Command Line Existential Crisis 
$ whatis whoami
Redisenfranchisement
Redisenfranchisement. Noun. A word that sounds like it was invented by George W. Bush, and to some degree, it actually was.
Read more from The Urban Sherpa Dictionary ->
Fortress of Solitude 
It was another routine day in Metropolis for Superman, the day he saved the single-engine jet from crashing into the city. The plane had lost power to its stabilizer and gone into a flat spin from which it surely never would have recovered, had Superman not flown in to save the day: the Man of Steel managed to grab the plane by its engine, arrest its spinning, and guide it to a safe landing in a nearby baseball field. The four passengers of the plane were grateful and in tears, while the LIttle Leaguers stopped their game to cheer.
Unfortunately, the force required to catch the plane in mid-air was also enough to dislodge the jet turbine, which broke loose from the body of the plane, and plummeted out of the sky and into an apartment building below. It tore through the building and killed two dozen people.
Superman, exceptional in so many ways, had never been the most thoughtful hero: decision-making while flying faster than a speeding bullet does not lend itself to introspection. Good and evil had always been for him, if simplistic, at least clear. When he received the news of the two dozen deaths—deaths which had been directly caused by his own well-intended efforts—he was devastated, and confused like he had never been before. For the first time in his life, Superman questioned his own ability to discern right from wrong—so he did what any reasonable thinking person would do in such a situation: he stopped rescuing people, and retreated to his Fortress of Solitude, there to wait and contemplate, until which time his path of action would become infallibly clear—which is to say, never.
Fridge Full of Condiments and No Food
Current inventory of the refrigerator, as of April 16, 2008:
Extra Hot Dijon Mustard, Zhou Black Bean Chili Sauce, Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce, Tabasco Brand Green Pepper Sauce, Tabasco Brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce, Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero, Harissa Paste, French's Classic Yellow Mustard, Sarabeth's Orange Apricot Marmalade, Sarabeth's Peach Apricot, Melinda's XXXXtra Reserve Habanero Pepper Sauce, Sarabeth's Pineapple Mango, Lemon Curb, Rice Wine Vinegar, Stonewall Kitchen Champagne Mustard, Thai Kitchen Roasted Red Chili Paste, Kikkoman Soy Sauce, Kikkoman Reduced Salt Soy Sauce, Annie's Natural Tuscany Italian Dressing, Annie's Fat Free Balsamic Vinaigrette, Oyster Sauce, Preserved Lemons, Gold's Horseradish, Rhubarb and Ginger Preserve, Sambal Oelek Chili Paste, Ma Po Spicy Bean Sauce, Pla Dug Chili Paste, Strawberry Preserves, Moroccan Green Olives, Maple Syrup, Hellman's Mayonnaise, Hellman's Light Mayonnaise, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Heinz Reduced Sugar Tomato Ketchup, Chili Paste with Sweet Basil Leaves, Sambal Bajak, Lakeshore Wholegrain Mustard, Mae Ploy Green Curry Paste, Assorted Beer, one egg.
These Are My Hands
There's a fire in my kitchen. This is a thing that happens sometimes. There are several pots on several burners and something somewhere has overflowed, and instead of simply making a mess, it has made a fire.
I might put out the fire with a towel, but I can't find one, and instead I try to dampen the flames with my bare hands, by pressing them against the hot metal burners. This is an ill-advised solution to the problem. In my own defense, I never decided to put out the fire with my hands. It just sort of happened.
Kind of like that unplanned phone call I just made. Sometimes it's like someone else grabs the steering wheel and drives into oncoming traffic. "I swear, officer—it wasn't me."
My hands have a mind of their own. My hands have Tourette's. My hands are always having an out-of-body experience, doing things I neither plan nor condone. One of these days, I'm sure, my hands will up and slap you. They'll sit down at a keyboard and plunk out a Tom Clancey novel. They'll goose someone on the subway. They'll drive the car off the road.
"I swear, officer—it wasn't me."
What scares me most is that I don't know whether or not that's true. It kind of was me. I don't know which is more me—the hands when I control them, or the hands when they control me. Which is more me—the one putting out the fires, or the one starting them?
This Old House
"I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls." - Henry David Thoreau
A friend and I were recently talking about Walden, the book
by Henry David Thoreau where he goes into the woods 
because he "wants to live deliberately"—the book that
we were all required to read in high school, and didn't, but only skimmed
it, which we've all been talking about periodically ever since. That
book.
We talk about Walden not because it's such a great book (we wouldn't know...), but because we too want to go to the woods and live deliberately.
Every now and then, I throw up my hands and say, "I'm moving to a cabin in the woods."
This morning it dawned on me: I already live in a cabin in the woods.
Not literally, no. Literally, I live in an apartment in Brooklyn. But it's on a sleepy, tree-lined street, with an enormous garden for a back yard, and though there's no mountain-fresh air or scent of pine needles, there is peace and quiet here. Or would be , if I'd ever get around to listening.
(To say that I am a seeker is also to say I'm a malcontent, or that I am not a finder. )
So, when I say I want a cabin in the woods, I must mean something else. Maybe it really is all about the pine needles.
The Most Authentic Art in the World
In 1940, four teenagers in the south of France fell into a cave and discovered its walls were covered with what might be the most authentic art ever made—paintings that pre-date any "art scene" by more than 15,000 years.1
Almost nothing is known of the pre-agrarian painters who covered the walls of the caves in Lascaux during the last ice age. They took time out of their short, brutish lives to climb deep inside a network of uninhabited limestone caves, and to paint human figures, glyphs, and animals on its walls. Whatever the purpose of the paintings, the work was not decorative: the caves would have been accessible to very few, and only visible through use of the earliest-known artificial lamps, found scattered throughout the site at Lascaux.
Why do people make art? That is the question that rings out through the Lascaux caves and echoes to this day. Why does anyone take the time out of their short, brutish life, to make something that might or might not ever see the light of day?
1. However "authentic" these cave paintings might have been, our modern-day experience of them is decidedly not so: to help preserve the original work, the French government commissioned replicas of the Lascaux paintings for the walls of another, nearby cave (called Lascaux II), and the original cave was closed to the public.
Chutes and Ladders
PATIENT: I just hope to God that death is the fucking end. I feel like I'm 80 years old. I'm tired of life and my mind wants to die.
DOCTOR: That's a metaphor, not reality.
PATIENT: It's a simile.
- Excerpt from Psychosis 4:48 by Sarah Kane
"Sometimes," he begins, "it's like I'm trying to build a ladder while I'm climbing on it. I have two long poles and a lot of short ones, for the rungs, and I have a hammer; and the first thing I have to do is hold these two poles upright, hold them parallel, and then join them together with the first rung. This is a very difficult job to accomplish by one's self—holding up the two poles, then situating the rung and hammering it into place. This is very hard. The poles keep slipping out of place. Assembling it takes strength, coordination and luck.
"I have none of these things.
"It would be an simple job if I had a lot of space, if I could lay the poles on the ground, if I weren't so crowded, if I could put it all together without having to fight against gravity, against physics. It would be an simple job if I had a friend or two to lend a hand.
"But I have none of these things.
"Once the first rung is in place, the two long poles are much easier to handle. The second rung will be hard but not as hard. Each new rung will make the ladder stronger but also put the tools, the hammer and pegs, more and more out of reach. Building a ladder while standing on it isn't easy. But the second rung is sure to be easier to affix than the first; and the third easier than the second; and each one easier after that.
"I know I could climb out of this, if only I could figure out that first rung."
On the Head of a Pin
Luc Besson's Angel-A
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work, and their selves, to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." - Anton Ego, from Pixar Studio's Ratatouille1
In Luc Besson's 2005 film, Angel-A, an out-of-luck Parisian named André is ready to jump off a bridge into the Seine, when a beautiful woman (Angela) beats him to it. She takes the plunge, he rescues her from drowning, and the two team up to get their lives back in order.
Their path leads through gangsters, pimps, horse races and strip clubs (this is a Luc Besson film, after all), before winding up (less characteristically) at Notre Dame Cathedral, and nearly at the gates of Heaven itself. En route, the two of them share a few touching moments: Angela is (of course) sent down from Heaven to teach André that he is lovable, and when she has him look in the mirror to tell himself so, he can't do it: "It's difficult," he stammers, but persists, tears in his eyes, till he manages to spit it out: "Je t'aime," he tells his reflection quietly.
If a film is entertaining, and manages to inspire or interest us toward a few moment's reflection, then perhaps any further discussion of it is beside the point—as esoteric as a medieval philosopher questioning how many angels could fit on the point of a needle.
But Angel-A is just as filled with touchy moments as touching ones: at one point, Angela whores herself to every man in a club, in order to help settle one of André many debts. (Angel-A is Wings of Desire meets Risky Business.) Later, we hear an alternate version of this story, in which Angela did not actually have sex with the 99 men, but simply lured them to a bathroom, robbed them, and bludgeoned them unconscious. Whew, that's much better!
The movie is one-half a fairy tale: a sweet man, who was never shown love, learns to treat people with kindness and honesty, and thus turns his life around. But it's a half-articulated moral, because in the world of Angel-A, only select actions have consequences; everything else can be solved by the six-foot tall, blonde-haired deus ex machina in the short black dress.
By the end of the movie, Angela has helped André realize his true nature; and his thanks to her is to lure her away from her own true nature: as she spreads her wings to fly back to Heaven, he clings on to her and brings her crashing back down to Earth, to "save" her and return her to the only place she could ever be happy: at the side of a man.2
1. I might have thought differently of Angel-A if I hadn't seen it back to back with Ratatouille, and noticed that apart from the pimping and whoring on the one hand, and the cooking and eating on the other, the two stories are almost exactly the same.
2. Luc Besson's brand of well-regarded schlock—including The Professional and La Femme Nikita—has come with its own mostly-well-regarded brand of "feminism": in his films, the girls kick ass. But they also take all their orders from men, and in the end, it is always the men who succeed or fail to make them happy.
Pantone 7499U
is the color of my ashen face.
See also Pantone 381U, as true now as then.
Crossing Guard
A few times during the day, the doors of P.S. 29 open up, and children gush out, yelping and laughing, loosed onto the streets of the city—and then the city is loosed onto them.1 Every day, on every corner, their guardian angels are there to protect them, and help them home: the crossing guards.
The crossing guards know the children by name. They talk to them, ask them about their day, ask about their homework, or their new boyfriends or girlfriends. The children joke with the crossing guards, laugh with them, seem to confide in them; and when the crossing guard says stop, the children stop; and when the crossing guard says go, the children go.
Today, at one crosswalk, a woman escorted a small pack of children across the street, and, arriving at the far curb, she took an extra moment to re-button a girl's coat, and to brush a bit of loose hair out of her face, before sending her on her way. And with that gesture, she reminded me what I love about New York, and about Brooklyn, and about people more generally.2
1. The children of New York—maybe every single one I've ever met, without exception—are so thoroughly smart, able and self-possessed that I now think of New York as the best (and possibly only) place to raise kids.
2. This week, I had the pleasure of meeting "Princess Genevieve," who was visiting, along with the rest of her family, from Ohio. Princess Genevieve wanted to ask me some questions about her website, which I thought was in pretty good shape already. While talking with her, I felt very briefly, very slightly, like a crossing guard.
The World According to Facebook
Or, Christopher Is, pt. 2
Yesterday, my mother asked me about the well-being of my sister's husband's brother's wife's father. "Huh?" That's my brother-in-law's sister-in-law's father, or, to put it another way, my own father-in-law three times removed.
If it is true that we are all separated by no more than six degrees of separation (and it is true, according to MSN Messenger), then my relationship with this person employs no fewer than four of those degrees. I have met my brother-in-law's sister-in-law, once, and I might have been able to recall her name, if someone offered me a hint of the first couple letters. I've never met her father, didn't have any ideas as to his health, and asked my mother how in the world she knew of this person.
Her answer?: "Facebook."1
(Unlike 99.9% of the Facebook population, my mother was born in the 40s.)
* * *
Unlike 99.9% of people born in the 70s, I am a regular user of Facebook. I know what superhero I am ("Rogue"), which German philosopher ("Heidegger"), and whether or not I'm a "hottie" (duh). If you're nice to me, I might "brew your a spot of tea," and if you're not, I might give you "the people's elbow." I can defend myself against the attacks of your zombie and vampire armies. I update my status often. And in the midst of all of this din of useless information, I failed to notice that there was something wrong with the health of my sister's husband's brother's wife's father.
Like 99.9% of the Facebook population, I was completely absorbed with stupid games and, ultimately, with myself. If the point of this software is to bring people closer together, then in this random sample of one time, it did not work.
* * *
There is a new feature in Facebook, through which the website makes its own recommendations about whom we should befriend. Its logic is fairly straightforward triadic interaction: "the friend of my friend is my friend." If several of my friends have a friend in common, then the software concludes that I, too, might know this person.
In other words, it mines out that second degree of separation, and shows a list it calls "People You May Know."
Looking at the list, I do in fact see some familiar names, but to me it reads more like, "People I Would Know, If Only I'd Been More Outgoing and Socially Confident"—friends of friends who might or might not remember me, if I were to click on the link to their name.2 Facebook offers me an alternate reality, where I can imagine myself at the center of a wider, and ever-growing, circle of friends—or at least "friends." I can know more and more about these people, what they're doing, where they're going, what music or films they like, whether or not their marriage (to someone I've never met) is working out3—without ever encountering them in the real world, in the future or in the past.
As for my actual friends, I'm not sure that Facebook draws us closer. Occasionally we'll get together (online) for a game of Scrabble, or I'll "throw [virtual] toilet paper" at them. But no more than that. And some days I wonder if that's the limit of what we have in common—if that is all our friendship ever was—and I worry that perhaps Facebook has become, instead of a collection of friends, more like a resting place for failed friendships, people with whom throwing toilet paper is enough.
1. I didn't even know my mom was on Facebook. She never "friended" me.
2. My friend Carolyn pointed out that this same list might also be "People You Hate, and Have Consciously Decided Not to Befriend in Facebook"—in which case, this new "feature" is a bit of an annoyance. She added too that I've never asked to be her Facebook friend, and that I've never mentioned her on my blog.
3. The single most remarkable moment of Facebook pathos I have yet to see—even more pathetic than my mother not "friending" me—was the moment when someone I know changed their relationship status from "Married" to "Separated", and announcement of the change was published out to the Facebook world. Compare with a lover's fight recently overheard: "You can break up with me," she said, "but I'm not changing my Facebook status!"
Sounds of Silence
Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park
Cinema is inherently voyeuristic: we, the viewers, are always on the outside, peering at something to which we should not be privy, while on the inside, the characters who occupy the world we watch seem unaware of our presence.
In the case of most Hollywood blockbusters, it is easy to forget that we are voyeurs, because our window offers us a view of the impossible—places we could never possibly be: inside a jet fighter, or amidst a zombie army, or bumbling through a romance with a witty supermodel, or in a galaxy far far away.
Gus Van Sant's recent spate of vérité-style films offer instead a glimpse into places we might have been, if only we were so unlucky: lost in the desert without food or water (Gerry), hiding under a table in the library of Columbine High School (Elephant), or living out the final week in the under-furnished mansion of a reluctant rock'n'roll hero, before his suicide (Last Days).1
Add to this list one more place we don't want to revisit any time soon: the mind of a teenager—in particular, the dreamy, lyrical, emotionally-detached mind of a skateboarding teenager named Alex, growing up in a broken home in Portland, struggling with belonging, and involved in an unfortunate and grisly incident one night at Paranoid Park. The film recounts the events before and after that incident, but it jumbles the order, skews the point of view, slows things down, speeds things up, repeats a scene several times but reveals something new each time. "I'm writing this a little out of order," says Alex of his own pencil-scribbled narration. "Sorry. I didn't do so well in creative writing."
Van Sant, an American auteur who is best known for his (excellent but entirely conventional) Good Will Hunting, has since been diligently reminding us that the medium of film is one of sound and image and time, more than one of plot or character or dialogue. The most memorable moments of his recent films are the ones in which nothing is said and not very much seems to happen: the crunch of feet on the desert gravel; an ad hoc song plucked out on an acoustic guitar, performed for no one; the silent grainy home-movie footage of one skater after another, jumping off a ramp and reaching—Icarus-like—for the sky. These scenes may seem wistful, or indulgent, or narcissistic2; but then, the most memorable moments of our own lives are probably the same.
1. Van Sant calls these three his "Death Trilogy," and indeed, they are beautiful, elegiac, fictional snuff films.
2. Marshall McLuhan suggests that Narcissus would never have become so enamored of his own reflection if he had understood it for what it was ("Narcissus as Narcosis"). Instead, perhaps he was enraptured at the discovery of one so similar to himself, and could not avert his eyes. The same might be said for Van Sant's long, longing gazes upon his subjects.
Cloudscape
"The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms." - from "The Library of Babel," by Jorge Luis Borges
I'm sitting in that chair in the corner of my bedroom, and my hand is bleeding. The morning is quiet. The sun shines in through the window and casts the shadow of the pane onto my bed, and I can hear distant traffic, and feel a breeze coming in.
I'm watching the blood run down my hand onto my wrist, onto my arm, a bright red rivulet, so bright, shockingly bright, candy apple red, and I think, "This is so shockingly bright. This is the color of vivid, the color of vitality, and seeing this color, it is a memorable experience. What is happening now is special. It is unique."
The same thing happened yesterday.
I cut my hand two days ago, or maybe it was the day before that, and since then, every morning, when I get out of the shower, I sit in the chair in the corner of my room and I notice again that my hand is bleeding. I see the angle of the sun through the window, I hear far-away cars, feel the gentle breeze, and think that what is happening right now is unique, never having happened before or ever again, though it happened yesterday, and (one might conclude) it will happen tomorrow.
I watch the trickle of blood wind across my wrist and down my arm without fear or concern but only deja vu, as if I am stuck in a single point of time, while the world around me has continued to move and change, almost imperceptibly, like the passing of a cloud.
Right now—is it today or yesterday? And if this has all happened before, why should that make this moment any less unique? If time is truly infinite, then won't this all happen again—not just my bleeding in this chair, but the repetition of the bleeding, and the musing on it? And again and again. If the dimensions of the universe are as boundless as mathematics, then is there not someone else, somewhere else, doing this same thing, even now? And writing about it? Hasn't it all been written before? Even by me.
The bleeding stops, on its own, for now, and I go on about my day.
Do No Evil
"There are moments—increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns—when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with." — New York Times editorial on Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech of March 18, 2008
I had many reactions to Barack Obama's speech yesterday in Pennsylvania, but first among them was one that caught me completely by surprise:
Hillary Clinton should step down, and concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.1
This opinion is different than the one I expressed here, or here, or even here. It is an opinion that's shifted gradually, over this last Machiavellian month, and then suddenly, when Obama stood up in Philadelphia and delivered his much-discussed "More Perfect Union" speech.
Consider that during the same news cycle, the press was combing through Clinton's "First Lady" papers, sniffing for evidence of scandals real or imagined; her own campaign continued its deceptive shell games in Michigan and Florida and Pennsylvania, arguing that though Obama now has the weight of the popular vote and the balance of delegates, in November, only she, Clinton, could pull the states that "matter." Elsewhere in politics, President Bush again declared "victory" in Iraq (beginning to beg the question not what the word "victory" means, but rather if words, in politics, mean anything); and newly-sworn-in New York governor David Paterson volunteered his chronicle of extramarital affairs, literally as if to give himself an air of credibility, because we all know by now, any politician who wants to be taken seriously must cheat on their spouse.
All of which is to say that if we, the electorate, are exhausted by the charade that is contemporary big media politics, and jaded, and detached, and disenfranchised, then of course we were caught off guard when Barack Obama took the podium and spoke to us honestly. In the midst of his own (possibly actual, serious) scandal—his association with "racist" pastor Jeremiah Wright—Obama avoided easy platitudes, sound bytes, and disavowals, and instead spoke to us "as though we were adults."
Both Obama and Clinton have promised us that they are candidates of "change." In Clinton's hands, this word is an honest and well-intended one, describing her intentions to improve our nation's economy, health care, and reputation abroad. Obama, too, wants these things, but it is becoming clearer that his idea of "change" is more fundamental:
He wants, first of all, to repair our dysfunctional, dumbed-down democracy (a system which has alienated nearly every citizen I know, and a system in which Clinton is as deeply implicated as anyone). This is not "change you can xerox;" until recently, I did not even believe it was change that was possible. But I am beginning to believe.
1. Upon further consideration, what I really mean by this is that she should rise to Obama's level of rhetoric, or she should bow out—preferably the former.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
EA's Army of Two Gets a Few Things Right
The first thing to notice about Army of Two, the new cooperative shooter from Electronic Arts, is how cute its two mercenary-heroes are. Or rather, what a cute couple they make: Salem is long-haired and downright pretty; Rios is a rougher sort, like Mr. Clean if Mr. Clean had been hit in the face by a little too much shrapnel in Somalia.
The second thing to notice is how much fun they have together. Even in the midst of heated battles, they're always funning each other—head-butting, high-fiving, tripping one another. Those guys! Sure, they squabble like an old married couple, but that's just another sign of how close they really are: in the end, there's no doubt they have each other's back.
The third thing to notice is how much time the two of them spend accessorizing. They jet from continent to continent, chasing terrorists in exchange for cash (these two are soldiers of fortune with hearts of gold), and when all of the bullets and bombs are said and done, ... they go shopping.1
In short, this quick, fun, machismo (and otherwise not-too-remarkable) game is the most homoerotic piece of military hardware since Top Gun. Who'd have thought that the conservative-seeming developers of Madden and The Sims2 would come out with such a strong critique of the Pentagon's anti-gay policy? But there it is: Army of Two is the story of two openly gay soldiers who leave the Army Rangers despite an exemplary record, then thrive as guns-for-hire. They are not only great at soldiering; they look good doing it.
"It's not the goal of the game [to educate people], because it's entertainment," says Alain Tascan, general manager for the EA division that developed Army of Two. "But if they learn a little bit more about it like we learned about it, it might open their eyes a little bit."
That's right. Who do you want in your foxhole, bro?
1. In this case, they go shopping for goofy metal hockey masks and bling-encrusted submachine guns. "Nice gun, bro."
2. The Sims: a game that is entirely about working and shopping. It doesn't get more conservative than that.
Caveatemptoraphobia
caveatemptoraphobia. Noun. 1. When the fear of "buyer's remorse" paralyzes one into inaction. 2. The refusal to accept a perfectly good thing, because it might turn out to be bad.
(See also, Imelda Marcos Syndrome. )
Read more from The Urban Sherpa Dictionary ->
Greed, Lust
The most-asked question in New York this week was on the subject of now-former governor Eliot Spitzer (more popularly known as "That Idiot"):
What was he thinking???
It is likely that we will never know what internal thought process led Spitzer to interrupt his years-long righteous crusade against mob-related prostitution (which he called "modern-day slavery"), in order to engage in the services of mob-related prostitution. His initial apology was too general to offer any clues:
I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better. I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.1 I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.2
His resignation speech added little as to what motivated him, and in fact he was already returning to his strident tones of yesteryear (or last week):
Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself.
Ever the champion of Good and Right, he suggests that he is doing us the honor of going back into battle on our behalf once more — that is, doing us the honor of resigning, so he will be free "to serve the common good and to move toward the ideals and solutions which I believe can build a future of hope and opportunity for us and for our children."
That's big of you, Spitz. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Since he's unlikely to explain his actions any further (at least until he's offered a lucrative book deal), it's up to us to conjecture how this otherwise joyless crusader was led so thoroughly into temptation. How could a man who had made his career attacking the sex trade have been brought down by it, so spectacularly, thoroughly, and ridiculously?3 Here are a few ideas:
Hubris: The classic Greek reading of this story is that Spitzer was blinded by his own ambition: he was so powerful or so good that the law simply didn't apply to him. Perhaps he met with "Kristen" out of love, or perhaps he was trying to save her (though he reportedly sometimes asked the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe”).
Too Much Disposable Income: Never having wanted for money, perhaps Spitzer was simply at a loss as to where to put all that spare change. Would that he had learned from one of his predecessors in the governor's mansion, Nelson Rockefeller, or from possible successor Michael Bloomberg -- neither of whom have particularly seemed to struggle with how to spend their money well. 4
Honesty: Perhaps Spitzer's tragic flaw was, simply, his truthfulness. Maybe he had too much integrity to take a mistress. Prostitution, at its root, is a simple, honest transaction; it wouldn't require any of the deception or subterfuge of a woman on the side. Further, Spitzer insisted on paying out of his own pocket. He might have let any number of powerful benefactors pick up the tab, thereby leaving few traces for a sting operation -- but he is a man of integrity, who would never allow himself to be beholden to the special interests of a patron. Spitzer insisted on being a free man, even if, in this case, freedom proved to be very expensive...
He wanted to be caught. Despite his new "Idiot" moniker, Eliot Spitzer is not a dumb man. Also, as a former prosecutor, he is intimately (ahem) familiar with how prostitution rings get busted. He had every reason to know full well which of his own calls, credit card transactions, etc. were bound straight for the DA. Yet he did it anyway.
Rather than assume he made a foolish mistake, doesn't it make more sense for us to believe that Spitzer wanted to be caught? Perhaps he was tired of all of the righteous posturing, or Albany; perhaps he realized that being governor wasn't as fun as he'd expected, and he wanted out. Maybe he's not an "idiot" at all.
Maybe that's what he was thinking.
We'll never know.
2. By, first of all, trotting them out in front of the cameras for these humiliating press conferences. His wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, wore a possibly now-permanent mask of incredulous contempt: "That idiot," her look seemed to say. "What was he thinking???"
3. Bill Maher's anti-analysis misses the point: I don't think people are shocked or alarmed that Spitzer would cheat on his wife. No slight intended upon her; that's just something people do -- especially, it seems, the egomaniacal people who gravitate toward politics. What gets people all riled up -- and curious -- is that he would pay $1000 an hour for something that he a) fought so hard against; and b) could have gotten for free. (Maher's misunderstanding of the issue stems from the fact that $1000 is probably a normal amount for him to pay for sex.)
4. Of the many ways in which Spitzer betrayed many people through his behavior, one was simply to have such bad judgment that $80,000 seemed to him a reasonable amount to spend to have sex with a 22-year old. This is the kind of bargain-hunter we entrusted with the fiscal decision-making of our state?
Charity, Chastity
There's a man who came over to my table an hour ago to ask for money. He was well groomed;
he had a nice watch and good teeth, and spoke gently. He claimed to have just been released from the hospital, and showed me his bracelet, though he didn't say what hospital or why he was there.
He touched me twice, softly, his fingertips brushing my arm while he spoke. And now, in retrospect, I'm furious. I hate him for touching me, because now, on account of those two touches, I won't be able to put him out of my mind1; and also because he'll probably be the only one to touch me today.2
1. I use the same trick myself, when I want to make an impression on a stranger. I do it consciously, manipulatively, and sincerely, too. But I hate having my own trick used against me.
2. I remind myself, like I might have reminded him if he were still around: we move to the city and surround ourselves with people, in order to be left alone.
Coming Soon, to a Mob Near You
If you don't already own an Apple iPhone, now might be the time to pick one up—so you have a little time to learn how it works, before it changes forever.
Yesterday, Apple released a "software development kit" for the iPhone. An SDK is a set of code libraries and other resources for software programmers: it's not the sort of thing that usually leads to press coverage in the mainstream media. But this is Apple we're talking about—the company that likes to "think different": the demand for this SDK was so high that it briefly brought down the Apple.com website.
Who knew there were so many eager programmers waiting in the wings?
The iPhone SDK will allow people, for the first time, to develop their own applications for the iPhone. Till now, every program running on the iPhone was under the strict control of Apple itself: they alone were dictating what web browser I could use, what email program, what games. Till now, the pretty little black box was under lock and key.
Now, Apple's thrown it to the smart mob.
* * *
The term "smart mob" was first introduced1 to describe a then-new trend in mobile technology: the use of SMS text messages to coordinate the efforts of large, otherwise-unconnected hordes of people, often for impromptu raves: an SMS would get sent to an entire "thumb tribe" to meet at this warehouse, or that vacant lot. The push of a few buttons was enough to mobilize a mob of people with a common goal—to go out dancing.
The technique was quickly adopted by political activists, who were able to use their mobile phones to communicate with one another to stay one step ahead of law enforcement during protests; and even by foot soldiers on the ground in Iraq, whose first-hand intel was often more reliable than what they were receiving from HQ.
But the term also overlaps with the idea of "collective intelligence," which underpins many of the wider trends taking place on the Internet: customer-written product reviews, wikis, and social networking sites (like Digg and del.icio.us) are founded on the premise that if you solicit opinions from a wide enough pool of people, truth will out.2 Eventually, the "smart mob" will ensure that the best products receive the best reviews and that the Wikipedia articles are accurate. Democracy (of a sort) and free market economy (of a sort) combine till the smart mob is smarter than any of its individuals.
Which is why, if you are Apple and you want to load the iPhone with "killer apps," you don't have to build or code or even conceive of any of them. All you have to do is ask the smart mob. Give them the tools, and let them build the killer apps for you.3
1. By Howard Rheingold, in his 2002 book of the same name.
2. As famous and influential as Wikipedia, the effect of the release of the photos from Abu Ghraib prison can also be considered a consequence of the "smart mob": once the information hit the network, the interpretation of that information was no longer in control of the spin doctors, but rather, the smart mob.
3. Another recent SDK release that caused mainstream excitement was Facebook's: the majority of that site's content was developed not by Facebook but by third-party developers, who used the SDK to create the numerous applications—Vampires, Scrabulous—that make the site so fun and so annoying. Tim Hartford recently equated this to the furniture store Ikea—a store that gives you the tools to design and build your own furniture, and depends on you to do all the heavy lifting.
Long Division
or, The Remainder
In the sometimes difficult arithmetic that is used to calculate love, perhaps no problem is more difficult to solve than this: at the end of love, where does the love go?
[Conservation of mass and energy would dictate that it must go somewhere: love is nothing if not massive and energetic.]
Two people come together, and then they are made separate again, by a kind of long division. But the equation doesn't balance: the two are divided, but there is a remainder, an amount that belongs to neither the one nor the other. An amount of loss.
What happens to the remainder?
Not News
Every major news outlet this morning reported that today might be the day that the Democratic race for president gets decided once and for all. (Read: for Obama.)
Here's a little tip to my friends in the fourth estate: if it hasn't happened yet, it isn't news.
Today might be the day that California falls into the ocean, the day that Tom Cruise comes out of the closet, or the day Cheney finally keels over from heart failure. It might be the day dinosaurs make a comeback. Today might be the day that the media reveals its pro-Obama bias.
Oh, wait—that did happen today. So that is news. But everything else is just conjecture, or in the case of our objective (?) press, wishful thinking.
Measure Twice, Cut (at) Once
Manhattan's a tough town, miserly with its second chances, and dating is no exception. With so many eligible singles (and by "eligible," I mean self-possessed, self-sufficient, and usually self-absorbed), there's no reason to settle for anything less than perfect.
Which is why I don't think it's unreasonable that I'm breaking up with you because you drink riesling. Riesling is a god-awful wine and I can't possibly be involved with anyone who thinks otherwise. It speaks badly of your judgment, more generally, and I won't risk having my future children inherit such terrible taste.
* * *
Hi! I just wanted to call, and say I had a great time last night, and I don't think we should ever do it again. Why? What do you mean, why? I'm sorry, I assumed you felt the same way. Remember when I was talking about that Terrence Malick film, and you thought I meant that movie with Meg Ryan? Sure, that Meg Ryan movie was an adaptation. No, it was an adaptation of Wim Wenders, not Terrence Malick. See? This proves my point exactly. Anyway, thanks for a fun night.
* * *
God, this is so graceless of me. I mean, I really wanted to wait till the entrées arrived, at least. But you were eating so slowly... I don't think we should see each other anymore. This isn't working out. I mean, we should have known, right?—I wanted a booth, you wanted a table. Ha ha. "Let's call the whole thing off."
I just wish you'd told me you had a double chin; it could have saved us both the trip. Can you please stop making that annoying sound when you cry? Here's some cash for the bill; I think if I leave now, I can make it home before Lost.
Are you going to eat that calamari? Mind if I get it wrapped up, to go?
Laugh Track
If you use Gmail (the free, web-based email service from everyone's favorite Internet software monolith, Google), then you're probably used to the sponsored ads that span the right hand side of all of your email messages. Maybe you're so used to them, you barely notice them anymore.
Or maybe, like me, you take them personally.
Google's software scans the contents of each email thread and delivers targeted ads that it thinks are "relevant" to the subject at hand. Sometimes it succeeds with uncanny accuracy; sometimes its logic is hard to glean.
Most of the time, it seems to be making fun of me.
Take, for example, a recent email in which I asked a friend if I could borrow a drill gun, because I don't own any power tools. The ad that came back? Oh, no! I'm emo!
The email where I brag about my recent trips to the gym earns me this "relevant" ad: Children's Workout NYC. An email where I think I'm being sexy and flirty winds up serving this ad: Have a Cute 3-Year Old? And a correspondence regarding a possible writing job delivers this: Need a seasoned ghost writer?
I draft a letter and send it—via Gmail—to Google's ad department:
Dear Google: I've been keeping an eye on the ads that appear in my email, and I have some questions about how you determine "relevancy." At best, the ads seem not very relevant; at worst, they're a bit mean-spirited. I realize they're selected by an algorithm, but still, it's hard not to feel like you're heckling. Please let me know what I can do to help you to target me more effectively as a market for your advertisers.
The ad that comes back in the right column? Pay-Per-Click Doesn't Work.
Finally, a relevant one...
Precious Time
I get it in my head that I need a watch.
I'm not sure where that idea comes from: I don't need a watch. How could I need a watch? No one needs a watch. There's a clock on my phone, a clock on my computer, a clock on the wall; clocks on the TV, on the microwave, on the coffee maker; clocks on the bell towers, on the subways cars, on the billboards. Everywhere I go, someone or something is telling me what time it is.
And most hours of most days, I don't particularly care what time it is.
So if I need a watch, that's not the reason.
But I can't get it out of my head: I need a watch.
* * *
The last watch I owned was a Mickey Mouse watch given to me by my parents when I was in six years old—a timepiece whose accuracy was only slightly compromised by the big, puffy, three-fingered gloves of the watch hands. My parents wisely understood that I was in first grade now; I had responsibilities; and that meant I needed to know what time it was. Bells rang, students shuffled through the halls, and for the first time in my life, I had appointments to keep: I was on someone else's schedule.
The watch, then, marked my rite of passage from childhood's boundless play time, to at least a miniaturized version of adulthood, the constraints of which were bound to force me onto someone else's schedule.
At some point, I lost the watch, and that was that.
I never was very good at keeping to other people's schedules.
* * *
They say time is money1, and as I browse the expensive Swiss timepieces under this glass counter, I couldn't agree more: time, at least in this store, is a lot of money.
My desire for a watch comes and goes, but seems to return whenever I want a badge of adulthood. It's more of an amulet, then, than a timepiece—adornment to announce to the world, first of all, that I am a responsible adult who needs to keep precise track of time (in the case of this particular chronograph watch, precise to the tenth of a second); and secondly, that I am capable of arranging my finances in such a way that the purchase of a piece of finely-crafted Swiss jewelry is a completely reasonable, and not frivolous, expense (which is untrue).2
Adulthood: the paradox that if we work hard, we can reward ourselves with expensive things, like a nice watch: we work more in order to pay for it, and have less time, while wearing a water-resistant quartz timepiece on which to watch time tick away.3,4
1. Certainly, those of us ever lucky enough to have an excess of one almost certainly have precious little of the other.
2. A few months ago, my life was full of too much adulthood, so I quit my job and adorned myself like a child.
3. Not unlike spending good money on an expensive trash can.
4. And again, the need to remind myself that simply not shopping, or not working, does not in and of itself constitute a critique of Late-Stage Capitalism.
Death in Texas
Maybe you watched last night's Democratic debate on CNN. Maybe you saw the moment when the candidates were asked to discuss Obama's recent "plagiarism" "scandal." (I couldn't decide which of the two words more deserved to put in quotes.) Maybe you heard Clinton tell Obama that "lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not 'Change you can believe in.' It's change you can Xerox."
Maybe you heard, after that, what the press widely describes as "booing."
If it was booing, then I find that strangely encouraging, 
because I think of booing as belonging to the quaint, pre-media politics of yesteryear (i.e., when people's opinions could still be heard, so people bothered to voice them). To me, though, it sounded more like the air being let out of an enormous balloon—like the death rattle of a Macy's Day parade float.
Even while she was trying to argue that Obama is a candidate of empty words and she a candidate of substance, Clinton offered up a line so pat and pre-canned that it had all the resonance of a bad TV commercial, so catty and empty that it might have been said by Rush Limbaugh, so disingenuous and cheap that people actually booed.
In that moment, she confirmed everyone's worst fear: that she is disingenuous.1
But worse than that: she thought we would fall for it. As if we're not inundated with 1,500 messages a day, each one trying to sell us something. As if that doesn't teach us to discern a good ad (or product, or soundbyte) from a bad one.
As if we were dumb.2
If Clinton wants to start speaking to Obama's base, then she'd do well to learn that their native tongue is media: they speak it fluently and know when its grammar and cadences don't ring true—and in those moments, they will boo you, "bury" you, blog about it, and post it on "the YouTube."
There's nothing wrong with being old, being older, being of a different generation. But if you start to believe that dying your hair and painting your face makes you young, well, that has the makings of a tragedy.
1. dis·in·gen·u·ous. (adj.) Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating. Contrast with my worst fear of Obama: that he is ingenuous. in·gen·u·ous. (adj.) Lacking in cunning, guile, or worldliness; simple; naive. Obama the ingenue.
2. Obama's response to the "plagiarism scandal"—that politics has entered its "silly season"—struck me as one of the most honest, media-aware lines I've ever heard from a politician, because he expects / demands that we acknowledge the degree to which the spectacle of contemporary politics is "silly"—something we were all thinking already...
The Bogeyman 
The bogeyman came over last night,
and
he wasn't as scary as I'd remembered.
We made dinner.
He said the wine went straight
to his head. At the end of the night,
We started kissing, and I fucked him
On the same bed where he used to lurk,
slovering and snarling, clawing at my ankles.
Now he's snoring while we spoon,
his sleeping face lit in moonlight, and
I know I haven't conquered fear, just
moved it somewhere else, still undiscovered.
Intro to Philosophy
or, How Looking for Belief Can Lead to Believing Nothing
My life has been a series of apostasies, and I blame this on Norman Kretzmann.
Against the advice of my high school guidance counselor, I entered college as a philosophy major. My last year of high school had been a strange and spacious one: since I'd completed most of my requirements the year before, I took it upon myself to spend my senior year doing whatever I wanted, despite the diligent efforts of hall monitors and truancy officers. I was delinquent, but in the best possible way: if I skipped class, it was usually to work on a film I was shooting through most of that year, a sort of thesis project that (in my mind) gave me carte blanche to wander the halls, as long as I carried a camera.
If I wasn't working on the film, then I was reading a book I'd stolen from an English teacher the year before, by Will Durant, called The Story of Philosophy.
People have romantic notions about philosophy, and the purpose of this book was to shatter all of those notions. People imagine the study of philosophy to be a lot of cloudy, heady and generalized musing about the meaning of life. But Durant's book was dry, dense, and merciless. He didn't care what you thought about the meaning of life. He cared only to explain the rigors of Spinoza and Schopenhauer—this, to high school students who would laugh at the word "monad" because it rhymes with "gonad."
Somehow, I found purchase there, in that book: I was unprepared for the mathematical precision that the discipline of philosophy required, but I did love the questions, and I would skim the dense passages over and over until I could understand them in their cloudy, heady, generalized forms: I loved philosophy in spite of itself.
I wound up at a college with a world-class philosophy department, and quickly discovered it was one of the easiest majors, requiring only thirty-two credits—just one class per semester. Since I'd just spent a year cultivating a love of free time and a disdain for requirements, it seemed a perfect match, and I declared my major immediately.
My first class: Philosophy of Religion, with Norman Kretzmann.
Kretzmann was famous in esoteric circles, but his celebrity (like that of most of my professors) was lost on me. Instead, I was excited by the subject matter. Young philosophers want to know, "How should we live?"—and it seemed to me that any discussion of religion would have to address this cloudy, heady, general question.
Instead, what happened, more of less, was this:
Kretzmann wrote two or three sentences on the blackboard, and amended the wording of them until the class could agree that they were true. Once he'd established these initial statements, he'd add to them, line by line, allowing us to argue at any point until we all agreed with what was written—so that the truth of each statement was airtight. Methodically, for an hour and a half, Kretzmann constructed a logical proof, and at the very end of class, exactly on cue, he'd arrive at the proof's conclusion.
On Tuesdays, he proved that God existed.
On Thursdays, he proved that God did not exist.
And it went back and forth like that for the entire semester.
I can't remember if the class ended on a Tuesday or a Thursday, or if, in the end, Kretzmann ever tipped his hand to reveal what he himself believed to be true. Belief, in the end, had nothing to do with it. Those sixteen weeks shattered all belief, and that must have been his intention: those proofs proved that you could prove anything. We were theists and atheists on alternate days, and after that, nihilists forever.
File Under 'Pathos'
"I would rather grieve over your absence than over you." - Antonio Porchia, Voces
They tell us that if you have arthritis, say, of the knees, you need to use the joint to alleviate the pain. The less you exercise, the more it will hurt. Practice makes perfect.
But if you have a tear in the knee, say, a medial meniscus, then use of the joint might worsen the tear, and cause permanent damage.
So in the case of undifferentiated pain—is it arthritis, or is it a tear?—what do you do? You risk injury by using it, and you risk injury by not using it.
And what about the heart? In the case of undifferentiated pain, what do you do? You risk injury by using it; you risk injury by not.
* * *
I always think today is the day. Today is the day that she's going to call. Even though she didn't call yesterday, or the day before that, or the week before that—today is the day. The phone will ring; 
I'll glance at the incoming call, and instead of reading the name with that now-familiar disappointment—"Oh, it's not her, it's just you"—you, someone who cares enough to actually call, yet still somehow is disappointing compared to her, the one I want to call, the one who doesn't care to. The one who, well, I wouldn't know what to say to her if she did call.
Here's a range of feelings no one had before cell phones: the pathos of having her number fall off of the "call log," replaced by more recent, less passionate activity. The pathos of having her last voicemail (more than thirty days old) "expire" and disappear into the ether. The pathos of deleting her from the phone's address book, mostly to protect myself from ill-advised late-night moments of weakness.
Nights and weekends are free.
* * *
I exercise my heart. Exercise and exorcise. I don't love but I consider its possibility. I find openness and optimism, slowly, in layers that peel off one by one. I remind myself that aloneness is the natural state; it's not unusual; it's how I felt every day, before. And will still, for a while yet.
Practice makes perfect.
Man of Leisure
As I wind down my three+ months of "unstructured time"—a time that's been exhilarating 
and also, surprisingly, frustrating—I'm reminded of an essay from Jock Young's 1971 book, The Drugtakers.
I haven't spent the last three months sucking on a bong, and the drugs aren't what interest me in Young's essay. Young is a criminologist whose research focuses on class, and mostly the working class—and in this book, he's curious about the meaning behind drug use. Much of the essay is dedicated to "the nature of work and leisure in advanced industrial societies."
It's not enough that we are subsumed by our day-jobs, and forced to seek our unalienated identity only during leisure hours:
Whether it is the relatively simple alienation so characteristic of assembly line work in factories, or the highly sophisticated kind of alienation we find in the folk ways of higher occupations, one thing is clear: the disengagement of self from occupational role not only is more common than it once was but is also increasingly regarded as "proper". It is during leisure and through the expression of subterranean values that modern man seeks his identity. [my emphasis]
But also:
The world of leisure and the world of work are intimately related. The money earned by work is spent in one's leisure time... A man is justified in expressing subterranean [non-productive] values if, and only if, he has earned the right to do so by working hard and being productive. Pleasure can only be legitimately purchased by the credit card of work.
The values of capitalism (i.e., productivity, consumption) are so deeply entrenched in our society that leisure is simply the flip side of work, and it's hard even to know how to have fun without consuming something. ("Wanna meet for drinks? Go out to dinner? Catch a movie?")
And long gone (to childhood) are the days of pure simple unstructured play, outside of this capitalist dialectic of productivity and consumption.
So I'm looking forward to going back to work, because now finally, ironically, I'll also be able to have some fun.
Suicide for Dummies
Are you thinking of killing yourself? Feeling all alone? Unbearable pressures at home and at work? Do you feel unloved? In deep pain, with no end in sight?
Go for it.
If you want to commit suicide, that is your prerogative. Maybe you could hang in there a little longer, try some counseling, switch to a new medication. Maybe not. If you really want to end your own life, then no one is going to be able to stop you.
But on your way out, please don't shoot anyone.
This week has seen five school shootings—murder-suicides—in Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and California, with a total death toll over two dozen. Don't these kids have any manners? Offing one's self is rude enough: someone—probably someone who loves you—is going to have to clean up the mess. But the urge to empty a rifle clip into a crowd full of strangers before you go... that's a whole other sort of unfathomable.
How is it possible that we're left wishing for the "good old days," when people simply slit their wrists in the tub? How is it possible to be nostalgic for the shootings at Columbine, when these things were still shocking, when we could act as though this was uncommon?
If you are contemplating suicide, here are a few simple tips:
- With a little planning and research, you can self-medicate. You won't even need a gun—which is good, because there's no lawful justification for anyone to have a gun in the first place.
- If you do decide to use a gun to kill yourself, there is absolutely no reason to load it with more than one bullet. If the first shot doesn't kill you, then you'll probably be bleeding, brain-damaged, in terrible pain, and/or tremendously relieved—and in none of those scenarios will you be in any shape to pull the trigger a second time. If you must have a gun, then one bullet only.
- Though you are not thinking rationally—you're upset, and that's understandable—still, even you aren't such a fool to believe that you're getting "revenge" on people who wronged or misunderstood you. You know that revenge is when you SuperGlue someone's locker shut, or when you embarrass them by outsmarting them. You also know that you won't look very smart laid out on the coroner's stainless steel table, while people talk about how your stupid school shooting was unoriginal, uninspired, and simply proved everything they already knew and disliked about you.
- If, after all that, you still do want to kill yourself, it's got nothing to do with anybody else. Leave them out of it. Leave your automatic rifle and your copy of Catcher in the Rye at home, and jump off a bridge. Bridges really work.
Or call a hotline and get help. 1-800-784-2433. (Yes, that really is 1-800-SUICIDE.)
The Idealist Versus the Progressive
Are we voting with our hearts or with our heads?
The difference between the idealist and the progressive: the idealist is pursuing abstract principles of an imagined better world; the progressive is working step by step for change. The progressive works to create, one policy at a time, 
a world fit for the idealist to live in.
[Many on the left are picking their candidate based on one issue: the war. The war, as an issue, is a red herring. It's silly. There is no war. Fix what is broken—the sanctity of civil liberties and human rights, the mutual respect between nations, the economy—and let Bush's shameful, egomaniacal invasion of Iraq follow its natural course from that. If there was ever a time for easy answers ("Get the troops out now!"), now is not that time. Troop withdrawal solves what? Who cares who voted for the war? It is an obsolete footnote now in history.]
The question is whether Obama's idealism can spark the fire for sweeping progressive reform—is he tilting at windmills, or is he the "long-awaited champion" of the Democratic Party?—and whether Clinton's pragmatic furnace is the better engine for change.
Structure from motion at equiluminance
"If I'd known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I'd've memorized the Song of Solomon." - Miller's Crossing
Memories are painted on acidic paper and in fugitive colors: they fade over time, 
so that things we once found beautiful might later disappoint us; things we cherished might fail to seem remarkable, till we can't remember what, exactly, we ever liked about them. Or disliked.
[Ask someone who is lonely what they miss: they miss a memory.]
The remembered thing, and the feelings evoked by the thing—once inseparably intertwined (like lovers)—begin to come apart. This is forgetting—because the thing, without the attached feeling, becomes an event only, not a memory. It signifies nothing.
So when we cling to a memory, we're clinging to a feeling, a feeling which we've tethered to an otherwise-insignificant event.
Sometimes we become so attached to that feeling—to the memory of the thing—that the thing itself, in all its original colors, is unrecognizable to us. We have assembled a set of points, put it in motion—and imagined a structure where there is none. We've created an optical illusion. And cling to it like a lover.
(Happy Valentine's Day.)
Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama
Dear Senator Obama,
I am, and have been, a strong supporter of your main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton—and I'd like to begin this letter by saying what she, these last few days, seems to have been unable to say:
Congratulations.
Congratulations for your brilliant, inspiring campaign, and for galvanizing the hope of so many who have become disillusioned with the American electoral process. During your campaign, you have proven yourself to be a leader who can rally people's hope, and I think this is as important now as ever in our nation's history.
I am feeling what many in the Clinton camp also seem to be feeling: that the tide is turning, irrevocably, from her and toward you. And, without compromising my belief that Ms. Clinton would make an excellent forty-fourth president, I am also beginning to get excited at the prospect of a President Barack Obama.
I am writing this letter today, though, to ask that you remember what, exactly, you have been pursuing these past months, and what you have been promising. You have stirred a lot of hope. The electorate is pouring its hope into you, and I ask that you accept this as its vessel—without hubris and with great humility. For it is a truly humbling responsibility.
Please never lose sight that the goal is not to run a brilliant campaign, nor garner votes, nor chase approval ratings, nor say kind words, but to repair a broken nation—a task which is sure to come with cost, and which could likely cost you the popularity you enjoy today. That is the office you seek, and if you fail to deliver on this promise, then you will surely have done much greater harm than good to the very people whose hope you stirred.
So much of America believes in you. I wish you all of the strength and wisdom you will need for the hard times ahead.
Sincerely,
Christopher DeWan
When He Surrounded Himself...
When he surrounded himself with the things that were left to him—a box of Grape Nuts, a toilet kit with dental floss and eye drops, a rusty bicycle, a small pile of movie ticket stubs, two potted plants, four books with folded pages and underlines, a wax Buddha candle, seven headaches, and a 28.8 fax modem—he piled them all onto his kitchen table (which was rented), and, watching as it buckled under the weight, he contemplated: what was the best way to eat everything?
The combined wisdoms of Betty, Julia, Wolfgang, Rachael, Emeril and The Two Fat Ladies offered no answers. The indexes of so many stew recipes did not tell him what he needed to know. So, on his own, he chopped several cloves of garlic, minced a fresh bunch of parsley, and set to simmer all of the ingredients of his life. He reduced them in a stock pot till he had a puree—a hearty soup with no name, of his own creation.
Pouring it out with an old bent ladle into a deep mug, he drank it hot, the soup of his own life, and dipped a few bits of old sourdough for bulk; and when he'd eaten the entire pot of it, he was of course entirely empty, because whether he knew it or not, he was drawing identity not from what filled him, but from what he lacked...
Technology and the Theatre (pt. 1)
A Technological History of the American Theatre
Indulge me for a minute.
Let's put aside the "isms" (naturalism, expressionism, absurdism, post-modernism) that generally make up our understanding of the history of modern theatre. Let's talk instead about technology—about "technological materialism," 
about the history of modern theatre, vis-à-vis technology.
For example:
Electrical lights replaced gaslights and saved many theatres (and cities) from burning down. The steam engine allowed the Moscow Art Theatre to tour its productions and affect the way the Western world understood acting. Film caused an existential crisis in theatre that continues to this day. (The invention of Bacardi and Alizé opened up sponsorship opportunities that carried the art form into the 21st Century.)
The introduction of new technologies changes theatre, not in only in the obvious practical ways (flying cars in Chitty Bang Bang), but also more broadly, because the technologies change a culture: they change the way that people relate to one another and to their world.
They affect our understanding of space and time.
I'll venture the most important technological innovation in 20th century theatre is the airplane. The ability to travel rapidly from city to city allows us to form opinions about Theatre, with a capital T, rather than simply about isolated ephemeral happenings in our corner of the world.
And the telegraph, and then the telephone, and then the television, allow us to share those opinions with other (sometimes faraway) people. Our understanding of what "far away" means is altered by these technologies.
That's premise #1: technology changes the way we think, particularly about space and time.
* * *
Here is premise #2 (and I hope it's an easy sell): the most important technological innovation of the late 20th and early 21st century is the Internet. More broadly, let's say the most significant innovation is digital media, and then connecting those digital media to one other via networks.
Digital media + networking = the Internet as we now know it.
The networking of digital media is often compared to the invention of the printing press in the sweep of its scale. It is hard to be too hyperbolic about its importance—though partly because we still don't fully understand what changes it will affect, because we are still in the midst of those changes.
Suffice to say it has somehow affected how we do most things.
* * *
But (and this is premise #3), it has not significantly affected the theatre. There's no end of discourse in the theatre community about how technological advances might affect the field—one gets the sense they want it to affect the field—but traces of this change are hard to see.
So I'm looking for them. That will be the subject of the next sections of this essay...
World War CO2
When Joseph Romm lists the litany of reasons that a vote for McCain in the upcoming presidential election would be a disaster for the global environment ("No Climate for Old Men," Salon.com), he also necessarily describes what he thinks is needed to arrest global warming.
While McCain may understand the scale of the climate problem, he does not appear to understand the scale of the solution. He understands the country needs to put in place a mandatory cap on GHG emissions and a trading system to energize American innovation. But in a recent Republican debate, he denied that a cap and trade system is a mandate, even though it would arguably be the most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated.
"The most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated." Or, to use a popular parlance: the next president must declare war on carbon emissions.
* * *
During the Reagan administration, when Neo-Conservatives really were "neo," they hijacked the word "war" for their own gains. They were careful to explain that the invasions of Grenada and Panama, though involving actual soldiers, bullets, and deaths, were not "wars;" they were "conflicts," "police actions." The Clinton administration continued to leverage this rhetorical shift during the "action" in Kosovo—which was sometimes "bombing" and sometimes "peace-keeping," but never "war."
Meanwhile, "war" became a term used strictly metaphorically, to describe pitched, heroic battles against abstract foes: Drugs, Terror, etc. These "wars" were "declared" (though never in the legal sense) in order to inspire patriotism and nationalism, through metonymic slight-of-hand: the DEA agents are "entrenched" on the "front line," "protecting us" from the "invasion" of "chemical weapons" such as cocaine and marijuana. That is not to say that the job of a DEA agent does not involve risk (or bullets), but rather to say that if the term "police action" were ever to be honestly, appropriately applied, then this would be one such place, because the DEA are literally police.
Though my nation is currently, notoriously, at "war," I would like to suggest that this is only true metaphorically. I side with Baudrillard: for Americans, at least, the Iraq War did not take place—because if there is anything to distinguish a "war" from a "police action" or "skirmish" or "battle," then it must be the impact that it has on the larger culture. Soldiers go to battle; societies go to war. And as of yet in my lifetime, I have never rationed canned goods, I have never sent aluminum to the front, I have never had loved ones snatched up by a draft or made into refugees or killed. The deepest impact that these so-called "wars" have had on the wider culture is to interrupt regular programming on CNN, to infect political discourse with more strident (and sometimes fascist) tones, and to affect the price of gasoline (though for better, or worse, I'm not even sure).
* * *
If the science is correct (and there are fewer and fewer reasons to doubt it), then the forward march of greenhouse gases against polar ice is more significant than the march of the Panzer division across Europe. As this idea moves into the mainstream, our leaders will, sooner or later, declare "war" on carbon dioxide. If they truly are leaders, they would do well to remind us, the electorate, that we don't understand the term "war"—that its meaning has been stolen from us by flag-waving politicians, and that war—actual war—is state-sanctioned, nation-wide discomfort the like of which my generation has never known.
That is something I can vote for.
One Way Ticket
A woman this morning on the train—we kept looking at each other, and I got that feeling one sometimes gets, looking at strangers on the train, that silly feeling: that I shouldn't let this person just walk away. That I could love this person. Based on what, I don't know—the curls in her hair, the stripes of her stockings, the pout of her lips, an elusive, effusive ... I don't know.
I resolved that if she got off at my stop, I would talk to her, ask her to coffee, ask her something, something I hadn't worked out yet. But one stop before mine, she stood, bundled her things, and with a furtive look back at me, got off the train. When the door closed and the train pulled away, I felt momentarily like a tiny piece of me had been lost forever. (Perhaps.)
Middle of the Night
Middle of the night,
We watched light through the window,
Played with it till it broke
And, being broken,
There was nothing else to do,
Even sleep.
Super Bowl Tuesday
It all comes down to this. A chance at immortality. Because history is written by the winners.
In cities across America, each week, they've been suiting up, going onto the field, and playing their hearts out. These would-be heroes have been putting it in the air and they've been pounding it into the ground. They've been marching it down the field and they've been knocking on the door. But this game is won in the trenches, and there can only be one champion.
Tonight, it will all be decided. The moment you've been waiting for. The best and the brightest, the strongest and the fastest, the meanest and the hungriest: they have trained hard and tonight they're going head to head in a dazzling show, surrounded by thralls of fans and millions of dollars of advertising. When the night is over and the game clock has run down, we'll look up at the scoreboard and know we have a new champion.
Of course I'm not talking about the entertaining, surprising, NFL championship game that played a few nights ago, but rather a game with far more elaborate and arcane rules even than American football: the electing of delegates for the United States presidency. We, the so-called electorate, seize on the excitement with the rabidity of sports fans. We cheer, we groan, we hope our team comes out ahead, and don't worry so much that we've reduced our government to the passionate whims of fandom.
By morning, the candidates will be decided, and we'll have our champions—though half the country has yet to vote.
Fucking Hillary Clinton 
The ice cubes in my glass freeze together head to head, like a kiss. At the point where they've decided they best fit, they become one, 
melt together, away from the world, and I twirl them around in the midst of their disappearance, to hear the music they make against the glass, clink clink.
The phone is ringing and I'm not answering it. I'm playing with my ice cubes and their wonderful music, clink clink, and the dull thump when they slide against the lime.
The answering machine will pick up, like a good answering machine.
I'm thinking of fucking Hillary Clinton. I'm thinking of taking her in a darkened room of the White House, under the titillated eyes of the Secret Service, on a desk used by Andrew Jackson. I'm thinking of thrusting my way into American history, pulling Hillary Clinton by her hair, biting the diamonds on her earlobes, biting her neck, while she writhes to reach the clasp of her dress. I'm thinking of making her famous lips quiver.
The answering machine picks up, as it is wont to do. Whoever's calling hangs up. It's annoying, especially 3am. But that's the way the game is played. The ball is in my court.
Things I have trouble imagining: Hillary in the throes of orgasm; Hillary with morning breath and raspy voice; Hillary cooking me breakfast; Hillary unrolling a condom onto me; Hillary letting me do her without a condom.
The harder these things are to imagine, the more they turn me on—so when she does them, so goes the game.
I pick up the phone and dial *69, but after the first ring, I hang up. I'm getting too old for this.
I like the image of Hillary pacing by the phone, feeling junior high, trying to get up the courage to call. I like to picture her hanging up after she hears my voice. I like Hillary flustered. I like knowing I just *69ed Hillary Clinton.
I pour myself another Scotch and watch the ice cubes fade into oblivion. The phone is ringing again: she's 69ed me right back. I reach to turn off the machine, cover up the evidence, shred the papers. She knows the drill. But I change my mind. I'm no good at being coy. Let her know what she's dealing with.
I enjoy watching Hillary at press conferences, on TV, wearing tailor-made suits of red or blue, crafted by conservative designers who are well paid but will never be known by name. I like watching her and guessing which panties she's wearing. I like knowing Hillary is cool and collected and smart and tough with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but that she can't sleep nights thinking of me. I like not calling her back, and standing her up for our secret, elaborate, tightly-scheduled rendezvous, pushing her nearly far enough to put my own life in danger. I like making Hillary Clinton cry.
And I think she likes it too.
Oh the games people play.
The machine picks up, and she hangs up again. Maybe she's thinking of Bill right now, somewhere in the back of her mind, thinking of a long time ago, when she was in love; when she still believed in love. I don't know what she's thinking, and I never will. I can only try to love her in the ways I think she wants to be loved, in the ways I think she needs to be loved.
And I do. Every day, I do.
(A version of this story first appeared in the journal Cargo, 1999, and was part of the series, Starfucker.)
Burning Bridges
Despite its common idiomatic usage, "burning your bridges" is not something you do in order to cut off your own exit and therefore force yourself forward. (If that is your goal, try "burning your boats.") When you burn your bridges, you do it so that the enemy can't follow.
I wonder about this often-overlooked distinction, while I continue to devastate my social life.
Want-Induced Psychosis (pt. 3)
"What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream." - Calderon de la Barca
Last night, miles from home, trying to fall asleep in an overheated unfamiliar bedroom, tossing and turning, listening to the rain hit the window, thinking, thinking, thinking—mulling mostly my own anxious sadness, and the phrase (the fact) that keeps coming back to me: "No matter what is next, the Golden Age is over."
That would be the "Golden Age" that I've had with C., the woman I love.1
I've written lately about "want-induced psychosis"—how, if you want to love someone badly enough, then a little contrary reality won't be enough to stop you: it's easy enough to construct a cozy fantasy world in your mind, and then move in.
Last night, though, trying to break out of my own mental loop of anxiety2, I play the reverse game: I construct, in my mind, a new fantasy, in which C. doesn't exist, never existed, was always a figment of my imagination. I imagine that I've spent the last few years of my life in a state of psychosis, happily building memories with someone who, it turns out, was a vivid hallucination. I imagine that I am only now coming out of this hallucination, and wrestling with the idea that many of my happiest memories never really happened.
In effect, I'm trying to negate one fantasy (my Happily Ever After life with C.) by employing another, new fantasy: the love that I thought I felt was an illusion.3
It is shocking—cold and empty—to sit in bed, in the middle of the night, and realize how much this strips out of my life. It feels as though a whole dimension has been flattened out of my world, or like color has faded into grayscale. At the same time, my life is suddenly, starkly simplified—the sudden absence of so much imagined future joy leaves me, for a rare moment, in the elusive "present": there is nothing more to me in this moment than me, in this moment. The thought is somehow quieting though not comforting.4
Now, many hours later: my self-induced psychosis has faded, and been replaced by the original (habitual) psychoses of missing her, imagining the life I might have had, imagining other possible future golden ages. But these familiar imaginings are finally tempered a bit by my experience sitting in bed in the middle of the night (a dreamer examining his pillow), feeling cold, empty, alone, and present. Quieted, if not comforted.5
The Golden Age is over. I wonder what's next?
1. Who will, in all likelihood, read this—read this, and be, if not upset, then certainly affected by it—thus altering the course of our future together: Schrödinger's Lover?
2. I'm losing her, so I want her more, so I'm more afraid of losing her. Etc.
3. Maybe, to most people, this seems backwards: why not simply live in reality? But I'm a dreamer, and I know this about myself, and I'm trying to live in reality—but first I have to make a course correction, and I'm hoping to use the fact that I am a dreamer to my advantage, for a change, instead of the liability it tends to be.
4. Sobs are tension leaving the body. Etc.
5. "Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there." (Otomo No Yakamochi)
5,999,999 to Go
One reason to go on dates: it narrows the field.
There are six million people in New York City, and now, based on the past two hours, I feel comfortable ruling one out.
Conversation with Blog
"How long have you known me, blog?," I ask my blog.
"A couple years, on and off."
"Have I ever been happy?"
"Sure. Every now and then. Here and there."
"Name one time."
"Really? Then? I was all alone in a mouse-infested apartment, hundreds of miles from anyone I loved. There's no record of my being happy then—just this stupid story about something called a Pest-a-Cator."
"Trust me. You were happy then. You bought a bike. You thought you had a new girlfriend. You just didn't write about it."
"I don't believe you."
"OK, how about December 8, 2004?"
"You're joking. The love of my life was touring another country with someone else. I was desperately cavorting with strangers. I had pneumonia!"
"You found it exciting and romantic."
"Oh."
"But you didn't write about it.
"Oh."
You never write about it, when you're happy."
"Oh."
"That's why, later, you never remember being happy."
(Pause.)
"You think you're pretty smart, don't you, blog?"
"Above average. But I try not to let it go to my head."
"I'm thinking of shutting you down forever. How smart would you be then, huh? Huh? What's the matter? No snappy answer? Yeah. That's what I thought..."