Not Going to Heaven

Like most openminded atheists I don't argue that God can not possibly exist. The possibility that Jehovah and his heaven and his hell do exist is not the point, as far as I'm concerned. They might well exist for all I know. In the absence of evidence, who can say? I just can not force myself to believe in them any more than faithful Jews, Christians, and Muslims can force themselves to believe in Thor, Asgard, the gods of Olympus, Visnu, and Shiva. Disbelief is not limited to us atheists. In fact, I disbelieve in only one more god than Pat Robertson disbelieves in (assuming Pat is sincere in his belief in a god).

I used to be one of those people who build their present lives on settled though unprovable concepts of an afterlife. Overall, the experience was not a positive one, and it took me years to get past the bad juju of force-feeding myself on the unfounded guilt, fear, and hope that came with such a belief system. I will admit that in my believing years I experienced a clearer sense of belonging than I do presently. Of course, back then I had youth going for me, as well as a simple faith that a blood sacrifice 2000 years ago was, despite contradictory evidence, making everything copacetic today. But the price of belonging was self-denial, unarguably a touchstone of the Christian faith, and self-humiliation (or humility, if you prefer). My acceptance at the churches I belonged to required acquiescence to the prejudices, politics, and even decorating tastes of my fellow church members, so I, the actual "I," never belonged even when I thought I did.

So how do I feel about not going to heaven? Not much, apparently. The few times over the past thirty years when I have felt close to death, the idea of my eternal destination did not occur to me even once. The only thought in my head, in the two experiences that I can clearly remember, was "Okay. This could be it." Nothing deeper, more profound, more poetic, philosophical, or life-changing than that. I was thinking "Okay I might be dying" on the same level as I think, once or twice a day, "I might be hungry." I figure that most atheists' responses to death must be deeper, more dynamic than mine, but this "meh" response to everlasting annihilation is all I got. I've had one night stands that have had more impact on my life than this.

The idea that the ME that I have come to love over the years will probably not live to see 2040 has no more effect on me than that this ME missed out on the golden age of Hollywood in the 1930s. Of course, I would prefer not to miss the next Jessica Lange performance and I may never see Paris, but on the whole I am pleased with my life as it has been so far. (I'm told I was a self-satisfied baby too, never crying or throwing temper tantrums, so I was probably born with this sort of equanimity ... and, perhaps, lack of gumption.) I have more fear of outliving my usefulness to others or outliving significant others than fear of my cessation of being. Further, I am particularly pleased with my post-faith years, during which I have learned more about love, friendship, generosity, magnanimity, peace of heart, wisdom, and kindness than I ever learned as a fundamentalist Christian, when those words or ones like them were part of the requisite vocabulary, often repeated hourly with phony high spirits like the laugh tracks on 1960s sitcoms. 

Do I want to die right now? No. Definitely no. But if it happens, it happens, and I have enough leftover blind faith in providence (but WHOSE providence?) that I figure death will come at the right time, whatever "right time" means. I call this "blind faith" because everyone I know who has died has not died at any time I would call "right." Statistically, then, my death will likewise be poorly timed, inconvenient, and, in the larger scheme of things, insignificant. But why worry about that? Worry is the unpleasant side effect of hope and fear. And who has time for that?

Awake in an Interesting Manner

In "The Gay Science" (1888), Nietzsche writes, "We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way--not at all or in an interesting manner." 

This aphorism piques my interest because it touches on Nietzsche's idea that the awakening to knowledge should be experienced as pleasure (i.e. "the gay science")--as "cheerful," not "serious." 

How much that we hear, listen to, even memorize fails to awaken us to knowledge? How much that we hear, listen to, even memorize, even accept as "the truth," is like dreamless sleep? 

The awakening to knowledge that delights us is that which corresponds to our inner selves, our passion, that inchoate innerness that we are constantly in the process of discovering--if we bother to--like (to use Nietzsche's analogy in the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals) bees ("honey-gatherers of the spirit") always on the lookout for something to bring back home to the hive.

And there's Whitman's metaphor: the spider who launches filament after filament into empty space, waiting for the connection that will form the basis of its home, its web, its network of sensibility (its soul).

"Awake ... in an interesting manner"--this involves the moments, the dreams, the insights we do remember because that forever-under-construction, never-finished sense of self finds something there with which to connect, thus discovering and defining a part of oneself ... for oneself.

To live interestingly is to remain, as much as possible, in a state of wanting to "find out"--also an interesting phrase because it suggests that knowledge, wisdom, meaning, whatever, is to be "found," pulled in from the "outside" and then, perhaps, turned into honey.

To be awake uninterestingly is, perhaps, not to be awake at all?

Shine, Perishing Republic

One of my favorite poems, much on my mind these last few weeks.

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity
Heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the Molten Mass, pops
And sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
Fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
Ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
Is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
Mountains: shine perishing republic

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance
From the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the
Monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man.
A clever servant, insufferable master.
There is a trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
 they say ­ God, when he walked on Earth.

--Robinson Jeffers (1925)

Ten Sweet Things in Life

1. To laugh unreservedly with your friends
2. To hold somebody's hand ... preferably where nobody sees and it's a secret for the two of you
3. To warm yourself against an old dog
4. To receive high praise from the people you respect
5. To know you have enough money in your pocket for anything you might want to do today
6. To raise your hands high over your head and dance
7. To feel the first light-as-air buzz of liquor
8. To stand up to your neck in water and look up at the sky
9. To see stars
10. To touch a favorite poem in a book with your fingertips

Don

I got email this afternoon from an old friend's sister, telling me he was dead. The message began with "Please forgive this crude and cruel method of notifying you." He died "probably" on Saturday. I liked the bluntness and self-awareness of the message. The sister, whom I never met, contacted me through a series of group emails my friend used to send out, usually concerning problems in American education or politics. My last email to him concerned the sorry state of education and politics in North Carolina these days. He didn't respond. He was a forwarder. 

He died alone. He had been ill for quite some time, seriously so since about the time his wife died. That must have been about ten years ago, maybe more. He came to visit me in the apartment I lived in back then, shortly after he had had serious surgery, was no longer employed, and had time on his hands. He, his wife, and I used to go to movies together every Friday afternoon in Pensacola, and we'd get together on Sunday evenings to eat pizza and tabbouleh while watching movies we rented on VHS. That long ago.

He used to work for General Electric, I think, and then changed careers to teach English where I taught English back then. He taught on a different campus. We met because he took a film class I taught--twice, because he liked it. The second time he brought a friend, who for a short time was my friend too, who then stopped being friends with either one of us, for reasons known to neither of us. This friend of a friend who briefly was my friend too liked to complain about people using the expression "bad weather." The point was that there's no such thing as bad weather because weather has no moral quality to it. It exists apart from our ethics. It is indifferent to our needs and wants. We call it bad when it's inconvenient for us. But storms are simply the way nature works. Nature needs storms, plants need the rain, we need the plants. I appreciated the stoicism of the complaint. It's one of those things I have taken to heart and made part of my life philosophy.

It had been years since Don's name sprang to mind whenever conversation turned to the subject of people I considered my friends. But he used to be my friend, somebody I saw at least twice a week, usually three times a week. And he sent me articles by Robert Reich and other moderate lefties every couple of months since I last saw him. When we saw movies on Friday afternoons, we always went someplace for pie or a sandwich afterwards. To discuss. To analyze. To critique. If we all hated the movie, he inevitably asked what might have been done to make the movie a better one. A different cast? a change of ending? more sex? less exposition? He was big on discussing things, and he was a very good discusser, pragmatic, reasonable, affable, except now and then when we were drinking and his face went red, and then he went to some pretty dark places.

Now he's dead. "Crude and cruel" are the only methods of expressing such an inconvenient fact honestly, from a human perspective. But nothing is really "crude" and "cruel" in nature. A thing like that is just what it is. But sometimes it's good to think about what might have been done to make it better.

Well, There You Are

I've been down lately, "lately" being measurable in decades, but more pointedly and more recently in months. It's a continuous state with me, neither alarming nor unnoticed in my experience of it. Actual circumstances influence it, along with internal chemistry those circumstances trigger, I suppose. Mood shifts, surges, wanes, and halts like weather patterns. My ways of cajoling myself into "pulling through" seem piss-poor to most people, I guess, but they do the job well enough.

One is that I remember (and try to heed) the admonition of a college history professor I had, a retired military man who used to invite a few of us students, dorm residents, to his home, his wife feeding us butters, jams, and bread made from scratch (before that practice became fashionable) and him showing off myriad antiques he had personally restored. (I learned more from this man's offhand opinions and quirks of character than I learned from his subject content--aromatic mimeographed pages of dates and battles in blurry purple print. To this day, I believe "characters" make the best teachers. A lot about me is explained within these parentheses.) The professor's admonition was 

"Never complain about anything. Eighty percent of the people you complain to do not care, and the other twenty percent think you're getting exactly what you deserve."

The other things I take into mind ("take comfort in" would not be the correct words) are that 

• Most things in life can't be helped.
• I do what I can do.
• I accept "good enough" in lieu of "perfect."
• I do not worry or hope too much about what is (1) out of my control and (2) not presently occurring. 
• What will matter to me most, in future memories, are the things that now seem insignificant, not the shit that causes panic, ecstasy, or other excitements.
• Only one thing will ever happen to me in life that I won't get through somehow.

Bees

Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations I respect but seldom follow, wrote, "What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee" (6.54, A.S.L. Farquharson translation). The message here is not that the individual bee has no integrity or value, but rather that the individual's integrity or value derives from the well-being (albeit not always the approval or respect) of the larger society. 

As many Greek and Roman philosophers noted (as well as the book of Job in the Hebrew bible), human beings are less equipped for survival in nature than most beasts--lacking the strength of the tiger, the camouflage of chameleons, the hard shell of tortoises, the speed of gazelles, or the eyesight of eagles. Humankind has survived through reason, technology, and the establishment of civilizations. Without the benefits of manmade order and society, an individual human being is further down the food chain than most (if not all) animals his size. Cooperation, compassion, and the pursuit of science (knowledge) have ensured human survival up till now.

The earliest human cultures regarded virtues as the qualities that enable people to get things done, for the good of self and others, not as the avoidance of certain disreputable actions, as so many moderns interpret "virtue." Ask people today if they're good and virtuous, and they may tell you they are because they do not steal, do not cheat, and do not murder, but ask them what positive good they personally bring to anybody else, and many of them will be stumped for an answer.

What's interesting to me is that those who have most benefited society--Socrates, Galileo, Alan Turing, just three examples that spring immediately to mind--have often been victims of their respective societies. Societies have been known to view their greatest benefactors as their biggest threats. I'm not sure why that should be the case, except to say that it's not an easy thing to see who most benefits the human hive except in looking backwards, at history--another feature of human civilization that's helped ensure its survival.

Those who seek to annihilate social order (rather than to revise or revolutionize it) are ultimately self-destructive, like the guy (Burgess Meredith) in the Twilight Zone episode who wished that he could be alone in the world so he could read the great books in peace. When his wish is granted and he is the last man alive on earth, he almost immediately steps on his reading glasses by accident and shatters them. Many hands give, one hand takes--but the ideal pattern of society is circular--individual diversity benefits society, which in turn protects and improves its diverse individuals, who are the builders of culture and technology.

As Marcus Aurelius points out repeatedly, the benefits of connectivity are not limited to human beings. We humans are connected to each other for survival, but we are also connected to the non-human world around us--the one mirroring and interacting with the other. The bees are vanishing from our world now, at a time when humans are becoming more alienated, more drastically individualistic, and less diligent in seeking the common good.  The disappearance of bees, as a recent Salon article suggests, may ultimately cripple agriculture, one of the first things humans developed to ensure their survival in a natural world indifferent to human survivability. We must "cultivate our garden," most definitely, but we must add value to the hive as well.

Short-Term Hopes

Horace's sweet ode to Leuconoe (Odes 1.11) contains the poet's best-known phrase, carpe diem or "seize the day." The poem begins, in David Ferry's translation from the Latin, "Don't be too eager to ask / What the gods have in mind for us, / What will become of you, / What will become of me ...." 

The warning echoes the Greek poets' cautious disregard for the future--the whole notion of "future" was one that the ancients seemed dead set on ignoring. Nothing can be known for certain until it is finished, they believed, with deliberate and agnostic lack of foresight. "Call no man lucky till he's dead," in the last lines of Sophocles' Oedipus. 

Horace's lines also anticipate Jesus's teaching, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matt. 6.34, King James Version). Jesus's admonition is based on the conviction that "heaven and earth" were about to "pass away" ... and very soon: "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark 13.29-33). 

Horace admits this scenario as a possibility (happily not a certainty, though):

Or else Jupiter says

This winter that's coming soon,

Eating away the cliffs

Along the Tyrrhenian Sea,

Is going to be the final

Winter of all. (lines 12-17; lines 4-6 in the succinct Latin)

Horace's and the Greeks' main concern was not "the evil thereof," but the real possibility of wasting one's life in dreamy contemplation (and hopeful preparation for) a future that could not be reliably predicted or, even if predicted as in Oedipus's case, could not be understood.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans," sang John Lennon by way of Mary Worth cartoonist Allen Saunders. For Horace, looking to the future is both hubristic and a waste of present resources, all of which have extremely short shelf-lives: "It is better not to know"--Ut melius quicquid erit pati (line 3)--literally, "Better to endure whatever will be."

If the boundaries of the Tyrrhenian Sea aren't certain, what can be? "Be mindful. / Take good care of your household. / The time we have is short." Or Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi / spem longam reseces"--literally,  "Be wise, strain the wine, and keep your hopes short term." Or as the wise Turk informs Candide at the end of Voltaire's comic masterpiece: "I have but twenty acres. ... I cultivate them with my children. Work keeps us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need" (Roger Pearson translation). From which, Candide concludes, with ancient wisdom, in reply to Pangloss's philosophically grandiose and overly optimistic take on how cause-and-effect works, "That is well put ... but we must cultivate our garden."

Interesting People

When I was younger, interesting people seemed more interesting. Today interesting people look like they ordered their interestingness from the same catalog. I enjoy going to bars and cafes where interesting people hang out, but increasingly the people I see in these places look like they might have copied and pasted their most interesting qualities from the same or similar sources. Interestingness--or some tendentious strain of it--has gone viral. I still prefer interesting people to uninteresting people. I just now have the impression that, thirty or forty years ago, the interesting part of interesting people was homemade--stretching in all kinds of incompatible directions, in no way predictable, frankly a little creepy at times--and thus ... more interesting to me.

I had this conversation last night with Barbara and Shane. It seems likely my age (I'm sixty), in collusion with my extreme introversion, has something to do with this changing and perhaps now jaded perception. When everything was new to me at age twenty or even thirty, the personality and lifestyle quirks that fascinated me appeared to come out of nowhere. Now these quirks come with labels as noticeable as Ralph Lauren polo ponies and golden arches. If they can't literally be bought someplace, it is possible now to live a perfectly banausic life, with all the mundane pragmatism and other bourgeois values in place, and still be "interesting." With the proliferation of web sites and blogs, I'm kind of surprised in the lack of variety ... in opinion, in tastes, in matters of interest.

I still get whiffs of interestingness when I travel, especially abroad, but I can't be sure that what I'm taking for interesting is simply a local variety of "interesting" ... in quotes. But I think perhaps we Americans have been entertained (mega-entertained) and malled almost to death, so that we have lost the ability to form eccentric peccadilloes and oddities of character that arrive chiefly from sometimes--even if too rarely--having to amuse ourselves, alone, unplugged, trend-free, and secluded from commercial and otherwise branded influences. Perhaps the emphasis on comfort, security, and competitive emulation in this culture robs us of the audacity, contrariness, and huge balls it takes to be the individualistic, outlandish, and smugly incorrigible freaks we were meant to be.

The only part of Christianity I have retained is the part the church dumped centuries ago: the teachings of Jesus, specifically the Sermon on the Mount. Impractical in the real world, incompatible with capitalism or any other model of personal success. Still, despite a lack of belief in a personal god, much less a miraculous savior, I put my faith not so much in fate--though perhaps there is some overlap with such a belief--but in the Galilean idea that nature and the flux of circumstances will look after me, until, of course, the day they cease to, and that no amount of worry, prudence, ambition, hope, guilt, enthusiasm, or fear extending past the present day will ever do me much good or harm. The best I can do is look inward for whatever kingdom exists inside myself. To let my instincts, senses, and reason direct my life moment by moment and rest assured that the universe will not let me live a moment too long or too short.

Love

What I know about love could be written on a postcard. I am not loveless, but it's an emotion that's always puzzled me a bit. If it's an emotion. I've always felt too easily manipulated by love. I am distrustful.

What else could love be but an emotion? Well, it could be an act of will. I remember, when I was in college, telling myself to love this guy, an acquaintance of mine from back home, and doing a pretty good job of it for another four years or so. Emotions were involved with this declaration of commitment, but I'm not sure if any of them were love. I'm not even sure, looking back, whether this so-called "act of free will" was anything but a rationalization of something else that had already taken me, involuntarily. 

It could be a natural right--like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It (or the pursuit of it) might even be an integral part of the pursuit of happiness.

Love could also be, of course, a myth--a story we tell ourselves and others that conveniently frames our bodily urges and the circumstances that life faces us with. I don't know. What I don't know about love could be written on many postcards.

Is love something I do, is it something I sense, or is it something I am in? Is it something I have any control over? Do we--as some modern evangelical psychotherapists would argue--choose whom we love? If so, is all love a choice (heterosexual and homosexual, normal and perverse, bad and good, long-term and short-term?) 

Have I, in fact, chosen to love pineapple?

Me, I like the idea that love is a choice. I've always been a fan of free will, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Most certainly, to act on love is a choice. How we act on love is both a choice and, much as we would like to deny it, a social construct: i.e. something we do according to (or in adamant reaction against) social rules and norms that belong not to just us individually but to a whole civilization, constructed by a given culture at a given point in history--and as malleable, fluctuating in value, and ultimately disposable as legal tender.

So what do I mean when I say I love? 

I mean that the object of my love makes me a better person, that my desire is to ensure the loved one's safety and happiness more than my own, that the experience of loving this person or this thing or this idea transcends all reasoning. 

Should I always act on love? Yes. 

But I should not insist on loving when love is not there. I should not become so in love with the idea of love that I counterfeit its appearance, its declarations, or its deliriums. Most of all, I must not pretend to love simply to please others or to feel as if I belong--and I should be careful, very careful, of how much I'm willing to twist or cover or re-characterize my love just to suit the laws and opinions of others.

Would this fit on a postcard?

I Secretly Voted Against Your Right to Marry

Frankly, I don't know why lesbians and gay men want to get married and have children. In fact, I don't fully understand why anyone, gay or straight, would want to conform to most social norms unless doing so would further some unique and self-determined ends. 

Years ago in Savannah I had an arch-conservative office-mate who kept a loaded firearm at his desk and nailed a placard to the wall over his desk that read, "Heterosexuals Have Rights Too." (The sign conveniently ignored the obvious, that in 1993 in Georgia homosexuals had no rights, per se.) In my first year at the college where we both taught English, he handed me a photocopy of a psychological study he had found in a journal that concluded that homosexuality is not conducive to a normal, well-adjusted life. Out of curiosity I read the article, but said nothing about it. A few weeks later he asked me what I thought of the piece. I replied, "Normality strikes me as a rather pedestrian goal." He laughed and said, "Good answer." 

He had gone to Woodstock in the sixties but converted to Reagan conservatism in the seventies. He was a libertarian and advocate of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Had he lived, he no doubt would have joined the Tea Party. He had the temperament typical of Tea Partiers: absolutist, reductionist, ready to argue, and financially motivated. But he killed himself (with his gun) a year or two before I moved to North Carolina. He lived most of his adult life pursuing rational self-interest and promoting gender norms and laissez-faire capitalism. I have to assume that his suicide meant he had not found the pressures of such a life any more fulfilling for him than for gay and lesbian teenagers who have to live in the hostile society he promoted, kids whose rates of suicide are estimated at two to three times the national norm--a statistic I first read in the article my office-mate passed on to me.

I have led a full life, denying myself little except for the respect and support of zealous church people, the pitter-patter of little footsteps, and a supportive spouse--in other words, the traditional lifestyle that would have (according to statistics) promoted my upward mobility and financial success. 

However, if other gay people want to get married and raise children, I think they should. Even though I retain my reservations about whether matrimony does anybody any real good, I don't think I or the government have the right to stand in the way. My take is that the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" upon which the nation was founded ensures every citizen a go at finding whatever form of fulfillment he or she can find. 

I support the right to any form of marriage so long as both parties can give their consent and they are not coerced, i.e. by rape or slavery, and perhaps so long as the marriage poses no untreatable health risks to their offspring, should they choose to procreate biologically. 

I don't understand why only the legally married should enjoy a host of financial and health benefits, denied to us singles. These include tax benefits; estate planning; distribution of benefits through Social Security, Medicare, and disability insurance; veterans' and military benefits; benefits through employers' insurance and retirement programs; hospital visitation rights; proxy decision-making; adoption; retail family discounts; protections from domestic abuse; burial arrangements; and more. Perhaps as a single man I am prone to be a bit, well, selfish, but it would never occur to me to award myself special and exclusive privileges that, by rights, could be extended to everybody without rubbing any skin off my nose. 

I don't understand why convicted rapists can get married--and, by the way, according to Mosaic law (Deut. 22.28-29), the model (we're often told) of the American justice system, must marry the women they raped--but two men or two women cannot. I don't understand on what grounds politicians who have divorced and remarried can charge gay people with threatening the integrity of marriage. But then I have not yet seen evidence that suggests that married people do have more integrity or contribute more to society than single people.

I don't see why it's okay, given the traditional separation of church and state, for federal and state laws to prohibit churches from marrying two people of the same sex. Religious conservatives would have us believe that marriage rights for gays and lesbians would force congregations to not only accept but also seal same-sex marriages. But right now any religious body can refuse to marry people for whatever reason--for instance, because the engaged couple belong to different faiths or because one or both parties have been divorced. Still, many conservatives promote the fear that legal same-sex marriage would limit a church's autonomy. Based on what evidence? At present, the opposite is the case: churches that favor extending the sacrament of marriage to people of the same sex are forbidden by law in most states from doing so. This is tantamount to, let's say, North Carolina asking its citizens to vote on which form of baptism should be the legal definition of baptism. I would think that the form of marriage that religious bodies regard as having spiritual value would be a matter for religious leaders to decide, but to decide only for themselves and their trusting followers. 

North Carolina (where I live) puts the question of same-sex marriage up for a vote in four months, in a proposed amendment to the state constitution. The purpose of a constitution is to organize a centralized government and define its powers, usually with protections that prevent "the tyranny of the majority" (as Alexis de Tocqueville phrased it in Democracy in America) from ignoring the rights of individuals and minorities. The proposed amendment to the state constitution would not only ignore gay people's rights but also repeal any privileges conferred upon their relationships at their workplaces and in their places of worship. 

Putting the civil rights of a minority up to a vote is antithetical to the spirit of American liberty and equality. Had the civil rights of African-Americans been left to a popular vote in the 1950s and '60s, we Southerners would probably still be under Jim Crow. The Equal Rights Amendment, which would affirm merely that "equal rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," has not passed in the forty years since its introduction. North Carolina is one of the fifteen states that resisted ratification. But the effect of North Carolina's Amendment 1 would be worse. It would be as if an amendment were proposed to legally codify that men would retain certain rights that would be deliberately denied to women. That is injustice. Anyone who would hide in a voting booth to deny against anyone else's right to marry is petty and cowardly--when, with a little gumption, he or she could respond to the minister's call to the congregation to "speak now or forever hold your peace," and put something on the line for the sake of conviction ... and, with luck, spark a long-remembered brawl at the wedding reception.

2012 Golden Globe Awards

I used to like the Golden Globes more than even the Academy Awards (the so-called "Super Bowl for gay men"). Back in the '80s it was shown late at night (on the east coast), and 70 percent of the show was cutaway shots of nominees getting shitfaced and otherwise misbehaving at the tables. A delight! But lately my interest in awards shows has lost its pulse. The only thing that makes me wish I had a television connection for this evening is the host, Ricky Gervais, and my fingers are crossed that he will be twice as scaldingly honest as he was last year and somebody posts it all on YouTube immediately. The only improvement I can think of there would be to have Wanda Sykes, Kathy Griffin, and Sacha Baron Cohen working red-carpet duty. Still, I am a movie lover.  Less and less lately, but still ... and, besides, I might very well have to stop saying I'm gay unless I post my picks (not necessarily predictions) for the best in all the nominated categories.

Best Motion Picture--Drama

Anything but the three I saw this year: The Descendants, Hugo, and Moneyball--and probably none of the ones I haven't seen, since lack of interest was crucial to my decision not to even bother trying to see those. If I could order off the menu, I'd choose Beginners of the films I saw in 2011--and, of the ones I missed, I would probably favor Shame, Melancholia, and We Need to Talk about Kevin. Or if I wanted to go for the longshot, I'd name the very admirable Gun Hill Road.

Best Motion Picture--Musical or Comedy

Of the two I saw, I'd pick Midnight in Paris, because I think Woody Allen is (still) a genius, though his most brilliant work was over thirty years ago. Of the other three, the only one I have a real interest in seeing is My Week with Marilyn.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture--Drama

Michael Fassbender for Shame, because I'd like to see him naked again. I haven't seen the movie, but it's a point in his favor that he is not playing a historical figure or a man with a disability or homosexual tendencies. I say that with full knowledge that he plays a sex addict, but really I have not yet been fully convinced there is such a disability as sexual addiction apart from a culture that finds sex in general ridiculous, aberrant, and uniquely iniquitous. (For the record, George Clooney, whom I usually like, was just George Clooney in The Descendants, a movie I disliked for its self-pitying sympathy for wealthy males, exasperated by its thorough bashing of a woman who is comatose and unable to defend herself and whose perspective we get in only one dazzling sign of life in the opening shot.)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture--Drama

I haven't seen any of these performances, but I will say this: I love Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and Tilda Swinton, but I'd give the prize to Swinton in We Need to Talk about Kevin because (see above) I have a general prejudice against awarding acting honors based on a movie's educational value ("this is history") or sympathy for an underprivileged group ("this is tolerance"). Art is not about didacticism or niceness. That's my position anyway.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture--Musical or Comedy

I'd give this one to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for yet another movie I didn't see, 50/50. But at this point in his 24-year career (and he is not 30 till next month), he has transitioned from child star to leading man and from television to big screen very well--and his accomplishment in 2004's Mysterious Skin and 2009's (500) Days of Summer was remarkable. I like Ryan Gosling, too, just not so much in Crazy Stupid Love, a decent movie that could have been a lot better than it was (no fault, though, to the acting).

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture--Musical or Comedy

I have seen Bridesmaids and liked it and admired Kristen Wiig's performance. I have not seen the three films featuring the other four nominees--but this may be the only category in which I am really very interested in seeing all the nominated films. Based on the fact that I like acerbic comedy (and love director Roman Polanski), I think I would favor Kate Winslet in the all-but-Albee Carnage--or her costar Jodie Foster (the film's trailer makes it look like she actually acts in this one).

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Easy one. Christopher Plummer in Beginners.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

I strongly suspect my vote would go to Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, had I only seen the movie. (I know it's irritating to hear I saw next to nothing this past year. Blame work. Blame Netflix. Blame blogging. Blame books.)

Best Director--Motion Picture

Woody Allen. For pretty much everything.

Best Screenplay--Motion Picture

Woody Allen. See above.

Best Song--Motion Picture

I have not seen (or heard) any of these movies (what's new?), but I would lean towards a Madonna and Mary J. Blige tie for oh so many reasons.

Best Original Score--Motion Picture

Frankly, I would like the Hollywood Foreign Press to vote for "none." Movie music has been incredibly overbearing these last four decades--and that does not even extend back far enough to cover Bette Davis's quip, "Do I walk up the stairs or does Max Steiner?" Minimalist use of music in The Birds and any number of Robert Bresson movies has convinced me that powerful emotion can be conveyed without a music soundtrack and the audiences filmmakers should be making award-nominated movies for should be fully capable of coming up with an appropriate response to narrative events without a musical cue--or, on TV, a laugh track.

Best Animated Film

Oh fuck.

Best Foreign Language Film

I'll go with the hype and say Iran's A Separation. I still love Almodovar, but I liked him a lot better before he started taking the Douglas Sirk comparisons literally.

Best Television Series--Drama

I saw two episodes of American Horror Story online and was mesmerized, even though my low-cost WiFi froze my laptop screen every six or seven minutes. That I made it entirely through two whole episodes before deciding, "Hell, I'll just wait for the DVD," is a testament to how good I thought it was.

Best Television Series--Musical or Comedy

Hands down, Modern Family.

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Downton Abbey. Probably.  Though I am very much looking forward to seeing Cinema Verite and Mildred Pierce.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series--Drama

A tie among all the performers except Kelsey Grammer.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series--Drama

Probably Juliana Margulies. I'm shooting blind now. I haven't seen any of the nominees, and The Good Wife is the only one I recognized as the title of a TV show.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series--Musical or Comedy

Please, don't insult me. Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock. The only right choice.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series--Musical or Comedy

Tina Fey in 30 Rock, if by musical we still mean singing and dancing and by comedy we still mean funny. Otherwise, I quite liked Laura Linney in The Big C--though, really, I'd still probably go with Fey.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Idris Elba for Luther--and, crossing categories (and years), The Wire and The Big C.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

From everything I've heard but not yet seen, Kate Winslet for Mildred Pierce.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television

Peter Dinklage for Game of Thrones. I want him to thank all the little people who made the award possible. Am I awful? Am I going to hell? But, yes, he does need to say that.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television

Jessica Lange for American Horror Story. Oh my god, yes! 

On Being Unfulfilled

I took my Christmas tree down on Wednesday. Pine needles still gather on my socks as I pad around the place, and the tree itself lies on the curb, not yet claimed by the City of Durham Curbside Yard Waste Collection Service. I had an odd, sad feeling taking it down. It makes me sad, half empty, the impermanence of things, especially splendor, even so shabby-chic a splendor as my six-foot tree was. The inability of things or people to last, to fill up a life, except for too brief shining spasms of delight and insight, is not pessimism; it is a fact. Every passion is soon enough dimmed and extinguished by everyday reality, dwindling resources, age, adversity, sickness, and death. Even adopting a life style, or philosophy, or religion has offered, at best, only a passing sense of satisfaction and quiet.

The day, alas, cannot be seized. But I must do my best, anyway.

I am not somebody who buys books or attends seminars on how to find fulfillment and purpose. Fulfillment and purpose are never found; they are made. I make mine from the real stuff of life--the stuff life throws at me or throws me into. And they don't last for long. Well, eventually I will find  quiet fulfillment in death, but in life I get flashing sensations of achievement, ecstasy, camaraderie, glamor, rage, lust, loneliness, and so forth. Even peace, boredom, and routine, which almost by definition create illusions of everlastingness, pass quickly. Rapid change could work well as a definition of life. My life, anyway. I am not one to be too settled, satiated, satisfied, filled up.

There is a way to live one's life amid the world's inadequacies. The trick, of course, is learning to accept them. I am content with nonfulfillment and change--stoically content by necessity to see things that are beautiful, wise, gratifying, and loved slip from grasp. Nothing is gained by discontent, which takes up space needed for new days of new feelings. Andre Gide once wrote that one does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. I want a lifetime of discovering new lands.

I love pineapple. But what if I ate a pineapple, let's say two whole pineapples--and then felt ideally fulfilled. Eternally fulfilled. Then I might never again enjoy the taste of other things--chili peppers, vanilla, brisket, cilantro, gin, lime, or even another pineapple. The body transforms what it takes in as energy, disposes or stores what it does not need, and makes room for more. I suppose I could still commit to eating only pineapple for the rest of my days, but I don't want to do that. Life may not offer eternal satisfaction and joy, but it does offer variety ... and change.

Of course, there's risk, too. If you let a good thing slip through your fingers, who's to say that the next thing to touch them will not be painful, even deadly? I am not so much a stoic that I am free of emotion. Last month I sobbed convulsively after I had my dog Ripley euthanized. What can replace Ripley? Nothing. But life moves on. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, "So it goes." My friend Dutch used to say, "You play the hand that's dealt you." Complaining about the hand I held never did me or anyone any good. Neither did clinging to it, forever refusing to pick up the next card. Nor imagining a heavenly Hoyle deck that gives a winning hand to everybody who wants it.

As one of my favorite poets Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, "Maybe all the dragons in our lives are really princesses waiting to see us be, just once, beautiful and brave." Death--or its pale second, a life lived in dogged commitment to safe and dependable routine, in refusal of the tidal motions of reality--requires no beauty or courage. Still, it's good not to be overly idealistic or ambitious. I cannot fix the world. Perhaps I can have an impact on reality, on history, perhaps not. Perhaps my life is getting better, or worse, or it stays the same. My optimistic or pessimistic thoughts have little effect on how things turn out in the end. It's hard to slay dragons without taking out a few princesses along the way. But we must always strive to be beautiful and brave.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

This week I reread one of my favorite books, Voltaire's Candide, or Optimism (1759). In it Voltaire satirizes philosophy's attempt to stabilize a careening world of reality, especially since much of life's disorder results from people attempting to impose a too narrow and ungenerous idea of order upon it. He particularly satirizes Leibniz's optimistic philosophy, a great influence on what Herbert Marcuse later dubbed "happy consciousness." In the closing chapters our hero reunites with his long-lost true love, only to find her ugly and repulsive, broken by life's interminable misfortunes. He has sought love, understanding, and wealth--gained them and lost them. "What a world we live in!" his disillusioned friend Pangloss exclaims. But there is no choice but to live in it.

They meet a Muslim farmer with a small plot of land, who has no idea of current events or politics, He and his four children live simply and hand-make sorbet and kaymak from the fruits of their garden: oranges, lemons, limes, pineapple, and pistachio. He tells his anxious visitors, "Work keeps us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need." He and his children treat the guests kindly and generously. Candide's final revelation is that simple, gratifying work is superior to theories, public affairs, epistemologies, and even positive thinking. "We must cultivate our garden," our hero says at the end.

The glass is ... unfulfilled. That's the good news. Meanwhile, we must cultivate our garden.

Adeste Fideles