John Swinburn

I brined the turkey breast. My favorite wife prepared the broccoli and rice casserole (I chopped the jalapeños). Tomorrow morning, I will fire up the smoker and get to work. Five and one half-hours after I put the fractional bird in the smoker, it will be ready, or so I’m told. Once out of the smoker at the proper temperature, we’ll cover it in foil and put it away for the weekend. For tomorrow is not a day for smoked turkey. Do you not realize tomorrow is cinco de mayo? The day is celebrated (more in the U.S. than in Mexico) as the day Mexican troops overcame French troops at the Battle of Puebla. Many people wrongly assume cinco de mayo is Mexican independence day. No. That’s diez y seis de septiembre; September 16. Regardless, we’re going to smoke turkey tomorrow and wait it out while we celebrate the day with two sets of neighbors, both progressives. So, no party; but we’ll drink margaritas in the name of decency and honor and we’ll eat Mexican-inspired hors d’oeuvres and the like. And, then, on Saturday and beyond, we’ll celebrate by eating pavo ahumado and cazuela de broccoli con arroz. The adoption of cultural celebrations (which I do NOT consider cultural appropriation) and honor of cultures through their foods are ways in which I think we can acknowledge our appreciation for other lifestyles and cultures.Diversity in all its healthy forms deserves appreciation and acknowledgement. After all, we’re but evidence of the diversity of biological organisms, aren’t we? Well of course we are.

We cannot begin to imagine the way communities of ants or seagulls or squirrels function. We assume, if they function in communities at all, they operate according to genetic encoding over which they have no control; they are “animals,” after all, so they do not think, feel emotion, or grieve the loss of friends and family in the way of humans. That’s probably true; not “in the way of humans.” But I suspect we simply do not understand ants and seagulls and squirrels; our own tendency to attribute to their behaviors human motivations and human communications cloud our attempts to understand them. I doubt they think and feel and communicate the way humans do; but I think they “think” and “feel” and “communicate” in ways we just do not understand. We assume, because their brains do not seem as complex and sophisticated as ours, they cannot be as complex and sophisticated as we humans are. That arrogant logic makes it unlikely we will ever have the capacity to understand them. The only way we might ever understand other beings is by shedding our notions of what constitutes thought. That, though, is harder than it seems. How can we imagine ways of thinking and feeling utterly foreign to our own experience? I do not know. But just imagine a dream in which you are thinking and speaking in Japanese (assuming you have no knowledge of Japanese); you cannot, because the ability to think and speak in Japanese is beyond your comprehension. It’s possibly to learn Japanese, but to do so requires shedding reliance on the way in which one forms words and strings them together. But what ant or seagull or squirrel is able or willing to teach us concepts and perspectives so distant from our experience that we cannot even imagine them? Yet we might imagine how a seagull or an ant or a squirrel thinks. “The world is food and so am I.” That single “thought” might color experience in a fundamental way. Couple that with a “thought” that in some fashion defines affiliation or affection in a way that makes the object of affiliation or affection “not food” and you have the building blocks of community. Perhaps. Based entirely on my own human way of thinking. Which limits my ability to understand things beyond my comprehension.

We sometimes keep meaningless records longer than necessary. Much longer than necessary. As my wife was going through some old papers this morning in preparation for shredding paperwork we no longer need, she came upon a folder with records of a citation I received in the mail in December 2003.

The ticket alleged violation of 5620, Chapt. 7A-18, litter. In a note on the citation, the issuing officer, Cheryl G. Daniels, had written “debri (sic) adjacent to premise.” The citation said the date of offense was 12/19/2003. I had no idea why I would have received such a citation. I went outside, looked all around my house, and found nothing that might have warranted the issuance of a ticket. So, on January 1, 2004, I wrote a  letter to the City of Dallas Municipal Court, pleading not guilty to the alleged offense and, on the back side of the ticket in the place reserved for declaring my intent, requesting a trial by jury. Not long thereafter, I received in the mail a notice that my case had been scheduled for September 1, 2004 at 8:30 a.m. I was given the opportunity to summon witnesses (which I opted not to do). According to the notice, “the State will summon its own witnesses. A $5.00 witness summons fee will be assessed if you are convicted.”

On the appointed date, I appeared in Municipal Court, prepared to defend myself against a false allegation of being a litterer. I remember sitting in the courtroom, waiting for my turn to take the stand in my defense when, after several other cases were discussed and scheduled, the judge asked an attorney for the city to proceed with my case. The attorney recommended dismissal and the judge agreed. I was invited to the bench, where the judge, Daniel F. Solis, handed me a slip of paper with details of my case and upon which “dismissed” had been stamped.

I have no idea, to this day, why I received that citation in the mail. But I was prepared to fight it, tooth and nail. As I think about the alleged offense and my reaction to it this morning, Arlo Guthrie’s story-in-song, “Alice’s Restaurant Masacre,” about being arrested for littering. Except he was guilty; I was not. And I have no idea why, almost thirteen years after I was cleared of the charge that might otherwise have sullied my reputation and ruined my life, I still have a copy of the ticket, my letter, and other records surrounding that dark event in my life. Well, I can tell you this: after today, I will no longer have those records. I’m going to cleanse that incident from my past with the help of a shredder.