Male Spirit, 2014

We’re a simple order,
no trappings but a few good habits —
doing with so little need of force,
or more like with the force
of water and grass
cleaving concrete.

I guess a man can swing a hammer
and mean nothing
toward the spike
but that it be safe where it lies.
He can know a difference
between metal and man.

And maybe a million acres of grass to listen to
makes one patient, open, and soft-eyed.
He won’t know, himself.
He’ll tell you a theory,
take his time.

This is the man, this is the order of men:
fourteen billion years in making,
together,
a plateau, a plane, a finished turning of nature.

How to be Secure?

I don’t want to dwell on this, but airline security makes me angry. I flew from BWI to Cleveland, and back to National this weekend. It was the first time I’d flown since 2007 (which had been the first time I’d flown since 2005), and I was really struck by security. At BWI, it was mostly just a drab, shuffling nuisance, but in Cleveland, where it consisted mainly of young men and women swaggering around barking at people, it made me pretty uncomfortable. One kid perched on a stool took my ticket and ID and asked me, without looking at me, “What were you doing in Cleveland?” Was he just making conversation, or was I required to answer? A woman spoke sharply to a passenger because he took a stack of the plastic bins from straight under the steel table instead of “from the corner,” as she put it, as though the distinction, and its importance, were plain to the rest of us.

I flew a lot as a teenager in the 80s, in and out of airports in the U.S. Europe, North Africa and even Soviet Russia. I knew that adults didn’t look forward to passing through customs in foreign countries — though often it wasn’t that bad, and easier for Americans than anyone else. And I remember being so glad to fly back into the U.S. and breezily pass into the country (and out again). I understand that the changes in protocol are the result of big, scary, tragic events, and that they are meant to prevent new terrible events, but I think the way that they’re being done is slovenly. I find the culture of American airport security unsettling, and I find it unsettling that people seem to have accepted it without a squeak.

Everywhere, in fact, it seems to me that we are getting increasingly used to the idea that police and security own the areas where they happen to be. It’s not necessarily the main thing that is happening when police are present (and, gosh, isn’t that a lot of places these days?), but I see that we’re getting used to their authority — slowly, slowly, so that one might be too busy to notice. I don’t believe I’m a big time “escape-from-the-Matrix” thinker, but I still don’t think that’s a good idea. Public places should belong to the public. I’d much prefer there be a power of simple human society that is supported by police, than that there be an order asserted by them.

I see us lean from the former toward the latter. Do you?

Common Word for a Not-Thing

We could do without the word naïve, I feel, because it parses into categories that don’t naturally exist. It’s strange, but sometimes I think the word itself emerged from a mindset that is fundamentally unsustainable.

Nobility, in its fullest expression, is naïve. The “beginner’s mind” of Zen could easily be called naïve (if you were to overlook the fact that it is deliberately cultivated, for profound reasons).

Maybe it’s just that we just need to use it more precisely than we tend to. It seems to me that the way its wielded in common usage actually stands to cut ties to wonder, to hope, and to simple, inexpensive rewards of being alive.

Cruelty

I’m watching The Act of Killing during meals. I think it’s an extremely valuable watch. Some critics have said it’s an excellent study of evil, but I think that puts it in a box that shouldn’t be there. I don’t think it’s about evil; I think it’s about people. At the same time I’m working through The Act of Killing, I’m reading A People’s History of the United States to prep for a class. Together, they affirm for me an idea I’ve had for awhile, which is that, often enough, people are cruel the way insects are cruel: automatically, thoughtlessly, casually — just out of our nature. We open the door to being harmful when we stop questioning whether or not we are being harmful.

And it’s not a net burden to ask. If I’m willing to ask the question, sooner or later I discover that I’m willing to free myself from wearing a hairshirt all the time. In fact, I actually free myself from a lot of guilt and shame if I’m willing to ask.

Big Trouble in Little China

You know why Big Trouble in Little China is a great movie? You probably do, but I’m going to say it anyway. Part of it is that John Carpenter made it in the mid-80s, when he was still a fairly meticulous craftsman. In the mid-80s, even a movie that felt like John Carpenter just got his buddies together on a weekend with a bunch of money and said, “Okay, next, let’s do this!” (and, if you haven’t noticed, there’s a surprising number of those in his oeuvre) turned out like an A-list film.

Big Trouble in Little China is definitely one of these, but the thing that makes it really great is that, like Star Wars, it is so completely self-justifying. It’s great because it is so totally committedly, unabashedly its weird, outside-the-box self. I love films like that. I think it’s rare for a film-maker to do it these days. Christopher Nolan does it sometimes. David O. Russell does it regularly. I don’t think many big directors do it anymore. Too bad!