Culture is a many splendored thing, an ever changing thing, a thing of rough serration.
Culture is accumulation or sublimation, affirmation and assimilation.
Replete with many influences, focuses and words
Our tragedies hard remembered, transforming or disfiguring by turns.
Cultures get names they are black, white or youth,
We name so we can shame, we separate and we segregate, and thus we sieve the truth
But trying by defining, or controlling by enrolling means we lose even that we thought we knew,
Cultures confound, confuse and astound and are never just ours, false, or true.
Culture is shared value, shared history, community and reality,
Some of it good some of it bad, some ugly and some pretty
Like our history the strong get to write and to say, where the line is drawn that makes us pure,
But less truth intrusion means an easier inclusion in the closed circle we call, "our" culture.
Can a leopard change spots, can a zebra turn white or a tiger be loosed from her stripes,
Are we trapped as we are, or loosed to the stars to be free of our roots and our stereotypes.
I'm a man born to be, stout, white, English and free I'm a rebel and always will be,
But in one week or so I will change in my flow, when America naturalizes me.
So much has been writ of our cousinly ties and our shared and yet broken connections
How two cultures so close, could be severed and torn and go in two different directions.
But of course I've run foul of my own simple mind when I fail to see all of the mix,
It's not two but two thousand cultures or more that make up this complex matrix.
So let me be clear what is going on here, so my readers won't howl, fuss or rasp,
I will not be Lakota, Chippewa, Cree, Dakota, just a common or garden old WASP.
Yes an oath will be sworn, and a hand will be raised, a new anthem may come from my lips,
But when all's said and done, as a new murican,' I will still love my old fish and chips!
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Clearing Out the Basement
It is a mildly bemusing thing for me to think that I have grown up to own a basement. My first home away from the family home was a shared room with a neurotic violinist and his candle and record collection. From there I progressed to a small room that had space for a bed, a heater and a small wardrobe. That pretty much summed up my abodes till the time I got married. I did have one notable straying from that pattern for a brief time in Hong Kong when I shared a room with four guys in an old refugee camp that was about the size of a pool table. Storage was neither an issue, or a discussion then.
Time passed marriage and children came and homes grew in size to accommodate the family. Two bedrooms, then three and finally four, plus of course the aforementioned basement. Of all the 35 homes my wife and I have shared over the years, I have never had a basement let alone one that is the size of a small apartment, that is until now. I happily confess that it happens to be one of my favorite rooms. Water heaters, furnaces, water softeners and lots of pipes and wires I do not understand. Basements are great repositories of memories and at times, if it be not too delicate a rhyme to note, suppositories of memory too. Could not resist that...
We have lived a few months shy of two years in this home, but till now have not managed to clear out and tidy what was beginning to look like a landfill site, a place of dross collection,where all the things we could not get round to placing or throwing away from years gone by ended up. Some were in piles of articles with no real theme or connection and others there were to be found in an all too clearly connected pile of things. The common bond of all however was that they had long since passed from the light of utility, into the shadowy vale of uselessness, but had never quite had anyone brave enough to give them their shipping orders.
It was all getting a little too much to bear so with the massive help of my firstborn, the basement was invaded, order was brought from chaos, the great desolation became inhabitable. Shelves were assembled, desks and workspaces were erected and a measure of calm was restored. Now the question was, what to do with the pile of things that emerged out of this civilizing process. The problem was that I found it hard to take things that worked and might be useful sometime, some place, even in unlikely if ever to be replicated circumstances and just get rid of them. I had kept them so long and shared so many fun times with them over the years it seemed strangely disloyal and bordering on mildly treacherous.
Though these old things were of little fiduciary value, they were containers of memories, and memories are particularly precious as one grows older. As age count rises you wonder if you yourself will be merely someone's fond memory all too soon. These old and not so old things spoke to me of many things learned and experienced and in some ways I felt spoke to me even as we passed them on to others.
The accrued debris of my life, the flotsam and jetsam of possessions floating in the basement as if from a ship long passed, were being dredged up, dried out, hauled up onto the shore to be handed on to others.
Old records, cassettes, CDs and videos, amplifiers, speakers and radios spoke of the message to be lived in our lives in the way we walk and communicate that which we know, value, feel and hold precious. Music, voice, images and instruments magically take what is waves and vibrations and make beauty, stir emotion and fire our hearts. Words spoken can draw us to the truth, make us smile and make us cry. The voice seeks an ear, an audience, a reply or a reception. Communication begins when a voice is received not just broadcast. When it is there is always the promise of revelation through relationship, a community from communication.
An old car DVD player reminded me of family trips, and journeys that were shared adventures of discovery and what it was to breathe a new type of air together. I recalled history re-visited, places of beauty admired and enjoyed as a family. Things only observed on small screens or on paper were walked on, viewed and touched by those who looked in to that little dvd screen as it travelled along the roads and highways.
A computer monitor spoke to me of connection and creating. What was typed, was processed and then seen on a screen like the one I am viewing now and the one being given away. Seeing is believing but it is also encapsulating and imagining both what is, and what can be, created with words, pictures and shapes on a screen. Monitors can be mirrors of our mind's inner creation, they are mirrors with x ray vision reflecting what is inside our heads as we see it written down.
Our minds and lives can become like cluttered, disorganized basements finding place for too long to the things we should have discarded. Not all memories are good ones, and reminding ourselves of them too often by the things we keep in view can be the last thing we need for us to grow and change. Not all things remain useful over time and though they may still function, their function has ceased to be relevant to us. They have become lost out of context and they fill what should be space, or where we should have fruitful things that will bring life and new direction to our ongoing life purposes. Clearing some shelf space in our lives for nothing but space where there can be reflection, renewal and rejuvenation is perhaps not a bad thing for any of us.
So happy new year to you all, happy cleared out basements, and happy fruitful lives for the coming year. If you need to clear out the basement, or the attic or the garage of your life there is probably no better time. I encourage you to say goodbye graciously and appreciatively to the things to be removed, but do say goodbye if you need to, and let the sweetness of the memory of past things, be just that.
Sweet and memories.
Time passed marriage and children came and homes grew in size to accommodate the family. Two bedrooms, then three and finally four, plus of course the aforementioned basement. Of all the 35 homes my wife and I have shared over the years, I have never had a basement let alone one that is the size of a small apartment, that is until now. I happily confess that it happens to be one of my favorite rooms. Water heaters, furnaces, water softeners and lots of pipes and wires I do not understand. Basements are great repositories of memories and at times, if it be not too delicate a rhyme to note, suppositories of memory too. Could not resist that...
We have lived a few months shy of two years in this home, but till now have not managed to clear out and tidy what was beginning to look like a landfill site, a place of dross collection,where all the things we could not get round to placing or throwing away from years gone by ended up. Some were in piles of articles with no real theme or connection and others there were to be found in an all too clearly connected pile of things. The common bond of all however was that they had long since passed from the light of utility, into the shadowy vale of uselessness, but had never quite had anyone brave enough to give them their shipping orders.
It was all getting a little too much to bear so with the massive help of my firstborn, the basement was invaded, order was brought from chaos, the great desolation became inhabitable. Shelves were assembled, desks and workspaces were erected and a measure of calm was restored. Now the question was, what to do with the pile of things that emerged out of this civilizing process. The problem was that I found it hard to take things that worked and might be useful sometime, some place, even in unlikely if ever to be replicated circumstances and just get rid of them. I had kept them so long and shared so many fun times with them over the years it seemed strangely disloyal and bordering on mildly treacherous.
Though these old things were of little fiduciary value, they were containers of memories, and memories are particularly precious as one grows older. As age count rises you wonder if you yourself will be merely someone's fond memory all too soon. These old and not so old things spoke to me of many things learned and experienced and in some ways I felt spoke to me even as we passed them on to others.
The accrued debris of my life, the flotsam and jetsam of possessions floating in the basement as if from a ship long passed, were being dredged up, dried out, hauled up onto the shore to be handed on to others.
Old records, cassettes, CDs and videos, amplifiers, speakers and radios spoke of the message to be lived in our lives in the way we walk and communicate that which we know, value, feel and hold precious. Music, voice, images and instruments magically take what is waves and vibrations and make beauty, stir emotion and fire our hearts. Words spoken can draw us to the truth, make us smile and make us cry. The voice seeks an ear, an audience, a reply or a reception. Communication begins when a voice is received not just broadcast. When it is there is always the promise of revelation through relationship, a community from communication.
An old car DVD player reminded me of family trips, and journeys that were shared adventures of discovery and what it was to breathe a new type of air together. I recalled history re-visited, places of beauty admired and enjoyed as a family. Things only observed on small screens or on paper were walked on, viewed and touched by those who looked in to that little dvd screen as it travelled along the roads and highways.
A computer monitor spoke to me of connection and creating. What was typed, was processed and then seen on a screen like the one I am viewing now and the one being given away. Seeing is believing but it is also encapsulating and imagining both what is, and what can be, created with words, pictures and shapes on a screen. Monitors can be mirrors of our mind's inner creation, they are mirrors with x ray vision reflecting what is inside our heads as we see it written down.
Our minds and lives can become like cluttered, disorganized basements finding place for too long to the things we should have discarded. Not all memories are good ones, and reminding ourselves of them too often by the things we keep in view can be the last thing we need for us to grow and change. Not all things remain useful over time and though they may still function, their function has ceased to be relevant to us. They have become lost out of context and they fill what should be space, or where we should have fruitful things that will bring life and new direction to our ongoing life purposes. Clearing some shelf space in our lives for nothing but space where there can be reflection, renewal and rejuvenation is perhaps not a bad thing for any of us.
So happy new year to you all, happy cleared out basements, and happy fruitful lives for the coming year. If you need to clear out the basement, or the attic or the garage of your life there is probably no better time. I encourage you to say goodbye graciously and appreciatively to the things to be removed, but do say goodbye if you need to, and let the sweetness of the memory of past things, be just that.
Sweet and memories.
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