2006-02-06 - 3:49 a.m.
Here I sit with a delicious mug of Don Francisco hazelnut coffee. I�ve lately become a hazelnut coffee fanatic, after one of the teaching assistants at school turned me on to the flavor. Previously, I didn�t care too much for flavored coffee (except for �mocha�), but now I drink hazelnut every chance I get. And finally, after forty years of drinking coffee (horrifying to think that as of the date of this entry, my birthday, I am a full FORTY YEARS beyond the age of 18!), I finally figured out the deal with �coffee measures� and �cup sizes�. It�s peculiar how most �coffee recipes� are based on �a standard six-ounce coffee cup�, when, I am sure, most Americans are actually drinking their coffee out of coffee MUGS which are larger than the miniscule six-ounces of what I think of as �ladies� party cups�. I do happen to have one set of six-ounce coffee cups (with matching saucers), that come with some relatively fancy �company dishes��however, those I never use, but reach for, instead, one of my very many coffee mugs (the one I am drinking from right now happens to be an �FBI Los Angeles� mug, that�s manly enough, huh, it�s white with the blue �Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation� seal that was given to me as a gift by the head of our city�s branch of the FBI because I secured for him last-minute valuable parking reservations when I used to work at the Getty Museum), and sometimes even one of the HUGE ones that are probably more appropriately described as �caf� au lait� cups, that approach being more BOWLS than cups. The Don Francisco package recommends �one slightly rounded tablespoon� of coffee per �standard 6-ounce coffee cup�. Okay, so how do I translate that to how much coffee I need for my mug?
It ends up (based on various measurements of the mugs that I have in my cupboard) that the basic-sized coffee mug happens to be 12-ounces, which is, then, two �standard� six-ounce coffee cups. With one coffee mug, you are getting two cups of coffee, even though neither the mug nor the cup of coffee is really a �cup�, i.e., eight ounces. Got that?
Next, I have a tiny little measuring device labeled �standard coffee measure�, made by a company called �Measurex� in Rahway, New Jersey, and guess what, I discovered that it happens to hold two slightly rounded tablespoons of ground coffee, and therefore is the perfect device to use if one is making one American mug of coffee. One of those coffee measures into the Melitta filter and twelve-ounces of just boiling water poured in and I end up with one perfect mug of coffee. Trust New Jersey manufacturing to give you the exact thing you need, none of this frou-frou fiddling around with six-inch cups that nobody ever uses.
On another front�these days, there seems to be very few political or economic positions on which I can be absolutely clear, anymore. Long ago I gave up on the idea of being either a �Democrat� or a �Republican�, those two categories just couldn�t be counted on to closely mirror how I felt about things. I liked the Swedish model better, in which there would be about twelve different political parties involved in each election, even right down to the local councilman level, why are we stuck with just two? That�s what the media wants I guess, as they are the ones who seem to control the elections, anyway.
But even just basic things like �free speech� and �free trade� are slippery slopes where as much as I believe in unfettered freedoms, I can�t help but find myself desiring limits sometimes on an �us versus them� basis.
The biggest type of person I am against these days is what I call �the emotionally immature.� That�s the kind of person �we� suffer from the most. The �emotionally immature� are people who never really grew up and who can be counted on to remain stuck in some kind of traumatic past, which henceforth has characterized them as some kind of victim, and that perceived victimhood is what controls everything they do and every way they think. This can manifest in individuals, and also in entire social groups.
One of the things I am thankful for, for having once been involved in what most people would consider to be a very bizarre cult, was that they NEVER allowed us to point the finger anywhere but straight back at the self, and these lessons stuck (mainly because we then discovered how empowering they were�what a concept, we really DO have some control over our own fate!). Most of the time, when something happens TO us, we can trace it back to something that WE did that was the cause. This, of course, goes completely against the �victim� mentality. And sure, there must be many instances where the person is entirely innocent�the woman who just happens to be kidnapped by the serial murderer, the child sexually molested by a parent, the African captured by European slave-traders, and so on�although in this cult, every one of THOSE is to blame, too, because of something they did in a past life (the raped had once been a rapist for example, and the very concept of slavery was first practiced by Northern Africans, and their slaves were Slavic people from the Caucasus region�notice the derivation of the words, there, �slave,� �Slavic� people, �Caucasians,� �Caucasus� region, so the first slaves were Caucasians, enslaved by Africans�therefore, KARMA!). But even with �entirely innocent in this lifetime� cases, the only one who can really DO anything about it NOW is, guess who, the self. It�s unrealistic to keep running to society to pay you reparations or give you an eternal free ride due to this so-called victimization. So, if one is unwilling to point the finger at the self as the cause, they at least ought to point the finger at the self as the solution. And isn�t a solution what they are really looking for, or is it to continue to be miserable forever due to some perceived wrong? Somebody, sometime, has to finally get off this thing and move on.
But, back to free speech. In England some people are upset because the concept of politically-correct speech has been taken too far. Somebody says something politically incorrect, and the police come knocking on their door! However, while I am certainly not in favor of that kind of police state, and certainly not for SPEECH, there have been some examples of this so-called free speech that has made me be more on the side of the police state.
For example, there was a discussion on British television about homosexual civil unions and one participant in the discussion opined that two men living together should not be allowed to adopt any BOYS, because, as she said, �This would be as dangerous as two heterosexual men adopting a little GIRL�. For this comment, she ended up with police knocking on her door and investigating her homophobic hate speech.
Humm, oh, the POLICE came knocking on her door, well, good for them, hooray, let�s have some MORE of this! It�s about time the pendulum swung the other way.
Not really. Of course I am not in favor of this kind of police investigation, but how loudly am I willing to lobby for the right of a person to make this kind of prejudicial comment? There always has been the famous legal example of an acceptable limit on the right of free speech, and that is �shouting �fire� in a crowded theater when there is no fire�. I put this woman�s comment in that category, because she is clearly shouting �fire� when there IS no fire when she continues to put forth the proposition that MALES are sexually out of control beasts and to put TWO of them together is bound to result in a helpless child becoming a sexual object. The woman was clearly being homophobic, despite her diversionary sleight of mind by including �two heterosexual men adopting a little girl,� as there would be NO SUCH THING as two heterosexual men adopting a little girl, so all she did was doubly damn the concept of TWO MEN. If one is bad, then two must be worse, so for God�s sake, keep them away from the little children. (Maybe one of the major causes of decline in our society is too much ABSENCE of male parenting?) This kind of speech, I am sick of it, and I say a person like this should be shut the fuck up, and if it includes the fear of police investigation to do it, well, I�m not going to be the one to complain.
It used to be that homosexuals were the one remaining minority group it was still safe to dump on, so now people are upset because that is coming to an end.
However, since people seem to eternally need to dump on somebody who isn�t them, I notice two other groups are still safe to dump on, too--the �old� and the �fat�. I wonder what will happen to that when the MAJORITY becomes old and fat. Actually, the majority already IS fat, with 60% of the American population not just overweight, but obese. And once the baby-boomer generation moves out of �middle-aged� into �old� (to happen very soon, I think), we may soon enough see this kind of speech limited, too. Personally, I wouldn�t mind that being limited, either.
Because of my work address, I have recently been getting at work two free magazines whose publishers must think that I am RICH, making the assumption that this glamorous street address is the address of my HOME. But what I can�t figure out is why they must also think that I am YOUNG, for how many YOUNG can afford to live on this drive?
The one that thinks I am RICH is a magazine called Enclave whose raison d�etre seems to be to trumpet the growth in real estate values in the west side, whereby in each successive month�s issue, the homes seem to increase in value another $10,000,000. To feel that this impresses me or makes me happy is to be sorely mistaken (but I DO love looking at the pictures).
But the other magazine�. It is called Hollywood Life and it took me a couple of issues to finally realize why it makes me feel bad. I discovered that they either use or refer to the concept of �young� about nine times per page. Here�s a smattering of the kind of people they have profiled (always telling you their age): Camilla Belle, 19; Austin Nichols, 25; Kevin Zegers, 21; Kate Beckinsale (their cover model this issue), 32; Sheetal Sheth, 29; and Dorian Missick, also 29. (By the way, how many of those do I even know of? Only Kevin Zegers, because I just saw him in the movie Transamerica last Tuesday, which I had gone to see because the lead actress, Felicity Huffman, won the Best Actress Golden Globe. However, Kevin was well worth seeing, I will say that.)
Other examples abound of how they parade �youth� before you as if that is the only kind of person who has a right to live. One of the most beautiful old hotels, an art deco tower on Sunset Boulevard that used to be called �The Argyle�, has been remodeled and brought out under a new name, �The Sunset Tower Hotel.� But look at this line from the article: �Much pleased with the makeover, [hotelier and new owner Jeff] Klein maintains that his will be �the Beverly Hills Hotel for a new generation: Hollywood elegant, sexy, smart and stylish.�� Wasn�t that what the two oh-so-hip Standard Hotels (one on Sunset and one downtown) were supposed to be, too? Is �the new generation� the only people anybody wants staying in their hotels these days?
In another section of the magazine, they show twelve pages of furniture and interior design called �Young Hollywood Home: Sexy, Cool, Glam�. They begin the article with: �As the nesting instincts of Young Hollywood kick into high gear, there�s no better time to discover what a pad for the pretty and the pampered might look like.� Frankly, from looking at the designs, I don�t see anything that a couple of �old codgers� wouldn�t also like�but presumably, the old codgers already have their furniture and a magazine like this exists to lure those who might actually be in the market for new furniture (and who can afford something beyond Ikea).
One of the advertisements in this magazine said it all, revealing all the hope and tragedy of reality. It was an ad for a new Elton John, Bernie Taupin Broadway Musical, Lestat, based on the Anne Rice vampire novels. The tag line read, �Die Young, Live Forever.� As Elton John and Bernie Taupin were MY generation�s music, there�s something just too poignant about this.
Also in the realm of questionable free speech is this hullabaloo about the anti-Moslem cartoons being run in European newspapers. I realize that Moslems are the west�s new �it�s okay to hate them� race or religion, but depicting their prophet, Mohammed, as a terrorist is really a bit much, don�t you think? Regardless of what people may think of terrorists, this isn�t something to blame Mohammed for. For one thing, the vast majority of Moslems are NOT terrorists, so to impute otherwise is to continue the very bad concept of profiling (earlier applied above in the rubric of �male = sexual beast, homosexual = likely child molestor�). I will have to say it again�while there are black thieves, the average black person is not a thief; while there are Hispanic gang members, the average Hispanic is not a gang member; while there are Moslem terrorists, the average Moslem is not a terrorist. Even if you think something like �more thieves are black than any other race�, upon seeing a black person walking down the street, it is odds-on wrong to presume that HE is a thief. Even if you think something like �more Hispanics are gang members than any other ethnic group,� upon having a Hispanic move in next door, it is odds-on wrong to presume that HE is a gang member. And even if you think something like �more Moslems are terrorists than any other religion,� upon seeing a Moslem on an airplane, it is odds-on wrong to presume that HE is a terrorist there to blow up the plane.
All these presumptions are based on FEAR, which means �False Expectations Appearing Real�. Change the expectation. Change the speech that creates expectation.
Anyway, while we may have the RIGHT to be offensive, isn�t it also true that it may be a better idea to NOT be? Free speech can sometimes be no better than a forceful fart in a crowded elevator.
Offensiveness can work in so many ways, among so many different cultures. I recall an aborigine woman who had actually gotten her PhD and had come to speak at the Getty museum against white people buying aboriginal art. Her contention was that aboriginal art is a spiritual expression of her culture that is being perverted and distorted by a western market for the art, the genuine article of which is sacred and not actually available to westerners. And I can see that that is true, as a couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend a gallery opening of works defined as �Contemporary Aboriginal Art�; those who invited me knew that I lecture on aboriginal art at the school and therefore they hoped that I would buy some of it. However what I saw at that gallery was what I would call �fake� aboriginal art, none of it was the kind of thing that I lecture on. I realized that what they call �Contemporary� Aboriginal Art is the kind of hybrid creation that that woman with the PhD was talking about�works created by aborigines at the direction of white people specifically for sale to the western market, painting on canvas with donated acrylic paints in every color of the rainbow (whereas traditional aborigine art is painted with home-made paints made from desert sands and plants, painted on tree bark), using genuine aboriginal artistry and techniques to present designs that sell, but otherwise express absolutely nothing. Besides, the larger canvasses were selling for tens of thousands of dollars, and somehow I don�t think all that money ends up in the hands of naked artists sitting outside under a tree.
The whole scene at that gallery was surreal, with visiting aborigine artists flown all the way from Australia standing around in high heels and cocktail dresses (the females) or three-piece suits and polished leather shoes (the males), holding crystal glasses of champagne (both genders), when I knew that back at the hotel, the second they were allowed to, all those clothes were going to be stripped off and they were going to go back to sitting on floor, and once back home they were going to go back to eating lizards and grubs. It was also surreal to overhear various gallery patrons make comments such as, �And they really paint all these from something that they dreamed?� The ignorance of that drove me crazy, for aboriginal dreamtime art has nothing to do with the western idea of �something you had a dream about�. The �Dreamtime� is the aboriginal concept of where you or any other thing existed before it was born or came into existence (as if the �you� of �you� existed as a dream inside of a seed or under the ground or in the apple of God�s eye or in heaven or in some other pre-life dimension). I think that is one of the most valuable concepts of all spirituality, what were you before and for what purpose did you come here, which is why it is so sacred, and to explore art that is depicting that concept is phenomenally enlightening, but no western art collector is ever going to see any of THAT in a gallery in West Hollywood.
The ultimate example of disrespectful perversion of aboriginal art for that woman with the PhD was a new shopping mall in Sydney that portrayed aboriginal art forms in mosaic tile all over the mall�s walkways. For her, to put these forms in the floor of a shopping mall would be similar to having depictions of all the Christian saints and all the stations of the cross embedded in the floor of a bank or stock exchange, so that the spirit of Jesus would forever be trampled on by the money-changers. Put that way, she really does have a point. Is it any different for a Danish newspaper to run depictions of Mohammed as a bearded man wearing a bomb on his head in the place of a turban? Whether Mohammed means anything to us or not (the truth is, he was a person we would probably admire if we knew his teachings more intimately�and let�s not judge him by the more reactionary among his followers), he is sacred to some people and therefore keeping our offensive speech to ourselves is prudent, polite, and demonstrative of understanding. And there is a value even above freedom:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. Any my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? In truth, that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free? If it is an unjust law you would abolish that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead. You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone see first that his throne erected in you is destroyed. For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed on you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
And so said Kahlil Gibran, an Arab, and a Christian.
�
 |
 |
�
