The truth...

I hesitate to write this entry after that last one...because I want people's help making the case against least possible necessary aggression...and I want people to see that I'm genuine in my efforts to come at the best/right answers...that I'm not some liberal activist looking to prove myself right...or some radical looking to manipulate the process...

That fundamentally...I am...genuinely...someone who wants to make the world better...and will really do just about anything to make it better...for real...no bullshit...no political agenda (that's not honestly about making things better, at least)...sometimes I think that I'm the only one who will know how genuinely I come to that conversation...

But you want to know the truth?...

After all the study...and all the effort...and all the really goddamn hard work...

You want to know the truth?...

The truth is...

I don't know...

I don't know what, exactly, will make the world better...

I hope I'm onto something...

But I really could be totally full of shit...

I hope not...because I already feel like a fool enough to not have to deal with that one, too...though...if it turned out to be the case...I'd deal with that one, too...

But the truth is...

I don't know...

I hope...and I try...and I think...and I try...and I hope...and I try...and I think...and I try...and I don't exactly know the order on all that...

I really don't know...

I just know that I trust my heart...that things can be better...even if I don't know exactly how they can be...

I just know that when I hear Louis Armstrong say the intro to the 1970 taping of What a Wonderful World...when he says...

"Some of you young folks been saying to me...hey, Pops...what you mean, what a wonderful world?...how about all them wars all over the place...you call them wonderful...and how about hunger and pollution...they ain't so wonderful either...

Well how about listening to old Pops, for a minute...it seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad...but what we're doing to it...

And all I'm saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance...love, baby, love...that's the secret...yeah...

If lots more of us loved each other...we'd solve lots more problems...

And, man...this world would be Odessa...

That's why old Pops keeps saying,

'I see trees of green
Red roses, too
I see them bloom
For me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world"

That when he says that...

I trust that...

I'm sure Louis was never some closet policy expert...I always assumed from that song...and because of my own biases as a liberal, I think...that Louis was a liberal...from that song...

But the truth is...today...I don't know any more...

If by liberal...you mean...someone who loves everyone (or most everyone, I suppose, for most folks)...and who believes in the power of the individual to take on any challenge...and to conquer it...

Someone who believes in freedom...and treating all people with respect...and understanding...

Then...I'd totally agree...I would say that's what Louis is being in that song...

But that kind of liberal...a "small l" liberal...a classical liberal...and freedom-loving liberal...a grown-up liberal...

Well, that can be just about anyone...

Conservatives are those kinds of liberals...

Liberals are those kinds of liberals (who we conventionally think of as liberals in contemporary political discussions)...

Radicals of every stripe can be those kinds of liberals, if they choose...

Anyone can, really...

But if you mean...a Democrat...or a campaign finance reform activist...or any other many different versions of liberal in a more conventional sense...

I don't really know, anymore...

Because that song...I hope...is one that everyone can identify with...

And the truth is...

Though I have this inner confidence that I might be right on this question...for whatever spiritual/ethereal reasons...

In an empirical way...I'm really not sure...

I wish I were...

I think it's right...

But I really don't know...

And I'm setting out to genuinely see where and whether they might or might not be right or wrong...with as fair and generous an effort to prove these ideas wrong, as much as possible...

Because...it really is more important to understand something...better...

Than it is to defend my opinions...about anything...

I just know that I genuinely care about doing the right thing...

And the right thing...I think...for me...and for everyone else that I presumably want to work on issues in behalf of...

Is to get to the right answers...to the best answers...to get it right...

And everything else just seems...like a less than honest effort...

On the one hand...

I live my life...like these principles are true...though I have no clue whether that's best for me or everyone else or not...

I hope so...

Other than being close to the ones I love...

It's my fondest hope in the world...

But I am more than prepared to give it up...if I'm wrong...

Because getting it right...is more important than being right...

You know what I mean?...

Getting to the best answers to lifes' most difficult matters...

Is more important than defending some fleeting self-righteous pose that I know more than I really know...

And I would just as soon be wrong...than to spend my life defending ideas that I've never really questioned...

That's the truth...

That and that I love my friends, all of them, and family more than I do any of this bullshit...

Politics is a passion for me...

But it is not my central passion...

People are my central passion...

I like them...

I want to do right by them...

I want to make things better for them...

I want their's and my life to be better...

Especially the people closest to me...

But everyone, really...

And I don't know if these ideas are the best way there...

I think they may be...

I live my life that way...

But I may be wrong...

That's all life is, I think...not really knowing...just making better guesses...

That's much of the reason why I think we should be more decent with one another...

Because...really...we're all just making our own best guesses...we're all just human...really...we're all just doing out best...really...no bullshit...that's all she wrote...

I miss my friends...

I got one who spends every ounce of her being to avoid me, right now...I imagine trying to get things figured out for herself...

And I have a whole crew of friends that I haven't been hanging with, for awhile now...trying to get all this stuff figured out for myself, better...

And I miss 'em all...and I need to get around to seeing my crew, at least...and cut out this bullshit...and just hang...and be friends, again...

This has been one crazy adventure...this life of mine...

I do wish it were easier to navigate...most of the time...

I wish we had more answers than we do...

That life played itself out more cleanly than it does...

But it doesn't...

We do as well as we do...

And that's it...

We do our best...

And that's it...

There is no better...

There's our best...and that's it...

You know...the truth is...

More than anything else...including saving the world...

I just want to have my friends back in my life...

All of them...

Jas...Dolly...Blick...Dave...and the rest of the crew...

Brandi...and Greg...if that were ever to be possible...

Jeannie...Tom...Wayne...all the rest of my professors and fellow grad students at KU...

And I want to see my family, again, as soon as possible...Thanksgiving is coming up...we haven't been together, as a family...all of us...in quite a long time, now...

I don't know if anyone will quite understand what a crazy adventure these last 3 or 4 years of my life have been...

I wish I would have started this blog in the months after Brandi and I broke up...

Now that would have been a study of a man in pain...and the story of how I fell in love with country music:):)...

I'll have to tell that story sometime...if I haven't already...

I've been saying, lately, that memories are like life's greatest hits...all played when you want them...

And sometimes I just wish that life's greatest hits could play, more, like they do on Melissa's Windows Media Player on her computer which she has so generously let me use while I search for teaching jobs...

That I could just play them...and really live them again...the really good ones...the ones that seem so distant the further away the people involved are in the present...

I have this one...that's got to annoy the fuck out of Brandi if she ever thinks about it...

Brandi could not stand the fact that I was so into politics...she felt like it consumed me...she felt like it was an obsession with me, I think...she just didn't understand that outside of her...and being a great dad...and being a great teacher...and a decent guy...that it was my great passion in life...

Brandi and I went away for a weekend to her family's cabin...and we took all these crazy political magazines and books with us...my idea, I think...

Brandi and Greg have a cabin, these days, I'm told...and something tells me that Brandi does not take along political magazines on trips where she is trying to escape the pressures of life...not enjoin them...as I made Brandi do on this trip...and in so many political conversations and adventures that we had against her will:):)...I'm exaggerating, of course...Brandi loved politics...just not quite as enthusiastically as I did...at the end, at least:)...

And we took these crazy magazines with us...and we talked politics the whole time...and made love all weekend...and cooked...and had candlelight...and flowers...as always...

I'd like to have that memory back...just for a little bit...to remember what it was like...just having a passion for politics...and being in love...and feeling totally un-self-conscious about either...

Just sharing a friendship...and a love...and a passion for making the world better...

And not caring whether Brandi liked it or not that I like that memory...

Just having it...

And I want to start making memories like that again...

There's this girl at work...of course there always is...but she seems nice:):)...nicer than most:)...I barely know her:):):)...but maybe:):):)...you know?:):):)...

Alright...it is way late...I should get some sleep before work tomorrow...

I just wanted to say all that...all that rambling:):)...

Hope everyone has a good day, tomorrow:):)...I'm going to be dragging ass, I'm sure:):)...

Talk with everyone soon, I hope:):)...

Love,
Ben