Putting the we in them

Some of the San Francisco Giants baseball team

   I live in San Francisco, and although I don't pay much attention to professional baseball, I do on occasion find myself around people that follow it closely, and often these people talk about their favorite baseball team by using the pronoun "we". They say things like, "we have one three games in a row", or "we should trade him (such and such a player) to another team". It strikes me as quite interesting, and odd, that a person should be pleased to be a part of something that offers them so little recognition. While I'm certain that the players of the San Francisco Giants know in a very general way that they have quite a large number of fans in the San francisco area, I'm also pretty sure that they know very few of them personally, while the fans seem to know a lot about the players.
   It is, of course, not at all unusual that a member of the general public should know more about a public figure than that figure does him or her, yet rarely would you hear a person refer to themselves and say, a pop singer, as "us". The public does not try to avoid the fact that they are the passive person in the relationship, yet these baseball fans seem quite satisified with, in fact, seem to celebrate, this apparently skewed association.
   There's no doubt about the roles assumed in this accord; the fans are the followers of the team, they sit in the their seats at the stadium or in their homes watching the players perform. Perhaps they jump up, yell, or clap on occasion, but they are still passively involved, if at all. They use a pronoun of inclusion, but it is a lie; they are not a part of. They are voyeurs, and to be a voyeur is to be outside of the action.
 

   

The lonely city

The view from one of my living room windows this morning

   Today is Thanksgiving day, I don't have to work today or tomorrow, and I my wife and I are invited to a good friend's house for a meal this evening. These things would certainly be on my wish list, would I to have one, if I were to detail things I'd like for the next two days. Still, I wake up with a healthy dose of melancholy this morning; it's drizzling outside, and there's a feeling of sadness inside of me.

   I can recall many years when I would look out of my window on Christmas, Thanksgiving or New Year's Day, and be moved by the stillness outside. I've lived in cities my entire life, and it's really difficult not to notice the quiet on these occasions. I love it when it's quiet, but the silence on these days is impregnated with a loneliness for me. I know that the lack of movement around me signifies that the people who would normally be busily walking or driving their cars are probably with their families or friends, yet I imagine all those people being alone. It's as if human isolation is made more tangible by a sense of community.

   There have been many years that I have experienced these holidays, sometimes having a place to go, and sometimes not, at times alone, and sometimes with a partner or wife, but this feeling I have doesn't seem contingent on my own plans or company for the day. When I look out of the window, the relative calm makes the city look lonely and superfluous. Is it that the city planners, architects, designers and engineers all worked together to produce something that was not useful or appreciated? Perhaps the city is just being given a well deserved day off? Still, I find it difficult to comprehend how the calm that I so value can leave me feeling so hollow.

An inverted world

Tray molding

  
   When I was a kid I used to enjoy laying on my back on the hardwood floors of the living room where I grew up. I would stare straight up, examining the molding which outlined the door frames and the geometric shapes which it created on the ceilings. I would imagine what it would be like if what was above me was under me, if the ceiling could become the floor that I would walk on. It always seemed to me that life would be so much better if this part of my world could just be reversed. It didn't suggest to me that everything would suddenly be perfect, but it certainly registered that it would be more interesting and beautiful. It also allowed me to exist in a sort of half-awake, dreamlike state, of the sort when you wake up from a nap and stare off into space without really seeing. I've always enjoyed that feeling.
   I remember thinking that what would then become the floor would be trickier to walk on, as I would have to be careful not to trip on or break those elegant shapes, and I also recall that the different rooms would be extremely difficult to enter and exit, as the entrances would be raised. Still. whatever the practical difficulties, that inverted world offered a kind of parallel life, and a parallel life seems like a great way to escape my own.
   There have been times since those years that I have been laying down, looked up to see molding on walls or ceilings, and tried to recapture that feeling of being able to gently drift into that other place, but have not been able to relive that sensation. Perhaps I don't need to psychically leave my world in the same way that I used to, or maybe that kind of imaginative existence is no longer available to me. Whatever the reason, the closest I seem to get to that invertible world is a bout of vertigo.

The sound of words

   I enjoy a wide variety of music, including that of other countries, and especially music produced during the 1970's in Ethiopia, Senegal, music from 1930's in Greece, and am currently listening to a lot of the Romanian singer Maria Tanase. The music I enjoy allows me to glimpse into other cultures, but music from countries where english, my primary language, is not spoken, affords the great pleasure of hearing the sounds of the lyrics, rather than comprehending their meanings. The words take on a different form, as they become wholly musical, and evoke an emotional response based on how they are enunciated. They are all inflection, and that inflection is so moving to me. I have tried to listen to music that is sung in a language known to me with the same open ears, but my own understanding closes that door. 

   When I listen to a beautiful voice emphasizing and accenting english words, it often sounds forced to me, but when I hear a singer in another language doing this, I listen to the words as music, and the music comes heartfelt and sad. It seems that the sadness I feel inside is lost when I can describe it too well.

Maria Tanase

The guilty lights

   Some people seem to be very good liars, while others are not. I think that I'm fairly adept at being able to fool others, but I usually pay for my deceptions with feelings of guilt and a quick plummeting of whatever sense of self worth I had managed to acquire before the lie. I really can't say what abilities make up a good liar, but it certainly appears that if one is going to do something wrong, it's would be best not to advertise it.
   If you have just robbed a bank or assaulted someone, it would probably be ill advised to approach a police officer to tell them that you have not done anything wrong. You would be calling attention to yourself, and a deception relies on, it seems to me, a high degree of anonymity. The more you try to convince a person that thinks you are lying that you are not, the more of a liar you appear.
   I find it very interesting that car owners tend to put on their hazard lights when they are parked illegally. I understand that this is ostensibly done when a car is double parked in the road to warn other drivers that the car in question is in fact stopped, and thus communicates to other drivers that they should go around it. If the vehicle is stopped in an illegal parking place, such as a no stopping zone, the lights seem to be communicating that the car's operator is only parked there temporarily. In either circumstance, and others where one sees hazard lights used for something other than warning of a potential or real hazard, it seems that these lights are flashing specifically to say, "I know I'm parked illegally, but please don't give me a ticket".
   This plea to traffic enforcement appears to be based on the ancient idea of confession, and the belief that if one admits to one's misdeeds, then that person should be forgiven. The person knows that they have wronged, but they are throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. They are pledging to do better next time.
   Socialized into and by a system that appears to relish the idea, at least in theory, that people are able to err, wrong their  rights, and begin life anew, it is reassuring to know that an individual can have a new future, where they can forget the one they knew themselves as, and became the better person they always wished they could be. The illegally parked automobile flashing their hazard lights seem to say, please don't punish the person I am in the process of leaving behind. Thank you.