Chasing Bubbles With A Butterfly Net

For someone like me with a well-developed startle response and a self-imposed posting deadline, the last few days in the news have been exhausting. It's the silly season in America, of course, with just days to go until the mid-term elections and the culmination of all our anxious imaginings, regardless of our political starting points. But it isn't just any election and it isn't just an America in isolation; it's a globe in transition 'midst an era of revving change. Back peddle? Plunge forward? Stand up on the or accelerate--with or without a prayer? Shit or go blind? (Do NOT fuss at me; that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term with a rich, fertile history.)

The week's been either a blogger's dream or her worst nightmare: more material than I could ever want, flitting past me far too fast, and me with only a sieving mind to capture it. I wake up every morning to chase the tantalizing NYTimes headlines, browse among the big, syndicated blogs, and find it impossible to choose a spot on which to land--a hummingbird on a sugar high.

Should I go with the eerie tolling in my brain from Angela Merkel's "Multikulti has utterly failed" statement? No matter how the Germans are spinning that one today, my head still rings. I've finally gotten so old that a first-hand knowledge of history is more than just a Trivial Pursuit advantage. Swell.



Or, perhaps I should choose the Pentagon's decision to allow recruiters to accept gay recruits--should they accidentally on purpose discover the recruit's affectional and/or sexual orientation. Today. With caveats. This is a thrilling political game of chicken, especially on the watch of a President who has been accused by progressives for lacking nerve. The military has not yet staged a coup, no recruits have melted into a puddle. The economy has boosted recruitment numbers to near quota since January of 2010, for the first time in the history of the Volunteer Military. Will there be a recruiting bubble in days to come?

And I'm losing my mind over the political revelations coming in. Christine O'Donnell might know the Amendments to the Constitution by heart, for all we know, but she doesn't seem very familiar with accepted interpretations. She's cited her "graduate fellowship" from the Claremont Institute in constitutional government as her qualification for office, but, as Anderson Cooper points out, "The Claremont Institue is a conservative think tank, it's not a university, and the fellowship lasted a grand total of seven days." Joe Miller ain't perfect...imagine...and what is it with the facial hair? Does he think the outre 3-day growth look makes him more electable? Miller believes the minimum wage is unconstitutional. He favors an East German-style border policy. And Sharron Angle "looks a little Asian" to me. She should be so lucky. Miller and Angle add to the tolling in my head that Merkel inaugurated. Their political soundbites may seem insubstantial, but the aggregate is appalling.

China's quiet embargo on export of rare earth elements to Europe and America? They mine 95% of the world's rare earths that we use in everything from cell phones to guided missiles. The American markets' wild drop and recovery? It is hopeless to try to snag the right moment to jump back into stocks with a market that tracks like a sine wave within one twenty-four hour period. Foreclosure news and the fate of Bank of America track the same dizzying template.

Michael Reese Mulch, Macrophotography of Soap Bubbles

In Afghanistan, NATO forces secretly protect free passage of some members of the Taliban for meetings with Hamid Karzai and, this morning, we learn that our superior forces have routed other members from their strongholds in Kandahar, using a new mobile rocket that operates like a cruise missile with pinpoint accuracy. NATO commanders are being cautioned not to flout their successes, recalling the ado about Marjah that burst like a bubble the minute they glanced away. And, still, some commanders seem not to have received the memo:

“We now have the initiative. We have created momentum,” said Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the British commander of the NATO coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, who has overseen the Kandahar operation for the last year. “It is everything put together in terms of the effort that has gone in over the last 18 months and it is undoubtedly having an impact.”

There's much, much more in the way of head-spinning news to choose from, but the piece that really caught my eye was this one: After Sweat Lodge Deaths, Fewer Tourists With Spiritual Needs.  You'll remember James Arthur Ray, the guru-con of Sedona, who helped market The Secret.



Like Christine O'Donnell, I've done a little dabbling in my day, although not in witchcraft; I have embraced Eastern aesthetics and, prior to 2008, enjoyed some real relief from stressful national and international news by focusing down on my herb garden or a walking meditation. My one costly experiment with a more organized training was bitterly disappointing. I'd done my homework and thought I'd found leadership and education in a worthy philosophy. What I got was a rude shove from the rear: the organization was, much to my surprise, cult-like, controlling, corrupt. I lost my taste for gurus and I haven't been feeling quite so spiritual, since. Who could, when the practicalities of the household budget are so compelling?

With my relatively new-found cynicism, I read Marc Lacey's NYT piece and hear sarcasm:

There is negative energy in the air here, which the channelers, mystics, healers, psychics and other New Age practitioners of Sedona are grappling to identify and snuff out. It has to do with the recent dearth of visitors to this spiritual oasis in search of enlightenment.

Nobody is sure exactly what is keeping people away from Sedona’s four vortexes, swirling energy sources emanating from the earth, but the effects are clear: far fewer crystals are being bought, spiritual tours taken and treatments ordered, from aura cleansings to chakra balancings.

It's been a year since Angel Valley and James Arthur Ray made the news that has since buried Sedona's spiritualist industry. Some practitioners have tried blaming the economy and have minimized the pall cast on their custom by three counts of manslaughter. Some have summoned angels and chanted amidst crystals to dispel the negative aura that hangs over their town. In  characteristic cluelessness, the New Agers seem shocked by the impact of the events of October 2009. Sedona's general tourist business has noted a comeback, and, yet, "spiritual tourism" is still depressed.

At last. One clear benefit of the recession is that it underscored this lesson of The Spiritual Warrior sweat lodge: it is foolhardy at best and often dangerous to spend your fortunes and your time following someone else in search of yourself. Like chasing bubbles with a butterfly net. A pursuit that belongs to what seems like another age altogether, when seen in the cold light of our realities today.