fizzes and pops

What about the wisdom of the elders?  Isn’t that something we are supposed to have in order to guide us in tough times?  I think of the Native Americans (of course I can only think of them through the movies I have seen, the books I have read, and the few reservations or ghettos I have passed through in the Midwest), of the wisdom of the leader, the oldest man sitting by the fire, or in the tent puffing  a pipe with his fellow old men who interpret the law with memories of precedent, grand historical knowledge, the experience of the group literally is stored in their heads.  They are given the greatest respect from the tribe, as the fountain of experience and knowledge.  Our elders are put into what we can affably call ‘homes.’  Look at the current housing problem:  30% of the populace at risk of losing their houses are over the age of 50, in a mortgage that they can’t afford.* (NY Times 10/18)  It is not just that these people were greedy, it is also that they were pressured into finding the ‘American Dream’  a larger house followed by an even larger one, that their family had split and splintered so that the kids and grandkids were all also searching for their own individual said “dream.”  And that they were often disrespected by the mortgage agents as to the exact details of the fluctuations in the lending agreement.  All of these issues fly in the face of the functioning family unit of the Native American, but are core the non-native’s “American Dream.”  Maybe the wisdom got drained out somewhere, or maybe the wisdom is in the telling, and if there is no one to tell it to, no one to listen, it just sort of fizzes and pop’s out of our grandparents’ mouths in the middle of the night.  

a post

So what is the spectacle?  Its kind of like that moment when you think you’ve cut yourself with a really sharp kitchen knife, and you’re waiting to see if blood will appear or not.  We are all tied up in things we say, and this makes me uncomfortable to say anything with rational security and true confidence.  That is, there is subjective existence going on to the words that I put down, as well as a public, objective existence.  These words will have two existences, two origins, and address themselves to two audiences in search for agreement from both.  So, for example, when I say, with some level of conviction, that I think that people are absorbed in a spectacle of hyped stories in our political realm that hide or obfuscate what is in some way a ‘fairer’ version of the truth;  those words come from within me to without me.  They also address themselves to me as I form them, and to my experience as a filter as to whether or not they ring ‘true.’  My experience, privately, is that I feel overwhelmed by this feeling of watching and waiting for the blood to flow, of being subject to the ‘spectacle’ from the inside out.