How to write about silence when the very act of doing so conjures up a voice in ones head? That narrator’s voice that accompanies such writings and hopefully sounds something like Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones. Today’s goal, though, is to provoke a true sense of silence, with all the glorious stillness and peace of mind that accompanies it. For that I need to be narrator free, so I will be brief.
I have spent a couple of days hiking through Sequoia National Park, on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. I cannot put to words the profound joy of traipsing through a forest blanketed by snow, surrounded by the largest trees on earth. So I’m not going to bother. However, I feel compelled to remind others that such experiences are a vital ingredient of life, so essential to our physical and mental well-being, yet so hard to “schedule”. We all know it’s what we need, though.
But if you can’t get away, try this instead. Take a moment to dwell upon your own awe-inspiring nature-related experience. Or simply anything that engenders a sense of calm and inner tranquility. To that end I leave the following section blank. Insert tale of humbling serenity here:
And for the more visually inclined readers (I always did enjoy books that had the occasional illustration) here are a few photos from the trip, no more photographically worthy than semi-decent desktop patterns.
I’ve got a song stuck in my head. It’s an old childhood song that goes something like:
Here we go loop-de-loo.
Here we go loop-de-la.
Here we go loop-de-loo.
All on a Saturday night.
I wonder if this song’s residency in my conscious mind has something to do with the impending end of year shenanigans. Let’s consider.
Christmas decorations abounding (which set off you’re annual retort, “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!”) – Check.
Thanksgiving (spent with loved ones, replete with thrills and disappointments) – Check
Black Friday (sneered at from afar, or shamefully caught up in, with that amazing never-to-be-seen-again-once-in-a-Christmas-season deal) – Check.
Christmas music (again with the sneering) – Check.
More Christmas music – Check.
Please make all this Christmas music stop! – Check.
How predictable we are.
In truth, I think it’s just the inevitable sigh of having reached the end of the year and accomplished rather less than we had hoped for on January 1st. That’s what this loop is really about, right? The annual setup for failure. Somehow we’re supposed to have accomplished oh so much over the course of the year, and what a shocker, we’ve barely scratched the surface.
Have no fear, though, for come January the loop will begin afresh, with New Year resolutions and calls from advertisers to “shape up”, “get fit”, “lose those pounds”. In short, make amends for the pathetic disappointment we were the previous year by promising a new and improved self. How unfair!
Imagine, for a moment, if we could lose the calendar. Forget the day, the month, or the year. Stick to the basics. Days are colder so we bundle up against the elements (even in LA). The fruits of summer are gone, replaced by the root vegetables of winter. Bring on beef stew, creamy soups, and mulled wine. Delicious! Days are short and darkness abounds, so we read more, engage in more philosophical conversations, appreciate a moment of quiet just as nature shuts down for a much needed breather.
And yes, we all need a breather. Especially you (yes, you!) for you have worked so hard all year. So hard! And if nobody else recognizes it, know that I do. I think you’ve outdone yourself, matured in an enviable way, and been a role model to people you don’t even know. Sure, I don’t know all the details, all the unspoken trials and tribulations that you’ve had to endure. But endure them you have, and so beautifully.
So resist the whiny pang of guilt that cries, “but you HAVEN’T… you DIDN’T… you WON’T…”.
You WILL!, but not right now.
Right now you are enjoying your respite. Breathing deeply. And above all taking immense pleasure in the calm. Because you’ve more than earned it.
Eating at a fast food establishment recently I experienced the unimaginable. The soda fountain wasn’t working! The enticingly colored machine, full of delicious promise, was actually bleeding, its malfunctioning ice-maker causing a perpetual stream of water to pour from the device’s innards. Ok, I thought. I can cope with that. Not being American born I’m not that obsessed with ice anyway. But with great dismay I discovered that the soda was also flat, and that I could not tolerate. I unhappily resigned myself to a meal of hamburger, extra-crispy fries, and a cup of room temperature overly sweetened, highly synthetic lemonade. Not good.
Yet as I slurped down my disappointment, I was surprised to find that none of the other patrons seemed to have noticed the absence of fizz in their fizzy drinks. Time and time again they returned to the machine, filled up their oversized cups with what, sans carbonation, is really quite vile, and walked away. This, naturally, made me think of the Occupy protests going on worldwide.
You don’t see the connection? Soda pop? Social injustice? And no, I don’t think that a fast food restaurant’s inability to serve sparkling soda is a social injustice.
First of all, we should all Occupy. Occupy our cities, towns, fields and tundras (thank you, Diane McEachern of Bethel, Alaska). We should do this peacefully (no need for a repeat of events in Rome, Italy), and we should be prepared to dig in our heels for the long haul.
But therein lies the problem.
Here in America we have far less at stake than in other parts of the world, far more to distract us from Occupying. America is a far cry from Tahrir Square, where protestors had nothing to lose, and everything to gain (although we have yet to see exactly how a democratic Egypt will manifest itself). We have no history of oppressive dictatorships, no long-standing sense of what we can’t have. We are also unlike Europe, which has a collective memory of what a socialist approach to government can do (universal health care, education, social services), even when interwoven with a generous sprinkling of capitalism.
Even Israel, for example, has been enjoying a healthy social uprising since the summer (not that the world media cares to report on anything that doesn’t perpetuate the notion that the Palestinian issue is the only story in town). A country built upon strong socialist ideals, there is an emerging understanding that with Israel’s financial growth and success, much of what the country was founded on has been rejected in favor of cappuccinos, flat screen TVs, and Prada bags. And having danced so carelessly toward this capitalist consumer hoedown, ordinary people are recognizing that they have paid a terrible price. They are finding, with capitalism and corporate greed run amok, that they are no longer welcome at the very party they organized in the first place.
In America, though, we have a romantic dream of capitalistic success, the fires of which are stoked in our hearts by the very system we are now protesting. We know nothing but a clamor for greater, faster, cheaper products that are the symbols of our success. And the flip side of the coveted wealth that that top 1% has amassed is the cheap world that the corporations have created for us.
Back when folks were just gearing up to Occupy Wall Street, I fled civilization for the backwaters of Montana, therein to bask in the silent glory of ranchland unchanged since Lewis and Clark changed it completely. And sure, from my porch overlooking the Gallatin valley, wild horses roaming in the dusk, coyotes yelping in the distance, it all seemed pretty grand. It still held the promise of what any hard-working salt-of-the-earth pioneer might aspire to.
And then I took a trip to the local Walmart.
Unbeatable Walmart Guns
Strolling along endless aisles of cheap clothing, processed food, and firearms I feared that our situation is hopeless. How can we change our habits when we have become morbidly obese consumpters (see earlier blog on this topic)? We have spent lifetimes being told to consume, and know nothing else. We may think we are bucking the system by Occupying, but we are tethered to a capitalistic parent, roaming far and wide on an extending baby leash. How soon before we are reined in? Or maybe we’re just adolescents, consumed by our personal rebellion as our parent chuckles at our indolence and holds out another cup of soda for us to drink. Either way, we are the children of an abusive parental figure, and with any parent, we love it regardless of its transgressions. More significantly, we have also learned all of our behavioral patterns from said parent, and we all know how difficult it is to break a pattern.
This is why I was so upset by the folks filling up on flat soda. The fizz has gone out of our system, but we can’t help but adhere to it. We yearn for something better, but true change takes more than a few banners, an occasional march, or some good sound-bites. We can’t demand social reform by camping out in parks having just run in to the local Walmart for a cheap made-in-China tent.
Part of our Occupying must be to reject that which the current system makes easy, specifically the cheap, disposable life that we have come to expect. And if the Occupy movement is to be successful in America, then we will have to make some significant sacrifices.
Try this one on for size. Can’t make it to an Occupy protest? Simply stop consuming any and every product created by a corporation. Want true social and financial restructuring? Eliminate every corporate item from your daily life. Not an easy thing to do, eradicating all that cheap, cheap, wonderfully cheap stuff. But sacrifice has to start somewhere.
Imagine if every single person in the country were to ban any corporate produce for one month alone? Corporations would surely come crumbling down, so dependent are they on our continued gorging. Cut them out of our daily rituals, and watch how we, the people, can seize the control we deserve.
Support your local farmers, your Mom & Pop stores, even grow some of your own food. (The lemongrass tea I make from a homegrown plant puts any and every soda I’ve ever consumed to shame, and costs me absolutely nothing). I know, I know, the economy couldn’t be in worse shape, making it seemingly essential that we resort to that cheaper, corporate branded, item. But maybe, just maybe, this economic avalanche is just what we need. Maybe, like those occupying Tahrir Square at the beginning of the year, we finally find ourselves with nothing to lose. Our jobs are gone. Our houses are worthless. If we can just wean ourselves off of the corporate teat, then perhaps we can finally rebuild a society where we truly stand proud.
The alternative is to remain this:
Diane McEachern image taken from her Facebook Page.
Independent Merchant image found here.
The term “the greatest thing since sliced bread” started out innocently enough, a 1928 marketing strategy for Kleen Maid Bread in Chillicothe, Ohio. The original phrase was “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”, although the abbreviated version is certainly catchier. Frank Bench, the proprietor of Kleen Maid, was on the verge of bankruptcy when he gambled on a cumbersome bread-slicing machine invented by Otto F. Rohwedder. Other bakers scoffed, but we all know how significant Mr. Bench’s decision has turned out to be.
So should Mr. Bench and Mr. Rohwedder be congratulated as pioneers of American innovation? I think not. Instead, they deserve a long overdue reprimand for bringing about the collapse of American independent thought.
Just look to any headline to see what I mean.
“The Greatest Trio Since Kirk, Spock & McCoy” (bloombergnews.com)
“The Greatest Threat Since FDA Tried to Turn Nutrients into Prescription Drugs” (blog.lef.com)
“The Greatest Leader Since Mickey Mouse” (desertpeace.wordpress.com)
“The Greatest Breakthrough Since Lunchtime” (abebooks.com)
Everywhere you look, you see echoes of “sliced bread”. In fact, the following sentence structure is pretty much the go-to statement for just about everything.
The (superlative) (noun) since (event/time period).
“US braces for Worst Hurricane Threat Since 1985” (bloombergnews.com)
“The Three Dumbest Neocon Predictions Since the Disaster in Iraq” (alternet.org)
“Amy Winehouse’s Upcoming Album Proves She’s the Hardest Working Dead Artist Since Tupac” (queerty.com)
“East Coast quake one of the biggest since 1897” (azdailysun.com)
Why the need for all the superlatives? Have we become nothing but hyperbolic morons? Can we think of no better way to describe something other than by making some superlative, and mostly irrelevant, statement?
In life we are constantly referring to past experiences as a means of understanding current ones. Comparison is essential if we are to learn from the past. However, why should everything be a superlative version of a previous event? Don’t we benefit more by recognizing that most things that happen to us fall within the same experiential range, as opposed to standing out from it? For if everything that happens to us is a superlative version of something else, then we become rapidly ill-equipped to deal with anything life throws at us. Because nothing can prepare us for what’s happening now!
Case in point every panicked event of the last six months.
Oh no, a nuclear disaster! What will become of us? Oh no, a debt ceiling! How will we make it through? Oh no, a hurricane! The end is nigh!
We forget that we’ve managed to plod through enough government crises, natural disasters, and personal misfortunes to give us ample tools to cope. We should be more than prepared to tackle the worst that life presents.
So are we just addicted to panic, fear, and hyperbole? The media would certainly have it so. After all, it keeps us distracted and them in business, with their round-the-clock breaking news mentality. Where would CNN be if it couldn’t dispatch some all-too-attractive reporter to the site of the most heartwrenching/significant/outrageous/bewildering news story since 3pm?
Perhaps we need to do away with commercially driven news altogether and with it eradicate the need to trump up every situation just so people will tune in and join the party panic. Then we might actually see people taking adversity in stride, sans elevated heart rates and raving eyeballs. Maybe we all need to donate a little bit extra cash to PBS or NPR. Maybe that will free us from this mad mad panic driven society.
And maybe, having reclaimed our sanity, we can sit back and enjoy a well-prepared sandwich, using sliced bread of course (I had to bring it back to sliced bread). Because sliced bread is indeed wonderful. Especially sliced white bread, the most texture-pleasing thing to play with since Play-doh.
