Proud to be an American

I am American, and proud to be an American. My name is Darren Reiley, which I usually point out to people is very Irish, and I often call myself Irish, even though I’ve never been to Ireland, because my ancestors came from there, and for some reason I think of that as my racial identity more than my English great grandparents or Cherokee great great grandmother (though I mention them sometimes too; white folks do that a lot here.)

I like to think about being American sometimes.  We’re great thinkers here in America.  Just this morning, I was thinking about the New Year, which we celebrate here generally by getting really drunk and setting off explosives.  The year we recognize starts with January which was named for a pagan Roman god.  The rest of the months, too, were named for either a Roman god, emperor or number.  As far as I know, no Romans ever lived in America; if they did, the other immigrants here probably called them Italians, or something worse.  Oh, by the way, I call myself American because of an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci, who never set foot in what is now my country.  (As Americans, we often forget there is a South America, and they’re Americans too.  This is a technicality.)

As Americans, we begin our week with Sunday (or Monday).  We have catchy little songs about the days of the week to teach our children to remember them.  They must be hard to remember at first since those days are named for Viking gods like Tiu, Woden and Thor.  Somehow, Saturn snuck in there too.  Those Romans again.

When we teach our kids math in school, here in America, we take some time first to make sure they know how to write their numbers clearly, and put them in the proper order, with the smallest numbers on the right.  We do this because we get our numbers from Arabic, not just the order and system, but the shape of the numbers themselves.  We now require all of our kids to know al-gebra (an Arabic word), because it’s a REALLY good way to do math.  We do this because back when white folks in Europe were hanging out in the Dark Ages, forgetting how to read if they ever knew, dying from plagues or local feudal lords or corrupt priests, the Arabs and Persians were doing really well, making art and developing math and astronomy and writing poetry.  We don’t teach that part in schools.  We mostly prefer to think of the numbers we use as “American.”  Then we can be proud of them.

Christianity is the official state religion here in America.  People say it isn’t, and that we have a separation of Church and State, but we’ve never had a non-Christian President—can’t even imagine having a non-Christian president—so I know that’s wrong.  A lot of Christians here like to say God Bless America, because they’re proud to be Americans too, and that means God must be on our side, whatever we’re doing.  We usually show pictures of Jesus as a white guy, even though he was Jewish and probably looked more like a Palestinian.  We talk about Jesus a lot here in America, with a hard “J” even though that name came from the Latin Iesu, which came from the Greek Iesu which came from the Hebrew Yeshua, which was his real name.  We don’t teach that in school or in church either because, well, He likes America enough to bless it all the time, so He must understand, especially with Christmas coming up.  What's more American than Christmas, when a fat Turkish saint with a Dutch name rides a sleigh with eight reindeer, most likely inspired by the same Viking god who gave us Thursday, and delivers presents made by children in China?  

Because I'm American, I speak good English, which is a strangely accented and often poorly spelled descendent of Anglo-Saxon, heavily seasoned with French, Latin and Greek.  I speak this language because the land where I live was colonized by people from the island of England, who took the land, most often by force, from the Native American people who lived here first.  The English found out about this land because it was apparently “discovered” by another Italian explorer, sailing for the Spanish, who was looking for India, and who also never actually set foot on American soil, but we name a lot of our cities, rivers and schools after him anyway.  If we know about it at all, we don’t worry too much about the fact that he was personally responsible for killing at least 100,000 Arawak Indians.  I was taught in school that genocide is bad, but that Columbus was brave and adventurous and clever.  So was Andrew Jackson.

I was also taught that slavery is bad, but money is good.  Sometimes these things are hard to think about at the same time, since much of America's wealth came from 150 years or so of white folks forcing black folks to work for free.  It’s easier to think about how this country also got really wealthy because all those Chinese folks built all those useful railroads.  They got paid $7 per week.  It sure was nice of them to work so hard for so little.  I bet they were proud to be American too, even if the white folks at the time didn’t call them American and wouldn’t let them be citizens.

Then again, America might also be really wealthy because of all of those helpful migrant workers who still harvest all of our fruits and nuts and vegetables.  They must be proud to be American too, since they’re willing to work so hard for six bucks an hour, when minimum wage is nine.  As a documented American citizen, I sure wouldn’t do that.  I know my rights.

Finally, I’m proud to be an American because I’m free.  Free to buy plastic stuff I probably don’t need that was made in China; free to wear nice, stylish clothes made by small children in Bengladesh; free to drive my Japanese car using oil from Iraq.  I won’t forget the men (black, white, or Arab) or the women or children (Cambodian, Indonesian or Guatemalan) who died, who gave those rights to me.   And I know I'm free, and I have these rights, because the Constitution, the greatest American invention, which was largely based on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, says so.

I’m American, by God.  I know who I am.  Do you?

Analogs

A curious thing began to happen in the 1970’s and 80’s. A new creature emerged from the primordial soup of intellectual evolution, a creature destined to dominate the future development of that soup, reshaping the thought-environment in new and unexpected ways, while virtually annihilating its predecessor. The creature I’m referring to, of course, is Digital Technology. You see, in the creation or reproduction of waves (generally sound waves at that point), people had always relied on the principle of analog reproduction, which maintained the smooth shape of the sound wave, preserved the curve, so to speak. Ye olde dinosaur Vinyl Record was one of the last true species of Analogosaur, except for the rugged survivor the Film Camera.

When Digitalus Erectus showed up on the turf, with its ability to store vast amounts of information in a small space, it multiplied so rapidly and easily that its evolutionary advantages made a rational mockery of the analog systems (consider the ease of copying a tape, or a CD, compared to copying a vinyl record). And yet, with all such dramatic evolutionary changes, so much that was beautiful is lost... must cold, heartless reason always govern evolution, or can aesthetics, can beauty have a say as well?

And just what is lost under the reign of the digital paradigm, you ask?

Allow me to explain.

The digital transfers its information, its sound, or its image by dividing it up into little blocks, little pixels, rather than transferring it in a direct representation of its original, curvy self. So if we look closely at the digital image, listen closely to the digital song, we see blocks and corners, blocks and corners. The audacious Etch-a-Sketch of Progress has carved right angles into the sumptuous curves of the Grand Design, and much of the integrity of analogy (some would argue) has been lost in cutting those corners.

When we think of using words to communicate our thoughts, for example, we’re tempted to think that the transfer of information, the exchange of ideas, takes place solely in the words. However, particularly with some of the more muttish languages like English, a great many words have three or four, or more, meanings, and can mean entirely different things in different contexts. Some words, like “so,” for instance, don’t even have any meaning on their own. “So” is completely reliant on context, on its relationship with other words: “I have so much time,” or “I can take only so much”; “and so,” “like so,” and so forth.

You get the picture.

Words, like little digital blocks of info, don’t carry the entirety of the meaning, then, do they? Ah no, Great Etch-a-Sketch! The music lies in between the words, in the lyrical spaces wherein dwell the Goddesses Intention and Context. When we focus too much on the discrete particles, on the isolatable pixels, we lose the transliteral, we lose the curves that bring the contours of Beauty to the communication of ideas. When we focus on the digits, we grow deaf to the Divine Whispers in the interstices.


Where am I going with all of this?  Ever toward the Mystery.  Living is a dance, yes a dance that requires music and image.  The little blocks of meaning and consequence we pick out of the pixellated landscape of Time cannot hold the pattern that ties us all together, step by step.  It is the steady stream of Consciousness, the mysterious flow of relationship, that allows us to dance, to write poetry, to make art, to LOVE.  And I would argue-- I have experienced-- that all manner of communication can happen in those spaces between.  One might call it telepathy, or psychic abilities, but I believe it is only the organic ability to transpose the sibilant curves of life-energy into understandable information.  Before, that is, the digital Left Brain, with its almost compulsive insistence on linear cause and effect (blocks and corners, blocks and corners) pulls out the pixels and mistakes them for the picture.

Don't get me wrong, the Left Brain is almost half of the whole; the Etch-a-Sketch must have a say as well.  But, whatever else I may be, I am a poet.  Let me draw my tongue along the curvy lines of Life.  Let me not get so stuck on single moments, single words, single acts, but dance the vibrant timelessness between.

Who's with me?