The Politics of Anger [Archive]

(originally posted August 28, 2012)


08/27/2012:  The story begins in LAX as I write this, thinking about politics.  I have a confession: I'm somewhat addicted to politics.  The reptiles of my mind hunger for sarcastic and confrontational engagement with others whose ideology might differ from my own.  Now, just because I suffer this addiction does not mean I have to feed it, but being given a choice to do the right thing doesn't mean I always take it.

Recently, I announced online my desire to divorce myself from politics.  The original motivation from this stemmed from the realization that, in our current political climate, one cannot embrace a candidate without buying into the politics of scarcity.  All politicians seem to operate on the idea of a zero sum world, which they sell to any given audience.  "There's only so much to go around," they say.  "The other guy is targeting you, my friend.  He wants to take your piece of the pie.  Well, I'm going to take his piece and give it back to you."

I choose not to believe in scarcity.  I believe in a universe abundance.  I have seen it in my own history, which is dotted with examples of God's last-minute delivery system whenever I reached a point near abject need.  The decision to terminate my engagement with politics comes because the politics of scarcity no longer align with the personal journey I am taking.

Still, politics is all over the place right now.  One cannot escape it.  It has devolved in terms of common sense to the same kind of energy one experiences at a sports bar when fans of two heated rivals gather to watch their teams beat up on each other.

I recall an afternoon on November 11, 2000, when I and several K-State fans gathered in a sports bar in Los Angeles to watch out beloved Cats play the Nebraska Cornhuskers, hated bullies of the Big XII Conference at the time.  The bar owners, sensing that Huskers fans had more cachet, devised its own caste system: The space allotted for K-State fans to watch the game was a bunch of long cafeteria-style tables with three small-screen TVs.  The Nebraska fans, on the other hand, were directed to a more comfortable lounge with a giant flat-screen TV.  When the Huskers pulled ahead early in the game, a few Nebraska fans wandered into our space to taunt and mock us.  Being bullheaded and angry at the time, I gave as good as I took, and my wife and a few of the fans feared we might come to blows.

Thankfully, it never came to that.  The largest and most vocal Husker fan wound up sitting at my table, and we spent the night chatting like a couple of war buddies.  Nevertheless, in hindsight now over a decade later, I realize how foolish was the behavior leading up to this short friendship.  Each of us, this Husker fan and me, had invested our identity and, indeed, our personal happiness in the performance of a bunch of college kids in a contest we could not control.  On that day, the team with the better players, the better coaches, the better athletic department and recruitment practices, the better weight-training facilities, the better game plan, the better whatever leading up to the game's final score, would determine which of the two of us was the "better" man.

And that is what has become of politics.  Only in rare cases do people look at issues and examine what is best for their community.  Most of the time, they mainline shallow rhetoric and empty images in an attempt to hitch their wagon to the predicted winner.  If your candidate wins and not mine, that means you are "better" than me, even though our lives are essentially unchanged the morning after election day.

This is an unhealthy place for me.  When the great philosophers encourage us to lay down our weapons, I believe that includes those of sarcasm, judgment, bitterness, and fine-tuned rage.  All of these play a part in today's political discourse, and while sitting here on the sidelines as I write this, it's easy for me to ask:  "What kind of fool would want a part of that?"

But when the day progresses, when I hear CNN in the background while waiting for my connecting flight in Denver, when I pull up my Twitter account and see that latest political jabs, the answer to that question is: "This kind of fool."  Like the alcohol that defined my past, politics is an addictive drug.  But there is something better, and only by enduring my political annulment one day at a time will I be able to find it.

Jazz moods [Archive]

(originally published August 7, 2012, at 9:27 a.m. CDT)

I am sitting in the hospital room today as Dad continues to show signs of improvement. He recognized me today, nodded when I asked if he knew me, and he squeezed my hand. He tried to smile when I joked about Mom.

Today, later, I have a phone meeting with someone from marketing for the publisher that is publishing my book. I have to juggle my thoughts between the novel, my father's condition, taking care of my mother, and trying to put in some work for my "Checkers" job to make a little money.

[Note: A "Checkers" job is just your day job, the one you do because you have to pay the bills. I call it a "Checkers" job because the hamburger chain Checkers in Florida used to use the slogan "Ya gotta eat!" So a "Checkers" job is the job you do because "Ya gotta eat!" Just thought I'd clarify that.]

As for the book, I was asked last night by my niece about the writing process. I told her that it has become like jazz. I have been watching Ken Burns' documentary about jazz, and the prevailing theme of this style of music I love is that in many ways the tunes are made up as one goes along. One of the reasons I love Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue is because he gathered these great musicians, offered them a handful of riffs, and then they just started ... doing it.

I don't think the jazz approach works for every artist. I think one needs to be trained in form and structure, and needs to be able to create well within those constraints, before one can start implementing his jazz moods. It's like a ballplayer learning to swing the bat. First, you must know technique, stance, mechanics, and you must master them. But once you master them, you reach a point where the swing comes to you in almost a Zen fashion. You can't overthink it, can't focus on the mechanics. You must let it be.

And I feel that is where my writing is going, that I am turning characters loose in a house of fiction and then seeing what happens. I will always have form and structure, as dictated by my late sensai Keith Denniston, to guide me. I entitle this post "Jazz moods" in honor of Keith, who wrote a collection of poems called "Jazz moods" and turned them into a dramatic, interpretive presentation.

I hated doing "Jazz moods" back then, hated playing the libidinous "Sonny Beaumont" in that piece ... but I'll be damned if I didn't learn a lot about my craft.

As Dad Lies Dreaming ... [Archive]

(originally published August 6, 2012, at 8:17 a.m., CDT)


I have been a week now back in Kansas, watching my father fight for his life. The details as to why he is in this condition are lengthy, and I have explained them so many times that I cannot explain them anymore. Suffice to say, my father is a very sick man, recovering from septic shock that was a result of postoperative complications, and for the past seven days he has been under sedation, pumped with heart meds and antibiotics, as a team of specialists have fought to pull him back from death's door.

A cliche in films when the hospitalized man survives is "it was touch-and-go there for awhile." With Dad, it is still touch-and-go, but fortunately, it has been more touch than go. Granted, the touches have been quite small, almost microscopic, but people abide and they endure, or at least they do the best that they can.

Monday morning now. One week ago right now, I believe I was somewhere in eastern Arizona, driving ...

[Pause] 

In the other room of this house--the very house I grew up in--my Mom called the hospital to check on Dad's status. I heard her say two things: "Good" and "Praise God!"