9/11 ten years on…

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I don’t like this day, and I doubt I ever will.

The first one, the original 9/11, scared the fuck out of me. Scared, like when I was in the Northridge earthquake, trapped in a small dark room, shaken like the inside a paint-shaker, and all to the sound of four freight trains rolling right over your head. If you have ever been really close to something VERY heavy, and moving fast (freight trains are the worst I have experienced) if gives off a subsonic that is difficult to describe, but will set the small hairs on the back of your neck alight because your body knows that if you make one tiny mistake, you are fucking toast. That kind of scary. The kind that makes you mind go OMFG! and you balls suck up into your crotch.

On the first 9/11 we woke up to NPR. I think my alarm went off at 6:00 back then, but I don’t recall. We had just moved into our first house two months before, and had a baby boy three months old. In short we were already stupid with fear, and way over our heads. The slow painful tsunami of parenthood had not quite peaked on the beach of our single lives, but already we were soaked, and the beach was covered in junk. So when the radio came on with the news, I almost didn’t believe it. “Big fire in the World Trade Center,” it said, but the boy was still asleep, and the TV still had regular analog stations, so I wandered into the living-room and turned the set on. About a minute later Teri must have heard the panic in my voice when I said, “honey!” We spent the rest of that morning alternating between sitting on the couch glued to the tv, or calling friends and family, and pacing back and forth on the phone.

Together we watched that first fire with mild fear, but mostly with dumbfounded ignorance. We didn’t know the cause (although it you go back now and look there is an obvious airplane shaped hole in the building) as the news reporters were being good cautious citizens, reporting only what they knew or could plainly see. The truth at that moment was still wrapped in euphemisms like “sources say” and “it has been reported”, and my personal favorite,”unconfirmed reports”. The great subtext of that day was yet to unfold.

So we watched a sky-scraper fire, nothing more. And we were having thoughts like, “oh, those poor fucks,” for the people trapped on the top part of the building. Then we got that collective “surprise!” moment when that second airplane zoomed right into frame of the camera, and smacked into the other tower with a puff of an explosion and a rain of fiery debris. It was as if in mid cut another director had taken over our collective movie, in this case a chick flick, and decided to make it a horror movie instead. Even the newspeople were thinking WTF! at that one, it was such a punch to the mental gut. I distinctly remember how sick-to-my-stomach it made me feel. It was bizarre, surreal. Like having a favorite 5 year-old niece or nephew jump up and say “surprise,” which you think is cute until you look into the closet they are pointing towards and see they have butchered your favorite cat, and smeared its bloody entrails all over the inside. It was that kind of surreal. Your first reaction is to think, “oh, um, okay,” and your second reaction is to puke.

But the day wasn’t over yet. The third surprise of the morning was when the second tower collapsed on itself. By then I was already having a discussion in the back of my head about high-temperature fires and modern sky-scraper construction, so I cannot say the collapse was a surprise to me. It was more like an “oh, of course!” Only this “of course” was punctuated by the deaths of thousands of people.

It was the collapse of the second tower that made me say out loud, “Damn. I’m glad I’m too old to be drafted because this must mean war.” I didn’t know who was behind this, but I knew then we would be going to war. It was that simple.

That was also when my balls tried to suck themselves up into by abdomen. Yep, scared.

***

You know, I think there should be an international limit on the number of OMFG!s on can experience on one day. After the first couple, the brain just goes numb, and then stays that way for a long time. Just like after being in the Northridge paint-shaker. One can only experience so much terror, and then the brain overloads. Perhaps this was Ossama Bin-Laden’s only mistake on that day. He could have gotten a much more dramatic effect if he had spread the four attacks over two different days, about two months apart. That would have been much more dramatic theater. I can only thank god he didn’t.

Anyway, there is another part to 9/11. Not the stuff that happened on that day, but the stuff that happened because of that day.  And it is this stuff, the political and social repercussions to that day, that REALLY PISSES ME OFF!!! It pisses me off so much that if I start to think about it for any length of time the rage starts to build, and I swear my eye starts to twitch. If Bin Laden may have made a mistake or two that day, by way of contrast our response was nothing but one mistake after another. With ten years of hindsight it is hard to believe how absolutely mind numbingly stupid we became. We did everything Bin Laden asked for, and wrapped it up for him like a Christmas present.

  1. Setting the situation up like it was an act of war, not a crime.
  2. Acting as if it was a war against Islam instead of a political war.
  3. Treating Bin Laden as if he was some “master villain” instead of as a religious lunatic hermit, high on crack, and living in a cave.
  4. For fuck’s sake, we even invaded Iraq over this. I mean, how stupid do you have to be?

Its like we got stung by a wasp, and our solution was to seek out every wasp nest we could find, smack them once with a stick, and then stand there and laugh. Of course if you act that stupid you’re going to get stung. I mean really, WTF? The English and the French both have these wonderful long histories of kicking the ant-hill that is the middle east and north Africa, and then getting covered in ant bites. Why the fuck did we feel the need to do the same thing all over again? Good Christ almighty, how dumb can one nation be? We’re supposed to learn from other nation’s mistakes, not do them over again for our own. Really, this is shit we could happily let someone else own. But we didn’t.

So 10 years on…

  • We are not any safer, and we are appreciably less free.
  • We have paid for the blood of our thousands spilled on that day, with the deaths of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Not to count hundreds of thousands of people that were displaced by out actions, made poorer by our wars, or lost loved ones and/or property for being in the unlucky position of being under the boot when our foot came down.
  • We have spent thousands of our precious lives and trillions of our national treasure.
  • We contributed almost nothing to democratizing the middle east. The leaders we did support now appear to be autocratic thugs, many of which have been overthrown by their own people. And the two places we did invade are not significantly freer then before we invaded.
  • The rest of the world (you know, the guys we do business with) thinks we’re either bullies or a bunch of newbs (or both!).

So good job, us. Get out your flags and wave, because  Yay, We Did It! Weee.

The sad part is, I think the only reason we are not doing more in the middle east right now is simply because we are broke. The collective conscious of our country still wants to cry and scream like a baby, pitching a fit, and stomping on every shadow. We haven’t learned that there is no “getting over” this day. There is no single bad guy to hunt down and kill like in a movie. There will be no final chase scene, and there will be no victory party when the credits roll. In fact, when the credits do roll we are going to see that we were not the protagonist at all, like we thought we were. No, in this film, in this reality, we’re playing the roll of the antagonist. That’s right, we’re playing the bad guys, we’re the ones with the black hats.

I say its time we turned in those black hats, and our sacred flags, for something much more appropriate; ashes and sack-cloth. Folks, we fucked up, and now its time we manned up and admitted it. I don’t think for a minute we were responsible for that terrible tragedy of 9/11, but we are certainly responsible for everything we did afterwards in response.

So today we put up our flag in honor of those fallen on this day 10 years ago, and to honor those fallen who bravely fought in the repercussions to the events of that terrible day. These were good folks, most of them great American citizens, and innocent, as near as I can tell, from any wrong doing. If there is any guilt in any of them, I say we let them take it up with their maker. I’m good with that. We also lit a few candles as a sign of our intent to peaceably remember this day, and what it means. Its not a parade, and we’re not waving the flag or watching some stupid crap on television. Really, I’ve cried enough, I don’t need to do more. There is no victory to this day, and by this point I doubt there will ever be. We had a chance for greatness, and we blew it. All that is left is for the rest of us to “get” that. For many Americans I doubt that day will ever come. Then again, I never thought I would see a black man elected to the White House, so I have to admit my powers of prognostication are not particularly impressive.

And… that is why I don’t like this day. I doubt I ever will.

Big Hair

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I first saw her waiting for the red line. She was about 5 and a half, in a light colored dress, well shaped, young, and pretty. But what drew my eye to here was her hair. She had hair, lots and lots of hair. It was dark, almost black with lighter highlights, and in a larger curl then your typical afro; somewhere in between afro and dreadlocks is the best I can describe it. The strands were long, flowing in clumps over 12 inches from her head, which means the individual hair must have been twice that long. We’re talking BIG hair here.

Her hair draped over her head like a dress from the Corps du Ballot. The top almost like a shield-cone volcano in shape, a long low cone of hair, like a large brown coolie hat. The hair was wider than her shoulders, and must have weighted as much as a baby.

When she sat down opposite me, her hair left this lovely space for her heart-shaped face to look out of. After a while I noticed she was looking for someone. She sat facing straight ahead, but kept turning side wise with only her eyes, looking for someone else on the platform. That’s when I realized how big her hair was. She kept using it like a bush growing over her head which she could hide in with only her face showing out the opening. Like a huge hat that also had it’s own partial veil.

That hair, really was something.

Cool story snippet: The IBS

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In the future everyone will have a internet blog score (IBS), which is maintained by a third party and is comprised of all of an individual’s internet input (included  any aliases they may use) and rates that person for integrity, politeness, mental health, aggressiveness, and other factors. This IBS is used in job interviews, dating services, etc, to help weed out the crazies and limit potential legal action.

On Roller-Coasters

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I love roller-coasters. They are awesome, plain and simple. Hop on one and you get to safely come close to death; to cheat him, as it were, and still walk away without having to give him your soul at some later date. Sure it costs a few bucks, but that’s cheap compared to being dead or losing your soul.

But here is the real reason why you should love roller-coasters: They are the perfect metaphor for your creative process.

What? you say. What are you talking about? What metaphor? What creative process?

Well I’ll tell you. You know that feeling you get when you’re going down the track, and you can see it drop away in front of you? You know, when your breath catches in your throat, and your arms grip the cushions (or your boyfriend’s arm) really hard? Its that part where your body is saying, “oh crap. I’m about to be launched into space,” but your face is smiling because your brain knows it’s only going to last for a moment. It is that duel reality part, where your body is saying one thing (Holy Shit!), while your brain is saying another (Weee!) that makes the ride so wonderful.

You see most of the time we listen to our bodies, and do what they say. So when your eyes see a car coming at you while you are crossing the street, you jump when it tells you “Watch out!” Or when you see a cute girl (or guy) walking down the sidewalk, your body says, “hey, check that out,” and your head follows. Most of the time this is a good thing. Its good that we don’t get run over, and its good (or at least pleasurable) that we notice attractive people. However, the problem is that sometimes the messages the body sends are not so good for us.

You see, your body will respond with the exact same fervor when it senses the danger of a car trying to run you over, as it does when it senses the danger of a new idea of yours being criticized by your best friend. On the one hand, the body’s response is helpful and appropriate, but on the other had, not so much. Mind you, your friends criticism might be hurtful (although probably not as hurtful as a car accident), but then again it might not. In fact, it might be helpful. And therein lies the rub. Unlike the black and white response to a speeding car, there are levels of grey involved with the creative process. But the body doesn’t know this, and so you get the same “Oh shit, we’re about to fall” feeling when you’re on a roller-coaster going over the edge, as you do when you are creating something interesting.

So here’s why a roller-coaster is so helpful to the creative person. Because it teaches us to listen to the “oh shit, we’re falling” response from the body, and yet do nothing about it. With the creative process, that “oh shit, we’re falling” message the body sends is crucial. Not because you are about to die, but because you are on the right track. It is your body’s way of telling you that you are getting to the good stuff. That you have struck a rich vein, and it’s time to dig hard.

You see, creativity requires risk. Sometimes big risk. I will even go so far as to say without the risk there is no reward. But your body doesn’t know this. When your are hurdling down the roller-coaster track, and fly over the edge, your body can only see the track drop away, and then quickly calculate the likely result. In other words, the risk. This is all our bodies can understand. It is what they are trained to do. This is why you hold your breath, and grip the cushions hard. Now it is your brain, on the other hand, that knows perfectly well your body will be safe (far safer then the automobile drive to the amusement park) so it allows you to smile even while your knuckles turn white. The brian knows the reward will come at the end of the ride, and doesn’t panic even while your body is trying to.

The problem is, when you start to do a creative process, your body senses the risk, and responds like it is supposed to do. “Danger, Will Robertson. Danger.” It senses the risk, and responds in the appropriate manner. If you are not used to this, you will sense this risk, and stop being creative immediately. The danger signal will overcome your creative impulse, and shut your brain down, just exactly like it will take over your thoughts to get your body out of the way of a speeding car. Alas, this is the exact opposite of what you need to do when you sense this risk, because the thing the body is of afraid of is usually the good stuff, the rich vein of ID, the mother-load of creative ideas. In effect, it is exactly as if your body is working against yourself, trying to keep you from being creative.

But this is true only if you are not expecting it; if you don’t know how to react to the “danger” signal your body sends. Once you know that the “oh shit, we’re falling” signal can be a positive thing (at least in terms of creativity) you can turn it around, and use it as a tool. It is a signal that you are on the right track. That you are digging down the correct mind shaft (yes, I spelled it that way on purpose). That you are going in the right direction. Yet to do this trick, you have to learn to separate what your brain is saying about your creative process, from what your body is saying. And that is not such an easy task. Which is why a roller-coaster is so darn handy. In a blink it does what no amount of thinking or talking can do; it separates the brain/body signal quite cleanly, and for very little cost. Certainly much cheaper than a session with your therapist.

So the next time you find yourself at an amusement park, ride the coasters, and dream great big dreams.

A bad day on the train

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Last week I took the train in to work every day, but Friday. The first day, Monday, started so bad I didn’t think I could make it the rest of the week. It started like this.

The station where I catch the Red Line subway is the first one (or the last one, depending on your point of view) in North Hollywood. It’s common for a train to break down when attempting to come back, which is why they keep an extra train beyond the station just in case. Monday started like this. I got on the train and it was so full I knew right away that this was the second train, the first one had broken down and was waiting on the other side of the platform with it’s doors closed, and the sign reading Not In Service glowing on it’s side. The doors chimed, then closed, and the train attempted to move forward. It jerked forward only a few inches and stopped. Not a good sign. The driver tried a few more times, but the train refused to move.  Shortly thereafter, the driver got on the PA and announced that this train was Out Of Service, and that we’d have to catch the next train which was just now pulling into the station. Everyone rushed to got off the train, and cross to the other side (all of 20 feet), where they proceeded to mill around the places where the train’s doors would open. This is somewhat normal, so I didn’t think much of it. What was abnormal was what happened when that new train opened its doors.

Right when the doors opened, the crowd surged into the train. Now normally they wait politely outside the door for the passengers inside to depart. This time they didn’t, and in some cased literally shoved them aside. I made some comment about waiting for the others to get off, but was ignored in the otherwise silent rush to get a seat. It was sad and disgusting to see people who normally act politely to be so hostile and selfish.

But that is not all. When we got off the train at Hollywood and Highland, many of us (it was a larger than normal crowd becuse of the train delays) stood outside waiting for the bus. Amongst the people waiting was a young man in a wheel chair, and a young women attending him. Now normally one waits for the people in their wheelchairs to get on first, but on this occasion the crowd surged forward, and immediately started getting on the bus. The young lady said politely many times to the crows that they needed to get on. The driver either did not see them, or was too pacified to care. Many people held back, but the since crowd kept trickling in, they saw no reason to wait, and got on themselves. Finally the driver noticed the wheel chair, and told the people to get back, but by then it was too late. The bus was so packed that even the people standing could not go back far enough to let the guy in the wheelchair on.  The driver shrugged his shoulders, and the bus moved on. By that time I was so disgusted with the passengers that I didn’t wish to ride with them, so I waited with the young couple for the next bus.

And man was that a good decision. You see while I was waiting for the next bus I struck up a conversation with a young couple from England. They were from the Midlands, and on their honeymoon, spending a few days in LA before they flew out to Tahiti for 2 weeks. He is a Bobby, and she is a Chemist (that’s cop and pharmacist, for those of you who speak American), and they were so charming and friendly. It was nice to meet fresh faces, and see some genuine happiness in the world. They got off the bus at Santa Monica and Fairfax, and I went on my way to work, for once forgetting how nasty humanity can be.

I dream of peaches

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I had a strange dream last light. I was opening up a bag of frozen peach slices, and eating them. For some reason I knew these slices had been prepared by my paternal grandfather. The taste triggered a memory of his large wrinkled hands carefully cutting and bagging the slices, before putting them in the freezer. It gave me a sense of connection to him, the peach piece was something he had touched in his hands just last year, and now it was in my hand.

When I woke up I remembered that Pops, as we called him, hadn’t died last year. He’s been in the grave for 30 years come this fall. Funny how your time sense is distorted by dreams. i also don’t recall him ever freezing fruit, although I’m sure he did it. The man kept a HUGE garden, and was happy to pass off fruits and vegetables to us whenever we visited. As a kid we thought that anything grown by Pops was bigger and sweeter then anything else you could buy. This was a rule we all believed earnestly up until his death made it impossible to prove otherwise.

He did freeze the trout we caught every time we went fishing, but I don’t recall peaches. Except for last night.

Finished

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My day job is working as a particular type of artist (a finish retoucher), and since it is a craft one needs to have examples of their work to show to others. Think of it as a resume of projects, as if you were sell yourself as a author by putting together a book (for that is what we call them) based on a small snippets, a page or two, from each story or novel. The variety of different “books” or portfolios, out there is amazing, and as they migrated to the internet they have been able to overcome one of the biggest limitations of a printed portfolio; that of space. In the past, one could only carry so many examples to a prospective client, so you had to pick and choose carefully what you would show. Now you can put up on your website literally thousands of pieces.  Some retouchers seem put up to have every piece they ever completed.
I’ve always found this process painstaking. Every time I go to organize my work it is like exhuming the dead. The weight of my knowledge (or lack thereof) seems to lay on every piece. Every success or failure has imbued the art with its heady aroma until I start to feel lost, as if I am trapped into the past. It is the most disagreeable of sensations.
Which is why I keep my portfolio small. I don’t want to show everything I’ve done. Heck I don’t want to remember them all. Some of these pieces carry with them some sweet memories, but most of them were work, hard work. And often they carry with them every disagreeable client decision, every stupid limitation brought on by bad photography, or poor planing at the shoot. Every project has its share of mistakes, and they all have to be worked out by the finisher. Literally, the buck stops here. So while you might look at a piece and see the smiling people, I look at it and see the all the mistakes I had to gloss over, or I see the better way we had the art before the client turned it into a piece of shit.
For me, when the project is over, I am DONE with it. Done with a capital D. Finished. I guess that is why I call myself a finisher.

My son the conservative

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The other day I came home from, work, and right when I walked in the door Trevor started telling me about these people on the MMORPG he is playing currently (Lego Universe). It seems that some of the guys online have gotten smart, and started begging the other players for money, claiming they couldn’t kill many of the monsters because their characters were too weak. Trevor had zero empathy for this guys, sniffing out their scam right away. He told me his character was no stronger than theirs (the game lists this stuff for all to see), and yet he was having no problems with the monsters. His indignation at their actions, and his delight at telling them off, was a wonder to behold. It  reminded me strongly of the many conservatives I’ve run across and they way they talk about welfare. “I’m not going to give my hard-earned money to someone who’s too lazy to work.”

My son, the Republican.

A new character is coming

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I think I have a new character coming out of my head, and let me tell you, he is not a nice one.

Last night I had two nightmares. The first one was one of those where you are scared not from anything specific, but because you are suddenly overwhelmed in a swirl of chaotic madness. I woke up with a shout, and a deep sense of someone lurking. That was at 4:30 am. God only knows why I didn’t wake up Teri or Trevor. I got up to pee, and check the house. I’d been sleeping in a awkward position (in fact, I’ve been sleeping poorly this whole week), so I chalked it up to should/back pain as the cause, and went back to sleep.

The second one was after I turned off the 6:30 alarm, and went back to sleep. I dreamed we owned an older house. I think it was situated on the end of the block where we lived as kids in Fresno (on San Carlos Street). The house was dirty, old, and grey, the color of ancient wood bleached by the sun. I was in the bedroom unpacking stuff when Trevor came in the room shouting about the goldfish. I ran into the hallway, and found myself up to my ankles in water. I started grabbing fish, and putting them back in their travel bag, when I noticed the hose. Someone had taken a garden house from outside, pushed the end though the window into the hallway, and turned it on full blast. I asked Trevor if he had done this, and he apologized. Then I yelled at him to run and turn it off.

It was when I was going out the front door that I saw the man. He was young (in his mid 20s) with shoulder length or longer straight blonde hair. His face was long and thin, his look severe as if he was unhappy about something that was preoccupying his thoughts. He was rolling across our back lawn in roller blades, clearly on our property. He looked to be about 6 feet tall or taller, but it was hard to tell because of the blades on his feet. He circled around the house checking us out and dodging all the moving boxes laying around. Then he rolled back to a trail heading off from the rear of our lot. I asked Trevor if this was the person who put the hose in the window, and he nodded his head saying that the man had threatened to beat him up if he said anything.

Like I said, not a nice guy.

The thing is, I don’t know who this guy is. Yet. I had a story idea this week, a type of blind justice based upon a reformed criminal that can see the ghosts caused by other’s crimes, but this guy doesn’t seem to fill that part. For one thing he was clearly comfortable with what he was doing, as in having no emotional understanding of the creepiness of his actions. This was not “fun” but dead earnest actions to accomplish something. Perhaps to try and move us off something he thought he owned, like the house. This is more in keeping with a antagonist then a protagonist, but I don’t know. He is not a nice character, and I don’t fancy writing about him. But I bet I will anyway.

Late night train ride

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Last Friday I ended up working for a client later then normal, staying until 10:30. Most of you know I take the subway and/or bus to work whenever I can. This particular client is right across the street from the Hollywood/Highland station on the Red Line (the subway). Late night on a Friday, and especially at a popular tourist stop on a warm summer evening, I expected to find the station crowded with the typical Europeans, Aussies, and American tourists. What I found instead were the workers; the hidden part of a modern city.

I thought I was heading home, but instead took a small detour into the hell of the working poor.

Waiting for the trains were all the security officers, janitors, and other people who come into the city late at night, and clean up after the rest of us have left. This is the shadow city, the other city. The part you normally do not see as their work happens after you and I go home. It was like I had wondered into a different town, one more Kafkaesque then the one I normally inhabit. Gone were all the suits, and the bright colored people. In their stead were tired mostly dark-skinned automatons. The late night, and harsh light giving them an almost zombie like appearance. Starring into space, the fatigue behind their eyes was palatable. I saw several bow their heads, and fall asleep on the short train ride to the last stop, their heads bouncing with the motion of the train, but their bodies too tired to wake up. The whole ride had this subdued air, with even the few teens on board unable to bring up enough energy to overcome the fatigue of their fellow passengers.

Getting off the train in “the Valley”, I was relieved to climb that last big set of stairs. The moonlit air above ground was warm and its comforting light invigorated the people as they left the station. We were back in the real world, the normal one. Kids hooted and hollered, riding their skateboards, or just running around to expelled the rest of the zombie energy from below.

As I boarded the Orange Line (and long articulated bus) I saw smiles all around. It was still late, and we were all still tired, but the dark pallor of the underground had lifted.