The Necessity of Scribbling

Last night, at dinner with friends who are, in one of the more peculiar twists of an American life, in the position of deciding between spending their next set of years in Alabama or Stockholm, I was reminded that I have a blog.  

Hello Blog. Sorry to be such a stranger. 

I've been working at launching a blog for United Way, called SpeakUnited And while I don't really write on that one EITHER. It's taking a bunch of my time to run it for the other bloggers who post on it.  What's been really fascinating about that blog is it focuses on all of the issues that matter to our organization - homelessness, youth violence, foreclosures, trends in philanthropy, effective pathways out of poverty etc. -- really bedrock stuff.  It does not, however, focus on politics.  It can't.  United Way is a nonprofit and thereby falls under 501c3 tax laws, the most limiting of which is the unequivocal restriction which makes all the world a dinnertable conversation at which politics and religion can never be broached. And I get that. I truly do. But it's primary season, ladies and gentlemen.  It's hard enough not to talk about the role politics plays in community issues on a daily basis.  It's nearly impossible in an election year, when every Globe article, every blog entry, every hallway conversation has taken that tint.  At least for me. 
We'll see how it goes.  It's not formally launched yet, but I'd definitely encourage anyone of you to go poke around it.

As for my friends who are choosing between moving to Stockholm and Alabama, ... did you guys realize that John Coltrane recorded songs about both of them?  You can't really go wrong in any location that inspired Coltrane to pick up his saxophone.

According to the global society of astronomists, we are here, frankly, because we have not yet split apart.  An unidentified substance known as"dark matter," which currently takes about about a 1/4 of the solar system has been the sole entity keeping us together for all these years (Captain & Tennille will disagree with this). Trouble is no one knows what dark matter looks like, or how long it will stick around.

"Well, it's like a sort of glue." shrugged one scientist interviewed by the seattle post today.

 Not content to sit around and awe over this new diety, The astronomists of the world have taken to chasing it down.  They are in a universal race for the answer. The U.S., Europe and Japan in the lead. They've all got different methods and machines that they think will be the link to this epoxy.  Weary of looking up and seeing nothing. NASA recently comondeered a defunct mine shaft In South Dakota. Because, maybe looking down will start to do us some good. The mine has been deepened to astonishing ends. It is now the length of 6 empire state buildings tip to tip from gravel to core.  Once, in Italy, three scientists claimed to have heard the traces of it in a sonar instrument they had developed.  They were never able to replicate it.  A frustration, I think, only the most faithful of believers can understand.

I read an article one time about the connection between solar storms and societal downward spirals.  Apparently when you look back at history, 100 years back or more, and track the occurrence of storms on the surface of the sun, they correspond directly to declines in the stock market, natural disasters, and general misanthropy among men.  It’s the physical manifestation of Murphy’s law. And it kicks our ass each time. 

Which is to say, My rent has gone up.

And I haven’t checked the stocks yet (not that I own any)  but I’m pinning the blame on our tortured astral body.  'Cause this one can’t be my doing. Things had been going really well.  I got a raise. I've been saving. And yeah, it’s only another 600 bucks a year, but the symbolism is killing me.  I don’t know exactly what I’ve got to do to make this city love me back.  I walk its parks. I don’t litter.  I rarely complain about the big dig, T fare hikes, or the general lack of manners.  And yet, I spend my mornings drying off under a 2 foot hole in my bathroom ceiling and come home to a 10 word note: Notice required by law. Rent Increase. Unit Two.  XXX dollars.

Boston is turning me into Tina Turner, and my legs aren’t nearly long enough.

I got a job I got a job I got a job I got a job.  Not only that but i've composed a disney-esque melody to go along with my newly celebrated "I got a job" phrase allowing me to sing it internally throughout the day while doing menial tasks.

Brushing my teeth has never been so self-fufilling. 

Sincerely,

Meghan R Keaney
newly elected
Communications Manager
United Way of Mass Bay.

George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill had an infamous animosity.  Shaw was a socialist and a vegitarian. And Churchill was, well, Churchill.  They hated the very spit out of each other.  Anyway the joke goes like this:

George Bernard Shaw once gave Winston Churchill a pair of tickets for the opening night of his Pygmalion and remarked, "Bring a friend -- if you have one." 

Churchill, unflustered, responded, "Matters of the state prevent me from attending the premiere, but I'll be there for the second night -- if you have one."

it kills me.

"You're what the autumn knew would happen
 After the collapse of primary color
once the last absolutes were torn to pieces
You could begin." 
(Adrienne Rich | November 1969)

Sitting, on the last symbolic day of summer, waiting for the rain to start.  Weather dot com has called for rain. CNN has called for rain.   But the skys are blue, and though the air in Boston has begun to taste like fall, I'm thinking we've all been fooled again.

September has become such a strange month.  Once home only to my birthday and the start of school,  it has juxtaposed two of our largest national catastrophes.  Both unimaginable: one because of how terrifyingly unnatural it was, how blanketly man-made and hellish, and the other because out of nowhere, something as simple as water became a WMD.

It's remarkable, the absolute ordinariness of some of the things that can level us.  It's surprising, even now, how you can feel things changing in a vague and prodigeous way. 

The global society of astronomists went on record last week to amend that there are in fact 12 planets in our dear solar system, not nine.  It was a nice little ancillary announcement held for the left column of the Post's health and science section and I nearly choked up my coffee over it.  It seems that up until this point the team had never actually set down an official definition for 'planet.'  Gravity, yes, massive universe-terminating dark energy, sure.  but not planets.  So when they finally addressed the oversight their agreed upon definition made room for three extra globular giants.  .... well.. shit. You think you could have settled on this a little earlier boys?   It's like discovering you have three bastard children.  Ceres, Cheron and UB313 (who, in rebellion has just decided to go by Xena). What's worse is that they're sort of half-breeds. There is something not quite planetary about each of them, which is the reason they weren't included initially and will ultimately end up in their having highschool experiences that, well, suck.   So now we've got to put on this whole show of inclusion, like we loved them all equally from the begining.  Elementary school mobiles will be redone, childhood fantasies of living on pluto will have to be expanded to include summer homes on Xena, and, trust me on this, some hollywood great will name his or her newborn Ceres.  That and there's the whole added phenomenon of nothing really changing at all.  which is even wierder.

This is becoming characteristic, this process of major events speckling our shared canvas without any notable change to the landscape.  Take thunder snow.  Conleys I think you missed this, but last winter out of nowhere it began to thunder and snow simultaneously in Boston. Thunder AND snow.  Thundersnow. It sounds like a transformer figurine. It was entirely thrilling and bizzare.  And we handled it with fonz-like unfetteredness.   Which I was proud of. If any populous can take it, it's our cut and paste generation.  We'll get stuck at the end of the world, sitting on rooftops and watching with reverence at how beautiful everything looks when it's on its way out.

Which brings me to my final point.  I've made a mix.  For the occasion of sitting on rooftops and taking guesses at the celestial locations of our three new planets (I hear one is between us and mars).   If you each will leave me your mailing addresses, I'll send you copies... oh and please, for the love of anything, take a moment and let yourself be in utter awe at our expanding universe. Something's are still meant to steal your breath away.