No Clock

Freckles on the face of a nation
Their beauty a matter of perspective

Bruised knees, wasted souls
Tithe their way to poverty

For the sake of blinding alters
That could feed whole cities

Spend a buck to see these opulent scars
Take a picture; history in your pocket

Stubborn echoes of a dead language
Fade outside it’s fortress walls

Ghost town air tastes like stale communion wafers
But here the crumbs are always swept up.

You call it a series of haiku(s) on the President of Iran. I call it a mediocre result of procrastination.

His name is so long

It takes a whole haiku line

Ahmadinejad

 

Ahmadinejad

Is also hard to pronounce

AK-MA-DI-NE-ZAD

 

Mahmoud believes all

Women ought to wear hijab

But won’t wear a tie

 

Peaceful intentions

For his nuclear equipment

A calm Jew-free world

I’m not sure if haikus or haiku is the plural for haiku. Here are two of them:

What a fascinating piece.

Fine Art Gallery
Cesspool of faux-intellect
Wine glass snobbery

But not funny like the ones in the Lion King.

Packs of hyenas
Shriek and laugh, like oh my god
Northface jacket girls

They weren’t the last to go, but they left the bar deep in conversation. The front door was closed and the rolling metal door in front of it was pulled halfway down.

“They must be closing early tonight.” Raymond ducked below the metal door, swinging his torso under as he stepped out onto the uneven cobblestone. He breathed deep to inhale the crisp mountain air that seemed at once tranquil and vigilant. All he tasted was the last glass of wine.

“It’s Tuesday and it’s 2.” Norman wore a military green cordury coat lined with immitation fur. It dangled from his lanky frame like it did from the hanger in his closet.

“For most people here, 2 is early.”

“Only students like you and alcoholics like me.”

They strolled down a side-street, not just talking but discussing. They discussed frequently and intensely and often. They discussed subjects they knew they didn’t fully understand. They cited scholars and writers and politicians and when they ran out of people to cite, they recycled.

And sometimes they talked about the world. About religion and life and values. That interested Raymond. He liked perspective’s. Even ignorant ones.

“The trick is to see through other people’s bullshit,” Raymond told him earlier that night.

“No,” Norman said. “The trick is to see through your own.” It sounded like he’d used that line before.

Norman and Raymond were both smart, but neither was brilliant. Norman and Raymond were thinkers, seekers, skpetics, and when it suited them bullshit artists. They didn’t know eachother long or well.

“It’s hard to find a decent discussion in this town isn’t it?” Raymond stared up at the ancient wall of the local cathedral as he spoke. It was high and old intricately carved, but Raymond didn’t look at it too closely. The church was always gray, he noticed. In daytime and night. Why didn’t the Catholics paint more?

“Ignorant. The whole city is ignorant and conservative and enclosed. Very sanctimonious really. Pharisaical.”

Raymond started to ask what Pharisaical meant, but stopped himself before the words escaped. He wasn’t ashamed, he just did not care at the moment. “But with all the students. It’s so young. College towns are inherently liberal by sheer demography.”

“Students just want to drink and party and sometimes complain. It’s just like everywhere else. The viejos run the town. They dictate its soul.” An aparmtent window flicked on above and the light bounced casually off Norman’s pale bald skull.

“Take away the complaining and that about describes the international students too. We aren’t here to study. Learn maybe, but not study. I wouldn’t call the school an intellectual hotbed.”

“Yes, I haven’t found any of the American women too bright here.”

Norman loved intellectual women. He often bragged about his days as a bartender in New York, taking grad students to bed. Women that challenged him. Women he could challenge. He loved a woman he could have breakfast with, he always said. And the Jewish ones were the most passionate in argument and in bed. Raymond was never sure if Norman hated Jews or secretly wanted to be one. Maybe both, he thought. Norman did love Noam Chomsky, but he also claimed to sleep with a woman did not mean sex. To Raymond it meant sex.

“Bright? Maybe. Intellectual definitely not. Good looking absolutely.”

Raymond didn’t really care that the American girls weren’t intellectual. It wasn’t something he looked for. Looks were more important to him. Then humor. But not the kind of humor where they laughed at his jokes. He looked for funny. Funny was hard to find.

They walked in silence for a moment, along the wall of the church and into a plaza with a fountain. The fountain was off but the light inside it was still on. In the corner there was a statue of a man and a pack mule. It was a big, bronze statue and Raymond liked it. Most statues were of kings and queens and saints and important stuff like that. This one was normal. It wasn’t a real person but Raymond thought the old man was more real than a thousand Queen Isabelas and a thousand Saint Peter’s.

He was looking at the statue man when Norman spoke.

“I’ll tell you which one of the American girls does intrigue me. It’s that Daphne. She’s so hot. It’s something about her.”

Raymond hesitated. He caught a glance at Norman, moving his eyes but not his head. He tried to toe one of the tiny rain puddles that lay between each handplaced cobble stone. “She’s a good girl.”

“That’s right man. You used to know her. She’s a smart one isnt she?”

“She’s a good girl. Smart and good grades- she does well in school I mean. Maybe she isn’t so intellectual. But she knows what she wants out of the world and she gets it. She gets it.”

“She’s so hot. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but I think she has a little crush on me. I don’t know. She’s very physical and flirty around me. I think she’s flirty in general but it seems especially flattering.”

Raymond said nothing.

“Not that it matters anyways. I’m twice her age and I could be imaging things. I could be full of shit. She’s a sexy one though.”

Raymond looked at him and smiled. He didn’t know what else to do.

“She’s a good girl,” he said. “A good friend.”

They reached a main street and shook hands. A municipal bus glided by silently. Norman took long steps in the opposite direction. Raymond went home to look up pharisaical.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot. It’s not that I want to-generally thinking gives me a headache. But I can’t help it. Mostly I’ve been thinking about the future, my future and myself. I don’t have many plans for it and beyond the broad strokes of my imagination don’t know what it holds.

But the more I think, the more certain things come into focus. Until the fall of 2005, my second year in Seattle, I only considered the what. What I would do with my life. What career? What city? What major? It’s not like I was stupid or shallow before that, I always knew I wanted to be happy above all other things. It’s just that I never really considered happiness on any level besides a good job, a good family, and a nice bank account.

It was that fall, about a year and a half ago that I started to consider things on a deeper level. Something, perhaps a combination of books I was reading, classes I was taking, my social life, and my family life at the time contributed to a change of sorts. I started this quest for fulfillment. I realized my life, while not by any means bad or unhappy, was a little empty. Maybe it was too easy, maybe it was a little boring and repetitive. I found ways to deal with it. I got a job, I started exercising more, studying harder, seeking out new forms of entertainment. My friends might remember that around New Years I decided my resolution was to improve every single aspect of my life. I called it the Better Eric Campaign.

The Better Eric Campaign was a success and a failure. It was a success in that for the first few months after it started, I was indeed better. It failed in that my “better” life just faded into routine and lost its specialness. It was then I started to realize that exterior success wouldn’t make me happy, just distracted. It was a big breakthrough. I’ve had an easy life. I haven’t had to overcome anything and I haven’t really been tested.

So began my next phase. The challenge phase. I began to think the only way I could be really content was to be challenged. To prove myself. My dad calls it the “Test of Fire” phase, and it took me until I got to Spain to realize what a bunch of bullshit that attitude is. My logic was that I hadn’t been challenged in any serious way, ever. My first 18 years were a breeze. My adolescence was by no means rough or emotional or difficult or dramatic. It was too easy, and when I finally got the chance to get out, when I finally went away to college I was really fucking happy.

I loved being the only person I knew. I loved the fact that I could go to a new place far from home, a good school, where I had no friends, and no idea what to expect, and that I could kick ass there. And kick ass I did. I ate the college lifestyle up. I got good grades without working too hard, I made friends and I just loved it. I didn’t take a deep breath that first year. There wasn’t an ounce of homesickness or a moment’s reflection.

I looked back at that and thought it was the challenge that made me happy as a freshman. It was the idea of overcoming something that brought me satisfaction. I figured it would be the same experience studying abroad, traveling, starting all over again. I’d have to face not having a group of friends, not having a safety net.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t true. There was no real challenge coming here. Spain is easy. It’s basically like America with bad haircuts and a different language. There weren’t any real fundamental obstacles, and I haven’t had any problems making friends both American and Spanish. There was no challenge to relish in. Maybe it’s because I was too self-aware. But more likely it’s that the idea of happiness by overcoming obstacles was wrong from the beginning.

So here I am in Spain. I’m having a good time. I’m traveling, I’m partying, my Spanish is definitely improving. It’s a good life here and I will look back on it fondly. But the expectations for emotional fulfillment, misguided as they were, have not been quenched. Maybe the challenge wasn’t good enough. Maybe I should have joined the army or moved to Sudan or something. But I don’t think that would have done it either. I’m a pretty independent-minded and adaptable guy. I think I could “make it” just about anywhere if I wanted to. “Making it” is not going to make me happy.

So what is going to make me as happy as I want to be? What’s it going to take? That’s what I have been thinking about. I know the things I like. I like traveling. I like the process, I like the learning, I like the short-lived friendships and the nameless bars and hostels. Mostly though, I like being lost in a new city and just walking around. Exploring.

I like baseball and rock and roll and clever comedians and good movies and politics.

I like reading books and learning. I like discussing those books and that knowledge with smart people who teach me things. It’s something I don’t get enough of, and I will do a better job finding from now on.

Seeking is a key word I think. At this point that’s all I can do, and I think it might be something I always do. Seek. Not necessarily for truth, because I’m not convinced there are any truths worth seeking, but for a step closer to it. Seeking knowledge, experience, wisdom from the most unlikely places. Seeking whatever it is that I happen to find.

The one thing I don’t think I’ll ever find is faith in anybody or anything beside myself. I believe in myself on a pretty deep level, because I’m the only person or thing I can really know for sure. Freudian subconscious crap or not, I’ll take myself over any person, idea, or religious figure out there.

Somebody very smart and very religious once told me that God is not something you can prove. It’s something you choose to believe in. It’s a choice I can understand, and a choice that might make life easier. But the person who told me that is a person with the ability to separate his analytical mind from his emotional one. That’s a skill I will never have. And in my life, in the decisions I’ve made so far, the analytical half of my brain seems to dominate the emotional side. I don’t understand, or really care to understand why.

It might come down to a belief I have, a theory that for many years I thought I came up with all by myself. It was only recently I learned is the foundation of fundamental secular philosophy. Basically it’s the idea of free will. As a kid I called it the “Decision Tree.”

The idea is that life is a series of decisions, and that every decision you make presents you with another decision. Everything you do is a decision. For every door you open you are leaving at least one door closed. There are a million paths you can take, kind of like those choose your own destiny books. The doors you choose not to open are like opportunity cost. Sometimes, when the result of your past decisions allows it, you have lots of foresight as to what the impact will be of a choice you are making. Sometimes you don’t. And even when that foresight is there, most people remain ignorant to it, sometimes by stupidity and sometimes by choice.

I call it the decision tree because I picture those decisions like branches. The tree starts growing when we first start becoming aware and making decisions. I don’t know at what age that occurs, but for the sake of argument it doesn’t matter that much. Other people would be more qualified to answer, but let’s start with three years old. You are three at your first day of preschool. It comes time to choose who you’re going to play with. The kid with the jump rope, the kid with the ball, or the kid with the tricycle. That decision you make is going to affect the next decision you make that day, and so on. It could, in the long run, be the difference between a lifelong friendship with a future rapist and a lifelong friendship with a future senator. Drawn out on a page, the decisions start to look like a tree, growing wider and wider and wider forever. Kind of like a never-ending family tree or NCAA tournament bracket.

Anyways I got into that to say this. I think since I “came up” with that idea, probably sometime in middle school, I’ve lived my life almost completely by the theory of making the best possible decision with the information I have. The strategy and values behind what makes a “good decision,” however, have changed as I have.

At this point, more so than any other time in my life that I can remember, I have absolutely no idea what goes into making a good decision. Sure in certain situations I can act strategically and intelligently. I know what makes sense within smaller contexts like politics or social relationships, or school, etc. But when it comes to the big picture of my life I really don’t have a damn clue.

In December I went on a trip to Poland where I saw Holocaust stuff. It was touching and depressing and serious and I learned a lot about my roots and my own family. But for a lot of people on the trip it was more. It was an emotional breakdown, a spiritual awakening, a catharsis. There weren’t dramatic feelings for me. I wasn’t drained or badly wounded or inspired. I couldn’t define it sharply enough in my head to conjure that kind of reaction. The feelings were raw and blurry and could not be placed. I didn’t come home wanting to be a better student, a more observant Jew, or a more active citizen of the world.

The only feeling I got was that I didn’t want to sell myself short in this life. That I’ve been given a hell of an opportunity and I’d be a fool to waste it. That’s where I stand right now. People have suffered and sacrificed for me. They’ve clawed their way through hell for me and never truly escaped. They’ve lived in a ghost town all their lives and they’ve walked every step of the way with two shadows just to give me a chance.

Somebody who I don’t know too well recently told me I should not be so calculating. I should make more mistakes, and let life come to me. Maybe I will. I’d sure like to. But never at the expense of my past. Never at the expense of the greatness I intend to achieve.

And for now it’s not that I’m unhappy, I’m just seeking the keys to the right doors.