A Man and a Lion were discussing the relative strength of men and lions in general. The Man contended that he and his fellows were stronger than lions by reason of their greater intelligence. “Come now with me,” he cried, “and I will soon prove that I am right.” So he took him into the public gardens and showed him a statue of Hercules overcoming the Lion and tearing his mouth in two.

“That is all very well,” said the Lion, “but proves nothing, for it was a man who made the statue.”

We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.

– Aesop

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.

An LA Times article about yesterday’s announcement that Britain’s Prince William has gotten engaged to his longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton highlights a key difference between British and American society:

“With no royal or aristocratic pedigree, Middleton will become the first commoner in centuries to marry a presumptive heir to the throne. Her plebeian background has been mercilessly picked over and ridiculed by Britain’s snobbish tabloids, here in a land where many still turn up their noses at those who speak with the wrong accent, say “toilet” instead of “loo” or live in a house with an address number rather than a name.”

Of course, nothing like a fairy tale romance involving a royal prince to get the commoners’ minds off such mundane woes as the prime minister’s recent drastic slashing of the government budget. Still, one can only wish the young couple well. The short, unhappy life of William’s mother is certainly a cautionary tale on the collision between fantasy and reality.

Meanwhile, over on this side of the pond, we have that pseudo-princess of Republican royalty, Bristol Palin, shaking her booty all over “Dancing with the Stars.” I guess the baby’s back home with Levi. How ya gonna keep ‘em down in Wasilla after they’ve seen Hollywood? (And, as somebody commented awhile back when the brouhaha over gay marriage in California was in the headlines, “How could gays possibly do any more harm to the idea of marriage as a sacred institution than Bristol and Levi?”)

Social class is the electrically charged third rail in American culture that people tend to avoid. But examples abound of how classy behavior doesn’t correlate with either money or ancestry. That’s where the British system is more hidebound by tradition. We have the freedom to consider how qualities such as character and individual action define class, American-style. There’s a lot to explore there, as we muddle through these turbulent times.

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Northern California is a place where borders between civilization and the wild are in a state of flux. There has been an increasing amount of public education in recent years about the importance of holding the line against wild animals encroaching on human turf. Bears (up in the mountains) and coyotes (closer in to the cities) who develop a taste for human food change their hunting tactics and pass them along to their young, which inevitably results in animals having to be killed when their behavior becomes too aggressive towards people. The last time I went camping up in the mountains, the park rangers were selling children’s books aimed at teaching little ones the difference between bears they might see in the wild and the friendly creatures they know from stories. It’s a serious issue.

Fortunately, the environmental activism of the past several decades seems to be bearing fruit, in that old alliances are shifting and new (relatively speaking) ideas are coming into play.  The environmentalism of yesteryear too often tended to pit city against country, human activity against the natural world, etc., as if you were supposed to choose one realm or the other. That’s simply not a sustainable concept. If my knowledge of matters such as deep ecology, California-style, proves useful to a creative team developing a major stage musical about a group of hobbits, wizards, elves, dwarves and humans, I need to be able to travel (and enjoy the journey) as I go about my work. Commerce is not the enemy of the environment. Greed, waste and fraud are.

The citizens of Richmond, an economically depressed neighboring city with a multicultural population numbering around 100,000, voted down a measure in this past election that would have permitted a northern California Indian tribe to build a glitzy casino on the last undeveloped headland on San Francisco Bay. The site, Point Molate, currently houses an abandoned Navy base. The casino deal had been in the works for seven years, during which time an alliance that included a Berkeley developer, a Mendocino County-based Pomo Indian tribe, Chevron Corporation (which owns a nearby refinery) and a sprinkling of environmental groups slugged out a deal each was willing to live with. The people of Richmond have given a resounding “thumbs down,” voting no on the pro-casino ballot measure and installing a City Council to represent their wishes going forward.

There’s lots to unpack with this story. The fundamental issue is whether or not a working class community can protect its turf against an array of moneyed interests, with varying motives, all of which presume to tell it what’s in its best interests. The project would certainly bring much needed money to Richmond, but at a high cost for the entire region. Indian gambling rights were designed to bring revenue to depressed rural areas where tribe members have limited economic opportunity. Allowing Vegas-style commercialism to encroach on a beautiful piece of land on the shores of San Francisco Bay would set a very bad precedent for a dense urban area whose population tends to hold green principles in high regard. Precisely because of its history of urban blight, Richmond is the type of area that has the potential to develop in accordance with true ecological principles, while avoiding the culture of corporate-style conspicuous consumption that has become just another form of blight spreading over more affluent cities and towns in the region. This is going to be an interesting one to watch.

I went to a small gathering/book signing this morning with a Berkeley writer named Adrienne McDonnell, whose first novel, The Doctor & the Diva, has recently been published to critical acclaim. The book, about a woman’s painful struggle between the desire to have a family and a deeply rooted need to pursue an artistic career, is based on a true story as revealed in a series of family letters from the early 1900s. The author was delightful and inspiring in telling her personal story, and she graciously encouraged the assembled group of writers (all women of a certain age) to always nurture and have faith in the creative spark within.

Inevitably, the letters and papers in my own file cabinet have resumed attempts to ensnare me with their siren song. Several years ago, I discovered a veritable treasure trove amongst papers I had inherited after my parents died. My grandfather, who was full of Southern charm and had a gift of gab to match, in his elder years wrote a series of letters to one of his brothers recounting, among other things, the stories their grandmother had told during their boyhood of life during the Civil War era. One of the letters narrates how she was alone at home in central Georgia with her two small children (the younger was my great-grandfather; her husband was away fighting for the Confederacy) when General Sherman’s army came to the door.

I get chills just writing this, and want to drop everything else I have to do today and begin reading through these papers and organizing them. They’re going to have to wait a bit longer, but it’s a priority. I have some items of real silver that have been passed down from my forebears, but this material is bright, shining gold.

The New Republic has a nice piece up this morning about ideas and the artistic process, written by a woman who teaches English at West Point. It’s an interesting window into the quality of education going on these days at the top levels of U.S. military training. The subject is charged for me because one of my conclusions about the Vietnam era was that the majority of U.S. power brokers (whether in government or business) didn’t practice what they preached, and were forced to routinely suppress evidence of their hypocrisy in order to maintain their professional and/or societal positions. If underlings are truly encouraged to think creatively and question the relationship between ideas and reality, sooner or later somebody’s going to feel threatened and will seek to quash certain lines of inquiry. That’s just human nature.

I’ve gotten the impression over the years that the military has done a vastly better job of learning the lessons of Vietnam than politicians have. And therein lies a ray of hope for today’s turbulent cacophony. To make a gross generalization, the liberally inclined tend to deny that military might has benevolent applications, while romanticizing the ability of government to engineer solutions to intractable problems. The conservatively inclined tend to view any questioning of power and authority as inherently unpatriotic, and wear blinders against evidence of systemic abuse at the top. Both mindsets are riddled with flaws. They also set up a false dichotomy that merely serves to keep the status quo entrenched.

The possibility of a true (and long overdue) dialectic is starting to take shape in American culture. I expect the next two years leading up to the 2012 election will see lots of ferment in this area. People in general seem open to considering new ways of looking at chronic and complex problems than they did when times were easier. Tensions between the Individual and Society, Man and Machine, etc. are archetypal and eternal, but their resolution has real-world implications and applications for an ongoing, infinite array of circumstances. It’s possible for U.S. power to be a force for good in the world and at the same time be a source of egregious abuse. Our history is an ongoing narrative that needs the best critical thinking and creative inquiry brought to bear in shaping it. It’s a healthy sign that the tools for exploring these kinds of ideas are being taught at the U.S.’s pre-eminent military academy.

7/13/02, Andorra — I arrived here in Andorra last night from Marseilles, and I must say that I really began to like it almost as soon as I arrived. Prices here are the lowest I’ve seen on this trip so far. Not only that, the whole town looks like Rodeo Drive, but with Tijuana prices. How can anyone not like it here?

My first pleasant surprise was that they speak Spanish here. Spanish is remarkably similar to Mexican, which I can speak fairly well. The bus driver who brought me up here from the last train station (believe me, you wouldn’t want to try to peddle a bicycle up this mountain) not only spoke in a comprehensible language, but was very accommodating when I told him I wanted to take a bicycle on the bus. Not only did I not have to argue in a foreign language while armed only with a Berlitz French phrase book (which is horribly inadequate when you need to use those wonderfully colorful and descriptive words that only contain four letters in English but are absolutely necessary when speaking to a French train conductor with an attitude problem), but his breath didn’t smell of frogs, snails, garlic and cheap wine.

This place is a BIG improvement. After reading the Lonely Planet, I was expecting another old European fiefdom with a castle on the top of the hill where they speak Catalan. Catalan is a language that is similar to both French and Spanish, but no one—not even the other Catalans—seems to understand it.

To my further delight, I found a nice hotel room for only 11 euros a night. It may lack some of the colonial charm of Pancho’s Motel, but it certainly beats camping—especially since drizzling rain is coming and going. After that, I went out for a very good and affordable meal.

The capitol here is a very clean, very modern and very pretty small town. The countryside is somewhat similar to the Lake Tahoe area, but the mountains are higher and steeper. The main industry seems to be selling tax-free luxury items, watches, camcorders, cameras, jewelry  etc. to other Europeans. All of the main streets are lined with Rodeo Drive-type shops full of expensive looking stuff. It’s really amazing to find cheap prices on food and hotels in the middle of this. This isn’t quite the souq in Abu Dhabi, but it really isn’t far from it.

I think I will probably take a few more days off from my holy crusade for God, and relax here for a while and begin working on the software for my mathematical theory. Let those damn sinners wait a few more days for their undeserved salvation.

Really beautiful places certainly seem to be more spectacular when accompanied by low prices, don’t they?

I’m getting punchy from having read and listened to too much jaw-jaw in the past 24 hours from people who purport to be sober-minded political and/or cultural analysts. I’ve always tended to take a turret-gunner approach to considering things from a multiplicity of angles before making up my mind, and it never ceases to amaze me how much people’s egos can blind them to how they come across to those outside their inner tier of family, friends and supporters (Meg Whitman, are you listening???). Nothing like a nationwide election to shine a light on some of the weirder currents and characters in American culture. So, while there’s a plethora of material to chew over and digest in serious-minded fashion from yesterday’s results, my first impulse is to laugh. Lewis Carroll captured the flavor of the moment perfectly, way back in 1872. I’m not a kneejerk defender of the Democrats by any stretch of the imagination, but this is quite literally what I hear coming out of the mouths of Republicans these days. I expect it’s an affliction that’s not going to go away anytime soon.

JABBERWOCKY

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,
  
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head
  
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
  
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(from Through the Looking Glass)

Jon Stewart may have stirred up something bigger than he bargained for in holding a “Rally For Sanity” on the National Mall on Saturday. I tuned in to the live broadcast partway through, and was pleasantly enough surprised by what I saw that I sat and watched until the end. Some of the music reminded me of the kind of mass festivals that were so popular back during the Vietnam era. I keep hearing all kinds of criticism about how Stewart didn’t do enough of this; should have done more of that; failed to meet expectations (which nobody seems able to clearly explain); blah, blah blah; but I saw glimmers of a hopeful spirit that has been missing from American popular culture for far too long.

There’s something going on when people en masse are turning to television comedians to interpret culture and news. But it’s no big mystery why, given the freak show that the corporate media tries to pass off as broadcast journalism. I usually avoid the latter like the plague, but every now and then I tune in when something unusual is going on. Most recently, I got caught up in the drama of the Chilean miners’ rescue. As the amazing event was wrapping up in real time, I had the misfortune of catching Katie Couric and a few of her lieutenants hovering around like buzzards, licking their lips over the prospect of stories that might be forthcoming about thoughts on cannibalism that the miners might have entertained during the dark days before they were located. It was obscene. They seemed to have absolutely zip self-awareness of how crude and uncivilized they sounded. And Katie Couric is a far cry from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.

The optimist in me thinks we’re in the end game of the deconstructed-to-death landscape that post-modernism hath wrought. If there’s no such thing as objective truth, there’s no such thing as sanity, ethics, or a few other essential components of a healthy, functional society. The pillars of our outmoded institutions may be crumbling, but down here on the ground where real folk go about their daily business, there’s something positive and energizing going on. I think that’s what Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert tapped into on a blustery day in DC, and I hope they keep at it.