eck-a-lec-tic

Aiding and Abetting

With the controversy building over just how old China’s female gymnasts are, the larger question has become how far the Chinese government will go to continue to be a nation based on propaganda, deception and plain old lies. They spent a large fortune building the venues, evicting anyone that stood in their way. While some of the structures are impressive, they don’t compensate in any way for the people displaced by their construction.

A hall built on the backs of working people loses its luster quickly.

People there still get rounded up, never to be heard from again. Some are sent to labor camps while others are just declared enemies of the state and executed.

Call it “cleaning house”.

Allowing the Chinese government to dictate what is said and how it is said in what context amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy. While it’s a nice thought that China is no longer the enemy, it’s only that: a nice thought.

And a naïve one at that.

In China, one can be executed for financial crimes. Taking bribes can put you on the wrong end of a pistol poked into the back of your neck.

Apparently, no one has ventured out into the wider Chinese world to see what it’s really like. At least no one with a camera and news crew.

The country continues to be the single largest violator of human rights on the planet. They have more humans, so they have more rights to violate.

That they would cheat in the Olympics should come as a shock to no one. That’s the least in their long list of crimes against humanity.

From the excesses of Mao and his wife to putting two 70 year old women in jail for filing for a permit to protest in a designated area this time around, they take the cake. A cake of bitter herbs with a sugar frosting.

While I’m intrigued by the coverage and the highlights of everyday life in China, I wouldn’t want to go there, much less live there. The media are playing into the party line of a “happy-happy” state. It reminds of the “money-blessing spray” I saw the last time I was in an oriental market.

It’s all one big sham, and until someone calls them on it, they’ll keep on doing the same old thing: imprisoning dissenters and executing people that embarrass the state.

That’s the Chinese tradition that has been ignored.

Not exposing it amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy. It amounts to a willful act of deliberate ignorance by every party that could tell the truth.

Instead, they spend their time in venues hand-picked by the government.

When everyone left to cover the Olympics, they must have left their balls behind. Maybe they got confiscated or are somewhere in lost luggage, but they sure ain’t where they need to be.

For the greatest propaganda event in its history, China seems to have no critics.

It’s aiding and abetting, pure and simple.

The Devil's Waltz

Religion and politics don't mix any better than oil and water, so I wonder why the two have walked hand-in-hand for so long. Religious beliefs used to be a private matter, but they aren't these days. Both the press and the public routinely question candidates for offices ranging from Dog-catcher to President about their relationships with God.

As if that's any of their business.

Religious beliefs are intensely personal ones that are evident by a person's actions. Besides, what people say about their faith means nothing. Their actions do. They are the evidence of it.

I don't particularly care about John McCain's or Barak Obama's personal faith. It's personal, after all. And even elected officials are allowed to have lead a private life as well as a public one.

I would argue that you can tell what a person believes by what he or she does. Words are easy. Life isn't. And a person's response to that simple fact of life tells me more about them than anything else.

I often think that the American political process has been corrupted, bastardized and sold-down-the-river by people who care more about getting elected than governing. These days in most races, it seems to come down to who is the lesser whore.

Most candidates in this election cycle are little more than sluts, garnering favor and support by selling themselves. But it's a deal with the devil.

I have learned through personal experience that people value integrity in people they will trust more than anything else. You gotta know what you believe and why you believe it. Then stick to it, regardless.

Most politicos these days are dancing with the devil, instead. They say what they need to get elected, do the opposite and then go back to the slop-trough-in-a- mud-hole to get their fill.

They expect no one will notice because, usually, no one does.

It's time to get beyond religion and labels and religious labels to a point where actions matter more than words. Where faith is left where it should be: in private. It should not be an issue in this election or any other, but it is and has been for far too long.

"Even so faith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone. Yes, a man may say, You have faith, and I have works: show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works" (James 2:17-18)

It's a simple principle that, if applied to the electoral process, could simplify things greatly. Leave faith out and run on issues. Then let the public decide based on actions.

That's the only real expression of faith, the only one that should matter.

The rest is all sound bites.

Georgia on my Mind

With its eyes set firmly on occupying Georgia, Russia scares me more than at any time since the symbolic end of the Cold War. It has continued to advance toward the seat of Georgian government and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. State-controlled news sources are concocting conspiracy theories that lay the blame at Dick Cheney’s and George W.’s feet.

While I would like to blame the dynamic duo for any bad thing I can, those allegations ring false. Neither is engaged enough or cares enough to engineer an all-out war on a small country of no strategic value. And if they did, they wouldn’t be on the side of the Russians.

For anyone that wants to know what a nuclear melt-down looks like, this is it. Just read the news.

They won’t use any nuclear weapons because they know that Moscow would be a pile of rubble 15 minutes later. But the simple fact that they might deters action by anyone else.

The US is stuck between a hard spot and a nutcracker. Our nuts are in the middle east, and they’re being squeezed pretty hard. And we can’t spare anything for a Georgian engagement, whether it’s under the auspices of the UN or other.

The US government can posture all it wants, but the Russians know that this is the time to reclaim territory. There is no one with the means to oppose them.

I don’t know how all this will turn out, but I am trepidatious at best and scared as all hell at the worst.

Eating Rainbows

On clear summer nights, the sky in Texas becomes a surreal blue that makes everything framed against it look like a movie prop. The crispness of the fading light deceives the eye, making three-dimensional objects look flat and round at the same time. Trees inhabit both a one-dimensional and a multi-dimensional world. It's a trick of the eye, I suppose.

But I always think of Alice and her Wonderland. Or of Billy Pilgrim, who came unstuck in time.

Nevertheless, it still takes my breath away. A tree becomes living art for that short time until the light fades. Buildings seem closer and larger at close range.

Sometimes I wander outside and feel like a little boy seeing his first rainbow. I'm all awe, wonder and questions. "Where'd that come from? Who made it? Can I touch it? What’s it made of? What does it feel like? Can we keep it?"

I know the science of rainbows all these years after I was a little boy, but I still think of them as miracles, gifts from God, and not atmospheric phenomena.

I’ve grown up, but there’s still a little boy inside who knows what they taste like : light, hope, joy.

Just like the Texas sky on summer nights when it glows a color of blue that I had forgotten existed.

May the wonder and awe never leave me.

Love and Marriage...and Ghosts

Mama and Daddy were married in my grandmother's living room. It was a simple ceremony between Christmas and New Year's (December 27, I think) in 1962. Mama was a good bit younger (and shorter) than Daddy, especially since she was only 18. She had just graduated from high school a few months before.

On the way to the his funeral, she told me she didn't think she'd ever marry again. I didn't say much. Just told her she might change her mind. And that it would be okay by me. Daddy always wanted her to be happy, and I don't think that changed when he died.

A little over a year later, she hasn't changed her mind. She watches reruns of old high school football games on a local cable channel just to catch a glimpse of him on the sidelines.

I told her I still loved Rich, my first partner who died 13 years ago. But I've been with Shannon for 9 years. I still love Rich, and Shannon lives with a ghost. I can love them both.

She may meet someone down the way that changes her mind about her driving-to-the-funeral pronouncement. But it's still pretty recent. A little over a year. Too soon to tell.

I've told her that I wouldn't object to her re-marrying, just as long as the man was as good as Daddy.

Not sure she can find one, but I'd settle for a good imitation. Just as long as he made her happy.

Call me a sentimental fool. Just don't call me an old one.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace

When the clouds grew tall and dark on the north-western horizon, I knew it was time to go across the street. Joe had died not long before, I wasn’t working and Mary and I were both afraid of storms. So I walked over, knocked on the door and sat down to strong, strong coffee and cake.

Mary always had cake.

We drank our coffee and picked at our cake, never really eating much, because we both knew that this one was the “big” one. Cigarettes helped calm our nerves.

Right up until the sky turned black, almost like night, the wind started howling and the rain whipped up under the eaves, trying to blow the whole roof off. The lightning could be awful, striking over and over again within spitting distance of her kitchen windows.

That’s when we walked around the house, and she showed me the crucifixes that Joe had left in the windows. “As long as those are there, we’ll be okay," she'd say in that gravelly voice I miss so much. "I don’t believe it, really, but Joe did, and they’ve kept us safe up til now. Some things you just don’t mess with.”

I didn't argue.

The winds howled, the rain beat down, and we sat at the kitchen table picking at our cake, swigging on coffee and smoking. We always ended back up there, at that little kitchen table, the same place, time after time after time.

She told me stories about her life. She was born not too far away, in Hickman, KY. She had family here, there and everywhere. She married Joe and lived with him in Chicago most of her life. Joe wasn’t Polish, like always said: he was Sicilian.

Joe got Alzheimer’s, and his decline was painful to watch. The decline started when he wandered away the first time and left Mary frantic. Neighbors found him down the road, but by then, he was having trouble getting in an out of the bath. A few months later, she couldn’t lift his legs to get him in or out and he didn't know how to.

We were both alone that summer, Miss Mary and me. Joe had died earlier in the year, and I couldn’t find a job. So we rode it out together. Both of us, I think, felt a bit powerless. We found our power in each other.

Mary died a few years later. Or at least the physical part of her did. As long as I’m alive, she will be, too.

Every time the weather gets bad, I remember her.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

I Am Not Here

View Larger Map
I was born in a small town on the Tennessee/Kentucky border, just a few miles from the Mississippi, and spent my youth fighting to get out. I wanted education and experience I couldn't find in a very rural town of 13,000, 2 hours from the nearest real city. And I had a budding sense that I wasn't like other people, at least not like most in small towns.

The sense of "otherness" followed me to a larger town where I went to a private, religiously affiliated university. And on to an even larger place in Texas, to a larger private, religiously affiliated graduate school. Although I received a good education, each place stifled me. My storehouse of knowledge grew, but my soul languished.

Then I discovered Austin, quite by accident. My last girlfriend drove me there to catch a plane home for a short holiday. We stayed overnight with her other best friend, who took us to a gay bar. It was the first time I had ever seen "normal" gay people, ones who weren't the stereotypes I had never wanted to be. And even at the height of the AIDS hysteria, no one was being harassed. They were standing outside a nightclub waiting to get inside, talking about bike racing and their latest 10 mile ride.

It was a revelation to me. I could be who I was, as I was, around people who didn't really care one way or another. I had never experienced that before.

I came screaming out of the closet shortly there-after, found my first boyfriend, broke up with him in Portugal, and met my first husband not long after. We couldn't live openly in Waco, TX, and Austin had been in my sight for a while.

It's the only truly civilized city in Texas. We moved here after a few weekend trips that seduced him, too. He wanted to move to Dallas, but I knew that when he saw Austin, he wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

When he died 4 years later, I was afforded all the rights and respect of a spouse, even though we had no formal relationship or paperwork. I told them who I was and what our relationship was at the emergency room, and they sent me to a private waiting room and then sent a counselor to help me. The situation was that bad.

In Austin, at that time, they listened to me when I told them to cut off life support the next day. His father and older sister were there, but couldn't or didn't say a word. I held his hand while he died and said "Good night, sweet Prince. And bands of angels sing you to your rest." The nurses started crying, too. Then they shuffled me out so they could take care of their business. "We need to finish taking care of him now," they said. "And we're so sorry for your loss."

I guess nurses in the CCU get used to that over time, but they didn't treat me any differently than I expect they would treat anyone else.

My boss was the first to show up at my house with food. I told her I was taking two weeks off, and she said to take what I needed. Since he worked at home, Rich had struck up a friendship with the lady that owned the house next door. She came by with food. I ended up with so much food, I had to give it away.

Now I'm an old married man again. We've been together since 2000, living in sin some would say, but not many around here. We live openly without being obnoxious about it. In fact, we have the boring life I dreamed of as a boy in Tennessee.

We have a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood. I have a long-standing and fairly-secure job where I have never talked specifically about my sexual orientation to many people, but one where it is taken with a grain of salt. It's the least important thing about me, and they seem to recognize that.

Austin doesn't have a gay ghetto. When I was doing the real estate thing, clients from other parts of the state or country told me that they wanted to live in the "gay neighborhood". I just told them that Austin didn't have one. We're everywhere. Just pick where you want to live and settle in.

Our neighborhood is a mixture of retired rich people and younger ones buying their houses as they die or get packed off to nursing homes. We have a natural foods grocery across the street, full of good produce and meat, and old people with oxygen tanks who don't like the mega-stores any more than I do. We have more in common than we have different.

I've finally found my home. I found it when I moved to Austin many years ago. Room to breathe. Room to be free. Room to just be me.

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God I'm free, at last.