A Blustery Day.

On this gray windy Fall day by Lake Huron any remnants of desire for home ownership have been blown away. Mature trees that block the street lights in Summer turn the colors I dreamed of seeing. The South Texas climate dictate what grows. The leaves don’t fall. Brown. Not a glorious palate of red, yellows and gold. Riding through a tunnel of them is magical. They tumble through the air on the unseen whim of the cool air. Forget the science of how and why. The adult gives way to a child like wonder of the season. A youthful period of endless possible futures.

Then they met the hard surface of the street. A reality meant for the adult self. Raking. Bagging. Work after getting off work. Unless you have kids. Then it work of a different sort to make sure it’s done. Not done right. Just done. Home ownership is a lifestyle choice. One which I’ve opted out of. Apartment dweller for 10 years.

At first the desire was still strong. Get my life back together. Look to get a small house in a older neighborhood. Problem being having done that early in my marriage. The neighborhood changed around us. One house at a time. Deep community roots replaced by very shallow transitory ones. Big single family homes of the past were made into apartments by absent landlords. We started the journey a couple. Continued it a family. And yes, did the White Flight route. Build a house in the country.

The land had been found 3 years before. Got a shell of a modular ranch style house. One which I would finish off after work. Every night and weekends.  Antique reclaimed pine floors. Done in a picture frame pattern to separate the Dining/Living room area. Ceiling fans. Tile work. Kitchen. 1 am was when I wondered if it was something we could afford? Was it something I wanted? There had always been a building tension inside about how this desire matched the reality I was evolving in. The process of vision to physical completion is still one of my greatest pleasures. Building is an addictive tactile experience. To much of our modern existence has no ending. It’s all continuum.

Mowing was and is a hated chore. Growing up maintaining a smallish slice of green to match everyone else’s shade of green was a duty my father entrusted me to. No leaves. No mature trees. First house? Yes. Been there, done that. My time is better spent. On anything else. How about meadow grass or a vegetable garden. No mowing or food. Something useful for the time spent after work. Leaves are the one equalizer in my city. Lumber Baron mansions. Larger upscale homes behind. Working class houses marching down the street with the sameness of having been built wholesale. Gray weathered concrete repaired with black asphalt is a carpet of gold. Beauty in decay.

The Seasons rule our lives. Even those climes that have subtle changes. Festivals mark the time we humans have proscribed over centuries. Markers we carry with us where ever we chose to live. All, except in densely packed urban areas, centered around a separate structure. A house. In a grouping of such structures. Neighborhoods. All bound to together by peer pressure to rake the fallen leaves.

Leaves I ride through with child like joy. On a bicycle.  That magical invention that give me that first taste of freedom. A milestone in a child’s life. The dominate figures in your young life trust you enough to let you out of their sight. Nose in the wind. Going fast. Or slow. My choice. I will gladly ride through all those adults raking and bagging in the growing darkness.

When I refused to follow old behaviors that never worked before, there was a pleasant outcome. That replaced pessimistic shading of sameness.  The balance was struggling to translate four version of English into a question needing an answer. Both shared being part of the safety net for those of us who occasionally find ourselves in need of it.  On a personal level it explains what is fueling the political atmosphere since the crisis.  It is from the middle of my own very human perspective filled with flawed thinking shaded with unrealistic dreams in a patch of shattered illusions.   

Yesterday was one of those filled with lesson learned.  Having lived in Michigan for close to decades now, some color change is the trees become special for it intensity.  This periodic confluence of factors inspire poets, writers and photographers to greater heights. The fierce contrast forced me to slow down to a place they live everyday. The one lesson that I take away from the experience is it may only happen once.  Nature is the essence of subtle chaos.  Dramatic events in weather destroys not only what we own but the supremacy we think have over our slice of the world. The smaller and more personal is that natural feeling of being the center of all things, the more extreme the feeling of betrayal.

There is the fertile ground from which the Teaparty grew.  Years of stability in their own life created illusion based on the past.  Humans have always been caught in a certain laziness of understanding the forces present in their lives. It all becomes background noise in the daily struggles to meet basic family or personal needs.  There is an observation I would like to share. Many people spend more time thinking about where to take vacation then the retirement plans for when it’s all semi-vacation. Current generations of workers have more flexible thoughts of casual time allowed by mastering technology. The TeaPartyers are more traditional in their view of work.  That fundamental shift has isolated them in a post 2008 world.  

This didn’t happen overnight or in a single decade. Change is a constant elemental force without emotion or concern about the damage it leaves in its path.  The bubbles of the past involved small sectors of the emerging economy.  At some point the language shifted to the level of separateness where the question of how this affects me became too complex to be answered. Degrees of separation seen in business decisions everyone can’t understand where it came from. House, home and family are concepts so ingrained they can’t be easily defined. They are deeply personal.  The wave that collapsed washed away all these illusions of permanence.

Looking at where the TP is strongest brings it in stark relief. Bastions of the shared beliefs in a sea of swirling currents filled with conflicting views of thoughts and life. Dynamic energy on general directions flow around obstructions. A worldview is framed by the life that shaped us. My local bank is solid. Ours kids and grandkids will do better than we did.  One day I’ll be able to retire and sit back a little. Washington doesn’t reflect my values but they work it out.  All of these variations on a theme are reinforced by those communities we chose to live in.  It can become one large echo chamber.

Politicians are masters of manipulating the newest advancements of technology in their campaigns. Social media opens the world to those contrary to acceptable local social or political norms.  FaceBook is now just one of many other such portals to the world.  It still dominates the center ground.  What it does best is group users into larger and larger echo chambers of narrow beliefs. The most base emotions can be put out in the ether without social pressures to moderate them. Anger for something beyond your control.  Pain at the loss of home and safety.  Frustration at a conflicting set of rules in the safety net we thought was for someone else.  Someone or group has to have known.  It’s their fault I’m in this place.

This From Bill Moyers.com

 The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza looked at the 80 Republican lawmakers who signed a letter demanding that the party attempt to “defund Obamacare” – Lizza dubs them the “suicide caucus” – and noted that they “represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans.” And they are political outliers.

Why am I writing about this dangerous politically charged subject?  On FB I reposted something that had me asking should I and then did. It had unintended consequences. If you have follow this blog, a short paragraph explanation of complex concepts is beyond me.  Those with years of training have developed a brevity that is beyond my ability at this point.  My comments since that ill advised post have been to answer the quick off the hip sound bite with nuisanced paragraphs.  

Moving into the second week of America’s shutdown, there was a question that must be considered.  Which last longer the rock or the sea?  It was asked by a fictional character in a story written by a writer who has a sense of history. What fiction will be written about this crisis in the American style of Liberal Democracy open to all but held hostage by a minority anchored to the past?  The past 4 years have been a challenge. The background noise of politics was unimportant to me.  The constant stress of bailing the ill repaired boat of my life took all my energy.  Now the waves wash freely over the raft I call mine.  That might be what I been struggling to express.  

I leave you with Jimmy Buffett on the MP3 tied to the mast flying the black flag.  If it was work to get this far, Thank you for the effort.  You spending your valuable time on this attempt to make sense of universal lessons means more than I can express.