eating 40 year old dreams

as the move approaches -- 3 weeks to go until we are out of my parent's house -- strange situations arise. my parents have stored emergency food supplies ever since i was little, some of it unchanged: large cans of dried peaches or potato flakes or margarine. they have no intention of lugging this 40 plus year old food to Utah, so we have begun eating it. yesterday i opened a large can of 'baco dices' -- bacon bits made of soy protein. there was a soft 'whish' of decompression as the can opener bit into the metal, and crisp, reddish, gravelly bits appeared. delicious! what an amazing sensation: eating something produced 40 or more years ago. even stranger was eating apple bits, soaked in water. to think that decades ago, this very fragment was part of a real apple hanging on a tree somewhere! the cheery advertising language on the cans reveals the old optimism about science and guaranteed progress of decades ago. 'life insurance in a can,' 'fresh taste,' etc. there was a kind of amazed bedazzlement, as if imagining that the country's rising wealth were solely due to an automatic bounty of science that would inevitably spread throughout the whole world: a utopian vision that know-how could surpass any natural limit. so the right technology could allow potatoes and margarine to taste the same today and 50 years from now: no old fashioned 'time' could get around american expertise, no worries about 'freshness' need trouble the house wife. food could be made impervious to time. timeless. in a way i guess such cans were one small example of the way science, manifested in consumer products, became metaphors for modern civilization as a utopia without limits of time and space. we still regard science with amazement. but with the decline of the american empire, and the degradation of the earth, we are well aware that science is not a panacea. in fact, science can be a destroyer, if harnessed to political and economic forces bent on short-term gain only. my wife will not eat the mashed potatoes with bacon bits. being chinese, she does not regard these products with amazement, but rather as bizarre and unnatural. for her, freshness is the chief guarantee of both flavor and healthfulness in food. for her food is a metaphor for a whole other set of ideas and emotions. she does not relate to that youthful exuberance of the 50s and 60s. she simply asks, 'why?' and she is right. what is the point of using science to divorce people from fresh, natural food and divorcing food itself from ordinary human contexts like cooking? where is the deeper value in it? and what sort of society is envisioned behind this odd product? while i agree with her, i can access that utopian wonderment of the previous generation. i can admit the project of freeze-drying food is odd -- but i can also enjoy crunching into those unnaturally red bacon bits.

sneering at 'hippies'

a couple of students in my undergrad anthropology classes have made sneering references to 'hippies' or 'dirty hippies.' i wonder what is behind this contempt. first, do the people referred to in this way also refer to themselves as 'hippies'? or is the term merely meant to smear those so designated? i wonder at the roots of this contempt. why is a group so intentionally and deliberately harmless nonetheless so hated by some? is this harmlessness and sense of openness threatening to those who adhere to another definition of what 'american' identity entails? is lacking a defensive, security-oriented attitude taken to be a betrayal of american values? a couple of nights ago, a young man walked down wall street in madison, carrying a couple of sticks of lit incense and loudly reciting something -- song lyrics, maybe -- to the silent house fronts. he perfumed the air as he walked. seeing me and my son, he quieted, greeted us, and began shouting again once a safe distance away. declaim on, gentle sons of the night!

congratulations, connecticut

connecticut has just abolished the death penalty. this is excellent news. governments should not be in the business of killing people outside of wartime. the death penalty just doesn't work. those states with the death penalty do not have lower crime rates. the death penalty does not deter. all it really comes down to is the blood lust for vengeance. which might be acceptable, if honestly stated (which it usually is not). except for the tiny detail that the creaky legal system is unable to prevent innocent people from being convicted and, probably (in a few known cases) executed. congratulations, constitution state.

to a student supporter of empire

how are you? there was something i meant to mention to you today, but forgot. remember how, a few weeks ago, you commented about the seemingly frozen nature of the country's political system? ie, the government seems unable to get anything meaningful done, sort of like China's one-party system? then i was recalling what you said at the beginning of the semester, about how you thought having an empire was a good thing. do you think it possible that some of the stagnation and incompetence in DC is due to the weight of the empire? my view -- my personal view only, which i tell you because you might be interested -- is that the empire (ie, the massive complex of military, intelligence, and industrial components, with their politician backers) is harming the republic fiscally and politically. fiscally, because it is draining funds for purposes very tangential to the needs of ordinary americans -- that clinic in iraq might be of use to iraqis, but is it helping us? politically, because this entire complex is unelected, and essentially influences politicians to support it at all costs. after all, there is a massive amount of money in the empire and its bureaucracies -- and how many politicians are beholden to it? money-wise, just look at the 'Joint Strike Fighter' -- already 10 years behind schedule (!!!) and predicted to cost 1.5 trillion dollars over the life of the jets, far more expensive than the planes we already have but only marginally (if that) better than our current planes. politics-wise, look at all the low-hanging policy fruit Obama could have done something about, were he really as serious about dealing with real issues as he is with managing the workings of our bloated empire. foreclosures -- nothing, or almost nothing done. tens of millions affected. and the money needed to deal with that issue? peanuts, compared to the money sucked up by the military-industrial complex. the empire is not the only problem, not by a long shot. but look at history: what happens to all empires, and the governments that struggle to shoulder them? eventually, massive cost overruns, and huge mission overreach, because the government is unable to limit what it (the military apparatus and its allies) is doing. spain fought dutch independence for, what, 80 years? was that war really necessary to the interests of the spanish people? no more so than our many wars (no longer declared or managed by congress) are necessary to us. institutional paralysis. aren't we doing what they did? in a recession, yet the military budgets grow every year. hundreds of bases in most countries on earth! all necessary? i doubt it. is it because we are more threatened than at any point in our history? of course not. al-qaeda, that diminishing gang of thugs, more dangerous than nazi germany? no way. the empire is just taking what it wants, and the politicians can do nothing about it -- most of them are in on it! (even liberals! look at joe courtney, in the 2nd district). for sure, welfare entitlements (medicare, etc) are also huge fiscal factors. but at least that money is going to ordinary americans and is cycling through the economy, not fattening defense industry bottom lines or the campaign coffers of the politicians who support them. and medicare doesn't corrupt the democratic process the way the imperial apparatus does. money aside, morally, what do empires do to republics? they ruin them. look at rome. it went from being a republic with some democratic traditions to a plutocracy run by noble families. which is where we are now, or pretty close to it. just my opinion, of course. some food for thought. (right at the moment when you are ready to stop thinking for a while, probably. sorry about that). congratulations on graduating, and good luck to you,

the fantasy of control

the visual focus of our market-guided society leads to an obsessive focus on control of one's surface image. in other words, control and manipulation of one's body, especially how it looks, is the aim to which successful people aspire. this aspiration reached, we congratulate ourselves on having achieved a state of alienation from ourselves: we see ourselves from the outside, as an object. control is reached as a symptom not of inner strength, but of inner terror and insecurity. a recent Lexus commercial (for a 2013 model) reminded me of this negative facet of our culture. it used a camera technology which aims the camera at the front corner of the car -- one of the headlights -- and captures the car's progression across the city. what is amazing about the images is how still the car is, even while the city around it, the lights and buildings, dance in frenetic motion. the contrast is mad, captivating. i think this visual trick is a good metaphor for the contemporary ideal American self: an eye in the storm of history. of course this controlled stillness is an utter -- and destructive -- fantasy. what we need to liberation from the cage of the self. it has become merely a platform from which to sell ourselves and our 'brand.' to hell with that!

old, old friend

through a peculiar series of coincidences, yesterday i came face to face with a friend from more than 30 years ago -- from 1st and 2nd and 3rd grades! we continued on through high school together, but not really together. not like we had been before the age of 10. we still saw each other in the halls of high school, but as strangers -- strangers with a secret.

the secret was, that we had once been very close. and it was hard to understand how that friend had morphed into this stranger. mike became very big, and heavily muscled, and stern. he wrestled, and walked very straight.

i didn't recognize mike at the youth theatre rehearsal (to which another long-lost classmate had invited me). if it hadn't been for Lara and Mike's daughter -- my fellow cast member -- pointing at him, i wouldn't have known it was him. in high school he was still rather narrow-faced, serious.

as we talked -- with an excitement strange in light of our subsequent decade of indifference (and inner wondering and confusion) -- his smile came back to me. and he said wise words. such as, that people don't change at all in their unique traits. he was referring to me, but i recognized that it was true of him as well: that soft, merry smile -- that smile lost to me in middle and high school, when we obediently went where the higher-ups told us to go academically -- struck a memory chord.

it was moving to hear him talk of his daughters, one of whom, fellow actor, curled long-limbed up on his lap at breaktime in pink tights and a purple plastic flower in her hair. he asserted that the idea that a second child will just divide the first child's love in half was a myth. 'you grow more love,' he said. he described the pleasure of sitting on the sofa, a daughter on each side of him watching a disney movie, smiling as he talked. he said he would like more children; maybe they will adopt. 'my arms are long,' he said, and the vivid phrase powerfully and simply called up the image he had just given me, of him sitting on the sofa, and reworked it. this is the poetry of ordinary life!

once we had talked of our post-third-grade lives, and struggled to come up with the names of those long-gone classmates, and revelled in a few crisp memories of fighting the Red Ant enemies on the school playground, or fighting the British in my back yard, uphill with muskets, we talked of history. and it came back to me that that was one thing we had shared way back then. i had voraciously read all the history books in the school library; he had too. and our play was steeped in the stories we read. even as proud Black Ants, as we got a bit older the Black Ant mythology took on American symbols. the fort we fought to defend in third grade we called The Alamo! one of the pictures i dug out of a box in the basement -- pictures he waxed nostalgic for -- depicted 'Ironclads of the Black Ant Wars,' no doubt drawn after reading about the American Civil War's iron ships.

he talked of the intensely spiritual experience -- pilgrimage, really -- to the beaches at Normandy for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. he marvelled at how he was able to stand in particular spots where he knew, from a photo in a book, or from the words of an old man who had been there and was returning -- something significant had happened 60 years before.

i realized Mike was politically conservative. that is just a simple mistake some people make, a superficial error in judgment stemming from lack of experience, from my view. but i realized, decades after we wrote each other off (do all kids feel that same confusion, to realize people once friends have changed to something else?), that he really was a man of integrity, feeling, and conviction. and i hope he also saw me again with the wisdom of an eight-year-old's eyes.

between new haven and shandong

i am waiting, still in limbo. my parents are closing a deal to sell their house by mid-june. i applied for a job in Shandong, China, paying the university there a visit a month ago. the new anthropology department seems interested in hiring me, but bureaucratic issues seem to be holding up a contract offer. so my mind flits through the night sky to Shandong, already imagining living and working there. but the possibility remains that the snarls will not be untangled -- in which case we will move 18 miles west, to New Haven.

i like new haven. but a move there means an end to my academic career, which can only be revived by more and better research than the anemic batch of hash i produced for my dissertation. this is one factor (there are many others, as well) which most impels me to go to shandong. new haven would be clean air, interesting cultural activities, new friends and neighbors, a predictable life. but it would be a dead-end: a prospect of decades of 30K a year in income, teaching 3 or 4 classes a semester.

i also miss living abroad. new haven would be placid. i like the intensity of being abroad -- even if that intensity comes in the form of misunderstandings, and annoyances, and friction, and bad air. i like a challenge. and china's culture is one such challenge. i like being an outsider trying to peer in, and talking to people, and attempting to bridge the gaps between us. that daily tension makes me thrive; even in small interactions, that gap looms. like a high-wire walker, the potential danger makes me stand straighter, all senses on high alert, balanced, taut as the wire i stand on -- alive!

you might think: sounds exhausting. yes, it can be. but inevitably, you find perches of comfort, places and people with whom you feel at ease. and then, the sense of relief is even greater than finding a place of comfort in your own country. in your own land, you expect to be at ease. but to find a place of ease in a foreign land -- yes, that feels amazingly good, an achievement, a miracle! like finding a feather bed in a wintry forest, a sofa in the sky, a cocoon in the ocean. and you feel really like a person of the earth, not a person of any particular country. there is a stretch, and then a reclining, that is a beautiful combination.

it reminds me how good i felt sometimes riding the greyhound bus, back when i rode it across the country. a day or two of misery and discomfort past, gradually the bus would subside into a sleepy peace, and how good that felt! we are angels all of a sudden gliding across the land, our bus purring softly and sun angling in from the west and a quiet conversation or two just barely reaching the ears. . .

there is something in me that loves repose in foreign places. my heart is a nomad. if there was a way financially to just keep moving -- not always to new places, but looping between old routes and some new places -- i would do it. looping around the world. maybe by bike?

don't get me started.

but for now there is Jinan, Shandong, repository of all my dreams.