Something New Comes Along

Just when I think there is nothing left to be old, something new comes along.

I wonder what creates a memory. When I wake in the morning, and there is nothing left to hold, nothing new to see, to comprehend, to learn, when there is nothing left to remember about time, will I really be awake or will I actually be dead? Is that the final samadhi I see before me, or just another aimless hallway lined with the disposable images of a past I watched while in repose in front of my television?

I spent the past week in the DC area, and went to the National Portrait Gallery one day. There we saw portraits of presidents, Civil War personalities and other American icons, like Jimi Hendrix and Gore Vidal, Jackie O. and Josephine Baker, Angela Davis and Katherine Hepburn. I remember a lot of the individuals, captured in paint pigment and photo emulsion, from my own lifetime. Here they are with the legends of a young nation, captured in time as if they too were cornerstones of proud nationalism and not temporary soda pop bubbles rendered into Styrofoam pylons supporting an age of plastic time. How Warholian!


So this is how history is written now. As 2007 slips into 2008, I guess we all need to pay better attention. The dimly lit Chinese restaurant on the neighborhood street corner, or the half-moon hanging over the leafless-tree that grows from the broken concrete stoop of a run down tenement, are all images I carry with me that - in some future context - could hold historical value, and those are only a couple of the ones my mind captured in the last 48 hours!

That anything from our living past can become grist for the historical mill is both ridiculous and overwhelming. For example, one could say it is ridiculous that 2007 could be remembered as a the year when a well run football team's glory will overshadow the glaring mismanagement of a poorly run nation. Likewise, it is overwhelming that tragic events, from Darfur to Pakistan, can crack the shell of our otherwise oblivious Humpty Dumpty lives, so that by the time we muster our horses and men, we will have fallen off the wall, leaving the hungry inconsolably weak, the weak uncontrollably desperate, and the desperate unalterably dangerous.

I'm sorry. It's hard not to be cynical. There's a lot of possibility for 2008, though. I don't know if hope alone is enough, or experience, or justice, but I do believe that we can move to heal the inconsolable, the uncontrollable, the unalterable, if we first resolve to heal ourselves.

Revolution only succeeds through resolution. The only way to create a new story is to commit to being a force for changing the current story.

Look at a recent picture of your family. Is there anything you could do to change the current story of your relationship to them?

Look at your bank statement. Is there anything you can commit to, to change the story of your relationship to money?

Look at your front lawn. Is there anything you can choose to do that will change your relationship to landscaping?

If you resolve to create change in your life in those or any small, personal area, then you can choose to play bigger in your next commitment. The new revolves when the old resolves. Rather than revering the past for its own sake, maybe we should venerate it only as the source for what we have become, are becoming, can become.

As we approach the fortieth anniversary of a notable year of joy and horror, it is appropriate to quote Bobby K. (also in the National Gallery) in his famous call to action, as a way to help us add context to history, "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

Happy New Year! Why not make it a historical one?

-PBG

Get Off the Surge; Go Off On the Contractors

Posturing is not governing. It's like a farmer wearing an expensive Italian suit to plant potatoes - you can only stand there looking good for so long before your customers wonder why you aren't bending down and getting dirty so you can fill their orders.

Look, I'm all for Congress resolutely standing against the President's surge (ewww), but let's move on. America's tragic policy in Iraq deserves all the attention and light Congress can shed on it, but there's no need to bulldog what everyone already knows: the country is opposed to the Surge.

The President has just asked for a lot more money to pay for his failed policy, and promises that he'll ask for even more next year. The problem is, all this vocal opposition to the Surge has put those of us against the war in a difficult position. We cannot hold off funding the troops and come out smelling good in the long run, regardless of the probable failure of the "new way forward". If we want to attack the White House's funding proposal we have to start questioning where the money is going, and get off of, sadly, who it's killing.

More waste from contractors like Parsons, Haliburton and KBR has come to light in the last week. The report from the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction cites numerous abuses of our money; that is what we should question. It is the one thing we actually can do something about.

We can talk about resolutions against Bush, but in the end, his word is the dragon's breath that sends brave young men and women into danger. The various Congressional resolutions are not only non-binding, they are non-gagging too. We can't keep him or Cheney from talking (ahh to dream) and that makes this principled stand little more than a thin ribbon of raffia on a pole in a hurricane.

Let's focus our attention on the contractors. Let's start that immediately, and make it part of the congressional budget hearings. Let's not appropriate funds for inappropriate work. The real way to get to the administration is to bite the hand that feeds it: big special interest contractors. A well reasoned confrontation on this front will put the administration back on the defensive in a way that will keep them from being able to claim that we are "emboldening the enemy".

Besides, it's the right way to deliver the potatoes.

-PBG