Of Ballots and Broadsides...

I am a permanent absentee voter. I have received my ballot in the mail. I have voted.

If you are also an absentee voter, and have received your absentee ballot, PLEASE VOTE.

"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right." ~ H.L. Mencken

This election is one of the most contentious I have ever experienced, in all my voting years. Aside from the various candidates who are trying to buy their office, there are some citizen's initiatives that have been written not by citizens but by corporate interests, and there are many attempts at ballot box budgeting in the works. I have done homework on all of this, and I confess to you that it is confusing, as well as contentious--nothing is straightforward; nothing is black and white; it is ALL about MONEY.

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." ~ Thomas Sowell (writer and economist)

Even in the small town, in which I reside, the campaigning is as serious and hardball as at the state level. I have received no less than 45 non-personal phone calls in the past three weeks: campaign messages, push polls, surveys and robocalls that are undisguised smears of specific candidates, as well as one promotion for rug cleaning.

In this day, we are more distracted than ever. Politicians and their campaign managers count on this.

I urge you to do your homework. I urge you to see what your party endorses. I urge you to find out what your local service organizations and newspapers endorse. I urge you to carry on discussions with friends and neighbors.  I urge you to read the contents of the Voter Guide. I urge you to read between the lines, with your critical thinking cap firmly on your head.

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." ~James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy (2006)

And then, I urge you to VOTE! It is your right, and your civic duty.

"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting." ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Spleen

Herein, I had a brilliant idea, and had been so inclined with wherewithal to work onward until completion of said thought-train, when, of the sudden, the roar of one machine was followed by the roar of another, seemingly right in my near ear, but followed closely into my far left ear, so that both ears were hounded with the founding and sounding and the veritable pounding in the roundhouse of my mind, until the turntable began to melt and then to roll impossibly down the tracks of my spine, infecting the words on the pages of my work and the pen in my hand, to the point that all were melting and rolling over the edges of the pages, into blackening pools of pain and despair at my feet.

The tyranny of machines, pushing us to the nether regions of our living quarters and our sanity. "Resistance is futile," a space zombie said to the characters in the play and also to the audience. Does the machine outdo the gentle rake for speed and efficiency? Surveys and science say no. But nothing shall impede the progress and deafness of civilization!

The resultant black pools of words stared silently back at me, with reproach. Separating them, once in this mood and state, would not be possible, not even with finepoint needle-nosed tweezers, which I would have to borrow from a friend.

For the accomplished pleasure of dispensing noizazy noise and rackety racket, as well as hectares of dirt blown about and abroad, the lawns of the land look lean and kempt, free from the carpeting of leaves and other foreign objects, for mine benefit and convenience--as if I have chosen and ordered such amenity, all over the land--and money is taken in exchange by the prime noizazter, a polite gentleman with three arms, a motor and no ears, who distributes it among his roving team of noizazters.

My work, damp, dark, shredded and pooled irretrievably, further excuses itself from my shaking hands, and what blotchy puddles are left completely drip from my mind--claiming the call of another errand--and move on, pouring themselves through the floorboards and into the ground beneath the house. Someday, they might return, when I least expect, so I had better call in a repairman to fix the sump pump, however bumptiously that work might thump.

Nothing against the noizazters, but their noizaz, with their soaring roar and pounding round and particulate pollution take me away from where I am and even beyond the point wherever I thought I was going or even want to be.

As the noizazters bundle their many arms and motors into their truck and roar away, I say to myself, that prime noizazter,  he is a fortunate one: he makes more money than I do, and is able to help four or five families to subsistence livelihood.

When they are gone, I hold my cleaved and aching head in my hands and weep.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

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See how someone else describes dealing with noise: "Old Bag" by Jenny Diski for the London Review of Books

Rest

Unhurried;

no pace, all space
—place
unflurried.

Moon arose,
intending to strike a pose,
instead, smiled into tired eyes,
with a long, lingering embrace.

Time chooses to slow apace,
an act of accommodation laws may belie.

Weary eyes close,
folding the soul slowly inward,
past the silent steps of sleep,
toward a farther vale of stillness,
the involution of consciousness,
beyond and Beyond Within,
until there is no farther to go,
but there nevertheless is,
for is Is, as it would be,
will Be forever.

Within the self-womb of this soft spiral,
Mind’s eye can close,
to dream tomorrow into being.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Silly Bandz: cute fad or environmental hazard?

Kids have been coming home with Silly Bandz now for weeks, trading them on the playground, giving them as party favors. These are brightly colored little rubber band-like items made of silicone, formed in different shapes, worn as bracelets. Inexpensive, and popular they are, yes. For now.

However, once Silly Bandz cease to be popular, they will end their life cycle as garbage. I have already seen broken ones littering the playground and street gutters near schools. Silicone is proven to be a bad thing for people, pets and other animals, birds and fish.

I point this out because our communities pride themselves in teaching "Green Thinking" and "Life Skills" to our children. I know that there are schools and even school districts that have been banning these seemingly innocent toys, mainly because they prove to be a distraction in class, even leading to problems on the playground. But parents should be thinking beyond the distraction factor, thinking in greater depth about the ramifications of ubiquitous, faddy, non-biodegradable products that are marketed to our children.

The fact is, Silly Bandz will eventually become part of the landfill and end up in our waterways, killing particularly birds and fish (they look like brightly colored worms, don't they?), but also posing a danger to other creatures. By the time that fad dies, and a new one is born, the creators of Silly Bandz (and like products) will have raked in millions of our dollars, but will not be accountable when the product becomes part of the mix of environmental problems facing the planet.

The fact that these items are cheap, numerous and readily available means that we are inadvertently teaching our kids (1) to be consumers and (2) to thoughtlessly assign value to items that have a dubious use and value, yet a life cycle that poses a future environmental threat.

Perhaps this seems a silly topic to be writing about, but we must now, at all times, be thinking seriously about the life cycle of the items we mass produce, whether they are cute toys or packaging, processed food, or whatever the items are. When we see the all too real stories about toxic sludge byproducts of aluminum manufacturing inundating Hungarian villages and flowing into the Danube river, we need to wake up to the fact that there needs to be more thought, regulation and oversight in the manufacture of just about everything.

I won't suggest that Silly Bandz need to be banned, because I know that parents will balk at the suggestion, and that I will accused of raining on everyone's parade of fun with junk.  However, I believe that this, and many other products, offer thoughtful and caring parents opportunities to teach children about consumerism of products that we know to be ultimately unhealthy for our planet.

To date, I have not spent a dime on Silly Bandz, and I have spoken of my misgivings to other parents on a selective basis. I have spoken to my children about why I think they are bad. They have a few of them, but they are informed now (by what I told them and by what they experienced recently, while volunteering on Coastal Cleanup Day), and they don't seem to be interested in collecting them.

This is a good sign.

The Right To Be Ugly

We live in a country that has many inalienable rights. Apparently, one of those rights is to be an ugly American.

People running live action video feed of another person's private activities. Woman destroys artwork because she thinks it demeans Jesus. Motorcycles and cars with tips welded on their mufflers, in order to drastically raise the decibel level and make your hair stand on end. Cars that block parking lot circulation so that their sole occupants can wait for someone to pull out of the parking slot closest to the entrance to the grocery store. Drivers who have their car stereo systems roaring at the highest volume and deepest bass rumble, so that everyone within a two block radius is forced to hear it. The garbage that is dumped on sidewalks, beaches and parks, sometimes within 8 feet of a receptacle. Runaway computer viruses that anonymously destroy equipment, while hijacking the victims' contact lists. The one-sided cell phone rants, where everyone else, standing in any line, anywhere, is a captive audience. Tailgating drivers, speeders, speed-weavers, stop sign runners, double-parkers, three-point-turners in school zones and those drivers who abandon their cars in passenger loading zones, despite the clear directives of posted signs. Bullies, bigots, bashers and trashers. This is, I hope you realize, only a partial list; you have your own list of minor to major irritants.

When did we become such rude, arrogant and narcissistic pigs?

The reason I ask this question is because the bad behavior seems to get worse as the days go by.  Celebrities, politicians and religious leaders lead the fashion trend and tend to model this behavior more than the average person; bad press is better than no press at all, I suppose. The constant need to fill 24 hours of network television on hundreds of channels heightens the visibility of the trend by creating an endless stream of trashy entertainment content, for our viewing pleasure or horror. Certainly, this all provides more that we can all natter on about. "Did you see what they did?" and "Did you hear what they said?" If you don't remember the 1998 film, The Truman Show, it is worth a watch now.

What is it all about? How about alienation?  In The Sane Society, Erich Fromm posited:

We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

It seems as if we have moved beyond this to something even worse, a lack of concrete relatedness to the people who drift through our daily lives. Whatever the cause, there seem to be a lot of people who really only act and care about what they are doing in any given moment; consequences, intended or otherwise, don't seem to come into the thought process at all--it could be overstating to suggest that there might be a thought process involved. Meanwhile, there are other people who get their jollies from being intentionally irritating to every person within reach of their chosen mode of ugliness. What an alienable use and waste of inalienable rights and freedoms! What a waste of mind, body, spirit! What a waste of life!

I have to be honest and say that I really enjoy thoughtful people, people who think about and care about the consequences of their actions, people who are not out for everything they can get, people who will drive around the block just because they know it won't take any longer than making that dangerous three-point turn that will have them backing up into a crosswalk. I find it a blessing to be standing in a line, if it must be so, with people who are able to smile, pass the time civilly, and make a dull moment into something fresh.

If I have to live in a world that gyrates to the beat of thoughtless boobs, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for all of you thoughtful and beautiful people who redeem ugly moments, created by ugly people, with a smile and a relaxed "we're all in this together" attitude.

breath

rising and falling,

with the fullness of time,
is what makes the song
sing

following breath,
living is easy

breath of heaven,
blowing on the head,
            in the heart,
            through the lips,
in the fullness of song,
            of life
            and being

fill me now,
and always

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Free the Arts

A few weekends ago, Cal Performances offered a Sunday "Free For All" of music, dance and performance art, at venues all over the UC Berkeley campus. It was a beautifully warm afternoon, and I was one of the many people scheduled to perform that day.

My husband drove the family to the campus, dropping me off near the venue, so that I could make the call time before the concert. He then parked and took the kids to wander about, seeing and hearing other performances before getting in line to see my concert. They got in line 20 minutes before concert time. When concert time came, they were among the more than 200 people who were turned away.

This was not an isolated incident. Hundreds of people were turned away from many performances. There were thousands of people milling through the campus on that warm summer day. All of them wanting to hear music, see dance, people watch, picnic or any number of other possible activities.

What does this say?

Living, as we do, in the wake of free-market free fall, perhaps the only affordable art experience for the average person is the free experience.

But, here is the rub: art has its costs. Being a singer and a writer, I know this all too well. Everyone involved in art personally invests so much more time (and even money), than any professional person with a 9-5 job could ever understand, to the art. Seasoned professionals are expected to continue "paying their dues" by donating their time to give free performances or showings all the time. The cliche argument is: "for the love of your art." The people who use that cliche don't really know what that actually means for the person who participates in a life of art, what is truly sacrificed. And, no, that kind of thing really isn't useful on your resume.

Once we realize we (and what we do) are commodities in a world that only understands buying and selling and value judgement, the love of our art shifts in imperceptible ways. The public desires an endless stream of entertainment to dull the blunt horrors of wage slavery. And so, there it is, an endless, even mindless, stream of entertainment sent out to meet the endless needs of the public. Some of this entertainment does entertain; much of it does not. Think about the hundreds of television channels that deliver 24 hours of dubious content, when the technology is capable of delivering on-demand content, tailored to the taste of the client. This endless stream of noise is very difficult to compete with, and who wants to?

What am I trying to say? There is a lot of money being spent to produce a lot of crap content, forcing "art" to be all about buying and selling products, most of which are not necessary for living a good life, many of which will be soon added to the pile of junk that, in many ways, looms over the future health of our planet.

But the minute a musician, actor, dancer, artist wants to receive professional recognition in the form of a decent paycheck and benefits, the buck stops. I find this interesting, psychologically and philosophically. To some extent, I find this to be evidence of a sick society.

People really cannot do without art in their lives. Art is what keeps us sane in a world crusted by layers and layers of political illogic and common denominator frustration, from which no reasonable sense of order can be derived. So many people are not or , at least, do not believe themselves capable of opening themselves up to creating their own artistic experience; this is why artistic individuals are so special and so necessary. The creative thought behind art has done as much to develop industry and technology as mathematics and science.

Singers, dancers, instrumentalists, thespians invest their bodies and psyches in the stream of artistic continuity in a way that no other set of professionals can. Fine artists and writers often sacrifice a social existence in order to have the time and solitude required to develop their art. Yes, time spent in this way is personally rewarding and edifying, but it comes at great personal cost, that even a steady paycheck can never truly repay. The personal angst (and even attendant therapy) that frequently informs an artist's work provides someone else a therapeutic experience. "Poetic Justice" would allow this exchange to have full circle closure back to the artist(s) in the form of remunerative therapy.

This leads me to my radical thought for today: The only way to truly Free the Arts is for society to earnestly invest in them. If a fraction of the money spent on crap commercial product junk were invested in arts organizations to the extent that artists could earn a decent living wage, we might be able to deliver more of what we love to do to a public that is obviously starving for it, as well as open the artistic frontier to explore and evolve beyond the mainstream of public consciousness.

Obviously, there is so much more to say. Discussion, anyone?