Instead of Doing Work, I am Watching the Rain

Do you ever see the better part of yourself in the passing of a storm? Well, for me there are times when I allow myself to look past my failings and love the world without question. I love the rumpled clouds, the heavy sheets of rain, the trees bent under the strain of a strong Midwestern wind. I love the dark water puddling in the gutters outside my kitchen, the way the grass is bowed low by thick drops, and a blue sky that is graying toward the set of evening. Beyond the lifted sash of window, I see all that I cannot give to myself and others, spilt onto the world in such exuberance and excess that I feel guilty for my selfish reservations and cynicism.

These are the moments when I realize that generosity and grace, forgiveness and acceptance, play out daily in the spectacle between sky and street, heedless of audience or author, and that all I need do is take up what is cast off so willingly and unrequested. If I could raise a toast then I would raise it to the sky: For what was drained is full, for what was wanting is now found. But . . . what stays when all is movement?

A Contribution to the Site from a Friend

DefineDecayDivideDevourDefendDelineateDismissDispense

DishonestDetermineDisparageDominateDiscountDetailDetach

DiminishDecorateDifferenceDialectDullDetritionDetectDouble

DestroyDeriveDotDepreciateDoubtDocumentDenoteDecode

DressingDeludeDemitDangerDraconianDrugDisciplineDraft

DeliberateDogmaDeflectDisableDegradeDredgeDeduce

DynamiteDeductDefectDomainDeceitDecideDisenfranchise

DisparateDomesticateDoomDrainDriftDubiousDualDone

Living in America Part 1

Living in America
Hit me!
-James Brown

I live in a town of 12,000 in the heartland of America. After having spent most of my life on the East Coast, upon moving to the Midwest, I discovered one counterintuitive fact that makes sense when one considers the red America/blue America divide. Both my realtor and my car dealer tried to rip me off in stupid ways, something an Easterner would not do (though they might rip you off in more sophisticated ways). Thus at Neologian’s request and Thesaurus’ challenge, I begin a three part series about living in America that starts with my town, mids with my neighborhood, and ends with my neighbor.

My town has six superfund clean up sites (and other sites are waiting to be found). That works out to one superfund site for every 2,000 citizens. Feel free to compare this statistic to your town. In fact, my town may feature the tallest point in the county—a toxic dump that has been capped, re-capped, re-re-capped & etc. to the point that it is now quite tall. Recently the town board considered running the boy scout’s box-car derby down the “hill” until one parent (and only one…) protested that the highest point in the county is no hill. I should mention here that most of the town board members run their campaigns with the slogan “I’m more conservative than the other guy.” No, not kidding.

As the former home of a military base, the town is now about 1/3 the size of its cold war high. Even twelve years after the base-closing, more buildings are torn down than are built. Besides the EPA superfund money for cleaning up, the chief employers are autoparts factories. But this town is on such a losing streak (never mind the high school’s pathetic football and basketball teams), that the factories aligned themselves with 1) Mitsubishi (in trouble), 2) Ford (in danger of bankruptcy) and 3) GM (in Hell).

The police try to enforce cruelty-to-animals ordinances without much effect given the passion here for dog-fighting, cock-fighting, puppy-beating (not kidding), and kitty-kicking. Perhaps it is because the town itself is a model of animal-cruelty, and not in the good way. The town houses its lost pets in a shed next to, and again I am not kidding, its sewage treatment plant. As a human who nearly chokes on the reek as I drive by it, I can’t imagine how painful it must be for the olfactory-sensitive animals who are confined there until their owners retrieve them or until they are executed . . . for no less a crime than vagrancy.

The police here are to be credited with enforcing drunk driving laws – travelers beware, if you drink and drive around this town, you will be caught, our police are the best in the state at busting drunks. Incredibly, this town has one of the highest bicycle commuting rates in the country. Why? Because all the drunks who get busted for drinking and driving loose their licenses and thus have to bike to work. This means that every rush hour here is a parade of clowns with beer guts hanging over bicycle handles, peddling their way to work.

Forgive me, but I look forward to the week after each new disaster when I go to the supermarket. In four years here, you would be amazed at how many times I’ve heard that the end time is coming because of:

9/11
Corruption in state government
Earthquakes in China/Iran/Pakistan
Bus accidents
Plane crashes
The Indian Ocean Tsunami
The flood in New Orleans

The amazing thing is that these blasphemies are uttered by the elderly who have witnessed thousands of tragedies/natural disasters/acts of God over the courses of their lives. But they are like the child who tells you about her kindergarten teacher as if you personally know Mrs. Crabapple. Everything that happens is about them (thus Thesaurus’ complaint about American solipsism). It is for this reason that these townsfolk are sure that Osama bin Laden has targeted their hometown for his next terrorist attack. “But of course Osama has heard of _______. He must hate our precious Walmart in particular.” Alas, these are my people. God bless em’ ‘cause life sure hasn’t.

Next: My Neighborhood

P.S.

Neologian = genius
Definer = methodical
Thesaurus = sophist-icate

The gauntlet is picked up!

My Sonic Time Machine

“Just another bunch of torn-down college graduates

trying to find a place to set down for a while

too pumped up to fake it

too belligerent to take it

sitting down, early town.”

--Lloyd Cole

Making requests of Definer seems unfair if I am not going to share in the burden of creation. Thus, I give you Thesaurus at 19 via my sonic time machine.

Take yourself back a few years. Well, take yourself back a few more still. The period in question is the early Nineties and Thesaurus is a skinny kid desperate to be cool in the large city where s/he is studying. This sprawling suburbia (Los Angeles) was a revelation of sorts. Hair gel was a necessity for everyone, not an accessory for fraternity pledges. The modern SUV was neither ubiquitous nor desirable. Instead, people with sufficient funds drove European and Japanese sports cars, while the rest of us made due with cheaper American copies or sensible sedans.

Los Angeles was a long ribbon of asphalt, unfolding its secrets through the lenses of our sunglasses. While being cool often meant being in the right place, what I remember most is the effort to get there. We always seemed to be in motion from one spot to the next, as if the traffic of the freeway system for which the city is famous had parked itself in our own lives. Coffee shops had just come back in vogue, and ripped jeans were a new style. Melrose Avenue was a cool street with great shopping, not a television show in syndication. We were trying so hard to be cool, when not caring would have been the coolest quality of all.

More than all these things, however, was the constant feeling of failure. The confusion of diminishing hormones, beautiful co-eds, and many privileged peers made the welter of activity on and off campus disorienting. All the while the sound of what we now call alternative music was the background for my transition into more adult discomfort and angst.

I have been able to return to the Los Angeles of my adolescence via some tracks that I downloaded from Emusic (www.emusic.com). Lush, that lovely British band that sounds so sweet singing about unhappy experiences (really, what British band doesn’t) has transported me back to a period that I recall for an excess of opportunities and a singular sense of self-disappointment. Hearing certain songs pulls my memory westward, and these Lush songs are temporal anchors for my disaffection. This makes my music collection a time machine of sorts, and I am beginning to feel like an extra from High Fidelity.

Some talk of the transformative power of music; right now I am interested in the transportive power of music. I wonder if I were to act as a DJ for my memory then what order would I arrange the playlist of my life. Better yet, maybe I could experience my past in a different way than I lived it. For instance, maybe I could skip the ex’s mix-tape and just leave the soundtrack for the early weeks of relationship on repeat. Weirdly, however, I think I like the depressing tracks best.

Let’s be honest, Voice of the Beehive, Morrissey and Lloyd Cole were much better friends than the vapid pop of the Lightning Seeds. Moreover, the memories are stronger when the songs or feelings attached to them are sad. I actually liked being depressed to these songs, if that makes sense.

Well, fellow bloggers, I gave my sonic time machine a whirl, but where will your own take us? Open the road map of your youth, switch on the radio, and play it.

Public Spat

Dearest Readers:

Permit a little ranting, if you will. My fellow poster, Definer, and I seem to have a disagreement with the purpose of our blog. For myself I feel no need to play amateur etymologist and provide you with all manner of esoteric derivations. As delightful as this may be in the company of good friends and much alcohol, the exact interest for you is in question. Moreover, these activities miss I. A. Richards point about the interinanimation of words. As I don’t have Richards on my bookshelf, I am going to quote Foss, Foss, and Trapp (Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric) in regards to this particularly insightful contribution by Richards: “The meaning we find for a word comes to it only with respect to the meanings of the other words that surround it; a word is always a cooperative member of a group of words” (45).

In place of short definitions I would like to give you a bit of commentary, some poetry when I am able, and a few ideas to consider during the course of your day. This is apt to spark a response from Definer, but the gantlet is down and the gates are up. Hence, my friend, what I am asking is that you extract material from both yourself and the items that you study.

There, the dispute is now public; so if the water was tepid before it surely is hot now. Am I being unfair?

Dialogue

Term: Dialogue
Method: Etymology

The standard etymology for dialogue is "to speak." The term is traced back through the French (dialoguer) to the Latin (dialogus) to the Greek (dia+legein) thus "by the means of speaking." But so far the earliest reference to the term's etymology I have found is Webster's first dictionary, a notoriously scurrilous source. Indeed, why have such a close synonym to the Greek "dialect" (by means of speaking)? I propose an alternate based on the Greek again: dyo+logos. This translates more accurately to the common use of dialogue: two thoughts or two words or two speakings. Indeed, given Webster's religious bent, he may have wished us to avoid getting too close to an heretical interpretation of John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Given that John was heavily influenced by the Greeks, whose idea of logos is complicated and encompasses both logic and order on the philosophical end and the linking of God to humans (a dyo-logos of sorts) on the theological end. Given this new etymology, the "word" is in fact a "dialogue" with not one but two thoughts/words/logics/speakers. Thus Dialogue: Two words in conversation.

Inamorato

Definer challenged me to come up with synonyms for “Inamorato.” Well, lover boy, here is a start, for both the bitter and the blessed.

Words:

egotist, partner, foil, dandy, laggard, dream, dolt, gadabout, palimpsest, roustabout, curiosity, vexation, mystery, mistake, bliss, stupefied, absentminded, impossible, engorged, beauteous, desired/desirable, tumescent, pulchritudinous, Beau Brummell, compliment

Phrases:

Warm, clean laundry on a cold day

That first sip of sherry/cognac/whiskey/vodka/beer etc.

A heavy moon in an amber sky

A new fork and a full plate

An old manuscript, faded at the edges and never finished

The worst case of buyer’s remorse

Driving really fast without concern for speed limits, why we have them, or who enforces them

That first shower after a three-day hike

Forgetting what you are wearing, how you look, and just feeling covered by the gaze of another

An anchor, dragging stubbornly across shallow seas

The warning your mother gave you that was never heeded

Regret with a charming smile

Everything you ever desired and never knew you wanted

Melancholy on the rocks, with a chaser of insecurity

Disappointment couched as hope

The insult you knew was coming

What you thought was pride is now embarrassment

A mirror held too close

Americas

My thanks to Thesaurus whose post "Only in America" has made me realize that my problem with "America" is the very word itself. There is no such thing, it is only a calling into being of an imaginary people who then buy into the idea that they are a people. Having recently marched in an anti-immigration parade, networked with academics, and spent time at "Home" with my blue-colored neighbors, I now recognize that the United States of America is misnamed. Rather, it should be the United States of Americas. My neighbor, a furloughed worker at an autoparts factory has less in common with my academic co-workers than he has in common with the Korean autoworkers who assembled my car. Likewise, my co-workers have less in common with the "Mexican"-"Americans" who work in the kitchens of multi-box chain restaurants than they do with Ghana's professoriate. Maybe the Marxists are right (and this coming from one who would define Marxism as that which lies at the oozing-bottom of the trash heap of history), it's not the language you speak or the God you worship. It's the rung of the ladder from which you sit, stand or hang. Could it be that for all our talk of equality, America truly has second and third-class citizenships?

The Beauty of Taxes

Definer noted a few days ago that the CIA may be reading our blogs. Think about this for a moment; formerly one had to pay a vanity press to publish material not taken up by mainstream publishers, but that didn’t mean anyone would read it even if you paid to have it in circulation. Now, however, the government is paying people to read our writings. If the rumor is to be believed, the powers that be have given us readers. Rejoice--our tax dollars have given us a captive readership.

Only in America? No—only by Americans

Admittedly this is a bold claim, but I think one could make the case that the best definition of America/Americans/Americanism is This American Life (www.thisamericanlife.org). Here, in all the faded glory of radio, we hear about America and how entertainingly dysfunctional, honest, mislead, and self-obsessed we are about our confusion and inferiority. Yet all of these neuroses pale in comparison to our omnivorous culture—that problematic notion-cum-material that seduces and offends, like a philandering uncle with a thick wallet and a penchant for sharing good whiskey with anyone holding an empty glass. Maybe our culture circulates so freely because it speaks so well in ways often we cannot.

So, on a spectacular Midwestern evening, when the air hangs windless and warm beyond my living room windows, I laud Ira Glass and company for producing narratives that say so much about this solipsistic set of people we call Americans. The acts comprising this evening’s show included an American Jew exploring how the hip-and-trendy set in Krakow have made Judaism, virtually nonexistent since WWII, the latest cool, cultural commodity. Next, a lovely story read by Mira Nair (of film fame) explores the icons of love, faith, and misunderstanding for a newly married Indian-American couple. Finally, David Sedaris shares a piece about how real love is not saying what one thinks. The great thing here is that each of these stories involved expatriates of some sort, yet all were somehow immediately recognizable as quintessentially American. All of which has made me start thinking about Definer’s pressing obsession—America/Americans/Americanism.

And you, dear reader, what does America look like? How does it smell? What do we wear and what are we afraid to tell you? We can forgo the media and our president—tell me about the rest of us, walking from nondescript restaurants to large cars, eyes hidden by countless baseball caps, our waists hugged by those jeans we helped the world to realize are so comfortable. What of us? If you could shoot the movie of America who would be in it? Would there be an ending? I am looking for scripts, so pitch me a story . . .

Cross

Term: Cross
Method: Dialectical

Terms take meaning thanks in part to accident, through a gradual process of evolution by discourse. That's right, as we talk in general conversation, we define and we often do this by defining something by what it is not. This implicit kind of definition is the dialectic. But does this evolutionary process happen visually as well? A cross that frames the mother of the Lord of Peace is now decorative, but was once required for warfare. The embrasure provided archers with cover as they shot their arrows at attacking armies. The statue provided parishioners with hope and love as they enterred its church. To be embraced was and is to be protected, supported. Is the image cross? Are the historical definitions cross?

The CIA may be reading your blog

As if we didn't know it already, the CIA is investing money in reading our blogs. I can't believe that I'm paying somebody to read this. Oh, the irony.

Check out www.wonkette.com

Retort

Arguing about words, that seems to be the function of Thesaurus and Definer. This is not a bad existence, especially if one agrees with us (I assume I can speak on behalf of Definer here, a dubious assumption) that the world we think we know is a construction of culture, language, and power. As such, words, their singular and dependent meanings, structure, in the very least, the intentions of our articulations. To make the point, I ask with varying degrees of inflection:

Who cares?

Who cares!

Who . . . cares?

Thesaurus

Term: Thesaurus
Method: Phonetic

What do I mean Thesaurus? Thesaurus is a neologism (you will not find the term in Johnson's or Webster's original dictionaries) and this may explain why it has been pronounced incorrectly from the start. Dictionaries (those terribly biased sources) inform us that the term should be pronounced "Thi-saw-r-es," when in fact it should be pronounced "the saur us." In other words the word should be pronounced as if you are refering to the (dino)saurus, a character right out of The Flintstones. Thus I ask, am I in dialogue with a neologist or a dinosaur?

P.S. Definer is happy to report to idefine the publication of the following:

Henry Hitchens, Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (New York: Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005)

Fans of definition may also wish to check out:

David Mickelthwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1999)

What do you mean, Thesaurus?

My partner(s) in this somewhat literary endeavor are amazing people, and I feel blessed to be able to share the same bit of cyberspace with them. However, now that I (in the sense that this individual, like Whitman, contains multitudes) am “here” I might as well begin to move us from monologue to dialogue, at least of sorts.

The “Definer” is thinking about sunsets, which parallels my own vexing thoughts about age. You see, dear reader, I have been taking stock of my development. Thus, the question of academic satisfaction has crept up once again, and I have filtered my disillusionment through the sieve of my age. Hence, I turn to that bard of the bitter bucolic, Ryan Adams and his song “Anybody Wanna Take Me Home”:

So, I am in the twilight of my youth

Not that I'm going to remember

And have you seen the moon tonight

Is it full?

Still burning its embers.

For me, Adams deftly explores that liminal period between the blush of youth and the clarity that can accompany growing older in a manner reminiscent of the Romantics. Adams’s metaphor encapsulates the best of adulthood: the realization that the ablation of innocence has a beauty and sweetness to it, which gives rise to humor, pathos, and reflection.

This leads me to some of Sylvia Plath’s work. In particular I am drawing a connection to Plath’s ability to realize the horror and beauty of daily living, which is often marked in the physical world around us. Take these two selections from Plath’s writing about flowers as an example:

Poppies in October

“O my God, what am I

That these late mouths should cry open

In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.”

Poppies in July

“And it exhausts me to watch you

Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.

Little bloody skirts!”

This process of redefining the beautiful as painful, the painful as beautiful might explain why I have chosen the moniker of “Thesaurus.” And if one disagrees, at least this might stand as a nice counterpoint to the “Definer.”

Welcome

Sunset

Term: Sunset
Method: Metaphor

Once upon a time, the sun never set on the British Empire and yet though this geographical oddity may have been true (before the Second World War, the British Empire had possessions that covered most of the time zones in the world) the metaphor was no more true for Britain than it was for Rome or will be for the United States. The sun sets on all empires; time makes everything but time obsolete. Thus the metaphor, the sun sets, time passes, things end. To reject sunsets is to believe the earth is flat.

Leib

Term: Leib
Method: Translation/History

From a German-English Dictionary: Body, belly, abdomen, womb, alive, soul

Definition: In German the terms leib (body) and leben (life) suggest an ancient connection between the soul and the body as if these were inseperable. Once upon a time, this was so. As the German historian Barbara Duden informs us, long ago we did not have bodies, we were bodies. Thus today, I am a live.

Home

Term: Home
Method: Thesaurus

Definition: abode, home sweet home, homestead, fireside, hearthstone, chimney corner, inglenook, roof, household, menage, domicile, place where one hangs his [sic] hat, teacherage, native land

In America our native land may be proud and it may be home. But it is not in good shape.

To Define

To Define: Who defines? The dictionary defines but this is obvious. And yet . . .

When Noah Webster first published his dictionary in 1828, he defined American as "A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America, especially the inhabitants of the United States."

Thus I ask again, who defines? Well, I try sometimes. And so do you. Indeed all those who employ language sometimes define whether consciously or not. To consciously define is to exercise some power over discourse. But alas, that power is terribly limited. As Samuel Johnson defined to define in 1754: "to explain a thing by its qualities and circumstances. To circumscribe; to bound; to decide; to determine."

My definition of to define: The conscious navigation of the tides of language in order to make sense of the world; to define.