Perpetual Notion

I never gave much thought to the Haiku poem. That all changed once I took a summer internship. Working full time in a cubicle, I suddenly saw the value of the confined poetic medium and its correlation to my life. The format can vary, but I tend to stick with the 5.7.5 model. That is three lines spread as five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables.

To bring the syllabic verse into some form of regular usage, and in part inspired by a friend’s “weekend limericks,” I am instituting the Friday Haiku. Though for lust of catchy terms, I will henceforth refer to this weekly post as “Fraiku.” Please enjoy.

Once a week haikus:
poetic joy to the world,
Lord of verse has come.

Okay, just kidding.
I am not really that vain.
It just fit so well.

But does fitting defend
my word choice and my message?
No, just make it cute.

Outside my window
a tree leans in to tell me
nature’s big secret.

I did not find it in-between
‘til there it was, and it alone seen
in space provided sense has swollen
shut to all and kept from fallin

Here sat a warmth that embraces its own
market of flesh but ration of bone
portion enough for grass not known greener
experience though sits a bit leaner

Simple is pleasant and pleasant is fine
but somehow a piece steps out of line
placed under the nose for sniff, say hello
an addition this, and with it I go

Sitting, rest easy, but doing so higher
a little more blood pump and no sign of tire
ditch this reserve, be not so humble
these are the moments that make reason stumble.

While we can not be certain of the reasoning, we know this much, dry humping has lead to the near end of our species. No less popular than this craze, is the search for an explanation why. Why is it that our youth have turned their lusty pubescent gazes away, renouncing sexual heritage? Here everyone pokes a finger in the blame-pie.

There are those who point to the pious for sweeping sexual education under the rug in promotion of abstinence. To do otherwise would be sin, and worthy of eternal damnation. The argument is well accounted for.

Then there is the group calling attention to the mis-educational dangers of television. The music video generation has images burned into their retinas of all this grinding and groping both against objects and each other. Who sanctioned the TV set to give that talk on the birds and the bees? Because they got it all wrong. Television should have avoided the issue, but since they tackled it, they should have the decency to finish the job. This watered down dance floor sex has obscured the act to an obscene wrestling match.

Though we must not forget the experts. From across the board folks are casting burden to the great disseminators of information. The people who have for years given warning of dangers in promiscuity, being unprotected, and not tested. So many things to befall if we do not follow the rules verbatim. Wearing the proper item, taking the daily pill, doing it this week as opposed to the next, getting checked out, making sure they get checked out, doing it this way but not that. All the variables and guidelines. This instinctively animal act is now prefaced with a checklist.

We can stand upon out pile of suspects, though come no closer to reaching anything of use. To continue pointing our fingers we will succeed in no more than tickling around the problem, when what we need to do is penetrate this outer fabric of blame. Mine is not the position to propagate a solution. Though what I can do is stand beside my peers in addressing our dire situation. We, as a society have fallen stagnant. Our youth, for whatever reason, have ceased procreation. A conscious collective effort to end our lineage, an evolutionary step that we can not yet grasp, or plain old apathy? This, that, or the other…  Sex is dead.

Quite possibly my favorite room in any house. I have always been quite at home in the bathroom. I was sitting there one afternoon and trying to figure when this interest began. I though back to my youth when my cousin and I would play in the bathroom at either my family’s home, his, or grandma’s. We would hover around the sink and mix our potions created from all the fine bottles, slimes, and powders in the cabinets below. Not concerned with how much it cost or what it could do to our skin, we filled everything we spotted into our test tube. With so much mysterious and wonderful plunder, it was fortunate that we had such a large test tube. And it looked remarkably like a family drinking water glass, hmm. Everyday was spent on the verge of a major breakthrough in science.

Any small room makes a great clubhouse. Big spaces get boring. But put me in a small room and it can become anything. The bathroom is the dominant small room. It could be a submarine or a tree fort or perhaps the wreckage of a plane on a deserted island. That one was always a favorite. It is such an isolated space, the rest of the house disappears. I could keep my mind within the game and be unconcerned with life beyond the wall. What the imagination could do to the common bathroom was unmatched.

A personal sanctuary. Anyone can walk into your bedroom. But that bathroom, under your control, is yours and yours alone. When I lost my imagination but gained my curiosity, I still enjoyed the bathroom. This was not so much about puberty as it was just having my own time. The walls remained a comforting blockade to the outside. Instead of daydreams, I could focus on clear thinking. I did not go to the bathroom because I had to think, thinking just happened to be a byproduct of going to the bathroom. Anywhere else in the home, school, or work I could always find a distraction. I am a very distracted person. The bathroom is where serious thinking takes place. I am not in conversation, there is no television or computer, no books, photographs, nothing. Nothing except for toilet paper and shampoo. Maybe once I will read the ingredients to shampoo. But once is enough. Philosophy, theology, literature, sociology, great breakthroughs in thought happen in the bathroom. If I could harness the focus native to the bathroom for daily practice, I would be a very diligent man.

Two is a crowd. Not since play dates with my cousin, has the bathroom been hospitable to more than one. Of course there is space for multiple people in these public restrooms, but it is my personal space. Does not matter if you got there first, you are in my space. With these feelings the bathroom becomes taboo. Men do not talk, and if they do, barely. They do not make eye contact, and if they do, they keep their eyes high. Ceiling is a good target, the floor if you can commit to it. This quiet dance around each other helps to maintain the illusion of personal sanctuary. It is this illusion I have grown a desire to break. In the last few years I have become interested in the awkward social dynamic of men in the bathroom. Certain folks are oblivious to this: small kids and the elderly. But for the rest, those in their prime, we just feel awkward. I like to watch this, I want to prod this, and to investigate. I feel increasingly compelled to make conversations, and sometimes I do. On occasion it works, other times people get weirded out. But usually I do not act. I think about it, and I want to, but it is so easy not to.

My New Year’s resolution was close to being a mandate that I must, when encountering another person in the restroom, always make conversation. I decided that ”always” could come back to bite my butt. It will remain instead, a barrier that I will pick at, on occasion, when I can get up the guff. But it is fun. And someday, maybe, the restroom will become the new break room or lounge area. It is at that point that I will regret my social course and long for my lost sanctuary.

I recently received an email from moveon.org wanting me to sign a petition supporting a bill that would place pricing limitations on the oil companies. Yes, I do hate the oil companies. I do agree that they are exploiting us with their rising prices. The oil companies are probably even better represented in Washington than we are. I do not enjoy the mass of profit flowing to Big Oil, they do not deserve that money. And yet we do not deserve the low costs that we have been paying for our gasoline. The $3.39 at the pump is not an accurate account of the real expense. Fossil fuels are in limited supply and we act as though they are infinite, a crop that will continue to yield. No, they will run out. We have probably even peaked already. Then there is the damage that we do, both in acquiring and using the fuel. Maybe the Earth does warm and cool in cycles, but we are certainly helping to warm it now.

Where is the sense of big picture? Gasoline is not overpriced, it is under priced and the money is going to the wrong places. Gas prices need to rise and not to anyone’s benefit, but for everyone’s benefit. The high costs of fuel must be channeled to research and development of more sustainable energy resources. There are all these advertisements for life insurance and retirement plans, so we know that people can think into the future. So why can we not do this for our collective future?

Higher fuel cost will also be of great value as a deterrent to driving personal automobiles. This is where I will do a rare thing, and that is praise the free market. Technology in fuel efficiency is getting better, fuel has peaked and is thus becoming more difficult to obtain, people are becoming more conscious of their driving habits and fuel consumption. The oil companies are watching all of this happen and wondering about their future. The end of Big Oil has become a reasonable idea. They, being business savvy, have decided to make a valiant last effort at pulling in as much cash as is possible before they are obsolete or run out of town. Likely both.

The oil companies have raised their prices. The masses are paying the price, for now. The news will continue to grow more dire for Big Oil, the prices will go up, less and less people will pay, and eventually this current system will phase out. This is the free market economy working its way out. I am not opposed to the efforts by the Senate and moveon.org, trying to curb oil profits. But the unbalanced profits are just a part of the problem, and not even a significant part at that. As much as I despise to see them reap the exploitative profits, I love to see them dig their grave. And Big Oil is doing just that.

I do not want it from a box
Poked and pulled, electric shocks
Raised in a cage, served in a can
Taste the plastic and not the land

I have feelings towards meat. Opinions. With friends vegetarian and vegan, I have tasted new things, rethought what it is that makes a meal. I was anxious for the Farmer’s Market in coming back to Eau Claire. And I am active with the Foodlums (UWEC’s local and organic food club). My diet has been shifting, evolving. At the forefront, is meat. I like meat, I eat it, and I am not opposed to its presence on the dinner table. We started out carnivores. It is natural. When humans took to eating plants, that was unnatural, we got sick. Time happens, we got healthy, balanced out. It works.

Where my concern enters, is the process which brings the meal to my plate. We have turned our animals into products. They may lack our abilities of cognition, yet that does not defend their treatment as little more than plastic. Animals live in forests and fields, not in factories. What it boils down to, is that I do not want an animal to have existed for me alone. What creature should live for no other purpose than to feed another? The idea disturbs me. Everything deserves sunshine. If I have no other conviction in life, so be it. But everything, all of it, deserves sunshine. Our current practice falls greatly short of this. The issue goes to far more brutality than light deprivation, but you do not have to take my word for it. PETA.org will tell you all you care to know, and plenty more. …In fact, they may be a poor source. Rather scary and polarizing.

My resolution is to know what I am eating. I want to respect the life that preceded my meal. I can do this by knowing where it came from, what it ate, and how it lived. I want to know that it had the capacity to roll in a field of grass and was not squatted down in a cramped cage of filth. I will continue to consume meat, though consciously. And only when I know and agree with the origin. The term is free range. This is more work, often more financial expense, and overall less meat eaten. I can live with this, and what is more… I can sleep with this.

Nineteen years with the wise hand of public education on my shoulder. Nudging me along. Sometimes gently, other times with a substantial shove. Harvesting the thought crop. And in time reining me and my ideas into some region of acceptability. I graduated. Two years ago now. And here I still hold to that which I had claimed then, “The best thing that I ever did was to go to college. The worst was to graduate.” A year of assorted work, and life with the folks has landed my existence back in my college town. At no point have I been surprised by this end. Something in the academic air that calls me in. Something different than whatever calls in the dude with the Camaro hanging out near the high school. Apparently we have both come back for something we want, and I will not judge. But, the authorities may question such behaviors. His of course. Mine are on the up and up. But I digress…

Unless I do the graduate school thing (not ruled out), I am on my own for academic pursuits. And of them I am far from done. I may have ceased my chase after the carrot degree hung before my nose, though I do not have to cease the chase all together. As I am a very goal oriented person, I have begun to develop a Life Degree. A loose concept, that if nothing else will keep me on the balls of my feet.

The Life Degree will serve as a list of goals new and old that I feel will better round out my life experience. Deeply steeped in the notion that we never stop learning, I am going after the true liberal arts compilation. I post my proposed degree as its own page on this site. Rather brief at this point, but goals/criteria can be added as they arise. To “complete” the degree would be amazing, though unnecessary. Some of it I expect to accomplish, others… well, I am not ruling them out. I am here for the chase.

What is on your Life Degree?