Zen and the Art of Valve-Control

Too many days in the city, and I am restless, hungry for quiet. My head is filled with "stuff." The greatest temptation of city life, when you are working on a book or your own art work, is to allow "what other people are doing" to fill your head. And numerically speaking, there are just so many "other people" here.

It is the difference between being the subject, or the object, of your own life. Here in the city, information and activity come tumbling over you, whether you like it or not. Someone has the radio on, or the TV on, people are talking talking talking, all the news--gossip especially--fills every space in which you move. You want to walk down the street and pick up a carton of milk, or take the subway to the library or post office, and all of it--in the space of four, five, ten blocks--assaults you. Suddenly, your head is full.

The battle of the city--I am finding, I am recognizing recently--is a battle of valve-control. You are trying to write something, to think something, to make something; your brain must be active, alert, clear, able to move in multiple directions as you work. Once city noise has cluttered the space--if the valve is wide open, information overload has already tumbled in--your mind, your imagination, are boxed in--like alternate side of the street parking days, when people double park and trap you in your space.

If you love city life, you don't experience it as noise or clutter or a trap, but as energy. Wondrous diversity. The world alive and vibrant in one city block, one subway car. Yes. True. But valve-control may be the secret here, too. Or maybe it's more like a Rorschach inkblot test, beauty and chaos moving in and out of relief. There is a zen to this, regardless. It takes work.

Today, it takes a lot of work. Between Mumbai, industry bail outs, and close-out sales on Senate seats... I'm struggling to get out of my parking spot.

Transition

Maybe, like they say, P. is just picking up on my emotions and reflecting them back to me. He's not the smartest pup in the litter, but he's definitely a sensitive one. You should see his sad puppy face, hang-down ears, deflated posture, when we load up to head back to the city. He is so bummed.

It's hard to describe/express the extreme-ness of the two places. I am less aware during the cold winter months, because of how much time I spend hunkered down inside. But it occurred to me this morning, when we were on our walk in the 'hood. I took a different route, down towards the water, which is also towards the power and sewage plants. Light industry turns to heavy industry the closer you get to the shore. Closer to our building, there are residents, buildings of modest size (and a tree!). Over there, in industrial land, things become mammoth and scary. Let's just say it's the land of emissions. And in the early morning hours, lots and lots of huge trucks, speeding by, delivering and dumping and hauling. Then there's me and P., trotting along - me scolding him for picking up sidewalk french fries like a psycho-mom.

Three days ago, P. and J. were wading in the river, watching eagles and fly-fishing.

This gal Majora Carter, Hunt's Point native, has been getting a lot of press lately. She founded an org called Sustainable South Bronx. Apparently they are trying to create a greenway - a jogger's and biker's path, along the water, which would come down near us. Boy, that would change everything.

Green, green, and more green

Another sign of capitalism going green, i.e. an article in The Times about Clorox's acquisition of Burt's Bee's. A pretty amazing, and illustrative, story - the journey from hippie Maine beekeeper & hitchhiker, to corporate millionaires. The question, of course, is which force will win out - corporate environmental responsibility, or corporate profit-motive. The hope, and the argument, of course, is that they work hand in hand, and increasingly so as today's consumer becomes more environmentally and globally conscious. (Again, we "vote" with our dollars.) We'll see.

Also a sign of the ways in which city and country converge. Burt's is wildly popular here in NYC. The guy on the label is Burt (Shavitz) himself, who still lives in Maine in a turkey coop with no running water or electricity. City-dwellers love this -- they (we) love the vicarious live-off-the-land Thoreauvian experience. They want a "natural" life in the most man-made environment on the planet. A little beeswax lip balm goes a long way here in the concrete jungle.

This may seem like a superficial convergence, but in my (momentary) optimism, I'm curious to see where this goes; how the powerful forces of business/consumerism can get under the skin of a society, for good. "Social entrepreneurs" have been preaching this for decades. I am still a great skeptic about big business, about the catastrophic human and environmental casualties; which is why this presidential election is such a defining moment, I think. Obama is a capitalist, without apology; the question is about attention to the costs of economic growth and concrete measures to address them. Who is winning, who is losing, and how do we as a democratic nation, supposedly engaged and empowered to participate in our country's policy-making via our representatives - how do we mitigate the negative affects of largescale economic growth and design bottom-up infusions (financial, educational, spiritual, etc.), to build a world that is as healthy as it is prosperous (i.e. likely less prosperous but more healthy)?

Change Is A-Comin' / Change Done Already Came

"So does that make the father in the ad less an agent of change, or even more of a revolutionary by saying that hybrids and the environment are now no longer something we even need to talk about?" --Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, 1/6/08

The article is about the new buzzword in the race for the Democratic presidential nominee: change. Kirk Johnson describes a new TV ad for the Ford Escape Hybrid: a young girl and her father, presumably in a typical Midwestern conservative town, are getting into their Ford Escape, and the girl is complaining that she's embarrassed to be seen in a gas-guzzling SUV. Where they're going (a metaphor for progressive communities), people drive hybrids and care about the environment, she says. The father tells the daughter that the Escape is in fact a hybrid. Well why didn't you say that, she asks. "I never thought I needed to," the father replies.

Something strange is happening. Obama won Iowa, a mostly white state. People are talking about his racial identity, but not that much - it's not "the main thing." People are talking about Hillary's gender, but it's also not "the main thing." (Change vs experience has become the main thing.) These two individuals are vying for the most powerful political office in the world. The tipping point (a la Malcolm Gladwell) has come and gone.

The father is not grandstanding about the fact that the Escape is a hybrid, it's sort of just a given.

Change is funny that way. There are certainly moments of drastic upheaval and event: the Civil Rights Movement, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, Clarence Thomas. Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Nancy Pelosi. The release of scientific reports substantiating global warming. Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. But now, here we are. Barack Obama may become the President of the United States. Hillary Clinton may become the President of the Unites States. Bill Richardson may become the next Vice President of the United States. Homosexuality is further and further from "deviant" for the majority of Americans. Organic foods are now sold at Walmart, and "carbon footprint" and "global warming" are part of the vernacular. In the process, change feels excruciatingly slow and uphill and costly; but then, weirdly, all of a sudden, there it is. Here we are. How about that. And we barely need to talk about it.

Could it be that capitalism is in fact now in check? That corporate decisions are truly being influenced by greater social values, as expressed through political rhetoric, actual policymaking, grassroots activism, and the media? You are what you buy, you are who you vote for - meaning, the trickle down of cultural values in a democratic capitalist society becomes most clearly manifest via your checkbook/credit card bill, and your ballot.

It's early, but look, people came out in Iowa (the way people were supposed to come out for Howard Dean, but didn't). The numbers themselves are a huge indication of change. Is democracy back??!!

Some people might say that this is what you'd call "self-correction." The American Empire is either going to crash and burn, or pull itself back together. The average society has an intuition about itself and acts accordingly when things get way off track.

I buy that. But I also think that this pulling back together requires leadership and commitment and grit in every sector at every level. Perhaps now's the moment to humbly thank the generations of grassroots warriors, the ground-up soldiers, the visionaries - who've understood all along that change is both slow and fast, and who've persisted on behalf of the greater good - at great cost, and with patience. Here we are. This moment may not last long (and who knows which way the election will turn), but I'm going to enjoy it - a moment of optimism, of feeling proud and grateful for my country and its commitment to real progress. And I'll be showing my gratitude, at the very least, via my checkbook/credit card bill and my ballot.