A Fest of Many Colors

Just returned from Pridefest '11 at Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, and I had a good time (this was my first time). Though I was expecting much more activity, it still had excitement (aside from some pastor walking around the perimeter spewing vitriol against the whole thing, though very briefly, it was good excitement). Some good acts (go Gateway Men's Chorus!), many great vendors, and the largest collection of non-straight people I've seen, some of whom were advertising their goods, to put it politely. I spent most of the time with my best friend/ex-girlfriend, who, when I left her, was more bedecked in pride then myself, including a brand new rainbow purse.

Indeed, I ended up with only a bracelet (one of those of the LiveStrong kind) because it was tossed out for free. I had a certain peculiar shame of sexuality for much of my life, and I'm only recently getting over it; this, along with my naturally reserved nature, leads me to be quiet about expressing myself very noticeably. My embarrassment was peculiar because my stance on sexuality was very equivocal, which is to say that I didn't know what it was, it was changing every time I thought about it. Over the years though, as I became more comfortable with myself, my views became more specified and pacified. I prefer to keep many private things private, so I'm not going to get more specific about my life relative to this matter. However, for all the victories that PrideFests around the world celebrate, for me, going today was about celebrating my victory over past qualms over a part of myself and others.

A work of beauty that a friend posted on Facebook, by Debussy.

Walking

 Today, I walked for some 2 hours (with a 5-10 minute break and plenty of brief pauses to sightsee) around the Central West End (St. Louis, MO), for around 4 1/2 miles, certainly one of the longest walking sprees I've taken. Though my legs were passing tired when I got back, they aren't sore, though I don't feel soreness until the next day, so we'll see. When I lived in St. Jacob, there were a couple years when I would walk almost every single day, even in the harsher temperatures. The town was small enough that if I wanted I could easily take in the whole place within 2 hours, though I usually didn't. Now that I live Collinsville, which is about 25 times bigger, I don't have that luxury, but I do have much more variety, so it's a good tradeoff. It was variety that drove me to walk to such an extent, and since I'm housesitting for the week near the CWE area, I decided to stroll through some of it.

I learned a few things. There is even more beauty in this neighborhood than I had previously known; there is much more variety of people and places intermixed in this small area than in the whole of a place like Collinsville, my current home of 25,000 people and the typical separation of residential and commercial; a place like this is where I really want to live (God I need a job!). More pertinent to this post, however, is that I truly rediscovered my love for walking. It's not that I'd forsaken strolling about, but the walks I've taken lately were more constitutionals than pleasures. I revamped my regular walks last summer to help lose weight, but I rarely enjoyed them as I used to. The muggy, miserable summer weather didn't help, but the unfamiliarity of my new home (this was only 2-3 years after moving, which may seem like a long time, but I rarely got out into the community) hampered my interest, and it certainly didn't have the glamor of a neighborhood like the area around Forest Park. But I realized today, along with my new-found passion for ambling about, my new community had become familiar and that I could finally begin enjoy my walks around it. Though I knew St. Jacob very intimately from 18 years of dwelling there, I was never bored with the surroundings; rather, I would be startled by some subtlety, some minutiae that I had never seen before, or I would be too occupied with thoughts to really care.

Another thing, which was more emphasized than realized, was that I enjoy observation too much to whiz past things. There was so much to see that I would need to see it again to truly begin to see it, but none of this could I truly appreciate if I just ran by it all. Mark Twain said that "golf is a good walk spoiled." Replace "golf" with "jogging," and you get my sentiment. I chuckle a little inside when ever I pass a jogger (or they pass me), and I've always thought jogging was a silly thing, though for a long time I just accepted that as an opinion, perhaps unfounded. (Also, my body just never accepted long-distance running, so that might have influenced it.) Last year I read The Primal Lifestyle, which helped me lose weight, become healthier, and gave me a reason for my suspicions of sustained running. The author, Mark Sisson, was a former long-distance runner (an Olympic one, I think) who would jog and run for many miles almost every day. He writes that such a lifestyle, coupled with runners' diet filled with carbohydrates, was actually making him unhealthy. Sure, he was incredibly fit, but build of body does good health denote. Such sustained fast paces depresses the immune system, which accounts for a higher amount of minor illnesses among runners. There are scientists who also say it smacks of evolution, that mankind didn't evolve to constantly run but to walk, and that sprinting was merely a survival technique.

So maybe my physical and mental instincts are right, that walking with intermittent sprinting is the most healthful option. At the least, I will see the things that I would miss if I just ran past it.

Got Trust?

    In reading a book called The Politically Incorrect Guide on Socialism, I was moved to thought by a marginalia, which posited that trust is more inherent in capitalism than socialism, and I was so stirred because it made clear to me a perplexing observation, that so many people I know have no faith in people or society at large. It now occurs to me that most of these same people are advocates of either socialist or welfare-statist ideas, whether knowingly or not. With capitalism, trust is required of a large group of people (consumers) to tell businesses and industries what they want and need, while with socialism, the trust is in a small group of people (central planners) to direct goods and service. I think people find it easier to trust a few people who are seemingly smart, philosopher kings who claim to know things the public simply can not, than a large mass that consists of a range from imbeciles to geniuses. We have, however, already run into the fatal flaw of socialism, which is that consumers know what they want and need and therefore businesses get direct intelligence on what to offer; with socialism, this direct communication is removed, and central planners, who can never have enough knowledge to know everyone's wants and needs, regulate things for the "average citizen" in the ideal case (if this can be called ideal), or, as is the frequent case in the real world, for some national ideal and egotistic purposes, i.e. personal gain and glory. Experience has shown that philosopher kings are anathema to a good, free society, because it is the will of the few over many, so trust in them is misplace.

   It really does trouble me that so many people lack fidelity in their fellow people. When ever they say that a group of people have been and are so easily led astray and do awful things, I think two things: first, that it was an individual or individuals (a cult of personality) that did such (Hitler's Germany, for example); and second, just as easily as they can be led astray, so too can they be brought down the straight and narrow way. However, I find it distasteful to speak of the need of leading anyone as such. People, in most cases, at least want to do good, and usually will when it suits them. "Ah," some will say, "that's the problem. If they only do it when it's good for them, then how are we to believe that they ever will?" For one thing, why would anyone do something bad for themselves? They may not see the long-term problems in some cases (eating all those cookies ruining your health and waistline), but if they can't derive immediate satisfaction (cookies are just so delicious), then they wouldn't do it all. But let's look at a large, long-term problem: pollution. Several people I know say the public can't be trusted to solve our pollution problems. Their view of solutions runs contrary to real world examples of what actually happened during the start of the Industrial Revolution that kept pollution at bay. If people are jealous of anything, it is their own property, and they will seek retribution if it is transgressed upon. When this happened in the early 19th century America, with the pollution of factories going downstream and harming people's land and waterways, the property owners sued successfully and the industries were required to somehow clean-up and deal with industrial waste. The threat of lawsuits therefore gives companies an incentive to invest in technologies that reduce waste and pollution. Then this was taken away by activist judges who claimed that, for public benefit, there was a certain amount of pollution that was allowable, since industries could therefore reap larger profits. This hasn't changed. All this is opposite of what many environmentalists propose as a solution, that is, government involvement in setting straight a wayward people, when it was actually these people who would have long ago had control of the issue if it weren't for government.

    I say, in short, that the common mistrust of society is gravely misplaced. The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." She meant something uplifting, but I also find, in this context, the shadow of a painful truth, for plenty of small groups of "thoughtful people" have changed the world much for the worse.

    What are your thoughts? How much trust do you place in humanity? What are your reasons?

And now for a thing of beauty. All this talk of socialism leads me to think of Dmitri Shostakovich, who lived in fear under Soviet Russia (which practiced socialism's twin, communism). I'm really just going to pick a symphony at random; let's see. . . and. . . Symphony No. 11 it is, fourth movement.

Fairy Tale (of sorts), Part 1

    (After watching Pan's Labyrinth, I was inspired to write a fairy tale of my own. Here is the start.)

 

    Gregory Surdus had never bothered to look deep for answers. And why should he? They were always ready for him when he had exerted himself more than he could possibly bear, which, like a person who by not moving much is quickly out of breath, was always very soon. His family was very wealthy, and if Gregory had trouble with his studies, then-but it is silly to say he had trouble, for he never had to bother with them. Yet, despite all he could have, he was discontent, and therefore prone to wandering the expansive plains, where the only trees for miles around either followed little brooks, or were solitary figures, stubbornly rising amidst a sea of crops like a buoy at sea. Since there was seemingly so little in the prairie, and he had never have a searching mind, Gregory would quickly become bored with his walks in the fields, and return home almost as soon as he left, so it appeared; and he was always more upset when he was back.
    As of late there was a dark fog following the family, for Gregory's father had suddenly fallen ill, and the sickness became fatal. Rumor, like a vulture, then pecked at his remaining reputation and dragged it through the dirt as it went to the nearby town, where gossips spread the most vile things, particularly about his death. But he was buried without much ado about the cause, and as far as the police were concerned, that was that. Mr. Surdus' fortune was split four ways, the largest portion going to his wife, Gregory's mother, Nebona; then two equal portions going to Gregory and his oldest brother, Simon, whose mother was the first Mrs. Surdus (I should mention now that Gregory was only nine years old, and his brother was twenty-one); and the final portion split among the other of the Surdus family. The rest of the clan dispersed grumbling about the blow they had been dealt, and the house now held only Gregory, his mother, and Simon, who had just finished college and was now head of the family business. The two brothers were close, and Simon looked after Gregory very lovingly, and Gregory, for his part, was very jealous for his brother, always taking his side in any matter. Nebona had married Mr. Surdus when Simon was twelve, and though he was therefore under her care, he was always distant with her, holding a distrust that even he did not quite understand. However, despite this change in household, life continued in much the same way for the Surdus family.
    Then one day, Gregory happened to travel farther than he was usually wont to do; not out of curiosity, necessarily, but the vagrant, aimless quality of thinking that leads people to wander as carelessly as their thoughts. Before he realized it, he found himself in a new place, a ribbon of trees that stretched along a stream which weaved through the fields. He was about to turn back when he heard, faintly, a noise farther ahead. Walking just a little more, he saw what had made the commotion. There was a hermit thrashing about by the stream, pulling at his hair in anger. He seemed about to hurt himself when he suddenly calmed, took a deep breath, and turned to the stream. Waiting a few moments, he then began making gestures towards the stream, moving his arms all about, bending his wrists at certain times, wiggling his fingers with abandon; it seemed he was trying to see the reflection of his strange actions in the stream, but bursts of mud would cloud the view, and he became upset. What Gregory did not and would not know for a bit was that the hermit was deaf, and signed a language no one knew.