the lives of men

MY FATHER WAS NEVER A BACHELOR. Not for a single day. Even before he had finished school, he was a husband, and soon after, a father. That's the way it was back then, except his brothers and sisters didn't do exactly the same, in fact many of his generation floundered for years. Lots of people do it today, too, so saying "thats the way it was back then" is not quite right.

Lives can be clear-cut, if not easy. Lives can be so given to others that the fickle passions of your own soul are easily subordinated, if not easily suppressed.

work and war. In peace, men are expected to give their lives to work, 40+hours a week, forThere is so much expected of a man, but really, it can be miserably concentrated in 2 words: other people's money, for other people's dreams, in war, the same, just much more tragically, heroically - either way, literally. We no longer hope our young men become pillars of the community, strong and wise elders, renaissance men. The only measure of a man is his ability to earn money. That sultry redheaded cartoon babe from Roger Rabbit (well, probably someone else before her) summed up the lot of 20th century man: "get out'a here, get me some money, too"...

Truthfully, there are many who fit this role well enough. A BMW, McMansion, a golden retriever and a cape house for a loving family is enough to satisfy many, for whom the bulk of their time would be spent unproductively if it were free. No pulsing demand to be shoulders-deep in the world haunts them, no deep and pounding desire to be a part of the global debate, the ebb and flow of ideas that ultimately determines weather the world is still safe for golden retrievers, and still produces an abundance of BMWs.

This life, however, born of the industrial revolution which pulled us off our farms and erased the cyclical nature of labor, reducing men to time and labor, only as good as their last quarterly report, is a recipe for decline- in fact, it is decline itself. We see ourselves as a rocket ship, but are we not merely a well-designed arrow, having left the source of our power far in the past? We are a nation born of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, where each citizen was to be full and complete, independent and autodidactic, a true democracy where society is the sum of the thoughtful and cooperative contribution of it's demos. Now, thoughtful contributions are cast a wary eye, not just unexpected but undesired, preempted or usurped by the greedy financial tentacles of the political/bureaucratic monster, like the Sea-Witch from the Disney classic. Now we live in a democracy of statistics, of numbers of votes, where the demos is some grotesque larval beast who's hedonistic demands must be met to placate it, keep it inactive and call attention away from the back-room wrongs and corrosions of the very structure that supports it.

At the same time, some men are totally free, well-financed, perusing a plurality of passions that we are told is impossible in a single life time, we are only one kind of cog. Matt Damon grins wholesomely from behind titles and captions on the cover of this month's GQ. What if there is some great love that you can't push aside? What if there are many?

The lives of modern men can be terribly proscribed, but I believe we were never meant to live this way. We may not be birds of flight, but we are not meant to be beasts of burden - we were born to fly.

the softening of hard hearts

As the voracious efforts of a generation fade and stain with time, as they acquire layers of paint textured with chipping & reapplication, as they shrink demurely behind maturing shrubs and filled-out trees, as their results, methods, and even motives are called into sharper criticism, vulnerabilities are revealed; occasionally the feebleness of a life's efforts, and the hurt of a life's work derided, can be glimpsed. In others' aggressive criticism I see my own cruelty, and a hard heart is softened.

Their own hard-hearted declarations seem less severe now, the fearful end which has not come, less inevitable. The shells of a passing generation's hopes stand, disdained, resented by their neoclassical neighbors for their lack of decorum and by their deconstructionist children for their lack of vitality and vigor. But the growth of vocalized opposition has dissolved the veneer of authoritarian domination, and our civic efforts and free-market success render their stalinistic likenesses sheepish, and our fears of them quaint. Tense severity mellows like in a black-and-white war movie.

The eroding concrete of their physical manifestations reveal the pebbles within, and the dissolution of this stern facade has lain the more resolute elements of the human spirit bare: hope, ambition, confidence, commitment, faith in a dream and the united effort of free individuals to build, literally, what they sincerely thought was a better world, a better future for all. The rudeness of the Brutalist concrete, in the presence of this revealed humanity, mellows and a humble texture comes into focus, a timelessness of mass, a pleasant tectonic weight which we are increasingly denied in favor of curtain walls and flying steel with hollow stone veneer. Expansive plate-glass speaks more, now, to selflessness - the greatest expense is invisible, its only function to keep us warm and dry while revealing the world outside - it is utterly about the 'other'. Their heavy steel mullions, warmed by layers of paint, are reassuring - quaint in an age where mullions are optional. All in all, these structures remind me of my childhood classrooms, open to the sky, spacious and modest.

After a century, on a safe and warm afternoon, these old concrete heaps stand steadfast but humbled behind veils of cherry blossoms and dogwoods, as testament to our forebearers who stood strong amidst global disaster and imagined a hopeful future, a clean, clear, affordable, charitable future. They are monuments to hope in a world we, thankfully, will never have to face.

When I think of City Hall, I think of many things - the corbusian predecessor which it falls far short of, it's origins in an open competition heralding a return of transparency and fairness in Boston politics, the impression of some aging soviet beauty queen who has lived to regret her disdainful shunning of her common neighbors, still to proud to reconcile in the face of her demise. But when the warm afternoon sunshine hits it just right, I am reminded of that wonderfully grumpy old pile of stones, the Palazzo Vecchio, that presides over Florence as a trophy of democracy. Let the old girl live, it takes time for hard hearts to soften.

welcome

On the verge of 26, I'm in-between schools, in-between careers, in-between passions, in-between lives. In an effort to maintain my sanity, I've started this page to clear my head of all the random ideas that rattle around, things I think are important but don't share in-between visits home, in-between beers, in-between cookouts, in-between pick-ups & drop offs.

Welcome to my brain dump.