Notes - Then We're Going Again

[notesthenweregoingagain]

What could I possible have to say about domestic violence? It’s never been perpetrated against me and but for the grace of God go I, I’ve never been in a situation in which I’ve perpetrated it against another. And to my general knowledge, none of...

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Black Men Will Save Us From Gun Violence

African-American men will be the ones to solve the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. When Philando Castile, a concealed carry permit holder, was shot and killed, the NRA showed remarkable and rare restraint by not coming out in vigorous defense of his right to carry. They were suddenly less interested in a full-throated defense of the second amendment than after every other similar incident. When a black man in an open carry state walks down the street with an AR-15 over his shoulder, he's restrained at police gun point as a clear and apparent threat. As uncomfortable as it makes us, as disgusting as it is, the race of these men - black men - are laying bare for police, the NRA, and society how deranged our attachment to guns has become. Conscious and unconscious racial bias is, strangely, the contact lenses society has needed to see the clear and apparent threat of gun proliferation, concealed carry, assault weapons, and open carry. The comfort and privilege that whiteness bestows on guns makes us blind to their danger. Fear of black men reminds us that guns are made to kill us.

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Honesty and Authenticity are Our Goals

When we expect writers to literally "write what they know," when we assume writers will create characters that match their racial, gender, socioeconomic, etc identity, we seriously undermine not only the universal scope of the human experience, but the inexplicable way a writer's subconscious works. Joss Whedon said in an interview that for whatever reason, his avatar in his work is a teenage girl, strong, but alienated. For me, I often find myself writing interracial couples - even though I've never been in an interracial relationship. I write women that feel more like me than men, and when I write men, I find they feel most like me when they're black. Why is this? I have no idea. But it's human and our political goals, as admirable and necessary as they may be, should never assume or circumscribe on an artists' instincts and interests. Honesty and authenticity are our goals above all else.

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

In Response to Salon’s Casual Racism in “Trainwreck” Story

Here’s the article: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/20/schumers_unfortunate_trainwreck_lesson_amys_casual_racism_isnt_one_of_her_bad_habits_to_overcome/

1) The scene in which Amy says "Black people?" features a second white character (played by Bill Hader) challenging and scolding her on her casually racist remark. The movie doesn't let Amy off in that moment and provides us with contrast (and in the end, the character that corrects her played by BIll Hader has his shit together and Amy realizes she needs to change her life). 

2) In my opinion, casual racism amongst white people is widespread, whether or not it is verbalized, and it comes out especially if only white people are gathered (hence why Amy is comfortable making the comment in front of Bill Hader's character but not a few seconds later when Lebron James enters). Amy's father is depicted as being overtly racist. Amy has a moment of overt racism. Her sister does not. Amy is closer to her father, takes after her father (relationships, foul-mouth, attitude, alcohol, racism), defends her father. Her sister does not. I read Amy's racism as rooted in her father's. That's just a honest character sketch: one daughter learned right from wrong and the other didn't. No further explanation or moralizing by the film required. 

3) Maybe it's dangerous, maybe it's not, but I think the moment in the film trusts you to laugh for the right reason. You're laughing at how inappropriate she is. You laugh knowing the joke is stereotypical. You laugh as she gets cornered into proving she's not racist by showing photos of her black friends on her phone, and then when she shows the photo of a black waiter serving her and her friend and tries to pass him off as her friend, it just confirms she is racist and we are laughing at how awful she is. We are Bill Hader looking at her like she's an asshole. 

4) In the scene with Vanessa Bayer, in which she tells the black man in front of her she used to have a black boyfriend, the author leaves out the context: she's availing herself to him sexually. The man is a doctor whom Amy's father suggests is a witch doctor because he's black and has an accent when he speaks English (the moment reveals Amy’s father’s racist beliefs/behaviors). Vanessa Bayer's character is a pathetic, privileged, over-caffeinated white girl who writes demeaning articles in a pop magazine. If I remember correctly in the scene, the doctor responds "I'm sure your parents were proud," raising the subtext (of a white girl wanting to be with a black man, handling it as inelegantly as she was, probably lying about her previous black boyfriend as an attempt to giver herself credibility) to text. Again, if anything a moment of racial privilege, but I think the movie assumes (and hopes, and pushes) it's audience to be on the side of laughing at how inappropriate, ridiculous, and dumb she is (contrasted with the cool, level-headed, handsome, successful black doctor who literally doesn't even turn and look her in the face). I think art has a responsibility to be honest. Sometimes honesty translates to responsibility in a more overt way. But in the end, I think honesty is responsibility and overt moralizing doesn't change hearts or win minds and makes for boring writing.

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

It Makes Less Sense Because There's An Explanation

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 - and all other acts of terror and violence - will never be understandable, but they can make sense. To my mind at the time, the attacks were a response to a response to an action to an effect to an accidental side effect. They were a piece of a never ending cycle of violence, international politics, anger, and hate. They were directed against and purportedly in response to the actions of the United States government (invading Iraq; toppling leaders; propping up other leaders; selling weapons; oil, etc.). The line connecting A and B wasn't straight, or clear, but it was inherently conceivable (if not still completely reprehensible).

The terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo office seems to have a more immediately identifiable straight line: satirical cartoons published in the magazine offended some people so those people killed the cartoonists, journalists, and publishers responsible for them. There's a logic to that. A clear goal: punish the offenders, and presumably, dissuade future publishing of such cartoons - and thus future consumption of such cartoons. 

But now this is where it all stops making sense:

-The radical Muslim terrorists - in their distorted minds doing what their religion calls them to do by striking against the anti-Muslim offenders - didn't just kill those responsible for the cartoons, they also killed a maintenance man, an office visitor, and a Muslim cop. A cop they wounded and then executed at point blank range, on the street, which was captured on video. A cop you can presume was also offended by those cartoons - but in the least, had nothing to do with their publication.

-A lot of people before the attack had never heard of Charlie Hebdo or the people who ran it, wrote for it, or illustrated for it. Now we know these people by name and their pictures are on newspapers and TV and the internet. And now we know their publication. 

-A lot of people had never seen the offending cartoons Charlie Hebdo had published - and many of those people wouldn't have found them amusing, intelligent, or tasteful. But now, those cartoons are being posted, shown, shared, and looked at by millions of people around the world - people, like myself, who are sharing them and looking at them not necessarily because of the content, but because of what happened to the people who created them, because they created them.

-The terrorists attacked those responsible for the offensive cartoons - but now millions of us have shared and spread the cartoons. Newspapers have republished the cartoons - newspapers that never, ever would've otherwise. Thanks to them, the cartoons are now being seen more quickly, in more mediums, by more people than if Charle Hebdo continued doing what it was going for the rest of the century. So now they have to kill us all - every single one of us. 

-Publications around the world responded with cartoons to the attacks - cartoons that mocked the attackers and their religion. Cartoons that would not have been created if it were not for the attack. 

-Charlie Hebdo - the offices of which were firebombed and destroyed in 2011 after a previous mocking cartoon was published - shared an office with another liberal magazine in Paris and continued to publish. In response, the staff believe it was better to die doing what they were doing than stop out of fear or intimidation. By Wednesday of next week, Charlie Hebdo will be publishing a new issue - they're going to print 1,000,000 copies (instead of the usual 30,000 or so) - by working out of that same liberal magazine's Paris office. So, the attack on their office didn't stop the magazine. And the assassination of a lot of the staff hasn't stopped the magazine (an outcome the staff was prepared to accept to keep publishing the magazine) - it's only increased its exposure and most likely (even just temporarily) will increase it's readership. 

To recap, a group of thin-skinned terrorists believed killing people responsible for creating and publishing cartoons they found offensive would be punishment for the cartoons, would prevent them from creating or publishing cartoons in the future, and would prevent people from seeing them. That's the assumed logic.

And the actual consequences of their actions: the magazine will be putting out a new issue from a different office in less than a week, to thousands of percent more people than would normally read it or pay attention, and in the meantime the world looks at, shares, and spreads the offending cartoons while creating new ones in countless publications around the world just because they can and won't be told by anyone they can't.

So, the logic collapses. The sense becomes nonsense. There's really no understanding any of this because these guys were idiots who accomplished all they were trying to prevent.

It's goddamn condemnable and disgusting that people had to die just because they wanted to say something. What a bunch of fucking assholes.

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

How I See Myself - How I Hope To Be

"The single most important quality needed to resist evil is moral autonomy. As Immanuel Kant wrote, moral autonomy is possible only through reflection, self-determination, and the courage not to cooperate."

-Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

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"I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”

-Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

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-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

My Cinema

Coppola: The way I write, I have a great big ball of dough. And I'm writing. Once in awhile, I take some and I make a pizza or I make a cake. But it's all the pasta of my life, all the ideas I have. Something I saw or a dream or an observation. It doesn't have to be a whole developed idea, just a seed. 

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

A Return to Civil Rights Era Policing?

We look back at our history, and those of us with a conscience, see how violently and unjustly people of color were treated by the police, by the FBI, and by the federal government. I believe in government and institutions - but they have to work, they have to function properly, to be useful and helpful and uplifting. I have no doubt in my mind resisting these institutions in the past when they violently suppressed citizens because of how they looked was the right thing to do. How do we know when it's the right thing to do again? How do we figure out that the institutions have become corrupt enough that it's time to disobey, to use force to defend ourselves and fellow citizens? Because we can't be fooled into thinking because today is today and back then was back then, that things are different based solely on that fact.

I don't believe in violence as a means of change, but I think you have the right to defend yourself. Our laws are such that police officers can defend themselves with lethal force and get away with it almost every time, that people in Florida and many states can now shoot to kill unarmed people if they feel threatened and get away with it almost every time. It doesn't matter what the evidence shows. It starts to make me wonder if it's time to adjust my stances - even just temporarily - and advocate for the mass arming of people of color. I know all the ways that can go wrong, because it's already going wrong with all the guns we currently have in society. But it really opened my eyes when I read some time ago that a lot of the militancy of the open carry activists is rooted in the black power movement's fight for gun rights for people of color (and how that lead to legislation to control gun rights).

Maybe, by publicly advocating for those rights, practically arming people (background checks, handgun purchases vs. rifles, etc.), it could wake the system up. It could make the government realize change needs to happen. It kind of makes me sick to even suggest this - because the implications would most likely be a complete disaster, with gun accident deaths going up, suicides going up, people killed in small fights, more cops being killed (the good and the bad), etc. Also, suggesting this makes me feel like a right wing kook who thinks we all need to arm ourselves and hide in bunkers to defeat our commie liberty-hating government - that the only way to effect change is via the threat of violence, which isn't right either.

But I also wonder if the thought of a large amount of people of color even seriously considering arming themselves would scare the shit out of the system enough to be like, "Whoa whoa there, OK. We get it now."  This is most definitely a bad idea, but the basic question remains: How do we know when our police officers of today have become no better than the violent, oppressive police officers of the past - and thus how do we know when it's time to completely resist because they've lost their legitimacy as law enforcement authority figures?

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Stories - Quotes, Books, Stories about Stories, etc.

This will be an ongoing thread.

I often come across quotes, stories, anecdotes, studies, etc. about Storytelling - and I was always want to do something with them, to hold onto them, to be able to reference them in the future and just to know that the info is there - so instead of putting it all in a folder on my computer, I'm gonna put it here.

"The world is not made up of atoms; it's made up of stories."

-Muriel Rukeyser

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"The story–from Rumplestiltskin 

to War and Peace–

is one of the basic tools 

invented by the human mind 

for the purpose of understanding. 

There have been great societies 

that did not use the wheel, 

but there have been no societies 

that did not tell stories."

-Ursula K. Le Guin

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Empathy - it's why cinema works, it's why cinema is powerful. This is amazing to see quantified in a scientific study, something those of us who love watching and discussing cinema, storytelling, and observing human behavior and psychology, have always known - that a story has a way of starting a conversation with you about yourself, your life, and your relationships in a nonthreatening, emotional way.

"Movie Date Night Can Double as Therapy"

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com//2014/02/10/movie-date-night-can-double-as-therapy/

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

The Necessity of Violence?

I'm thinking about this because of our newly launched military actions against IS/ISIL/ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This might be an ongoing post, it might not.

If we accept the premise that we want to get to a more peaceful world. And if we accept the notion that violence begets violence, that violence is cyclical, that an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye and so on is a rather standard response to violence (with some exceptions), how do we move to a less violent or violence free world?

If there's person A and person B, and person A hits person B. And person B decides not to hit person A back, what happens? Does that end the cycle? If so - and let's say that it does - what happens next? Is A moved to disengage by B's lack of retaliation? Does A hit B again, knowing there are no consequences? Does A hit B until B responds violently, giving A a reason to escalate violence further? Does A assume dominion over and control of B, because of the lack on consequences, and proceed to enact further violence and manipulation over B? What makes A stop - if B doesn't hit back? Incredulity at the lack of retaliation? Does A just walk way? Does it depend on the context, on why A struck B to begin with?

If it does depend on the context - and I suspect it does, amongst other factors such as the strength of each party, what's at stake, the scale of the violence, the resources needed to carry out such violence, etc. (I guess that all falls under context) - but if it does depend on context, then doesn't that mean that some violence will always be necessary, because there will also be a context where disengagement won't work? Where A will be some violent force that will be happy to come up against Bs that don't strike back and will just strike them all down. What stops them? Are they eventually stopped by the pile of bodies in front of them, bodies of people who chose nonviolence? How many bodies would that take? Who would volunteer?

What I'm trying to get at is, a lot of people I read have jumped to condemn the airstrikes against IS. They were happy we were pulling out of Iraq, now they're mad we're staying involved (some of them were also mad we weren't doing more, and are now mad we're doing something, but I won't get into that). I was happy we we got out of Iraq. I don't know how I feel about the airstrikes. I strongly support President Obama's cautious, multilateral, reasonable approach - but I don't feel like I can say I support or don't support the strikes yet.

But, let's say we agree not to take action. We don't retaliate for action - we end the cycle. Al-Qaeda attacks us on 9/11 and then we use diplomatic and economic efforts to bring them to justice. Would that work? How do you define justice? Would that work in a world where our allies would use violence to retaliate? If we don't retaliate with violence, but our allies do successfully (in that they kill the attackers), how does that change our standing in the world? How does that affect our ability to influence the world? Would that only work if we never veered from the course, and no one else did either? And if we didn't veer, and never retaliated, what would stop violence from being inflicted further upon us?

As I write this, I'm excited about the possibility of a world in which we don't retaliate - we rely on our other strengths to prevent and punish violent behavior. I just don't know how we get there - if we don't all go there at the same time. Can you imagine the reaction by citizens of this country if we didn't retaliate in Afghanistan after 9/11? Maybe that's just a political problem. Maybe people would come around. Maybe, like those that answered Dr. King's calls for nonviolence, people would be brave. Though, Dr. King was taken from this world violently. Is that a microcosm for what would happen to the non-retaliators?

I don't know. I feel like I'm not getting past my initial notions to a deeper point here. I'm stuck. I like the idea of the world I'm imagining, but there's something about this idea that if we didn't all agree to start living in this new world all at once, that it wouldn't work. 

I think I agree that sometimes force is necessary - for example, using force against IS now will slow their growth, disorganize them, and restrict them from continuing to take territory and inflict violence on innocent people as quickly. 

But that force will only encourage them to strike us back. I do believe that.

So let's say they do - or they at least develop the capacity to - so we strike them again.

Which makes them want to strike us back even further.

So we strike them again. Doesn't this just become mowing the grass, until we've either killed them all or changed the economic and political situation on the ground?

If so, that means violent force is kind of always a temporary measure - as defense, as punishment, etc. - as diplomatic measures are used to end the violence. 

But even if IS as a group is destroyed, or diplomatically somehow we get them to stop being violent, won't there still be individuals who fought with IS who carry anger and the desire for violent revenge in them, who will just start or a join a new group and continue the fight?

I just don't see how it ends. I don't see in this situation how we don't use some force to slow and deter IS as we find more sustainable ways to stop them (cutting off funding, disrupting recruitment, etc.) - not even necessarily because they pose a threat to us right now, but because we see if left unchecked they will pose a threat to us in the future (though that gets into the debate about preemptive warfare). I don't see how if we use force we don't harden their resolve to hurt us and only make the situation potentially worse.

I guess that's the nature of hard decisions. There's no way to know if we're going to get it right. We can't predict consequences, and we can't avoid negative consequences no matter what we do. So people want to act in a way that they feel is more noble, or is best in and of itself, hoping for certain outcomes, but knowing we can't always control the outcomes. 

I hope, in the end, President Obama is using the show of force as a way of 1) showing IS and the world there are consequences for killing Americans 2) to demonstrate to allies we are serious about our stance against IS as a way to get them to buy in to any necessary but limited military actions but more importantly diplomatic actions 3) to slow IS, degrade them, and disorganize them while the world unifies around finding other ways to stop them - and in the end the campaign will be cautious, limited, restrained, and temporary, and ideally, will be authorized by Congress.

I don't want another war, but I don't think we can write off all future/present conflict in a blanket way as unnecessary only because a significant amount of the conflict we've been entangled in over the past decade has been unnecessary. 

-The Oldest Young Man You Know 

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Sometimes you get home from a few days away...

Sometimes you get home from a few days away and out of your routine and the precarious balance you maintain between making enough money to survive and spending enough time making your work - the emotional balance, being OK not being immediately, tangibly productive because you're investing time towards longterm creative productivity - crumbles into self-doubt, anxiety, and the desire to check some things off a To Do list, no matter how unnecessary or trivial those tasks to be done may be.

In this dreadful state, you realize living life happens in one of two ways - 1) enjoying the moments because that's all there really is and 2) creating something out of nothing to be enjoyed, critiqued, discussed, remembered, experienced currently and in the future, for posterity, even if that means forsaking current experiences. 

But then you remember the climate is changing and things are scary. Will movies matter in the future? Will your work survive? Will there still be viable, sustainable ways of conducting electricity so people can watch movies at all? Will there be any people around anymore? Should I be spending time on creating things or just spending time enjoying things - movies that already exist, my love, my family, my friends, sunsets, good food, babies, dogs (big ones, not small ones), etc.?

But you're an optimistic person. Besides, some people will survive. They will find a way to adapt. They will find a way to survive. Electricity won't be abandoned now that we've experienced it. So, there's an infinitesimal chance your short film about that little girl exploring a garden might be seen by some little girl in the future who's never seen a garden, except for the one in your movie.

So you go back to believing creating - and suffering to create, and not having enough money because you're trying to create - is worth the time away from your love and watching movies and playing with small babies and big dogs.

But then you watch an old movie that reminds you eventually the earth will be gone because the sun is gonna stop or crash into it or something - either way, no matter what, the entire earth will die. Guaranteed. Everything will be gone, including Miami, which will have been underwater for thousands of years and Ohio which has 100% humidity in January and the snow covered mountains of Hawaii - thanks to climate change - which doesn't even matter in the end because the sun is gonna fuck the whole thing up. And that's not even our fault. 

So, if the whole earth is gonna go kaput, there really feels like no reason to create anything, unless it's just being created for the here and now, or for your kid's or maybe maybe your kid's kids - but no one further away from you than them. You have to live for reason number 1 - the experience - the experience of creating, not the product. Not the creation itself.

It makes you question why we should behave, not break laws, why we get married or worry about student loan debt or vote in elections or try so hard to watch every episode of all seven seasons of The West Wing in order even though it ends up taking a Netflix account, a Blockbuster DVD-in-the-mail account (when that still existed) and Amazon Prime. The whole earth is gonna be gone, so all our archives and novels and paintings and poems and family photos and loves and terrorist attack memorials and cemeteries and churches and cinema houses will all be gone. No one in the entire universe will be left to even remember them. Memories will be gone too! Think about that the next time you spend 15 minutes of your life that you'll never ever ever get back making a grocery list - you'll shop for that food, eat that food, shit that food out - and then the earth is gonna explode and even that shit is gonna have nowhere to go!

Sure, we might end up colonizing Mars and other planets before earth bites it and we could take the entire human experience with us on a flash drive-sized flashdrive, but we can't count on that, now can we? 

I'm optimistic. I think all art is an act of optimism, an investment in the future, a vote of faith that the people of the present not only can make things better for tomorrow, but that they or more people they create will be around to enjoy that tomorrow. The tomorrow created on the back of today's creations. I want to believe - I do believe - that things are always getting better.

But there are days or moments or hours when I just don't know if there will even be a tomorrow for humanity - good or bad - and not having faith in tomorrow takes away my desire, my ability, and my reasoning for creating art. Without tomorrow, you have to live today. And if all I have is today, I don't want to spend my time creating - I just want to spend my time experiencing. Creation is yesterday's experience relived today for tomorrow's benefit. No tomorrow means no reason to create today.

But I want to create, I don't want to just experience. I want to experience and create and experience and create and so on. So hopefully, I'll get a good night's sleep tonight, we'll wake up to some decent news coming out of the climate change talks at the U.N., I'll google how many years we have until the sun destroys the earth or the earth explodes itself or whatever (it's billions and billions of years, so honestly, that's probably enough time for me to feel satisfied that my work was thoroughly viewed and enjoyed before we call it quits) and I'll feel some more hope and optimism about the future again, and the desire to create will supersede the desire to experience, and I'll be able to get back to work investing in a future by creating what I can today.  

Or maybe I'll realize that even work created today, for today, is important - because it allows us to share ourselves with others, to connect with people, to communicate honestly, and to comfort others - and that experience, of creating today to connect with people now - is still worth it, even if none of my creations last beyond my lifetime. At least I made something that mattered - a piece of work and a human connection while I was here - and enjoyed the experience of doing it. 

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

The Myth of the Moderate Republican in My Lifetime (thus far)

I realized recently that I have never known, in my life, the moderate, reasonable Republican party of myth and the past. All I've known, since I became marginally aware of politics at 10 or 11 years old, was Newt Gingrich, Clinton's Impeachment, a stolen Presidential election, lies about WMDs and the resulting decade long war that killed thousands, a flooded city deserted by our federal government, lies about death panels and birth certificates and "paling around with terrorists" and coded racist language and voter suppression tactics and screaming "You lie!" while the President addresses congress and "legitimate rape" and corporations as people and money as speech and employers being able to make health decisions for their female employees and immigrant children being screamed at, "we don't want you!" and 40+ votes to repeal a market-based healthcare plan (proposed by a Republican thinktank) and playing Russian roulette with the debt ceiling and the federal budget/government and ignoring scientific consensus about climate change and freaking out when the President wants to address school kids on the first day of school and stopping any money being spent on crumbling infrastructure (the most unideological and least sexy but necessary thing I can think of) and roadblocking any and every piece of legislation attempting to do something, anything, about the epidemic of gun violence. Is it so hard to understand why the modern Republican party can engender such contempt? I would love to see this reasonable, moderate, responsible party I've heard about. Anyone willing or able to show me it?

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

I'm going to be thankful now for what I might not have later

"Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually."

-Abraham Joshua Heschel

I can walk.

I can taste, and eat, and drink.

I can see - movies, books, words, Melissa, people, the sky, the city, children.

My health.

My mind/consciousness.

My parents and grandparents and family.

Melissa.

Friends. 

Ambition, big ideas, passion, motivation. 

The hill in front of me to climb.

My youth.

Freedom.

My memories.

[             ] ahead of me. 

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Love/To See The Face of God

Maybe true love is not the feeling of love, but the choice of it.

Having someone you not only feel love for, but want to love.

Maybe it's that want that fuels longevity.

Feelings ebb and flow, get interrupted, change, get hurt. Desire for - whether or not it's always felt - can be the constant.

Feelings feel almost granted to us - and in return, they can be taken. Suddenly, without warning. Choice is ours, at all times. And maybe choice strengthens feeling, keeps it, grows it, protects it, secures it, bridges in its absence.

Together, they form a bond of love that would distinguish from a love purely of only feeling (early romantic love) or a love of only want/choice (familial love).

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

God doesn't get credit for our kindness. We do.

Katie, a young mom, can't afford to buy the diapers she needs - so Flynn, a fellow customer and stranger, steps in to buy the diapers in an act of human compassion and kindness. What is young Katie's response? "It was an awesome statement of what God's love does." No. No. NO. It was human love, and human compassion. It was kindness, something we all can CHOOSE to share with each other. It is what is required of each of us to live moral lives. It's what our country right now needs from us. It has nothing to do with God. Nothing. Acts of violence cannot be chalked up to Evil (TM) and God does not get credit for our acts of kindness. It's all us, folks. That's not a statement about the existence or lack of existence of a God. You can believe we're all alone or you can believe God has imbued us with our capacity for love. Either way, it helps no one to pretend we are not fully in charge of how we treat each other and how we receive and interpret the love of others. If we keep chalking everything up to fate or chance or "it was meant to be" or God, then we will grow even more helpless, divided, angry, violent, cynical, careless, and lost than we already are as we wait for some ethereal thing to come and save us. From a stone cold liberal: take some personal responsibility for your kindness and give it to others where it's due.

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Spiritual Experiences, Spiritual Thoughts

This will be another ongoing post. I want to contemplate my feelings on spirituality and the afterlife - many of which are contradictory - by recording past experiences and observations along with new ideas and current feelings. 

1) In the sky, at the flash of lightning, I saw the face of a man looking down at me. I walked from the car and turned my head back up to the sky before entering our apartment building and in the flash of lightning I saw the man's face again, this time turned towards me in my new position away from the car.

2) Recently, I've done some reading related to Christianity (The Testament of Mary and Zealot) as well as some reading on Islam (a basic overview pamphlet and a pamphlet about women in Islam). Even though I'm not necessarily a follower of these religions or their dogmas, or believe the stories they claim to be historical fact, or appreciate many of their more conservative teachings, there's something powerful to me about reading about belief, about other people's spiritual teachings. It makes me feel like I'm connecting with something deeper. It makes the reading feel spiritual - and I think, in the end, what I really want, is to find material that by reading it and rereading it I can access the spiritual in me. I want access to the spiritual via a physical, intimate act like reading. 

3) I most definitely believe in ghosts/spirits. I have multiple photos of what I believe are ghosts. I've experienced knocks at the door when no one was there (more than once, over the course of a year). I've heard many stories of other people's experiences with ghosts and I believe them. I've heard laughs in a room not coming from a person (I was awake, my roommate was asleep and silent). My great-grandma had a distinct smell. Years after she had passed away in Buffalo, the second floor of our townhouse in Virginia suddenly smelled very strongly like her. Our dog starting barking at nothing: the air, the counter, the kitchen. She started barking and didn't stop, and kept barking for so long (at least an hour) that I got freaked out and called my Mom. Suddenly, the barking stopped and the smell was gone. I've visited a Spiritual Medium twice (two different ones, both in Lily Dale, NY) and their messages were very accurate. 

4) I'm intrigued by Spiritualism and the belief that there's no need to have faith in an afterlife because Spiritualism is the only religion to provide proof of the continuity of life (via Mediums, who connect you with someone "in spirit"). I'm not intimidated by faith, but proof is nice, especially because so many people rely on faith to avoid intellectual rigor and as an excuse to mistreat others (I've thought that faith is really just an excuse for the lack of an explanation). 

5) I don't really believe in Evil - and I definitely don't believe in "Evil People." I understand that some actions people take can be labeled as Evil, but I'm skeptical, because labeling something Evil or disregarding someone or writing them off or defining them as Evil is yet another example of a lack of intellectual rigor, it brushes over complex problems, it undervalues the importance of mental and emotional health, it lacks compassion and empathy, it puts walls up between us (and blinds us to how close all of us are to committing awful acts against one another), and it feels at best medieval in thinking. People are good, or people are blank slates, and life - biology, experiences, circumstances - fill the color in between the lines. There's no such thing as an Evil Person. However, for some reason, I almost/basically believe in possession. I think stories about possession have the potential to be the most terrifying. I just about believe that it's possible to be possessed by a demon. But I don't know - my beliefs feel contradictory here - and I haven't reconciled them yet. 

6) I have a real resistance to the word God. Most of that probably comes from cultural context/inherent connotation, experiencing how other people use the word, all the ways the word is used to justify actions and beliefs I find abhorrent, the all-or-nothing, all-encompassing nature of the word, etc. and less to do with any belief or disbelief in a higher power. Or maybe it has a lot to do with my discomfort with the words Dad and Father, though I'm not sure. My discomfort with the word God is a more recent occurrence and I've never really been comfortable with Dad or Father. I've read the argument that the word God can come to mean whatever you believe/want it to represent - for example, in Spiritualism, the continuity of life in spirit form - but it's really hard to shake the strong connotations, especially when everyone else is screaming the word with a rather unified, but different meaning compared to how I'm attempting to use it. 

7) Melissa and I pretty much knew we didn't want to get married in the Catholic Church - or pretty much any other religious institution. But we didn't want to get married at our reception venue either: that shortened the day, made it all seem a little pedestrian, not special, not significant. We were looking for a church-like building without the Church part. We settled on a small Unitarian Universalist church not 2 minutes down the same road the high school sits on where we met. The image below is a card I found in one of the pews of the church that outlines the church's principles. This is the type of thing I can get comfortable with and I'm intrigued now to do a little bit more reading on Unitarian Universalism. 

Here's a video of people talking about Unitarian Universalism. This sounds good to me.

8) Driving back from the funeral of my 10-year-old cousin - who suddenly collapsed on the soccer field just a few days before - my grandfather commented (I believe on the traffic in his way), something along the lines of: God doesn't like me today or God give me a break. I had never been to the funeral of a child before, let alone been the pall bearer or left some of my favorite childhood toys in the casket, as I just had. I was in no mood. I snapped at him and reminded him he was driving home from a child's funeral. He was silent, as far as I remember, or at least - in whatever he said - he didn't defend himself. This incident has stuck with me. I think it says something about religion and notions of God that are built around pleasing us, paving our way, making coincidences and bad things happen "for a reason" all in our benefit - so that when we experience even the slightest of inconvenience, we feel almost deserted by God, betrayed by God. Even when juxtaposed against a child's funeral, we still mourn for ourselves and our perceived slight in the hands of God. Our notions of religion and spirituality shouldn't be so divorced from the things and people, and their pains and experiences, all around us. If God was present that day, he wasn't trying to piss my grandfather off with traffic - or even putting that traffic there so I could snap at my grandfather and teach him a lesson - he was with my aunt and uncle as they suffered through something one expects is impossible to bear, to survive. 

9) Roger Ebert, Life Itself: "I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn't make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition."

10) Roger Ebert, Life Itself: "I have no interest in megachurches with jocular millionaire pastors. I think what happens in them is sociopolitical, not spiritual."

11) Roger Ebert, Life Itself: "I prefer vertical prayer, directed up toward heaven, rather than horizontal prayer, directed sideways toward me."

12) 

-The Oldest Young Man You Know

[notesthenweregoingagain]

Everything Wrong With Conservatives

This will be a post that's updated with more wrongness as it becomes even more apparent to me:

1) "During the 2000 Senate campaign in New York, Rick Lazio, who was running against Hillary Clinton, visited a high school that had tested well and congratulated the kids for helping to maintain local property values."

2) You mention guns/gun violence/a school shooting/domestic violence involving a gun/a suicide-by-gun/a child accidentally killed by a gun - and express the slightest sadness, or anger, or desire to see less death - and they scream: gun bans don't work! cars and swingsets kill more people! what about kitchen knives!!!?? ...

3) Blocking buses on the way to shelters full of immigrant children - newly arrived over the border, most alone, many fleeing brutal violence at home - waving signs "Return to sender" and screaming "We don't want you!"

-The Oldest Young Man You Know