Making Amends

Facebook posts are primarily good for catharsis: celebrating, bragging, and venting about the actions, beliefs, and lifestyles of people who don’t share the immense levels of enlightenment you perceive yourself to possess.

Allow me to indulge in a different kind of post.

When I was 16 or so, I worked at a fast food restaurant for about a year. It was my second job, but my first experience of no-bullshit hard work. I was self absorbed, insecure, and had an undercurrent or anger I didn’t fully understand. There was an older woman (maybe in her 30’s) who worked there. She was generally good natured, and I realize now she probably had some kind of cognitive issue. One night her, a friend of mine, and myself were working drive thru, and we all had our headsets on. My friend and I were saying vulgar jokes to each other. Suddenly, I heard the gruff voice of the general manager come over the headset: ‘Spencer! Get your ass to my office!’

When I got back to his office, he was holding the woman’s headset. She had told on my friend and I. The general manager chewed me out (rightly) for being an asshole, and closed with ‘That woman shouldn’t have to listen to that kind of filth from a young pup like you!’ And sent me back to work. I was embarrassed, but I was also mad at the woman for snitching on me. I kind of remember her trying to smooth things over afterwards, but I was cold, and made some kind of comment about snitching.

A few months later I had quit the job, and was walking through the mall with a different friend. The woman was there with two small children who I assumed were hers. She smiled broadly and waved to me from across the floor. She approached me, one tiny hand in each of her own, and I shouted at her, ‘Fuck you, bitch!’

She looked mortified and shrunk away. My friend, who was similarly placed on the idiot spectrum—thankfully I have better friends now—laughed, and we moved on.

This morning I stopped by a gas station and I am ninety percent certain that same woman—older, heavier, worn down looking—was working 3rd shift. I don’t think she recognized me (because I look older, heavier, more worn down probably), and I couldn’t guess if she’d even remember what a tool I was to her back in the day. It occurred to me that I should apologize to her. 

I brought my items up to the checkout, and began going over how to start the apology. I noticed she had a few blotchy looking tattoos around her wrists, and wondered if she had them when she worked at the restaurant. She scanned my items. I began to speak, and then another customer walked up behind me in line. My courage failed me, and I paid for my items and left.

I don’t know why I chickened out when it came to making amends. I’m usually very forthright and quick to correct my errors (or, I am now anyway).

As I drove away I kept thinking I should turn back, but the distance got greater and greater.

I know where she works now, and what shift, so the apology could still happen. As I’m typing this though, I’m wondering if it was best that I didn’t at that moment. Not apologizing forced me to sit with who I have been, and to reflect on who I am and who I still could become.

I am sorry that I added unnecessary pain to that woman’s life. I’ve thought about her more in the last 30 minutes than I ever did in all the preceding years. 

I’m going to apologize, I just want to make sure it is in as thoughtful a way as possible.

Lenin & Trotsky’s Dinner

I love the October Revolution. I love Lenin and Trotsky, both for different reasons.

One of my favorite stories about the October Revolution takes place after Lenin has seized control of the government, and he and Trotsky are sitting in the Czar’s palace dining hall, being waited on the Czar’s servants, who Lenin couldn’t bare to fire because they had devoted their lives to their jobs, and that was all they knew.

Lenin and Trotsky are sitting at a table in the dining hall discussing strategy. The head servant walks up to them and reverently asks them what they’d like for dinner. The revolutionaries say ‘roots and gravy’, which was a common peasant meal. The head servant reminds them they could have anything they want. They are busy, so they stick with ‘roots and gravy’.

Eventually the head servant brings their meal to them on the Czar’s own personal China. The Czar, who had lived in opulent luxury while his people starved, had the best forks and spoons and plates.

Lenin and Trotsky look at their peasant meal of roots and gravy served on this ridiculously decadent dining ware, look at each other, and laugh their balls off.

It’s a beautiful story.

Kanye West

I have loved and defended Kanye West as long as he’s been around. His ‘slavery was a choice’ comment is where we part ways. It’s hard not to imagine Kanye as a slave asking to speak to a manager.

Effective Leadership

So, I created this work flow chart for my job. It had everything that needed to happen broken up into days. It was beautiful and perfect. My team, however, had difficulty getting on board with it. Something about it didn’t work for them. They needed guidance and structure, but not ‘that’ guidance and structure. I hung in with my flow chart longer than I probably should have based simply on the fact that I created it. Today I realized it wasn’t working, brought in other people, and came up with something better.

Now, I could have begun penalizing my team for not flowing with MY flowchart, but I reverted to mission, got over myself, and came up with something better.

This is all just to say I came up behind a truck with a bumper sticker that read ‘Jesus died for sinners’ in traffic today. Now, anyone familiar with effective leadership should see that, in the Jesus situation, God clearly dug in because it was HIS FLOW CHART. Good leaders can’t be precious like that.

Nietzsche

i have a picture
Of myself
Before I stared
Into the abyss
And it stared back
Something subtle
Changed about
The eyes
A subtle shift
In light

I have three sons
Aged 7 12 and 16
And in their photos
Their eyes
Even the eyes of the one
Who is 16
Still have that
Pre-abyss light

Someday
They will see
What I have seen
Someday
The eye light will change

And we will still
Love each other
And we will still
Share our thoughts
And we will still
Live on

But our laugh
Something about
Our laugh
Will change

To match the change
In our eye-light

Bernie Sanders and Cardi B

Allow me to be the wet blanket that falls over the whole ‘Bernie Sanders shouts out Cardi B’ thing.

1. Bernie subtweeting Cardi B is a major Hillary ‘I keep hot sauce in my bag’ Clinton form of pandering.

But most importantly,

2. People who’s people haven’t been affected by the policies of elected people who are clearly their people tend to rationalize away the policies of elected people like them who overall tend to endorse and progress their particular worldview but also endorse and progress policies that hinder the advancement of people who clearly aren’t their people. 

Specifically, in the case of Bernie cynically attempting to cash in on Cardi B’s praise of FDR, I say this:

First of all, FDR was The Godfather of redlining. Secondly, the people who’s opinion of FDR that I most value are Japanese Americans. Who cares about social security for white Americans when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps? 

On Love

Idealized love. Intoxicated romance. Teenage love: “I would die for you”.

Adult love. Real love. Mature love. Commitment: “Yes, I would die for you, but I will also do the dishes”.

Punching Down

I love stand up comedy. I tried it for about six months after high school and it didn’t work out, but I still love it.

Stand up was my introduction to moral philosophy as well as politics. Stand up comedians are the people’s philosophers, and they typically inhabit and convey truth in a succinct and moving way that, say, Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson never could, with none of the pretension. That being said, I am so glad that ‘punching down’ has become a legitimate cultural criticism of comics.

My orientation towards art has always been summed up best by that Cesar Cruz quote that ‘art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable’. Comedy is art as well as low-key philosophy, so I am especially glad that rich and privileged comics are now consistently receiving dings for attacking and belittling disenfranchised individuals.

Dave Chappelle used to be great. His most recent specials—aside from being overly self impressed—were dismissed for his material regarding transgender individuals. Ricky Gervais—who has never been great—has suffered from the same assessment, but to a greater degree.

Comedy is for the people. Comedians should never punch down. Punching down is designed to satiate the prejudices of the powerful. When a comedian punches down, they become nothing more than the court jester, validating the prejudices of the monarchy.

 Real comedy only works when it is either delivered by a disenfranchised voice, or delivered in order to lift a disenfranchised voice.

When our most prominent comics begin acting as clowns for the powers that be, they’ve got to be held accountable. The good thing about comedians being the philosophers of the people is that you neither have to punch down nor up to let them know they’ve missed a beat. You can punch them right in the face.

Wounds

Life seems to be an endless series of receiving and recovering from wounds. This is not a cynical observation! Often, our scars become the best parts of ourselves. While it is perfectly honorable to retreat and recover for a moment—everyone needs to be able to catch their breath—we have to move forward. Our wounds and scars are part of us, but they’re not all of us: do not move into your wound. Let it heal. Help it heal. Understand it, and learn how to avoid similar wounds in the future, but do not set up residence in that bloody, pus-filled gash. Don’t keep picking at it. Don’t keep cutting it back open.

Body Language

Body language is fascinating.

As someone who has such distinct body language that it is incredibly easy to do an impression of me—I barely move my top lip when speaking, I stroke my beard, touch my ears, fidget with the rings on my fingers, gesticulate like a caricature of a stereotypical Italian mafioso—I find the terrain of body language both informational and treacherous.

When I was a child, up until the time I was a pre-teen, I didn’t know exactly how to be human. I knew what resonated with me when I saw it in others, but I didn’t exactly know how to manifest authentic physical representation of myself until maybe my mid twenties. So, I copied other people. I copied 3 people in particular, to the point that I have completely Zeliged their body language idiosyncrasies into my own behavior to the point that even a decade after finally becoming comfortable with my authentic self, those people who resonated with me and I very intentionally studied and copy-catted are still evident in my day to day interpersonal communications.

The 3 folks I copied: My dad, Levar Burton, Jeff Goldblum.

1. My Dad

I remember the moment my mom chastised my dad for biting his nails. I looked up to my dad. I was small enough to sit in the front child’s seat of a grocery cart at our local Kroger, I remember that clearly. Also, we were in the produce section. I remember at that moment I had discovered one concrete way I could echo the behavior of my father, and I looked down at my hitherto unbitten fingernails. I started chewing. I remember chastising myself for forgetting to bite my nails when they got too long. I kept at it and succeeded in creating a habit. I still bite my nails to this day.

2. Levar Burton

A lot of PBS as a kid. Reading Rainbow was so important. Levar would do this hand gesture when he would say, ‘See you next time!’ I practiced it. It’s just something I do now. PS, thanks to my mom for reading to me when I was little, and thanks to Levar for reinforcing the importance of reading.

3. Jeff Goldblum

My grandfather loaned me a copy of Jurassic Park the book maybe one year before the movie came out. I loved it. I read it in 3 days. I suppose to reinforce that bonding experience, my grandfather took me to see the movie when it came out. The character of Ian Malcolm wasn’t that impressive to me in the book—I was a Muldoon guy—but, Goldblum’s on screen persona rocked me. He was cool and smart and charming, but most importantly, he was fully comfortable with his idiosyncratic conversational tics. The uhms. The ahs. The awkward pauses and gestures. The general sense that he was floating above all of human experience...my kids still point out when I’m Goldbluming.

It has always struck me that however bad we may want to rebel against whatever force in our life, the  laziest way to do it is to embrace the opposite of whatever that force embraced. Dad drank Pepsi? I’ll drink coke. Mom was a democrat? I’m a republican. That’s easy.

What’s not easy is to change behaviors. Reactions to stress, fear, happiness, confrontation, success...these are things our parents taught us not with words, but with the core of their beings. Language is thought out and at least somewhat prepared. Most people don’t strategize body language. No one strategizes sweat or red ears. One of my favorite quotes from some dead catholic is ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary’. Maybe you are drinking Pepsi now instead of Coke, but what noise do you make when that sugary liquid hits your taste buds? Plus, it’s still soda.

And it’s the same for body language. Whatever clever word games we use to convince the world we are who we say we are, our body—more often than not—is telling the world who we actually are.

History Class

Talking to my son about the history program at his school. Of course, he has a more expansive view than the curriculum suggests, but here are the common themes:

1. Iconic white people of European descent.

2. Famous battles fought by iconic white people of European descent.

3. Historical tragedies that impacted white people of European descent.

4. Wasn’t it nice that we didn’t kill Martin Luther King Jr until he was finished saying his most quotable lines?

5. Wasn’t it nice that—under pressure from a restless underclass—that eventually we gave non-white Americans the opportunity to buy into the same opiate of capitalist-consumerism that white people have been able to opt into for much longer?

6. When it comes to non-white people within the U.S., and non-European countries, here are A.) the times we (white) interceded and saved non-white people within the country and B.) ‘Maybe you have never heard of this overwhelmingly non-white country before, but we (white people) dropped a lot of bombs there, and stopped communism.

Signs and wonders.

Respect

One thing I have consistently taught my boys: you do not owe anyone respect. Respect is earned. It may be beneficial to engage someone who has more situational authority than you diplomatically, but you don’t have to respect them, or let their opinions impact your self evaluation. Title, age, position...they don’t matter. My boys respect me because I have earned it. You can’t raise children to sacrifice their own dignity in order to appease the fragile ego of undeserving authority figures.

Against Sesame Street Liberalism

Sesame Street is great and important. For children. As you pass puberty and move towards regular colonoscopies, your worldview should widen and expand. It should be capable of acknowledging the dark as well as the light, and making necessary adjustments to policy prescriptions and ideology. When I think of Sesame Street Liberalism, I admit to having a caricature in my mind: A white male or female born of economic privilege but moved by sympathetic narratives of racial, gender, and non-heterosexual sexual orientations, who has really never struggled too much in their own lives, but generally has a worldview that boils down to, ‘Why can’t we all just get along/I’m ok, you’re ok’ kind of Oprah platitudes. I think Ben Affleck might perfectly embody this label.

Now, it’s all good and wonderful to think folks should just get along and leave each other in peace. But the reality of the situation is that humans are animals, and the laws of the jungle still apply. If you were born in a two story house in a white, upper middle class neighborhood to upwardly mobile parents, you have to square with yourself: you really don’t know struggle. It’s easy for you to ‘not see race’ or suggest some kind of global group hug might eliminate all of the strife in the world. That’s because you had a nanny. And, PS, race exists. You are the person Langston Hughes wrote about in his poem about Northern Liberals. And PPS, you will never address your fashionably liberal social concerns unless you address root issues, which in this country, and—actually—all over the world, is capitalism.

Capitalism is highly concentrated in the US, but it’s ripples go far and wide across the globe. Capitalism rewards highly active consumers. It lionizes on inherited wealth and purchasing power, and only allows enough comfort to the exploited under class to keep them from revolting and to allow them to reproduce enough future workers to keep the system of alienation going. If the Sesame Street Liberal was serious about social justice, they would forsake their inheritance and become a foot soldier in the movement to abolish our capitalist prison.

Another perfect embodiment of Sesame Street Liberalism: McDonalds recently inverting their Golden Arches on Women’s Day to turn their iconic ‘M’ into a ‘W’ for ‘woman’. I’m sure some pampered, disconnected, middle aged upper class house wife might offer a polite golf clap to that gesture, but maybe it would be more meaningful if you paid your employees—many of whom are women—a living wage?

There is a difference between leftism and Liberalism. In a culture where there is real justice and equality, Liberalism would be fine and wonderful. But Sesame Street Liberals have jumped the gun becaus their privilege disconnects them from the struggles of people who are still outsiders in this system. They’re skipping scenes because they know they’ll make it to the end of the movie.

What we need right now is not this brand of Liberalism. We need militant leftism, which is capable of fighting for these beliefs in real time. Leftism is capable of winning these victories instead of simply sliding flower stems down the gun barrels of their oppressors and offering a loopy peace sign in response to the enemy order to fire on all opposing combatants.

Liberalism is John Lennon. Leftism is Che Guevara. Liberalism is Jimmy Carter. Leftism is John Brown. Liberalism is Oprah Winfrey. Leftism is Huey Newton. Liberalism is Joel Osteen. Leftism is Jesus Christ.

One of the worst parts of Sesame Street Liberalism—among so many other bad parts—is the arrogance, condescension, and apparently inherited sense of superiority. George W Bush played this cultural blind spot in order to obtain 2 presidential terms, and the Democratic Party stuck the stick in their own bicycle wheel when they sabotaged other candidates in order to put forward their own anointed candidate (Hillary Clinton, an icon of Sesame Street Liberalism, and Neo-Liberal capitalism) against the most transparently terrible (in all categories) candidate in our country’s history, and lose.

When you never have to worry about going a day without cable TV, air conditioning, or internet access—let alone clean water, housing, food, healthcare—you make lazy and arrogant decisions. When you get to the bottom line—and capitalism is all about the bottom line—the Sesame Street Liberal is only concerned about the condition of the real people as long as they get cultural cache from their support, and their own bottom line is not affected. Cut off the inheritance stream that daddy and granddaddy earned by exploiting laborers for years and years, and that’s when you’ll see what’s behind the mask.

Divine Commandments

I don’t know why, but whenever a woman begins a statement to another woman with ‘Girl...’ it almost feels to me like a proclamation brought down from the mountain by Moses himself.

Neighbors

I am so involved in my own life and my own passions that I am sometimes astounded by the pettiness and nosiness of other people. My neighbor—who must know the zoning laws by heart (they probably rest on his bedside table next to his bible)—called the police on another neighbor for a trivial zoning infraction, and all parties stood on the sidewalk discussing the situation. The person who made the complaint was animated and emotional. The police officer wore an expression of stoic boredom. The neighbor who had the complaint made against them was a mixture of amused, dumbfounded, and diplomatic. It was something to see. There are surely many shortcomings to my own orientation, but the orientation of someone with so few inner resources and so much personal boredom that they feel obligated to monitor the totally benign social transgressions of others always reminds me of the denizens that occupy he’ll in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Great Divorce’.

Things That I Know About Donald Trump That He Does Not Know About Himself

FYI

Donald Trump has never had to agonize over whether to pay the electric bill or buy groceries for his kids.

Donald Trump has never walked up to a locked door that mentioning his daddy’s name hasn’t been able to unlock.

Donald Trump has never had to work. He has also never appreciated the joy that work can bring to a person, because it’s never been something he has had to do.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what love or loyalty mean, because he has always viewed such things as contractual.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what it feels like to break in a pair of steel toed work boots. He’s not familiar with the experience of sliding a pair of new work boots on in the face of a ten to twelve hour work shift of non stop walking and lifting, in spite of calluses and open wounds on your feet.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what it’s like to skip breakfast because there is only enough food in the house for the kids, even though he’s off to do hard labor in the aforementioned work boots for 12 hours, and there is no time for a lunch break.

If Donald Trump has ever been in a fist fight, it was with another inheritance baby, with the full knowledge that some kind of administrator would stop the thing before dental bills needed to be considered. He has never fought a real person, the kind of person who knows how to fight, because they know what struggle and survival means.

I don’t know where he gets the idea that he deserves the streetwise cowboy persona he attempts to inhabit, because he has never faced any of the dilemmas such a persona is bound to encounter.

This is not a tough, wise, smart, or compassionate man. This is a sad and stunted man who needs only one thing, and it’s the only thing his money could never buy him: the love and acceptance of his (dead) father, and any semblance of inner peace. What a sad and grotesque character.

His hands are small, but I also bet they are soft as fuck.

Keep Death Close to your Fingertips

Keep death close to your fingertips
Let it remind you of the light still inside
Keep death close to your fingertips
Let it focus your eyes on the light in which
you reside
Don't be afraid of the impending void
Because emptiness has nothing to hide

Make a friend of death
Hold his hand when you walk through the world
Make a friend of death
He has secrets others don't know and are afraid
to find
Let the limitations of time lay naked beside you
And bathe in the river of this brief life

John Berryman told us to 'travel in the direction
of our fear'
We are not guaranteed a day, a week, a month,
a moment, or a year
Inhabit fully this life and transcend it too
And tell the truth with every tear

Safe Spaces

My instinct tells me that people who are offended by the concept of the safe space (provided they know the actual meaning of the term and not just the grotesque caricature derided by talk radio), are possibly the people most in need of a safe space. Their outrage and mockery of the idea that a person in crisis might need a 'space' to go to and be surrounded by caring, supportive, non-judgmental people, suggests a history of pain that needs to be confronted. I can imagine them scoffing at the safe space concept internally by saying, 'who was there for me when I needed help?', and, 'what is so great about these people that they have these resources that I lacked?' One of the most important things I have learned as a social worker is to look past the noise a person makes and seek out the issue. Every lion that roars has some kind of thorn in their paw. Ignore the roar. Find the thorn.

On Warfare

I am incredibly far from the wisest person in the world. I can be proud. I can be stubborn. I am fully capable of accessing every sin and folly imaginable, because I am human, and some traits are just inside of us to one degree or another. So, I'm no Sage, but I have received a few hard won lessons. Here's one of them: if you find yourself in a conflict or argument, the worst thing you can do is try to win. That may seem counterintuitive (I know it did to me for the longest time), but it's the truth. Don't try to win. Try to be correct. Humble yourself enough to allow your mind to consider an alternative opinion or criticism of your person or belief or stance--however aggressively presented--and make yourself willing...no...make yourself GRATEFUL if an adversary proves your point or orientation wrong. To be moved off of an incorrect path by friend, foe, or whatever--however indelicate the correction may be--is a great gift. You don't ever need to win an argument. You need to exit the other side of an argument with the correct information, so you can make whatever adjustments need to be made. If you lie in an argument, you will lose. If you misrepresent your opponent in an argument, you will lose. If you bluster and threaten and thump your chest in an argument, you will lose. Bluster, lying, bravado, clever word games...these are admissions of weakness, and they will be your downfall. If you're fighting with someone, you're fighting for something. But even if you vanquish your foe with your lies, straw man arguments, and bravado, if you are standing on a foundation of sand, you will sink. Conflict requires openness. It requires humility. Even if you rally the whole world around your campaign against one individual or idea, you will know in your heart that you are wrong. And what is wrong will be righted. What is done in the dark will be brought to the light. If you want to win, first you need to be humble. You need to be honest. And even if you find yourself won over by an opposing argument or adversary--even if you lose--you still have won.

Feral

Your eyes are wild
What contraption
Beats your heart?
I imagine steam
And Pistons
And cranking gears.

You know,
Everything is made.
Even wild things
Like you.
There is always
An inventor
In some mad laboratory
Even if that inventor is
Yourself.