011-09-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

are there unseen and misunderstood happenings? it seems likely. some have speculated that there are ten dimensions, see:

could the factors that determine the outcomes of out lives be transcendent of the surface of a largely arbitrary social consensus? it's very likely that they are. "god" and "karma" are both examples of extrasocial explanations of the working of the universe (natural selection too!). we can imagine something bigger, and thus our intellects are liberated from the arbitration of our eras.

we are free to think bigger thoughts and live smaller lives (in our own estimations). we are at ease to commit horrible atrocities, armed with the knowledge that tar, feathers and public opinion aren't really hell. maybe there is no hell. maybe there is. it is in this line of reasoning that we can start to expect to wobble and/or soar, perhaps crash-landing with excellence on the rocks of impassioned indifference. ingenuity may thrive and frustration may abound.

we have slipped the grasp of moralism, sink or swim.

we can learn to love, only to be mocked for the sentiment, chained half-willingly to the outside of society, spit on by the unsuspecting, with the keys heavy in our back pockets. the powers that be and the powers that want to be have in common that they fail to recognize the value of helplessness. what is regarded as pathetic in this life may be of infinite value in a contemporary eternity.

to that effect jesus is quoted as saying "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

can i launch into a discourse now on how to be childlike in your living? i asked myself that, while i was thinking about writing this. i can't, but i want you and i, reader, to understand why so many do:

not everyone knows what it is like to be a child. for instance, my thoughts were fear-motivated as far back as i can remember. i discovered wonder and ecstatic abandon somewhere around age 15.
the childlike experience is by no sense uniform. scholars may be hard-pressed to determine and communicate the specific of this quote, and many others like it. it's very unclear, but many demand clear answers.

i am of the opinion that it is a pathetic tendency to focus on the acquisition of physical objects. i believe the current wisdom is: ' you can't take it with you when you go.' that's an incomplete reality: you can't take it with you ever. while i can't speak authoritatively of the spiritual realm, your physical belongings can leave any moment. surely you recognize that there are forces beyond your control.

perhaps it is equally grotesque and pointless to engineer and entertain notions of a fantastic afterlife in which all things will be made right, and all persons set in order.

"the kingdom of heaven is within [among] you."

well, is it?

sailors

2011-08-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

zen by dieseldemon

they held hands,
the devil and she,
as they went off to face the man with the chainsaw.
while he and i, both short on cash,
tried our luck at sneaking in.

so we walked in pairs (in different towns),
our ring fingers wrapped together,
spring on our minds...

we used to kiss (and the devil makes four)
in the front seats of stationary cars.
and now they kiss on stage and say 'i do,'
while he and i, both short on cash,
still stand and shoot the late october breeze.
all strung out on the memories,
we take long drags off short cigarettes
and knee-jerk our minds into the emptiness.

and later on, drunk on the time of day,
he tries to tell me, tries to tell himself,
how everything was all his fault,

how even when you're sneaking in,
nothing's ever free.
the corn maze is gone,
but we're still lost at sea.

i hope that someone reads my...

2011-08-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

i'm concerned that my dogmatism, though experientially founded, is overly focused on preconceived notions of 'self' and 'knowing.' just because "i" "know" something doesn't make it true....

does it?

also: i keep waking up to the sprinklers soaking me in the middle of the night. is this a sign from god that i should stop sleeping in people's yards?

as ever,

joel

the power of words?

2011-07-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

the unlit highway of self-assurance.

a man at the park stopped and asked me if i'd read his tract. i told him no offense, but i'd read a lot of literature about God, and was suddenly subject to even more now that i'm living homeless. why not just chat?

there was a message to be dispersed, and he was attempting to "reach out to the younger generation."

"people don't have time to talk to me," he said, citing examples of people texting or absorbed in the music coming out of their ipods.

so i told him: "i think literature is remarkably ineffective strategy for conveying your message, especially for younger people." it may be true that people "don't have time" to talk to him, but it's almos certainly true that they don't have time to read his tract after they walk away. and if they do, what then? what kind of power can literature convey to this world?

even as a english major, i am skeptical of the power of stark written word to convert a person into a believer in an un-stark and unwritten Reality. "how about demonstrating the love of God?" i said. "can you feel it right now?"

he could. but certainty had it's nasty little claws in him. he wasn't offended by my words, but asserted with intensity: "i know that what i'm doing is right." he cited a biblical account of apostles "preaching door-to-door" and referenced the persecution that he had experienced as an open-air evangelist...

there are some people who need to believe what they believe to be ok, who cite evidence in defense of the dogmatic claims upon which their sense of self-value is based. i think the man at the park is one of those people. and so am i.

God loves...

2011-06-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

'Jesus loves you' is a common rhetorical derived from john 3:16-18; the phrase has been adopted as a mantra by modern evangelicals for the encouragement of outsiders and insiders alike, supplementing the equally popular 'God is love' (1 john 4: 7-16).

maybe the most troubling thing about this concept is that it can't inherently mean anything to the hearer. if we assume that Jesus is God and 'God is love,' then 'Jesus loves you' in the strictest terms only means that he is consistent with His character. His love has nothing to do with you in any practical way.

i drew this sketch to illustrate the trouble.

so next time you're tempted to tell a stranger that 'Jesus loves' them, you may want to re-think it. a more effective strategy might be demonstrating the love of God, if that's in the cards.

as ever,

joel

morningsongs

2011-06-06T11:03:00.001-07:00

"when we awake each morning, we hold in our hands, usually weakly and loosely, but a few fringes of the tapestry of lived life, as loomed for us by forgetting." - walter benjamin

(a poem from last november)

pillow hair and morning breath

notwithstanding,

the silence kisses me to say good morning.

and though they say that opposites attract,

we both lay together -

holding down the floor and out the cold -

'til morningsongs and afternoonishchats.

skyline in a box

'to keep our metaphysics warm'

2011-06-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

i wrote this post. deleted this post,
rewrote it.

it's not poetry. ok?

i just got done with an remarkably fascinating conversation with pedro about life, God and the possible connections. pedro thinks i'm wrong; right to be doing what i'm doing, but wrong.

it's really earth-shaking to be called wrong. i'm going to savor this moment.

i love conversations. they can be a phenomenal way to have my worldviews shaken up. they are the best way to learn that i'm wrong. wrong.

we get to talk a lot, the world and me. mostly we are fumbling through the bare basics of affirmation of somebody or somebody else - patting backs and shaking hands; stepping on toes and apologizing.

it's hard to get through the formalities; and even when you do, there is always the possibility of a fatal incompatibility of core values. this can manifest in an equally deadly shallowness:

shallow in all the wrong ways, we talked gucci, light beers and mcdonald's menu items for half an hour. "life's a bitch!" she concluded, up to her ankles in the most carelessly polluted puddle of it.

sometimes i think, half serious: 'there goes our life together; into the need-driven self-affirming worship of personal preference.' or something....

but people like pedro have this liberating influence on my curiosity. it's very important that i'm able to work with thoughts in a social setting, my thoughts and other peoples'; i need to be told i'm wrong about things.

this might give you a sense of why i so intensely value intellectual debate. i love it more than bob dylan. in a few very important ways, this blog is one such conversation. and here are a couple more:

life stories in sentences and symphonies. this blog is a trip. michael's prose is engaging, and his poetry is achingly visceral. personal tone pervades every second, as he attains fervently to vulnerability. the resulting beauty is resolutely human.

melody's postmodernist prose and textmessage poems (formally wonder/wander) is such a great triumph of conversational style. she's not explicitly assumptive, but she sure doesn't explain herself either. there are contained within her posts deep metaphysical mysteries that she thought of while riding her bike to the store or sipping wine out in the garden. melody doesn't even own an ivory tower, but if she did she would be sitting in the window, playing music for the birds.

this bike and i took shelter from the rain storm at the park.

room for God

2011-06-01T16:31:00.000-07:00

time present and time past

are both perhaps present in time future,

and time future contained in time past.

if all time is eternally present

all time is unredeemable.

- t. s. eliot (burnt norton, 1935)

so here's the idea - that time isn't real in the first place; that it's an semi-arbitrary abstraction - first of the mind (moment to moment), next of societal standardization (of agricultural utility, of use in keeping records, etc.) and at last of material ends ('i'm on the clock'; 'time is money').

but if time isn't real, only effectively a mentally synthesized, socially engineered and societally manipulated organization of matter, then how can we understand reality or grasp at possibility? how else might we organize all that there is?

what if the past isn't actually a continuum that effectively culminates in the present?

if we aren't moving towards, maybe we aren't in motion at all. maybe our minds are simply organizing temporally homogenous data into a continuum and simultaneously facilitating the illusion of a progress toward some "moments" and away from others. maybe.*

assumptions of progress are over-believed, if not over-trusted, noted eliot's contemporary, himself a german jew between the wars:

"the current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. this amazement is not the beginning of knowledge - unless that knowledge is that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable."

- walter benjamin (theses on the philosophy of history)

what if we can't organize the past around the present with certainty, can't safely assume that we've made any progress in terms of knowing or discovering what is?

in contrast to eliot's claim that "all time is unredeemable," benjamin's elaborations go on to frame the search for cohesion and meaning into an infinitely inquisitive hopefulness. he resolves to possibility instead of resolution, claiming for each generation a "weak messianic power," proclaiming them as the possible carriers of the redemptive moment, from which we will understand all others, by which we can know a less than arbitrary significance of present, past and future...

there is now effectively room for God; and the moment that He Is redeems all other moments. any thoughts?

as ever,

joel

the city poses one of several well-articulated implications
about the relationship between time and reality.
- 'where is this all going?'

*organizing by moments or events is also problematic, as you might have guessed. these seem very likely to be a trick of the mind. do we learn to think in terms of moments and objects in the same way we learn object permanence? not sure...

golf?

2011-05-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

what about urban golfing? these folks adapted the ritzy ritual to a fun little city game with instantly customizable targets. trash cans and fire hydrants were among the objects cited by the city-dwellers as appropriate to aim for.

i watched as they reached with clubs to retrieve stray balls, joking about how selecting a luxury car as their next target. but what makes the game safe for play in downtown portland? tennis balls. now you know.

making waves

2011-05-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

1
there's a calm in the lethargy
of minutes on the sofa i will miss
there's a nothing-will-be-calm-again
again, but i'm familiar with this
illusory imminence

and this too shall slide

into the never-ending and always beginning

yes

2
do you ever read, honey
a poem about yourself and think 'goddamn!
that doesn't do me justice at all'
well i don't
by dating poets, i've been immortalized

by living in the past,
by speaking out of turn,
by loving dreamers,
i've not always been loved
(but at least i've been considered)

3
now is not the time to be sad
now is not the
time to be
heartbroken

now is the nicotine, now is the whiskey shots
now is the time to cash in on all of our 'no guarantees'
now is reason enough to make our nerve endings bleed,
to embrace breakers in an ocean full of entropy
and learn to love each other from across the thrashing sea

out of breath, in the
rear-view mirrorworld,
us

sleep, cynicism

2011-05-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

is any of this worthwhile?
all these thoughts about God, religion and the church (and i intentionally separate terms) keep tumbling out. i don't know about you, but sometimes i see this blog as a cynical rail against the sect i grew up in, a lamentable reaction to the regrettable discovery of a deep, deep emptiness.

sometimes.

i have been looking back at what i've written, and through all of the negative comments and sarcastic accusations, i've seen a coherent thread of progress. this is going somewhere. but progress isn't always so great. is it?

maybe not. but the way i see things, we are, all of us, in a nearly hopeless predicament of apparent meaninglessness; maybe the disillusioned try not to think of it, while the comfortable 'make their own meaning.' the especially bold will claim transcendent truth (that, and people who get paid to claim it).

the problem is that people starve, are attacked, are killed. maybe i naively believe that every famine has a solution, every war is misguided and every addiction or mental illness speaks to a lack of something.

God. how can we fix this?
it's like we're complacently lost at sea, and i'm like 'it's hurricane season. let's go.' you can ask me where, but we all know the answer to that one. anywhere.

so where are you going with this?
i'm in a state of crisis because i haven't found a voice that's strong enough to calm the storm of our times. can we really abide sickness, famine and war? can we really call them part of God's plan?

people commonly use the idea of God as a calming influence that will help them sleep at night. but i think if we really believed in God, we would find it just that much harder to sleep.

hell. that's more like it:
if we say we value human life, then there is absolutely no way we can be ok with a God who doesn't. christianity champions such a God.

if we say we know the divine Author of the universe, then we had better have some damn good answers for our actions...

poussin's victory of joshua over the amelekites.

maybe what i'm arguing for most of all is to get people out of this state of certainty and complacency, and into the wasteland of doubt and possibility. have we constructed these comfortable idealogical cocoons only to sleep through the epidemics and the genocide?

no. i really believe that if we stop and think about it, we can't accept the pathetic and crippling notion that 'He's got the whole world in His hands.' it might help us sleep at night, but that won't make it any more true.

travels

2011-05-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

friends,

i've been on the road for much of the last few weeks. here are some pictures to that effect:

the last of the landlines.

portland

darklit sepialand.

...which way to go?

this dude.

tree (+synthetic vibrance)..

..what an opportunity

ok, that's all.

- j

some thoughts on abandoning christianity

2011-05-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

crack a window and let the

universe in

days are blurring together.
i am more frequently confronted with the probability that it is naive to assume God in anything, and deceptive to pretend He is. a nostalgically charged song pervades my subconsciousness, and suddenly instead i want this or that (him or her)...

in the abjectly pretended certainty of such observational claims, my thoughts are revealed as frivolous little adventures. 'isn't that cute?' quips a sarcastic and unassuming self from somewhere below the calm.

unassuming.
maybe most of the trouble is all my assuming. other people who dropped serious christianity to sink like the millstone it is have ended up as addicts, as unstable flounderers in the ocean outside. it's hard to abandon your basis for reality, no matter how fucked up it is. it's hard to be unsure, and it's easy to be wrong.

but i can't live life on unstable assumptions; not even for convenience sake. a modern augustine might have said: 'the church is a violent, racist, sexist, slave-mongering, war-justifying, genocidal whore. and i hate that bitch.'

it's disconcerting to apply a modern perspective to a religion that has asserted its infallibility through dozens of wars, thousands of internal schisms and at least a few witch hunts... it's disconcerting, but it needs to be done. otherwise people will keep telling me that we've finally got it right.

wrong again
i will inevitably have to face up to a steadily lengthening list of inadequacies. but my pathetic notions of certainty didn't make me any more right, any more wrapped up in love.

i invite the reader to celebrate the realization that they are right about everything but possibly a few minor points in their theological doctrine. others who disagree are either ignorant, rebellious or the ever-popular "led astray."

as for me, i don't know the way to where i hope He is. and this is such a horribly big deal.

photos

2011-05-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

monday is apparently not a big blogging day. that's completely understandable, world. i mean, i really want to read your juicy updates, but i understand. you're a busy planet.

so, i put together a few pictures:

kitchen fire.

o. the. sun.

free bus ride.

free alley.

scrolls, etc.

2011-05-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

this cat from the whitaker (yeah, babe!)

scrolls

the faster i walk,

the warmer i feel

about

forgetting my coat

that's on the coatstand

purchased for

the season.

the faster i walk,

the less i feel bad

about

rain,

which i've decided,

has its place

but doesn't know it.

ii.

so in the deepest blue part of the morning,

i was right about the sky and wrong about the

sentiments.

(it was only light reflecting off my cornea.)

and i connected you and me without sufficient

evidence

it wasn't us,

but what's the difference?

iii.

i spent my

first six days

digging up scrolls.

on the seventh one i met you,

maybe soon and maybe since.

but

it's just like you to laugh at me,

trying to think of you in terms of me,

and...

there isn't space for all of this.

you are and maybe someday i'll be.

we're out of sight and out of time

(which isn't real, but might as well be).

(thanks to mel for editing this poem.)

fire

2011-05-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

smoky and his friends have lied to you. arson is the only way to true enlightenment. to prove it, check out these photos of things:

bike by roommate.

adam.

can't get enough of that waffle sound.

scared of losing all the time?

goats are the future.

no imagine them all on fire. k cool.

a ten-thousand-pound lid

2011-05-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

this is a continuation of an earlier post entitled the God in my box.

one of the most difficult dilemmas in my life right now is the debate over how to treat the bible. it's true that i live in one of the most adamantly christian nations on earth, and to add to that i am surrounded by people who are convinced that the protestant bible is the infallible word of God. this is how i grew up.

this dumpster has an incredibly difficult lid
as well. just don't read into it too much.
i was taught to believe "in the beginning.." and "for God so loved..." before i could form sentences on my own, and these are among the verses that i vehemently defended until a year ago. thankfully, life experiences have recently prompted me to ask some very specific questions.

it seems very obvious to me now that the belief system i once subscribed to is built on a series of half truths and convenient assumptions, which would not hold up against a little critical thinking and solid reasoning. how about yours?

while this entire issue may seem irrelevant to many, i have found it very valuable to have an ongoing discussion regarding the evolution of my stance on belief and religion with those around me. it has helped me to think critically and stay sane.

would you like to join the discussion? the following are just
three of the main reasons that i simply could not give up my faith in the bible as higher truth for so very long. enjoy! (and feel free to disagree in the comment box below)

three myths i whole-heartedly believed about the bible

(1) inerrancy
the argument for the inerrancy of scriptures was initially taught to me in apologist form. i had already embraced the biblical texts as the highest from of truth due to songs and mantras that i learned in sunday school and at home. in reality, i believed in inerrancy of the scriptures chiefly because of vacation bible school songs like "i believe the bible is the word of God."

when i actually did learn the basis for our belief in divinely inspired and uncompromised nature of the bible, it was in fragmentary form. archaeological evidence was referenced in passing. the cohesiveness of the texts

(addressed below)

was invoked. by far the most compelling reason i was given was that literally billions of people have embraced the christian faith over literally thousands of years.

how could two billion christians be wrong? there are a billion muslims who can tell you exactly how.

i remember asking my mother why certain books were chosen for inclusion in the bible while others were left out. she replied that by the time of the council of nicea (325 ad, when the bible as we know it was assembled), it was obvious which books had changed people's lives and which had not. and this answer sticks with me to this day.

in a certain sense my mom was right; belief in the inerrancy of the bible does change people's lives. but i would argue that you can take any book and bestow upon it the status of higher truth, wholeheartedly living according to the (real or imagined) principles contained in it. there is no doubt that that book will change your life.

(2) morality
maybe the biggest misnomer about the biblical texts is that they are collectively expressive of a set of transcendent values. for years

i have heard

from parents, church leaders and friends who i studied the bible with that the bible never contradicts itself.

this is categorically untrue. there are so many contradictions within the current biblical texts that the problem of agreeing on an interpretation for application has started actual wars.
this one task occupies the minds of millions of intelligent scholars around the globe, and has preoccupied millions more for literally sixteen hundred years. their failure is testified to by the existence of thousands of distinct christian groups, many antagonistic and some willing violently prejudiced against each other.

for years, when i would point out a contradiction in the biblical texts i was studying, my friends or family or family members would point to a lack of faith on my part. sometimes they would follow this by expressing their concern that i was looking for a reason to ignore the moral standards in the bible.

however, my motivation for questioning the veracity of the biblical texts wasn't always motivated by an irrational and nihilistic rebellion. much to the contrary, my greatest motivation was often genuine desire to understand what is true about the world, about God.

in a structure of belief that depends on the interpretation of the biblical morals as a basis for community, questions like mine were outside of the scope of discussion.

i think this is why it took me until long after i left the church to establish a clear line of thinking about the possibility of a transcendent moral structure throughout the scriptures.

it was only after i left the church that i was able to take more seriously the observation that the biblical authors are saying radically different things. there actually didn't seem to be much of a continuous thread uniting them...

(3) cohesiveness
and this brings me to the most prevalent myth of all. i was previously convinced of the notion that the biblical texts represented a whole document that revealed God's unfolding plan of redemption to humanity.

the trouble is that these texts do not appear to be written by God, but by several people over the course of more than a thousand years. there can be no cohesiveness of the biblical texts as a whole for the same reason that we have failed over the centuries to successfully extract a coherent moral structure from the these books. these notions have traditionally been read into the text, but the reality they assert doesn't intrinsically manifest itself to the critical reader.

there is no transcendent take-home message - probably because no such message was intended.

to sum up
if you think about it, none of the aforementioned myths have solid foundations in the biblical texts in the first place. the biblical texts never claim to be part of a cohesive 66-part volume; and no author could make the claim that their writings would not contradict those of the other authors, because many of them didn't even know about each other. it's true that a few of the canonized authors make claims regarding the supernatural inspiration of their books, but the vast majority do not.

i confess that i don't express as much faith as i once did. but i actually look at this as a good thing. my faith was not primarily in God, or even the bible, but in culturally absorbed myths about the bible.

but what should we believe? or is faith obsolete?

i have no answers to these questions. but maybe we have over-focused on belief out of convenience or out of fear. maybe we have made too many (or too few) conclusions. whatever the case, i suggest we take a closer look at what we believe to start with.

as ever,

joel

what's wrong with faith?

2011-05-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

i learned from a sign on a guy's backpack that the world is ending. then there were the silent protestors with the "atheists love you" signs, and little mennonite children holding signboards that encouraged the onlookers to repent. there were bibles being waved at a crowd of at least two hundred. oh, the joys of eugene!

yesterday's hilarious collision of belief systems at the e.m.u. (spectator video) got pretty ugly at some points. there was a lot of screaming and name-calling. basically, it was brilliant to watch.

multiple times i saw people come down from the crowd and either debate or support the fundamentalist preacher. there was often rudeness on both ends, while the crowd crudely moderated by either drowning out or screaming "let him speak."

amid the crass yelling and un-stifled laughter, i thought i could sense a sort of excitement that goes beyond the usual mocking. there seems to be a suppressed desire for discourse on belief and its real-world consequences; and this in a university that patronizingly treats serious belief like pop art.

and then there's the phenomenon of the chomsky speech, during which people literally sat outside in the cold listening on a speaker after the lecture hall and all the satellite video locations were full to capacity.

here are several generations of self-proclaimed free thinkers (with anachronistically unthinkable volumes of information available on their cellphones) cramming in to lecture halls to hear the conclusions of an almost an almost resolutely anti-polemical 92-year-old linguist. is there really so much popular disgust with contemporary politics? what gives?

we have developed in western academic culture what the contemporary thinker sam harris refers to as "balkanized discourse." once we enter university, our beliefs never engage our knowledge or experiences in way a that would make us alter either of them. this is the foundation for religious moderation in the west.

this separation of brain and faith is actually a good thing on an individual level. if what you want out of life is peace of mind and a sense of community, then mindlessly embracing conflicting ideologies is a very effective approach. however, on a societal level this poses some serious issues.

religious moderates, who support, for example, the bible can't in good conscience take it all literally. there are several roadblocks to this, including revisionism among the later canonized jewish thinkers (see romans 9, hosea 1-2), cultural specificities (see paul's letters) and considerations of genre (jonah is a satire, jesus' parables are metaphorical, etc.)

however, there are obviously those who take the bible so literally that they feel the need to subjugate women and shout the hell-fire gospel on college campuses. not so long ago in many western nations there were those who took the bible so literally that they saw fit to capture and enslave africans, and there there remains a remnant who tolerate the wars based on biblical precedence.

we are subject to extremists because we have separated our knowledge (science and culture) from our religious beliefs (things we accept "on faith" without critically analyzing them). if religious moderates stand up and defend the teaching of books they don't believe in (like the bible or the qur'an), then they give license to religious literalists to take them to their violent and/or repressive extremes.

no wonder people are so enamored by the areligious discourses of chomsky and fascinated by the hyper-religious shoutings of the open-air preachers. at least these people are addressing the issue!

modern tolerant culture is at once forming and suppressing the expression of a dilemma - while on one hand we are overwhelmed by information and unable to cohesively process it, on the other we are willfully engaging in the internalization of contradictory science and belief.

these two problematics combine for what i would argue is one of the biggest issues facing mankind - for all of our certainty, we can't form a coherent worldview. more than simply tragic, this confusion makes us vulnerable to the loudest propaganda and the most subtle culturally dissolved falsities. if we don't take advantage of our desire for greater meaning, we can have no doubt that someone else will.

as ever,

joel

"shawn the baptist" also made an appearance
at oregon state (photo: fsa osu).

midwestern kids (offensive)

2011-05-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

midwestern kids and their midwestern drugs

(i.)

if i'm underneath the weather, i'm not only feeling down.
i don't think i can quantify the emptiness i've found.
now the interstate is freezing through an avalanche of spin,
i can only stop and shiver as the cold pollutes my skin...

ii.

come friday, i’m cryogenically inclined
or maybe i’m in and not of
the in-and-not-of-crowd
something’s wrong with my social id
like i'm simply simple in this so-complex, or
i want truth and love in this money and sex...

iii.

i smoke cigarettes now,
always have and always will.
when
you don’t have memories,
each moment is the only eternity.
a-blazingly curious after each fad,
(i want you, i want you, i want you so bad)
it's driving me mad, it’s driving me
sane.

&&sober

iv.

but, i protest, i am more

than just a conflated state of mind:

i am all of the people i've loved in the the past,

voices in the back of my consciousness:

'support the sys-tem.'

'fuck the man.'

'and life begins.'

please:
believe
the hype.

i am all of the resonance
of a dissonant shade
who saw sultry suburban settlements
entrusting god with their monies
and their monies with their god
and flew into a rage,
midwestern boys and their midwestern girls;
midwestern girls and their midwestern
girls.

so
people try to calm us down;
and, speaking of my generation,
i saw the sharpest of the sharp cutting doses,
the brightest of the bright lighting j's.
why should i,
and why should we,
behave any differently?

(i am swiftly losing traction on this question.)

so this is our lot, then?

staring at skies and

sleeping in shifts around the sun.

so it's always six a.m. somewhere.

but you, brother,

you go back to sleep:

this is my watch.

vi.

but
my unanchored wishful thinking
(grace an ocean, we're all sinking),
my textbook appeals to sentiment
approach my own thrown with confidence..
again, faith is fungible...
life is literal...
can't we all just get along?

no we can't, and;
if we can't afford to love each other,
we'll collapse into material binge,
we'll believe things for the peace of mind they bring
(you know what it is)

(vii.)

[the shivering god
is screaming at the bus stop
weary,
heavy,

loaded.

'come unto me
all you who are lowly,
and if you're barely getting by,
throw down your guns,
dump out your rum,
and i will get you high.
let the little children,
if they're down and out of luck...'
but midwestern kids and their midwestern christ

still don't give a fuck]

needs

2011-05-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

i'm held hostage by my socially-generated desires. advertising and its human-borne echos have irrevocably captured my understanding.

on what grounds do i ever need a cheeseburger?

...cup of coffee?

...soda?

...new jacket?

running the atrociously grandiose numbers

2011-05-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

this composite photo shows 320,000 light bulbs
in an effort to illustrate the scale of in-home
power waste (from chris jordan's rtn).

"i enjoy exploring around our country's shipping ports and industrial junk yards... there I find evidence of a kind of slow-motion apocalypse in progress." - chris jordan

probably among the most unsettling sights in present-day eugene is the featured exhibit at the jordan schnitzer museum of art. an eclectic set of jumbo photographs depicting industrial waste and industry-driven culture hang on the four walls of the on-campus gallery's upper room - twenty photographs with captions that betray a tragic truth about contemporary american culture - that it is a catalyst in the accelerated destruction of the natural world.

among the phenomena depicted by the exhibit are junk mail, plastic bottles and breast augmentations, all in quantities massive enough to squash the casual visitor's expectations. it was precisely because i was a casual visitor, my observations were obliterated.

and this is the sentiment which i retained:

that many and maybe all of us are participants in the artificial projection of a commercially motivated conception of aesthetics onto the natural world through its destruction and strategic reformation.

that to call the american flavor of neocapitalism massively and unsustainably wasteful is comparable to unilaterally asserting that the roman empire was 'un-caring.' it just grazes the surface of the matter.

that our way of life, that my way of life needs to significantly change.

also: there is a moon made of 29,000 credit cards. honest.

eliot, fawkes, bin laden

2011-05-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

abject villainy? a reasonable retrotrend.

there's nothing like social media to hyper-intensely explicate how temporal situations repeat. a friend had this as his status:

was osama bin laden simply
playing a role? (photo: @swanksalot)

a penny for the old guy

shape without form, shade without color
paralyzed force, gesture without motion...
those who have crossed...
to death's other kingdom
remember us - if at all - not as lost
violent souls, but only
as the hollow men
the stuffed men...

this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but with a whimper

- t. s. eliot (1925)

the original "old guy" from this poem was the british anarchist and famous attempted arsonist guy fawkes. the parallels been his life and death and that of bin laden are notable, and he may make a good half-forgotten folk hero someday (much to the chagrin of the nationalistic old guard).

few may agree that these two were good, but many are sympathetic to the notion that they stood against a great (and possibly greater) evil.

to raze a building in the name of a religion is an unredeemably banal action. bin laden and fawkes both got that wrong. but there is a take-home message.

both of these crazies lived in a world in which was safely in the grips of an elitist minority. and this continues: bin laden dead or alive, the world remains safe for the financial elite everywhere - they are safe from economic troubles, safe from terrorism, safe from ever having to work to increase their wealth. they are safe from facing the consequences of their lifestyle on the third world.

what have our famed arsonists and terrorists done wrong? plenty, and almost everything. killing, threatening and getting involved in religion. bin laden, for one, got his anti-western message all wrong. true, neocapitalist practices are a main cause of global starvation and perpetual economic depression in the third world. but killing people will only make him the bad guy. better methods must be engaged.

let's look for a moment at what fawkes and bin laden got right. first, they recognized that nothing they had done had in any way affected the "security" of the worlds they lived in. and then they did bigger things. i might suggest in times like this that you don't have to be crazy to engage in civil disobedience. maybe you just have to be informed.

we have silent hunger strike on our hands the world over, and all the western powers can think to do is to stabilize the oil-producing arab countries. wars in iraq, afghanistan and libya are just good-old police brutality on a global scale.

the world is in protest, and bin laden simply chucked the first brick (and got the cops called). but maybe more bricks need to be thrown. and maybe less people need to die.

we want meaning!

2011-04-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

georg lukács, though often orange and pixelated,

had some great things to say about perception.

"there is a nostalgia of the soul where the longing for home is so violent that the soul must, with blind impetuousness, take the first path that seems to lead there." - georg lukács

i've heard it said that the mind is a "connecting organ," the entity which allows us to makes sense of the world, to perceive things as meaningful and inter-related, whether they are or not.

this is obviously of biological utility.

but the 19th century scottish philosopher david hume made the claim that we are not suited for considering the metaphysical, emphasizing the distinctions between "lively perceptions" and our (inherently at least intermittently wayward) internal reflections on those perceptions.

is this true?

have we, in the search for what the self deems as necessary meaning, overstepped our bounds? have we strayed from the path of mentally "connecting" as a biological necessity and stumbled into the dense and foggy woods of the metaphysical without good cause?

there is virtually no question in my mind as to whether or not there is a transcendent God, a transcendent reality. but i only know this experientially, and have no tangible proof or logical processes to this effect. we can compare experiences, yes. but is there a logical conversation we can have about the transcendent? or is hume right?

so far, the only thing that i can appeal to is human need. perhaps the human need and desire for love indicates something about the nature of reality.

and this is where i need some help. i need to hear some perspectives on the subject:

- what is love?

- what is the nature of human desire for love?

i really want to explore and write about this more. any thoughts? you can send them in an email to joeldevyldere(at)msn.com or leave them as a comment below. let's keep this conversation going.

as ever,

joel

memories

2011-04-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

utilitarian poetry ftw (edited in gimp).

it's one of those bar scenes with the cosmic noise removal on. the interior scenery is conspicuously empty, background sounds are reduced to a carefully crafted whisper and the lighting is diminished so that all the soft-glowy emphasis is on the bar-tender and the strange man she's serving. they are cutting the small-talk before he kisses her, when she says the strangest thing: "it makes me think that all we really are is our memories."

for anyone wondering, this is a scene from sebastian gutierrez's girl walks into a bar, which was just recently released on youtube (go platform innovation!). the film is an artistic triumph, though it may be largely unimportant in a philosophical sense. nevertheless, it contained the line that inspired me start to examine the role of memory in consciousness and perception.

consciousness, in a modern sense, might simply be awareness of the self. so, in a sense, this girl is right - if we consider the "self" a series of interconnections of subjectively accumulated data, then we are entirely dependent on the brain's capacity and ability to store that information over time (memory) in order to reach and maintain a self-deterministic existence. translation: if we are the center of our own universe, then all we are and have depends on our memories.

from this standpoint, it seems to me like the existence of memory loss is one of the biggest weak points in the case for a utilitarian reliance on subjectively derived reality. if through mental malfunction we can't remember previously processed facts, events or even identities, then our subjective reality narrows as our mind deteriorates.

if we choose to make reality ultimately subjective, then we become masters of the reality we know. and yet, in the case of our mental deterioration or obstruction, any cognitively capable person (including our past self) has the right to claim that we don't grasp enough to live at an optimum level for us. we thus become incapable of realizing our full subjective reality, while we present ourselves with an inferior picture of reality - the reality experienced by the deteriorating self.

with this in mind, we can now no longer say that we are progressively experiencing the enlightenment of the self. more than that, we can no longer claim a static understanding - we are moving backward. this is troubling because a largely biological process (the distortion of the mind over time) becomes a factor that determines who we are and how we see the world against our will. thus, we have not only surrendered control to all possible external worlds (the a posteriori), but also had the essence of who we are wrested from our grasp by natural occurrences (like disease, aging, etc.)

i guess when you come down to it, this is only one of the many possible examples that could demonstrate that subjectivity only functions as an insecure and ultimately egotistical grasp for control. is modern society really composed of individuals who have never considered this claim?

this is not an argument for arbitrary objectivity. this is the long-form for a hauntingly persistent question on my mind:

what is real?

as ever,

joel

philosophy of cigarettes

2011-04-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

picture by andrew hippie

on smoking
people want to know why i smoke cigarettes. when faced with that question i seldom ever answer it seriously. there is too much to say, too much that most people wouldn't seriously consider that would have to go into an explication of the issue. however, in this post i'm going to suspend that trend and give a few thoughts on the issue.

first, let's look at about societal perception of addiction. it is commonly thought that social consensus is a somewhat accurate division of the less harmful addictions from the more harmful ones. using this logic, we can see why addiction to heroin is a deal-breaker in many friendships while facebook addiction is a laughing matter.

however, this distinction is essentially a false dichotomy. society's fascination with partially hydrogenated oil and high-fructose corn syrup (think taco bell and rockstar energy drinks) is no less harmful than its flirting interactions with tobacco. are unprecedented epidemic-level outbreaks of obesity and diabetes negligible? are their causes laughable?

we are similarly engaged in a full-scale cultural addiction to transport by means of fossil fuel consumption. how many people that you know would still be alive if there were no car accidents? and what, in a land where we can grow our food locally and participate is the motivation for owning and operating cars in the first place? is it convenience, a large-scale fumbling for an elusive sense of control?

'these years of buy and sell'
it may be that health standards and mortality rates are not the final criteria for the social acceptance of a practice, but the separations between "good" and "bad" addictions are by no means arbitrary. they are determined by societal consent, and in a neocapitalist society consent is bought and sold in both on an individual basis (direct advertising) and on a large-scale collective level (deals worked out by legislators and lobbyists).

government propaganda campaigns invoke "big tobacco," but i haven't heard anything about "big fast food," or "big caffeine." as a result, consent is being produced, assembled and shipped with unprecedented freedom. the difference between a "good" addiction and a "bad" one might just be a few hundred thousand dollars.

what is happening here? what have we created? a universe of perceived ideals fueled and impassioned by perceived needs. large-scale addiction.

the western man needs to drive and drive fast in a car he often can't afford to prove that he is a sexually attractive entity. the western woman needs clothes with a brand on them from far, far away to prove that she can be attractive too.

why addiction (in the first place)?
essentially, we have all at least partially subscribed to the subjective worldview. we all know, deep down, that the one thing that is truly meaningful is our intangible and inexpressible self; we know that we can never quite say what we mean or convey what and who we are in the depths of our souls.

experientially, we are confounded by the realization that the force contained in our self is not a sufficient means by which to live. there are, in fact, other selves (and, arguably, a semi-static physical world) to deal with! the subjective self takes over from there and asserts needs; we crave a manifest denial of our insecurity, a tangible affirmation of our illusion that we are really in control, and these physical assertions of ego often very quickly become addictions.

this explanation also shows why addictions aren't as evidently prevalent in some religious groups. many of these groups at least nominally reject the idea that subjective truth is the most precious, substituting other methods of deriving truth (for fundamentalist christians, higher truth comes at least partially from a literal interpretation of the biblical narratives).

i've come to look at addiction as symptomatic of a widely-held cultural subjectivity and the resulting subconscious assertion of personal needs as a mission that will hold that subjectivity intact as source of higher truth by which to live. from an inter-subjective or transcendental absolutist viewpoint, all addiction is simply an arbitrary advancement of the self as the most important thing in the universe.

addiction is both a grasp for that sense of control and an expression of the futility of that grasp. so as long as we remain complicitly certain that real truth comes from within, we will remain in self-perpetuated cycles of progressively more damaging "self affirmations." but honestly, what else is there?

as ever,

joel

happy salmon!

2011-04-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

photo: 619 sports

dear world:

what a day for strategically occupying a universe! and i have converged on the infinite, comprehending eternity and stuff. let's recap:

1. problem solved! shrodinger's cat is, was and shall ever be a zombie (both dead and alive).

2. by leading horses to water, i often tip a delicate balance on their free-will/ determinism continuum causing them to at least take a sip.

3. i bought an island where trees fall in the forest and no one knows hears them.

4. jesus christ is now more popular than ever. efforts were re-doubled to make 'ghandi' and 'mohamed' curse-words too, but culture remained largely arbitrary.

5. carp(eh) diem is some sort of springtime that the fish are celebrating in canada (see photo).

"sieze the day!" exclaimed
untold numbers of these literarily
inclined fish. (photo: sanbeiji)

in other news: noam chomsky is coming to uo.

photo: andrew rusk

last week, i stumbled on a video interview of linguistic theorist noam chomsky on @google. i was very impressed by some of his critiques of the u.s. imperial mindset and explanations of linguistic theory. i thought he raised some significant questions about the nature of american foreign policy and the popular conceptions that steer its course.

though he has a history of theorizing some very radical and avant garde material, when speaking mr. chomsky comes across rather calm for an 82-year-old political activist, anarchy theorist and m.i.t. professor. his speaking style is even-keel and his material is fascinating.

tomorrow (wed. april 20th) at 7:00 pm
university of oregon, columbia 150 (campus map)
admission: free

to clear up any confusion

2011-04-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

- the universe does not revolve around you (or me).

- no one can prove that.

whistling through the cellphone

2011-04-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

oh, eugene!
you're so supreme
(and super green)
you rhyme with beans.

eugene (above) shares a mystical
and profoundly 'traditional'
connection with this can
of refried pinto goodness.

coke, pepsi and the libyan revolution

2011-04-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

"the president does not have the power under the constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual imminent threat to the nation." - senator barack obama, december 20, 2007

a sudden change of pace?
among the greatest disappointments in the american political landscape is the failure of liberal policy to be... well, liberal. two wars continue, while the u.s. effectively enters a third in libya, trillions are handed out to enormous corporations, and now the president has called for more domestic drilling. it might seem to the casual observer that obama and co. have played the same game that bush and co. played, just with better media coverage.

are they? policing the world militarily and supporting greedy corporations at the expense of tax-payers were two of the major accusations leveled against the previous administration. however, this time there aren't just questionable tax cuts to complain about but actual large-scale bail-outs. and this war can't by almost any stretch be related back to a matter of national security. as the nation is finding out the hard way, 'change' is a very vague word.

soft drinks, hard politics

one of the most compelling examples of pervasive materialism is the coke-pepsi dilemma. consumers have for decades on end been presented with the choice between coke, which some say is a little fizzier and pepsi, rumored to be a bit sweeter. coke has a contract with mcdonald's, while pepsi has dibs on most small restaurants and small concession stands. there are competing billboards, blind flavor tests and copy-cat super bowl ads. the competition is intense.

but is the coke-pepsi competition really a scam? how much do these companies really resent each other. they've convinced everyone to take sides, from the fast food execs right down to the 10-year-old at the 7-11 counter. entire states have their preference (soda is commonly called "coke" in most of texas).

but no one stops and thinks what am i drinking? has the 'secret ingredient' controversy between the two firms really succeeded at distracting everyone form the fact that both drinks are essentially carbonated corn syrup?

coca cola bottling and pepsi could really appreciate each other - each without the other loses the competitive edge - not over each other, but over other possible alternatives. they owe to each other the existence of the competition, the existence of the market.

above: synthetically contrived controversies.

and that's how it is in two-party politics. republicans and democrats can thank each other for the controversy they lend each other; the contrast establishes validity for a ruling class of abominably rich men from politically influential families who gain law degrees and lobby handouts and step gingerly into public office. no one who is asking whether or not the political system is legitimate can be heard over the cries of unexamined loyalty.

"vote republican" may as well be equated with "drink coca cola" or "go team." but you can't do any better on the democratic/pepsi side. they're exactly the same.

coke and pepsi in libya

and that brings us back to obama. sure, he can promise unique flavor and a crisp, refreshing aftertaste, but when you come down to it, his actions will not differ from those of bush or clinton in any significant way when it comes to war. the u.s. has for decades acted almost solely in its economic interest.

obama is doing exactly what he criticized george bush for - he is taking actions that he has already declared are not in his constitutional power to take. but can we blame him? millions of people are cheering for him and as a symbol, as a rockstar. "go blue!" they scream as we enter yet another war.

still unconvinced?
huffington post pieced together this wonderful little montage of obama's speech on libya and bush's speech on iraq. exact. same. shit. i know, right?

politician is a noble human being?

2011-04-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

can politicians act out of personal decency?

new york times columnist david brooks declared his support for the obama administration's libya plan last week, citing president obama's nobility as a motivating factor. obama, he said, was convicted "that the U.S. cannot sit by and watch tens of thousands of people get massacred when it has the means to prevent it." (article)

yes. it. can. but not in any nation strategic to its neo-imperial interests. we haven't interfered in north korea, where a entire population is enslaved to the state, impoverished to the point of starvation, and systematically brainwashed to the advantage of a megalomaniacal fascist dictator. we had no troops on the ground in sudan, where genocidal conflicts raged for years. we took no actions against mubarak's "democracy" in egypt.

no, the government of the united states has no interest inactions like supporting revolutions or distributing humanitarian aid that do not support its financial interests. north korean leadership would retaliate against any u.s.-led attacks, destabilizing the entire region. sudanese rebels would have fragmented the country and disrupted the oil trade. egyptian president and dictator hosni mubarak was one of the u.s.'s greatest allies in the region, and received massive amount of foreign aid from the u.s.

many people may be shocked by such statements, claiming as that the a country like the u.s., with so much military sophistication and so much international sway has the right and obligation to defend the libyan civilian population. many, no doubt many readers of david brooks column, now think the president obama is taking military action in libya out of the goodness of his heart.

but obama is a politician. he has almost inconceivably large incentives to act in the financial interest of the nation. however, as a politician, president obama has little if any incentive to act as a decent and compassion human being. whatever decisions he makes are pressured by hundreds of different financial interests; and almost all of them want want the us economy to recover and thrive so that they can make more money (some notable exceptions are large banks and auto-makers, who would rather just take money from the government directly).

the president's job is to balance out everyone's interests and find a solution that makes everyone more money. his main occupational hazard is that he will never have moral hazard: do what's best for $veryone, and the country will succ$$d.

so in light of all this, can obama act as a decent human being? he's the president of the united states, so i submit that he cannot.

question mark!

2011-03-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

query: ruefully neglected blog will you rise again?

verily came the deep-throated and foul-breathed reply. the voice continued, gravelly echoes resounding off the corners of my cranium: i will thrash their pathetic little literary minds. i will rock...
around the clock.

i stood in silence. i pondered in profile. i gasped aghast at the ghastly trash i was hearing.

apparently, and this is only hypothetical, my blog can beat up your blog.

in other news: new death cab single (streaming here).
and this was pretty cool:

amend your boredom: read a blog post!

2011-02-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

hang it all, authentic bob ross,
there is nothing so voluminous as that beard.

i made a mental recount, and this is the third time that i've done one of these. previous socially oriented checklists of thing to do when your bored were spastic and caffeine-fueled attempts to increase the popularity of my blog and/or myspace page.

- first up, you gotta check out colbert report's wednesday show. as always, stephen colbert put together a fantastic satirical commentary on the week's events.

- you might also if you dig canadian tunes, check out this band called city and colour (ooh, they even spell in canadian). they (he, dallas green) currently have several songs available for free download on their (his) purevolume, including a great song entitled "the girl."

- also, i find that inventing words and trying to sneak them into urban dictionary is a great past-time that involves no special skills, previous knowledge or compassionate mourning for the rapidly deteriorating state of the english language. i like to do this under the pseudonymn of "bob ross," figuring that the real bob ross is too busy with his beard to bother with expanding inner city vocabularies. (also, for some reason, no matter what page you're on in that website, there always seems to be a snorg tees girl cheering you on. eerie...)

- honestly, if you just can't seem to stop wondering what i maybe might could be should be doing today, then you should probably watch this.

ok, adios.

- joel

snorg tees girl is obviously kind of a big deal,
but can she snowcouch?

beauty is...

2011-01-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

hang it all, rogers. that sweater is a beaut!

beauty is a face that makes ships sail, or a meal that makes mouths water. it's pretty much anything that makes anyone yell: "hang it all, that's beautiful!"

...unless that person is rolling. or on the tele (we can't trust the broadcasts these days).

beauty is a pageant winner or a mountain range (or a pageant-winning mountain range). beauty is anything that drunk people encounter on the way back from the bars to their vehicles. beauty is mozart. and maybe lady gaga. [link for adventurous readers]

so beauty is a descriptor that we attribute to the deeply attractive aspects of reality; is this plus that. maybe, but i've been starting to think that my preconceived addition-based notions of reality don't describe it quite very well...

is beauty really the sum of the parts working together so... that... nothing... is lacking? that seems rather shallow; kinda sounds like something you could get through an s.a.t. question with, no problem. but what is beauty? and what isn't it?

help me out here guys.

my conversation with the ant-eaters

2011-01-27T23:29:00.000-08:00

photo by @ellasdad

i am so ever-presently tiring of fashionability...

perhaps one thing that i'm missing is some perspective on myself and my mini-culture (mmm... sounds like a great pita stand), my macro-culture, time-space, infinitive-tense spider-sense reality. yeah?

so, what is real... and what is creative?

are the thoughts that populate the greatest minds creative, or only those in the lesser minds that are articulated in a fashionable fashion?

can i fashion something mentally and happen to fasten my passion sentimentally to an unexpressed something inside me?

oh, probably.

either way: you, the reader, are probably wondering what i'm toking about now.

however, as the God of the universe probably didn't say,"go forth My son, and leave big slobbery suction rings on every dashboard you find!"

no He didn't, and probably might not likely say that! what of it?

time is imaginary, culture is arbitrary and this question of God's will is going to be a lot harder than i had previously thought.

i love my ducks

2011-01-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

the lecture reduced to an exhibition for blatantly unsupported statements affirming and championing this-or-that sociopolitical agenda and sharply ridiculous criticisms of contemporary political and religious figures.

"learning" presented as the science of the articulation and defense of whatsoever avant-garde pseudo-philosophical and nominally scientific doctrine one's academic superiors shall force-feed him or her.

a politically and ideologically homogenous student body that genuinely believes that the only thing to riot about is football.

a hyper-educated populous with no concept of authentic debate.

an ever-expanding generation of lifelong idealists with dystrophic intellects.

a vast army of endemically complacent soldiers of the future, ever-inclined to narrowing their ever-decaying and atrophied minds.

this is diversity at its most hypocritical, a framework for activism at its most frivolous, the pinnacle of narcissistic monoculturalism. the institution known as the public university presents a nuisance to its constituents, an eyesore to its critics and a challenge to its clients. can it be salvaged?

shakespeared!

2011-01-25T18:40:00.000-08:00

yeah, babe.

everyone is blogging today. sorry you guys, i don't have the time to read them all. for now, i'm going to sketch out a little of what i'm thinking:

- for one thing, it has been sunny now for two days. except when andrew hippie and i went out to look at the stars last night and the sky was covered by certain stratus clouds (you know who you are).

- and then there's this concept of essences being mutually exclusive, of people being independent, unique and distinguishable, which shakespeare blows out of the water... except apparently people don't take shakespeare so seriously anymore. so social fungibility advances, while unique and valuable personhood is forced into the uncomfortable margins of religious sensibility. gross.

- the good news is, i didn't watch the news. too much negativity, i think. my [gmo] bread and [rbst enhanced] butter optimism doesn't require that i comprehend or even read the labels (and i mean that literally too).

- even better, someone somewhere (aztecs? gwc?) invented peanut butter. the knowledge of peanut butter (is the wonder) has been spread far and wide with the butterknife of collective information technologies. notwithstanding an imminent apocalypse, the world will never be the same.

as ever,

joel

of january-winter-springs

2011-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

Spirit, if You breathe with the sunnycold breeze
of the morning
give me skin to feel You.
give me toes to understand
what kind of mud is always settling
in the yes-spring-puddles of You. please
give me fingertips to touch Your greatgreenglowing leaves.
come make me shiver, but don't let me suddenfreeze
in the quick-frozen, slow-thawing universe of these.

oh, Spirit! let my body sing
of january-winter-springs,
of seasons soaked in sun to savor,
today's and never maybe later's!

oh, Spirit! if You, in passing, brush back my hair and whisper gently in my ear,
give me eyes to shut real tight and give me ears to hear.

poem, jan. 24 by joeldevyldere

"tree in fog" by andrew

tonight

2011-01-23T23:47:00.000-08:00

photo by @respres

there's been a lot of talk about God. alot of speculation and almost as much surefire preachin'. i don't want to add to that tonight. speculation is fine, and maybe even indoctrination, but...

we are; you and i are in the middle of this. let us not waste our opportunities.

"he who has ears let him hear! the kingdom of heaven is among you! I AM the Bread Who came down from heaven... he who drinks of the water that I give will not grow thirsty again."

and so i came to Him, sippin' on that living water, and i lay back in His lap. ("let the little children come to Me... for their's is the kingdom of heaven.") and i rested a while. ("come to ME all who are weary and I will give you rest.")

grace is sufficiency. that's the truth i'm coming in every situation to know. but since i can't doctrinize my experience (ha! and maybe you really shouldn't want me to), i feel both compelled and liberated to leave this as an encouragement. go seek God. it has been worth it for me so far.

as ever,

joel

why doesn't olive oil taste like olives?

2011-01-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

photo: http://www.creativetools.se/

i need to know.

dialogue?

2010-12-28T14:40:00.000-08:00

no, we can't go back to normal.

anyway, what is normalcy that we should idealize it so?

but originality is so difficult. it takes so much and leaves so little... and besides people will give you all manner of funny looks if you go your own way (especially creative people). so don't go there, stop fiddling with these thoughts, stop dreaming up these artworks, and GET BACK TO WORK! (sorry for shouting)

oh, and this is seattle

keep on

2010-12-25T00:55:00.000-08:00

it's amazing, really, to give up the chase; to all at once attain, and say, 'this is the end of my search.' at the end you can sigh, commend yourself for hanging in there. you can trade in contentiousness for contentment and finally just relax.

i hope you don't. future self and present others take heed - we will likely not soon have cause to get comfortable.

token christmas blog (bleh)

2010-12-24T15:20:00.000-08:00

what can i say? i'm trapped in my retail reality this christmas eve. the shoppers are sprinting about from store to bright-lit store in search of gifts for each other. not all the shoppers, i guess. some people are playing it cool. still, a lot of people are worried about making sure that everyone else gets more things.

i'm awash in disillusionment - with hyper-commercialism and marketable sentiment, with opportunistic ideological conflict and rhetorically charged bitterness. i'm disappointed that this holiday brings occasion for obligatory family time and guilt giving.

some people i've talked to have used the time of festivity for the advancement of their beliefs. i'm told that christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus. i've had the nativity version of christmas crammed down my throat repeatedly by people who tell me that political correct-ness is taking the Christ out of christmas. that may be true, but i'm not so sure it's a bad thing.

does God really need christmas?

culture is kinda like a sandbox. (photo by janez novak)

i'm of the opinion that culture is dynamic. i try not to think of it like a solid rock that was dropped to earth by God to endure forever. culture might be more like a sandbox. everyone makes their mark, but those contirbutions are soon rearranged by others. from this perspective, the fact that less people like to associate late december with the birth of Jesus is not a moral crisis but simply a shift in culture.

sure, we can sell you nativity scenes instead of snow globes, but that doesn't mean you respect God any more. you can read luke 2 aloud together on christmas morning before tearing into a bunch of festively wrapped tokens of impulsively acquired temporal gratification. maybe culture is largely abitrary

some people celebrate the birth of Jesus, some being with family, and some buying and selling; most people under ten simply celebrate receiving presents. is there some inherent good we can do by reverting back to older traditions? getting back to the roots of the season would entail examining lots of different intertwining traditions - both "pagan" and "christian." but honestly, is getting back to the roots of christmas really necessary?

as ever,

joel

holy...

holier...

holiest

unexpected

2010-12-22T00:09:00.000-08:00

i'm watching with wonder as a tear spills out from behind his funky purple glasses and streams down his face. revivalist preacher eddie lee todd is delivering an intensely visceral and emotionally vibrant sermon, same as always. he's wearing a plaid shirt, high-waisted dress pants and a painter cap – early fifties dress i would guess. his voice is on tempo, picking up speed and his adjectives are well chosen and well placed – this man has had a lot of practice speaking. but instead of smiling and nodding along, i'm staring at him in amazement with my mouth hanging open.

at 84, this man has been delivering similar messages to vast and varying audiences for decades on end. he's preached his way around the united states and several other countries. but this is different. we're alone in the family room and this sermon is for me. there is no way he can know the gravity of the things he's saying.

eddie lee todd lives in hemet, california. he's currently going through some hard times – his wife clara (of 64 years) has a badly injured hip and is staying in a rehabilitation center in nearby murrieta. her alzheimer-like symptoms make it difficult for her to recall who people are and what's happening around her. we call them mimi and papa. i'm pretty sure everyone does.

papa is staying in murrieta with mimi during the days and sleeping at his daughter dahna's house in adjacent temecula each night. if i had to guess, i'd say that papa's symptoms are characteristic of a person with mild alzheimer's disease; he has a very hard time recalling who people are and what is happening around him.

papa started by telling me how grateful he is that we're friends. it surprised me that he even recognized me, as that's not always the case. in everyday life, his words and mannerisms may be confused, even incoherent, but man when he preaches he's on it! the phrases swiftly tumble, concise and un-jumbled out into the room. the beauty in his manner is amplified too – he's gentle, not overbearing; he's reverent, by no means authoritarian. papa's demeanor is that of someone who's so inclined to love that he's no longer conscious of his efforts to do so.

throughout the few days i got to spend with papa that love shone through the confusion and the debilitation. some kind of strength was made perfect in his unashamed weakness.

once, while talking with jonathan and me, papa encouraged us that Jesus came to give us life, and life abundantly. “abundantly,” he repeated, “that means more than you've got room for. so make some more room.”

both jonathan and i were deeply affected by his words. we felt like that was exactly what we needed to hear. sermons are apparently no problem for his otherwise worn out mind. he can remember specific scripture references. sometimes when he would quote them, i would look over at his wife and see her mouthing the words. no doubt mimi's heard at least some of them hundreds of times.

back in the family room, papa is finishing his personal exhortation (what will likely be his last words face-to-face with me). he tells me that a soul – my soul – is worth more than the whole world. this resonates strongly with me as a part of an emerging remedy for my insecurities. still standing, he finishes his preaching and i thank him as he starts away. he's nodding and saying something like “that's alright.” suddenly he turns around and says, “that's sermon number one.”

staring up at the aging man behind the purple glasses, i wonder if he really even knows who i am. did he understand what he was saying, or were the words just flowing through, on their way from a Source to a very grateful and awestruck recipient.

papa and jonathan at the table in temecula.

we do what we feel we must

2010-12-19T22:43:00.000-08:00

we make meaning.
we intend and are intended at....

it's like we're building our sandcastle-selves on the shore, and the waves are intermittently interfering with our "progress." every once in a while, someone (doubtless one of marx's "comrades" or schopenhauer's "fellow sufferers") jogs on over and kicks our existence in. gee thanks, [friend, teacher, parent or ex-girlfriend], i was about to start over anyways...

we dream up new moat systems, sketching our plans on the beach. we invest time both time and hope. sometimes the waves stay distant and allow us time to build up. it's those other times when we can get all discouraged and wonder why we're playing in the sand.

what is the meaning of this photo by andrew?

lake elsinore, part 2

2010-12-18T02:38:00.000-08:00

this is a continuation of an earlier post. cameron lemons is the fellow who made the controversial prophecy that God will judge los angeles with a catastrophic earthquake in the year 2010.

the lakeside house

the question is so hopeless and fragile: what does cameron lemons stand to lose if those critics and skeptics from the youtube comments, the churches and the streets are right, if the status quo continues, if the ground doesn’t shake by january 1^st? what if he’s wrong?

respect, reputation, social credibility, a church, and a discipleship program - cam stands to lose a lot, but not quite everything.

tonight we are ninjas, secret agents. our mission is to leave a box of candy and a hastily composed personalized poem on a neighbor’s doorstep. at 11 pm, jonathan, claire and i pile out of the lemons’ minivan and creep up toward the driveway of a dark and looming house. we are holding invisible guns and humming the “mission impossible” theme. with claire posted as lookout, jonathan and i stumble up the porch steps, crouch beneath the living room window and deposit the goodies and the card on the front doorstep. back at the van, we are slamming doors and cam is pulling back out onto main street. mission accomplished.

“elving” is the practice of secretly leaving gifts and messages on the doorstep of an unsuspecting neighbor for the 11 days preceding christmas and revealing yourself to the victim(s) on day 12. the gifts increase in number each day and are generally coupled with an appropriately themed poem. cam penned tonight’s poem after a prayer meeting that ran for hours. he and his wife jenelle have been elving for years now, and now the “fellas” (the boys living in the first story of their house) and whoever else is around get to join in. cam makes a great getaway driver.

another neighborly practice that i got to witness is caroling. it seems strange to me that people really go door-to-door singing christmas songs in socal where mid-december is still warm and summery. but when the lemons took their boys (5-year-old josiah and 4-year-old jordan) along with the fellas and then ten or so guests that happened to be at their house out for caroling, the neighbors loved it. house after house was the scene for a wonderful display of community: we all sang “joy to the world,” while frenchie set up and played the djembe and jonathan backed us up on the violin. door after door opened to reveal the smiling faces of little children and their parents.

from afternoon group car washes set to soul music to 5 am prayer and bible study meetings, the people here intentionally live and do most everything together. not only an outward expression, authentic community life is really lived out here at lakeside (the nickname for the lemons’ old two-story house on lindsay street). smiles are more vibrant here.

earlier in the night while jonathan and michael were having a deep conversation at the table, i was chasing josiah and jordan from room to room while carrying baby grace. tanner sat in a nearby seat researching about jehovah’s witnesses and jenelle and claire were cooking up burritos in the kitchen.

the liveliness is no ‘faux show,’ either. i stared in amazement when the day before cam worked through an intense internal issue in the group, all the while employing respect for those who disagreed with him. he took the unusual step of consulting everyone at the table and patiently waiting for all of the frustrations to be expressed. he also followed up the discussion with at least three one-on-one talks with the people involved. i have never experienced such a strong example of care and concern from a father figure.

it goes beyond compassion, though. cam apparently sits by himself praying for hours at a time. “my husband is addicted to God like crack cocaine,” jenelle commented. his relationship with God seems to stand outside of everything else, and that might be the only thing he doesn’t stand to lose.

shortcomings

2010-12-17T19:03:00.000-08:00

how can i express my experiences with clarity and honesty?

intermittently consuming motivations propel me to seek the truth at all costs. i am at once searching and reporting my findings, scratching out and re-drawing well-meant escape routes and treasure maps...

most of the time i have no idea where i am and where it is i am going. i think that in some ways this helps me to be a more objective writer. true, i can't any longer claim the embodiment of some of the more classical elements of objectivity - i have a stake in the game.

but maybe soon and very soon this world will cease to be satisfied by the rhetorical concision and detached and vague conclusions of some of its more "objective" writers and thinkers. in some ways, that kind of reporting is out of date, anyway.

a flurry of rhetorically concise questions to that effect are pervading my consciousness:

- don't we all have a stake in the everyday adventures of our fellow sufferers?

- aren't we all more or less on a journey to discover an objectively transcendent reality that we can call truth?

- is the relevance of a given point of view really enriched by the measure that the holder remains detached and "objective?"

what is objectivity?
- establishing separation, maintaining distance and perspective?
- presenting as much of an outsider point of view?
- "do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God"?

maybe all these and more. which definitions are attainable? which are inherently desirable? how much of what we do should be flexible and how much should be constant? hmmm?

we can all go back and look at our aim... but even aspirations and deep desires can be somewhat flexible...

my take on the situation is that humankind is shivering through an arctic wasteland of prolonged ignorance. our prescriptive philosophies call for more faith in the human spirit to overcome the human condition. but i don't buy it. when someone is freezing on the inside, warm blankets aren't enough. we need a furious transcendent energy. we need to be ablaze.

life in lake elsinore

2010-12-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

snap! crackle! pop! the adrenaline rush is so suddenly so real. i can hear the power lines breaking and feel the earth crumble beneath my feet. a few blocks away the lakewater is already surging into the streets. it's happening (already happening!)...
or is it?

the house on lindsay st.

i lay here on the bottom half of a bunk bed on the second story of the hundred-year-old house on lindsay street sketching out this story. a quick look out the window confirms my deeply held suspicions - the streets of lake elsinore are quiet and undisturbed. a few cars pass, stuttering slightly at the four-way stop that my room overlooks. it's 10:28 and all is well... externally.

i came to the eclectic and largely under-resourced city of lake elsinore three days ago with my room-mate jonathan. we are students at the university of oregon in eugene, though jonathan is originally from a nearby suburb called temecula. one day jonathan's mom suggested that we go down to see his family in the area. a couple of days after finals, we hopped on a plane, and here we are.

the old two-story house that we're in belongs to jonathan's cousin cameron lemons, who's putting us up for the week. cam sincerely believes that in 2008 he received a prophecy from God - a devastating earthquake will utterly destroy the nearby city of los angeles... in the year 2010. he articulated this prophecy on youtube, where it was instantly subject to no end of skepticism and ridicule. this, of course, did not silence him. cam has remained resolute, holding on to the things he believes he has received from God largely on faith.

both the urgency of his message and the vehemence of his critics have increased as the months have passed by. this give and take is also what you might expect in a situation where someone claims to be predicting or interpreting the future; perfectly natural. however, some would say that cam has a genuine reason to be afraid - at t-15 days, the only thing shaking is the confidence of those around him. here is just a little piece of his story:

cameron lemons grew up in temecula, california, raised by his parents bob and donna (bb and dd to the grandchildren). his family was apparently nominally christian at the outset. cam remembers deciding to really follow God at age 17, and ended up studying at westmont college, where he met his wife, jenelle. he got his masters at a seminary on the east coast, and became an associate pastor at an evangelical church back in temecula. he's worked there for the last four years.

tanner has changed quite a bit since meeting cameron lemons.

cam's life is currently undergoing some pretty intense changes. he's finishing up his work in temecula at the end of the year, to move on to some new things. in addition to the earthquake prophecy, cameron also believes he has heard god telling him to leave a safe, predictable and affluent temecula and transplant his family to a poor and drug-ridden town called lake elsinore. cam, jenelle and their three kids in their new home there for fourteen months. the young couple brought with them three boys from their church in temecula - james, michael and frenchie.

"the fellas," as cam calls them, live in a room on the first floor of the lemons' new house. the fourth "fella" is tanner, a recently homeless young man who converted, cleaned up his act, and now has an enthusiastic passion for the gospel of jesus christ.

cam counts tanner among the few who have expressed a serious solidarity with the earthquake prophecy. other serious supporters include his wife jenelle and a few other pastors who have emailed him saying he received a similar prophecy. jonathan, cam's cousin and my travelling companion, is on board as well. currently a senior in music composition, at the prestigious university of oregon school of music and dance, he dedicated last spring's junior project to the prophecy, subtly entitling it "los angeles earthquake 2010: a prophecy of judgment."

jonathan reading out in front of the house.

two and a half weeks into december, cameron lemons' stance is solid. he believes that god is sending a devastating earthquake tot eh city of los angeles in judgement of sin and lawlessness, and is determined to warn as many people as he can that they are in harm's way.

actually, his views are not altogether unsupported. according to the us geological survey, southern california is due for an immense earthquake. similarly, the california geological society recently made a video predicting with certainty a catastrophic quake in the la area.

whether their perspective is scientifically or prophetically formed (and for many it's both), many people have cause to believe that the occurrence of such a disaster in los angeles is only a matter of time. so why are there so few standing with this particular pastor in his mission of proclamation?

a very solemn cameron addressed the issue in his usual humble and polite manner: it's the timeline. many who would have otherwise supported his messaage and its distribution are concerned that the man is preaching judgement in a specific chronological time-frame. still, this preacher continues to gently and lovingly spread the word. how will this all shake out, anyhow? maybe only time will tell.

jenelle, cam and the fellas.

purpose?

2010-12-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

c'mon let's be completely clear:

we have a fiery need that can't be extinguished by our desperate interactions in this world.
end of story. or the middle...

the map of everything

2010-11-30T19:10:00.000-08:00

i drove with my roommate andrew hippie up the 5 to albany today. this is the quasi-suburban post-agricultural community where i grew up. anymore, big fields full of soggy sheep make up only 5% of the town's staggering sprawl of grass seed fields, department stores and bowling alleys.

as soon as we got off the freeway, i started giving hippie directions, pointing out the turn he should take to get to his destination and gesturing toward the starbucks where i would study while i waited for him. i realized in this trip that i know the town pretty well. i know good shortcuts, cheap restaurants and chill coffeeshops. i have the much-coveted skill of being able to get around albany, oregon.

that said, i don't think i could draw a map of it. what i have is a ground-level knowledge, a hands-on appropriation of the information required to travel around a rather limited slice of human civilization. i can't begin to tell you all the street names.

the world is a big place. if you look up at night you might infer that it's just one world in an even bigger place. since i can't map out albany, mapping out the universe would be pretty difficult. if i had to guess what the world was like, based on my experience of albany, though, i guess i would do alright.

i would first mention that it's cold and rainy (9 mos. a year). i might also be able to conclude that the main export of the universe is grass seed and that most of the people are christians, but they sure don't act like they talk. i could then conclusively say that the universe is filled with hypercaffeinated, materialistic, fast-food munching hillbillies.

i feel like trying to get at absolute truth through personal experience is a bit like me trying to map out the universe from my personal knowledge of traveling it. there's just too much, and in many ways i'm just too small. i don't have sufficient experience or the right kind.

what is and what isn't? that question always confuses me.

as ever,

joel