ofREH

So,
One indicator that I’m getting older is that I can choke up listening to Christmas music.
Granted, not just ANY Christmas music, but the Nats and Bings of my youth can easily produce a lump.
Attributable somewhat to my love of the Season, the indefinable spirit that fills many of us, the near atmospheric anticipation of children, but also to memories of my Grandmothers overheated living room, filled with Family, of the smell of kitchen labours, of napping beneath her coffee table, never having felt safer and…her perpetual, never ceasing, stack of LP’s, monitored and prompted by the ever vigilant, black hook shaped arm of her Hi-Fi.
It reminds me of long, back seat, in the middle, feet on the hump, (Mark would claim car sickness and so always get the window. He could just have as easily said “cuz I’m older. Shut up”) drives from the high desert to her house in Downey and then Fullerton. Or the Uncles that would gather us up and take us out evenings to see the spectacular neighborhoods of lighted displays and my Fathers predictable frustration in untangling our own lights, year after year.
It can transport me back to midnight Mass pilgrimages to Rome or to the smell of a fireplace, lit with burning coal, in England.
My Father and Mother were unequaled in their design of a small boys Christmas delight. For a Man that might otherwise, kindly, be considered miserly,  Dad pulled all stops for Christmas and the joy and season it promised.
There was the fake tree (allergies, I’m told), blinking lights and heirloom decorations, illuminated characters forgotten and packed away most of the year, again and again newly regaled with oooh’s and ahhh’s once brought to life. The cherished Manger beneath and the ritualistic placing of the guiding star. Even a cardboard fireplace assemblage to properly hang our stocking (made by Mom, of course, and with our names glittered in definition). Once, a coat rack stood in as substitute, with twisting strands of pine like decoration, wrapped its length, on a Christmas we spent in a Hotel in Naples.
Like every year, Santa found his way in there too.
Christmas mornings were after restless nights. They were, for my Parents, always coffee first…THEN the heaps of brightly coloured, finely wrapped packages, waiting their own imminent demise at the hands of grinning, giddy children.
Three of us, then four. The fourth, a gift herself, of sorts.
I cannot ever remember being disappointed. There was all the plastic army men a boy could want, toy guns, A bicycle I never got to ride, and even a genuine Samsonite briefcase I begged.
There was the long cherished, best friend of my childhood, my own version of Hobbes (of Calvin)…My stuffed Santa.(there is still an accounting to be made there, Mother…WHO finally made him “go away”?)
There were easy bake ovens and doll houses for my older Sister and G.I Joes and water pump filled rocket stations for my older Brother.
Cole and Crosby can bring all that back to me but so can the voices of silly little characters from forgotten Christmas Season specials.
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, for one. Those of Kris Kringle, Burgermeister Meisterburger or the Winter Warlock can have me back, in pajamas, rapt in front of a tv, mouth hanging open and someone, always, “suggesting” I close it.
Very recently, I came across a audio version of that Special and when I began playing it, the affect it had on me was startling. As I listened, within moments, I recalled the anxiety I felt as a child, for Kris and his flight across the  mountains of the Whispering Winds, the sympathy for the children of Sombertown at not being allowed toys, my dislike of the Burgermeister and his underling, my thrill at the Winter Warlock being redeemed. As I listened, I found myself recounting and even vocalizing the next lines in the drama.

~~~~~I’ve imbedded audio to enhance this tale. Please click on the “play” links~~~~~

For those of you with small children, or having had them, this may prompt a shrug and a…”So?”.
I’ve wondered since, if you could remember the first time you sat down with your little ones, for the first airing as a Family, if it had a similar affect and if you’ve since become numbed to it from exposure. I hope not. It’s a wonderful experience.
I’ve also wondered, because of the ever ready, on demand, media environment, that children today will appreciate the novelty of what was, for us anyway, annual rituals.
Every year, we highly anticipated, not just Seasonal specials, but annual screenings of movies as well. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (ooooh the child snatcher with the net!!), Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music.
I’d ask, are there a new season of movies and specials that elicit that same reaction from our children? Is Bill Murrys “Scrooged” or his awesome “Goundhog Day”, the delightful “home Alone” or Jim Carreys “Grinch”, even if just fancier tellings (as ours were) of older stories…are they, for them, my “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”? I hope so. I hope they can look forward to the retelling and rewatching as much as I did and I hope that when they get older, the memory of them will incite a flood of emotion as my own have.
Yes, I’m getting older, but I prefer to think I’m just Well Seasoned.

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Where's Waldo?

So,

I was well rehearsed in the chants, I shook my fists and banged my plastic drum, I yelled until my throat was raw.

I slept on the sidewalk with hundreds of other comrades, ate donated food from the community (the yellow mush from the Hare Krishna Temple was…uh…filling?) and felt empowered!

We occupied the library at UC Santa Cruz (such a beautiful Campus. Thank you Gov. Reagan), and wreaked havoc on the steps of Sproul Plaza at UC Berkley. Ending up at UCLA, where we rushed the stairs of Royce Hall and tangled with Police. At one point, an officer tried to grab my “plastic drum banging stick” from me and I put him on his backside. The crowd grabbed me and pulled me to the back, keeping me from being arrested. They were exciting, amazing times and it was all on the five o’clock news.

Mandela was still imprisoned, Bishop Desmond Tutu was our de facto leader.

I may have even cared a little about the horrific injustice in South Africa under apartheid…but really…I was there to get laid (sorry Mom).

THAT is why I can’t take the Occupy crowd too seriously.

We had our committed, our devotees as well. Heck, the strawberry blonde I followed around the State was certainly one and would suffer no frauds to bed her. I had to convince. I assumed the role of outrage and I should’ve been given an Oscar for my portrayal.

‘Cept, there were many more auditioning for the role. Just as convincing and JUST as motivated.

We had a blast.

Of course, our lack of conviction, in no way, diminished the truth of what initiated the protests. In the end, they even had the desired affect. The UC Regents voted to divest all funds from the Govt. of South Africa.

It may be that the Occupy Movement can have similar results. If only by the intense coverage, those who might not otherwise be aware of disparity between the super wealthy and the working class, might at least take notice. They might affect some manner of change. They will have to, because if left to the devices of those I am watching on the news, those that are there for the ride, that deface and destroy public and private property, that are sexually assaulting Women, robbing other protesters and dipping their filthy hands in the Movements kitty…

I imagine they are well rehearsed in the chants as well.

I don’t care to ring like the proverbial 60’s burnout but there is a very different feel to this crowd. Different but the same.

I may have wanted Mandela out of prison just enough to get in that strawberry blonde’s drawers but I would never have considered forcing my way in them, if Nelson had to stay locked up.

Ultimately, I learned a lot about what I had fraudulently embraced as cause. In that lesson, I was exposed to, and came to care for, the movement that I participated in. I remember being genuinely excited when apartheid was dismantled and the white ruling class released Nelson Mandela and stepped aside, allowing progress, and with it, hope for a more equitable future for the greater portion of a people.

I recall being a lil surprised and glad for my reaction.

I’ll offer as much hope for the Occupiers but I wouldn’t bet on that horse if it looks like me.

Rougher than I like but it made for decent toilet paper.

So,
I wish I’d asked my Grandmother, before she passed…well…alot of things, actually, but in particular, if she felt that, during the 40’s and 50’s, we, as a Nation, were worse off than when she was a child.
I’m sure she might have told me that life had become more complicated, harried and that things were just simpler for her as a small girl.
Of course, much of that impression might be attributed to her having become an adult. One with the pressures and responsibilities that generally come with adulthood. Back then.
I don’t think, were she pressed (at your peril), she would have said that the Country was a less attractive idea, a perceptibly failing experiment. I don’t think she would have thought that, during the 40’s and 50’s, we were less morally grounded or even civil, for that matter, then when she was reared.
Now…ask yourself the same question.
I ask, because recently I was in line at an airport behind a Father and his two Children and they were both shockingly beautiful kids. Most noticeably, was that they both, boy and girl, had the longest eyelashes I think I’ve ever seen. So long, that I recall thinking they must brush the lenses of any eyewear.
My first instinct was to comment to the Father, “Such beauties, these two!”. Already smiling in greeting and raising my hand, minutely, to point to them as I did so…then, letting it drop, my smile faded and I looking away, as the second instinct took hold.
The one that told me Dad would think me a predator, were I to remark, in any way, on his Children.
It at first disturbed me, then saddened me, then, made me angry. Because I would have felt the same, were they my kids and a strange Man had even noticed them. much less thought to make comment upon it.
I can’t help but wonder at what else has changed in these past several decades. What we as a society have lost, that we once took for granted.
The answer I keep giving is…no, we are not as well off as we were 60 years ago. We are not even as well off as recently as when I was a child, though I think the corruption of spirit had already a solid foundation by then.
If so, if that be a general consensus, shouldn’t the next questions be to why?
What has changed? What are the common denominators of our decline?
The obvious, at least for me, is apathy,  a sense of entitlement, coddling, drugs, Family, Education, Faith, and decadence, both moral and spiritual.
One can argue or highlight the many significance advances we have made in American society. The obvious ones, rooted in race and gender. Perhaps not as obvious, are those in technology and science. From reaching the Moon and beyond, to understanding and mapping the human genome. So many fantastic, inconceivable achievements…yet…what will they, or have they, contributed to our the hope of our future, that of our our youth.
Is your Child better off today, than you, at that age? I kinda doubt it.
Are they safer, smarter, more driven, more compassionate, considerate, hopeful, or…dare I say it, healthier?
I kinda doubt it. (well…except yours, of course)
Globally, Seven billion, this year. Less than a century ago we were half that number. Is THAT the promise of the future?…boundless humanity? This, the boon of our advance…or the price?
There are no truer words whispered to us than those of history.
If looking back, at every redrawn boundary, every calculated resignation to the impulse of society, there could be a bygone appreciation.
We could and have done worse than to savour it.
It may well be all we are left with.

You put that nasty butter salt on the popcorn??...shhh...it's starting

So,
Do you remember that time you thought I might care to hear about the dream you had the night before?
Yea. I’m having none of it.
Obviously dreams are an extention of our consciousness. Just as obviously, they only make sense to those that have them.
What makes perfect sense to you, is much like a rabbit hole to whoever you are trying to detail it to. Trust me.
“So then..then I was like walking around and Billy pops out of a meatloaf and wants to use my metal leg as a gearshift for her sewing machine…”
Who the fuck is Billy?
And so on…
Now though. I dream.
I didn’t used to. Or at least, remember any. Occasionally, I might wake suddenly from one horrible enough to pull me from a deep slumber and even those, I’d not recall in the morning.
That was before I caught allergies.
I shit you not, in the last several years, either because of the mild allergy medicine I take or because of the pressure on some portion of some lobe, from my sinuses, I dream like crazy. Vivid, close to the surface dreams. Tangible, almost. To the point where I can actually recall thinking to myself…in my dream.
Just last night, Petey, having just left Office as New Jersey Governor and was celebrating now being the “ex Governor” but still keeping the title…I recall thinking to myself, in the dream, “man, that fucker can do anything!!” but then my phone rang and Joelle insisted on describing her husbands (routine) colonoscopy to me. Seriously??
I’d almost rather have someone else tell me their dreams than have to recall my own now.
I hate it. No fucking dream journal for me.
I wanna go back to sleeping and remembering nothing.
What little attention I’ve given to analyses clearly shows a pattern. That I only dream of those I need recall, not those I have any day to day with.
In other words, two of my Ex’s haunt me like ghosts, except not as ethereal, but in my face, “I thought I was rid of you when I set you ass on the curb” payback.
Fuck me running.
Karma? Purgatory, more like.
There is some consolation though. Occasionally, my beloved Nana stops by. Sometimes even around dinnertime and I get to relive her unbelievable chicken and rice. Even that though, I’d forgo, if it meant I needn’t keep driving that damn yellow school bus (empty) over the barrier on the bridge….again and again. The sneezing and congestion is bad enough… must I saddle up for the only six hours I used to count on without you?

No…you still can’t tell me yours. I have enough on my hands.

Awww...so cute!! Can we keep him??

So,
If you might get their attention, long enough to get him to turn the wood chipper off and put the shotgun down or get her to lower the gallon of petrol and book of matches…ask them if they know that what they are about to do may end them up on a gurney, at some distant date, with needles in their arms and three colour coded plungers on the wall, primed to end their lives.
I have a feeling, in the heat of passion, as it were, they would reply…yes please.
I happen to think there are situations that might, if not excuse murder, explain it. I do not think that the threat of capital punishment would stay their course. If I try to consider their position, it seems to me that whatever manner of lunacy or desperation has them feeling so without options, so filled with rage or…passion…preservation is likely the last thing on their minds and possibly, even, contrary.
Determining premeditation is a factor for a host of reasons. Primarily, for determining consequences. While capital punishment may not appropriate for some crimes, it most certainly is for the larger percentage of heinous ones.
Premeditated or not, I don’t think the threat carries ANY deterrent in it’s wake.
More importantly…I don’t give a fuck.
The deterrent debate is absurd. Both, for those who argue against capital punishment and those in favour of it.
Of those that would commit unspeakable, violent, premeditated, life altering or life ending crimes, the argument should be more about the preservation of society, than that of the butcher. Whether or not the possible outcome may or may not have been considered, is inconsequential.
Put em down.
If they take the innocence of a child, with proven inability to be rehabilitated, the inevitability that they will foul again…put em down.
If they could be so callous as to consider (or even worse, NOT consider) that bottle of wine, that $80, that Snickers or rite of passage, above that of another’s life…put em down. If they kill or are in any way responsible for the death of a police officer or fireman, that have been sworn to protect me from THEM…put em down

I don’t care where they came from, how long they have been addicted to drugs. I don’t want to hear how their Fathers beat them or how their Mothers put cigarettes out on them. I’m not interested in their Faith or lack of it, where they came from and where they might have ended up.
All that…is personal and THIS ain’t. It’s business. The business of preservation. My life, yours and ours.
That ball of fur, was once a puppy, some child’s best friend, perhaps. Sweet, loving, loyal and cuddly…till it began frothing at the mouth.
Your dog is rabid.
Put em down.

The Masons have a handshake and innocuous greeting, Program enlistee’s have the word “Anonymous” to be anything but. Undiscriminating Men have three quick foot taps from the adjoining stall to be co-joined, Deadheads, despisers of uniformity and The Man, have Tie-Dye and Birkenstock. Liberals have…the Bumper Sticker.

Not exclusively, of course. One might spy, if paying close attention, a sticker adorned to some large, gas guzzling SUV, suggesting one Right leaning candidate or another, even an occasional spirited rebuff, of a kind, directed at a prevailing Liberal policy.
Generally speaking, that would be the full intent. Not so for the Liberal.
For the Liberal, the Bumper Sticker is a  a membership card. A cry for other like minded Prius drivers to acknowledge them as fellow magnanimous, free thinking,

Peace Sister.

peace loving, erudite, progressive, intellectually endowed rescuers of Humanity. A phenomenon dubbed by a Friend of mine as the “wink wink” factor. Not nearly as concerned for Bake Sales or Co-existing as they are for you to permit or nod entry to that coveted and regaled spot, the doors and walls of the Bastille, so that they might fling them open!, knock them down!, allowing the prisoners of ignorance, so long chained and sheltered, to be free and warmed, nourished in the light, the illumination of their omniscient embrace!!!
~HURL~
I’ve actually argued the opposite is true. That were Liberals truly able to convert the masses, that they would flee the ranks in droves for less fed upon pastures. Disregarding the obvious,  to why the field might be absent or vanquished of herd.
That they might be common, unrecognizable in the throng, share a widely held belief or Faith, could never be acceptable to the sticky backed vinyl crowd.
Oh no.
For them it isn’t simply enough that they suggest, or propose. For them, it’s an insistence. That you be aware of their thoughts, attitudes and profane expressions. To advise you personally would never do. They need a vehicle to spread their intent. A billboard, on wheels. Hear me and give me due!! In the spirit of Bumper cars, ramming into your conscious or conscience,. for your own good, of course.

~wink wink~ C'mon in! We serve condescension, gluten free, of course.