Two Lives

SITUATION: Assume that two men are born on the same day, one in the United States and one in Great Britain. They come from equally happy homes and grow into equally successful men. Both enjoy good careers and long happy marriages. They both raise beautiful children that grow into content and responsible adults. They both die on the same day.

Now assume that one did all the right things because he lived according to the dictates of his conscience or his God. His concern was simply doing the right thing. Assume the other did all the right things because he wanted to insure that he was remembered fondly. His concern was his legacy.

QUESTION: Are their lives of equal worth?

ANSWER: I don’t know.

To say yes is to acknowledge the equal importance of the contributions made by these two imaginary men to their families, communities and the world in general. To say no is to deny the importance of intention.

One man’s intention was to provide the people in his world with the things that he, as a man, believed they needed. To him, the ends and the means were one in the same. The other man’s intention was to leave his mark- if in no other way than through his children. To him, the means were a function of the ends.    

I ask this question because I recently met a man that was in the process of starting a blog. I’ve no idea whether or not he ever carried through with his plan and it was a fairly brief encounter. But the conversation has stayed with me for quite some time.

He wanted to write about the issue of what it means to be a man in today’s world. I was immediately interested because I’ve often pondered a man’s changing role in a changing world. It’s a much bigger question than it seems at first glance. It covers the gamut from whether or not to hold doors for a lady, to friendships, to family responsibilities, to personal conduct and beyond. (Side Note: The best fictional exploration of this question I’ve ever found is in Jim Harrison’s novella Legends of the Fall. The movie is also quite good.)

I read one of his pieces, an essay really. It dealt with the issue of personal legacy. He stated that most people are forgotten within two generations of death. I’ve no idea where he got this statistic but it may well be true. I see no problem with this, but he seemed uncomfortable with the implacability of time. Hence, the idea of personal legacy.

You should know that his professed purpose for this concern with legacy was his two young sons. If they are to be his legacy, he reasons, he wants to make sure that it’s a good one. I gathered from our conversation that he is in the process of raising two fine young men. Sounds reasonable, does it not? Maybe even admirable.

But I was left with questions. I acknowledge that on the holistic level, all men’s lives are of equal value. Good balances evil, love balances hate and peace balances violence- often in the same life. But on an individual level? Is there not that gut response, that innate repugnance, at the idea that these two men are equal?

           Do we not know intuitively that intention matters? And perhaps the answer is right there. Perhaps these two men’s lives are equally valued while not of equal value.

Quiet Wars (Part 1)

So many have managed to capture his interest, however fleetingly.  But, to capture his imagination, there’s been just one in many years now.  To capture the imagination is to inspire, to allow just enough of a glimpse to build upon things that he cannot possibly know, yet does.

            She is confident and self assured but feels she should be more so.  She compensates with a certain intensity, a roiling placidity that she manifests in a variety of ways.  It’s in the slight tilt of her head during deliberative pauses when speaking in soft rich tones that almost hide the smoky resonance.  It’s in the dark gaze that strikes as a quick glance and thunders to a startling depth.  Anger? Desperation? Predation?  He can’t tell and she herself is likely unsure.  A hard pleading spills from her eyes.  But for what?

            She posses arresting beauty of which she is aware but seems to not fully grasp.  She sees that men notice her, when she notices them.  Women too, seem to take note and pay her some unspoken, gender-coded heed.  But she has no thought of the reasons or depth of those reasons.  She never gives it much thought for the simple reason that she fears that the conclusion she might reach would leave her uncomfortable- that those reasons ultimately would be tawdry and base.  And perhaps for some they were on that primal level.  But for most her effect was, at its essence, inspirational.  And what is inspiration if not uplifting?  So she passes through her life and, much to her own consternation, is by virtue of her beauty credited with the most admirable of qualities.

            And as he struggled to step out of the circle of her magnetic pull, he began to understand the dilemma posed by Dostoevsky:

How can I as a man begin with pure love, as for the Madonna,

                                            yet end with a rutting lust as for the whore?

            Making peace with that contradiction, he chose to obsess over the best part, the heavenly part that transcended all else in his close and quiet life.  That was when all seemed possible.  Not just possible- inevitable.  Eternity was inevitable, he knew that all along.  But in her he knew the nature of the eternal.  It was contained, experienced in each moment with her there. 

Town Square (Part 2 of 2)

I walk among the stylish suburbanites. One man is drawn to a print in one of the photography booths.  It’s beautifully done, stylized by some kind of software and printed onto heavy gauge paper that may be canvas.  It’s lovely, yet lacking passion.  “I like this one.  What do you think?” he asks a woman through whose jeans can be seen panty lines biting into a butt fighting middle age. 

“It’s pretty.  Won’t work with the sofa, though” she dismisses him and moves to the next booth. 

There are artists that work in clay or metal or glass or stone, from granite to semi-precious stones, watercolor or oil or even paper.  More than a few seem spectacularly talented.

I move into a booth that’s hung both with realistic yet highly stylized sketches as well as stunning acrylics on canvas.  They are striking.  I study a cityscape that begins at the bottom in buildings of sandy hues and reaches upward past almost imagined windows through rooftops of antennae and into a sky that bursts from orange to a cloudlike feel.  Its texture and progression seem to reach upward beyond the canvas. 

   The artist wanders from behind the booth and introduces himself as Saidi.  He speaks in an accent that’s somewhere between French and Arab.  He’s smoking a cigarette that’s down to the filter.  I tell him that this piece feels ancient and modern all pushed together.  It seems to rise above the confines of the canvas.  He looks at it and tells me that it’s Tunisia, where he’s from and that there’s a lot of smog there.   

I move to the next canvas.  It’s a beach scene.  The waves breaking from the right move from greens to blues to foamy misting caps.  I feel the spray in the textures.  On the left is the beach with pools of seawater collecting on the sand.  There is a group of young ladies in the center.  They are wearing bikinis, gathered into a group and seem to want to be noticed in that way young girls have when they act like that’s not what they’re doing.  Saidi tells me of the horizontal lay of nature and the verticality of humans in the piece.  I see that the girls’ faces are indistinct and this seems to elevate their bodies to primacy.  I tell him so and ask if this is also from his home.  He tells me that he’s lived in Tunisia, Paris and a few other places I don’t catch and that beaches are about the same everywhere that he’s been.  This one’s Myrtle Beach.  We both grin at this. 

I ask how he ended up here and simply points to a sketch of a beautiful young woman in the corner of his booth.  We grin again.

Another painting catches my eye.  It’s a night scene of a group of people moving away from the artist in an alleyway.  Light comes from windows above and around and from where the alley appears to empty into a cross street.  The colors in this painting are again, striking.  Blues, purples, oranges, yellows, reds, a little girl in a pink skirt all pull at the eye.  The overall effect is the excitement of a city night fused with a solitary melancholy.

Saidi excuses himself to speak with a couple that’s come to pick up a charcoal that he’s done from a photograph they’d left earlier in the day.

I stand looking at this painting for a few more minutes and wander off.  I find a retaining wall where I sit to sip bottled water and contemplate what I’ve just seen.  I know as little about painting as I do about ballet, but read once that the purpose of art is to capture the fleeting. 

We tend to discount feelings these days.  They’ve become something to hide, minimize, ignore, or overcome- anything but express.  Perhaps that’s because we’ve reached some collective decision that feelings are temporary things- they simply don’t last and are therefore of no consequence.

But some, like this man, know how untrue that can be.  His work takes a moment and wrenches from it not the scene, but the experience.  It shows more than what is seen.  In the blurred details one is left only with an impression.  And impression is by definition both highly personal and based on emotion.  He’s taken what we call fleeting and captured it, given it permanence.  And in giving emotion permanence, he validates it.  This, I think, is why we have always valued our poets, writers, sculptors, painters and artists in general.  We know that someone somewhere is on some level capturing our most personal aspects.  In a world where we can’t do it publicly, they validate our emotions.  They validate us.

I end this reverie and reach for my bottle of water.  It’s not there so I look over and see that a female police officer has taken a seat beside me.  She’s sipping bottled water.  My water.  I look away from her.  Did a cop really just steal my water?  Obviously, she did.  So what now?  I look back and think she’s looking at me but can’t tell because of her mirrored cop shades.  Her uniform is dark blue and crisp with shiny buttons and badges.  She wears a black leather utility belt from which hang handcuffs, pepper spray, a retractable baton and, of course, a gun.  I find her dark skin and strong jaw line quite lovely, but then I’ve always been uncomfortably attracted to women that scare me and I see nothing remotely good coming from challenging her.  I look away for a moment and she gets up and wanders off, leaving the empty bottle.

I’ve only a moment to ponder what just happened when a woman in her seventies approaches and asks me what I’m doing.  I tell her I don’t understand and she tells me that she’s seen me here for hours scribbling in that notebook.  I tell her that I’m just capturing my impressions of the festival.  She says that she was just wondering whether or not she needed to be worried about me.  Cautiouned by the duplicity of her stated concern, I tell her that she need not worry.  I’m just fine.  She asks my name and I instinctively lie and give my asshole neighbor’s name.  Seeming satisfied, she walks over to a bench full of other seniors and is immediately the center of inquiry. 

I decide that this part of suburbia is getting too creepy so I grab my water bottle and toss it into a recycle bin.  I walk out through the main pavilion in front of the stage where I spot a group of the dancers, now in street clothes.  I want to see if the one that danced to “Paradise” can possibly be as beautiful when stationary as she was while dancing.  I see her talking with a group of friends.  And while she is indeed a lovely creature with pale blue eyes and high cheekbones, without the flowing surrender to movement, the spell is broken.  She’s just another beautiful young woman. 

I continue on and see another dancer leaning on her elbows onto a waist high cocktail table.  She’s the fierce simmering attacker of the music.  She looks me straight in the eye as I walk along, locking her eyes onto mine.  Is this a challenge?  Is this disdain for what must seem to her an old man?  Is she simply testing her newly realized feminine powers?  I smile, nod and keep walking.  As I pass behind her she keeps her gaze steadily upon me until she’s looking over her shoulder.  Then she smiles lightly and wiggles an ass that’s barely covered by her cotton sundress.  I pretend not to notice, look the other way smiling and mutter my thanks heavenward. 

It was, I think, a good day in Duluth.      

Check out Chouaieb Saidi's work, most amazing artist I've ever met:

http://www.artabus.com/saidi/?pic=-1

Street Scene: Little Five Points

I have a bird’s eye view of Atlanta’s thriving center of counter-culture from where I sit.  I’m at a patio table at the Brewhouse Pub on the corner of Moreland and Euclid avenues.  I can see a new age crystal shop, a palm reader and to the right is a second hand, no, make that vintage clothing store.  Across the street and to the left, a city police sub-station shares a storefront with a jewelry store.  The store is called “Fetish” and I ponder for a moment exactly where one might wear the sparkling pieces on display in the window.  A block east down the street is Sacred Heart Tattoo where a guy named Sean delivers amazing artistic individuality with needles and ink.  He’s a frigging genius.     

I’ve been sitting here drinking for a while now and my patio space has been shared by a changing cast in these hours. 

There’s the table right out by the sidewalk where five college guys guzzled pitchers in the company of a lone blonde girl.  She was not particularly cute, clearly someone’s girlfriend and the default designated driver.  They were quite loud until an amateur rugby team settled at the next table.  Then they seemed to intuit that their drunken sophomore sharp wit was no match for the sweaty testosterone cloud rising from next door.  They ended up leaving and sticking the girl with the tab.  She ended up sticking with one of the rugby guys.     

There was the twenty-something couple in the corner with the wirehaired puppy.  He was dressed in an expensive three-quarter length wool coat and tennis shoes.  She was wearing a knee length sweater, cut off short-short jeans, black tights and boots with crimson socks.  She should have looked atrocious but didn’t.    

There was the too-pleased-with-himself business type out for a faux biker weekend in leather chaps and Harley tee shirt.  He sat sipping single malt and smoking a cigar with his overly maintained and overly made-up upwardly mobile biker-mama-wife-not-quite wannabe.  

There was another young couple at the table directly in front of me.  They were both dressed in boots, jeans and hoodies.  His was green and hers was blue.  Together they shivered from some phantom and I suspect drug induced breeze.  I envied how they seemed to be the only two people in their world.

There were bicycles and backpacks and bums and a girl with a sousaphone.  There was an apparent African grizzled grey god in a gold and black dashiki with three hundred dollar Italian loafers and there was an undeniable Nubian princess with coal black eyes, a hypnotic smile and legs as long as a Georgia summer.

 Darkness doesn’t fall around here at this time of year. It creeps into the corner of your eyes just slowly enough that you don’t really notice.  At some point the sun’s light must have shaded to shadow, its warmth must have shifted to shiver. But when?  Rush hour is over in most of the city.  But here the traffic remains heavy, the glint of sun on chrome having morphed into blue halogen glare.

As I said, I’ve been drinking here a while now and evening has settled in.  The crowd has changed with the lighting.  Gone are the cookie selling Girls Scouts that shouted at cars and passers-by like sideshow barkers.  There are no more young parents pushing strollers or walking dogs and most of the khakied cultural voyeurs from the suburbs have also disappeared.

As amber warmth begins to envelope me, my eyes adjust and their dilation gathers in so much more than lost light.  I see that the college boys were visitors here.  So were the faux biker couple and the twenty-something guy in the expensive coat.  But his girlfriend who should look atrocious seemed organic here among the body piercings and tattoos and purplish hair and half shaved heads.  So did the shivering young couple and the African god and Nubian princess and the bicycles and backpacks and even the damn sousaphone. 

Here, disaffected sneers and guileless smiles mingle.  Hemp sandals and Doc Martins walk together.  Here is the disenchantment of youth still in possession of innocence.  And here is its not always youthful result, a counter-culture life that rejects the perceived suffocation of conventionality.  All is kinetic here and from this place the rest of the world seems only so much restrained potential.  But restrained by what?  Mortgages and careers and appearances?  I doubt the question is considered.  Here it simply seems that some amorphous consensus has been reached that conventionality is conventionally dull.   

So, as I said, I’ve sat drinking for a while now.  About nine o’clock I noticed someone else alone and not moving.  He was completely unremarkable with reddish brown hair, a three day beard and blue eyes.  He was dressed in jeans and a “Flogging Molly” tee shirt and seemed to have spotted an acquaintance through the glass that separated the bar from the patio.  What seemed like a dozen lightning quick expressions flashed across his face as he looked into the warm glassy glow.  I followed his gaze to the source of his turmoil and understood instantly.  She was tiny and shiny against a dark wood and leather background.  A silver ring on every finger, a pierced lip and delicate tattoos disappearing up her arm into a gauzy white shirt announce that she was in her element.  Yet she remained distinct, among but not of, pearl in oyster. 

Her green eyes fixed on something the neither I nor my surreptitious new friend could see.  My gaze switched continuously from lovely her to uncertain him.  He stood too tense, so focused that I wasn’t sure that he would be able to retain any semblance of composure when she finally spotted him.  Her head began to turn, a delicate jaw line and full lips forming a smile as my friend’s hand raised to a soft wave.  He began to move forward and then froze in half stride and half smile and half wave as another guy intruded into our private scene.  He, like this place, somehow combined dark heat and openness- an amiable and disjointed jumble of inexplicable charm.  He stepped smoothly between her knees as she sat on a barstool and gave her a light kiss and comment.  She gave him a soft smile and shined even brighter. 

As her life continues, my new friend’s slams to a stop.  I watch him closely, a vulture looking to feed on shock or disappointment or anger or disgust or loathing or ANY pain.  I wait but he stands there, frustrating me, angering me with his lack of response.  He just drops his hand and casually rubs his neck as if that’s all he was doing in the first place.  There is no scowl, no grimace or cursing under his breath or appeal to his god or even defeated scrutiny of the sidewalk before him.  My mind screams at him to do something, although I have no idea what.  And I don’t care what. 

But instead of defeat or anything else, I recognize the vacuum.  I see that he’s yet another that has found the switch, the ability not to feel when the only experience available seems to be pain.  He thinks that numb is better than pain.  He thinks that numb is not dead.  I see that in his blank expression as we watch some other guy’s darkness light her.  He turns and continues down the sidewalk. 

She should have hurt him.  Not intentionally or casually or thoughtlessly.  Just naturally.  But she didn’t.  She couldn’t.  He’s gone.  Perhaps one day someone will bring him back.

In the mean time, I like it here.  Think I’ll have another drink.

Note:  Sean's really good.  Check him out.
http://www.sacredhearttattoo.com/Artists/Little5Points/SeanRains.aspx