Fun Among the Stars

Yesterday as I was trolling blogs looking for pictures to share, I stumbled across a question. “Do you believe in evolution, or do you believe in the Bible?” More than likely, the question came from a fundamentalist, but there are many who aren’t religious, even many who are critics of religion who think in such black and white terms. But I think, that’s sort of like asking if you believe in America or if you believe in Westeros, or if you believe in photography or Picasso.

Many think that mythological stories came about due to a lack of scientific knowledge, but I don’t think that was the intention of the original authors. I don’t think people repeated them because they thought they answered such down to earth questions. I think they served as a kind of poetry about the mystery of life and how it is experienced. Humans aren’t machines who always think in such rationalistic terms. We are emotional creatures who feel things. For many, the stories connect on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. Many think if you concretize them, you ruin them…in the same way you would ruin Star Wars if you insisted it was literal history that’s either true or false. Not everything we do is left brained.

Humans are formed by culture, and our culture happens to value positivism. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fundamentalism arose in this era. It’s an attempt to make the religion fit the times, but not necessarily in an overt and intentional way.

I suspect that religion often gets into trouble when it becomes institutionalized. When the Judeans were sent into exile in Babylon, there was probably an impetus to formalize beliefs so as to retain identity. Then when the Persians allowed them to return and build the second temple, the aristocratic priestly class might have wanted to retain control. There is evidence that early Christians told all kinds of wild and woolly stories. But then Paul not only wanted to be a convert but the authority that brought the message to gentiles. He turned the stories about Jesus into a formula. Later came bishops who stamped their feet and demanded orthodoxy. Then the Edict of Milan turned Christianity into a triumphal religion, and it got bound up in politics. But did Christianity and other religions survive because of creeds and doctrines and men in robes who claim to speak for God? Or was it something else?

Thomas Aquinas was one of the most influential theologians of the Middle Ages. He’s still a towering figure in Roman Catholicism. He spent his life attempting to justify every aspect of faith in meticulous rationalistic terms. His arguments are no longer considered persuasive by philosophers, and they give technical reasons why. But if you think Aquinas was a fool engaged in nonsense, then you’ve just never read him. He was a genius. However, at the end of his life he abandoned his theological projects, and when his admirers begged him to continue, he claimed to have experienced something that made all of his work seem like straw. I think he realized there was something else besides dogma and arguments and proofs.

Last night, I noticed even Neil deGrasse Tyson bid his friend and colleague Stephen Hawking to rest in peace. I doubt if Tyson literally believes Hawking is out there somewhere in a lounge chair or snoozing in a feather bed. But we’re human. President Obama told Hawking in a tweet to “have fun among the stars.” This is right-brained stuff, and it’s part of who we are.

Camping Forever

The Great Recession left many destitute, and some who had previously led middle-class lives found themselves homeless. Those who couldn’t find alternative shelter slept in their cars or RVs they bought in better times, or used what recourses they had left to buy used vans or small camp trailers. Most did this with the intension of resuming some semblance of their former lives as soon as they could. Some, however, embraced their new situation as an emerging lifestyle. They called themselves houseless rather than homeless, and they gladly left behind debt and mortgages, rent and jobs they hated for simplicity and the freedom of the road. Journalist Jessica Bruder spent several years interviewing hundreds of these people, followed the progress of a dozen or so closely, and even tried her hand at sleeping in her car for several months. Then she wrote a book called Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

Many of these new nomads are fifty or older. A lot of them are in their sixties and seventies. You might see them out on the road and think they’re retirees enjoying their golden years, but the truth is they have no conventional home to go to, and they often live hand to mouth. Because they’re older, there’s little chance of them finding high wage jobs. Some never had high paying jobs. Quite a few are loners.

The best places to camp without being disturbed or harassed by police is out in the country. That’s called boondocking. If you try to sleep while parked in a parking lot or on a suburban side street, that’s stealth camping, which is pretty risky. Some businesses, such as Wal-Mart, don’t mind if you stay in their parking lot for a night or two. And you can camp in state parks and national forests for free so long as you find a place where you can pull off the road. There’s another name for camping in a park outside of a designated campground: dispersed camping. You can usually stay in one spot for two weeks, and then you have to move, maybe at least 25 miles, depending on the area. Your car battery can be used to charge up your phone and tablet. You have to find a spigot to fill your water tank or water jugs. As for your bathroom needs, you have to bury your poop and use solar showers to keep clean. Backpackers will tell you that using baby wipes are better than toilet paper out in the wild, but you have to haul them out along with your other trash. Some use buckets lined with plastic bags. Truck stops and Laundromats sometimes have shower facilities you can use for a fee.

You need a fixed address to maintain a driver’s license, collect Social Security checks, and pay taxes and car insurance. You can do this by claiming to live with friends or relatives, along with a few other tricks.

In the warmer months, campgrounds hire camp hosts. You get a free campsite and maybe hookups for the season, and you get a small paycheck. In return, you have to pick up litter, clean bathrooms, answer questions, register campers and scold them when they make too much noise or break the rules. In November and December, you might find seasonal work such as selling Christmas trees or filling orders at an Amazon warehouse. Amazon calls their Christmas employees living in vans Camperforce, and they’ve even set up parking lots and facilities for them. So the next time you get a Christmas package from Amazon, think about the homeless grandmother who might have packed it.

One of the women Bruder stayed in contact with throughout her research period, a woman who was enthusiastic and optimistic about living on the road, finally bought five acres of desert land with money she earned at Amazon and was in the process of building herself an Earthship, which is a home made of dirt filled tires. She’ll use a cistern to collect rainwater, and she’ll use a compost toilet so she won’t need a septic tank. Her power comes from a generator and solar panels.

I find the whole thing both disturbing and somehow appealing. I’m a poor loner, and there’s little chance of me becoming independently wealthy. I live in fear of being evicted from my apartment. And I feel stuck in an arid town I don’t like. But what if moving was as simple as starting up my engine? And what if I could spend my summers in the woods?

I’ve even thought about buying a small piece of land out in the country and living in a used camper or an old school bus. I suggested I might do that after my father died, but everyone I talked to was horrified by the idea. “You can’t live in a camper!” they said. But they weren’t offering to give me a home.

Cobun Avenue

I lived in this house for about a year beginning in late summer 1986. It’s located in Morgantown, West Virginia. Like many old houses in Morgantown, it had been partitioned into apartments and rented out to WVU students. I had the two front rooms on the second floor. Back in the day, it had been a lovely home, and it still retained some of it’s elegance when I lived there, but it was quite run down by then. The girl who lived in the rooms at the back of the second floor was named Myra, I think. She was a tall, thin, socially awkward, high strung girl, and she was a graduating senior. I don’t recall her ever having any friends over.

Late the next spring, Myra started cleaning, and not just her own rooms. She scrubbed the enclosed front porch. At the time, it had windows all around, and she polished every pane. She cleaned the door facings, too. Then she moved onto the entrance hall with it’s large wooden mantel and the paneled oak staircase that had been mercifully left intact.

Because of my social anxiety, I was too shy to ask her why she was doing all of this, but my friend Nathan did ask. That’s how I found out her parents and grandparents were coming for her graduation, and she wanted the house to look nice for them.

When the parents and grandparents came, they set up a reception there in the entrance hall. They even had a table loaded down with food, and several folding chairs placed around the fireplace. I hardly new Myra, and I didn’t know her relatives at all, so this embarrassed me. I smiled at them, politely turned down their offer to eat and chat, and dashed up to my rooms. They were there for a couple of days, and I never saw anyone join Myra’s little graduation party.

They had all gone to such lengths. I regret not finding the nerve to stop for a piece of cake.

Live while you can.

Call Me By Your Name started streaming earlier in the week, and I began watching minutes after it was available. It now ranks as one of my favorite films. Beautifully shot, directed, acted and written. Incredibly subtle, true, honest and emotionally insightful.

I read the book a few months ago, so I was excited about the film when I first heard about it. But I was also apprehensive. The book is quite an experience in and of itself, and it mainly takes place inside of Elio’s head. We see everything from Elio’s perspective. We look out at the world through his eyes. But film is voyeuristic. We become an unseen observer rather than a confidant. So I wasn’t sure they could do the book justice, and after seeing the first trailer, I feared it would be an uninspired, cheap indie, an insipid flop. I feared many wouldn’t give the book a go if the movie was bad. But then all the positive reviews started coming in, and a lot of people were saying it was in the same league as Maurice, Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight. Now that I’ve seen it, I wholeheartedly agree. I loved every minute.

Some are saying that because Elio and Oliver so readily accepted their desires for one another without the need to question their sexuality or justify it or label it, we have reached a turning point. One review I read called it the first post-gay film, whatever that means. But I don’t agree with all that.

First of all, Elio and Oliver aren’t gay. They’re bisexual. And there is most certainly some serious angst going on. Both characters are cultured, well read, highly educated and sophisticated, so they intellectually know having a sexual and romantic interest for someone of your own sex shouldn’t be a big deal. They’re far ahead of their time for 1983. But they know the rest of the world isn’t quite up to speed, and they’re not quite there on a gut level themselves despite their backgrounds.

They are coy with each other in the first half of the movie in a way they wouldn’t have been if their attraction had been hetero. And once they establish a romantic physical relationship, they’re secretive about it. They don’t want people to know about them. And it’s not just that they’re demure or private. They’re afraid. They don’t hold hands, or kiss or dance together in public, but they both do all of those things with girls. And they don’t “come out” because for Elio the story takes place before he would come out. His attraction to Oliver is a revelation to him. He wasn’t expecting it. And he most certainly doesn’t want anyone to know yet. It took him weeks to find the courage to tell Oliver. As for Oliver, we don’t know who he’s told back home. Oliver is a guest in Italy. It seems unlikely he’d feel the need to rush all over the village telling locals he would never see again that he likes both men and women.

It’s not that they’re carefree and nonchalant about their relationship. I don’t understand where some are getting that. However, the story is primarily about their love and not about their fear. Maybe that’s what seems so new and fresh.

Like Elio, I was 17 in the summer of 1983, and by then I had known I liked boys for six years. I was desperately lonely and full of longing. My body ached to be touched. I needed both physical and emotional intimacy. I wish I could have spent that summer in northern Italy. Wish my family had a beautiful old house surrounded by a verdant landscape. Wish my father had been as accepting and wise as Elio’s. And I wish I had become friends with someone like Elio or Oliver. Or maybe Elio and Oliver.

There is a line in the book that didn’t make it into the film, Elio says he and Oliver might see two young men together when they’re old, and it will stir them. They will call it envy because to call it regret would break their hearts.