At Medium

I got gas in the tank
I got money in the bank
I got news for you, baby
You’re looking at the man

Brandon Flowers et al

I haven’t slept tonight.  The weak 8:00 AM light is nudging itself through my very, very closed blinds.  The light, the noise growing in the house as my parents start their day, the questionable lucidity, it all feels like high school again.  I remember a good number of mornings like this. Burning the midnight oil, fighting tooth and nail through massive history papers for a uniquely exacting teacher.  I suspect this won’t be the last time in the next four years I’ll be reminded of Mr. Parr as I enter a demanding, highly fraternal liberal arts college with a reputation for churning out lawyers and politicians.

This tranquility could be yours. . .Visit Honolulu

In my latest insomnia-fueled twitter plunge, I happened to stumble across a thread explaining Starfish Prime.  If that sounds like grandiose, esoteric nonsense euphemizing cold war era insanity, well it’s because that’s exactly what it is.  According to a wikipedia article I glanced at to cite a source that is not twitter dot com, Starfish Prime was a code name for one of several clandestine nuclear detonations in the early 60’s.  The reason we haven’t heard of them?  They shot the nukes into space.  The Kennedy era feds, hopped up on cigarettes and benzos, figured the best way to keep the Ruskis from knowing what was up our sleeves was shooting the biggest firework the world has ever seen into the one place the Soviets couldn’t stick their spies: outer space.  We got bored with irradiating New Mexico and the Pacific Ocean – fuck it, we might as well give space cancer too.  And let me tell you, the pictures from this thing are the most beautiful goddamn thing I ever saw.  I mean they’re incredible, they’re the kind of images that will make you groan about “awesome” being overused, that’s the kind of awe these images deserve.  I don’t use the word apocalyptic lightly.  For a brief moment, the sky melted.   I try to comprehend being that pilot that took these terrible photographs (as well as pausing to quote the Bhagavat-Gita in a very hackish and derivative manner), meekly puttering away from the gates of Hell. The scientific Tower of Babel.  Part of me struggles to empathize with him, like he should embrace the Wrath of God and accept his fate for playing accomplice to such a payload with dignity and humility.  But then again I’m just an asshole with a keyboard.

The Wrath of God, as seen from the comfort of a modern aeroplane

I think about my family.  Specifically, my great to the nth degree grandparents that bet it all on black to move to a strange land and create something better for their children.  It’s become a bit hackneyed to tug at the heartstrings of the sappy American consciousness with appeals to working class ethics and abstract references to immigration. But I’m trying to be less cynical so I think it’s worth engaging with honestly.  Let’s face it, none of our ancestors were royalty.  The one common American Gene is that each and every one of us came from the mud.  At least our great-nth-grandparents did, and they busted their asses every day to give their children a better life, and so did their children, so on and so forth.  We’re all peasants by blood; The oddity of America is that blood no longer equals birthright.  I think about my grandpa Pat, my dad’s dad.  The man didn’t have it easy. Poor and forced to become a man earlier than he should’ve, he did what any young man in the late 50’s would’ve done in those shoes: he joined the navy.  I always remember hearing about how he came home from the service with a 28” waist.  We always have been. . .twiggy.  Point being, he married my grandmother and started his family with nothing to his name except his name.  He was and always will be a union man through and through.  The man simply believes in work.  Twelve hour days making Buicks, and I’m willing to bet as long as he remembered that he was working to give his children a better life and more opportunities than he had, he never complained once.  That’s a powerful thing.  I suspect that this level of stoicism has been bred out of the Ellenbergers somewhat, as evidenced by this *thing* being written at all.  The most amazing thing is that his hard work actually paid off.  My parents were the first generation in both families to go to college.  They accomplished their mission: they provided the link from the generation with less to the generation with more.  It’s so easy to get lost in the nihilism (a sign of intellectual weakness) vis-a-vis our crumbling democracy that we forget that maybe upon stepping back from marxist class pugnacity and libertarian fantasies of rugged bootstrapping riches – we find that work has *value*.  Especially when the fruits of your sacrificial labor will go on to to feed those that will carry your name.  

Picture, now with Caption!

Ever since I can remember, I secretly very deep down always wanted to be The Man.  The center of attention, the charismatic rockstar that could command the attention of a room simply with the wave of a hand or a well timed zinger.  The older I get, the more outgoing and thus happier I become, so even though I’m still not there yet, the dream feels more real than it did.  I am in a sort of unique position.  I exist at a point in my bloodline, where, quite literally, each of my forefathers has laid a stepping stone gradually climbing up to me: suburban, comfortable Nathan.  But the escalation is more than just comfort.  I, and many of my peers along with me, am the most upwardly mobile member of my family in History.   A great deal of us are going to good schools in fields that we’re passionate about, and the ones that aren’t have launched into the workforce with gusto, working in fields that excite them.  The cosmic absurdity of me of all people being gifted, nay blessed, with this unprecedented good fortune haunts me.  Because I’m in the first wave of Ellenbergers that has been granted the luxury of thinking about such things.  The first Ellenberger that has been put in a position to work towards being The Man instead of just having to be *a man* out of necessity.  Pretty much everything I think or do is all extremely petty and inconsequential so I try to not take for granted what my ancestors, grandparents, and parents have built for me to take off from.  But I play the cards I’ve been dealt, and when you’ve been given the cards I have, it’s hard to see your life as the product of anything else but cosmic luck.  The great irony is that I am privileged beyond my great-nth-grandparents dreams, but I still want more.  I can’t help but shoot for the stars, even if I detonate spectacularly in the stratosphere.

My grandfather (left), myself (center), and portraits of my uncle (top right) and my father (bottom right)

I always liked working. Gives you a reason to get up in the morning.

My Uncle, My Father’s Brother

Nathan E.

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