Mellow Afternoon

It’s been a long time since I posted anything here.

I set out from Vermont yesterday morning, heading for my new home in Portland, Oregon. I’m really excited about the whole process, finding a place to live, a place to work, people to hang out with. It’s daunting; challenging. I think that’s why I’m doing it. There’s a part of me that gets off on kicking my fears in the teeth. Better than having them hang over me.

I stayed at my friend Andy’s place in Staten Island. We played guitar and then walked down to the little baseball stadium by the ferry to see the view of the city, this enormous thing overflowing with people on the horizon. New York City. I’ve spent real time there and somehow I’m still in awe of it, like some sort of mythical city of spires and old ghosts, only it’s all running for speed, like a battlefield, dirty and dingy and yet fucking glorious. It always impresses me every time. Still, it makes me feel nervous and insignificant in a way that Washington never did. It remains a mysterious ‘other’ despite my efforts to get to know it, and refuses to give up its secret powers to me. I wonder how long it would take me to adjust to New York, if I could thrive there, if the peculiar affronts of that city would wear overly on me.

I would have liked to stay another day, but I thought it best to get a good start. I wouldn’t want to be late, after all.

Please, please, please ask yourself. What do you believe in? What is important, what is the truth, what is beyond refute, what is indispensible and unavoidable and unalterable. What idea would you defend? What subject inflames your passion? What concept will drive you to stand up and yell out the truth? I ask you only one question. What do you believe?

What will you do for belief? You stand and yell and argue the veracity of your claims. Will you fight for them? Would you devote an hour of your day towards the triumph of your thoughts? Will you sacrifice yourself? Sacrifice your comfort, sacrifice your status in society, sacrifice your life itself? Would you die for your beliefs? Would you give up the entirety of your existence to defend them? Would you give up your children and your children’s children’s children for an idea?

Many have. Many will. Sacrifice is no easy question. Ultimately, we did the world a disservice when we stopped telling people to ‘be a man’ because ‘being a woman’ was derisive. Unfortunately, ‘be a responsible and virtuous human being’ doesn’t have quite the same ring. Nevertheless, I say that an unwillingness to lay down your life is neither cowardly nor unrespectable. Let us not cheapen the righteousness of sacrifice by insinuating that failure to do so is somehow weak or inferior. Instead, let us focus on the merit of the act of sacrifice itself as being something deserving of great respect and admiration, whatever that cause or belief might be. Let us give honor where honor is due, and there is honor owed to the martyred souls of history.

And although I don’t agree with America’s wars of foreign aggression, and I do not agree with its campaign of terrorizing the third world, and I do not agree with its strongarming foreign governments economically, and although I hate with unbridled passion its efforts to destroy the ecology of the planet, to use up its resources in a misguided attempt to bring about the rapture sooner rather than later, though I throw fits over the organized oppression of the poor and the systemized subjugation of the middle class, despite my distaste with all acts of terrorism around the world, with the very concept of using violence against others, I cannot help but appreciate the willingness to go to the limit of human action for one’s beliefs. To be a soldier for Truth. To stand for an ideal. I must recognise their struggles alongside my own, and where another man will go farther than I could, I must recognise that contribution to humanity. Because I am a man with beliefs.

When we learned about America in school, they used a lot of words like Liberty and Freedom. We learned about the concepts of Justice and Democracy. We were taught to be Patriots. We were taught about how America was a nation of untold opportunity, and how America was a land of freedom, where you could do anything. We sang songs about the brotherhood of mankind, and how America would bridge all gaps to be the great melting pot where ideas could run free and grow to glorious new heights. An indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all! And I believed it! I still believe in it!

I do believe in the value of Liberty. I believe in Freedom and Justice for all who walk this land. I believe that Democracy can bring great things to the world. I believe in America. We were taught that America meant Liberty and Justice for all. Freedom is what America has always represented! Since its inception, to people around the world, America means Freedom. Freedom is what America has always been!

Since I’ve grown up I’ve found out a lot of things about America that don’t make me proud of my country. I have found out about our government paying people to pollute the earth through subsidies and tax breaks and flat-out corruption. I have found out about our government funding genocide and bolstering dictatorships elsewhere around the world. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this country is built on the genocide and displacement of millions of innocent people. I’ve had to adjust to the shame that comes from knowing that my wealth and comfort would not exist without the history of violent oppression that this nation is so unfortunately built upon. I can deal with history, and I can deal with things how they are. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let this continue. We owe it to the world, we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our future as a species to stop this infernal machine now, before things get worse on this planet.

Our nation has long since become corrupted from the noble ideals that the Founding Fathers laid down. Since its creation this country has overstepped its bounds in grevious injustice against man and nature alike. Power has become entrenched, and many despair to even attempt to rectify the situation. Apathy has long since been publicly vilified and privately appreciated by self-serving politicians and bilious bureaucrats alike. The politics of power have gone unchallenged for too long and it is time for the pendulum to swing once more.

In this country we are constantly shown how unstoppable the machinery of injustice is. We are informed every single day of its reach, its breadth, its nearly limitless power, and its clockwork inevitability. As sure as death and taxes, they say. But we are not unarmed! We do not yet live in a fascist state. We retain the right to free speech, at least enough to post missives on the internet. We retain the right to public assembly, at least enough to protest within designated free-speech zones. We are free from government interference, at least enough to get our message across to people. Our votes still count towards something, at least enough to swing the balance of power towards those who would treat Lady Liberty with the respect she deserves. And all around are signs of their house crumbling. The balance of power is nestled on the narrow spire of a crumbling tower, and it is moments from collapse, if just one more American would rise to the challenge, if one more person decided that they believed in what America has always stood for, and refused to accept anything less, if they would fight for Justice.

It is no accident that this culture fetishizes super-heroes. A super-hero is the ultimate representation of what this country stands for. He is the personification of righteous indignation, of selflessness, of pure American idealism. A super-hero is just one American fighting for America, fighting against grave evil. But our enemies do not have super powers, and neither will most of them be found in foreign countries. Our problems are not external to ourselves, but will be found within the halls of power. That power that evil wields against the world is the power that We The People grant it, and nothing more.

I cannot say this more clearly: the ideals that we were taught in school are the true meaning of this nation. They are the core of America, and are at the heart of all true Americans. And if you stand against those principles, if you act to subvert them and give them weak lip service through gritted teeth, no matter what title you hold, whether it’s President or Senator or Janitor, if you act against those principles that all Americans have learned and taken to heart, then you are a Traitor and must be dealt with accordingly. Justice is blind but we cannot be! Vigilance is demanded of us if we should hope to preserve this nation in any sense beyond the empty promises of the current administration. If you are a Patriot then it is time for you to show your true colors! Oust the Traitors from office and make a name for yourself!

Yes, it is time to issue an ultimatum to the mighty engine of greed and destruction at the head of this foul beast, and to let every corner of Washington hear our voice: “You will stand up for what is right, and honor the ideals that you swore to uphold the day you stepped into civil service. You will support Truth and Justice and Freedom and Liberty and Democracy, and you will not swerve in this mission, and you will not fail us ever again in this mission. You will righteously condemn all limits placed on the freedom to choose one’s own destiny, and you will tirelessly work to repair the injustices done to the world in the name of Democracy and Freedom, and you will repair the meaning of those words in that action. You will condemn those who seek to twist the structure of power to fill their own pockets as the Traitors to America that they are, and you will root out every instance of inefficiency and inequality and impropriety in this rotten system. You will do this, or you will find yourself ousted from power without warning or recompense, and you will be branded Unamerican, and you will be shunned by all who value honesty and honor. We can accept nothing less from you, and until Freedom reigns throughout the country that is designed to be its greatest argument, we ask for nothing more. We the People demand of You the Government what was promised to us when all this started some 230 years ago. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We the People demand our birthright. Liberty is no small thing and we will never let it be taken from us. Never.”

I have been across this country, and I have seen its people. Every street corner has heard the clarion call to our nation’s principles, every child made to listen to the seemingly empty promises of a Revolution 200 years old. The concepts at the heart of our country are threaded through every inch of our people, and they will not fail to cheer on the triumphant return of Americanism. America without tyranny, without fear, without despair, without injustice or inequality. Some think that it’s already over, that we can never win against the rigid power structures and endless pockets of corruption, greed and power. Well I believe that it’s not too late to save the world. I believe that heroism can still be found among our politicians, if only they could know they’d win reelection without the help of the corrupt and without the cynicism of years past. Because I am unwilling to be a cynic. I am an idealist. I believe in Freedom, I believe in Justice, and I believe in America. I am a Patriot, and I say that it is high time the pillars of city hall be shook, lest we dive further into fascism and decay. And I truly believe that I am not alone.

I started this with a question, and I’ll finish it the same way. What do you really believe in?

Intellectual Property law in the western world has reached the end of its rope, and has long since begun to choke the life from the American economy, hindering progress and blocking growth in its violent swings, reaching for anything to stand on. It is time for change.

It has become apparent to all that there are an enormous number of bogus patents, that patents are frequently used to hinder progress, to create monopoly, stifle competition, and generally impede economic growth. Despite their being bastions of capitalism, it should be noted that it is always in the best interest of the wealthy corporation to interfere with competition– at the expense of the general public. What’s wrong is that we have both laws against anti-competitive behavior (in the form of anti-trust), and then more laws encouraging anti-competitive behavior (in the form of IP law). Worse than that, there are long legal precedents in place stating that if you fail to ‘protect’ your IP as a CEO, you can be sued by your shareholders. The system is corrupt, and failure to act in a corrupt fashion on the part of a business owner is punishable with civil action, and damn the consequences to society.

At the same time, it seems self-evident that those spending years and/or huge sums of money developing new technology or creating new art MUST have some sort of recompense for their efforts. Hence, we have a need for copyright and patent laws. Certainly noone would suggest that Sony should be able to sell a CD that I made without financially compensating me, the creator of that content, which in any capitalist society is exactly what would happen without IP law. As nice as it is to have every idea in the public domain, it needs to be said that as long as inequity of property exists as the dominant paradigm of commerce, there must be intellectual property, because creative people have as much right to become rich from their ideas as the business people who put those ideas in consumers’ hands. The relative merits of capitalism versus communism aren’t really pertinent to this discussion, but let it be said that IP is necessary to some degree in this society as it stands.

So what do we do to fix the problem? The question is one of approaching the ideal situation stated by economic theory, represented in this case by the EFF, wherein all ideas are free and public domain, while maintaining the ability to both recoup expenses in devloping those ideas and prevent companies from stealing the fruits of that labor. First, it is absolutely clear that if no money is being made from the use of an IP, then it should be covered under fair use. Hobbyists and scientists alike should have full access to all material, in order to allow progress to march on unimpeded. It’s also obvious that the methods involved in the patent office are outdated, arcane, and ineffective. Thus, we need to establish a world foundation for patent law on the internet, with all patents being processed for peer review, where anyone can view patents, quickly and effectively search for existing patents, and file patents with little hassle or expenditure compared to the current system. Patent issues could be handled democratically, the democratic system being an excellent measure of ‘non-obvious’ as compared to some overworked patent clerk. This brings me to another important point– the elimination of patent-based monopolies. Instead, a set of guidelines for royalties should be established according to the widespread appeal of a given patent and the degree of resemblance a product based on that patent has (like a patent covering a type of servo used in a robot finger shouldn’t entitle the inventor of that servo to 10% of the cost of the robot, just as Wright’s patent on Wing Warping shouldn’t have given them the right to a 20% royalty on aileron designs, yet a patent on a home teleporter might deserve a royalty of 30%). Additional royalty adjustments should be put in place for improvements on existing designs, and to make up in part for the loss of monopoly power, additional subsidies should be put in place for R&D operations. Additionally, copyright periods should be decreased to 25 years as patents are increased to 25 years, with hefty penalities for breaking what would at that point be very reasonable IP law, instead of the complicated mess currently in place, where it is often difficult to establish if you are actually breaking the law without hiring expensive patent lawyers.

The ultimate result of all this would be a system that would be inexpensive to maintain, provide a global resource of technological progress, and correct current systems’ misguided priorities to ensure that the focus is maintained on the public benefits of innovation while maintaining a degree of financial incentives.

Can you imagine what it would be like if we had unlimited energy? What if you could buy a $200 generator that could power your entire household for 20 years? What if your new $30,000 car could fly?

How would housebuilding change? No more sealed compartments– you build light and open, so it breathes easy. Why not? Not like it costs anything to heat it. Imagine heated roadways that never needed plowing. Heated sidewalks, heated patios. People could live outdoors, enjoying their 90 degree stone slabs. No more power outages in winter. Unlimited free energy means you can broadcast it as Tesla envisioned, electricity for everyone and everything that needed it. Unlimited free energy makes the promises of technology deliver.

Flying cars are possible, but the fuel consumption makes it impractical and jet engines are too complex to be affordable. Free energy changes all that. Free energy makes power consumptive processes like building microchips or motorcycles cost a fraction of what they did previously. Free energy means warehouses that grow food for entire villages in Antarctica. Unlimited electricity means you can build huge underwater cities of self-sustaining domes that grow food and convert carbon dioxide to oxygen enough for thousands of people, down there under the sea. Free energy means no more wars over oil.

I’m here to tell you that it’s possible. There is nothing in the way of limitless energy but the mechanations of powerful men. Just one hundred years ago they’d barely invented the gas engine. Now we have jets breaking the sound barrier and men in space and all of it comes down to just a tiny bit of ingenuity. A hundred years ago the sound barrier was impossible to break. A hundred years ago we were NEVER going to reach space. A tiny bit of genius changes the whole world.

That ingenuity continues to exist in today’s man. There’s nothing in the way but the sheer belief that it’s impossible. Prove the world wrong, and save it in the same stroke. Already the world waits with baited breath.

I got in my car, the day cooler than it’d been recently. Sun still shining overhead, not a cloud in the sky.

But there was a screaming jet overhead, a blast of screeching sound that disappeared as quickly as it began.

I wound my way across the streets of seattle, cool breeze blowing across the hairs of my arm.

Came up over the hill, espying before me the Space Needle dominating the downtown skyline behind, filling the sky.

And there up ahead is 6 jets in tight formation, flying close, there between the space needle and the more distant skyscrapers over downtown.

You can’t hear them from this distance, but you can see them, trailing smoke, a curtain of spent jet fuel.

Doing a loop de loop, the six of them, in tight formation, perfectly framing the needle. Making an eye of it.

The smoke trail doesn’t last long, there’s a breeze here, and slowly, as I find myself unexplicably stopped in the middle of the street, staring, it deforms, warping itself across a thousand feet of sky.

On the radio the dj announces that the Blue Angels are practicing overhead. Blue F/A-18 Hornets, screaming across the sky.

I continue on, I wait at the streetlight.

There’s a shadow that blasts directly overhead, like a bird, and I look overhead to glimpse a last moment of a jet disappearing between the leaves of the tree, a couple hundred feet up at most, and just as it passes over, there’s that osprey call, exploding jet fuel clawing its way through the air, splitting it violently. You feel the jet rather than hear it.

I sit there at the light, looking up, hoping to see it come round again. When it doesn’t, I’m disappointed somehow. Like they’d put on this little private show for me, dropping their shadow over my car specifically, and now I don’t want it to be over.

All day you hear them practicing, that brief flare of noise as they go by, but you don’t see them. But I saw them, unexpected and beautiful, like noone else could have.

Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time.

The weather is sunny again, after a morning spent in rain yesterday.

Outside my house, the great fern tree has erupted in unexpected bloom, giant pink tufts of fuzzy sweet-smelling flowers bursting out over the whole of the thing, the tree that took so long to grow leaves, that’s taken until now to grow flowers, it’s now a glorious thing.

Like it took so long to grow into the fullness of time, but now it’s here and it’s more distinctive than any other on my street. You see it from blocks and blocks away, this giant pink and green cloud waving in the breeze. I’ve never seen a tree like it, in books or on the street, in the forest, beside the field.

It is unique, and it is beautiful.

And so for the umpteenth day in a row, I sit here on my couch in the late afternoon sunshine, looking out at this backlit tree, taking in the breeze that’s now become faintly perfumed before passing through my open front door.

I sit, and I think to myself: I wonder who I’ll be tomorrow?

So here I am, chilling out in the one spot I’ve spent almost all my time at, sitting out on the patio at Collis, sitting here mooching bandwidth and power, sitting in the black metal lawn furniture with the array of laptops, sipping cold coffee and warm water, burning discs.

12 people showed up, my last night in town, taking over as though we actually went to Dartmouth.

Mike sits talking bikes with Matt. JJ sits fiddling with his broken computer. Eli sits, smoking with Adam. Nabil and Jasmine are putting their heads together, having a private conversation in a whole group of people. Pia and Anne stand chatting amongst themselves near their boyfriend and husband. Tegan and Adam are leaving, making goodbye motions and handing out hugs and handshakes.

A whole bunch of people, and I’m off with JJ and the computers, blogging, talking on AIM to those I won’t be able to visit this trip.

Perhaps I’ll bother to join the party.

I’ve landed from a day’s travel. Spent the night crashed out on the air mattress at my parents’ house, Nabil up on the bed in what used to be my room. Hanging out with Mike and Nabil at Collis, out in the eye of the giant elms on the corner of the green.

Yesterday I flew. Spent two and a half long hours in the Southwest terminal at Las Vegas Int’l, looking around anxiously for some sort of real food. Settled on an aging ceasar salad with soggy croutons for $7. Felt alienated by the way the entire airline experience is designed to keep you complacent and tired, bored and uncomfortable. They’re keeping you off balance, making sure you don’t stand up for yourself. Just a swarm of mildly unhappy people standing around, waiting for something for hours on end.

I sat down in the bulkhead seat for the long flight into New Hampshire, at the front of the plane with the flight attendants. They have this look of boredom and complacent friendliness to them, all long blonde hair and skirts. I think this is the first flight I’ve been on staffed by stereotypical stewardesses. One is about thirty, and she has the practiced air of someone who no longer pays attention to her work. I look out the window for most of the trip, eyeing the hazy air over the grand canyon until my neck hurt. Later on I’d watch the clouds, or the surreal patches of green and brown in almost geometric patterns, bisected by the squiggly brown rivers and odd exceptions. Through the miles of warm haze it’s like a cartoon, the perfectly round hayfields, brown and dead in the corners where the irrigation doesn’t reach.

Later on it slowly gets dark and the sky turns to purpled puffs and formless blue down over the countryside. I fidget in my seat, ready for the trip to be over, singing to myself, rubbing my hands together in kinesthetic patterns, tapping my foot impatiently.

Over Vermont we descend, and the clouds break open to reveal orange towns amid empty black land. The captain comes on the intercom, and announces that if you look out the right side of the plane, you can see fireworks displays. The younger stewardess giggles and looks out the window by me. “You have to look hard, they’re really small from up here.” Down among the black lands and nearer the orange lights there are little flashes of red and green and white pocking the blackness. As we descend, town by town goes by, little private celebrations with their small displays, and bright explosions of rapid colors splash all at once. The bright blue globes grow larger and larger.

By the time the stewardesses take their seats for the landing, everyone on board has that sense of childlike delight, and for the first time in my airline experience, people all around are smiles, like the whole country is announcing our arrival in glorious festival, lit up in patterns of burning lights. The younger blonde leans forward, hoping to see out my window. “I wish we had windows back here,” she says, on the verge of giggling, delight burning up her eyes.

We disembark a little less frustrated than we might have been, enriched by a bit of magic at the end of the day, a shared experience of beauty and wonder.

Waiting for my luggage, Mike and Nabil come find me, and there’s grins all around.

There are worse ways to fly out for a funeral.

I woke up this morning and the air was heavy in my room. It was nearing noon, but outside it was as though it were very early morning, gold clouds on the horizon making you wonder if the day would turn sunny or rainy, the morning cool and moist beneath clouds not yet burned off or socked in. I grinned at the illusion, letting the air slide across me, laying in bed. I watched the thin leaves of the tree outside my window ripple in the wet breeze.

Later, it’d grow hot, just 75 degrees, the skies erupting every hour or two to release the humidity. I spent the afternoon in an empty coffee shop, playing cards with the barista. She beat me at spit. I beat her at rummy.

It’s humid and I’m tired, skipping out on my acting group to avoid spending an hour in traffic getting back to the city.

Everything’s good.

Yesterday my grandmother died. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, so I bought a new laptop like I’d been planning, 17 full inches of fire-breathing plastic and silicon. On the way to Sammamish to buy this Dell monstrosity, some dude smacked into me doing 10 or 15 mph. I don’t see any damage to the car beyond a few scratches to the clearcoat, so, it wasn’t that big a deal, I guess, though my neck was a little sore the rest of the day.

Sammamish is interesting. You drive through a beautiful lush field, tall trees all around the edge of the tiny little valley. Up ahead is a big red barn, and you feel very at home. Then you notice up ahead a line of cars a half mile long, waiting to get through the street light. Soon it’s nothing but big housing developments. You see an Electronics Boutique, and a brown plaza. The streets here are so very twee, and there’s a McDonald’s, complete with dark green roofing to blend in with the ‘natural’ surroundings. Take a turn down the dead end road, two miles long, and swing into the housing development. There are no trees here older than ten years, and the whole place reeks of suburbia. Just endless houses and identical roads swarming over each other, take a turn into 243rd Place SE, no, you wanted 243rd Ave SE, that’s next block up and across the street.

The guy selling me the laptop is Korean or Chinese, and his mouth is planted firmly on the side of his face, like some sort of Picasso from the blue period. He talks through a thick accent. His wife is very beautiful and smiles broadly. I’d wager this guy knows his tech stuff. I turn on the computer, and everything checks out, all the specs are right, the machine works and I pay the man. We talk computers a bit. His house is huge and pristine, on the corner and with no lawn to speak of. I nod and smile and say thank you and off I go back through the ruined rural town and sit in the half-mile line waiting to get through the stoplight.

Trying to get back on 520, we’re not even moving, and up on the highway above you can see the cars there just sitting still, impotent. I can hear through my open window the coming of sirens. A fire truck, two ambulances, a cruiser each from the Redmond fire department and police department pass by as we all in unison pull over to the side, like some sort of vehicular ballet. Slowly, slowly we creep up on the scene of the accident, and there’s no sign of ruined steel and glass, but a crowd is gathered around the ambulances, and some man on a stretcher is being attended by paramedics, lying out in his blue jeans and sneakers. Passing by at 10 mph I can hear only brief snatches of conversation– “at the time of the accident, we were….” and that’s it.

And as the highway cleared up for a few precious miles of cruising at 70, I realized I had every excuse in the world to be pissed off right now. I could be sulky, angry, depressed, lonely, annoyed, irritated, heart-broken, destroyed. Judging by the events thus far, and that knot of traffic coming up ahead, I could be just as pissed as I want to be. And even as I came up on three miles of stopped traffic, everyone wanting just to make it to the city and being thwarted, I knew that it wasn’t that bad. Somehow it’s easier to be at peace with the world when the world refuses to be at peace with you. And sitting there in traffic, watching the clouds go by, I couldn’t help but smile.

So here I am today. I’m supposed to be having a meeting to discuss this whole project of mine, folks were supposed to show up 15 minutes ago, and here I am, sitting by myself, tapping away at my keyboard on the living room couch. I’ve been stood up by a dozen people, maybe I should be annoyed, but all I can do is just sit back and relax, and let it all go.

Smile…