Allison

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State shooting in which Allison Krause was killed. Allison had graduated from my high school the year before I started there. I didn't know her but many people who did were still there. Shock and grief filled the halls. A huge fight broke out around the flag pole because some students had lowered the flag to half mast and others were trying to raise it again.
The word straight was used to describe people who went along with established social structures. The rest of us were hippies. I remember wandering into the battle and being hit by accident but after too much time in an MFA program I question whether my memories have been twisted by the need for drama. I do have a few very clear memories. I remember a young man, a hippie, with a wild Afro in blue jeans and a t-shirt and I remember another young man with short blond hair and a button up shirt. He was a football player who was dating a cheerleader. In any other school he would have ruled. In fact he may have been a prom king. Hippies didn't go to the prom.
In many ways that day shaped who I became. My belief in my country and its institutions was crushed. If the national guard could shoot an unarmed student at the college in which she was an honor student how could they be trusted? You didn't have to know Allison for her death to have that effect. You didn't even need to be a student at her high school. You were part of a generation. And we no longer believed.
Of course the blond kid was also part of my generation. I wonder what happened to him.
There's a Facebook group for my high school and there was some talk about Allison yesterday. Three other students were shot and killed that day. Three other high school student bodies. As a generation we are credited with lots of social awareness. But I'm not sure anymore. What did we do?
I'm reading Twilight of the Elites It's great thinking but as I was reading last night I was thinking about Allison and a fight around a flag pole. I feel like we're still having that same fight around that same flag. Things feel so broken.
I have genuine affection for Obama. I'd vote for him again if I could. Drones. Guantanamo. Education policy. Yeah. I know. But I stopped believing in institutions a long time ago. I don't think there's much good that will come from inside the Beltway. I guess I just feel better with someone who at least articulates values that I share.  
There's a very good thing happening in my life but I'm dealing with a lot of self recrimination as well. Questioning how and why I got where I am. Feeling wrong. But I remember that day. I remember that young woman who I never ever knew. I remember feeling like I was waking up. And many of the values developed during that time are the ones I still hold dear.
We weren't the first generation to want social justice.
I know we won't be the last.  

Responding

I started to write this post awhile ago.
When I was in NC Mom and I watched The Iron Lady. I felt like it painted a relatively full portrait of Thatcher. I grimaced remembering the Thatcher/Reagan years but I had enough distance to see why she thought what she was doing would be good. I basically ignored as much of the news during those years as I could because it was all so crushing. There's been a lot of discussion about her lately. I keep starting to write my on the one hand on the other hand view of her but it feels hollow.
George Orwell wrote that cliche's of the day were a product of contemporary politics. I pay a lot of attention to how I say things. Sometimes I worry that I am too much of a relativist and not clear or definitive. But I do have strong feelings. When I'm with people who I know agree with me I am probably more direct. When I am talking to someone who I know has an opposite opinion I am generally more reserved. When I'm writing a blog post that will be read by two or three friends I am a combination of both because some of my friends don't see things the way I do. I'm not beyond cliches. I aspire to be.  
I was reminded of a conversation I had in a Facebook thread. Conversations in comment boxes are always a bit frustrating. I'm not sure how it started. A friend from EA posted something. This is a person who I never really worked directly with but knew because they were friends with people on my team and had a great reputation. When I left they called to tell me about a possible job. They are a person who truly cares about others and backs that up with action. At some point in the tread that was about something I can't remember, they said something about personal responsibility and choice. It felt so hard and cold. I left the thread. I wanted to write about it then but I was in NC with nothing but my smart phone and arthritic fingers. Now I'm trying to include the memory in a post when I don't even remember details.
I do remember the essential feeling I had.
Choice is always made in context. Entire plot lines are drawn from someone making a choice without all the information they need to make it a good choice. The story is about what happens after the choice and how it all works out. Or doesn't. Life feels more complicated than most narratives. It's so rare that a choice is good or bad. We make a choice and moments later we change our mind our modify our trajectory. Even the most informed choices still leave us feeling our way along.It's too easy to end with the idea of someone making a choice.
Conservative politics often feel hard and cold to me. But I know conservatives. They aren't always hard and cold.
I'm in a pretty good mood these days generally speaking. But the news from Boston hurts the heart. The news out of the senate today hurts the head. When I blogged regularly I felt like I needed to comment on every daily event. But it feels hollow. It feels cliche.
We live in such hopped up times. Less than four hours after the bomb went off in Boston there was already music and a fancy header for every news report. With no solid information news hosts struggle to fill time. Writing that even feels hollow.
Seriously. Is registering when you buy a gun such a big deal? Do we really need all guns to be available to everyone all the time? Seriously? Just because a piece of legislation won't make everything all better should we do nothing? And conflating the event in Boston with gun legislation is just sloppy thinking. That's how I feel. That's what I think.
The Iron Lady's you made your own choices now live with the result social policy was cold and hard. And it didn't work. I mean for the love of everything can we just be a little more nuanced? A little less snarky and snippy and chest thumpy and what ever.
But.
Of course.
I like snarky and snippy some times.
I'm in a pretty good mood lately. Some really truly good things are happening. And I have the news on less often. I listen to music more often. Almost every day. I still like to be informed. I still have a response. I still have a desire to be in the mix. I am still brought to tears daily. The micro and the macro are zones I expand and contract into and out of every day. I think we all pretty much do.
So.
Anyway.
Is started to write this post awhile ago.
And I wanted to finish it.

Some Thing and Some Thing

Some thing happened.
It's not worth detailing. My reaction was disproportionate. I knew it was. I could not control it.
You know those films where a building is being purposefully collapsed? It seems like they always happen in Vegas. The whole building seems to crumble all at once. That's how I felt.
I understand my psychological architecture fairly well. I can usually tell when something has tapped some part of the substructure. There's a Rickie Lee lyric:There are wounds that stir up the force of gravity. A cold that will wipe the hope from your eyes. 
Yeah.
So I've been down. Dumbstruck. Wounded. I stopped listening to music. The one time I tried I felt like my heart was being torn from chest. I slowed participating in social media. Stopped checking in.
I want to say I'm all better but I'm not.
However.
There may be some thing happening.
Many problems may be solved.  
 I did have some fun with food.

Still Home

I've been home long enough to find it surprising how much pleasure I am still getting from just being in my apartment. I look around at the plants and books and just stuff in general and feel ... good. For something that is really not at all what I wanted it to be my music project has made a huge and positive difference in my day. I almost filled 160 GB, which could make me sad because I'd like to buy a bunch of new music but I can't afford and I feel like I have a bunch since I'm hearing stuff I haven't listened to in years. Bruce Cockburn just now. PLus I could delete some opera. Traviata tends to load all at once instead of aria at a time. You really have to be in the mood for the whole thing.
I wrote a food blog about my post soup coma. Right now I'm eating a bowl full of left over beef chow fun, cashew chicken and pan fried string beans.  A lovely mish mash.

Lived

I saw a quote on Facebook yesterday: I will not live an unlived life. It wasn't a famous person or at least not famous to me. It gave me a brain cramp. If you're living you are living a life. How do you un-live? Of course I understand the intent. I know that life can feel somnambulism and rote. It just seems like an inexact way to say what was intended. Aphorisms call for dubious metrics.

And then I realized that the book I've been talking about reading has In Praise of the Unlived Life in the title. But I think (having only read excerpts and a review) he's writing about what I mean. 

I know when I was in NC I felt zoned. I worked on puzzles and read books and made soup. I had numerous conversations about nothing interesting. There were days when I felt like running out the door. 

Now that I'm writing about it I realize that I'm not really sure why it bugged me as much as it did. It felt like a grand pronouncement with no substantive intention. It feels like we nod and smile and applaud these things and we don't really know what's being said.    

Kindness

Muni has a policy that women can ask a driver to let them off of a bus closer to their destination when it's late. They won't go off their route but if letting you off a block away from a stop gets you closer they will, or they should. I learned about it one night when a woman asked to be let off on my corner. I got off behind her and we struck up a conversation. We've been neighborhood friends ever since. We see each other from time to time and chat. We have never exchanged information but I'm always glad to see her.
I was always reticent to ask. The policy is not well articulated and some drivers think it's after dark and others think it's after 10:00 PM. Some stop and others argue about the policy. I hate asking for special treatment so if they argue it makes me miserable. It's not really special treatment if it's a policy and if they say something like they don't have time I'm OK. It's ridiculous because they have to stop on my corner anyway. We're talking about maybe two minutes to let me off.
One night it was dark and raining and I asked and the guy said it was too early. My knees weren't as bad as they are now but I did limp. I got off and walked home in the cold, dark night feeling angry and sorry for myself. It was pouring. I got soaked. The guy was so unkind. For no obvious reason I remembered all this recently and was going to write a post about it and then forgot.
I am increasingly dependent on kindness. I am becoming Blanche Dubois. But I am never comfortable asking for help.
I am lucky. I have great neighbors who get my mail and take my trash down and carry groceries up. I'd be in so much more pain if they didn't do these things. But there are times when I need to ask. It's just so hard.
After I read the book review for the Philips book I realized that I had a book he'd coauthored. I don't remember if I read something or heard him on the radio but I remember buying the book during one of Kristina's visits. Kristina's kindness is legend in my life. Specifically her contributions to my reading addiction. I think there was a scenario in which we found one copy of the book in one book store, which she bought for me and another in a different book store, which I bought for her. And then we made jokes about our kindness.
I decided I need to read the book I already have before I buy a new one. I don't know why. It's some weird notion of discipline I made up. Anyway. I think I'm getting a feel for his thinking.
I grew up with my grandparents and knew I had to help. I never resented helping. I took pride in it. Philips makes this very point about the naturalness of kindness. He writes about the pleasure of kindness being in the way it connects us with other people. But it also makes us vulnerable. I think I learned that my help toward my grandparents was a sort of rent. A need/obligation. And that shadowed my pleasure and sense of connection. I've been trying to untangle those wires for years.
When I was in North Carolina people seemed so kind. Mom and rarely approached a door without someone opening it for us. One host in a restaurant stretched herself like a ballet dancer to hold two different doors. Sales clerks and grocery checkers seemed less disgruntled than they do here.
One morning I walked out the door and saw the bus a block away at the stop. I figured I'd missed it. I started down my hill and when I looked up the bus was stopped at my corner. The driver was one I saw many mornings and she must have seen me and was waiting. I heard the sound of the door opening and ran for it so grateful and surprised.
Kindness is surprising. It's another thing Philips mentions. It shouldn't be. But it is.  
 

Some Things Happened

I'm almost done getting all my discs into the IPod. There are 4641 songs on it now, which thrills me. Just as I finished writing the post yesterday Big Big Love hit the shuffle. Fun. Mood shifter.

Then I watched the first half of a documentary about Ai Weiwei. He's so interesting. Sometimes his art reminds me of an American artist who I have mixed feelings about but Weiwei's art is so rooted in a political perspective. In the doc he visits the town in which he sustained a brain injury from being hit by a policeman. He goes to ask that an investigation be launched. While there he has a dinner, which moves outside in front of the restaurant where he is joined by a group of fans. It creates an image that is comically close to the last supper. The police ask if he can move back inside and he says he will when he finished eating. All he's doing is having dinner with friends but it's such a challenge to a political system in which gathering together is seditious. He uses Twitter like a weapon against tyranny.

Later I read a book review. After the first paragraph I was ready to buy the book .     
  ...he argues that, instead of feeling that we should have a better life, we should just live, as gratifyingly as possible, the life we have. Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for bitterness. What makes us think that we could have been a contender? Yet, in the dark of night, we do think this, and grieve that it wasn’t possible. “And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives,” Phillips writes. “Our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless trauma about, the lives we were unable to live.” 

The reviewer doesn't seem to like Phillips much and after I'd read the whole review I decided to wait. I have a book he co-wrote and I think I heard him being interviewed about it. He has many interesting things to say. Many lucid things. 

So a few random and disparate things happened. And I got a bunch of salt and pepper shakers washed. By the end of the day I felt clear. Or something. Clear is not the right word. Smoothed out. But also full of thought. But also other things. Hard to quite describe.