John Lennon died thirty years ago yesterday. There’s no small amount of historical irony in the fact that he was murdered by a deranged fan a little over a month after Ronald Reagan was elected president. Lennon was a Dreamer, a working class kid from industrial England who soared to the heights of international fame and fortune and stayed there, chronicling the magical mystery tour of his life’s journey at every step of the way for all of us to share in. Reagan was an Illusionist who led America down the primrose path to a place where Fantasy became hopelessly entangled with Reality and the body politic degenerated to the level of a pit brawl. Thirty years on, the bill is coming due.

Todd Gitlin nails the Wikileaks freak show. I’ve been largely tuning out the whole affair, under the theory that History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. The annoying aspect of the entire brouhaha is the wholesale dismissal of the value of diplomacy as a tool for resolving conflict. Who is this little twerp parading around the Internet acting like a self-proclaimed counter-culture hero? According to Gitlin, “a minister of chaos fighting for a world of total transparency.” Good luck on that.

Further, “…it is not surprising that the generation that has made the mash-up its prime aesthetic form has produced the data dump. But to put it this way is not to congratulate Wikileaks—at least not without considerable ambivalence. It’s to lament the coming of a certain—shall we say generational?—style of exposé. Wikileaks is the Facebook of whistle blowing.”

The activists of yesteryear have become the wise elders of today (some of them, at any rate…). Street theatre and monkey-wrenching can be lots of fun, but someone has to be the grownups when it comes to dealing with the world as it is rather than as we would like it to be.

I picked up a book in Berkeley last week that’s right up my alley in terms of getting under the hood of American culture. It has the rather unimaginative title What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy, and is written by a Pennsylvania political science professor named Edward P. Morgan. What immediately grabbed my attention was the book’s focus on how references to the ‘60s in contemporary culture and politics tend to be systemically hollowed out and cut off at the roots, resulting in powerful emotional symbolism being bandied about that somehow never gets integrated into a realistic evaluation of historical context.

From the preface: “…the mass media’s “Sixties” discourse is chiefly one of ghosts, accusations, and smoke and mirrors that has long played on audience emotions and diverted public attention to what is essentially a symbolic form of spectator politics… this political culture is both hyper-political and depoliticized; hyper-political because it is dominated by blame-them rhetoric heightened by imagistic media, yet depoliticized in two important ways: the nation’s political institutions too often serve up essentially symbolic solutions that fail to resolve deep-seated problems that have over time become worse, and a correspondingly disillusioned and disempowered public is drawn into a culture of consumption and entertainment that provides them with a compensatory but ultimately erosive sense of empowerment.”

We’re way overdue for a major reckoning on how the Vietnam era shook American culture and politics to the core. As a society we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. The nice thing about engaging with the ‘60s is that, no matter how dark and complex the subject matter gets, it’s always counter-balanced by the whole glittering, incredible, outrageous extravaganza that popular culture served up on a regular basis. As we learned back in the day, political and cultural activism can be both constructive and a whole lot of fun. Who knows? Maybe a revival of that idea will bring some healing balm to the bitter tensions of what passes for our current public discourse.

“I must confess that after months of thought I am unable to get the true bearing of this event. One or two consequences are obvious. The experiences of children will be taken more seriously. Cameras will be forthcoming. Other well-authenticated cases will come along. These little folk who appear to be our neighbors, with only some small difference of vibration to separate us, will become familiar. The thought of them, even when unseen, will add a charm to every brook and valley and give a romantic interest to every country walk. The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth-century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and a mystery to life. Having discovered this, the world will not find it so difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts which has already been so convincingly put before it. All this I see, but there may be much more. When Columbus knelt in prayer upon the edge of America, what prophetic eye saw all that a new continent might do to affect the destinies of the world? We also seem to be on the edge of a new continent, separated not by oceans but by subtle and surmountable psychic conditions. I look at the prospect with awe.”

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
excerpt from The Strand, Christmas 1920 issue

The Virginia state legislature is gestating a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution so individual states would have the right to opt out of federal laws they don’t wish to abide by, subject to a 2/3 vote of the state legislature. Eric Cantor, a cocky idiot who will be House Majority Leader in the new Congress, is urging everyone to keep an open mind about this. Phew! Once the floodgates in the mind open up to the lure of delusional revisionism, there’s simply no going back.

It’s actually fitting, given that the sesquicentennial (great word!) of the Civil War is fast approaching, that this subject be given a public airing. Back in the day, the idea of secession was romanticized from a leftist/environmentalist standpoint in Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, which posited an ecological utopia formed when Northern California, Oregon and Washington split off from the United States to create a separate nation. It was a fun fantasy, but one that I outgrew a long time ago.

Don’t these people have enough to do? We really don’t want to re-litigate the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was passionate about holding the Union together, and slavery was a secondary concern. I know there are many people who prefer not to examine that too closely, but it’s the truth. Our radical experiment in the ideal of liberty and justice for all has made great progress in the past 150 years. We need people in positions of power doing the ongoing heavy lifting required to engage constructively with the major issues of the day. We don’t need lightweights who prefer to sulk when they don’t get their own way and waste a bunch of time indulging in escapist fantasies.

When I visited Monet’s garden at Giverny in the summer of 2001, I understood for the first time how an artist could settle on one piece of land and never grow tired of studying and portraying its beauty. Take a beautiful outdoor setting and add in the play of light and shadow over the course of a day, then spread that across the circle of seasons (during which time Mother Nature works her magic), and you have infinite combinations of wonder to explore. I’m a totally amateur photographer and I didn’t have the luxury of a digital camera then, but I still took some amazing pictures that I delight in looking at.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of people’s souls being rooted in place, and what it might mean if everyone developed a sense of stewardship over a physical location they felt was their spirit’s home. They would hopefully then want to know it better: its history, its natural lore, its ecosystem, its beauty and what it meant to them, etc. I would be expansive about this: for some, it might be their birthplace, even though they had long since moved away. Others might feel most at home in a bustling urban area (not my cup of tea, but that’s neither here nor there). Everybody would decide for themself which place on terra firma sang to them most sweetly. It would apply a deep ecology ethic to manmade systems, rather than being separatist about the whole thing. It might help to restore a sense of rootedness to modern culture. It’s a fun idea to think about.

The idea that Americans continuing to over-indulge themselves into a consumptive stupor will restore health and stability to the economy would be laughable if so many people didn’t seem to fall for it. In fact, our collective inability to recognize and call out the symptoms of the addiction disease for what they are has much to do with what got us into the current mess. Why would I want to spend the day after Thanksgiving elbowing my way through sweaty crowds to buy a bunch of stuff I don’t need when, for the price of half a gallon of gas, I could be out enjoying this?

‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.

Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
There’s no place like home!

An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain;
Oh, give me my lowly thatch’d cottage again!
The birds singing gaily that came at my call;
Give me them with the peace of mind dearer than all.

Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
There’s no place like home!

John Howard Payne (1791-1852), “Home, Sweet Home”

7/23/02, Burgos, Spain – I’m in Burgos, now. This is where El Cid lived in the 11th century. I arrived here last night and am spending the day resting and sightseeing. I’ll continue on my path of righteousness in the morning. I have about 500 km more to go to reach Santiago, where my holy crusade will end. In fact, I’ve already placed my order for a size XXL 5000 watt halo.

There are some really neat souvenir shops here in town. You can get a genuine El Cid sword here for under $20. I wish I had some space to carry one. On the other hand, I might just need one for protection against the roving bands of godless heathen moors and protestants that I’ve been warned about.

Now that I’ve cycled a few hundred km in northwestern Spain (and having cycled the entire Mediterranean coast on my last trip), I have to admit that Spain is just not as pretty as France. This is really unfortunate, as the cost of living here is much less, I can almost speak the language, and the food is better. In France I really tried to cultivate a taste for frogs and snails, but never really did get to like them. Here in Spain, a tortilla is a flat potato omelette and all of the cafes have tapas, which are an assortment of snacks that usually taste good even if I don’t know what they are made of.

From now on, I plan to slow down my pace a little. After my last trip to Europe, I felt that I spent too much time cycling and too little time enjoying Europe. And here I am making the same mistake again. This afternoon I’m going to read my pilgrim guidebook and try to plan for some more rest days between here and Santiago. The country I’m cycling through is like the area between Bakersfield and Fresno, but with a lot more hills. The two lane highway seems to miss most of the small medieval villages that I really like to see. It’s not as bicycle friendly as France, where there are a lot more rural roads that pass right through the small villages.

God is certainly looking out for the welfare of His holy pilgrims. The temperature is in the mid ‘90s, none of us are even slightly concerned about frostbite, and there are just enough unexpected thunderstorms to ensure our personal cleanliness.

The closer I get to Santiago, the more holy pilgrims I see along the way, as the various pilgrim trails from all parts of Europe converge. I’m expecting that the last 50 km into Santiago will look like the Interstate 10 at rush hour, full of backpackers and bicycles.

I’m really surprised at just how popular this trip is here in Europe. I had never heard of it before someone in Paris told me about it. I have even run across several other Americans here. With the three Euro price for a night of ecstasy in the multi-sex albuergues, a person can easily take a very long, very cheap European vacation and see things that the average tourist will never have a clue even exists. I might even do this again someday, but following a different route. That way I could be the only saint in California with two halos.

7/18/02, Pamplona, Spain — I’m finally back to cycling on my holy crusade for God, but I had some difficulty getting here from Andorra. I was able to take a bus to Lleida, Spain, which is a town with all the charm of Beirut. From there I was told that I couldn’t take the Holy Skinkmobile on the bus to Pamplona.

Then I went to the train station, where they told me that the bike has to be in a box before I can take it on the train. Even after I patiently explained to those heathens in my cultured, fluent and flawless Mexican-border Spanish (which I have spent many years refining and perfecting in some of Tijuana’s finest cantinas) that I am a pilgrim on a holy crusade for God, and that if they give me any shit their immortal souls will be in grave peril of the hellfire of eternal damnation, they still insisted on the bicycle box.

Maybe He will show them mercy and only give them 100 trillion years in purgatory.

I finally had to buy a roll of strapping tape and crawl through all the dumpsters in town until I had enough cardboard to make a bicycle box. I caught the midnight train and arrived in Pamplona at about 6:00 this morning.

They just had the running of the bulls in Pamplona last week, maybe you saw it on the news. I had always thought that Pamplona was another ancient European town, but if there is an old part to the city I never found it. I rode the bike around for a long time, looking for a cheap hotel. I was really tired and frustrated trying to navigate, as none of the streets have signs. By the time I located where I was on the map, I found that I was at the edge of town and pointed back toward the pilgrim trail. So I decided to pedal another 25 kilometers and get a cheap place to rest in by the trail.

I was very surprised to find out that the Holy Roman Swinging Catholic Church rents out multi-sex dorm rooms to holy horny pilgrims. They call them Albergues, and they are only three Euros a night. This is fantastic! Just think of all the money I will save to reinvest in my wicked lifestyle by staying in albergues. Unfortunately, they aren’t equipped with vibrating water beds, strobe lights and music by Jimmy Hendrix or Black Sabbath. But, what can you expect for only three Euros?

From here, it looks like a little over two more weeks or 800 kilometers of pedaling on my holy crusade, depending on the size of the hills.