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Thus the discussion of one man's fate commenced again. At least a couple of those closest to me immediately expressed the opinion that a return to New Orleans would be a step down rather than a step up. They reminded me that, at least from the perspective of those outside, New Orleans was actively killing the person they had known and loved. Anything and anywhere would be better, from this perspective, than returning to New Orleans. Even living on the street in Phoenix, some argued, was preferable to returning to the "Hell-hole."PHOENIX, AZ, USA - As visions of sugar plums dance through your head, The World's Magazine Editor and Publisher prepares for another leg in his hejira. Another cross-continental trek.
15 December, 2004: As we approach a holiday in my country -- which is the veritable Shrine of Commodities, a season where the entire focus of advertising and retail sales is on conspicuous and unashamed consumption -- it strikes me that my own life is very much an exercise of letting things go. I have been in a near-constant process of letting things go, places, people, apartments, CDs, clothing, dishes, furniture -- you name it, for years. I am the Master of Disposal. It's only natural that the American Christmas and I are like oil and water to each other.
This Christmas, I am contemplating letting the mirage in the desert that was my promised job and new life in Phoenix go. It was based, after all, on the word of a completely unreliable and untrustworthy person. I sa w the red flags from my past association with the man but ignored them, believing in the redemptive dream of time's healing and assurances that " ... everything is in order." Such assurances from the disordered should never be taken without the compulsory grain of salt.
On the positive side, I have had the chance to visit America. I have found it as toxic as I remembered it, perhaps even more so than I might have imagined it to have become, if that is possible. The there that is there is wholly a thing of commodification and hubris, wrapped in jingoism and prejudice thinly-veiled with homily and false piety, tied with a bow of rock-n'-roll ignorance. As long as the music is pumpin', everything must be awright! Let's go shopping!
Into its third generation that's lived by malling, its fourth of television, its second of cell phones, PlayStation and the monitor-centered life, its first of iPod insulation and Hummers driving the stake into the dream of sustainability, America rolls on as the world burns.
There are already veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom moving into our homeless shelters or on queue at our outpatient mental health centers. Wounded, legless and armless, vets injured in battle in Bhagdad, Falluja, Basra and Karbala are having to beg friends and strangers to send them money so that they can pay the long distance fees to call home from Walter Reed Army Hospital.
The U.S. Congress appropriates millions of dollars to buy Mr. Bush a new yacht while grade school children go to buildings where the decaying ceilings reveal the sky above and are taught history from books that end with the Vietnam War. (Oh wait! That wasn't a declared war, that was just a police action.)
Tens of millions of American people like me live without health insurance or enough of a living wage to keep food on their tables, clothes on their backs or those of their children, any prospect of a retirement without dog food as sustenance and little or no hope.
They are not the only ones who hate us. Black Elk was right; we can now poison the very air and water, and since it is possible, we are blithely and aggressively doing so. Not only is there MBTE, which I've written about in these pages twice now for you, my love, poisoning water supplies all over this continent because of America's love of the automobile, but also, I read this week and see broadcast on Phoenix television stations, rocket fuel -- rocket fuel run-off -- poisoning our water.
You already know about the Bushistas Clean Air Act, my love. I don't have to reiterate the scandal that is for you again.
The very words "Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Men" should force a gag reflex when coming out of an American throat.
Wait. I'm sorry. U2 just put out a new album. "The Apprentice" is still on TV. Old Navy is having a Christmas sale. The elections in Iraq will take place on schedule. Everything is all right. Pump up the music!
IN THE COURTYARD BELOW MY APARTMENT there is always the sound of children playing in the afternoon. Playing, yelling, laughing, singing, chanting. The children in this little Latino enclave where I live today still play outdoors. Unlike many of their peers across this land who sit before one monitor or the other, in chat rooms, on console games, watching television or otherwise cloistered, these kids still race by on bicycles or roller skates -- well, inline skates in some cases -- run, jump, have little confabs in the rock garden below my apartment windows. They climb trees. It's an awesome, chaotic spectacle to observe at about five in the afternoon when everyone is back from school and allowed to run wild in their own world until the sun goes down and dinner is called.Some of the doors facing this courtyard -- and the adjoining courtyards around which this complex is built -- are decorated with red, gold, green wrapping paper, bright red bows, wreaths, Christmas lights. They form the protective and festive arms within which the children of this place play, call out to each other for gatherings. While the older children are off at school, the younger ones quickly shake the bonds of parental supervision to rush out of doors and collect their friends for mischief. The voices of children burst through my door from early morning until dusk. There is so much life in that!
17 December, 2004: SO IT HAPPENED THAT EVENTS PUT IT INTO MY HEAD TO RESUME THE HEGIRA this week. Here is the missive I sent my closest friends and supporters at the beginning of the week:From: Rod Amis [mailto:rod@g21.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 3:01 PM
To: XXXX@XXXx
Subject: The OptionsDear Ava,
Finally deciding that it's time to write a letter again and this one will probably contain information you'll find troublesome.
I came across this woman named -- you'll see the irony almost immediately here -- Stella who needs someone to provide part of the gas money for her to travel East along the southern route. She's offered to drop me off in New Orleans.
Yeah. New Orleans.
You see, things are obviously not working out here in Phoenix. Yes, I'll have an apartment -- but one I can't pay for, and nowhere to go after the first of the year, when the Sheriff will likely be at my door ready to throw me on the street. All the furniture (well, Doug's mentioned leaving me a bed) will be gone as will the phone/DSL and I'll still be working for insubstantial money tutoring for brainfuse.com waiting for another job to materialize. PLUS unlike the French Quarter, where I could at least walk everywhere if I didn't have a penny to my name -- Phoenix will continue to be spread out and I won't know a single soul. At least in New Orleans, I knew enough people to couch-surf, which isn't a possibility here.
True, it *is* cheaper to live here in Phoenix. Food is cheaper. Housing is cheaper. But that doesn't mean much if you can't land a job.
Ideas have a life of their own. Once Stella put the germ of that idea in my mind, the wheels started turning. With my Food Stamps, I can stock up on bucketloads of food which -- if I decide to crawl back to NOLA with my tail between my legs -- I can use to convert into cash by selling it, door-to-door if need be.
That made me realize I don't have to do that kind of move on Stella's schedule. I posted an ad on Craig's List(s) both here and in New Orleans (for people returning home after the holidays) offering to pay for gas in exchange for the ride.
This isn't saying I'm definitely doing it -- and facing the shame and jokes of NOT being able to stay away from New Orleans like so many others. (It really is a running joke there to tell people who are leaving: "You'll be back." AND it usually turns out to be true.)
Matt has already offered to chip into any gasfare, if I go through with the idea, I'd have to pay whomever if I decide to crawl back and to give me a bed or couch to sleep on until I get re-settled. As you know, he has always insisted that I belonged there -- for good and ill.
The brainfuse job *claims* that things will pick up in January and I'll have more students, thus making more money. So, I'm holding onto that for now because it's all I have PLUS it has the added benefit of being online, so I can work from anywhere. AND, as school is out for the holidays soon, there wouldn't be any classes anyway while I was in transit.
I can anticipate some of the things you'll have to say against this train of thought/potential action. Go ahead and say them anyway.
Maybe there's something I'm missing in this analysis. Let me know.
Love,
BogeyP.S.: Hmmn. I might as well bcc the other "Phoenix Investors" on my end of this e-mail to save myself retelling this development again.
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Webslinger: G21:The World's Magazine
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email: rod@g21.net"Don't wait to hear the last thing I say. That will just be the punctuation mark." -- Rod Amis, 20 04
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That led me to consider alternatives. After all, I could and can go anywhere. No place is demonstrably better than the next when you're broke.
So that is what I began to consider today, "Where is best for me?"
Within this discussion, there are also those of my friends who advise that I need to make a better effort at "letting go of the past." This argument goes that I am too concerned with people and incidents that I believe have shaped me and that they are actually unnecessary baggage. According to these arguments, this baggage is a weight I should no longer carry, that its weight pulls me down.
That is all well and good on its face, I suppose; my objection is that completely letting go of the past and focusing only on the future means also throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. Surely, those advising that I jettison my own past can't believe that it would be beneficial to simply abandon lifelong friends.
IF I have any treasure in this world, that of most value is my friends. I could not do without them and would not have continued to survive without their help. They are my gold.
Admittedly, most likely because of my obsessive fear of abandonment, rooted in my childhood experience, I do attempt to hold onto people too tightly. As I said at the opening, my life seems to be an exercise in letting go.
There are people from my past, I now realize, whose friendship was more a matter of my obsession than their reciprocal investment. In fact, maintaining their friendships had become a ritualistic habit for me rather than any actual symbiosis. I had placed these people on undeserved pedestals from which they could look down on me in judgmental pity, which I took to heart, rather than fellow-feeling. It took other people, who were actual friends, to point this fact out for me. I'm grateful.
But, as with most advice, I believe that "letting go of the past," is a simplistic solution to the larger life questions I am grappling with. Besides, asking someone who is an inveterate history buff to devalue the past -- either personal or transpersonal -- is a losing game. I shall always believe that the past is something we need to learn from and always suspect that this advice is simply a parcel of the anti-historical bent of this culture.
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"The Power of Nightmares" makes a very strong case for something which Yours Unruly has asserted for years now: that Al Queda is more mythological than real and both sides of the "War on Terrorism" are using a sham to motivate people and nations toward more bloodshed. Information Clearinghouse, an alternative information Web presence with which G21 is affiliated, now offers the documentary series in its entirety. You can either view it online or, if you're a Bittorrent user, download it and view it in high quality on your desktop. Here are the URLs you'll need for viewing, my loves.
The Power of Nightmares-part one
The Power of Nightmares-part two
The Power of Nightmares-part three
Merry Christmas.
ITEM TWO: FROM THE PRE-EMPTIVE WAR DEPARTMENT. In a recent column, our friend Arianna Huffington, shared these facts:
... Then there is the deceitful way his administration continues to underreport the number of injured and ill soldiers, leaving as many as 15,000 off the Pentagon's official casualty count because their wounds -- including spinal injuries, bone fractures, heart problems and mental disorders -- were not the result of enemy fire. Eighty percent of these soldiers were injured so severely that they never returned to their units -- but, to the Pentagon, they are not even worth counting.As for the injuries they are willing to tally, the numbers tell a chilling tale of suffering. For instance, American soldiers in Iraq are having their limbs amputated at double the rate of previous wars, while Army suicide rates are soaring, up 40 percent in the past year.
Some of the latter can, no doubt, be traced to the lack of a clear purpose guiding our troops. "That," says Iraq war vet and Operation Truth founder Paul Rieckhoff, "is the most basic tool a soldier needs on the battlefield -- a reason to be there." And it can't help morale to have the administration repeatedly invoking stop-loss orders (many just in time for the holidays) and turning decades of Pentagon policy on its ear by calling on troops to serve multiple tours of duty overseas.
The situation doesn't get much brighter once the troops finally make it home. Twenty percent of the nearly 28,000 Iraq war vets who have sought help from the Veterans Administration we re diagnosed with a mental disorder, including major depression, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, emotional numbness and violent outbursts. And, stunningly, Iraq war vets are already starting to turn up at our nation's homeless shelters, the first drops of what homeless-vet advocates fear could become a deluge. ...
ITEM THREE: I sometimes lament my British heritage because of the many ill-advised or damnable things the British government has countenanced. But now and again, I have to face that there is much positive there, too. It was Britain, after all, that abolished the slave-trade that is such a stunning legacy to my own race long before the United States got around to doing so.
So reading an article in the Guardian (UK) was a ray of light in my otherwise dismal run-up to the holidays. ["Judges' Verdict onTerror Laws Provokes Constitutional Crisis," Friday, 17 December, 2004, by Clare Dyer, Michael White and Alan Travis] (Snip)
... Lord Hoffmann, ruled that there is no "state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation"- the only basis on which Britain is entitled to exercise its opt-out from article five of the European convention, the right to liberty.(End snippet)It was the anti-terror laws introduced by Mr Blunkett which posed a threat, he declared. "The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."
God save the Queen.
ITEM FOUR: MORE FROM THE PRE-EMPTIVE WAR DEPARTMENT. This snippet is taken from Bob Herbert's New York Times column of 20 December, 2004:
... Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, "I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war."When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks' guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on. ...
This Editor has come to see that the best that we can do now, here at The World's Magazine, is continue to pile the increasing evidence of the misguided, immoral, deadly situation the United States has created one item on top another until maybe, just maybe, what is clear to any person with eyes to see also becomes clear to the people of the United States. YOU, America, are responsible for what we are reporting here. This is being done in your name with your tax dollars.
Peace on Earth. Good Will towards Humanity.
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.The past week, as you no doubt gathered from the foregoing, my little love, was one of anxious concerns for me. I circle and circle around my decision-making, consult every and all friends, like a fretting school marm. I over-analyze every decision, I know that.
If my shambles existence is any evidence, all this fretting and vetting does me not a whit's worth of good. (There's another of those terms! Whit: noun a very small part or amount. [askoxford.com, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary online])
Friends among the sustaining patrons listed on the right column of this page have been sending me infusions of money to keep me going until the Food Stamp card arrives, to help pay the cost of whatever I mean to do, even if it's make the sad attempt to try to stand here.
The Five-Day "Pay or Quit" notice was slipped under the apartment door today. I must do something by Christmas.
This experience in Phoenix has certainly proven the axiom that I am much more fortunate when moving east rather than west. There is something about the ecumenical mysticism and rugged know-nothingness that rubs me the wrong way. Manhattan is the one place I have lived, in the last five years, that even came close to feeling like "Home" and it would likely be in my best interests to cultivate the means of returning there. I'll be working on that.
Meanwhile, I continue to have plenty of spiritual work to do on myself. Whether New Orleans can produce a conducive atmosphere for that is anyone's guess but it makes sense to be dubious.
ON MY LEGEND LITERARY PRIESTHOOD: It came to me last evening, before drifting off to sleep, that a person as analytical as myself, observing my behavior from the outside, would make a causal connection between The World's Magazine and my on-going celibacy. Such a person would possibly be correct in theorizing that the publication schedule of the magazine, with its Monday launch date necessitating my working weekend deadlines, militated against a level of normal sociability. In short, while other single people, especially interesting women, were naturally out and about for the traditional weekend, I am unavailable.
Going further, it could be argued that I sublimate my need for female companionship by forming virtual relationships -- where all my needs sans the physical -- could be met online through communion with women around the world who represent facets of what most people seek in their liaisons. That argument could be buttressed by the evidence of the "loving" tone I present to the intended recipient of these "Glass House"s.
The analysis might run that using the dodge of an actual former lover as the correspondent of these memoirs was more sleight-of-hand; the fly was waggling its wings in order to be pulled into any numbers of webs. That analysis could take support from the fact that the actual lover in question corresponded far less than the "little loves" so often addressed on these pages ...
Such a person would be quite astute. That person would have taken the "Editorial Confessions" of the previous "Glass House" as precursor to their analysis and begun to paint a compelling picture of where the Knight Errant of these diaries might next alight.
Let's get the regret out of the way first. Because of a possible SNAFU and our inability to obtain the interview with MediaChannel.org's Danny Schecter to include with our review of the new documentary "Weapons of Mass Deception," that planned feature won't appear in this Holiday edition as slated. We must queue that feature until 2005.
There are a number of wonderful features in the rest of the magazine to celebrate, though. BRAD BALFOUR outdid himself for our Holiday Special by bringing both "House of Flying Daggers"'s Yimou Zhang and "The Aviator"'s Leonardo DiCaprio to these pages. We're chuffed about having them both. I'm also particularly happy to have a double feature in G21 AFRICA from AAMENA JIWAJI and NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI.
Most gratifying of all is that YOU have given us our first G21 Person of the Year, Dr. Wangari Maathai. It's about time! Thank you.
Also, this Holiday Season, I have to say a word about our Sponsors. This Editor probably would not have continued the effort of doing this every week of the year or trying to write at all, if it weren't for those people listed on the Roll of Honor that appears on the right of this page [beside the "News to Rod" section.]
Those people listed went out of their way, and reached into their hearts and pockets, to let me know that they felt that G21 and Rod Amis both were worth keeping around a bit longer. They definitely made me feel that it was important, and continued to be necessary, to be alive and I'd be remiss if I closed the year without offering them my public and heartfelt thanks.
Though I know some people find it embarrassing to be spoken of so publicly here, I also believe that people should be given props while they are still around, not at some memorial. For that reason, I have to risk embarrassing Dahrl Stultz, Dragan and Dragana Vicanovic, Cheryl Nation and Matt Stowell. Each of those people went even further than most to raise my spirits, show me love and keep me alive this year. Thank you, thank you so much! (Now stop cringing. It's the Holidays. I can be sentimental for now.)
Thanks for coming back this week.
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS Internet magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Our Resident Philosopher is now resuming his hejira. He teaches a distance-learning courses in Reading and Math to at-risk students online. Now all he needs is a job that actually pays well or an angel to hire him to do this magazine ... In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider. 
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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