Ever since moving away from regularly journaling/blogging and instead actively posting in smaller posts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, I’ve occasionally started a blog post only to leave it in my computer or iPhone notepad in partially finished form. Tonight, it seemed like this might be a good time to revisit one of those incomplete blog fragments and finally post them online. The following was an originally a series of brief thoughts that occurred to me while Sally and I were in New York back for a few days during the second week of November.

This is my second trip to New York City in two years. Before these two trips, I was last here in the spring of 2007. Both of these visits have been heavily laden with nostalgia for the two years I lived here after graduating from Rutgers — as well as some wonderful memories from the few trips back up here after moving back to the DC area in 1998. Ideally, it seems clear that making regular visits is a moral imperative. However, the cost of these trips mean that we simply can’t do this every year. Train fare (the only civilized way of traveling from DC to NYC,) staying multiple nights in a hotel in Manhattan, and the other necessary expenses incurred in a multi-day stay here make this a rather expensive proposition. So, while three trips in three years appears unlikely, maybe we can be back here again in 2024…

One of the things I miss most from my time living in New York is The Strand. It remains a wonder of a bookshop, but it has undergone one significant change in the nearly 25 years since I lived here: the “review copy” section of the basement is no more. One of my favorite things to do when living here was going through those shelves and coming home with a number of recently published hardcovers for far less than cover price. Given the changes in the book industry in the interim, it’s disappearance comes as no surprise. It’s still fun to come in and browse the shelves, but the absence of the review copy section means that coming here just isn’t the same for me. Alas, that’s just something time does to all things…

This trip included an afternoon where Sally and I are off doing separate things. She planned well in advance to join a gathering of women who love Gudrun clothing. I, however, didn’t plan anything on anything in particular while on my own, and started by simply wandering around the area and seeing what I might find. Eventually, I decided that I should go to McSorely’s — an option I considered in advance but hadn’t made any previous decisions about. I suppose I get why people still go there — I mean, where else can you go that both John Lennon and Abraham Lincoln both drank at? — but I wonder if it’s now something where you’re primarily paying for an experience more than anything else. If I lived here still, I wouldn’t feel the need to return. Oh, thank goodness I actually did have cash on me — it’s hard to believe that there are cash-only establishments in this day and age…

One thing we generally didn’t plan in advance for either of our visits was where we were going to eat. When the time to do so came, Sally and I did a lot of just walking around and checking the menus of restaurants as we passed by. Inevitably we would find a place that looked like a great place to try — though on a couple occasions this took longer than we liked. It was kind of surprising how large a percentage of the restaurant didn’t provide vegetarian fare. It was certainly larger than the percentage of restaurants in our section of Northern Virginia not providing meatless meals. Not willing to make any kind of conjectures as to why the weird dichotomy exists. To me, a city as diverse as New York would mean that more restaurants made an effort at accommodating both vegetarians and omnivores…

One of the exceptions to meal planning was a visit to The Cauldron. During our visit list year, we had such a wonderful time doing the potions making class that we made another visit to simply enjoy the atmosphere and the fantasy themed cocktails. Alas, this year’s visit was somewhat disappointing. The place was more plainly decorated, the waitstaff less personable, and the vibe very much subdued. We still enjoyed ourselves, as well as had a great time with an old of mine, Erica, I hadn’t seen in over 10 years, but some of the magic (pun fully intended) we encountered last year vanished…

One return to a favorite from the time I lived in NYC that didn’t disappoint was The Cloisters. It was on our list of places to see last year, but we just weren’t able to get up there. This time, we purposefully set aside a specific date and time to go up. It was everything I remembered. It helped immensely that it was a gorgeous day outside, which made the gardens and balcony overlooking the river…

On our visit last year, we went to the observations decks on both the Empire State Building and One Vanderbilt. This year, we thought that checking out the 30 Rockefeller observation deck would provide an interesting change of perspective. It absolutely exceeded any expectations. Although we visited the top of Empire State at nearly the exact same date and time, the colors from just after sunset were absolutely breathtaking. I don’t think I’ve ever taken as many pictures in as short a time period as I did that night. I don’t recall the exact verbiage from the moment, but while pausing between photos, I said to Sally that the impending environmental collapse and global warming crisis make it hard to be excited about the future, but at least the view before the shit hits the fan is amazing…

If there is one part of this trip I wish for a second stab it, it’s visiting Oscar Wilde. It would have been smart to get there earlier in the day than during the after work rush. It was just one of those places where the combination of decor and drink menu was just awesome. If there was a downside, it’s that it was clearly a trendy place for the 20-something crowd. I think that I single-handedly lowered the coolness quotient of the establishment while Sally and I wear at the bar.

Finally — though by no means the last thing about the trip worth noting — R.I.P. The Slaughtered Lamb and Jeckyll & Hyde. Both of these establishments were casualties of the pandemic during the (relatively) short time between Sally’s and my two trips to NYC. We made to it the Slaughtered Lamb during our first trip, but it was clear at the time that the bar was a shell of its former glory. Despite the fact that both locales were kitschy destinations designed with tourists in mind, I nonetheless had fond memories of both places both from my time living in New York and during a couple of my subsequent visits before meeting Sally. It’s always sad to see a notable physical part of your past disappear, and these two spots were certainly no exception.

The original plan this morning was to post about returning to eating and exercising properly after my three-month, end-of-year attempt at simply maintaining my weight in an effort to enjoy the holiday season and a few other important occasions scattered throughout. I will simply state for now that it was essentially an abject failure and that I will return to this subject when my next regular weigh-in date arrives. However, the partially composed, original post for today got trashed when I was thrown into Facebook jail for 24 hours.

Aside from the utterly ridiculous reasons for this happening (more on that in a bit,) it’s probably for the better as this day is a particularly good one to be staying as far away from Facebook as possible. I was already riled up earlier in the morning after looking through my Facebook memories from a year ago today, and I’m certain that doom scrolling, as I far too frequently do, would have only served to further intensify those feelings. Thankfully (?), that very behavior — which Facebook utterly encourages due to its design — provided the impetus to getting thrown into Facebook Jail

See, what brought this 24-hour sentence upon me was a simple response to a troll whose comment was highlighted in a response to Washington Post article in my feed. My comment: “Bitch, please. 😂” Apparently, by responding to a troll (which I never should have done in the first place — I really do know better) I “didn’t follow [their] Community Standards on harassment and bullying.” This was a second strike against my account, thus the ban. My first? A comment I made early last year — “Speaking as one, straight white males are the worst” — for that, Facebook’s impeccably context-sensitive, thoughtfully programmed bots and AIs decided that I had engaged in hate speech.

🙄

After quickly getting over my initial reaction of disbelief (and more than just a little bit of  anger,) I started taking some actions that I have actually considering for a number of months now. See, I am fully aware of just how fucking evil Facebook Meta is, and I have already spent lots of time thinking about what to do about that given that the overwhelming majority of my social interaction takes place online, and Facebook is the primary facilitator of it. So, as much as I really wish I could simply delete my account there and never return, I don’t believe it’s 100% feasible, at least not at this time. The fact is that there are a number of friends and family who only/predominantly use Facebook, and don’t really one of the other social platforms. Hell, I barely use any of the others.

Well, that’s changing now.

I’m not giving up the Facebook account, but I’ve started taking steps to transition away from it as much as possible. I’ve decided to make Twitter my new primary site for the kind of short posts that they and Facebook encourage, and anything longer than that is absolutely going over on this blog from now on. I’ll then link to anything I post here to those sites. Once Facebook allows me to make changes to the account again, it’ll be time to aggressively trim my Facebook friends list down to the people that I really wish to follow and then unfollow The Washington Post, New York Times, et al. I already have subscriptions to the news sites that overwhelmingly appear in my feed, and I can manage my own news consumption without Meta’s help. As for the doom scrolling… Well, I’m sure that the Twitter feed will likely provide enough angst on that front. Finally, I’ve already removed the Facebook app from my digital devices and will only visit the site through a web browser. This way, I can more easily control what information Facebook gathers about it.

Frankly, this was a step I should’ve taken a long time ago. I joke frequently about the fact I work for Satan, but holy shit… If I’m working for Satan, Meta is Cthulu. I know my change in usage will in no way effect their bottom line — especially since I’m not actually leaving and they will still monetize me in anyway they can. However, I can rest a little better in knowing that I’m not continuing to play the game the way they would prefer. Maybe a little further down the road, I will take the final step: download all my content and then close the account. However, the desire to socialize as easily as possible those I care about is a hard one to overcome, and I’m certain that even the changes I’m now implementing will take some getting used to.

Speaking as someone who wasn’t a member of the Cult of Trump and was emotionally unsettled (if not outright traumatized) by the entirety of his presidency, every single year since 2016 has seemed like yet another year in which we as a species are slowly shambling zombie-like to our demise. Runaway climate change, environmental collapse, the rapid conversion of the GOP into a quasi-fascist political party that actively undermining our democracy, the rise of fascism around the world, a nearly two-year long pandemic showing no current signs of ending soon, the ever increasing wealth inequality, an accelarating, already out-of-control plastic pollution crisis… It’s damn near impossible to believe that we’re not in some kind of slowly unfolding, inexcorable collapse of human society as we know it.

I wish I could be optimistic about the coming year — I truly do. Instead, I’m feeling rather nihilistic about not just about 2022, but for pretty much the entire future. As bad as all all current problems are, so long as climate change continues to be inadequately addressed, solutions to the other issues simply don’t matter. Even if all of humankind collectively decided to immediately do everything possible to combat climate change, it will still take decades before CO₂ levels start dropping. Even more daunting: we actually don’t have a solution yet for all the methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas) being released into the atmosphere as all the permafrost in Russia and North America defrosts.

I think back to my teenage years, and the fact that I was convinced that the world was likely going to end in nuclear war. During that time, I frequently had nightmares about it happening, and the nightmares all evolved out of the fact that I somehow survived the initial exchange — because that was a fate far worse than being incinerated instantaneously in a nuclear explosion. The morbid relief at the notion that it would all end in an instant made that apocalyptic scenario oddly more acceptable than the one currently unfolding. The individual and institutional forces that have created this mess have become so powerful that I don’t see how any of those who are profiting from this slow-motion disaster will accept any changes that will actually address these problems. That kind of leap would involves sacrificing far too much of their own power and wealth. The selfish, short-sighted, tribalistic tendencies of our species are just that unyielding.

I truly wish I had a way of properly coping with this. Instead, my solution to maintaining at least a semblance of sanity is to simply keep finding joy, comfort, and happiness where I can with those I love and in the immediate world around me. Do that, and try my best to be kind and courteous to everyone (something that’s becoming progressively harder in a world where so many proudly don’t give a fuck about the feeling of anyone whom them deem as “other” and deliberately go out of their way to antagonize them.)

In other words, make the best that you can of the world you’re in. The airplane is going absolutely down. So after you don your own oxygen mask, do your best to help your fellow passengers put theirs on before impact. Then, simply hope for the best.

My blogging and writing output these days seems rather pitiful compared to the halcyon days of LiveJournal. Frequent posts averaging a minimum of a few hundred words have devolved into far less frequent pithy Facebook bursts of no more than a few sentences. There is no one but myself to blame, and it’s a shame for numerous reasons, not the least of which is since that time I’m sure that certain events and memories that would have been nice to document and save are now lost due to the unavoidable effects of being middle-aged.

Thankfully, those efforts resulted in saving much about my past. In particular, I wrote plenty of  material relating to my college experience with White Evangelical Christianity (WEC.) Alas, I don’t believe there exists a concise summation of that period and how it ultimately changed me in ways I still might not fully grok. All my previous attempts — before, during, and after the LiveJournal era — to compose such a narrative never came close to completion, though a few still exist in Word documents that have lain undisturbed on computer hard drives and backups for many years.

The problem is that it’s a rather difficult subject to summarize in absolutely no more than a couple thousand words. It’s amazingly easy to share stories and anecdotes and indulge in tangents that provide meaningful insight into the opinions and views I now hold. It’s just that those diversions create difficulties in controlling the narrative. That’s the reason every single previous attempt remains incomplete — it became easier to walk away than to attempt to properly pare everything back down to a manageable length. Nonetheless, recent events have provided inspiration to make another effort. The fact that you’re reading this means that this attempt finally achieved the previously elusive success, or it at least worked just well enough for sufficient satisfaction. 

The important thing to understand about this testimony — and, yes, that word choice is deliberate — is that the journey started with the absolute desire to believe and experience God’s love the same way that so many in that faith profess to feel it. When starting on that path, I chose to view and interpret a number of events in my life as God trying to make himself (using the “male” designation because WEC very clearly both understands and depicts God as gendered that way) manifest to me. However, it would be utterly disingenuous to not note the importance that Denise played at the start. 

My girlfriend at that time, Denise (not her real name) was the primary reason this was all happening. Raised in the WEC world, she still lived at home and resolutely held those beliefs. During the first few dates, we shared our respective religious experiences, and because I found myself rapidly falling in love with her, her presence became the clinching factor in my deciding that God was attempting to work in mysterious ways.

So, akin to the way my heart opened to Denise, I attempted to experience and feel God’s love by fully devoting myself to the precepts of her faith. Bible studies, daily devotionals, joining an explicitly “Bible-based” church (as if other Christian branches didn’t actually base their beliefs upon it), scheduling meetings and having discussions with the Pastor of that church, giving thanks before meals, attending services more than once per week, spending entire Saturdays at the WEC equivalent of TED Talks, writing frequently about my experiences in the college newspaper… and, most notably, doing nearly all of these with Denise.  

Looking back on the effort, it’s amazing to see the fervor I displayed. Yet, over 25 years of distance results in some clarity of vision lacking at the time. There’s a reason why Evangelicals talk about the importance of properly indoctrinating children in the faith. Instead, I came into it with a background rooted in wildly differing efforts by my grandmother and father to raise me in two unrelated faiths: Catholicism and Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. Despite nothing but the best intentions and sincere efforts when starting out, I was also a well-read intellectual with moral and ethical beliefs firmly grounded in feminist and humanist values.

In retrospect, it comes as no surprise that every single wholehearted attempt at some kind of leap of faith resulted in a spiritual face plant. Obstacles that proved impossible to overcome certainly played a part: an inability to reconcile contradictions in Biblical text, rigorous objections to a very black-and-white way of looking at the world, finding extreme fault with certain aspects of WEC dogma (just to name a few.) At the end of the whole experience, it simply seemed that I completely lacked the mental makeup — in the words of Dennis Miller, back when he was funny, the “ecclesiastical whiteout” — required for someone to maintain the kind of faith demanded by WEC. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

It certainly didn’t help that I regularly experienced events and conversations that brutally undermined my ability to simply just accept certain things on unadulterated, simple faith. Numerous anecdotes come to mind, and at some point in the future I will attempt to compile the most memorable of them into a second narrative (hence, the “Book 1” in the title.) For now, I’ll simply relay an experience at one of those WEC TED Talk-like events.

In it, a speaker attempted to explain how certain aspects of my life (and those lives of others) were sinful and un-Christian. Somehow, much of the music and fiction I enjoyed and saw no religious issues with was taking me further away from God. It was best to remove and forever avoid all of it from my life. The justifications for these assertions involved exceedingly questionable interpretations of Biblical passages that were divorced from meaningful context. This was followed with the audacious assertion that if you felt uneasy about what they just said, then that was the result of Satan’s influencing you — any discomfort you felt was because your soul knew deep down what was just said was true.

I shit you not. The only reason why I didn’t walk out before the event ended was that I went there with Denise, in her car.

By the time we had been together for nearly two years, desperation had settled in. Despite all my efforts, God’s presence felt no closer than it did on the day Denise and I met. Desperate times call for equally distraught measures, and one conveniently presented itself: full immersion baptism. Although properly baptised in the Catholic faith, that meant almost nothing in WEC circles. The true way to experience baptism was as an adult, and preferably fully submerged in water (not just sprinkled with it.)

So, attired in an baptismal robe, I metaphorically climbed to the top of the highest diving board I could find and sprung off the end of it with all the energy available to muster. This was the ultimate leap of faith. Or, if you’ll please forgive the tortured mixture of Christian faiths, the frantic Hail Mary pass on the last play of the game. When I literally emerged from the backwards dunk into baptismal pool, there was no spiritual renewal, no feeling God’s presence, and nothing akin to the spiritual weight of the world removed from my shoulders.

I just felt wet.

That’s not entirely right. I knew at that moment the relationship to Denise was over, but I still felt a sense of responsibility to her and her future happiness. Suffice it to say there was simply no realistic scenario wherein we remained together without my active involvement in the faith. The relationship ended with lots of tears, some white lies to cushion the blow, and no small amount of guilt. I don’t know what became of her, but wherever she is, hopefully Denise is happily living a good life.

I’m grateful for the sojourn into the WEC world. It’s responsible for many of the lessons I learned about myself and the world around me, and it allowed me to see and experience first-hand a few wonderful things to be found in living that faith. More importantly, I read the Bible in its entirety (some portions many times over) and came to appreciate red letter edition Bibles. Though I may not have found God, much of what Jesus actually had to say was enjoyably enlightening.

With that in mind, it was clear that much of the dark underbelly of White Evangelical Christianity resulted from placing far too much emphasis on the parts of the Bible printed in standard black. This causes an appalling lack of compassion to those outside the faith, coldly moralizing judgment, and a disgusting amount of thoughtless, casual cruelty. It also allows for a misguided use of one’s own belief in salvation to excuse dreadful behavior in the here-and-now. Most appallingly, the WEC belief system actively encourages the belief in dominionism and the assertion that America is really a Christian nation. 

Those were my conclusions back when leaving the faith in the fall of 1995. Their insisting on a religious right to treat the LGTBQ community as second-class citizens, their venomous rejection of any validity to the Black Lives Matter movement, their refusal to support government policies that help the downtrodden and poor, or any of the other public issue stances they’ve voiced since Trump started campaigning for President back in 2015… none of these came as any surprise to me as those events unfolded.

Any residual good fuzzy feelings that remained in the moments while toweling off after stepping out from the kiddie pool for adults are long since gone. I’m good without God. Do not confuse this with somehow hating him, which many of the WEC faithful want to believe that atheists do (see the God Is Dead movie series.) There’s a whole lot to unpack in terms of my feelings to a possible higher power/creator. That’s a subject for another time — maybe in a Book 3, perhaps. 

Whatever their, her, its, and/or his place in our universe — let’s go with “its” — I’ve found a way to find meaning in everyday life. If something is responsible for my experience, it also knows me and the way I operate. It sees my gratitude for this life and my thankfulness for the good fortune I’ve experienced. Whatever the truth is, I know it wants nothing more than for us to all be excellent to everyone.

It’s been months since posting anything to this blog, I’m currently the only one awake in the house, and there are some thoughts careening around my head. So…

• I really need a Lego workspace. I’d certainly attempt far more displays given a safe-from-feline area to go wild with. It’s possible that with a little more decluttering and rearranging, a portion of the garage could be turned into one. To do that though, insulating the garage door (something we should really do anyway, given the design of the house) becomes a moral imperative.
• Spending three days in Philly last week and then going to Winchester, VA a few days starkly illustrated the difference between blue America and red America. In Philly,  nearly everyone was still wearing masks and doing their best to be responsible and considerate to those who haven’t been vaccinated yet. In Winchester, it was almost as if the pandemic had never happened. I guarantee you that the vaccination rates of those in Center City Philly is much higher than in Winchester. Red America is going to be in for a rude awakening at some point in the not-to-distant future. 
• Barenaked Ladies is putting out a new album next month, and for the first time ever since becoming a fan 30 years ago, I’m not feeling any excitement or anticipation. Their last two albums weren’t all that good, and the first single of the new album, “Flip,” was simply grating to my ears. I’ll almost certainly buy it and give the album every chance to surprise me, but my expectations are just about as low as they can get.
• It’s likely that at the end of the month Sally and I will be attending our first concert since the pandemic started. We purchased Jonathan Coulton tickets in December 2019 for a show originally scheduled to take place in May 2020. The show never actually got canceled, and after numerous reschedules, it is taking place on Tuesday, June 29. If we do decide to attend (the deadline to request a refund is still a week away,) we are going to be counting heavily on the hope that Coulton fans (at least the ones in this area) are sufficiently like-minded and that the overwhelming majority will be actually following CDC guidelines and not acting like the unvaccinated in Winchester.

That’s it for the time being. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with his noodley appendage.