Here's a picture xeroxed on lime-green paper which was left in the lid of our garbage canister yesterday. (Yesterday was garbage day.) My sweetheart and I discovered this card when we returned home from our bike ride. (Despite being winter, the weather was warm enough for biking: almost forty degrees eff.) Note that I did not edit or manipulate the postcard in any way, except for obscuring the artist's home address, which he included, for some reason, in the upper left quadrant.
Isn't that nice? It is a Christmas card, handmade by our local garbageman. I liked it so much that I wanted to try making a copy of it; so below is my noble attempt. (I wonder if a museum would buy it?)
The problem, which caused the slicing-disjunctive look to my effort, was that I began to draw with a gel pen on the back of a glossy Xmas card that a former student had given to me, and the ink was smearing; so I flipped the cover over atop my failure and used its non-glossy backside to try again; but the front of this card had an Xmas-boot-sized hole cut out of it, which I had scissor'd away for a previous blog image. But I soldiered thru and completed my copy, and simply let the old artifacts show beneath – I colored them orange so as to acknowledge the imperfect match. I'll share a few behind-the-scenes details "from the cutting room floor" at the end of the entry, which I hope will help clarify what I'm trying to explain here.
Now I will write the text of this morning's journal post. I will begin with an intro, since I haven't done an intro in a while:
Introduction
The structure of this entry shall resemble a triple-phase rocket. In the course of its trajectory, the following aims will be accomplished:
- I will react to a remark that I recently heard in a speech (on the lack of advancements in modern clothes-washing);
- I will offer a few quotations from the official government rules on displaying and caring for the U.S. flag;
- I will end with a lengthy talk between my me and my mom.
Now I want to stress that this terminal conversation (item 3 above) will be wholly make-believe; that is to say, fictional. It’s worth mentioning this because, in past entries, I’ve recorded, with honest fidelity, actual conversations that have occurred between family members and myself. Today, however, I want to try something new: I want to explore the realm of imaginary argument. Nonetheless, I’ll try to remain true to what I consider to be the "spirit of my mom’s mind". The end goal of all this, as usual, will be to go nowhere. Now here’s the entry proper:
Dear diary,
I’m still reading David Graeber’s book Debt, and it seems like the best book I’ve ever read. It’s true that if I pick up another book after it, like one by Samuel Beckett or Ralph Waldo Emerson, that next book will seem like the best book I’ve ever read, too. This is either a perfect example of The Midas Curse of Being an Eternal Enthusiast, or the expected result of only reading the best books. But this masterwork by Graeber takes the cake, because it illuminates the underlying foundations of our entire…
I just wanna say that I really like David Graeber’s book Debt. It’s one of those books that cause one to wish that one could force everyone else to read it. One wants to purchase a big stack of multiple copies and hand them out at Christmas. But, on second thot, one retires to one’s cage and buries one’s head in one’s pillow and weeps oneself to sleep, because one ultimately cannot bring oneself to force one’s predilections upon others; and this saddens one; plus admittedly one was exhausted after a hard day of work-shirking.
So, at the moment, I can’t get enough of Graeber’s genius: when I put down his book to take a break from reading, I find myself searching online for videos of his lectures, speeches, etc.; and I just finished watching yet another public address of his last night: he was talking about the future, how our current age never managed to build all the awe-inspiring inventions that the previous age imagined would soon be built. Like if you live in 1977 and someone asks you “What do you think the year 2018 will be like?” and you answer “It’ll be joyous: there will be robots that will wash your clothes for you.” This was actually an example (one of many), which Graeber offered in his speech, of what the future failed to bring. I just thot it was a funny idea, and I wanted to expand upon it here in my public-private journal, because I’m fresh out of original thots and thus I must scavenge the thots of others in order to survive.
My mom tells me that when I was just a little boy, way back in the days before the advent of electrical dry-cleaning mechanisms, I would go down to the Ganges river with my washboard and all the family’s linens, and I’d scrub them vigorously until they turned slightly tan. This would take me fifteen hours; so I’d only have ten hours left, out of each day’s twenty-five, to earn bread for my family, which I supported all by myself working as a swineherd at the manor of Odysseus.
My point is that, now that it’s December of 2018, I own an automatic clothes washer and a gas-powered dryer. So all I have to do is take my family’s linens up in my arms, heft them into the drum of the washing machine; add fabric conditioner to the dispenser drawer; choose the temperature; select the spin cycle that I prefer; then close the door and press the “TRY YOUR BEST!” button. Once the clothes are light tan, I can hang them outside on the clothesline, so that they might dry in the summer breeze. If my neighbor has ignited a bonfire in his yard, which is adjacent to mine, the smoke will get into the fabric of our linens and give them a pleasantly smoky smell, until the next time I wash them. And when winter comes & the temperature dips below freezing, I can place our wet clothes on top of our house’s roof to dry, and they might harden, due to the propensity of water to turn from liquid to ice, thus lending the top of our abode an extra layer of protection. But no matter what season it happens to be, I can turn on our gas dryer, to enjoy the pleasant hum that it makes. (One time, my aunt opened her own dryer door and screamed, cuz she saw a dead mouse reclining inside. This was back when she lived with her daughter and son-in-law and their three tiny snowmen in the Bronx.)
My point is this: We moderns have already cut down the amount of labor that goes into the washing and airing of our dirty linens. We don’t need to invent a walking robot that can haul our hamper up and down the stairs. There are already too many hours of vacation time that we can’t figure out how to use, in any given day. Plus the robot will be so stupid: it will look stupid and walk too stupidly; for it will be top-heavy. I just think that Graeber has a bad idea, with this whole robot laundry thing.
OK: Here, I kinda got side-tracked while doing my research for the above sermon. I looked at the Internet and found this CRS Report for Congress updated 14 April 2008 titled The United States Flag: Federal Law Relating to Display and Associated Questions. Under section 8, “Respect for Flag”, it says:
The flag of the United States of America should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, state flags, and institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
I am intrigued by this concept of flag dipping. Also my neighbors across the street (the ones whose bonfire always leaves my clothes smelling burnt-fresh) display a flag on their garage, and they never take it in after sundown, and they don’t have a spotlight installed to keep the flag well lit at night. So I always wondered how many rules of flag-etiquette they’re breaking. Also when I was walking at the park last week, I saw in this one house’s backyard a flag on a flagpole, and it was the U.S. flag but it was monochrome, with just one stripe in color, and that stripe was blue from the left to the center, and red from the center to the right. So I wondered what that was, and I found out that it’s called a “thin line flag” or something like that; and the blue line symbolizes respect for law-enforcement officers, and the red line is for fire-fighters. So there’s loads of controversy now sparking around the concept of this “thin line flag” — is it a true flag or not? Should the official U.S. full-color (non thin-line) flag be displayed above or below the thin line flag? (You’re supposed to display any foreign countries’ flags underneath the flag of the United States of America (U.S.A.)) Subsection “i” of the above-mentioned section of the “Federal Law” document says:
The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.
I think I see this law being broken all the time. Also subsection “j” says:
No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.
And, skipping to the end of “j”, I found the following statement; whose most interesting part I shall print in ALL CAPS for emphasis:
THE FLAG REPRESENTS A LIVING COUNTRY AND IS ITSELF CONSIDERED A LIVING THING. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
Lastly, here’s subsection “k”; which (I’m sure some smart aleck out there has already mentioned) feels strange, in light of the grand national quarrel about whether or not protesters should be able to burn the flag as a sign of dissent:
The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.
So the flag is a living thing, and the most dignified way to destroy it is by burning — this might be cited as an argument in favor of cremation. My grandfather and father both were cremated after they croaked, and my mom who is a borderline Fundamentalist Christian expressed uneasiness with this practice: she said she would’ve preferred, in both cases, that the dead body be buried in a coffin, unburnt. When I asked her why she thot this, she cried:
“Because the Bible says that we will all rise from the grave at the sound of the last trump,” (I think she meant the last blast of an angel’s trumpet, not that there will be multiple U.S. presidents named Trump; but maybe I’m wrong) “and if you’re cremated, you have no grave to rise from and no body to re-animate.”
And I said, “But can’t you rise from your urn? Can’t your ashes come together and cohere and make a spindly frame again?”
And my mom said, “Not if your loved ones scattered your ashes in the ocean, out the side of a boat or helicopter.”
And I said, “But all the bodies that are buried in coffins are decaying and putrefying — they’re breaking down into less-ordered forms like individual molecules and atoms, just like ash; so God will have to put those pieces together somehow too.”
And my mom said, “But it’s a lot harder to find all the bits of ash that once comprised a physical body than it is to just rehydrate a corpse in a coffin.”
And I said, “So you think that God infuses the dead bodies with water and they come back to life, and sprout from the ground like dandelions? It’s that simple?”
And my mom said, “Well, no, the resurrected dead will receive new spiritual bodies; because we will wake to eternal life, and all flesh naturally decays; so God will use a substance that lasts forever, instead of regular flesh, when he revives us. And some of us will be called into Heaven, and some of us will be cast into Hell.”
So I said, “Well if God is just going to give everyone a new spiritual body, then why does it matter if you burn your previous shell or let it rot in the ground?”
And mom answered, “Cuz God will blend your former atoms with newfangled elements, and if all you are is ashes, it’ll just be a lot more difficult for God to resurrect you. It’s like trying to bake a cake without the right ingredients. Say you’re missing flour and butter — how are you going to bake your cake? It’ll turn out crumbly, or it won’t taste right. Like when the ancient Israelites were escaping from slavery in Egypt, and they didn’t have time to bake their bread with leaven — they didn’t have time to wait for the bread to rise: they had to get going & hasten into the wilderness, where they wandered for forty years (and some died there) — so, when they were fleeing from their oppressors, they made unleavened bread, which, to this day, is served as a traditional part of the Passover meal, to help us remember the hardships that our ancestors suffered to create the foundation of life that we today enjoy. It also teaches us that we should never enslave our neighbors.”
And I said, “Is our family actually Jewish, or Benjaminite? Or of Hebrew descent?”
(Footnote 49 from Chapter Seven of Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years says that loose bands of pastoral nomads or refugees, who also sometimes doubled as soldiers, were often referred to generically as hapiru or habiru, both in Mesopotamia and to the West; and that this might be the origin of the term Hebrew, another group that according to their own histories had fled from bondage, wandered with their flocks in the desert, and eventually descended as conquerors on urban society.)
And my mom said, “I don’t know. Both grandparents, on dad’s side and mine, were found on doorsteps — they were abandoned by their tribes — so we, who are their offspring, could be anything. That’s why it’s good to respect all people; for you never know if you might share a bloodline with them.”
And I said, “But even if we’re not related in a literal, physical, flesh-&-blood way — wouldn’t it be good to respect all people, regardless? Why even bring bloodline into it?”
And my mom said, “That’s right: it’s only a habit of speech and thot; that’s why I mentioned it. But it’s true, no matter which way you look at it: if you follow our lines back far enough, you’ll find that we are all branches of the same trunk: we humans share the same fore-parents, Adam and Eve.”
And I said, “But you still don’t believe in evolution? That is, you believe that all humans come from the same first couple, but you don’t believe that human-kind stems from ape-kind?”
And my mom said, “No, I don’t believe that. I think that God made the apes as a separate act: First, he got all his monkey-business out of his system; and THEN he molded Adam from the mud, as a fresh creation. And he made Eve, Adam’s wife, out of a rib from Adam’s breast: the curvy-bone.”
And I said, “But if you believe that humankind evolved from apes — or from chimps or primates or whatever — then your compassion will expand from mankind alone to all living creatures, because you’ll see not only all humans as your brothers and sisters, but you’ll be able to say: Every thing that lives is holy.”
And my mom said, “Yes but if I look upon pigs as my brothers and sisters, it’ll be harder to kill them and eat them; and I think that God made pigs for us to eat.”
And I said, “But God specifically prohibited the eating of pigs, when he wrote his commandments, in the Bible that you believe.”
And my mom said, “No, those laws are outdated now. It would be silly to avoid eating ham just because of an ancient rule.”
And I said, “Well if you can simply pick and choose what biblical laws to follow, based on whether or not they seem relevant to you, a self-styled sinner, then why does Jesus even need to come along and die to free us all from the curse of the law? My point is: you can apparently free yourself from the curse of the law, just fine (as you demonstrated an instant ago), by simply using your common sense.”
And my mom said, “But not all of the law is irrelevant. I still like the parts about ‘Do not kill’ and ‘Do not steal’. Moreover, life is often terrifying, and I feel that I need help getting thru the hard times; so it’s useful to have Jesus to pray to — it comforts my heart.”
And I said, “I understand that. But your belief about Jesus matches what the ancients said about Orpheus more than what the Bible says about God, especially if God is Yahweh or Jehovah. Cuz if you’re supposed to imitate Christ, then why do you pray to Jesus? Jesus himself only prayed to his Heavenly Father Jove, didn’t he?”
And mom said, “But God the Father is angry and does not give me very much comfort. If I pray to Jesus, there’s a sweeter feeling, like someone is really listening to my pains, and he feels compassion and will help me get thru the hardship. Plus Jesus sits at the right hand of God, so he can relay any part of my prayer to his Father if it needs to be brought to his attention. That’s why they call Jesus our intercessor: he mediates between us frail humans and our harsh creator, the perfectionist Jehovah.”
And I said, “But I thot that Jesus wrought the world into existence, so isn’t he our creator?”
And mom said, “No, Yahweh God spoke the world into existence, and God’s word is Jesus — that’s why they say ‘Jesus is the Word of God’ — thus Jesus is the medium thru which the world came into being, but Jesus himself is no more responsible for the contents of this universe than a pen is for the evils of a sketch by Picasso (or the beauties of a postcard drawn by your local garbageman).”
And I said, “But aren’t we ALL sorta just paintbrushes being pulled across the canvas of space-and-time? Doesn’t God use us all, the way you say that he used Jesus?”
And mom said, “Yeah, you could say that.”
And I said, “So, again, why do we need Jesus to forgive us? Why not just forgive ourselves, if we are his equals?”
And my mom said, “Well, because Jesus was a special case: he was God’s only begotten son. He was conceived upon a virgin, whereas the rest of us humans were formed in shameful sin, via animalistic rutting, because the sex act produced us. Jesus didn’t come into the world thru the tunnel of fucking; he was THOT into existence.”
And I said, “Then how did he end up in Mary’s womb?”
And mom said, “God THOT Jesus into the womb. Then when Jesus was born, he was perfect in every way: he did not cry when the umbilical cord was severed. And he honored his mother and father all the days of his life. He neither lied nor cheated nor stole. And he did not marry, for marriage leads to sin, because of the lusts of the flesh. Then Jesus died hanging from a tree; and, since his blood was perfect, it was considered by Jehovah to be the final sacrifice: that’s why we no longer sacrifice lambs and doves and sprinkle their blood on the altar.”
And I said, “But we do indeed still sacrifice animals. Cows and pigs and sheep are slain everyday at the slaughterhouse. Cows are made into beef patties and cheesesteaks; pigs are made into pork chops and ham spread; and sheep become gyros.”
And my mom answered, “But their blood is not sprinkled on the altar — the killing is just so that we can continue to live healthily, not a sacrificial slaying to appease an angry creator.”
Here I paused for a while, and took congress with my private thots. Then I said: “I guess you’ve answered all my questions. I am ready to convert to Christianity. But there’s one last thing I was wondering about — can you help me understand why Jehovah, God the Creator, is always so angry? You’ve said it yourself a few times now: Jesus is friendly and kind, but God the Father is fierce and very judgmental. Why is this? What causes him to be so ornery? If I myself owned the world, I’d be happy about it. Or if I created the world and it ended up displeasing me, I’d just refashion it until it suited my fancy. Then I’d hang it in my front room.”
And mom answered and said, “You wouldn’t be happy about it, if you owned the world. Just think about how responsibility tenses you up. A man with only a couple dollars in his pocket is always happier than a man who has billions in the bank, because the richer you are, the more responsibility you have: this stressful burden weighs you down and makes you much less fun at parties. And when you say ‘...if I created the world and it displeased me, I’d just destroy it and then build it again wholly perfect the second time around,’ this is exactly what God is doing — only the process is so slow that we grow impatient. He’s very leisurely allowing his world to destroy itself, so that he can step in after it’s dead and pump it back to life, just like how the buried corpses in their coffins will be rehydrated and welcomed into Heaven or Hell, depending on whether they believed in Jesus or not. So the reason God’s so angry is that not everyone believes in his only perfect self-portrait: his lone son Jesus. Think about how you’d feel if you had just one favorite offspring, and you killed your baby so that others could have nice things, but then the recipients of your gifts failed to acknowledge your generosity; they didn’t even bother to look up during the festivities and take a moment of silence to thank their Heavenly Father for all these blessings. Wouldn’t that fill YOU with rage?”
And I said, “Well I get enraged when people don’t read my blog posts, but I always feel a little guilty about my anger, because it’s not like anyone really requested that I write a long droning entry like this — so if I wasted my time doing it, I have no one to blame but myself. That’s why I try to remember: If you’re going to write anything, or even if you take it upon yourself to save the world by aborting your firstborn fetus, you better make sure that the act of writing, or slaying, in & of itself, is a genuine pleasure; cuz your efforts are most likely going to end up in the dustbin of literature.”
MORAL
So the U.S. flag is sort of like the resurrected believer, because fire is the only dignified way to dispose of it; and it also fits with the earlier idea about the stair-climbing robot who washes your clothes in the Ganges, because the flag should never touch water: it is dry-clean only. Also robots melt when burnt, and their soul is not an adjunct of fornication.
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