2005-11-12 - 7:52 p.m.
Jigsaw-puzzle-pieces floating around in my head, sometimes coming together, but other times coming apart. What I know, how I see things, the solid ground upon which I stand, is actually quite a fluid thing. I am reminded of one of my favorite books, C.S. Lewis�s Perelandra, which takes place on a water planet (like Earth), except that there is very little solid land, that mostly what land there is, is composed of tightly-woven roots and rushes that eventually grew in vegetative complexity until whole trees would grow on these floating multi-acre-sized mats. That one could be sitting in a valley at one moment, and then sitting on the crest of a hill at another moment, as the sea frothed and foamed beneath the woven landscape. Like that.
Well, we had the election, of course, what was it called, �the mid-term election,� or something like that? We were told that Arnold Schwarzeneggar spent millions of our state�s money to have this election now instead of whenever we would normally have the election, so I was somewhat surprised to discover that other states had an election now, too. So tell me what Arnold did, again? I suppose I should be more organized about the calendar of elections, but for me, they come up when the Secretary of State sends me the voter pamphlet, which I then sit down and read from cover to cover, make my decisions, and then go vote on election day. I do consider myself to be a more-or-less intelligent voter, but I do have certain principles that could perhaps be considered not intelligent. For example, if I really don�t understand the proposition (and I am sure that most people do NOT understand the propositions), I will either not vote on that particular issue, or if it costs money, I will simply vote no (if I don�t understand it). I believe it is the responsibility of those sponsoring such a proposition to make SURE that I understand it before I will vote for it, and by that I do NOT mean leaving me a recorded message on my answering machine. I generally do not respond to telephone propaganda, whether it is an attempt to get me to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, donate money to the National Organization for Women (what kills it for all these people is when they say, �So, can I put you down for $100?�, at which time I put the phone receiver down), or vote for proposition 72 (or whatever number is being touted this time).
And judges�although we had no judges running for anything this time, I always think the judge elections are a joke. Who knows one judge from another? It�s not as though I go before any of them on a regular basis�or at all. Well, there was the judge when I served on jury duty, I liked her a lot, but unfortunately, I forget her name. So they are just ciphers to me. I refuse to vote for a judge who doesn�t even bother to write a blurb about himself or herself in the voter pamphlet. They�ve got to attempt to earn my vote, but I warn them, their blurb might wreck it for them, too. There are just some things that if they say, I will know to not vote for them (but I won�t reveal what any of the vote-killer words are here).
The ads all said that Arnold wanted to have this election now at this odd time because he felt that so few voters would turn out and only the rabid-right-wingers would show up in force so that his six propositions would win. What a great way that was to make us non-rabid-right-wingers get out and vote! I even got to the polls EARLY, before I went to work! Actually, I can�t give the anti-Arnold ads credit for that, as I vote in EVERY election (although I might not if Los Angeles County succumbed to Diebold voting machines�but fortunately, we�ve got good ol� old-fashioned ink-dot paper ballots that actually have to be COUNTED by a real person). And, I wanted to vote before work rather than after, because I had gotten sick of hearing the winners on the radio before I even had a chance to vote. �George W. Bush won the Presidency. Go out and vote, the polls will still be open for three more hours.�
I had a new polling place, this time. For the longest time, I voted around the corner from my apartment building at a famous drug rehab house. I don�t think it is really the house that is so famous, as it is some of its temporary residents. Robert Downey, Jr.! (I think he has his name on a brass plaque on one of the rooms, by now.) Courtney Love! Yes, I suppose living in Hollywood does have its advantages. If you crave to have some actor�s autograph, you can always catch them as they walk by en masse on their morning walk. I am often delayed several minutes at my apartment complex�s parking lot gate trying to drive to work in the morning because the whole rehab house-full is walking by on their morning constitutional (and they don�t seem to want to be split apart from the rest of the crowd by a car slipping through). Funny, they just look like ordinary people! So let this be a warning to you, drug addicts come in all shapes and sizes�it could be YOU!
Then the polling place was moved to an old folks� home owned by the Presbyterian Church. I disliked that polling place because it entailed a rather long walk up a very steep hill, not at all as convenient as around the corner like the drug rehab house. Fortunately, that place didn�t last too long. Then the polling place was moved to the lobby of the Best Western Hollywood Hills Hotel. Quite convenient location, if quite an inconvenient spot inside the hotel�in the lobby. Voting booths entwined with guests attempting to check out or register in. Gee, too bad the guests couldn�t vote while they were at it! (I presume you voted absentee?)
But this time it was at the Vedanta Center, now way beyond walking distance, but at least this polling place has a parking lot. I didn�t mind the Vedanta Center, and while I waited, it was fun to see if I could recognize who the various gurus were whose portraits lined the walls. Well, I did have one complaint�you had to walk across a wet, muddy lawn in order to get to the workroom where the voting booths were. Yogi monks may not mind getting their feet muddy, but those of us who go to work in an office with nicely polished dress shoes found it a mite problematic. However, I managed to slog my way back and forth across and dutifully placed my votes.
All six of Arnold Schwarzeneggar�s propositions lost, and the one proposition I voted yes for won--the one that authorized money for repairs of all the schools so that the Los Angeles Unified School District could get rid of that blasted all-year-round schedule! It�s hard to believe that there are kids in this city who have to go to school in the summer, but with such a lack of classroom space, I suppose it didn�t make sense for perfectly good classrooms to go unused for the months of June, July, and August. Remembering the absolute joys of all my summers, I just couldn�t do that to any kid!
However, despite Arnold�s failure, my favorite election result was the throwing out of all the Dover, Pennsylvania school board members who had supported �intelligent design� in place of evolution in the science curriculum. You know, already the United States is trailing behind several other countries (most notably, Japan) in the numbers of patents it gets, so to turn our schools� science curriculum into a religion-based Dark Ages science was not the way to go.
But here is one of those slip-sliding jigsaw puzzle pieces I began this entry with. While I believe in the science of evolution, I have to admit that I generally feel that I see no clear evidence of it. Where are the �inbetween� animals? If there was an evolution from reptiles to birds, why don�t we see any lizards with rudimentary wings (which kind of thing doesn�t even show up in the fossil record)? And I remember one day standing in my office, gazing absent-mindedly out the window while tapping my teeth with a finger and suddenly thinking teeth!�how do you �evolve� teeth? Were there some kinds of animals who had nothing but soft gums, yet over the eons, the bone and skin cells of the gum started to excrete walls of calcium until, voila!, there were now present the teeth that allowed them to actually eat the foods they were supposed to eat? Or had they simply gone on the banana, rice, and yogurt diet for several eons until this operation was finally concluded?
A close friend of mine had studied several examples of intricate locks and keys in creation, such as a long needle-nosed beak that can just manage to reach down inside a stem to the succulent nectar of a flower, or how nuts, which are a nut tree�s seeds, are swallowed as food but some of them are not broken up by squirrels, but excreted out the other end embedded in a lump of fertilizer�the whole thing was just so, well, intelligent and designed! But, generally speaking, �intelligent design� simply says, �God did it, end of story,� which, as Joseph Campbell so aptly clarified, really means �Hell if I know how it was done.� So I think the answer may somewhere lie in there beyond the two opposing camps�that there may be cosmic design forces we have yet to understand with an intelligence vastly beyond our ken, which operates through some kind of evolutionary dynamic, the mechanizations of which we have yet to fully unlock. So I�m not really against (or for) either side�I am only against the battle. I see nothing wrong with saying to kids (which is what I say to them every chance I get, and they greatly appreciate it), �This is what we think we know so far, but there are limits to our understanding, which is a good thing, because what good is life when every mystery is already solved?� That�s what they do in college (or, at least, graduate school). I remember my father telling me that at M.I.T. where he was earning his masters degree in nuclear engineering that professors said to whole lecture halls of students: �This is how we can generate power from nuclear fission, but what to do with the waste product, ahh, that is for you future engineers to solve!� The Greeks seemed to understand that scientific undertakings were a Pandora�s box, but that didn�t argue against Prometheus bringing us fire.
There was one election result that horrified me: the voters of the City of San Francisco passing an anti-hand-gun ordinance, banning all hand guns from the city: �turn in your handgun by April 1.� (So what�s next? In a bid to lessen global warming, are they going to order the turning in of all SUVS by next August?) Now, I generally think of myself as a pacifist and I sure am not interested in killing anybody, but how can ANYBODY who had just a few months ago witnessed what happened in New Orleans pass an ordinance requiring residents to turn in all their handguns? What, are they absolutely nuts?
What did Katrina teach us?
That you cannot count on the federal government to come help you (nor SHOULD you�we are supposed to be self-reliant AMERICANS). Either they can�t get there (which we all know in Los Angeles and is part of all disaster preparedness: in the event of a major earthquake, roads will be impassable, electricity and water will stop, it will take at least three days for emergency crews to get to you, if at all, you are on your own) or won�t (taking care of YOU is not their top priority, taking care of their own IS).
And besides, when the government DOES get there, the only way they know how to organize things is via martial law. You want what happened inside the Superdome (there really were stacks of the bodies of raped-to-death children found in the freezers in the dome kitchen complex) happening in your very own neighborhood where you are contained by a phalanx of National Guardsmen? (Hey, I lived under martial law in Berkeley during the People�s Park riots of 1969, I know how your freedoms can be abridged.)
One thing I resent about the news broadcasts was how much they all centered on the plight of the poor who couldn�t (or didn�t) evacuate, and needed to be rescued. My heart went out to them, but what about the stories of the middle class residents? I�m sorry if my view is too self-concerned, but I wanted to know more about what happened to people like �us�. That kind of thing could have been our story. And it wasn�t enough to hear that �they evacuated, so it all turned out alright for them.� No, that�s not the whole story, not by a long shot.
I think it is generally well-known that for most of the middle class, the bulk of their lifetime�s wealth is tied up in their house, or if they have a business, it is all in their inventory. Looting Walmart is one thing, but what about the man who has a little hardware store and everything he owns is inside that store? How does he pick up and rebuild? Well, the poor who couldn�t even afford a Greyhound bus ticket out of there, they suffered horribly, it is true, but did we now want the middle class residents to collapse down to that lower class so now they, too, have to go on welfare? Or those who had jobs, where are their jobs, now? What would happen economically to anyone reading these words if your job (and income) floated down river? Suddenly, you are no different than �the poor��in fact, you now are the poor.
I thought it was a horrifying scene right out of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or maybe 1984 to have armed military personnel going from middle class house to middle class house in New Orleans, hand-cuffing the law-abiding residents who had returned to protect their houses and all their worldly goods, and collecting all their weapons. Serious gun activist Liz Michael (who lately has become one of my favorite people) says you have a Constitutional right to shoot any totalitarian government official who comes by to take away from you your gun and therefore leave you totally defenseless (against armed gangs, looters, and totalitarian government officials). I mean, first they DON�T help us, and then when they come, they take away our ability to HELP OURSELVES. But in San Francisco, the majority simply voted to walk out into the streets en masse and proffer their naked wrists for the chains of anyone wielding iron rings and interlocking links. Is that what it means to be liberal?
And just in case someone wants to think Liz Michael is some left-wing nut case (I didn�t think she was a nut case, but I did make the mistake of placing her on a certain polarity of political thought)�I was surprised to see that she was very strongly against abortion, so strongly, that she convinced me, too.
For a long time, I was �pro-choice,� and I am still �pro-choice� enough that I despise the idea of adding an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution or overthrowing Roe v. Wade. But before, I was completely on the side of the woman�s right to choose, allowing women to be completely in charge of their own bodies. My own belief about abortion was (and still is) that I wouldn�t do it myself. If I happened to get someone pregnant and I didn�t want us to keep the baby, or she didn�t want to, I would nevertheless beg her to carry the baby to term and then put it up for adoption. If money were an issue, I would pay the money. It�s not an impossible proposition. I know a woman where I work who got pregnant, but did not want the baby. Instead, it ended up that her sister wanted to have the baby, so she carried the baby until it was born, and then placed her in the arms of her ecstatic sister. All three people, the pregnant woman, her sister, and the baby, came out winners and morally correct, in my view. In fact, the formerly pregnant coworker is a kind of hero in my book. Although now my idea of �a woman�s right to choose� is �a woman�s right to choose birth control�, I do understand that accidental pregnancies will happen and I do not agree that a woman should be forced to keep and raise an unwanted baby. But there are enough women in the country who absolutely DO want children but for some reason can�t have them on their own, that having an abortion is a hugely negative trade-off against the pain, discomfort, and inconvenience of being pregnant (which I do appreciate).
So now I am against abortion without actually supporting laws that prevent them. What changed my mind? Very simple, really, Liz Michael had on her website photos of actual aborted babies. Before then, I was willfully ignorant, I guess. I just thought of �aborted fetus� as something like a conglomeration of divided cells, or maybe a �tadpole� (and certainly some very early abortions are that)�but these were actual BABIES. Very, very tiny, perfectly-formed babies, with miniscule toes and fingers and faces and bodies. A friend of mine at work sent me photos of an artist�s precious creations, little tiny carved marzipan babies, so sweet and beautiful. Well, these aborted fetuses looked essentially like those marzipan babies.
Here�s the one thing that got me the most. Whenever people bring their babies to work, the one thing that I love so much is what those babies are doing with their hands. They are always holding onto something, as if being human means just that, using ones hands to hold something. Asleep or awake, there they are, holding a rattle or a teething ring or a set of colorful plastic keys or maybe just the edge of a blanket. My heart fastens onto them holding onto something with those tiny hands, and my love swells for them. And that�s what those aborted fetuses were doing, or trying to do. Of course freshly ripped from the womb they didn�t have teething rings or a set of plastic keys, but with every one of them their hands were reaching out with tightly closed fingers, craving to grasp, yearning humans every one, and I cried and said to myself, No more abortions. But I wouldn�t make it a law, not yet, anyway. I�d just make sure the pregnant mothers saw those pictures and then leave it up to them. I hope that with a woman�s right to choose, they will choose what is right.
Jigsaw puzzles�the pieces of the foundation of my world view continue to shift and I find myself agreeing more and more with who I used to think was �the enemy�, but now see only as a fellow traveler in this shifting confusion. In this fluid world, the valley becomes the mountain top and the mountain top becomes the valley. If it sometimes makes me seasick, at least I know that I keep on moving forward.
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