The Year of Being 56

Just a quick note in the wake of the Iowa caucus results. Even though I stand by my previous posting, with its claim that Iowa and New Hampshire should not be interpreted as political weathervanes, I really am impressed with two aspects of the Iowa outcome.

1. America is more deeply divided than ever. Even in the heart of the heartland, you could not find two candidates whose views are more diametrically opposed, and who so completely represent opposite constituencies, than you find in Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama.
2. And yet, at the same time, like the rocket’s red glare arching aross the firmament, you could not find clearer proof that politics in this country has taken a careening twist off the beaten path, a twist for the better. Because as different as these two men are from each other, they are both infinitely more different than their competitors in their respective parties. And that distinction, that radical departure from the norm, is, I think, much more important than the difference that divides the two winners. Because it implies, to the extent that it holds in subsequent primaries, a deep need on the part of the American electorate for something not only different, but something truly hopeful and uplifting. In their own individual, and vastly different approaches, both of these men offer that.

Just received an email letter from Michael Moore, presenting his take on the Democratic candidates here on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. As usual, Moore pretty much lays out the issues in comprehensive and comprehendable terms. He compares the three front-runners (Clinton, Obama and Edwards), apologetically dismissing Hillary as too much for the war, and not able to get behind Obama, as a candiate not having enough substance. He implicitly endorses Edwards as the candidate who has firmly established his campaign as an all-out attack on Big Business and the Industrial-Politico-Military Complex. The norm for an American politico is to run in lockstep with these entities. As Moore points out, it is only someone willing to buck these oppressively powerful forces who can ever hope to overcome the stranglehold they possess on our lives.

As Carol and I have said so many times, “God bless Mike Moore”.

I myself like Richardson, and for many of the same reasons Moore implicitly touts Edwards. But I admit, Edwards is also high on my list. And I’m sorry: I just don’t trust Hillary. I’ll vote for her against anyone the Republicans throw up (my choice of words is quite specifically made in this case), because I don’t trust Giuliani either (besides obviously not being able to spell his name), or Romney, and that’s it for any even potentially moderate Republican. Huckabee is at least from Arkansas, he ought to run on that premise: “From the same state as the last good president”. But come on. Having Jesus as your running mate puts him so far out that he should be frightening even to Republicans.

So many of these guys, on both sides, are frightening. Frightening for what they say, and in many cases, even more frightening for what they do not. The latter is mainly a characteristic of Democrats, who, as a class of humanity, have repeatedly chosen to NOT say important things, for fear of… what? Being less of a man (or less of a woman) than the Republicans? Dont they understand that, finally, by God, that’s what a majority of Americans want?

But Edwards and Richardson are not frightening. They make sense, they present reasonable plans of action to at least start us on the long road out of the Bush quagmire. I wouldn’t mind an Edwards/Richardson ticket (or reverse it).

In any case, the question will not be decided in Iowa, nor even New Hampshire, really. The first real test will be South Carolina, and to see how that Southern strategy plays (and where, let’s face it, Edwards should be fairly strong, at least among Democrats). And then it’s California and Texas and Florida, the ones who have the votes, and where the real decisions will be made.

No, I don’t think Iowa and NH really count for much, they are in many ways purely symbolic. Especially this time around, it’s such a national referendum, and both of those states represent such specialized (and small) populaces, they just don’t have that “finger on the pulse” importance. And I don’t think “momentum” counts for much either, at least not from these places.

No, this time around it’s the War and the Economy (which indirectly implicates and involves Health Care). And all three are gonna snowball into… something. Something significant. But what that something is ultimately defeats my prognostication abilities to describe. Other than the its one huge, overwhelming, most important characteristic:

It’s NOT George W.

Counting down, baby. And thanking God.

Ah, the bleak midwinter. It’s cold and blustery and austere and dark… finally! The time has been so long out of joint, I had despaired of cursed sprites to ever set it right again. It is good to have these Ragnarokian times, these bleak and severe days. How else to appreciate the warmth and fragrance when they (inevitably) return? Like Kahlil Gibran, whose book of poetry “The Prophet” so captured the imagination of many people in my generation, I understand that it is the polarities of nature, and of the human spirit, that make it possible to gauge what we do, and what is done to us. How we feel, and how we make others feel.

The inevitable list of resolves is also part of this dark teatime of the soul: health, creativity, interpersonal give and take. I will not enumerate them in this forum, and besides, they don’t change that much. Perhaps if I were better at attaining a few of them, I could add some new ones. But until that glorious day, the old resolves will serve me well. They are like old friends, or rather, old clothing, well-known and well-understood.

I wrote these lines the other day, in another context, but I’ll repeat them here. And also make at least one new resolve: to pick back up the gauntlet of the daily blog. It is more a matter of will and application, and less of needing something to say. The latter I never lack, the former are things I lack more than not. Ah well. Writing and January: they go well together, as long as the writing remains stark.

The poem.

Midwinter Muse 

There is something primal and ancient in all this.
Something reminiscent of forces larger 
And surer than those we consciously admit.
Life itself withdraws, and only the barest flicker is left 
To give evidence it still exists.  But the Solstice is past,
And we will now bravely revel against the Darkness, 
A shivaree whose volume and sheer audacity 
Eternally guarantees that the flicker shall quicken again, 
Dormant now beneath the frost, but eternally returning. 
The evergreens are sure sign of an ages-old contract. 

Deep Magic presses against a cold windowpane and whispers
“I know… and I have not forgotten.”

I do not believe in Hell, which is a shame.

[Any fundamentalist Christian who reads this would readily agree. “It’s a shame, all right,” they’d say. “Otherwise you’d be making some effort to avoid damnation, but you’re not, so off to Hell with you.” But then, I don’t think any Christian fundamentalists will ever read this; ergo, no reason to be concerned.]

I set out on the road to not believing in Hell in junior high or thereabouts. Actually, I started out on the road to eternal damnation by not believing in eternal damnation. I never could understand how a finite amount of sin could justify an infinite amount of punishment. Seemed a bit petty for a Being chalked up with Creating the Entire Universe. Pulling out that brick eventually resulted in the whole Christian edifice, as it was described in the Methodist church in mid-20th century Alabama, collapsing into utter ruin, at least in my mind. As it fell, other bricks were jettisoned: Hell, bodily resurrection, virgin birth, original sin, and a whole host of easy targets tumbled onto the desert sands.

I’ve since reconstructed my own form of christianity, but it still lacks a Hell. Atheism was never an option, and agnosticism is ultimately so unsatisfying. If you wait for proof of divinity, if you require the Godhead to satisfy your personal curiosity with a demonstration… well, eternal damnation may not make sense, but some things can still seem to take an infinite amount of time.

So, given this theological prologue, why should I consider my unbelief in the fiery pit a shame? Simply put, I think that is the only place George W. Bush (and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, etc.) would ever have been made to serve time (not eternal!) for the grievous and manifold sins they have perpetrated on the American people, the Iraqi people, and the World in general.

I have been accused (in these pages, actually) of being a water boy for the DNC, which is a little silly. I am not a registered Democratic, I vote in every election for the person, as I understand him (or her), who most nearly coincides with my world view. And there have been many elections where that overlap has been decidedly minimal; still, between (or among) candidates, it has always been at least discernible. I have voted independent (Anderson in ‘80), and even Republican (Governor Riley in Alabama’s last election: I think he’s done a decent job, is fiscally responsible, and sees no need to legislate morality, at least not too obtrusively). I imagine that’s more “cross-voting” than many Republicans will have done.

The point of my lack of party affiliaiton? Far from being a DNC water boy, I am chagrined and appalled at the lack of political backbone in the Democrat Party. There will almost certainly never be any form of censure, much less the impeachment, conviction and imprisonment, that BushCheneyRumsfeld so overwhelmingly deserve. The Democratics just won’t stand up and do the right thing. For every Feingold or Obama, there are far too many Conyers and Reids and Kerrys.

The fact that Bill Clinton was actually impeached, and brought to trial in the Senate, for what was essentially a dalliance and simple lies about his behavior, while W. Bush will never even be reprimanded, that is also a “shame”. Like Bob Dylan said, in another context,

“I’m ashamed
 To live in a land
 Where justice is a game.”

George W. Bush has lied, not only to Congress, but to the country and to the world, about the reasons for his Iraq war; has mismanaged the war with an ineptitude that is criminal; has ignored the Constitution with impunity and undermined our rights as citizens; has illegally wire-tapped his own countrymen; has issued more than 500 signing statements to laws that he disagrees with, flouting his obligation to enforce the law, thumbing his nose at Republican and Democrat Congresses alike. Clinton was impeached for having oral sex in the Oval office, and then covering it up. W. Bush will get a complete pass for trampling the Bill of Rights, reversing the intent of the Freedom Of Information Act, sucking up the budget surplus left him by Clinton and driving us into the deepest debt the country has ever known.

No, Bush will not be punished, not ever in this lifetime, not even by any self-inflicted dark tea-time of the soul. The moral capacity that might eventully catch up with and cause self-torment in most men and women, given the enormity of such transgressions, is simply missing in the man. The ethical imperative will fall like water off a duck in the case of G.W. Bush: he simply does not have the moral or ethical or critical discernment to realize where his actions have placed him on the scale of offenses waged against humanity. I mean, the fool thinks he’s getting all these ideas from God, for chrissake!

No, he will walk out of the White House, and amble back to Crawford, fencing and chain-sawing and driving his pickup, oblivious to the disasters he has left in his wake. There will be no punishment, although I’m willing to bet that his Secret Service contingent will be a lot larger than his fellow ex-Presidents. There are people who will desire justice in the temporal plane, belated or not, and Crawford looks to be wide-open territory. Best to see to your fences, and with a will!

As for me… well, it’s just a shame that I don’t believe in Hell, that’s all.

But you know, it would be interesting to see how George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden reacted when they finally met each other there.

Early Autumn in clear glory
With a touch of heat
Just outside the shade of still green trees.
Sky, unadorned by cloud,
A single high contrail
Fleets across the zenith,
Then fades back into the perfect blue.

Around the edges of leaves,
In the poplars and the persimmons and the rosebuds,
The faintest ghost of arid color
Tinges the future florid Autumn.

For now, it’s the rampant green Autumn,
The clear, perfectly hot
Southern Alabama Autumn,
Composed of equal parts
Clarity and warmth
And the haunting expectation
Of the coming coolness.

 

These lines came to me while having lunch, al fresco, at a nearby cafe that sits beside the train tracks. This is definitely my favorite time of the year, or at least the beginning of it. I wonder if everyone who lives in their Years of Being 56 find appealing the inherent background melancholy of autumn. The season, at least in the South, refuses to completely let go of summer, but it carries within itself the seeds of the coming winter. Best of all are the years when the summer has been unforgivingly and mercilessly hot, and the winter is bleakly bitter. In those years, this season, little more than an interlude, magnifies all experience into focused intensities, crystalline heartbreaks that encompass the passion we have just lived, and encase it the freezing eternity that the death of winter signifies. In the long shadow of an autumn afternoon, here we are, standing at the stove, canning apples and beans, saving them up to relish when the long dark steals across the fields.

But I’ve always loved autumn best. Perhaps it was some kind of foreknowledge, but even as a child, and then as a young man, autumn air moved me, not quite producing a lump in the throat, but making me sense that the possibility was always there. It is the season of sharp, acrid smells. Spring’s aromas are riotous, jumbled, almost cloying in their sensuality. Summer kills the scent with heat, winter just kills. Autumn is the concave lens of scent: finally, there is clear air to bear the fragrances, and burning leaves and logs to etch their outlines.

If April is the cruellest month, September is the clearest.

Today marks the 100th day of “The Year of Being 56″. Not, I am a little ashamed to say, my 100th posting; I have not been nearly that faithful. Rather, the 100th day in my personal year of being 56.

Now, 100 days into a new presidential administration has become a de facto milestone, the moment when the new president is assessed and graded, generally by the press. I guess, therefore, I should do some assessing and grading. Since it is me doing the assessing, and this is my forum, I choose, however, not to assess myself. Why not go ahead and assess, oh, I don’t know… How about the President. And his Surge.

It might make a good name for a band. The President and The Surge, sounds almost like Bruce Hornsby (sorry, Bruce, no insult intended).

So… Howsabout them Surge??

You know, it seems to me that the only judgment that fits is the same one we have consistently and universally been able to apply to each and every one of our glorious Iraqi endeavors.

Abject Failure.

Now, I want to stop right here for a minute and perform an obligtory task. I have sworn an oath, and I must abide by it: “No mention of the Irag War can be made unless somebody states the Obvious Truths.” Truths that we have likely tired of hearing, possibly to the point of boredom or even irritation. Nevertheless, they are so critical, so vitally important, that, like 9/11 itself, we must NEVER forget them. They should be applied, like warning labels on cigarette packages, to every editorial, every news story and every conversation that deals with the war in Iraq.

The Obvious Truths are these:

1. Iraq had no part in the attack of 9/11, and no Al Qaeda connection.
2. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
3. Not only was there not even any vaguely reasonable evidence for an Al Qaeda connection or for WMD, but the Bush Administration repeatedly made distorted and inflammatory statements that were intended to make America and the world believe such an Al Qaeda connection existed, and that WMD were hidden in Iraq.
4. Dictator or not, despicable or not, we simply invaded a sovereign nation. With no more provocation than that provided by Hitler for invading Czechoslovakia or Poland.
5. Although not perhaps an undeniable “truth”, only a fool would deny the Obvious Implication: that we did all of this for oil.
6. Oh yeah, one more Obvious Truth: by essentially breaking off from Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden, we failed to capture or kill the man actually responsible for the deaths of 9/11. Not to mention the 1000’s of American deaths and untold Iraqi deaths that the war in Iraq has caused. The totally unnecessary, essentially illegal (read the constitution), completely misguided, and insanely and even criminally mismanaged war.

Don’t let the war come up in conversation unless you state the Obvious Truths. In any discussion that deals with “freedom on the march” or “sectarian violence” or “Iraq is a hotbed of terrorism” or “if we leave, the country will dissolve into chaos”, the Obvious Truths put everything into the proper contextual framework:

We caused all this crap.

Or, to be more precise, CheneyBushRumsfeld caused it (started it, then immediately bungled the war they couldn’t wait to have). Every atom, every iota of the unholy mess has its source in the actions of those criminals. We must never forget this. And even though we, as a nation, must admit to a gross sin of omission by allowing ourselves to be blinded by the simplest forms of fear-mongering combined with jingoistic flag-waving, their sins of commission are almost astronomical in comparison. To knowingly feed your countrymen a diet of fear and misinformation, and then to feed your youngsters to a meat-grinding insanity like Iraq, those are the acts of demons.

So… Howsabout them Surge??

Petraeus has said that, if things go well, we might be able to get down to “pre-Surge” numbers by next summer. As near as I can tell, that’s the best they’re offering.

Listen, I know we have short memories in this country. That’s why I insist on the Obvious Truths. When (to quote a Stan Rogers song) the “smiling bastards lying to you/ everywhere you go” lovely folk of the Administration can, simply by repeating it over and over again, convince simple folk that Saddam was behind 9/11, and that he bloody well did have WMD, well, we’ll eventually believe everything. Donald Rumsfeld’d into submission.

But please recall what this Surge was supposed to do. We’re were supposed to ramp it up about 30,000 soldiers, then secure neighborhoods and then cities and then maybe provinces. Everybody, Right and Left, was completely ready to bail on W’s war, but, no, give us until September, please? See, we have this list of milestones! Just give us until September, then you can judge the results. Oh, please don’t pull us outta that briar patch yet, just give us until September, then you’ll see. Then you can make a decision.

Now it’s September. The Iraqi-Maliki governmental express has accomplished almost exactly none of the milestones, unless you count “continue to have a government until September”. Violence is up, pretty much proportional to the American troop level in country, there is no police, no Iraqi army, no nothing.

And especially no end in sight.

But PetraeusBushCheney claim phantom successes, and ask us to “give them just a little more time/and freedom will surely grow”.

Sorry. The 100 Day mark is here, and there does not exist a letter grade low enough to grade The Surge.

Ain’t it the truth? I mean, obviously.

I had my Sirius radio on the other day and a Tangerine Dream song came through the speakers. Now, I am not particularly a Tangerine Dream fan, but I find their music interesting. And Sirius, by the way, is a great source for this kind of out-of-the-way musical interlude: certain channels (The Vault, Jam On, Classic Vinyl) will occasionally play some very unusual cuts, things that never make it on to my terrestrial radio.

The Tangerine Dream piece was not so much a song as it was a tune, and not so much a tune, as it was a soundscape, and not so much a soundscape as it was an “auditory manipulation”. The phrase “auditory manipulation” is entirely apt. Tangerine Dream was not merely playing a song, they were in the business of eliciting specific neuronal responses in my cortex. And not by presenting some passive New Age audio mood landscape. This song was intended, purely and simply, to be an hallucination. It was supposed to Trip me Out. No question but that it was crafted to be experienced specifically while under the influence of mind alteration.

But wait. Tangerine Dream wasn’t just painting a background for some indeterminate mushroom-fabricated reality. The closer I listened, the more I realized that the true intent in this music was to be the Trip. To provide for the properly attuned listener (and by properly attuned, I mean electronically cranked) each swerve and loop and slalom and detour, leading him by the brain, and showing him where each foot was to be placed as he stepped into the rabbit hole.

It occurred to me that there over the years there have been several groups who play at this Trip Manipulation game, with varying degrees of success. Certainly Pink Floyd comes immediately to mind. Consider Roger Waters’ guitar work, and all those lush arrangements and transitions, combined with those eerie voices laughing and shouting just beyond the threshold to make out what they are saying. All these elements are efforts to “Be the Trip”, and pretty sucessful ones at that. In fact, a lot of English and European groups over the years made what appear to be very targeted attempts to Be the Trip. Yes, for instance, loved to envelop the listener in almost classical flights of hallucinatory fancy, with the imagery of the lyrics matching the floating islands on the album covers.

It’s hard to fault these musicians from wanting to paint the beautiful (and not so beautiful) worlds their own internal discoveries had led them to experience. It’s the nature of art, in a way. The thing is, though, that no matter how well these Trips were presented, they were, after all, the vision of Jon Anderson or Roger Waters or whoever. The listener was somewhat a passive recipient. And because they were presented as whole tapestries, it was necessary to forever represent the whole tapestry, everytime it was played. No fractal differentiation allowed, thank you. Please to be note perfect, because my highly sensitized mind is expecting all those notes, just as I first experienced them, and I will be bummed out if I don’t get to recreate the hallucination the way it’s “supposed to go”. And you don’t want 1000’s of bummed out people in your audience, do you? Oh, no, please not that.

But there rose, in another part of the planet, a wholly different approach to how the psychedelic musical landscape might be surveyed and explored. In the land of the free, the home of the brave and don’t tread on me spirit, far out (literatively and figuratvely) on the West Coast of America, there came into being a completely altered approach to altered states for alternative music.

There was the good ol’ Grateful Dead.

In my car at lunch today, again on Sirius (which, last Friday, launched the Grateful Dead Channel, a simply inspired bit of programming!), I heard a 1969 Fillmore West version of “Dark Star.”

“Dark star crashes
 Pouring its light into ashes”

Now, this, this is the psychedelic experience at its democratic, participatory best! The whole point of a Grateful Dead show, born as they were as the house band for the Electric Koolaid Acid Tests, was never to repeat anything. Everything, every meaning, every discovery, was to be found, communally, in the moment, with no preconceived idea where it might take us, but completely certain that it will take inevitably us somewhere.

“The bus came by and I got on
 That’s when it all began.
 With cowboy Neal at the wheel
 It was a bus into Never-never-land”

Now some people will think it perhaps disingenuous of me to insist that the Grateful Dead were not trying to “Be” the Trip. I mean, they called Jerry Garcia “Captain Trips”, for god’s sake. Surely he was leading us somewhere, smiling that little smile, soloing away, searching out hapless people in the crowd, and playing that little riff just for them, right at them. But the point was, it was a dialogue, not only between Jerry and the audience, all those “what’s nexting” souls there for hours. But between and among everyone in the band, too. A triologue, a quadrilogue, quintalogue, everybodylogue, everyone finding out, in the existential moment, what the resolution to this quandary was going to be. It’s the way democracy would work if all the voters were instantly telepathic with one another. Jerry, Phil Lesh, Bobby the-rock-star Weir. Mickey and Bill drumming away. Pigpen downing Jack Daniels, and suddenly careening away from the cosmic depths and blacklight dreams of “Dark Star” to the blues standard “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”, and laying down a rap about young girls and “going downtown to see my baby”, and “you gots to feel so good, so good”, decades before rap became a musical genre.

The music went wherever the moment required it to go. If it was “Dancing in the Streets”, then veer over there for a while, and whirl and twirl. If it was sweetly needing a “Peggy-O”, then sing of Confedrate soldiers marching down to Fennario. Or a cowboy song, “Me and My Uncle” or “Jack Straw”. Or bring in the blue lights, and make it sad, maybe even slightly dangerous, and sing about “Stella Blue”.

“When all the years combine
 And melt into a dream
 A broken angel sings from a guitar…
 Dust of those rusty strings just one more time”

Then bring up the dark reds, and play wild jungle or Arabic-tinged drums, and suddenly it’s definitely dangerous, edgy, no-exit, insect fear and strange howls feedbacking out of tie-dyed speakers. There’s a little shiver of fear now, now the crowd draws in on itself, looks behind itself, sideways at itself. Is there something moving in the darkness?

But this is not a band that leaves you wandering on the steppes, like Hesse’s Steppenwolf, staring into the warm, well-lit homes, but forever doomed to wander a barren heath. No, suddenly, a door opens, and Tom Bombadil stands on the doorstep, and there’s a warm fire in the hearth, and he welcomes you in: “Sugar Magnolia”, maybe, or “Row Jimmy” or even “Terrapin Station”. Then begin the Dance again, all together now. Then a big finish, or lots of them, strung together, “Iko, Iko”, maybe, or “Not Fade Away”.

“You know our love’ll not fade away”

Then a quiet “We Bid You Goodnight”, or “Ripple”, or a very special “Brokedown Palace”, a tune to send your fevered head out into the cool late night or early dawn, calmed and spent. Not screaming and freaked, but mentally and spiritually tucked in. A candle in the window.

“Going home, going home
 By the waterside, I will rest my bones
 Listen to the river sing sweet songs
 To rock my soul”

So much of the successful foray into (and out of) democratic chaos depends on the lyrics of Robert Hunter and to a lesser extent, John Barlow. Hunter and Garcia formed one of the greatest songwriting teams you never heard of. Their songs were sometimes vignettes, and real stories. Other times, the lyrics and melody and chords melded to reveal a Zen-like opening, a sudden vantage point to see the Other World. But The Grateful Dead, as songwriters, never tried to Be the Trip. Instead, they were more like a knothole in an old fence around a ballpark. Put your eye up to the hole, and see what you will. Here are a few powerful, suggestive images, take them, they’re yours to have. What do they suggest? Where do you wish to go? What will you make of it this time?

“It’s just a box of rain
 I don’t know who put it there
 Believe it if you need it
 Or leave it if you dare.

 And it’s just a box of rain
 And a ribbon for your hair
 Such a long, long time to be gone
 And a short time to be here.”

The untamed, powerful urges of democracy, with the uniquely American insistence on not only self-reliance, but on sharing what we have, that is at the heart of what was the Grateful Dead experience when it was at its best. Oh sure, in the later years, the structures of the songs began to outweigh the freedom of the search for what the music might reveal. That is, I guess, inevitable, part of the calcification and osteoporosis of aging. But there remains in my experience nothing quite as liberating as being at the center of those musical storms, and then seeing the light shine through. The adage of the 60’s and 70’s is still true, still in a forever present tense, true:

“There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.”

The following essay was heard on public radio station WLRH in the autumn of 2006. The same event that triggered its creation occurred again yesterday, again on a bike ride. Consider it a sort of Proustian ode to Remembrance of Things Past. With the obvious differences that it is not in the form of an ode and sounds nothing like Proust.

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An annual event occurred the other day, an event that restored my geographical destiny. I say annual, because it thankfully happens every year, although the precise date varies. 

Now, geographical destiny is not a thing many people consider significant in their lives. But as for me, there is a period that spans the months of July and August, as well as parts of June and a considerable portion of September, when I am absolutely convinced that, as my soul was winging its way toward earth and its injection into my new born body, that it was intended to land in Vermont. But instead some cosmic disturbance, a passing comet or misplaced meteor perhaps, deflected it so that I landed in Alabama instead. Why consider my Alabama birth a mistake? Because for the interminable months of July and August, as well as parts of June and a considerable portion of September, I am completely and utterly miserable. Alabama heat and Alabama humidity gang up on a poor, misplaced soul that should have been born in the Green Mountains, up in Ben and Jerry Land. Where the weather admits that it should be getting cooler, and acts accordingly.

But back to the event. I make a daily ride on my bicycle, 12 miles out along the path at Point Mallard in Decatur, a pretty ride that takes me through the trees, right beside the Tennessee River. A perfectly beautiful afternoon ride, dodging the walkers and the joggers. A beautiful, wonderful ride— except during the months of July and August, as well as parts of June and a considerable portion of September. During that purgatory, it takes a veritable act of will just to get up and face the heat. Sweat and dust and humidity. Just get it over with.

But the other day, it happened, the event happened. I got on my bike, and there was something different in the air. Or not in the air, depending on your perspective. There was a clarity, the world no longer seen through a glass muggy. There was a hint, a notion, the barest trace of… coolness. I wondered, was this it? And then on the trail, there they were. Muscadines, newly fallen, still untrodden, but for a few. Muscadines, those woodland grapes whose scent is both strong and yet somehow delicate. Muscadines, made into wine by some, into jams and jellies by those whose moral compass lies in another direction. The fragrance of muscadines rose in that clear, and yes, definitely cool, air.

And my reaction was immediate. I was suddenly back at a county fair in my youth, the smell of cotton candy and cool nights. Then my nose was buried deep in the grass of a football field, forcibly inhaling the pungent smell of grass that’s been churned by an afternoon’s practice. There was the smell of apples and fresh-squeezed cider. The smell of hay, and a hayride, and innocence thinking itself wicked because it was hidden in the dark straw, and then the bonfire and the songs and the flaming marshmallows. And the raked, damp leaves in the front yard, and the burning piles of leaves. All these Proustian odors, these remembrances of things past, were triggered by synapses that had been tangled together with the synapses that were triggered by the smell of muscadines in air that carried the first clear, bittersweet hint of Autumn.

And those memories flooded the soul of one who mistakenly thought he should have been born in Vermont, but realizes he is at home in Alabama.

I was emailing a friend of mine (Joe, a Mississippi native, who has a nifty blog of his own: Hardboiled Dreams of the World, check it out), and I said this in my email:

It’s good to hear a resonant voice “crying out” in this red state southern wilderness. I guess you and I are proof that such voices can indeed be born and bred here. There’s a power, but also a decent dose of humor, humility and even spirituality, in the Southern Liberal perspective that seems curiously missing Upeast and Outwest. It falls much easier on my ears. And anyway, I like to think of my perspective as less “liberal” than “liberated”, by which I mean hopefully free of bias, and tending toward Zennish clarity. But no doubt I am nevertheless interpreted (and branded) as Liberal. 

Southern Liberal. In many a parlor, the phrase would immediately be taken either as a joke, or an outright oxymoron. We are a rara avis, and it’s not entirely clear how we can ever come into being, the geographic culturalism so obviously antithetic to the breed. In my case, I was indeed raised by conservative parents. But, theirs, at least in my formative years, was a thoughtful conservatism, tempered with a sense of equality and fairness. For instance, I was thankfully taught that racism was clearly a bad thing, and understood that a man was to be judged by the content of his character long before Rev. King made his famous speech. More than the content of his character, I was raised to consider that actions speak even louder. A whole plethora of platitudes weaved around me as I grew up, but I do not consider them empty adages.

Now I must admit that the thoughtful conservatism that I breathed in as child somehow morphed as I became a young man. Maybe it was because I did not consider the lessons of my youth as empty adages. Like the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and every other recitation, I examined every phrase, broke it down and rebuilt it. Made sure, like Garrison Keillor’s lousy Unitarian choir members, that I agreed with every thing I thought I believed before I mouthed it. And evolved it when I didn’t.

Certainly there is still a bit of the rebel in every Southern child. It’s married, in a sometimes uneasy marriage, with love of place and a constant knowledge of one’s juxtaposition to honor, ancestry, and family. It is smoothed over by an insistence on manners and proper behavior. The rebel child ever runs the risk of deserting the conservatism of his parents, who, in that inevitable tendency of age, become perhaps more conservative and less thoughtful. The rebel Southern child of the 70’s (the 60’s didn’t show up in the South until sometime in the 70’s) found a wealth of intellectual fodder to feed his rebellion. Many eventually let the flames of rebellion become subdued by beer, Charlie Daniels and that insistent creep of years. For the Southern Liberal, however, the years may have had a calming effect, but the issues remained the same: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Mixed in with a little Humilite, and never forgetting Histoire.

The Northern Liberal seems shrill in comparison. I’d like to think that the inability of Liberal Radio to effectively contest Hate Radio is not all just the inability of liberals to see things one-sided (”Well, on the other hand, you can always…”). Southen Liberals just find all that screaming distasteful, and simply ignore it.

West Coast Liberals seem way too laid back. That hot-blooded southern Celtic streak may be tempered with too much social decorum, but it’s always simmering inside, ready to boil over when the issues become truly and extraordinarily important. The destruction of the Bill of Rights comes to mind, as well as the destruction of the balance of power among the Three Branches.

If there is a Midwestern Liberal, I wouldn’t know anything about their characteristics. I can only imagine that there is something in there about serving hot dishes, and jello salads. I’m strictly going on Garrison here.

Western Liberals are pretty much the same as Libertarian, a philosophy that appeals to any thinking person. It’s the “thinking” requirement that excludes almost everyone from any reasonable camp. [And yes, I went through the de rigeur Ayn Rand phase. “Prove to me that you deserve my love and then I will take yours. As roughly as possible.” Got the T-shirt and the busted relatonship to prove it.]

In fact, it is the lack of discernment and rationale that makes so much of today’s political landscape ugly and inhospitable. On all sides, discourse immediately degenerates into shouting match, ad hominem slugfests. I fault much of 20th century education, which failed consistently to instill the modicum of logical deduction and induction upon which all civilized debate is based. Okay, now I reveal the conservatism that has crept in with age (56 years, remember?). Apparently, I would have school curriculum revert to the Quadrivium and the Trivium. And everyone takes Latin and Greek. Do ‘em some good, by cracky!

Perhaps for Southern Liberals, our liberal past is not dead. It’s not even past. Go figure.

“Okay,” you ask, ”if the oil runs out, isn’t that the solution? If we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, doesn’t the atmosphere pretty much clean up all by itself?”

Funny you should mention that phrase “clean up.” Turns out, cleaning up the atmosphere would introduce an extra liability, one that is only just now coming to light. Or the lack of it. I speak of a counter-trend, caused absolutely 100% by human action: Global Dimming. Coincidentally, the PBS progam Nova tonight featured this lesser known phenomena. Funny thing: it turns out that the same pollutions that have pumped untold tons of greenhouse gases into the air have simultaneously pumped untold tons of particulate matter up there as well. Smokestacks, tailpipes, even contrails have all combined to throw up what is effectively a screen against sunlight. Less sunlight coming in means less is available for the greenhouse gases to trap. As a matter of fact, it’s had a significant counter-effect on warming. If CO2 raised us 2 degrees C., smog reduced it a little over 1 degree.

So, this is great, right? I mean, it’s sort of like the Gaia Hypothesis, some sort of “balance” going on. Sweet.

Uh, no. First of all, the Gaia Hypothesis implies an innate balance, a form of stasis that the planet does all by itself, not Man pumping in mutually obliterating crap. Secondly, note: greenhouse warming still wins; it’s not a balance. Which is huge, when you finally realize that the “enlightened” industrial West (North America and Europe, to be plain) has been working for decades to eliminate the particulate component of our emissions. The reason is simple: they were killing us. Yes, they’re (surpise!) unhealthy. Plus, it’s now been discovered that this dimming, for so many years concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, had its own deletorious effect on climate. Much evidence suggests that the horrible African droughts were caused by it.

So, the industrial countries, to save their citizenry have gotten our act together w.r.t. smoggy stuff. China and India are still doing their part to fill the global dimming gap, but they are wising up as well. Something like 10% of the Indian population suffer from some form of respiratory disease, and coal-burning China can’t be far behind. Their govenments are now aware of the problem. As China and India gain industrial stature, they, too, will begin to curb their particulate emissions. No, we won’t have the luxury of smog for very much longer.

Which means that the ameliorating effect of global dimming will go away. It’s already happening, due to the successful efforts to reduce smog in America and Europe. And as a result the warming is, well, heating up. It’s gaining speed. In fact, since the global dimming has effectively masked greenhouse effects for most of the time we’ve been creating them, many climate scientists now believe we may have grossly underestimated those greenhouse effects. We may only now be seeing the beginning of what real warming is really like.

Add to all this the fact that the greenhouse emissions we’ve been pouring in for decades don’t just go away because we hit Peak Oil, and suddenly stop adding to them. It’s like weight gain: it hangs around in an unsightly way long after you decided to go on a diet. And having made every effort to eradicate the natural mechanisms to reabsorb the excess CO2 (that is, by trying our damnest to burn down every last square inch of rain forests, for instance), that excess is likely to stick around much longer than the time it took to put it there. Add these factors to the fact that by creating open water at the North Pole, and reducing ice fields everywhere, we’ve also reduced the earth’s albedo (i.e., its reflective capacity), making it even more absorbent to sunlight. So now we’re multiplying the acceleration that was already exacerbated by reducing solar dimming.

Here’s another brick for the wall: increased warming also threatens to release 10 billion tons or so of a substance called hydrated methane, which has been safely tucked away on the ocean floor for eons. The pressure and cold keeps it in a sort of dangerous equilibrium, but as the earth’s surface heat increases past a certain breaking point, it can suddenly be released in one gigantic global pooter-tooter. It happened the last time about 50 million years ago, and instantly raised the earth’s temperature about 12-15 degrees F. (put a match to that fart!). Methane, you see, is approximately 6 times more efficient at retaining heat than CO2. You gotta love efficency.

No, the factors that are warming us up will be around for a long time, and their various aspects, like a demonic jigsaw puzzle, each seem to be almost designed to strengthen the effect of the other. It’s like Gaia had suddenly turned out to be, instead of kindly old Mother Nature, the horrible creature in the attic at the Bates Motel. Intelligent Design by a bad person.

And me mustn’t forget the “running out of oil” thing, the specific and notable consequence of Peak Oil. That’s a problem all unto itself. Just when the human race will need all the energy it can, not only to combat all the environmental disasters rising on every horizon, but just to feed itself, in the midst of drought, floods, and rising oceans, somebody turns off the power switch. Remember: humanity, carressed by an extraordinarily long global “summer”, with rich harvests, made possible by feeding on the tit of millions of years of ancient sunlight (ie, oil, and to a lesser extent, coal), has managed to load itself with a mass of humanity far beyond that of the natural carrying capacity of this planet. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, earth’s population hovered at about one billion, apparently all that it could safely support based on the annual solar energy exchange (ie, forests and crops converting sunlight into chemical storehouses).

Then, with the advent, first of coal, then mainly due to petroluem, the population began to soar. Fertilizers, irrigation, modern machinery, pesticides, all based on OIL, combined to produce harvests that allowed populations to artificially expand beyond whatever balance had held before. Thank God for little things like war and genocide and disease, or else we’d already be at the 10 billion mark expected by mid-century.

But the pumps get turned off. And suddenly, there’s no way to maintain that artificially high population. And the world’s long summer turns into hell on earth. And it’s like a 10 billion car freight train running into the laws of physics and supply and demand and reality. Without much imagination, it’s safe to say it won’t be pretty. Train wrecks rarely are.

So. We may not be able to predict who wins in the race between Peak Oil and Global Warming.

But we can pretty well see who loses.