Oh, the dreaded day is upon me! While I comfortably hide in my house every day, crippled by social anxiety, poor social skills, a compulsive suspicion of others’ motives, and simple shyness—I am secure in the knowledge that there are boundaries to a person’s property—If someone knocks on my door, I don’t have to let them in—I can say, “Go away.” –and no matter how rude of me that is, they legally have to go away.
But today, the normal rules don’t apply. Today I must put on a full set of clothes—I must accomplish my full ‘toilette’ and present myself, smiling wide, to whatever crowd of monstrous children inhabit my doorstep. I must have a bowl full of bribes for my own protection. And worst of all, I must engage with all their parents as if they were common sights upon my doorstep with a frightening attention to my health and mood—I must say I’m fine and ask them if they are also. It makes me shudder.
I miss the old ways of childhood. When I was of school age, I knew every kid in a thirty mile radius—I wandered near and far, and so did they—we mingled in the way only those unfamiliar with their surroundings have a need to mingle. But now I don’t know my next door neighbor—with a handful of exceptions, I don’t know a soul in my neighborhood—and while I’m exceptionally anti-social, they too are anti-social by virtue of being grown adults with ‘things to do’. We are all more likely to form our social-circles based on old school ties and our present place of work. Indeed the modern mode is to accept ignorance of our neighbors as part of the ‘hominess’ of being at home, where no one will ‘bother’ you. I am acutely aware of this because I’ve been unemployed for so long—I have no workplace mingling, no new employees to meet, no old employees to say goodbye to.
So when I have to look across the ‘connecting costumed kids’ at the complete strangers that are my neighboring parents, I feel both disappointed and extremely uncomfortable. People freak me out. They sometimes believe the strangest things. They sometimes staunchly oppose scientifically-accepted realities. Some of them even carry firearms—I guess—or so I’m led to believe. There are lots of people who are a little crazy, but not so crazy that they’re locked up for it—they just wander around, having lives just like the rest of us—but they scare the bejeezus out of me.
When I listen to other music, I am open-minded and forgiving—if something doesn’t catch my ear at once, I’m willing to give it a chance. When I am feeling very hard-headed and down-to-earth, I can’t enjoy music as much as I otherwise do—engaging one’s critical faculties too completely puts one in the position of ‘finding fault’—and no creative impulse can survive such a negative onslaught.
It only now occurs to me that I always turn my criticism on ‘high’ whenever I judge my own efforts—and in doing so I’m being less fair to myself than I would be to a long-dead stranger—so today I’m having a moratorium on self-doubt and self-criticism. I enjoyed playing this improv on my piano and that’s all there is to that.
Speaking of being open-minded and forgiving—I just watched Chris Columbus’s “Pixels” on VOD. Liberals doses of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ are required (and a little THC doesn’t hurt either) but if, like me, you are a fan of Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, and video arcade games—then “Pixels” is funny, and a lot of fun.
First of all—I love movies where the characters start as children and then, through the magic of “30 Years Later…”, we begin the real story of the characters in the present day. It’s a great way to give a story depth, especially something as goofy as “Pixels”. Secondly, I love a movie where no one is inherently evil—childishly stupid, yes—misguided, greedy, not thinking things through, … whatever—yes—and I think this is closer to real life. Reality never seems to have a positive villain—for every issue there are just a lot of sides, a lot of needs, and a lot of pigheadedness—but rarely pure evil.
The good guys win and the guy gets the girl—other features I’m always in favor of. No lengthy wrong-turns into gloom and despair—another plus. Factoid hunters on IMDb point out that many game characters used were derived from post-1982 video games, which belies the film’s premise—but if that was the most unbelievable part of this movie, the world would be a very strange place.
What I enjoyed noticing was all the kid actors’ credits—many of the smaller roles were played by children with last names like Sandler, James, and Covert (one of the producers of the film) and I can only assume that the film’s set was very much a family affair. And if you look closely, you’ll catch a glimpse of the actual Professor Toru Iwatani, inventor of Pac-Man, doing a cameo as a game repairman in an early scene, at the Electric Dream Factory arcade. Good times.
In my walk earlier, I felt a strong regret that I hadn’t brought my camera, so I shot a few snaps out the window to use for today’s video:
I began to read a story on Medium and got into it before I realized it was telling of the writer’s attempts to deal with a sister’s suicide—but I couldn’t stop reading. Not how I would have chosen to start my day. Then, in my email, there’s a NY Times story about China ending its one-child policy—imagine—the largest population on earth, largely undeveloped, largely hungry—and the government’s policy was not to grow more food, but to have less people. Bunch of fucking geniuses in charge over there—well, they’ve given it up now, so that’s something. Still no word on growing more food, though—fucking geniuses.
I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about abortion. What is life? When does it begin? The Pro-Lifers will insist that life begins at the moment of fertilization. That makes sense to a degree—otherwise we’d have to consider every ovum or spermatozoa a potential life as well. Imagine a killer being charged with however many counts of murder as there were ova in his victim’s ovaries—not to mention the thousands of potential lives wasted every time a man masturbates—that would be ridiculous.
Still—is fertilization the only decision-point? Before modern medicine, we considered the first breath taken as the dividing line between potential and human life. Further back, infants were not fully human until after their baptism—and even further back, one was not part of the tribe until one had passed the coming-of-age trial. One could make the case that the first fetal heartbeat was the start of life—or, if we could do an EEG test on fetuses, we could say that the beginning of consciousness was the true start. For legal purposes, we now use the term ‘viable’, which connotes the fetuses’ ability to survive outside their wombs, as a dividing line between potential and human life.
We cannot escape the fact that our modern arguments over terminology are a by-product of our understanding of medicine. In times past, unwanted newborns were abandoned, or even murdered outright—and this was usually done to female infants. Men, having been born and raised by their own mothers, saw no further use for additional women—talk about ego. And women were forced to produce as many babies as possible, even if it killed them. While this created a built-in workforce for the men, it only created bigger crowds which the women had to cook for, clean, and clothe every day. And with health being what it was, a woman who birthed ten or fifteen children could still end up with only a few survivors—just as her own life was nasty, brutish, and short.
The western patriarchal society of old was expert in dismissing everything of value about women while imposing on them unconscionable limits to their rights and freedoms. Even the shadow of those times today leaves many women doubting their equality with men. And who can blame them for this confusion? Taken all in all, women are not equal to men—they are superior. Women biologically have greater endurance, greater resistance to stress—and they can produce life. Men seem to surpass women only in their ability to bully—which perhaps explains why we’ve waited until the 21st century to address bullying as a bad thing.
The church’s insistence on women being available to men (their ‘wifely’ duty) provided a rational for men to copulate with women even against their wishes (which could easily be described as ‘rape’, even among married couples). And this fiat to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ was extended to forbid women from doing anything to interfere with any life engendered by this manhandling. Thus the taboo on birth control. Originally, birth control was considered ‘anything’—including the so-called rhythm method or the use of a simple condom. The crime was that of withholding the creation of new life in any way—not of killing an unborn baby. Had earlier societies known how to determine the sex of an infant before birth, they would have gleefully aborted plenty of babies as worthless females-in-waiting.
The present-day Pro Life movement is a tattered vestige of this ancient misogyny—having lost the religious upper-hand, they are left with this one specious category of birth control that still offers them a lifeline to the draconian morals of old. And how they scream about the ‘sanctity of life’—while ignoring every one of the many other ways in which life is brutalized by society from cradle to grave.
The debate over fertilization versus viability should be decided in favor of a woman’s right to choose if for no other reason than women deserve some recompense for the untold centuries of sexual slavery and gender persecution as the established order of things. If, in granting women the right to control their own bodies, we allow for the possibility of some rare abuse, it is nothing compared to the rank injustice that has been women’s lot for so very, very long.
Walking outside in the drizzle this late in October (Halloween is Saturday) I feel a chill yet I don’t need a jacket—it’s a short walk—just long enough to see the thick golden blanket of leaves on the lawn, the swirl of leaves falling through the breeze in the trees, and hear the whispered rustle of so much paper-like shuffling it becomes its own white noise. All summer long the trees had been uniformly green—now they each display their true natures—dark crimson, golden yellow, or faded sunset orange—and the leaves leave the trees, filling the air and carpeting the ground, gathering in wind-blown piles.
All yesterday the neighborhood ached with the high groans of leaf-blowers—today’s light rain leaves me the joy of autumn’s delicate hiss, unsullied. I know I am old because I no longer sense the aroma of mimeograph ink in the smell of fall’s foliage and moldering breath—even a passing school bus makes me ponder the driver’s sobriety rather than its sweat-stanky back seats—that’s how old and parental I’ve become.
Neither do I obsess over my costume or dream of pillowcases filled with candy—instead I dread the monotonous getting up to answer the door and sitting back down only to hear the bell again. But Trick-or-Treating has fallen out of favor in our modern age—so now the wearying chore becomes instead a long wait between rare interruptions—almost a relief as well as an annoyance. Where are the crowds of kids that wandered the local streets of yesteryear? Why do I feel my own age so sharply as the year itself comes to a close?
Void unimaginable, an ocean without a floor or shore
Floating there I wait and see only distance and space
No company to joke with—no more after or before
Floating where eternity dances yet hides its face
With feet that never find a place
And I am small amid the vastness
And I am lost among the stars
And I am never going to see again the green
And I am stuck forever in between
And if I died no one would know it
And if there’s hope no one will show it
I swim
In this vastness
The power of nothingness overwhelming my mind
No chink in the every of everywhere always
No feature or landmark remaining to find
Come speak to me love—(I don’t care what she says)—
Say what you will but please say Yes.
Face and Bubbles – Collage
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 12:10 AM
Post (2015Oct27)
Well, I may have gone a little too dark on this poem—I tried to pull the nose up, at the end—but maybe too little too late. Anyway, the point is that too much solitude is as mentally unhealthy as too little sunlight is physically unhealthy. Love is necessary, or friendship—even simple companionship which, while not as profound, may be easier to come by—I’ll take anything to break that recursive loneliness loop that eventually drives one insane.
The new pictures are made with my new oil pastels—I haven’t quite got the hang of them yet. I’ve always had a problem with color—I tend to use them all. I like prisms and rainbows—I’m very democratic, even inclusive, when it comes to color.
The piano cover of “Autumn In New York” goes well with all the gold and orange leaves outside my window—my voice—maybe not so much. I threw in the other three covers just because. I’m struggling with my improvs lately—I have been trying to make them better for decades, but I feel like I can’t find anything new anymore—we’ll see—maybe I’ll have an epiphany or something. In the meantime, I’m just trying to sound entertaining.
Bubbles
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 10:38 AM
Real Progress (2015Oct27)
In just a few days, we will have reached the one-year mark on our presidential campaign—I can’t help wondering what the previous twelve months of back and forth were supposed to accomplish, other than to fill air time on cable-news shows and politics-based social media threads. It’s hard to stomach all the focus on ‘who it will be’ without any concern about ‘what will they do’. Yet, with the right-wing, those are the same question—a tea-party candidate will do nothing—except try to keep others from doing anything—that’s their whole agenda.
Likewise, a moderate Republican will do nothing—not for lack of trying, but because of their tea-party brethren. And even a Democrat will get done only as much as the executive office allows—because the House and Senate are still firmly in the hands of the GOP. The only real hope for governmental or legislative action is if the Democrats can find a way to win back those Congressional seats, as well as win the White House. So this presidential campaign obsession is just the usual media focus on the inconsequential. Ben Carson (not to mention Trump) is a scary possibility—but the odds of anyone but white males voting for either one is so low as to make their chances in a general election ‘slim to none’.
The same can be said of Bernie Sanders—he’s got the far-left tied up, but he could never get the majority of the nation’s voters either. That leaves Hillary, whom everyone has assumed will win all along—only she’ll be hobbled by the same GOP congress that bedeviled Obama. Again, the real story—the story that’s being ignored—is whether the Democrats can elect local support, outside of the presidency.
Of course, I could be wrong—we may get a Republican president, if voters are stupid enough—what a hell on earth that would be. Despite Obama’s heroic efforts, we still haven’t dug ourselves out of the hole the last GOP president buried us in. The only good that came out of Bush’s two terms was getting Democrats out to vote—Obama began his terms with a friendly Congress and I’m still confused as to how we managed to screw that up.
Well, not really—the answer is horribly simple. The Democrats, while they have an edge on common sense and American values, are just as dumb, lazy, spineless, and corrupt as the Republicans—both our candidates and we voters. Intellect and transparency can find a place in the Democratic party—which, as I say, gives them something of an edge—but we’re still people, just like the GOP folks. And people are human—with all the failings that implies.
When I look back on all the changes in society, I’m dumbstruck by the incredible progress we’ve made. While we still struggle with racism, at least it has lost its legitimacy in the laws of our land. While we still lack gender equality, we have seen women get access to birth-control, jobs, and inclusion far beyond the Suzy Homemaker mindset of my childhood. While we still have issues with LGBT equality, we have at least progressed beyond the point of considering homosexuality as a crime, or a mental disease. To me, this is the real progress of our country—I could care less about laptops, cellphones, smart-cars, and DNA sequencing, if it doesn’t have the open-minded humanity that an enlightened, modern culture deserves.
Ben Carson seems unusually ignorant for a respected brain surgeon—how can that be? It is a signal victory of fundamentalism that it has the flexibility to accept technical training and scientific rigor within the confines of the purely mechanical—and yet maintains its insistence on magical thinking within selected contexts. The Amish are the exception, as they eschew even geared wheels and electric current—a mystery, yet more sensible in its absolutism than the pick-and-choose fundamentalism of run-of-the-mill bible-thumpers like Ben.
Modern Christians usually accept that current science replaces the ‘factual’ tautology and cosmology of the Bible without doing any great harm to the spiritual content of that Good Book. Orthodox Christian Scientists are the exception, as they eschew the medical science and practices that Ben is so known for. Oddly, the Christian Scientists will drive a car—and the Amish will take medicine—yet it is accepted that both groups worship the same God as the less stringent, more casual believers of mainstream Protestantism.
Catholics have their specialty too, but it lies in the more ethereal realm of ‘morality’—their focus is often on birth-control and gender-bias (and gender ‘purity’, i.e. LGBT hatred). This is a hangover from the days when the Catholic Church made a business out of selling forgiveness—and business was good, while it lasted. But there is always a boomerang effect—young Amish are most tempted by muscle cars; young Christian Scientists are most tempted by medical relief—but Catholics, being focused on sex and gender, are most tempted by sexuality.
Religious ‘specialty features’ become a window into human nature—whatever is most feared becomes that which is most fascinating. Certain ‘tools’ are used to limit this gravitational attraction to the forbidden. The Amish use the wanderjahr, or Rumspringa, as a way of allowing their young adults to experience the wider world—knowing that some will choose to remain in that world, rather than return to the Amish culture. Of those who choose an Amish life, there is also the practice of ‘shunning’, which cuts all ties to any member of the community who breaks faith with their rules. Being such a backward culture, the Amish community requires these cut-offs to prevent their ranks from swelling with rebellious members willing to allow changes into their way of life. Ignoring two centuries of change across the rest of the globe is no easy task.
The Catholics have absolution, which makes it possible to break their rules and still have a place in the community—but they also have excommunication, which is a paradoxical process by which they exempt the worst offenders from absolution, and of acceptance in their community. Forgiveness is their watchword—unless one goes too far, for which is there is no forgiveness—like I said—paradoxical.
Protestants have only propriety—which in its way is even more insidious. A staunch protestant can invent more rules and strictures than other faiths could imagine—and these inventions can become part of the societal conventions of a community. It is almost an art form—deciding which aspects of our lives make us most uncomfortable and using religious vagaries to mark such aspects as evil—and this changes from place to place, based on the local preferences. In this way, one person’s eccentricities can acquire the solidity of scientific fact. It is, in many ways, the most imaginative way of seeing things—but it operates more upon our imagined fears than our imagined hopes.
The most strident criticisms I hear regarding my atheism are those that claim I have nothing—that only a fool would go through life without a God. That makes perfect sense to a believer—but from my point of view we all have nothing—and some of us simply pretend there is something there. I can’t pretend that they aren’t happier in their beliefs—that my life doesn’t have less glory and joy than theirs. Unfortunately, I require more than convenience as a reason to believe—and I require my beliefs to fit in with what I know to be true.
Knowledge, too, is problematical. What I know to be true is a very small fraction of what there is to know. Atheists, even atheist scientists, live in a world of ignorance—we don’t know how the universe was created, we don’t know why humans exist, we don’t know any sure answers to replace religious beliefs. Atheists don’t offer alternative beliefs, we just don’t accept older beliefs out of convention or convenience. We allow for the fact that such an unknowable universe is probably not revealed in ancient myths, even the most modern, monotheistic versions of those myths.
And here the dichotomy of scripture becomes an issue. The scientific ignorance of ancient times is debunked by the advances of science—the older the ‘facts’, the more likely their inaccuracy. Human nature, on the other hand, is well-served by millennia of observation and contemplation—the spiritual aspects of sacred writings have much to offer in terms of how we treat each other and how we view ourselves. Thus the teachings of Moses, of Christ, of Mohammed or Buddha—these words have value to society—but the conflation of this wisdom with the creation myths and other factual ignorance of ancient times makes these scriptures mixed bags of wisdom and nonsense.
This dichotomy is further confused by our preference for the path of least resistance. Jesus tells us to give freely, to be charitable, merciful, and forgiving—but that’s extremely inconvenient. It is so much more satisfying to use dogma to attack others, or use piety to aggrandize ourselves. Jefferson famously created his own personal cut-and-paste bible in which he selected those passages which he felt had the most meaning to his times, and left out that which harkened back to a more primitive age. Dogmatic insistence on the entirety of the Bible creates a false boundary, requiring that we take the good with the bad—and ignoring the fact that the Bible is an evolved text, which has already been changed many times throughout history.
There is much to doubt, and much to question, in the established religions of our times—and so we see many scientists are also atheists, whether that makes them unhappy or not. And a brain surgeon is very much like a scientist, so we expect someone like Ben Carson to question dogmas that are laughably unscientific. Sadly, we must accept that brain surgery, unlike medical research, is a trained skill—a very complex and intellectually demanding skill, but still ultimately a rote process that, while requiring a sharp mind and a steady hand, nonetheless requires no great curiosity or imagination.
Surprisingly, atheism is not a matter of mere intellect—the fundamentalists have many great thinkers amongst them. But as with idiot savants, intellectuals can accomplish great mental challenges without a commensurate breadth of perception or understanding. Ben Carson is a respected brain surgeon—he could just as easily be a rocket scientist—either way, he still would not be guaranteed wisdom—or leadership.
His recent obtuse comments about school-shootings and gay marriage reveal the superficial character of his thought processes—and prove that specialized skill in one area does not equip anyone to succeed at everything. When Donald Trump extolls his business acumen, we can question how that jibes with two bankruptcies, but when Ben Carson says he’s a good brain surgeon, there’s no reason to doubt him. Nevertheless, it is little indication that he is prepared to lead the free world—it is in fact proof that he knows nothing about it, since brain surgery requires no small amount of concentration.
Ben Carson does, however, fit in with the Tea Party’s attitudes about small government, disrupted government, even no government. How apropos that their candidate has no experience in governing. What it does not explain is why Ben Carson would want to be president. I think of such candidates, Trump or Carson, as ‘suicide bomber’ candidates—they just want to get into the White House so they can blow it all to smithereens.
Back in my youth, the hippies decided to drop out of established society because of all its faults and hypocrisy—but they eventually realized that productive change can only be accomplished from within the establishment. The right-wing partisans of the present are going through the same learning process—the only question is how much damage will their shut-downs and obstructionism do to our country before they realize the same thing.
Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing was a spectacle. Republican congresspersons were indefatigably terse, insensitive, and thick-headed for eleven hours. Their pretense of nonpartisanship would have been better served had even one of them said even one civil word to the former Secretary of State throughout their marathon grilling. And even Hillary Clinton might have wilted under such a barrage of enmity, had she not had the regular interruptions of the Democratic members, who spent their time castigating the hearing itself, rather than its witness—to whom they pretty much offered apologies that she was required to be subject to that circus.
After the preceding seven hearings, it’s hard to see how the Republicans committee members had hoped to appear anything other than incompetent during this eighth, Clinton-only farce. All the GOP members at the dais were former prosecutors—and after witnessing their bullying, all-talk, no-listen tirades, I was ready to despair not just of the Congress, but of our justice system as well. To ‘win a case’, in our dreary reality, often replaces the seeking out of truth among hot-shot lawyers—and these specific lawyers have transferred that worst-of-all-failings of our legal system to our legislative system. Their desire for a partisan victory, rather than clarity, showed through every syllable of their attempted mugging.
With all the talk of ‘transparency’ yesterday, it was the Republicans who were revealed as transparent in their partisanship. I would have been tremendously embarrassed to have been among their number—but then, I’m not trapped in an extremist right-wing bubble of anger and resentment. They showed the sorry enthusiasm of cheerleaders for a team being soundly trounced—lots of noise to little purpose.
Darling Hillary—now, that’s a different story. Eleven hours of unruffled poise and competency—I was blown away by her strength, her endurance, and her intelligence. If her poll numbers don’t reflect a surge of approval for her candidacy, then I give up on this country for good—if hi-jinx and raillery can drown out such astute capability, then democracy has finally failed us. The late Margaret Thatcher has a new rival for the title “Iron Lady”.
I learned two things yesterday—the Benghazi attack was a horrible tragedy, and Hillary Clinton was not the cause of it. If that is what the Republicans wished America to learn yesterday, then—job well done, folks.
I don’t know. I have a lot going on inside me—it makes me feel like I have something to write—but there’s just chaos in there, virtually screaming a million things at once, none of it coherent. So, no, not really anything to write.
My body seems to be slowly bouncing back from its long decline—enough so that I begin to feel restless about spending all day every day inside this tiny house. Not that we don’t love our cozy little cabin—but hell, sometimes you have to go out. Now, that wasn’t true—hasn’t been true for many years—I’d focus more on having the energy to get out of bed or make myself a sandwich or take a shower. But before I got sick, it was pretty common—I get bored and frustrated very quickly when I’m in touch with my full capacity.
And I’m sick and tired of retracing my words just to explicate that ‘full capacity’ now does not mean back to my original 35-year-old, healthy, rambunctious self. Take it as given that if I’m talking about a resurgence of my vitality or a sharpening of my senses, I’m only talking relative to my near-death experience and decades-long infirmity. I’ll never be young again. I’ll never have twenty-twenty vision again. My hands will never be steady again. And most of all I’ll never have the ability to get lost in my own thoughts again.
I used to think of that zoned-out state I’d get into while programming code or drawing a picture as a kind of wandering—but it wasn’t. I was taking for granted something that came easily to me—but now I can see it for the very strenuous hacking through the mental jungle that it was. I can feel the effort of thought now—if I heard about effort of thinking in those young days, I refused to believe it. I couldn’t perceive any effort—even though my mind was functioning like gang-busters. I miss that a lot—in the way you can only miss something that you lost without ever having known how valuable it was.
Of course, I also miss it because it was my meal ticket. I used to think that I was lucky to find a job in programming and systems—now it is clear to me that I was never good at anything else, not professionally. My mind started to weaken from illness at about the same time I was considering looking for more challenging coding work. It was very frustrating to lose my super-power, slowly, mysteriously, just as I was trying to move on to even more difficult puzzles. Now I can’t program my way out of a paper bag—which leaves me with a large past life that was headed towards something I can never go back to. So, yeah, I miss that a lot.
My old self is dead. I am alive. It’s a quandary.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 10:29 AM
Fall proceeds apace—others have posted some striking photos of the leaves changing, so I’m gonna pass on taking my own photos of the yard and environs. The urge to photograph things is always there, but I’d rather conserve my energy on the off-chance that I’ll get antsy enough to draw a picture instead.
The endless drone of leaf-blowers gives the Fall a sour strangeness—these people want their mess cleaned up and their lawns bare, and they don’t care how much racket they make getting it done. Who could have imagined that getting an artificial wind to blow would be best accomplished with tiny engines that make a deafening whine and emit grey clouds of diesel soot?
But enough of my seasonal peeves—no more. What matters is the doing—and what am I doing?
Monday, October 19, 2015 6:04 PM
Joseph Henry was an American physicist who discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction nearly simultaneously with Michael Faraday, the Englishman who, through the vagaries of history, is known as its sole discoverer. But such quibbles about ‘first-places’ abound in the history of science—Morse was not the first man to send a signal by electrified wire, Edison was not the first man to create a moving picture (or a light-bulb, for that matter)—there are often two stories. One is the closely researched story of who did which step and when, and how it all ‘worked out’ to what we’re familiar with today—and the other story is what we call ‘popular history’, where Ford ‘invented’ the car and Italians ‘invented’ pasta.
It is a little odd that in trying to tell some of the detailed, accurate story, an historian has to set up and knock down several widely-held misapprehensions common in the popular understanding of history. Serious historians must tell the true story while ‘untelling’ the false ones. This can lead to great interest amongst the populace—and some will argue with any history based on the archived records simply because they love the popular version so much better. And some details are just too bothersome to retain—Columbus’s voyage west to the Indies involved five ships—this is well-documented, and even taught in school—but the image of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria endures.
The only book offered on Amazon.com has a blurb which extols the great achievements and the seminal place that Joseph Henry held in the formation of the United States as a scientific world leader, but such importance is belied by the fact that there is only the one book—a biography. I placed an order for a used copy—I want to see if I can find out why we care so little about a man who was Edison’s Edison.
I’ve also downloaded Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” from the Gutenburg Project’s digital library—I’m thinking of doing a video that combines my readings of passages, my illustrations of the story as images, and my music as soundtrack. The book is enormous—the idea of illustrating every passage, even in rough sketches, would take a younger man than myself—and completing such an audio/video chapter-book is that much more unlikely. But it will give me a project that never ends—and in my mind, they are the only ones worth starting.
I don’t know—I mean, I know a little, but not enough. I have no confidence—I mean, I have a little, but not enough. I don’t have the strength—well, maybe I could manage one effort, but not over and over. Most importantly, I lack enthusiasm—I can forget the past and enthuse for a moment, but inevitably I remember the past—entropy, illness, betrayal, and indifference—and I feel the enthusiasm melt away, a mist in sunlight.
Was it a wrong turn I took—and if it was, was there any life I could have lived that didn’t come to cynicism, eventually? (Maybe it’s Maybelline—right?) If I could have lived a life that avoided the lessons I’ve learned, would that ignorance have been better? No—I struggled equally hard with a lack of information. People are animals—once I learned not to judge that statement, once I learned just to accept it, I had to stop believing in the ‘but’. “People are animals, but…” But there is no ‘but’. Take away convention and pretense and all that’s left are animals, social animals—but animals just the same.
One divergence we like to point to is the ‘path of least resistance’—a dog will bark and dig from behind a fence, trapped because it cannot move forward; a person will look around and walk away from the fence to take a route around the obstacle. We cite this as a sign of human intelligence. Yet our powerful skills in finding obtuse escape routes seem to fail when we try to deal with society—we bark behind self-imposed fences at things we could easily work around, had we the imagination to walk away from conventions and acceptance.
Such open-mindedness might bring people further away from their animality—but whenever an open-minded person suggests getting away from conventions and acceptance, a close-minded person will jump on the idea and say, “Yes! Let’s start by ejecting morality and inclusion.” The desire to act out among others without consequences is really more animal, not less. A good liberal wants to avoid the strictures of conventions and acceptance, but retain the cooperation and inclusion that are society’s best features—it’s never easy and it’s never simple.
So we see that being a ‘rebel’ is an ambiguous role—breaking the rules encompasses both forward progress and devolution. To be conservative is to consider the whole thing as being too dangerous, too unpredictable—better to just keep things as they are, warts and all. A liberal considers change a necessary risk that it is better to engage with purpose than to strive to avoid. I’ve always considered conservatism as cowardice—but to believe that, I’m implicitly agreeing with conservatives that change is dangerous. It’s really quite a pickle.
The ‘Either-Or’ model is a false rationalization—whenever you hear someone say ‘we have to do this or we have to do that’, you know you’re being manipulated. There are countless ways to go through life; there are innumerable solutions to every problem—and we know this because of the infinite ways in which things can go wrong. If existence were an ‘either-or’ situation, it would be a much simpler place—but I’m sure that is impossible—because I think the complexity is a necessary element of existence.
This complexity is also the reason that we never win the fight against injustice—it finds its way around every rule, regulation, and watch-post. The only thing that stops injustice is self-determination. The only time you see people being just is when there’s a disaster—as soon as things calm down, they take a breath, and go right back to self-interest—self-determination’s idiot sibling—its non-nutritional replacement.
Self-interest is the easy, no-planning-required substitute for a considered life of self-determination. It’s oh so comfortable and commitment is optional—who wouldn’t be tempted? If only it weren’t for those silly games we all have to play to convince others that we actually care—if not for that, self-interest would be perfect. Yet without playing the game, you can’t hook the suckers who buy in to the whole self-determination rap. It’s a quandary. How does one climb over all those bodies while smiling at them and saying “How are you?”
Most who know me would say that to describe me as ‘quixotic’ would be putting it too kindly—I can be downright ingenuous when the situation arises—as it did today, as I read my Kindle while listening to classical music on my cable TV. Optimum cable offers Music Choice as part of its TV service—a channel for every popular music genre, displaying title and artists while it plays the audio (with silent graphic ads, of course). Classical music, being less than popular, gets only the last two channels—Classical Masterpieces and Light Classical. Don’t be fooled—the only difference is that Light Classical plays shorter pieces—they don’t really understand what ‘Light Classical’ means, technically. But the channels’ titles are not that big a deal.
What upset me was that I heard a Bach piano piece that I also play—it was familiar to me so I looked up from my book and saw “Bach- English Suite No. 1 in A – Huguette Dreyfus, Harpsichord”. This was not the first time I had seen Music Choice listing a piano performance as a harpsichord performance—while Baroque music can be played on the original harpsichord or the modern piano, they are very different performances that only a machine could confuse together—and inaccuracy makes me crazy—especially when it’s on a digital database. When a database is filled with errors, those errors last forever—it’s a mistake that will never be erased, and I don’t cotton to such rapscallity.
If Music Choice wants to spell Keisha with an ‘S’ instead of a dollar sign, that’s okay by me—but classical music is historical, and errors in historical data confuse an already difficult subject. Imagine if someone wrote a biography of George Washington that was full of inaccuracies—wouldn’t that bother you? Imagine how you’d feel if they put it on TV on an infinite loop, 24/7.
You won’t be surprised by what happened when I went on live-chat with Optimum’s customer service. But perhaps it will amuse you:
(responding)
New party (‘Tierra’) has joined the session
Tierra: Hi, my name is Tierra M and I will be assisting you today.
CHRIS DUNN: Hi Tierra
Tierra: Hi, My name is Tierra, How can I help you today?
CHRIS DUNN: Music Choice airs piano piece but titles it harpsichord piece on the Classical Masterpiece Channel – description is “Huguette Dreyfus, Harpsichord – Bach- English Suite No. 1 in A” but the performance is a piano.
CHRIS DUNN: This is not the first time I’ve seen mistakes in the listings
Tierra: I am sorry that you are having an issue and will be more than happy to assist you.
CHRIS DUNN: Who checks this stuff?
Tierra: Can we start by verifying the account info with your name/address/& phone # associated with the account please.
CHRIS DUNN: chris dunn po box 343 (914) 048-0035
Tierra: I need the complete service address please.
CHRIS DUNN: 44 jupiter drive, somer NY 10500
Tierra: Thank you, please allow me a few moments to review your account to better help you.
CHRIS DUNN: It is not me who requires help. I know that the titles on your Music Choice music are wrong—my concern is for the people that don’t know—who trust Optimum to provide accurate historical information
Tierra: I do have to follow protocol to get this addressed for you.
Tierra: Can you tell me if it’s on both boxes?
Tierra: As well as the channel number please.
CHRIS DUNN: I’m not stopping you—I’m just saying.
CHRIS DUNN: the channel number is 898
CHRIS DUNN: It’s not a problem with my box, but with your broadcast
Tierra: I understand and have to get all the information from you to be able to assist you further.
Tierra: Can you let me know if it’s happening on both boxes?
CHRIS DUNN: yes
CHRIS DUNN: it is
Tierra: Thank you, I’m going to get these boxes updated and reset if that’s okay?
CHRIS DUNN: You can reset my boxes, if that’s what you want to do. I’m a little disappointed that you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying.
Tierra: I’m sorry you think I don’t understand what your saying, I do understand you, I do have to follow protocol to be able to assist you further to getting this issue resolved.
CHRIS DUNN: Okay
Tierra: One moment while I troubleshoot this issue.
Tierra: Can you see if these boxes rebooted please?
CHRIS DUNN: The HD box is in the process—the other box is normal.
Tierra: The other box will not allow me to reset it from here, You will need to unplug the power cord for the box either by the outlet or from the box of the box. You are to leave it out for 15 seconds and then plug it back in for it to reset.
CHRIS DUNN: What now?
CHRIS DUNN: Power reset complete
Tierra: Thank you, when it say’s turn on, power it on and let me know when you get a picture.
CHRIS DUNN: Okay
Tierra: Thank you.
CHRIS DUNN: Picture
Tierra: Thank you, I will go ahead and escalate this issue over to our engineering team for them to see if they can address this issue and they will follow up with you within 24 hours. When they contact you, if they cannot reach you they will make a second attempt and leave you a voice mail. At this time, is there anything else that I can assist you with?
CHRIS DUNN: No thank you
Tierra: It was my pleasure helping you today, Please know we are available 24/7 for you, by Live Chat, Email, Phone, as well as by Twitter and Face book. Have a great day!
Party (‘Tierra’) has left the session.
:Party (‘CHRIS DUNN’) has left the session.
Now, I wanted to say a lot more than ‘no thank you’ at this end of this farce—but I left open the possibility that this person felt trapped in her protocols and could only report my complaint if she did all her usual stuff. I believe it far more likely that she was a not-nice person who enjoys using her job to annoy anyone who contacts her, but you never know. Either way, she’s not getting a job in rocket science anytime soon.
I’m disappointed that Optimum is smart enough to know how to make money off of their music channels, but not smart enough to identify the music they air. And by insulating themselves so completely from anyone who might ask them to correct their mistakes Optimum represents what is worst about our new digital society. To log on to my chat-session, I was asked to prove I wasn’t a robot—if only it worked both ways.
Putin has kicked the hornet’s nest—he may have been forced by circumstances beyond his control to throw his weight around and make Russia’s military relevant (Do you know anyone who wants to invade that charming country?) but he obviously hasn’t been paying attention to America’s forays into the Middle East. Didn’t he know how much American blood and treasure we’ve spilled there—and what have we accomplished? With few exceptions, other countries, including Russia, have sat on the sidelines and waited for us to bring capitalism there, so they could find new business partners—why would any sane leader allow his or her nation to become equally embroiled—without even teaming up with the existing effort? Will Russian mothers allow Putin to waste their children supporting Assad—and why?
Iran has voted in favor of the nuclear-disarmament agreement—a blow to the hard-liners there, but a good thing for all of us. American meddling in that country made them hate us—with good reason. Anything we can do to restore good relations with the Iranian people would benefit everyone.
The magazine Playboy has announced that it will stop publishing photos of nude women—a victory for women’s rights and dignity? ‘Fraid not. They simply need to stop shelling out cash for the same pictures anyone can get on the inter-web—not to mention try to keep a magazine relevant in a post-paper society. There will still be plenty to ogle for those that still subscribe—just not full nudity. I always felt their decision to go that far damaged the ‘brand’ anyway—in a world where there are naked pictures of women, who needs Playboy? If your brand is titillation, why marry the cow? Sorry gals—that just slipped out.
I’m so excited by this week’s VOD movie offerings that I can’t decide which to watch first—“San Andreas” (starring the Rock) or “Tomorrowland” (starring the Clooney). I split the difference and watched “Entourage—The Movie” while I made up my mind. Everyone said it was awful (no surprise) and I always feel compelled to watch something everyone hates—I usually like those movies. In this case, I’d say that if you enjoyed the series, and you don’t mind paying a premium to watch an extended final episode—you’re good. If you wanted a movie, well….
Now “San Andreas” will undoubtedly be noisy and have lots of quick cuts—a guaranteed headache, especially if I watch it after seeing one movie today, already. “Tomorrowland”, on the other hand, is just the kind of movie I love—sci-fi, futurism, happy ending (I assume). I don’t know if I want that to be ruined by my being already tired from watching “Entourage”, either. Still can’t decide. Maybe not watch either until tomorrow. I was enjoying Kathryn Grayson on TMC early today—something where she co-starred with Mario Lanza—maybe that’s what makes it hard to pick a pay-video movie—nothing in my cart has the oomph of old Hollywood—modern movies rarely do. I can’t wait for the new Spielberg, with Hanks in it—that’s definitely got a shot.
I didn’t watch the GOP debates—those people have me reaching for the remote just from a sound bite on the news—there was no way I’d listen to their idiocy for hours at a time. But tonight’s the Democrat debate—should I watch? I’m already for Hillary. I already like the sound of Bernie better, but I know he can’t win nationally, so why torture myself? And the other three—well, if you can name them, you’ve got more on the ball than I do. People have been assuming Hillary will be elected our next president ever since she stood aside for Obama—and I know the media needs drama grist for their mills—but I’ve made my decision, and I think I’d rather watch something else. If I had the energy to really follow politics, I’d get involved, not watch it on CNN and tell myself I was involved.
I’ve considered politics—after years of getting furious at incompetence in public service, I’ve often thought about it. But all we civilians get are the sound-bites—politics is a long hard slog through meetings and conferences and conversations with other politicians. When I vote these days, I’m not only rooting for a candidate—I’m grateful that they’re doing what I could never have the patience for. I hope that they will do well by us, but I don’t make the mistake of assuming they have an easy job. Only the bad politicians have easy jobs—the good ones work like dogs, and for few rewards. Look at poor old Jimmy Carter—a great man ousted from his job by a movie star, after cleaning up Nixon’s mess and getting Americans to believe in the system again. No, I’d just as soon light myself on fire as become a politician.
I’ve never been good at music—I don’t have rhythm—I can’t keep a beat—not the way a musician can. That’s why I always say I play the piano—I never ‘perform’. Performances are for people who are sharing their talent—I play piano for my own satisfaction, but I know that I’m not good enough to entertain an audience. Don’t get me wrong—I would love to be a musician—but I was born with a gift for drawing—and people are rarely blessed with multiple talents (even if they prefer music to art).
Nowadays, the rule of thumb is: Rhythm is everything—if you can’t dance to it, it ain’t gonna fly. Exceptions include extended pauses, rubato, and caesurae—these are times when music sacrifices rhythm for theatricality, for dramatic or emotional effect. Nonetheless, there is no music without rhythm—I can’t disagree—but we weren’t always so enlightened. In early medieval times, plainchant was the music of the church—it was ponderously slow and entirely monophonic. Plainchant, even Gregorian chant, was meant to be solemn and reverent—it was a tool of the service, not an entertainment. If you wanted entertaining music, you had to go to a tavern, a wedding party, or a country dance—where one could hear jigs, hornpipes, and reels—the folk music that sprang from work songs, lullabies, and marching tunes.
With the advent of polyphony, especially counter-point, church music began to acquire texture, depth—and tempo. People loved it, but conservative types put it down as ‘rough’ music—that’s what Baroque means—Rough. When Vivaldi toured the continent with his Four Seasons, performed by his all-girl orchestra (he was a music teacher at a home for daughters of unwed mothers) it combined youth with rough music—kind of like medieval rock-and-roll—and they caused a sensation everywhere. People went mad for the new music. The young Bach, as a boy, was fascinated with Vivaldi’s music—and Bach was lucky not to have been born decades earlier, when his style of sacred compositions would have been considered sacrilegious.
The disapproving oldsters that deemed early baroque music ‘rough’ were concerned with maintaining the dignity of the church service—good music was not their lookout. But baroque music was good—it was downright irresistible—and we saw a split between those who wanted music confined to the reverence of plainchant and those who liked to listen to good music. Bach split the difference, believing that his compositions were offerings to God—prayers, if you will. This was in keeping with German Protestant views, moving away from merely worshipping God on their knees—and towards glorifying God with their good works.
Detractors of early baroque had the same success as detractors of early Elvis or early Beatles—history tells us that good music always wins the argument. Those old naysayers weren’t speaking out of concern for the music, they were simply trying to enforce a dogmatic conservatism that saw change as something to be feared—something wrong, even evil.
I see similar blindness in the behavior of so-called Pro-Life activists. Abortion used to be illegal because it was birth control—nobody in the pre-modern era gave a damn about fetuses—or new-born babies, or children in general for that matter. In the times before modern medicine, miscarriages and infant mortality were all too common—mothers of a large brood were lucky to see half their children survive to adulthood. Birth control was forbidden by religious dogma—and still is, for Catholics and many others—whether it took the form of abortion, a condom, or even the unreliable ‘rhythm method’.
The modern concern over ‘the rights of the unborn’ is a modern adaption—conservatives lost the fight over the legality of birth control in general, but they weren’t going to give up on abortion without a fight. Hence Pro-Lifers have a new dogma to push back against the struggle for women’s right to control their reproductive systems.
Let me add here that even progressives like myself don’t approve of late-term abortions—if a woman knows she’s pregnant, and doesn’t want to be—fine—but if she can’t make up her mind after a month or two—well, that’s just irresponsible. In the progress from fertilized egg, to fetus, to infant, it’s hard to say where the line is, since premature births are not uncommon—so putting it off will bring one to a time when it’s hard to say whether you’re performing an abortion or infanticide. Medical professionals use the term ‘viable’ to divide a fetus from a preemie—but in terms of conscience, it’s best not to let it even reach that question.
That question aside, abortions don’t appear to have any significant difference from the countless manipulations of nature that modern medical oversight of our lives entails. Doesn’t a vasectomy, or a tubal ligation, prevent numerous potential lives? Don’t incubators and other advances save more wanted babies than are lost to unwanted fertilized eggs and early fetuses of abortion patients? Pro-Lifers can be very insistent in their protests but they are very capricious in the reasoning behind it. Their furious insistence that a woman complete any and every pregnancy is never combined with an offer to foster the unwanted children.
Plus there’s the very important point that no woman is eager to have an abortion—they simply want to avoid becoming a mother when they are not prepared to do it properly. How nice it would be if anti-feminists were mobilized against neglectful parenting, instead of attacking those who see it coming and try to avoid it.
Conservatives insist that an abortion is the same as killing a baby—very picturesque, very dramatic—but hypocritically simplistic. Their own preachers will tell them that the body is nothing—the soul is everything. Being an atheist, I prefer the term conscience, or consciousness, but it’s all the same thing in different terms. The body is just equipment—the mind is the person. You can’t ‘murder’ something that lacks awareness—you can’t be guilty for ending something that is only potential, not yet extant.
Of course, arguments can be made on both sides, ad infinitum. Since it is such a fine point, I believe the question should be decided by the person most intimately involved—the woman herself. If anyone else has an opinion, let them back it up with an offer of involvement in the raising of the child, or mind their own damn business.
I sense a repeated pattern of history—once, when the rich and powerful felt that slavery was too necessary to their continued peace they began to rationalize indecency as convention, even tradition—and it caused a national schism. Now, we have rich and powerful people who feel that climate-warming and arms dealing are too necessary to their continued peace—and they have been busy rationalizing indecency as convention, even tradition—even as ‘constitutionally protected’. Now they have caused a schism in our nation—but we’re too modern for a second civil war—no, we’re just going to shut down the government, ruin its credit rating, and let the whole beautiful dream turn to poo.
The turmoil in Congress is indicative of this—no one on the Right can agree because the Right has entered the world of rationalization—all of their reasons must support Big Energy, and the NRA—logic be damned. It’s not that they’re wrong for abandoning logic—that can be an effective tactic—it’s just that when you get a whole roomful of people doing it, they’ll all come up with their own rationalizations. And they have. The term ‘Congress’ implies a coming together—and it has operated in that spirit, more or less, for centuries—but not anymore.
Many people in this country have let themselves be convinced that government is bad—they should grow the hell up. We’re going to have government whether we like it or not—the only things that’s bad is bad government—and that’s what the Tea Party propaganda has led us to. They can’t get rid of government, but they can sure fuck it up so it doesn’t work anymore—good job, boys and girls—and you too, you loyal voters.
The crisis isn’t who the next speaker will be—that’s so unimportant it’s not funny. The crisis is: How do we get rid of these yahoos that clog our political system like human cholesterol? It’s like the red states are voting to give this country a heart attack—well, congrats, Baggers—the whole place is falling apart. We’re weaker; we’re less secure; our infrastructure is rotting; our economy is stagnating; there aren’t enough jobs—but hey—we can all still carry pistols around. Yippie-kiyay, motherfuckers!
Please note: For illustrations, I was going to download images of some House Republicans and photoshop memes that had the caption “Do You Trust This Man?” but I’m too damn lazy—you’ll have to imagine them for yourselves. Sorry.
Huzzah! I am once again a licensed driver of automobiles. My faithful compendium, Spencer, went out early this morning to top off his gas tank in anticipation of my noon Road Test in Carmel—and he reminded me to bring all my paperwork, which was a good thing. I’m not used to his car, but I’m actually an old hand at driving, so different cars don’t really throw me that badly—and he has a really nice car, too—a Chevy Impala. I forgot to look over my shoulder before pulling out; and I didn’t signal before beginning my parallel parking; but I passed, and that’s the important thing.
More important, to me, was the fact that I was able to use the bathroom this morning for the first time in several days—it’s quite a relief. I’m on my second day of heavy antibiotics for diverticulitis—things are finally becoming bearable. I’m able to think again, relatively speaking—and for what my usual thinking is worth—so I’m going to share some of the hell I’ve gone through recently.
I’m tempted to comment on the Republicans in Congress and the Russians in Syria—but this is a journal entry, so no politics today.
Wednesday, October 07, 2015 7:16 AM
Pain, And More Pain (2015Oct07)
For days I felt pain in my abdomen—then yesterday I couldn’t stand it any longer and Claire drove me to the ER in Mt. Kisco. Turns out I have diverticulitis. That may sound bad, but they were talking about ‘blockages’ and ‘surgery’, so it’s actually good news—plus, they didn’t have to admit me—bonus!
So they put me on a massive antibiotics regimen and liquid diet. It still hurts this morning but at least I’m not wondering if I’m about to die—it’s really quite painful. It reminded me of the ‘good old days’ when I had six months of forty surgical-staples in my abdomen, after my transplant operation.
People who’ve been sick or in pain can be very dull—for instance, I have no plans today other than to lay around and be glad I’m not having surgery (knock wood). Whenever the antibiotics get my inflammation to die down, I plan to spend that day just enjoying the absence of pain (I should be so lucky). With any luck, I may move my bowels someday soon—it’s a friggin carnival, here at the Dunn house.
In the meantime, I’m wondering if having something new to write about is all that great—seeing as how it’s all about dysfunction in my ass—not your traditional crowd-pleaser as literary subjects go. Still, being a shut-in makes you crazy for anything to happen, anything to break the stultifying circularity—and if I only counted the positive incidents, I’d have a long wait for that break.
There was positivity, however—my lovely Bear drove me to the hospital and stayed with me the whole time and drove me home again around midnight, when she had to get up early today, to serve jury-duty in lower Manhattan. It’s times like these that I marvel at how lucky I am to have a wonderful Bear. She’s the greatest. But anyone who has met her knows that.
BTW, All these drawings are my illustrations for my Bear Poems
So much pain over the last week or so—it made it hard for me to think—I have trouble thinking under pressure. I’m posting the improvs, but only as examples of how messed up in the head I was when I played them. I have enough trouble with the piano when I’m feeling myself.
Before I knew about the diverticulitis, I had a bad week—I wrote several posts that I never posted—they were very dark. But since I now know what was going on, I’ll share one of them with you—this was from five days ago:
Friday, October 02, 2015 11:32 AM
Pain (2015Oct02)
After a certain point, you realize that aches and pains have just become a part of your daily life—that each twinge is not a signal that you’re dying, or that you ate poison, or that you need to go to the ER. You reach the conclusion that if you’re not actually sweating in pain, then it doesn’t hurt that bad. And even when it’s sweating-bad, you give it a few minutes—just to make sure it isn’t gas—or a cramp. Pain signals help the body respond to threats and intrusions—but as we age, tiny threats and intrusions become the norm—and the aches and pains stay turned-on pretty much from the time you get out of bed.
Analgesics are wonderful things—by reducing inflammation of tissue, it reduces pain—and it also reduces the amount of damage, since the longer tissue is inflamed, the worse the damage. I occasionally use ice packs, or heating pads, for my back aches or neck aches. The only pain I have trouble dealing with is headaches—to me, it’s like static on the radio—it makes it hard to think, to read—even watching TV is difficult with a headache. So I use aspirin.
As a teenager, I was addicted to aspirin for a while—now, if I use aspirin too much, it just makes the headache worse. For years, I used Tylenol and Advil instead—but then my liver doctor told me that was suicidal, so now I’m back to aspirin—and only one at a time—and not every day. Still, I sometimes get unbearable headaches—and I break down and take two aspirin and two Advil. That works most of the time—but it also guarantees that the headache will come back the next day, a kind of boomerang effect. So I do my best to avoid that vicious cycle.
It’s so different for children—as a child, I didn’t understand what a headache actually was—I almost never got sick, and when I did I’d be so delirious from fever that I hallucinated. Pain is virtually unknown to the young—their bodies work like well-oiled machines, their bones are elastic, and they hardly weigh anything when they fall down. When pain does arrive in a young person’s life, it’s momentous—it can overpower their reason. That’s very different from someone like me, who thinks of pain as a normal part of breathing. It’s another aspect of life that makes it hard for young and old to understand each other.
If you ask a young person if they want to live forever, they’ll say ‘of course’—but if you ask an old person, they’ll have to think it over. Living forever is nothing unless it includes eternal youth—otherwise, you’re just extending your retirement—and what’s the point of that? I don’t want to live a long time—I want to live healthy for as long as I can. In my case, that’s already a moot point. I’ve been living on the edges of health for years now—and it’s nothing but hard work, fighting off the spells of frustration, rage, and despair that inevitably follow when life has no object beyond breathing.
In normal life, the bottom line is always a goal—you’re trying to accomplish something—hopefully, maybe even achieve greatness at something. Without access to a job, a career, a car, or a social group—as in my case—without the ability to work or create or achieve, life becomes a battle against oneself. Even staying alive isn’t my job—it’s my doctors’. My only real job is not to kill myself and waste all their hard work. In the meantime, I suffer from an incurable case of ‘idle hands’.
At the same time, the emptiness of normal lives is revealed to me—nine to five, working for some office manager, getting paid a salary—these thing may allow me to support my family, but what do I get out of it, besides a life of modern slavery? What right do the wealthy owners have to enslave the other 99% in pursuit of manufacturing plastics, selling magazine subscriptions, organizing vacation itineraries, or selling burial insurance? How is it different from Medieval times, when the wealthy owners enslaved everyone to grow food that wasn’t even their own?
Statistics show that democracy doesn’t respond to the majority of people in the country—it responds to the majority of rich people. Statistically, there’s as much chance of the most-wanted legislation being voted on as the least-wanted legislation—among the whole population. Among the wealthy, democracy does what it’s supposed to do—it enacts what they want most and avoids what they most don’t want—but if it only works for the 1%, then it’s not really democracy, is it?
Likewise with ‘progress’. The new I-Phone 6s is a wonder—if you have a thousand bucks up front, and hundreds a month to spare. The new Tesla model S is a wonder—if you have $100,000 to spare. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to work nine to five for the privilege of worrying about bills and driving a junker. And that’s if we’re not starving, or homeless, or sending our kids to schools that don’t teach them to read. The United States, in its origin, began a fight with the rich and powerful—I think, here in 2015, we can all agree that we’ve lost that fight. The poor are always with us—and so are the rich. Anyone see a connection there?
In our war against the rich, we are constantly being diverted with little nothings—molehills built up into mountains for the media to get excited about. They spend all day talking about whether Trump should be president, when it’s so obvious that that asshole belongs in jail, at best. The Koch brothers hold seminars to decide which candidate to pay for, when they should be huddled in their mansions with a torch-lit angry mob outside their windows.
It’s the old problem—you can’t fix a car while you’re driving it down the highway. We can protest Occupy Wall Street all weekend, but we have to leave and go work for those pigs on Monday morning. We can vote for any candidate we like, but the candidates get pre-selected by those pigs. And the most able among us are not working to beat those pigs, but to join them. And people wonder why I’m so depressed all the time. What a crock.
[Afterword: So, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Nothing was easy or comfortable. But I’m on the mend now—and I have a drivers license again (motorists beware!) so I’m a happy man. Have a good day, everybody.]
I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. When you reach the end of your rope, when you fail (and trust me none of us gets out alive) just remember that time moves inexorably forward, that memory is selective, and that no one is perfect. Forgive yourself and move on.
Alchemical symbols for Arsenic
However, if you find you have to forgive yourself rather frequently, that’s a bad sign—you should look into that. See—the trouble is I have one set of advice for people like me, compulsively goody-two-shoes whose lives are an unending search for the ineffable—and quite another set of advice for those who feel that getting by, having a good time, is sufficient. In one sense, some of my pearls of wisdom are always a recipe for disaster—since I can only talk to one set of people at a time.
Alchemical symbols for Copper
Because of this, and because I just naturally write as if I’m talking to people like myself, it would behoove me not to give advice—and everyone knows what free advice is worth, anyhow. But when I think of young people, when I think of all the advice I might have had a good use for when I was young and inexperienced and uneducated, it’s hard not to try to pass on some of the more valuable tricks and devices I’ve uncovered in the passing of years.
Alchemical symbols for Gold
If the wrong person reads my blog, he or she could end up doing horrible things—and saying, “It’s okay—I’m literally doing what Xper Dunn said to do—and he’s a real smart guy.” So, I’m reluctant to be very definite about anything on a public space like this. That’s part of the reason I get annoyed at the media—those professional voices have such conviction—the same conviction whether they’re announcing another school shooting or trying to sell you a questionable Volkswagen. They use the same smooth sure vocal drippings when reporting on our best leaders and minds—and when they’re re-stating the clap-trap from the indescribably misguided voices on the ‘other side’. They often put even more emphasis on the clap-trap—because that nonsense tends to have a theatrical ring to it—listen to any Trump speech (or any of Hitler’s, for that matter) and you’ll see what I mean.
Alchemical symbols for Iron
I would be definite if words could be trusted to mean one simple thing instead of lending themselves so well to differing interpretations. There is so much I would say if words would suffice—but they are worse than worthless, pretending to have meaning when they actually have far too many meanings. This typing is just a game I play to distract myself from the pain of being idle. I try to be positive but it’s hard not to let that lead me into thinking I can actually say what I need to say. Then I watch CSPAN and see those expert word-wranglers mangle common sense with a load of bushwah—and I realize that they (or anyone, really) can take any sequence of words and twist them beyond recognition. It’s completely futile.
Alchemical symbols for Lead
The only thing that ever made words work properly, or at least a little, was when two like-minded people tried in earnest to understand each other. That is why education is such a dicey business—it requires an earnest, capable teacher in every classroom and it requires every single student to be earnestly engaged in the act of learning. Good luck with that—poor teachers. Just like society, where all the laws and police you can imagine wouldn’t have a chance of enforcing order and peace without the earnest good will of the citizens—the police and the courts are problematic enough dealing with the results of human nature in an unfair social system—imagine if the vast majority of us weren’t trying to get along and go along. That would get ugly.
Alchemical symbols for Magnesium
You hear people belittle ‘good intentions’—nothing would work without them—not society, not schools, not even speech. So value your good intentions—even if they don’t work out they have a value of their own. It’s possible to try too hard—I’m not saying good intentions always bring good results—but good intentions are only the beginning—putting them down is just short-sighted. I think everyone already knows that. Still, ‘being earnest’ is still targeted for ridicule by most people—but I never much cared for the people who’ve adjudged me ‘too serious’. I’d laugh at them for not being serious enough but there’s nothing funny about that—it’s just sad.
Alchemical symbols for Mercury
I have a sense of humor—but I don’t care for pranks, or the Three Stooges (I like them better now—but when I was a kid I was mystified that anyone saw humor in a guy hitting his brother on the head with a hammer). I never laugh when I see someone fall down—that doesn’t seem funny to me. This difference was one of the first clues I had that people could be very different from me. I used to skip blithely along assuming that everyone was like me. I’m still not used to the idea that some people are different—and that I’m supposed to be okay with that. If the whole world seems careless and stupid to me, I have to question whether they’re the problem—but I take things too seriously, so I’m sticking with everyone else being careless and stupid. Present company excepted, of course.
Guns are bombs, okay? They’re sophisticated bombs with a piece of custom-shaped shrapnel that comes out the end. They’re explosives—adding the bells and whistles doesn’t change that. Now think about the difference between our attitudes towards guns and our attitudes towards bombs. Think about the pre-boarding inspections that confiscate water bottles and cuticle scissors. Think about that schoolkid who got busted for bringing a clock to school. Now think about those yahoos that parade about in public spaces with semi-automatic rifles across their shoulders.
We have got to stop romanticizing guns—we have to amend the constitution to rescind the ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’. We have to end the NRA’s choke-hold on Washington—and on state and local lawmakers. Or we should just add ‘bombs’ to the Second Amendment—what’s the difference? Most homeowners own guns—and of those who use them, most of them accidentally shoot a family member—now that’s a proud tradition.
Money has hacked our democracy—and the proof is in the proliferation of commerce and industry, without a commensurate explosion in regulatory agencies. We are constantly told of all the wonderful new advances, new products, new materials, new investment derivatives, new genetically-modified products—where’s the damned regulatory structure to keep all these new enterprises from going rogue? They’re being suppressed by the rich bastards who are making money off all these new things—using society as a vast, cost-free experiment lab. We live on a knife-edge of new technology running in all directions at once—where is the government oversight on all the wonderful new risks and excesses?
We are unwilling guinea pigs for every new internet site, drug, GMO food or feed, flavor enhancer, investment scheme, and safety feature (or lack thereof) on every vehicle, appliance, or toy. We are told that the unions our grandparents went to jail for, got beat up for, or died for, are the evil influence—not the owners and executives with all the power—and because of our failing educational system, many of us are stupid enough to believe that. But don’t get me started on what the American voters have become stupid enough to believe—common sense has long fled the field of battle against these pidgeon-heads—a mindless victory that is looking fair to elect a clown for president. If you need further proof that our democracy has been hacked by capitalism—explain to me Trump’s poll numbers. I think he would be the first president who never read a history book.
Vladimr Putin is a gangster—a short one, because he’s not a whole person—he’s mostly asshole. Now that Russia is run by mobsters, it makes sense that the one with the Napoleon-complex is the big cheese. But the worst part about Putin is that he’s right. America thought it was clever to arm a bunch of religious fanatics and let them do the fighting in Afghanistan—then America turned its back on Afghanistan after the Russians gave up and went home—just when that region needed committed efforts (and funds) to help to transform itself into a developing country. Now we’ve got Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and ISIL—in some ways it would have been better to let the Russians occupy the place.
So that’s on us—9/11 was a direct response from a bunch of pissed-off fanatics that resented being used by America to fight their Cold War, and then got dumped once they had done what we wanted. And attacking the wrong country in response—well, that was just Dubya’s little cherry on top, destabilizing the entire Middle East for no good reason. Now this oafish Capone-ski, Putin, is annexing countries and bombing Syrian freedom-fighters for Assad—and he’s got the moral high-ground. This is what happens when Conservatives use whatever it is they use, instead of thinking, to lead our nation.
Obama is understandably reluctant to throw fuel on the fire, having been elected partly on the premise that militarism in the Middle East is not America’s strong suit. And really, how is America supposed to end the conflicts between Shia and Sunni half-a-world away? All we could do is copy Putin—drop bombs on whatever targets present themselves and hope that random bloodshed adds to the discourse—and we’re already doing that. World War III, here we come—Oh, boy!
Meanwhile, all the reasonable Syrians are on hiking trips, or boating in the Mediterranean—well, if I think about it, I’m sure there are millions of decent Syrians who are too poor or too trapped to leave. Maybe someday, if the fighting ever stops, there’ll be a couple of intelligent people left to rebuild the place.
And of course our National village idiot, Trump, promises to ship all the Syrian refugees back to Syria (that’s after he’s shipped millions of undocumented workers south of the border). He’s really into transportation, this guy. What a tool.
The presumed-next Speaker, McCarthy, has admitted that the only purpose of the Benghazi hearings was to throw a wrench into Hillary Clinton’s political image and muddy her rep—that’s an unexpected bit of fresh air—not that he shouldn’t be ashamed of himself and his party for putting themselves above the service they purport to render. I watched a little C-SPAN and heard them cawing over Planned Parenthood—until Cecile Richards had to correct one of them on live TV. But even after the tapes were proved edited and it was pointed out that Planned Parenthood provides important women’s health care, with only a small percentage of their efforts involving abortion (which is legal, BTW) the GOP continues to pretend that Cecile Richards is leading a band of bloodthirsty cannibals who eat baby-brains for lunch. (They have it on video.) We hardly need rich people to screw up the world with idiots like this in government, especially now that they’ve gotten into the habit of doubling down on every stupid lie, no matter how many times it’s exposed as a lie.
And, as I predicted, the moronic Jeb Bush is making the talk-show rounds and looking downright erudite after a whole summer of Trump—and the Democrats, according to polls, are falling for the Hillary E-Mail smear—proof that we Democrats are just as stupid as the GOP—just in our own way. When I look at Hillary Clinton I see someone who’s uncomfortable—she’s not a natural politician, like her husband—she’s less comfortable feeding us bullshit. But I think that’s a good thing. When I look at Hillary Clinton I see someone who’s spent her life in public service—someone who has only entered politics because that’s where the chance for real change is. Perhaps I go too far—but isn’t it about time we had a counter-balance to the GOP’s bullshit against her? Whatever her faults, she’s Socrates with a touch of Einstein—compared to her rivals.
And whatever happened to our dream of electing the first woman president? Are we too smug now that we’ve had an African-American president—do we think that we’ve been ‘enlightened’ enough for now, let’s get back to the rich white guys that always do such a bang-up job? Yeah, that’s sounds about right. Sorry, Hil—you’re more than qualified, but the GOP says your email server destroyed the free world—and your lady Democrats got hit on the head, I guess, because they’re starting to believe those jerks.
