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Landscaping

I've been doing landscaping for the last two days with my buddy Milo. The project is at a house in the East Bay (Alamo), in a gated community with other mansions and well-manicured lawns.

Working outside is great. Learning about plants and drip irrigation is great. Hanging out with Milo is great and the pay is excellent- his client is generous and it is far more money than I would expect. However, I feel what we are doing is slightly ridiculous.

This landscaping is purely atheistic. The flowers, shrubs, trees and lawns are there just to look good. You can't eat them, you can't use them, but they make the house look pretty. In the process thousands of gallons of water and labor are used to maintain it and keep it green. It's ironic because the hillsides behind the community are just as beautiful and don't require anything.

In my opinion, it’s wasteful to spend a hundred thousand dollars on something that just looks good. That kind of money can buy homes, and medicine, and college education. It would be different if vegetables and fruit trees were eating the water and enjoying the labor, but they aren't. It's just a small army of us working to subjugate nature into small pretty boxes and terraces to impress the neighbors.

I feel conflicted. One hand, I really enjoy it. On the other, I feel it's one of the most useless things I have ever done.

Mark Tawin and Funerals

The funeral for Darla was yesterday.  They held it in the gym of Sonora High and a huge number of people attended.  It's obvious that she was very respected and loved in this community.  Channel 3 (out of Sacramento) did a news story on her and it was also front page in the local newspaper.  Everyone had good stories to tell and it was a good way to stay goodbye.

My family left after the funeral but I am still here staying with my grandmother.  She's a staunch conservative and we always seem to get into fun little debates.  Most of her information comes from right wing radio and radical conservative mailings.  Today she got two pieces attacking Hillary Clinton, one urging her to sign a petition to have the US leave the UN, three with information about how immigrants are taking over the country, and one about the threat of communist China.  She reads them all and donates money to some.  It's sort of useless discussing it though because she always pulls the age card.  A lot of conversations end with, "Well, you just don't know how it really works because you haven't been around long enough.  Don't you love this country?  Why are you always so pessimestic?"  I love my grandmother.

I am half way through the Zinn Reader.  Good essays on race, class, war, law and history.  I liked this thought, pulled from a Mark Tawin piece at the turn of the century, showing again how history repeats itself:

The loud little handful will shout for war.  The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first. . . .  The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."

Then the few will shout even louder. . . .  Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it. . .

Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies. . . and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.

In Memoriam

About a year ago, I remember telling Darla and Kim about my next big expedition. I was planning to hitchhike from California to Mexico City, and from there take buses to the bottom of South America. It was the latest in a long series of trips, and I don’t think anyone in the family was quite as enthusiastic as Darla and Kim. They told me stories about their last adventure in Mexico, about sampling tequila and struggling with Spanish. We discussed other places we all wanted to travel, and Darla asked me to be sure to write down any good spots I found for them to retire.

The news caught up to me in Acapulco, two months into the trip, that Darla was sick. Acapulco is a strange place to receive news like that, surrounded by palm trees, resorts and beaches. My heart was in my stomach for the rest of the day; and I think it was the first time I actually stopped and thought about how much she meant to me.

I think, when you grow up having someone like Darla in your life, you never expect them to leave. Being shipped off to my aunt’s house when I was younger was always something to look forward to. Darla was fun, and she knew exactly what we needed: as much pizza as we could eat, extra scoops of ice cream, late night movies, and plenty of time in the pool.

As I got older, Darla continued to be there: for my high school graduation, ski trips to bear valley, short trips in the summers, and of course, all the Thanksgivings and Christmases.

I remember one year Darla and Kim came to visit me at college in Santa Cruz. I took them for a hike through the redwoods on campus, showed them my dorm room and life, and then, they took me for trip through Costco. That visit left me with ten pounds of chips and forty boxes of macaroni, but more importantly, words of support for the path I was on and encouragement for what I wanted to do with my life.

With Darla I never felt that I had to prove anything or act in a certain way. She was always a source of support and love, and I knew that if I ever needed anything, she would be willing to help. And it wasn’t just her. Because of Darla, I also have Kim in my life, and so, although our family has shrunk by one, it has also grown.

I feel sad that Darla is gone- but I also know few people who have had such a full life and have affected so many others. I was always amazed, when I came to visit her in Sonora, at how many people stopped us in restaurants, or at the supermarket, or while pumping gas, just to say hello. It was like being the nephew of a minor celebrity.

In the newspaper yesterday, in an article about Dia de los Muertos, I read a quote. It said: “Death thinks it’s so important, but it isn’t. Death is a travel agent. It gets you from point A to point B.” I liked that metaphor. I think it means Darla is now on another journey, and I hope, this time, she is writing down the good spots for the rest of us to retire.

The Ethnographer

The Ethnographer
Jorge Luis Borges

I was told about the case in Texas, but it happened in another state. I have a single protagonist (though in every story there are thousands of protagonists, visible and invisible, alive and dead). The man’s name, I believe, was Fred Murdock. He was tall, as American’s are; his hair was neither blond nor dark, his features were sharp, and he spoke very little. There was nothing singular about him, not even that feigned singularity that young men affect. He was naturally respectful, and he distrusted neither books nor the men and women who write them. He was at that age when a man doesn’t yet know who he is, and so is ready to throw himself into whatever chance puts his way- Persian mysticism or the unknown origins of Hungarian, algebra or the hazards of war, Puritanism or orgy. At the university, an adviser had interested him in Amerindian languages. Certain esoteric rites still survived in certain tribes out West; one of his professors, an older man, suggested that he go live on a reservation, observe the rites, and discover the secret revealed by the medicine man to the initiates. When he came back, he would have his dissertation, and the university authorities would see that it was published.

Murdock leaped at the suggestion. One of his ancestors had died in the frontier wars; that bygone conflict of his race was now a link. He must have foreseen difficulties that lay ahead for him; he would have to convince the red men to accept him as one of their own. He set out upon the long adventure. He lived more than two years on the prairie, sometimes sheltered by adobe walls, sometimes in the open. He rose before dawn, went to bed at sundown, and came to dream in a language that was not that of his fathers. He conditioned his palate to harsh flavors, he covered himself with strange clothing, he forgot his friends and the city, he came to think in a fashion that the logic of his mind rejected. During the first few months of his education he secretly took notes; later, he tore the notes up- perhaps to avoid drawing suspicion upon himself, perhaps because he no longer needed them. After a time (determined upon the advance by certain practices, both spiritual and physical), the priest instructed Murdock to start remembering his dreams, and to recount them to him at daybreak each morning. The young man found that on nights of the full moon he dreamed of buffalo. He reported these recurrent dreams to his teacher; the teacher at last revealed to him the tribe’s secret doctrine. One morning, without saying a word to anyone, Murdock left.

In the city, he was homesick for those first evenings on the prairie when, long ago, he had been homesick for the city. He made his way to his professor’s office and told him that he knew the secret, but had resolved not to reveal it.

“Are you bound by your oath?” the professor asked.

“That’s not the reason,” Murdock replied. “I learned something out there that I can’t express.”

“The English language may not be able to communicate it,” the professor suggested.

“That’s not it, sir. Now that I possess the secret, I could tell it in a hundred different and even contradictory ways. I don’t know how to tell but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now.”

After a pause he added:
“And anyway, the secret is not as important as the paths that led me to it. Each person has to walk those paths himself.”

The professor spoke coldly:
“I will inform the committee of your decision. Are you planning to live among the Indians?”

“No,” Murdock answered. “I may not even go back to the prairie. What the men of prairie taught me is good anywhere and for any circumstances.”

That was the essence of their conversation.

Fred married, divorced, and is now one of the librarians at Yale.

Art and Anarchy

Quote of the day:
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to join your revolution.”
– Emma Goldman

We don’t see many beautiful photos of Iraq. Maybe if people saw more they wouldn’t be so gung-ho about bombing it to pieces. The MOMA also had an exhibit by Robert Adams with photos of gruesume clear cuts in Oregon. The shots of gigantic machines gutting and deboning the forest were disconcerting- like pictures of battle fields or chicken slaughterhouses. I think I have to say thanks for the guy who let me in for free.

I like the quote of the day. In a long and heady conversations with someone yesterday I was told that the world is in shit-shape. Perhaps, they said, quickening the demise of the system (?) through choas, burning down buildings, and disrupting traffic is the best solution. I’d prefer the revolution where everyone is dancing- even our idiot chief of state.

And if you didn't click to see the photos of Iraq you need to do it now.