EXCUSES ON THE PATH: Diary of a sword swallower (part 3)

Do not try this on your own. This article is for entertainment purposes only! —The Editors

Not really a sword to swallow?

After a successful lesson, Adam left me with my homework, and any feeling of accomplishment was soon to be squashed by this assignment. The homework quickly proved how challenging learning the talent truly was, despite the physical simplicity of the assigned task. He had begun his teaching by comparing the difficulty of learning sword swallowing to the difficulty of quitting smoking. At that time I cockily thought to myself that I, who wakes before dawn and walks through frigid east coast winter air to practice yoga daily, would have little problem dealing with the “discipline” aspect of learning a new talent. Oh, how wrong I was.

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CONTROLLING THE FIVE GAG REFLEXES: Diary of a sword swallower (part 2)

Missed the throat

Do not try this on your own. This article is for entertainment purposes only! —The Editors

My friends and I spent the week wondering how exactly one starts sword swallowing. Carrot sticks? Pocky? Butter knife? Fencing sword? Very curious.

Adam and I arranged to hold the lesson in my lower east side apartment. After some heckling and loving encouragement from the guys I work with, I was able to slip out early to get home for my first session. Running late I called Adam from two blocks away, to let him know I was almost here. I saw a big man standing in the snowy twilight outside my house holding a long kevlar bag…obviously the guy. Standing at about 6’3” with a handlebar moustache, cowboy shirt, slicked back pompadour, and thick Buddy Holly glasses, Adam’s style undoubtedly said “barker.”

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POSTS FROM INDIA (2/8, 2/9) [travel series]

Varanasi: the good ole days of 1834

While in India I had intended to write “articles” about the places I was visiting. That’s not going to happen. Too much to see to bother writing it all down. Instead I’ve decided to post some short little things here and there.

2/8/2010 (Varanasi)
Last night it rained. That means the already precarious allies of Varanasi (Kashi/Benares) are covered in what you wish was mud, but is actually the slippery brown gold that is cow dung, which means the cobblestones are now hella holy. It’s everywhere, and I am constantly walking in it. Some people are walking barefoot.

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STOPPED AT THE UK BORDER: What is country, what is state, what am I but very late? by Briar (travel series)

Our friend and fellow Reveler, Briar, emailed this description of the hassles he encountered while trying to enter England in 2007 to tour with a vocal ensemble singing folk music from all over the world.

E–, I just tried calling you but the phone here is so old (it pulses, somewhat like the old dial phones) that the calling card I bought doesn’t work. The house dates back to at least 1250, which is the age of one wall in my room with stone imported from Italy. A magical place with a backyard that backs up to a river and ley lines (look it up) that date back two-thousand years. That was where we arrived yesterday afternoon after an insane day of almost deportation. I’m debating whether or not to type the whole story but if not now, when?

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WHAT TRAVEL MEANS TO ME, by Justin Moyer (travel series)

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Travel isn’t healthy. Travel might not even be smart. The human body didn’t evolve to wake up in a different place every day, fight jet lag, hurtle down highways at 80 mph or through the troposphere at 500 mph, sleep in hotel rooms where the windows won’t open, or battle unfamiliar microbes lurking on the handlebars of rented bicycles or in the handshakes of cruise ship social directors. The digestion rebels during travel. The muscles ache from doing too little until they ache from doing too much. The brain demands a “getaway”—an exit from the stressful 9–5 routine for a day or a week—and, upon return, is grateful for the vacation from vacation. When traveling, one often wonders: Why travel?

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THE PLEASURES OF BACKYARD TOURISM (travel series)

Welcome to Springfield, IL

Springfield, Illinois, is a tourist Mecca. There’s just that certain je ne sais quoi about a dead president that makes people flock to the schlock erected in his memory. Thanks to state and federal funds from the boom times of the bipolar economy we find ourselves in, Springfield now boasts a presidential museum and library, with the accompanying hordes of camera-eyed tourists and hyperactive and bored school children. The effect on our downtown has been pernicious. The buildings in which poor people previously lived have been torn down or remodeled into upscale condominiums. The homeless (ever-increasing in numbers) have been “encouraged” to go elsewhere. Downtown used to be a lively place, with regular people—citizens—hanging out and having fun, but now is cleansed so as not to give tourists indigestion; there is even a man whose job is to vacuum the sidewalks.

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NEW OLD TRAVEL SERIES: Pack your bags and check your passport, we’re off!

Ho!

While our companion in revelry, Onalistus, is off seeing distant lands we at These New Old Traditions have been thinking about what it means to travel.

Though the necessity and ease of travel has evolved quite a bit, our core reasons for doing it seem to have not changed much. Ye Olde Hunter/ Gatherers moved around out of the necessity for more food or better weather. Fancy colonizing explorers set out in search of…well, more food and better weather. Lords and ladies and later Jane-Austin-type society folk traveled for long periods of time to stir up trouble, see family, and heal their ailments with better weather. (Those folks never seemed to worry about food, but considering that each time someone new arrived they threw a big party in their honor, one could easily suggest that “more food” was not out of the picture).

Now?

Now We Revelers head off to “see the world” almost because we are scared to know what will happen to our souls if we don’t. Travel is about taking ourselves out of our normal patterns so we can see what they are when we return.  Travel of the body–or the spirit–is never easy. Whether we are traveling far, or simply taking our souls on a little trip to our own backyard, there are borders to contend with, unfamiliar languages, and new things around every corner. So, we head out bravely, to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, hoping that in doing so we will find a greater understanding of our every day lives. And, if we’re lucky, more food and better weather.

HO, REVELERS! The journey starts tomorrow.

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RACE TRAITORS, WHITE MOBS, & HONEST ABE (MLK series)

The A. Lincoln Motel and Route 66, south side of Springfield, IL, 1992

1.

I grew up in a very white rural area. I met a black person for the first time at school when I was sixteen. She and her mother were the only black people in our entire county. Although my family is not technically white, we pass easily enough, both culturally and with the appearance of (tanned) white skin. Racism was common, just the background of normal everyday existence. I grew up calling brazil nuts “nigger toes;” worried that as a child who liked to drink coffee, it would turn my skin black; and of course, knew the very scary boogeyman to be a big black man, just waiting to get me. Fear and ignorance, and lack of examples to counter stereotypes played a big part of my awareness of cultures and race in my formative years.

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DETHRONING A KING, by Tripp York (MLK Series)

In this essay, Christian anarchist and professor of Religious Studies, Tripp York, discusses the co-opting of King’s beliefs and message.

“A dangerous Negro, now a national hero. How shall we work with that?”
—Vincent Harding

In a brief essay entitled “Martin Luther King, Jr: Dangerous Prophet,” Vincent Harding (a colleague of King) reminds his readers that as easy as it is to forget that Jesus was an executed criminal who undermined the very politics that makes this fallen world turn, so too is it both easy and tempting to twist King into our own image, who is no longer a prophet, but an idol that serves rather than questions our interests.

In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. was called the most dangerous Negro in the United States because he posed a threat to the very precious ideals that, unfortunately, continue to underwrite our socio-economic and political culture. This same man is now revered as a national saint. The question that must be asked is: Did we undergo the changes that King demanded—an alternative economy, the practice of nonviolence, and the ceasing of imperialism? Or, has his message somehow changed since his death so that it can accommodate that for which he gave his life in protest?

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“MLK AS HOLIDAY” ESSAY EXTENTION: Sunday, January 17

Some people asked for a little extra time. We can dig that. Have the weekend! We look forward to reading your pieces from now through Sunday evening. To review the original post with suggestions/guidelines click on this word: Skiddadlevitzenbergestein

The rest still applies:

• Please send all articles for review to: newoldtraditions [at] gmail [dot] com
• All articles should be typed and saved in a Word document. (Please do not send .docx files. We can’t open them). Length should be anywhere from 500-1500 words.
• If we decide to run the piece, we will contact you and let you know when it has been uploaded to the site.

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GIFTS & GIVING: “When the Present is the Presentation,” by Zara Bode

Continuing our series on “Gifts & Giving” honky-tonk singer-songwriter sensation, Zara Bode, offers a suggestion on how to make even a store-bought gift personal.

Get out your blinders, put in your earplugs, and (if you haven’t already) throw your TV out the window. These are the precautions we must take in order to best avoid the commercial slam of the holidays. There’s little we can do to fight it, but year after year, in our last efforts we will take the ideals of the “perfect gift” and fight back with homemade bath salts, jams (yes please!), or more likely end up denouncing gifts for the season altogether.

But what we forget is that the offense is not in the practice, but in the presentation. A gift should be seen as a communication, a statement from one to the other that they are loved, welcomed, and appreciated. This is why I wrap my presents with the same pride in presentation, as I would decorate my home for the welcoming of guests. If you want to be a grinch, go ahead, but I’m hoping to reclaim the heart in this holiday tradition, by trying to find the beauty in the exchange.

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GIFTS & GIVING: “An Immediatist Potlatch,” by Hakim Bey

Excerpted from Hakim Bey’s book Immediatism. For the entire text please click here. In this section Hakim Bey gives us a taste of what a possible “Immediatist potlatch” would look like, fit with homemade gifts and performances.

iv.
The main purpose of the potlatch is of course gift-giving. Every player should arrive with one or more gifts & leave with one or more different gifts. This could be accomplished in a number of ways: (a) Each player brings one gift & passes it to the person seated next to them at the table (or some similar arrangement); (b) Everyone brings a gift for every other guest. The choice may depend on the number of players, with (a) better for larger groups & (b) for smaller gatherings. If the choice is (b), you may want to decide beforehand whether the gifts should be the same or different. For example, if I am playing with five other people, do I bring (say) five hand-painted neckties, or five totally different gifts? And will the gifts be given specifically to certain individuals (in which case they might be crafted to suit the recipient’s personality), or will they be distributed by lot?

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GIFTS & GIVING: “The Gift,” by Blake Seidenshaw

Like all gifts, the gift of giving is as much for the giver as for the receiver. This paradox is especially true of homemade gifts. The modern tradition of purchasing pre-made gifts arises from our tendency to want to really give something to the receiver. Interacting through the medium of money, however, severs the giver, in a way, from the gift, and emphasizes the unidirectionality of flow, downplaying the interpersonal nature of giving. When you give something you’ve made, the act of giving retains a strong reciprocity. The receiver still “gets” something, but in that reception, “gives” something back as well.

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GIFTS & GIVING: “Three Wise Offerings from Three Wise Men,” By KSmith Reveler

The conventional telling of the Christmas story reports that three “Wise Men,” “kings from the East,” or three Magi ignited the custom of gift giving by bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Baby Jesus on Epiphany (12 days after Christmas). Most likely these three travelers were not kings at all, but rather, Persian Zoroastrian priests or missionaries. They were also astronomers (not astrologers) and had been following a kind of cosmic event, often referred to as the “Star of Bethlehem.”

Let’s investigate the symbolic significance of the gifts they brought:

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