whose harm is it, anyway

What is harm anyway? There's the obvious nightmare catalog of war, insurrection, repression, torture, and unimaginable, and all-too-observable, endless permutations of physical, mental, social, etc violence, passive or active. And everything in between along a continuum of horror. There's that. There are also ever more subtle acts or omissions of harm, a seemingly infinite inventory of our inhumanity.

But what about the debates that people wage, even on Planet Harm?

Debates about blame, responsibility, history, cause and effect, will, evil, social structures, philosophies, religions, anarchies?

What about cloudy or murky (in the eyes of some) instances of alleged harm? (Mere mention of the word "alleged" sparks debate in some circles.)

The gesture of holding the door open for someone: is it gallant, condescending, ahistorical, sexist, ageist, arrogant, presumptuous, kind, or neutral?

And the rebuff of such a gesture: is that a shade of harm in the form of hues yet named?

The list goes on. The lists go on. (Whose lists?)

The look from one to another, anonymous or intimate: affection, objectification, lust, compassion, anguish, remorse, regret, rage, curiosity, sadness, charity, solidarity, sincerity, lovingkindness . . . ad infinitum.

The same with the written word, the spoken word. The same (multiplied exponentially) with words or parts of words or emojis transmitted by short message service, or SMS, which we all call "text."

The same with the word or words not said.

And then there's the harm of history, the stain and weight of ancient or recent sins, horrors we inherit, a heritage that can't be disappeared, that we cannot escape, even if by association and lineage. 

So, we on Planet Harm live and breathe all this; it's our atmosphere. Some of us plead acceptance; others pray for amnesia; yet others cry for conversion, a magical metanoia; many crave escape (and they find it but only in passing, momentarily).

We Harmlings are standing on a plank over a crevice. We dream of wings. 

We Harmlings push a rope that is slack from use.

The elders sang sagas of a deus ex machina, a dea ex machina, come to the rescue.

We lost the words but remember the melody.

What now?

Planet Harm

You walk in the sands, the landscape you know by heart, the windswept dunes granular as sugar and almost as white. The screeching seagulls declare, "Water is somewhere, but where?" People say, "The sky's the limit." What kind of limit is that? The sands, the horizon, they're the limit. One echoes the other. You have no GPS, no bearings. One direction is the same as any other.

Legend has it we are on the planet Harm, meaning that is what we are taught from the earliest age. We are told that our world is round, not flat. We are taught that Harm is spherical but not circular. We are taught that Harm is the name of our planet.

Who came up with that, and when?

Who can say?

As a citizen, a resident, of planet Harm, your pain is nothing special, nor is your grief. All of us are in harm's way. It's our birthright. If everyone is in harm's way, who has a right to complain? Sure, differences of degree and scale exist. But they don't stand out. Harm is in the air, in our history, in our vocabulary, our line of sight. 

When someone (Anonymous, for our purposes and safety) entertained the idea of escaping the circle of pain, it made no sense. What circle? We see no markings, no signposts. How could there be a circle of harm when harm is all we know? How can we imagine an atmosphere other than our own?

No passports, no tickets, no travel vouchers.  

But no one has ever expressed a desire to leave. Nobody has ever voiced a need to flee. And to where would we go? What would we find there?

We perform our daily chores: melting the sand into glass, sculpting the glass into art, selling the art to the Harmageddonite who bids the highest.

The sharp bristly-minty tang of a dark pine forest. The shock of the chlorine choir of the salty sea, its ripples blinding you. The roar of a river halting you. A blanket of emerald meadow lulling you to sleep.

We hear rumors, murmurs. We dream, or fantasize. Our poets sang sagas.

Talk of escape, revolution, refuge. The elders memorized the chants and passed them on to our children's children.

We hear the secret and dangerous whispers about "charms." The unwritten subversive scriptures etched into our blood.

Charms: the coded hints of talismans, trinkets, fetishes, amulets, totems, periapts, tokens, incantations, chants, litanies, phylacteries, scapulas, beads.

The inscription on the desert rock quotes Empedocles: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. ”

The priestesses debate whether this promises hope or despair.

the vow

We took vows. We made a vow of silence. We all did. Some complied more than others, or so we have "heard." I took a vow of silence. During the Ceremony itself, the Presider spoke no words, nor any sign language utterances. All the Candidates knew in advance this was at the heart of the Ceremony, not the only vow but a critical one. Stark in its simplicity, its lack of protocols, aberrations, rewards, punishments. We knew this out there in the world. We knew this, we were told, warned, if you will. We could've run right then and there. I could have run. We complied. We affirmed by standing as one, rising from the pews, our white cotton robes rustling (the robes took no vow of silence!), our cowls covering our heads. Obviously white vestments or black. Had to be either one. We stood as one. However, two Candidates, one male and one female, refused, they remained seated while the others stood. The Ushers politely ushered them out into the blaring noon sun. No remonstrances, no frowns. They were told, we were all told, this was a last chance to shun the vow of silence, to make a silent statement of rejection -- or freedom, if you subscribed to such a worldly view. Better now than later.

I stood. I assented. I had no hesitation. If I were to hesitate, would I have remained seated? We will never know, will we?

The first week was the hardest. Such a new means of living, with so little training or practice! The Ushers were tolerant, letting the odd, random spoken word to escape, as happened with many, if not most, of us. Things like "yes" or "no" or "what." One quickly learned that such monosyllabic slips faded away, subsided, stopped, given no conversational milieu to flourish in. After all, what does "what," "yes," or "no" even mean without a prompt or context or wordscape? Almost nothing.

I napped a lot at first. The antidote to this, the Ushers knew, was work in the fields. Raking, pruning, digging, mulching, watering, transplanting. The work was a boost to my spirits, uplifting, despite the hard labor involved.

By the end of the first year, the silence became a routine, an atmosphere, a given. I can't speak for anyone else (obviously, I am not permitted to speak at all), but I was surprised that the wordless soundscape (coughs, sneezes, burps, farts, yawns, knuckle cracklings continued to flourish) did not create a white purity, a pristine echo in my heart and mind. Quite the opposite. The silence, for me, evoked a roar of white noise. No, no, that's not quite right. Sure, there was the static of anxiety, fear, and restlessness, but that was nothing compared to the relentless interior monologue gonging in my head, made silent only by sleep, which over time became increasingly sparse.

Wasn't this the purpose of the vow, to silence, or quell, the running commentary of my mind? Weren't they trying to soften, eventually mute, our narrative (a worn-out word), our editorial board, our storyteller without lips or voice?

Voice. That word. Voice. Do I have one? (Whispers in my cell have proved inconclusive.) I am convinced that my voice persists; it has not vanished; its imprint can still be felt. 

And that is why I have written this crumpled note, unfolded into legibility, I pray. Hear my voice. Rescue me. I can't speak for any of the others. But rescue me. I've had enough. Get me out. There are rumors, scribbled on napkins or toilet paper, that some have made it out.

I'm screaming. I'm shouting. 

Can you hear me?

exile

'I would be in exile now but everywhere's the same...I want a ticket home.' Phil Ochs

Who exiled us, and from where? What did we do to deserve this bleak Babylon? What trumped-up offense triggered our desolate banishment? We have became exiles on Main Street, as well as Maple, Cypress, Poplar, Oak, Pine, Walnut, the whole slew of tree streets. And all the lanes and avenues. Exiled. Our offspring became a diaspora scattered to the winds, and for what and why and to where, for that matter from where. We are refugees without a country to escape from or to go to. No St. Helena or Elba as Napoleon had. You begin to accept it all as part of the punishment, the scheme: the burning sands, the foreign language, strange fruits, the treeless hardscape (despite those arboral street names). Nixon in San Clemente. Santa Claus at the North Pole. Jesus in the tomb. John Gotti in his cell. Jane Fonda in Hanoi. We fear traipsing the sands again, before our calluses have formed anew. Exilia in Exileland. And who were these residents who were here when we arrived? Were they exiles long ago? No passports, no direction home. No appetite any more for going back, as if something is there for us. 

Who will read this message in a bottle?

And then what?

a thousand nothings deep, or fifteen questions

• To not be or to be? (that's where every naked vernixed baby starts)
• Can you be tied up in nots?
• Have you been a little noughty boy or girl or other?
• How many noughty problems are you trying to solve?
• Is it all for nought?
• Exactly how do you not do something?
• Will she even know about the myriad midnight moments you texted her but did not press Send, the relentless repetition of uncertainties, declarations of love posing as a litany, the anvil of No in your chest radiating its metallic pulse out to the tired sheets?
• Have you learned any lessons from that course you took on set theory, the difference between a null set and an empty set?
• How does one measure nullity-zero-none? 
• If you're trying so hard to not do something, aren't you doing more than if you were doing nothing? (we're talking again about her cited above)
• Why is it harder for you to say No than Yes (except when Yes would clearly be better than No, or vice versa)?
• Have you noticed that to forgo the habit of Yes you have to acquire the vernix-covered habit of No, which requires more discipline, resolve, will, and anonymity, because after all who pays attention to your silent No, Not This Time, the No that is mined in the night or in the day when you are mumbling with your earbuds in?
• When is enough enough, more accurately, when is not enough finally enough?
• Are they always lying, at the least fibbing, when they assert, No, it's nothing, nothing at all, that is not what I meant at all?
• How do you (yes, you; no, not you) spell No?

hopeless romantic

You hear and see the term "hopeless romantic." Why hopeless and not hopeful? Does the former choice anticipate rejection, adding to the unrequited-love pose? Does the latter choice make it all sound too easy? Is being romantic a hopeless proposition, given the clash of romance and gauzy fantasy vs. the pebble-in-the-shoe or sand-in-your-tea challenges of so-called reality?

If I were a rich man...

Good song, entertaining play. "Fiddler on the Roof." Saw it on Broadway with my older brother and my parents. A Christmas present. Something tells me my younger brother was at home watching a famous football game in which the Kansas City Chiefs lost.

If I were a rich man:

• I wouldn't necessarily be happier.
• it might be harder to live sober.
• perhaps I'd be less, not more, generous.
• my life would be more complicated.
• other people would view me differently.
• I might employ the personal pronoun "I" more often.
• I might forget what it was like to be a poor man
• I would dress differently.
• I might speak differently.
• my circle of friends and acquaintances might change.
• I might eat differently.
• I would travel.

cui bono?

The movie "Birdman" did not soar for me. Although the acting performances were excellent across the board, and the filming techniques intriguing, the movie was drenched in the existential searching and posing I thought went out in the Seventies. I liked some of the takes on Manhattan, evoking the somewhat squalid Eighties, when I worked there, more than the current Disneyfied version of Times Square and its environs. Oh, I get the reality versus fiction versus fantasy stuff. And the back story about worth and authenticity and identity blah blah blah. Cui bono? To what good? The writers and directors took themselves über-seriously. Sorry. Pretentious claptrap. Not buying it. Save it for the Gauloises-smoking crowd.