Fatherhood Poetic

A Political Awakening!!!!!!

2008-11-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

Today was a very special day.

It was a day that I knew well ahead of time I would be able to take direct, personal action and create future hope, future love, future admiration, future CARE, passion, compassion, and a legacy. All within my power today.

So I took full advantage of it.

I'm speaking of course of the literal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to literally engender lifetime memories in my children of being part of nothing less than one of the most historic days in modern world history.

Whatta chance!!!!!

To gather my two small kiddiepoos and talk to them about the President of the United States of America and what that means and what voting was and why ...and why.... and WHY. It was also an opportunity to see if I've learned anything from being a parent lo these 5 years since to make any of this worth a shit I had to do all this in words that would mean something to THEM.

Voting, it turns out, is like when they can't decide between movies to watch and if there was one more person, the third opinion cast would make it a vote and decide who's plan would go into action. Cool! Nailed that one, they grokked!

The President, it turns out, is like...well, where else to look than the new President's favorite man who's held the job, the man who laid the first Masonically charged cornerstone himself of the Capitol Building where President-elect Obama will take the oath of office, to whom that towering stone spike boldly acknowledges America's debt to its sun-god-king origins way down in Egypt-land, the man whose name holds firm on the location of that monument, home to the government of the Country of which is he known as the Father. Georgie Washington. The President, it turns out, ladies and germs, is like a Daddy. Ohhhhh-K! They got that one, too!

The Website of the President's house has a wonderful little scrolling dealie of allllll those faces of the men who've lived in the white house. I showed 'em George Washington. The OG George Dubya, yo. And I showed them McCain and then I showed them Obama.

I had them, my friends, wrapped around my finger. They were rapt. They got it. But before we walked to the polling place there was thing left to do to hit it out of the park: to get their laughter and emotions to a fever pitch about it all so that the memory would be with them of this day for the rest of their lives.

So I told them the story of my political awakening.

I know, I know, you're saying, Kylen! Jesus Christ, dude, they're KIDS! Booooooooooring.

Ahh, but maybe YOU don't know the story. I acted it out with the kids. And it went over so well I had to act it out like ten more times!!!!! Hahahahahahahaha.

(Please click this embedded youtube link you see below as a soundtrack if ya like. It's Marvin Gaye. It's our song!)

Here it is, then, the story of my Great Political Awakening ~

I started by showing them the picture of the President involved.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The year, in fact, was the USA's Bicentennial.

It was November 2, 1976. We lived in Helena, Montana. My mom ("gramma" in my retelling to the kiddiewinks) worked for the Montana Education Association, doing her union organizing thing, and she was not home that night as she would be at the local Democratic headquarters watching the returns for, among other items, the race between Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Though I had a live-in babysitter, I was still only 5, and found some comfort in sleeping in my mom's bed. Then again, Montana's frikken cold, and hers was cozier. I even got to fall asleep with the TV on. Woo hoo! I dimly recall Johnny Carson as I drifted off.

Before the big moment, a wee bit 'o the background.

See, the whole point of trying to consciously imprint my kids today was because of something that is in fact, so important it's easy to forget -- what with my breezy, often totally hilarious bloggy blog blogging, here. u-hem! Politics is important. Social structures and playing a roll in allowing as many people as possible to thrive is important. I have named an on-all-the-time "game" to the kids: the Wa-Hoo! Game. The idea is that we each of us loves to have so much fun all the time that we yell out: "Wa-Hoo!" So the game is to constantly be vigilant of what we can do to ensure that anyone we come into contact with gets to also feel like yelling joyously, "Wa-hoo!"

The brilliance of the fellows in Philadelphia in the 1770s and 80s should not be underestimated, nor overlooked, nor missed for the romantic patinas of the usual idealistic buzzwords. They architected AND got up-and-running the Socratically clever societal "machine" that keeps things like the French Revolution from happening when it is correctly implemented. The "American Experiment" should not be misrepresented as a phantastical open ticket for all people to have a chance to be on top. It is not, was not, and was not intended to be. But it was intended to make a lot of people think so -- AND, and this is critical -- and to not be so downtrodden, so under the thumb of the owners of the means of production that they upset the fabric of society with bloody wars and uprising. Government, then, those smart men in Philadelphia reinvented as a moat, a buffer between the owners of the means of production and "the people", or more pointedly, the workers, the people who made that ownership possible, and yes, that includes the slaves, which the boys in Philly also knew. They were smart men and they were rich men. They knew, like all rich really know, that they were rich because of other people's labors and by dint of their lacking wealth. The capital "P" Past to those men, was the one where the rich people (royalty) were perhaps not as smart, since they really had done personally nothing to get the wealth, and to those Older Rich, the best way to protect your wealth was to have a lot of muscle and a literal castle and literal moat to keep the poor at bay. Well, that doesn't work. The boys in Philly get a lot of flak these days since they pretty clearly did a lot to protect their own wealth. Well, duh. But they did it with intelligence and wisdom. The best way to protect their wealth, they saw, was to do something to ensure that the majority of the poor, poorer, poorest were never THAT poor (compared to how things had been elsewhere) -- and not only that, but that they also believed they had a role, a voice, in the way the system works. The cynics among us, of course, will opine that of course the poor have always been shit on, still are, and that most of us do NOT have a voice, a means, that the system is so flawed as to leave most of us truly impotent. I won't necessarily argue with that view. Plato relays to us that Socrates and his interlocutors hit on the idea that the ideal city-state (one that would maximize justice for as many as possible and be able to last and provide sustaining resources for its population and the opportunities for as many people as possible to thrive) would simply have to have a myth that misled people about some of the potentials that were not going to be potential for ALL the people ALL the time: the noble lie, it was called.

The great American poet Carl Sandberg -- a biographer of President Lincoln -- once said, "And what myth would have instead of 'The People'?"

Just so.

But the brilliance of the creation in Philadelphia was not just a system by which the rich could keep MOST people MOSTLY satisfied so as to sustain and improve their own wealth. The fact was, the system does offer means by which the rich, richer, richest cannot forever trample on human beings. The system has change -- slow change -- built into it within and around the system we call "checks and balances". Those things are real. And the humanistic concerns that we bleeding hearts would call "improvements to the human condition" that have occurred in America are a result of the system being built with such change in mind.

Of the PEOPLE. For the PEOPLE. BY the PEOPLE.

Sooooo, back to my tale. Things I did not know in November, 1976:

-- my mom's mom had been among the first employees of the Social Security Administration in the 1930s. Her family -- very poor dirt-farmers, descendants of both Amish immigrants AND two passengers on the Mayflower -- were all big-time Roosevelt Democrats.

-- my mom was in Chicago in 1968. She was there as a young journalist of the student teachers' association's publication, living at the time in a slum of Washington, DC, where she walked in anti-war vigils, and was a general lefty. Like the well-documented Democrats around the nation, she saw a darkness fall when Richard Nixon was RE-elected in 1972. From what I know now, I understand that in fact, a lot of thusly minded people were deeply heartbroken by that seeming defeat. And indeed they were vindicated: it turned out that Nixon did a little cheating during the campaign (leading to his disgraced resignation); Nixon's administration played baptismal crucible for those who would populate Reagen's White House and take the day in 2000, leading directly to the two wars we are now in, the many, many de-regulations of business that led to huge exploitations by business of the environment, humans, that led to the banking failures and resultant mega-mergers, among other things -- learned, not insignificantly, in Nixon's White House at the knees of the then-still-living OG Cold Warriors who had architected the speciously founded Cold War itself. They were right to be mad, sad, and afraid.

Most importantly, what i did not know when I went to sleep that night in November, 1976, thirty-two years ago, was that my mom cared about "politics" -- whatever THAT was. More, I didn't know such a thing mattered.

Then....she came home.

The door to her bedroom burst open with such a loud noise and shaking of the walls that my sleeping eyes popped open and I froze with shock. As she came through the door, my heard turning to see what rough beast dared to be invading my sleep, she yelled, as loud as I can imagine:

CARTER WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CARTER WON!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think she must have whipped the bed-spread off to hug me or something, because I remember being mad that I had been not only thus so rudely awoken, but was then freezing my ass off, looking at her false eyelashes falling off from the tears of joy. I really REALLY hate being woken up out of the blue like that, man. Harumph.

I'd seen her laugh. I'd seen her angry and had heard her be excited and happy before that. But I'd never seen her elated to the point of physical outburst. Nor have I to this day.

I'd gone to sleep that Tuesday night when I was five years old, loving my mom a lot and having my fine, secure little image and notions of her, chief among which was an extremely solid notion that she cared more for me than anything else in the world. A different person burst in that night and woke me up to the fact that my mom cared about something else -- maybe even MORE than she cared for me since she was willing to disturb my sleep! (I'm only half-kidding...)

Obviously it's apples and oranges. The kind of care we have for the world, the world of ideas, the world of society is different than the care we have for and offer our family.

But underneath is the same thing. Passion.

My mom didn't burst in and wake me up that November night. Her passion for the world of politics, for the things that are possible, or even might be possible through that world and in this world is what burst through the door and woke me right the fuck up.

So I told my little kiddies the story of that. I laid them in my bed just like I was in November 1976 (daughter is now 5 years old, just like I was back then) and I walked out the door and burst in and yelled CARTER WON!!!!! with my arms up like my mom's were that night. They cracked up. They then each took MANY turns being gramma bursting in yelling CARTER WON!!!!! and being me, all cozy and asleep being woken up. And we all took turns. They were totally sucked in to my little memory imprinting session. We then suited up and walked to the polling place. I put on my belt that has an American flag buckle. I put it on upside down as I have for eight years, and had to explain to them that it was cuz it indicates "at risk" and that I couldn't switch to the right way until I knew if he'd won. So I voted. They each got "I voted" stickers along with mine.

We went home. We ate dinner. As we exited to house to take them back to mom's house for the night, someone on my street ran out on the sidewalk seeing a friend and said, "I think he won." I froze and said and thought: it's only 8pm. It's too early. Let's not out hopes up.

More whoops and hollars came from every house on the block. Car horns honked. Someone set off firecrackers. I pushed the stroller stoically forward. The kids said, "What's going on, Daddy?" I said, "Well, it sounds like a lot of people seem to think he's won. But we won't know until we see a TV or hear a radio. I bet mom will know."

As we walked, more shouts of elation, cars honking. A tingle started in my toes and rushed up my body, and every hair on my body stood on end. My eyes went wide and I felt a steady, warm wetness start to leave my eyes. I felt so cut-off from information. How could they call it this early? That would mean he'd carried MORE than the states we expected. MANY more. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. I walked fast and choked back tears a few times. On arrival at mom's she confirmed it. I gave her a big hug. I held my kids aloft and told them: "Our guy won!!!!!"

Their eyes went wide and they said, "He DID???" Daughter ran up the steps and hooted and hollared throughout the complex. I hugged them both big and walked away. The tears flowed more now. I saw a guy walking on the street shaking his head with a big smile and a grandiose step and a "Whoa, MAN!". And I stopped in my tracks to switch my belt. My phone rang and I was told that my son (3 years old) wanted me to come back real quick to tell me something, and I said I had something to show him, too. I turned around, went back the few steps to the front gate and they stood at the steps. My ex said, "They want to tell you who won."

They shouted at me with huge smiles: "OBAMA WON!!!!!!!"

I shouted back: "Look! I switched the belt back!!!!"

I have no idea what exactly will happen to Obama, to our country, to me, my kids, etc, of course. But tonight I spent some time to draw my kids' attention to the fact that there is something that matters A LOT. And even if Obama lost, they'd likely remember it for the rest of their lives. But our guy won, baby.

OUR GUY WON

And my son and daughter will remember this evening for the rest of their lives. And it's a fucking historic day. My grandchildren will presumably hear about it. Long after I'm long gone, and after all of you reading this are, too, I hope that my grandchildren relay to their friends, lovers, and children a couple of stories about how their grampa got woken up when he was 5 by his mom because she was so totally psyched by the hope of what might be possible when her guy won, and how their mom/dad went with grampa to vote in Oakland the night that Obama got elected because as a way to impress on them the fact that involvement in civil affairs is no small matter, that it's a legacy, that it matters, that it's how we spread the Wa-Hoo Game far and wide.

Or something like that.

At the very least, they saw the whole neighborhood burst with joy because of the fact that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States of America.

WA-HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awww, freak out!

2008-10-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

People are losin' it. People across the board are wigging out. What in the world do I mean? "Stop projecting, man! We know life's hard an' all for ya these days, maybe YOU'RE wigging out, but dude" might be your thought. Au contraire, mes ami. People in the public sphere -- talking heads, pundits, paid commentators, reporters, on-air talent, call them what you will, I noticed it in one case, and then over several days, after noticing others, had the Aha! moment in seeing that many of the kind had behaved in this way.

More explanation: professionalism. Professionalism refers to -- among other things -- a code of personal conduct which basically comes down to controlling the emotion that your face, body language and speech convey so that it is limited to a relatively flattened or even bandwidth; no extremes of emotion. This is especially true in the mediasphere, where it's also known as "gravitas", hilariously lampooned by St. Stephen the Colbert going head to head with Brian Williams in delivering lines without what we'd all consider the normal emotions concomitant to the things they said.

In other words, media folk -- if they're professional -- speak and in eny way we receive them comport themselves sounding and looking never too excited, never too upset by what they say, by the lines they're reading, the report they're delivering. That's thought of as how the media can be objective. Which is of course a rather brilliant deception and dissimulation, a feign, a mask that makes us -- and even some of them! -- actually believe that the media actually can be objective; the idea goes like this:

a journalist's personal opinions should not affect how they convey a story because it could skew the way the story's delivered, distorting the facts, thus corrupting the "truth" from getting to the audience.

to be continued...

Holy Mustang, Dadman!

2008-09-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

Ola all.

I'll probably have to have this text be meta in the sense that it's been so long since I posted anything that I'll have to send a reminder email to get everyone back on board since I committed the unpardonable act of leaving you all bored with, like, not posting any goddamn thing all summer.

But this is good again.

A friend from high has become a dad for the third time to a son. His brood are Dash, T. Rex, and Gavin, the newbie.

And I got to spend the better part of a week with the first male relative...of my life, really! My nephew, a 21-year old cat who was born and raised in Munich, Germany, Gavin, came to see his uncle. A reminder that before just a few years ago, neither of us knew of the others' existence. I knew of his mother's, but only vaguely, until I found her on the Web in 2000. Well so but anyway, Gavin came out and we had a jolly ole time.

In addition to one physical resemblance, which was -- let me tell you, after a lifetime of looking like no other GUY in my world -- comforting in a strange way, so-called personality or behavior or stimulus-response mechanisms, or even interests...we had several key ones in common. So that was neat. :-)

Before his visit up to the Bay Area, he'd met his aunt, (my other half sister, who lives in Boulder and is totally rad in most every way) in San Diego, which happens to be the area of residence of my and my two sisters's dad; Gavin's grandad.

Was it weird to hear him talked about by Gavin? A person at once closer than I'll ever get to be, and yet...more distant than I'll ever be. Yes. Yes it was. Gavin was BORN in the 1980s. My fully expressed ruminations on this will have to wait for another time.

But suffice it to say this:

he snapped shots of a thing I'd only heard of, a myth until now, really: the 1967 Mustang my dad has had since then. My mom and dad met each other in the summer of 1967, the summer of (c'mon, people, all together, now: the summer of: LOOOOVE....)

And in other news, my kids have stumbled upon Batman and the gang, and they're over the moon. (which I was at 3 also! woo hoo! Who else was? C'mon! Pipe in with your Batman memories!)

I did the right thing and spent time on this here Internet thingie to find a place to buy a particular mask for my own son. This mask is not sold separately in stores from, like, 5 other plastic pieces of shit they package with it. But holy savings, was I stoked to find the child-sized mask online and order that shit up, ship it to the office. And just as I'm ready to assume the role -- holy sidekick! -- of the erstwhile Robin, my beautiful Jenner informs that I am in fact, Daddy Batman.

My god, Jenner. Thank you for that. Uh, I mean, BATMAN, thank you for that, Batman.

Kickin Ass With the White Rabbit

2008-04-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while, and since you’ve been kind or somehow interested enough to read this and let me know that you’re doing so, you all deserve more goodies!

Well so here’s one. This is … clearly produced from a place of love.

A love for a great many things. Or perhaps for just a few. But it cracked me up, and much as Top Gun made me want to be a fighter pilot for the Navy, so now I want to be a Karate-obsessed suburban dad, hustling my kids into it. Anyone who says media is bad for the mind simply doesn't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, or forgot the great Bruce Lee dictum: “we must have emotional content”…er, or toto concentwashun…or something like that …

Fatherhood Cinematic Triumphant!!

2008-02-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

Ah, what a wonderful thing to see Daniel Day-Lewis accept the Oscar tonight for his role as Daniel Plainview in that mighty, tremendous and fearless movie "There Will Be Blood". You may recall that I was over the moon for this medium-affirming piece of art when I saw a surprise, special sneak-preview in November. I was amazed at the resonance I felt with it; with its unflinching tale of where fatherhood can go wrong and was frankly (you might recall this as well) a little apprehensive that I was focusing too much on that aspect of the film.

It's awesome to see it having received so much positive attention that was equally as switched on by it as I was. And now, without further ado, here is the man about whom George Clooney rightfully said, "Ok, let's get it over with and just bow to this fucker!"...ladies and gentlemen, stop reading and click the embedded video above for Daniel Day-Lewis.

If...you click on one URL....

2008-02-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

...then click on this one below. It is what I like to call, one of the most important URLs in all the Web, and specifically for those who have kids.

This is it.

It is a basic rundown on how the brain grows and develops in the first few years of life. This is stuff that is hardly known by most people. But if you read closely, it's information that really is as critical to being able to help your child grow and thrive as knowing that vitamin c and calcium are basic building blocks of their physical selves.

There's more to it than even the college educated, secular humanists among us would first consider. Read it, and then apply it to your observations of your kids.

Here's a poem:

Savoring the Nanoseconds

2008-01-30T02:06:00.000-08:00

How many blog entries exist that begin with the following, or words to the same effect: Sorry for the lag in posts, but ...

But if any of you have been reading this one with anything like regularity and were getting something out of it, then I am indeed sincere when I say, "Hey, I'm really sorry about the lag in posts, but...I can yammer on more, NOW!"

So, I found out the other day I get to go to college again. Yeah. I'm thrilled. It'll be with my daughter. Yeah, we were talking about something the other Saturday and I offered, "...bla bla bla, when you're off at college, you can bla bla bla bla..." She says to me, "Dad, I don't WANNA go off to college!" And forgetting that she is not a miniature full-grown person but a kid, thus possessed of Kid-Think and Kid-Mind, I slipped into "OMG, Here's An Opportunity to Seize the Moment and Instill the Right Virtues About Education" mode, ie, earnest, shit, maybe even sanctimonious. I said, "Why, honey?" not wanting to lead her yet with my opinion but find out why she'd say something that I was mistakenly hearing as the sort of thing that is as close to apostasy as my kids could say, in my book.

Her lower lip curled into the sad lip and she almost cried, "cuz I don't wanna go off away from you!"

Joy! Rapture! I was totally wrong and my daughter LOVED me! Woo hoo! Well there was lots of "ohh, honey"s and such, hugs, good stuff, and then, still being a literal minded IDIOT, I started to say, "Well ya know honey, there are lots of great colleges right here in the Bay Area! Why, you could..." I heard myself and FINALLY clued in. "Well can I come with you to college?" I asked her, at last parlez vous'ing.

And ...SHE SAID YES!!!!!!

Hot damn! She was totally stoked! She settles into happy mode and says, as if already planning the way we'll (she'll) decorate our (her) dorm room and says, "Yeah, you'll go off WITH me to college."

I asked a few times, because, well, I wanted to be sure.

So friends, family, countrymen, I'm gettin' all college fevered up! Packin' some bags, listening to college radio, boning up on my Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, and some other cool kid type stuff, too. Oh, I know it's still about 14 years away, but dudes! College! "Hey, who's that...DUDE hanging out w/ you," the kool kidz will ask my cool-as-all-hell daughter. "Oh, that's my Dad!" And they'll all think it's soo cool. Me, livin' there. Chillin/ Makin' sandwiches for our housemates. Keggers. Sittin' in classes with her. (this last one was the source of some good laughs as I related all these exciting ways we'd get to share her college experience and pretended as if the chairs would still be too small for me -- as if college was to be attended by her 4 year old self, and I bunched myself up as if stuffed into a child's desk; she loved that, we ran with it for a few moments, laughed a lot...moved on..)

She assured me that yes, I would have to go with her to college so we could be together. She sort of immediately segued right back into animating the toys she held in her hands, and I remained sitting on the floor smiling at her, savoring the nanosecond of the reality where she wants me with her always. The reality of the next moment where she wasn't even thinking about it anymore had already begun its surrender to the reality of me standing up to respond to requests for lunch from her and her brother within a few seconds.

Remaining silent about what you and I know that she doesn't know about what will really happen 14 years from now when she does in fact go off to college is simply part of a parent's job description. Violating that particular part of parenting I can only compare to this: imagine you have a candle, a small candle, and the sun is setting, it's getting very dark, very fast. The candle is lit, and you have to walk down a hallway carrying that candle in order to light the other candles and lamps that will light and warm the house with its flame, which is so small that as you walk you actually have to move slowly and keep your hands guarding it from the wind. Telling her how it's really going to be would have been exactly like removing my hand from the candle, and knowing that it's the only way to light the rest of the house and see at all or make it through the cold night, watch it dance and flicker in the gusts before being quickly and thoroughly extinguished. I've never been one at all delighted by the act of destruction, so clearly there was nothing that was going to make me share what will really happen then. I'm hardly in any rush. Every single second that ticks by also talks: bye, it says. I'm growing more and more and am growing up up and away. So please, Mr. Time, it's ok, you can go as slowly as you want.

Plus, it's not like as her Dad I have the right to violate her innocence and natural growth of understanding. Only Life is entitled to tell us those type of things, and it's only life's voice we hear anyway on such matters.

Sooooo as it stands now, I'm still planning on a second go at college with my daughter in apx. 14 years. Wish me luck!

Here's a poem for today. Thanks to my friend Tim Orr, also a dad, for directing me to it. It's by a fairly renowned fellow named Li-Young Lee.

A Story

Li-Young Lee

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.

copyright, Li-Young Lee.

Look! Say!: Dr. Chall and Dr. Seuss Win the Day!!

2008-01-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

Or as I like to call them, Thing 1 and Thing 2. hee hee hee

See, I had a very special private and glorious moment given to me the other day. Granted I DID think to pay attention...and I have consciously sculpted my whole fathering world around engendering events like the one I'm about to relate, but STILL! (Not to mention that both my ex and myself were reading novels by age 9, and that she has been seamlessly and constantly surrounding the kids with letters and we've read to them every night since birth...but STILL!)

So my daughter, let's call her "Sally", is 4 and a half. The other day I was doing some dishes, her little brother (2 years and three months, now) was playing in the street with broken glass or something, and Sally was directly behind me, leaning-bending-goofing on the arm and back of my futon couch. I heard her mumble something and asked what she said, thinking she was speaking to me.

She said, "Oh, nothing, Dad. I'm just talking to my self." Ok, cute enough and all that. But I still turned the faucet down a little to lessen the noise of the water and cocked my head a little to foster a little better hearing of just what she was "mumbling".

"ahhhyyyy llluv ...." a bit of a pause, "toooo reee-ahhd. I love to reee-uh-dd."

I guess I've been Dadding long enough that an auto-response was already taking hold of my posture (leaning forward, out of the "I want to listen to her"-zone), facial expression (starting to smile that amused smile of the parent when hearing nonsense baby-babble) and feeling (happy resignation that I had not overheard something that might rip my heart out -- a feeling fueled entirely by knowing that separation and divorce is hard on kids) when that whole process was halted BOOM! stop-me-in-my-tracks suddenly as I reacted to what I'd actually just heard.

Before the next instant, I need to let the gentle reader know that I joined this Dr. Seuss book club recently and one of their little "Thanks for giving us your money" dealios was this mini-book-bag, (just the size of Dr. Seuss books, dammit I KNOW there must be a connection! ;-) featuring a typically bemused Cat in the Hat with a speech-bubble proclaiming, "I Love to Read!" Yeah, it's a little cheesy. Yeah, it does veer a leeeetle bit close to the world of flash-cards and too-many-classes that I utterly abhor in contemporary parenting in America...but it's essentially cute. You know, for kids.

So standing there at my dishes, frozen, remembering the bag, I look around for it. Sure enough, of course, it's hanging on a door handle and is precisely what Sally was looking at. (She was looking at it quite intently and did not give any indication that she'd seen me look at her.)

Realizing with a bizarre professional detachment that I'd just had a front-row seat for a "Moment" that I assumed out of hand would occur at a school, elsewhere -- that I'd just heard my kid learn to fucking read, I asked her again, "What did you say, honey?"

My head was still slightly turned, my eyes cast down to the right corner to see her, but my hands carried on busily with the dishes; I had tried not to sound overly interested.

She rocked gently the way little kids do, bobbing her head a little while staring dead-set on the bag's words, and looked very much like she was now truly listening to her internal monologue that was a confirmation that she had indeed decoded the letters. But she told me, "Oh, nothing. I told you, I'm just talking to myself."

I really wanted to play dumb and let her keep this moment semi-private, as she partially appeared to want. But I couldn't help myself and the part of me built on "love, praise, encourage, celebrate-triumphs in kids" won and I exuberantly leaned down and beamed at her something like, "Well, baby, I know what you just did! You can READ, Sally! You just READ that bag, honey!" I kissed her head her cheek her head again and declared a couple times how awesome it was, how awesome she was. I think I might have tried to join her game at that point and said something like, "But I won't tell anyone, you don't have to worry."

So don't any of you, like, go and tell her I told you, 'k? Or I'll have to let Thing 1 and Thing 2 loose to do a thing or two to YOU!

Doin' lines with Father Time...

2008-01-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year

Father Time is old and weary, but hope, hope I tell you, springs anew today. Welcome to the baby new year! We look at the calendar, those beloved lines that make tidy little grids, festooned with what ever imagery speaks to us and all together now, no really, ALL of us ALL together today look at the top of the little wall-hanging grid and say, "Hey! This square calls itself Jan 1. It's a whole new year!"

The little grid, 7 squares across and five down, stretches, of course, further, 52 squares all the way down to what the calendar calls, the END of the year. And with those little lines we plot and plan and arrange our selves, situate ourselves and since we call today, January 1st the beginning of the year, we thus get a new beginning. Every time that grid comes back up on the square named Jan 1. Nice. A brand new start.

It's a function of this little system of lines that we use to situate ourselves that somehow we all seem to perpetually need that convenient brand new start that we give ourselves. But the sun and the earth and the moon, they don't really mark it, do they? Or do they? We are the sunlight's bloomage, after all. We grid-keepers and Jan 1 markers are earth, or at least a part. Where am I going with this?

The grid can be helpful. Let me rephrase that: the very notion of the calendar allows for all success in our human affairs as it is essentially the shared technique for making these big brains of ours publicly store our memories. Thanks to the calendar we get to plan and sort and expect and such. But look around you, my friends. For whom does the calendar work best? (substitute the word "planning" for "calendar".) I think we'll all find that it is not those who actually believe that Jan 1 is some sort of new beginning (or behave like they do, anyway.)

Jan 1 is a day, just another day. A day that happens to name the start of counting, conveniently placed at the time of year when life in the northern hemisphere has slowed to almost a standstill for on about 15,000 years.

My point is this: nothing changes today. Nothing changes just because I or you or we say that it's a new beginning. If you tie your plans to this day, you'll find yourself haplessly re-jiggering your goals one more time 365 days from now. But if you shift your point of view, then your goals unfold like a perfect tablecloth over the table. In other words, the calendar, which tells us today is the new beginning, is not in charge. If you let it tell you it's a new beginning, you're not in charge of your self, your life. The calendar, rather, is a tool for you to do whatever it is to plan, situate, tally, expect and accomplish on a schedule of your design which uses the calendar.

It's merely a coincidence that today I'm finally writing a document to give to my attorney that will shift much in the life of my self, my children and my still-not-officially-ex-wife. It just happens that I had today off work. No new beginnings here, man. Uh uh, nope...just another day in paradise, me and the dung beetles, making lines in our crap....

Interlude

2007-12-29T06:01:00.000-08:00

...in which we briefly look back a few posts, I share a moment of raw, self-conscious over-reflection, too real to be blogistically narcissistic, and redeem myself with nothing less than arrogant chest-pounding w/ the help of an "I told ya so" moment.

If you've been reading this humble Web log, you might recall my excited mention in November of the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood", which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a turn of the century oil man. Now in wider release, it's getting mainstream reviews, and my breathless enthusiasm turns out to have been right on the money. I want to let you all know, even if it's just a few of you, that I really don't dig being the guy who nerdily points out the correctness of his pick. But when I not only wrote my observations on the movie here, but told people in person, I was met with a thorough "so-what" attitude, pretty much everyone I mentioned it to saying matter-of-factly and even distractedly, "Hm, haven't heard of it". I'd then try to use my own enthusiasm about it to carry a verbal review of the movie that grew shorter with each telling as I could tell more and more that...no one gave a crap, it wasn't on their radar. I also believe I caught a whiff in the air of a sort of detached, maybe bewildered pity in people to whom I talked about it; whether correct or not, it seemed to me that my liveliness on the topic of fatherhood and that it lay at the heart of Day-Lewis' character and thus the movie was being perceived as a misplaced projection. (The fact that no one else had seen it, so could not comment at all left a gaping hole of the back-n-forth that defines a conversation, a hole into which my self-consciousness tossed tangled weeds.) My friends all know that fatherhood has been a wild odyssey for me, and so when I was met with blank stares, nonplussed "Oh"s and such, not even a "that makes sense", or better yet, "Wow, man! That sounds like a great movie! Guess I better check it out when it's released!" heh

Well don't worry, I never for one second doubted my review or my perception of the movie, and very very quickly exited the trombone closet of my discontent to patiently await what I knew would be coming when it hit wide release: vindication.

"There Will be Blood" so impressed and enthralled me in, among other ways, its seamy, hyper-realistically complex relevance to the focal area of this blog -- addressing what it means to be a father through the associations of the world of mind and literature. This movie is heavy, entertaining, and electrically intense. It also is a complex tale of the hardening of a human heart, not a formulaic, predictable one, but one that takes us through the steps that loss of touch with humanity (emotional connection) moment to moment and decision to decision. Two months after my lucky sneak-previewing, the reviews are bearing this out.

Alonse Durande of MSNBC says:

"It’s hard to capture the greatness of 'There Will Be Blood' by merely recounting the plot, and it would do the film a disservice to give away its delicious twists and surprises. Suffice it to say, then, that the film triumphs as a character study, as a stunning visual recreation of a bygone era, and as one of the most devastating attacks on greed and capitalism to come out of Hollywood since 1948’s 'Force of Evil.'"

from David Ansen's review in Newsweek:

"Plainview's misanthropy and his emotional isolation grow with his power. 'I look at people and see nothing worth liking,' he confesses in a rare moment of self-revelation. The only person Daniel's connected to (he'd never use the word "love") is his adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), who provides an innocent face when he's pitching his projects to the local marks. But when H.W. is struck deaf in a drilling accident, Daniel loses his lifeline to the world. It severs not just their relationship, but his increasingly shaky hold on sanity."

Here then is why it blew my mind that upon launching a blog such as this, I would find a brand spanking new piece of high art that is essentially the story of a broken, lonely, and ambitious man who is almost -- almost! -- redeemed by assuming and accepting the role of father, but then falls from grace most thoroughly when life throws him a curve ball that reveals in plain view his handicaps. I mean, shit balls! The movie is a fatherhood, poetic...tragic.

But fatherhood (life) of course is sometimes tragic. We all do have handicaps of one kind or another. Engagement with life's primary roles and more, with other humans is high-stakes stuff, people! And broken people who don't know how to connect with others will most certainly cower, fall, and break when something they need help with can no longer be hidden. Ouch! "There Will Be Blood" is a masterpiece, definitely, because it is as powerful a telling of a man's failure on the hero's journey as I think there has been in recent note. Failure in the moment -- not knowing what to do and then avoiding the consequences -- is tangible; people do push away people and things that make them feel exposed. Fathers do abandon their children, and fathers are usurped by sons, if only in their own eyes. There IS blood here and there. Daniel Day-Lewis' stunning and deeply compassionate animation of this sad man who does bad things is but one painstaking detail within bulging rolls and undulations of artistic beauty.

And who called it the day after seeing it when all ya'll glazed over while I yammered on about it? That's right, me...er, uh, or rather I. That's right! I called it. Now go see it so I can stop already and return to the train of thought that I interrupted to bring you this message of art and self-aggrandizement.

Kids, Zen Mind, and a poem! -- xmas Pt.3

2007-12-28T11:27:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2007. This year hung with meaning and opportunities and import and portent. Were it not for the fact that I have more on my to DO list than ever in my life, I would have waxed and yammered on philosophical way more than I have. Probably a good thing; this is my only such venue, and I don't want to lose my modest readership for falling so soon into the infamously insidious and insipid "O! ME! O! melodramatic me, overwrought me...etc etc" pitfall of "THE BLOG". So in a sort of inverse narcissism, for the sake of keeping you reading these my thoughts and observations I'll make sure I don't bore you (too much, yet...hee hee.)

The most succinct version of this post would be something like: the attention required to care for small children, from survival-based needs to emotional ones, is no doubt a most rigorous form of Zen practice, a Satori-delivery device! An active meditation not unlike Kyudo, or The Way of the Bow. Its amped-up demand for vigilant attentions on many levels simultaneously may even be the best "exercise for enlightenment" or immersion in the dharma. Or maybe it's such a heavy lesson in no-mind active engagement with the here and now for those who are wont to slip into the comfort of abstraction given the opportunity, cuz you just can't with toddlers if you happen to want to be present enough to do everything in your power to raise solid people aiming squarely at the top of Maslow's Heirarchy.

What the hell is Kylen going on about THIS time?

So compacting all my mixed emotions this holiday into a snowball, it comes down to the fact that kids are so very real and present because of their immediate needs that it forces the adult world of abstractions, yes, even things like money, into the background, where, I'm afraid to say, they belong.

This idea might appear potentially recursive, but actually is simply an embodiement of the suchness of life.

The unfolding realization that much was at stake this Xmas kicked off when I realized out with the kids in Union Square, that I would be decorating my "tinyhouse" -- as they call my studio apartment -- for the holiday. Because realizing that dramatically emphasized that there were TWO separate homes, now: mom's house and my house.

In attempting to make my new single-Dad-home Christmas-y, and totally NOT hitting in on my first try, I faced the fact that I had never personally and solely decorated for Xmas, even though I love it.

Finally, the central issue at hand was the yearly trip to family Christmas. The trip made for Christmas 2003 found us greeted with a whole EXTRA tree for the 6-month-old baby daughter we'd brought. The subsequent years saw new twists and even location changes as our daughter grew, a brother was added and they both grew. This year, however, was the first since my marriage that my ex would not be coming -- but the kids would.

This shall be continued...

Here's the poem:

------

Father's Song
by Gregory Orr

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child's blood so red
it stops a father's heart.

My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.

Round and round: bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tried to teach me risk.

From The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems by Gregory Orr. Copyright © 2002 by Gregory Orr. All rights reserved.

About that white beard....XMas Pt.2

2007-12-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone. Welcome back.

Apropos the season and its, er, reason, if a couple of days late, is the following: MY favorite Christmas song.

It's featured here in its original habitat: as part of a short indie film of some years ago by The Billy Nayer Show, a hallowed and legendary San Francisco musical act. So bare with it until the song begins. And don't you dare not listen to the whole thing! Only 364 days till Santa will make you pay for that naughty. ;-)

And no, the man sporting that snappy white beard in the picture in the last post (see below) was NOT, as the Peter Panaspirant among us might have hoped to hope, Santa, baby, but in fact is my own dad. More on him later. Watch the video and follow the links, see how deep the rabbit hole really goes...

Standing Still - Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T07:17:00.000-08:00

Well, let's pretend you're reading this at 4:15 pm, PST, Saturday Dec 22nd (just a couple days ago). That was the winter solstice! Woo hoo! Did you know it's called the solstice due to the apparent total stillness of the sun? And so, lacking TV, phones, radio, even the Internet, our ancestors' more observant members had the time to note these things and note, also, how the nights approaching this non-action of the Sun that repeated every roughly 365 days lengthened and then following this Sol Stasis, the nights began shortening. This didn't mean lower electricity bills to those ancestors, obviously. It meant that even though when this stationary moment of the Sun occurred it was freezing and nothing would grow in the ground, the temperatures would increase as the nights got shorter, and by god, there'd be food again in just a few months! And I remind that it was COLD! That's one hell of a set of reasons to party!

And that's just what they did. For thousands of years. So just because one guy's title (Christ was not, of course, his name) got mashed on to the Mass Shindig, don't be fooled into thinking "Christmas is a Christian Holiday". It may be, officially and by title, a Christian Holiday. But that's missing the point in a big big way.

I add to this the interesting factoid that my own dad, yes he lives, turned 81 years old Thursday, December 20th. If you think numbered make patterns, it might be of note to you that I'm 36. Both our ages' digits add up to 9 (8+1, 3+6). Does this mean that I now believe I'm going to be invited down to Carlsbad where he lives to throw some pots and talk about...stuff? Umm, no. I think it means that his life's pattern is something I need to pay attention to.

The sins of the father are visited upon the son.

D'ya think stories that last a long long time (it's called "resonate throughout the ages"...) do so by accident? Or just really good production value? lol

So in not opting out of being a father, I've avoided that sin. But we all know that where one least expects ...ANYthying, is where it can occur. So I abide in attention.

Hip happenin', happy happy holidays to you all. And may the Sun bless us, every one, as my son blesses me every time he looks at me.

I close with this.

I recently rediscovered a song, realizing that though it's lyric purports to be about Jesus, it is NOT about Jesus. It's about the perfected gift to us all that each and every brand new baby is. Babies are the christ child. All babies.

Then, perhaps in Bethlehem when a boy named Y'shua was born to a young lady named Miriam, now and forever. When a baby is born, everything is perfect again for a second. And the world stands the chance of being perfect again, possibly, forever.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Somewhere a baby has just been born.

So we've got that goin' for us.

K

Kaiser Bill

2007-11-27T15:39:00.000-08:00

So I had no ride, faced my fate alone, distracted myself from a very noticeable throbbing dull pain coming at me from down below with some comparative mythology about what it means to be a man which boiled down to: don't squander your talents and take care of those you are responsible for so that they may thrive and someday kill you so that they can carry the chain on and pay the Oedipal cycle forward.

Cool. Sorted. In to the room I go.

I'm ushered into the little bathroom, given a little robey thing and a razor. "Shave yourself," says the male nurse. He then points to a coat hook on the back of the door that just happens to be shaped like an inverted "Y", points to the center, "you know, flip it up, this is the shaft up here, just get like a couple inch are in each direction." Oh. Ohhh kay, then. I shave.

I am shorn.

I go in, lay down, the nurse puts those operating drop cloths down all around my lower area, slathers some iodine all over the surrounding area of me and leaves.

Silence.
Total Silence.

And those fucking bright operating room lights, and a tray of sterile, shiny, SHARP instruments. (mommy?)

(the boys are getting uncomfortable just writing this, gang...I may have to take a break.)

And underneath those lights lays yours truly, my personal little area of privacy scrubbed, shorn, sanitized and OUT THERE, feeling the chilly air of the operating room. I was feeling, you might say, a little frikken exposed, vulnerable even.

Minutes pass. Many. Enter the good doctor.

Then, after some small talk and jibber jabber, not nearly enough if you ask me cause I wasn't feelin' it, and by "it" I mean distracted, just what you don't want to happen (from a primal perseptive, from the point of view of your balls!) HAPPENS: Someone enters, sticks you DOWN THERE with a sharp thing, sticks you again and then says "you're gonna feel some pressure".

!

Right then sucked. A lot.

The nurse comes in and pauses as he looks at me, the Dr. asks, "you allright?"

"yeah" I squeak out. The nurse says "man, you're already getting really red" referring to my face, on which he then tossed a nice cold cloth. Which i promptly grabbed and bit really hard as the Doc injected me with more local anaesthetic. Then I said, not able to speak easily, "I felt some pain" and he said again",

"Really? Sorry, guess I'll give you more."

damn srtaight, buddy!!!!!! JAYZUS!

as he injected me again, I used that precious little cold rag to squeeze with all my might and but I fliched when he injected me and my cold, vaguely soothing precious went flying to the ground.

lol

(mommy!)

suck it up, son, you're a man, now!

So while the good Dr. cut to the chase, or rather, cut into the Chase, I took it upon myself to talk to HIM so that I'd stop myself from hyperventilating and running out of the operating room (that's what the family jewels were telling me to do, anyway).

Well it worked, cuz to talk requires steadier breathing than I had been practicing, all full as I was, of Fear and Trembling.

And I'm here to tell you that even though it was SO WRONG to have blades and shit IN my scrotum -- nature say: NO WAY JOSE -- my mind won the day, cuz it say:

AOK, cowboy. Now,go get 'em, Tiger!

:-)

I am free. Free of the gnawing fear...what if...free of guilt, stress, worry, slipping into the ultimate irresponsibility because sex rules.

the pain went away and is but a memory, for tis a far better thing I do...

CODA: I had to tell My Soon-To-Be-Ex, but didn't want to be direct. So I called and left a voicemail: "OK, so talk to you later. I'm about to go and make our two children even more special."

THOSE two sperm were sacred, the rest...not so much.

Hurts so good...

2007-11-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hey gang.

A note of thanks. I have recently exercised good judgment in my personal, life-planning affairs, and I'm thankful for it. I'm also thankful for Kaiser and their Urology Department and the amazing wonders of that miracle of modern medicine known as: The Vasectomy.

Lo it was a pleasant, if darkish night Monday, November 12, 2007 that I did make my way out to the Walnut Creek Kaiser Permenente Facility after work to have this amazing "walk-in/walk-out" procedure done. Oddly I could not find anyone to give me a lift home (they advised that the, ummm, pain and discomfort can be a little much and one ideally would like a ride.) Well it all seemed poetically apt, if ya ask me, so I accepted that I would face every angle of the dangle alone, as we are of course in our decisions ultimately. I took with my rod and my staff....whoa, wrong blog, I took with me a borrowed copy of Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces" and in my recent, highly intentional, vibrationally in-tune reading of that perfect, essential book, happened to be on the part of the hero's atonement with the father (as part of the hero's journey to universal mastery, ie, SELF mastery.) It was not really a coincidence, as I knew the book would hold some nice thoughts to help me stop the increasingly painful and steady throb coming from my ole boys down south, my family jewels, the guys, the two berries, my balls!

Guys, you know how it is. Well they knew what time it was, I can tell ya. And I was gettin' angry, red faces, raised fists, and a totally unpleasant psycho-somatic pain there which was basically the ole testes saying "What the fuck do you think you're about to do? WE'RE in charge, here, MISTER! Or have you forgotten?"

Well I would not allow any turning back.

Atonement with the father.....

Joseph Campbell slyly points out: at one-ment with the father

And he meticulously skips through so many myths from hither and yon pointing out the intense meetings of heroes with their always-estranged and usually fairly beastly daddies (father as ogre). It only ends heroically when the hero-son truly realizes he IS the father; the fathers' dilemmas are his own.

Snap!

He's arrived and moves forward.

Well, for those who know the details of my personal daddy story....this was Ride-to-the-Vasectomy GOLD!

(more tomorrow)

Poetic Sinematic, CLOSING SHOT

2007-11-15T03:24:00.000-08:00

Well the ole blog format sure does beg for closure of topics, huh?

Well fine, ok, then. I can roll with that.

When this movie is released widely next week (the 21st) go see it. It's what film is about. Lest we forget that film is THE relevant form of art for our era, for the minds that we have, for the mindsets we've been served by that hoary old salty dog, the 20th Century, bombastic, too-large and uncontrollable child of the 19th Century, this movie and filmmakers like PT Anderson embody the ones involved in making art in the age of mechanical reproduction that matter.

THIS is the kind of film that we all need to get up and watch. It's art. It's visceral. You watch the people on the screen and some of them are awful, they're awful people. They detest themselves and we detest them, too, because the actors and the director and the costume people and the cinematographer all pulled it off. And it's all too human, real, right there like that, like life.

And filmmakers like PT Anderson matter because not only can they manipulate the camera and the medium for solid storytelling, but because he knows the elements of story.

And even in our jaded, seen-it-all-before times, the basics still work. The sins of the father ARE visited upon the son.

There Will Be Blood -- that title so bursting with portent! -- is a film that entertains dramatically, it peals back a layer of the Life Existential (we are what we say, having become what we thought, and knows from "numerous subjective "reads" of it as a text. It boldly (PTA boldly) includes all the readings, therefore IN the film-as-text, and none at cross-purposes: it's a morality play, it's a map=territory, map not territory meditation, it's a man v. nature story and a man v. man yarn. But at the heart of its darkness is the hyperdimensional tendrils, dendrites, implications of fatherhood and its discontents.

And it's all so sad and true that it's exciting and in being true cuts to the quick.

Some fathers do beat their sons
Some sons never talk about it
Some sons become fathers who do bad things to their sons
Some sons who are fathers do abandon their Oedipal seedlings...is it fear? is it...fear of the father or fear of the son? Who is who?

Watch the movie.

The next post will be really quite something. Wherein I describe in uproarious detail the night I let someone in to my personal sanctum sanctorium with BLADES....and hilarity ensued.

Be well my pretties. And thanks.

...Poetic, Sinematic Pt.3

2007-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

I saw this film, There Will Be Blood, Monday night, November 5, 2007. (Recall, loyal readers, that I was all set to carry on in my hyper-focused retelling of the day I proposed marriage, a day that surely will live in....well; it'll get its due someday.) And this flick I saw Monday so captured me on a number of levels I've been totally focused on sharing IT with you all. And yes, it DOES tie in to this blog...;-)

Ok, so but now you're likely saying....AND?

And, I am evidently not alone in seeing a lot more in that 158 minutes of flashing lights and shadows on the silver screen than just a western (genre flick). It's also got more going on than being an anti-industry epic, or even a morality play (ala Beckett by way of this obscure little story from Italy). Even if this movie could find its thorough examination through those three "lenses", it would still register as a thoughtful, robust movie that blows most out of the water. Tempted as I am to go into every little and big thing I saw in this awesome film, I will leave that to Adrian, film critics, sigh, to others. Quick but important note: please don't be fooled by ME waxing intellectual; this movie is above all VISCERAL. This is art, baby, ART! The truth at 24 frames per goddamned, glorious second.

OK, so back to it, and with a nice, tidy, grounding recap:

"There Will Be Blood", the new film from PT Anderson, the wunderkind director who made his name with Boogie Nights, is a period piece, a Western, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and relative newcomer Paul Dano, and is a great film. Anderson wrote the script based on a novel called "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair, famous for The Jungle, his no-holds-barred expose of the meatpacking industry at the turn of the last century.

This long-ass movie, which I saw at a sneak preview, it opens widely Nov 21st, follows the exploits of a fellow in the American southwest as he doggedly pursues oil and the wealth that can come from it from a hole in the ground in 1898 to his mansion in 1927. Not far into his journey he meets an earnest young man, er, well a young man who certainly dedicates his time to being a man of God. They become -- I would say -- inextricably bound but not in any pat, or easily formulaic manner. There you have as one of the cruxes of the film the classic duo, a businessman and a preacherman. Who is worse? Who is more despicable, the man who lies to people to get their money, or the man who lies to people to get....what exactly DOES a preacher get???

I found a depiction of these two "set piece" characters that are ripe for caricature, dealing in a minute breakdown in absolutely human terms of the HOW and the WHY of the evil that men do. These two characters make choices of action that will precipitate death, dismemberment, killing. There WILL be blood. A lot of movies do this, but not with the poetic thoroughness that rings like a thunderclap of this one. And -- tying this back to the raison d'etre of this blog -- a critical part of the this film's take on the puzzle of why and how men can make choices and take actions that are violent, cruel, heartless, mean and murderous has to do with fatherhood. The father-son relationship is at the heart of the film, and was apparently, the premise even more so in the novel.

What fathers mean to boys. What fathers mean to men; both to the men who were those boys, but also to each other: every man, in simply beholding the actions of another, bears witness to each others' man-ness. And in that, to the echoes of each others' fathers and each others' fatherhoods. Because whether or not there are genetic fruit of his loins, every man has to deal with and determine his fatherhood; how he will father, or if he will, and whom. Many won't find any sort of "issue" to over-think or intellectualize. Others may. Others might make a satisfying transference of fathering qualities in to the priesthood. Certainly there are plenty of roads one can take.

This movie deals with some of them, and illustrates at least SOME specific combinations that lead to terrible, immoral choices, choices that cause pain, draw blood and end lives.

To be continued.

...Poetic, Sinematic Pt.2

2007-11-09T16:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, back at last. Sorry for the lag, gang. (Am I going to start every post with an apology?!? God, I hope not! ;-)

"There Will Be Blood" is a great film. It's not a great film because it happens to be about things that interest me: the birth and growth of the oil industry, the turn of the 20th century,fatherhood. Nor is is great because it shares my point of view: industry is amoral, history is really peoples' stories, not the capital first letter textbook outlines of wars and presidents. It's a great film because it masterfully addresses the subject of choices. "There Will Be Blood" is a movie about choices essentially. The choices have consequences; (there will be blood). Anderson's script, attention to his actors and finally his actors deliver to the screen the extremely ambitious and difficult vision of what real people look like when they make decisions -- choices -- that most of us consider and even know to be immoral ones. Industry might be amoral, but human individuals are almost never that way. We are moral, with or without the "im-" in front of the word.

But so how does someone with emotions kill another person? How does someone abandon their child? What does a man look like who is lying to get something from another person for their own -- and no one else's -- betterment? How and why can someone "go there"? And WHAT in god's name do they look like?

Well we know by now that they do not wear horns and carry pitchforks. We're aware, generally, that they might wear gray suits, spectacles and be accountants. But...could they...is it conceivable that they might look like a single parent? A fresh-faced young man who is trying to help his family? Or do you just THINK he's trying to help his family because he seemed so earnest, desperate and he knew something you didn't which was how you would fill in the blanks with the information he presented you? Did the single parent do the same thing to the people HE convinced to give him their hard-earned money? Maybe he was not even a parent.

Daniel Day-Lewis likes shoes. Daniel Day-Lewis likes Venice. He likes shoes, and he likes Venice. He lives in Venice and makes shoes. And he only emerges from his plain view seclusion to employ his zenith of what is possible through method acting for roles he thinks important. Very clearly young Paul Dano likes to act really really well. These two bring to disgusting life two characters who make the kinds of choices listed above for which there will be blood.

And what kind of fathers they had and what kind of fathers they are , what sins they visit upon and have visted on themselves...heh heh heh, it's rich stuff. And it has to do with something I call "Violence of the Mind". More tomorrow.

...Poetic Sinematic

2007-11-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!

I had planned to post the rest of the story I started in my last post in this post, and the next one. That funny li'l tale of the day -- of the moment -- I asked my wife to marry me. The moment that changed my demeanor, outlook and set me on the unstoppable course to fatherhood (which is, after all the point. Woops! I meant "point of this blog."...right? Woops again! I might've just ..oh, you didn't notice? Ok, anyway, as I was saying...)

...but something happened that is MUCH more pertinent and amazing and cool and important to share.

On a random, last-minute recommendation from my friend Adrian Chan I had the opportunity to see a sneak preview of the new movie from the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson.

Yes.

YES! Yes, you envious little kiddiepie pattie pies.

It's that fucking good.

And it's about fatherhood.

It's also about the evil that men do. And the good they could do...if that was the way they decided. But they didn't. And a lot of the time they don't do. It's about all that. Directed from a screenplay he wrote, P.T. Anderson based "There Will Be Blood" on a novel called "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair. Yes, the guy who wrote that muckraking tale of the Chicago meatpacking industry "The Jungle".

FADE TO BLACK
INT
PULL BACK TO REVEAL BLANK COMPUTER MONITOR
CLOSE-UP
BACK OF YOUR EYELIDS

I have to get to work, now. So I'm going to post again this afternoon after you've had a chance to let these bits work in your mind in the background:

-- story by a respected exposer of immoral practices in industry

-- the rapacious, obsessive precocious talent of a respected, epic-aiming young filmmaker

-- Oil!

-- Fatherhood

...the hills throb with portent of things to come. So many things...

Mister Right and the precipice

2007-10-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

Hideous on the edge of a precipice
The cavity filled up with forgetfulness

-- Stereolab, Three Dee Melodie

Sorry for the lag in posting. Thanks for returning. This and the follow-up offer a wee bit 'o' the background that made me a Daddy. Don't be fooled by this tale, Fatherhood agrees with me. A lot. But life, true life, as a friend once said, is alone allotted to the beatifically besotted...

Remember that joke by Steven Wright that goes: "You know that feeling when you're leaning back in a chair, and then you lean back too far and start to fall and just at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time."?

I started feeling like that all the time the moment I decided, suspended in mid air above San Francisco, to propose marriage. Except I didn't catch myself exactly. We sat across a small table having after-work cocktails to celebrate the end of my second week at a brand new, well-paying job, since I'd been unemployed for seven months, back there from the end of 2001 into 2002. My confidence had returned, so why not splurge a little and spend 30 bucks on cocktails and nibbles, right? Woops, looks like I slipped a little down that particular rabbit hole to infinity, not recognizing it for the precipice is really was. Where she and I sat that summer evening atop the Hyatt Embarcadero in its infamous revolving restaurant, the whole Bay and Beautiful City by the Bay spun slowly around us, and helped to convince me that yes, yes, she and I were, right here, we ARE the center of the world.

She spoke, smiling her very pretty smile, but I didn't listen; I was looking at the tableaux before me of my favorite place in the world literally centered on the female who had in 103 days and almost as many sleepless, sensually subsuming sweaty nights become my favorite person. Everything told me to lock-in; she was a GO. Everything I chose to consider, anyway. Every long-term consideration indicated the exact opposite -- that at the outside I should free myself of this troubled, baby-driven lady by Burning Man, 40 days and nights away. The fact that our time had been so filled with face-melting sensual bonding might have told me that perhaps I should wait for a cool-down, or at least to let the thing dry off, before making any potentially life-altering decisions. The fact that I had not even received my first paycheck (yes, sad, but true) COULD have, for most people maybe, contributed to a general manner of calm caution with, oooooh, I dunno, PLANNING in mind to reclaim one's personal financial well-being. I could go on...

I decided to ask her and to elope to Las Vegas atop the city, lost in the ecstasy of feeling loved, feeling wanted, and that person being someone *I* wanted, I cared for and thought I, being a person of generous spirit and, from what science has to say, maybe gifted with these cool-ass genes ;-)... We walked to another place (The Old Ship Saloon -- I even appealed to my own sense of history), and while walking I firmed myself in the decision by throwing tethers to the outside world; I would need a Best Man. I called my oldest friend in the world, more than a brother, a plant of similar seed grown in the same mulch, but he was not to be gotten a hold of. Well, I thought, if I wait around for him, the moment will pass. And I won't do this utterly insane thing, this leap of faith and hope without even anything to pass for the shadow of a safety net -- as if nothing THAT bad could happen.

But, like the Steven Wright joke, clearly I did know that it was a cliff, and well...it went straight down.

But I'm getting ahead.

Fatherhood Poetic, OR, A Young Gentleman's Primer

2007-10-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

Hi.

...

Well HOW are ya? I'm really glad you dropped by this brand-spankin' new, if modest corner of the Web.

Although I have a profile that you and anyone else can check out -- especially as posts pile up and this first greeting becomes buried and largely pointless -- since you've been kind enough to surf on over, I'll use this space to tell you what this log on the Web is about. But I pause, because I confess I think the title tells you everything you need to know.

The ADD version: I became a dad 4 years ago. Now I'm a dad twice over! And I'm getting divorced.

I'm over-educated, raised by a single mom who fights the good fight for public education teachers. My own dad I have not seen since 1994, and it ahd been since 1977 before that. He's an artist. But more on him later. Though I was not ready in very particular ways for kids, I had a built-in component that bade me throw more or less my whole being into the task of fathering.

So the blog is what the title says. In addition to the well and often told Greatest Hits of Fatherhood and Parenting in general -- the unexpected detaching diaper, the first taste of ice-cream, the discovery of their own toes, the raw animal realness of birth, the laughter, the tears -- my particular journey has included bonus features like The 1000-page book shredded by hand, the Night in Jail, the Fakest Voice in the World and oh, soooo many more. And yeah, I'll give ya the goods; I'm not gonna completely deprive you of Touching Moments, or Light-Hearted Goofs, but this is a forum for me to share the journey I've taken through the Archetypal Wonderland of 1000 Faces and to do so using the toolbox of poetics to...oh whatever.

Into the Rabbit Hole we go...

I'm a tall, rangey white rabbit living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland for the time being. I'm a Gen-Xer, which seems weird to say, since until only recently that term evoked publiclly-focused impressions of youth and directionless irresponsibility. In other words, I'm in my mid 30s, and from where I sit, though "Gen-X" by sheer math cannot equal youth or irresponsibility (no matter how irrepressible...heh) and though the last five years have held cruel jokes, cruel gravity and straight up cruel shoes for ME that has radically transformed my mental landscape, oddly enough, my peers are still in the same boat. That IS why they're called peers, huh.

And while it may seem as if I'm just verbally running along like a freshly poured glass of water (no direction), au contraire. Have you heard of Morris Massey? He was a business consultant and trainer who coined a phrase: "What You Are is Where You Were When". Catchy, and absolutely rich with substance. He distilled developmental psychology, history and sociology to demonstrate that the notion of "generations" is not at all arbitrary or merely convenient for marketing differientiation. Indeed, the markets FOLLOW the values of the generations. You can read more in-depth about it easily enough, but the gist is this, with a focus on personal values: everybody passes through the same personality- and thus value-shaping processes. The public events and values surrounding us all at more or less standard points in our developments have a major impact on how our values form, and more, WHAT our values are.

So as I passed from a certain person and persona in 2001 to the present day, I've had a very isolating journey. And if you don't know me, I'm not one known for isolation. But, I look around now that the smoke has cleared, and sure enough ole Dr. Massey was right! My fellow Gen-Xers are right there with me! It's called life. It goes on within us and without us. Yes siree, bob, the life-changing, eye-opening, jaw-dropping, gut-wrenching, mind-bending, humble-pie-handing-out, holy WHAT the FUCK!!! no no no no no no no no! not YET! I'm not done playing in the sandbox myself yet, sea-changing, most glorious life-affirming basic simple little thing that happened to me -- and was bound to happen, sooner or later to a good many of the people born within five years of me, keeping us, now more than ever, PEERS, was nothing more or less than fatherhood. Or, as The Onion had it: Miracle of Birth Happens for 83 Billionth time.

If you've read this far, THANK YOU! ;-) But seriously, fatherhood is a big deal. Especially when you didn't have your own father in your life. Nor any in-person male role model to speak of in the formative years. Especially when you're from a cultural milieu that is not as inclusive or tacitly encouraging of the idea of not taking care of your kids as other cultural schemas. Especially when you're pretty much a lifer in the human potential movement, despite its 1970s phraseology, cuz it's all true and I'm a living example...

Fatherhood is as serious to me as cancer. It's as important a role for me as any shred of a moment you can think of for yourself when being genuine mattered. If you're genuinely religious, then I'd compare the gravity with which I take fatherhood to the sanctity of your behavior inside a church or temple of your religion. But really, who the hell is REALLY religious anymore? Basically, whatever it is you value about YOU, are you honest...are you always respectful of elders, always dressed to impress, never given to public drunkenness, intent on proving your self in some way to one or both of your parents...whatever it is, that's where fatherhood rests to me. It's a big fucking deal.

But should you decide to drop in here whenever, what you WON'T likely find is me pontificating in some solemn, self-important way as if I'm the only person who takes it this seriously, or any weird, creepy self-aggrandizing way. "Dude, THAT guy has some serious Daddy issues. You can almost see the cartwheels he's doing for his dad to see!" No no no. I'll share the stuff that I have a hunch will hit a shared note. Hey, were you there for the 90s, man?! I survived! Looks like you did, too! How was it for ya? What happened to YOU along the way? No way!

So with that roundabout intro, I launch this Fatherhood blog with a poem I wrote for a friend who became a father as we neared the end of our time in college, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away from Planet Here and Now. And yet....by the gift of being very close to this friend ("very close" I define as having logged a lot of hours together no where else but here and now) as he swam in those first few months that are life with a newborn, I thought about my dad, who bagged out, another friend's dad, who did the same, and riffed on the names of my friend and his girlfriend.

Fatherhood Poetic

Children come through you --
not from you.

When Jack the Heart-Hunter
heard his whole hell hoo-hoo'd
by Horace the Owl, whole
hoards of hessians hushed
as they rushed from his heart to
his head
and back again --
He was a father.
A generation of himself meshed
tighter than any chain with that
of his hitherto separate heart.
Yes, a new person is borne through
the ancient ancient canal -- the original third eye
the vertical eye opens wide and
bears that new synthesis of
a thousand-fold previous syntheses.
He was a father.
"I'm not gonna be a dick" says he.
"Love always and forever" says he...
"our child our son..." he said.

[pause]

It's not just a job, it's a do --
only he can say to himself
"It's your do and your job" -- and be heard.