Look Into the Eyes of the Dragon and Despair
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
- Aldous Huxley, "Texts and Pretexts"
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art is this: art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved.
- Piet Hein
You can say that again, Chewie! This is one Life Day we won't soon forget. Wait, I lost control of the remote cannons. I'm gonna have to run back and operate the aft gun manually.
- An understandably mortified Harrison Ford in "The Star Wars Holiday Special"
[Alright. That last quote does make for a rather jarring contrast with the preceding three. But I like to keep you all on your toes. Who else would lump together Goethe and Han Solo?]
Felicitations! It has been a while, hasn't it? Grab a sit and talk for a spell. I've been quite busy and this is just to inform you all of the many exciting and wondrous developments 2004 delivered to the Hacienda de Flanagan! Please enjoy the enclosed precious photos of Baby's First Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and Boxing Day!
Well. Not really.
I dunno, after my last entry following the election I admit I fell into something of an existential funk. Bush's defeat had seemed an utter certainty to me, something beyond question. I conceded that it would be close...I wasn't totally delusional...but nonetheless, I earnestly and genuinely believed that I was going to see things turn around, I spent the weeks before the election feeling the hairs on my arms stand up, feeling my skin marble over in anticipatory gooseflesh, thinking I could taste that tart ozone flavor that stains the air just before the storm breaks. I thought we could all hear the approaching thunder. I really thought that the lightning of history was about to strike, and that I would witness, if not the beginning of the end, at least the end of the beginning, to quote Winston.
I just couldn't fucking believe it when it didn't happen, and the country rolled on, oblivious, slack-jawed and stupid and trying to explain to its own satisfaction just how in the hell it woke up in bed with the town spittoon when all it did was go out drinking the night before and act really irresponsibly and not pay any attention to what it was doing. I mean, who saw that one coming? She looked like an angel the night before...it's all a bit hazy, to be honest...
So anyway. Not to go off on Rant Number 3457 about how Bush is Evil and Blah Blah Blah, because those are boring and too easy to write. The point from which I'm trying to cop a feel is that the past two months, for many reasons but perhaps chiefly owing to the deadening effect of the election, have been spent by me in something of a malaise. I suppose the impending holiday festivities did not contribute positively to this. I am not a fan of Christmas. Loot aside, it's always struck me as an incredibly fraudulent and false time. You have people who act prenaturally cheerfully and nicely to all and sundry, which means that such kindness is nondiscriminatory and meaningless and a waste of my fucking time, really. Just be honest instead. You have people who get so goddamned consumed with stress over executing the rituals of holiday cheer, buying gifts, getting the tree, coordinating incoming family members, etc., that they always seem to snap and just lose it on the next random person they meet, and that person is always me. These people should be strapped down and forced to watch their children be fed to rabid dogs for their insolence. Lighten the fuck up. It's a stupid holiday, it's not open heart surgery. No one's going to die if the angel on top of the tree is crooked or the cranberry sauce is canned and not homemade. Then you have the oppressors, the ones who try to inflict the holiday on you against your will, who waggle their eyebrows in disdain when you politely decline the opportunity to participate in the office Secret Santa collaboration which they approach with all the gravity and solemnity of the 9/11 Commission, who bitch and moan about how Christians are being persecuted all over again because they can't put a nativity scene on municipal property because of that pesky First Amendment, who get offended when you mention casually that there are no records of Jesus ever having existed and that for centuries Christians believed he'd been born in March anyway. These people will get theirs someday. When the revolution comes they'll be among the first lined up against the wall, as far as I'm concerned. Fuck Christmas.
I did get a nice new coat, though. Thanks Mom.
But, moving on. Now that Christmas is behind me and I've got the calendrical winds to my back, and 2005 is approaching us like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Bangkok pursuing that comely [and sexually ambiguous 13-year-old] prostitute at the end of the bar - stumblingly, unthinkingly, perhaps unwisely, but nonetheless inexorably - I feel once again the flickering surge of positivity, optimism, all that righteous shit coursing through my veins once more. This usually happens about this time of year. Oddly enough, the catalyst for this feeling was my car suddenly dying on the way home from work Christmas evening. Yep. Had to wait in the freezing cold for about two hours for the tow truck to show up. And yet...when it happened, when I felt it clunk to a sudden halt, and the wind lashed against my face as I peered down at the engine trying to vaguely discern the trouble, by spider-sense I suppose since I know fuck-all about cars, and my fingertips started to numb from the cold and the engine just would not turn over, sorry, not happening...I dunno. I felt an oddly compelling placidity seep into me, like warm water into a dry sponge. I mean, my car broke down. Big fucking deal. Ordinarily this would have pissed me off a great deal, and I was pissed at first, but...it just went away. I mean, it's just a problem, you know? Problems get fixed.
There's a great line from Watchmen, the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel masterpiece which is simply the finest comic book ever written, better than most textual novels, and you all really ought to seek it out if you haven't read it yet. But in this world, superheroes are outlawed, and sort on the spur of the moment, but at the same time as the culmination of a long process of emotional fermentation, two of the heroes, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, don their costumes again and fly out into the night and wind up rescuing an apartment building full of tenants from a fire. And they end up soon afterwards making love in the sky over New York City, ensconced within tendrils of dry ice fog and surrounded by jets of flame. And as they lay together afterwards, one of them, Nite Owl, a rich, polite, amateurish dilettante of a man, who never really recovered from being forced underground, admits just how much he missed this, just how drunk on power and excitement and life he feels right now. "I feel so confident it's like I'm on fire. And all the mask killers, all the wars in the world, they're just cases - just problems to solve."
On a smaller scale, the day after my car died, I learned a friend of mine might be pregnant. She's 18 years old and scared to death of how she's going to tell her parents if it turns out to be the case. On a much larger scale, around the same time my engine gave up the ghost going south on Route 9, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rumbled up across the ocean floor off the coast of Sumatra, unleashing tsunamis that scoured the Indian Ocean from Somalia to Indonesia. Tsunamis aren't a common occurrence in the Indian like they are along the Pacific Rim, which has a sophisticated early warning system to detect and cope with them. The Indian Ocean nations had nothing in place. So far over 23,000 have been reported dead and several millions are now homeless.
Maybe I'm just one of those perverse types who's only really happy, or least, comfortable, when coping with setbacks, rolling with the punches, adjusting and compromising and dealing with things. Maybe that iron forged in the crucible of adversity gleams all the brighter and cuts that much sharper, and maybe I am a terribly melodramatic writer. Who knows. But I feel strangely optimistic again. It's a great feeling. Like I can cope with anything. Like I can accomplish anything.
It probably won't last. But enjoy it with me while it does.
- Aldous Huxley, "Texts and Pretexts"
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art is this: art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved.
- Piet Hein
You can say that again, Chewie! This is one Life Day we won't soon forget. Wait, I lost control of the remote cannons. I'm gonna have to run back and operate the aft gun manually.
- An understandably mortified Harrison Ford in "The Star Wars Holiday Special"
[Alright. That last quote does make for a rather jarring contrast with the preceding three. But I like to keep you all on your toes. Who else would lump together Goethe and Han Solo?]
Felicitations! It has been a while, hasn't it? Grab a sit and talk for a spell. I've been quite busy and this is just to inform you all of the many exciting and wondrous developments 2004 delivered to the Hacienda de Flanagan! Please enjoy the enclosed precious photos of Baby's First Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and Boxing Day!
Well. Not really.
I dunno, after my last entry following the election I admit I fell into something of an existential funk. Bush's defeat had seemed an utter certainty to me, something beyond question. I conceded that it would be close...I wasn't totally delusional...but nonetheless, I earnestly and genuinely believed that I was going to see things turn around, I spent the weeks before the election feeling the hairs on my arms stand up, feeling my skin marble over in anticipatory gooseflesh, thinking I could taste that tart ozone flavor that stains the air just before the storm breaks. I thought we could all hear the approaching thunder. I really thought that the lightning of history was about to strike, and that I would witness, if not the beginning of the end, at least the end of the beginning, to quote Winston.
I just couldn't fucking believe it when it didn't happen, and the country rolled on, oblivious, slack-jawed and stupid and trying to explain to its own satisfaction just how in the hell it woke up in bed with the town spittoon when all it did was go out drinking the night before and act really irresponsibly and not pay any attention to what it was doing. I mean, who saw that one coming? She looked like an angel the night before...it's all a bit hazy, to be honest...
So anyway. Not to go off on Rant Number 3457 about how Bush is Evil and Blah Blah Blah, because those are boring and too easy to write. The point from which I'm trying to cop a feel is that the past two months, for many reasons but perhaps chiefly owing to the deadening effect of the election, have been spent by me in something of a malaise. I suppose the impending holiday festivities did not contribute positively to this. I am not a fan of Christmas. Loot aside, it's always struck me as an incredibly fraudulent and false time. You have people who act prenaturally cheerfully and nicely to all and sundry, which means that such kindness is nondiscriminatory and meaningless and a waste of my fucking time, really. Just be honest instead. You have people who get so goddamned consumed with stress over executing the rituals of holiday cheer, buying gifts, getting the tree, coordinating incoming family members, etc., that they always seem to snap and just lose it on the next random person they meet, and that person is always me. These people should be strapped down and forced to watch their children be fed to rabid dogs for their insolence. Lighten the fuck up. It's a stupid holiday, it's not open heart surgery. No one's going to die if the angel on top of the tree is crooked or the cranberry sauce is canned and not homemade. Then you have the oppressors, the ones who try to inflict the holiday on you against your will, who waggle their eyebrows in disdain when you politely decline the opportunity to participate in the office Secret Santa collaboration which they approach with all the gravity and solemnity of the 9/11 Commission, who bitch and moan about how Christians are being persecuted all over again because they can't put a nativity scene on municipal property because of that pesky First Amendment, who get offended when you mention casually that there are no records of Jesus ever having existed and that for centuries Christians believed he'd been born in March anyway. These people will get theirs someday. When the revolution comes they'll be among the first lined up against the wall, as far as I'm concerned. Fuck Christmas.
I did get a nice new coat, though. Thanks Mom.
But, moving on. Now that Christmas is behind me and I've got the calendrical winds to my back, and 2005 is approaching us like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Bangkok pursuing that comely [and sexually ambiguous 13-year-old] prostitute at the end of the bar - stumblingly, unthinkingly, perhaps unwisely, but nonetheless inexorably - I feel once again the flickering surge of positivity, optimism, all that righteous shit coursing through my veins once more. This usually happens about this time of year. Oddly enough, the catalyst for this feeling was my car suddenly dying on the way home from work Christmas evening. Yep. Had to wait in the freezing cold for about two hours for the tow truck to show up. And yet...when it happened, when I felt it clunk to a sudden halt, and the wind lashed against my face as I peered down at the engine trying to vaguely discern the trouble, by spider-sense I suppose since I know fuck-all about cars, and my fingertips started to numb from the cold and the engine just would not turn over, sorry, not happening...I dunno. I felt an oddly compelling placidity seep into me, like warm water into a dry sponge. I mean, my car broke down. Big fucking deal. Ordinarily this would have pissed me off a great deal, and I was pissed at first, but...it just went away. I mean, it's just a problem, you know? Problems get fixed.
There's a great line from Watchmen, the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel masterpiece which is simply the finest comic book ever written, better than most textual novels, and you all really ought to seek it out if you haven't read it yet. But in this world, superheroes are outlawed, and sort on the spur of the moment, but at the same time as the culmination of a long process of emotional fermentation, two of the heroes, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, don their costumes again and fly out into the night and wind up rescuing an apartment building full of tenants from a fire. And they end up soon afterwards making love in the sky over New York City, ensconced within tendrils of dry ice fog and surrounded by jets of flame. And as they lay together afterwards, one of them, Nite Owl, a rich, polite, amateurish dilettante of a man, who never really recovered from being forced underground, admits just how much he missed this, just how drunk on power and excitement and life he feels right now. "I feel so confident it's like I'm on fire. And all the mask killers, all the wars in the world, they're just cases - just problems to solve."
On a smaller scale, the day after my car died, I learned a friend of mine might be pregnant. She's 18 years old and scared to death of how she's going to tell her parents if it turns out to be the case. On a much larger scale, around the same time my engine gave up the ghost going south on Route 9, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rumbled up across the ocean floor off the coast of Sumatra, unleashing tsunamis that scoured the Indian Ocean from Somalia to Indonesia. Tsunamis aren't a common occurrence in the Indian like they are along the Pacific Rim, which has a sophisticated early warning system to detect and cope with them. The Indian Ocean nations had nothing in place. So far over 23,000 have been reported dead and several millions are now homeless.
Maybe I'm just one of those perverse types who's only really happy, or least, comfortable, when coping with setbacks, rolling with the punches, adjusting and compromising and dealing with things. Maybe that iron forged in the crucible of adversity gleams all the brighter and cuts that much sharper, and maybe I am a terribly melodramatic writer. Who knows. But I feel strangely optimistic again. It's a great feeling. Like I can cope with anything. Like I can accomplish anything.
It probably won't last. But enjoy it with me while it does.
posted by Patrick at 7:10 PM
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