"Eventually the boy made up his mind that even if it were a ghost, it was the ghost of a knight...

...and knights were bound by their vows to help people in distress."

I've had a lot of good stuff happen to me in the last couple of months. I am very grateful that many of you were able to share this time with me.

I feel very lucky to have been so blessed with so much support and love.

This week, I am reminded of how lucky I am as I am horrified by recent national events. This week, an eighth grader and a college freshman took their lives because other people weren't happy or comfortable with who these two boys were. Eighth graders and college freshmen, I work with these kids - everyday. I see young men like the two boys who chose to end their lives - everyday of my professional life. As I stood in front of students last night and today, I realized what a profound affect these two news stories had had on me. Of course, there are young men I teach that are going through this and of course, it's hard. Have I ever acted inadvertently or unwittingly made some comment that made their lives more difficult? Have I ever missed something, not paid careful enough attention and missed some punk kid making another kid's life a living hell?

Why can't people just love who they want to love? Why is everyone so hung up on it, especially when a guy loves another guy? What's the worst part is that people poison their children so that when they go to junior high or move away to college they can make someone else's life so miserable. Harassing a 13 year-old, posting your roommate's private affairs on Twitter, this stuff is fucked.

I popped in my favorite episode of Six Feet Under tonight. It's entitled "A Private Life" which begins with the death of a young gay man who is beaten to death by a pair of intolerant knuckle-draggers. He is terribly deformed in the beating, but the family insists on an open casket. As David works to restore the remains, the young man's body becomes a metaphor for David's own self image. When, at the end of the season, David has emerged from the trials and tribulations associated with accepting his own sexuality, the boy appears to him, radiant and restored. I can't help but view this episode (as I'm sure I am meant to) as a metaphor for our society. While we scar our children by passing on these dark attitudes or allowing them to be victims of these attitudes we scar ourselves.

Can any of us really be healed until we all are?

As he ages, the attitudes that Wart expresses in my title quote would prove to be an idealized generalization. Wouldn't it be nice, though, if we could somehow find solice in facing the things we fear the most.

R.I.P. Asher Truong and Tyler Clementi
You deserved a better world. We all do.

"Go We, and Seek That Which We Shall Not Find" - Why the Lost Finale Was Fantastic

The title of this entry shares the name with the title of my blog, which seems cheap, but is really just very appropriate. The Lost finale tonight was mind blowing. As we were settling down to watch the epic five hours of Lost-related programing this evening, I remarked that season five had ended with a serious game changer. That is, the introduction of Jacob and MIB had forced us to reconsider everything that we thought we understood about the island. I predicted that season six would end on a similar note; I was correct. The entire scope of what we thought we knew and understood about the show changed tonight.

All around the country, people were sitting down expecting answers. This, as it turns out was a trap that we too easily fell into. I and countless others were drooling at the prospect of finally learning where that DHARMA pallet was coming from and what was the source of the light, and how did the island sink, etc, etc, etc. Despite the aforementioned five hours of Lost programming, these answers did not come this evening. Instead, what we got was a completely character-driven finale that refocused our critical eyes. We didn't need the information about the island because ultimately, the island doesn't matter.

The island is an allegorical means to an end. It presents obstacles and challenges that need to be overcome in order to transcend it, but ultimately, the island itself cannot transcend. This story has been told over and over again. The island is Oz and Narnia and Christmastown. Characters who find themselves in these places (almost always by accident) seek to find answers and fulfillment there but never can. This is because they are seeking the wrong things, their goals are associated with the physical world and not the spiritual one. At the heart of all these stories, however, is the fact that it is only in pursuing these false goals, that the characters can achieve real fulfillment. They must seek what they shall not find in order discover what is really important. This is all a pretty common motif, and Lost is in very good company.

The show is able to distinguish itself in its finale, however, in its ability to link the characters' journey to the journey of the viewers. We were all lusting for answers about the island. We wanted to know everything about the origin of the island and the possible applications of its magic. We were distracted by it, and to a point, obsessed with it, in the same way that Jacob and MIB's mother (and her party) were, the same way the MIB himself was, the same way the DHARMA initiative was. It is an essentially human flaw that transcends time, generation after generation on (and off) the island. It became clear to us tonight that this is the challenge Jack has been facing. He needs to let go, this has always been his problem. When he finally just let go of role as protector and passed it onto Hurley tonight, he was baptized and able to achieve fulfillment and transcendence. It is much the same struggle Neo faces in The Matrix and Alice faces in Through the Looking Glass, but in this case we do it with him.

As Jack corks the destructive force buried deep at the island's core, he is unwittingly stifling his own inner demons and finding peace with himself as a spiritual being, something he has been unable to fully do in the last six seasons. We realize then, that answers to our petty island questions are not coming and with that burden relieved, we rejoice for him and for all his fellow islanders who have died before and will die after him as their souls reunite in a glorious final scene in the "sideways" world, which in the one real answer given tonight to be a sort of purgatory. We are reminded that Lost is and always was about the characters and thus about us. What lies at the heart of this story also lies within our own hearts.

Thank you, Lost, for six seasons of remarkable story telling. Thank you for daring to be smart on television. Thank you for calling on us to seek our destiny as spiritual beings. Thank you for forcing us to seek that which we shall not find.



Namaste.

"The Thing About These Creatures that I Am Speaking Of is that They Have No Hearts...

I think that people are conditioned to not act in their own best interests. Let me give you some examples of what I mean. I start with one that many of you have already heard me share. On the day of the 2008 elections, NPR was interviewing a coal miner in West Virginia. She claimed that she was voting for McCain because Obama was going to take her money away and give it to someone else. Now, unless this woman was the most successful coal miner EVER, she is much more likely to be on the receiving end of what she seemed to see as Obama's Robin Hood-esque efforts. Considering that Obama's campaign promises included only repealing tax breaks to people who make more than $200,000, there was little basis for this woman's concern. In fact, she is now paying less in taxes than she was when she was interviewed.

Similarly, the debate over health care reform is astonishing to me. While I, myself, support a single-payer system. I understand why some people have objections. However, with both single payer and a public option off the table, I don't understand why people still object to a bill that will basically ban insurance companies from unethical practices, help more people get insurance, and reduce health care costs. Now, the bill will require most people to purchase health insurace, but I have not heard any strong argument against that. Just the typical, "the government can't tell us what to do" nonsense. Newsflash, if you vote, you are the government. And yes, the government can and does tell you what to do all the time because it's the government's job to govern. It makes good sense to make people buy insurance so that the most people can get reasonable coverage. Of course, it makes more sense to socialize medicine, but we won't go there. About 60% of small businesses in RI cited health insurance costs as their #1 concern according to the ProJo. Every year premiums increase at an alarming rate, co-pays are rising and people are getting screwed by these under-regulated, greedy fucks. Yet, people consistently say they dare opposed to health care reform. Of course, if they are asked about the individual parts of the bill they are overwhelmingly for it.


Let's talk about workers and unions. Because I am a public employee, people begrudge my pension, my salary scale and my belonging to a union. They feel that I have it too good and should have to endure the hardships of the private sector as they do. To these people I say, if I have it too god, why don't you advocate to get these things for yourself? Why not unionize in your workplace or more importantly, vote for candidates who support things like card-check and punishing the crap out of companies who ship jobs overseas to save a cheap buck. Fight back against corporations that are abandoning pensions and demand that your representatives do something about it. Yet people don't. Instead of fighting to make every one's life better, they want to fight to make some people's lives worse.

Why do people do this? Are they brainwashed by large corporations? Is Republican media that powerful? I really don't think it is either of those things. I think that people are still under the illusion that they can and will be rich someday. That they will be the fat cat in the future, so they need to protect the fat cats (of whom this blog's title is referring) now instead of punching them in the balls and taking their money (which is what I advocate). What will it take for people to realize that the deck is stacked against them and unless we stand up to these businesses and corporations via representative government or social organizations, we will never win.

Thoughts?


...They are cold blooded like fishes."

-Robin Wood (aka Hood)
The Sword in the Stone

"Lancelot Tried to Have a Word...

...he considered it to be the most valuable of possessions."

This is a new place, and it is fitting because here I will take on a new purpose. I was the only one left on Live Journal, and even I had left myself. I had left before I stopped writing. It was a different Joe that wrote there than who writes to his readers here. Of this there can be no question. Yet, deep down, I am still so much the same. Which is why I have chosen an old motif with which to start this blog.

I hope to keep you all reading and commenting and thinking not only about me and my thoughts and ideas, but by the quest for the only things that matter, those which we shall not find.



"His word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad."