For the New School Year

Crossposted from the HPRgument

Here’s Teddy Roosevelt talking to some undergrads at the University of Paris in 1910:

It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their- your- chances of useful service are at an end. Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer….

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Of course, when he returned to the States, Roosevelt went into that proverbial arena — proceeding to challenge incumbent Taft for the Republican nomination, on a platform of popular democracy that historian George Mowry has called “one of the most  radical ever made by a major American political figure”; founding the Progressive Party; and taking part in the four-way presidential campaign of 1912, widely regarded as a turning point in American politics. (Roosevelt bellowed at the time: ”The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is: Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not.”)

I highlight this University of Paris quote because it sums up a dispensation that we Harvard students — we to whom “much has been given” — might be wise to take to heart: simply, that what’s worth having is won through daring; won by the men and women “in the arena,” who act without certainty of success, “marred by dust and sweat and blood”; that failing is better, finally, then not trying at all.

You think this is retrograde? Perhaps it is — but wouldn’t that be sad? “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.”

So here’s to hoping, once again, that the arena’s real and that the struggle matters. To a year of striving and failure — to a year of fearlessness.

TR wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Money, Politics, and Citizens United

Crossposted from the Harvard Political Review blog:

I spent this past week complaining about government dysfunction -- so I'd be remiss not to mention the Citizens United ruling. Of the many bad things that happened last week Citizens United is probably the most significant. The ruling will make our government worse. How much worse? It's not clear -- some argue that risk-averse corporations won't be inclined to amp up political contributions, wasting share-holder money and damaging their brands; some say that the barriers between government and corporations are already so permeable that this ruling amounts to little -- yet the point is, it will make things worse. The gap between legislators and their constituents (and the country they serve) will only widen, and the connection between corporations and the law will tighten.

Who can deny that? That an increase in corporate money means a decrease in legislator independence, in rational legislation, and in citizen trust in the system?

Specifically, I'd say there are two things we're going to see more of: the rich buying elections, i.e. influencing who gets into congress through the link between corporate campaign contributions and voters' opinions, and the rich buying votes, i.e. influencing what those congressmen do once they're there through the link between campaign contributions and the politicians who benefit from receiving them.

Money of course should never be able to buy these things. Money is for buying cars and hotel tickets and (sure) prostitutes -- but it cannot be for buying political power. The two spheres must be separate. That's what equality demands: that a proclivity for making money does not translate into the power to make laws (just like the power to make laws doesn't translate into the power to make money). Yet the merger of these two spheres, the economic and political, is already real. Consider the remarkable graph below, from Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels. He associates the votes of senators with the political opinions of their constituents, separated by income level:

This is a big subject. There are a whole lot of graphs to show and statistics to cite, but the point is commonsensical. There's too much money in politics. It makes our laws worse, it's inimical to justice, and it will, in the long run, undermine the institutional integrity of our legislative branch. Who knows what Citizens United will bring? But like I said: it will only make things worse.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of David Paul Ohmer

The Pathos of Helplessness

Crossposted from the Harvard Political Review blog:

James Fallows makes a lot of good points in his long Atlantic article, “How American Can Rise Again.” I’ll highlight just one. Let’s call it “the pathos of helplessness”:

The full details are beyond us here, but the crucial point is that in principle, the United States itself has the power to correct what is wrong in each case. Take jobs, as a very important for-instance: the loss of middle-class jobs is America’s worst economic problem. But that would be so even if China were still as closed as under Mao. According to prevailing economic theory, a country’s job structure and income distribution are determined more by its own domestic policies—education, investment, taxes—plus shifts in technology than by anything its competitors do. That’s especially true of a large economy like America’s. Those policies are ours to change.

My problem with the “America is in decline” narrative is that it’s usually made to imply that China and India’s rise has some of direct barring on America’s problems. When people talk about America’s problems, they’re using talking about things like: a declining middle class, an absurdly inefficient healthcare system, an oil dependency, run-away debt — issues that have only a highly-abstracted relationship to our relative geopolitical power vis a vis China, and a more clear relationship with things like domestic policy decisions and public-private investment choices. Our problems are, quite literally, ours to change.

But you wouldn’t believe it by looking at Congress today. We’ve got one political party that officially refuses to take responsibility for solving these problems, and then we have an antiquated and dysfunctional political system that empowers them. We can solve our own problems — China has little to do with it one way or the other — but, probably, patently, we won’t. It’s remarkable and depressing. Fallows:

That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I’ve never heard in my time overseas is “I wish we had a Senate like yours.” When Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, he said again and again that America needed “a government as good as its people.” Knowing Carter’s sometimes acid views on human nature, I thought that was actually a sly barb—and that the imperfect American public had generally ended up with the government we deserve. But now I take his plea at face value. American culture is better than our government. And if we can’t fix what’s broken, we face a replay of what made the months after the 9/11 attacks so painful: realizing that it was possible to change course and address problems long neglected, and then watching that chance slip away.

To me, fixing our government is the issue that needs to be tackled. Unless we fix our government, we can’t fix ourselves. Larry Lessig, who founded Change Congress and came over to the Harvard law school last year to start the Center for Institutional Corruption, uses the analogy of an alcoholic: his job’s in jeopardy, his home life is in shambles, his liver is failing; his drinking, clearly, isn’t his biggest problem, but it is his first problem, the one that precedes all the rest, the one that, until fixed, will continue to enable and exacerbate all the rest.

The positive news to come out of our healthcare reform debates is that all the dysfunction of our political system got brought to the fore in a very big way: the relentless obstructionism, the corrosive influence of money, the absurdly unequal concentrations of political power, the acrid partisanship, and, reflective of all this, the general loss of trust in the governing process writ large.

This isn’t simply an institutional failing. We have a political party that’s taken this generalized sense of political helplessness and turned it into a system of belief. And we’ve had thirty years of theory and politics attempting to legitimize anti-communitarian selfishness and greed. I think it’s fair to say that this is nothing less than a loss of confidence in the American system of self-government — in our specific institutions and also in the idea of a polity that not only goes on and gets on, but one that actively saves itself again and again, and that distributes the responsibility for doing that into the hands of the people. If there’s any truth to the “America is in decline” narrative then it’s in this: this loss of confidence in our own ability to govern ourselves. It has nothing to do with China and it’s up to us to change.

Negotiating With Iran (What It's Not)

I agree with the Zoey's points about Iran's incentives to accept American diplomatic outreach. But I would take her conclusion further. It wasn't just Bush's failure to be "attuned to geopolitical realities" that prevented this sort of progress; it was his failure, on a deeper level, to respect or conceptualize properly the purpose of diplomacy generally.

It's a fitting occasion to remember Bush's remarks to the Israeli parliament last spring:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

That would be foolish! But of course that's not the purpose of diplomacy. I'm sure that others have articulated this better than I can, but it bears repeating. Negotiation is not about contriving an "ingenious argument" that will "persuade" our foes to put down their weapons. Negotiation is about advancing national goals by aligning them with the incentive structures of the other negotiating partner.

Here's a thought experiment. Say Iran's desire for nuclear capabilities is a product of (1) wanting to deterring an American attack and (2) wanting to assert greater regional leadership. On the other hand, America's fear is a product of our strong interests in (1) halting Iran's nuclear program and (2) ending its hostility towards Israel.

In this scenario, both nations' interests are aligned. One bargain would be that Iran ceases its enrichment program and commits to a policy of neutrality towards Israel; and in exchange, the United States provides security guarantees and recognizes Iran's regional leadership, including working to get it admitted into the WTO. Both nations' interests, initially aligned, are now relatively satisfied.

Negotiation, in this sense, is a form of commerce. Two parties exchange goods (money, security, land, guarantees or other things) and both perceive that the transaction is to its benefit, the result being positive sum. That's the proper purpose of negotiaton: not to use words like bludgeons or to invent persuasive arguments; it's about finding overlapping interests, and pursuing them agressively.

Of course this is all rather simplified and abstract; whether an agreement with Iran can be nailed down will depend on finding an intersection between the perceived interests of multiple regional players, each with varying leverage, stakes, political limitations and so on.

But it's not a "foolish delusion" to think that such an agreement can be reached. And if can be -- let this be said clearly -- the benefits would be greater and more permanent than those gained by military action, and the costs would be infinitely lower. Commerce benefits both parties. Diplomats, like other merchants exchanging goods, desire peace.

{Crossposted from the HPR Blog; photocredit younggrobv}

What if Sergey Brin Were Denied a Visa?

[Crossposted from the HPR blog]

The NYT came out with Part IV of its "Remade in America" series. It's a great series, full of the cool graphics that the NYT does so well. But the thesis of the piece, I suggest, is rather obvious (at least to anyone who's walked around Harvard's campus lately). Simply: immigration really, really helps America.

“Every American I’ve talked to says: ‘Dude, it’s ridiculous that we’re not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you!’ ” he said.

“The people of America get it,” he added. “And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb they’re being.”

Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.

To be fair, we're talking about the easiest cases -- immigrants who have enter our skilled labor forces vis a vis Ivy League schools. But in some ways that's the point: these are easy cases.

America's ability to attract the brightest students from around the world remains one of its greatest advantages -- one that distinguishes it, finally, from other great powers at their senescence. Britain never had the same universalist appeal that America has. It couldn't. For Britain, an old and rich cultural-racial heritage made the assimilation of immigrants fraught with difficulties; it's complicated, but the bottom line was that the darker your skin, the less British you could ever be.

That's not the case in America. America was founded on virgin soil; there was no antecedently established culture (well, almost none...). So we were constituted on a set of ideas -- ones that, conceivably, anyone from any part of the world could aspire to. I think this aspirational quality is key. It means that our ability to attract diverse and talented students isn't just an artifact of our wealth; it's built into our source code, into the way that we were founded. It's because our national identity isn't predicated on a cultural heritage but on ideals. America is a framework not a race.

This is something that's often neglected both by the "United States is in decline" crowd and the "I'm a real American" crowd. Both groups misunderstand how the founding of our country makes us unique; and they both undervalue the material advantages this confers, Google Inc. as a great example.

Of course, you could ask, Should we be skimming off the most talented students from developing countries? Maybe not. But if they want to come, surely we should take them.

Happy New Year after A Year of Travel

2008 was a year of traveling. The images that are salient to me are of mountains, and of sitting on buses with my cheek against a window; I see myself third-person, looking at the dusty yellow road outside; I think of going home every day, walking up Giraldez in the dark, hearing dogs bark, a few internet cafes and yellow ice cream vats on the street; I think about all the nights I sat with Nilda, that beautiful girl who seemed very sad, just the two of us at the table, sipping soup; I think about waking up at dawn.

For me, thinking about 2008 is a lot like thinking about traveling. It is only a coincidence that this was also a year of travel for America. An odd coincidence: I've heard some people say that their lives are products of artistic design – I don’t think that is true. But is odd, as a point about narrative arc of some sort, that the two, my traveling and our country’s, come together that way – it is odd that I leave America at exactly the moment when so many people are rediscovering its meaning.

The history of our country is punctuated by moments when we have chosen to be better, to create a more perfect union, and it is my conviction that we are passing through one of those moments right now. And 2008, a year for me that has featured a long march in Peru and then the inundation of Harvard, a year of abyss in all the best ways, also constitutes a personal moment when I choose to be better than I have been.

Travel, though, only means something so long you stop. Why travel? I used to say: to understand your home. Well, we’ve traveled an awful lot. Let’s get to work.

Here’s to 2009. I think it’s going to be a good one.

Respond to Political Attacks by Staying on Message

I'm writing this while watching Mark Warner's keynote. This line struck me as true: "This race is all about the future. That's why we must elect Barack Obama as our next president. Because the race for the future will be won when old partisanship gives way to new ideas. When we put solutions over stalemates, and when hope replaces fear."

Everyone has theories about why Obama hasn't pulled ahead in the polls. The question that I raised earlier, which still seems relevant, is whether Obama's "new politics" can survive in the world of "old politics," where we decidedly reside. Machiavelli said that you can't achieve a world "as it might be" until you succeed in the world "as it is" and one is reminded of this watching McCain's sleazy campaign, and noting that it's working. Obama once again seems stuck hoping for a future politics that hasn't come yet, deciding either to weather the personal attacks or undercut his own message of transcendence by responding. Democratic are calling for him to take the gloves off.

How does a call for a more civil politics fit in the world as it is? This is not just a question of political image; it goes to the heart of competing philosophies on the nature of politics. Hillary, on the one hand, ran her campaign on the premise that we will always be divided. She said that we needed a knife fighter.

Obama said that he didn't look at things that way. He said that the terms we have used to discuss our politics, the cultural divisions that we have been relying on since the 1960s -- the divisions that Nixon used to create a southern Republican coalition -- have outlasted their usefulness. He said that our old categories have lead us to the point of impasse and that we need a new politics to deal with a new and dangerous world.

Writing with the only authority I have, which is as a representative of a class of eighteen year old Americans who came to age intellectually during the eight years George Bush's president, it is clear to me that the nature of our politics is a direct symptom of the nature of a worldview that developed in the 1960s and came to a head with the racial gambits of Karl Rove and the neoconservatism of Dick Cheney. The governance and the politics are the same; when Obama says "change" he means not just from an the economics and foreign policies that have failed us, but also change from the destructive reductionism of our political demarcations. The fact that the two are bundled together and must be overcome at once is because the historical moment that we are at is real. We have a forty-seven year-old Obama and a seventy-two year-old McCain to illustrate that.

Every time Obama is smeared his campaign must make it clear that McCain's attacks are part of the great choice of this election. I'm not a "message person" but today even my prose is ringing with a patriotic zeal, and as I see it, here's what they might say.

The choice our country has is simple. We can continue what we are doing, continue to have a politics smaller than our problems, continue on the path that we are on at the risk of running headlong into disaster, or we can change.

The history of America shows that we have never been afraid or unwilling to stand up and fight for change. We have never been afraid or unwilling to measure ourselves against our own ideals. American history is a process. It is a process of creating a "more perfect union." It is a series of moments of standing up and looking at our future deciding that yes, we as a country can do better.

Now is one of those moments.

What we are doing is simply unsustainable. We are depleting our economic and political resources too rapidly. We are too insouciant towards the violations of our constitution and rule of law, the torturing of soldiers and the consolidation of executive power. We are failing too many Americans. Abroad, the world is shifting rapidly, China and Russia are re-emerging, and extra-national terrorist pose an undeminished (exacerbated?) threat. We continue to do nothing about an oil dependence which promises to siphen our wealth, fund our enemies and destroy the world.

One thing that what we have learned in the past eight years is that the old solutions are insufficient. The old free market economics, the old cold war dogmatism, the old political tricks -- these cannot solve the new problems presented to us at the turn of the century. America can do better. Obama, by virtue of his age, his temperament, his multiculturalism, his intelligence, is a product of this new era and the one fit to lead us there. McCain -- who is volatile, mawkish and reductionist, dangerously aggressive; who would be the oldest president in history; who, in an electronic information economy doesn't know how to use the internet -- typifies the limitations of old principles and outworn notions. His worldview -- his belief in a great existential struggle between Evil and Good -- is befitting of World War II, rather than a globalized twenty-first century when the Iranian economy might soon look more like ours than the German.

Every time McCain attacks Obama it is an opportunity to respond at the heart of the matter. This is the choice we face: more of the same, or a change -- change not just from the Republicans and the Bush Administration, but change from the culture that gave birth to a politics this small, the cultural divisions that no longer fit us and that we were always to limber for, the bifurcating of the world into good and evil when it was always more complex, the cowboy unilateralism so unfit for a globalized world, the total, blustering incompetence propped up and legitimized by this one's ideology or that one's morality -- a change not just from old policies, but from the entire cultural and intellectual milieu that has lead us to the catastrophe of the Bush Administration in the first place.

Their own version of existence under the crushing weight of mass.

I have been working on this essay, for a while. It´s about the novel Herzog, by Saul Bellow.

Many have been lifted from the idiocy of village life, that is true; and we thank our forces of accumulation. But many, like this Herzog, are lost. Suffocated. Frightened and confused. Even Newsweek tells us that there is too many, too much and nothing new can come about. How might I keep up the burden of self-hood despite the excess of everything. Who I am among this mass? Where does a feeble voices fit, among this group, these thinkers, possessors of every wisdom, alive and dead, among this great authority, indiscriminate, teeming, swollen, vast. I am completely lost.

Click on, to read more.

Mirrors

The following are short sketches of three images. They are from separate instances, and the narrative is weak.

· · · · · ·

The bus makes its final roll forward after seven hours ascending the Andean mountains, and as it does, a wild dog barks at the yellow beams cast by the headlights. The passengers pass single file through the bus door, and the dog continues to bark. Though no one seems to notice the dog; somehow his noises only contribute to the quiet and dusty darkness of the night. The bright nearly-full moon makes clear, even in the darkness, the impossible magnitude of the mountains – their dark shadows go on forever – and also in a way the impossible smallness of us.

Max descends from the bus and the dog´s bark is like the crack of a felled tree; everyone now notices the dog. He crouches then he jumps forward and for a moment there is a fight between Max and the dog. For a moment there is a fight, and everyone sees the beast´s wild red pupils. A man beside Max kicks the dog hard in the chest and picks up a stone from the dirt road. He holds it over his head. The dog, pushed back, hesitates.

He looks over the mountains beneath him and then back at the shadowy path towards the man with the stone. Then he puts his tail down and his legs begin to weaken.

· · · · ·

At some point between Chosica and San Pedro, Max noticed the mirror on the dashboard. It was held by the hands of a Jesus figurine and trembled over each pebble on the unpaved road. Off the surface of this small, minutely cracked mirror was another mirror, that of the driver´s face, whose Aviator glasses were shinny and curved. In this remarkable and cruel double reflection the world in front of the bus was revealed and distorted: the cacti were metallic spider webs and the yellow road was indefinite. Max discovered then (with the inevitability of discoveries made in the heat of the sun) that there is something grotesque about mirrors.

· · · · · ·

“¿Qué quieres Joven?” asked a woman, who was quite young, probably the café owner´s daughter. Rather than walk, she seemed to glide to the table. This is because the concrete in the plaza is smooth, as if it were cut from ice, and covered with dust. Max did not notice this until later, however, because he was thinking deeply. Though the night was alive and sexual, it was also dark, and in the dark alone it is easy to sit and sip coca-cola and think deeply, or to watch pretty girls walk about the plaza and think about nothing at all. Perhaps now he was doing both, as he reflected on the wrinkled woman he saw, with an indigenous colored skirt and dark braids, who sat on the corner of the street huaking nock-off deodorant to a hurried public. That is the solitude of this land, he thought, to be at once very old and very young…

“Joven, vas a pedir?” the woman asked, this time more loudly. When he looked up, she smiled a great facetious smile. Everything in her face pulled smooth but the rims of her eyes, as if they were dual keepers of some great wisdom. Her smile was so nice that he thought, if only I knew her language…

Around the plaza, faded pinks and green covered the low walls and smoky reflections drifted in the light of the lamps, like gray clouds gently dripping dust.

In fact, Max was so diligently engaged in the activity of watching the girls in the plaza and thinking grand thoughts, that he hardly noticed – as if in a daze – when a crooked man (Max would later remember seeing him picking through the dump) walked to his table, lips shining, and grabbed at Max´s Coke bottle. His hands were shaking, like the of humming vocal chords passing through his body.

“Hey, don´t, sir” Max said, but he was passive. The crooked man took the Coke bottle and held it with two hands. He went to the center of the plaza and with two hands, he drank the Coca-Cola. He placed the bottle on the ground with tenderness, and then, hurried, went towards the dump, around the corner, out of sight.

The waitress had her hands on her hips.

“Más Coca-Cola Joven?"

“Sí por favor” he said. She walked away, and as she did, Max watched her slightly revealed waist, the smooth, brown skin above her jeans, gently wrinkle and tighten with the movement of her hips.

Immediately, of the crooked, old man, he wondered: How different is this country, engaged in dizzying modernization, from a crazy man with a coke bottle, picking through the remains of others refuge?

As the woman reached for a second coke bottle, she absently shook her head and smiled, “los gringos.”

It was only later that Max wondered: How different am I?

A Very Short Love Letter to America

This small collection of pictures spans a time period from the beginning of the summer -- to me known as the Summer of Love -- to the end of my travels in the West. Though this period is rather short, I will remember it as endlessly long. How long is the moment that a ball tossed in the air stops and sits before it travels down again? There is a moment that the ball does not move. This is the moment of transition, of reflection; the ball is at once traveling up and traveling down; this is the moment that glances at infinity, that is outside of time, has no beginning, no end and is infinitely short. Therefore the moment is forever. For me, that is the feeling of this period in my life.

This was not a specific feeling, but a general one. It gripped all those closest to me. On the hottest days of the heart, it was always three o’clock in the morning, and we are waiting awake for the first light of dawn. This was a period of restlessness.

Perhaps, one might say that America herself is caught on a brink of anticipation, running without moving towards something we do not know. America (to borrow Mailer's phrase) is pregnant.

I am leaving for Latin America on Sunday, and once I leave, I doubt that I will ever be able to sufficiently restore these feelings of infinite anticipation. After I leave I doubt I will ever be able to wholly return, and perhaps I will not want to. Therefore, these photographs and memories are a last glance at my home. These are my images of America: if they die away, then a part of America for me dies too. But they are alive, and indeed it is tough to hate America looking at the Rocky Mountains. My country has certainly committed barbarities – yes, they are outrageous. But can America be truly obscene if she has produced for me these people and spaces?

Treehouse

The dirt is soft against the feet. That is how you know the trail, even in the dark – like tonight, with a full moon. The woods are wild: a cracked tree, long javelins protrude in the moonlight, fallen stones from the old wall, logs decaying to sawdust, wiry branches kiss your face like sad, chapped lips, spider webs wrap on your skin and taste like long hair in your mouth. About two-hundred yards into the trail, the cars and road are no longer visible. If you stare into the glow of the trees against the black sky it makes you think for a second that you’ll die in the woods, somewhere next to the stone wall, but that it wouldn’t be the worst end, to leave your bones among the leaves. After all, the black sky is august.

Just when these thoughts come, they go, for the awkward turn of the trail opens to the noise of the crowd, somewhere faintly away. Then, ike a phoenix, it emerges into sight; the lights strike first. They are fantastical lights. They shine in a circle. The noise, drums against the sky, strikes too. You move towards the lights and the noise. Even moths travel towards their own salvation, even if it ends up killing them, on a fire; Then they burn and dazzle. So you appeal to the animal and search in the woods; and you simultaneously are the civilization that destroys the animal with those fantastical lights. Curious how the transition between the one and another – man and his animal ancestor – is not difficult. For a moment the civilization and the woods are united. They are one for a moment. Then you move from the wild trail into the party, where your friends greet you with smiles.

Prom

Get Yo Jollies III

She glanced at me. Her face was filled with such a mixture of intimacy and vacancy that I felt guilt. Hers was the sideways, awkward glance that one can imagine between a whore and her client, after they both have dressed. “Goodbye” he says, with melancholy, shame, and satisfaction; “goodbye” I said to those eyes.

Maine

That you might think is wrong. Max did not on most occasions believe that recklessness was admirable. In fact he looked down on that dirty, moonlight class of teenagers who profited on their own wildness. Sex, fire, alcohol! Balls! All were like street chases broadcasted live – to make headlines during the evening news or to sell newspaper ads for facial cream. Recklessness, by most accounts, is not synonymous with freedom. The teenager is a servant to his own identity: he must each night bring himself closer to his own destruction if he want to continue to be alive. You cannot build anything by destroying everything. And when the onlookers tire of his antics, they tire of his life itself, caring not whether he jumps from a ledge to his own doom or whether he just stands there, bamboozled, while everyone walks away to watch the next joker play with guns.

But she was different. Wildness for her was neither statement nor identity; it was a property of her soul. She does not have to be reckless. Or have to be anything. Hence, she could take everything. Perhaps the definitive moment when a girl transitions to a woman is when she realizes that to be good is easy; and that the real challenge is to be bad – and enjoy it. Max had known girls before – yes he had know the young and the good – but woman he knew few...

Mt. Katahdin

...too smart to be destroyed by madness, but too stupid to know that there are fates much worse for great minds than ending life too early: among them, beginning life too late -- passing seamlessly from the protective womb to the protective grave, with no intervening period, and with nothing to show for it.

San Francisco

Oakland

Napa Valley

Point Reyes

...what a curious cat! too free to be a queen, but too beautiful to be a serf. A sphinx, she reclines languidly on a Moroccan rug in my mind, purrs until my heart breaks, and then at night vanishes curling like a wisp of smoke.

Jamba Juice

Aspen

Colorado College