being your own

We are each, to ourselves, the horse, the chariot, and the charioteer.

faraway

How did I miss the national anthem of Myanmar all these years - its earnest strangeness - as strange, in its place, as that glorious oddity Key wrote: Kaba Ma Kyei ကမ္ဘာမကျေ Until the world ends up shattering, long live Burma!

Waffle House, et al.

Waiting on tables and cooking short order is remarkably good preparation for a career as a corporate lawyer.

preparation?

Google and other companies tailor webpage ads based on my browsing and email history.  I look at the Metropolitain Museum's website, and I get ads about art reproductions for a while.  But (honest injun!) I do not know what I did to merit the current barrage of hemorrhoid relief ads.

I think I will have to fake shop for a bit - for ink cartridges, say - just to get them off the subject.

clean sweepers and packrats

We oscillate between two contrary impulses in our inward, spiritual spaces.  Sometimes we are Moses, come down from the mountain, pulverizing the golden calf: we seek the One that is True by casting out all else.  But then sometimes we are Noah.  Yes, drawn by something singular, if but a singular uncertainty, and collecting a couple of everything into inward keeps, and maybe more than a couple of anything that seems plausibly holy.

secured

One who accepts bonds either wishes not to be free or: is betting.

all whet

For those sharp enough to pick up the problem, here's a Times headline from today: "N.Y. School Chief Honed Blunt Style Over 40 Years."

plant anyway

We are adapted to toil but want ease. Consideration of that tension is the straightest, easiest path I know into an appreciation for the role of wisdom and the trouble with cavalier truth telling.

their chains shall be broken

Two middle-aged men sit at a table in the Whole Foods near my work.  If they ever were eating or drinking anything, any trace is gone.  They seem settled in: to their spot, to their raincoats, to their conversation.  They watch as a "yoga and wellness" table is set up nearby, brochures set out, bundles of promotional pencils placed.  Their conversation flags as they observe, then one says, half-heartedly,  "I guess I could stop chain smoking a little."

a saccharine one

There are reasonable reactions that are not reasonable states - that are unhelpful ways to be.  Bitterness, surely.  Much of the human world is as bitter as a peach pit, and a bitter reaction is reasonable.  But no good comes of bitterness.

elements of law

Convertibility is a remarkable tool.  Nationalization of the state militia (or National Guard), debt that can be converted to equity in the event of borrower distress, currencies themselves.

chemistry

So much of the social quality of alcohol, as distinct from other drugs, comes from its liquid form and solvent and soluble qualities.

shifting allegiances

Corruption or disintegration, used in their social senses, range wide.  There is corruption or disintegration that is mere loss of order, to no good whatever.  And then there is corruption or disintegration that is really migration: a movement to a different order from the standpoint of the losing order.  Some who say "There goes the neighborhood!" is both correct and: in the wrong.  Ordinary political corruption is itself often the expression of a competing order that could be (though usually isn't) better.

wedding

Every happiness is the child of goodness and disregard. 

habits

Kindness - kindness lives in small houses.

beyond

Some peoples are beautiful, but not attractive - to the outsider - as children and the elderly are beautiful without being attractive, for they too are outsiders, within.

Yucatan 1, 2, 3

I fly into and out of Cancun, but do not stay there.  The scene at the airport makes me glad I did not.  The ugly American is everywhere visible - downing their first (or last) huge margarita slurpee from a pink plastic cup, buying Viagra and what-not over the counter at the gateside pharmacy, dressed to expose their revolting bodies.  Of course the ugly "American" is often European: plenty of the worst are lined up to go back to Manchester, or Dublin, or Milan.

It is ugly, but is it bad?  On to Uxmal, a formidable archaeological site.  Beauty abounds, the riddle of these grand stone structures absorbing, there is no feeling of the tourist trap, those visiting are awed - elevated.  It is not ugly.  But isn't it bad?  The ancient ball court - intricately, expertly carved - where captives were forced to play a brutal game, then decapitated.  The enormous platform, decorated entirely with carved bas-relief skulls - where the heads of decapitated captives were stacked to the sky.  The king and his lofty retinue lived on platforms reached by steep steps the commoners would never dare to ascend.  When they were all swept away by drought and war, the extraordinary beauty of their city and its stone structures - remained.  Remained, that is, eventually in ruins, covered in vines and trees.  It took the opportunity of drawing tourists and nationalistic pride to fund the decades of work of deciphering what was, putting stone back on stone, reclaiming the shadow of the glory of the place.

Onward to Santa Rosa, where the Hacienda is a marvel of sensitive restoration, peace and luxury.  Eleven rooms for the prosperous travelers who appreciate such a quiet little jewel.  The flowers and towels and heavy silverware are set out by men.  The housekeeping is masculine, only a few teenage women appear to be on the staff.  (Other than the manager herself, who is not local, but now lives in the village.  Given the dependence of this little village on the hacienda, she is virtually the mayor.)  Where are the local women?  At home: most girls marry at eighteen and most men prefer that their wives not work or risk exposing themselves to outsiders.  And the poverty is as obvious as the warm, wide smiles I'm greeted with in every part of the village.

Greed built Cancun out of nothing, and built it for the ugly masses necessary to fill its beaches and hotels and bars and strip clubs.  Greed built Uxmal.  Greed built the henequen plantation that Santa Rosa originally was, where the hacendado (or patron) kept his field hands in wage slavery by charging them high prices at the only store - which he owned - where the costs could be deducted, with interest, from future pay.

But not greed alone.  Cancun has beautiful beaches and breathtaking resorts.  Uxmal is visited for its present beauty as much as for its historic significance.  Santa Rosa is beautiful enough to draw tears from the visitor.

That petite Mayan woman at the Cancun Airport, selling Viagra to tourists in her white pharmacist's smock, prettily made up, eyes cold, smile thin. She might be from Santa Rosa, she might have wanted independence, she may go home to a little apartment with air conditioning and a sound roof, after stopping by the supermarket, having picked up a kilo of her girlfriend's favorite veggies. Her eyes soften, her smile broadens, and they make ramen, just the way they like.  The next morning she does not trudge to toil in an endlessly repetitive, stifling factory.  She does not work for a pittance slid under the table.  She has credentials that are marketable and mobile.  She gives advice to parents with howling children suffering from stomachaches, not just frat boys with wicked hangovers.  They listen to her.

Deciphered, one thinks of the soliloquy of Orson Welles in The Third Man, one thinks a hundred things, one sees good in the thicket of greed, evil in the bosom of beauty.  The twining vines, the stewing gumbo of ourselves, the ageless love triangle of good, beauty and greed, continually begetting themselves and the child evil.

attics

Every family is a self-contained realm of narcissistic myths, and in this lies each family's strength beyond economic necessity, its ability to bond - and to bind - without the voluntary impedimenta of friendships.

Yucatan in view