A CHANGE IN SEASONS

Fall is just moments away. A spring and summer have drifted away while everyone pointed fingers at each other blaming the other person for the debacle their lives have been the past few years and yet no one is willing to accept responsibility for themselves or their own actions. Everything is generally prefaced with some form of “If only”. My life (as you well know by now) took a drastic change as the clock was chiming and the New Year was being rung in. I’d barely had the chance to make one of those obligatory “Out with the Old, In with the New” statements many feel the need to make at times like that but it became painfully apparent things were about to be different without saying much of anything. That statement quickly ceased to be a cliché and turned into an all too real mantra, the effects of which I’m still learning to deal with each and every day. “Out with the Old, In with the New” has resonated in every aspect of our lives this year because of the surreal political and economic climate that grinds on without a plausible solution to anything. Regardless of who gets elected everything will still be doomed to fail because we lack a backbone to make any hard choices. The people we elect have too many IOU’s out there to really change anything and have less of a backbone than we do. No matter what side of the fence you stand on you want the other guy to give up more than you yourself are willing to give up and have become willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what you want while trotting out words like “honest” and “honorable” to use as your shield and if that doesn’t work you invoke the name of God. People have been lying to each other and themselves for so long they no longer know what is and isn’t true. Whatever is wrong with their life…it’s someone else’s fault and they’re going to continue to lie to everyone (especially themselves) until they find out who the culprit is that makes their life so miserable looking for anything at all that might be considered a clue (except a mirror) so they can point a finger in some other direction and say “See! It wasn’t me!” even though they’re clearly implicated in the wrongful deed from the beginning more often than not. The relationships they have are forged by fantasy, half-truths and are fleeting at best. They always have one foot out the door in case they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They want people to blow sunshine up their ass and tell them they’re special until they do get found out and when the rift finally happens…again…it’s always the other persons fault. So they begin searching out new victims to replace the old ones while desperately attempting to maintain their popularity. The down side is they don’t know who they are and have no clue what they’re actually looking for. It’s a rarity to have a relationship with someone who knows you warts and all and still willing to stand beside you no matter what. As you might imagine I have few of such relationships that deep these days. The people closest to me and I trust the most can be counted on two hands…minus a finger or two. My wife is certainly on the top of that list. I don’t have the memory or the patience to cultivate that many relationships and my bluntness (and sometimes arrogance) tends to scare many away…besides, as my eldest daughter recently pointed out, I have a tendency to throw everyone under the bus sooner or later. I have many friends, lovers and acquaintances that I deeply respect and admire on many levels but, as much as I care about them, it’s unlikely we could all agree on where to eat for lunch much less accomplish anything important and my frustration would only get the better of me. The year is almost three quarters gone. “The Winter of Our Discontent” is quickly closing in upon us. We have choices to make soon and not just at the polling booth. We’ve betrayed ourselves long enough. I have no desire to become just another character in a John Steinbeck novel anymore. I have learned much about myself this year. My collection of people with a bunch of initials behind their last names grows daily. I write this after just learning I have arthritis in both hands and Carpal Tunnel from my left wrist to my elbow…yet here I sit writing, ignoring the pain, and knowing I may have yet another surgery in my future. Before long they’ll be taping paint brushes in my hands the way they did Monet late in his life so he (and I) could keep painting. I haven’t given up on myself or the human race yet so many seem to have done just that. It’s time for a change. We really do need one…a real one this time.

MISSING THE BEAT

I make no bones about my lack of musical ability. I, regretfully, embrace it. I can tell you what I do and don’t like musically and am willing to listen to pretty much everything at least once to see if it falls into my parameters of acceptance. Much of what I do like may surprise many of you, but then again… Who really gives a shit? This moment of mental masturbation has little (although some in the broad scheme of things it does) to do with where I’m heading with this. This little trip down memory lane kinda starts with the “Beat Generation”. If you’re under fifty years old you probably have no clue who they were or what they were about. They weren’t the cartoonish images most remember from books, TV and movies or the stories in LIFE and LOOK magazines. Maynard G. Krebs was the comic relief to validate Dobie Gillis’ All American values system regardless of how transparent it really was not a real example of a “Beatnick”. He was more the “Slacker” of that generation. The men of the “Beat Generation” didn’t all have goatees, sunglasses and wear black turtleneck sweaters and berets. The women didn’t dance spastically around in black leotards to bad jazz riffs snapping their fingers while someone stood on a stage and spouted complete gibberish to the music and proclaim it was poetry for the beaten down masses (thus the name…they were tired, they were beat). Some of that did happen but there was more going on than that back then. Many of those antics would reappear at times as society grew (pun intended) and would be regarded as “original”. The “Beats” promoted free thinking, changed censorship laws regarding literature and the arts in general, opened doors to embrace your sexuality whether you be gay, bi or straight, explored eastern religions and philosophies of all types, experimented with drugs, distrusted the government (so were regarded as “communists” by mainstream America) and considered everyone equal regardless of race or religion. All of which would be adopted by the “counter culture” a few years later. It didn’t take long for the Beats to (like the “Punks” a few generations later) realize you can’t be miserable and unhappy forever…besides, the drug choices were getting larger and they were becoming unexpectedly…happy. So they moved a short distance around the corner to the Haight-Ashbury area of the same city, San Francisco. They grew their hair out, wore bright colored clothes, still danced spastically like the white Protestants they really were and recited bad poetry to a variety of music. More religions were embraced, saving the Environment was important and the music was as varied and eclectic as we were becoming. We wanted to “Buy the World a Coke” and live in Peace and Harmony never for a moment realizing we were being led down a material path driven by our own ego and consumerism. Places like Chess King happily sold us “Sonny and Cher” fake fur vests for $60.00 at a time when you could buy Levi’s for between eight and twelve bucks at The GAP and we wanted everything we could get our hands on never realizing how out of touch we were becoming. One morning we wake up, and to our surprise, the hero’s of the anti-war movement had become stock brokers. The musical icons we loved had become corporations for tax purposes and had employees to pay health benefits to. The rest have died from using too many “recreational” drugs. Without missing a beat we discard our circus clothes and our “natural” look then bought “preppie clothes” and cases of hairspray. We join the “Young (enter the political party or religion of your choice here)” and convince ourselves we’re making a difference while getting hammered at Happy Hour with our other equally mindless “friends” or we joined “Hair” bands. We “help” the environment by kinasorta recycling and buying “organic” produce. We don’t grow anything anymore…we don’t have the time. The “Punk” movement comes and goes quickly leaving it largely where it started in a disenfranchised New York City filled with many of the first casualties of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. Anger is replaced by Apathy and we all feign shock and disbelief when Andy Warhol gets shot and accidentally exposes how corporate the art world really is and Rock Hudson “comes out” about being gay and having AIDS. John Lennon gets killed a short time later and gets elevated to the God he never was but people use as an excuse to get drunk for weeks on end after that. People begin to think that having a white ring of powder around your nostril is a fashion statement. The odd gyrations thought to be dancing a few years earlier are little more than moving in place fearing someone might look at us and think us “not normal”. The all encompassing euphoria shared in our youth has been replaced by a “rabid attack dog” mentality ready to berate, belittle and, in some cases, kill anyone who doesn’t agree with our views or moral beliefs. We really can’t dance to such a cadence…march mindlessly…maybe. We avoid politics wherever and whenever possible. There are a few that ONLY talk about the subject and do so poorly. Many of the very same people pay way too much for a photo op with no one of any importance outside of their own little world. The $4.99 Blue Plate Special at Joe’s Diner with meatloaf, mushroom gravy and mixed vegetables is now Terrine of Beef with Wild Mushroom Compote and Seasonal Vegetables at $1000.00 a plate in some gaudy ballroom. In return you get the photo, a bullshit promise and little else. Rappers descended out of the heavens one day spouting angry inaudible “poetry” over someone else’s music and proclaimed “original”. It quickly became the deadliest musical genre concocted by man. I know many people think that people with bad grammar, attitudes and clothing choices should be cleaned from the gene poll but I’m sure there are better ways than shooting them and anyone else in a close proximity. In typical evolutionary style the former criminals are now business moguls who happily take our money from us and we feel honored to let them do it. Why else would we spend $200.00 on a pair of jeans that look like shit on us but we feel so elitist in doing it? Stupidity must have a bigger pocketbook than one might imagine. These days we want to be around “real” people like ourselves. The sad part is…we have no clue who we are anymore. Still we feel comfortable being with people who go to the same plastic surgeons, get the same Botox treatments, go to the same gyms and stand next to the same equipment, shop at Needless Mark-up or other trendy places like them and drive the same leased vehicles to the same cookie cutter McMansions every night. No one talks about anything anymore other than themselves and how wonderful they are, what they do for a living or what they saw on the Food Network the other night. Anything deeper than that they’re lost and don’t know what to say. I’m tired, I’m beat. I want a reality in my life that makes sense and isn’t going to turn out to be just another mirage. Change is good. Life always changes. Having to do so because it all was a lie or a marketing strategy is disturbing. Somehow in the timeframe of the last three quarters of a century (give or take) we’ve lost the beat. I, for one, want it back.