Tag Archives: personal experience

IT MIGHT BE THE BEST OF TIMES OR DAMN NEAR THE WORST

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Before I explain fracturing one of the great literary openings, I want to apologize for the extended period I’ve taken off from writing Monday posts. We’re way past my planned reappearance in January when I said I’d re-open. There have been deaths, potential lives (I’m going to be a grandfather to twin girls), a son moving out of the house, a rescheduled release date of my first three Matt Jacob novels by Polis Books, a decision to issue the fourth (TIES THAT BLIND) in fall of 2015 as both a print and e-book, and a great vacation in Mexico. From here on in I intend to post every other Monday and occasionally have different interesting and talented writers filling in on the off week.

As for the post’s title, it popped while watching an episode of Cosmos. I don’t have many regrets about my lack of formal education and perhaps that lack has added to my incredible delight and amazement as I begin to discern the scope of information and understanding we, as humans, have at our fingertips. In fact, it will take decades to decipher the raw data we receive every day from the rovers and probes that have been sent to space. It makes me tingle the same as listening to Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes, Miles, reading Raymond Chandler, or seeing a Eugene O’Neill play.

It’s not just astronomers who might be living in the best of times. We’ve been discovering new species that survive at the ocean’s depths via modern submersible technology. And what of neurologists and neuropsychologists mapping the electrical pathways of the brain and the implications for treating diseases like Parkinson’s, for example. Hell, it’s only been about a decade since the completion of the Human Genome Project and we’re already reaping its benefits, and not just in medicine. Frankly, the discoveries that have occurred during my lifetime have dropped my jaw.

And let’s not ignore technology and the Internet, which has changed the way people interact, the ‘size’ of our world, politics all over the planet, and offers the opportunity to disseminate information faster than our wildest dreams.

Yeah, I know. A lot of people won’t like the paragraph above. I often hear complaints about the loss of the “real” world to the “virtual.” The massive erosion of privacy. Have listened as people derided the “Arab Spring” since the results have been considerably less than desired. I understand the issues, see the complications, appreciate the downsides, but continue to say bring it on.

From where I sit, the potential far outweighs the negative. Furthermore, whenever societies go through seismic change, many people decry the loss of the past. I’m just not one of them. Does anyone really believe the world would have known about the kidnapping of 250 Nigerian girls without the Internet?

That last fact brings me to the second half of the title. With all this great knowledge tumbling into our lives, we still live in a world better known for atrocities than humanity. That, to me, is a sick mind fuck.

People are going to tell me “twas ever thus” and they may be accurate. But until my dying day I’m never going to believe it has to stay this way, that we’re not better than this. That the gentle acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity we see between individuals every day can’t be translated into the greater society everywhere.

Why? It’s isn’t because of anything rose colored. I’ve been lucky to have seen some serious change for the better over the course of my life. From changing attitudes toward Trans*, LGBs, and women to issues that include income inequality–(1% versus 90)–and, to a much lesser degree, institutional racism.

Then add to that the commitment and work being done by those coming after my generation. Despite the economic hardships that younger people now face, they are still growing Teach For America. Still finding ways, inside and outside the system, to work for social change. Again, not just in the U.S., but places where it’s even more difficult and the risks much, much greater.

But yeah, you gotta be blind not to see that way, way too much totally sucks—and it behooves us to never forget. But however ugly it is and/or becomes, there’s really is an awful lot of wonder, awe, art, music, science, and good, good people to love and respect.

(Please remind me of this column when I get into one of my negative rants. Thanks.)

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

LAST CALL

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As some of you already know, I’ve signed with Polis Books which will first repackage and reissue STILL AMONG THE LIVING, TWO WAY TOLL, and NO SAVING GRACE, then launch my 4th Matt Jacob novel, TIES THAT BLIND. I’m excited about working with Jason Pinter, founder and driving force behind this new Internet publishing house. TIES will be delivered to Jason by February 1st who, I’m pleased to say, will be its editor. The hope is that together we can cut through the Internet’s noise and bring the entire four book collection to a new generation of readers.

The only regret I had in making this commitment was the loss of Michael Paul Smith‘s current book covers. As part of my agreement, all current Matt Jacob novels (including the PDF version) will be withdrawn from sale within the next few weeks and remain so until Polis reissues them. So, if you love Michael’s covers, now is the time to buy these editions. They are available through my website, http://zacharykleinonline.com/matt-jacob-ebooks/, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Smashwords, which provides the ability to download the series to other platforms including Apple devices.

The other goodbye or, at least so long, has to do with my Just sayin’ weekly column. This will be my last post until I get my feet on the ground working with Polis Books and Jason. I’m hopeful to return at some point in January but can’t promise. So, for those of you who’ve taken the time to read it, I want to thank you dearly. It’s been because of your support that Just sayin’ has been running since January 2011.

Of course, when I return I hope you come back with me. I can’t express the pleasure I’ve had speaking to you throughout these years.

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me. Roland Barthes

SAID THE JOKER TO THE THIEF

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There is, but frankly it’s pretty unappealing. I’d rather interview the dead than be one. I hate returning to my regular Monday posts on a down note, but see no other way. It’s not that my off time was unproductive–got the major revision of TIES THAT BLIND finished and will begin the second revision after my publishing work partner re-reads the book and we review her comments. So, as far as writing goes, I’m pretty pleased. And, in fact, I had a much cheerier post planned for my return.

So why the down?

I read the newspaper every morning. And every morning I read about another fifty dead Iraqis. Another car bomb in Afghanistan. Obama ready to drone Syria—which most of Congress and even more of our population oppose. And then he catches hell from talking heads and those same opposing congressmen for agreeing to a negotiation rather than a bombing.

Ah-h-h, bombing—and they call baseball the “national pastime.” Since the Korean War we have bombed the following countries AND a city in the United States:

  • Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
  • Indonesia 1958
  • Cuba 1959-1961
  • Congo 1964
  • Laos 1964-73
  • Vietnam 1961-73
  • Cambodia 1969-70
  • Grenada 1983
  • Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
  • Libya 1986. 2011
  • El Salvador 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1980s
  • Iran 1987
  • Panama 1989
  • Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
  • Kuwait 1991
  • Somalia 1993
  • Bosnia 1994, 1995
  • Sudan 1998
  • Afghanistan 1998, 2001-present
  • Yugoslavia 1999
  • Yemen 2002, , 2009, 2011
  • Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
  • Iraq 2003-present
  • Pakistan 2007-present
  • Somalia 2007-8, 2011

Plus:

Iran April 2003 – hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one person.

Pakistan 2002-03 – bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

China 1999 – – Its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears the bombing was no accident.

France 1986 – After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route and, when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links were knocked out.

Philadelphia May 13, 1985 – A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, mayor’s office, and FBI were colluded  to “evict” a black organization called MOVE from one house and the effort got out of hand

(http://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/united-states-bombings-of-other-countries)

Do the math. In the fifty-four years since we stopped dropping bombs in the Korean War, we spent 36 of them dropping bombs on someone else. Or, if you want to reduce the fraction, it comes down to a very disturbing super-majority of two-thirds. I thought about researching the number of civilian casualties now simply known as “collateral damage”, but frankly, I was afraid I’d throw up. And I really hate to puke.

I imagine there are people who might be able to find rationalizations for some—or even all the above. And I say go for it because it sure doesn’t look like anything is about to change. We might as well have “reasons” for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. We ought to have “reasons” for a military force greater than that of damn near every other country combined. Let alone, “reasons” for not spending that unconscionable amount of money on giving our kids great schooling and healthcare.

Bottom line; we’re still taking scalps.

Some of my disgust probably comes because of age. I’m getting closer and closer to “the way out of here” and the older I get, the more violence sickens me. To have my homeland be a serial killer on steroids is excruciating. I’ve been alive through all the above and shudder to think how much more “collateral damage” I’ll live through during the rest of my life.

It would be easy to simply blame politicians, generals, national security councils. Too easy. We the people allow, encourage these mass murders. And I see nothing on the horizon that gives me much hope for change. Hell, the Socialist French President was extolling the virtues of bombing Syria.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to live in a country where bombs rain down day after day. Or even the threat of it. I have a Palestinian friend who once told me the first word he ever learned was “bomba.” The very idea of spending every day and night literally waiting for the bomb to drop is almost unfathomable. But in a country where every car’s backfire sends people scrambling for shelter, it’s a whole different experience. Those of us who are old enough to remember “duck and cover” probably remember the apprehension that came with the drill—and that was merely practice. As tragic, frightening, and painful as 9/11 was, it doesn’t equal the slaughter and fear we’ve inflicted upon innocents throughout the past fifty-four years. So many others have awakened every morning wondering how many of their family members are still alive. Not something our own children are forced to cope with.

Although I know a lot of people who feel the way I do, I still experience myself as A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. I go about my daily life, worrying about my relatively insignificant problems, then each morning coffee get jolted back to crazy. Only it’s apparently not crazy. It’s our country and the world in which we live and this is why I felt compelled to write this post.

I am, however, pleased to be writing my Just sayin’ column again. I missed doing it and missed the comments from people I know and those I don’t. And while I do feel intensely about politics and the United States’s role in this insanity, my column will once again tackle a variety of subjects, ideas, art, entertainment–as well as more INTERVIEWS WITH THE DEAD. Just sayin’ will not be an every week political rant–but I gotta tell you, thems there some low hanging fruit.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life-–Jane Addams

 

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS

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Nah, it’s not depression nor loss of electricity (which would really depress me). I’m simply taking a recess, a working vacation from my Just sayin’ posts until sometime in September.

As I mentioned last week, I’m in a serious revision push with TIES THAT BLIND. I want to strap myself in so the book has a chance to be online sometime this fall, which includes the revision, copy editing and reworking the format for each type of e-book published (including the PDF version).

I don’t expect to finish everything before I turn the Just sayin’ light back on, but I sure hope I’m close. So to those who might actually miss the posts and to those who have been following them, I’ll be baaack!

In the meantime, please enjoy the first chapter of each of my books, which can be found on my web site. And, of course, if you’re so inclined it’s easy to purchase them through my site as well. But thanks again for taking your time to read and comment on my columns. I can’t say enough about how much I’ve appreciated it.

See you in September.

“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.” Pablo Picasso

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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I’ll be turning sixty five this July so you’d think I would have known better. From the time I quit college, I had no belief that what passes for democracy in this country could be seriously reformed through our existing institutions. I distrusted both major political parties and doubted it was possible to ever create a significant or even viable third.

Living without this kind of belief is hard. Although I have, in many ways, embraced the resulting cynicism as a lifestyle, it drains an important part of life out of you. Luckily I also trusted that working with people less fortunate than I would be a worthwhile way to spend my life. A romanticized vision of an existential existence personified by the doctor in Albert Camus’s book, The Plague. And for most of my years that has been true.

Creating a school for dropouts in Chicago, trying to stem gang violence, pushing from my alternative school platform for educational reform; working at Boston’s Project Place, a worker-controlled social service agency that provided free services and also struggled to create an alternative to the usual hierarchical structures; having a private practice in counseling; fighting in the world of law for workers injured or killed by corporate indifference. All these years, all these efforts fed the meter.

Even when turning to detective fiction, I harbored the notion if I were able to honestly write about people’s interior lives and relationships, that too would be worthwhile to others and more important than just living for myself.

Throughout all that time I refused to vote for any major party presidential candidate except George McGovern. Even when folks beat on me for refusing to vote for Democrats like Humphrey and Clinton, I continued to believe that real change could never come about through our traditional institutions. A belief that was reinforced through my work with civil and criminal courts which exposed the nakedly blatant deck-stacking.

Then came Obama and I dropped my guard. I’ve written before about why I supported him, so no need to tread over old territory. But we’re almost six years in and my armor is back in place. Even his quasi-reforms don’t cut it. Especially when matched with the same old, same old that’s been a hallmark of his presidency.

In fact, the best I can say about his election (other than breaking the race barrier) is the preview of our new demographics and that was going to happen with or without him, and with or without some half-ass immigration “reform” laws.

So, “I’m back, I’m back. I’m back to where I once belonged.” But it’s different now. Or, more specifically, I’m different. It’s worse than ever. I don’t know how the “seduced and abandoned” factor figures in, but I can’t even imagine how anything can change for the better, something I’ve always been able to do.

This loss saddens me. The space where there was once an unbending hope for the future has been replaced by fear, loathing, and a deep sense of generational failure.

Yes, my generation has helped in some areas–race, women’s rights, LGBT rights and more, but it wasn’t and isn’t enough. I realized that when I looked at The Way We Live Now chart I included in my August 29th post. (middle of : http://zacharykleinonline.com/political/what-the-hell-are-we-4/) So much pain, so many lost lives, so little gain.

It’s kind of shocking when one is faced with their own naiveté. Add to that the painful realization that I’m saddened by what I see rather than juiced by anger. I’m sure some of these feelings are related to my own mortality. But some have to do with revisiting that existential reality and truly understanding the hopelessness that doctor faced in fighting the plague. As my cousin’s comment said on last Monday’s post, “What has become of us?” What I didn’t respond but probably should have, “Twas ever thus.”

Even with all that I’m feeling, I’m just not ready to throw in the towel. Maybe it’s because I see the work my son and his wife are doing along with others like him. Maybe it’s because I see that the Internet has given the fight a powerful new weapon and arena from its role in the Arab Spring to the petitions and notes flooding my inbox. Or, maybe it’s because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch. It doesn’t matter. I’ll continue to vote in local elections, sign those petitions, do my write ins for president, and occasionally demonstrate. But what matters to me NOW is making sure the candle is lit for those who follow.

Keep Hope Alive—Jessie Jackson