Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Again. And Again.

My first year living in New England, and Boston is the subject of senseless violence in what is now being referred to with the “t”-word. If I am to apply the seriousness by which my friends in other parts of the country take these events…that is, by which events cause phone calls and text messages to arrive inquiring as to whether or not I am okay…as a litmus test for their level of tragedy, then I suppose I haven’t experienced anything quite of this magnitude since that day on a past September that we all wish had never occurred. Still, those of us in the U.S. now have another day on which we will be able to identify where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news.

The 9/11 attacks were particularly dramatic for me as I was traveling by air when they occurred. When the tragedy of Virginia Tech was wrought, I lived only about an hour away. On Monday, I was in class just outside of Boston. My first instinct was to feel what those who orchestrate these events want us to feel: fear. Or, at least uncertainty. I’ve never panicked during these events, but one certainly feels anxious at times.

Now, another moment has occurred in which I want to scream as loudly as I can, “For God’s sake, for the sake of all that is holy, we have to stop killing each other!” Yet, man never seems happy unless we’re doing just that. Often in the name of an ideology, or under the flag of patriotism, or occasionally even in the name of God (which doesn’t make Him happy at all, I suspect), we continue to do exactly that. We ambush, we invade, we attack, we let the wrath of our righteous anger fall.

I’m not sure our anger is righteous, but when we hear that the fatalities of this latest attack include a child, our anger is at least justifiable. And, so, angry we are.

And stern if veiled threats are made from a leader’s podium.

And, days or weeks or months from now, actions of retribution will be taken in the name of justice, and more bodies will likely be added to the count. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll find yet another reason to wage war against someone else.

The cycle will continue, because it’s easier to respond to violence with violence than to take the higher ground. Partly, I think, because the higher ground is obscured in these moments. As I said, our anger is justifiable. It is difficult to see higher ground through such a fog.

Still, that doesn’t stop the cycle.

I’m not naive enough to think that it will stop, though, at least not completely. Sociologically, I see it continuing. Theologically, I see it continuing. Realistically, I know that it will continue. That grim resignation, though, does nothing to lift the weariness that I feel in my soul when I know that more souls have been ripped from our company without cause or reason. I’m so, so exhausted with the weight of the knowledge that human life continues to be taken by other humans.

Karen said to me last night in a succinct moment of realism, “It will only get worse.”

“I know.” I responded. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to take.”

Backward and Forward

I was a sophomore in high school when America entered yet another war, and I remember sitting in the back of my parents’ car on the way to a church service and hearing on the radio that what had become known as Operation Desert Storm was in full swing. We went home that evening, and I turned on the television to see coverage of what was transpiring on the other side of the world. I had never been cognizant of my country being at war before, and I felt all of the anxieties and emotions that went with it. I didn’t know where to turn as news channels were concerned, and I remember settling on CNN, simply because that was the one that I could think of and find first.

The network sort of stuck with me. I remember how the programming changed through the years, as I watched it nearly every morning, especially after I finished college. I don’t watch much live news programming any more, as cable is a relic of a bygone age in our household. Still, CNN remains a primary source from which I get the headlines, usually via phone or tablet somewhere between breakfast and the end of the morning commute. Taking the time to watch a program in the morning really isn’t so much a luxury that I have any more.

It’s interesting to reflect on how my news watching has changed over the years. I transitioned from cable, to podcasts, to streaming live coverage, to reading it within a mobile application. The progression has seemed so natural that I really haven’t even thought about it.

Until the most recent update to CNN’s iPad app, though, which now launches with the sound byte of James Earl Jones proclaiming, “This…is CNN”, apparently a network-wide return to its roots. Hearing it took me back to random evenings in high school sitting in front of the television. There was a segue from this into a general memory of spending weekday evenings watching television with my parents, and the feeling of safety and family that such a memory invokes.

Now, I’m more than aware of the studies linking regular television viewing to degradation in family communication…we haven’t let our daughter watch television until nearly the age of two. The memories of doing so with my parents, though, remain a wonderful recollection for me today.

I wonder if our daughter will experience anything similar, as watching broadcast programming is such an increasing rarity. I don’t think that there’s anything missing in that experience, per se, but I am curious as to what events that Karen and I consider commonplace will evolve and form wonderful memories for our daughter…and maybe that she’ll even nostalgically blog about later in life at some point. That will be beautiful news to me.

Collision of Worlds

I was spending part of my lunch break yesterday across the street from the building where I have classes, mentally adding to the ever-growing list of books that I would buy if had money (and will buy when I do…being a full-time student again has serious financial downsides).

The problem with being so passionate about an interdisciplinary perspective is that sometimes (or, in fact, often) you experience a collision of worlds. The subcultures of the disciplines that I’ve studied can be so wildly different that it’s difficult to reconcile them. Theatre culture and theological culture can be on opposite ends of the spectrum, for example. The literary world and the world of the Internet have critical disagreements on core ideas, such as how (or even if) we read.

I was struck by this yet again as I stood in the bookstore yesterday, lamenting the fact that I haven’t had time to read or write fiction at any substantive level in the last three months. And, while I am reading a great deal, Javascript or PHP manuals simply don’t create the same mental synergy, even though they are tools for creativity.

I liken it to my theatre experience in many ways (theatre has always been the lens through which I view the world). A great deal of my theatre experience during my undergrad days was as a designer. I acted very little, and only began directing within the last five years or so. Theatre design, whichever sub-genre you choose (I was mostly a sound designer, with occasional scenic or lighting flirtations) is very technical, but creative in its problem-solving. It creates a wonderful scaffold for the rest of the medium to do its work. Web development is much the same. I’m no visual artist, and, by extension, I’m no graphic designer, nor would I ever claim to be. The way that the web functions, though, requires similarly technical design and scaffolding, and its that area into which I’m (fingers crossed) making a career change.

I don’t think, either, that Internet culture has to be mutually exclusive of literary culture. The Internet is a communications medium, not a work of art in itself. It allows us to experience works of art more easily and even more fully, though, be it beautiful visual design (perhaps even of the website itself), or a wonderful work of contemporary literature, or anything in between.

That’s sort of how I reconcile the discord between the subcultures that I’m convinced only appears on the surface. When we dig deeper, we find, as always, that every discipline overlaps every other, and that we are always more alike than we are different.

The Nature of a Hero in the Eyes of a Child

I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical when DC Comics began releasing it’s New 52 version of Captain Marvel, and announced that he would be called Shazam from here forward. For those of you who don’t know, Captain Marvel, a powerful but lesser known hero in the DC Universe, is a boy named Billy Batson who was gifted with amazing powers by the wizard Shazam in order to do good and protect the weak. In order to summon his power and transform himself into Captain Marvel, Billy calls out, “Shazam!” DC reasoned, apparently, that the word that invoked his power was better known to their new target audience, and opted to re-name the hero.

They made what was likely a wise choice, given the doubtless hesitancy of many like myself, and began releasing the first story arc of Billy Batson as extra back-up stories in issues of the Justice League, one of their flagship and best-selling titles. That made it easy to read each issue, as it was packaged with a title that I was buying every month, anyway.

Initially, I feared that my skepticism was well-founded. I found Batson to be arrogant and childish in his newfound identity as (I’m trying to bring myself to say it…) Shazam, acting in the immature way that a child would when given amazing abilities. I wasn’t buying it, but I was reading it because I wasn’t buying it, or at least not explicitly. This origin story-arc follows Batson as a fifteen-year-old child, bounced into yet another foster home, through his meeting of the wizard and becoming (it’s not getting any easier to say…) Shazam. And, so the misadventures continued.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised with the story as it progressed in the most recent issue of the Justice League. Black Adam is proving a more than formidable opponent for Shazam, and terrorizing both the city and the child within the hero. Billy’s friends from his foster home find him having changed back into his childhood self, and hiding in fear because he knows that Black Adam cannot find him as long as he is not in his identity as (oh, fine, I’m getting the hang of it…) Shazam. The issue ends with Billy attempting to locate the wizard again, insisting that he was given his powers by mistake, and that they need to be taken back by the wizard and given to someone else.

Billy cannot recognize his own ability to be a hero, and cannot recognize the destiny that has been given him. He cannot see beyond his fear, and the reader cannot blame him, because he is, in his own words, “only a kid”, though suddenly entrusted with a man’s responsibility.

Even greater than this, a hero’s responsibility.

Writer Geoff Johns is painting an unexpected component of the nature of a hero, that of a hero who cannot at first find himself worthy, who is attempting to walk through the very human struggle of coming to terms with the tension between courage and terror. I’m fascinated to see how Johns develops (it still hurts…) Shazam, because he is realizing the potential of the character for portraying the process through which a hero overcomes their fear and stands tall to champion those who cannot defend themselves.

Photo Attribution: gualtiero under Creative Commons

Eight Months of Adapting to a New Culture

I’ve always loved to travel, and to see new places. A goal that I sort of secretly held for Karen and I when we were married (and still do, its just more difficult as a student) was also a goal that I tried to keep for myself for years: to visit one new place every year. Typically, we’ve been successful in that.

While I’ve travelled a great deal, and I’ve seen much of what at least my own country has to offer, I haven’t lived in many different places. At this point in life, I’ve lived in three different states. While cultural differences in different geographic locations fascinate me to no end, those same differences can be simultaneously fascinating and frustrating when you’re living with them. In the South, things moved at an impossibly slow pace (unless one was constructing a new building, in which case it was up practically overnight, because that’s how they seem to define the concept of progress down there), you were waited on when someone felt like it if you went into a business, no one had any clue what to do with snow, and people were always polite to your face, regardless of what they said behind your back.

There were a lot of great things about the South, as well (the weather is foremost in my memory at the moment), but the things that I listed above were the things that I found to be most negative. I didn’t mind them at first, but they began to really annoy me after a while. There were other, specific things to Virginia, as well, like the fact that there was no such thing as an acceleration lane on the expressway, and that you could drive completely insane as long as you didn’t speed, because the only traffic law that any police officer seemed to care about at all was the speed limit (which was always posted incredibly low there).

All of those things are the things that don’t exist here in New England. After just short of eight months here, though, there’s a handful of things that are making me scratch my head in bemusement, and I thought that you might find them funny, as well.

Traffic patterns are just weird if you didn’t grow up with them (Karen did, and so she’s quite comfortable here). I’m glad to say that acceleration lanes are back in my life, but the cities here are just much older than those in the South, and thus were designed around foot traffic, not motor vehicle traffic. This manifests in practical ways, like roundabouts instead of traffic signals at many intersections (of which I’m a fan), but also in chaotic ways to the uninitiated, like streets branching off at incredibly odd angles at intersections. And circular intersections…those are always fun. With poor signage. And, in Massachusetts specifically, there are no lanes when you exit from an Interstate. So, you go from a structured four lanes of traffic to no distinguishable lanes, with traffic coming in from multiple exits on all sides and weaving in and out of each other to reach the outlet to their destination. Seriously, it’s chaos.

Karen and I live in the “greater Boston area,” but are just across the state line in New Hampshire. Our current city is sort of a bedroom community for the Boston area…many choose to live here because of the cost of living decrease. Because of that, I anticipated some continuity when we moved here, but the differences between New Hampshire and Massachusetts can actually be quite profound. Massachusetts, for example, prefers to regulate necessary things (with which I have no problem). Recycling is legally mandated in many areas. Cleaning the snow off of your car before driving is actually a law. New Hampshire, conversely, really doesn’t like to be told what to do. There’s no income tax here, and no sales tax, either (yet they still maintain excellent public services to their residents, such as health care for children). Don’t want to have insurance on your vehicle? That’s not legally required of you here (which is really concerning to me). Don’t want to wear your seat belt? That’s now a law, either. Very few traffic cameras exist here, and there are fewer laws in general. The license plates say “Live Free or Die,” for crying out loud. Going between the two on a daily basis is almost its own sort of regular culture shock.

Some things that I love about New England? The people are straight forward, but very friendly. They say what they think, and you don’t have to interpret. Pedestrians always have right of way, especially in crosswalks! If you’re in a crosswalk, you barely have to even look. Just walk, because traffic stops for you. Every town has a common, which is sort of cool, and makes a great landmark for navigation.

And, when snow happens (and it always happens), they really know how to deal with it (the main streets were cleared the next morning after 28 inches of snow dumped on us this year).

All that to say, every place has a different set of advantages and disadvantages, things that are irritating and things that are brilliant. I was ready for a different set of advantages and disadvantages, so moving is nice. I’m sure that we’ll do it all over again in a few years, and where will that one take us? Only time will tell…

In the meantime, I’m going to need to buy a lot more cold weather gear.