Culture

            San Antonio, 12 January 1982:

                Boy Racers Foreshadowed

These people who drive around in black

Not quite sports cars — Pontiacs, Chevies, Datsuns —

That get shitty mileage and handle like tanks —

I know because I drove one for a couple of weeks once —

And they have the Rock station’s decal

In the middle of their rear window —

What about them, anyway? How do you explain that?

Is it God’s will?

Or just assholes without any idea of what’s going on,

Like me?

                Fashion and Style

Fashion is fleeting;

style lasts.

Fashion is dictated by others;

style comes from within.

Fashion is a group thing;

style is an individual thing.

Fashion is superficial;

style is integral.

Fashion comes from the mass media;

style is personal.

Fashion is a commercial phenomenon – it costs money;

style can’t be bought – it’s free.

People pick fashions from the available options;

Style is a matter of unlimited choice.

Fashion is a part of our culture;

style is a part of our souls.

                 Legs & Tits

The women of Yap in Micronesia

go about their days bare breasted

because it’s hot and babies need feeding.

They do, however, always wear

foot-length lava-lavas,

because women’s legs are scandalously

provocative sexually.

The Chamoru women of Guam,

another Micronesian island,

being overwhelmingly Catholic

of an Inquisition-era Spanish variety,

wouldn’t dream of going out in public

with their breasts uncovered.

Mother-of-God!

But, since it’s hot, they almost all wear shorts.

Yapese tend to think that Chamoru women

are a bunch of sluts for showing their legs.

Chamorus overwhelmingly consider Yapese women

to be a bunch of sluts for showing their tits.

                Testosterone & Culture

It would be interesting to read a study

of the various ways that adult men

in various cultures and subcultures

express the reality

of the testosterone in their bloodstreams.

In which cultures do they express it primarily with violence?

In which with sexual promiscuity?

In which with displays of physical strength?

In which with posturing?

In which with piety?

In which with insensitivity to others?

In which with the ability to endure pain?

In which with emotionlessness?

In which with vigorous defending of family honour?

In which with attention-demanding public behaviour?

In which with acquisitiveness?

In which with the ability to dominate others?

In which with conspicuous consumption and waste?

In which, if any, other than rural New Zealand,

is going about outdoors

in near-freezing weather

wearing only shorts, a singlet, gumboots,

and maybe a floppy cricket cap

the mark of being a Real Man?

            An Obvious Observation

I was watching the opening ceremonies

and highlights of the first few events

of the 2011 Pacifica Games in New Caledonia

via digital delay on Maori TV.

To provide the all-important

atmosphere and ambience,

the producers showed heaps of long shots

of Noumea and its environs.

It struck me as a pleasant place in which to live or winter

for those who have plenty of money –

but then, any place would be.

                Cultural-Stereotype Similarities

When I was a freelance writer in the early 1980s

I did a story about Southeast Asian refugees in San Antonio.

One educated Vietnamese man whom I interviewed

made the wry observation

that the city’s two main Southeast Asian refugee groups

resembled the two main groups

that flooded into New York and elsewhere

during the mass migrations

of the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

The Vietnamese, he told me, were like the Eastern European Jews –

ambitious, shrewd, ready to delay gratification, and keen on education.

The Laotians, he went on, were like the people from southern Italy –

easily satisfied with just about any job

and keen on food and drinking

and generally enjoying life with their extended families and friends.

Remembering this and curious, I asked my mate Michael,

who’s lived in Southeast Asia

and whose thesis on Cambodian politics I edited,

who the Khmers’ stereotype would resemble

and he told me the Irish –

they have close-knit families, are wary of strangers, distrust authority, bear a grudge toward the Vietnamese as the Irish do the English,

and tend to behave jovially up to a point,

but can suddenly turn violent when drinking or provoked.

I wonder to what extent

these cultural stereotypes

are accurate.

More than a bit, I imagine,

but definitely far from entirely.

           A Status Hierarchy

Out behind the school

the extensive onion and carrot fields

stretched expansively

in every direction.

The migrant workers’ kids

showed up for school

during the picking seasons.

They had their own

special classroom

in a one-room relocatable building

right next to the one

in which I supervised In-School Suspension,

the school jail.

The other kids

(such as most of those

the school administration sent to me),

who were permanent residents

of the painfully downmarket barrio

spreading out from the school

in the three other directions

and as poor as piss,

looked down on the migrant pickers’ children

as inferior.

That’s how humans are.

             Population Density

The bus rolled slowly

past a line of mansions.

Inside, the gaggle of slum kids

on their way

to their first volleyball game

at the posh school’s gym

gaped at the three-storey residences,

as wide as they were high,

beneath enormous old shade trees.

One girl asked me

how many families lived in them.

When I answered, “One each,”

they didn’t know whether to believe me.

         What Explorers Say

They came from their cultures,

Armstrong and Hillary,

which is probably the source

of the difference between

“That’s one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind” and

“We knocked the bastard off.”

I know which of these cultures,

although flawed as all are,

sits better with me.

Holiness

                   Cats and Believers

Discussing matters of belief –

it doesn’t matter whether

it’s Christianity or astrology or free-market economics –

with people who actually

believe in them

is a less useful way

to spend time

than waiting for a cat

to make up its mind.

            Hah-oh-ah-lee-uh

When I was little

and had to go to the Jewish temple

whenever my mother made me,

what really impressed me

during the service and sermon

was how the rabbi

was able to drag out the word ‘holy’

into five syllables,

each lasting a full second or more.

I wondered if they had special classes

in rabbi school –

I didn’t know the word yeshiva then –

where they learnt how to do that.

                    Sanctity

When I referred to the oak tree

in our house’s back yard

as sacred,

one of my then-adolescent daughters

asked me what makes something sacred.

Although I’d never thought about it,

I answered immediately

that if somebody just says

that something’s sacred

and others believe that person,

then to those people it’s sacred.

To others it isn’t.

This seemed to make sense to her and she nodded.

                  Bullshit Studies

The more complicated, intricate, detailed,

and demanding of exhaustive study

such superstitions as

the Abrahamic and Hindu religions

and the homeopathy, astrology, acupuncture,

and free-market economics pseudosciences are,

the more absolutely ludicrous

any honest, open, and clear-minded consideration of them

reveals them to be.

They do provide their devotees

with something to use up their time, however,

and also a sense of fellowship

that creates a support system

to help them maintain

their precious delusions.

              Symbolic Headgear

When the Pope was in the Middle East

I saw TV images, on Mute of course,

of a papally attended interfaith service

in Jerusalem or somewhere near there,

I’d guess,

and it struck me that no matter which

monotheistic religion or denomination they represented

– Catholic, Islam, Judaism, Orthodoxy, and so on –

all the clergy present were men

wearing funny-looking hats

of one sort or another.

Outlandish, non-functional headgears

clearly have significant mana

in traditionally organised monotheism,

although I fail to divine

their spiritual significance, myself –

except, of course,

the Pastafarian colander.

          Hallelujah!

Church hymns, xmas carols,

and other religious songs

are not about the soul or the spirit.

They’re about power –

people controlling others –

with some cultural solidarity

thrown in as seasoning.

                             Blessed

My paternal grandparents were hard-core Stalinist atheists.

Since my mother hated them more than she hated anyone else –

and she was a prolific and vehement hater –

she made me go to a middle-of-the-road –

neither orthodox nor reformed – Jewish temple.

Since my daddy had done a generation-gap thing

and become half-assedly semi-religious

he let her, although I don’t remember him going himself.

He, by the way, enjoyed dissing Christianity,

something for which my mother always scolded him,

and made it clear to me that following that example

was not to be on my agenda.

My memories of going to the temple

centre on listening to the cantor,

a small man with a large-nostril nose

that he employed for singing stuff in a language I didn’t understand

in an operatic tenor,

whilst I sat with the backs of my thighs burning from my wool suit –

my being painfully allergic to wool making no difference

to my mother’s clothing selections for me –

with my mother beside me violently hissing at me to stop fidgeting,

and elbowing my ribs and kicking my shins with the side of her shoe

when I failed to do so.

I went through with the bar mitzvah bullshit

because I had no choice

and also because I wanted to rake in the pressies.

Besides, I’ve always enjoyed performing.

After that I rapidly lost interest,

and when I ate on a fast day

and nothing negative happened,

I thought the whole thing through

and concluded that it really was all bullshit.

                   Blasphemy!

It was when that weedy-looking little bloke

came up to me after a performance

and told me that he found it to be offensive

because he was a Chris-ti-an

(that’s three syllables: Kriss-Tee-Anne –

people like that tend to be prissy

as well as egocentrically superstitious)

that I realised how fortunate I was

to live in a country

where blasphemy is not a crime.

A Catholic colleague of mine

when I worked as a high-school teacher,

and who was, incidentally,

as prissy as they come –

a celibate queer in denial

who was crushed to learn that Liberace

had died from Aids,

refusing to accept that his hero

had enjoyed sexual love with another man –

had been horrified when I told the old joke:

‘What’s invisible and tells lies?’

(pause)

‘God.’

He informed me with much sadness

(because he really was fond of me – really)

that I was doomed to Hell no matter what,

because no matter how much good I did in my life,

the only Sin that God would never forgive

is blasphemy.

My only response was,

Well, that’s that, then.

         Monotheism and Taxonomy

Although I acknowledge that

people must have the right

to believe

 – without empirical evidence –

in some ancient

Middle-Eastern-culture’s

semi-anthropomorphic,

masculine,

simultaneously monotheistic and triumphalist

sky-god,

and to pray to

him as if

the whole seething universe exists for them,

and as if he gives a shit

about their stupefyingly picayune, personal peccadilloes,

and also to obey unquestioningly,

and violently –

if that’s what it takes –

those who say that they know

what he wants,

their doing these things

makes me feel

disgust and dismay

and ashamed to be

in the same species they are.