Month: November 2004

In the process of trying to shift my secondary blog focus from politics to something resembling economics, or at least philosophical economics, I keep running into bits and pieces of things that remind me of politics and the current argument raging through the blogger community.

Stangely enough, here’s another Tracy Chapman songs that seems particularly relevant:

CROSSROADS

All you folks think you own my life
You never made any sacrifice
Demons they are on my trail
Standing at the crossroads of the hell
I look to the left I look to the right
Hands that grab me on every side

All you folks think I got my price
At which I’ll sell all that is mine
You think money rules when all else fails
Go sell your soul keep your shell
I’m trying to protect what I keep inside
All the reasons why I live my life

Some say the devil be a mystical thing
I say the devil he a walking man
He a fool he a liar conjurer and a thief
Try to tell you what you want
Try to tell you what you need

Standing at the point
The road it cross you down
What is at your back
Which way do you turn
Who’ll come to find you first
Your devils or your gods

All you folks think you run my life
Say I should be willing to compromise
I say all you demons go back to hell
I’ll save my soul save myself

I’ll admit to being a pragmatist in politics and am willing to accept compromise as a necessity in politics. I have no illusions that a majority of people is ever going to see life, and the world, the way I do. Let’s face it, anyone who sees the world through the lens of poetry is obviously part of a very small minority. I’d have to be completely delusional to believe that I’m ever going to convince the rest of the world to see the world the way I do.

I’ve always believed everyone has a right to their own beliefs, but that’s never made me willing to give up my own beliefs. Call it an INTP failure, but I’m stuck living in this world according to my own vision, even if that makes me a minority of one.

It does, however, reassure me a little that Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird was voted one of the greatest 20th century movie heroes because it shows that an awful lot of us share his beliefs even if we don’t always live up to them.

In the end, the most important person you have to live with is the one inside your skin. If you don’t live by your deepest truths, you have not only failed your self, you have failed your community.

It should be obvious that I would not be comfortable being part of the Democratic party if they were to move too far to the right in order to win the popular vote. If that were to happen, I’d probably shift my support to a 3rd party because I’d rather lose an election than sacrifice my basic values. As Atticus says, “before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

What I would really like to see is the Democrats do a better job of selling their vision of America to voters. If a majority of Americans subscribe to Atticus’ view of the world, then the Democratic Party ought to be able to put forward a candidate that could win a majority of the vote without sacrificing their fundamental rights and counter the Republican spin that they somehow reflect America’s best traditions and values.

In the fine tradition of Harry Belafontes’ “Man Piaba,” James Taylor’s
“Sun on the Moon” tries to explain the difficulties of balancing the need for money with the need for comfort, and just how hard it is to keep those demands “all in line:”

Sun on the Moon

In line, in line, it’s all in line
My ducks are all in a row
They do not change, they do not move
They have nowhere to go

I’ve been talking to a friend of mine
He says making money’s just a waste of time
He’s a lazy gent, he don’t pay no rent
He’s all bent out of shape from living in a tent
It’s hard to hear what he has to say
‘Cause everyone around me is just the same way:

More, more, daddy gimme some, gimme some
More, more, daddy gimme some more

Some kind of funny looking money machine it is
Saddest looking people that I’ve ever seen
Living in a hole, body and soul
Strung out on the company dole

One for a nickel and two for a dime
Time may be money but your money won’t buy time

In line, in line, it’s all in a line
My ducks are all in a row
They do not shift, they do not move
They have nowhere to go

Me and my flea we were down by the water
Fell in a hole with Superman’s daughter
Living alone, chewing on a bone
Pretty as homemade sin
She had to be high by the look in her eye
Her hands were wet and her mouth was dry
The sun on the moon, the sun on the moon
The sun on the moon made a mighty nice light

Bow wow wow, honk your horn

In line, in line, it’s all in line
My ducks are all in a row
They do not change, they do not move
They have nowhere to go

Sometimes I’m hungry, I don’t know what to do
You can take a taco to Katama too

I’d like to think that “making money’s just a waste of time” but my herniated disk keeps telling me that sleeping on the ground in a tent, except for backpacking trips, isn’t really a viable option. Still, it’s hard not to agree that all most people seem to be saying today is “more, more, daddy gimme some more.”
When I look around, too often all I can see is sad-looking people “living in a hole, body and soul/ Strung out on the company dole.” their lives devoted to making money to buy mountains and mountains of things they don’t have time to enjoy.

Obviously there’s more to it than this, and too often the more you think about it the less sense it seems to make, but it still seems to me that Emerson was right in the 1850’s when he wrote, “Things are in the saddle,/ And ride mankind.” And if he was right in 1850, it’s hard to imagine what he would think of our society’s priorities. Heck, you might wonder what most of us would think of our own priorities if we ever sat down long enough to think about them.

It’s clear what’s going around blogdom right now sure ain’t love, but despite that the lines from this Tracy Chapman song keep running through my mind as I read all the vitrolic statements being made out of frustration and more than a little despair.

BRIDGES

All the bridges that you burn
Come back one day to haunt you
One day you’ll find you’re walking
Lonely
Baby I
Never meant to hurt you
Sometimes the best intentions
Still don’t make things right

But all my ghosts they find me
Like my past they think they own me
In dreams and dark corners they surround me
Till I cry I cry

Let me take this time to set the record straight
Let me take this time to take it all back
Let me take this time to tell you how I felt
Let me take this time to try and make it right

But you can
Walk away
Be all alone
Spend all your time
Thinking about the way things used to be
If love feels right
You work it out
You don’t give it up
Baby

Anybody tell you that
Anybody tell you that
Anybody tell you that

You should take some time maybe sleep on it tonight
You should take some time baby heed the words I said
You should take some time think about your life
You should take some time before you throw it all away

I ain’t got the time
To sit here and wait around
But I got the time
If you say I’m what you want

Personally, I don’t think I’m going to change my basic principles, but I’m not going to give up hope that the majority of people really share most of those principles, even if they don’t see the world the same way I do right now.

I do have a hard time, though, seeing what can possibly be gained from going around calling others stupid or, worse yet, stupid idiots. Which of course is not to say that there weren’t times in my life when I yelled such comments at people talking on the radio or on television. It’s one thing to think that, but something quite different about posting it to your web site, leaving a permanent trail of what may well be a passing emotion.

Looking back over a relatively long life I’m amazed at how few pieces of clothing I can ever remember owning, despite at one time being somewhat of a “clothes horse,” perhaps in a vain attempt to imitate my older brother, or perhaps merely to compensate for my relative lack of looks. Often when I look at old photographs I see clothes that look like they must have belonged to someone else, not me. Still, there are five pieces of clothing that still seem invaluable to me.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, only one of these items of clothing had any real economic value. All of them, though, had tremendous sentimental value. And the longer I had them the harder it was to get rid of them; they just kept getting more and more valuable with time.

The oldest of them, and the one I kept the longest, was a “ski” sweater my mother knitted. It reminded me of all the sweaters my mother knitted for my older brother and me when we were younger living in Washington and needed warm winter clothing. This may well have been the last sweater my mother ever knitted because the skin on her hands became thin and brittle. Despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, this was certainly one of the most beautiful sweaters she ever knitted. Although the sweater was much too warm for cross-country skiing, I wore it whenever I got a chance in the winter. The sweater remained in my chest-of-drawers for many years past the time I could actually wear it because I loved it so much.

I still have my army jacket, despite the fact that it’s been forever since I got out of the army. Of course, part of that may be explained by the fact that it was one of the few items large enough that I can still wear it. Unfortunately, by now it’s gotten raggedy enough that I only wear it when I’m working in the shop or in the yard. I long ago stripped the patches, though not the nametag, off the jacket out of respect for them. I didn’t have the heart to burn the jacket as I probably should have, though. That jacket saw me through a lot of interesting times, and I can’t quite imagine myself without it hanging around the house somewhere.

Despite the fact that I generally hated to wear a coat and tie, the coat that Paula, my first wife, made for me remains one of my favorite pieces of clothing. I kept it around long after the sleeves were too worn to wear it to school, or anywhere else for that matter. Although Paula was an excellent seamstress before we were married, she took a special class at the local community college in order to make the jacket. It was a demanding class, and, as I remember it, my jacket was her class project. It was a beautifully tailored coat, or at least it was to my relatively inexperienced eye. It mad me look good, but, more importantly, it made me feel great when I wore it. I was proud to announce that my wife had made it for me.

I’m not sure if I bought the lama hat that I wore hiking for years or if someone bought it for me from Early Winters. I do know, though, that I wore it from the time I seriously started hiking to the point where the rusted wire rim that held the brim out became a dangerous weapon, threatening to blind me if I did not finally get rid of it. I’m not sure whether I loved that old hat because it made me look like Walt Whitman, because it had accompanied me on so many fabulous hikes, or simply because it was imminently practical. It kept the sun out of my eyes and cooled my head when dipped in a cold mountain stream, and it kept the rain off my glasses when it was cold and raining. It was an indispensable tool on a hiking trip.

The costliest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned would have to be the Gore Tex jacket that Leslie bought for me as a wedding present instead of a ring. Despite it’s horrendous original price, it may well turn out to be a surprisingly affordable jacket when you consider how much wear I’ve gotten out of it. In the winter, I’ve worn it nearly daily, both to go out shopping because it looks sharp and cross-country skiing because it functions so well at keeping water out while still letting sweat escape. It is jackets like this that have justifiably made North Face a legend in the hiking field, and after the fact seems worth every penny it cost. It still shows little sign of wear, though I’ve taken the precaution of buying a much cheaper jacket to wear on days when it’s unlikely to rain or my life doesn’t depend on staying dry in freezing cold weather. I can’t quite imagine living without this jacket, though like all good things it, too, will probably pass.

Despite my current aversion to “wasting” money on clothes that I don’t need and don’t want, I can’t imagine how much poorer my life would have been without these clothes. In a very real sense, I didn’t own them; they owned me.