Ghost Gardens

The nakedness of the city was probably the most fantastic part of it. The big empty buildings holding onto whatever quiet dignity they have left as the environment starts to reclaim its original birthplace. In other corners of the city buildings were crumbling down in a solemn fashion that the extreme quiet only can bring about. The remains of the life that once lived and existed in a city slowly receeding into the past. A naked city still full of life but slowly dying every second. The post-apocalyptic life came calling much sooner except it forgot the apocalypse and just became post-infastructure in a sense. Just like the great marvels of the old world having arrived much sooner than anyone ever expected. Each step is a moment where the whiff of the decaying structures makes your head spin as your body tries to make sense with if it had ever existed in that place before.

Oddly enough, I found myself walking into one of these collapsing giants of yesteryear that still had power running through it. It was strange to find a place so lit in the forgotten corner of this city. As night crept on and I stumbled amongst the rubble I found myself staring through a hole in the roof of a pavillion off of one of the floors. I watched as the water sprinkled down amongst the holes in the fabric and mingle with the bare lightbulbs still hanging, flickering from time to time. That incandescent color now lost in today’s world mixing with the sprinkle of rain cause a quiet longing for a past or some fleeting feeling of understand and belonging to this one moment in time.

I walked out to the pavillion and looked around. I felt the rain start to soak my hood but did not get wet. As I stared across the ruins, I could see a few miles away the lights of the city. In the in-between rand lights from those hanging on or from squatters settling in spread out across the blank and empty darkness. Away in the city people were still living but were they thriving? As merely a tourist I could only stare out and contemplate this fall from grace and the reclaiming of the wild by the wild. Down below I could hear the cars arriving for the show and the dj’s rolling their equipment in to the rooms we would fill with electronic beats, wild lights and crazed dancers. A new jazz, so to speak, making you wonder if Fitzgerald would be partaking if he were born in this time for like the 20’s a new dawn was upon the world but instead of ubridled optimism, this was an escape from the mingling attitudes of existing.

The loudness and life of tonight in the midst of an aging building and dying streets; a perfect metaphor for the places that our generation could be at if states were changed but a tad. The difference being this time we are aware of the possibilities that lay before us so we partake of this excess as a way to say, “for another day.” The question that would not be asked nor answered being if there would be our fall from grace or would we weather the storms in our own spirited and undefeated way. So I stared back out and smiled while I pondered these thoughts with my cigarette glinting in the darkness for anyone who looked up, almost like a beacon for all those who wanted to and would come.

Rocking the Vote Through Abstinence

In one of my favorite stand-up bits, George Carlin expounds on the reasons why he does not vote. It is a unique perspective besides the, “I didn’t like any of the candidates.” In his crude and honest way he gave more than just that answer when no one could give one quite like that. Today we come to the midterm elections in the United States with groups and Facebook statuses claiming that we have no right to complain if we don’t vote. My father likes to tell me that sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils. That begs the question then of, “Well isn’t that still voting for evil?”

Personally, I feel strongly that consciously not voting is just as meaningful as those that “throw away” their votes for one of the two major parties. As Carlin put, “shit in and shit out.”, and it’s quite true to me. Lord Acton states, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Do we have absolute power in the United States government? No, but it certainly is a hell of a lot more powerful than what it was ever meant to be. And as Carlin put, each rotation of politicians for the most part is just part of the same system of shit that leads to pork barrel spending, lobbyists and broken promises; not always broken promises on their account but because of the ruling majority in the House and Senate. Either way, as long as the same parties consistently hold ground then why truly waste a vote?

The other problem with voting, especially this year, stem from narrowed views on political problems. In the state of Texas for instance we have a major race between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott. Do you want to know what I know about these two candidates? Well, I know that Davis is pro-choice and thus pro-women while Abbott is pro-life and therefore anti-women. Which brings up how shitty our system is that because you believe one thing you’re automatically hating on another group. Anyways, what else can I tell you about these two? Enough, because I read their platforms but for the every day voter I have a sneaking suspicion that the abortion debate is the extent of their understanding (A few friends on Facebook have proven this to me). So why are you voting then?!

Let me explain, there are four types of people in the United States when it comes to politics: Informed voters, uninformed voters, apathetic abstainers and informed abstainers. Informed voters have researched the candidates and understand who they’re voting for whether Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or whatever. Uninformed voters are those that look at one aspect and vote. Examples are the people who say vote for Wendy because she’s pro-women or those who say vote Abbott because he cares about babies or a lot of people who voted because Obama was black or promised universal healthcare (the last has been a huge kick in the teeth for these voters). Apathetic abstainers are the ones who either don’t care or don’t think anyone cares about them so why vote or even pay attention. Informed abstainers have researched the candidates and decided that they can’t vote for any of them or because they don’t believe in voting for the lesser of two evils.

Now, I have been told repeatedly that I have no right to complain if I do not vote. The problem with this logic can be found here in a very crass way by the late, great George Carlin:

 

Why are we so concerned with people complaining? If we’re going to follow this logic then the only people who have no right to complain after election day are apathetic abstainers and uninformed voters. Then again, this goes down to a Freedom of Speech idea because how dare you say that people can’t complain if they don’t vote. They’re exercising their right by not voting!  Everyone has the right to complain and to be angry whether they voted or not. Voting is one of the most fundamental rights we have so why should I take that lightly and vote for people that I don’t identify with? It’s all well and good but did anyone notice the articles about the celebrities from Rock the Vote who didn’t, um, well, rock the vote?

I’m sorry to break it to you but you can waste your vote if you vote. Want to know what’s better than voting? Being involved, actually researching candidates not sound bites, and actually making a difference. I’d rather live in a country where people are actively involved in their government and not voting than what we do now where we get excited around election time and care about things, but then the rest of the time we complain and aren’t involved. Don’t tell me I can’t complain and don’t tell me I’m not informed because I’m not voting, that’s the biggest lie you’ve been sold.

I’ll leave you with this: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” – Thoreau

Memories as Matter as Memories in Jeans and a Grey Sueded Jersey

Cracker Jacks and faux wood grained dining room tables lined the small hallway of my first place of residence after my moving out. In the years that have passed since then I can only recall the remarkable whereabouts of my own internal clock as it pointed me down some poignant corridor of which I was unaware. In the midst of the moving out I had forgotten to pick up childhood memories which were later decimated in a fire that torched the home. It was within the sentimentality of these items being reduced to ash and the memories of them that I final could ponder the meanings.

It also gave way for me to ponder the fear that one day my mental capabilities would fail me and I would be forever grasping at straws to remember everything that drove the feelings for these items. In that midst I became lost into the smell of these items. Never, even then, could I recall vivid memories but only memories of sleeping or playing with the items as well as the way they smelled. It’s like the times you step into an old house and you reel for a second once a smell hits your nose. It’s a feeling like you know this place and its secrets when in reality it’s just your mind recognizing the smell and trying to place it with preexisting memories while observing the place you’re in.

That reeling has always been my favorite part of my memories, like that house held some long lost secrets of which I could not remember. As if I had existed in this place before yet unable to remember because who I was when these secrets unfolded only echoes inside of me, a faint trace of a former life. Not a reincarnation if you will but a memory residing in my makeup of atoms and quarks and stardust.

Now there has never actually existed this hallway lined with Cracker Jacks and fake wood tables, nor has any of my childhood items been destroyed in a fire. Hell, I’ve recently moved back home after an unsuccessful excursion to Tampa; though I miss the town and my friends there and want to go back. I also am not quite sure where I stand on this idea of memory residing in our makeup though in a reincarnation sort of way. I do however wonder about that reeling feeling because it almost feels like I’m reaching some understanding of the place before it is snookered away by the mystery of the senses mingling. To me it feels akin Poe saying that, “All experience, in matters of philosophical discovery, teaches us that, in such discovery, it is the unforeseen upon which we must calculate most largely.” and Solnit’s response that what Poe is saying is that one must, “…recognize the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.” When that spin hits it’s our being keeping balance between echoes of memory with the present load on the senses. It’s our being saying, “Hey, I remember something or was it a dream?”

It is a most wondrous pondering to think of the Conservation of Mass in correlation with our existence especially in terms of our memories. Is it possible that our memories aren’t just the essence of our being but somehow tied into our lives? There has to be something more than just wires in the brain getting crisscrossed with when we entering places and the smells hit our nose to cause us to whirl. According to Henri Bergson there are two types of memory with one being habitual memory and the other true memory. The habitual memory is memory that is repetitively assigned a place in our minds while true memory are what we consider the memory of past events. This true memory has no actual place, it’s that spirit or our essence. I need to actually check out the book which I shall after I finish the three I have by Solnit.

I’m not sure where I’ll come out after these readings but I still just have this feeling in my gut that the mystery of memory will never be completely solved. It has been a philosophical question for time out of mind to what are memories really are. Selectionism seems to believe the same as Bergson and for expansion on this whole question will lead me to academic research. Still, I can’t get that feeling out of my mind every time I come upon a place that I’ve never been before.

Maybe someday I’ll walk into a room and it’ll be a hallway lined with empty boxes of Cracker Jacks or faux wood tables or maybe not. Imagination is a wild and crazy beast that we’ve lost touch with. Someday we might prove that these true memories have no actual bases in reality; which will be quite saddening. I like to think though that there’s something much more going on, more convoluted that we can imagine for if it’s possible as in Eternal Sunshine to delete select memories then they can’t be separate from us…at least I don’t think so.