28 August 2002 (Wednesday)

morning constitutional

I'm incapable of going for a run in this city. Every corner I have to stop and look, explore beyond the storefronts. A half-hour exercise routine becomes a two-hour odyssey. I feel like a subdued version of Amélie, or Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl, or maybe Guthrie in Sharon Creech's Bloomability. A six year old in a twenty-three year old's body.

1. A hardware store. Endless variations on human ingenuity: hundreds and hundreds of screws, bolts, fasteners. "Can I help you with anything?" "Believe it or not, I'm just looking," I say. "Look all you want," the man nods. "There's a lot to see."
   
   
2. Steam and stainless steel in a restaurant kitchen, men moving with rhythmic precision in white uniforms, knives flashing. On a little side table, a giant lobster made out of egg bread. The chefs at the counter glance up at me through the window. I grin and mouth hello.
   
   
3. A boy sits on a stoop as two adults struggle nearby with furniture and a too-small car. He has his left cheek smushed against the palm of his hand, his eyes vacant; beside him is a large plastic rack of shoes. I'm reminded suddenly of a passage from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: thinking of everyone you meet as a second You, rather than an Other. I wave to the boy. He looks confused.
   
   
4. Two blocks from home, a mortuary. The adult in me protests -- "Don't be ridiculous, you have no business there, just move along" -- as I head across the street and pull open the door, cautiously. In the first chapel, a ninety-two year old man. The coffin is tiny, and there are no mourners in sight. Everywhere there are elaborate chandeliers, floral arrangements, muted oil paintings. "Can I help you?" "I was looking to find out a little more about cremation," I find myself saying. She leads me to an office and hands me a packet of price listings, descriptions of services. You can have yourself scattered along the coast by plane for $45.00. I ask about urns. They make biodegradable ones now, of recycled paper with no new wood fiber, special plastic bags that dissolve in water. "A family member?" she inquires politely at last. "No, just thinking about my own," I say. "Hopefully a long ways off." She nods and mentions the preplanned funeral option. The woman is a miracle of tact. I wonder how often she talks to perfectly happy, healthy people in her line of work.

I'm back on the street, informational packet in hand. The stoplight ahead of me is about to change and I dash for it, feeling full of sunlight and laughter suddenly. Someday I'll be gone from here, I think, as cars zip past me, Doppler effect humming. That's why all this matters.

posted by enjelani @ 11:23 AM PST [ link ]

27 August 2002 (Tuesday)

if i were a fascist dictator (or: politics, part deux)

I would see to it that top funding went to the following areas:

• the free public education system (smaller classes, attractive salaries for teachers; something good is bound to happen)
  
• mass media (broadcasting goes downhill once you're beholden to ratings, advertisers and corporate sponsors)
  
• an infrastructure for active citizenship (e.g. child care during town hall meetings, internet access for online voting)
  
• environmental research (particularly with regards to industry, farming and metropolitan areas)
  
• the military (with less focus on expensive weaponry, and more on figuring out what actually works)

Then I'd enact a bunch of campaign finance restriction laws, resign as dictator and see what happened.

Three of the five are about the dissemination of information; the remaining two address responsibilities shared by the entire group. I've got opinions on abortion, the death penalty, gun control, affirmative action, but those are issues rightfully relegated to the forum of public debate. Much as I'd like to have it all my way, I'd leave those questions up to the people to decide.

This post seems ripe for an amabelle-y survey question. Which would be your top five?

posted by enjelani @ 03:33 PM PST [ link ]

politics

Hey, all you out there. What say we get a dialogue going on the November elections? I intend to vote, and to cast as fully informed a vote as possible, so I'm going to need some help.

While I'm at it, the movement to require open-source software for government applications seems misguided to me -- fighting fire with fire. The new copy-protection proposals are scary as all hell, but the solution is to shoot those down, not to invent something that goes against open-source's very roots in libertarianism.

Activism exhausts me. I've never really done it as a result; I've voted, I've written letters to my senators, I've been a conscientious consumer, but I never dove headlong into a campaign of any kind. I have absolutely nothing in my life to complain about, and taking up someone else's battle cry against injustice always felt hollow at best, even if I sympathized with the cause. I think if I'm going to have any kind of serious political impact in my lifetime, it'll be through my checkbook, funding programs I believe in. Maybe it's my father's influence, and his (rather elitist) conceptualization of activism in terms of generals and footsoldiers. Anyone can wave a flag and set up chairs in an auditorium, he argues; to really make a difference you need to be at the helm, with both the money and the vision. I guess I think of it differently: I'd be supplying the only asset I know how to give. Devotion of belief and energy ain't my strong points.

Of course, this approach assumes achieving some degree of fabulous wealth first. I'm working on it.

posted by enjelani @ 01:46 AM PST [ link ]