We Live Tomorrow

So here we are...

Plague-less. Vaccinated. Infrastructured.

Our battles are academic, philosophical, elementary fights of faith and status. We fend off first world diseases born of fat and fury. We sue over lead poisoning and asbestos. We immunize. We eat canned goods when we're poor. We worry about stocks and bonds and platforms and mergers and basis points on glowing screens. We worry about snow delays and traffic jams. Who ARE we?

The plague broke out in Algeria in 2003. They have the 8th largest reserve of natural gas in the world. They're playing ahead and looking back at the same time; tripping all over their pubescence. What will it take to drag them out of yesterday?

Connections? Physical, irreversible connections? It's a planet, not a country. It's a humanity, not a society. The plague will get all the way over here from all the way back there if we ignore it for long enough. We're connected by a million particles of rock and water and air. But we're not.

So what does it take to grab boot straps and tug hard enough to bridge a time gap? Worth? Synergy of values? A wiki-page?

Something else to worry about. The accuracy of wiki pages. *sigh. It sure is comfortable in climate controlled offices. Here. In the future.

Snips and Snails, and Monogamy Tales

A friend emailed me today to tell me about her breakfast adventures. She had breakfast with admitted polygamists and was subsequently drowned by a current of confusion over her own stake in that war. (What a hearty breakfast that must have been.) Her email invoked the same sentiments in me - confusion that something consensual could be so controversial - and I got to thinking about why monogamy is considered the flagship of a partnership.

Here's my attempt to de-tangle the delicacies. I started with the concept of 'family'.

Sure, a family unit is the fiscal brick of our society, but just because sex creates children does not mean that sex must, de facto, create families. Who elected Merriam and Webster the mayors of morals and why is fidelity at the epi-center of character? Are the players in an open relationship infidels? If it's consensual, is it unethical? I think monogamy is a way to ensure that neither party will conflate emotional and fiscal availability with physical pleasure. It's a way to be secure in your resources, to know that your partner won't leave you for the next set of grope-able mammary glands that walks by.

But why? Why would a partnership break under the wave of an orgasm? Because if it's agreed upon that the relationship is monogamist (not under ANY circumstances to be confused with monotonous), then the act of infidelity strikes at the core of what's really breaking up the iceberg - trust. The definition of infidelity is lack of faith. It's a breach of contract, not an unethical consortium! Why should infidelity be as heinous as not bringing home those pickles you promised? Because it involves a sentient third party?

Wouldn't it be more NATURAL to copulate with as many people as possible? To ensure the survival of your tribe? To keep workers in the fields, hunters in the woods? More mouths to feed but more might to feed the mouths?

And then there's a society that rests, nay, tax-breaks upon the familial unit. I think THAT charter is the infidel of humanity. Defining family as that which springs out of us rather than those who web around us to create a dome to weather the world - it seems archaic, to say the least, and narrow-minded, to get saucy.

As my friend was breakfasting, I was messing around on my company's payroll website looking for a W-2 to download and file (coincidentally, yes, we're a Fidelity client. ohhhh the undertones of reliability...) and what I think we're all missing is that the 'family' unit, though fiercely guarded by some, is actually, federally, a fairly soft term. Why not band together with your chosen 'family' and elect a head of household, elect some dependents (grad students, for sure), file together and split the rewards. Why not? Why not file your taxes the way you live your life? Why not redefine the family unit? Ascribe some responsibility to each other, devoid of 'genetic family' obligation. The future most certainly lies in family units shaped by reality as, eventually, that square peg will be smoothed by the edges of the hole, right?

And I guess, until then, my response to my friend's email is that my lesbionic stake is with the womanogamists. I don't think it's natural, I don't think it should be the cru(tch)x of society, but I don't want to share this one with the world and for that reason, I have promised to practice the art of keeping my hands in my pockets. A welcome, fair and cozy place for them these blustery days.

A, B, A, B, Up, Down, Up, Down, Select, Start

Everything I learned in life was culled from a solid foundation in video games.

1) Some enemies are destroyed by getting jumped on. Some enemies require precision fire-balling. Enemies that require fire-balling are often immune to jumping. Enemies that require jumping are often immune to fire-balling. There is a subset of enemies that respond to both. Figuring out how to handle hurdles will be painstaking and rife with trial and error. Wear supportive shoes.

2) Don't be afraid break bricks for fun, you never know what friends will pop out of them. Often the most unexpected people come out of the most unexpected places. Like babies.

3) When there are two variables, there are always only three options; speed and control are always up for grabs but grabbing them in the right mix for the right situation is tricky. Not knowing what you need in life is lethal.

4) Some portals take you places where only good things exist and leave you where you started. Some portals take you places you can't return from and test your every move. Some portals go no where at all. Be prepared for anything.

5) Never be afraid to re-do something easy to stock up for something hard. Like gathering flowers for protection before rescuing princesses from castles.

6) With 100 lives you tend not to appreciate the one you're living. Don't be surprised if 100 re-dos isn't enough.

7) If you get hit by the enemy once, you'll probably lose all your money. If you get hit a second time, you'll probably die. Money and turtle shells have shield-like qualities. Know how to procure both.

8) Swimming is slow and frustrating and sometimes you run out of air. Know your outs, avoid puffer fish.

9) Getting to Koopa via the Star World isn't cheating, the end is never as hard or exciting as you think it ought to be and, no, they don't give you a number to call in Japan to report that you've beaten the game and deserve worldwide recognition. Nope, not even if you beat it twice. Someday you'll even accept that no one ANYWHERE cares if you beat the game because...

10) The game will never be over. The princess will never be safe. Hold on to her for all you're worth.

Run

Fair city, footed in the ashes of autumn,

(Breath)

The moon has been beggared of its fearfulness

As the nights stain the afternoons.

A woman paces the newly long shadows -

Afflicted. She has an erosion of capacity.

Don't we all?

Pedestrians to the world watch as she screams

Of anarchy, lies, and broken tea cups,

While students to her disorder torch coffee shops with

The oppressive heat of conjecture. Silly children.

Like fog, their bias spills out and condenses on the cool cement and

An endless motorcade slips them quietly by,

Boasting ten thousand flashes of epileptic mayhem -

A gross of laborers, idling far from their berths,

Grapple with the trafficked fumes of impatience.

The brief day has need of strength -

An erosion of complacency.

A moment of endlessness.

Anything -

Fair city, burning for winter.

5 Year Update. By Demand.

Harvard has asked for yet another skullcap-output. It won't get graded though so I might actually DO this one. It's the first of the last series of essays they'll email, poke, and pester us about in 5 year intervals for the rest of our lives. The collective group I'm referring to is the class of 2005. The lives I'm referring to are the earth-bound spans of time that begin relatively without exception between 1982 and 1984- and which will all end like suicide sprints on a rugby pitch over-laid onto a soccer field, with the ghost of football markings from freshman week when the recruits took over the entire grassy knoll. Fifteen hundred sprint lines to touch and 120 yards to fit them in.

I'm supposed to write an essay. A 5 year essay. What have I done in 5 years that I want to let my classmates (nay, the WORLD!) know about?

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*pant pant pant*

Here's the bare bones of it: After Boston, I spent a few months in DC, moved to the Mission in San Francisco for 1 year of my life almost to the day, and then flew back to New York to sample Midtown, the Upper East Side, Brooklyn and now the West Village.

Adding Muscle (aka, the source of all revelry: money-procurement): I worked in an operating room for my (vacation from life) year in San Francisco. I wore scrubs to work, I washed blood for autologous transfusions, I ran through the halls of the ICU while priming IVs as surgeons performed cardiac massage on post-operative surgical patients and barked orders over their shoulders to me and my cohorts, who were also running. In shoe coverings. Not the easiest thing in the world and a heck of an inner thigh workout. I decided there was no way in hell that I would want to be a doctor. So I took up healthcare consulting at Accenture and spent 1.5 years on the road (really.) before deciding to settle down and look for a job in Manhattan. As these 5 year update emails roll in, I find myself attempting to be a strategy consultant for the pharma industry at a boutique firm (Insight Strategy Advisors) in Manhattan and not only am I a huge fan of this sentence, but I'm going to try and stick with it for a while longer as I figure out what's next in this grid o' procurement...

And the life of the matter: I still have all my moving parts despite a stint on the U-23 National Rugby Team. My family is healthy and stateside after some bouts with the UK, Africa and MRI machines. My friends are thriving and scattered but they seem to rotate through NYC just frequently enough for me to feel like it really IS the epicenter of the universe. My heart is trucking along smoothly and shiny rocks and tiny toes will undoubtedly make an appearance before the next 5 year installment gets jotted down (in a blog. The day after Maine screwed up that gay marriage law). Now if only I was legally allowed to get married... There must be SOMEONE in this class that can fix that!!!

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And that's my update. I think. What else have I done in the last 5 years? Chase girls, drink beer, learn stuff, develop plantar fasciitis, acquire a gorgeous dish set, meet the authors of the xkcd series, invest in a non-profit, own a vespa, discover whiskey, switch careers, check myself into the ER for fluids, relinquish whiskey, switch coasts, run a 10K, get stoned for the dawn of 2009, run up gigantic phone bills, hate girl, love girl, hate girl, love girl, find friends, continue to suck at Beirut, keep friends regardless, sell a vespa, lose a hundred battles, yoyo diet, quit rugby, learn flip cup, win a few key wars, hate girl, looove girl, learn MORE stuff, develop an obnoxious need to cloud compute the inanity of my life via blog... grow up?...

nahhhhh. I still order whiskey on occasion.

for real(sies)

I almost started this blog with, "so what makes something real? Is it tangible? Is it mere atomic weight and the ascription thereof?" And then I realized that despite my best efforts to pretend to be interested in the physical properties of reality and the perception of matter as reflected in light, I have zero interest in delving into the subject of reality outside the bounds of human relationships. And seeing as how this is my blog, I've decided to, once again, pare down through the meat of the matter to what it is I'd really like to whine about.

I spoke to my grandfather last weekend. After a long line of remarkably insightful questions about my job he almost immediately turned around and grilled me about the friends I have. He referenced the expression about real friends and counting them on one hand (versus acquaintances) and he asked if I had real friends in my life, in my city. And that got me thinking about real friends, my city, hands, etc. But also, my grandfather is a mechanical engineer. He's an American dream. He's as car-shop and model-boat-building as they get and here he was starting a conversation about how to work hard and ending it with how to be happy... The least I could do was spend some at-work-hours thinking about it.

So what's real, anyway? Who should we count on our fingers? Is it the banter-er that belittles the best? Is it the introspect-er we don't want to lose? Is it the hi-fiver we don't want to admit to not wanting to lose? Is it a relationship marked by longevity? Is it some mixture of transience and permanence and bananas coupled with atomic weight and measurable volume and an out-of-state ID? Can we lose them in an instant? If we can lose them, was it ever real?

How do we know if someone who we LIKE having around is worth investing in because they'll STAY around; through personal crisis, hell and high(er) water, a relocation to Portland for a lumberjack... you know. How do we know what we should work out and what we should walk out on?

We don't. Right? Is this the part about trusting your heart to know what's real because it clunks around your chest like a pinto at a soap box derby whenever 'real' gets near? Mayyyyyyyybe....

Ultimately, no matter how things present, the perception of permanence and transience can only be measured retrospectively. Right?

So if you're married to your expectations, do you throw your whole heart into it and expect a divorce while working to stay married? Is that the only way to make sure you'll always be right in the end? Do we have to make it through the middle to know what was good at the start?

What about a litmus test? An indicator... Milestones... A frat-boy romantic at a wholesale keg shop drowning in ice (Lots of ice. Because it's beer, by god, BEER!) who knows her real friends won't graduate to whiskey without her...

Or... More applicably, imagine it's the first Monday of winter and your metro card expired, your subway train broke down, you missed a client meeting, your laptop blue-screened, your gay IT guy hit on you - you, a boyish lesbian - (and then lost all your iTunes as he DIDN'T recover your personal files), you got soaked to the bone as it rained during lunch, you sat in a freezing office working on a backup mini-PC for the rest of the afternoon recreating everything you did over the weekend until you finally give up on powerpoint formatting with a flourish that catches the attention of the fire alarm, and when you get home your toilet is still running and your bathroom looks like a water-bug vacation resort.

Who do you call for an emergency intervention - who do you desperately need to walk through that Irish pub's door - who do YOU want to come home to? And when will you believe that that's real?

Rock-a-bye Really?

I've started to wonder what being sentient really means. As a person. As an agnostic. As a Jets fan...

The things that we want in life, are they derived from tapping into an inner well of needs and desires that defy causation? Are we too overwhelmed by the O2 : CO2 exchanging going on that we absorb some or all of these notions of need and desire from common sentiment? Are we being smart - matching what's available with what's missing from the list of our lives and then cramming it all in, regardless of squareness and circularity?

How do we know that we want things? Like babies. Let's talk about babies. Is it a combination of the congenital and the constructed? Because, really, if you think about it, babies suck away resources, destroy environments (both via global warming and disruption of living room feng shui), contribute to anxiety as they grow and stumble and get slapped by the world - like an incessantly inverting umbrella in a tropical storm-turned-hurricane - and in return they coo and, presumably, take care of us in our infirmity. Is that the trade off? Is that the reason we have babies? Because we're not really in race against extinction here, folks...

So if we'll be financially capable of supporting our damn selves in our infirmity, does that negate the need for children? And more pressingly, does it negate the DESIRE for children?

Are we constantly balancing some whisper from our chromosomes that wends synergistically through our loins to get multiplied by convention against some reasonable rationale for not budding off and jeopardizing our painstakingly accumulated resources? Does being sentient mean that we can override the innate, possibly vestigal elements of being human? Would we want to? Could we reason our way in and out of wanting to? Is that allowed?

I guess, in sum, how do we delineate between what's intrinsically human and what's intensely personal? And why do people have BABIES?!!