a praise poem

Oh hallowed youth whom to you
summer days lend out
timeshares of warmth, a smiling sun
On your beauty and fun
and only playful pouts
grace your mouths
on the lake, on your decks
grilling out, eating in
You make every day bright
Every evening memorable

And when the school year begins
You waste no time to switch,
pick up your books, adopt a wise look
and the halls of college sing of your return
Computers whiz and blink with light
to give you screens filled with scholarly delight
The books, they know you need them less,
they attend in solomne reverence and readiness
And there is no reticence to bring you
whatever it is you need-- perhaps a coffee
flavored sweet to suit your similar taste

Ah, your footsteps bring Rainbows
where ever you pass
Sperry's sing from the trees
lining the student walk way
Nike's form lacks and so yearns

for your smiles that adorn

yet are never put up for display.

Every gym short,

a new bright color
Every t-shirt,
you casually acquire

So no matter the strife, the replaced carpet
the soririty clash, the DUI, the debt, the
beer, the rumor, the conquest, the credit card,
the debit card, the gift card,

the big game--

And no matter the unfair exam,
the workload, the stress, you will be you,

this stuff of class is put there to stay

it is not for life or your course of a day

when you hear of problems outside your world--

Christ, what are other people for?

We all deserve what we have.

Remember: Don't sweat the small stuff.
Live laugh learn. Life is good.

Above all,
We are just glad to see that you have tanned well.

strangers

I am at the fair walking around. Cecilia and I look rather stoic and aloof in our sunglasses and I like that image. This woman grabs her daughter's hand and says, "you better take my hand, there are strangers everywhere."

Which, when you think about it, is a funny thing to say. What else would they be? Did the mother come to the carnival thinking that three hundred of her closest friends and relatives would be riding the spaceship or stumbling through the mardi gras fun house?

"Honey, do you want to run out to the grocery store with me?"

"No I better not, there could be strangers there."

And the word "strangers." It must feel alarming to look at a crowd of people and just see the word stranger flashing over and over. I guess there are only two kinds of people in the world afterall: strangers and non-strangers.

It makes me think though-- to most people, I am a stranger. And if its numbers that count, my overwhelming identity would be that of stranger. Its not too hard to be a stranger; most people are really good at it with out exuding effort or becoming self-concious in their attempts. Sure there are anamolies, like occasional friendships and kin, but overwhelmingly, we stay strangers.

Whats the in-between of a stranger and a friend? Often, friends make good strangers. We are all in a state of flux becoming more or less like strangers as we move around or dont move around. Yesterday there was a man in front of me in line dressed like a woman. She had breasts and teased hair, but big sad boy eyes, even with the eyeliner. She turned around to face me and said, "Sometimes you get what you're looking for, sometimes you dont," which sounds about right. I think it was a prophesy.

She was buying a book, a book that was one of the first books my mother read a loud to me. Little House in the Big Woods. Which seems significant: we are little dots in a big place, shifting on a gray scale of strangeness.

a short meditation on playwriting

Sometimes if I am very very lucky, when I first turn on my airconditioning, the initial burst of stale air causes my car to smell like a Disney World ride. And that is a great great day.

As I am working on this playwriting project, I think I have encountered a valuable lesson. The characters must not fully have a handle on their world or their problems. That sounds like a given, but it is a really crucial thing to perfect. The characters cant fully comprehend the nature of their conflict. Which should be in the playwright's ability: to be so honest about their issues that they push (both themselves and the play) to the ends of thier know-how problem solving. Sort of like John Donne poetry, or my favorite movie, Broadcast News... both these things, the movie and the poetry, have unbearable conflict in common. John Donne's narrator as well as Holly Hunter's character absolutely are up to their neck in angst, one siding up in the protestant/ catholic rift, the other choosing between love and values. And they dont let themselves off the hook of the struggle, consequently the audience/reader have no clue how its all going to end up just as the character does not know.

Thats how you play it, thats how you write it, thats how you read it, watch it. Narratives... education... they just serve a purpose and take you down a road that exposes you to everything you dont know and dont understand.

Au la cart, Darling, Au la cart

Well, for me, I love the idea of non-local foods. What is more romantic than a New York rendezvous? Imagine, flying cross country in a jet, to dine, magnificently, on cuisine that has traveled equally as far. In Paris, in Manchu Pitchu, I eat the food of Switzerland, Japan. We meet at dinner; I sip and dine on supple palletes of subtle sauces. The champagne flows like bubbling petroleum, from my lips and down further still-- an elite tango of diet and lifestyle. I love my food as I love myself: rich, transient, global.

An Equestrian Question of Ethicality

Is it Ethical to be an Equestrian?

The worry has echoed around these last few months. When I'm taking a lesson, it is not uncommon for the instructor to yell out across the dusty arena "You're the boss! Tell the horse what to do, not the other way around!" When you hear this, the horse is coughing from the dust and you are on your 10th lap around the ring; the end not quite in sight. And amidst the heat and the sweat and the crop you use to motivate your steed to acceptable speeds, you have to ask yourself, "Wait. Is this right?"

Sure, Ayer would just say "Boo horse-riding boo!" and leave it at that. But the non-logical positivists amongst us still feel unsatisfied.

I've never arrived at a solid answer to the query on if animals have souls or consciousness. Heck, I'm not even sure if humans have souls or consciousness (best, for maximum societal meshing to assume that they do; sorry if that sounds cynical). But let’s say they do have souls/consciousness, as everyone loves to imagine of their beloved pet. Well if that’s the case, what about what the horse wants?

If a horse has a soul, shouldn't we enter into an equal, peer-like relationship with them? Or are their more qualifications to consider when deciding to treat an animal as an equal? Some might say intelligence. Humans are more intelligent than horses, so it’s alright if we command them. But to me this logic just doesn't fly. Enlightened Despots never lasted long being enlightened and leading the ignorant masses. When dealing with people at a societal level, one person's lack of "intelligence" isn’t grounds for different treatment. Or it shouldn’t be.

On top of that, what are our values that we decide what makes up intelligence? Is it fair to judge all creatures on a human scale of intelligence? Horses may have a totally different value system than ours and it could be completely outside of our imagination or understanding. Do we just give our values preference because we communicate amongst ourselves for consensus?

All I'm saying is... if aliens land on earth and start riding us around to play polo, I'd be pretty pissed that they would assume that because they couldn’t comprehend us they would use us as ends for their own game and, as a default, prefer their species over ours.

Which leads me to some ethical schools of thought. When I try to apply this question of horse-riding to The Big Three (as I affectionately call them) Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue Ethics, I get some confusing results.

I.
Utilitarianism is problematic from the beginning. Every human being in this schema is worth "1". Well animal bias is built in! How much are they worth? .5? .3? Is their score based on their "usefulness" to human people? Come on! One person riding and having fun is worth 2 hedons, but one Horse getting ridden and just not feeling like it is worth 1 doller... this is nonsense. Next ethical school of thought, thanks.

II.
Kantianism. Ah, Kant. I just wish I could sit down with this reclusive man and ask him myself over a cup of tea. We would probably get further than I could ever get with Miller's mummified head (another doller on Utilitarianism's likeability tally!)
"Now, Emmanual, I need answers, can you tell me if this horse riding business is ethical?"
"Ah yes, well, you must ask yourself the question, does this act use the horse as a mere end, or as a means as well?"
"Well, if I understand the question, I care for the horse in addition to just riding it around. I look out for its general health, and not just because I want to keep riding it, but because I like it too."
"That’s a good start, but are you respecting the full agency of the horse? Giving it a choice?"
"Oh, I see what you are saying but what if that’s not what a horse wants? And if it had a choice, it might choose to be in a wild heard, running over craigy land, then soft fields, rocks and grasses, under stars. Well I took that life from that horse. We drained the Colorado River, and we posted letters on the hills. I've created a world where the horse couldn’t live without me, so how does that figure into my reckoning? Am I morally obligated to care for this dependent creature?"
"Is that what you would wish for universally?"
"I don’t know, I guess, but that’s only because I can’t imagine a world any different. Does this universal application account for a revolution of how we interact with animals?"
"Have another cup of tea."
I am getting ansy in this parlor, I have to get up and leave. Virtue ethics is next.

III.
Now my initial problem with virtue ethics is more of a personal problem, hardly worth mentioning since I am nearly sure no one else experiences this. Its just that... when in virtue ethics you are supposed to imagine what a perfectly virtuous person would do, and then do that, I imagine a kingly-type man, rather like a knight, riding a noble steed. I never critiqued this mental image until I started worrying about equestrians. It was then that I realized that my perfectly virtuous, perfectly fictitious role model was a reflection of an activity that has a dubious moral nature. I have to scavenge around my brain for a more neutral candidate to emulate. Still... I must plough on.

Would a virtuous person ride a horse?
Would a brave person ride a horse?
Would a wise person ride a horse?
Would a temperate person ride a horse?
The answer to all of these questions is, historically, yes. So what do I do if I want to re-imagine a new world? I can’t use the custom of how things have been to dictate how things will be!

I think on this mental image I've had, of the knight-ly king, king-ly knight, whichever, and it is still causing me some concern. He is like some drawing from a children's book published in the 1960's ... something that would be in my Grandmother's bookshelf of books she read to my mother. I emulate a 1960's perception of a chivalrous male? Before I can think any further on horses, I need to re-evaluate my life some more.

So here I am where I started. Concerned. Speaking of youth (children’s book illustrations that is) I can’t help but note the basic homogenization of horses in literature, especially children’s books. They are often romanticized. An excerpt from Mary O'Hara's My Friend Flicka shows the epitome of horse-portrayals. The second excerpt, from Lucy Corin's Everyday Psycho Killers: A History for Girls is aware of the standard dealings with horses in literature and rips it right open.

They struck at each other with their forefeet, then, curving beautifully,
dropped sideways. The hairs of tails and manes stood out strongly, moving with a
separate life of their own. One head rose, curling over the other to nip at the
back of the neck. The other stallion twisted out from under, reared higher,
striking. They coiled and uncoiled inside the floating fringes of their hair in
flowing, incessant movement, and the sun blazed down of them, making shining
mirrors on thier round haunches and the bulging neck muscles (O’Hara, 70).

The horses run around and around the track. At the track, the highest compliment
you can pay a horse is to say it’s a machine. That horse is a real machine,
you’d say… The horses run around and around the track until they break down.
That’s how they say it, breaking… Either way, at the track or at the farm, the
horse is in a box, or moving in circles, one of the other, all life long (Corin,
73, 74).

It is almost cruel to put the selections side by side. Yet I am convinced that both accounts of horses are true, nearly incompatible, but true. So how do I decide what is ethically encouraged? I turned in my equestrian team dues yesterday. And all I have in the argument is a handful of mental images: a mummified head, a cup of tea, a knight, happy horses, broken horses. More polished thoughts are necessary.

George and the Placenta

Fancy, the grey mare, gave birth to her colt yesterday. Instead of waiting for some murky dusk to slip out the baby, it happened in the afternoon, hot and heavy. Exciting as it was, we nearly forgot the wet sac that came with the baby. So while Archie tested out his new legs in the feild and his funny knees matched his funny eyes (one brown, one blue) something else was left behind of equal wonder and beauty.

Corinne, the barnhead, held back her excited dog from the fleshy placenta: gripping him by the collar and butting her hip and leg into his side to close him away.

"Easy, George!" She said. "Not for you!"

George is a good dog, some sort of labrodor breed. He has his own agenda. Sometimes I see him jumping into the horse water trough on hot days. Other times he wanders among people, not looking on either side until he finds Corinne. She is never far from him.

Corinne kept the placenta over ice, to show the kids that came through. We examined the skin, the hundreds of veins that covered it, better than any leaf. It was a fine bit of engineering; and I couldn't understand why something so complete and well thought out would pass right through the body. Wouldn't Fancy want to keep that? I touched it with my finger.

The week passed on and I imagined that George the good dog had eaten the placenta meal because he was wild and his own self and he would devour the placenta and it would nourish him. Instead, the smell from the top barn wasn't of horses and dirt and hay. It was the sickly stench of meat like the time I accidently left the thrown away chicken in the trash instead of taking it to the dumpster.

4th of July

Fourth of July is big here at this summer camp at which I work. A day of patriotic festivities ends with a fire works show in the camp director's backyard. Impressive and expensive: the ultimate American display. As the show blasted and glimmered along, a soundtrack played in the background of old-fashioned marches and yankee-doodle type songs. I felt while I was laying there on the blanket, gazing above the glow sticks and glowstick bracelets, like I was in turn of the century America ... circa 1903. I remembered just then the historical breadth of the country, a different direction to consider than iconic displays of the Fourth of July that are on holiday table place sets.

Last week and the week before I went to D.C. -- saw the monuments. My favorite was the Thomas Jefferson dome. It was peaceful there on the other side of the water. I wandered at one of the quote panels inside though. I looked it up again. It says:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

And I wonder if its true that societies evolve, if we really become more "enlightened" as time passes. My history teacher once said that each new technological advance promises leisure and enlightenment for the masses. Instead, well that doesnt happen. Is it just an inflation of problems and solutions, more solutions breeding more problems?

I was thinking about that while I was watching to fireworks. The colors traced over and over until I could see them even when my eyes were closed.