Homer: No TV and no beer make Homer go something something.
Marge: Go crazy?
Homer: Don’t mind if I do.
It’s only been a few days of semi-isolation. I haven’t had any beer or watched any TV – though to be honest, I haven’t watched TV (on a regular basis) for years (I don’t own a TV)… I’m not quite at the tipping point of going crazy, but I wouldn’t mind going out for a beer. I say semi-isolation because I still go out for walks, and I still sit on park benches, but I’ve been avoiding people. I’ve waved but kept my distance when I’ve seen neighborhood friends.
Today, I’ve been all over the place: applying to a few more jobs, reading poetry, writing poetry, consuming cough drops (though fewer than yesterday), consuming political news (though less than yesterday), and being a crank (probably about the same as always).
Attention and Metaphor
Among this morning’s diet of poems was a poem about watering plants and a poem about the discovery of a new species of millipede. Both poems served as good reminders that attention is… a gift, a currency, a form of love, an act of generosity.
Apologies for the quality of the screenshots of the second poem – longer poem, tiny screen.
Both poems are, in essence, love poems. Poems of attention. Love, being the epitome of care/attention and the antidote to cynicism.
Of course, my mind, working the way it does, didn’t take long to seek the counterfactual, the arguments against such care and attention. The first poem reminded me of a time when every morning I left my partner’s place in the city to head home where I’d feed the cats and get ready for work… and every morning before leaving at 5am, I wrote for her a different love note – sometimes wishing her a great day, sometimes saying I already missed her, sometimes to say I love her, etc. etc. As we know with many plants, there is such a thing as over-watering.
That train of thought prompted me to try my own poem about a Zebra plant that I bought when I moved here. I watered it like I do the other plants, which apparently wasn’t enough. In almost no time, it’s leaves crinkled, browned, and eventually dropped. Within a few days, it was little more than a stalk with one or two remaining leaves. That’s when I read that it needs lots of water to flush salts out of the soil. I gave it extra care and it came back. Now it has close to a dozen deep green leaves. I suppose what I wanted to get at in my poem is that we each have our own care instructions and how thirsty we can be when water has been withheld from us – which was a riff on some lines from Stephen Dunn’s poem “Tenderness” – a poem I have dogeared and referenced countless times. “You must have experienced the absence of it / often enough to know what silk and deep balm it is / when at last it comes.”
As for the millipede, I, too, love that there are people in the world who pay such close attention to things and that there are people who pay attention to the ones who are paying attention. So often, poetry and attention are about naming things, and to name things properly requires attention – what a wonderful gift.
Speaking of Poetry and Reading
In the midst of their breathless and disproportionate political coverage in which they are following Biden’s every move and urging him to withdraw from the race, the New York Times, an institution that may be too old to do it’s job very well, found enough time this past week to release a list of the top 100 books of the 21st century.
The list, which I looked over today, highlighted how little I’ve read over the past 24 years, but also how little consideration is given to poetry. At best, I’ve read maybe 6 or 7 of the 100 books – totally my bad. Perhaps more damning is that I’m not sure I’ve even heard of half of the books. I used to be more up on these things. Most of the books that I knew of and some of the ones I owned were published when I was still working in publishing and going to trade shows like Book Expo where I would pick up advance reader copies. When I moved (one of these various times), I donated a lot of those books (without having read them). I suppose this is why I have a library card.
Seeing those books was a bit of a time warp, wait, what the fuck happened and how was that 25 years ago moment. 25 years ago, I wasn’t married and I had only just met my eventual wife/ex-wife. Come to think of it, a few days ago we would have celebrated the 25th anniversary of our first date. Ooof… time and its relentless march.
As I perused the list, I felt mildly guilty for not being better read. There’s good stuff out there, and here I am mindlessly wasting my time on social media and twiddling my thumbs over silly blog posts. Right off the bat, I think I might want to read 10:04 by Ben Lerner. With Vonnegut style lines like, “Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you’ve the chance” I can see I might appreciate his sense of humor.
I was, however, disappointed that poetry was under-represented. I think the only poetry book on the list was Citizen by Claudia Rankine, and even that is not a straight-up book of poetry (it has essays and visual art and other stuff). I’d complain about the list and its lack of poetry, but that would just make me look like a crank.
I’m a Crank
While looking for jobs today, I came across a posting for an Executive Director position at a foundation. As soon as I read, founded by NBA star… I knew what the foundation’s focus would be: ensuring disadvantaged kids are healthy and active. I read on: “…works through evidence-based programming, research and awareness to promote children’s wellness, with a focus on reducing childhood obesity…” yadda yadda, “…physical activity, healthy eating, sleep, and emotional well-being to improve the health of our children and their overall development.” Is it me, or does every professional athlete have a foundation focused on promoting x, y, and z through sports? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this news story (local athlete supports kids) at least two dozen times – and I don’t have a TV or watch much news.
As someone who has worked in the nonprofit space for over a decade, it gets exhausting to see the same projects with the same initiatives being funded by just about every wealthy person who has a pet project. Instead of contributing to a collective effort, instead of supporting effective agencies and programs that already exist, they’ve decided to start their own foundation. Typically, this is inefficient and ego-driven. In the worst cases, family foundations are little more than a tax dodge and branding ploy. And because they’re foundations (usually with fewer disclosures) they seldom have the scrutiny that a traditional nonprofit (like your local Y or Boys and Girls Club) would have. A reasonable question to ask might be: if their mission is similar (which it is), instead of forming their own foundation, why don’t these professional athletes pour their money into the local Y or the local sports programs or the already existing and under-funded after-school programs? Given how many of these foundations exist, I would think American children should be the healthiest and most active kids in the world. And yet…
Speaking of Extreme Wealth and Being a Crank
Today, jets have been flying overhead in formation. Yesterday, over the Bay, it was helicopters. There’s a big sailing race tomorrow – big as in a winner takes all $2 million dollar prize sailing race. It’s happening at the yacht club near my apartment (maybe a fifteen minute walk from my place).
Yesterday, as I sat on a bench near the water, I watched some of the boats practicing – they’re very fast – streamlined and fancy. A black helicopter hovered and flew around before dipping down close to the water to follow some of the boats. If I had to guess, it was filming action shots for marketing purposes (the race website is full of jump-cut action shots).
This is where my crankiness comes in. A sailing race with a $2 million dollar purse. A spectacle that warrants fighter jets flying overhead to commemorate the event? A marketing budget that supports helicopters flying in close to get action shots. I work in an industry that’s trying to solve (or at least alleviate) difficult problems (hunger, homelessness, poverty) and very few organizations have the budget for professional video let alone video from helicopters. The race, SailGP, was founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, whose software company, Oracle, has given SailGP $2.3 million in sponsorship money. They expect next year, the race will break even or turn a profit. The boats cost about $4 million, which I suppose is chump change compared to Ellison’s $160 million super yacht.
This crankiness (which is really about fairness and excess) always puts me in a mood. I could deal with the excess and the extravagance if we, collectively, were more honest about global resources and who the real takers are. I work in an industry that often has a deficit mindset. Nonprofits compete for resources as though they’re on the hunger games (there’s a very good author/speaker/commentator by the name of Vu Le who talks about these things) meanwhile we, collectively, have enough resources to spend billions of dollars on sports and billions more on sports betting.
But the taking and wastefulness doesn’t end there. In the middle of a climate crisis that may end life on this planet as we know it, we, the plebs, are being told to do our part and recycle and compost and buy an EV and go solar while tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple are doubling down on AI which consumes enormous amounts of energy (Google’s emissions have climbed nearly 50% in the last 5 years because of AI). But beyond the companies, it’s also the individuals. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. 1% (approximately 77 million people) are producing as much pollution as five billion people. This was part of what I was thinking as I watched the helicopter swoop in low for its close-up action shots… action shots for a one-minute marketing clip to advertise a luxury boat race.
This is why we can’t have nice things. This is why I sit on benches and read poems about love and attention and care – things that sometimes feel in short supply.