"a note in the margin"

I'm a cynic, fiercely trying to be an optimist.
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Washington D.C.: My story so far

“Our eyes see change, inside, we're the same as we ever were.”

-The Kinks, Living on a Thin Line

As of tomorrow, I will have lived in D.C. for four months(College Park MD if you must, but being part of the metropolitan area I'm going to call it D.C.). It's been a half-odyssey of mixed blessings. That being said, I'm happier than I've been in years. Previously I lived in southern West Virginia for six years and the Pittsburgh area before that. Lengthy excursions to Columbus OH and Los Angeles were mixed in there somewhere. As many people from back wherever are asking how I like it here, I figured I would put it to summation here, now that I've been here long enough to really assess my new environment.

For all I expected and did not expect, this relocation has prompted far more than I ever anticipated it would. Parts of me which I previously hid are coming out, and parts of me I was previously praised for go largely unnoted. There is a sensation of trying to find my feet that accompanies these changes, but though I still stumble occasionally, I am increasingly confident that I am making this adjustment with as much grace as can be expected.

It's hard to really compartmentalize the pros and cons—the world has essentially been turned inside out and while there has been an awakening akin to what I expected, it goes far beyond what I thought would be the case in almost every way. Life never ceases to confront me with new challenges, and offer previously-unconsidered rewards.

When I was at Marshall University in Huntington, WV, I felt largely like I could never really be myself. There was almost a culture of non-expression which permeated the place. I always felt I was pushing the borders of what was acceptable ambition but regarded by some as naive aspiration.

On one hand, a person was supposed to create an identity which was unique and enticing to others, but it was all supposed to be within a specific set of cultural guidelines. Being smart and accomplishing things was good, but it was all supposed to be plotted along carefully-drawn, preexisting trajectories: finishing school and working was good, realizing you're in the asshole of the world filled with problems no one is interested in actually fixing was bad. Opposing Mountaintop Removal meant you were a concerned, progressive citizen—understanding and being passionate about Israeli-Palestinian relations was met with silence and half-remembered punditry. “Do all you can, young man, but do it here, and seek not to concern thyself with what occurs beyond these borders.” Love it, but don't leave it, even in thought.

That sentiment may be the antithesis of who I believe I am.

I love D.C., I love being surrounded by people who don't admonish me for thinking too much or trying too hard to accomplish things. I love hearing a dozen languages in the streets when I walk around. I love living in a place where I need never see the same faces if I don't wish to. I love feeling surrounded by people who always want more out of the precious, brief life they are given. Before I felt only stagnation, here I feel only the great thrum of humanity, threatening to rattle itself apart before each day begins.

In Huntington I was told something like “Here is your sandbox, build the most elaborate castle you can. Make it fine and call all within earshot to come see your grand work, nevermind that the beach is nearby where people build (and destroy) things larger and grander than the sandbox every day. Those beach-people have no interest in our sandbox. Nevermind the sand in the box is caked with shit no one seems interested in cleaning up because that would be being untrue to the spirit of Appalachia, whatever that means. Celebrated ignorance, celebrating the defeat of a stereotype but not actively seeking to dispel it.

That being said, I do miss things about Appalachia.

As stifled as I felt in West Virginia, there was a place for honesty there, and remembering and acting in the pursuit of nothing more than a good evening. I miss it being completely okay to spend a day wanting nothing more than to enjoy the company of others. There was a rawness to socialization there, a warmth in seeing the same people and having relatively little to discuss in the way of new developments. I miss meeting strangers and never discussing what we did by day, only what we wanted to accomplish in the short-term of the evening where we met. As alien as I felt in my six years in Appalachia, there was a comfort there that I grew accustomed to.

As much as I love meeting beautiful, brilliant, witty people here, I do miss people I had far less in common with—people I would never connect with on an existential level, but people who I could remain in the company of for an evening and feel we were friends, not colleagues or allies. It seems everywhere I go I am relegated to describing my interactions with others to tapping on glass. People in Appalachia didn't connect with my mind, but people here don't connect with my heart. Perhaps all feel this way in times of great change.

That being said, I much prefer my current surroundings. I also look forward to the day when this inane prefacing can give way to more humorous entries.

What is it like here socially? It's a lot like meeting people for the first time again and again. In comparison, we speak more of what we do rather than what we want to make manifest. We exist largely in constructed discourses of interaction. Previously, we lived largely in discourses of non-action.

I don't doubt that I will eventually fully adjust to life here (check back in 3 months), but right now this transition is giving me time to really explore my best laid plans. I feel I'm coming across as lamenting the reality of the situation, where I feel I'm actually transitioning (not painlessly) to a reality which suits my character far better than the previous one.

An old friend of mine recently moved here as well. She's admittedly experiencing extreme culture shock—I feel I kind of bypassed that stage, but at the same time I can empathize with the larger, more ambiguous realities she's only beginning to catch the edges of. She's unlearning old reactions, where I was ready to and willing and grateful to abandon them but am unsure what to put in their place.

My roommate is also new to the area, and experiencing similar feelings. He and I are very different, but experiencing a conceptually similar ordeal (which is probably not clearly defined to the people reading this). He's a native northern Virginian who spent his past five years in California. We're alike in demeanor and unlike in our ambitions. Like me, he's finding it shockingly hard how difficult it is to build a social circle here—we're both generally likable, reasonably funny, well-adjusted modern people who are finding trouble carving where we expected the clay to yield with ease. Many Thursdays, when the week is finished, we sit at our kitchen table and drink ourselves into oblivion (or at least sub-oblivion) until the thin hours of the morning. Once we even sat up (drinking) til 8am the following day (thank god Carlo Rossi jugs last a long time). While we both feel temporarily alienated here, I'm having the time of my life as he sinks into depression. There is camaraderie in the things we feel, but our reactions to it are opposed. I'm basking in the transitions here where he is lamenting them. I can't say much more on what he feels, but it is comforting having another person recognize the metamorphosis we are both caught in.

I wish he shared my optimism, but I recognize we are coming from previous circumstances which are as distant from each other conceptually as they places we've come from are geographically. Perhaps this is more a reflection on our previous satisfaction (or lack there of, in my case) more than anything. That, after all, is where we differed most.

Stagnation has long been among the things I loathed most, and finally being free of it I recognize that the world beyond that yolk expands continuously, it does not shift into a shape that welcomes. We have to make it such.

Ultimately, there is no “right” place. There are no ideal circumstances which allow us to flourish into a readily-discernible portrait of our idealized self. We have to get by on fortune of occurrence; the heavy moments come no matter where we may be, and when they come we have to seize them, but apart from that we need grace as well. We need the simple luck of saying the right things when it's warranted to make connections which are meaningful. Whether it be hillbilly entrenchment or infinite passing identity which lies before us, we need that alchemy of initiative and fortune to bring about meaningful connections with human beings. These moments are rare, but bear infinite potential (that dangerous word).

The older we get the more we grow, and the more difficult it is to share ourselves and connect with another human being. I think we largely become caricatures, shouting the basest of our being on others without being able to provide the context to make it appreciable. Whether we're in West Virginia or what may be the most international, intellectual city in the world, our range of personal interaction is ultimately very small. While different places may provide different opportunities and color different mindsets, in the end we are all the same in that way.

I've always believed the world was too large for any one person. We have to carve our own tiny niche where things can be as we'd love them. Sometimes we can share the space with a person or two, but finding where to carve it and whether or not to share it is the hardest part, and it's beyond all of us to simply will into existence. We mustn't be slaves to some future, never-realized reality. We have to look around us and treat every season of life as if it is the crescendo. It is only by doing this that we may guarantee our continued, steady, stumbling rise.

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Reflections on the Rally to Restore Sanity

(written November 2, 2010)

This past Saturday I was lucky enough to be able to attend The Rally To Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. I was luckier still, to be one of the fortunate few (few-ish) who were close enough to actually hear what was said. While the Rally was satisfying, in whatever way you can say that, on many fronts I felt it was ultimately characterized by a barely-concealed nervousness about what was in store for the future of this country.

Most news outlets are reporting attendance in the neighborhood of 250,000. Sadly, the permit secured by Comedy Central for the event only accommodated about 60,000, leaving many people unable to hear or see anything that was going on, even on the screens posted around the Washington Mall. I would venture to guess as many as 60,000 came from the Washington metropolitan area. I'm not sure of the cause behind this gross underestimation, but it is unfortunate because there were important things said.

Apart from a generally jovial atmosphere, it was nice to be able to strike up friendly conversations with complete strangers—something pretty uncharacteristic of Washington D.C. I spoke with people from all over, of all ages, and all with different reasons for being there. I was both surprised and pleased at the number of older people in attendance. It was by no means a college-age crowd, as many expected. Many of them would have looked more at home at a Tea Party rally. As well as I could tell, most were there to have fun, get a few laughs and see the nation's capital. The signs were fantastic, I wish I had taken more pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

“I'm not sure if it's illegal to solicit alcohol on the Washington Mall, but if it isn't that might possibly be what I'm doing”

I clapped for this guy as I passed him and he turned to me and said “man, it works!” Another brilliant idea I did not think of.

A middle-aged woman sitting with two small children held a sign reading:

“You should fear me because I am 1) a woman 2) a Muslim 3) a socialist and 4) a mother.” The last one deepened the meaning of her otherwise amusing statement. It also underlined the serious side of the rally which outside observers may not have detected.

“My wife thinks I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail”

“I want my country back....or a pony....one of the two.”

“Hey Christine O'Donnel, I Masturbate and I Vote!”

(many European news outlets elected to focus on O'Donnel's condemnation of masturbation in the 1990s)

and of course....

“Save Ferris”

While the signs were undoubtedly one of the event's main attractions, not everyone was content to simply go along with the smirking discourse set forth by Stewart and Colbert. Clearly, many people saw this as an anti-Tea Party rally, and a search to reconnect with rational politics. Some were there to laugh, some were gravely serious. Contrast the above signs with:

“I like having roads, schools and police departments, quit whining and pay your taxes.”

“What would Trotsky do?”

“Tea Party Supporters: I can use this sign to show you the value of the public option.”

Ok, that last one comes from drunken conversations with an old friend, but I'll use it as a filler because I can't actually recall many of the more serious ones. The point is, a large number of the people there really got behind the message that there is something wrong with the direction in which this country is going. Many weren't there to laugh.

I've promised myself I wouldn't use this blog to discuss politics. While I am very interested in politics and do often engage in debates and discussions of such, ultimately I don't feel it's what should consume our private thoughts and conversations. We must keep part of ourselves for better things. We must not forget what is before us as individuals, what gives us joy and what moves us, no matter how many banners and broadcasts fill the air. That being said, I wasn't at the Rally To Restore Sanity because I felt we were really going to establish anything or reverse the trend of extremism going on this country, but I was nervous to see how many of my fellow Rally attendees were. And I can't blame them.

These are difficult times in the United States of America, and while I tend to regard patriotism much as Bertrand Russel did, I'm not so naive as to believe real change happens overnight, or in two years, or in four. There are a lot of great things about the country I live in and there are a lot of terrible things, all we can do is live in our tiny circle of social influence and hope to make things better for those we touch.

While this post is dated for November 2^nd, the election results aren't in yet and my internet is down so I can't even see how things are going. I wanted to get this out beforehand, even though I know there's virtually no chance of Congress doing anything for the next two years (can we suspend their pay until then?). The United States is a strange animal with a long series of veterinary appointments ahead of it. In the Bush years we saw what extreme conservatism does to a country, and in the Obama years we have seen how hard that machine is to change. We must stop seeing the founding fathers as deities and understand that while men who lived over 200 years ago may have had some great ideas, not all of them are readily applicable to the modern world. We must also recognize that they didn't live in such politically polarized times.

I'm not sure what the answer ultimately is, but this ever-diverging path American politics finds itself on will never make our country 'great' again. We need to constantly adjust to the climate of our time if we're to survive, let alone flourish. We must abandon rhetoric for reason if we're to stay afloat. How quickly we forget the great empires of the past who surpassed us in all ways, comparatively speaking.

Jon Stewart ended the Rally with what I felt was a particularly touching speech wherein he tried to show that we, as a people, are not how we're portrayed in the 24 hour American news media. We're so much more and it is only when we are caricatured that we can be recipients of hate; we have more in common than we do in opposition. He tried to make a joke or two during this speech, but the dead silence he was met with undoubtedly discouraged him from making more—America was listening and it desperately wanted to be reassured that we aren't condemned to a future of division. “These are hard times, not end times” Stewart said. Only by believing we are so conceptually oppositional can we make the attitudes on the television an every-day reality.

He seemed at that moment to wish he were anything but a comedian, because coming from a comedian this message, which the United States needed so desperately, can always be undermined. It's unfortunate that in these difficult times the most honest and essential things that need to be said come from a man who is denied legitimacy by his trade. His ever-passing trade, in my opinion. Jon Stewart had to hide behind humor because the circus he lambasted so in his closing speech would never allow him to be otherwise. Despite this, I think the Rally To Restore Sanity succeeded in reassuring us that rationality still has a place in this country, even though it often seems to be otherwise. I can only hope, that like so many things in the past which were supposed to destroy us (us as a people, not as Americans) these hard times will too be weathered and pass into barely-noted history.

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