War and Afterthoughts

I’ll tell you exactly what I did the day of 9-11 and until 72 hours afterward. I locked myself in my closet-sized dormitory and cried hysterically like I didn’t know was possible. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep; I just stared at the TV screen, driving myself to a near hallucinatory state.

While the evening of March 19, 2003 has by no means fired emotions as intense as that unfortunate day; it is another shot to my stoicism. The distance between my life and current events, the ersatz veneer news and television drapes over the truth; is gone again at a historic milestone. September 11th violated Americans, but this turn of events makes us feel like a jilted paramours. I do not feel raped, but cheated. I am disgusted by this deceit and I am angry.

Jilted rather than victimized, we should take this opportunity to fight back using whatever methods we see fit. Take to the streets, blog; but by all means get the message across that you are at least skeptical if not appalled by US intervention in Iraq. If you are not feeling this, then you are not paying attention.

Iraq is our scapegoat for 9-11, although the evidence of even the slightest involvement in that event is hearsay. Our actions today can prevent as tremendous a blow from occurring on our soil ever again. If you believe, as I do, that US involvement in Iraq is far more likely to induce devastating consequences than positive effects, this issue is too grave to ignore.

Early in the morning, the day after war was declared, I met up with a team of about one hundred people at Eastern Market. We were directed to the metro without any clue of our destination. Arriving at the Rosslyn stop, we walked to the Key Bridge connecting Arlington, Virginia and Georgetown. Thirty of the activists stepped onto the bridge, holding hands and holding up traffic. In minutes, a coalition of cyclists met up at the Washington end of the bridge.

It looked like each of them would be arrested, while those of us standing on the sidewalk were set to be detained. However, at the last minute the cops allowed us all to leave. Attribute this benevolent streak to Chief Ramsey’s bad press of late; there were several reporters accompanying us with microphones and video cameras.

Disruptive, yes. Irreverent, yes. Irrelevant – Not at all.

Whether or not you agree with the action of “direct action,” it is still a viable method of spreading a message. It is agreed that this method should employed gingerly, but by fair account, the day after bombs were dropped was a time to do it.

Curiosity was the driving force of my participation, but undoubtably it was rage that got me out of bed at 5 am. I hate to think that anyone went about his business as usual that day. Whether you support the war or not, the beginning of it was a reminder to us all, of the unthinkable evil plaguing the Middle East.

Before you brush aside the protesters as just a bunch of tie-dyed, clueless hippies; take a look at one of the most outspoken activists this week, Daniel Ellsberg. The 71 year old Harvard Economics PhD was a distinguished defense analyst working with RAND, the Pentagon, and the State Department. In 1971 he leaked TThe Pentagon Papers; a massive document illustrating the extend American leaders were deceiving the public with involvement in Vietnam. He narrowly escaped life-imprisonment.

On Thursday Ellsberg demonstrated in front of the White House and made this statement:

"We are out here tonight, supporting our troops, by telling the President to bring them home--we're telling him not to send our troops to die from chemical weapons in the desert, in this reckless and unnecessary war, which will decrease the security of American citizens enormously. A heavy rain is coming down now, and the police are surrounding us, telling us that they will arrest us, that we don't have a permit to be here, just as the U.S. doesn't have a permit from the UN to bomb Iraq. This war is blatantly aggressive and illegal, from the perspective of the UN charter, to which we are a signatory. Thus it is illegal from the perspective of the Constitution of the United States, which holds all treaties we sign to be the supreme law of the land.

"Aggressive war is not patriotic. It flies in the face of everything our Constitution stands for. I cannot think of a better place for patriotic Americans like us to be, than out here in front of the White House, putting our bodies in the way of this war, nonviolently. I expect one way or another to be arrested tonight, which seems right on this particular night. It's a good night for a patriotic American who opposes this war to be in jail.”

Remarkably he escaped arrest that day. On Friday, again, he demonstrated at the same place and spent the night in jail.

Ellsberg is no crank. He is a man of courage and integrity; accepting great risks to fight for what is true. But for every Ellsberg there is a Ramsey Clark, and for every Ramsey Clark there are millions of misinformed “activists” standing behind him, sullying the anti-war platform left and right. Unfortunately, it is Clark’s project ANSWER that gets every permit it requests and therefore the most attention. Its only rival in size and scope is Not in Our Name, also a neo-Communist organization’s front. By the way, I hear they hate each other. God bless competition.

Undoubtably there is strength in numbers, and to appropriately send out a message against this war, we must set aside some ideological differences to unite. The anti-war movement has to be retrofitted to accommodate the wide variety of dissenting viewpoints. That is why neither ANSWER, nor Not in Our Name is acceptable as a organizing body.

Win Without War is a group with the potential to make a difference. They are actively seeking to attract the kinds of people that would feel alienated at a traditional protest. Two weeks ago, they staged a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Most of the attendees were suburban families with small children – not the sort you’ll find picketing the White House, but perhaps holding similar political sentiments.

Still, perusing the list of coalitions involved with Win Without War shows it’s largely an organization of mainstream Democrats. While their plan how to “win without war” lists nothing egregiously offensive to free-market ears, they place some sentimental value on the UN – a bureaucracy libertarians and conservatives will be happy to see dismantled. Also, Win Without War is aligning itself with yet another anti-war organization, the largely Green, United for Peace and Justice. United for Peace and Justice gets its information from a think-tank with a name calling for eye-rolling, the Center for Economic and Social Rights.

That is why dissenting viewpoints that are poorly represented in anti-war coalitions should make themselves a presence in the movement. If there are no conservative or libertarian voices to suggest nationalizing heath care and preserving social security are unrelated to the Iraq issue; how can we expect others to omit these concerns from their platforms?

Then again, are libertarians and conservatives inherently anti-activist? It seems the people sharing my political affinity are decidedly passive no matter their level of disgust with the current administration. Libertarians that won’t miss an event with fancy cocktails and girls to hit on, shy away from actions that might actually move us closer to that free-market utopia in the sky, albeit if by only infinitesimal steps. Perhaps this shows how one’s understanding of public choice can be perverted to justify apathy.

It is almost futile to suggest coordinating a libertarian coalition to join Win Without War or United for Peace and Justice. While such a coalition could certainly counter any statist or objectionable logic of current anti-war campaigns, and streamline their goals to maximize the greatest amount of participants; who’s going to join in? I can name two libertarian “activist” groups in existence. Both have websites that haven’t been updated in several months, and their activities were hardly ever more than a handful of free-market friends having some fun.

Rather than condescendingly participating in the anti-war movement or “crashing” their events, we anti-war conservatives and libertarians should take part as individuals. If we should feel the civic duty to do as best we can to prevent further international wreckage, we must be confident enough to unite alone with those with opposing views on other points.

The War in Iraq signifies a libertarian need to amicably divorce from the neo-cons. Despite their relative concurrence on economic matters, they are adversaries where it matters the most. Neo-cons are certainly gravely dangerous to us as the sycophants and propagandists of the Bush doctrine. Lefties are, if only this, intuitive and skeptical enough to reject the rationale for this war.

Libertarianism will never flourish if it is self-contained, but we must chose are alliances wisely, and make it known such alliances are temporal. The neo-cons are no friends to liberty if they patronize us when we speak out against their kind of bureaucracy. They are not the Daddy-All-Knowing party by default of their tidier clothes. They will never accept us and they will never learn from us. However, the left is an untapped resource of many people – intelligent, technologically savvy, and damn well coordinated – eager to learn if we are willing to teach. They are open to ideas, so long were a driven to impart these ideas.

There is room for a libertarian message in the anti-war movement. We just aren’t taking the left up on their offer. Maybe it’s public choice, or maybe we lack passion; but it’s hard to believe so many intelligent people are willing to take a great injury from the state, and turn the other cheek.

Bar Code.

in turtlenecks with cigarettes
we forget the days ahead
lying part-time agnostic
by the economy of id

another night under the red light
it’s better than a living room
where no one ever noticed
that we had wanted to die

Storytelling: Almost Better Than Nothing

Avoiding television and movies is to me, less of a political statement than a lifestyle choice. Sitting enclosed in a dark room for ninety minutes, living vicariously through the effortless lives of celebrities is the most depressing of all traditional American past-times. Perhaps my hatred of movies is why I like Todd Solondz so much.

Critics complain his work is obvious, but is not the medium itself obvious? The heavy-handedness evident in the Solondz oeuvre, is perhaps a cognizant acknowledgment that film – rather than art or literature -- has imposing creative restraints, and you can't push the limits without coming off as, dare I say, pretentious.

Clocking in at thirty minutes, "Fiction," is graciously concise. What the section lacks in theme and depth, it more than gains in smooth, swift transition. It begins with pink-haired Vi (Selma Blair,) shagging a guy from her writing class who has cerebral palsy (Leo Fitzpatrick.) In no time, she's dumped by her handicapped boyfriend and drinking alone at a dive-bar. There, she finds her writing professor, a Pulitzer prize winning black man, in the corner by himself. After a pithy conversation she's back at his place. To evade a NC-17 rating, the characters are blocked with an orange rectangle, but we can still hear the professor groaning and instructing Vi to shout, "Fuck me hard, nigger." The scene is too detached to feel disturbing, with or without the rectangle censor, but make no mistake, "Fiction" is a comedy. It takes race relations refreshingly cursorily, without preachiness or real ugliness. Whether you appreciate "Fiction" or not, depends largely on whether you believe U. S. race relations can be taken cursorily. Vi, apathetic in her Steven Biko t-shirt, is a flippant parody of WASP-y "United Colors of Benetton" artifice; eager to desegregate -- just not in her backyard.

According to the film-snobs, Todd Solondz loathes his characters and makes them excessively passionless and cloying for the amusement of urbane cynics. He takes this criticism to task with the second piece, "Non-Fiction." Here, the protagonist is a typical teenage loner, simultaneously carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and living in oblivion. He just wants everyone to get off his case, alright? But it's no wonder Scooby hides up in his room all day; he's got weed, mushrooms, a gay friend to give him head; and a completely intolerable family of suburban lunatics. The kid is soon discovered by a sad-sack would-be auteur, and becomes the focus of his vaguely-proposed documentary. Toby Oxman, the unctuous film maker, exploits his subject, devouring Scooby's "umm" and "like" filled commentary, as an escape from his own failed existence. Toby's editor, played cooly by Franka Potente, criticizes the effort, explaining it is pointless to use Scooby for no other purpose than to laugh at him.

While the content of "Non-Fiction," is more satisfying than the "Fiction," it feels much longer than forty-five minutes and should have been further edited. There's an annoyingly moralizing subplot where Scooby's little brother terrorizes the family's El Salvadorian nanny, that should have been cut altogether. Without it, maybe Solondz could have kept the missing third story, which reportedly included a scene where Dawson of "Dawson's Creek" is on the receiving end of anal sex. There are a few other scenes in "Non-Fiction" that tread on a little too long. Then again, Solondz did capture to perfection the immaculate starkness of locker rows in an empty hallway. Those shots did make me wince, but maybe it was my own high school trauma coming back to haunt me.
When Scooby walks in on a secret screening of the documentary, he hears the audience obnoxiously howling at his stoned reflections. Like Vi, Scooby's angst is wholly trite and self-contained, but in the end, he still gets burned by rejection. Maybe Solondz hates his characters, but he does offer an interesting commentary on the vacuous, self-centered state of indifference. In one scene, the school psychologist absurdly cites a study claiming the stress upon American high school students is greater than pressures Bosnian teenagers face.

"Storytelling" is similar to another film I've seen recently (i.e. the past year,) "The Idiots." There, the sense of detachment is emphasized by "dogma"-style direction: simple cameras and no music, among the other minimalist dictates. Both films overtly disparage an easy subject, suburban piety. But "The Idiots" has subversive undertones that occupy your mind until the next day. "Storytelling" is forgotten the minute you exit the theater. For this reason,"The Idiots" is a more complete version of "Storytelling," although both are preferable to me, as a naysayer, over your typical epic theatric. If you are like me, and agree with every word Holden Caulfield said about Laurence Olivier, "Storytelling" is the film for you – supposing you'd bother to see it. Flawed as it is, there are no plastic actors and no false sentiments, there is no pretense and no conviction. But if you want to get "swept away" by the "magic" of the movies, look elsewhere, maybe "Happenstance" or whatever's at the multiplex this week.

Promiscuity of Inquisitiveness

I haven't slept in three nights. Instead, I stretch out upon my cushy bed, starring straight into darkness until the dimensions of my furniture manifest as shady apparitions. As soon as the clock says quarter-to-six, I give up, get out of bed, and hop into the shower. Then I hit the gym or down multiple café-au-laits, to barely rev me up for the day ahead.

Insomniacs are tired, yet due to circumstance, unable to sleep. Likewise, shy people are often lonely, but unable to speak. A strange hesitation has created in me an unnecessary safety net so that I may never assimilate into society's current, but instead observe it all at an uncomfortable distance.

Introversion comes sometimes with a delicate sense of pride. Although, I have yet to ever make a good first impression or hold my own in a conversation including more than three; social-paralysis can have the benefit of amplified observational skills. In "Along the Road," Aldous Huxley admits, "incapacity to be bright in company is entirely due to my excessive curiosity." I often find myself often incapable of the clever little remarks required of me in soiree conversations. Instead my mind is elsewhere, whether focused upon the details of a nearby conversation or whatever is going on beyond the window. "This excessive and promiscuous inquisitiveness," Huxley writes, "so fatal to a man who desires to mix in society, is a valuable asset to the one who merely looks on, without participating in the actions of his fellows."And perhaps introversion is, as Schopenhauer suggests, the result of richer sensitivity to pain, frustration, and humiliation. In that sense, introverts are also secretly passionate, initially perceived as stern and unyielding Severins, but hot-blooded at the feet of "Venus."

Shyness is different. Where introversion involves calmly declining participation in socialization, shyness renders it physically impossible. Everyone has his own social-phobias, whether it is public-speaking or talking to attractive people. For me the irrational list of worries is endless; I never approach strangers, and chafe when they approach me. When it comes to meeting people, a method I stick to is hiding behind a good (social) friend, expecting him to make the introductions and the small talk. As soon as dialogue is flowing naturally, I can usually get a few bits in; unless the new person stands directly in front of me, that makes me especially nervous. I loath phone calls except to old friends, but email is no resolve when I'm fretting over the syntax and level of formality even in a note removing me from a mailing-list. The only method of communication that I've mastered is text-messaging on mobile phones, but people don't really do that in the states.

Most of you reading this essay are thinking, 'what a freak,' but I'm certain of at least a handful is following along nodding their heads. Libertarians tend to begin as either leaders or loners, as few of us grew up surrounded by classical liberal influences. We are often the only libertarians in our group of friends, and whether we use this position as a way to distance ourselves or take charge, depends upon the individual.

Libertarians also tend to be agnostic or atheist; conceding that is death an end. So, libertarians-shysters, think of it this way -- what have you got to lose? Is not everything that is human familiar to you? Intuitive rejection wastes your time, or so I'd like to fool myself into believing. Saving-face is nice, but vivid life experiences are better.

The Age of Autonomy

“You don’t realize how pretty/amazing/special you are...”

That’s what gets him in the door. Predatory single men use it on the shy-looking girls at the bar, instinctively understanding personalized flattery is the way to get someone to go home with you. This line anticipates that a woman’s insecurity coexists with a desire to be appreciated by the right person. Many of us, no matter the extent of our flaws, wish that someday, someone will see “the real me.”

Desire for a life-partner enhances a woman’s insecurities. Confidence, never an easy characteristic to develop or maintain, may be self-defeated by an impossible fantasy continually perpetuated in popular culture and modern mores.

If “white knights” do exist, they are few and far between – and probably already taken by now. When it comes to “love” we are not expected to make choices. Love mythically exists without responsibilities, but in reality all substantial relationships take work. We may never meet our “soul-mates,” but we can certainly follow the protocols of perfect relationships to better appreciate the company of those we merely “date.”

While many in the media the breakdown of the marriage institution as a moral crisis, consider it instead the dawning of the Age of Autonomy. Individuals are not content marrying or forming partnership in the absence of love. However, identifying the absence of love has amounted to a greater sense of loneliness and anxiety among young singles.

The liberalization of sexuality is a good thing. The absence of rigid social mores means we can pursue happiness as we see fit. Sure, we may make mistakes, but none are ever so grievous as marrying someone you don’t love. Marriage is something you should want to do, not something you need to do. Even long-term relationships tend to develop only if a couple honestly appreciates each other’s companionship. Singles are pickier these days, because they have greater freedom with their sexuality than the generations before us. Homosexuality is hardly given a second thought, and the word “spinster” hasn’t been tossed around since lace collars were in style.

These freedoms are blessings in disguise. The urban loneliness Zeitgeist, delineated by writers as diverse as Candace Bushnell and Robert Putnam, is not a state of victimization. Individuals are making the choice to withdraw from committed participation, romantically or otherwise. One could even theorize the information age has made it easier than ever to find an appropriately suited mate. The inability many people have bridging that gap even with the internet, is just evidence of the probable odds stacked against ever finding romantic love.

Unfortunately, plenty of single women rationalize their romantic woes as an attractiveness deficiency. The virtue of frugality is lost to the modern young woman. Financial responsibility is eschewed for a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. If we can accept that marriage is no longer a safe bet for the future, single women should better keep an eye out for 401k plans.

Overestimating the value of appearance as a condition of attractiveness is not a new malaise. It goes to show the women’s liberation movement failed to deliver a sense of independence in addition to greater liberty. The desire to be physically attractive is strangely compounded by intellectual advancement. It is mostly the “perfectionists” that are vomiting in the ladies room after lunch, but they lack the sensibility and rational to refuse this condition.

Irrational decisions such as eating disorders or extravagant spending habits are not publically stigmatized as “irrational.” Instead, these decisions are considered to be potential aspects of the unpredictable, unreasoned ontology of femaleness.

To achieve happiness, it is, and should be, the goal of every woman to construct and maintain a mind's presence so undeniable that her body is a secondary feature. Women should be encouraged to be intelligent, independent people capable of making decisions securing the best possible outcomes. Allowing any condition otherwise is misogyny in its most discrete and dangerous form.

For women, independence and intellectual maturity is often hindered by universal insecurities. She must come to terms with two things:

- I look the way I look. Nothing will ever change this. If anyone has a problem with my appearance he can take it up with my genetic providers, because I had no say in the matter.

- I may or may not find a life-partner. I have no control over the possibility. I can exist at a state where I am at the optimal preparedness for accepting love. If it should never occur, I can still maximize my happiness in other areas of my life.

A woman cannot be loved for her appearance alone. It is by definition something that is not sustainable. Should she invest primarily in this aspect to obtain companionship, she is neglecting the fact that with time, her appearance will require more effort to maintain. Secondly, as this process involves the issues and motivations of another individual, it is risky. Someone who “loves” another for her youthful beauty may very well deflect his love elsewhere when his partner goes grey.

I’m not sure what else to write here... what do you think so far?

Who Stalled Feminism?

There’s a Sephora in every major city, and most suburban shopping malls. The chic onyx interior artfully displays upscale fragrances and cosmetics. Although the ingredients hardly differ from anything in Rite-Aid red bins, the packaging and presentation of the products lures shoppers by the billions. The formula to Sephora’s success is simple. While a designer label suit is immediatly out of the average woman’s budget range, she can afford a $20 eyeshadow compact -- even if similar products cost a couple bucks. She isn’t buying the compact, but a fantasy. Every Sephora-fix is the next step on her way to the luxerious lifestyle she craves – or to financial meltdown.

Sephora is banking on the average modern woman’s incapacity to rationally budget her money. Shows like Sex and the City have validated credit card debt as a rite-of-passage -- for grown women. A woman’s reluctance to fiscal responsibility is usually deeply-rooted in the urban legend of a knight in shining armor who will swallow her financial burdens at the alter. But if the pushing forty Sex and the City-spinsters are any indication of the times, that knight may never come.

Vanessa Summers, the author of Get in the Game! The Girls' Guide to Money & Investing says, “I think it's true of many women, in the back of our subconscious, that this is how it's going to turn out for us. I remember my grandmother always telling me as a child, "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor man." Now that I have empowered myself by getting my financial life together, finding someone to step in and take care of me doesn't even cross my mind.”

And yet, “feminists” still want to obfuscate the problem as a “sexism” thing. Conventional wisdom holds that women are “cooperative” rather than “competitive,” but the controversy surrounding Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes suggests the opposite is true. Wiseman’s book deconstructs the “Alpha, Beta, and Gamma” level playground coalitions girls build and break until, well, I know thirty-five year old who still operate in this manner. Maureen Dowd’s famous rebuttal was that “Gammas” grow up to be stockbrokers, engineers, and attorneys. But the “Alphas” get the house, and the children, and the husband’s salary with which they can dispose at Sephora – and isn’t that what they wanted?

The problem is, the average women does not use cost-benefit analysis when deciding the effort to put into her appearance. Because even if you could buy sexiness, the cost isn’t worth it. Consider a woman, Alice, takes two hours daily for basic grooming to maintain her mean physical attractiveness. On one end of the spectrum, A, you have Alice devoting an average of 4 hours per day into maintaining her appearance (including makeup application, working out at the gym, etc.) The other extreme, B, has Alice devoting absolutely no time to maintaining of her appearance.

For most women, the difference between point A and point B manifests as nothing. A few hours at the gym might make you noticeably thinner and gloss might make your lips puffier, but your genes made the essence of your face and body. Besides surgery there is very little one can do to make a difference.

Still, let’s take the example that Alice is sexier at point A than at the mean by an addition of two units of sex appeal. The benefits of these two units is logically outweighed by the forgone costs of losing time for worthwhile activities such as reading, thinking, or balancing her checkbook. And let us not forget the cost of products. Hair highlights and gym memberships can be very expensive.

Alice is better off sticking to her mean. The cost of maintaining herself at attractiveness A, exceeds the benefit of the number of more people who will find her attractive. Secondly, although more people find Alice when she spend more time on her looks, the people who find her attractive at A maybe themselves be guided by vanity and not worth dating. Trust me on this one ladies. Vain and idiotic habits are self-defeating. Never once have I known a guy to prefer the girl in ruffled skirts and high-heels over the one comfortable in jeans and a tank-top.

Thinking in the long-run, the time it takes to maintain your looks increases exponentially. A body that takes an hour of daily exercise to keep trim, will later need three. You cannot be loved for your appearance alone, because it is not sustainable. As time wears away a theoretically :”loving” partner may leave you too, for someone who fits the image you outgrew. But if you invest time into building a compelling character -- one who is kind, intelligent, caring, independent, honest, and other good qualities-- you are not easily replicated ... or replaced.

Let alone the $400 bill, it is very difficult and painful to walk in Manolo Blanik heels.

Cruise Control

It's mating season again. The cherry blossoms have bloomed, high school seniors are headed to the prom, and The Gap has replenished its stock of halter tops. One can't so much as walk down the street to Safeway without passing a dozen snogging couples. And if it's sunny, forget it, Dupont Circle becomes one enormous outdoor singles bar, fueling next week's supply of City Paper's "I Saw You" Ads.

To even the most apologetic members of the second-sex, the sleazier elements of the "heat" are unavoidable. The best method is to let it roll of your back like a duck in the rain, squinting straight-ahead at something in the distant horizon. That being said, after dying my blond hair brown, the number of stolen glances I receive has dramatically decreased. Washington really is a city with priorities.

Swans mate for life, but thankfully, human beings need not to. We test the roads before deciding on a vehicle, as a practical and accurate ideal of one's desires comes only with experience. Though it's sometimes discouraging to realize a picture of the perfect soul mate cannot yet be drawn in your head; that doesn't mean you lose hope. Of course there are better things to think about, but honestly, how often does the subject occupy your mind?

A soul mate is the ultimate status symbol. After all, what in the world is more elusive? The most petulant and asocial among us wouldn't refuse that one special person who makes him feel "complete." What results when a culture emphasized two-equals-one, is the creation of legions of unnecessary couples, each simulating "love," to withstand the suggestion of loneliness.

Last summer, I experienced a fulfilling conversation with someone I never had the chance to admit into my life as anything more than an acquaintance. This was several days before moving thousands of miles away. Over vodka tonics we confessed our mutual appreciation from afar, but when I began to lament that which would have been a beautiful togetherness, he interjected it is only nice to think that way. For given our similarly diffident proclivity, the reality of the situation would have produced an example of hipsters too besotted with their own appearance as a couple - reading Wallpaper magazine in cafes, wearing coordinating trousers -to initiate any sort of poignant dialogue beyond perhaps, "that's a really great band."

The non-couple has become a model to which even moderately adoring pairs might subscribe. This is a laconic approach to relations, absent of passion, reason, and communication. It's just not cool to care – especially about another person – so one may sit idly in cafes with his partner, tacitly, and yet perhaps, ignorant of that person's birth year. That's not the comfortable silence true love allows, but cold and indifferent stiffness, reconciling companionship with emotional safety. There is no passion when both parties strive to never be offended or challenged, and never desire feelings greater than contentment.

Too much value is placed upon the facade of couples. This mystique sways even the most hard-nosed loners and eccentrics. To a rebel especially, it is a sweet relief to find someone there to nod his head, and stand beside you at even your most impetuous hours. Presence is in itself a form of commitment. With a partner, one is immediately validated as attractive and desirable, if only at least, to his one special person.

Everyone likes to feel justified, and no one likes to be hurt. Perhaps many of us hesitant to scale the impossible bounds in order to find true soul-mates, and settle instead safely in the conundrum of neither love not indifference. After all, "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

When monotonous monogamy is mistaken for love, a series of "test drives" are forgone. It's not irrational to pass over the risk of a lifetime of regrets, for something stable yet sedate. It is though, a very boring way to go about life. And so I never envy the non-couples and their feigned "soul-mates," because what they have is only "love." Where love is smart, "love" is smug. Love is blind, but "love" is dumb.

Don’t waste my mind.

Blame the economy. Today's job market is sending thousands of more
students straight into graduate programs. But employers had every
reason to overlook college seniors when hiring for entry-level
positions. A Bachelor's candidate may enter the workforce without any
marketable skills, perhaps unable to properly construct a sentence.
In a recession, businesses have neither the time nor the money to
train recent graduates the things they did not learn in school.

The "politically correct" movement may have been conventionally
replaced with "anti-globalization" activism, but its legacy remains
on college campuses-nationwide as an academic anachronism. A rigorous
college education -- requiring comprehension and analytic reasoning --
is something of the past. Instead students "deconstruct" the paragon
of a shopping mall or write "Marxist critiques" on advertisements
found in Glamour magazine.

In the United States, "college" is considered a rite-of-passage
rather than an education. This shift in values has resulted in an
abhorrent disintegration of university faculty into department-based
special interest groups. "Semiotics" and "Women's Studies"
professors, well-aware their departments will never attain the
prestige of a sound discipline, must therefore lobby for inclusion
into the school's "core curriculum" or general education
requirements. Professors who cut their teeth at the height of
the "politically-correct" movement seek to establish trends as
disciplines -- otherwise they are out of jobs.

When irrelevant subjects are college-degree requirements, students
take education less seriously. A 4.0 can be as simple as a term-paper
full of jargon and obfuscating language, bemoaning the "white man,"
his "power," and the ensuing social injustice. According to many in
academia, you either oppress or are oppressed, and every single detail
of your life may be over-analyzed as evidence of this behavior.

At George Mason University, the Honors Program in General Education
has done an extreme disservice to some of the school's best and
brightest. When I entered the program in 1998, the required summer
reading was not Hamlet or Dante's Inferno, but a teen- romance novel
about porphyria entitled "Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush." Little has
changed since the program's inception four years ago. One class
dedicates two weeks to the study of "Celebrity Culture," another uses
the "interstate as an in-depth case study," exploring "broader
questions about how our society perceives and manages complex socio-
technological systems;" and every student must "microanalyze"
shopping malls. These "professors" should be ashamed of themselves.
They are wasting students' minds.

The Honors Program persists in bloated ignorance, capable only in
developing teams of aesthete-neophytes destined for lengthy stints in
the secretarial arts ... or academia. Hesitant of transition into the
workforce, unready to wake up before noon, and wealthy enough to
continue the sabbatical; graduate school is awfully appealing to some
college seniors. These incoming doctoral-candidates will eventually
look down from the proverbial "ivory tower," onto a reality they were
unqualified to take part in.

Disconnect.

"Some Americans will forget you the day after you're introduced," or so my German friend complained to me, about his expatriate coworkers in Stuttgart. He claims it is chiefly an Americanism to be re-introduced to someone multiple times. That and several other reasons lead him to decline a rather lucrative job offer in New York, for a modest salary in Australia.

It takes an awful lot of courage to walk across a room to greet somebody. There's always the risk he'll look back at you with a condescending smile of no recognition. Perhaps Richard is too cynical, but admit it, at one time or another you've feigned oblivion to someone with whom acquaintance never gelled. You might hesitate to say hello in six months, even to people with whom you had a good talk. Three months is high-speed Washington's lag-time. If you met someone over three months ago, and never caught up with them again; you're no longer acquaintances but back to strangers again.

But yes, I'm guilty. I do this all the time. Like others, I rationalize this behavior by reminding myself that I only meet people when I'm drunk and my thoughts are barely half-rational. So I pretend not only am I a lush, but a blind-woman too, and no, I don't remember your face after three months. Then again, snubbing is a two-way street.

Why do we Washingtonians work so hard to be a city of strangers? What is this American fetish for disconnection? In Washington, everybody is looking to get his; whether that is a better job, a rent-controlled Dupont efficiency, or a shiny blond trophy intern. So after 5, the downtown bars are flooded with young people in suits hitting on each other and tossing business cards about. Where do you work? Where do you live? Where did you go to school? What did you study? And make it fast! But what I wonder is, why do they care? It is because people will sacrifice their self-respect to meet as many people in town as is possible, without ever getting to know any of them. They neglect deep conversations and friendships to maintain a heavy Rolodex.

DC is infamously a transient city. People do not come here for the culture, the city life, or the urbanity. They come to work. People come to DC to get ahead, and so they will live monotonous, conventional lives, comforted by the knowledge its only an entry-level position and the banality is temporary. The transitive nature of the city renders us hesitant to make lasting bonds with one another. No one settles down in DC; internships, fellowships, and other short-term employments, mean that you could lose an entire network of friends in a weekend.

The absurdity of Washington, DC is beyond compare. Beyond the ersatz elegance that is "The Mall," lies a stretch of architectural artifice, surrounded by dozens of city suburbs and subdivisions, but not one is immediately recognizable from the next. There is no real sense of community in DC, but many of us have the shared experience of a hellish morning commute. Rent-control sends most people to the suburban sprawl, in shiny duplexes on nondescript parkways. Besides the gays in Dupont Circle, or the crack-addicts in Anacostia; all neighborhoods are a compartmentalized circus of different people living their separate lives. The extremity of these differences not only fails to bring us together with people we wouldn't talk to normally, but further tears us apart from people of our kind.

So what you have is a city of extroverts living holed-up in apartments and denying themselves real pleasure. They pretend they don't know you, because soon enough, they'll be gone. I didn't write this because I have a solution. Perhaps, do as I say and not as I do, and at least smile and nod the next time you see a familiar face. But more than that, this is a recommendation to those of us with souls, to avoid Washington, DC. It will either bore you to death or eat you alive.

Beyond Conviction.

I knew curfew was 1:00 am, but at 12:58, I rang the doorbell and banged upon the window with my boot, when all lights were out at the Jugendgastehaus in Halle, Germany. My Deutchmarks were all spent, so I couldn't take a taxi back to the station to get back on the train and get out of there; besides all my stuff was spread out upon the rock-hard dormitory bunk that kept me awake the night before.

Halle was a milestone made artificially. I rigged fate and it bit me back harder. When I found out Love Parade was scheduled on my twenty-first birthday; I decided to be there - company and housing arrangements where not then deliberated. The closet romantic in me believed it was meant to be, like something special had to occur because a kitschy rave was scheduled on my birthday in my favorite city. I had completed a year-long study at Charles University in Prague, and then hit the road with an Inter-Rail ticket to travel before heading home. Berlin was the final destination before getting back to Prague and flying to Boston on the 25th. That summer, I visited the Baltics, the Balkans, Scandinavia, and Central Europe. I did it all alone. My friends had left with the tide and there was no boyfriend. Companionship of that kind sickened me and struck me as premature, meaning too many of those shaggy-haired, journal-writing "expats" slipped through my fingers. Although they resurface time to time as regrets and missed opportunities; I wanted to be nobody's "dependent" --exempting of course, my father and our shared debit card. I was a lone wolf, a "Steppenwolf," just like the dog-eared and highlighted book in my backpack.

Traveling is a game you play. Without making proper arrangements for accommodation, your safety is at stake. I was wise enough to know there was no way I'd find an empty bunk in Berlin on Love Parade, but dumb enough not to read up on the suburb I picked to commute from. I chose Halle because there were trains on the hour direct to Berlin with no added surcharge to my unlimited rail-pass. It wasn't until later that I read the "former center of the G.D.R. chemical industry" also has "the highest crime rate in Germany."

After checking into the hostel, I walked to the center of town for dinner. It was just before dark and it looked like it would rain. Halle is Soviet. Silent tram cars cut through grey cobblestones, slowly and ominously. Each stop is punctual, exact, and inhuman. Prague trams squeak and putter and jerk you around; but are plastic, shiny, and new. Halle trams are rusty wonders of machinery, with well-oiled, streamlined efficiency that must have astonished the townspeople at its 1930s-era debut. It is an outdated modernity that can only be described as "German." Still the trams run, through a town with horrors no one needs to speak of, because you can see them spelled out by the sheer number of shattered window-panes. It's a town of shattered glass and bullet holes, rotting wood and rust; and all of it is a washed out gray-green army-fatigue, missile and tank kind of color. The buildings are abandoned and destroyed or completely modern. Right next to a bombed out movie theater is a McDonald's. Halle is hell. The embodiment of a nightmare.

I stepped inside a shopping mall to escape the rain. There, I noticed a teenage Asian girl in a cheongsam. She stood by the fountain and starred at the skylight. A young man sneaked up from behind and put his hands over her eyes. She was spooked and yelled something, and ran inside a Chinese restaurant where her parents worked behind the counter. That was cute. I figured they were just some cute couple playing, and looked over at a window display. But the guy was still standing there, and she wasn't coming back out, so what just happened? Before I bothered to wonder, I heard someone whisper something to me from behind, and I felt the word on my neck. It sounded like "princess." I ceased to be invisible, and became an actor in the show. It frightened me then, that I could be connected to the outside world, having played the role of an observer and outsider for so long. I knew it had to be that freaky guy behind me, doing whatever he had done to the Asian girl. I ran like hell and he ran after me. I ran for a mile in my combat boots. I don't know where I lost the guy -- if at all -- but I didn't exhale until I was tucked safely in that horribly uncomfortable bed, and back to reading Steppenwolf.

The next morning I took the train to Love Parade and I turned twenty-one. Millions of terrible things happened there, but in the end, all was ok, because I got on the train that would get me back to Halle in time -- or so I thought, until I stood there, locked out, cold and lonely in a place that was not home. Before I could curl up against the doorstep, as sleeping there would be no less comfortable than the "mattress," I heard shouting. I figured it was a rapist or a murderer and I was as good as dead. I figured he was saying "You stupid sheltered American! What do you think are you doing? This is where you'll die." But he was saying he had the key to the door and I don't speak English very well... nice to meet you... be careful next time... where are you from?

"Czech Republic."

I had barely opened my mouth in two weeks. What I said came out in broken English, accented ambiguously Eastern European. Even now, when I'm flustered at a counter or at the bank or something, I start with that accent and people ask if I'm a foreigner.

"I don't speak Czech."

Me neither, I thought. But momentarily, I believed in god, or the invisible hand or something. That was my sixth life. I've averted death six-times in my life and that's not counting a million and one car collisions I've missed by a hair. There's always a safety net for me, but the more I count on it, the poorer the odds become. Hearing about John Walker made me think of my time in Halle. It's funny how solitude can absolutely divide one's self from rationale. When you are completely alone and in a place unimaginably far away; your thoughts drift into reckless paranoia. I'm not saying John Walker is innocent, or even forgivable. But I don't believe he is that much different from the next twenty-year old introvert. Showered and shaved, he could be in The Strokes or at least work the register at DCCD. People could be telling you about him at a party, "John's really cool. He's into Middle Eastern issues and Muslim stuff. That's cool."

Suburban Souls.

There are a lot of places like Reston, Virginia, but few are quite as big. Its sprawling parking lots surrounding spotlessly clean apartment complexes and "european-style" shopping centers, lobotimized for the american aesthetic. When you stand in the center of town, you are nowhere. I imagine it to be the exact opposite of that place in the Southwest where you can touch four states at once.

Nowhere to me, is also Naumberg, Germany. It's where Nietzsche grew up, maybe that's why he turned out the way he did. It's a pretty little place, if also a little bland. Passing through one day, I called for a bed in the hostel, and spent the rest of the evening trying to find it. Two miles from the Old Town – uphill – is where the hostel is located. It is not on the main drag, but in a little alcove you'd never see without looking for it or getting lost, as I did. It's a big, grey building on acres of land. The man at the front desk was a cripple who looked at me funny as I stumbled through guidebook-German asking for the key. As soon as I closed the door to the single room with cement floors and ex-GDR drabness, I knew I was nowhere. I could die and no one would know, because at that moment, I was so far removed from all that should be my conventional linear progression of life.

After an hour of pacing, locked up alone and feeling like an inmate; I took a walk outside. Although I was starving, there was nothing to eat. I sat on the porch with my legs dangling over the edge, and watched the sunset. I was nowhere, and sharing the space with no one. I was nothing.

The next morning, I went to the cafeteria for breakfast. A room that had been dead empty the night before, was then packed with senior citizens -- German senior citizens. There was no place for me to sit as each table was occupied by these chirpy elderly people with their mueseli and yoghurt, nuttella and toast. Besides, I couldn't even think to join them, and therefore draw attention to myself. Then, I noticed one of the tables by the back had several empty chairs. Sitting at the end of the table was a woman and her young son. After I sat down with my tray, I realized the boy was autistic. His mother got up for a moment, and he starred out the window. I remember his face.

"I am a camera, with it's shutter open, quite passive, recording not thinking ... Someday, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." writes Christopher Isherwood expertly in "Goodbye to Berlin." I often don't know what to make of my memories of Europe. They are unique to me, and central to myself, and yet, often very painful to revisit. I separate myself from that period, but Europe will never disappear from my cognizance – it can't – because I wrote everything down.

And I wrote everything down, because I observed, and because I looked and listened but never actively participated. The difference between Naumberg and reality is, I never did want to infiltrate the world of German seniors; and I could never possibly reach the autistic boy. A language barrier, and a million codes of conduct prevented me from ever entering that world.

I was thinking about this while browsing Second Story Books, where I came across an intriguingly titled book; "Suburban Souls" by "Anonymous. Before I looked at it, I guessed inside would be everything I wanted to hear. Instead I see it's nothing but "classic erotica" about a middle-aged man "degrading" a nineteen-year-old girl, who even still, refuses to "sacrifice her maidenhead." I put the book back. The ultimate chronicle of the state of nowhere has yet to be written ... but I'll submit this sketch as a kick-off.