THREE THINGS: John Stewart’s Dimples, The Etowah Indian Mounds, & The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.

I take John Stewart to bed with me most evenings. I only have bunny ears that catch three channels (and I hear that come February even that won’t work) so I watch TV on my laptop –usually in bed. ( www.hulu.com) I learned the whole watch-TV-online-trick just this year, and in that time I’ve developed a serious crush on John Stewart. Stephen Colbert –though I admire his (ahem) “roast” of George Bush at the press dinner way back when, (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE_saVX_2A) just doesn’t do it for me the same way John does. Other comedians might tickle my funny bone from time to time, but my heart belongs to John.

I think its all about his dimples. Are they not adorable? http://www.thedailyshow.com/
I am grateful for his satire: his all-in-good-fun-poke-poke-at-the-powers-that-be –and-the deeply-disturbing. His on-air team is delightful; you can tell he has genuine affection for the peeps that make the funny graphics and watch all that news footage. I enjoy his thoughtful guests, and his well-mannered interviews. He strikes me as a true gentleman, a family man that ought to serve as a role model for men/ celebrities everywhere. (If only.) But most of all, he makes the news bearable.

The truth is, this is where I get the bulk of my news. Shame, shame on me. I skim the headlines, and I try to stay appraised of current topics. I rely on a network of friends to learn what’s up, and NGO’s that spam my inbox to stay informed. I’m not uninvolved, I write my district supervisors, congress people, senators etc. but after a long day of supporting my own NGO, squeezing poems, friends, family, and laundry into the rest of the day, -- all I want to do is look at his cute dimples; know that someone, somewhere is calling bullshit where it ought to be called; AND not taking himself too seriously in the process. Thank you for your levity John Stewart – the world needs it.

I have wondered if perhaps John and I are connected on a metaphysical level. Is there some collective consciousness that he and I both share? For example, on Monday night he opened the show with a short quip about how he hoped we’d contemplated the genocide of millions of Native Americans with our turkey dinners– and it so happens –I actually had.

Last Tuesday, my mother, grandfather, and I took a drive to the Etowah Indian Mounds. http://www.gastateparks.org/info/etowah/. I grew up as a Californian who visited rural Georgia for a week or so every summer to see my grandparents. Granny and Big Jack lived on Lake Blackshear (Formerly the Thronateeska river.) They were near the “watermelon capital of the world” of all places. Needless to say, a trip to Georgia was full of comfort foods: buttermilk biscuits, butterbeans, butter, black-eyed peas, pink-eyed purple hulls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and bacon. There were fish fries where Big Jack served bass, catfish and hushpuppies to dozens of friends. I was allowed as much coca-cola as I could drink, caramel cake, and Klondike bars. What would you do for a….? One year my father actually made my younger brother weigh back into California as soon as he came home from the airport. Poor thing.

There were also adventures at the lake: we took the boat to look for alligators lounging on fallen cypress trees deep into the sloughs on the other side of the river. Spanish moss draped the trees like heavy metal haircuts – a few decades later.

We also went hunting for pottery and arrowheads that washed up on the shore of the soon-to-be developed lakeside properties. My mom still has a stone tool most likely used for skinning hides, and I have a collection of flint arrowheads unearthed in a treasure chest, the elders had buried specifically for me to find.

But our days at the lake ended a few years ago, and now my grandfather lives on my uncle’s property about a three hour drive from the lake. They all thought it best as he grew approached his nineties to be closer to family. Visiting the mounds was a pleasant diversion, and reminiscent of all those long walks on the lakeshore. The mounds were behind an interpretive center, where we watched a short film about the indigenous people before exploring the structures. The mounds looked like the beginnings of what could have evolved into something like the Aztec ruins in Central America. They were about five stories high, I’d guess, and not far from the ditches where they must have excavated the dirt to build them. We climbed the stairs to the top of the mound and gazed at the river. We tried to imagine where they would have cultivated the sunflower seeds; where would children have played? Could you smell pumpkin roasting from up here – maybe wild turkey? The trees along the river were alight in Fall foliage. The wind was brisk.

A place this empty of its original inhabitants strikes the imagination, but as the descendents of the ones who brought the disease, and the armies that eventually did millions of them in, I found something antiseptic about our day trip. The glass displays of artifacts –and wall text about “how they lived” in the interpretative center are fascinating historically, but emotionally – there lies something ignorant, deeply cold, and savage. Even to use the word “savage” in this context is loaded. Its only been just recently that I’ve done the generational math to figure out which ancestors were around for the Trail of Tears. I asked my grandfather – did he remember if his grandfather knew any “Indians”? To which he replied “You had relatives in Omaha, Georgia who were slaughtered by Cherokee.” Uh – Okay. And that was all we said.

What does this mean to me, two hundred years later on a Thanksgiving excursion? I think it’s a reality one has to steep in to fully understand the implications on the present, both individually and collectively. And of course, we don’t have to look back 200 years to find other examples of aggressive domination and destruction. Is it OK that John made a joke like that on TV - does it let us off hook? Or is bringing up these issues in our culture, part of accepting our past, and increasing our collective sensitivity so that people are becoming hopefully more and more primed to “Just say No” to the war or the sweat shop pajamas from WalMart.


I was and am still steeping…when on the flight home, I inadvertently picked up The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I was deciding between the Coelho, and Cormac McCarthy –but I felt a little too tender to read about an apocalyptic future. For whatever reason, I had imagined The Alchemist as something fun and colorful ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Jorge Amado. Boy, was I bummed.

For those of you who don’t know: “The Alchemist (Portuguese: O Alquimista) is a bestseller novel that is the most famous work of author Paulo Coelho. It is a symbolic story that urges its readers to follow their dreams. Originally published in Greece in 1988, The Alchemist has been translated into 61 languages, a guinness world record for the book translated in most languages. It has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries, becoming one of the best-selling books in history.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemist_(novel).

Chief in its principals the book espouses the philosophy that when you take steps towards your personal destiny, the universe does all it can to cooperate. It positively encourages taking leaps of faith, but the dark side of this reads that the only reason you don’t get to your goals, is because you have not committed deeply enough to your “personal legend” or are blocked by fear. I don’t disagree whole heartedly with these assertions, but there is something politically idiotic about the assumptions.

For example, would things have worked out differently for the Etowah had they had a copy of The Alchemist? Or my relatives in Omaha, Georgia? Or perhaps, my grandfather would still be at the lake had he exhibited more dedication to his “personal legend”. Truth be told, books like this (Celestine Prophesy, The Secret, et all.) make me so mad I could spit.

Sharper minds than mine, can no doubt quickly deconstruct what is wrong with such a book from any number of philosophical perspectives. Instead I just get flummoxed trying to explain to loved ones who dutifully swallow these adages and clichés and who consequently beat themselves up trying to replicate the success described there. It makes me want to scream: life is so much more complicated, ambiguous, gorgeous, mysterious, enlivening, tragic, passionate, cruel, and dare I say “sacred?” than this. Yes these ramblings have a tinge of truth to them – but I still smell snake oil! Me? No! I’m not bitter. Cynical? Maybe… Oh – no- it is NOT my ego getting in the way of accepting “the truth.” Oh please do not condescend to me. Yes, let’s drop it. FINE.

Pardon me, I was replaying the tape in my head of an argument with an ex-boyfriend who had swallowed hook, line, and sinker that JZ Knight actually had channeled an entity named Ramtha after wearing tin foil in the shape of a cone on her head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramtha#Ramtha

Its in these moments that I ask myself, “What would Margaret Atwood say?” Or Dorothy Parker? Or Mark Twain? Or Noam Chomsky? Or even John Stewart? THOSE DIMPLES.

John Stewart I LOVE you and I LOVE your dimples. Thank you for following your “Personal Legend” and serving us fresh satire 4 nights a week with a big smile, a few “settle downs” (so sexy! sigh) and for asking the right questions with a sense of humility and light-heartedness.