Osama bin Laden is quite probably the most hated and vilified figure in the American consciousness.  And rightly so.

The man has said that he wants to destroy the America’s global economic dominance.  Today he took aim at the United States’ failure to curb carbon emissions.

To stop global warming, he called for the “wheels of the American economy” to be brought to a halt. “This is possible … if the peoples of the world stop consuming American goods.”

First off, even if the American economy came to a halt, emissions would still rise, global consumption would rise and the US would be deprived of its capacity to transition to clean energy.  If he really wanted to help the “tens of millions [driven] into poverty and unemployment” he would not seek to tear down the markets required to produce clean energy.  Access to reliable energy is directly associated with raising living standards.  Unless bin Laden wants the world’s population to continue using  fossil fuels, he must recognize the need for clean energy development, which requires investment and robust markets.

I have to conclude that his strategy is not to stop global warming, but rather to draw broader global support for his anti-American efforts.  What better way to wreak havoc and chaos in the nation of his enemies than to associate himself with one of the fastest growing sectors of the US economy: clean energy.

After all, bin Laden is the new Hitler.  Folks throw his name around when they want to paint something or someone as un-patriotic, irrational or evil.  By highlighting the climate challenge, bin Laden opens the floodgates for climate deniers to claim that taking action on climate issues is now un-American, anti-American and that seeks to destroy the economy.

These claims of course are untrue, offensive and unacceptable.

But they sure as hell create yet another barrier to developing a clean energy economy (added to fossil fuel interests entrenched in Congress, a tough investment environment and the infuriatingly slow pace of climate negotiation).

So while yes, the US has shirked its responsibility to tackle climate change, I cannot see how bin Laden’s call to action actually advances this goal.  Instead, Osama bin Laden just handed the enemies of clean energy a grenade launcher, which they eagerly received.

I am deceiving myself at this very moment through an act of inspirational denial.  I can’t believe that all hope is lost, I won’t believe there is nothing more to be done.  There is always something to be done.  If nothing else, we must adjust to the emerging dismal situation and make the best of it.  My world is dynamic, so I must be as well, which means there is always something to be done.

I take comfort, motivation from this concept: my circumstances are never fully out of my control.  I tell myself things can’t be all bad and it makes me work harder for the glimmer of a chance of a better future.

But what if I’m wrong?  What if i am just my small little self?  It’s possible I could have no special influence on the momentum of the world.  If I believed I was impotent, I would be.  But the converse?  Can I make change by willing myself to?  Sure.  But will it be enough?  Ahhh.  That’s the real concern.

Oh, to be able to see the ripples of our actions, as if seeing heat through infrared goggles.  Our power, we never understand.  Instead it’s left to my feeble imagination to willfully believe that I can shift systemic inertia.  I deny myself doubt, because I refuse despair.  Am I foolhardy and blind? Optimistic and powerful?  Likely, all, but I would choose nothing else.

Written 16 Jan 2010

Man creates competition,
Glory and victory for some barely attainable goal
Because life has ceased to be a challenge,
The thrill of existence no longer sustains
Passion for life.

Adrenaline pumps through my veins
Same as any other on earth
But what makes it surge?
Life and death balancing acts
Of our own choosing and not.

Clinging to a mountain, at the mercy of the elements
I throw caution to the same wind
That seeks to pull me from the rock.
But with luck I am stronger still. I must
Quell survival instinct for that momentary elation.

And what of it? Victory over nature?
Day in and day out billions refuse
To left life slip through their grasp
And raise a doggedly determined head
To face a new dawn.

Yet adventure feels more chosen
More in my control than simple living.
We practice perseverance
To make it second nature
For undesired and undeserved crises.

Written 28 December 2009

In rehearsal, our relationships grow to resemble the characters we adopt.  They become us and we become them, never to be the same.  This fiction we create saturates the emotions we feel, articulates them in words too eloquent and rhythmic to exist in real life.  But they are our reflection, deepest thoughts never brought to light, words we never said; all of it compressed into song and dance and laughter and sighs.

But the truth is, I live more fully in character.  Reality is flat and dull – no one ever proclaims their secret undying love for me, my family isn’t wrenched apart by some unfortunate misunderstanding.  No, instead I make my way, paying my bills with my day job selling useless crap, waiting to escape at night into the technicolor dreamworld of the theater.  When I leave myself at the door, I bring the truths of life to everyone else.

Written 18 December 2009

Fireweed

At times it feels like the whole world is crashing down, compromised at the very foundations and tumbling piece by piece around me while I stand rooted in the fear that it might crush me on the way, leaving nothing in its path but a spreading chaos that I am powerless to stop because it is building momentum and all the invisible cracks and fissures that grew through the centuries of struggle between a thousand us and thems have finally broken through the veneer of peace and tranquility to reveal a world smoldering with ancient injury and stretched to the limit by modern demands for food and water and dignity and security and life and love and how I just wish someone would shelter me in their arms as the debris rips through my hope that if I could just shake this paralysis and support the world on my shoulders maybe, just maybe the shaking would calm just long enough for the dizzy destruction to pause and we could all catch our breath and summon the strength of will to save this reality that has hopes and dreams and fears scrawled across it like global graffiti, beautiful and raw as the lives of those who drew the story of humanity with their blood, sweat and tears for no other reason than to live despite the pain that threatens to overwhelm the vision of a better life, a better future that like a fireweed must go through a maelstrom before it can bloom, and is that what we’re going through now? Is this collapse the beginning of something new, rising from the decay of a system whose time has come, with the grim reaper’s scythe swinging at the very cracks I see before my eyes, tearing down the old to provide space for the new or is it the death of a world that sold its soul long ago in the brutal battle for existence when we were blinded to each other’s suffering by our own self-righteous groans that we don’t deserve this shit when we forgot that sharing the pain lightens the burden and knowing that others feel the same and are simply in their own fight for survival recalls our common humanity.

At times it feels like the whole world is crashing down and I am dumbstruck by the sheer enormity of it all, but then I remember that waiting for the end would be an infinite torment because there are millions of people just like me who, instead of turning inward on the off-chance that they might weather the storm, bring their hope into the light of day where it can absorb the strength of those who are uplifted if even for a moment by its presence and regain the courage to act despite the very likelihood that the cracks in the world will swallow them up before a life fully manifests its beauty, but would we recognize beauty if it was easy and ever abundant and not something to fight for, to remind ourselves to see in the tiniest displays of compassion in a dispassionate world that for all its might stands powerless to the relentless defiance of the human spirit.

A friend of mine passed away this week. I met him in first grade and he was one of the very few people I went to elementary, middle and high school with.  He was a wonderful human being who brightened many lives.  Above all else, this is how I remember him.

-

“Jeez, learn how to take a joke.”

He said those words so many times that they were permanently imprinted in my memory. They spoke to both my solemnity and his playfulness. Whenever that line came out, it hurt in a way. Obviously whatever he had said offended me. But it wasn’t his fault; he was joking. Was I not fun to be around?

It wasn’t until he wrote it in my 6th grade yearbook that he finally got through to me. Seeing those words like a brand seared onto my identity forced me to reconcile with the notion that I, in fact, did take life far too seriously.

I was twelve.

After that year we stopped taking the school bus together, that daily ritual of forced camaraderie. We grew apart, and we grew up. Passing each other in the halls of high school, no longer good friends, there was still a recognition that you never really lose the bonds of childhood.

Eventually, I learned to take a joke and I like to think that every time I laugh some part of him lives on through me.

Tonight I finished my novel.  At 50,656 words and 105 pages, it is one of the most remarkable projects I have undertaken.  This doesn’t diminish my work as an organizer, but rather complements it, as a personal challenge that I alone could accomplish.  Through my experience of writing a novel I stumbled across what might well turn out to be my next big project for the year. I learned how to simply write and write and write even if I didn’t want to.   I discovered that the internet is a giant time suck (though I did know that before).  I pushed myself to be creative in a way that I had never experienced before and frankly, I might be addicted to it.  I could go on, but I’ll spare you the gushy details.

Instead, if you would like to read this novel that I’ve been waxing poetic over for the past month, entitled Summer at The Rising Loaf, just let me know and I will gladly send you a copy.

I encourage you to get out of your box and do something crazy.  If only for a month.

 

 

Written 25 November 2009

I heard them calling from deep inside
These words crying out for the light
Of day.

Their muffled murmurs tickle my mind,
Hinting at the hidden wisdom available to all
Who listen.

So I opened up and reached far in
To lift these fragile half-formed thoughts
To life.

I scooped and cradled their nascent forms
Holding them safe until they grew
Into their own.

Words bubbled out of their shells
Meeting and rearranging to speak of
Ordinary wonders.

But these words escaped the refuge
I had built for them.  They did not want to be mine
Alone.

I love these words that I had created,
But if you love them, let them go.
So I did.

Some returned time and time again,
Articulating a world view that I came
To hold.

Others came back for holidays,
Those momentous occasions for which they
Are perfect.

Still others collected to forge ideas
That I did not like.  These were not my words.
Not anymore.

How could I have brought forth such danger,
Anger manifest through common language
And speech?

These words had taken a part of me and
Thrown it into the chaos of consciousness
with no remorse.

My only hope is that someday they’ll come back
as old friends wizened from the world,
seeking rest.

36,291 words in 76 pages.

That number staggers me.  First, that I have been able to write that much in just three short weeks, and second, because those words have brought to life characters that I had never dreamed before.  When I first started the National Novel Writing Month, I didn’t actually expect to finish.  I thought it would be a fun challenge.  But 76 pages later, I am mesmerized at the power of writing to unlock the imagination.

One of my friends asked me today: how do you do it?  By that she meant, how did I find the time to write a novel, finish out my first semester of graduate school and find time for all the other things in my life.  The simple answer is that it is ridiculously fun.  I am entranced in my plot and characters (even though there are days when writing is as slow as molasses in winter) and I’m learning how to enrich them as I write.  Okay, and the second part of the answer is that I have been spending less time doing other things in my life, especially sleeping.

I’m approaching the climax of the story, and to be honest, I feel a lot of pressure to get it right. 

Written 17 November 2009.  This is a piece I am including in my novel, but I wanted to share it here as well.

She feels the drumbeat, distant at first, recalling some ancient memory of a womb long forgotten.  That pulse so near pumping one life to another.  Steady.  Strong. Warm.

Deeper than thought, she moves with the rhythm, ebbing and flowing, through the throngs of men who silenced their drums in the name of safety.  But the rise and fall, quickening of the pace and the sudden halt are truer to the primal dance than the listless comfort of conformity.

She hears the drumbeat now, urging her hands and feet to join with the others who have not abandoned the spark.  They merge and break, adapt and change, embracing the ever-shifting tumult of life.  For what is it to be alive but to revel in the very collision of self and other?

She is the drumbeat, calling forth the forces of hope, of strength, of motion, building that distant rumble to a deafening roar of celebration that resounds in the hearts of all who once knew that primal pulse.