1 December 2016

8 December 2016

I had to say goodbye to my Chevrolet Cobalt when a Colorado hailstorm claimed its life. It was a sad time because the car had treated me so well and had so many years left to live. I was deeply attached to this car and had put almost eighty thousand miles on it in six years. It had taken me from Jackson to Chattanooga, to Montréal, to Chico CA, to Los Angeles, and to Colorado Springs. When my girlfriend got a call about an urgent family health issue, it did not take us back to Tennessee. For the second time in six months, we packed up all our belongings--this time in a Nissan Versa Note S rental--and moved across the country. Fierce winds on I-70 in Kansas threatened to blow the little matchbox car out of its lane. I am extremely grateful for the use of that rental car. It got me and Deborah back home. But I fail to understand why anyone would buy a Nissan Versa Note. The interior looks sharp, but the engine is tee-niny (109 hp) and struggles to push the meager 2,414 lb. vehicle up to highway speeds. It definitely feels like Nissan spent more time on cosmetic design than they did on the mechanical aspects of this car. Upon returning to Tennessee, I was able to pick up a 2000 Oldsmobile Intrigue with only 51,000 miles on it. In marked contrast to the Nissan Versa Note, this GM vehicle has muscle behind it. A 265-horsepower V6 engine powers this steel-framed sedan. It's butter-smooth at cruising speeds; and on the highway, light pumps of the accelerator open the throttle up to a roar. The Versa had an immodest delay between pressing the accelerator and the car speeding up. None of that here: the Oldsmobile Intrigue zips, whips, and handles great. I threw a fresh set of Duralast Gold ceramic brake pads on it, and ordered another Tennessee flag front plate to match the one that was on my Cobalt. The Oldsmobile is a pleasure to drive, and that would have been enough, but this model had a crisp metallic finish and mafia-level blackout tint on the back windows and rear window. I am grateful for the years that the Cobalt gave me and for the opportunity to now drive this gem of a vehicle. I love it.

In many ways, 2016 was a tough year. On the plus side, I finally finished the long journey of my bachelor's degree. Graduation week was a vivid display of support from the community of people who know me well. People who matter to me were happy for me, and that brought the reality of accomplishment to my tired eyes. Classroom education has been maddening to me in a deep, hard-to-articulate way. I have not fully deconstructed that feeling. In large part, I take issue with the "regurgitation" method of teaching: "Here is a collection of facts. Be prepared to repeat them on the test." I was told once that contemporary education is designed to prepare students for factory jobs. Learn to be silent and still for long hours, follow directions precisely, and do not think too much about what you're doing. This is one of those things that came tagged with a [citation needed], but I understand the sentiment. I also understand that most people do not feel this way about school. Some professors work very hard to teach their students principles of critical thinking instead of memorization. But other professors besides those require a hell of a lot of unthinking busywork, which takes away time from the worthwhile courses.

But on another hand, 2016 was an upside-down year. George H.W. Bush told a Kennedy daughter he was voting for Hillary Clinton. Glenn Beck supports Black Lives Matter. Anti-vaccination gains footing with no scientific data whatsoever. A proxy war in Syria between the US and Russia looked like a Cold War revival.

Donald Trump is our next POTUS. Glenn Beck is suddenly woke af. In the face of this reality I'm forced to question if I really am Solange.
— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) November 9, 2016

Like many of my peers, I developed a cynicism to politics while growing up during the George W. Bush administration. The 24-hour news outlets had too much to gain from demagoguery, and there was more-than-ample opportunity for rabble-rousing. CNN and MSNBC painted the president and his Cabinet as a team of villains. Fox News kissed his feet. The diametric opposition was not lost on me. I became aware of the deep divide between what a president does and what people think they do. There were many scandals involving legislators at that time also. It was easy to become cynical.

This world we live in is so fast paced and ever-changing; the mind is driven to and fro by external and internal forces. How can I achieve my goals if my mind is easily swayed and distracted? How can I even decipher my own goals in this cacophony? This is the real story of ACID FIRE LOVE: a postmodern sonnet. It is a love story--staged as a romantic love story between a man and a woman--which is really about the search for meaning in the 21st century, where there has been a disintegration of consensus reality. I think most people understand me when I say this. Everyone has conflicting ideas about the facts of the world and how life should be lived. Different ideas regarding what is true and valuable. The conflicting narratives will make your head spin. Tribes and nations have waged war over ideas as often as over arable land and water. In that sense, conflicting metanarratives have always been part of human life. But one thing I think everyone agrees on is the importance of that sense of peace and wholeness which the Israelites called shalom (שָׁלוֹם‎ , Arabic salām سَلاَم‎).

We meet this pure essence of wholeness throughout our lives. Embodied in the medium of atoms and molecules, it is the driving force of our entire lives from birth until the end. Any hunger is a divergence from shalom, and food to a hungry belly (whether literal or metaphoric) is the restoration of that shalom. It is the feeling of hitting your own bed after an exhausting day of work. It is a warm, dry home after being soaked in cold rain. It's the paycheck that comes when your finances are scraping bottom. And in our highest moments, it is experienced as living life purposefully and with meaning.

Most of my writing is unpublished. I prefer to think about what I say before it comes out of my mouth, and the same is true on paper (or pixels). My archives contain another booklet of poetry, a couple short stories, a handful of metaphysics essays, about two hundred pages of miscellaneous notes to be sorted and condensed, visual art pieces, and the pilot issue of a comic book. I don't know what I'll publish next. One thing I have taken from 2016 is that we have a geniune need for positive influences and hope-filled voices. This will be the driving force behind what I choose to put online. In this clamorous atmosphere of negativity, I will put my effort to direct our gazes to that sense of peace and wholeness.