Zigging and Zagging, Part 1

I've been thinking of friends.

It seems like I am always on a different path from all of my contemporaries. I always zig when my friends zag. I don't think that it's ever been a conscious thing, but I remember playing hide and seek when I was a kid, and I was always last to be found. Once, on a trip to Disneyland, we were playing hide and seek with a friend's father on Tom Sawyer's Island. It took them ages to find me. When I finally was found, my father said he would be "it." I was excited because my father never played with us. I picked the best spot I could find, and waited to show off my intelligence to him. He took 20 steps, and I was the first.

I asked my father if he'd seen me--had I been visible? He said he knew that I would go the opposite direction of the other kids. He said I always did things the hard way. That's what he told me for the rest of my childhood... or maybe it started before that and I don't remember.

I always went to summer school. When all the other kids went on trips or something, I went to school in the misty summer mornings. Way before it was cool to "take a semester off," I was suspended for a semester and had to change schools. All those summer classes came in handy.

All my friends were in high school, and I was in trade school getting a certificate in computer graphics, working for an architectural firm. I wore collared shirts I bought at the thrift store I worked for the state-ordered community service--they made me manager, they loved me so much. When I was allowed to go back to high school, I didn't have to take a full load because I had taken so many summer classes. I could leave early, go to work at the architectural firm, and go to school at night. I graduated on time with everyone else, but a month later, I had a graphics job working with Coca-Cola and Irvine Digital Graphics and a certificate in graphic design and advertising. I was 18.

Calling all Congress: "Fuck Common Sense"

I called my congressman today to tell him that I wanted healthcare reform. I told him that I was a small business owner who supported Obama's plan to reform national healthcare.

A few weeks ago, I called the Virginian senators to tell them the same thing.

I hope they listen.

The truth is, I don't think that Bob Goodlatte, my congressman, cares about human beings very much. I don't think that he'll listen to me or anyone else. He wrote a short article about what he calls "common sense healthcare reform" that acknowledges the broken state of the national healthcare system and basically sets a stage where my mom wouldn't be able to get mammograms in the near future.

The problem with "common sense" is that no one can really agree on what it means. "Common sense," after all, dictates that the world is flat. It also says that capital punishment deters crime. "Common sense" is almost always wrong when it comes to big things. Healthcare is definitely a big thing.

Republican and Libertarian arguments often rest very heavily on "common sense," but "Main Street logic on Wall Street" is bull shit, unfortunately. There are unforeseeable factors at play that "common sense" simply cannot account for. That's why people go to school for a long time to figure out how satellites orbit our planet without bumping into one another or how banks can make a ton of money short-term and destroy the national economy long-term.

"Common sense" makes Einstein's theory of relativity look unfathomable, and yet it works. It works because scientists have a method involving endless calculations and experiments that proves whether it will. Of course, you could buy a scientist to say whatever you want, but in the end, a scientist is a much better person to place your bets on than "common sense." That's why people ask expert witnesses so many questions in court: they know more than "common sense" folks.

Experts, real experts, say that national healthcare reform is good for small businesses and everyone else.

Poetry Lately

Many interesting and/or fun things happened in poetry last week.

First, I got some poems published at Back Room Live, which used to be a monthly reading series in Oakland and now is an awesome online poetry journal.

Then, a poet named Jeremy Czerw wrote me an email and told me he loved The Berenstain Bears Go to Church, a chapbook that Wheelhouse published.

Finally, someone freaked out about my "How to Join a Motorcycle Gang" poem on this blog. I'd kind of forgotten about that piece. I like it very much.
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• I've been writing more, too.
• I am going to start posting here five days a week again.
• How sexy is that motorcycle picture?
• I still do not have a motorcycle.
• I only have a Subaru, and it's leased.
• I would like to be the first asthmatic to ride across the country on a motorcycle.
• Che famously did a lot of north/south biking.
• I am the white Che Guevara.
• When I read a lot of Allen Ginsberg, I thought I was a communist.
• Today, I just have strong feelings about equality and motorcycles.