Beauty, Humor and Healthy Pessimism

David Rakoff

David Rakoff has died at 47. The gay essayist, comic, avowed pessimist and self-proclaimed neurotic Jew has crossed over to the other side. His book of essays, "Half Empty," extolled the virtues of a realistic, pessimistic attitude when looking at the world.

The cause of his death was a tumor caused by radiation treatments he had for lymphoma when he was 22. Like any logical realist, his own demise was an option he was prepared to accept with the same humor and grace he used to write about his cancer.

Like Jewish tribal affiliate and fellow cancer survivor, Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote "Bright Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America," he espoused a realistic, rather than a sugar-coated view of life. Of late, psychologists and psychiatrists are arriving at the conclusion that this attitude is healthier for many people than a sunny-bunny perspective that leaves sick and depressed people saddled with guilt and blame for their own illnesses.

Like Rakoff and Ehrenreich, I too, am a cancer survivor. After my Clark's level 4 melanoma diagnosis in 1991 I contemplated for the first time the fact that my life might be concluding shortly. As a terminal Jew, healthly skepicism, i.e. pessimism was always been my modus operandi anyway.

But surprisingly, I actually came away from my cancer experience with a lot of practical and positive resolutions that a cheerier person may not have adopted. I made a list of concrete proposals to change my life just in case I survived the ordeal. That was nearly 21 years ago, so I was one of the lucky ones.

I promised myself that I would write and try to get my work published, that I would hold world travel and language learning as life priorities and that I wouldn't be consumed by the workaday rat race. Four years after my diagnosis, I took a part-time job and have never worked full-time for the capitalism dream-shredding machine again. Yet my overall, dark-sided nature has remained fundamentally unchanged, although in many ways I have definitely mellowed with my(unanticipated) advancing age.

True creativity is not born of sunshine and lollipops, it is a survival mechanism that comes from profound inner struggle mixed with existential angst and humor. Farewell David Rakoff, we will miss you and we will bear in mind that we are all coming up right behind you!

In Mexico Sitting and Relaxing is Legal

Plaza in Tlaquepaque

I came back to news of San Francisco's enforcement of the new sit/lie ordinance that makes hanging out on public sidewalks against the law. Not only is this not the case in Mexico, sitting and relaxing are actually encouraged in public spaces such as the beautiful old colonial-style plazas that grace almost every city and town.

There are benches everywhere, much like the ones that were removed from Civic Center Plaza in the mid-nineties when I worked at the nearby Public Library. Yes, in sleazier towns there are occasional scruffy guys or borrachos (drunks) but the night markets don't sell alcohol and the problem is nearly non-existent compared to this country.

Public spaces are for the people and they come alive at night with stands selling tacos, pozole, tamales, homemade potato chips, even hamburgers. The people are so friendly it made me a bit embarrassed for our country of rush and bother. I am trying to be more Mexican now in my new retired state. To me that means more conscious of others and more aware of myself as a member of a community that transcends ethnicity, race and gender identity.

Passing as a Man in the Guadalajara Bus Station...

 A Female Man in Guadalajara

Yes, there are queers in Mexico, one woman bus driver was butch as all get-out, but in general women tend toward ultra-femme. Gay men, of course, are more visible. This must be the reason that I was so often addressed as senor. Deb and I decided to make the best of it and try to pass as a heterosexual couple. It worked as long as I didn't speak. My voice is not exactly in the male range.

On Vacation

                            Lavenderjoan is on vacation and will return to blog again in August.

Travel as Buddhist Practice

Ajijic Seen From Lake Chapala

I'm in the process of packing for 3 weeks of travel in Mexico with Deborah. Since I'm putting everything in a backpack that I have to carry, my decision are made almost exclusively by weight. It's a challenging prospect due to the fact that we will be at in a range of climates from 7,000 feet above sea (sunny and comfortably temperate) to absolute sea level which, in July, will be steaming. I'm taking lots of soap so I can wash and rewash the clothes that I'll be sick to death of by the end of the trip. 

Packing is one of the hardest things about travel. Once we leave, we will have next to nothing and will, judging by our past performance, get used to it. It will be as though we never had any other life but the one of motion. Travel is one of the few genuinely Buddhist experiences. You are in the moment because there is nowhere else to be. Taking in the world and meeting basic needs of food and shelter are the goals that take up all the available space. It is a freeing feeling.

When I was young, following the death of my mother in 1973, I took the money from her life insurance, a friend and we went to Europe to bum around indefinitely. Our venture, meant to last at least a year, ended in eight months, not because we ran out of money (hostels and train travel were dirt cheap then) but because, even at 23, we ran out of stamina and patience with nomadic life. In the long run, there is an isolating quality to observing other's lives from the outside.

But, in the short run, I am really looking forward to a few weeks of suspended reality. Especially because, as a newly retired person, I haven't yet defined the parameters of what that day to day reality will actually look like.

A Rapidly Warming World

Fires, soaring temperatures, fierce storms; we are now experiencing first-hand the effects of global warming, that some euphemistically term, climate change. To say many people are without power takes on a quite literal meaning. What will this mean for the future? The diminishing population of endangered insects, like honey-bees, will mean that plants that rely on pollination will not produce fruit.

Other factors will impact the food supply. New wetland and marsh in once fertile fields and drought in once temperate areas will not bode well for feeding the population of the future.

It's a scary prospect because we can't expatriate from the earth as easily as we can from an individual country. Can and will industrialized countries commodify the universe? WalMart is probably laying the foundation for WalMars as we speak. For all we know, the one percent may be working on a Titanic-sized space station with condos aboard as Newt Gingrich plans for life on the moon.

How will this all play out? Will the entire exercise of politics become superfluous and unnecessary. It all remains to be seen but, indisputably, we do live in challenging times.

The "Empire of Consumption"

I saw Chris Hedges speak last night and the "empire of consumption" was the phrase he used to refer to what this society has become.Was it always this apparent or have things changed drastically? The commercialization of society has never seemed more obvious and obnoxious than it is today. He observes that it is a progression that has happened over time.But this out-of control growth was years in the making and, like any malignant tumor, it will destroy the host organism.

Of course, for many years the Gay Pride Parade has been used as a vehicle for advertising, some of its biggest sponsors being alcohol companies. This is not subtle irony. The fact that alcoholism is a big problem in the LGBT community only makes the strategy more blatant and obscene. What a fertile field for new consumers! And what a sad commentary on queer liberation for those of us who remember the early marches to the aptly named, Marx Meadow in Golden Gate Park.

Materialism and privatization are the mantras of the 21st century. An Ayn Rand-style, libertarian world is barreling down upon us inch by inch. It is one where the corporations and the 1% are in the driver's seat and the rest of us are under the wheels. No sector is immune. The final steps involve the destruction of labor unions so that workers are easily exploitable, cheap and plentiful. The education system is being replaced by a network of charter schools where teachers are expendable and students, taught to perform like trained seals on exams but not to employ critical thinking skills, must pay to attend. Libraries, hospitals, the postal service and prisons are all being targeted for privatization in the new survival of the wealthiest economy.

Chain stores and chain restaurants are rapidly replacing the mom 'n pop genre. The internet provides competition for almost every market excepting only those like food, medical care and hairdressing. The trades that require the physical presence of our bodies. Everything else is up for grabs.