April 9th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Words don’t seem adequate anymore. Too rough. Too insincere. Too abstract. In this form writing isn’t enough. It could never, can never, really express the full brunt of my restlessness.

I want to scream. I want to murder. In this way I’m not at all different from everything I despise. I’m a man afterall…

And the world tumbles on. The dread machinery of rough hands, sweat collecting at the veins like a downpour. I’m the center of the hurricane. I bring with me destruction and pestilence.

Fear me. For this is all I have left to give.

So it was at the beginning. Chaos and gratuitous violence. Rape. The pilfering of what otherwise could have been a faithless, absolute clarity.

For this too I am to blame.

So it goes. Right into the firestorm.

March 18th, 2010 by Hoopleton

I haven’t written for the days have steamed along and my mind is held up in some tin roof motel four counties north. I receive ransom letters in lieu of dreams, scribbled out in faded avocado ink. And I shrug, and I think, well, I suppose this is just the way it’s gonna be. But to what end? I’m not sure, I reply as I run my fingers through my graying hair. I honestly don’t think it matters all that much.

Consider the first half of March my vacation from myself. Don’t you dare ask what the second half will bring. The point is that I’ve been cleansing and I don’t plan to stop just yet. Personal matters need to be sorted. Court documents need to be filed. There’s only so much aged Gouda in the world. Oh, and of course there is the ever present agony of self.

I was standing on a bridge over the Chicago River smoking one of the last few dozen cigarettes I’ll smoke this winter and for a moment I could see the waters swell over the banks. I imagined the river rising twenty stories in twenty seconds. Streets devastated by tides of sewage. Cars washed away within the inland sea. It wouldn’t be long from that point until the overpasses were submerged and skyscrapers began to topple over like dead trees. At the surface only blue flesh and forests of loose-leaf.

These are the thoughts that occupy my mind in the brief intervals of silence between the near constant booming volleys of undeserved, but certainly long overdue joy. Sickening isn’t it? And you wonder why it is I need a month away.

Hoopleton will be back in stride very soon. Stay tuned.

December 31st, 2009 by Hoopleton

2010. A decade into the second millennium of the modern era. Two years to the Mayan apocalypse.

We approach each New Year’s Eve with a curious mixture of excitement and trepidation. We think about what’s past and anticipate what is yet to come. We make predictions. Resolutions. Plans. On a primal level we’re simply happy to have made it as far as we have.

We’re a strangely optimistic species. Despite the fact that little in the way of substantive change occurs from one year to the next we hold out for bigger, better things with every toast and every kiss.

I gave up on the idea of prediction some years back, but a few generalities can be assumed.

Barring an asteroid impact or the rise of a new Soviet Empire, the world will continue to spin as it always has. War in the Middle East. Instability at home. Triumphs and tragedies. Heartbreak and revelation. The markets will heave and slump. Movie stars will die. Politicians will lie. Most of us will get a little bit older.

As we move closer to the much foretold singularity and the promises of eternal life, though not life as we know it, I much rather offer you my best wishes than reviews or predictions.

I hope 2010 brings you greater fortune and greater understanding. I hope 2010 brings you greater peace and compassion.

I speak to you as Eugene V. Debs. I speak to you as Kenneth Patchen. In that I am you. In that I believe in the sort of brotherhood that may change this world.

Even I can be an optimist, if at least for this night.

Happy 2010.

December 25th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Aftermath

by Siegfried Sassoon

Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same-and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

November 21st, 2009 by Hoopleton

October 31st, 2009 by Hoopleton

Will be out of service for the next several days as I change abodes. Expect hoopleton to be back up by Wednesday (hopefully).

October 7th, 2009 by Hoopleton

It’s hard to understand today’s politics in the United States. Was it always like this? Is our perception of the past skewed by the power of hindsight? When looking back do we miss a plethora of failures for the bright glare of milestones? Or are we truly living in an age that is witness to the decline of our modern political system as we know it?

In the last twenty years, it seems, our elected officials have become increasingly ineffectual. Whether it be the Clinton era of inaction or the Bush era of criminal mismanagement or the current administration and it’s impotence of power, we seem to be strapped into free fall. Scandal follows scandal in the national headlines. Hatemongering and race bating take on the guise of intellectual debate. The sophists have commandeered the Assembly as the once mighty American Republic slides deeper into debt and shortsightedness.

Barack Obama, a man swept into office on a message of hope, on promises to remake the United States into the global leader that it once was, a President with unbeatable majorities in both chambers of Congress, although having moved on minor issues has dropped the ball on anything of substance. His major campaign promises have either been laid aside or discarded completely. His leadership seems increasingly weak and cowardly. He is a man out of his element. Someone who likes playing President but who has neither the will nor the understanding to actually be President.

The Democrats, the party that gave us Civil Rights, most of our social safety net and who still claim to represent the interests of the disadvantaged, have degenerated into a disorganized mob. Empty of message, platform or any of the ideals that once put them on the right side of the ethical divide, they are nothing more than a mirror reflecting the GOP’s worst criticisms. Whereas sixty years ago the Party of FDR transformed an isolationist frontier backwater into a superpower, the Democrats of today seem determined to destroy the United States out of sheer incompetence.

And as for the Republicans, the Party of Lincoln has increasingly become the last refuge for extremists, bigots and warmongers. A fascist, reactionary minority party more interested in tearing down the opposition than creating a sustainable future. Loud and angry, the Grand Old Party claims to love this nation while undermining its interests at every turn. The prevailing philosophy among Republican leaders seems to be that if they can’t sit at the controls they’d rather see the entire apparatus burn.

Is this our 476?

Our civic institutions are crumbling. The dollar is not what it once was. Our great military is bogged down in two conflicts that may just go on forever. Our political and financial leaders are too busy robbing us to see that end is coming and our media, the fourth estate, in existence, one would assume, to protect us, is only stoking the fires of our discontent.

Is the answer here a third party? Is it even worth fixing all that’s broken? Or should we just let it all fall apart?

If human beings have proven anything it’s that our systems of governance can never endure forever. As we erect a structure it immediately begins to topple over. We may slip into a dark age or just skim over the surface of one, but in every case we have to reassess, rework and rebuild. But I wonder if we’ve been going about it in the wrong way for all these thousands of years. Maybe these concepts of nationality, ethnicity, tribe, god and country are at the root of the problem. Maybe a clean slate is what we need. Scorch the earth and try from the beginning again.

September 13th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Between the prospect of moving, taking a few mini vacations and preparing another round of grad apps there’s been little time to write and even less time to post. That should change very soon. If not by pure force of will then certainly by the sheer power of the changing season.

Stay tuned.

August 23rd, 2009 by Hoopleton

Side projects and life changes have kept me busy of late, and as I’m not posting daily I’m putting off adding daily inspirations until things stabilize again.

So it goes that we find ourselves continuously caught between opportunity and responsibility, craving adventure all along the path.

Some more thoughts in a bit.

Stay tuned.

July 6th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Serving as Secretary of Defense between 1961 and 1968, Robert S. McNamara was for the last forty years a divisive, controversial figure. A hero to some, a war criminal to others, he has been described as arrogant, incompetent, brilliant and tragic. He was labeled as the architect of the Vietnam War. A genius who somehow got it all horribly wrong. When he finally left the DoD for the Presidency of the World Bank, he began to speak out against the war and America’s aggressive military posture. He admitted he had been wrong, but never apologized for his mistakes. In retirement he became a critic of nuclear weapons and warned about the dangers of what would be the last world war.

Perhaps there was no other figure in recent history who better exemplified the dualities of the American character. In so many ways McNamara was America. A commanding political force who served as part of the vast mechanism that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives under a banner of altruism.

Such is our national psyche. We speak in high rhetoric about the triumph of democracy, about the need to spread freedom and liberty, while at the same time we command the largest, most destructive military arsenal the world has ever seen. We spend more on the business of war than every other nation on Earth. In the last hundred years we’ve never gone long without invasion or intervention. We fight dictatorships, but usually only out of self-interest. We are sometimes a symbol of good, and sometimes an instrument of evil.

But Robert McNamara didn’t only represent the duality in our action, he also represented the contradictions in our self analysis. He was the manifestation of our civic dreams and nightmares. He reflected our strengths and desires. We as champions. We as murderers. We as innocents, desperate to believe our leadership despite countless instances of criminality and deception.

When he was the head of America’s military apparatus Robert McNamara was very much part of the problem, deluded in thinking that violence could ever truly resolve conflict. That murder could ever be morally justified. In this way he was, just as our entire political structure, madness incarnate. A raving psychotic convinced of his own righteousness. Where he differed from those around him, was that while others continued down the road of insanity, McNamara, I think, realized the flaws in this world view.

Robert McNamara died today at the age of 92. He leaves behind a troubling legacy. Troubling because it defies easy classification. But perhaps that’s also part of the problem, our rush to so quickly summarize the set of complexities that are the human mind. To define ourselves so definitively as Americans. As citizens of the world.

I don’t have a final judgment for the architect of the Vietnam War. I’ve read the works of his supporters and detractors. I’ve heard from the man himself. In the end I don’t think he was either the best of us or the worst of us, but he was certainly more than a man. Robert McNamara was the incarnation of a set of destructive national policies, and our most fervent desires for what we’d like to imagine ourselves to be.