Here’s your daily dose of “oh my god we are so screwed!”
Whose tire is your favorite journalist swinging on as they grasp for access like it’s crack rock and they are junkies willing to do anything, anything for their next hit.
(Via Nat)
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Leaving Las Cruces – Part 2
I need solitude like I need air. That is to say, solitude is necessary for me to be me and to center myself.
However, just as breathing is necessary but not enough for a full and productive life, solitude is a basic need, one that I have to create regularly for myself, but in itself, it is not enough for me to live dynamically, to live well. For that to happen, I need community and a strong network of friends who care about me, who inspire me, who challenge me to achieve my goals and question my easy assumptions, and who can make me smile, laugh, and act silly. In fact, the irony of NYC was that, despite being surrounded by 8 million people and unable to find or create the solitude that I needed, I never really established a community of my own friends who could provide this other, vital element to my life. I do not mean to diminish the kindnesses and friendships that were offered and accepted while I was in NYC, nor to I mean to diminish how important and supportive and kind and helpful Joya was (and continues to be). Because I was unhappy and unable to find solitude, my ability to really connect and form deep friendships was considerably hampered. Yes, there were other, external, factors that made forming new communities difficult. At the time, I may have seen those factors as the root cause for my inability to create community. Those external realities were real, and certainly contributed to the difficulties in creating community, but they were difficulties that could have been overcome if I’d had more strength and fortitude/solitude. Truth be told, my desire to leave NYC made it very hard to want to make friends when I knew that, once again, I’d have to say goodbye to a group of people that I’d grown to care for and depend on.
For all intents and purposes, I’ve been alone since leaving Natalie’s place in Maryland on August 3rd. I have not been particularly lonely. In fact, I could probably go another month or two living with minimal contact with others and be just fine in many respects. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much time completely to myself and for that alone, this trip was completely worthwhile. With this alone time, I have been able to reflect more clearly on how I want to live and how best to focus my energies.
From a stark and mercenary point of view, I realized that starting over, trying to build a network of friends and colleagues from scratch requires a massive amount of energy, dedication and time. If, as I’ve mentioned before, I am going to make life decisions based on what’s best for me as a writer and theatre artist, then I seriously have to question the decision to move to a place where I know nobody, where I have no network or support group, where I have no friends, where there is so little theatre that the odds of finding someone to inspire me and to challenge me and to, perhaps, collaborate with me are extremely low. Put into this, admittedly non-emotional perspective, I had to ask myself: what do I need to succeed as an artist and is Las Cruces really capable of providing for those needs.
The romanticized version of moving to the desert to be a writer presented a reality that said, “yes, all you need to vast empty spaces, deep night skies, and lots of solitude.”
The actual experience and reflection of moving here has replied with, “no, because as much as you enjoy the silence, or might groove on the stars and the vistas and mountains and the landscape, these are not the things that inspire you. People inspire you, artistic accomplishment of others inspires you, questions of how and why people do what they do are the questions that concern you as an artist. Sunsets are pretty and the White Sands National Monument is beautiful, but these do not inspire you to make things, or to tell stories.”
Finding the proper balance between solitude and community will be, I suspect, a continual challenge for me. As with most challenges, it deserves to be engaged with and not run away from. In a less analytical vein, I’m simply looking forward to having a group of really cool people that I can hang out with, who will make me laugh, who will inspire me, and who will welcome me.
Leaving Las Cruces – Conclusions
Leaving Las Cruces – Part 1
There are a number of reasons why I’m leaving Las Cruces, and I’ve shared some of those reasons in a previous post before I had actually made up my mind to go. In the end, my decision was based on a number of factors that include short term financial needs, longer term financial goals, a clearer understanding of how to balance solitude with community, and the need to prioritize my energies toward writing and creative pursuits. In addition to—or perhaps in summation of—these factors, is the fuzzy, new age-y feeling that being here, now, is somehow just not quite right.
As I mentioned previously, the financial realities of Las Cruces and the surrounding areas are far bleaker than I expected. Jobs outside of retail or the government are hard to come by and wages are very low. Looking at my likely prospects and doing some basic calculations, I realized that I could most likely support myself when it came to daily living but that it would be unlikely that I could continue to pay back my current debts. Even if I could manage to both support myself and pay off last year’s taxes, my credit card bills, and my student loans, the chances of actually saving money for the future or being able to invest in property or other forms of long terms security were not just slim, but decidedly none.
The thought of 10 years from now and living as poor as I do (and have been) is profoundly disturbing to me. I want to be clear though, the whole money thing is not so much about acquiring things as it is about a feeling of security and creating a level of freedom and mobility that I don’t have. That I’ve never really had. I don’t need 10 houses, but I would like to have at least one to call home. I don’t need to fly first class, but I would like to visit friends that are scattered in various parts of the country. I don’t need the most expensive car, but it would be nice to have one (a hybrid hopefully) that is economical but with low mileage so I don’t have to worry about it when driving on long trips. Now, I certainly won’t be able to achieve this level of security overnight, but in the short term, Rhode Island offers higher wages and significantly more job opportunities that will use a wider range of my professional skills.
That’s short term. Longer term goals revolve around becoming my own boss, owning my own business so that I can achieve a level of independence, flexibility and self-determination that are difficult to find when working for someone else.
The consulting/training business that I am planning combines theatre and teaching—both of which I’m rather fond of—with a real need in the business world. While I don’t want to discuss the particulars here, I will say that the most consistent problem for businesses, whether non-profit or corporate, is that of communication breakdown. At its core, theatre is about communication and theatre training offers a unique set of skills that can be “ported” quite easily to the needs of businesses and to individuals who want to be more effective managers and leaders.
This business will depend on certain infrastructures that are simply not present in Las Cruces or its environs. In fact, given my desire to not live in a big city, but my need for a concentration of businesses, corporations, wealth, and theatre practitioners, Rhode Island is one of the best places for me to go. Providence is small, but will provide a manageable starting place, with a decent amount of corporate presence. Easy access to Boston and NYC mean that I can grow into those markets and exploit the corporate money that saturates both cities. Also, and just as importantly, I know people in Rhode Island. Even though I haven’t lived there in seven years, there are people I can go to for advice, for help, for networking opportunities, for artistic collaboration, and for friendship. Rhode Island provides rich possibilities, not only for my business, but for my personal life and my artistic life.
Leaving Las Cruces – Conclusions
Miscellaneous NON-Political Odds And Ends
I’ve been an a political kick the last couple of weeks what with all the convention folderol and elephant dung-slinging that’s been going on. But there are other parts to my life . . . like being a geek. Here’s my current desktop arrangement:
(GeekTool is showing my current iTunes song, the background is “Surreal wallpaper 2″ by ltripley, and my dock customization came from Superdock site.)
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I’m doing a lot of reading on my iPhone these days, as it has replaced my old Toshiba e755 (which gave up the ghost about a month before leaving NYC. I’ve been using two programs for this. Stanza and eReader.
(Stanza)
(eReader)
Now, I know that some people can’t imagine reading books on a screen, much less a small screen like an iPhone, but I have gotten used to it and while I will probably buy the actual physical book of Anathem, for my “light” reading, the screen has become almost transparent to me and I can easily find myself engrossed in the book itself. eReader is a commercial site, although they will allow you to upload content to your bookshelf on their site and then sync that with your iPhone, while Stanza works with a desktop program to convert a large number of file types and then do a wireless sync over a wi-fi network. Stanza is the more flexible of the two, especially if you have a library of ebooks in different formats, but if you want to do right by authors and pay for your ebooks–although with the recognition that drm is involved–eReader has a large selection and their iPhone reader is top notch.
Both programs are free.
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500 Words for 50 Days Update:
I’m 20 days into this challenge and I have missed my 500 mark twice: once I didn’t quite make 500 words and the other time I didn’t write anything. That was a day after major insomnia and I hadn’t slept until after 6 am and the whole day moved like thick molasses for me. The good news is that I’m regularly exceeding my word count.
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This is my new homepage for my browser.
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The Clogs are one of my new, most favorite bands (along with the Rachel’s).
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Oh, and I’m moving back to Rhode Island in a couple of weeks.
The Real Meaning of the Republican National Convention
Is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like a recent political spectacle:
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes Hate . . . is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting The Party’s enemies . . . and express their hatred for them and the principles of democracy.
[From Two Minutes Hate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
Biden Bites Back
Ok, so I was a bit down on Biden a couple of weeks ago – but this is so refreshing after the past week of Republicans slinging elephant shit on the American people:
The Republican Party Leadership Is . . . (add your own description in the comments)
Spiteful
Racist
Hate-mongering
Fear-mongering
Thuggish
Fascist
Lying
Duplicitous
Against Constitutional Rights
Against Human Rights
Manipulative
Self-serving
Arrogant
Pro-Torture
Pro-War
Pro-Death
Sexist
Homophobic
Please add your own choice words in the comments.
Why Don’t You?
Despite my cynicism and anger about some of Obama’s decisions – I do think he is someone to vote for and not a simple vote against the establishment.
McCain Watch – Stumpy McStumpster
I mean, really?
Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”
[From McCain Stumbles on H.I.V. Prevention - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com]
I have no words for this. The man is dumb as dirt.
Ah, the Sweet Sweet Smell of a Police State
There has been a rash of arrests and raids in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area as the Republican National Convention gets underway. Here’s one of the higher profile arrests:
ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfuly detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press. [From Democracy Now! | Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC]
For more information and videos, check out The Uptake, which has been covering a number of illegal raids and arrests, often with video phones. The quality isn’t great on most of the videos, but you can get a sense of what is going on.
Why the gestapo tactics?1
I submit that the people running the “Grand Old Party” are a group of petty, power-hungry thugs. I am not suggesting that the majority of Republicans are petty, power-hungry thugs but that the majority of American’s who vote or support the Republican party without consideration are supporting a party that no longer exists. The Republicans who stood for national security (undermined at every turn by Bush & Co.), fiscal responsibility (also undermined by Bush & Co.), and smaller government (can you say undermined by Bush & Co. boys & girls), doesn’t exist any longer. The Republican Party had turned itself into a reactionary, fascist, racist, war-mongering party that gives not one whit for the rule of law,2 for human rights,3 or for rational governance.4
They are thugs and are behaving as such. McCain runs negative and ad hominem attacks against Obama because he has nothing to offer this country but a vision of corporate greed and the stoking of various war engines. The coordinated attacks on journalists and peace activists smacks of GOP pressure on local law enforcement in order to keep people intimidated and unable to effectively communicate just how crazed and ruthless the GOP has become.
Next time a Republican claims that he or she loves this country, instead of just accepting their rhetoric, let’s look at their actions. I guarantee that the majority of Republicans in the Federal Government will have a track record that shows that they love their own power and their own pocketbooks a whole hell of a lot more than they love the idea of democracy, the Constitution, or America.
1. The Gestapo had the authority to investigate treason, espionage and sabotage cases, and cases of criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany. A law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight. The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. (Wikipedia, “Gestapo”)
3. “. . . the interrogation methods Bush has authorized and continues to defend are flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions and international conventions against torture and cruel and degrading treatment.” (World Socialist Website)