I am so proud of my country today.  In fact, for the first time in a long time, I am a very proud American.

Two days ago, our country elected Senator Barack Obama as our next president.  I don't need to retell his story here; anybody who has found this blog stepped here on a sea of news articles, biographies, and stories about who this extraordinary man is, where he came from, and what he wants to do.

But I will repeat our story.  We are a country which, for the last eight years, has lived under a sneaking suspicion that the end of the last great superpower was nigh, and that our great nation of freedom, opportunity, and personal liberty was being chipped away by a relentless pattern of human rights violations, wiretapping, misrepresentation and the war it was predicated upon, foolhardy executive power-grabbing, economic tumult, and the discouraging feeling that we, the American people, were having the wool pulled over our collective eyes.

I am tired of going to foreign nations and sheepishly admitting my country of origin, for fear of the string of foreign-language expletives and shameful curses that I would be forced to respond to.  I'm tired of defending the liberty that my grandfather fought, shot for and was shot for in light of a bumbling figurehead, a puppet executive, and an inexplicable drain of the very liberties and respect for humanity that our country was built on.  I'm tired of being embarrassed by our leader, and by the kind of myopic zealotry and undereducated fundamentalism that came to characterize our twice-elected leader.  (For which I am equally to blame...I voted for our current President in both elections...and I am sorry).

...and today, I am breathing with fresh lungs, and a heart beating heavily with hope.

This week, we elected America's first African-American president.  To be slightly more broad, we elected America's first non-white president.  And I can't imagine being any happier that this person is Barack Obama.

I cannot wait to tell my children that I was there when Barack Obama was elected.  I am so thrilled that my children will not grow up in a world where only white males can reach the highest office in the land.  I am so proud that the rows of pictures that make up the "wall of presidents" at every grade school, middle school, and high school in the country will now have a dark-skinned face...at least one dark-skinned face, and hopefully many more...for as long as this country is established.  My children will never know a world where black men and women have no President who looks like them to aspire to.  And the children of black men and women across this country will never know a world where the "white majority" did not trust someone who looked like them to serve as their chief executive and leader.

I truthfully wondered if I would ever see this day.  And it is one of the great honors of my life that I got to be a part of electing this man.

I don't know that I believe that God takes a hand, or even necessarily an interest, in the politics of our country.  But I will tell you that I thank Him for a race well run, for two candidates that made this country proud throughout...for many of us, proud for this first time in years...and for the gift that is this radical milestone in the development of our young nation.  And I hope He hears it.

John McCain is an, without dispute, an American hero, and would likely have made an outstanding leader...I have been proud to support his cause and character in my small social circles where I could throughout his campaign.  But this is Barack Obama's time, and this is America's time for Barack Obama.  I think maybe we are finally ready.  I hope we are.

May God's hand guide you and protect you as you take your first steps of executive leadership, President-Elect Obama.  I'm proud to follow.

Peace to you,

Justin

[photo by Ellen Karns]

Of Zen and the Art of Humidor Maintenance...

I've taken to smoking cigars. Well, that may conjure the wrong image. Better said, I've taken to the hobby of cigars, which includes some smoking. Mostly, it includes reading about cigars, learning about cigars, shopping for cigars, setting up one's humidor to season cigars, and, after smoking, reviewing and journaling cigars.

I guess it's a little like Carson Palmer saying, "I've taken to playing football on Sunday afternoons."

So, what makes it all worth it? Of all things, why cigars? Certainly, I could have found a hobby that's cheaper, less smelly, more socially acceptable, and generally doesn't make you die...

I've been wondering this same thing. Why, of all the things i could spend my ever-dwindling free time on, would I choose this archaic throwback to the days when we didn't know any better?

...I think it's because it's meditative, and that makes it fun.

When you spark a cigar, even a smaller Corona or a stubby Robusto, you're committing to 30+ minutes of doing nothing else. You are engaging in a fully immersive self-indulgent activity. The thing is rich, and deep, and attention-keeping...and, perhaps more importantly, it's pungent and smelly and the smoke spreads everywhere...meaning you can't very well do it inside, and you can't really do it while you're doing anything practical. When you have a cigar in your hand, it becomes what you're doing for that half-an-hour, and I love that.

I've also discovered that cigars are inherently social, as long as those you're being social with like the smell of cigars. For some reason, in a way more powerful than beer or vodka or appetizers or cigarettes or dance music, when you light a cigar with someone, you're bound to talk about things. Usually, things that matter to you.

I like my new hobby. It's simultaneously profound and generally useless. It's meaningful, and its purposeless. It's masculine and timeless, and hopelessly stereotypical and outdated. It's instantly social, and turns people off immediately. It's delicious and tasty, and it smells like rotten campfire the next day.

Mostly, it's relaxing. So let me know if you'd like to join me for a cigar sometime...I'd like that.

Cheers,
Justin

A 2:30 a.m. poem...

magnetic poetry
Originally uploaded by surrealmuse.

As I sit awake with another periodic bout of entirely inexplicable insomnia, here is a scrap of poetry I made on my fridge about a cure for the problem...



if you ask a book
as i do,
delight in no repose as sanguine
as its scholarly ennui



Peace,
Justin

[photo from by michael wilson]

I keep turning up the music to try and drown out the sadness.

I’m on a plane from Dallas back to Cincinnati, and I’ve got my headphones on. The good ones. The ones that surround your ear, block everything else out. They’re supposed to anyway. But I’ve been through Fiona, then Fallout Boy, then Metallica…pushing it louder and louder, trying to forget about it, because men on business don’t cry on planes.

I’m trying to stop thinking for a moment about my friend Katie who died this week, and mostly trying to stop imagining what it feels like to be her family right now.

It feels surreal, to tell you the truth. Like an abstract poem I don’t quite understand, but the more I study the words the less I like the shadows they keep casting.

God damn it.

She was so bright, so fun, so powerful, so sweet, and so unstoppably honest. She was brave as hell, too…from her career to her relationship with her partner to her motherhood to battle with this tumor…so brave. More brave than I’ve ever hoped to be.

She was articulate, kind, and creative. She had a singing voice that spelled sugar and push simultaneously to me; a boyish timbre rutted into a Brownie undertone, as if Scout herself bought a guitar and learned to wail. Her recordings became a critical part of the soundtrack of my college days. Her recording of “Blue Like That” still stands as one of my most treasured audio-lockets…and if I think more about that, I will cry on this plane, and I don’t intend to do that.

Katie was giving and adventurous. When I called her in the midst of putting together her second record and invited her, at absolutely no pay, reward, or promise of decent food, to trek out into the wilderness of Indiana with my brother and I to play music and entertain junior high kids for a weekend…she didn’t hesitate. She packed her guitar, donned a preposterous wig and Cruella deVille jacket, joined our silly weekend without fanfare or prodding, and spent the next 72 hours improvising the flavor of ridiculous dialogue that makes 13-year-olds giggle.

When I caught my hand on fire trying to play a lighter-fluid dragon, she did the only thing that made sense to her at the time…shoved it between her thighs and squeezed. We laughed until one of us peed.

The only thing that ever bothered her was when someone would call her by her full-name-as-one-word, like “TigerWoods” or “GarthBrooks.” She was a musician and aspired to sing for the world, but I never got the feeling she wanted to be a celebrity…not like that.

Katie gave out of a very honest place, and she gave a lot. She sang out of a very real place, and she sang beautifully. She was hilarious, and she was lovely.

I have no idea how to think about Katie’s death.

I’m sad, and I’m angry, and I’m doubting. And I’m so, so sorry. Reider family, I am so sorry. Karen, I am so sorry. I feel like you deserve better than this.

Katie, I miss who you are. I’m glad you are not suffering any more, and I know you’re back home with your mom…wherever that place is…but I can’t help but feel like the world was better with you here.

Peace,
Justin

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
"The Fates lead him who will. Him who won't, they drag."
Seneca, ~30 a.d.

I think of the future sometimes.

Most of the time, I'm thinking of the very, very near future. As in, eight hours from now when the project summary comes due or twenty four hours from now when I'm supposed to be on a plane, or five minutes from now when I will have needed to be at a meeting for 15 minutes.

I spend a lot of the remaining time thinking about the past...what went right, what went wrong, and how what went right was probably just something going wrong that went at it wrong. (I am, despite the words of those close to me, not truly a cynic at heart...I am a rampant and disappointed idealist, perhaps, but not truly a cynic). I worry, and worrying for me is a mostly about confusing the near future with a distant past.

But sometimes, I think of the future. The real future.

For me, right now, these moments are occupied wondering about being a dad. I am not a dad, and I have no immediate reason to believe I will soon be a dad. But I think about it a lot...we think about it a lot. For me, it's not a yearning, exactly...not a need...but it feels like a want...like the happy memory of a first crush, it's a quiet and peaceful want that won't quite leave, but doesn't cause much trouble.

My friend Jimmy just had a baby, and my friend Ryan just had a baby. I have met one, and can't wait to meet the other. Two of my best friends in the world are dads. Like, the real kind of dad...like my dad was a dad. I struggle to imagine them as my dad...waking up early to get chocolate Entenman's donuts on Saturday mornings and grunting under the car as he drains engine oil in the hot afternoons. But, for some reason, I can imagine me doing it. They may become their dads, and that is likely a very good thing. And I may become mine...that is also a very good thing. We will learn to clap at recitals and work late for soccer-uniform money and to sit and watch and genuinely love our kids when they do the little things that bring them joy, whether we understand them or not. I hope I have those days. I don't need them just yet, but I hope I get them.

At the same time, I'm surprised at the lack of aching. I think, after two years and some change, I may be finding some peace in the unknowable To-Come. I'm tired of trying to predict it, honestly, and I'm becoming slightly thrilled at my inability to beat it. There is a peace in that...it's strange, but there is.

I don't know what is to come. I don't know if it includes birth, or adoption, or joy, or heartache, or another 50 years of the a marriage better than my tiny imagination would have sketched...with child or without. I don't know. But the peace, perhaps, is in knowing that I'm allowed to stop telling myself I should know.

Peace,
Justin

Aaaah, Gay Paris...the city of romance, the city of love, the city where bread is a mandatory part of every balanced breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Aaaah, Gay Paris.

So my travels have taken me to thriving little burg of Paris, France, where I'm learning at least several words in French, pronounced with an accent reminiscent of a garbage disposal filled with whole artichokes. So far, while in Paris, I have found my way from the airport to my hotel with a cab driver who spoke no English other than "Jou Like George Boosh?" (my answer to which I'm certain he didn't comprehend...but the tone defied borders), bought a magazine (no small achievement when you don't know the words for "buy" "how much," "magazine," "can I" and "a"), found my way 2 kilometers from my hotel to our facility on foot, and even got an old guy to respond in French when I said "bonjour," implying I sounded French enough to fool him.

I have also, during my time here, eaten some of the finest tasties that have ever graced my palate. I had pastisse, a delightful licoricey pre-meal liquer intended to shock your taste buds into licoricey submission to the meal to come; coc a vin, which the menu described as "a homemade old rooster soaked in Marsala wine," prompting both the questions, "how old was the rooster, and how do you home-make one?"; escargot soaked in butter, garlic, and what I assume was heroin; crepe Suzette, which is French for "creepy Suzy"; and enough freshly-baked baguettes to make one consider shredding one's Adkins book and crushing it into some kind of spreadable jam.

I also ate a creme brulee for lunch that will likely prompt any number of lurid dreams for the next few days, and real French Fries which were...umm...well, they were pretty much like American Fries, but in France.

Despite their reputation, the French people have been remarkably kind, polite, and generally agreeable. With the exception of the bar owner who kept yelling about how ridiculous it is that the "French can't smoke in France despite France being French," everyone has been very well-behaved...downright hospitable at times, even. This is a far cry from my single day in Paris ten years ago, when I, as a high school near-grad backpacking with no money to spend, was welcomed as a leprechaun welcomes a drought. I've even carried on tiny conversations with real-deal French people, and enjoyed learning tons of little cultural ideosyncracies and idioms (such as, "I lost my G," which refers to shedding an accent when speaking English, and not, in fact, to having a buddy from da hood pass away).

So far, it's been a great trip! I look forward to sharing more after tomorrow, when I get to get out and actually see the city a bit (been cooped up inside of a facility most days). Au Revoir! C'est La Vie!

Peace,
Justin