we were children once
and nothing more
taught to keep
our little secrets

chaos in control
the past comes back in a flash
nightmares in the noonday sun

we overindulge in spirits
too meek to inherit
the weight of the world

at home in fear
there’s danger beyond strangers
no need for make-believe
when everyone pretends

we find ourselves in hiding
passing souls composed of air
fighting to forgive
the trespassers against us

I thought of this phrase back when my sense of time was a bit jumbled. Memories, mostly bad ones, were flooding my brain as thoughts of the future were rendering me a petrified mess. In trying to make sense of my mixed-up self, I realized that what we consider NOW is finished the moment we experience it. The very act of doing something puts the actor in the immediate past, as things to do—in the future—wait to be accomplished.

This is all coming back to me today because lately I’ve been taking my emotional temperature a lot. I keep searching for the connective tissue between what I did yesterday and what I have to do tomorrow, all while my being occupies its current position. I’m always aware of my thought/feeling processes, but my self-monitoring has increased during my recent job search.

The larger issue here is, of course, the question of value. Throughout my life, even in the smallest moments, I have demanded ultra-meaning. I often ponder the purpose of this or that aspect of my life, which ultimately leads to: “What is the meaning of my life?” Perhaps the answer that pops up a lot (There is no meaning—I have no purpose) is a direct result of my wanting an-easy-to-find, single Meaning in everything I do. (And believe me, during this difficult job search my questioning of the process has happened more than once.)

Sometimes I forget just to live and to allow myself my thoughts and feelings as they are. My battle is, indeed, an internal one. I suppose, when I finally pull back from beating myself up, I can take comfort in the realization that it’s better to “hyper-feel”—to be a jumble of emotions—than to feel nothing at all.

When I’m deeply depressed, I’m numb to reality. But I’m often depressed as a result of feeling too much anxiety, of being too focused on the bigger picture. What I need to break out of my funk, is less feeling and more doing—more doing that helps me get what I want out of life.

At its core, therapy has been about making me a better consumer. If I’m “healthy” enough to work, then I can earn my own money and go out and spend it on things I don’t really need. When I’m in the throes of mental illness, however, I’m not at all productive; my “inward numbness” pits me against the system.

But people who display what I’ve dubbed “outward numbness” contribute to the economy, all the while caring less about what others think of them, or how mundane their money-making lives are.

Rather than turning my anger inward, into depression, I now realize that I must direct my frustrations out onto the world, so that I might make a name for myself—and a little cash in the process.

–Arcade Fire, “Black Mirror” (2007)

Technology has created a new place for us in the twenty-first century. According to one French thinker, Marc Auge, we spend a vast majority of our days less in specific places and more in non-place. We travel through non-place all the time. It’s the everyday oddness that welcomes and surrounds us.

So much of our identities are stored in distant databases and on plastic cards we keep safe in our wallets. Who we truly are is becoming blurred as computers continue to dominate our lives.

We meet our identities at the ATM, which tells us how much we’re worth. But the same machine that greets me, greets Joe and Mary and Bob. We’re engaging in our own automated experience each time we need a little cash, completing our transactions from a distance, in the comfort of our local branch.

On page 103 of his book, “Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity” (1995), Auge describes what happens when we enter non-place:

“What he is confronted with, finally, is an image of himself, but in truth it is a pretty strange image. The only face to be seen, the only voice to be heard, in the silent dialogue he holds with the landscape-text addressed to him along with others, are his own: the face and voice of a solitude made all the more baffling by the fact that it echoes millions of others.”

Auge conveys here the depths of our inner disconnect. It’s like that feeling you get when you return from a long trip—you sense that you’ve been gone. This is how we always feel, like we’re returning home from far away, even though we never left.

But returning is not enough—even when we’re home we’re not at home with where we are. Of course, some quality time online can alleviate our uneasiness. In the end, though, we remain strangers to ourselves, encountering our identities in the non-place that exists everywhere.

Perhaps I’ll visit a friendly teller at my bank tomorrow, instead of hitting the machine. This will serve as my partial protest.

The board setup is always the same, with valuable spots predetermined. Before every game, there’s a fixed number of each letter and each letter has a pre-assigned value. I’m allowed to hold no more than seven letters during each turn and I must select new tiles from a bag without looking at them first. The words I try to play must conform to the basic rules of the English language.

Of course, the words I make are dependent upon what I’ve done on previous turns and what my opponents have come up with. No move is made without previous moves affecting it. As far as strategy is concerned, I often count on my opponents to mess up, either due to oversights or a lack of skill.

Sometimes I pull better letters than at other times, but my success is always dependent upon the situation and my ability to form high-scoring words more frequently than others.

Equal distribution of resources is impossible; in fact, the game derives its variety from one player acquiring a disproportionate amount of valuable letters and putting them to good use for himself.

There are some unfortunate realities that often arise. Some people get all vowels on their rack on a regular basis; they have no chance from the beginning and there’s no real explanation for this, although we often consider such sad saps “unlucky.”

In truth, for every person who’s lucky enough to get “QUIZ” on a triple-word score, there are thousands more pulling a “Q” on their final turn, with no available “U” to attach it to. Yesterday’s winner soon becomes a loser today.

If we look at the larger picture, it’s clear that we’re all approaching the same board, and are bound by the rules set before us, but our experience with the game (our success or failure) is unique to us.

We’re free only to the extent that we are forced to work with what the game gives us, and with what we bring to the table. So much of our game-playing is limited by things over which we have little or no control.

Ultimately, some big questions must be asked. Who devised this game? (I mean, beyond the creative folks at Hasbro). And why are we playing it in the first place?

So read a temporary sign chained to a street sign in a neighborhood near mine last week.

Down the road, sure enough, there were the photos, held up by proud pro-lifers, so desperate to save us all. I gave one group a sneer as I drove past, but they had tied their self-righteous blinders on too tightly to take notice.

I can engage in a debate about abortion anytime; what concerns me here is the amount of moxie it takes one to display his convictions at a busy intersection on a Thursday afternoon in July.

The way I see it, there are two types of people in the world: those who believe in something no matter what, even when (and especially when) confronted with divergent viewpoints—and those who are willing to have serious philosophical discussions in which they accept the reality that a single answer may never be reached.

Religion tends to recruit the first group, the stubborn herd. Philosophy appeals to the second group, the free-thinkers who refuse to hide behind short-sighted conclusions.

It’s ironic that members of the stubborn herd, so confident that God is on their side, often feel compelled to display their rigid beliefs in a way that merely exposes their insecurities. People comfortable with ambiguity and philosophical incongruities don’t need to shout the Truth at random folks trying to get home on a Thursday afternoon in July.

So writes economist Thorstein Veblen in his famous work The Theory of the Leisure Class, first published in 1899. Veblen’s analysis of the connection between wealth and politics more than one-hundred years ago rings true today.

It’s no secret that the tea party movement is comprised of some rather rich folks. That these wealthy tea party types are also conservatives is no coincidence. But their influence over the middle and working classes in America, the common man, is not always so easy to figure.

Enter Veblen, who in a chapter entitled “Industrial Exemption and Conservatism,” tells us that:

“…the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought.”

In this passage Veblen outlines how the rich, who wish to maintain their enormous wealth and status, prevent the middle and lower classes from even thinking about new ways to improve the lot of all Americans, especially in cases where any political or economic changes would deplete the upper class of significant power and control over the entire system.

Hence the rise of rural and middle-class conservatives in the fringes of the Republican Party today, people who struggle economically but continue to adopt rigidly conservative politics that prevent the improvement of their daily lives.

Wealthy tea party cronies shout: “Big Government is intrusive and any time it interferes in the Free Market Process, it’s intrusive and limits our individual rights.” And the struggling middle and lower classes immediately think: “You’re right, upper class, the government has failed us and anything that might extend its power is bad!”

Tax the rich at a higher rate? Why, that’s un-American. Provide health care for all Americans? You’re a communist.

In the end, the wealthy use the fears and biases of the working classes against the working classes, so that the rich can thwart progress and sustain their ridiculous levels of wealth. “Conservative,” in essence, refers in this case to the rich “conserving” their money and status and power.

And they’re the patriotic ones, with “patriotism” here analogous to any policy or political stance that furthers the status quo. But, of course, the tea party hides from the fact that their unabashed “love of country” rhetoric is simply a cover for discrimination and exclusion.

It’s the reason the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are still in effect. It’s why the average America is still denied basic health care coverage at every turn.

And it’s downright criminal to any thinking citizen.

I’ve been wondering such heavy things (in some form) for a long time now, probably since the third or fourth grade. It amazes me how stuff that happened to me years ago manages to re-surface today, buoyant emotional debris clogging up my thought-streams.

But I often keep hidden my sadness about unfortunate moments I’ve had to endure. Repression provided strong shelter during difficult times, but it prevented me from venturing back outside once the storms had passed.

Today I realize that sadness is an important part of my experience. It allows me to mourn for what and whom I’ve lost. Sadness reminds me I’m human and that everyone I encounter is suffering too.

If anything, when I’m sad I’m more aware of how I don’t want others to hurt. Compassion stems from the realization that none of us is immune from pain and hardship. In helping others acknowledge that life is often tragic and disheartening, I hope that the small circle of people I know can stray from the “I’m doing fine” act and feel less alone.

And in feeling less alone, perhaps we’ll all self-medicate less, and avoid trying to compensate for our sadness in ways that simply increase our pain and make everyone around us miserable.

It was raining one summer day, so we had to play our game indoors. I was installed at first base, hoping that the ball somehow would avoid me. A kid on the opposing team hit a pitch high into the air, all the way up to the ceiling. Magically, the ball landed in my open glove and stuck there. I had no idea what was going on, but my dad was in the gym, and he was cheering for me. That’s what he always did.

Today marks five years since my father died, and all I keep thinking about is baseball and our relationship to it. I’ll never forget how my dad, a huge Cubs fan, used to find out when my favorite team as a kid, the Atlanta Braves, would be in town to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. He made sure that I got to see my team in person at least once a year. He rooted for me even when we weren’t rooting for the same team.

By the time college rolled around, though, I started following the Cubs and quickly became a big fan. One year after graduation, in 2003, I was having a difficult time in my life. It was often hard for me to get out of bed and face the world, but that summer dad encouraged me to emerge from my darkness and watch Cubs games with him. Again he was cheering me on, wishing the best for his struggling son.

Sadly, 2003 went down as another lost year for the Cubs. After beating, ironically, the Braves in the first round of the playoffs that October, the Cubs were five outs away from reaching the World Series for the first time since 1945, when dad was just nine years old. The Florida Marlins scored seven runs in the eighth inning, though, and won game 6, forcing a game 7.

Hope was tough to come by at the start of that last game. The Cubs couldn’t recover from their previous defeat, and just like that, a promising postseason run went up in smoke.

The loss was hard enough, but I didn’t make it any easier for my father, telling him right after the loss, “It’s just a game.” Of course, I was trying to cheer him up as he had done for me that whole summer, but he was so heartbroken that my words were empty.

Three seasons later, in 2006, my father’s health was in decline. We still watched the Cubs, of course, but I could tell that it was harder for him to enjoy the games. In April, while the Cubs were in Los Angeles and playing the Dodgers, Cubs first baseman (and our best player) Derrek Lee broke two bones in his wrist during a collision at his position. Right after it happened, dad said, “There goes the season.”

I tried denying the truth of that statement, but I knew he was right. I didn’t know, however, that in one month my father would be gone.

When the season ended in October of that year, the Cubs finished in last place with close to 100 losses in a 162-game schedule. They watched the postseason from home as their archrivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, went on to win the World Series.

From my first-grade team, to my favorite club being five outs from the World Series, to watching last night’s contests on TV, baseball’s been more than just a game for me. It’s a part of who I am and part of who my father was. It unites us even though we’re not here together, cheering for each other.

Lay vs. Lie

You lay a book down, but you lie down in bed. It’s like the difference between set and sit. You set your keys down, but you sit at a table. I blame “Now I lay me down to sleep” for screwing up even professors on this one. By the way, once you’ve laid the book down, it’s then lying on the bed.

You’re vs. Your

This seems simple enough, and yet here I am trying to explain it. “You’re” is a contraction of “you are,” whereas “your” indicates something attributed to you. If you graduated from grade school, you’re smart enough to know your teachers should’ve gone over this rule a few more times with some kids.

Me vs. I

Lots of intelligent people mess this up. Bob gave the book to me. Clearly, it’s not, “Bob gave the book to I.” Somehow, when another person is added, folks forget this rule. Chris gave the book to Kim and me. No way would this be correct: “Chris gave the book to Kim and I.” If you simply remove the other person, you’ll soon re-discover that “I do something,” whereas “something is done to me.”

Who vs. Whom

This one is often hard to grasp. “Who” is a lot like “I,” while “whom” operates much like “me.” Take this sentence: Jim hurt Frank. Jim is the one who did the hurting. And whom did he hurt? That would be Frank. It’s not, “Who should I call?” but “Whom should I call?” because the person on the other line receives the act of your calling.

Commas and Periods Inside Quotation Marks

In Britain, all punctuation marks go outside the quotes. But early American printers were worried that commas and periods would be lost somehow if they ended up outside the closed quotes. So, in America, this sentence should read: Todd never said, “Nate is a fool.” Most people, though, write: Todd never said, “Nate is a fool”. To confuse things further, colons and semicolons always go outside quote marks, wherever you live.

Its vs. It’s

The crowd is on its feet is correct because “its” is attributed to the crowd. “It’s,” however, is the shortened version of “it is.” It’s a beautiful day, you’d write to a friend. This problem resembles the “you’re vs. your” issue discussed in part one. In both cases, the words sound alike, but the grammar rule demonstrates the difference between the two.

Than vs. Then

“Than” is used in comparisons, such as, Mike is taller than Joe. I’ve seen people mix this up with “then,” which is used to indicate a current condition or some point in the future. If you’re too short, then you can’t ride the rollercoaster. Mary will see Sally then. Again, because of their similar sound, these words tend to confuse some writers.

There/Their/They’re and To/Too/Two

This one aggravates me. Here’s another example of words that sound alike but mean something different. “There” is a location, “their” shows that a group (they) own something, and “they’re” is the contracted form of “they are.” Why folks don’t know that “to” is a preposition, “too” is an adverb, and “two” is a number, is beyond me.

Should’ve, Not “Should Of”

Oh my, this one’s amazing. “Should’ve” stands for “should have.” The rather unfortunate “should of” exists in error only. It’s another example of sound confusing sense. Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve let these language issues go, but the English major in me couldn’t keep his good grammar snobbery to himself.