Carthago delenda est

I am avoiding the media today.

Ten years ago I was working at Jo-Ann Fabrics trying to get the Fall quarter visuals up to standard.  I had been up with my team all night setting and re-setting pumpkins and ghosts on the sales floor and decided I needed to put my head down for a bit.  Michelle came in about 8 in the morning (Chicago Time) telling me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York.

I thought she was joking, told her it wasn’t funny what she was trying to do, and tried to put my head back down in my office.  She came over and bonked me on the head and told me to come into the break-room to look and see for myself.

{If I have the time and inclination, I’ll add the entry from my journal that day.}

I first started to study Classical Greek and Latin to counter my fundamentalist family members.  I wanted a way to talk about things that are important to them without debating their theology.  I WILL debate their theology when it is important that I make my point, but don’t make a habit of it.

What I didn’t realize was that studying Latin and Greek would give me as much political and historical insight as it has.  All of the sudden I start developing informed opinions based on historical sources instead of “Oh, it seems to me…” without knowing exactly why it seemed this way or that.

And that brings me to my early-morning September 11th musings as I avoid news feeds, newspapers, and get ready for my Sunday classes.

When the buildings collapsed I had this vague feeling of doom and gloom.  It wasn’t just that the buildings fell and the horror of what was going on in New York.  It was a sense of political dread.  It was like looking into a volcano. The nice thing is that the Patriot Act and its decommissioning of the Constitution didn’t surprise me.  The invasion of Afghanistan and  Iraq seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Enter: Carthage.

Except that George Bush is certainly NO Cato. You can see that in the streets of Kabul and Baghdad.  So either we are in some parallel First Punic War and are going to be pushed to the limit and see history out to the Third or we are floundering and poking Carthage in the eye ruining our reputations internationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

Of course, this needs to be developed more, and I barely have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, but I really think there is something to it.

It Was More Than A Month Before Hallowe’en, George

I am avoiding the media today.

It is early and I have to get ready for classes, but September 11th always bites me in the ass.
For me it will always be the day that George W. Bush decided to start channeling a learning disabled version of Cato.

I will write more tonight after class, but I hate what this has become.

Greg, Greg, Greg…

Now that everything is starting to settle down from Greg’s death, I’m going to start posting my journal entries from the time I found out he was in the hospital (that entry is already up – I posted it the day I found out, as I had just finished coding the blogs) to the week after his memorial service a couple of weeks later.

None of it is earth-shattering, but it may be interesting to you if you have never had to be with someone at the end of their lives and then deal with the arrangements afterward.

I will be back-dating the stuff so that you can read it in sequence with a note or two about when I actually posted it instead of posting it on the day it is actually put up.  I thought about it and think that it will give you a better sense of what was really going on.

 

Be Careful What You Consider A Solution

I was reading about Easter Island and the monoliths (Moai) on Atlas Obscura.

I vaguely remembered from school that there were almost no trees on the island and that there were all of these mysteries that surrounded them.  Who built them? Why? How?

I didn’t realize that we know the answers to most of these questions, nor did I realize just how horrible the history of the island was.

I started to think about the island based just on the Atlas Obscura entry.  It got me thinking about use of resources and problem solving.  There was an idea forming in the back of my mind that was saying: “Be careful what you consider to be a solution to your problems” which then developed into: “Easter Island is what happens when you don’t pay attention to the environmental impact you have as a human being and rely too much on spiritualism and/or religion to solve your problems”.

The island is only 45 square miles total. In the 16th and 17th centuries, statue building accelerated, and the population grew, reaching around 40,000. Then, around the year 1160, the whole thing collapsed. Some 2,000 people live on the island now, and the landscape is barren. No trees grow here except for a few invasive and problematic eucalyptus groves.

The article describes how the island’s original inhabitants at one point used the lumber on the island to build fishing boats and move the giant moai.  It briefly describes how the monoliths were created and moved into place, but the most interesting thing is what they were:

These sculptures (often called heads, though they are in fact disproportionately sized full-body figures, often seen buried halfway in dirt) represent specific ancestors. These representations were erected between the village and chaos — the ocean — as a wall of protection. The two major tribes of Easter Island lived in a tropical rain-forest, a paradise of food and fishing, with plenty of time to put into the Great Work of the statues.

This was leading me to think of the island in comparison to the West in the 21st century.  How we think about our resources, how we rely on religion and spiritualism as a means of problem solving instead of really looking at the problems that surround us.

Are we going to be as stuck as the original island’s inhabitants were when the oil runs dry or becomes too expensive?  How will we deal with that?  Will we erect huge monoliths to help or protect us?  Will we use up the last of our resources in an attempt to delay the inevitable?

How could a people smart enough to navigate to tiny landfalls on thousands of miles of Pacific ocean and capable of vast engineering projects like the Moai statues be so unable to deal with the coming of a doom which must have been obvious on such a tiny island?

It may have been easier then we imagine. A few years ago, locals on Easter Island discovered they could catch and sell lobsters from around the island. They then caught and sold those lobsters until there were no more.

Though much is known about the Moais, there’s lots more archaeology to do on Easter Island than digging up stone sculptures. Researchers are just starting on the villages — and their story is one of the most compelling on Earth: Humans can make their own bad luck. In the case of Easter Island, ever larger and larger statues were not the right defense.

Of course nothing is ever easy or as simple. *

When you read the Wikipedia article linked at the beginning of this post, you get a much richer and more traumatic history of the island.
Slave raids, Catholic missionaries, intentional germ warfare (smallpox), and any number of horrible, monstrous things.  So it isn’t as clean and easy as the shorter article makes it out to be.  Few things are.

It did get me thinking, though, that perhaps if the island were closer to the rest of the colonial possessions it could have ended up more like Haiti – perhaps the reason that Haiti is still what it is is because it has proximity to both help and information?

Just thinking about stuff.

*In all fairness, to Atlas Obscura, they are an amazing website that isn’t meant to be comprehensive.  Their goal is to bring neat places to the attention of people who are interested in… neat places.  I am in no way criticizing their narrative, just adding to it and making some commentary that is outside of their scope.

 

 

You Can Blame Or Try To Understand

But at the end of the day, you have to find a way to PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.

I was having an email conversation with my friend Mitch the other day.  He said that, in his opinion, one cannot blame their parents or anyone else for things going wrong in their lives after the age of 30.  It is hard, but I think he is right.  You can try to understand it, but there comes a point when you have to just deal with things and not blame, blame, blame.

It is harder than you think.

I have to find the time and energy to get this together.  There is a lot I need to do and if I wallow in my own pain it both magnifies it and negates the pleasurable things that are going on in my life and takes so much of the energy that could be channeled into the positive (or at least productively neutral) things.

This is a real problem.

I have noticed recently that my general tone is getting more and more negative and that needs to stop.

It is one thing to point out where there are problems, but when you dwell on them instead of trying to solve them you are in trouble.  I am getting to the point where I am in trouble.

Classes have started this week, and with them underway, things need to be changing.  They need to be changing fast and they need to be changing thoroughly.  I am giving myself FOUR MONTHS to turn this boat around.

So starting today, I am sitting down and coming up with an outline for the next four months.  There is no reason for this to be this way.  No reason whatsoever.

Stay tuned and/or come along for the ride.

We will see what happens.

Yes, Well, We are VERY Classy

I have a friend who has strange ideas about what impresses people.

He grew up soul-crushingly poor. To this day it haunts him.  He carries it with him in everything he does. He thinks that everyone is trying to take his money away from him and undervaluing what he produces.

I was helping him organize some digital images on a USB drive the other day and as we were creating folders and getting things together I saw that he had a number of pictures of $100 bills strewn across the table in his gallery.  I asked him where they got filed and he said “résumé”.  I asked him why résumé and he said: “I print these out and take them in with me when I am interviewing for a commission [he is a fine artist] so I can show them and let them know that they can’t cheat me. I make money.”

I was shocked that someone would do this.

It goes against every single business theory I have.  I asked him if maybe he understood that he may not be getting the commissions he deserves because he was putting people off.  He didn’t understand what I meant.  To him the idea that someone would show up with those kinds of pictures meant business; where to me it would mean it is the last time they would EVER hear from me.

This surprised him.

I explained that those with money don’t really want to see huge displays of it.  That someone commissioning a work from him would be really disgusted by those pictures.

Me: “It speaks of a lack of class!  To me it says ‘I have no grace or elegance’, ‘I am the farthest thing from refined you will see!’, and ‘I don’t know how to behave in social situations’.”

Him: “Um, Tchad, since you are giving me a lecture about class, refinement, and grace… I wasn’t going to say anything… but you have a big booger hanging out of your nose… I can’t let you go on and on about dignity while you have something hanging out of your nose.”

Me: “…”

Him: “I’m sorry.  You were saying?”

So that is it.  I still think that it is classless behavior on his part to take those photos to an interview… something glass houses… something something stones…

 

 

Perspective.

I’m NOT Happy

One of the things that a number of therapists suggest is to make your troubles ridiculous.  You take your emotional reaction to the problem and you scramble it up so that it becomes this stupid thing instead of this giant hand-wavey hysterical mess. It is a way of changing what it means to you.  You also learn to laugh at yourself in the process.
It works. I am going to have to record more of these.

And Then I Thought:

Unlike most every average human being since the beginning of the species at the age of 36 I have:

  • Lived longer.
  • Lived better.
  • Had better teeth.
  • Gone through less pain.
  • Worked less.
  •  Produced more.
  • Lived more honestly.
  • Lived a safer life.
  • Had more freedom.

Just trying to keep things in perspective.  While it may have been ok to have been born in the past 150 years (for me), boy howdy am I glad I wasn’t born in 922.

 

Awww… No, Wait… Oh, Nevermind…

I hate graffiti.*

I mean really, really hate graffiti.  It makes me angry on a cosmic level.  You want to express your distaste for the system?  Fine, whatever.  You are doing yourself no favors by doing it this way.  You want to tag SOMEONE ELSE’S property?!? Did YOU work for that?!? Did YOU bust YOUR ass to keep it tuckpointed and clean?!? Are YOU the one paying insurance premiums?!?

Jerks.

Graffiti makes me feel like some angry old Grandpa.

This makes me really angry
Nice. Really nice.
More B.S. Graffiti

Trash

Because the antique terra cotta needed some help.

Because the antique terracotta needed some help.

But then I came across this.  This “FORGIVE” graffiti has been popping up here and there throughout the city over the past few years.  Sometimes it will be up and obvious, sometimes it will be tucked away in a little corner.

And then I soften a little…

Forgive Graffiti

I get romantic about this.

I make narratives.  I think of things that could be… What does this mean?

More Forgiveness...

More Forgiveness

And then I think of James Baldwin and that maybe it is just a little but of that sensibility in all of it…

And I see this one:

Forgive Yourself, my friend...

Aww...

Following the drips from his paint can…

Drip Drip Drip...

Following....

Drip II

Following....

Up the block…

Drip III

Following...

Oh, man… nevermind.  Damnit…

Oh, nevermind...

Oh, nevermind...

You almost had me thinking you were something there for a second, Mr. Graffiti.  Almost.

*I think I have to note that graffiti in my mind isn’t the same thing as public murals or street art.  They serve very different purposes and operate on different planes.

If I read this ONE more time:

Please advise. 

Please advise. 

Please advise.

I hate it.  It drives me bananas.  There are way too many other ways you could phrase things without this little fleck of douchebaggery.

It always comes up in emails when there is something that the person is disputing or wants to correct:

Your mannequins are too expensive.  I will pay $75 for each, not $200.  Please advise.

I was under the impression that x, y, and z… and that is not the case, I would like a refund.  Please advise.

I am interested in the 3-6 class but can only come every third week and have to bring special (whatever).  Please advise.

I really try hard to be kind and understanding, but I HATE this phrase.  It feels very passive-agrressive to me.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe people think that it feels neutral and corporate.  Maybe I am the one with the issue.  BUT FYI: It feels threatening and almost ENSURES that you won’t get what you are looking for.  At least from me.

So consider yourself advised.