Seven Months.

August is upon us.

I will see the woods someday.

Rain washes more than just your skin.

Why I Am No Republican

If that didn't kill you, I should convey with my utmost that I am no dirty “Dem,” either. Frankly, and perhaps this is too idealistic of me, I find that by constricting my free thought and intellect to the molding of the dogmatic platform of any party to be all too similar to defining my entire body of spiritual beliefs by the edicts of a pre-renaissance western pope. Both are obstructive to free thought and innovation, oppressive to my personal rights and liberties, and therefore wrong by principle. Even if my ideas, those that evolved with help from information, data, and rational thought, do or ever did one-hundred-percent line up with a party’s platform, I would still not call myself a Republican, Democrat, Marxist, Libertarian, Texas Secessionist, Power Ranger Reform Clan, or blindly subscriptive member of any other party. I prefer to think my own thoughts, as opposed to swearing by the rants of the honorable Mr. Limbaugh, or worshiping the first black President of the United States as the savior of our species. Therefore, to amend my attention-grabbing headline necessary for your reading pleasure, I am as equally not a Democrat as a Republican. So don’t write off my words as propaganda, because they simply aren’t.

Introductory caveat aside, I understand that without parties, or groups of likeminded people banded together to combine political power in pursuit of favorable legislation, and their platforms, perhaps our political system would be too weak to function. It would be potentially even more divisive, even more cutthroat without alliances. Imagine if every single Representative and Senator were unable or unwilling to work with any other Representative or Senator. Even an increasing-in-size-and-entropy universe with uncounted multitudes of potentially colliding galaxies is not a decent-enough metaphor for the melee of divisive legislative combat that would haunt out “United” States’ political system and turn it into a non-functioning Athenian-style democracy. Not to mention that these Congressman and Senators would have a hard time even managing to be elected without the support of a party. This is no perfect world, and I understand that.

Still, I can’t help but be appalled at the divisive nature of party politics in America. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party; very, very few, if any, members of each could easily be found that would be willing to ‘share’ power. Protest the fictionality or not, Gandalf says it best, “There is only one Lord of the Rings, and he does not share power.” I cite, for example, President Obama’s recent attempt to pass the Economic Stimulus Package through the U.S. Congress. I lend neither support not dissent to the President’s much-hyped plan. I present only the plain fact that the package received literally no Republican votes in the House, and only three votes from Republican Senators (New York Times). In understand the perhaps every single Republican representatives and all thirty-seven Republican senators actually read the package all the way through, and found some legitimate faults. It is possible. But compared to the likelihood that the Old Elephant instructed its body parts how to vote, this chance is very slim. The debate over the Stimulus Package was no isolated event; this is standard operating policy for both major parties. This is why such importance is vested in the number “sixty”; for with sixty senatorial seats controlled by one party, currently the Democratic Party, any filibuster or hope of genuine, intelligent opposition can be bypassed in the Senate. Put the dots together, and the Democratic Party, which now has a Presidential seat and a Senate majority, and is generally quite unwilling to work with Republicans, not controls the Federal Government. That party’s standard operating procedure of issuing a platform, and bashing whoever and whatever goes against that platform, especially the Republican Party, is set to seriously divide the already unintelligently divided America even more.

I am no Utopian. I do not think that a human utopia is fully attainable. I understand that people, as defined by human nature, want what is best for their individual selves, as opposed to what is sacrificing their wants for the betterment of the larger group, generally speaking. This explains the lack of a functioning global community. This means that people do not and will not by nature ‘get along’ well enough to peacefully legislate all of the time. And I know very well that critical thinking and tough questioning, both seemingly absent in blind platform acceptance and violent party politics, are invaluable to good decision-making. But argument purely for the sake of spiting the Democratic or Republican Party or their platforms is unacceptable. I would not tolerate it in my household, and I will not tolerate it in America. This is, in part, why I subscribe to no Party platform. Blind acceptance of party platforms means blind slavery to parties, which leads to a divided America.

Not that Nanci Pelosi or Sarah Palin will read my editorial, but, were I one of their constituents, I would be on the phone with my government’s headquarters leaving voicemail after voicemail of condemnation of the overriding party bickering that haunts America’s governmental halls. I urge anyone who cares about himself or his neighbor to cease pointless bickering and the blind consuming of Party politics, or pointless bickering and party politics will cease the working functionality of America and paralyze our way of life.

Driving to See the Greatest Plants Alive.

I imagine it is quite like a plant. There are dead ones and live ones. Thorny ones and delicate ones. Ones with strong roots to last the storms, and to get the water even when very little is to be had. There are rootless ones; and when the wind comes it will pull them apart. There are those that frequently sprout, like weeds in a country field. But the ones that sprout too often cannot stand the years, because when too many plants crowd the earth, they all die. Then there are the Giant Sequoia's. My God, the ones that last the years and occupy the coast. They grow and grow, sometimes producing thirty-cubic feet of beautiful wood a year. The kind that everyone drives two-thousand miles to see. Young kids wonder what it's like to grow roots like theirs; and old folks are comforted by their presence through the decades. Romantic ladies dream about having one to call their own, and all grown men really want is to be a part of the family of trees.

We all want it. Every one of us. Love as big as a tree.

I once argued with my 9th grade literature teacher.

She told me that people could not live alone; that humans were not capable of being, of existing, totally by themselves. If you can read the foreshadow, you know already that I vehemently disagreed.

I was right. Even in 9th grade, I was a literal child. I knew it then, and I know it now: people don't need other people to be alive. To have oxygen and nutrients flowing through their hearts and arteries. Babies don't need their mothers, and men don't need others. The novelty of being alive, of rapidly responding to external stimuli, isn't sustained by human relationships. Christopher McCandless can live in a van in Alaska and survive on wild plants and squirrels. Robert Neville can live alone in an eight-million corpse steel graveyard and survive the outbreak. And God knows I could sit alone in my apartment, eating two meals a day out of a microwave, while my heart still contracted and relaxed.

Still, even while being correct, It's funny how off I was. She did not mean what I thought she meant; she did not say what I thought she said. Granted, those particular muscular contractions that formed those particular words that made up the offending statement did come out of her mouth and vibrate through the air matter between us and into my ears. But I absolutely failed to read between the lines. I heard what she said, but didn't realize what she meant. I became so invested in the literality of her words that I ignored the deeper statement about life and human relations. Had I not done that, had I read between the lines, I would have prematurely learned a great lesson, one that kings would have killed for.

People cannot live on their own. They can be living, be existent and responsive to external stimulus, yes. So yes, I did literally argue the correct response when I heard her collection of words. But I was stupid. There is no way I could truly live alone. And I pray to God that I won’t have to. Human beings need other human beings to truly live, to truly be. That's the truth between the lines.

And I didn't believe her.

Oh.