On 2 November, 2004, I received this e-mail and sent out a copy to my personal friends:
I had planned to look for work that day, I did trawl Craig's List, but I was inclined to wait otherwise. I took a bus downtown to cash my paycheck. I went to pay my rent and walked home feeling good about that, though I knew my work prospects were slim and diminishing. I thought, "Phew! The rent is actually paid! Break out the purple and green crayons and color me relieved."
"All the voices of my magic said that I should hold onto hope," I responded, "but all the magic felt like I should forget putting people on the cover next Monday and just go with wolves."
On the evening of the 1 November, I had sat drinking whiskey and (uncharacteristically) sharing with Doug and his inamorata Jaimie how my mind works and why I feel so often alienated from the people around me. Toward the end of our conversation, after I rather byzantine peroration of my weldanschaaung, Jaimie commented: "My brain hurts! You make my brain hurt."
I apologized. I explained that one of my Ethiopian friends, from my days working with East African immigrants in San Francisco a decade earlier, had once told me the same thing. This is what Giday said:
"Rod, the people have accepted you as our leader, but you should never talk to them about how you think. Your mind is burning. It is like looking into a fire. They do not need to know these things."
Giday was correct, of course. I have always known this in some sense. That is why I have learned to remain hidden and quiet. I know that I am bringing fire but I attempt to couch it in the most gentle of appearances, Luv. That is what magicians do. All the analogies are valid for that: iron fist in velvet glove, wolf in sheep's clothing, dragon disguised as butterfly.
Doug asked me what was on my agenda this morning. I told him I would open my e-mail box to listen to the mourning of my friends and then I would look for work. I would thereafter begin working on this magazine, which I believe is more important now than ever. The whole world has watched, as we used to chant when I was a young radical rather than old one, and seen the true nature of the Empire which has provoked my serial lamentations and Jeremiads. Now, more than ever, I must be ready to bring fire.
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The first e-mail I received this morning was from my old roomie from Manhatten, BRAD BALFOUR. I sent this copy of our brief talk to my personal friends. sigh...
what's the next step for those that oppose the republican onslught on this
coiuntry[sic]
how can we change american minds and values
we have to find a way to reach out and comprehend where the masses in
thisnamerica can relate to what we believe in
ecology
religious tolerence
acceptance of different values
diversity
openess
to the world at large
it's the south and the frontier states that have come to matter
for one thing...
we have to work to get rid of the electoral college
working class values are not helped by republicans yet people cited moral
values as the reason to vote for bush
killing innocents in iraq
is moral
yet people worry about abortion and gay marriage more
what is considered moral values
bush has such disregard and contempt for the little man
the solidified their base...
the great virture of the dems is their range of values and backgrounds
to ever win again is not only to reach these people but open their minds
do we want a country that considers creationism equal to evolution
is that what bodes for us in the 21st century'
devolution?
is this just a country that lives in another world than mine
sigh....
And I said:
Brad,
As you know, the Old Curmudgeon has been writing for five years that this is a country than lives in another world than mine. Yesterday morning, I put these lines from Francis Bacon on the page where I was mapping out the next issue of G21:
"It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be..."
During my morning walk today, I thought of both Edward Said, who I have quoted in this space before and of Pablo Neruda. They are among my long list of heroes. I have always believed in heroes, my love, as you know. That has not and will not change.
Here, in the desert, another desert that I have chosen -- as I did when you loved me most -- I must today think of my heroes for both your sake and mine, because I continue to speak as the outsider, the dissident, the Loyal Opposition, as I always have.
When I wrote of Edward Said, I quoted this from him:
A condition of marginality, which might seem irresponsible or flippant, frees you from having always to proceed with caution, afraid to overturn the applecart, anxious about upsetting fellow members of the same corporation. No one is ever free of attachments and sentiment of course. Nor do I have in mind here the so-called free-floating intellectual, whose technical competence is on loan and for sale to anyone. I am saying, however, that to be as marginal and undomesticated as someone who is in real exile is for the real intellectual to be unusually responsive to the traveler rather than to the potentate, to the provisional and risky rather than to the habitual, to innovation and experiment rather than the authoritatively given status quo. The exilic intellectual does not respond to logic of the conventional but to the audacity of daring, and to representing change, to moving on, not standing still.
I still feel the same way today. I remain a dissident, now more than ever.
Nothing has changed. I have always been able to accomodate myself, as an exile, to living under circumstances not of my choosing. You will remember, my Darling, how when I lived in that other desert, in Egypt, we would joke about what the censors must think of our letters. Now, as then, my life was perforce an open book. I could hide nothing because there was nowhere to hide my roiling thought. I, certainly, could not bring myself to censor, before the bureaucratic censors, what I needed to say to you from my heart, then as now.
I am still in the margins, on the edge, speaking for myself, but also for those others who cannot speak or dare not.
That is what reminded me of Pablo Neruda.
Neruda, another dissident, said:
Latin America is very fond of the word "hope." We like to be called the "continent of hope." Candidates for deputy, senator, president, call themselves "candidates of hope." This hope is really something like a promise of heaven, an IOU whose payment is always being put off. It is put off until the next legislative campaign, until next year, until the next century
While I was walking, Luv, I thought of the many wise things Pablo Neruda had to say and how they apply to the lives of us all. I was trying to channel Neruda as I wrote to you and, looking at the palm trees along the road in this desert, I was thinking about the celebration of Neruda's life and writing I attended in Cairo, Egypt, those many years ago when I first began to write for you.
One of my journ
o friends in Cairo invited me to the Neruda celebration because he thought that there was something in me that would appreciate the ideas presented there. I was all of a callow twenty-two years old, a budding journalist without the hard bones I have today. (Okay, the brittle bones.)
We all knew, those of us standing there, in a country where everything we wrote and everything we thought was open to government scrutiny and censorship, that Neruda was speaking for us, with his poetry and his epigrams, in ways that we could not speak for ourselves. Every man in that room -- and we were mostly men, of course -- because there were few women journalists in Cairo in those days and fewer who would attend such a gathering -- we all knew that the chances were that we would be dissidents and exiles in our own countries for most of our lives. We, mostly young, the oldest of us in his mid-thirties, knew that we had the kinship of opposition to the world as it was presented in our countries.
I was the only American, accepted among the more seasoned men of the Cairo Press Center because I was American but also because I had been identified by my joking friend from al-Ahram, the official newspaper of this country, as the young "bastard pasha." The local joke. Even then it was obvious that I meant to bring fire. My phone rang in the middle of the night, Luv, as you know, to tell me that Nixon had resigned. I took at taxi to the Press Center at 3:00 a.m. to listen to the resignation and write my story. My friend who worked for the Kenyan paper asked me what I would say.
I said, "I will say, 'Thank God that is over. And then I will say, 'And who the Hell is Gerald Ford?'"
We both laughed.
3 November, 2004: "What does this have to do with the wolf, Rod?" you must ask.
It was my unpleasant duty, in mid-September, to rescind my endorsement of Senator Kerry. My reasons, given here, had to do with what -- as an old hand on political campaigns past -- I saw as strategic weaknesses and a demonstrated (to me) tendency to suppress criticism of those weaknesses. In retrospect, I feel I might have been particularly on hard on Senator Edwards' role (or lack thereof, in my view at the time) in the Democratic Party's offensive. The results of this election appear to have borne out my feelings on that day in September when I shared them with you here.
(LET'S PAUSE to be clear on one thing: No, I don't believe Mr. Bush gained a plurality of over three million votes. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, as you know, but I also wasn't born yesterday. That three million plus figure simply defies all reason. The "largest landslide in the history of Presidential politics," as Mr. Cheney asserted at the victory celebration; it doesn't add up. That Mr. Bush could win by more votes than Ronald Reagan, a much more popular President for those of that ilk, who are now quick to make him the object of hagiography, simply doesn't wash. I am reminded of a Chancellor in a European country who seemingly won an overwhelming electoral victory.)
Whether it was by only one million or more, the fact remains that Mr. Bush can now claim a mandate for his policies. The American liberal claim to a new silent majority has now been convincingly repudiated. Wedge issues like same-sex marriage and "pro-life" politics can and will claim an ascendancy in the national agenda. Eleven states, including Oregon, have clearly come out in favor of marriage in America being defined as only between a man and woman. With Chief Justice Rehnquist on chemotherapy, we must expect a new Supreme Court in the United States that will assert that "strict constructionism" as Mr. Bush signalled his base during the Presidential debates means, in fact, that the framers of the Constitution never envisioned the notion of the fetus carried in a woman's body as "property" she could make a determination about. (That was the true meaning of Mr. Bush equating Roe v. Wade with the "Dred Scott" decision if you missed it. This equation has been used in pro-life circles for decades, in case you missed it. It is one of their hallmark tenets on the morality of over-turning Roe.)
NEWS TO ROD
The items this week, because -- unlike the rest of the Punditocracy -- I have no intention of focusing on something that was self-evident, may surprise you.
ITEM ONE: UNDERSTANDING MEDIA - [From "Priorities of American Global TV:
Humanity, National Interest, or Commercial Profit?" by Rebecca MacKinnon, Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School]:
In November 2003, I had the rare opportunity to interview Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for CNN. The interview came at an important time as Japan wrestled with the question of whether to send non-combat Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq. It would be the first military dispatch by Japan to a war-torn country since World War II and represented a major turning point in Japan's postwar history. The potential dispatch was also considered to be a political gamble for Prime Minister Koizumi - given that public opinion polls showed a majority of Japanese were against sending troops at that time. ...
... This exclusive interview was broadcast repeatedly over a 24-hour period on CNN International, which is seen by viewers around the world but not in the United States. CNN USA, the version of CNN seen by Americans inside the U.S., did not broadcast a single "soundbite" of Koizumi's interview.
... I do not believe, however, that CNN and its approach to reporting is any more or less flawed than most other commercially-run TV news operations. That is why the emergence of alternatives is important: not only alternative TV networks with perspectives from other countries, but also alternative sources of information through the print media and through the internet. No TV news company has the right to claim that it has a monopoly on "truth." Critical-thinking viewers who want to be truly informed should never expect to be able to get all their news from one TV channel or any one single source. It should be the job of the media to inform citizens of democracies. But citizens who want to remain free - and who want their true interests to be properly represented - must also take responsibility for their own information consumption. Any person who thinks that he or she can sit on the living room couch every night and be spoon-fed the truth is highly delusional.
You know where I'm going with this. You read Ms. MacKinnon's entire article here, if you are so inclined.
ITEM TWO: I received a poem from my life-long friend, Ric Williams, the Poetry Editor at the Austin (TX) Chronicle. Longtime Loyal Readers know I can't abide poetry, for the most part, but this one seemed to fit the Zeitgeitst.
on the morning of the third
of November two thousand four
the day after the election of reverend Bush
i told a weepy co-worker the story of Thomas Morton
(poet lawyer mythologist visionary)
& the mocked Miles Standish
(priggish puritan Captain "Shrimpe")
reminding her that at the very
beginning of the adventure
there was this
split
in American
consciousness
between the licentious pagans
& the licensed to be pure:
the free versus
the fundamentalists;
how even then the libertines
were forced to flee
to tolerant French
Canada, o, Canada
sweet & easy.
a small comfort,
but a Merry Mount story
is always good
for the nerves
of a distraught liberal:
it is our heritage:
after all, we understand
what it is to get
fucked in America.
so, friends:
to the ghost
of T. Morton
a man who said
of this land,
"Glory Here!"
cheers.
© 2004 Richard Lance Williams November 5
to the maypole, o, ye sweet youth
ITEM THREE: I have no comment on this item from the International Herald Tribune. I know how much you hate, Luv, my screeds on "the dreary science." (Thanks, DC!)
ITEM FOUR: AND I GOT this article from that hotbed of Brit liberalism from the Guardian (UK) over my transom, too. I yawned.
I have given up on informing the Punditocracy and the people who believe them what is actually being missed by their "wisdom."
I keep waiting for them to call it right for a change.
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LIFE OF ROD
7 November, 2004: You've learned to know what I can expect in this Valley of the Sun situation, my love. One day Doug is staying here, one day he is moving to Colorado. One day he is happy to have a place at all, happy that I am willing to buy all the necessary accoutrements of every day living (soap -- both for bathing and washing clothes, bread, utensils with which to eat, toilet paper -- Well, you know the list,) the next he is incensed because I ask for quiet time in which to write and edit and now he and Jaimie must have a place of their own.
I am grateful that he has furniture. Though, I would have furniture and many more dishes and pots and pans of my own if I had not been led, encouraged, to believe that I could move here and expect a "soft landing." As you've read, it's been anything but.
What is my life like really? I am sleeping on the floor on cushions from the sofa. It seems, again, that the gods are not ready for me to sleep on a bed. I was using a bath towel and the one jacket I brought from New Orleans to keep me warm on these cold desert nights until last night.
It suddenly dawned that I might be freezing at night when I was heard sneezing as I worked on this magazine a couple days ago.
As you would expect, I am left to discern the seriousness of each intent and impulse and decide how best to "land" after whatever happens.
I have grown use to this High Drama uncertainty, on a hesitant level.
I guess I should expect this of poets. The rest of us are just the scenery of their lives ...
(Yes, Luv, this is me channeling Bierce again. I keep coming back to those words balanced, dependable, steady. I guess that's too boring.)
I could probably weather this better of things were more stable. My Boss called me in this week to say he couldn't afford me right now. He said that things should improve and that he would call me midweek to talk about the future. When he didn't call on Wednesday, I left word on Thursday. Haven't gotten a return call yet. Picked up an on-the-fly computer consulting job on Thursday, though, which turned out to be fortuitous. As Doug was broke, I gave him an advance payment on the telephone/DSL bill. That didn't preclude "lending" more money, of course.
ROD'S PHOTO ALBUM
I NEVER, EVER should have started featuring pictures people send me on this page. Evitably, that only encouraged others of you who enjoy filling my e-mail box to send me on pictures of your own. So now I'm stuck with featuring Loyal Reader Photos in this "Glass House" until I can finagle some way to weasel out of the obligation. Sheesh!
So what have I got? Well, from my pal DC STULTZ over in Florida these came in under the heading: "Reasons Not to Pass Out."
I have to admit that I laughed out loud seeing these, even though I had to wonder if young people might have some better way to spend their time.
Nyahh!
VARIOUS CULPRITS sent me this one, I'm sure they don't want me to mention their names in public. I also got another version using a photo of Mr. Bush in front of a black cross and saying "Welcome to Hell."
My Response: At least people can still laugh. That is a Good Thing.
REMINISCENCE TIME: I have always had this fantasy about one day building my own house. In this fantasy of mine, I build a house at the base -- and around -- a tall tree that I don't move. I build the house around the tree and let it continue to grow up through my roof. There's one more thing: the tree is on a stream. I let the stream run through my living room -- and therefore my home -- as well.
This is, of course, a neo-pagan fantasy. I accept that. I am asking for the merger of an old and a new aesthetic. When I was in my 20s, I believed the house should be a geodesic dome. That architectural choice was all-the-age for people like me back then.
Then, one day, I heard about an architectural wonder. The Farnsworth House. And another, the Phillip Johnson House in New Canaan Connecticut. These certainly hold certain charms for me but don't quite fit the model.
Forgive the digression. It was meant to explain why I found this picture of tree-house so endearing.
Thanks for coming back this week. Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own ...
THINGS I NEED THIS WEEK
1. A better paying job.
2. Respite from constant worry.
3. Developing a circle of good friends here in Phoenix.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Love,
Rod
PHOENIX, AZ, USA - 3 November, 2004: On 1 November, I realized that there was a quote from Sir Francis Bacon that defined the way I felt the Zeitgeist was resonating for your Old Magician. I looked online and found it right away. 
Our Editor does listen!