. . . we are not the very button
It begins sometime around Labor Day (a totally non-invasive holiday). You catch a Christmas-type tree out of the corner of your eye as you’re scanning the Sunday Chronicle. Your chest tightens a tiny bit. A month later you’re in the dressing room at The Gap and you hear Tony Bennett singing Jingle Bells. The back of your neck feels hot, prickly, your palms tingle, you heart beat echoes in your ears.
Then, for a while, it’s all jack-o-lanterns and requirements to buy candies. A holiday almost avoidable . . . just turn off your light and hide in the back of the house. . . but at least it’s a distraction from The All-Consuming Event waiting for you in seven weeks. Seven weeks of hell. Someone asks you what you want for Christmas and you answer that you want it to be over. That’s what you want. But first you have to have a panic attack and spend a couple of hours wired to Marin General’s ER. Then it becomes all about breathing. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on one thing. Stay quiet. Breathe.
The long slide into Christmas has another detour, this time it’s Thanksgiving. You look at Trip Advisor for long-weekends out of town. Santa Barbara perhaps. But it never works and those extroverts who Run Things pull you into the land of sausage-apple stuffing and pumpkin pies. Then it’s clean-up for three days and nothing between you and the obese Holiday Elf.
You cannot think. People and their cars invade from the hinterlands making a short trip to the post office a logistical nightmare. And more than traffic gets tangled up. It’s your brain that’s under attack. Jimmy Stewart is kissing Donna Reed, there’s a Christmas tree and a small child, and everyone is happy and weepy because Stewart’s friends loosened their pockets and gave him lots of money. And then it’s a dark and foggy night. A ghostlike hearse rattles down a lonely street. An old man who doesn’t live rich, but is, strides purposefully and carefully along the walkway. All night he’s urged to loosen his pockets and spend spend spend. Morning comes and he loosens his pockets and everyone is happy and weepy.
You get the message. Open your pockets. Every paper, television, internet page, urges Buy Me Buy Me Buy Me. But that’s not all. You won’t just get the camera or the Samsung Galaxy Tab, you’ll become Jimmy Stewart or Scrooge Redeemed. Succumb to Buy Me and you are a sentimental hero. Your friends and family will be happy and weepy.
Fast forward: December 26th. Peace. Quiet. You’ve got 200 secular classical pieces on your iPod. Play them during breakfast. Go into your studio where it’s jazz 24/7. Work on a new piece. Dally around the Best Buy site and order a gift. Have it sent to Dear Ones. It’s all so pleasant now. So easy now. The Little Drummer Boy is no longer pounding away in your head. He’s gone. Run over by a UPS truck you hope. Breathe. It’s a new year.
OK, folks. I’m taking all the blame for this one. I’ve seen enough things in my life to know when to make an early exit and I knew exit time was before the opening credits finished rolling. Even before that because I’d seen the trailer last summer and it looked like a turkey so by ignoring my better judgement and watching it last night I deserved having two precious hours of my waking life gobbled up.
Imagine a shaggy dog story that involves ins and outs and backs and forths and all the while it’s boring, going nowhere, but you stick around for the punchline. Certainly, it has to have a punchline to justify its doggyness. Right? Well, not necessarily.
There was Robert Duval and I remembered his role in The Godfather and what an excellent film that was.
There was Lucas Black and I remembered his role in Sling Blade and what an excellent film that was.
There was Sissy Spacek wearing an almost-live squirrel on her head. I have no memories of her in an excellent film so this one might have suited her had it not been for the rodent.
Have I seen a worse-written worse-directed film in my life? I’m sure I have. Just don’t expect me to remember it right now. I have to get gone.
I’ve had problems with my Publisher program. For the past few weeks every click on a Publisher document took me to Photoshop and an error message with no options other than exit. What the whoop? Publisher is a Microsoft product and Photoshop is by Adobe so there can’t be any incest-related hang-ups. Do I have to accept that all my lovely pub-pix are unavailable because access is denied by Photoshop?
So I thought: How long has this been going on? Uhhh. . .since doing a project late November? Could it be that access was denied because of an ill-conceived, ill-executed project? An idea, perhaps, that was not ended satisfactorily? A project fraught with irritations and anxiety?
The deadline was met, the project is gone, but the residue remained in Photoshop. All those images that were needed to build the thing and then the thing itself are still there. Lurking. So I thought about it and about what I needed and what I did not. I opened those files and clicked delete, each one systematically, execution style. Gone. Did I miss them? Did I miss the misery that each image conjured? Not at all. When I figured out what was holding me back I got rid of it, of everything. Publisher is back. Photoshop is tidy. I am pleased.
I’m sitting here in my studio on an almost-noon Sunday and the rain is falling. I have something I want to do. I say to myself and to others that This is what I want to do with my life. That This is what I want as the creative centerpiece in the dining room of my life, but I don’t do it. I’m writing about wanting to do it and not doing it which should take enough time until I’m called to do something else that someone else wants me to do and I’m off the hook for another day.
I suspect there is something that needs to be deleted in my hard drive. I just don’t know what it is.
[From Alternet – Medea Benjamin]
But let us not forget that the source of most of these documents is suspected to be Private Bradley Manning, who is sitting in a prison in Quantico, VA, in solitary confinement. While Julian Assange is in the whirlwind of the public eye, let’s remember the person who really put his career and his freedom on the line. If you want to send thanks and some holiday cheer to Bradley Manning, you can write to him (a postcard is best) at:
Bradley Manning c/o Courage to Resist 484 Lake Park Ave #41 Oakland CA 94610From AlterNet:
Time Magazine readers chose Julian Assange as Person of the Year. Hands down. But Time‘s editors preferred to go with the safer choice: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The loser in this contest is Time Magazine. Hands down.
Just think about it. Facebook has been around for years now. It’s a fabulous social networking tool, but there is nothing it accomplished in 2010 that wasn’t accomplished in 2009. In the swirling pace of the tech world, Facebook is old news.
In contrast, WikiLeaks has, in the course of just a few months, turned the world of U.S. policy and foreign relations upside down–or better yet, inside out. In recognizing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as Person of the Year runner up, Time writer Barton Gellman acknowledged that, “WikiLeaks became a revolutionary force, wresting secrets into the public domain on a scale without precedent. Assange and company wrought deep disruptions in the marketplace of state power, much as tech-savvy insurgents before them had disrupted markets in music, film and publishing. The currency of information, scattered to the four corners of the globe, is roiling not only U.S. foreign relations but also the alliances and internal politics of other nations.” Gellman went on to make the grandiose claim that “WikiLeaks has established itself, too, as a competitor to news media and intelligence agencies.”
Time editors might have felt U.S. government pressure to jump over the obvious man of the year, Julian Assange. But we, the people, must thank Assange for giving us troves of secret information that can help us understand the inner workings of our government. We see our soldiers shooting down innocent Iraqis with no accountability; we see our Afghan “ally” squirreling $52 million in cash out of the country; we see our diplomats being told to spy on UN staff; we see our ambassador in Honduras acknowledging an illegal coup that our government ends up supporting; we see the Obama administration browbeating countries to water down a climate accord. The revelations go on and on. For this, WikiLeaks and Assange are rightfully the “People’s Choice.”
[repeating above]
But let us not forget that the source of most of these documents is suspected to be Private Bradley Manning, who is sitting in a prison in Quantico, VA, in solitary confinement. While Julian Assange is in the whirlwind of the public eye, let’s remember the person who really put his career and his freedom on the line. If you want to send thanks and some holiday cheer to Bradley Manning, you can write to him (a postcard is best) at:
Bradley Manning
c/o Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland CA 94610
On Fortune's Cap 