New Blog Address

As part of my effort to move back to the use of Mark instead of Marc Olmsted, I have reconstituted the blog at a new address:

http://thetrashwhisperer.blogspot.com/

Please head over there for the latest entry.

If you are searching for the San Francisco-based poet, Marc Olmsted, I am not him. His website is under construction at www.marcolmsted.com

Thanks.

MCO 2009

What Really Happened?

I've been thinking about the accident a lot, and the more and more I think about it, the more I think I got conned. Set-up. Played.

I have been driving for 33 years. I've had a few fender-benders, some worse than others, but never an accident with physical injuries, to me or others. I have been at countless corners making the same kind of turn as I was on Saturday, and if a cyclist was coming from the direction opposite from traffic, he always knew to make sure I could see him. How many times have you noticed a cyclist or pedestrian waiting to cross if front of you until you make eye contact? How many times have you waved someone past you in the same situation I describe, perhaps apologetically because you had to move forward to get a clear view of the traffic due to parked cars obscuring your view?

I honestly think this guy proceeded precisely because he could see I was watching for traffic in the other direction. If I had clearly been at fault, why wouldn't he have wanted my insurance info? I think he ran into my car in a way that was maximally dramatic but minimally painful. All he could show me was a scraped--barely--elbow.

He played on my unconcious racist assumptions. Of course he doesn't want the police--he's illegal, look, he doesn't speak a word of English. (That was too well done. Everyone has a smattering.) But he knew I would be afraid of a lawsuit--who wouldn't? Isn't the person in the car always wrong? What he couldn't know is my kneejerk fear of somehow finding myself behind bars again--irrational in this situation, but real as concrete as far as my stomach went.

No, he wanted cash, and I wanted to make the whole situation unhappen as far as I possibly could. "Otto" played me like a violin.

And you know what, that's okay. I am actually relieved that all of my streetwise training via dealing and prison has not left me jaded enough not to be conned. It's okay that I assumed I was at fault, distracted, not paying enough attention. It's right that I felt terrible. I was grateful to get out of it for $200. He did the classic con thing of making you somehow feel better while being duped.

Perhaps things happened just as I described yesterday. I take comfort in there being just enough doubt. But if he did con me, it's on his karma, and my paying him probably burned off some of mine.

But if there's ever a next time, I think I'll just wait for the cops and ambulance. And what do I pay my insurance premiums for except for this very reason? It's probably time that I move past my fear of being tossed in the back of a cruiser. There's a reason they call them accidents.

MCO 2009

Poor But Rich

So yesterday I'm at the corner of Hollywood and El Centro, in the car, talking to my friend Michael on the Bluetooth. I look to my right, for pedestrians, none. I look to my left at the traffic going east, from left to right, and wait for an opening. I have done this same turn well over a thousand times.

From my right, down the sidewalk at a speed fast enough that I hadn't seen him a moment ago when I looked, a bicycle comes. He sees me at the stop sign, but doesn't bother to make sure I see him. I think he brakes just as he realizes I am looking the other way and am advancing because of a break in the traffic. When I hit him I am going 1 mph, and I brake instantly. He is knocked over but doesn't go flying. I am more shocked than I have ever been in my life. He literally materialized from thin air.

I climb out immediately, seized with visions of doing 10-20 for vehicular manslaughter. "I am SO sorry!" are the first words out of my mouth, taking full responsibility, sure that I must have been at fault. He is unhurt, a scrape on the elbow only. He is a young Hispanic man, very thin and short, without a helmet, who speaks no English, except to tell me "no police!" I gather he is illegal. I ask if he wants to go to the hospital, in Spanish. No. I go to get my insurance card, then realize we'd have to file an accident report with the police to process it though insurance. I don't know what to do, and then realize what he is hoping for. "Do you want some money?" I ask. He nods. Bingo.

He locks his bike, and I usher him into my car, observing him closely to make sure he's not hurt or limping. His name is Otto, he's from Mexico, and he has two daughters. When we get to the ATM I say: "$100?" He nods no. "$200." Dos cientos.

At this point, I could have realized that he was going against the flow of the traffic, on a sidewalk, and that had something to do with the accident. I could have realized that if he wasn't willing to go to the police, he wouldn't have much to go on in court. I could have insisted on $100, because I have just paid for the trip to my nephew's wedding and barely had enough to make it through the next month as it is. But frankly, I didn't think the request was unreasonable. It is far less than my deductible, and I will not face an increase in insurance premiums. And what if he wakes up the next day with pain on his side and has to go to the doctor? What if his bike turns out to be damaged? And though yes, I am poor, he is poorer.

When we return, from a block away was see an ambulance and cops, and he tells me to drop him off where we are, he will get his bike when they leave. I am delighted to do so. I feel like I've done something wrong, but I'm pretty sure we're in our rights to settle it this way. And for someone who has had dealings with the police like I've had, I am just too afraid. I know I was sober, it was an accident, it happens. But the fear is overpowering.

Today, I actually wonder if he wasn't pedaling blindly to some sort of rendezvous that would have made him some desperately needed cash. Money to send home, or to buy food for his daughters, or to pay the electric bill. Some request God found completely reasonable, and so decided to make happen there and then, but in a way that would also scare him into driving safely in the future so he stays around for his family. (No I don't really believe God works so specifically, but I still need to find meaning in the seemingly arbitrary and financial painful.)

My sister calls this morning, and without me telling her this story, she tells me she's paying for my trip to the wedding. So I won't be eating spaghetti and shopping at the 99 cents store for a month after all. I feel like the universe is telling me when you do the right thing, it'll take care of you. And gave me a chance to help some people survive in these tough economic times.

For God's sake people, learn from me. If you're on a headset while driving, compensate by being exta alert. And try to stay off the phone for all but essential conversations. I know it's nice to get more done by talking while driving, but studies say your brain is less available for the road. Let's remember we managed for decades and decades without phones in cars. It won't kill you to go without, but it may save a life.

MCO 2009

Where are the Good Republicans?

Sometimes I look at the oppressed state of so many of the world's women, and I have to think of our own history. It was only a generation ago that single motherhood was a cause for shame and shunning; a century ago getting a divorce was almost unthinkable and domestic violence never prosecuted. Women couldn't vote in 1909. Going back a few centuries, women couldn't even inherit property, and often died from having too many children.

I need to remember this when I hear reports of the Taliban taking over sections of Pakistan. Things evolve over time, usually in conjunction with the spread of democracy and the lifting of poverty. Men who don't feel oppressed feel less compelling to oppress at home as the only realm in which they can feel powerful.

I really have nothing but contempt for the right wing in this country, but I take little satisfaction in it. Okay, I lie. I take a great deal of satisfaction in it. After what they did under Bush, I want them to twist in the wind, I love how they are making ridiculous fools of themselves with their hyberbolic denunciations of everything and refusal to offer any constructive alternative solutions.

But I was born under Eisenhower, and as much as I would have probably voted for Adlai Stevenson, I'm pretty sure there were few democrats who dreaded what would happen when he lost. Eisenhower was a smart, practical man. He wasn't an ideologue. He wasn't particularly progressive either, but the country probably needed the social upheaval of the 60s to make the way for civil rights and Johnson's Great Society. Eisenhower was prescient enough to warn about the military-industrial complex-it's an extraordinary farewell speech.

I can't for the life of me understand why Republicans look back to Reagan to "reinvent" themselves, and not to Eisenhower. Reagan was a doddering fool who started us on the ridiculous path of tax cuts for the rich and monster deficits. Eisenhower got us out of Korea and presided over relative prosperity. He wouldn't pretend global warming was a liberal conspiracy.

The Republican descent into ideology, power for power's-sake, and messianic self-righteousness has helped create the kind of conditions that ensure the continued threat of fundamentalism and terrorism. The trillions dollars spent in Iraq could have alleviated a helluva lot of poverty, put a lot of Muslim girls through school, fed the progress to more open-minded societies. The consequences of their misrule may be irreversible; climate change alone threatens the planet existentially.

As I said, I have no affection for the right, but I do think a healthy, civil, two-party system where fringes remain on the fringe is good for democracy. Where are all the moderate Republicans who used to provide balance and some common sense, who didn't fetishize tax cuts as the solution to everything? The Republicans who were likely to be your small-town doctor making a house-call, the farmer who didn't want subsidies, the fair-minded sheriff who hunted but didn't see the point of assault weapons? Why won't they take their party back?

MCO 2009

War Crimes

I can't say I'm the least bit shocked at any of the revelations coming out about the prevalence and severity of torture occurring during the last 8 years. Olbermann and Maddow can say it better than I can so I won't go into all the chilling details nor debunk all the insane reasoning. What I will note is the absurdity of claiming torture "works" when one suspect was waterboarded 83 times and the other 183 times. If it "worked," a few times would easily suffice to get all the information necessary to find out actionable intelligence.
183 times means it's NOT working.

The men in our custody have been told that Americans are violent infidels capable of montrous cruelty--torture just proves them right. When these suspects are treated humanely, they are far more likely to start questioning what they've been told about America, and give helpful information--if they have it. American agents, working in a foreign country and culture (often having no command of native languages) often pick up someone low-level or not involved at all. The bad-guy's drivers brother-in-law, as it were. (The real life CIA is nothing like it is in the movies. It's full of people making mistakes, pursuing faulty leads, getting the wrong guy.) And even if they might have the right guy, whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Why should one have to be a citizen to be due this fundamental assumption?

What happened was that Cheney and Bush didn't get the intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, because there was no such link. So the order went out to continue the torture until the suspects finally figured out what they had to say to make it stop. Whatever they coughed up, whether verifiable or not, was then seized on by Cheney et al. to justify the invasion, with no details given as to how the intelligence was obtained for reasons of "national security." The torture "worked" when they said what the torturers wanted to hear. Might as well be the Spanish Inquisition.

The truly pathological part is that once this phony narrative was established, it assumed the status of "fact" in the minds of those propounding it. When the Nazis lied, they knew they were lying. When they said they were "resettling" Jews, they knew damn well they were killing them. I honestly think Cheney believed the intelligence he made sure was invented.

It's the scariest kind of mendacity, when the liars believe their own lies. I also think George Bush believed it when he said "The United States does not torture." He'd read the memo from his lawyer saying it wasn't.

Torture is never, ever, ever okay. (Big Mark, if you defend it, I will reject your comment. Read Matt Alexanders "How to Break a Terrorist" instead.) It may be dreadful for the victim, but it is soul-killing for those who perpetrate it. And it begs the question, where was the conscience of these people? (Hence today's Hy-Art). When did their self-righteousness cloud out their sense of right and wrong? When did they start to believe you are an American before you're a human being? A citizen of this country before you are a citizen of the planet?

The truth is the vast bulk of this torture, from waterboarding to Abu Ghraib, had nothing to do with getting intelligence. It was about revenge. These people had dared attack the United States, had dared question our power and hegemony, and that justified any amount of abuse. We dehumanized our enemy and in doing so, lost our humanity.

I'm relieved that Obama put a stop to these techniques, but make no mistake about it, they continue all over and America and certainly the world. Things go on in prisons and detentions centers in this country that are cruel, inhuman and degrading. I was stuck in a tiny holding room with 50 other men for 4 hours once, and this goes on every day. People kick drugs in prison, unattended, all the time, and if you've ever watched someone go through that, the lack of even minimal medical supervision is horrific. There isn't enough staff--we want criminals off the street, but we don't want to pay for anything resembling rehabilitation. Most of the discipline and punishment in prison occurs between inmates, doing the dirty work so that the administration can keep technically "clean" hands. If you declare that you will refuse to engage in any violence under any circumstances, as in a race riot, you risk getting beaten to a pulp for it, and forced into protective custody. Inmates are victimized by other inmates all the time--the adminstration is too overwhelmed to prevent it, or doesn't really care.

Human beings who exercise dominance over other human beings will abuse that power, no one is exempt. Thinking we are different, just by virtue of our Americanness, is the height of arrogance. If it still means anything special to be American, we need to investigate and prosecute the torturers to the fullest exent of the law, period.

Insanity and Unmanageablity

I googled
"unmanageability" and the first result was of Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading" in which (unbeknownst to me) he plays an alcoholic. Then I googled "insanity" and the first result was this skydiving poster. So I layered one over the other at exactly 50%. Have I stumbled upon the successor to Hy-Art? Googlebrids?

Those two words were on my mind because I was reminded by a story I heard in the rooms of AA that insanity is not always preceded or even accompanied by unmanageability. My life as a dealer is a perfect example: all that money made my life much more manageable, practically speaking; but doing something with such horrific potential consquences was the height of insanity. That's one of the reasons I didn't choose to get sober when it would have made all kinds of sense to do so. I thought my life was supposed to be unmanageable--as it reads in Step 1--and if I paid my bills and walked my dog and kept my appointments, I didn't qualify. I didn't get "unmanageability" until guards were managing my life 24/7.

Of course, insanity is more than enough qualification for AA, but that sort of self-diagnosis is almost impossible. Insane people never think they're insane; sane people question their sanity all the time. That's why Bill Wilson put unmanageability before sanity in the 12 steps. He knew a person in the throes of alcoholic insanity will tell you they are the sanest person in the room and believe it. (What could be saner than wanting to feel better?) But when they lose their job, car, family etc., only then can it be undeniable that their lives have become unmanageable.

I've probably shared most of this before, but in downloading my entire blog (5 years worth) to a text file, it came out to over 2400 pages, so good luck writing that much and not repeating onself. I also saved all the work I had on the website, and realized my output of art has been prodigious. (I almost said "insane")

The creative life is the only one I want to live--the only one that is both sane and manageable.

MCO 2009

This is What Happens When I Skip a Day

Well, yes, first, I do note the irony that producing an amusing piece of art about not procrastinating, is, at heart, an act of procrastination.

My poor Libra-American soul is locked in a daily search for balance. From the blog, email, TV, and Facebook, I get an enormous amount of immediate pleasure and gratification, not the least because these are interactive forms of communication (Yes, even TV, because watching it is a shared experience with everyone else watching it.) Writing is just me and the screen and my brain. Once a week or so I post another piece of the memoir and get a few reactions, but 90% of the gratification is what I derive from writing. In order to get that other 10%, as in the pleasure of perhaps publishing it and being read on a large scale, I have to engage over and over in that solitary process that is rather like going to the gym. Right after you're finished it feels marvelous, but they don't call it working out f0r nothing. So I tend to choose what feels good in the short term (being connected with people) over the longterm cultivation of a career that has tremendous meaning for me. It's a problem. But a quality problem, by any measure.

You'd think with all the walking around the neighborhood I do that I would witness more actual acts of littering, but it's very rare. Yesterday was one of the few times; a man in his van waiting double-parked for someone dropped an empty pack of American Spirit cigarettes from his window. I really need to have a better reaction rehearsed, but what came out was along the lines of: "Why do you do this? WHY? Why can't you just take it from the car, and into in the house and put it in the trash?" To which he responded with his own question {insert Armenian accent} "Why you pick up the trash when they pick it up?" It was clear he was talking about the weekly streetsweeping machines. "Oh c'mon. " I answered. "They don't pick it up, I pick it up! And you can make a little effort to help out!" At which point I walked over the the dumpster and tossed in his pack. "See how easy it is!" I'm happy to say he seemed to be hanging his head a little, though the satisfaction of shaming a litterer was less than the discomfort of confronting a stranger.

It's funny because I'd just walked the dog down a parallel street where I never pick up trash, and was disgusted by how absolutely clogged with litter it was. The street was strewn with plastic bags, fast food wrappers, Starbucks and Jamba Juice cups, and endless empty cigarette packs. The streetsweepers get a fraction of it, and certainly don't get anything on the sidewalks. The only reason any of this finally gets picked up is because the apartment buildings have gardeners that come once a month and usually will clean whatever is there, but that leaves the area trashed most of the time. And this guy knows it. He has eyes.

What I saw was a sense of entitlement combined with very little sense that anything he does has an impact. It's a weird combination of "I pay taxes so I want to see what I pay them for" combined with "nothing I do makes any difference, so it doesn't matter if I litter" (and then probably complain about what a crappy neighborhood he lives in.) It's maddening!

What I should have probably said is: "Have some pride in you neighborhood! Aren't you proud to be Armenian? Don't you want to keep Little Armenia beautiful?" I think I might try that tack next time.

And since I've totally blown my non-procrastination vow with this long-ass entry, I'd like to share one last thing. I reconnected with an old friend on Facebook, and she offered condolences about my brother, adding "you've had to endure way too much for one family." She was right, of course, in that two of us dead out of five is a huge amount of loss. At the same time, the thought that immediately sprang to my mind was "no, no, we're actually extremely blessed." Perhaps I'm projecting my own sense of amazement every time I realize how extraordinary my own survival through both AIDS and drug addiction has been, but if I look at my sisters, I know that every day they also look at their 2 children respectively, and there can be no measuring the joy that comes the fact they are healthy and happy. And we all profoundly appreciate each other and my Mom on a daily basis as well, not to mention that none of us worries about where our next meal is coming from. That's huge.

The truth is that no one gets through life without their "fair" share of grief. Nobody. Once you accept the inevitability of that reality in your own life, you can stop railing against the what, and concentrating on the how. How can I put these events in a perspective that helps me live with them, find meaning in them?

For example, I have noticed that the worst traumas endured by my family-Luke's death, my Dad's death, my imprisonment, Steve's suicide--have never been closer than 5 years apart. That has been enormously comforting to me. It also gives me great compassion for those who suffer multiple losses in a short amount of time. Those of us"lucky" enough to have our tragedies spaced out can be there for those who are overwhelmed, helping them get through it. How beautiful is that?

MCO 2009