headhunters, and I don't mean job recruiters

This morning, I read a very interesting post written by Kamala Thiagarajan about a very interesting-sounding book. I have to admit my first reaction to the headline ("PHOTOS: The Vanishing Body Art Of A Tribe Of Onetime Headhunters") was most intriguing for the word photos and the preview photo at first, and I almost stopped reading after the caption under that preview picture:

Chingham Chatrahpa, 75, shows off his facial and neck tattoos. A face tattoo would be etched after a man's first headhunting expedition, usually at the age of 18-to-25 years. Only a warrior who decapitated an enemy could get a neck tattoo.

My first reaction, which prompted me to consider clicking away, was "maybe that's an art that should vanish." I kept reading, though, and was rewarded for it. The book and the blog piece were not about the vanishing art of headhunting, they were really about yet another vanishing indigenous community. And despite what the British viewed as savage behavior, and we still do today, there's a lot more to their culture than hunting heads.

Last year I heard a podcast about a different community descended from headhunters and a "new" emotion that was "discovered" by a couple of anthropologists who visited that tribe in the 60s. The tribe had one word for it, liget, and the best definition these anthropologists could come up with was "it makes me want to take a head."



Here's the accompanying blog post.

The rest of this is from my recollection, as I didn't re-listen to the podcast and only skimmed through the blog, and is littered with my subjective view of society and culture.

Liget was not rage or fury, which is the way that phrase sounds to a lot of us, it was about community and protection and grief... the feeling a parent has when a child dies suddenly and unfairly. In American culture this emotion is expressed in many ways, including rage and fury, but also often with a desire to protect others, to band together as a community (support or advocacy groups, friends and relatives, parents who also lost children in the same event, other kids who survived). It strikes me now, in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and the outpouring of what I think is liget which has followed, that we could sure use a better outlet for our liget than shouting at each other from across a political divide. I'm encouraged to have had several highly productive conversations with gun enthusiasts in the past month about finding common ground in this never-ending debate and to have seen the momentum continue up to today and hopefully at least through the midterms, because at the same time I'm discouraged by Congress' continuing lack of interest in finding a compromise that seems so ready for voters to support but which remains anathema to the NRA. Perhaps we would all be better off if we acknowledged we can learn from "savage" societies. After all, it's not like Europeans were free from savagery in any way, and certainly we've seen plenty of it in modern day America.

"The Red Pill" (quotation marks intended)

I just watched the movie The Red Pill [note italics] and I also just wrote a fairly lengthy review on Amazon:

First of all, this is a very ambitious and in many ways courageous movie to make. I'm glad it was made, and I think it does bring up some discussions that society should be having. I am a picture of privilege in our society, though—white, cis, male, educated, above-average income in my childhood home (in part due to two working parents)—and I resist the Men's Rights Movement now even more than I did before watching the film. Every complaint from the Men's Rights movement, no matter how legitimate (and some are, although not many), comes down to "men have it bad, too, so we should eliminate any progress women have made on that front." For example, (nearly) as many men are domestically abused as women*, so we shouldn't spend so much effort taking care of the abused women.

* If you believe the statistics cited, which at least one person interviewed in the movie did not. That same person is the only one who made the point that if the statistics are true, the solution should be to spend twice as much money on helping domestic violence victims.

There's also an enormous dose (to the point of overdose for me) of two-wrongs-make-a-right thinking. I reached the point of nearly vomiting when Elam's writing suggesting we have a month to beat up "violent bitches" is justified because he was responding to a feminist piece about beating up violent men.

The filmmaker herself had dialog with many people she did not agree with, but I don't remember her showing any dialog between feminists and so-called MRAs. She showed them shouting at each other a few times, but edited it such that the men always came off as being more calm and reasonable about the argument. It would be a more interesting movie to get some of these people who were shouting at each other, lock them in a comfortable room with cameras and microphones, and tell them you can come out after neither of you has shouted for 30 minutes. If they decide to sit in silence of 30 minutes, try again until you get two of them to talk to each other. The solution the MRAs offer is still one of us vs them when in fact we need a masculism movement which is not against feminism but is instead a male counterpart to it. That way more of us, no matter our gender or anything other identifies, can move on and get to a humanism movement. Then we'll be getting somewhere.

Honestly, I only gave this movie as many as 3 stars because I admire the filmmaker's willingness and desire to make it. The discussion is important to have, but it needs to be a dialog, not two monologues.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1761D74KFG2NZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B06XGY67WQ

There's more to say, though. Elam says early in the movie (and I'm paraphrasing) that trying to understand any part of his platform in isolation from the other parts is like trying to understand a snow drift by looking at each of the snow flakes individually. OK, so I'm trying to see the whole picture you've created. The whole picture that I see is that men have it worse than women and we have been oppressed by feminism. We work more dangerous jobs, die more in the military, lose out in custody battles, are fraudulently inflicted with fatherhood at times and illegally denied our paternal rights at other times, are victims of rape and domestic violence. Sure. All of these things are true. But they're not fighting to get the more rights for you. They're fighting to level the playing field even if that means denying women the rights they have been fighting for since, well, at least since the suffragette movement. That's the whole snowdrift, Mr. Elam, like it or not.

The red pill is such a beautiful metaphor, I hate to see it co-opted by the so-called Men's Right's Movement. One person's red pill is another's blue pill in this case. The men who use this term think they are waking up to reality instead of going back to sleep into the "comfort" of feminism. Feminists of the 60s and 70s (the feminists of my parents' generation and, I think, also the feminists of my generation in the 80s and early 90s) were clearly consuming a red pill and inviting everyone to join them. Many of us today are still inviting others to consume that very same red pill, then along comes a group of broflakes who tell us that red pill is actually blue and if I won't admit that it's red I'm the one who's sexist. Wake up, fellas, you have the power to make many of the changes you want to see in your lives. You have the power to engage in dialog with feminists instead of dismissing them. You have the power to build a genuine masculism which is not in opposition to, but in concert with, feminism to make a better society for all of us. Wake up.

feeling like writing…

I'm home from walking the dogs. As is often the case, the rest of the family is asleep (including the dogs, who tend to fall asleep after a drink of water and a treat—can dogs having a late-night snack be said to be "#bumsteading?" For that matter, what is "#bumsteading?" I haven't defined that one on this blog yet. I don't think. #Bumsteading is a practice of a late-night snack that's often far too large and possibly decadent than is really healthy right before bed. Named after Dagwood Bumstead, of course, the namesake of the Dagwood Sandwich. I tried for a little while to get the trend going on social media, but I think the closest I came was a friend who uses it now frequently, but not with the #. Oh, well, I guess the 15 minutes of social media fame Andy Warhol promised me is still to come.) But I digress. As is my common practice when I'm in this sort of mood. What sort of mood? Well, it's the kind of mood where I feel like writing instead or reading or watching or listening. Usually that means my brain is too scattered to focus on outside stimuli. But today is a different feeling than just that. Like I said, I'm only a tiny bit manic. But what I am is kinda zombified. Allergens in our backyard have conspired to make sure none of us really sleep well, so I'm tired. There are other contributors, but not worth going into right now. My brain isn't like Lightning McQueen today, buzzing around at a million miles an hour in every different direction at once, it's more like a zombie, one of the slow zombies, but not a totally brain dead one—like a Warm Bodies zombie, maybe? I'm not sure, it's been awhile since I saw that movie, and even then I only saw it and didn't hear it because I was mixing Foley for it. Oh, snap another digression. I guess I'm in a combo kind of day, like a Semi-Smart Zombie Lightning McQueen.

Well, to quote Douglas Adams' Humpback whale falling into the planet Magrathea, "have I built up any coherent picture of things? No."

And now I've pretty much tapped all the energy I had for writing in making that video clip out of the radio show, because the one in the movie that I found on youtube just isn't as good and I couldn't figure out how to post audio only on this blog. Pity. (The radio show is my absolute favorite telling of that story. I've heard it well over 100 times by now and I've only read the book a handful of times, never really got into the BBC TV series, and was one of the few fans who liked the movie even though it couldn't hold a candle to the radio play.)

Charlottesville

This Vice News piece has some really shocking footage.  We still don't know the full story, and perhaps the full story is actually unknowable. Another thing worth noting about Trump's press conference hissy-fit yesterday was that he made it clear he doesn't have any information the media doesn't have. That's either a lie and betrays a cover-up of what he does know, or it's frightening. 

That's a tangent, though. This video and all the evidence I've seen so far clearly does show at least two sides engaging in violence. Who "started" it? Was the violence of at least one side justified? I don't know. Another thing I can be fairly certain of is the alt-reich is ruled by fear (and anger but for me, anger is generally an expression of fear). As for the alt-reich nutbags complaining about being ruled an unlawful protest because of the actions of a handful of instigators, all I can say is wah-wah, you poor broflakes—I've been in a permitted protest ruled unlawful because of a few instigators. It happens. Get over it. 

And speaking of tangents, well, that's exactly what happened to us at the DNC free speech zone in 2000. My beef was not with the anarchists who refused to get down off the fence—I wouldn't have done it, but I didn't begrudge them their own protest. The police were right to call us all an unlawful protest, though. I was disappointed when they unplugged Ozomatli, glad to see them doing what they always do and "taking their message to the streets" (their words). My beef was the LAPD as we dispersed. And even more offense was the media praising them for averting a riot. The only riot that was threatening to start there was theirs. They broke up a genuinely non-violent protest. They told us to disperse and to use one particular exit from the zone. When we were "attempting to comply with their order," mounted police officers armed with tear gas and beanbag bullets chased us back in the exit they had told us to use. Fortunately I and my friends made it out of the other exit they had told us not to use and we managed to avoid any serious exposure to tear gas and any "non-lethal" bullets flying through the crowd. Did anyone fire "non-lethal" bullets at the Alt-Right broflakes in Charlottesville? I haven't heard any reports of it. Would they have fired back with lethal bullets? They certainly brag as though they would have. 

I do acknowledge that there are at least two sides to any fight except a few rare exceptions. (Most notable are Bull Connor vs. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnamese government vs. the Buddhist monks.) This video clearly shows this is not one of those cases. Don't get me wrong, I'm still vehemently anti-confederacy and anti-Nazi. I still condemn Trump's message of "many sides" to this story, applaud his scripted comments on Monday, and condemn the organizers of this protest—which was, in their own words, "not a non-violent protest." (Well, maybe I'm paraphrasing, I don't especially want to watch the video again just to confirm that statement.) I also condemn anyone who *instigated* violence no matter what their justification for doing it. I haven't seen enough to know who instigated what, and I'm not especially interested in discussing opinions on that point. I invite my Republican friends to simply condemn that violence and white nationalism without trying to blame anyone else for it. 

last one awake in the house....

I was going to watch some TV or maybe a movie. The house is asleep, or at least on their way to asleep, and I'm up. This happens a lot in our house. I don't know whether I actually need less sleep than my family or if I'm just running a bigger sleep deficit, but whatever the reason, I'm up. I usually watch TV, sometimes tool around social networks, very rarely read a book—you know, the old fashioned way with paper and bindings and (nowadays) reading glasses? But tonight I'm writing. Sure, I did a little stream-surfing, some social networking before I got here, and there's no guarantee I won't tab away as soon as I see a (1) in one of those tabs, but I'm here now. (Well, actually I went through a few tabs in the middle of writing that sentence, but I'm back. For now.)

So why do I write? The one rule of being a writer is to write and you can see as well as I can how often I do that on this blog. (Here, I'll save you the clicks and counting and stuff: not very often.) If you see me on the social networks, too, hopefully you've noticed how carefully I compose many of my postings and I do that daily. OK, hourly. Minutely? Is that a thing? But maybe I'm kidding myself, maybe you read my posts or this blog and you think, yeah, this dude is not a writer. Although probably not if you're reading the blog. I mean, why would you read a blog in this day and age if you didn't have at least some interest in either the writing style or the content? And since I basically have no content, or at least none I'm aware of, it must be the style. Not that I know who you are or even how many of you there are. I'm not interested in analytics so I've never really figured out what the different numbers they show me on the back end mean. That's not why I'm here. I'm here to write and throw it out there. I'm not even interested in whether it sticks. I guess I feel more than a little self-indulgent with that, but there it is. Honesty.

Yeah, I got sucked down the social network rabbit hole. Interesting conversation about micro- and macro-economics with an elementary school friend I haven't talked to since Jimmy Carter was President. Well... maybe once or twice during the Reagan years. In fact, I think we were at a party together once, but my memory is a little vague on that night. Hmmm, wonder why.

random writings while waiting for the oatmeal

Oatmeal is simmering, my family is happily reading, and I'm tired of reading news of fresh disasters on my phone, so I'm going to write something. I don't know what it'll be yet, and I don't have much time.

Before I resorted to my phone (handier int he kitchen than a hard-cover book), I was reading John Le Carré's memoir The Pigeon Tunnels—which is fantastic, by the way. Specifically, a chapter about the last days of Phnom Penh before it fell to the Khmer Rouge. There was a wonderful anecdote (possibly true) about a woman who took a whole pack of orphaned children in to the American Consulate demanding passports for them all. When she was asked where their mothers were, she said "I am their mother." When further questioned about how she could be the mother of so many children roughly the same age, she said "I had a lot of quadruplets." According to the legend, the wink and nod worked and she got the children out.

Then I got to my phone and there was a story about what's happening in the Philippines right now, IS fighters taking over a city on the one majority-muslim island (or one of the few ones?) in the nation, Mindanao. It makes me want to fly over there and adopt a lot of quadruplets.

Alright, oatmeal is ready and family is hungry.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Well... the title may be a bit hyperbolic. After all, I haven't conducted an exhaustive review of all 48 previous birthdays (that count includes my 0th birthday for the math nerds out there), but today was the best I can remember. Many who are reading this know that my 48th year was not my favorite year. To those who don't know that, it may come as no surprise anyway: mid-life crisis (or mid-life change or transition or male menopause or The Change or whatever you want to call it) often hits guys around this age. So there's that. Fathers often feel a bit of the same emotional transition, too, regardless of their own age. And only a select few of you (all people I know IRW) know the full extent of how hard that has hit me this year. I'd rather not go into details now, but just rest assured it's been a helluva ride for me. Then there's my mother-in-law dying this year. That was a whopper. She passed about two weeks after my birthday last year and it hit me much harder than I gave it credit for at the time. I was expecting to need to be there to support my wife when she lost her mother. And her brother, and our son who lost his Gheegi, but I was not expecting it to hit me so hard personally. And it did. Yeah howdy, it sure did. Then there's the "enough already, 2016" phenomenon that's been so well covered by social media: the loss of seminal artists I respect deeply like David Bowie, Prince, Carrie Fisher, and so many others. I think one of the reasons this year's crop of dying celebrities hit social networks so hard is that this is really the first big wave of the seminal artists of "m-m-m-my generation, babe" to die of old age. (Hopefully Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend will still be around for awhile so we can sing that song without busting out in tears--due respect to John Entwhistle and of course Keith Moon, may they both rest in peace.)

Anyway, you get the point. My 48th year sucked. Enough said.

Today starts my 49th year, and I really hope the awesomeness of the celebration is indicative of an awesome year. Really, the celebration started last night. I was a mess yesterday. Stressed out and overwhelmed by that stress. Not a pretty picture. My most darling wife, Kathleen--my biggest supporter this year--swooped in and took care of business, getting dinner on the table (usually my "job"), taking more than her share of the responsibility getting our kid to bed, and showing me nothing but love and support the whole time. When I woke up today, the world looked brighter even before Kathleen and our son chimed in wishing me a happy birthday. Then Kathleen made me breakfast (again, usually my "job" in the mornings), which included delicious waffles, fresh strawberries, and bacon. That's right, a woman who hasn't eaten bacon since she was about 7 years old made me bacon, as she has done every year on my birthday. Cooking bacon is a full-body experience, and she is not the kind of non-pork eater who sneaks a bit of bacon now and then, she just plain doesn't like it. And yet she covers herself with bacon-grease splatters and stinks up the whole house with bacon smell for me every year. If that's not gonna make a guy feel special, I don't know what is. And that was all before 8am.

I don't always work on my birthday even when it does fall mid-week, but this year we had no choice, so we were on the Foley stage all day finishing off the footsteps and getting back into some props we didn't finish last week. Kathleen, yes the same Kathleen who cooked me bacon, walked some of the best Foley I've heard in a long time. Like probably since she did the gun sound for an actor who clearly wasn't comfortable holding a gun. I'm telling you, after she did that Foley, the guy looked badass with that gun in his hand. I still don't know how she did it, but she did. Well, today was even more impressive than that. We'll share more about the details when the movie is released (or maybe near release), but let's just say there's a prop that is generally considered an inanimate object by most people but which the director wants to come alive. Today it came alive for me. Kathleen did that. What a gift!

And then, and then! My 1st cousin had a baby today, so the latest member of our son's generation was born on my birthday. That's pretty cool. Thanks, Tova, for having your baby today!

Oh, yeah, then there's dinner. I got to make dinner tonight, and I love making dinner. I've been fine-tuning my chicken noodle soup (from scratch) recipe, and I think tonight's was the best I've made yet. And if Kathleen and Sorren disagreed with that assessment, they were kind enough to keep that to themselves. :D But AFTER dinner came the most awesome birthday cake, a gateau, beautifully designed, and presented with 4 candles to indicate decades (including BB8 and Kylo Ren candles, woah) and a big, fat 8. Such great presentation, complete with a pillow dance (from our boy) and, of course, a song (from both of them).

I also got a batch of delightful emails, too many facebook birthday greetings for me to respond to today, a balloon and edible arrangment from my mom (combine that with the gateau and our eating habits, and we've got dessert for a week!) and so very much love and goodness throughout the day.

Wow. I'm floored. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, son. Thanks, mom and dad. Thanks to everyone.

routines

So I've recently come into a morning routine. Recently like about a week ago. I'm not a routine person, never really aspired to or desired more routine in my life.... I've always preferred to be spontaneous and to go with the flow and all that kind of thing. But every now and then I'm reminded of the value of a routine, especially in certain inherently repetitive aspects of life. Morning is going to be roughly the same thing whether I have a routine or not: there will be waking, coffee, preparing our kid's lunch, getting breakfast on the table, making sure said kid gets to school, getting my own butt to work, etc. So when someone suggested a morning routine to me, I decided to give it a try. It's nothing new, no new ideas of what to include in that routine, just plugging in a little time for meditation. In my case, some in the house and then while the oatmeal is baking (dude, haven't tried baked oatmeal yet? check it out) taking the dog for a walk around the park. I'm not very good at routine, though, because I've been so resistant to it my entire life. Last week went pretty well with it until Sunday morning when I just slept in because that's what one does on Sunday mornings. Then Monday morning went alright, but Tuesday morning I just wasn't getting out of bed yet. This morning I'm up earlier than my "official" routine starts, which is why I'm here.

And now I'm at a loss as to what to write. I think I had an idea of what I wanted to write, but now it's gone. Lost in the mire of routine.

writing just to write - 4 March 2017

I don't know what I'm going to write here. I'm just writing. I keep getting these reminders of how hard it is to write if you don't practice, and I don't practice. There are reasons. Always reasons. Excused. I'm a slave to King Busy. I'm a father, a husband, a small business owner, no one's paying me to write and I've got "better" things to do with my time. But is it "better" to stare at facebook for an extra 20 minutes? Last week, I spent 83 minutes watching the worst movie I've ever seen. Literally. What could I have written in those 83 minutes? I don't know. I'll never know, but I can find out what I'll write in the next 10 minutes right now, and that's exactly what I'm planning to do. Cave mode is on. Well, not literally, because I'm on the Foley stage computer and that control room is not cave compatible, but the browser only has one tab open (this one), the email client is quit, my phone is in silent mode (and screen-side down), and the rest of the house is still sleeping. So I've got nothing better to do than write. Just write. Not edit. Maybe I'll do that later, maybe I won't. This is full on stream of consciousness writing at the moment, though, although I can't seem to stop myself from occasionally pausing to think about what comes next and definitely can't stop my fingers from correcting typos. That's just muscle memory, I think, but the former.... is that a bad habit or a good one developing? I think it's a good one developing. I want to go back and edit that sentence, but I'm not going to. I think the pause and think where is this stream going... that's a good thing, I think, even if I don't go anywhere interesting with it. Which I'm not doing right now. Certainly not. I'm just writing. Well, listening to Beyoncé and writing. I guess that's not really cave mode compatible, is it? But it does seem to go with writing better than it does with dialog editing, and I do it with dialog editing sometimes, too (low volume comparatively, and preferably instrumental music), so I'll allow it. I'm not in airplane mode, though, which is what I usually do in cave mode on the phone. I don't think that makes a big difference, though, at least not today. Pausing to sip coffee is definitely cave mode compatible. And, now, my kid is out of bed, 4 minutes before I'd said I'd keep writing.

the creative process

Today I had the distinct pleasure of screening a short movie which has not yet been released, and while I'm dying to gush about it I don't think I'm allowed to yet. But I can and will say that my creative juices are flowing in the aftermath of watching this. I don't trust myself to say any more right now.

Yeah, well....

So much for daily writing. I have been keeping a journal on paper, but it's a week-at-a-glance calendar and I'm keeping it just to track a few details of my day, not to write. Oh, well....

daily writing

Yeah, so Virginia Woolf kept a diary. Yeah, so I used to keep one. I have at several times in my life, although I don't know that I ever did it daily or with the same diligence and discipline of Ms. Woolf, but I do think it helped me in intangible ways when I was doing it. I don't have a decent place to do it in the house right now, and I want to do it more, so until I buy a new old school one with paper and stuff, I'm just going to make an effort to write here more regularly. Again. I've made this effort before. I've set myself goals, some of which are found in the history, and some which only I know. I haven't kept those goals. I'm still not the writer I fancy myself, not even casually and certainly not in any way that's useful or productive professionally. But I'll keep trying. It's stream of consciousness right now (in case that isn't obvious) and I sat down knowing I didn't have "enough" time to devote to it tonight, so it's going to be short and disjointed. Which is interesting. More interesting, maybe, than long and disjointed, but probably not as interesting as short and concise. Perhaps. Perhaps would've been a better word than maybe, but even though I went back to correct a typo right there, I resisted the urge to edit the word. And now I'm out of time for tonight. There you have it.

Memories of the Texas State Troopers

I was pulled over in Texas. It was a Thursday night, probably around 10pm, and I was on my way from Albuquerque to Kalamazoo, MI. Yes, I was speeding. I was clocked at 83 in a 75 and that seems about right. (The car has an analog speedometer, so it's hard to be precise even with the cruise control on.) I saw headlights shining on the shoulder, had time to think "huh, that's odd, wonder what's--" and then drive through the headlights and think "oh, crap, I just drove through a speed trap." Sure enough, he pulled out, caught up, and pulled me over. He was very clear from the start that he was going to issue me a warning, but he also wanted me to get out of the car and come with him while he was running my license and plate, which struck me as odd. It turned out he suspected me of running drugs. That might've had something to do with the bag of freshly roasted Hatch green chile in the back seat, but my hunch is it was mostly about a sporty coupe at that time of day on that stretch of Interstate. The officer was never rude or especially threatening to me, but he clearly didn't trust me from the moment he started asking me questions. I suppose it's probably my nervous demeanor, and by the time he was searching my car, another cop had arrived on the scene who even asked if I was "a nervous person?" My response was "not especially, no," although in retrospect I wish I'd said "when I'm pulled over, asked to get out of my car, interrogated about drugs that might be in my possession, asked to stand 20 feet off the freeway in 50° weather wearing nothing more than what was comfortable in a heated car while two cops rifle through my belongings looking for something they're not going to find but which would cost me my freedom if someone thought it would be funny to plan on me? Yeah, I'm a little nervous then." The other thing I wanted to say at the time, but it's probably better I didn't, was "do you encounter a lot of people who aren't nervous in a situation like this one?" This was after I'd been given no less than 4 opportunities to tell the cops about a "small quantity of marijuana" I might have either in the car or on my person. Honestly, officer, if I'd had any, I would've told you right off the bat. I haven't been in possession of even a small quantity of marijuana since before that car was built, before any of the clothes I was wearing were made, so I'm 100% confident I'm not forgetting anything.

Eventually, whether I was nervous or not, no matter how convinced they were that I was lying, they either satisfied themselves that I wasn't carrying any drugs or they got bored and decided to catch another fish in the barrel to see if the drugs were easier to find. It took me a few minutes to get my car put back together enough to carry on with my road trip, I snapped a picture over my shoulder which didn't come out at all, and went on my way. The 2nd cop had already left and the 1st one pulled out faster than I and had caught someone else before I even caught up to him. I set the cruise control to the low side of the 75 line on my speedometer and got out of Texas as quickly and efficiently as I could without taking the chance of meeting one of his colleagues.

So here's the open letter part of this blog. It didn't really occur to me at the time how much old, boring, white-guy privilege I'd just enjoyed. I'm not saying I would've been shot or even handcuffed had I not been an old, boring, white guy (although who knows?), but the interaction would have been different. If I'm perceived as a threat because I'm nervous, it's not a far walk to think someone who is nervous, maybe has a chip on their shoulder because they get pulled over more often than I do, and more accurately fits the "profile" of drug runner, had longer hair, was wearing a cheeky graphic tee and tattered jeans, the smell in the car wasn't roasted chiles but the roach in the ash tray. So far I'm describing myself not that many years ago on a similar road trip. (I don't actually remember smoking marijuana in the car on a long solo road trip, but I'm not going to say it never happened.) Then imagine if I'm not white, that ads something to the equation. Maybe that's more the profile the Texas State Troopers were looking for, maybe it's not, but non-white people are more exposed to being profiled and someone who's been profiled before is more likely to get defensive in that situation. Defensiveness is surely a red flag. My lovely wife also pointed out this is why it's different taking a solo road trip if you're a woman. What? Surely, the cop thinks the woman is less of a threat, right? Less suspicious? Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't matter. A woman has a totally different feeling being alone on the side of the freeway in the middle of nowhere with a strange man, even if he is wearing a uniform.

So much is made by the "all lives matter" crowd of how the suspect should behave. If only these young black men would just go along with being questioned, searched, detained, they'd still be alive. When was the last time you were pulled over? What were the circumstances? Did you remember everything about staying calm, calling the officer "sir," not being nervous, or at least not showing it? I reminded myself as I was slowing down and pulling off the road, and I still blew it. I forgot to call the officer "sir" until he started asking about drugs in the car, and I'm sure that made me seem even more nervous than if I hadn't suddenly started calling him "sir." There should be a presumption of innocence in these encounters, on both sides. I don't know about cop training, but I do know the legal system is designed to presume a suspect is innocent even as they're being arrested and booked. I know enough about human nature to know there's no way cops make that presumption, even if they are trained to. I also know enough about human nature to know I distrusted those cops. I literally watched a Washtenaw County Sherrif drop a firecracker as he was bending down to pick it up saying "oh, look at this? I thought you guys said you didn't have any fireworks?" I've been pulled over in a car full of teenage boys because of a "visual obstruction" (graduation tassel on the rearview mirror). These are not major abuses of power, but they play into me being nervous when a cop is searching my car for evidence of a felony.

The cop who pulled me over did everything right in terms of trying to make me comfortable: he told me before he asked me out of the car he was going to issue a warning (not a ticket), when he did bring up drugs he made it clear (repeatedly) that what he suspected I was most likely to be carrying would not be a big deal, he never treated me like a criminal or someone he was afraid of (until he had me stand so far off the highway.... I'm still not sure I understand that one--it felt like either intimidation or to get me out of sight of the dashboard camera). But they both treated me like they didn't trust me. They asked me the same questions over and over to check for inconsistencies. They played good cop bad cop with me (mildly, but still, I recognize the game). They questioned my story with incredulity. ("Your college reunion, eh? Do you remember what month you graduated in? Why is your reunion in October?")

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a stop the officer barely remembers because it went so smoothly. If they do remember one thing about it, I'm sure it's the bag of Hatch. Why a cop from the state next to New Mexico had never seen that before is a mystery to me, but maybe this is their first autumn on the job. They were both pretty young.

I'll tell you what happened on the return trip, though, the unintended consequence of this routine traffic stop. I made it a point to gas up, caffeine up, and bathroom break it up enough in Oklahoma and close enough to the border so that I wouldn't have to stop on my way through the panhandle of Texas. I pinned that cruise control to 75MPH and made my way through Texas without spending a dime in their economy. I've driven through Texas on I-40 at least a half dozen times in my life and I'm certain that's the first time I didn't spend any money there.

ponderings on hearing loss from a professional sound guy, chapter 2: the drama

DISCLAIMER:

Most importantly, let me assure you the reader now that my hearing is not currently compromised in any way.

I'm not going to post this at the same time I'm writing it. Another thing, I'm not experiencing permanent hearing loss. Yet. But I am getting to an age and in the business I'm in, every time my ears get plugged with wax I start thinking "is this it?" The whole idea in writing it is to document my experiences of my hearing as I go through little hiccups as I have recently. Being a professional sound guy, I'm concerned about damaging my career by even talking about it, which is why I don't publish as I write, have written and will continue to write some of these ponderings with paper and pen to transcribe later.

---------------------------
ponderings on hearing loss from a professional sound guy
chapter 2: the drama

I can't remember the last time I could hear properly. It feels like months, probably been weeks, maybe even days. I know it's getting bad when I seek professional help to clean the wax out. I don't really trust other people with my ears. I've had a few bad experiences, but nothing really dangerous. The worst was an audiologist who used a metal scoop to dig out wax. Sure, she used water, too, and even water mostly, but the metal scoop was another go-to tool in her arsenal and it hurt. Worse than the use of metal, though, was her complete lack of compassion over the pain and fear I was experiencing.

So I usually get to this point where I'm on the verge of panic, my mind running around and spinning on the dangers of permanent hearing loss. I'm sure I'm going deaf, positive this is the time it's not just wax, that I'm really loosing it for good. It's only after a day or two of that kind of panic that I call the doctor's office for a lavage. (Pro tip: skip the audiologist and find a good MA who does ear lavage.) I had that lavage yesterday and I still can't hear out of either ear. I mean, I can hear, just not very well. I figure I'm loosing about 20-30dB above 1kHz. That's pretty serious. The standard reply (even from a good MA who is good at ear lavage) is "sometimes it takes a little while for your hearing to come back. And that's a standard response because it's true. My ears suffer trauma just like any other part of my body, and sometimes it takes a little while to really feel relief of symptoms after trauma. Still and all, there's always a really great moment in a good lavage for me. An a-ha moment. It's like that moment when you're swimming and the water drains out of your ear. A sort of crackly aural sunrise. A beautiful feeling of getting back what was feared to be lost. I never had that feeling on this lavage, but I took the MA's word for it: she could see my ear drums and it might just be water and would clear soon. It didn't.

So a few days later, here I am, back in the doctor's office. My regular doc (actually a CNP, but what the heck, she's a healer, so I'm good with "doc") is listening to my paranoid ramblings very patiently. You see, I've been "researching" my condition. You know, the kind of research where you sit up late at night staring at a computer screen (or your phone) and decide you must certainly have cancer. (In my case, it's vestibular cancer.) Finally, after listening to my panic, she patiently gets up with her ear-looker (what's that thing called?) and takes a look. My right ear is totally clogged with wax again. The other one has a massive infection on the ear drum that wasn't showing a few days ago. Undoubtedly the fluid was already behind the ear drum, and that's why it sounded like I still had wax in front of the ear drum. What none of us understands is why I haven't felt any pain, but no matter, antibiotics are prescribed, prescription is filled (after a bit of shopping around to find out who takes my insurance because I evidently I haven't filled a prescription in awhile, or maybe I just never noticed how much they cost), and the course is begun.

Oh, and the right ear gets another lavage, and this was the best part of the appointment, because I did get that beautiful aural sunrise I love so much. It's almost worth letting the wax build up now and then just for that beautiful feeling of hearing again. The world was so loud, and sounds that usually bother me (most notably traffic) were gloriously and beautifully and overwhelmingly loud.

ponderings on hearing loss from a professional sound guy, chapter 1: ancient history

DISCLAIMER:

Most importantly, let me assure you the reader now that my hearing is not currently compromised in any way.

For professional reasons, I'm not going to post any chapters in this series at the same time I'm writing them, and some portions are written long after the fact. Another thing, I am not experiencing permanent hearing loss. Yet. But I am getting to an age and in the business I'm in, every time my ears get plugged with wax I start thinking "is this it?" The whole idea in writing it is to document my experiences of my hearing as I go through those "is this it?" moments, as I have recently. Being a professional sound guy, I'm concerned about damaging my career by even talking about it, which is why I don't publish as I write, have written and will continue to write some of these ponderings with paper and pen to transcribe later.

---------------------------
ponderings on hearing loss from a professional sound guy
chapter 1: ancient history

I've had a long relationship with my ears. When I was young, I was young (ob) and did foolish things young people do. For one thing, I didn't know I was going into a career using my ears. For another, I was young and stupid and bulletproof. Or so I thought. There were rock concerts, of course. There were clubs. A little bit later there was mixing live rock and roll without any regard for my ears. There were messages such as this one: Delicate Butterfly of a Man Wears Earplugs at Hardcore Show. I was a punk. And unlike my punk sensibilities of today, I was a conforming punk. I was not going to be the only "delicate butterfly of a man" wearing earplugs. Or standing farther away from the speakers than my friends. That was not happening. Kids, don't listen to shit like this. It's bullshit to imply that taking care of your hearing is somehow not punk or not manly or not cool. Being able to hear well for as long as possible is punk and manly and cool. Ear plugs are a drag, no doubt. I still don't like to wear them. There are some that are better than others, both in comfort and in the quality of the listening experience through them. I don't have any endorsement here, but if you don't like one, try another one. Protect your hearing, though. That feeling the morning after a concert when the world sounds flat is not normal and it's not healthy.

There were other stupid things I did. The one which occasionally comes back to haunt me is a particularly misguided skin-diving incident. I was in high school. My family was on vacation in the British Virgin Islands on a sailboat. (Yeah, I know, poor me, right?) I noticed a wreck in about 100' of water on the charts and read about it in the guide book, and I wanted to see it. We were anchored a few hundred yards away, so I snorkeled out to the spot, as best I could, and looked. No way I could see through 100' of water--at least not on that day, not in that bay. So I dove down a bit, and still couldn't see anything. So I took a huge breath and dove down as far as I could go. I still hadn't seen anything (maybe I was in the wrong spot?) when my left ear screamed at me in pain. No one had ever taught me, and I'd never bothered to learn, that I needed to equalize the pressure in my ears when diving deeper than a swimming pool. Oh, that hurt. It hurt a lot. I immediately turned back to the surface and forgot completely about the wreck, snorkeled back to the boat and tried to ignore the pain, hoping it would feel better soon. It didn't. The next morning I had a whopper of an ear infection, the most painful one I ever remember (although I did have one more on my honeymoon that came close; more on that later, I'm sure), and we were getting on an airplane that day, or maybe the day after. Needless to say, it was a pretty painful flight, and I went on antibiotics as soon as possible, which cleared up that pain and emboldened me to think I hadn't done any permanent damage.

Still to this day, I have no evidence of permanent damage, I've had plenty of experiences to indicate there was more to that injury than one infection. The first time I remember feeling that one come back to haunt me was shortly after moving onto a houseboat. I was 28 years old, living in Portland, OR, working as a sound guy. (Minor digression here: living on a houseboat is awesome. I highly recommend it for everyone at least once in their lives, especially when you're young, single and/or childless. If you have this opportunity and all of those conditions apply to you, take the opportunity and thank me later. If you're not single nor childless, the calculation might be a little more complicated than that, but give it some serious thought.) I'd been living on the houseboat for a few weeks and had water skied at least a dozen times in the Wilamette river when my balance started to feel funky. I didn't think much of it because I was living on a houseboat and thought it was simply a case of "sea legs." When I went (temporarily) deaf in my left ear, though, I went to see my doctor. He diagnosed me as having a viral infection in my inner ear which would clear up on it's own. He figured I'd fallen hard on the left side and gotten some river water pushed through my ear drum in the process. It did clear up, and I figured he'd nailed it, but it's also pretty likely I fell at least as hard on the right side and never had an infection on that side.

So that's the history. At the time of the houseboat, I was working in the sound business, and I wasn't unconcerned about going deaf, even though it was temporary. I was still pretty young and stupid and bulletproof. I lost my stereo image for a week or so, but I could still hear fine out of my right ear, so I worked with my head slightly turned and trusted meters and instinct for any stereo imaging concerns. Life went on, my ear went back to normal, and my career as a professional sound guy marched forwards....

The Landscape of Fatherhood

A friend of mine on the facebook (one I've actually met IRW) posted this blog about being a mommy writer and it's great. There were three things that really struck me about it:

1. It's about dads, too. 
2. It's about all creative endeavors, not just writing. 
3. It also applies to reading. 

I'm a dad. Obviously. So I don't have some of the same biological explanations that moms do for how having a child has changed me. Women carry the cells of their babies for the rest of their lives, and vice versa. As far as I know, other than the genetic material I supplied to get that process started, I don't have the same kind of physical connection with my son, but there's still an undeniable connection. I don't feel his cry in my body the way my wife does, but I still feel it. His presence in this world has made an enormous difference in the landscape of my inner self. I've also grown closer to his mommy, my wife. I've loved her deeply since the day we met (as with so many men, it took me awhile to figure this out, but I really do believe it was there from the start), but something changed when she starting making our son from scratch inside her belly. Again, as is sadly typical of men, it took me awhile to figure this out, to honor it, to trust it, but it's been there for almost 9 years now. While the author of the aforementioned blog writes she "once held fast to the feminist narrative that having children wouldn’t define" her, I totally understand what she means. The masculine narrative that having children won't change us seems ancient and instinctive; it's similar to the tired old yarn that being in a relationship won't change us. Neither of these notions serves us. We are denying a reality we can't change. Being in a relationship changes us, whether that relationship is a new friend, a co-worker, a lover, a spouse, or a child. To quote a pastor speaking to the newcomers every week in her congregations, "we are different when you are here." Furthermore, we are different after we've met you. No one can stand in the same river twice, and humanity is a river with a very powerful flow. 

So, yeah, being a dad has changed me. No doubt. And who I am goes very directly into everything I create. It's somehow comforting to think my creative voice somehow transcends this, but there's really nothing comfortable about my creative voice; never has been, and (hopefully) never will be. I've grown out of the youthful, romantic notion that I have to suffer for my art, but that doesn't mean I'm every truly comfortable when I'm in a creative state. The best work I've ever done in my life, starting from a young age, are when I'm not sure whether it's good or not. It's a constant struggle. That's why I push myself to do and try new things, to write when I'm more comfortable working with sound, to work differently within the medium I am (relatively) comfortable in, why I shy away from using templates for the final mix on a project (which is, for me, the most creative part).... 

One of the great changes I've noticed is that my attention span has changed. It's not that it's gotten shorter or longer, it's that my brain has gotten used to interruptions. These can be literal interruptions, as this morning when I was trying to finish reading the blog post and my son was literally standing on my office chair behind me and tickling my neck with his (or my) hair. The more surprising ones, though, are when I'm at work, in a dark room, far from the literal distractions of fatherhood, and I find myself deep in thought about my wife or my son or our dog. The landscape of fatherhood follows me everywhere I go. And it's a good view. 

semi-annual writing push

It's time once again for my semi-annual (or perhaps it's annual, maybe even bi-annual or less frequent than that) push to write more. Of course, as always, this urge, this pressing urge to express myself in writing, comes when I don't have time for it. Especially not today. Or this week, really. But here it is and here I am, getting in a few lines while the eggs cook on the stove, hardly the right way to write. But when have I ever done things the right way? I suppose I have, I suppose there is a "do it right" voice in my head, and that's why I feel as though I should wait and write when I can sit down in 'the writing chair' (as a friend who is a bona fide, published writer, calls it) for 8 hours a day and just write. Well, I am in a writing chair, and at a keyboard, not my stoopid phone, so that's something, right? And if the eggs get burnt, I'm the one who has to eat them, so here I am, consciousness streaming away, vomiting my words out onto this blog where probably no one will read them.

So this guy is walking down the street, sees a perfectly good tennis ball on the curb, so he picks it up and puts it in his pocket. A few blocks later, he runs into a woman he knows and they stop to chat. He notices she keeps starting at the tennis ball in his pocket and he self-consciously says "oh, it's just I've got a tennis ball." She says "that must really hurt. I had tennis elbow once and it was really painful."

I love tennis balls pic.twitter.com/DpC43wFhTn

— Life on Earth (@planetepics) February 13, 2016

I could use this dude's services....

There are times when we get so busy at Hear Kitty Studios that someone inevitably jokes we should clone ourselves. I think I've finally found the guy who can help us:

I just wish he'd put his phone number on the tailgate....

From Gordon Eagleheart:

Last night [the night of September 27th, 2015] was a powerful night. Our Mother’s shadow was revealed on Grandmother Moon while we prayed and offered music to Fire, Air, Earth and Water in the Rio Grande Bosque. During sleep time powerful feelings joined me. All the feelings of living with plague in the land enveloped me. We were one grand sensation of great suffering. It was the dark ages in the current moment. The taste of death was everywhere. I clearly got that I am plague. I am part of this consuming darkness. I got that the message I offer is unwanted by those living the modern consumerism lifestyle. My message is a plague to their way of being with the world. If people awaken and realize the death they are bringing to life on this planet, their beloved lifestyle will die. They avoid hearing relatedness like the plague and strive to maintain separateness. They do not want to hear that the modern way of life is a plague that is consuming life on our beloved Mother Earth. The modern socioeconomic system is a plague raging on and is a consuming darkness. Yes, the shadows of the Mother were shining bright last night on Grandmother Moon.

I walk forward knowing that Life's intent is strong and nurtures the continuity and sustainability of Life. Eventually the plague will come to an end. I know not how much beautiful Life will be consumed while the plague rages on.

His words perfectly and beautifully express a feeling I've often had. I'm not going to try to restate them in any way. If you want more clarification, read them again, meditate on them, whatever it takes to understand.

What I do want to expound on is the way a similar idea to Gordon's has been and can be expressed in popular culture. The Walking Dead has revealed (several seasons ago, so I don't think I have to put any "spoiler alert" on this) that all the heroes of the show are infected by whatever it is that's turned most of the world's population into zombies. It's in them, too. In some dormant state. What if that "whatever it is" has been in us for generations? Since the plague? Longer? What if that "whatever it is" is, in fact, who we are?