Ruminate

Today on a mailing list I belong to, one of the regulars posted a series of links to articles detailing the often callous and cavalier attitude of US soldiers towards both their Iraqi enemies and civilians caught in the crossfire during military operations. There was a Sergeant who expressed his remorse at killing a civilian who was standing next to an Iraqi officer by saying “I’m sorry, but the chick was in the way.” There was a pilot detailing his “exhilaration” when his bombs struck and “all hell broke loose.” There was a (I suspect doctored) photo showing troops on the deck of an Aircraft carrier in a formation that spelled, from above, “Fuck Iraq.”

When I see this kind of thing I am reminded of pictures I have seen in the past showing the profanities laborers scrawled on bomb casings at the factory during World War II, and the sayings written on planes and missiles in Vietnam. The person posting the links was clearly disgusted by this behavior and attempting to stir up simmering resentment and anger among the list participants. I sympathize with his intent, but I think he may be a bit off the mark.

While I certainly don’t think anyone should be supported who wants to kill civilians (or anyone at all), I think one has to allow for a pretty broad spectrum of callousness and disregard in the attitude of troops who are out on the front line. The fact is, these men and women (many of them are really just kids) are out in an environment where they must kill or be killed. The enemy often hates them, and they have been trained, drilled, motivated, and harangued to hate this enemy back. When you have a job to do such as fighting a war, this is probably a necessary survival instinct. I have observed similar attitudes and changes in friends who have gone into careers in law enforcement, particularly when they are walking beats and riding patrols. I wouldn’t say that they are bad people, but something inside each of them has changed in a way that while perhaps necessary to do their jobs, still stirs up resentment– and even a little fear– in me.

The military is a way of life that thrives on attitude, posturing, honor, glory, duty, and machismo. It is difficult for me to understand a position where one expects these men and women to risk their lives for country against a despotic enemy, but maintains that they should do so without feeling any anger or even hatred towards those they fight. This isn’t an attitude I want my children or friends to have to take, which is why I have no desire to see them become Marines or Army Rangers. For similar reasons, different only in degree, I don’t harbor any desire to see them become police officers or college hockey players either!

For the most part, and particularly in a war like this one where the “rules” of engagement are being broken and dirty tricks being engaged in, a soldier has little leeway to refuse to carry out a task because there is too much civilian risk. To do so is to put themselves and their buddies in danger. Further, if they hope to make it alive through a desperate time that no training can really prepare them for, they must not be merely acquiescent… they need to be excited, motivated, angry, and gung-ho. These are the qualities of the soldiers who are going to be able to make the right decisions to survive and not spend the rest of their lives wracked with guilt over doing their job.

There are certainly lines that should not be crossed, and tragedies have occurred when our brothers and sisters have gone to war and then gone too far. I am against the manner in which we went to war in the first place– I am certainly not going to advocate wholesale slaughter of civilians, or pretend that seeing the stress and hatred of a mortal enemy exhibited in the speech and actions of a solder is a beautiful thing. But I recognize the psychological necessity to depersonalize the enemy, and the need to protect oneself, even pre-emptively, in ways that can cause injury and death to civilians who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, often through no fault of their own, and sometimes against their will.

War is an ugly, brutal business. Those who take part in it must give up a small piece of their soul to become the kind of detached fighter that will survive and achieve our country’s objectives. I wouldn’t wish it on my friends or family, but I wish these soldiers the best now and pray for a healthy and speedy return and recovery from the trauma inflicted by warfare.

One of the strange things about being a divorced parent is the whole issue of
schedules. I am fortunate to get along pretty well with my ex-wife (though it
is quite clear that we never could have stayed married). Ironically, this can
make scheduling issues even worse. For a long time we had a schedule where the
kids would be at my house on alternate days and alternate weekends. This worked
pretty well, since they could ride the bus home from school to each house as
appropriate, but it could get a bit confusing. More recently we have switched
to a complicated sounding 3/4 schedule, where the kids are with my either
Sat-Tue or Sun-Tue. If this all seems a bit strange to you, it is.

Because we all get along, there is plenty of flexibility in the schedule around
the kids’ activities, business trips, etc. But yesterday’s events are a good
example of what can happen because of this flexibility. I woke early on
Saturday with a sound plan to spend most of the day doing some needed creative
things: getting some query letters out in the mail, researching some markets,
transcribing some drafts from my journal, and finally getting in a solid 3-4
hours of blissfully uninterrupted writing time. At about 9a, while I was
drinking coffee and looking at the Poets & Writers classified, my daughter
called to see if coming over at 10 a.m. is too early. I was a bit irritated at
the interruption and told her that I didn’t have any plans to have them over. I
talked to Mom, she realized that the schedule this weekend starts on Sunday, and
I go back to work.

Then I start feeling guilty. As a divorced parent you look forward to– and
plan around– your time without the children just as you look forward to– and
make plans for– your time with them. I want to have my kids with me all the
time. But if I know I am not going to, I will plan to do certain things when
they are not there just as I plan activities for the times they are with me. It
is hard for me not to see my kids every day. One of the small rewards is that
it does allow for some more “free” time to do other things.

But I don’t ever want my kids to think that I don’t want them around. They are
welcome to come home and stay anytime they want on a “Mom Day” or days, but
that is a discussion for them to have with their Mother. So I called back to
explain that it wasn’t that I don’t want them to come over, that of course they
can come anytime they want, but it was a day they are supposed to be with their
mom and she probably wants to do things with them now that the schedule is
straightened out.

An hour later my daughter calls back to say she and her brother will be over in
a bit. There go all my plans. I meant every word I said when I told them they
were welcome anytime. But I didn’t expect them to actually take me up on my
offer!

All was not lost, though– I still hoped to get some work done before dinner,
possibly even a few hours of writing. But along with the kids comes the kids’
friends, need for help with their computer, discussions, the blaring of music
and the PlayStation, and ultimately a friend who is visiting from Anchorage who
wants to spend the night to visit my son. While I am OK leaving my two children
alone for a few hours, I won’t do so with someone else’s child over!

At the end of the day, I find I have achieved nearly nothing of the plans for
the day, not to mention getting a lot less sleep than I had hoped. And this
morning, the whole cycle starts over.

Springtime, which many tell me is supposed to be a happy, vibrant time is, for
me, all too often a time of depression. The last, deepest, and worst part of
Winter finds me withdrawn into my shell, my self-examination mechanism dialed
down to zero, with all aspirations and dreams larger than the workaday world
walled away into a deep part of my psyche that I refuse to acknowledge.

But the coming of Spring makes that an impossible position to maintain. I have
no choice but to let the light in where it burrows like a worm into that little
seed from which my motivations (ahem) spring.

It’s a mini-crisis like the birthday crisis I endure every October, when I
become overwhelmed with regret at roads taken and not taken, opportunities
missed, goals gone unachieved. But unlike the birthday crisis, which hits just
as the darkness of winter is coming in, causing a systemic shutdown, the Spring
crisis retains a hint of that fabled sense of renewal, and instead of deciding
that it’s all in vain I crawl forth convinced that this time I am going to kick
myself in the ass and really do things right. My abandoned plans to lose some
weight, gain a foreign language, become recognized as a Great American Poet
under the age of 20, 25, 30, 35, are all revived. I become convinced that I can
excel at my technical job while retaining and feeding the essential
intellectual core that needed to be any good as a poet, thinker, critic, and
essayist.

Whatever. I am once again convinced– as always– that next year won’t find me
in the same place, writing these same thoughts down once more.

Looks like Wes Sheldahl has taken up the task of continuing development of GreyMatter– a great weblog tool that used to be my favorite, but whose author discontinued development almost two years ago… a decision which eventually forced me to change to Movable Type. This could be a really wonderful development for webloggers.

I don’t know when I enjoy movies more: when I see in them what I am, or when I see in them a vision of something I want to be, however ephemeral. Like most people, I enjoy losing myself in the common cinematic fantasy where I become the lead character, be that character good or evil, male or female, comforting or terrifying. But some of the best movies reach into my own psyche and make me uncomfortable with observations and elaborations that seem to speak directly to me alone, revealing reality in a manner ultimately more satisfying than the more ephemeral pleasure of fantasy that accompany lesser entertainments.

Adaptation is this kind of movie.

Charlie Kaufman, paired with his imaginary twin brother and alter-ego Donald has brilliantly captured the constant interior monologue of a working artist, in all its inconsistent glory, rocking back and forth between banality and trenchant insight, with bouts of masturbation (literally and mentally) sandwiched in between. One moment Charlie finds himself fixated on his need for coffee and a muffin (banana nut), the next he is ranting incoherently into a tape recorder at the very moment of what surely feels like inspiration, though at times we in the detached and faceless audience are quite sure it is something else altogether. The solipsism of watching Kaufman watching himself author the script of the very movie we are seeing is the physical embodiment of the inward navel-spying gaze of creation itself. Nicolas Cage brings to life the twin (physically and psychologically) aspects of creation with aplomb, invoking a fiction that is, as Homer Simpson would say, “Funny because it’s true.”

The film archly reflects the inner world of Kaufman as he writes the screenplay for the very film you are watching. It’s at once disturbing, funny, messy, and ultimately fantastic. Cage perfectly overplays both Kaufman and his fictional, Bill McKee worshipping (and decidedly unblocked) twin. Charlie is an introverted, agitated, over-intellectualizing author, while Donald is
oblivious, quick with a joke, and confident. While Charlie agonizes over the complex needs to bring a “book about flowers” to life, Donald blithely churns out his script that has a single schizophrenic character serving as serial killer, victim, and pursuing sheriff, the impossibility of the physical mechanism for implementing this be damned. In truth the real life book Charlie is tasked with adapting (The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean) is much more than a book about flowers… it is really the story of an obsessive, apparent rube with enough backstory for three movies. As Charlie’s desire to massage this “clever New Yorker shit” into a story with a more traditional narrative arc unravels, so does the movie. To everyone’s benefit.

For a short stretch near the end Adapation teeters on the edge of becoming the massive cop-out that some observers have claimed it to be. Nearly hoisted by his own petard, Kaufman has to find a way to write himself out of the corner he has squarely placed the fim. We are left to wonder what trick can possibly be pulled from Kaufman’s hat to save his movie– a trick that is necessary if the film is to avoid the slow “death” by trailing off in an orgy of pseudo-intellectualism and wishful irony” that seems to be the bane of the kind of independent filmmaking which informs the creative landscape of this movie. At the same time, Kaufman can’t resort to a “Hollywood ending” of the very kind he most despises. That Kaufman is actually able to take the best intentions of both of these methods and make them work– simultaneously realizing the inevitable, permanent schism that must emerge between the twins– is a precise illustration of who wears the real Genius Pants in the Kaufman family. Not to mention that his elaboration of both filmmaking conventions allows him to both use them for his own purposes and comment on their shortcomings, essnetially folding the movie in on itself in the manner of Ourobouros, the mythical symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail, which makes an appearance in the film as part of a debate between the twins.

It’s difficult to synopsize a film of this kind, adding as it does another layer to an already complex structure. Suffice it to say that Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep turn in Oscar-worthy performances as the orchid thief and Susan Orlean, respectively, while Tilda Swynton brightens the screen as Charlie Kaufman’s (unrecognized) real muse.

Ultimately, Adaptation serves two ends, simultaneously illuminating an inner creative landscape that I inhabit (and that inhabits me), while catering to a usually repressed dream of what I hope I can someday become. Like Chuang Tzu, who wakes wondering if he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he is man, so I left this movie in a fugue state between depression and exhilaration, mockery and despair, triumph and a slow realization of the will to succeed and possibly transform myself.

I’ve admired Tony Blair for a long time, from the Clinton era to constant appearances before the House of Commons on CSPAN, the kind of proving ground free of scripts and handlers that would quickly expose Bush for the fraud that he is if he were ever to dare to risk himself in such an environment.

While I remain a bit disappointed by his stance on Iraq, I respect his conviction on the matter. More than any other politician so far, he put his career on the line to back this military action, despite a majority of the population (and for a while a majority of his own legislature) opposing him. It was just a few weeks ago that Blair’s political demise was being forecast… and the worst is not necessarily over!

But what I find most disconcerting are Blair’s joint appearances with Bush, such as the one from Camp David this morning where they “discussed” a post-war Iraq. I find it hard to believe that any American Bush supporter could watch the intelligent, converstant Tony Blair and the bumbling, script-seeking Bush field questions and not wish, at least secretly, that Blair was our president. It has to hurt Blair to defer to such an idiot, and it has to hurt even more to avoid squirming when Bush gets lost in a single short pre-scripted thought.

And it must really gall Blair, as it would anyone, to realize that such an inferior specimen has been elevated to the position of leader of perhaps the most powerful country in the world! Right place, right time, right father, fiendishly good luck. There is no other human explanation.

The Hunted is the latest entry in the Tommy Lee Jones Hunts Bad Guy genre. This time an even older Tommy Lee must hunt down his former student (Master say, someday Master become student, student become Master), the super-stealthy special-ops trained silent assassin superman that takes the human form of Benicio Del Toro.

The movie is fairly predictable, given the arc of the previous two Fugitive movies of which this is a third part in everything but name. In the first movie, a younger Tommy Lee hunted the everyman Harrison Ford. In the next, an older Tommy Lee hunted a younger, buffer Wesley Snipes. In this installment a really old Tommy Lee hunts the much younger Del Toro, a CIA killer who has burned out and taken to butchering hunters who kill without the proper reverence for life.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next movie, in which Tommy Lee waves his walker vainly at a retreating Incredible Hulk, only to track him down and kill him with a well placed smack from his cane.

Maybe it’s just the atmosphere of current political times, when I know that there are real special forces folks out risking their lives in Iraq, but this simple movie still held a small fascination, despite the ever more unbelievable action. And even in predictable roles, Tommy Lee Jones is fun to watch, while the return of Benicio Del Toro to the big screen is welcomed by this fan, even in a trite vehicle like The Hunted.

The notion that voicing anything other than support for the Commander-in-Chief during war-time is un-patriotic– even treasonous– behavior is appalling.

I support the troops who are fighting overseas, but I still protest the necessity of the action they are undertaking and, more importantly, will not disguise my discontent with the pathetic leadership qualities of the Bush administration that have now been on display for many months. My recognition that the Commander-in-Chief of our military forces is an intellectually shallow, ineffective, narrow-minded, right-wing basket-case has nothing to do with my support of the men and women actually waging this war and facing danger themselves.

I’ve not spent a lot of time following war weblogs. Between discussions with friends, debates on mailing lists, and the non-stop television coverage, I get all warred-out pretty quickly and just don’t want to hear or think about it anymore.

While the technology involved with the real-time satellite links and night-vision cameras is pretty impressive, the coverage has gone well beyond covering the minutiae and into the realm of complete wanking. When there are only three or four real facts to cover, getting fifteen different commentaries makes for ludicrous levels of redundancy. It would seem that the major news outlets have only two modes for coverage: off, and full-throttle, 24 hours per day of unsullied repetition.

If the last Gulf War made anything clear, it’s the fact that the media outlets will receive only the information the Department of Defense wants them to, and it will be done with enough skill that they generally won’t realize they are being spoon-fed. Does anyone really believe that these reporters are going to break any new and unplanned stories?

Make no mistake– I am happy to live in a land of a relatively free press. But I also won’t underestimate the wartime demands of intelligence and disinformation.

I have to admit that I am surprised by Bush and Co. patience with the Iraq situation. I was so impressed that I predicted they would last a few days before really making massive strikes, but that appears to have been a bit optimistic. But so far this campaign appears to have been run in the cleanest, most professional way possible.

Although I don’t think this was a necessary action, I continue to hope for a quick resolution. I will be relieved to see Saddam out of the picture, and I am sure a good portion of his people will agree.

I’ve noticed that war brings out the worst in some people, pushing them to make statements about how they can’t wait until the “real bombing” starts and complaining about a “lack of action.” I can only write it off as the folly of youth.

When I was a younger man I had my own fantasies about the manliness of war and military conflict. For a few years I wanted nothing in my life but to become an elite Marine Recon or Special Forces soldier. Barring that I wanted to be a spook, or an FBI special agent. I’m glad this fascination wore away. But I have a lot of sympathy for those who have an idealized view of war, becoming “men”, trial by fire, and the undeniable allure of special forces operating under cover of darkness in enemy territory. There’s a reason this kind of subject makes for compulsively readable books and hit movies!

The personalities involved in war are extravagant and the technology impressive, despite the implications that many find abhorrent.

Now I wonder what will happen when this campaign is over. I don’t expect the real war to last very long… but the stabilization and rebuilding effort should be rather lengthy. Will the UN become involved as it should be? Will the Kosovo model take hold or will it be something completely different? Will we stay the course as we promised or will we largely abandon rebuilding and humanitarian efforts as we have in Afghanistan after a few feeble food drops?