Everyone always talks about how New York City seems so huge and overwhelming to the casual interloper, how the mile-high skyscrapers loom over you and hammer home your infinite smallness in the world. Well, San Francisco does the same thing on a different axis: through the perpetual telescopic effect of the hilly topography, you can follow a street as it rises up into the sky, ten, twenty times more imposing than any skyscraper. Instead of just seeing what's immediately surrounding you on your block, you can also see, with stunning clarity, blocks that are miles in the distance, blanketed with dense rows of shoulder-to-shoulder houses that follow the gentle swells of the terraformed hilltops. Trying to locate yourself in relation to these floating urban islands is like trying to suss out a Necker cube -- squint and focus as hard as you might, you will still see only one facet at a time, either the forward-projecting or the backward-projecting one. But, in spite of the futility, your mind aches to put them together into a coherent picture that captures both.
It's tempting to make an analogy to the human perception of present and past. The mind, when confronted with people and places from the past, strains to perform the impossible mental operation of reconciling two perspectives. One of them is concrete and tangible, and the other is a glimmering road snaking upward into the horizon -- and while you can see it unfold with surprising detail, much more detail than the blunt close-up face of the present, you know that stretching your fingertips out to touch it would be entirely in vain.
I know it and I try anyway, because my mind loves puzzles and paradoxes, because life in just three dimensions is never quite good enough.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Post/riposte
Update to the Great Cougar Saga of Twenty-Ten:
Two days after the incident, I noticed a handmade sign and a small cluster of flowers in jars arranged in a shady bus stop niche. Predictably, the good people of Berkeley were saddened and/or outraged by the killing, and they'd erected a miniature shrine to mark the occasion, complete with an expression of their disappointment with the Berkeley P.D., as well as what looked like a 5th grade homework assignment on cougar facts. Being the perpetual cynical jerk that I am, I chuckled and snapped a photo with my iPhone, to be shown to friends in the crude vein of "LOL, hippies."
But when I passed the shrine the next day, there was a new addition -- a typed letter, presumably from a fellow cynic, lightly chiding people for being so foolish and quick to splash moral outrage over a fairly cut-and-dried situation (cougar in burban neighborhood = dangerous). Every time I passed by the area on subsequent days, there was some new development in the shrine discussion: notes jotted on the typed letter, both approving and disapproving; more facts sheets and print-outs of National Geographic-style cougar photos; a prayer for peace and harmony with the animal kingdom; and even a second typed letter, this one riddled with arrows pointing to facts from the original shrine decor, calling them out as specious and then arguing vehemently for "critical thinking" -- a lost art, according to the anonymous writer.
At first, I was simply amazed by how virtual-looking this discussion was becoming, with its hyperlinks and follow-up threads, and how well-represented every facet of Internet commentator was in the fracas. There was the OP, the snarky respondent, the peacemaker, the fact-finder, the critic of the fact-finder... all that was missing was the obscene troll and the inevitable comparison of the California law enforcement tactics to that of Hitler's Germany.
But then I remembered something I'd read while researching for my undergrad thesis on dissent and revolution in communist and post-communist Eastern Europe. In the 80s, a shrine to John Lennon instantaneously materialized in the middle of Prague right after the announcement of Lennon's tragic death. The communist police were miffed at first and tried getting rid of it, but the plethora of flowers and candles and teary notes reappeared in the morning after each clandestine midnight sweep, like mushrooms after a rainfall. Eventually, the police gave in and, pun intended, let it be. Seizing the opportunity, the dissident community appropriated the shrine as a symbol of their resistance movement, as John Lennon and The Beatles had already been for the disgruntled East European youth for the better part of a decade. To the flowers and candles and teary notes were added more overtly political messages on the subject of Peace and Freedom. Dissidents even began to use the shrine as a bonafide message board, posting locations and times of their next meetings in the middle of the traditional mourning accouterments. Eventually, the police were alerted and became more vigilant about pruning the shrine of political content -- but by then it was already the late 80s, and a real revolution was just around the corner.
Clearly, the people of Communist Czechoslovakia already had some germinal concept of message boards in their heads, and it only took a few more years for technology to catch up to the idea. What really makes me giddy is the continuity not only of the theoretical aspect, but also the concrete implementation, the blow-by-blow of how this public discussion plays out. Whether it happens in the street or in the comments section of the New York Times, it's the same kind of discourse, built on digression and marginality, fixing on some highly public, emotionally resonant event in history, and then pulling together people's preexisting political agendas, performed personas, and various other axes that need grinding. It's at once centripetal and centrifugal, generating the weight that gives importance to the event, while simultaneously threatening to pull the solidity and homogeneity of communal interpretation in a dozen different directions. Both modern and primal, just like a cougar roaming the back-alleys by one of the world's most distinguished restaurants. People: truly the world's most fascinating beasts.
Two days after the incident, I noticed a handmade sign and a small cluster of flowers in jars arranged in a shady bus stop niche. Predictably, the good people of Berkeley were saddened and/or outraged by the killing, and they'd erected a miniature shrine to mark the occasion, complete with an expression of their disappointment with the Berkeley P.D., as well as what looked like a 5th grade homework assignment on cougar facts. Being the perpetual cynical jerk that I am, I chuckled and snapped a photo with my iPhone, to be shown to friends in the crude vein of "LOL, hippies."
But when I passed the shrine the next day, there was a new addition -- a typed letter, presumably from a fellow cynic, lightly chiding people for being so foolish and quick to splash moral outrage over a fairly cut-and-dried situation (cougar in burban neighborhood = dangerous). Every time I passed by the area on subsequent days, there was some new development in the shrine discussion: notes jotted on the typed letter, both approving and disapproving; more facts sheets and print-outs of National Geographic-style cougar photos; a prayer for peace and harmony with the animal kingdom; and even a second typed letter, this one riddled with arrows pointing to facts from the original shrine decor, calling them out as specious and then arguing vehemently for "critical thinking" -- a lost art, according to the anonymous writer.
At first, I was simply amazed by how virtual-looking this discussion was becoming, with its hyperlinks and follow-up threads, and how well-represented every facet of Internet commentator was in the fracas. There was the OP, the snarky respondent, the peacemaker, the fact-finder, the critic of the fact-finder... all that was missing was the obscene troll and the inevitable comparison of the California law enforcement tactics to that of Hitler's Germany.
But then I remembered something I'd read while researching for my undergrad thesis on dissent and revolution in communist and post-communist Eastern Europe. In the 80s, a shrine to John Lennon instantaneously materialized in the middle of Prague right after the announcement of Lennon's tragic death. The communist police were miffed at first and tried getting rid of it, but the plethora of flowers and candles and teary notes reappeared in the morning after each clandestine midnight sweep, like mushrooms after a rainfall. Eventually, the police gave in and, pun intended, let it be. Seizing the opportunity, the dissident community appropriated the shrine as a symbol of their resistance movement, as John Lennon and The Beatles had already been for the disgruntled East European youth for the better part of a decade. To the flowers and candles and teary notes were added more overtly political messages on the subject of Peace and Freedom. Dissidents even began to use the shrine as a bonafide message board, posting locations and times of their next meetings in the middle of the traditional mourning accouterments. Eventually, the police were alerted and became more vigilant about pruning the shrine of political content -- but by then it was already the late 80s, and a real revolution was just around the corner.
Clearly, the people of Communist Czechoslovakia already had some germinal concept of message boards in their heads, and it only took a few more years for technology to catch up to the idea. What really makes me giddy is the continuity not only of the theoretical aspect, but also the concrete implementation, the blow-by-blow of how this public discussion plays out. Whether it happens in the street or in the comments section of the New York Times, it's the same kind of discourse, built on digression and marginality, fixing on some highly public, emotionally resonant event in history, and then pulling together people's preexisting political agendas, performed personas, and various other axes that need grinding. It's at once centripetal and centrifugal, generating the weight that gives importance to the event, while simultaneously threatening to pull the solidity and homogeneity of communal interpretation in a dozen different directions. Both modern and primal, just like a cougar roaming the back-alleys by one of the world's most distinguished restaurants. People: truly the world's most fascinating beasts.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Big game
Last night, in a state of restless half-sleep, I heard the sound of two gunshots going off, seemingly right outside the bedroom window. Throughout most of my solidly lower-to-middle middle class existence, I've been fortunate enough not to hear gunshots all that often -- the exception being the W.T.O. riots in Seattle circa my sophomore year of high school, and I'm pretty sure those were rubber bullets -- but the sound was unmistakable: like the swat of a rug-beater on a dusty carpet, but amplified tenfold, with a sinister reverb you never hear in the movies. Idly, I wondered who on earth could be firing a weapon in the middle of downtown Berkeley, but at that point, I was too far gone with sleep to care.
Turns out, the shots were from a police officer tasked with gunning down a wild cougar that had inexplicably wandered into our quiet suburban neighborhood. When this story was related to me the following day, what surprised me wasn't so much the cougar prowling around the organically stocked dumpsters of Chez Panisse. That much seemed perfectly reasonable to me, given that mountains are close and "twice-cooked kid goat with cumin, ginger, eggplant, and chickpeas" is enough to draw in the most skittish and reclusive of carnivores. What surprised me was that, even in this hippie/yuppiefied town, the only effective method the local law could come up with for dealing with a wild animal was extermination. Weren't there some tranq darts lying around in their Black Marias, or some tear gas left over from 60s student protests?
I kept thinking about this as I heard about the crazy Discovery Channel standoff that also happened today. Obviously, it's dangerous to compare the killing of a wild animal to the killing of a person, but even without PETA-style intellectual convolution, the logic from the point of view of the trigger finger feels exactly the same to me: This is a wild, unpredictable creature. It may harm someone. It needs to die to let others live. Viscerally, I'm uncomfortable with this logic. I don't like imagining myself in the situation of the police officer whose job it is to make that decision and, pun intended, execute it. I don't like the place a mind has to go in order to dispassionately, instantaneously make that choice. And I certainly don't like the dark stain that inevitably remains imprinted in some corner of that mind after the dust has settled and the body of some unfortunate hunted creature lays prone and motionless like a limp rag. One would say, then, that I'm clearly on the side of deontological ethics, favoring process and means over and above any ends they enact. Thinking deeper about the situation, though, I suppose that's precisely what draws me to utilitarianism. It's not a visceral, passionate reaction, and that makes it a hell of a lot harder for a human mind to make sense of it. But maybe we as a species need to put ourselves in more difficult situations, and to avoid solving them with meely-mouthed platitudes about kindness and love and sanctity of life, especially when it's so clear that our entire society is built on anything but.
Turns out, the shots were from a police officer tasked with gunning down a wild cougar that had inexplicably wandered into our quiet suburban neighborhood. When this story was related to me the following day, what surprised me wasn't so much the cougar prowling around the organically stocked dumpsters of Chez Panisse. That much seemed perfectly reasonable to me, given that mountains are close and "twice-cooked kid goat with cumin, ginger, eggplant, and chickpeas" is enough to draw in the most skittish and reclusive of carnivores. What surprised me was that, even in this hippie/yuppiefied town, the only effective method the local law could come up with for dealing with a wild animal was extermination. Weren't there some tranq darts lying around in their Black Marias, or some tear gas left over from 60s student protests?
I kept thinking about this as I heard about the crazy Discovery Channel standoff that also happened today. Obviously, it's dangerous to compare the killing of a wild animal to the killing of a person, but even without PETA-style intellectual convolution, the logic from the point of view of the trigger finger feels exactly the same to me: This is a wild, unpredictable creature. It may harm someone. It needs to die to let others live. Viscerally, I'm uncomfortable with this logic. I don't like imagining myself in the situation of the police officer whose job it is to make that decision and, pun intended, execute it. I don't like the place a mind has to go in order to dispassionately, instantaneously make that choice. And I certainly don't like the dark stain that inevitably remains imprinted in some corner of that mind after the dust has settled and the body of some unfortunate hunted creature lays prone and motionless like a limp rag. One would say, then, that I'm clearly on the side of deontological ethics, favoring process and means over and above any ends they enact. Thinking deeper about the situation, though, I suppose that's precisely what draws me to utilitarianism. It's not a visceral, passionate reaction, and that makes it a hell of a lot harder for a human mind to make sense of it. But maybe we as a species need to put ourselves in more difficult situations, and to avoid solving them with meely-mouthed platitudes about kindness and love and sanctity of life, especially when it's so clear that our entire society is built on anything but.
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