I don’t think I’ve made a secret of my nerdiness; it’s attested here and elsewhere, not least in casual conversations I’ve had with no few people. In some ways, I’ve had to be; there’s a certain amount of nerdiness obligatory in graduate study, particularly graduate study of “that old stuff” that I studied, and there’s more involved in continuing to work with that kind of material after completing degrees and mustering out of formal academia. (Note here, here, here, and here. Note, too, that such citations, even if not necessarily formal, are themselves badges of nerdiness.) And, in the absence of a number of other ways in which people in my part of the world tend to define themselves, nerdiness does offer me some anchor for who and what I am; labels are always problematic, but they do offer sometimes-useful starting points, even to those of us who really ought to be a bit past “starting” at this point.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that I mark out strange little bits of nerdiness in my own life, often in terrible puns. Today is not dissimilar, though I’m neither eleventy-one nor thirty-three to make the kind of gross joke commemorated in one volume. No, today gets marked as Hobbit Day by many of my acquaintance and affiliation, the date in Tolkien’s Legendarium on which both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are born. While I will not be doing much to celebrate it, having other tasks to which I must apply myself, I note its happening, and the note itself reaffirms, to me and to all who see it, that I am and remain a nerd. And since I no longer have to worry about schoolroom bullies giving me wedgies or waiting with sticks for me to ride my bike past the physical plant, there is some comfort in having a reconnection to what has long been part not only of my public persona but my private personality.

We all always perform, as scholars have noted, even if the audience is only ourselves.

Today, I have my little scene, and I’ve already recited my lines.

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A few years back, now, I reflected on what is now and will likely continue to be regarded as the second major event in the new millennium in the United States (the first being the opening of the millennium): the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. It joins the fifth of November, Goliad, and the Alamo as a thing not to forget, and it is akin to 7 December 1941 in being a day that lives in infamy. Or it seems like it should, somehow, even if there seems to be less and less commemoration of, well, all such things. They’re decades gone and more, now, and there is always some new thing on which to fixate, some new wrong that deserves attention and redress (and I say so much sincerely); what has happened is crowded out by what is happening.

There is still not a picture needed for this.

So much is not inappropriate, of course. What went before cannot be changed, although regard for and understanding of it certainly can and almost as certainly should. (This is not to say evil should be excused, of course, though I know well that many will look at the revelation of nuance and detail as an attempt to do so. I see it happen too much with other things not to think that the same will happen again, and while I know that it is not strictly logical, I also know that reason is more than logic alone, despite the stated pretenses of far too many.) What is happening now can, at least to some degree, be changed; what is happening now can, at least to some degree and for some people, be improved. Who benefits and to what extent remain open questions, although they seem to be closing more daily, and in part because of what happened in the wake of the terrorist attacks whose twenty-second anniversary is today.

If we have grown scarred as the cliché has it, it shows us as having been injured and being able to feel less as a result of it. Touch the scars you have, who have them, and then the never-cut flesh beside it, and tell me which place is more sensate. Consider the scars that are shown, and consider, too, the deeper ones formed by wounds not seen but still inflicted, tears and cuts and punctures deep within that make the lungs breathe more raggedly, the bowels move in fits and starts, the heart lurch. We live who live; we endure who do. But we do not do either so well as we did before, though we parade where we have been wounded.

The wounds show more fully the more closely and the smaller we look, of course. How many and how grievous have been inflicted, have been endured, have been accepted? Smooth skin is not necessarily a prize, youth and inexperience not virtues in themselves because unearned (and is there not a fixation on earning to be found?), but not all injuries are deserved, and not all scars are merited.

These years later, having seen the results of fear indulged too long and often, have we yet learned the lessons offered for such high tuition as makes pennies of what a bursar will bill? Or will we need more remediation?

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I have been remarking on what today commemorates for some years, now, not only in this webspace (here, here, and here), but also in others. Having been a union man, and still being one in some ways, I know well the value of organized labor, and I note with some…vexation the repeated refusals by those who claim to want a return to the practices of decades past to align with the organizing principles that informed many of those practices. What made things great wasn’t what many want to believe. (That things weren’t great for a lot of people does not escape me, either, even if it does many–although I know that many don’t bother with pursuit.)

As I think on things this time around, I find myself somewhat caught. I suppose it’s a symptom of too much thinking that conundra emerge, and I suppose it says something about me that I encounter them as often as I do, but I recognize there is a tension at work between the potential ennobling effects of work and the fact that having to work is, in some ways, a curse. For those who value Genesis (the book, not the band or the up-jumped Hyundai), work is one of the things with which the fallen Adam is cursed (1:17-19); I am not up enough on other ideologies to remark on whether a similar burden is imposed from on high, which is my failing and not that of said ideologies. I can remark, however, that there are few in my experience or of whom I have heard report who do not, at least on occasion, complain about their work, even those who say that they love their jobs (and there are many who affirm very much the opposite). Much as I enjoy writing, there are times when the blank page taunts me, and while I meet some of those taunts bravely, there are some from which I have turned away.

I can also remark, though, that I am improved by working, and not only in terms of my bank accounts. Such work as I have done and still do–and I know there are some who will say that I do not “really” work and never have–has sharpened my mind. Used to be that it strengthened by body, too, until I had my jobs that are inside work with no heavy lifting. I’m not the only one, either; my family’s been full of such people, almost all of them better at what they do than I am at what I do, and my family is but one of many such. So there is nobility in the work that is done, even if it is otherwise than ought to be that the work has to be done.

But the work does have to be done, and I remain grateful for those who do that work. As should we all be, even as we work to ensure that those who do the labor upon which we rely are treated as they ought to be, as we would ourselves hope to be treated, did we do that work.

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It would appear to be that time again, when the United States makes a particular show of honoring those who died in its uniformed service, and I air something of a re-run or a spin-off of something I’ve shown before (here, here, and here). In truth, the situation has little changed across the few years I have been making a point of writing in this webspace, the United States and the part of it in which I live marking the day as it has done so long as I recall, and some complaining, perhaps hypocritically, about the juxtaposition.

I am among the some, of course, and doubtlessly the perhaps.

For me this year, while I’ve not been uprooted again, I have been on the road. My family and I took a short trip up through a part of the state we’ve not visited yet, despite it being only a few hours’ drive away. It has made for a decent enough weekend, and one about which I will doubtlessly have more to say in a future post. I’m given to understand that it’s a fairly common pursuit for the time of year, with people getting out of school and “summer” starting (again, the solstice is a few weeks off, and it’s already been plenty warm here); it hasn’t necessarily been so in my life, but a lot of that is because I am a crotchety curmudgeon who hates fun.

Ask my daughter. She’ll tell you.

It might not be the most fitting observance of the day, as I think I’ve noted. But I’m not going to feel ashamed that I took the time to be with my family. And I can affirm that I’ve made a point, not just here, but with that family, and particularly with my daughter, of noting why the holiday is in place. It’s not enough, of course; what can be? It is, however, a start, and that’s got to be good for something.

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Today marks the victory of Mexico over France at Puebla, and, in the part of the world where I grew up and where I live again, it is spent as a celebration of Mexican culture. (Admittedly, where I am used to be Mexico, but it wasn’t still Mexico at the time Puebla happened. Oh, no, there was another war going on, and this part of the world was on the wrong side of it.) Given how much of the rest of the year a lot of people here spend decrying that culture, the observance strikes me as odd to disingenuous to hypocritical to appropriative and reductionist, at least as many make the observance. But then, that’s hardly unique to this day, as I think I might’ve mentioned a few times before.

For me, the day is something that attracts attention; again, I live where I live, and, for better or worse, I identify as a resident of that part of the world, so the common observances are part of the identificatory markers. And I confess to some hypocrisy of my own; I do love me some tacos, and they do tend to be on special on Cinco de Mayo. It’s far removed from the origination of the observance, and it doesn’t do me any credit, thought it does contribute to my waistline being what it is.

There is this, too: My wife and child are both Hispanic, specifically of Mexican descent. My wife’s grandmother, though born in the US, grew up south of the Rio Grande; her parents hailed from there, if memory serves, or her grandparents did. So they, at least, have the more direct tie, and I am happy to celebrate their heritage with them, even if I do not share it myself. It is part of who they are, even if it is not the part they necessarily foreground; I am rather quite fond of the both of them, so why should I not laud what contributes to making them who they are, so long as it does not hurt them?

But then, given how things are in this part of the world and many others, perhaps they would come to harm from the acknowledgement of their ancestry. Enough people do so where I can see it, and I look in few places and with poor eyesight; there is surely far more of it of which I am unaware.

Funny how that kind of thing can work out.

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There was a time that my family made much of this day, noting that one of the roots from which they and I spring stretches back across the Atlantic to the land where Brian Boru played and ruled (though I did not learn about the harpist king until far later). The shape of the merrymaking was less important than the fact of it, although I look back on it now with a mix of longing and loathing–the former for the usual reasons, and the latter, as well.

Anymore, though, I find myself less and less inclined to do much on holidays. Even the “big” ones find me…hesitant, forcing myself through for the sake of Ms. 8–and today’s observance is not one of the “big” holidays. At least, it is not for me; I imagine that it is for others. I do not begrudge them their joy, although I have not always been fond of its demonstrations; I remember experiences of it in New York City that I would rather not. But drunken asshats are in many places and times; it’s not something peculiar to today…

The day may come again when I find delight in things I once did, when I can allow myself the space in which to do so. For now, though, I have yet work to do, and so such celebrations as I might undertake will have to wait a while again.

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