One Face That Ain't Lookin' Through Me

Published on Friday, January 20, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

by Christopher Cooper

It's counterintuitive, at least. Nonsensical, really. Unbelievable, when you think about it. Here's this guy, smart enough, one supposes, to a degree. He writes well (impeccable spelling, decent vocabulary, some facility connecting disparate ideas into a satisfying, if wordy, synthesis). He drafts just enough cracks in his wall of sarcasm so careful readers can feel some decency and empathy leaking through. Occasionally, confessionally, he weeps in a cleansing, restorative, invigorating style. He is kind to dogs and to small children related to him. (The children—he is related to dogs only in a general, mammalian sense, as are we all, about which see Darwin.) And he's funny. Somewhere between Mark Twain and Lenny Bruce, although he hastens to suggest persons with limited time or interest read Twain and listen to Lenny before going into his own back catalogue. And humble. And handsome. It would be enough to enjoy limited local celebrity and perhaps a short, fond editorial comment when he passes (he would say croaks or buys the farm if you were buying him coffee or beer, but has that innate feel for the right word at the right time that commends herein the euphemistic over the coarse). But instead our author, our essayist, our fortnightly columnist takes his space and our time often, too often, to lament, fault, decry, denigrate, drag down, disapprove, deplore and dissent. What ails the man? He further irritates the scattering of readers still attending by using Bob Dylan to explain: “You do what you must do and you do it well; I'd do it for you, honey-baby, can't you tell?” Because here's the thing: letters. People write and, far from saying “beware, doll,” a good many encourage him to keep on keeping on. So this week, with some editing for length and to preserve the anonymity of its author, our correspondent asks us consider why he so often puts his plow sole underneath the foul and negative earth and rips the corrupted sods of our times open so we may gag at the vile worms and putrefaction there exposed. Here we are, as we look through an un-fogged eye from a decent distance: Hi, Chris, Please excuse this unsolicited message from a stranger very far away. I wouldn't bother you if it weren't important. The other day I stumbled across [your essay] “I Don't Give A Damn For The Same Old Played Out Scenes.” It prompted me to look up some of your other work. I have to ask you to do something, and will get to that later. I also have to thank you for the reminder, when I really needed it, of the explosive, exuberant defiance of Bruce's 'Badlands.' And for the reminder that such a song can be therapeutic in this darkness. Seventeen years ago I left my country, the United States. I left my country because Americans had voted in Ronald Reagan and then Bush the Dad. I thought it couldn't get much worse. Since then, from far away, I've had to watch a few things happen to the only place I can legally exist without a visa. It's been like living across the road from your former house, where your parents and siblings still live, and watching a chimney fire slowly consume the roof, and accelerate. But when one goes over and knocks on their door to tell them, they can't comprehend the warning. I've lived and worked in more than one dictatorship, and I've seen decent countries turn into nightmarish fascist states. Now I'm watching it happen, impossibly, to home. I've had to watch, and feel, the change in the way the world regards Americans: from grudging admiration, to irritation, then anger, then shock, then hate, then revulsion, and finally, now, pity. The developments in and about the States have been hellish for us expatriates. We have trapped inside us more fury and bitterness than people back home can imagine. There are hundreds, thousands of us: turned out of hotels, politely asked to leave restaurants, thrown out of bars, all for being American. Our American-ness is the dominant factor in every encounter, every conversation. You see their faces fall, you sense their embarrassment for you, their own awkwardness. Then, one day, the whole things transcends social discomfort, political or aesthetic distaste, and you realize it's materially serious. Your own country, in your name, is literally murdering babies, locking up innocent people, ruining strangers' lives and those of their families, ruining whole countries, stealing your family's money and destroying all hope, safety and stability for the only place your children can go, their only home. You wake up in the night with a fear so real. Sometimes I really do wake up and have to go to one of my kids' room, lie down with them. The horror of what's happening with America really is just that, horror. It's not abstract. It's painful as a karate chop to your windpipe, frightening as being on a plane that develops a serious problem mid-flight, and ugly as vomit. I am one of the people for whom you are doing a great, great service, and a great honor. That's why I'm taking your time with this long letter. Your words are good, and they're getting around from over there in Maine. they're giving people strength. I'm imploring you to not stop, to keep going, to forget all barriers. Keep doing it. Hit hard. And then hit harder, harder than you think you need to, because it's probably all worse than you think. I've been around Bush and many of his Cabinet members, had to ask them questions, heard from their minions on “deep background” the stuff that I can't write, or even repeat to anyone. It is worse than you think I'm a tough old fart now and for work I've waded through bodies, dodged bullets, wrecked motorcycles, been lost in jungles, tear gassed, detained by hostile authorities with no accountability to anyone, beaten up by foreign police, etc., etc., and maintained my composure. When I read your essay with the 'Badlands' lyrics in the title, tears ran down my face for the first time in probably 20 years. I went to my stereo, dug up the CD, turned it up all the way. Just wanted to say thank you, my brother. My family and I will hold you in our prayers. Very sincerely, [a reader] And there it is. A man begs you to do what you feel you should do but doubt there is much demand for you to do. Truly, I have enough store of funny stories and maudlin vignettes and insignificant insights to keep us in columns until the newspaper folds under the pressure of our times into a Text-Message-Only edition and I write my last, truncated essay and limp off to the garden to piss and moan and putter until I die. I don't need to sound the alarm that our world is in ruin to fill out my column inches. But I do need to do it to fulfill my responsibilities to myself, my readers, my species (and to the rest of the mammals and all the other Classes, too, and to Darwin and Linnaeus and whomever or whatever any of you might think God is or was or will be when He, She or It holds me in judgment after I expire. Expect me to remind us all as the year rolls on and the columns come forth that our Constitution is being trampled, our rights sundered, our countryside raped. I shall be forced to address the lies and lawbreaking of the regime that has made our nation into an object of disgust and ridicule abroad and a threat to innocent citizens at home. You and I will have to understand how cravenly or willingly or stupidly the Democratic party is allowing or abetting or colluding with the Republican in this dark reversal of the American promise. Those of us who inhabit odd spaces in small venues can expect regular publication only to the extent that we do not violate the religious and political and cultural standards of our editors and publishers and the communities we serve. Certainly there are regional differences—I'd fare less well in the Bible Belt than I do here on the relatively liberal coast of Maine. Kansas would be an uncomfortable home for me. Texas would be impossible, although the music would be better than in Kansas. But even here in liberal, educated, secular, generally well-informed, even skeptical New England, the press is cautious or conservative, the average voter or reader disinclined to seek out or accept critical views of the power structure, the more so if those opinions boldly assert that we may be living in the most corrupted iteration of the American movie ever run. It would be easier, more fun, less unsettling to writer and audience alike for those of us granted our fifteen hundred words in some small newspaper to produce the local color anecdotes our several decades of living in and loving our small towns have given us to dispense. We neither need nor enjoy outraged letters or disgusted readers when we condemn the President, his handlers, henchmen, enablers and apologists as far more devious and dangerous than old Dick Nixon and his pal Henry Kissinger, who established the previous standards for abusing the citizenry and violating international law. But the job needs to be done. It falls to me and to others such as I because the New York Times and NBC News no longer do their jobs. And we are sometimes reminded of our duty and called to it by our readers themselves. By their letters. It's a hard way to begin another year. But it's a hard rain that falls, for sure, and there's no way out better than straight on into the storm. Hard times may demand hard men, but more likely hard thinking and a clear confrontation of hard reality. But read that letter again (it's much more clear and direct than I often am). That man says I made him cry, and that's a part of my job; but I got him to listen to Springsteen, too, and that's maybe reason enough to keep reading, keep listening: you to me, me to him, all of us to Bruce. “Badlands” is a dark song, but it's not a hopeless one. It's written, like Woody Guthrie's and Hank Williams' best songs were too, for you and me and “For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside/ That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” Hell, I even get nice letters from Kansas and Texas sometimes. Chris Cooper lives in Alna, Maine. His neighbors do sometimes complain about his essays, but none of them have yet sold their properties in protest or asked for valuation reductions because of proximity. It is a mystery to all parties involved why The Wiscasset Newspaper continues to print his pieces in so prominent a location so regularly. He reads all E-mail and responds to some at ckc2@prexar.com.