In Which Our Heroine Waxes Poetic Discussing The Nature Of Time and New Year Resolutions

"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

Albert Einstein

So here we are, once again at the end of a year. Humans, with a biological framework structuring our experience of time as linear, feel its passage and express the concept through our senses, behavior, expectations, and language - as this succint quotation explains better than I:

"In daily life we divide time into three parts: past, present, and future. The grammatical structure of language revolves around this fundamental distinction. Reality is associated with the present moment. The past we think of having slipped out of existence, whereas the future is even more shadowy, its details still unformed. In this simple picture, the "now" of our conscious awareness glides steadily onward, transforming events that were once in the unformed future into the concrete but fleeting reality of the present, and thence relegating them to the fixed past." --Paul Davies, "That Mysterious Flow".

At the beginning of the 21st century, we are surrounded not only by clocks ticking away seconds, minutes, hours, days, but by our modern sense of seasonal time, measured not as our ancestors through the waxing and waning of the moon and the earth-based cycle of sowing, planting, harvest and fallow but through a rigid adherence to daily exigencies, our work week, fixed national holidays, and professional deadlines. We only step out of "our time" when we focus on timeless events such as a wedding, a baby's birth, a parent's funeral.

And at the end of the year, we find that we all long so much to improve our lives, and thereby prove to ourselves at least that the coming year will hold joy rather than tragedy, that the future will find us basking in much anticipated happiness. Therefore, we purposely plan ways in which we can make these wishes become true.

We resolve.

We resolve to lose weight, take more exercise, exert more control over our finances. We resolve to find a better job, or get a raise or promotion. We resolve to dress better or attend more closely to our grooming or our health.

Rarely do we resolve to have more fun, to work less, to travel more or spend more time with loved ones. We hardly ever resolve to read the classics, learn a new language, join in a cause to improve our surroundings or even to assign more of our discretionary dollars to charity.

The year to come is a marvelous thing, seen most clearly precisely in the waning moments of New Years Eve, a recognition that the new year is marvelous strictly in its potential, the sense that nothing hasn't happened yet, that the year is metaphorically fresh snow on which no human tracks have been made, with no grimy slush muddying its pristine beauty. Perhaps the concept of a virgin future, as noted by Einstein, is indeed merely a convincing illusion, albeit an illusion quite as convincing as Paul Davies' explanation of a fixed past and the fleeting awareness of the present.

The possibilities of the unknown, the surprises lying in wait in a life yet to be lived - for humans with bodies which for now remain powerless in the grip of linear time, although physicists are still hotly debating how time is structured in the universe - this is our annual chance to wrest free from the grip of what has been and concentrate on what is to be.

Regardless of which theory of time one believes, the whole point I think is the cherished structure of belief itself: hope does indeed spring eternal; dreams have a reality and only need us to clothe them and make them flesh; human achievement can indeed be limitless.

We can all resolve to discover the best in ourselves and by doing so, conquer our faults and transmute them, like the base metals of the alchemers of old, into purest gold.

The End of Innocence, or Damn You Norman Rockwell

People face the holidays with varying philosophies; many savor the lights and decorations, enjoy planning surprise gifts for family and friends, and relish the extra socializing the season invariably brings. They pay scant attention to shopping crowds and other holiday hazards, rather choosing to exult in each moment.

Others detest the enforced jollity, cringe at the crass commercialization of a solemn and thoughtful season, and dread receiving unwanted gifts or giving others useless trinkets. They are quick to scorn the entire endeavor and often blatantly refuse to celebrate at all.

I blame Norman Rockwell.

For every excited, hectic, pleased, frazzled, harried, morose and meloncholic adult at Christmas there's a reason, and it's quite simply Norman Rockwell.

See, I think that the people who try, often against huge odds, to make their holidays as much as possible like those they remember, are remembering all too well the perfect pictures of Mr. Rockwell. If, the subconscious mind must reason, I can recreate this picturesque joy, perhaps, just perhaps, all may go right this year - dissapontment will vanish and I'll finally be happy.

Those already entirely too dissapointed look at Mr. Rockwell's creation with sadly a similar eye - they've been so ground down that the effort the subconscious mind must make to be lifted out of day-to-day pessimism proves too much - the tragically forced happiness of the holiday only reminds me of my present and most likely continued unhappiness - therefore, why should I even try?

The bucolic holidays of years past: perfectly dressed, glowing tots crowded around a jolly Santa Claus, looking up at him in awe; the picture perfect Christmas trees superbly decorated and blazing fireplaces lovingly decked with pristine holly; rings of contented adults wreathed in smiles hoisting glasses of nog; colorfully wrapped gifts holding inside exactly what the recipient wanted.

Be still oh sadly innocent heart, for you are to be broken beyond recall.

The truth is, these visions of holiday sublimity began and ended within one man's mind - they never happened. Oh, I'm sure that we all can remember very good Christmases, memorable holidays probably experienced while children, while still deep within the innocence of youth. But believe me, no matter how wonderfully vaselined the lenses of one's backwards looking rose colored glasses, there's no way those memories can ever compare with Mr. Rockwell's devilishly alluring and persistent fantasies.

It's the end of innocence, it is, that gets us all in the end. Gazing with a tingling spine at perfectly falling snow on Christmas Eve. Convinced with one's entire being not only of the existence of Santa Claus but of his impending visit that night. Gorging on holiday treats without thinking for a solitary second of gaining weight or high cholesterol. Thinking that a perfect holiday season will make up for a lifetime of slights, that either keeping or not keeping the season will redeem one's soul.

Believing, if only for one time during the year, that peace on earth and goodwill towards men can truly be accomplished.

Hilarious and Very Wrong Christmas Gifts I've Actually Received

1. Oversized bathrobe, striped in turquoise and white, which appeared to be made out of troll-doll hair; wearing it, I looked like an enormous creamsicle.

2. Homemade brownies/cookies wrapped loosely in used foil, rolling around untethered in a too-large box.

3. Sheer white cotton jumpsuit, complete with chunky 80's style shoulder pads and self belt, presented in 1995.

4. Oversized sweatshirt embroidered with a cartoon drawing of a pig, received when I was 34.

I'm sure there's more - these were hands down the most memorable in their sheer awfulness.

Blogus Interruptus

Actual real life has intervened and prevented me from babbling incoherently, writing random fictional letters, compiling nonsensical lists, and all around making grandiose claims.

New posts soon. I miss my non-existent blogging fame.

I'll Take The Meaning of Life for $500, Alex

Both Tom & Kaz have some very good & clear commentary on my original post about religion. [Even though they don’t know each other in real life, I can assure them both that they hold very similar opinions!]. I started to respond to their comments but they turned into novella length, thus becoming this post.

The original post was difficult to write - I "heard" it in my head pretty clearly but concept did not connect with computer screen as smoothly as it had in my mind, and constant editing didn't improve the offering. I posted it anyway, mostly because I was tired of tinkering, although it felt very half-baked.

As I started writing, I realized the most of my issues revolve around Christianity –arguably, the organized religion I’m most familiar with. I don’t know enough about Islam, Buddhist doctrine or other eastern religions to formulate complaints. I also assumed in the course of writing the post and specifically mentioning what’s happening in this country, that it would be critical of Christianity. I also believe spiritual demeanor has absolutely nothing to do with organized religion, and spiritual moments can be experienced throughout life without the benefit of deity or clergy.

I consider organized religion, especially the afterlife dogma, as being nothing but a 100% gamble. A metaphysical throw of the dice, as it were – a “get out of jail free” card just in case there’s something beyond death, a stack of Personal Good Points on the off chance that someone will tally up a grand total and reward one commensurately.

Organized religion mandates that one live ethically according to the laws of a god, whose existence can neither be successfully proven nor disproven, and that misbehavior will be severely punished by said deity through either personal misfortune or global calamity.

(Living ethically because it’s the most reasonable and logical way for humankind to forge thriving, rational societies doesn’t seem to occur to the religious.)

The hypocrisy behind organized religion's objection to drugs always struck me as pointless and naïve, as if they had, in this particular instance, not made any connection between opiates and their natural origins to their own god’s mandate giving Adam dominion over all animals, etc. which is curious, given their great joy in claiming many of their deity’s pronouncements of several thousand years ago to be perfectly valid in our vastly more complicated 21st century.

If Life really is all a game, I think I’d prefer it to be more on the lines of uber-highbrow Jeopardy, where the accumulation of knowledge wins the prize, rather than Marco Polo in the Atlantic Ocean, where the more blindly one follows the big voice in the sky the greater is one’s likelihood for survival.

"Religion is the opiate of the masses."

This is such a famous statement that it hardly needs accrediting. In truth, I've always been intrigued with the notion; seduced, in spite of myself, by the powerful juxtaposition of religion and narcotics in the same sentence. Talk about distilling quite a lot into less than 10 words - whoosh!

In their most pure states, opiates are derived from plants. Nature, known for Its fine appreciation of irony, is surely chuckling somewhere while going on Its merry way. Of course, a little human tinkering is required to turn an innocent poppy into a narcotic, but I honestly can't see the difference between the ancient and equally human arts of brewing beer, making wine, or pressing olives for oil, and the process of extracting opium from poppies. Early man obviously needed a little help from his friends, and I certainly can never fault that. [And yes, you can get the recipes from our very good friends at Google - thanks guys!]

The psychological effects of opiates are, among others, a feeling of euphoria and a release from pain.

Religion offers its followers a similar psychological pay-off; ecstatic feelings of well-being and safety, and a temporary release from pain and suffering. It provides answers to questions we teeny humans seem compelled to ask of an indifferent universe.

Nature might be pouting slightly now, to anthropomorize for a moment, perhaps unable to comprehend why we can't seem to accept our ultimate dinkyness.

Religion also promises that this "opium dream" may be made more or less permanent even after death.

So here's the payoff, and what a payoff it is! This country has evolved into a nation fascinated with lotteries bloated beyond recognition and devoted to casinos of every type, on-line and virtual.

Consider the religious gamble: eternal life at the right hand of the Almighty or unrelenting, painful, and extremely hot Hell? Since no one has successfully returned from the other side to provide a definitive answer to the question of what really happens, perhaps it's merely a situation of hedging a bet.

Is it any wonder, then, that in this country of frantically self-medicating consumers bent on getting something for nothing ["all you need is a dollar and dream" - ack, such mindless twaddle], religion has made a comeback of such huge porportion?

Again, if one ponders the other silver crossing the palm, is it any surprise that crystal meth has gained such enormous popularity?

Seems as if we can't have one without the other - hey waiter, I'll have a Marijuana Cocktail, an appetizer of Jesus to start, some Old Testament Salad, followed by an entree of Hash with a side of Fresh Hell.

Blog Against Racism Day was November 30th - as I didn't get the chance to post on that date, here's a belated effort.

For a good portion of my childhood, I was Very White living the Land of Incredible Whiteness. It was a 90% homogeneous community; everyone was the same as everyone else. The difficulty with being raised in this type of environment is not just the incredible sameness of one's surroundings, but more that the tiniest variation away from the norm is enlarged so dramatically that the community reaction can border on lunacy. You do NOT want to be known as "different" in this kind of community. Conformity was the rule. It was a line drawn around a magic societal circle, out of which it was very difficult to step.

Thus, I was probably 15, having moved from this rural setting to a Chicago suburb, when I first encountered anyone other than Quite White. It was astonishing, to say the least; not only was I confronting a new high school and the general agony of adolescence, but with diversity thrown into the mix it was a melange of excitement, curiosity, confusion, exoticism tinged with eroticism, and dread.

The gigantic high school I attended had been the scene, only a year or two before, of actual honest to goodness race riots. Perhaps a good many of the stories that were told about that time were apocryphal, but enough of them were believable enough, thrilling and debasing enough, to have been true.

That time was my first experience with any type of Otherness, the first occasion where I had a black girlfriend through the Drama Club, a Korean friend through English class, and a half Japanese half American boyfriend.

I do not know, to this day, what kind of insults or indignities these friends may have suffered during the course of their lives based on ingrained prejuidices about race or ethnic background.

Because it didn't happen to me.

That changed when I married Mr. Fresh Hell nine years ago. He's from Algeria, for all intents and purposes Arab, although his education, demeanor, mindset and looks are distinctly more European.

Since then, and especially since September 11th [which we, as New Yorkers, personally experienced], I'm still somewhat astonished to be on the receiving end of such abysmal ignorance about other races and cultures that at times I'm surprised I can pull my jaw up from the floor.

Conversation between me and my [then] boss, who is highly educated and at the time held a very serious international position in a major international adevertising agency, about my upcoming marriage:

Me: Hey, Quisling, guess what? Mr. FH and I got engaged and are getting married - so, I just put in vaction time for the second week in January for the wedding.

Q: Congratulations! That's great! Oh, Mr. FH. Where is he from again?

Me: Algeria.

Q: Is he black?

Me: [crickets chirping in the silence] Um. No. He's from ALGERIA, you know, the coast of North Africa. He's actually pretty pale, although he has black hair.

Q: Oh. I guess I was thinking of Nigeria.

Me: [backing off slowly]. Yeah, I guess.

I've gotten a lot of questions over the years, and many more since 2001. Many questioners show a healthy curiosity, a true attempt at understanding; there are some that are egregiously stupid and uninformed. The former I answer seriously and at length, or apply a sense of humor as needed [Yes, he is quite like the Soup Nazi -No, I didn't have to convert to his religion because he doesn't believe in religion, he believes in science]; the latter I either answer shortly or don't reply to at all.

It's the spectre of Otherness that falls, by association, at my door, and without the accumulation of a lifetime of experience with Otherness and all it entails, I'm so often exasperated by its presence and by its persistence.

I've certainly developed empathy towards those who have always had to explain themselves in an often futile attempt to educate others to see beyond shallow notions of color or ethnicity.

Thankfully, I no longer reside in the Land of Incredible Whiteness, but I still feel it's important to do my part as Honorary Diplomat to Otherness and erradicate ignorance when I encounter it.

There are differences among races and cultures but more importantly, it's the simililarities that brand us all as human.

Would that we could all see ourselves as first that.