A Day in the Life of Chaos

My father always seemed old.  Okay, maybe older is a better word.  He never seemed ancient and he certainly has never been like "old guy."  Old guy is a guy in my office that is slightly 10 years older than me but has seemed old since probably the day he was born.  I swear to God his mother gave birth to him and he came out in a tie gripping about those nasty kids.  He drives a Cadillac, need I say more? My father never even seemed older in the way that young people view those 10 years their senior.  Like they some how came from a world alien in from their own.  A world with completely different culture, values and rituals when it comes to growing up. No, my father just seemed like a father.  He mostly stood in an adult world but still had or toe or two in the world of a child. As I cross through the midpoint of my life I often look at myself in terms of my father.  I consider my age and the stage in life of my son.  I think about how when I was at that point, my father s

At some point in my life I crossed the line.  When it was, how it happened, I don't know.  The line was as blurry as my memory of breakfast last month.   Every generation has experienced this feeling because music is effectively a time stamp on our minds.  For whatever reason the teenage years are the most susceptible to this impression. I don't think there is a human alive that can't close their eyes and think of a song that was once playing on the radio or archived on an LP or a cassette tape.  Of course both of these terms alone are a generational divide.  Even before our very eyes the CD is giving way to the .mp3. Perhaps it is a result of a fundamental resistance to change but each successive generation has also despised some new music just as the one before it did.  From Duke Ellington to swing.  From swing to Elvis and the Beatles overtaken by the psychedelic and rock.  The latent violence and sexuality of rap and the screaming beat of punk each seemed to reach

As time passes I have always chosen to look over my shoulder.  I like to know who is still following, who is still there.  Some people blaze a trail into the future and chose to let the moments of their life they built it upon to fade into the mist.   You should never look back they say, never dwell in the past.  While we can't live in the past, forgetting is is like forgetting the foundation a building was constructed on.  Memories can be kind, beautiful or as sharp as a knife.   They can rip at our psyche like the teeth of a jagged saw yet they make us what we are.  To forget them entirely is to forget a piece of yourself. While I may never see them again, there is something wonderfully cathartic about knowing the figure I harbor in a memory still exists.  Occasionally, lives might cross again.  The most magical of these crossings allows for apologies for the mistakes of the past and redemption through the knowledge of a moment in life once shared together.  It transitions the

Years ago the immortal Monty Python, a name that means everything to anyone born before 1970 and almost nothing to those born after, created a film called The Meaning of Life.  It was vintage Python, filled with exploding men and Catholics singing Every Sperm is Sacred.  In a Python way it laughed at our own preoccupations, our own uniquely human thoughts. The film began with a song: Why are we here, what's life all about? Is God really real, or is there some doubt? Well tonight we're going to sort it all out, For tonight it's the Meaning of Life. What's the point of all this hoax? Is it the chicken and the egg time, are we just yolks? Or perhaps we're just one of God's little jokes, Well ça c'est the Meaning of Life. Is life just a game where we make up the rules, While we're searching for something to say, Or are we just simply spiraling coils, Of self-replicating DNA. In this life, what is out fate? Is there Heaven and Hell? Do we re

When I was a child I had a mentor.  Well not really, mentor is a word that conjurers up an image of an apprentice working with a powerful wizard.  In reality it was more like a person that feels special to you for an unknown reason.  There was just something about that person that seemed to sit right.  Maybe they listened, maybe they didn't.  Maybe it was just a person that even though I never asked anything from them, they made me feel secure.  They made me feel important or valued in some way.  In my case they were friends of my parents who in some way through my contact with them made me feel important in their eyes. Ken Piper Nearly as far back as I can remember I knew a wonderful man.  He seemed seven feet tall and had a body four feet wide.  His head was bald and he had a smile and a laugh as deep as a geyser billowing steam.  He used to give me books or records when I was small and as I grew older he would take me to school.  He lived with us for awhile while his life w

It is not easy being a liberal. Once I listened to an episode of the Prairie Home Companion, I know, a distinctly liberal thing to do, and Garrison Keillor had an interesting thought.  He announced at the beginning of the show he was going to become a Republican.  After doing so, he commented how easy life was.  His emotional guilt was gone.  He didn't have to worry about the environment or about charity.  He didn't have to consider other people, only worry about himself.  Yes sir, for Garrison Keillor, life was sweet.  There are times I wonder what it would be like to follow in his path.  I think I would sleep so well at night, my mind would be clear and my focus would be my own. It is funny how when we cross paths with a homeless person in our own world we are often oblivious.  If they are an everyday sight, they become invisible and often a nuisance.  When at work I often leave through a back door to avoid the out stretched hands.  I have never given to them choosing

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up." Martin Niemöller We are now 6 months out from the next election cycle.  America will again look at itself in the mirror and maybe 30% of those eligible will actually vote.  The vast majority of those will vote based on their fears and misconceptions, few will vote for a vision or a future.  Negativism will overwhelm us as corporate money will flood the airwaves with messages by inauspicious sounding groups like "Citizens for a Clean America" funded quietly by the oil industry.  If there should be any lesson learned from the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it is just how much power corporate America an

In Santa Monica California there is a long street promenade spanning blocks. It is a people place in a city built on cars, freeways and the isolated communities they spawned. Spaced out in increments musicians play, girls sing, clowns tie balloons and even the freakish contort their bodies in ways that defy sense. On one short stretch a young woman stood with guitar in hand. She sang from her heart, a smile piercing her lips. Her eyes were filled with joy as she seemed to turn this public space into a cathedral of her own.  With her talent on display for the world to see she was comfortable, almost serene.  There was no hesitation, no modesty, only a smile and an expression of joy painted with natural color across her lips. Santa Monica, is a wonderful part of Los Angeles mercifully rescued from the cycle of destruction and renewal. Los Angeles is a city that in truth is quite ugly however, little by little it is remembering that it has a soul. Lost among the maze of immigrant nei

When I was a child growing up on MacINNES St. in the frozen northern town of Anchorage, Alaska, my world seemed like a world unto itself.  It was a clearly defined nation state with borders I needed a passport stamp from my parents to cross.  Wide roads acting as frontiers ringed the nation with seemingly impenetrable traffic.  Around my house there was a vast menagerie of streets that seemed to wind their way through all forms of terrain, perfect for a bicycle.  There were hills, gravel areas, circles that safely went around and returned to where they started.  Best of all, there were trails that skirted houses.  They led to areas that seemed vast and wild.  We gave them names like Burlington Woods and the Swamp near Geneva Woods.  Each had their own characteristics, places filled with secret trails, hiding spots and rafts of old wood.  These were the National Parks of our country, places where kids were kids and parents were a distant shout from a porch calling for dinner. My so

My grandfather died about 8 years ago now, he was in his 80's when he passed.  He was the son of German immigrants and spent his life working for Hughes Aircraft in California.  It was the time when Howard Hughes was in his heyday.  Ideas were flowing like lightning bolting from the sky.  Invention fed modernization and modernization fed more invention.   Government led the way.  It established the context, the mission and brilliant minds lined up to provide the answers. When you are a child you never really appreciate the significance of a life, of a talent, until you grow older and place it within the context of your own life.   A micrometer is a tool that allows a human being to nearly create perfection.  It measures the minute and until computers and lasers it was the guide post for human ingenuity when seeking to create the exact.  My grandfather had countless micrometers and his abilities as a machinist created parts the flew with the Apollo missions to the moon.  They answ