Those big holidays never quite turn out like you expected. Your aunt, despite her best efforts, did not ignite a tinderbox with political comments. The turkey was surprisingly tender, the champagne underwhelming but effective. Pleasant surprises and silver linings are all too welcome in this age of clouded uncertainty.

Something like that. But here's the dark meat:

Whatever your memory of this Thanksgiving feels like, no matter the bitterness or bliss, imagine this instead: for the first time in your life, there was no Thanksgiving dinner. No bickering family, no champagne to take the edge off. No warmth, no shelter from the elements at all.

Some people spent last night on the edge of hypothermia. If they slept by some divine mercy, they fell asleep uncertain if they would–or if they even wanted to–wake up the next morning. Among us are those who invite shivering souls into soup kitchens, who procure and prepare nourishment for the hungry on days deemed to be holy by religious and/or governmental authority. Obliged to kindness beyond the everyday, one or two days of the year.

Given the current state of human development, the fact that anyone volunteers time any day of the year to feed and share warmth with the destitute is miraculous. Yet there exists a small group within the population who serves the destitute every day, tirelessly. Tens of thousands of people fall into this charitable group of samaritans. On its heaviest days, this group will never weigh in over a whopping twentieth of a percent of the American population. The rest of us pay lip service at best. 

We are a modern nation. The most modern, some might argue. They would cite the relatively progressive character of our politics (a citation that will expire on 20.1.2017,) the might of our military, the behemoth that is our economy. 

Reality is, though, that we share a common thread of destitution with every nation we put to shame in so many other categories of development. This is a glaring inconsistency of priorities in the direction of our vast resources, capital and financial. Despite our ability to provide assistance and resources, we leave so many out in the cold at home and abroad.  

Yesterday was a warm day for me. I'd been out in the cold, metaphorically. A friend, a family took me in and showed me what family looks like, what warmth tastes, smells, and feels like. Laughing until our faces and bellies ached.

The Thanksgiving holiday is one marked by celebration of family and gratitude, and appropriately so. But today my belly is empty save for the fresh memory of fullness, and I cannot help but think of those people for whom a warm meal, family, and laughter are distant memories–if they are memories at all. 

The families with whom I spent this third Thursday left their mark. They carved love into the layer protecting me. The next morning I awoke sober, mind full of the hunger felt by 42.2 million Americans and more than 700 million humans. The yin to my holiday's yang, the acid bath for my metal surface. This mordant bites deeper the longer I am exposed, emboldening the pattern. If you pressed me like a die against the world, my surface would leave a relief depicting what I grew to know on November 24th of this year. 

Below are the final five paragraphs of a paper I wrote in the Spring of 2015. I wrote this for an English class while interning at a social justice nonprofit in London in the midst of the UK's parliamentary election. A party called the UK Independence Party had formed with a platform very similar to that of our President-Elect; what I discovered by researching and writing this paper haunts me even more chillingly after the results of our election. 

----------------------------

            According to polls cited by Robert Ford at an October 2014 British Academy conference titled “Immigration and Politics of Britishness,” 86% of Britons born before 1945 define “British” identity by accent alone, while just 63% of those born between 1945 and 1964 agree. However, those born after 1964 are split down the middle on the importance of accent with 40% emphasizing civic loyalty as “British,” up from the pre-1945 poll participants’ 13% and 1945-1964 born participants’ 35% opinion on the importance of civic loyalty (Ford, 2014).

            Crucially, those born after 1964 are five times more likely to express a completely different idea of British identity than pre-1945 and twice as likely as those in the middle demographic born between 1945-1964 (Ford, 2014). Taken together, these statistics suggest that the oldest, whitest members of British society (those most likely to support UKIP) also have the least flexible ideas about what makes a person “British,” regardless of country of origin. It can also be inferred that younger Britons approach British identity from a more open and rational perspective. Rationally, an accent can be acquired in fewer years than UKIP would deny an immigrant worker rights to public benefits, and civic loyalty is most likely a reciprocal for respect and protection offered by a reasonable civic authority.

            All these factors combined, from the nostalgic appeal of imperial Victorian England to the unsound rationale of UKIP’s platform and even less sound rationale of its supporters, indicate that this blight on the UK’s political landscape is a new sort of phenomenon. UKIP and its supporters discriminate indiscriminately; their irrational repulsion and ethnocentrism are symptomatic of system-wide distress manifesting in the behaviour of people least aware of the economic and geopolitical dynamics of the modern world.

          Globalisation, the grandchild of empire and spitting image spawn of capitalism, determines the current flow of peoples across borders. Frances Webber, another speaker at the 2014 “Immigration and Politics of Britishness” conference, identifies a distinct pattern: Global capitalism and free trade deals stop countries from protecting interests of their people in favor of business. As a result, food prices rise in developing countries, people revolt, governments suppress, impoverishing and uprooting millions. Those millions are forced to migrate from underdeveloped to developed countries such as Britain (Webber, 2014) where they are consequently blamed for economic woes that, in fact, began with the global capitalistic policy-making of governments and/or large corporations. 

            Given the pattern described above, the UK’s celebrated imperial history, and the desperation of ignorant and prejudiced citizens in capitalist Britain, the emergence of an ideology such as UKIP’s was inevitable.. Even if its policies are never realized, UKIP’s DNA requires careful analysis for the sake of all developed nations. Human bodies are designed to combat malignant foreign and internal threats, but certain maladies and genetic coding can induce the body to attack its own healthy cells.
As a descendant of archaic, racist Victorian ethnocentrism, UKIP’s indiscriminate discrimination emerges as a new strain of an old disease. This malady ails Britain and other developed national organisms that indignantly suffer economic and civic woes which are actually traceable to their own policies. Proper treatment will require accurate and humble analysis of the new strain, unrestricted by prejudices or nostalgia. Any inoculation must be devised for the longevity of humanity as a living, breathing, beautifully imperfect, wildly diverse organism.

Though my experience as a mariner is limited, I've learned to appreciate the sound of a sail unfurling.

The roll and snap of canvas billowing in the wind resonates against my tympanic membranes, eliciting a sharp inhale as chills run outward from my core to my extremities. Blood swells from my lungs to my brain and muscles; I feel alive.

Yet I am daunted by the idea of floating untethered on an ocean so broad and deep that only stars and magnetism provide orientation. Waves and weather consume sailors regularly and tragically, yet only rarely is an individual at sea against his or her own will.

Desperate migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, trafficked humans from the undeveloped world, they do not have the same choice of will. Some will never see their families or homeland again, and too many perish altogether. Yet here I am fantasizing about sailing.

It could be called a question of fear, but I'd prefer to call it a question of trust. I find it difficult to place absolute trust the timbers or metal of any man-made vessel against the unfeeling kinetic energy of Mother Nature. 

I suppose this means I must trust my own mettle. Trust that I've chosen the right sail, one that will fill and not tear. That I can grip the ropes which determine that sail's angle, that I will know just when and how far to turn the rudder. 

This trust sounds more and more like faith now, which can be a blind and blinding thing. But I know that the wind will howl and whip my sails when it chooses, and that sometimes the balance of pressure in the atmosphere will leave me adrift. 

So I'll call this surrender. Acknowledgment of the liberating idea that

"A fish does not swim; it is swum,"

and:

"A bird does not fly; it is flown."

Gliding along the water with nothing but buoyancy and a sail, I would find myself somewhere between fish and bird. 

I should learn to sail, if only to know this feeling of surrender.

A cashier whom I do not know gave me a free refill of coffee this morning. It was Strange, but it made me feel more welcome and comfortable occupying the space I've claimed in the corner of this café.

For balance (and not lack of gratitude,) I'll write about discomfort with the strange. In this case, the kind you feel sympathetically when you watch someone behave with so little social awareness that your skin crawls. When you have to sit on your hands and bite your tongue until it bleeds. "I would NEVER..."

There is a woman who comes to the coffee shop around the same time I do who causes me such discomfort. To say nothing of the quality of her clothing, she appears to have dressed haphazardly, and does not appear to drive a car. Over the course of her visit she darts in and out the doors, starting conversations with herself, customers, baristas, gesticulating wildly in a frantic sign language that appears to have devolved from ASL. Her lips smile, but her eyes reflect pain.

Baristas know her by now, and understand she's harmless. Some customers humor her, but some are visibly and audibly uncomfortable with how close she stands to them. Even I, sitting in my corner at a safe distance, am disquieted by the constant bobbing of her head and body and the frenetic flitting fingers in front of her face as she speaks. I cringe and squeeze my eyes shut when she tries to communicate with children who appear more fearful of her than anything else.

Her short-circuited language reflects what I can only imagine to be a past life. A life when she drew a bridge between herself and a community of people who cannot use the same channels of aural communication that most humans do. Practically living on a different plane of existence. 

She appears to be desperately toeing the seam between our plane and hers. It moves me to see people on the "normal" plane making efforts to communicate with her, to steady her tightrope walk. It checks the privilege of the judgmental little dragon in my heart that would singe her for being uncouth, and stirs the dragon who would breath just enough flame to warm and dry her as she walks uncovered back to her home on this rainy morning.

Beneath the worn exterior of her psyche, however, is something beautiful and kind. In ages past she might have been ostracized and labeled by the fearful as mad or possessed by some evil; in this coffee shop, most can see she is a human who has known irreversible suffering, who would seek only to improve the lives of others given the opportunity to shed her malady.

----Spoiler Alert if you haven't seen Stranger Things (though this really doesn't give much away)----

This woman appears particularly benign next to the otherworldly monster depicted in Stranger Things. Through a timely coincidence(?), that series parallels our reality. A creature from another reality has visited himself upon our world, snatching people and dragging them into its own terrifying dimension. Its mindless actions drive a wedge between those in our dimenson who can believe that such a monster exists and those who cannot--or will not--acknowledge the monstrous nature of its presence.

Only those who can acknowledge the monster can fight it. In Stranger Things, only those with purity of intention and willingness to question reality find themselves capable of gaining any ground. The children at the center of the story have the most flexible concept of possibility and are the most effective defenders of their world.

If only they existed outside of Stranger Things' fiction. A very real monster, a manifestation of the collective, unconscious fear and anger plaguing millions, blights not only our country but many others. This blight has proven capable of turning people against each other for their attachments to one version of reality or the other. 

In this moment of human history, as in Stranger Things, heroism seems to require the ability to walk along the seams and leap across the rifts; would-be-heroes will face down discomfort with the strange and unfathomable with a determination to rescue what is "good."

Frequency=Speed/Wavelength

"...all objects have a natural frequency

 or set of frequencies

 at which they vibrate when struck,

 plucked, 

strummed

 or somehow

 disturbed."

A quick dive into memory recalls the meaning of "struck." Learning of my parents' separation. Seeing my grandmother lying, serene, on her deathbed. The early morning of the eleventh day of September in the year 2001. The days when teammates died.

Such strikes against my fiber left me oscillating chaotically among states. The crest of waves along one z axis would match sadness, others confusion, some numbness. Or dangerous empathy.

Plucked... by a coy smile from the woman across the room. By that first, fleeting touch of her hand on your arm when she bursts into laughter at your first attempt to make her smile. In an entirely different dimension, by the reckless giggle of a child.

The keen of violin strings, the rhythmic motion of a warm body against my own, the smell of holiday dinners, the firm embrace from a long-missed friend. Strumming the strings at the core of me, where cords twist and ripple and knot....where the time between successive strums interacts intimately with the elasticity (or rigidity) of the fiber. 

Whether struck, plucked, strummed, or otherwise disturbed, the resulting frequency finds a way to manifest. In something like a crystal goblet, the material sings at certain frequencies. At other frequencies, the same crystal shatters.

"The actual frequency is 

dependent upon the 

[material properties of]

the object..."

I've sung, and I've shattered. With each frequency reached, a new state of matter explored. I can only identify the different vibrations relatively; each new frequency is an opportunity to extract a core sample, a glimpse of my material properties, of how that material behaves when struck, plucked, strummed, or disturbed. 

Of course it hurts sometimes. And sometimes it's bliss. But it's plumbing past that depth, that surface manifestation, which produces a sonogram of something more essential. One more element of the ever-unwinding equation which could, in the span of a few lifetimes, yield my natural frequency.

Here's to the attempt to solve that equation with just one life. 

I was going to write about something would only burn on its way out and smolder once it hit the page. Something that I would regret writing later, something I would look at with disgust.

I was going to write something that indicts, perhaps even justifiably. Something to separate myself from the bile in my very own stomach. Something that would realign my reality according to some preconceived notion of what virtue looks like at its most regal. 

I was going to write about what virtue looks like when it's been beaten bloody and dragged toward a crucifix. But I thought that image might strike a nerve. 

So I will not write it into reality. That dark fantasy, no matter its promise of release and cleansing fire, is the sort that even Adam would recognize. Surely his demons live within me as they live within all of us, but at least we have the benefit of hindsight.

Simulating that hindsight has granted me restraint. Instead of railing against reality, I choose to embrace it. A small part of my consciousness has journeyed to the future to inhabit the eyes of someone studying this period of human history.

So I choke back the molten mass of angst and fear that would corrode the path forward, eating through all the haphazard progress we've made.

That we should all have the fortitude to swallow this reflux, to heal our body politic, to get on our hands and knees and dig for the common threads. That a few among us are still capable of weaving.

MSU New Sonoma
Anthropology 110
Pre-Modern Terrestrial Socialization

Until recent years, technology has limited our ability to comprehend the behavior of humans that lived around the turn of the millennium. More than fifty years later, many scholars and academics have struggled to explain the wave of self-destructive behavior exhibited by the recently identified subset of humans known as homo sapiens avarus that characterized the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Computer simulations have produced plausible and reasonably accurate models of interaction in the relatively abstract realms of behavior political and economic terms. However, current programming language struggles to dive deeper into the social lives of the long-embattled homo genus. Calculating social behavior has proven a difficult or impossible task for the Supercomputers. Liquid quantum intelligence drives, though capable of making probabilistic decisions to within a millionth of a percentage point's accuracy, are no more capable of predicting homo sapiens avarus' decision matrices than they were before acquiring consciousness.

Refusing to submit myself to their defeat, this aspiring anthropologist proposes a different approach to studying our recent ancestors. From primitive computer drives recovered at a terrestrial excavation site in the heart of the U.S. State of Northern California, I have recovered credible written documentation of then-modern homo sapiens' behavior and thought.

Our group cannot say with certainty whether the author (or authors) of these accounts belonged to a homo sapiens subset such as avarus or whether they belonged to the genetic lines which survive today. I would like to express optimism that our group will be capable of beginning to answer this question by the end of this study, which will publish in stages as we carry out thorough investigation of the materials we've recovered.

Though the site where we recovered our source of information is more than 55 million kilometers distant, I've never felt closer to our recent ancestors than I have during the months spent poring over these accounts. I will present the writings as I find them, in their raw state. Our group will annotate the excerpts as necessary in attempts to identify common threads and explain homo sapiens' behavior (when possible.)

Without further ado, let us begin the study.