The Years of Being

NPR this morning reported a story about the brains of people who exhibit addictive behaviors. Turns out that scientists have known for quite some time that these brains are different from the rest of us (I am arbitrarily placing myself in the “non-addictive personality” camp. This may be debatable, at least for those who know me. You’re welcome to choose your own camp). For addicts, certain brain connections are, according to the report, “less efficient”. Specifically, the physical pathways that connect the “it would be wise to stop doing this now” part of the brain to the “man, this feels good!” part of the brain.

So addicts have physically different brains. What was unknown, however, was whether that physical difference was part of the addict’s baseline machinery, or whether the continued pursuit of his addiction had changed his brain. Sort of like the billboards that show the Before and Now pictures of meth users, but not as scary.

Turns out, there is now strong evidence that the predisposition to addiction is genetic. The researchers studied the brains of siblings, one of whom was an addict, the other with no history of drug use. The brains of both showed the same physical abnormality; i.e., both had connections that were less efficient at employing willpower to curb harmful behavior. Why one sibling actually became addicted and the other did not is still a question to be considered, but it is at least a hopeful one: nice to know that predisposition to something does not mean predestination to do it.

On the other hand, it might be the case that the lucky brother or sister was never exposed to drugs. Life presents different circumstances and opportunities to us all, even those of us related by birth. And just because no history of drug use cropped up does not mean that other forms of addiction were not present. The researchers were quick to point out that “addiction” covers a wide range of behaviors: alcohol, smoking, eating, gambling, etc. As well as compulsive behaviors and even ADHD. Bad connections in the brain don’t just lead to heroin and meth.

Whatever the cause for the observed discrepancies, I am a great believer in the power of the Mind to overcome shortcomings in the Machine (i.e., the brain in this case), and of our ability to physically reshape and reconfigure our brains. The brain is a plastic, conformable organ, and physical changes continuously occur in the brain as a result of our experiences. We generally refer to this as “learning”, which at times may be more or less difficult, but which is always possible, even in old dogs. Because your brain means you may be less efficient at using willpower to overcome tendencies is not the same as saying that you have no willpower whatsoever. My guess is that the non-addictive sibling exercised his will when the temptations arose. Exercise strengthens and willpower increases. Perhaps the brain used other, more efficient pathways. It is a clever organ, whose overriding characteristic is adaptability.

In any event, on balance, this seems like good news for those of us who find it hard to stop compulsive but potentially harmful behaviors. If we knew for certain that we (or our offspring) were genetically predisposed to not knowing when to stop, then perhaps we could take conscious steps to strengthen our resolve by some external means. Forewarned is forearmed. Predisposition may persistently urge us, but remembering what can happen is a force insisting that we do not listen.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

I am who I say I am.
I am not saying that,
I am just saying what
I said to see what you
Would say if I said that.
“Who are you?”, you say?
To sense the truth of that
Say again what you said
To me so sadly, suddenly
Seeing that what I said
Was the mere sum of my ego.

I assume I said something
That you sensed was said
Suspiciously or in some other
Spoken sleight of hand.
See who says these things
And you will see the simple
Substance that seems to hold
The whole edifice together.
I am who I said I was
But something happened
And that person slipped away,
Unseen and unseeing, at sea
In the snare of his own solipsism.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Yesterday, I had lunch with my very good friend Bill Case. Bill and I have been meeting for lunch once a week for many years. Overtime, we’ve constrained ourselves to a select few places, comfortable places. Really and truly, it’s pretty much narrowed down to The Main Street Cafe in downtown Madison, where the food is always excellent and, perhaps even more importantly, they know us very well. And forgive us. When I say “know us very well”, I mean that when one of us arrives, the waitress automatically brings precisely what both of us will be drinking (Bill has hot spiced tea in the winter, I always have unsweetened tea with extra lemon), and then proceeds to suggest the things they know we’ll like. And subtly warn against what they know we won’t. You know, “A place where everybody knows your name”. And what you eat. And when I say “forgive us”, well, Bill and I talk a lot during lunch. And we usually get loud, and very animated, and by the end of the meal, depending on the discussion, we might even approach going manic. Especially if the discussion happens to involve politics. Or the climate. Or almost anything, really.

We just get excited about the world and what’s happening in it, that’s all. And we kind of forget we’re, you know, in a public place. That’s probably why, when the weather permits, they’re glad we sit outside. The open air tends to absorb our enthusiasm.

So yesterday (which was fairly calm, more in the introspective vein than an End of Civilization rant), the topic turned to this blog. We were discussing my most recent post, which had concerned Newt Gingrich. This was a topic that could have easily careened off into one of those manic exchanges, but instead we talked about blogging in general. Bill was considering cranking up his own blog, but worried out loud about whether he’d have something worth blogging about frequently enough to warrant it, much less a daily commitment. “I’d probably end up writing something like, ‘Air is wonderful!’”

And there it was. Boom. Bill had supplied my whole thesis for today, launched my brain into that spin that it sometimes takes, and pretty much determined today’s entry in those three words. Because guess what? Air is wonderful.

It’s a miracle, really. Consider the air.

It’s a constant mixture, and has been for many millions of years. 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, almost 1% argon (how did that get in there?), about 3 hundredths of a percent the infamous CO2, traces of other gases, a bit of water vapor that averages about 1%. Although the fluctuations around that 1% H2O have a disproportionate effect on our day-to-day weather: rain or drought, feast or famine, all hinging on minute differences in the amount of water vapor. It was not always thus: when the planet first formed, there was no air at all. When it did form, that initial atmosphere would have been a toxic mix of methane and other carbon compounds, sulfuric and other acids. Gradually, atmosphere changed and water was introduced to the planet, most likely by virtue of a constant bombardment of those dirty ice balls we call comets. After billions of years, and with the introduction of living organisms, the air began a long evolutionary process, finally arriving, some 50-60 million years ago, at the ratios we have today. And since then, the ratio of gases has remained constant.

But it’s the nitrogen-oxygen ratio that represents the truly miraculous aspect of the atmosphere. We obviously require O2 to breathe. Every school child since Lavoisier has been taught that without the precious oxygen, air might as well be a vacuum for all the good it would do to keep us alive. In fact, your first thought might be, “If we need oxygen, why stop at 1/5 of the atmosphere? Why not 2/5, or half? Why not have all of the air be composed of oxygen?” I mean, if Michael Jackson slept in a hyperbaric oxygen tent, and pro football players suck O2 out of a tube to literally get their second wind, seems reasonable that the whole world would benefit if there was more oxygen floating around.

The fact is, we couldn’t live with that much O2. Oxygen is highly reactive. We breathe it, sure, but it’s also the thing that rusts metals and causes all kinds of deleterious chemical reactions. Oxygen oxidizes things. Breaks them down. Too much oxygen, the planet would actually be poisoned. And there’s another thing: If there were just a little higher concentration of O2 in the atmosphere, everything that could burn (wood, forests, petroleum, etc) would essentially be burning all the time. Remember the fire triangle? Fuel + Ignition + Oxygen? The fuel is all the plant life on the planet. Ignition is any stray lightning (there is lightning on our planet, somewhere, all the time). Pump up the oxygen content enough and the whole planet bursts into flames.

What keeps it from turning the place into a planet-wide funeral pyre? Nitrogen. Molecular Nitrogen (N2) is one of the least reactive substances you can imagine. It has what is called a triple bond between the two nitrogen atoms, a bond so strong that the molecule is almost inert (it’s not: but it takes a pretty hefty jolt to make it do something). So here’s this mixture of gases in the atmosphere. One of the most highly reactive, absolutely sine qua non for life substances, oxygen. A molecule that has the chemical “kick” that life absolutely requires. And then the big, totally insensitive, have to poke it with a stick to get its attention nitrogen, acting like a blanket to calm the oxygen down. The end result is that the O2 has just enough power to keep our life motors running, but not enough so that they scream out of control.

So. There has to be enough O2 to support life, but not enough to turn Earth into Dante’s Inferno. And here’s the real kicker, the eye-opener, the “what the hell?” piece of the puzzle. If the amount of oxygen increased by only a tiny percentage, the giant conflagration is inevitable. If it decreased by a tiny percentage, the air would be incapable of sustaining life, at least at the metabolic rates we’ve come to know and love. Meaning us. Humans.

Perhaps your first thought is: “Dang. How lucky that the O2 concentration just happens to be the magic number, 21%. And that the dullard molecular nitrogen makes up essentially all the rest.” Yes, lucky indeed.

Or is it? Several years ago, the British scientist James Lovelock noticed this happy coincidence. But he turned the question around. Is it luck that the atmosphere has this particular mixture, or is it inevitable? He proposed the Gaia Hypothesis to suggest it is the latter. According to his idea, the Earth acts in homeostatic fashion, self-regulating itself so as to maintain a sustainable equilibrium. This atmospheric composition is not an accident, it is a value that all life, working in concert with the physical substrate of the planet, arrives at so as to maintain that very life. The Earth is actively keeping everything within its purview in a state of dynamic equilibrium commensurate with life. And that goes for temperature, atmosphere, oceans, flora, fauna, all of it. In the extreme formulation of Gaia, the earth can be considered a single organism. And just as your body has a set of organs and sensors and systems that all work to maintain a nice 98.6 degrees and to stay healthy, so does the Earth. Fluctuations happen: we get sick, so does the Earth. But we return the steady state, and does she.

The Gaia Hypothesis is an idea that fundamentalists and conservatives tend to recoil from. The idea of an almost “aware” planet is too much. And of course even the word “Gaia” (the name of the primordial earth goddess in Greek mythology) sounds, well, too gay for that crowd. To be fair, Lovelock certainly never suggested that the Earth was “alive” or even aware in any sense that we would recognize. But it’s obvious that the idea strikes a resonant chord for all people and religions and philosophies that regard the world as a holistic entity. And no matter how one considers it, it remains a source of amazement that our atmosphere is so perfectly suited to our existence, when just a minor adjustment either way would have been so devastatingly different.

Yes, Bill, my friend, you’re absolutely right: Air iswonderful.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

How lovely to wake to fog,
To pull the blinds
And be surprised by softness.
Sunny dawns have their place
But misty mornings
Hold a hidden promise.

When the world is less defined
It leaves potential
For the unintended consequence.
When the edges of things are vague
The boundaries merge
Into the Oneness
That underlies us all.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Florida’s Republican primary is now history, and the Mittmeister is a convincing victor. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum left the party before the confetti fell, but no one ever really considered them as legitimate contenders anyway, Iowa’s late declaration for Santorum notwithstanding. Ron Paul is hanging around to keep his Libertarian agenda in the conversation, and the best parts of Libertarianism deserve his efforts. Santorum is probably hanging around to keep his hat in the Vice-Presidential ring, which is probably not a bad strategy. Both cut out early for Nevada and points west, hoping to capture those critical delegates by some advance politicking. Of course, Nevada’s delegates are awarded proportionally, so that might be less of a win than they hope for.

So what is Gingrich the Newt doing after he was handed his butt on a sunshine platter? As nearly as I can tell, he’s still planning his inauguration guest list.

There may be no more self-deluded politician in America. There is certainly no politician who is more spiteful, egotistical or mean-spirited. He gets decisively beat by Romney, didn’t even make the concession phone call that modern politics pretty much considers de rigueur. But it was almost surreal to listen to him talking about the bills he was planning to sign on his first day in office. How his “People Power” would defeat Romney’s “Money Power”.

Maybe his confidence is tied to his win in South Carolina, a state that has managed to pick the Republican candidate every primary since 1980. Although there’s every indication that the people in South Carolina are every bit as delusional as Gingrich. How else to explain the string of bizarro politicians that have cropped up there, from Strom “I’m a Dixiecrat but also a father” Thurmond to Joe “You’re a liar” Wilson to Governor Mark “Andes… Appalachians… I get those confused” Sanford.

A saner source of confidence might lie in his expectation of carrying the South. The South, it is said, represents the soul of the modern Republican Party. Southerners as a group more closely reflect the overall zeitgeist of the GOP than any other region, or that is the common wisdom. And Southerners just don’t cotton to no Upeast Massachusetts moderate, and you can take that to the bank. Which Newt plans on doing, and, judging from his strong showing in South Carolina, together with the demographics of the vote in Florida, he probably will. Florida voted in an extremely divided way. South Florida (a.k.a. “Yankeeland” or “New York’s Retirement Village”) was overwhelmingly pro-Romney in the primary. From Tampa down to Miami, it was essentially an solid bloc behind a man that talks the same way these repatriated Northeast voters talk. But look at the map across North Florida, and especially the panhandle, it was all Gingrich. The Florida Panhandle has often been called Far South Alabama, and for good reason: the sensibilities of the locals across that area are much more in tune with Birmingham than Biscayne Bay. Heck, there’s probably as many Crimson Tide and Auburn Tiger fans as there are Gators and Seminoles. So Newt probably has the South sewn up.

But what does it profiteth a man if he gain Dixie, but lose his immortal nomination. California, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. That’s where the big ticket delegates come from. And that’s where Romney will ice the win.

Mathematics is a harsh taskmaster. Newt the Academic has degrees in history, not math, so perhaps the inevitability of the numbers has not dawned for him. History tells him that a South Carolina win clinches the nomination. Mathematics would tell him that history is an idiot. Regardless, we can only hope he does stay in the race. Otherwise, the entertainment value just falls in the toilet. And Mitt needs a reason to spend his money. So, trek on, oh Gingrich the Newt! Keep Bain Capital and RomneyCare and the Massachusetts Moderate all fresh on our minds! If nobody else thanks you for your efforts, rest assured the DNC is 100% behind you!

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

The improbable of dubious utility I do now,
The obvious takes a little longer.
The standard set of triage markers I ignore.
These decisions I think make me stronger.

The thawing tundra highway has a subtle appeal,
Macadam for pavement can only weaken.
Reading road signs for directions is for fools,
Trust the borealis to provide a beacon.

Speaking plainly to make a point is proving nothing.
Circular logic is more compelling,
Obfuscation is an art that’s underrated.
It’s no much the sell as it’s the selling.

Wise prevention pounds against the mask of honor,
Unprepared, I wait for any dangers.
Cleansed and pure, unencumbered by perception,
I’m a warrior, tabla rasa, to face all strangers.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

This picture of the Allman Brothers made a Facebook appearance the other day. This was taken in Ocean Breeze, California, I think, though that name sounds like a fictional place that might have cropped up in a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mystery: ‘Nancy’s blond hair swirled in the sea air as her roadster sped down the coast highway. “A week in Ocean Breeze in August, ” the young detective said to her friend Bess Marvin, who sat beside, admiring the view. “What could be peachier than that?” “Maybe if Ned Nickeson were down there with you,” chuckled their companion, George Fayne, comfortably perched in the back seat.’

This photo was made in 1965, back when they were still calling themselves the Allman Joys. Of the members that eventually composed the Allman Brothers, only the two brothers themselves are in this band and in this picture. It is left as an exercise to the student to determine which two they are. I know who my picks would be, and, really, it’s kinda hard not to figure it out. That’s the thing about time and aging and change. Regardless what the world does to us, or what we try to do to it, in each person there’s always a thread, a common life essence, that makes itself recognizable wherever you happen to see or meet the person along their world line.

This was apparently some sort of dance, or maybe it’s a country club affair. Those crazy youth out front sure seem to have “my parents are members” stamped all over their twisting, frugging, boogalooing bodies. The two guitar players, not so much. Though the bass player looks a little like maybe it was his mom who might have arranged the the gig (“Can you and your little band play next Friday for Teen Night?”) .

Or maybe it was a staged publicity picture, since there don’t seem to be too many Hullabalooers crowding the stage. Either that, or all the other dancers are over by the punch bowl or maybe outside smoking. Cigarettes. It’s 1965, and even in Ocean Breeze, in whatever place this is, where people dress like that, it’s definitely cigarettes. Winston or Marlboro. Maybe Kools.

The dancer on the left is just so damn cool! And he knows it. That guy was probably voted Most Likely To Be Running the Chamber of Commerce. He is definitely a glad-hander, and I bet he had a new joke every time you saw him. And I’ll bet a LOT of those jokes involved pulling a finger, or some other scatalogical reference. And probably noogies administered to the less cool personalities at school. His dance partner is putting the “you’re too much” sign on him. Tan guy on the right, I’m thinking he was probably Mr. Handsome, fighting off the chicks. A nice enough guy, and his parents obviously paid big time for dental work when he was a kid. What a smile!

All these faces, frozen on a spring night in 1965. Their bodies, captured in mid-awkward motion. In their brains are  some vague notions of college next year, maybe thinking about a good job, maybe working for dad. Marriage is inevitable, but none of that happens before they engage in some serious shenanigans, by golly. These four in front, they know they have privilege, and money and looks and popularity. It’s written in their gestures, their confident swagger.

Behind them, two faces have something different displayed, some trace of The Other. There’s a good bet that they probably didn’t fit perfectly into the rigid molds that America in 1965 forced on its youth. That guitarist on the left stares straight at  the camera. He knows it’s there, and there’s a hint that he will always know it’s there, that someone is looking, listening. The blond-headed kid on the right… I knew so many guitar players back in the day, high school players, tall and lanky, stooped over their instruments, a bit of a dazed look in their eyes. Playing, playing, playing, playing. It was all they lived for. I wonder if it was a Southern archetype, that combination of long, supple fingers and a kind of empty concentration. And the requirement to play. All. The. Time.

The Most Likely Quartet in the front, I wonder what became of them? Their self-assuredness was probably justified, as far as it went. A satisfied life, fairly predictable I imagine, but with its share of small peaks and memories of parties and weddings and births and funerals, of missteps and successes and trophies in the den.

The two behind them, they became legends. One was dead before his 25th birthday, but not before he had forever redefined what playing slide guitar meant in the world of blues and rock music.  His brother flirted with death his whole life. Six years after this country club gig, they would find themselves in the Fillmore East, playing a legendary concert that included some of the finest rock improvisation ever recorded, their musical abilities on the cusp of becoming a world-wide phenomenon. They became icons in a culture that elevated musicians of their stature to transcendence. Listeners could hear the whispered words of angels in their playing, although that phenomenon usually required an ingestion of various fungi.

Eight roads diverged on a dance floor. A spring night in 1965 is captured in photographic emulsions. Time and space proceed from that instant, spreading outward, inexorably carrying the dancers and the players on their separate journeys. Time will have ravaged each one of these people, killing one for certain, and maybe one or two more have succumbed. And yet, there in that instant, all those outcomes are only phantom possibilities. The kid watching the camera, in a moment of clarity, might have decided that a steady job would make more sense, music was stupid, who made it in music anyway. His brother would have likely gone along. Maybe Mr. Teeth would rebel, take the wrong kinds of classes at Berkeley, drop out, join the Marines, become a mercenary in Angola, and end up a drug lord in the Heart of Darkness. Whatever they held, all the quantum possibilities were still enfolded in their pregnant, unopened state at that moment in 1965, Schroedinger’s Cat was both dead and alive.

Only our memories have the power to remind us of what we became, and to force us to remain thus. It is a terrible power, against which imagination will struggle in vain. The past prohibits the future. It constrains it in a web of complexities and complications composed of all the threads of life we’ve agreed to along the way. And yet those self-same memories can serve as time machines, can preserve images and instants to be called up again and again. “Places I remember… all my life.” Rooms we can re-enter and see those whom time can never change. And the same must be true for ourselves. In another’s memory, we remain frozen, the way they knew us at that one time. Forever drinking of Ponce de Leon’s fountain by virtue of another person’s timeless memory of us. Assuming they didn’t marry, the blond girl might very well carry such a memory of the Jokester in that picture. Or of a tall, blonde kid playing guitar one night in spring at Ocean Breeze.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Btw, here’s a link to a song that seems appropriate to this post.

I need a January friend
To help me push away the dark
When the night times never end
I need somebody to come along
When the winter locks down tight
And it’s hard to sing a song

When the sun don’t rise too high,
Neither do I
When the world gets sad and blue
I do, too
When the cold wind’s blowing in
I need a friend
A January friend.

I need a comrade for the ride
Someone who knows the backroads
In this foreign countryside
I need a partner in my crimes
Someone who’ll watch my backside
And won’t care how many times.

When the solstice turns the sun
You know that spring is on its way
But it’s a long time till it comes
There’s lots of January blues
Got to get through all this gray
Got to hear some good time news

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Politicians, especially those recently elected, are fond of proclaiming that in this country there is more that unites us than that which separates us. Things oft repeated may seem to grow trite by the repetition, but I believe in this case the idea holds true. Loud rancorous pundits will always insist otherwise; how else can they maintain a constant diatribe? If the “enemy” is not sufficiently different, then it would be hard to continuously paint him as the enemy. The extremists on both the right and left, those that hold office and those that only hold grudges, require a stark distinction to justify their extreme existence. And indeed, between the poles of extremity lies an uncrossable divide. Once you have stuck your flag on one side of that chasm, the other side immediately becomes at once intensely stupid and callous, and yet somehow still cleverly sly and calculating.

The truth, I think, is that America is a country whose soul rests in the bosom of the middle. Sure, the center of gravity of that middle ground shifts a little left or a little right from year to year. The ceaseless banging of the drum and shrill sounding of the tocsin is bound to have some effect, as do the winds of prosperity (or the doldrums that come from the lack of prosperity). Some years we are more conservative and tend to hold on to what we individually possess. Some years, our compassion for others loosens our hearts and purse strings and me vote a bit more liberally.

But ultimately, we all shuffle across the same ground, and for many of the same reasons. We want a little calm. A bit of peace. Some security, for us and our loved ones, and for the world to hold a place in line for us for a few more years. Not too different, you and I.

So the mystery of modern political life is: how did the national political discussion become so completely polarized and locked into a ceaseless, raging polemic centered on differences, differences represented largely by the extremes? Why is it that only extremist viewpoints monopolize the 24/7 cycle of  commentary and even for what passes as “news”? I think the answer to that lies where so many answers lie. Follow the money, and you’ll find the reason. Sex sells, but outrage is not far behind. A calm, reasonable tone doesn’t sell anything. But angry, outraged talking heads, while not helpful in clarifying anything, are pretty darn entertaining. And since we all watch a LOT of television, we see a LOT of outrage. Even if what we really want, down deep, is a nice calm explanation.

Well, don’t count on a dispassionate discourse any time soon. We’ll be seeing our differences paraded before us for as long as there’s a profit to be made from the exposition. Life is not easy in the 21st century. There’s a lot of confusion, a huge amount of obfuscation and very few clear guideposts. Finding the middle of the road is only going to get harder.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

The river is red this morning,
Like part of a Martian landscape
Before the Old Ones left.
When the canals were full and flowing,
And Martian trees lined the banks.

Down this channel, red water flows,
Lit by a dawn that wants to be on fire
But only holds the chemical signature
Of fire and sulfur and oxide.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

This morning, NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a story about a 71 year Frenchman who is suing the Catholic Church to get his soul back. Well, specifically, he wants his baptism revoked. But the Church argues he can’t do that, that the rite of Baptism forever changed him. He may stop going to Mass, stop praying, stop observing the dogma altogether. He can systematically break all ten commandments, but according to the Church, his Baptism forever marks him as God’s own, and the Church will forever stand ready to accept him back.

Our 71 -year old Mssr. Freethinker grew up in a rural region in Northwest France, a devout Catholic as a youth. But exposure to other ways of thinking and dealing with the universe led him to the personal conviction that God does not exist. He requested his name be stricken from the church rolls, and that was done. Then in 2001 he determined that he also wanted his baptism revoked: a complete schism. He requested this from the church, they refused, and now there’s a lawsuit in the French courts.

Though not earth-shaking, the case certainly has some potentially far-reaching ramifications, at least among the religious. At stake is the question of who owns the human soul. One would imagine that the Church would argue that the soul is owned by God Almighty. And that the Catholic Church, as the link from God to man on earth, is the proper regent for human souls. Since Catholics baptize at infancy, it would be difficult to make a convincing argument that the man had voluntarily submitted his soul to the church’s care; a baby may emerge from the womb with its soul already riddled by the curse of Original Sin, but no one would suggest that the baptism a baby undergoes is in any way voluntary.

The man could certainly argue that his soul is by God his own (pardon the pun), a sentiment that should ring true in the land of egalite, fraternite, liberte. It definitely would resonate here in the country of “Live Free or Die”, where personal ownership is sacrosanct, a concept that’s practically welded into our DNA. My soul is my property, by gum, and I thank you to keep your hands off it. Or he might even more radically argue that he has no soul, and that therefore no one owns it. This logical extrapolation from his stated beliefs is a bit less appealing to people from Peoria. More importantly, it would permit the church to counter with the argument that even if he denied the existence of his soul, the church recognized it, and that their claim on it was legitimate, since one cannot legitimately lay claim to nothing, and thus his request was moot. At this point, angels begin to dance on a pinhead and it’s time to cut to commercial.

Of course, the man might try to constrain his suit to the simple act of having his baptism revoked. But since the Church has already made the statement that he was forever and irrevocably changed by that baptism, it’s hard to see how the soul doesn’t enter into the proceedings eventually. What other part of him could they possibly claim had been forever changed? His heart? His brain? His spleen?

If the French courts side with the claimant (which seems likely, given the very secular bias in French society), then the question of who owns the soul becomes suddenly problematic. If the law declares that The Maker of All Things, including the human soul, doesn’t own those souls, it seems to me that we’d be looking at a potential rift in the fabric of the universe. Or at the very least a run in its stockings.

But then that was probably inevitable when The Maker of All Things gave the keys to Peter in the first place. After all, the fisherman was merely human. And to err is human, thus to be human is to err. Which eventually had to run into that whole Infallibility thing. So how could you expect to get all the way through without one or two paradoxes?

Me, I’m sticking to the “my soul is MINE” theory. I don’t see how a perfect Creator could have possibly created the mess I carry around. No, I think it’s likely that even if God had been responsible for the standard-issue human soul, and He were walking around Creation and happened to come across one of these items laying on the sidewalk of some celestial street, He might pause for a second. Even bend down momentarily, thinking to retrieve it. But, when He saw up close how disgustingly ugly the thing was, He’d quickly straighten up, put His hands in His robe, and nonchalantly hurry away, whistling and looking around to see if anyone had noticed, thinking to Himself, “I knew that free will idea would come in handy.”

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Seeing cold air in bright sunshine
Is nearly like breathing light.
Pacing the wet sand of a shoreline
Is raining the sea on the inside.
Making small talk with an Einstein
Is thumbing your nose in a mystery.
Leaving the Buddha by the roadside
Is thinking of nothing a little too soon.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

I own XM satellite radio, a device I rank among the “How did I get along without this?” things that modern life has made possible. One of the more delightful consequences of having this link to the heavens in my car has been my discovery of the Old Time Radio channel. This channel beams down episodes of radio shows from the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s. From the times when people sat around their living rooms and stared at the light from the radio dial the way families stare at their televisions today. The major difference being that the families watching their radio dials required the active involvement of their imaginations to see the scenes enacted on their radios.

One of the recurring scenes happened on a comedy classic called Fibber McGee and Molly. Fibber’s closet was a running gag in Americana. Whenever Mayor Latrivia or neighbor Guildersleeve or any other of the denizens of Wistful Vista said something that caused Fibber to think he might need to open his closet, America held it’s breath. The same way that decades later we knew Barney Fife was going to hopelessly embarrass himself in the next few moments, Americans knew what would happen Fibber opened that closet door. He’d opened the door, and out would pour a cascade of junk. The auditory equivalent of your high school locker, you could hear it falling out of the closet for what seemed like minutes. Listeners knew it was coming. Listeners identified with that closet. Because every listener had something in their own house that was the equivalent of McGee’s closet.

It has ever been thus. Maybe it’s just Americans, but I doubt it. I think there’s a human packrat gene that requires we, as a species, stash away stuff. Don’t deny it. Everyone has a place, a place they stash the unused medicine bottles, the leftover curtain hardware, the rubber bands, the receipts for forgotten purchases, the spare screwdrivers, the mason jar lids, forgotten spoons, pieces of plastic apparatus of unknown function. It may be the kitchen drawer full of lost and unnameable items, a place in the pantry that overflows onto the floor, a closet under the stairs full of clothes and sleds and camera cases and board games and broken ornaments and flashlights that no longer work. Or it may be a whole room devoted to storing stuff momentarily, but, once relegated to that region of infinite capacity, stuff that that never seems to find its way back to the light of day.

Fibber McGee and Molly ran for two and half decades, 1936 to 1959, one of the most successful series ever. And that closet was a constant companion for all those years. Apparently, it struck a chord in listeners. Everybody has the equivalent of Fibber McGee’s closet. Stuff just hates to be thrown away. Who knows when you might need it?

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Classical and jazz and blues
The tension between them
Is a false barricade
Nothing exists but excellence
Or the lack of it.
Nothing matters but the execution
And whether it touches the heart.

Music speaks to mind and soul,
Remembers the patterns
That make us dance inside
And lifts the veil that hides.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

For a variety of reasons, I have a Google+ account. Not because I think Google+ is going to suddenly displace Mr. Zuckerberg’s creation as the social media meeting place of choice (I call him “Mr. Zuckerberg” just in case he’s listening in; like to stay on Z’s good side for whenever he lowers the boom on the Facebook universe, which seems inevitable). No, I just thought Google+ seemed like a superior step up in ease of use and sophistication, and might, by virtue of these improvements, draw enough people into its fold to make that fold interesting. And I really, really resent not being able to use bold, italics and underline in my FB posts. Oh, the naivete of me!

Nevertheless, even if Google+ hasn’t been the overwhelming success I was hoping for, there are some very interesting people in my “circles” (a concept Facebook was quick to snatch up, though for some reason they STILL don’t support formatted texts in my status).

One of my Google+ “circle-mates” (I don’t know what the generic Google+ term is that corresponds to a FB “friend”) almost single-handedly makes my Google+ visits a daily requirement. By virtue of some clever connections to the world’s most exquisite photographs, or else by sheer diligence in searching, she manages to post an almost continual stream of unbelievably captivating pictures. These pictures run the gamut w.r.t. style and subject matter. Their one common thread is that they immediately engage the eye and often the mind, sometimes even causing me to do the mental equivalent of a gasp. Today, she posted a lovely picture of a village in Dorset, with a mossy street disappearing down the hill, a row of those quintessentially English cottages running alongside. Someone had commented that they had walked up and down that hill, in that village, many times. I understood, if not literally, then metaphorically.

Oh, to be in England again! If not this specific village, nor this hill, then to walk in another like it. There is always in a scene like this the hint of something, if not magical, then something close to magical. As if people who live in houses like this are, at any moment, only a footstep away from something special. As if people who live in places like this live close to the magical. The English and Scottish countryside is practically littered with Thin Places. The careless wayfarer might, taking a wrong turn in the woods, or stepping through a hinged gate, suddenly be faced with The Ineffable. Feel that aura of strangeness that whispers intensely, “The world is not as you know it. This place is a bridge that crosses into the Otherwhen.” There are many such places in the wide world, but nowhere else are they so closely packed.

Dorset and neighboring Wiltshire are in the southwest. A little further west, and you cross into Cornwall, and eventually reach Land’s End. This whole region is Arthurian country. You can hardly throw a stone without hitting some site associated with the legend of the Once and Future King,  or Merlin, or Arthur’s knights and their ladies, or their deeds. Here also the home of Morgan Le Fay and her sisters. Celtic and Pictish gods rustle in the hedgerows, perhaps robbed of their former power to affect the affairs of men, but still breathing through the bones of the land, giants in the earth. Glastonbury is the spiritual midpoint of the whole region, and the legends there are ancient and still have the ability to claim the imagination. Joseph of Arimathea sojourned here, some say with the child Jesus in tow, trading for tin, and leaving his staff in the ground of a hill across from the Tor, to grow into a thorn bush that still bears his name. Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife to Henry II, the Lion in Winter, visited the monks of Glastonbury when they claimed to have discovered the graves of Arthur and Guenevere, a likely ruse by the monks to gain royal favor, but still adding to the mystique. And nearby, the Chalice Well, where the white and red dragon’s blood flows from the ground to mingle at the bottom of the hill to join the River Brue.

The thin places are not always easy to detect. In England, they are hard to ignore. If you travel to England, take my advice. Quit the busy streets of London as soon as you may. Sure, see those sights, they are important. But get ye to the countryside for the main thrust of your stay. Walk on the paths that crisscross the country. It’s encouraged to tramp across fields and hills (mind the gate, and leave it shut, that’s the main thing to remember). I think you’ll agree: the soul of England lies between the hedgerows, and not in Heathrow. Out there among the thin places, where the fairies and elves dance at twilight and dawn.

But take care at the turnings in the path and the gates in the fence. You might find yourself in that land that lies ever just beyond your waking sight. And unwilling to return to the world you think you know.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Dead things are moving
In the mists, in the foggy night
Nature is leaving,
With her heart, the sole living light.
Wrongness has triumphed
Over all that was standing guard
Darkness is roaring
In the dawn, and it carries a sword.

We are the parents
Of a world that is wailing now.
Our seed had union
With the worst, an unholy vow.
Morning won’t save us
From the knife, from a harvest lost,
From vast destruction,
From the fire, from a killing frost.

All things are dying
On a sea made of frozen blood
No one is trying
To reach out, to see what is good.
Rampantly greedy,
We are torn, never satisfied.
Dead souls are needy
Never know they’ve already died.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Those of us schooled in a somewhat traditional curriculum for the science of Economics are often perplexed by certain aspects of modern capitalism. We were taught that tired model that entailed Suppliers of goods and services producing their wares or providing their abilities, matched by a mathematical universe of Consumers, individuals who purchased those goods and services, using their own hard-earned wages. Prices fluctuated according to a principle called “Supply and Demand” and over time, they followed broad, but comprehensible trends. Businesses and industry invested capital, people saved or spent, interest rates doodled around. The key concept in all this was the idea that some entities produced Things that other entities Wanted, and thus were willing to pay for them.

But the world today operates by ostensibly wildly different rules. How else can you explain a Google or a Facebook, which are apparently worth billions, but who give away what the “make” for free? The answer we all have been led to believe is “ads”. Adverts. Advertisements. The things on web pages nobody voluntarily looks at. Seems to me that advertisers are willing to spend an inordinate amount of money on the belief that subliminal suggestions work, that just having the ad in the frame of vision somehow influences us to be predisposed to the product. Okay, I know Google is continuously analyzing our search efforts and (assuming you use Google Chrome, as I do) even the pages we visit. Therefore their self-aware GOOGLE-EYE that sees all and knows all can then show ads that we must be interested in. That’s why when I search, I see pages on the left, and commercial possibilities on the right. And sure, if I’m in the market for a galvanized automatic eye-drop dispenser, I’ll probably click on of those commercial sites. You got me. But I don’t see how that tiny bit of shopping facilitation warrants the free distribution of search engines and web browsers and maps and Earth and document storage. And makes the company worth more than the GNPs of several small countries.

As for Facebook, the “lures” they show are just visual noise. Really. Mark Zuckerberg may have found some way to suck all my likes and dislikes and preferences and politics out of my brain directly into a FB app, but it doesn’t seem to generate any revenue for anybody. And yet the company (and Mark) are worth literal bookoos of bucks in the eyes of investors.

I just don’t see how passive, latent advertising on a website in any way warrants the money. You can’t force me to watch the ads, or buy the products. I’ll just look away.

Enter TIVO. Here is a technology that has forever undermined the traditional advertising paradigm. There must be a verb that is used to describe how people use DVR devices to watch television. But first of all, let’s go ahead and admit that “TIVO” has quickly become eponymous for all those DVR devices, in the same way that trademarks like “kleenex” and “xerox” (and in the South, “coke”, which means “any cold drank”) are now words we us generically. Just as one “xeroxes” a document rather than “copy” it, now one “tivo’s” a television program. I have AT&T’s U-Verse, so I don’t officially own a TIVO. But I sure as heck tivo’d NCIS last night.

So we tivo programs. But we still need a word to describe how we watch tivo’d programs. Because we do not just passively watch them. We watch until a commercial comes on, and then we fast forward past it until the show comes back on; that’s makes advertisers frustrated. Oh, sure, we did the same with shows we taped on VCR. But that was such an effort: load the tape, set everything up, hope the timer is set correctly, etc. With tivo, you just hit record while you’re watching, or find the show on the Guide and tell tivo to record it whenever it comes on. Or tell it to record that show every time it comes on.

And when you fast forwarded a VCR, it was easy to miss the point when the show started again. So you back up (which is painful. And slow), find the spot, finally hit play. Tivo on the other hand knows what you’re doing. You fast forward tivo, see the show is on, hit play, tivo automatically backs up the recording and then starts, ensuring you hit the mark. Tivo is no fool; it’s pretty easy to guess why you were fast-forwarding in the first place.

Advertisers understand that when people watch recordings of shows they’re gonna skip the ads. I imagine they put that into their calculations of revenues and payment schedules. But I don’t see how they can accommodate what has become the end game in tivology. Because it was so easy to just record and play, now people are using tivo in ways advertisers and television executives probably didn’t fully expect. And this is where we need the new word.

Because now, when I watch a show, I hardly ever watch it in real-time. I set the show to be tivo’d, and then go watch some other recordings for a bit, like episodes of Big Bang Theory. Or maybe get a beer, or some chips. Get comfy in my chair, make sure the show has a good 7-10 minute head start, and then start watching the recording. And skip past all the commercials. If I watch a regular television show in its normal time slot, it’s only because the remote is broken.

Sure, I watched the Alabama-LSU championship game live. Sports and State of the Unions and Oscars are a different kind of television. That’s really real time, happening now, history in the making. But if circumstances had prevented me from seeing the championship game from the beginning, I’d have been happy to skip the ads. And it is this ability to completely eliminate the ads that makes TIVO something entirely different. I don’t know how advertisers will eventually adjust, but they’re smart people. Devious, but smart. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more product placement during the shows. But that’s kind of like those Facebook adverts: it’s nicely passive.

In the meantime, we need a new word to describe this mode of watching television. Tiviewing, maybe? Skipit? I invite you to coin the new term. The OED is waiting for your call.

As for the Super Bowl, I’m a little conflicted. Do I really want to tiview it and miss all the new commercials?

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

This is a casual poem,
Written without forethought
Or intention, caught off guard
And waiting for the next word
Like we wait for sunlight
And whether the feather
Will fall within or without
The circle drawn on the table.

Odds are that it will leave
No lasting impression, either
On the table or on my mind.
But the easy flow of word to ideas
Is a joy to follow, wondering
Who invents either, and what
Required the writing and
Where the time went.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

In the science fiction classic Dune, Frank Herbert’s hero is Paul Atreides, aka Mau’Dib (“the Mouse”), aka the Kwisatz Haderach, which I’ve always taken to mean “he who is many places at once”, but which sounded dangerously close to the Firesign Theatre formulation “How can you be in two places at once if you’re not anywhere at all?” Whenever he finds himself in a stressful, dangerous situation, Paul would always chant the mantra his Bene Gessrit mother taught him:

“I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.”

By silently repeating this advice, our young hero was able to concentrate his mind, focusing on the moment, and dealing impassively with whatever peril was imminent, whether it was a slender needle coated with deadly poison mere millimeters away from his fingertip, or a giant spice worm of Arrakis, a hundred feet or more in length, rearing out of the desert sands, its gaping maw filled with razor sharp teeth that could devour him in an instant.

The lesson was clear: Give into your fear, and both you and your mind will die. Fear is the mind-killer, and the mind is the only thing that can free itself from whatever it fears.

Since before we were married, my wife Carol has always displayed in her kitchen a beautiful painting etched on glass. On it was printed an old Arabian proverb:

“Anger is a wind that blows out the lamp of the mind.”

This simple truth so impressed me that I long ago incorporated it as part of my email signature, right above “Against stupidity, the gods themselves strive in vain.” When you think about it, the latter adage can often lead to situations in which it is wise to keep the former firmly in mind. Stupidity can easily cause anger, even though being stupid is not anyone’s fault. You can correct ignorance. You can’t fix DNA.

Fear and Anger. Are there any more destructive emotions to be found in the spectrum of human feeling than these two? Each has the ability, given the right circumstance, to utterly undo our capacity for rational behavior. Some might think love unhinges people, but they are confusing love with infatuation. True love is the clearest prism in the universe, it sees without a filter and accepts what it sees without question. Anger and fear can only distort, their source is the Reptilian Complex in the brain, that most ancient and powerful seat of fight or flight, smell and distrust. And in those cases where both have seized a person’s soul, the compound effect is overwhelming, uncontrollable. Let the tandem virus spread to a group of people, infecting whole populations, and the result is almost inevitably a terrible calamity.

We’ve all seen the cinematic cliches of a mob gone insane, of lynch parties, where “normal” men and women are caught up in a wave and seemingly unable to control themselves, to refrain from violence and mayhem. Nazi Germany is the classic modern example of an almost clinical manipulation of fear and anger to control a whole nation. Individual Germans may not have executed Jews and Communists, but because they were immobilized first by their anger and frustration, and then by their fear, they collectively condoned the horror.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind, fear is the mind-killer. The irrational becomes reasonable, the ridiculous becomes righteous. It can happen whenever individuals abrogate their responsibility to think and consider and weigh alternatives, and instead grab the easiest slogan to call their own, believe the lie that feeds their insecurities, hear only what the loudest scream incessantly and blame whatever the shouters point at. Fear and anger become the refuge for those who have turned off the cognitive levels in their brains, and prefer the more deeply satisfying reptilian core, the suspicious, hateful, dominating, greedy core that civilization continues to try and tame.

It happens today. I would say that it happens more openly in the camps of the fundamentalist, of those on the far right, and I think anyone who argued otherwise would have a hard time defending their position. Hatred and insane fear hold an iron grip on so many of these people, at least the ones who have the pulpits and the microphones. They hate and fear Obama, and make outrageous, unsupportable claims to justify that fearful hatred. They espouse slogans and echo their pundits. No, I am not saying that liberals are free of bias. Only that liberals, by their very nature, are more open to listening to all sides. That they are less dogmatic. It’s what makes them less forceful in the politics of the day. The right is willing to march lock-step, regardless of the issue. The liberals are more prone to stop and talk it over. I’m not talking about classic mid-20th century communists; there has never been a less liberal, more dogmatic mindset than those people. But people who are truly liberal-minded tend to be less tied to preconceptions. That’s what liberalism is.

We have have come through many dangers, toils and snares. Real dangers exist in the world, and rational defense must always be erected against them. But unless we free ourselves from the prison of fear and anger that so many of us are building around our souls, the world will always seem dark and foreboding.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett

Keep to the road, walk the center line
Carefully place each foot before the other.
You have a fortnight to make Dover,
Wavering neither right nor left.
Stray from the highway, your life is forfeit.

The king obeys the law, he is not above it.
He must repay your treachery of love
With a commensurate penalty.
Choice is not part of the equation,
Only retribution and a sense of justice.

Whence to Dover, the rest is yours to do.
Swim the Channel or enter the cloister,
The law is not clear at that point.
This land will not accept you back again,
Your best friend and your love are lost.

© 2012 Chuck Puckett