On the Road

I was often inspired by the story of Jack Keroauc, and how he wrote his famous book, “On the Road”. I never read, “On the Road”, although I had always meant to. I do remember vividly listening to a friend describe Jack’s writing process. On a cloudy and milk-neutral day I was on a bus with a good friend and she told me that Jack had written “On the Road” all at once. In one fell swoop. On a single roll of paper that stretched out for hundreds of feet. What inspiration, I remember thinking, what drive. This man had it. Was it due to some inherent nature, some basic and fundamental aspect of his character? Did he unwind the story from his inner tissues like a spider drawing out a glistening strand of silk?

Or was there some specific environmental variable? In other words, was there something special about the time or the place? Some calm breeze that blew from the West and carried with it the essence of ingenuity? Or, and this was my personal favorite, was it perhaps a song he heard? I imagined Jack cruising down the highway in a beat up Plymouth with the windows open, passing some forgotten dusty town wherefrom within the haunted bowels of a shimmering saloon carried forth the mystical notes of a banjo or fiddle. A folksy and earthy and intoxicating answer to life’s impenetrable riddle. And that melody hit Jack square in the face and made his nose bleed and when he came back to his senses the world was rushing and roaring around him in violent and unending fury and he was compelled, no, forced, to write down this transcript of his journeys. This was the sort of catalyst that I imagined appropriate for such a powerful eruption of literary catharsis.

As much as I’ve tried, I’ve never been hit by that kind of melody. I’ve struggled my entire life to express myself as best as I could, but I never managed to get…quite…there. I think the problem lay not in ability, nor in source material (for it is a universal truth of mine that everyone possesses an awe-inspiring imagination). No, the problem was simply one of inverted priorities.

Inversion. How simple an idea. Flipping something upside down. 

The Death of Steve Jobs

There was a strange period of time in my life where I got a used Apple laptop from an uncle, and I used it constantly. I shaped my mindset around this computer and used it to apply to college. Since then I have started using a PC and I have trouble remembering the kind of person I was, when, for a few years, I used a Mac almost exclusively. Steve Jobs is dead, so I doubt I will ever be able to access that person again.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Thoughts on Buckminster Fuller

I am essentially a lazy person. I do not mean that I abhor school assignments or performing my duties and my places of employment. The contrary, I relish in these tasks, often taking time to ensure that they are completed to the very best of my ability, and taking pride in their end form. My laziness is focused more on what I seem incapable of achieving; a truly comprehensive mind set. This is a problem that I have identified with my entire generation, not just me, and I believe that it is a problem that has increased over the past two or three generations.

What got me thinking about this issue was a little book by Buckminster Fuller entitled "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth". It is a slight and narrow tome with thin pages working against large font to produce something that can be read, ultimately, in a day or two. My father gave it to me, which is normally a very bad indicator of literary merit. My father loves older books, especially older books which have not fallen in the limelight of artistic celebration or scholarly study over the years. He loves older books that have been forgotten, their authors long dead, their ideas strange and esoteric. A biography of Wernher von Braun, a second-hand account of the Lewis and Clark adventures, a guide to the geology of Northern New England, and books like this from futurist, poet, and part-time engineer Buckminster Fuller. In the early 20th century, Fuller was an influential character in the American post-industrial movement. This I say, not because it is said in the book or on his jacket, but because it is what I think. You see, Buckminster was most active in the years after World War II, in a time when American industry was flourishing, propelled in large part by a strongly growing population, post-war economic stimulus, and the boom in privatized manufacturing of new technology inspired by the desperate and chaotic advances made during the war. Throughout this period, Buckminster Fuller espoused a view of the world that was set firmly with its eyes facing forward, and in many instances too far forward for his colleagues and coworkers. Many of his ideas, the geodesic dome for instance, were ridiculed at the time. It was only years later that this groundbreaking geometric design would be found as a naturally induced isotope of carbon atoms strung together. I think my father, who has always been socially awkward and distrustful of organized religion, organized politics, and organized education, finds some sort of common ground with this man, and is hungry for a similar time of posthumos vindication.

The main essence of Fuller's argument in this book, spelled out in many long, run-on, unnecessarily verbose sentences is this: man has strayed away from his essential "comprehensive" roots, in favor of extreme specialization. The original essence of man which has inspired most great accomplishments (Fuller argues), is the ability to think about and maintain a wide variety of different skill sets. His oft-used example is that of the ancient sailor. These original mariners were tasked with learning how to predict weather, navigate, maintain a ship, collect food and water etc. And because the proliferation of large sailing ships sparked the first explosion of human growth (both geographically and culturally), there certainly must be some connection between these men who maintained "comprehensive skill sets and understandings", and the very basic essence of human advancement.

Of course there are those who would argue that correlation does not indicate causation, but Fuller disregards these potential naysayers with the same stubborn and spectacular bull-headedness that I expect out of my father. He goes on to argue that over time, our flawed educational process has instilled in our people the idea that increased specialization is a good thing. That instead of learning how to fix things, people have learned how to fix one specific type of thing, cars for instance, and instead of learning how to fix all cars, we now know how to only fix domestic or imported, etc. etc. Its a very convincing argument and Fuller sells it very well. I may be predisposed to agree with him because I have felt myself grate against this idea of specialization during my own college experience. I am not just an Anthropology major, I am an Anthropology major with an archaeology focus. And I do not have a general archaeology focus, but rather a zooarchaeological focus. And not just a general zooarchaeological focus, because my research has been restricted, for the most part, to a certain region and time period. So you see, when I graduate from here next Spring, I will know quite a lot about a few things and very little about most things.

The desire to be a comprehensive human is, I believe, one of the most inherently positive character traits a person can have. I believe I have it. I also believe I am losing it. And this is why I say I am lazy. For me, one of the most "comprehensive" things I can do is learn about an issue, form an opinion about it, articulate my opinion with the written or spoken word, and present my idea to others for analysis and discussion. While my ability to articulate has improved as I have gotten older, the inclination to seek out these initial issues has decreased dramatically. Sure, I read the newspaper and watch TV but my eyes and ears only perk up when a story comes along that I already have personal experience with. I am a Democrat, so I surround myself with stories of awful Republicans because I am comfortable with this opinion-forming route. It is a well worn, and oft-traveled path for my mind, and so it is easier for me to stay in and grate a deeper ravine into my mind. And the same time, it will be harder to climb out later if I ever need to change my opinion about something. This sort of stability is a good thing if you are an older person who needs to make consistent and stable decisions (a public servant for example). I believe this process is a very bad thing if you are like me, a young person who is just now still forming opinions and trying to find out "what kind of person am I?". I dislike this idea very much, and because I can recognize it in myself, I dislike it even more. It is a tumor, but in many ways it is worse, because nobody can do anything about it except for myself.

And as I have said before, I am a lazy person.

Increasing Taxes

Just a thought: Why do so many conservatives get bent out-of-shape over the idea of increasing taxes? It's fairly clear by this chart (http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html) that the current tax bracket set-up is a very recent innovation. I can understand if the voters of my generation cannot wrap their minds around tax rates of 50% (or even higher!) for the extremely wealthy. It's simple: they have not been exposed to this. But what is the excuse for the majority of conservative voters? Older people who are no doubt familiar with these historical precedents. Reducing the deficit does not happen magically, and it certainly will not occur through the simple hack-and-slash of government programs. It is my belief that people need to start realizing that we are a developed, democratic country and that in order to live in the type of society we have enjoyed for so long, we need to start paying for it somehow.

I think the bigger problem is that people take our way of life for granted. You hate paying taxes? Go live in the DRC and enjoy your tax-free existence.

Summer Time

Today is June 1st. While Summer does not officially begin for several weeks, I feel compelled to address the turn of the season. I live in New England and am therefore blessed to encounter each season in new and exciting ways every year. The weather, the foilage, the smells, everything changes at least a dozen times a year and sometimes I can't even imagine what it was like to live just two months ago. Right now the humidity is overpowering, everything feels wet. In addition to all of the humidity, the temperature is rising. The past week has been brutal, a living sauna, hell on earth without a clear reason for damnation. I stepped into my car and literally watched sweat seep out of my skin. The nights are still cool, but this will only last so long. Before long, the Northern Summer Air will creep through the windows and sweat through the walls and there will be no safe haven from its oily and malignant arms. This has not happened yet, and I am still gloriously happy with the changes. I have not yet forgotten the old; the cold; the snow and the bitter ice and the constant salt stains on every surface. The summer is still my lover. I have not yet grown tired of her. She has not yet suffocated me. But I have played this game every year for years and years. Soon I will look desperately ahead for the icy, chilling embrace of winter.

Full Speed Ahead, Maniac Twins!

INTRODUCTION

The first time I met Jack Faust, I knew for sure that he was a pilot. There was no question – he was wearing all the right clothes for example. He was driving a beat-up pickup truck and clearly had not shaved for several weeks. I suppose it would be useful for me to point out that he was not a military pilot. He was, he used to be, all good pilots are, but he wasn't a military pilot by the time I met him. He was a contract test-pilot. He worked for a small company out of Little Rock, Hammer Aeroworks, Harris Aeroworks, I can't remember the exact name. I remember a lot of things about him though, I can picture him sitting here, right now, in the passenger seat of my 1997 Saab. He wasn't a very tall person, maybe 5' 7” or 5' 8”. He was naturally lean and had a deep-love for leather jackets. He washed his jeans once a month and when I first met him he was living paycheck to paycheck. He had just quit smoking, he informed me, as he flashed a wide, bright smile from across the tarmac. I was instantly aroused, but the wind from the mountains to the west was blowing sand at face level and I had to squint my eyes as I walked towards him. I could feel his eyes sizing me up and I began to regret my decision to forego my gym membership for the past six months. I was scrawny and awkward; there was no way around it. I was skinny and really tall and my arms stuck out from the sides of my body like branches on a tree. I hid this under a tailored suit and an expensive tie. In one hand I held a file-folder, a thin manila record of Jack's entire life. I held my other hand open and extended. “You wouldn't believe the kind of money I'm saving not buying a pack a day.” He laughed and patted me on the shoulder as he walked straight past me, my hand closing on empty air. I turned around and sputtered, “I think they'll need to see some identification, you know, because this is a military base.” Over the roaring wind and sand and desert grit I heard him reply that he knew the guards from weekend poker. The words were lost as he opened the door on the side of the base and dissappeared inside. I stood for a few seconds, feeling rather foolish, and then proceeded to follow him indoors.

I had no idea why Major Opule had instructed me to greet Jack on his way into the base. It was a job for a secretary and I was hardly that. As the coordinator of the loosely designated “Rocket Scientists”, I was primarily tasked with the oversight of major engineering projects. Besides, I had only been on the base for a month and it seemed like Jack felt as much at home here as he probably did at whatever nearby bar he spent his weekends. I hadn't argued though, I just didn't argue. I hated confrontation, I hated conflict. I was an engineer, a mechanic, a chemist. I was the guy that sat in the lab in front of a computer running simulations after everyone else had gone home. I was a genius and my tool of choice was a calculator. At the time, dealing with a dark and mysterious test-pilot seemed like the last thing I had been trained to do. My orders were specific, greet him at the front gate and escort him into the building. The file folder weighed heavy in my hand as I ran down the linoleum-lined hallway rushing to catch up with him. Much of the stress was psychological; I had spent several minutes studying his file and preparing a list of topics with which to engage in small talk. I had been on the verge of making notes. Now I was running after him as he took a left and headed straight for the command center, his ragged cross-trainers were silent on the floor and the air was quietly and methodically puncuated with loud claps from my polished loafers. “Mr. Faust? Pleasure to meet you, my name is Jim.” He punched a button next to the elevator. “Major Opule has had nothing but good things to say about you.” He starting whistling as he stared at the floor. “This program is black-listed, as I'm sure you know, but I would be happy to breif you on what were doing.” He rubbed his right hand against the stubble on his jaw, moved up and over his face until he was massaging his eye brows together, as if pondering a great philosophical mystery, he responded without looking at me. “Listen Jim, I am really hungover right now and I don't know if you are aware but Major Opule is a very large asshole that I don't particularly look forward to seeing every two or three years. Can you breif me later? Do you have somewhere to be, something to do? You look very important.” I coughed and shook some of the sand off of my suit.

“MIT?”

“Caltech, actually.” I responded.

“Beautiful LA. Do you miss the girls?”

“I'm actually gay.” I replied for the thousandth time in my life. He looked at me for the first time.

“That must be fun for you. Still, Los Angeles, California and now you're living in Shithole, Nevada. You must miss it.”

I didn't know how to repond., and winced as a said, “I like to travel.”

He laughed and punched the elevator button again with a knuckle. I decided to make a quick getaway, to escape with what little remained of my dignity. “I've got a project running I should get back to. If you need to see me, I'm in the main lab all day.” He nodded and smiled and continued to look at the elevator which opened as I stepped away. He dissappeared inside and the metal doors closed behind him and I was left alone in a linoleum-lined hallway surrounded by the whirring of hidden air conditioning systems.

At the time that I first met Jack Faust, the program had been running for a little over two years. There were three different kinds of people on base; Air Force, NASA, and private contractors. With the end of the shuttle program came the beginning of what the failing administration had coined “The New Space Race”. Hundreds of thousands of scientists across the country were recruited by the government, lured in by the lucrative promise of contracts and access to extremely desirable private-market inputs, things like priority-orders for foreign tech, military bandwidth, and a giant pair of scissors with which to cut through the red-tape surrounding air, ground, and ocean testing. The goal was simple; put a rocket deeper into space than ever before. Of course, the competition was different. No longer were government mandates passed down the ranks, creased and pressed with the fear of Soviet aggresion affirmed in every paragraph. Instead, the competition was domestic; privatized space, the captains of the aeronautics industries were stronger than ever. In the first year of the program, the year I was recruited fresh out of UCLA, the numbers were clear; for every rocket sent up by the U.S. Government, private companies were sending up twenty or thirty. And it had only gotten worse. These companies had money, energy, efficiency, and were attracting some of the brighest minds. They were run by internet business-owners on laptops and they had slogans and fundraisers, and for the first time in a very long time, people wanted to be astronauts again.

I knew I was on the failing end of the equation: I knew this even when I signed up. Maybe it was the reason why I had signed up; I had always been attracted to lost causes.

The actor as a changed man

“I can be anyone I want to be.” He had told her, in unequivocal terms. He looked directly at her eyes as his hands automatically pulled a fork through light chocolate cake. He hated chocolate cake. That's what you were supposed to do with women, right? Look them in the eyes? He felt like he was suffocating, the chocolate cake stuck in his mouth. Now she looked to be a hundred miles away from him, but at the time in the darkened dining room, in the restaurant with the low ceiling and the flickering candles and the soft music and the cars roaring outside and the people laughing on the sidewalk she seemed very close. At the time, he felt that he could have touched her without moving. All he could see was her and she was beautiful. The light and the background noise of the restaurant melted into a lovely and warm flurry of colors and sounds and smells and it framed her face like a painting. The chocolate cake was killing him though, so he grabbed his sweating glass of cold water and nervously drank some. In his haste to look cool and confident he spilled some down his chin and her lips broke into a broad smile and a quiet laugh.

God, he was nervous. “I'm serious,” he said, “I've always been able to blend in wherever I want to. I can make friends with anyone.” She was older than him by two or three years; working on a doctorate in music while he was a struggling first-year law-student who held two part-time jobs. He played saxophone very badly, and he wore khakis and v-neck sweaters and when he smiled, the wrinkles on the side of his face spider webbed into a million different patterns. She was already hopelessly lost within him, but he had no idea so he continued to try different techniques, different strategies to make her laugh. By the end of the night he knew two things for certain; there was no way he would be able to act the way he had with previous girls: she saw through his charades and his cock-eyes grins. And two, he would have to think of a better place for their second date because the chocolate cake was horrible. Her plate was absolutely clean, and he caught the waiters eye and she brushed her hand against his as they left the table.

Thirty-four years and two children later he grabbed a wooden oar from the grass, still wet with dew, and tossed it into the rowboat before pushing it into the calm lake water. There was no sound and no movement, save for the quiet bobbing of water against wood. The water lapped gently at the shore and the lake was framed by towering pines and spruces and at the far end a soft fog bank was slowly enveloping a distant shore. This was where they had spent their honeymoon, and although he could have afforded better, she had insisted that they stayed in-country. She wanted to be surrounded by woods and lakes. A week in a cabin, she had proclaimed through the pillows and lace as they lay tangled in each other; soft Californian night air hung outside and the crickets chirped. “I think I can do better than a cabin honey.” She laughed her silent laugh and pushed him away with the tips of her fingers. He let the words roll from his tongue; allowing the syllables to effortlessly glide into chuckles the way he knew she liked. He teased her and she drew him close. They had spent a week here, amidst the towering trees and the quiet water. At the end of the week, they piloted his beat-up Saab into town to pick up more food and water and beer and drove back to spend another week. Those first two weeks melted into a month and before he knew it he had left his practice and written his first novel and she was giving music lessons in a local studio.

The love was consistent and strong, and it was the sort of love that persisted, like an subterranean river. It cut underneath the rocky terrain of their everyday life, occasionally seeping out in moments of professional weakness, a brush of fingers against skin, a lingering glance. At times it trickled slowly and seemed to run out completely. They followed many of the protocols of an American marriage; they broke all the rules they had set for each other. They would forgive each other; these were minor problems after all, right? In the grand scheme of the world, our love was stronger than fire, colder than ice, harder than steel, the man wrote in notes he would leave underneath her windshield wipers. He was the strong one. He could be anyone he wanted to be. He wanted to be a strong husband and a strong father and he planned out and carefully executed the next twenty years of his life with the meticulous attention of a professional actor, playing the part to perfection. He lost sight of himself and became the role. He was Zeus himself, with a supreme goddess at his side; he could conquer the world. He had, after all, conquered her heart, hadn't he?

It was then with no small amount of irony that his parents died first. The parents who hadn't spoken to each other in twenty years. He had been married for twenty years, he would occasionally remind himself. His parents had been estranged for as long as he had been married. The ring on his finger was testament to his success, his overarching triumph. He neglected to remember that although separated, his parents still wore their wedding rings; two matching gold bands in a cardboard box of personal effects that were delivered to his door from the hospital a day later. They had died within 14 hours of each other. Different causes though, the doctor continued, raising his eyebrows, pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction. He laughed on the inside before beginning to cry. Their hearts had eventually broken. As much of a product of poor diet as it was lost romance, but the irony remained.

It all fell apart with terrifying speed. He longed for the days when he could be anyone. He could stop being a fifty-five year old man who had just lost his parents. He could start being something else. But he had lost that ability a long time ago. He had forsaken his ability to change himself into whatever he wanted, to divine some existential escape from the misery that engulfed his heart and mind and blasted like steaming water from his very pores and from the tears that streamed from his eyes. There was no love that was worth this, he had shouted at her in the kitchen, smashing a plate against the wall. There was no comfort; he was literally lost in his own grief.

And now she stood and stared at him from the distant shore of the lake where they had spent those first precious moments together. This was where it had started, wasn't it? How fitting that they return, two lost souls of romance, two ghosts silently orbiting a star that had died long ago, still dancing to a beat long forgotten. Maybe he could rescue her. The words echoed empty in the front of his mind. He stepped gently into the rowboat, his old joints groaning in protest. How long since his parents had died? Ten years? The time seemed to blend together and the mist of the morning enveloped him as he slowly paddled out into the lake. The wooden oar was cracked and faded and the skin of the hands that held it was not much better. Was this the same boat they had used together so many years ago?

She was leaving him, he already knew. She had already left, but this would make it final. He had to go see her, talk with her, make her realize...what? He didn't know the words that would make her forget the mistakes he had made. How he had systematically ignored her for several years. How he had forsaken her love for the pure, sanctimonious world of grief that he had constructed. He felt now, that there was a deeper level to his pain. More than a feeling – he knew it. There was some intermediate substrate that halted the rough current of his emotions; that lay like a blanket over his heart, protecting him from the rough abrasions of his mind. It was an unconscious layer of protection. He was not aware of its nature, no, not even fully aware of its existence. But he felt its presence there on the lake. It lay in perfect continuity with the terrain of his own heart, a warm blanket of moss over a boulder, a clean sheet stretched over a mattress.

Of course, she was gone too. He had known that when he left the shore, but still a small, child-like part of his brain held the faint hope that she would reappear as he approached the far shore. When he got within twenty or thirty feet he could make out a tangled underbrush of thorny vines and indifferent vegetation. She was not here. She had not been here in thirty years and she would never be here again. She had died, in a car accident just two weeks prior. She lay in quiet repose, he imagined, in his arms, held in his old hands. This is where he would scatter her ashes. They had been sealed in a plastic bag inside of a cardboard box, very similar to the one he had received from the hospital when his parents had died. Now he had two cardboard boxes and no parents and no wife. He had spent his grief on his parents; there was none left for her. The selfishness of the situation enveloped him, and anger filled the void, but only temporarily. Instead, he had felt a stronger compulsion. He acted now, erasing thoughts, and automatically withdrawing the small bag of fluff from the cardboard box. He placed the box at his feet and opened the bag and shook it into the still morning air. There was no wind, so much of the contents fell instead on the surface of the lake and floated, without moving. As he paddled back to the cabin and his car, the ripples from the movement of the boat passed quietly under the ashes, and soon the water was still again.