Alan Asnen's Blog, page 3
August 26, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Thirteen
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Already behaving under the lack of impulse control, or maybe acting like an eight-year-old without the necessary aid of priests and nuns that Terry the future maniac assassin had, reading and an ad on the back of a comic book that promised if I sent back the coupon, I could earn $10,000 in six months. With that kind of money in the bank, and the interest I could earn—yes, brainy Irish-Jewish lad, I already understood interest—I could rid myself of that horrid Douglaston shithole in a few years. I stole a stamp from my incognizant father and off in the mail went that coupon.
A few weeks later a huge box full of greeting cards arrived with a letter promising that, great salesman they understood me to be, if I sold all the cards quickly to my friends and family members, at ten cents apiece, they’d send another box ASAP and another, and another, and, before you knew it, I’d have my $10,000! But, first, pay up $39.95 for this lot!
My father saw the box, beat the crap out of me, not for stealing the stamp, but for being so incompetently stupid, and told me that, after he paid the $39.95 now owed for the first box, I’d pay him back by finding a job. One thing led to a Rube Goldberg other and I ended up sweeping those floors in the garment district and I was shockingly happy about this because I saw an opportunity to earn money, save it up, and move the heck out. Anyway.
That was the garment district job which began this memory hole. I have a lot of experience sweeping up and doing other janitorial chores. I swept the floors, picked up choppings, and delivered racks on the street, like you see in old movies. Plus, that job afforded me the ability to travel into the city. On my own at nine years old. Then WOO. Where I started out sweeping the floors.
Yes. I do know how to handle a broom. Maybe I should have stayed in that line, like I said.
But, because I do know how to handle a broom, I became a writer, artist of sorts and met Robin, and a lot more at all of fourteen years old. Not old enough to carry a green card. Thanks to the broom, Benny finagled that house musician job for me at Steve Paul’s club, and all those gig’s around town.
Terry hung out at “The Scene” occasionally. I never spoke to him there. I would see him with various people, rarely the same people twice. But who knows. Before my second set, I had too many screwdrivers to notice much. I turned into a lush for a while, true. Terry hung around in the crowds at those benefit concerts, connected to some or another group we were playing for, but never there to listen, there to organize, mingling, walking around, talking to people.
Because Terry had become that young scholar, after all. Went on to college at Stanford. Became a hippie, if you want to call it that. He ended up at The Farm with Hugh Romney and Ken Kesey, up in Oregon, where he became one of the Merry Pranksters. But Terry wasn’t that “merry.” Yes, he was the prankster…ha ha...but not that merry.
One item that impressed me with myself for a long time happened as 1968 turned into 1969. A call came in from a friend of a friend to Dan asking him to provide a lecture on the underground press at the Society for Ethical Culture. He turned around. I was sitting next to him at the time, and he asked me to do it for him. Okay.
Snow waited in the pinkish clouds the evening of the lecture. I walked up Fifth Avenue and the mauve sky had fully descended upon the top of the Empire State building. I walked wherever I went in those days, whenever possible, despite distances, and this long walk to the Upper West Side captured the brisk December night full of beautiful sounds, the charming crowds reflecting the holiday lights everywhere, and I felt sober, merrily soaking it all in while rehashing what I would say. Freshly bathed with pine scent, clean shaven, wearing laundered-crisp white shirt, black commando sweater, right up to my Army jacket. Even ironed my jeans.
The marble and stone front of the building was not unfamiliar to me, having passed it by many times before. When I walked into the foyer, the face of Beth Gourmet appeared, and she greeted me alongside fellow Society members Sondra Goodyear and Neil Fabricant. Ah, ethics. We had met before at a cozy party where Dan invited me to share the snorting of some fine heroin with same Sondra and Neil, sans Beth. Sutton Place. Only the best for them. Not my last time for that dust.
We went inside to the Society rooms and the lecture hall, already filling up, and behind to the stage. They sat down and there, sitting between them, in the front row, wearing a black beret, wraparound sunglasses, a black turtleneck and black jeans was Terry.
Two people came up from WOO, Dean Lattimer, a contributing writer, and a friend of his, a nursing student from Alabama, the first down-home Southerners I’d ever met. They sat a few rows back, quite stoned, smiling profusely, and waving to me giddily. Dean wore his armor, a buckskin coat with full leather frills and Kitty, the nurse, a feathery boa that I stared at probably too long, wondering if and how it could possibly keep her warm.
Sondra Goodyear—yes, that Goodyear—arose gracefully and introduced me from the audience. They all applauded. More applause than I ever received for my music, or anything else. I hadn’t yet said a word. I began, talking about the history of alternative press in the country, highlighting Tom Paine, the broadsides, the freedom presses that exposed slavery before and during the Civil War, the birth of Harper’s and The Nation and about the rebel journalists and muckrakers during and after the Gilded Age and moved quickly to the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on I. F. Stone. I felt Terry staring at me through those black lenses. I knew I this covered territory people had heard of in their social studies classes. I attempted to glance past him when I scanned that portion of the audience. I could not but help myself, pausing at Dean and Kitty, who, when they weren’t talking to each other and drawing stares from the people around them, were smiling and waving at me.
As I reached the conclusion, I improvised a scoonch, and expanded upon what I already had to say about the new Underground Press Syndicate, which Dan and I had formed, and our connections with the Black Panther Party’s newspapers around the country. In fact, this had been work I instigated on my own, without Dan Zimmer’s knowledge, originally. I talked about the common issues and common goals—I pointedly used the term “common enemies”—that the majority of those on the left had being voiced through the underground newspapers of the day, and which was a marvel in terms of their diversity of expression. More applause. Lecture over.
No.
Terry stood up. “Very good, man. Very insightful.” He turned around to face the audience. “However, my white friend here has overlooked several factors. First, ever since the foundation of this country, built upon a lie by seemingly good people, the white man has been arguing with himself, this so-called left-right dichotomy that supposedly brings some white brothers together with the genuinely oppressed brothers and sisters. It is an artificial thing, man, a mockery of reality. It comes out of a fascination with philosophy and idealism. The roots for it are in the mind, man. The real struggle,” he turned back to me for a moment, and back to the audience, “the real struggle for the oppressed comes from the lived reality they carry with them as a daily burden, the poverty, the distress, the hunger. Not,” without looking, he waved at me, “this.” More applause. For him. And he walked away.
The crowd broke up. Sondra, Neil and Beth chatted with Terry while Dean and Kitty nudged through the crowd to coo with me. Terry came back and, with a quick smile, shook my hand, walked away, and took the main attention with him. I saw it, and felt it, while I stood there with Dean and Kitty fawning on me. I had a feeling like surrender itself. As if he’d delivered the KO punch and I could hear the bell ringing and the announcer’s call ringside. I wanted to scream for help.
“You knocked the motherfuckers out!” Dean blew into my face.
“That was sooo exciting!” Kitty’s added, stumbling and folding over herself, clutching Dean’s arm.
Other people were mingling, a few walking up to me, telling me what a nice talk I gave, thanking me and asking if they could chat with me at the reception. Nice words you hear. I know. I’ve said them myself. I smiled. After all, this was not a Warhol party.
I looked at Dean and Kitty. “There’s a reception. I’ll bet you’ve got the munchies…”
“Shit, yeah…” Dean giggled.
A man in quicksand keeps sinking whether he is immobile or fighting for escape. What he needs is a rescuer from the outside to pull him from the pit. That’s his singular chance. I’ve never been in quicksand, per se. I don’t know if there is a discrete moment of self-discovery when you decide there’s no point in panicking. Or that it is equally conscientious to panic all you want because it makes no difference.
I suppose that, when you are in a panic attack, an anxiety attack, there must be a similar moment of discovery. But I should insert a word of caution here because there are no generalizations about panic attacks. To each his own. There must be one. There must be a moment when you feel the full impact of the fact that you are inside a panic attack, that you’ve reached the point of lost control, when you can’t pull yourself out. You need help from the outside. If that help isn’t there you keep sinking into the panic. And that’s when you are gone. After which it’s a question of time, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s never happened to me.
Already behaving under the lack of impulse control, or maybe acting like an eight-year-old without the necessary aid of priests and nuns that Terry the future maniac assassin had, reading and an ad on the back of a comic book that promised if I sent back the coupon, I could earn $10,000 in six months. With that kind of money in the bank, and the interest I could earn—yes, brainy Irish-Jewish lad, I already understood interest—I could rid myself of that horrid Douglaston shithole in a few years. I stole a stamp from my incognizant father and off in the mail went that coupon.
A few weeks later a huge box full of greeting cards arrived with a letter promising that, great salesman they understood me to be, if I sold all the cards quickly to my friends and family members, at ten cents apiece, they’d send another box ASAP and another, and another, and, before you knew it, I’d have my $10,000! But, first, pay up $39.95 for this lot!
My father saw the box, beat the crap out of me, not for stealing the stamp, but for being so incompetently stupid, and told me that, after he paid the $39.95 now owed for the first box, I’d pay him back by finding a job. One thing led to a Rube Goldberg other and I ended up sweeping those floors in the garment district and I was shockingly happy about this because I saw an opportunity to earn money, save it up, and move the heck out. Anyway.
That was the garment district job which began this memory hole. I have a lot of experience sweeping up and doing other janitorial chores. I swept the floors, picked up choppings, and delivered racks on the street, like you see in old movies. Plus, that job afforded me the ability to travel into the city. On my own at nine years old. Then WOO. Where I started out sweeping the floors.
Yes. I do know how to handle a broom. Maybe I should have stayed in that line, like I said.
But, because I do know how to handle a broom, I became a writer, artist of sorts and met Robin, and a lot more at all of fourteen years old. Not old enough to carry a green card. Thanks to the broom, Benny finagled that house musician job for me at Steve Paul’s club, and all those gig’s around town.
Terry hung out at “The Scene” occasionally. I never spoke to him there. I would see him with various people, rarely the same people twice. But who knows. Before my second set, I had too many screwdrivers to notice much. I turned into a lush for a while, true. Terry hung around in the crowds at those benefit concerts, connected to some or another group we were playing for, but never there to listen, there to organize, mingling, walking around, talking to people.
Because Terry had become that young scholar, after all. Went on to college at Stanford. Became a hippie, if you want to call it that. He ended up at The Farm with Hugh Romney and Ken Kesey, up in Oregon, where he became one of the Merry Pranksters. But Terry wasn’t that “merry.” Yes, he was the prankster…ha ha...but not that merry.
One item that impressed me with myself for a long time happened as 1968 turned into 1969. A call came in from a friend of a friend to Dan asking him to provide a lecture on the underground press at the Society for Ethical Culture. He turned around. I was sitting next to him at the time, and he asked me to do it for him. Okay.
Snow waited in the pinkish clouds the evening of the lecture. I walked up Fifth Avenue and the mauve sky had fully descended upon the top of the Empire State building. I walked wherever I went in those days, whenever possible, despite distances, and this long walk to the Upper West Side captured the brisk December night full of beautiful sounds, the charming crowds reflecting the holiday lights everywhere, and I felt sober, merrily soaking it all in while rehashing what I would say. Freshly bathed with pine scent, clean shaven, wearing laundered-crisp white shirt, black commando sweater, right up to my Army jacket. Even ironed my jeans.
The marble and stone front of the building was not unfamiliar to me, having passed it by many times before. When I walked into the foyer, the face of Beth Gourmet appeared, and she greeted me alongside fellow Society members Sondra Goodyear and Neil Fabricant. Ah, ethics. We had met before at a cozy party where Dan invited me to share the snorting of some fine heroin with same Sondra and Neil, sans Beth. Sutton Place. Only the best for them. Not my last time for that dust.
We went inside to the Society rooms and the lecture hall, already filling up, and behind to the stage. They sat down and there, sitting between them, in the front row, wearing a black beret, wraparound sunglasses, a black turtleneck and black jeans was Terry.
Two people came up from WOO, Dean Lattimer, a contributing writer, and a friend of his, a nursing student from Alabama, the first down-home Southerners I’d ever met. They sat a few rows back, quite stoned, smiling profusely, and waving to me giddily. Dean wore his armor, a buckskin coat with full leather frills and Kitty, the nurse, a feathery boa that I stared at probably too long, wondering if and how it could possibly keep her warm.
Sondra Goodyear—yes, that Goodyear—arose gracefully and introduced me from the audience. They all applauded. More applause than I ever received for my music, or anything else. I hadn’t yet said a word. I began, talking about the history of alternative press in the country, highlighting Tom Paine, the broadsides, the freedom presses that exposed slavery before and during the Civil War, the birth of Harper’s and The Nation and about the rebel journalists and muckrakers during and after the Gilded Age and moved quickly to the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on I. F. Stone. I felt Terry staring at me through those black lenses. I knew I this covered territory people had heard of in their social studies classes. I attempted to glance past him when I scanned that portion of the audience. I could not but help myself, pausing at Dean and Kitty, who, when they weren’t talking to each other and drawing stares from the people around them, were smiling and waving at me.
As I reached the conclusion, I improvised a scoonch, and expanded upon what I already had to say about the new Underground Press Syndicate, which Dan and I had formed, and our connections with the Black Panther Party’s newspapers around the country. In fact, this had been work I instigated on my own, without Dan Zimmer’s knowledge, originally. I talked about the common issues and common goals—I pointedly used the term “common enemies”—that the majority of those on the left had being voiced through the underground newspapers of the day, and which was a marvel in terms of their diversity of expression. More applause. Lecture over.
No.
Terry stood up. “Very good, man. Very insightful.” He turned around to face the audience. “However, my white friend here has overlooked several factors. First, ever since the foundation of this country, built upon a lie by seemingly good people, the white man has been arguing with himself, this so-called left-right dichotomy that supposedly brings some white brothers together with the genuinely oppressed brothers and sisters. It is an artificial thing, man, a mockery of reality. It comes out of a fascination with philosophy and idealism. The roots for it are in the mind, man. The real struggle,” he turned back to me for a moment, and back to the audience, “the real struggle for the oppressed comes from the lived reality they carry with them as a daily burden, the poverty, the distress, the hunger. Not,” without looking, he waved at me, “this.” More applause. For him. And he walked away.
The crowd broke up. Sondra, Neil and Beth chatted with Terry while Dean and Kitty nudged through the crowd to coo with me. Terry came back and, with a quick smile, shook my hand, walked away, and took the main attention with him. I saw it, and felt it, while I stood there with Dean and Kitty fawning on me. I had a feeling like surrender itself. As if he’d delivered the KO punch and I could hear the bell ringing and the announcer’s call ringside. I wanted to scream for help.
“You knocked the motherfuckers out!” Dean blew into my face.
“That was sooo exciting!” Kitty’s added, stumbling and folding over herself, clutching Dean’s arm.
Other people were mingling, a few walking up to me, telling me what a nice talk I gave, thanking me and asking if they could chat with me at the reception. Nice words you hear. I know. I’ve said them myself. I smiled. After all, this was not a Warhol party.
I looked at Dean and Kitty. “There’s a reception. I’ll bet you’ve got the munchies…”
“Shit, yeah…” Dean giggled.
A man in quicksand keeps sinking whether he is immobile or fighting for escape. What he needs is a rescuer from the outside to pull him from the pit. That’s his singular chance. I’ve never been in quicksand, per se. I don’t know if there is a discrete moment of self-discovery when you decide there’s no point in panicking. Or that it is equally conscientious to panic all you want because it makes no difference.
I suppose that, when you are in a panic attack, an anxiety attack, there must be a similar moment of discovery. But I should insert a word of caution here because there are no generalizations about panic attacks. To each his own. There must be one. There must be a moment when you feel the full impact of the fact that you are inside a panic attack, that you’ve reached the point of lost control, when you can’t pull yourself out. You need help from the outside. If that help isn’t there you keep sinking into the panic. And that’s when you are gone. After which it’s a question of time, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s never happened to me.
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Twelve
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
How’s this: I believe in the Superman Theory. Not Nietzsche. Forget him for a moment. I mean the other Superman. For me, it’s Truth, Justice and… You know, all the time, no matter what, no matter who. I have to be that way and, well, I’ll be telling you why. Ah, I’m spilling the beans now. I gave up lying and now I cannot stop being honest. Gets me in trouble all the time. Probably more trouble than the lying. Maybe not long term but who can tell.
And I like to dance, born to dance, because I was born next to my cousin Jean, the dancer. I like all sorts of music, show tunes, doo-wop, R&B… Big Funkadelic fan, as long as you can forget all the bad shit George Clinton did. How about “This Land Is Made for You and Me”?
How about this: There may or may not have been a place called San Francisco. And the Bay Area. Let’s be generous, for we had Berkeley those many years. That has solid mystery vibes. I may or may not have lived and worked there. And one day there may or may not have been a knock on my office door. I like that. I prefer the traditional Arabic “maybe, maybe not” instead of “once upon a time” here, even though this may have a fairy-tale feel.
Too minimalist? Too Hollywood? I get it. You see, I’ve been trying to push a sensation across. Set a tone, a mood. I’m not trying to be clever. I am good at that, though. Being clever and charming has brought me this far, after all, someone who should have been dead before puberty. I can do better, but, for a long time it wasn’t worth the effort. These days, I am trying. Again. But, of course, remember, this isn’t fiction. I’m trying to do a Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson kind of thing, you know?
“You’re really going to keep going in circles like this?”
“Please, Mel. Will you go away now and let me work?”
“Is that what this is, Herr Doktor Detective? Is this your work, now? Writing your memoirs? What a laugh. We’ll have to start calling you Watson. Oh, Watson!”
“Don’t yell in my ear… Go away, or you won’t get any dinner.”
“I’ll be back. To help.”
“Yeah, you and your Irish mother.”
“Don’t say another fucking word about my mother… You Mick on a stick… Jew in a stew…”
“What a fucking mouth on you!” Finally walking away. “Hey! Wait a second! Yeah. These are my memoirs, Miss Brilliance. You never bothered telling anyone the details, you know! The whole story...”
“Well, Mister Mouth, you never told me!!!” And she threw a pillow at my head.
“What’s wrong with memoirs, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to do that after the kind of thing that happened to me? All that television exposure?”
You know, one of these days, I’m going to have to tell the world about her.
“Once upon a time.” In one weird sense, properly speaking, that’s exactly the kind of story this is, now, even if I try to put an Arabic spin on it. Certainly, looking at it from one perspective, the perspective certain parties would like you to have, now that she’s out of the room, it has the elements of a fairy tale, the type that should end with the princess walking off with the prince. Plus, people who speak English used to expect their stories to begin that way. No one has dependable expectations anymore. You want a surprise? Arab Spring? Brexit? Trump? Weinstein? North Korean lube? And I do speak English, having taught it long ago. Once upon a time. Among other things. Not always a detective, not always chasing dogs and cats. Humanities, that’s what they call it. That’s me. Human. But I choose to start with the more obtuse “maybe and maybe not.” Maybe I’m a jerk. Maybe not. Considering. Depending upon who you ask.
They pulled on my memory as I held up to the third degree from those seventeen government intelligence agencies. Seventeen or fourteen? You see how it gets. Then again being ramrodded through four Congressional investigations. I stared back. Some of my bravest moments, if I do say. Just like Mel wrote it up. Robin would have been proud. Punch in the arm, laughing all the way down the hall proud. Doing all that to someone my age. They don’t care. Politicians. Bureaucrats. Who cares what they think I may have done? I like to think I’m still young enough to hold up to it. Pfft. I am! Take ‘em all on, one by one!
Think back to what happened to your memories when the Weinstein affair blew up, trying to recover what you had done or what had happened to you, or what you had seen in the past and never spoken up about. Who, me? For example, I mean. See what it does to you? What is normal? What needs to be rethought, relearned or undone? What needs to be compromised? Too old? Was I still too young?
Lawyers. My ass. When Mac saw those FBI agents coming, he said, “You’re gonna need a good lawyer.” I gave him Chandler’s line: “If he was good, he wouldn’t be a lawyer.” They wanted “the whole story.” Not then. I was ready, which means I wasn’t ready.
Mel didn’t have the whole story either because I didn’t give it to her. She also didn’t want to write the love story. Too girlie for her. Well, now I’m ready, really ready. And I’m a girlie kind of guy, I guess. Mel wrote that piece for The Atlantic. Applause, applause. I suppose you’ve all read it. Or you’ve heard about it. You know what happened, obviously, even if you don’t know these other details, whatever version you’ve been fed. But, this? Too girlie for her.
When I became a vegetarian in my forties, I began by eating Middle Eastern food. It’s because I met this wonderful Baha’i fellow at a Giants game. He explained it all to me. No more hot dogs after that. No, that didn’t make me an Arabist and does not influence the way I tell stories. I hope people reading this are smarter than that. But brother, is my stomach better. In this instance, the variable Arabic beginning makes more sense than the more definitive, traditional Western “once upon a time.” I may be a jerk. Or worse. I know. It seems like I’m drifting. Listen, by the time we get to the end, I promise, this will all make some kind of sense. I think. Just hang on a second more. They tell me you’re probably already getting bored. Something is going to happen in a minute. Trust me.
What’s the best way to tell a story? It depends. What story do you want to tell, and to what end? James Agee used to write about the strange, pure, magical tone that certain movies had for people, especially children, that would reverberate inside when you saw them, or stories that, when you read them, or heard them told stayed with you, became a part of who you were, your nature. A really good story should create what the French describe as frisson, that mystical remembrance. A sensation that creeps up your neck as it draws to a conclusion, a kind of identification with the essence of something that is yet isn’t present, a sort of emotional déjà vu. This is a natural response to something that you know but cannot speak. You could expect it at any moment. There and not there. A ghost but without having to believe in ghosts.
This is important. Some parents twist you with stories, they tell you things you shouldn’t know, shouldn’t think, and these have to be undone. They are undone by stories from others, told and retold. How they are retold, by teachers, by movies, literature, music, current events, love walking into your life, bombs thrown into crowds in front of you, are all different forms of life-changing events. Story-changing events. All capable of the undoing. And death.
When I tell this story over and over to myself, it’s like that. But, so far, I don’t know why. Should I? I mean, I lived it. Well, you don’t know the story, yet, do you? Not the real story.
Anyway. My Baha’i pal told me these stories about why people suffered from all sorts of illness, they explained why I was having these stomach aches, and suddenly I became a vegetarian. And cured. What’s that word the French use? But all we do is pass along each other’s stories. In the end, there aren’t that many. Something like twenty-seven or eight, they told me in grad school. Were the stories true? Who cares? You like meat? Good for you. Current events? Affaires d’l’amour? In those realms are there more than those twenty-seven different stories?
It isn’t lying, necessarily, when you tell a story differently. It’s storytelling. According to T.S. Eliot either stealing or borrowing depending upon your position. If I were Eliot, I don’t know what position I’d be in. Otherwise, you’d be mimeographing the same twenty-seven stories over and over. Mimeographing. That’s what you used to do before Google. You read Anne Sexton, a poem like “Cinderella,” and you know what I’m talking about. Either we retell stories merrily or in a more gruesome fashion, as fairy tales or nightmares.
Am I dropping names? Yes, for reference. For stability. For markers. I am also the conscientious academic when needs be. Or I lie a lot. In an academic way. Same thing.
Here, in this story, something happens, then that, and so on. But the elements of this story shoot out like the spokes of a wheel from a hub, everything runs back and forth, and in the end, maybe it never happened at all? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on trust. You see? So, I need references for stability. Because it depends, I suppose, on what, or who, you want to believe. Other people are telling different stories, aren’t they? They always will and always have. Certain interests will keep what they want known and secret as much as they can. And they will say whatever they want about other people’s stories. They’ll probably have a lot to say about mine. And me. And then, you know, the internet? Jesus. Bots, now, they have bots.
Usually, besides having a pleasant time, the whole point of telling a story really is winning. But what? In the end, what?
If you want to re-right yourself and resolve the problems you have with your memory you have no choice but to go back and reconstruct. Take your time. Be scrupulous. Give the subject the effort it deserves. Also, take a break now and again. This is a matter of rectitude, of the utmost trustworthiness. Especially if you have doubts from the start. Doubts about what you remember. Doubts about what you know. Doubts about yourself. Especially if it appears that others have doubts about you. Self-confidence is a great thing. The Dalai Lama teaches this. It is probably his primary lesson after love. That’s the way I hear him. He also tells us Nirvana is a great thing. I agree with him on that, too. That Nirvana is a great thing, not that it’s real. We need great ideals in our lives, but Nirvana isn’t real. The Dalai Lama believes Nirvana is real. I don’t know the man. Even if I did, would he tell me? I know…
To an extent, everybody has this problem about self-doubt, and always has had because everybody always has their own story, stories being what they are. Whatever they are. Formally, of course, we have the story as it exists and the story as it is told, which one can screw around with as one pleases. As I have done. You are very welcome. Some people detest this. You have been warned. And don’t say I didn’t tell you so. I happen to be a nice person in that regard no matter what others might say. And you know who.
But always one has to rely also on their own story from others. I’ve always had others in my life. Oh, brother, have I. And some stories have always been mysteries and not always for fun. You know, like Sherlock Holmes. This isn’t Sherlock Holmes. Forget what Mel said. Things are just more complicated today and not always for fun. And not always by accident. There are no coincidences, by the way. Maybe.
Say you’re driving down the street and suddenly a cat runs across the road. You swerve out of the way and your car hits a tree. Bummer. Your friend consoles you, tells you you did the right thing, saving the cat, sacrificing the car. You are a hero. Now, change the scenario. Same road, same cat, same tree. Same friend. However, you’re driving the friend’s car instead. This time your friend doesn’t take to the idea of hitting the tree instead of the cat.
Choices like hitting a tree instead of a cat might sound mundane. “Hey, your friend’s an asshole!” Yeah. But say that friend was a woman and I’d had too much to drink and punched her in a Las Vegas elevator. You might take issue with that. So might she. And, no, never happened, thank you. But some fine lines in life consist of happenstance, or the choices you make that end up pissing people off and turning them from friends into enemies for life. Or something in between. To paraphrase Casey Stengel, the secret to life is to keep the people who hate you separated from those who are undecided. You can extrapolate a great deal from that. Stengel was a genius.
Other choices are more or less pretty. I made some poor choices early in life. Did and said some stupid things. I thought they made me questionable because I thought people knew and cared about those choices, naïve enough to believe they spent a lot of time focused on me and the choices I made. I matured, those poor choices hurt others less and, after finally settling down with Robin, I even eased off beating myself up over them. But the memories didn’t stop, they intensified. Once the broom-sweeping started again, the daily memory dump became something of a Zen exercise. Perhaps more of a detention-camp punishment walk. If there is a difference.
How’s this: I believe in the Superman Theory. Not Nietzsche. Forget him for a moment. I mean the other Superman. For me, it’s Truth, Justice and… You know, all the time, no matter what, no matter who. I have to be that way and, well, I’ll be telling you why. Ah, I’m spilling the beans now. I gave up lying and now I cannot stop being honest. Gets me in trouble all the time. Probably more trouble than the lying. Maybe not long term but who can tell.
And I like to dance, born to dance, because I was born next to my cousin Jean, the dancer. I like all sorts of music, show tunes, doo-wop, R&B… Big Funkadelic fan, as long as you can forget all the bad shit George Clinton did. How about “This Land Is Made for You and Me”?
How about this: There may or may not have been a place called San Francisco. And the Bay Area. Let’s be generous, for we had Berkeley those many years. That has solid mystery vibes. I may or may not have lived and worked there. And one day there may or may not have been a knock on my office door. I like that. I prefer the traditional Arabic “maybe, maybe not” instead of “once upon a time” here, even though this may have a fairy-tale feel.
Too minimalist? Too Hollywood? I get it. You see, I’ve been trying to push a sensation across. Set a tone, a mood. I’m not trying to be clever. I am good at that, though. Being clever and charming has brought me this far, after all, someone who should have been dead before puberty. I can do better, but, for a long time it wasn’t worth the effort. These days, I am trying. Again. But, of course, remember, this isn’t fiction. I’m trying to do a Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson kind of thing, you know?
“You’re really going to keep going in circles like this?”
“Please, Mel. Will you go away now and let me work?”
“Is that what this is, Herr Doktor Detective? Is this your work, now? Writing your memoirs? What a laugh. We’ll have to start calling you Watson. Oh, Watson!”
“Don’t yell in my ear… Go away, or you won’t get any dinner.”
“I’ll be back. To help.”
“Yeah, you and your Irish mother.”
“Don’t say another fucking word about my mother… You Mick on a stick… Jew in a stew…”
“What a fucking mouth on you!” Finally walking away. “Hey! Wait a second! Yeah. These are my memoirs, Miss Brilliance. You never bothered telling anyone the details, you know! The whole story...”
“Well, Mister Mouth, you never told me!!!” And she threw a pillow at my head.
“What’s wrong with memoirs, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to do that after the kind of thing that happened to me? All that television exposure?”
You know, one of these days, I’m going to have to tell the world about her.
“Once upon a time.” In one weird sense, properly speaking, that’s exactly the kind of story this is, now, even if I try to put an Arabic spin on it. Certainly, looking at it from one perspective, the perspective certain parties would like you to have, now that she’s out of the room, it has the elements of a fairy tale, the type that should end with the princess walking off with the prince. Plus, people who speak English used to expect their stories to begin that way. No one has dependable expectations anymore. You want a surprise? Arab Spring? Brexit? Trump? Weinstein? North Korean lube? And I do speak English, having taught it long ago. Once upon a time. Among other things. Not always a detective, not always chasing dogs and cats. Humanities, that’s what they call it. That’s me. Human. But I choose to start with the more obtuse “maybe and maybe not.” Maybe I’m a jerk. Maybe not. Considering. Depending upon who you ask.
They pulled on my memory as I held up to the third degree from those seventeen government intelligence agencies. Seventeen or fourteen? You see how it gets. Then again being ramrodded through four Congressional investigations. I stared back. Some of my bravest moments, if I do say. Just like Mel wrote it up. Robin would have been proud. Punch in the arm, laughing all the way down the hall proud. Doing all that to someone my age. They don’t care. Politicians. Bureaucrats. Who cares what they think I may have done? I like to think I’m still young enough to hold up to it. Pfft. I am! Take ‘em all on, one by one!
Think back to what happened to your memories when the Weinstein affair blew up, trying to recover what you had done or what had happened to you, or what you had seen in the past and never spoken up about. Who, me? For example, I mean. See what it does to you? What is normal? What needs to be rethought, relearned or undone? What needs to be compromised? Too old? Was I still too young?
Lawyers. My ass. When Mac saw those FBI agents coming, he said, “You’re gonna need a good lawyer.” I gave him Chandler’s line: “If he was good, he wouldn’t be a lawyer.” They wanted “the whole story.” Not then. I was ready, which means I wasn’t ready.
Mel didn’t have the whole story either because I didn’t give it to her. She also didn’t want to write the love story. Too girlie for her. Well, now I’m ready, really ready. And I’m a girlie kind of guy, I guess. Mel wrote that piece for The Atlantic. Applause, applause. I suppose you’ve all read it. Or you’ve heard about it. You know what happened, obviously, even if you don’t know these other details, whatever version you’ve been fed. But, this? Too girlie for her.
When I became a vegetarian in my forties, I began by eating Middle Eastern food. It’s because I met this wonderful Baha’i fellow at a Giants game. He explained it all to me. No more hot dogs after that. No, that didn’t make me an Arabist and does not influence the way I tell stories. I hope people reading this are smarter than that. But brother, is my stomach better. In this instance, the variable Arabic beginning makes more sense than the more definitive, traditional Western “once upon a time.” I may be a jerk. Or worse. I know. It seems like I’m drifting. Listen, by the time we get to the end, I promise, this will all make some kind of sense. I think. Just hang on a second more. They tell me you’re probably already getting bored. Something is going to happen in a minute. Trust me.
What’s the best way to tell a story? It depends. What story do you want to tell, and to what end? James Agee used to write about the strange, pure, magical tone that certain movies had for people, especially children, that would reverberate inside when you saw them, or stories that, when you read them, or heard them told stayed with you, became a part of who you were, your nature. A really good story should create what the French describe as frisson, that mystical remembrance. A sensation that creeps up your neck as it draws to a conclusion, a kind of identification with the essence of something that is yet isn’t present, a sort of emotional déjà vu. This is a natural response to something that you know but cannot speak. You could expect it at any moment. There and not there. A ghost but without having to believe in ghosts.
This is important. Some parents twist you with stories, they tell you things you shouldn’t know, shouldn’t think, and these have to be undone. They are undone by stories from others, told and retold. How they are retold, by teachers, by movies, literature, music, current events, love walking into your life, bombs thrown into crowds in front of you, are all different forms of life-changing events. Story-changing events. All capable of the undoing. And death.
When I tell this story over and over to myself, it’s like that. But, so far, I don’t know why. Should I? I mean, I lived it. Well, you don’t know the story, yet, do you? Not the real story.
Anyway. My Baha’i pal told me these stories about why people suffered from all sorts of illness, they explained why I was having these stomach aches, and suddenly I became a vegetarian. And cured. What’s that word the French use? But all we do is pass along each other’s stories. In the end, there aren’t that many. Something like twenty-seven or eight, they told me in grad school. Were the stories true? Who cares? You like meat? Good for you. Current events? Affaires d’l’amour? In those realms are there more than those twenty-seven different stories?
It isn’t lying, necessarily, when you tell a story differently. It’s storytelling. According to T.S. Eliot either stealing or borrowing depending upon your position. If I were Eliot, I don’t know what position I’d be in. Otherwise, you’d be mimeographing the same twenty-seven stories over and over. Mimeographing. That’s what you used to do before Google. You read Anne Sexton, a poem like “Cinderella,” and you know what I’m talking about. Either we retell stories merrily or in a more gruesome fashion, as fairy tales or nightmares.
Am I dropping names? Yes, for reference. For stability. For markers. I am also the conscientious academic when needs be. Or I lie a lot. In an academic way. Same thing.
Here, in this story, something happens, then that, and so on. But the elements of this story shoot out like the spokes of a wheel from a hub, everything runs back and forth, and in the end, maybe it never happened at all? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on trust. You see? So, I need references for stability. Because it depends, I suppose, on what, or who, you want to believe. Other people are telling different stories, aren’t they? They always will and always have. Certain interests will keep what they want known and secret as much as they can. And they will say whatever they want about other people’s stories. They’ll probably have a lot to say about mine. And me. And then, you know, the internet? Jesus. Bots, now, they have bots.
Usually, besides having a pleasant time, the whole point of telling a story really is winning. But what? In the end, what?
If you want to re-right yourself and resolve the problems you have with your memory you have no choice but to go back and reconstruct. Take your time. Be scrupulous. Give the subject the effort it deserves. Also, take a break now and again. This is a matter of rectitude, of the utmost trustworthiness. Especially if you have doubts from the start. Doubts about what you remember. Doubts about what you know. Doubts about yourself. Especially if it appears that others have doubts about you. Self-confidence is a great thing. The Dalai Lama teaches this. It is probably his primary lesson after love. That’s the way I hear him. He also tells us Nirvana is a great thing. I agree with him on that, too. That Nirvana is a great thing, not that it’s real. We need great ideals in our lives, but Nirvana isn’t real. The Dalai Lama believes Nirvana is real. I don’t know the man. Even if I did, would he tell me? I know…
To an extent, everybody has this problem about self-doubt, and always has had because everybody always has their own story, stories being what they are. Whatever they are. Formally, of course, we have the story as it exists and the story as it is told, which one can screw around with as one pleases. As I have done. You are very welcome. Some people detest this. You have been warned. And don’t say I didn’t tell you so. I happen to be a nice person in that regard no matter what others might say. And you know who.
But always one has to rely also on their own story from others. I’ve always had others in my life. Oh, brother, have I. And some stories have always been mysteries and not always for fun. You know, like Sherlock Holmes. This isn’t Sherlock Holmes. Forget what Mel said. Things are just more complicated today and not always for fun. And not always by accident. There are no coincidences, by the way. Maybe.
Say you’re driving down the street and suddenly a cat runs across the road. You swerve out of the way and your car hits a tree. Bummer. Your friend consoles you, tells you you did the right thing, saving the cat, sacrificing the car. You are a hero. Now, change the scenario. Same road, same cat, same tree. Same friend. However, you’re driving the friend’s car instead. This time your friend doesn’t take to the idea of hitting the tree instead of the cat.
Choices like hitting a tree instead of a cat might sound mundane. “Hey, your friend’s an asshole!” Yeah. But say that friend was a woman and I’d had too much to drink and punched her in a Las Vegas elevator. You might take issue with that. So might she. And, no, never happened, thank you. But some fine lines in life consist of happenstance, or the choices you make that end up pissing people off and turning them from friends into enemies for life. Or something in between. To paraphrase Casey Stengel, the secret to life is to keep the people who hate you separated from those who are undecided. You can extrapolate a great deal from that. Stengel was a genius.
Other choices are more or less pretty. I made some poor choices early in life. Did and said some stupid things. I thought they made me questionable because I thought people knew and cared about those choices, naïve enough to believe they spent a lot of time focused on me and the choices I made. I matured, those poor choices hurt others less and, after finally settling down with Robin, I even eased off beating myself up over them. But the memories didn’t stop, they intensified. Once the broom-sweeping started again, the daily memory dump became something of a Zen exercise. Perhaps more of a detention-camp punishment walk. If there is a difference.
August 25, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Eleven
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Most people aren’t boy scouts. Or girl scouts. Be fair. They could be preaching from the bible, they could be President of the United States, but if they don’t show compassion to people, to animals, if they don’t respect someone’s property, they’re just thugs. It doesn’t matter if they’re smiling at you, treating you like a friend, they have to show that compassion. It may come as a shock to you, but most people don’t. I used to watch a lot of television and those shows like to push the idea that people are nice. They aren’t.
Most people are selfish and stupid, cannot see two inches in front of their noses or think two steps ahead in time. They may not go out of their way to hurt you, but they won’t go out of their way to help you, either. They think that is someone—or worse, some thing—else’s job.
Those of you who haven’t been watching the news lately may not be aware of the latest manifestation of the absolute scientific proof of these statements. I urge you in that direction.
John Gould liked beating the compassion out of people. This process worked best on his three children. I was fortunate in getting out of that mess faster than the other two. Now, when I say fortunate, my good fortune comes mostly at the expense of a great many other extremely compassionate people, a large number of whom had to fall by the wayside over the years after I remanded myself out of John Gould’s clutches because of my utter lack of empathy even as they showed me the best of human care. Few, countable on rare, random digits, remain. And, in case you haven’t been paying close attention, I am not yet fully capable of the full range of human kindness, what one might expect of a normal person.
Further proof that compassion actually does exist in the world, can be located and inculcated, sown in a person and grown like the best fruit. But, it is difficult.
You develop totally as person, otherwise, without empathy. You are full of desires, needs, drives, abilities. Empathy is what rounds you out as a complete human being, one of the rare qualities, and tells you what to do with that package of, I guess we might as well call them minor qualities, as well as playing its own major role. It gives you purpose. Direction. Poor me. Poor anyone who has to struggle without it or any lack of it. Don’t be so shocked to know that so many people are walking around without some large sum of it in their pockets. Just read the internet. Just understand that there is an internet, a need for an internet, beyond the scientific and technical demands, the social cravings behind it. The gut-driven lack of empathy that pulls it all together in one orgasmic scream of ME.
Oh, sure, many people walk around thinking and saying they are filled to the brim with empathy. There are even a bunch who have the nerve to call themselves “empaths.” Empaths! You know, like on Star Trek. Christ on a cracker, are those people crazy and trying to make a bundle.
I’ve spent more than fifty years, part-time of course, focused on building what my parents should have built for me, or helped me build myself in my first five to seven years of life, some genuine empathy, internalized from youth. Had they done their job properly I would probably have come out whole. As it is, I am still only partially there and will remain so until I am wholly in my grave. Probably. We’ll see. Thanks, Mumsy and Daddikins. Some problems truly are their fault, some can always be laid at their doorstep—don’t listen to those who say otherwise—as much as the color of our eyes and hair. Whether or not we or they can do much about it later. There are movements afoot to tell us we need to suck it up and take responsibility, blah blah blah. Always have been. I think they are always led by bad parents. Usually men.
But, later, we can try, and we can find people to help. And they can help if they want. Or, if you want to allow them in. If they aren’t complete assholes. Like bad therapists who tell you love isn’t real and crap like that. And, of course, no guarantees you won’t find worse assholes to take their place.
You always see these crappy ghetto melodramas—on TV, usually made for TV—where some moron replacement daddy steps in to help a teenage boy and tells him that when the pressure is on, that’s when the magic happens inside you that defines you as a man. No, dumbbell, that’s when you get your act together, learn responsibility and what defines your character as a human being, man or woman, and if you were a decent parent, you’d get that shit straight. But, of course, it’s a ghetto melodrama so it’s just going to keep fucking up the lives of the ghetto kids watching it to keep them down and in prison. Keep that part of them that should be working on the empathy they missed out on from having a decent father absent. So they, and you, can keep beating their mothers...
Now, perhaps Terpil had developed a sort of empathy, or was trying it on for size. How it came to him at such a late date is a question for others to answer. If it came earlier, unnoticed by me, another. Perhaps he had fully developed some brim-full empathy and I was missing it because of some innate prejudice that clouded my opinion of him. Poor Terpil.
Ah, well...
And then there are the very founts of empathy, the therapists, so many of whom are simply scam artists. Or well-intentioned people who simply have no idea what they are really doing and create empathy out of a guidebook.
I’m going to make a statement that sounds absolutely horrible. As if I haven’t already. Not only that, but seemingly disconnected. (And, if you are a psychoanalyst, you might think the disconnect is part of a dissociation, but I beg you not to go there…or go there if you want, whatever...and go some other place, too, for all I care.) First, though, a nice thought. I love the police. Some of my best friends are members of police forces of some kind.
Most people aren’t boy scouts. Or girl scouts. Be fair. They could be preaching from the bible, they could be President of the United States, but if they don’t show compassion to people, to animals, if they don’t respect someone’s property, they’re just thugs. It doesn’t matter if they’re smiling at you, treating you like a friend, they have to show that compassion. It may come as a shock to you, but most people don’t. I used to watch a lot of television and those shows like to push the idea that people are nice. They aren’t.
Most people are selfish and stupid, cannot see two inches in front of their noses or think two steps ahead in time. They may not go out of their way to hurt you, but they won’t go out of their way to help you, either. They think that is someone—or worse, some thing—else’s job.
Those of you who haven’t been watching the news lately may not be aware of the latest manifestation of the absolute scientific proof of these statements. I urge you in that direction.
John Gould liked beating the compassion out of people. This process worked best on his three children. I was fortunate in getting out of that mess faster than the other two. Now, when I say fortunate, my good fortune comes mostly at the expense of a great many other extremely compassionate people, a large number of whom had to fall by the wayside over the years after I remanded myself out of John Gould’s clutches because of my utter lack of empathy even as they showed me the best of human care. Few, countable on rare, random digits, remain. And, in case you haven’t been paying close attention, I am not yet fully capable of the full range of human kindness, what one might expect of a normal person.
Further proof that compassion actually does exist in the world, can be located and inculcated, sown in a person and grown like the best fruit. But, it is difficult.
You develop totally as person, otherwise, without empathy. You are full of desires, needs, drives, abilities. Empathy is what rounds you out as a complete human being, one of the rare qualities, and tells you what to do with that package of, I guess we might as well call them minor qualities, as well as playing its own major role. It gives you purpose. Direction. Poor me. Poor anyone who has to struggle without it or any lack of it. Don’t be so shocked to know that so many people are walking around without some large sum of it in their pockets. Just read the internet. Just understand that there is an internet, a need for an internet, beyond the scientific and technical demands, the social cravings behind it. The gut-driven lack of empathy that pulls it all together in one orgasmic scream of ME.
Oh, sure, many people walk around thinking and saying they are filled to the brim with empathy. There are even a bunch who have the nerve to call themselves “empaths.” Empaths! You know, like on Star Trek. Christ on a cracker, are those people crazy and trying to make a bundle.
I’ve spent more than fifty years, part-time of course, focused on building what my parents should have built for me, or helped me build myself in my first five to seven years of life, some genuine empathy, internalized from youth. Had they done their job properly I would probably have come out whole. As it is, I am still only partially there and will remain so until I am wholly in my grave. Probably. We’ll see. Thanks, Mumsy and Daddikins. Some problems truly are their fault, some can always be laid at their doorstep—don’t listen to those who say otherwise—as much as the color of our eyes and hair. Whether or not we or they can do much about it later. There are movements afoot to tell us we need to suck it up and take responsibility, blah blah blah. Always have been. I think they are always led by bad parents. Usually men.
But, later, we can try, and we can find people to help. And they can help if they want. Or, if you want to allow them in. If they aren’t complete assholes. Like bad therapists who tell you love isn’t real and crap like that. And, of course, no guarantees you won’t find worse assholes to take their place.
You always see these crappy ghetto melodramas—on TV, usually made for TV—where some moron replacement daddy steps in to help a teenage boy and tells him that when the pressure is on, that’s when the magic happens inside you that defines you as a man. No, dumbbell, that’s when you get your act together, learn responsibility and what defines your character as a human being, man or woman, and if you were a decent parent, you’d get that shit straight. But, of course, it’s a ghetto melodrama so it’s just going to keep fucking up the lives of the ghetto kids watching it to keep them down and in prison. Keep that part of them that should be working on the empathy they missed out on from having a decent father absent. So they, and you, can keep beating their mothers...
Now, perhaps Terpil had developed a sort of empathy, or was trying it on for size. How it came to him at such a late date is a question for others to answer. If it came earlier, unnoticed by me, another. Perhaps he had fully developed some brim-full empathy and I was missing it because of some innate prejudice that clouded my opinion of him. Poor Terpil.
Ah, well...
And then there are the very founts of empathy, the therapists, so many of whom are simply scam artists. Or well-intentioned people who simply have no idea what they are really doing and create empathy out of a guidebook.
I’m going to make a statement that sounds absolutely horrible. As if I haven’t already. Not only that, but seemingly disconnected. (And, if you are a psychoanalyst, you might think the disconnect is part of a dissociation, but I beg you not to go there…or go there if you want, whatever...and go some other place, too, for all I care.) First, though, a nice thought. I love the police. Some of my best friends are members of police forces of some kind.
The Last Diversion
[Or, as it might have appeared (in some fashion) in the new and last revisions of But Tell It Slant, We Must an Anguish Pay, and Then the List Is Done as the Demi-Post-Mid-COVID Pre-Prologue...
(in Frank Gould’s authorial voice...of course...not mine)]
While we are all huddled up in our hovels, Mel’s friends—more than mine—who so enjoyed all the readings I gave while City Lights was opened, congratulating me on the funny parts, mostly, came back—I understand through something called Zoom—to complain to her about certain other parts.
I’ve heard these complaints before, of course, and not only, although mostly from Mel herself. However, this time—and I trust her on it—more than three or four jerks were understood to have said something along the lines of, “He’s sounding like Ayn Rand with these social and political rants.”
Okay. What can I say. That was definitely the last straw. Comparing me with that Russian, helmet-headed...runt. Mel didn’t have to say another word.
So. Full revision, full steam ahead on all the books, with all the links you have come to appreciate. To be located here. And Lord help us all if Goodreads goes out of business.
Alright, one or two exceptions. First, and you’ll note it when you get there, I have an argument to make about the whole program. It will be very short, I promise, and the longer version linked. Second, you do have to understand the major concept of not being able to follow the game unless you know the players, yes?
These first four books are intricately entwined with my life and the lives of those I love and, sure, even not so much love when it comes to certain persons. You have to know something about that in order to understand what’s taking place, right? I can’t just shoot ahead and tell you “this happened, then this happened, then this happened,” without giving you the background. What kind of Rand would THAT make me? So. Those parts have to stay. Even if Mel rolled her eyes a bit. Like I said, she doesn’t like the kissy parts. I think a lot of you reading this do! And, no, I won’t call it the “romantic” parts because that will make it sound like fiction again and get THOSE people arguing all over... I’m sick of it!!
(in Frank Gould’s authorial voice...of course...not mine)]
While we are all huddled up in our hovels, Mel’s friends—more than mine—who so enjoyed all the readings I gave while City Lights was opened, congratulating me on the funny parts, mostly, came back—I understand through something called Zoom—to complain to her about certain other parts.
I’ve heard these complaints before, of course, and not only, although mostly from Mel herself. However, this time—and I trust her on it—more than three or four jerks were understood to have said something along the lines of, “He’s sounding like Ayn Rand with these social and political rants.”
Okay. What can I say. That was definitely the last straw. Comparing me with that Russian, helmet-headed...runt. Mel didn’t have to say another word.
So. Full revision, full steam ahead on all the books, with all the links you have come to appreciate. To be located here. And Lord help us all if Goodreads goes out of business.
Alright, one or two exceptions. First, and you’ll note it when you get there, I have an argument to make about the whole program. It will be very short, I promise, and the longer version linked. Second, you do have to understand the major concept of not being able to follow the game unless you know the players, yes?
These first four books are intricately entwined with my life and the lives of those I love and, sure, even not so much love when it comes to certain persons. You have to know something about that in order to understand what’s taking place, right? I can’t just shoot ahead and tell you “this happened, then this happened, then this happened,” without giving you the background. What kind of Rand would THAT make me? So. Those parts have to stay. Even if Mel rolled her eyes a bit. Like I said, she doesn’t like the kissy parts. I think a lot of you reading this do! And, no, I won’t call it the “romantic” parts because that will make it sound like fiction again and get THOSE people arguing all over... I’m sick of it!!
August 24, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Nine
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Beethoven, Friedrich, Whitman, Kerouac all melted me during my childhood. But they never spoke to me and said vote this way, or join the army, or start a fire, be the revolution. They never told me explicitly to do anything except, obviously, to motivate me out of my pre-pubescent hellhole.
When I was gob-smacked by “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” while a rambunctious young tadpole, I wanted to do something, and later I learned that this lofty movie propaganda put the juice into me. Some art should be political, but that doesn’t mean the political message should be overt. The artist herself isn’t necessarily aware of the message. Polke, whom some consider Germany’s Andy Warhol, what I tried to explain to Tre that first encounter, was an extremely political artist. He went through a phase, probably his most famous, of painting East German concentration camps, a “celebration” of his nation’s various historical moments, I suppose. But those images of guard towers, screaming at you, did not scream anything in particular. Not to me. Possibly they screamed something striking to East or West Germans. Imaginative they were, they were also too benign. Those stark, shadowy towers were glossed over by cascades of cartoon-like showers of ducks and flowers and pop images, turning the towers into toys and the canvases into the par of a child’s nursery blanket.
Today, when I look at the Japanese dancers, I can see Polke glaring backward, frivolously, at a corrupt element within us. I’m not alone reading that into his work. The demeaning of women. The loss of an ancient culture. The trashing of culture in general.
Does it make me want to do anything about these problems? It inspires me. I hammered my students with righteous indignation. What else can you do except warn them about the loss of their culture, the inevitable changes in culture that cause loss, the exuberant lies that your own culture will tell that can force you into opposition with others and yourself? And what else can you do except warn young women, and caution young men, about the harm mass culture does to society, does to gender?
Everywhere in our country the White Male tells you they are in control, what to think, and especially what to think about who is in control. The feminist writers warn us that we can get intimidated by and even become a part of, knowingly or unwittingly, the very people who corrupt us and deny us our dignity. They drag non-white, non-male recruits into their ranks to start spreading the news. In my day, feminism hadn’t done much to turn off the loudspeaker any more than Martin Luther King, Jr. had to shut off the spigot of idiots like Clarence Thomas. See the women voting for Trump. See the women flooding the ranks of the AltRight.
And yet…and yet.
Beethoven, Friedrich, Whitman, Kerouac all melted me during my childhood. But they never spoke to me and said vote this way, or join the army, or start a fire, be the revolution. They never told me explicitly to do anything except, obviously, to motivate me out of my pre-pubescent hellhole.
When I was gob-smacked by “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” while a rambunctious young tadpole, I wanted to do something, and later I learned that this lofty movie propaganda put the juice into me. Some art should be political, but that doesn’t mean the political message should be overt. The artist herself isn’t necessarily aware of the message. Polke, whom some consider Germany’s Andy Warhol, what I tried to explain to Tre that first encounter, was an extremely political artist. He went through a phase, probably his most famous, of painting East German concentration camps, a “celebration” of his nation’s various historical moments, I suppose. But those images of guard towers, screaming at you, did not scream anything in particular. Not to me. Possibly they screamed something striking to East or West Germans. Imaginative they were, they were also too benign. Those stark, shadowy towers were glossed over by cascades of cartoon-like showers of ducks and flowers and pop images, turning the towers into toys and the canvases into the par of a child’s nursery blanket.
Today, when I look at the Japanese dancers, I can see Polke glaring backward, frivolously, at a corrupt element within us. I’m not alone reading that into his work. The demeaning of women. The loss of an ancient culture. The trashing of culture in general.
Does it make me want to do anything about these problems? It inspires me. I hammered my students with righteous indignation. What else can you do except warn them about the loss of their culture, the inevitable changes in culture that cause loss, the exuberant lies that your own culture will tell that can force you into opposition with others and yourself? And what else can you do except warn young women, and caution young men, about the harm mass culture does to society, does to gender?
Everywhere in our country the White Male tells you they are in control, what to think, and especially what to think about who is in control. The feminist writers warn us that we can get intimidated by and even become a part of, knowingly or unwittingly, the very people who corrupt us and deny us our dignity. They drag non-white, non-male recruits into their ranks to start spreading the news. In my day, feminism hadn’t done much to turn off the loudspeaker any more than Martin Luther King, Jr. had to shut off the spigot of idiots like Clarence Thomas. See the women voting for Trump. See the women flooding the ranks of the AltRight.
And yet…and yet.
August 20, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Eight
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
What society doesn’t discuss is the shocking statistics on the abuse of older women. Because so few of the crimes are reported, the extent of the problem is not fully known. Only about 30 percent of elderly abuse victims go to the authorities.
And, of course, women are six times more likely to be victims of abuse.
A supervised setting such as a nursing home isn’t a deterrent, as 84 percent of elder abuse happens to those living in a care center. Shockingly, 80 percent of the time, that abuse is perpetrated by a caregiver — and more than 75 percent of those victims say their abuse was witnessed by someone. Still, the crimes go unreported to authorities.
Isn’t that funny? I mean, if you like statistics.
It isn’t simply care center workers who are preying on these vulnerable women. More than half the time, sexual abuse is committed by a family member they are dependent upon. This means many elderly women must choose between reporting the crime and losing their financial support for the care they receive.
Cognitive decline plays a significant role as victims are not always helpful in the investigation and prosecution of their abuse. According to the Nursing Home Abuse Center, about 5 million elderly over 65 have some degree of dementia. By age 85, the figure jumps to nearly half of all elderly.
Oh, and don’t forget that some of these women are veterans.
This is why everyone should make a point of spending time with the elderly while they are younger and getting to know what it is like to be old and getting familiar with the ins and outs of agedness. You do not want to be surprised when, with any luck—and we must call it luck, even if it is bad—becoming old happens to you.
This is neither new nor surprising advice. Old age does not come upon you gradually for the simple fact that it comes upon you live in a state of constant denial as it approaches. Denial or at least a state that you are questioning it as it approaches. With each moment of questioning, with each happenstance of aging, with each reckoning of the lessoning of your abilities, the falling away of your senses, you account for it that you are temporarily ill, or that there is a change in the weather, or that someone has treated you badly that day, or that it is the government’s fault, and that things will change for the better, soon. Oh, yes, definitely. Any day now... Those lines on your face are just going to disappear, POOF!
Yet none of that is true and things only deteriorate over time. Time is your opponent and time is stronger than you. Time is not your enemy, though, it is your friend. That is why you should spend time with the elderly. Spend that time with them when you are young. That is when time is your best friend, after all, when you are young. Yet, surely, most young people prefer to spend their time with other young people. So it has been, so it always shall be. And time remains your friend when you are old. You simply have to spend time, both when you are young and old, becoming familiar with it. And also, you have more time when you are old, to make friends with the young.
At least the ones who won’t rape you or steal your money when you are elderly and incognizant.
But who thinks about the old other than their own? Your own family members? And do you even think of them? Give them the time of day? Most elderly are simply forgotten, left to themselves or, at best, some others, often careless others, others who prey upon them. That’s right. Prey upon them, their bodies, their money, even their souls, until they are dead. Or beyond.
Worse today because there is so much for us to concern ourselves with, especially ourselves as the marketplace tells us more and more often to concern ourselves with ourselves. And the world itself is burning and forces us to think more and more about ourselves and our dwindling time here on the planet we—and, yes, those elderly folks—have destroyed.
Ah, well, you say, here you are...here I am. An old white man complaining about the plight of old white men. Fuck you. Sure, why not. But, plenty of others out there, my friends, old but not men, old but not white, suffering far more than I. Indeed. Have you not been reading so far? Notice how little I suffer? And white men, too, surely, other than myself, and some deserving of compassion. Some not, I suppose. Some should be hung by their thumbs, dipped in honey and left in the sun to be devoured by ants. Sure. That’s a good one. But not all of them. And, on second thought, don’t waste the honey. Make it a syrup of processed sugar and gasoline. Better yet, palm oil. That way it won’t burn, and the ants will have more fun.
But not all the old white men. Some of them were good boys. Or, at least, they tried at times.
What society doesn’t discuss is the shocking statistics on the abuse of older women. Because so few of the crimes are reported, the extent of the problem is not fully known. Only about 30 percent of elderly abuse victims go to the authorities.
And, of course, women are six times more likely to be victims of abuse.
A supervised setting such as a nursing home isn’t a deterrent, as 84 percent of elder abuse happens to those living in a care center. Shockingly, 80 percent of the time, that abuse is perpetrated by a caregiver — and more than 75 percent of those victims say their abuse was witnessed by someone. Still, the crimes go unreported to authorities.
Isn’t that funny? I mean, if you like statistics.
It isn’t simply care center workers who are preying on these vulnerable women. More than half the time, sexual abuse is committed by a family member they are dependent upon. This means many elderly women must choose between reporting the crime and losing their financial support for the care they receive.
Cognitive decline plays a significant role as victims are not always helpful in the investigation and prosecution of their abuse. According to the Nursing Home Abuse Center, about 5 million elderly over 65 have some degree of dementia. By age 85, the figure jumps to nearly half of all elderly.
Oh, and don’t forget that some of these women are veterans.
This is why everyone should make a point of spending time with the elderly while they are younger and getting to know what it is like to be old and getting familiar with the ins and outs of agedness. You do not want to be surprised when, with any luck—and we must call it luck, even if it is bad—becoming old happens to you.
This is neither new nor surprising advice. Old age does not come upon you gradually for the simple fact that it comes upon you live in a state of constant denial as it approaches. Denial or at least a state that you are questioning it as it approaches. With each moment of questioning, with each happenstance of aging, with each reckoning of the lessoning of your abilities, the falling away of your senses, you account for it that you are temporarily ill, or that there is a change in the weather, or that someone has treated you badly that day, or that it is the government’s fault, and that things will change for the better, soon. Oh, yes, definitely. Any day now... Those lines on your face are just going to disappear, POOF!
Yet none of that is true and things only deteriorate over time. Time is your opponent and time is stronger than you. Time is not your enemy, though, it is your friend. That is why you should spend time with the elderly. Spend that time with them when you are young. That is when time is your best friend, after all, when you are young. Yet, surely, most young people prefer to spend their time with other young people. So it has been, so it always shall be. And time remains your friend when you are old. You simply have to spend time, both when you are young and old, becoming familiar with it. And also, you have more time when you are old, to make friends with the young.
At least the ones who won’t rape you or steal your money when you are elderly and incognizant.
But who thinks about the old other than their own? Your own family members? And do you even think of them? Give them the time of day? Most elderly are simply forgotten, left to themselves or, at best, some others, often careless others, others who prey upon them. That’s right. Prey upon them, their bodies, their money, even their souls, until they are dead. Or beyond.
Worse today because there is so much for us to concern ourselves with, especially ourselves as the marketplace tells us more and more often to concern ourselves with ourselves. And the world itself is burning and forces us to think more and more about ourselves and our dwindling time here on the planet we—and, yes, those elderly folks—have destroyed.
Ah, well, you say, here you are...here I am. An old white man complaining about the plight of old white men. Fuck you. Sure, why not. But, plenty of others out there, my friends, old but not men, old but not white, suffering far more than I. Indeed. Have you not been reading so far? Notice how little I suffer? And white men, too, surely, other than myself, and some deserving of compassion. Some not, I suppose. Some should be hung by their thumbs, dipped in honey and left in the sun to be devoured by ants. Sure. That’s a good one. But not all of them. And, on second thought, don’t waste the honey. Make it a syrup of processed sugar and gasoline. Better yet, palm oil. That way it won’t burn, and the ants will have more fun.
But not all the old white men. Some of them were good boys. Or, at least, they tried at times.
August 19, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part SEVEN
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Scientists have understood the basics of genetics for centuries. They’ve had an inkling of something that interferes with genetics, with human development, for about one hundred years, as well. The environment. All sorts of things, and I’m not speaking about mommy and daddy’s attitudes, either. No Freud, here. Actually, no damn Freud anywhere. Sorry, an extravagance. And it would be years before they understood the effects of diet, smoking and alcohol. They saw something else, decades ago. We knew that random, highly charged particles, tinier than atoms, traveling at high speeds, were capable of striking and altering, or otherwise “damaging” a fertilized egg at precisely the right moment, likely to cause incidental mutations. Some might be outwardly noticeable enough to cause an immediate and unpredictable miscarriage or, later, infant death, or a deformation of the body at birth. Other mutations might not be so quickly discerned. Some even speculate this could be a precursor to evolution itself.
Other factors may occur. With identical twins, for example, where the genetic material is exactly the same, some researchers have discovered that minute hormonal differences in the amniotic “soup” floating in the tiny space between one fetus and another can result in one baby being born with a predisposition to one characteristic, the other to its opposite. One red-haired, one blonde. One could be straight and the other gay or trans later in life, for example.
Science is only a matter of evidence and probability. Any good scientist will tell you they only know what they know, nothing more. Scientists who tell you otherwise are fools or, better, not very good scientists. Most scientists are truly better referred to as artists who require more research and practice.
Some not-very-well-trained or supposed scientists insist to this day that gender identity is a behavioral or psychological disorder of some sort, treatable by psychotherapy. For example. This despite decades of conscientious psychological, medical, biological and social research to the contrary. All of this research indicates—indicates through evidence and probability—that it is a biological predisposition. What evidence and probability do these outlier scientists have on their side? Some, of course, but usually little. Not nearly as much in the face of the majority. As is often the case in countless other issues like the effects of tobacco smoking, or climate change. It isn’t a matter of being politically correct but of catching up with the evidence and being good at your profession. Some people can’t, some are not, some simply refuse to be. Quite happily, too. Yet they still manage to be heard from. I wonder why?
In this case it's about “sex,” of course. People—all people, not only scientists—have a fairly easy time distinguishing the differences between human behaviors and accepting them as a given in nearly every other sphere of life. That some people are extremely intelligent and some mentally challenged. Some have a talent for farming and others a talent for writing. I’d probably make a better farmer than writer or detective, for instance. What is wheat, by the way? Some are predisposed to be skinny, others athletic and others fat, some small and others tall.
Surprisingly, most people accept most differences but cannot, somehow, understand sexual difference beyond “male” and “female” dependent upon genitalia, even though all the wide rainbow of differences manage to manifest during early childhood, long before supposed “outside influences” could manage any change in personality or physiology.
What determines such prejudices about sexuality which skewer our attitudes about gender orientation? Morality, and that has in turn been twisted, usually, by politics or, more likely, religion. Religion tells us all these things have been predetermined by a higher power with a plan, and that this plan has a particular method which excludes certain immoral activities. This higher power—let’s call it God for brevity’s sake—may allow the immoral activity of drunkenness now and then or lawlessness now and then because they are too common and may be part of the plan, even though they cause disruption, even violence and death. But sexual “deviation”? That’s not possible, because that leads away from making babies, doesn’t it, and so cannot be part of the plan. Sex without babies can’t be part of the plan… But, wait a second. There is quite a bit of sex without babies between “normal” men and women, even outside of marriage. It is frowned upon, I know, but… They don’t treat it like a crime, do they? They don’t go around beating people up over it, do they? At least not around here. (Now, in other countries, that is exactly what they do. To the women, at least. Therefore, we are soooo much more progressive! Aren’t we? Most of us. Give yourselves a pat on the back, Judeo-Christian brothers and sisters, for not being backwards!)
This is all bullshit in the name of a deity. Progressive-expressive hate in the name of a deity. Which has a massive history. No kidding. Another good justification for removing deities of all sorts. However, removing deities will not remove hate, Stalin proved that, good old Joe comes to the rescue once again, so…that thinking, too, is a bit narrowminded. The supposed purpose of deities, recently, at least, most of them, at least, has been to remove our hate. Hasn’t been too much progress from that direction, but perhaps some. We’re only beginning to collect the data. Give it time.
Meanwhile, give The Little Drummer Boy some… You never know. He might grow up to be queer. The woman who wrote the song about him might have been… You’d have to ask her very, very close friend, but they’re both dead, now. And the dead tell no tales, so they say.
As to the living...
Scientists have understood the basics of genetics for centuries. They’ve had an inkling of something that interferes with genetics, with human development, for about one hundred years, as well. The environment. All sorts of things, and I’m not speaking about mommy and daddy’s attitudes, either. No Freud, here. Actually, no damn Freud anywhere. Sorry, an extravagance. And it would be years before they understood the effects of diet, smoking and alcohol. They saw something else, decades ago. We knew that random, highly charged particles, tinier than atoms, traveling at high speeds, were capable of striking and altering, or otherwise “damaging” a fertilized egg at precisely the right moment, likely to cause incidental mutations. Some might be outwardly noticeable enough to cause an immediate and unpredictable miscarriage or, later, infant death, or a deformation of the body at birth. Other mutations might not be so quickly discerned. Some even speculate this could be a precursor to evolution itself.
Other factors may occur. With identical twins, for example, where the genetic material is exactly the same, some researchers have discovered that minute hormonal differences in the amniotic “soup” floating in the tiny space between one fetus and another can result in one baby being born with a predisposition to one characteristic, the other to its opposite. One red-haired, one blonde. One could be straight and the other gay or trans later in life, for example.
Science is only a matter of evidence and probability. Any good scientist will tell you they only know what they know, nothing more. Scientists who tell you otherwise are fools or, better, not very good scientists. Most scientists are truly better referred to as artists who require more research and practice.
Some not-very-well-trained or supposed scientists insist to this day that gender identity is a behavioral or psychological disorder of some sort, treatable by psychotherapy. For example. This despite decades of conscientious psychological, medical, biological and social research to the contrary. All of this research indicates—indicates through evidence and probability—that it is a biological predisposition. What evidence and probability do these outlier scientists have on their side? Some, of course, but usually little. Not nearly as much in the face of the majority. As is often the case in countless other issues like the effects of tobacco smoking, or climate change. It isn’t a matter of being politically correct but of catching up with the evidence and being good at your profession. Some people can’t, some are not, some simply refuse to be. Quite happily, too. Yet they still manage to be heard from. I wonder why?
In this case it's about “sex,” of course. People—all people, not only scientists—have a fairly easy time distinguishing the differences between human behaviors and accepting them as a given in nearly every other sphere of life. That some people are extremely intelligent and some mentally challenged. Some have a talent for farming and others a talent for writing. I’d probably make a better farmer than writer or detective, for instance. What is wheat, by the way? Some are predisposed to be skinny, others athletic and others fat, some small and others tall.
Surprisingly, most people accept most differences but cannot, somehow, understand sexual difference beyond “male” and “female” dependent upon genitalia, even though all the wide rainbow of differences manage to manifest during early childhood, long before supposed “outside influences” could manage any change in personality or physiology.
What determines such prejudices about sexuality which skewer our attitudes about gender orientation? Morality, and that has in turn been twisted, usually, by politics or, more likely, religion. Religion tells us all these things have been predetermined by a higher power with a plan, and that this plan has a particular method which excludes certain immoral activities. This higher power—let’s call it God for brevity’s sake—may allow the immoral activity of drunkenness now and then or lawlessness now and then because they are too common and may be part of the plan, even though they cause disruption, even violence and death. But sexual “deviation”? That’s not possible, because that leads away from making babies, doesn’t it, and so cannot be part of the plan. Sex without babies can’t be part of the plan… But, wait a second. There is quite a bit of sex without babies between “normal” men and women, even outside of marriage. It is frowned upon, I know, but… They don’t treat it like a crime, do they? They don’t go around beating people up over it, do they? At least not around here. (Now, in other countries, that is exactly what they do. To the women, at least. Therefore, we are soooo much more progressive! Aren’t we? Most of us. Give yourselves a pat on the back, Judeo-Christian brothers and sisters, for not being backwards!)
This is all bullshit in the name of a deity. Progressive-expressive hate in the name of a deity. Which has a massive history. No kidding. Another good justification for removing deities of all sorts. However, removing deities will not remove hate, Stalin proved that, good old Joe comes to the rescue once again, so…that thinking, too, is a bit narrowminded. The supposed purpose of deities, recently, at least, most of them, at least, has been to remove our hate. Hasn’t been too much progress from that direction, but perhaps some. We’re only beginning to collect the data. Give it time.
Meanwhile, give The Little Drummer Boy some… You never know. He might grow up to be queer. The woman who wrote the song about him might have been… You’d have to ask her very, very close friend, but they’re both dead, now. And the dead tell no tales, so they say.
As to the living...
August 18, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Six
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is simply stupid. Some other time I will discuss the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Not now. Or maybe I already have. Why should I remember things like that?
Animals are intelligent. They can communicate with us and do, all the time they are in our presence. They speak to us directly and clearly, using their own languages, telling us things of importance to them and, when we have established a significant enough relationship with them, things of importance to us as well. These may be pets or “wild animals” with whom we meet on a regular or irregular basis in the woods or around our houses. Rural or urban. It makes no difference. Even birds will recognize us, even from a distance. In fact, that is what they do.
The blue jay bounces up and down when it produces that squeaky-wheel sound. Apparently, it has to bounce in order to produce that sound; this isn’t some dance with a detached or ulterior purpose. All the other birds around know exactly what this dancing and song mean, and so should you: “Get the fuck out of my space!” He wouldn’t be there, singing and dancing otherwise. He’d be somewhere else. Not around you.
It’s simple, and you are simple: simply stupid if you don’t understand it.
Watch a squirrel, sitting still, flick its tail. An animal’s tail is not some superfluous appendage. The squirrel does not flick its tail to be cute and entertaining. When in motion, climbing, the tail is a critical limb, necessary for maintaining balance. But, when sitting still, level on some surface, why would a squirrel, or any other animal use its tail? Out of nervousness? Anxiety? Like a human, stressed by the problems witnessed on television or traversing its subconscious? Don’t be an idiot. It’s communicating. The way you might use your hands to speak when you aren’t using them to eat a hamburger.
And it may be communicating with you.
I had a childhood. Everybody does, I suppose. Mine wasn’t much. As it turned out mine certainly wasn’t much of what I needed. In the end it wasn’t what I expected it to be. At least in terms of the books I read, what they taught, what I saw on television and in the movies. And it got cut short, in great part because I cut it short. I wanted to parachute out of it. I wasn’t getting what I wanted from it. I wasn’t getting what I needed from it. So, I didn’t want childhood any longer.
Maybe that’s what happens in life. Forget all the psychological hobby-gobby. It’s as simple as that. You are supposed to get X. From your parents, your siblings, the people around you, the environment. You are supposed to get certain things you require. Some people do. Some people don’t. Some people are supposed to get certain things, some people other things. I guess. The people around you, the environment, they don’t know what those things are, they only give what they have to give. So, you get what they have to give, and if it isn’t what you need, you are screwed.
Sometimes because the environment is bad and sometimes the people suck and sometimes someone is at fault and sometimes not and sometimes history is a bitch, war, famine, climate change. If you end up not getting whatever X was, you are going to go through life either burdened by that void or trying constantly to fill it. Or some combination of the two.
Myself, I have always been some hoary combination of the two. Lucky that way, I think. People who just have a void and try to fill it, they are maniacal, they are much worse than people who only feel the burden, who walk around moody and morose, whimpering all the time. I know, because I have been both ways at times. Best to avoid either extreme as much as possible. Best to be out there trying to fill that hole some days. Not sobbing and dependent, hanging onto others, begging for mercy constantly. But, then, also, better that than being some narcissistic maniac, trying to be a superhero, a billionaire. Or President.
As for me I wasn’t even aware of what I didn’t get—although I knew something had been missing; affection, that was obvious—but more. As I made my way further from the City, I felt a difference taking place inside. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes it felt like fear, a sort of anxiety. I didn’t feel comfortable outside the City at first. Of course. Many times I lived with a state of anxiety within the City, but that was a different anxiety, the kind most city-dwellers learn, the defensiveness, protectiveness, self-awareness. The looking over the shoulder at night.
This all changed when I left the City. Not on vacation. You don’t really build this sense on vacation, cadets. You have to be out there in the dark woods a few months, or at least understand that you are going to be there, like, for a long, long time. The strangeness of open spaces. The different sounds you hear when there is nothing but trees and crickets. Oddness of noise, wind in trees, the night creatures, when the only thing you used to be hearing at night is automobiles and people screaming, crashes, strange laughter and sirens.
When I first settled in South Carolina I lived in a relatively suburban situation, in a sense, comfortable…but not too far removed from city life, from the environment I’d known growing up, only a few blocks away from concrete and traffic, congestion, noise, people milling about, in one of the state’s largest cities. But it still far enough to attain difference.
There was a brook—a brook—next to my cottage—a cottage—and I could hear it at night and hear the woodland creatures—woodland creatures—crawling around it and swimming through it.
One morning soon after arriving I woke and while drinking my coffee, I saw a duck leading a line of four ducklings along that brook outside my bedroom window. This was a transformational moment. Neither a New York City moment nor a San Francisco moment. Neither a Kansas City nor even a Liberty moment—because I hadn’t been there long enough. I had never seen little baby ducks waddling in a line before. Not in real life. Watching baby birds being fed by their parents before. Right outside my window. While I drank coffee and unglazed my eyes. These were messages being sent to me. But were they actually new?
For years I ignored the messages, buried my head in books and booze and women, but the messages kept coming, like a kind of Morse code, like ducks in a line, like birds sitting on a fence.
When I arrived in Tennessee, and could not find a city home because I wasn’t in a city of any size; found a job teaching at an all-black college; white landlords would not rent to me because of this; when I found someone who would rent to me because of her tolerance for white boys who were brave enough to teach at the historically black college, I found myself in the middle of the woods with raccoons and otters, deer and mice, skunk and foxes, coyotes and all manner of birds including herons who would preen in front of my bedroom window, this menagerie would appear all day and night like a kaleidoscope.
The anxiety of country and woods flew away. Not all at once. It molted, a feather a day. But I finally understood that anxiety and could trace it back to its roots.
Roots in New York City’s Central park and a squirrel named Ian.
I was a troublesome lad in grade school. As Bonnie recollected, as all my old childhood friends knew, the trouble had well-defined roots. So much so that my teachers insisted I be sent to therapy. That’s right. Me, at seven, sent to therapy. When I wasn’t getting into fights, I was lying my way into or out of truancy—as when I would blame not going to class on someone telling me class had been cancelled—or stealing things, or simply spending class time telling jokes and making my classmates laugh while lessons—if anything in first or second grade could be called such—were taking place.
So, mother had to take me on two connecting buses into Jackson Heights or maybe Jamaica for the City’s services building, tucked under the elevated tracks, noisy and busy and dirty and exciting, where the juvenile psychologists were housed (fortunately for both of us, a nice Chinese restaurant was across the street; where, when I had to blow my nose, mother insisted I slip under the table for discretion’s sake). It was a ratty place, smelling of urine and disinfectant, and I had to play with some ratty dolls for some nice South Asian fellow in plastic glasses who seemed to be smiling and not the whole time. Why would he do that? And how?
Anyway, the result of that, what turned out to be pre-test of my psychological makeup, was a referral to the prestigious Adler Clinic on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a meeting with Mrs. Doctor Adler herself, who smiled a lot, unlike the South Asian fellow, and didn’t ask me to play with dolls, and spent only a few minutes with me but quite some time with both my parents—oh, dad had to come along on this ride, and it was a Saturday, which meant a pain in the ass for him, too—and brother did they lie out both sides of each others’ mouths about nearly everything, covering but mostly for him. So, I ended up in group therapy with Dr. G, and Dr. G would have us spend the last half of each two-hour Saturday session in Central Park, each week, weather permitting, spending an extra hour with one of us boys in the park individually. I, by myself, began spending Saturdays by myself alone in the City, once dad gave up on driving me in, which caused him to hang out in Manhattan, something he hated.
That’s when I met Ian.
I love James Bond. Always have. And so, being precocious, something you may have noticed, I went straight to the source and understood who Ian Fleming was, read all about him, and he, soon, in addition to Bond, became a hero. So, when I met this little squirrel who was so brave it was a natural.
I sat on a bench and he walked right up to me, stood on his hind legs and looked at me. I was ten years old. I don’t know how old he was. The connection was immediate. Ineffable. As though I had been struck by lightning.
So…
And then Robin came. To Tennessee. That was the moment. She put her hand out into the environment. It all became real. Suddenly I knew I was in the right place. She was there and she was with me. And when I saw a squirrel hop, when I was with her, it spoke with me and said, You are in the right place, now. This is where you were supposed to be all along. As hateful as the place was at times the tree stumps spoke to me, the blades of grass, every leaf of every tree, green in the spring and brown in the fall, sang to me, and said you are part of us now as you always were meant to be. This is what I was missing growing up. This was what was absent from my childhood. I felt my childhood reemerging. It was Robin, I hate to say it, who became both my wife and my absent affectionate parent, at the same time, and she knew it, too, and she loved me all the more for it, because she knew that was what I had missed so long ago. And when we left Tennessee, because we had to, she knew what it did.
Of course, Robin wasn’t the only one who saw this childlike essence, this need in me. I had this girlfriend once in South Carolina who picked up on it. She had me scoped out for marriage. Apparently, she told her momma about it and momma worked out a little scheme. Momma and daddy and girlfriend picked me up one day and took me to the movie theater on Two Notch Road in Columbia where they were showing “The Neverending Story” and we sat there where they were showing this kiddie movie. They had a wonderful time imagining I was having a wonderful time and all I could think was, these people are cookaraches. Of course, they probably weren’t cookaraches, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them as a result after that. Now, she picked up this childlike essence but misread it and momma went one step too far.
And how many times does that happen?
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is simply stupid. Some other time I will discuss the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Not now. Or maybe I already have. Why should I remember things like that?
Animals are intelligent. They can communicate with us and do, all the time they are in our presence. They speak to us directly and clearly, using their own languages, telling us things of importance to them and, when we have established a significant enough relationship with them, things of importance to us as well. These may be pets or “wild animals” with whom we meet on a regular or irregular basis in the woods or around our houses. Rural or urban. It makes no difference. Even birds will recognize us, even from a distance. In fact, that is what they do.
The blue jay bounces up and down when it produces that squeaky-wheel sound. Apparently, it has to bounce in order to produce that sound; this isn’t some dance with a detached or ulterior purpose. All the other birds around know exactly what this dancing and song mean, and so should you: “Get the fuck out of my space!” He wouldn’t be there, singing and dancing otherwise. He’d be somewhere else. Not around you.
It’s simple, and you are simple: simply stupid if you don’t understand it.
Watch a squirrel, sitting still, flick its tail. An animal’s tail is not some superfluous appendage. The squirrel does not flick its tail to be cute and entertaining. When in motion, climbing, the tail is a critical limb, necessary for maintaining balance. But, when sitting still, level on some surface, why would a squirrel, or any other animal use its tail? Out of nervousness? Anxiety? Like a human, stressed by the problems witnessed on television or traversing its subconscious? Don’t be an idiot. It’s communicating. The way you might use your hands to speak when you aren’t using them to eat a hamburger.
And it may be communicating with you.
I had a childhood. Everybody does, I suppose. Mine wasn’t much. As it turned out mine certainly wasn’t much of what I needed. In the end it wasn’t what I expected it to be. At least in terms of the books I read, what they taught, what I saw on television and in the movies. And it got cut short, in great part because I cut it short. I wanted to parachute out of it. I wasn’t getting what I wanted from it. I wasn’t getting what I needed from it. So, I didn’t want childhood any longer.
Maybe that’s what happens in life. Forget all the psychological hobby-gobby. It’s as simple as that. You are supposed to get X. From your parents, your siblings, the people around you, the environment. You are supposed to get certain things you require. Some people do. Some people don’t. Some people are supposed to get certain things, some people other things. I guess. The people around you, the environment, they don’t know what those things are, they only give what they have to give. So, you get what they have to give, and if it isn’t what you need, you are screwed.
Sometimes because the environment is bad and sometimes the people suck and sometimes someone is at fault and sometimes not and sometimes history is a bitch, war, famine, climate change. If you end up not getting whatever X was, you are going to go through life either burdened by that void or trying constantly to fill it. Or some combination of the two.
Myself, I have always been some hoary combination of the two. Lucky that way, I think. People who just have a void and try to fill it, they are maniacal, they are much worse than people who only feel the burden, who walk around moody and morose, whimpering all the time. I know, because I have been both ways at times. Best to avoid either extreme as much as possible. Best to be out there trying to fill that hole some days. Not sobbing and dependent, hanging onto others, begging for mercy constantly. But, then, also, better that than being some narcissistic maniac, trying to be a superhero, a billionaire. Or President.
As for me I wasn’t even aware of what I didn’t get—although I knew something had been missing; affection, that was obvious—but more. As I made my way further from the City, I felt a difference taking place inside. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes it felt like fear, a sort of anxiety. I didn’t feel comfortable outside the City at first. Of course. Many times I lived with a state of anxiety within the City, but that was a different anxiety, the kind most city-dwellers learn, the defensiveness, protectiveness, self-awareness. The looking over the shoulder at night.
This all changed when I left the City. Not on vacation. You don’t really build this sense on vacation, cadets. You have to be out there in the dark woods a few months, or at least understand that you are going to be there, like, for a long, long time. The strangeness of open spaces. The different sounds you hear when there is nothing but trees and crickets. Oddness of noise, wind in trees, the night creatures, when the only thing you used to be hearing at night is automobiles and people screaming, crashes, strange laughter and sirens.
When I first settled in South Carolina I lived in a relatively suburban situation, in a sense, comfortable…but not too far removed from city life, from the environment I’d known growing up, only a few blocks away from concrete and traffic, congestion, noise, people milling about, in one of the state’s largest cities. But it still far enough to attain difference.
There was a brook—a brook—next to my cottage—a cottage—and I could hear it at night and hear the woodland creatures—woodland creatures—crawling around it and swimming through it.
One morning soon after arriving I woke and while drinking my coffee, I saw a duck leading a line of four ducklings along that brook outside my bedroom window. This was a transformational moment. Neither a New York City moment nor a San Francisco moment. Neither a Kansas City nor even a Liberty moment—because I hadn’t been there long enough. I had never seen little baby ducks waddling in a line before. Not in real life. Watching baby birds being fed by their parents before. Right outside my window. While I drank coffee and unglazed my eyes. These were messages being sent to me. But were they actually new?
For years I ignored the messages, buried my head in books and booze and women, but the messages kept coming, like a kind of Morse code, like ducks in a line, like birds sitting on a fence.
When I arrived in Tennessee, and could not find a city home because I wasn’t in a city of any size; found a job teaching at an all-black college; white landlords would not rent to me because of this; when I found someone who would rent to me because of her tolerance for white boys who were brave enough to teach at the historically black college, I found myself in the middle of the woods with raccoons and otters, deer and mice, skunk and foxes, coyotes and all manner of birds including herons who would preen in front of my bedroom window, this menagerie would appear all day and night like a kaleidoscope.
The anxiety of country and woods flew away. Not all at once. It molted, a feather a day. But I finally understood that anxiety and could trace it back to its roots.
Roots in New York City’s Central park and a squirrel named Ian.
I was a troublesome lad in grade school. As Bonnie recollected, as all my old childhood friends knew, the trouble had well-defined roots. So much so that my teachers insisted I be sent to therapy. That’s right. Me, at seven, sent to therapy. When I wasn’t getting into fights, I was lying my way into or out of truancy—as when I would blame not going to class on someone telling me class had been cancelled—or stealing things, or simply spending class time telling jokes and making my classmates laugh while lessons—if anything in first or second grade could be called such—were taking place.
So, mother had to take me on two connecting buses into Jackson Heights or maybe Jamaica for the City’s services building, tucked under the elevated tracks, noisy and busy and dirty and exciting, where the juvenile psychologists were housed (fortunately for both of us, a nice Chinese restaurant was across the street; where, when I had to blow my nose, mother insisted I slip under the table for discretion’s sake). It was a ratty place, smelling of urine and disinfectant, and I had to play with some ratty dolls for some nice South Asian fellow in plastic glasses who seemed to be smiling and not the whole time. Why would he do that? And how?
Anyway, the result of that, what turned out to be pre-test of my psychological makeup, was a referral to the prestigious Adler Clinic on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a meeting with Mrs. Doctor Adler herself, who smiled a lot, unlike the South Asian fellow, and didn’t ask me to play with dolls, and spent only a few minutes with me but quite some time with both my parents—oh, dad had to come along on this ride, and it was a Saturday, which meant a pain in the ass for him, too—and brother did they lie out both sides of each others’ mouths about nearly everything, covering but mostly for him. So, I ended up in group therapy with Dr. G, and Dr. G would have us spend the last half of each two-hour Saturday session in Central Park, each week, weather permitting, spending an extra hour with one of us boys in the park individually. I, by myself, began spending Saturdays by myself alone in the City, once dad gave up on driving me in, which caused him to hang out in Manhattan, something he hated.
That’s when I met Ian.
I love James Bond. Always have. And so, being precocious, something you may have noticed, I went straight to the source and understood who Ian Fleming was, read all about him, and he, soon, in addition to Bond, became a hero. So, when I met this little squirrel who was so brave it was a natural.
I sat on a bench and he walked right up to me, stood on his hind legs and looked at me. I was ten years old. I don’t know how old he was. The connection was immediate. Ineffable. As though I had been struck by lightning.
So…
And then Robin came. To Tennessee. That was the moment. She put her hand out into the environment. It all became real. Suddenly I knew I was in the right place. She was there and she was with me. And when I saw a squirrel hop, when I was with her, it spoke with me and said, You are in the right place, now. This is where you were supposed to be all along. As hateful as the place was at times the tree stumps spoke to me, the blades of grass, every leaf of every tree, green in the spring and brown in the fall, sang to me, and said you are part of us now as you always were meant to be. This is what I was missing growing up. This was what was absent from my childhood. I felt my childhood reemerging. It was Robin, I hate to say it, who became both my wife and my absent affectionate parent, at the same time, and she knew it, too, and she loved me all the more for it, because she knew that was what I had missed so long ago. And when we left Tennessee, because we had to, she knew what it did.
Of course, Robin wasn’t the only one who saw this childlike essence, this need in me. I had this girlfriend once in South Carolina who picked up on it. She had me scoped out for marriage. Apparently, she told her momma about it and momma worked out a little scheme. Momma and daddy and girlfriend picked me up one day and took me to the movie theater on Two Notch Road in Columbia where they were showing “The Neverending Story” and we sat there where they were showing this kiddie movie. They had a wonderful time imagining I was having a wonderful time and all I could think was, these people are cookaraches. Of course, they probably weren’t cookaraches, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them as a result after that. Now, she picked up this childlike essence but misread it and momma went one step too far.
And how many times does that happen?
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Five
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Progress is an odd thing. It can be used as a cudgel in the hands of those who believe they understand it when they don’t. Western Civilization, whatever that may be, or however you may wish to define it, and whatever purpose it may serve in your life for good or evil, contains a certain history of itself from a Point A to a Point B, where we presume we are at this moment, with definable stops in between. This despite the current argument among historians about not dividing history into “eras.” Another matter altogether. Some of those stops are debatable, some are not. As are their effects. Knowing the difference is crucial.
One critical example of progress for citizens of our country comes complete in this debate over the “Judeo-Christian foundation” of our nation which we hear so often these days. Many take nostalgic glimpses through the lens of “progress” and say this foundation never existed, that it is a myth, or something blown out of proportion by “white supremacists.” Not being a member of the AltRight myself, I cannot speak for their point of view. But if you look honestly through the lens of history you cannot deny the presence of this “foundation.” This is not a denial of “progress” away from it, however, and those who believe in “progress” still have a case.
The first white settlers arrived at our shores with specific Catholic and Christian agendas, and they continued to come in waves for generations with same, building churches and schools—the very then-definition of “Western civilization”—for nearly two millennia. The foundational universities of our nation, exemplified by Harvard and Yale, were precepted upon the ideals of acceptance of Christ, and were formed to produce ministers of the faith. These ministers not only preached the gospel to those coming from Europe, but also spread the word to Native Americans in the frontier. They took it upon themselves, along with other frontier people, to found new churches and Christian schools in the ever-expanding territories, long before the Revolution.
From this process comes today’s idea that the nation was “founded” upon “Judeo-Christian principles” much more so than that the Founding Fathers’ influences created such ideals. To deny these facts is to fly in the face of history itself.
Other calculations of reality, however despicable, existed. The Native American tribes, of course, were not seen as part of the nascent nation until they were accepted into it by virtue of treaties and relocation to reservations, and this only after mass slaughter. African slaves were brought here immediately and absorbed into Christianity by virtual brainwashing. Not until several generations later did any significant numbers of non-Christian immigration occur. Thus, “progress” beyond the initial “Judeo-Christian principles.”
Essentially guiding this later aspect of progress was the Industrial Revolution which, when it arrived on our shores, gave to the wealthy, particularly the wealthy of the North (but not exclusively so) enough money to build their own churches and, more importantly, their own more secular universities. Thus we had institutions like Johns Hopkins, The University of Chicago, Duke and Stanford. This occurred just in time for the arrival of ideas like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, germ theory and vaccines, new thoughts about astronomy, all of which flew in the face of a literal reading of the Bible. All of which were taught freely at these new universities and others supported by new wealth. But, at first, not at the old, Christian colleges.
Schools competed. Competition has results. Most schools, including old foundational universities like Harvard and Yale, ultimately chose the new “progressive” track in order to remain competitive and continue accruing wealth. In most regards this was the rational course. Germ theory works. Vaccines do as well. Evolutionary theory and many other scientific theories, no matter how much they do not seem to apply to the Bible, all ended up having evidentiary track records. Business appreciated the effect these matters had upon technology. Government appreciated the effect these matters had upon “diplomacy” and the welfare of “the state.”
The church fought this with a revivalist movement that, in effect, continues to this day. But, the church, finally, had to take a step back. Such is "progress."
Religion always has its place within a culture, within civilization. Religion does not have to fight to find that place. When it does fight, however, it ultimately loses or causes more damage than necessary by “winning.” Part of the reason the church has lost its place is because it has lost a battle. There was no purpose served in the church’s resistance to progress. The Founding Fathers already saw the inevitability of immigration, and with it the expansion of religion and religious freedom, including the freedom from religion. Churches have fought “progress” and “progress” has fought back. Search history and see which side inevitably wins, time after time. And, when “winning,” what the outcome always is.
St. Cyril killed Hypatia and destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Who is more revered today? St. Cyril. But, did science end? Certainly, the young Catholic Church didn’t die away, nor the burgeoning Eastern Orthodox. A double sainthood for mighty Cyril! What does it matter? In the end it always manages to become a losing battle for both science and religion. Leaving us where we are today. Empty and dying.
If you study theology at any depth you discover that the point is to find ecstasy in doubt, to relish the fact that you live inside a universal mystery and relish the mystery. You will find no resolution to this mystery. There is none.
Then you have science, where the crucial matter is eliminating all mysteries and uncovering the meanings of all aspects of life and the universe itself. But you find that it is all based upon theories that must be supported by masses of collected data, also, usually, never fully resolved but proved to ever-convincing probabilities by the mountains of evidence. Such evidence can take years, decades, even centuries to gather before manifesting in that collective, substantial conviction which might take hold of the public’s consciousness. Convincing people with the strength equal to a theological mystery, let’s say.
In the halls of religions, you have those whose faith in the mystery is so strong that it becomes a virtual reality, surpassing all doubt. The antithesis of theology. In the ivory towers of science, always there have been those who are so convinced by numbers that doubt becomes a madness. Both become fanatics.
You may mock entire classes of people for begrudging the efforts of science. But they may also have a point, as unconscious as they may be of it. Science itself moves forward based on a type of faith in its own work, seeking wisdom in that mountain of evidence and the providence of probability, deciding that reason alone will explain all problems, an answer to all questions. Which may provide us, ultimately, with the answer we require to the question: Why does science so often fail us? Indeed, fail us, in all probability, as often as religion and politics combined.
Today, the third leading cause of death in the United States is medical error. And the first two causes of death are heart disease and cancer, also closely related to the medical field, a part of science. Medicine is only one major field of science.
Possibly, one of the largest definable groups of child rapists can be found in the Catholic Church. So, there is that pseudo-statistic, as well.
You can find statistics if you go hunting around for them. I’m not. Just saying, as they say. You will find at both extremes, religion and science, causes for shame and embarrassment, histrionics and merciless pleas to bring justice to the world. But, in the end, we should also consider mercy for the good these institutions have given us. Better health and education, for example. Progress never comes on the cheap.
So, if I am a Catholic parent, do I keep my child from going alone to church? No. But I sure as heck sit her down and have a long talk about what’s going on and make certain she talks to me about any inconsistencies in behavior she senses. By the way? This has been going on for centuries in all other religions as well… And given the problems in medicine, and all the noise I hear about vaccines, do I keep my child vaccine-free? Hell, no. Why should I give in to the stupidity of non-scientists, which is where all the vaccine-free nonsense comes from? Sure, scientists have their problems, but vaccines have proved their efficacy with statistical probability that should satisfy any sane person.
The question before us today is whether progress will now come to a halt. Partly because of science and partly because of religion. Partly despite the efforts of both to change us and the nature of the elements that may destroy us. And partly because our democracy has been aided by science to allow for a steady stream of irrational voices that demand “justice” where justice sometimes cannot and often should not be served.
This is why we are so distracted from what is genuinely important. Perhaps the end of civilization, or human existence. Maybe something as important as that. If you believe the scientists.
But, who does, when there is gluten to be feared? Or the Judeo-Christian foundation to be upheld against the onslaught of Muslim immigration.
An interesting story if anyone would care to tell it.
Not my job. Just saying. Read a newspaper, why don’t you. Of course, in the newspapers, you’ll hardly ever see anything interesting about what might really be happening, like Richard Thiel building houses for the wealthy on the oceans, or Elon Musk building rocketships to Mars for the wealthy.
Oh, wait, no, the papers are actually full of that, but no one is paying attention. Who reads newspapers when there is Instagram and Netflix?
Progress is an odd thing. It can be used as a cudgel in the hands of those who believe they understand it when they don’t. Western Civilization, whatever that may be, or however you may wish to define it, and whatever purpose it may serve in your life for good or evil, contains a certain history of itself from a Point A to a Point B, where we presume we are at this moment, with definable stops in between. This despite the current argument among historians about not dividing history into “eras.” Another matter altogether. Some of those stops are debatable, some are not. As are their effects. Knowing the difference is crucial.
One critical example of progress for citizens of our country comes complete in this debate over the “Judeo-Christian foundation” of our nation which we hear so often these days. Many take nostalgic glimpses through the lens of “progress” and say this foundation never existed, that it is a myth, or something blown out of proportion by “white supremacists.” Not being a member of the AltRight myself, I cannot speak for their point of view. But if you look honestly through the lens of history you cannot deny the presence of this “foundation.” This is not a denial of “progress” away from it, however, and those who believe in “progress” still have a case.
The first white settlers arrived at our shores with specific Catholic and Christian agendas, and they continued to come in waves for generations with same, building churches and schools—the very then-definition of “Western civilization”—for nearly two millennia. The foundational universities of our nation, exemplified by Harvard and Yale, were precepted upon the ideals of acceptance of Christ, and were formed to produce ministers of the faith. These ministers not only preached the gospel to those coming from Europe, but also spread the word to Native Americans in the frontier. They took it upon themselves, along with other frontier people, to found new churches and Christian schools in the ever-expanding territories, long before the Revolution.
From this process comes today’s idea that the nation was “founded” upon “Judeo-Christian principles” much more so than that the Founding Fathers’ influences created such ideals. To deny these facts is to fly in the face of history itself.
Other calculations of reality, however despicable, existed. The Native American tribes, of course, were not seen as part of the nascent nation until they were accepted into it by virtue of treaties and relocation to reservations, and this only after mass slaughter. African slaves were brought here immediately and absorbed into Christianity by virtual brainwashing. Not until several generations later did any significant numbers of non-Christian immigration occur. Thus, “progress” beyond the initial “Judeo-Christian principles.”
Essentially guiding this later aspect of progress was the Industrial Revolution which, when it arrived on our shores, gave to the wealthy, particularly the wealthy of the North (but not exclusively so) enough money to build their own churches and, more importantly, their own more secular universities. Thus we had institutions like Johns Hopkins, The University of Chicago, Duke and Stanford. This occurred just in time for the arrival of ideas like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, germ theory and vaccines, new thoughts about astronomy, all of which flew in the face of a literal reading of the Bible. All of which were taught freely at these new universities and others supported by new wealth. But, at first, not at the old, Christian colleges.
Schools competed. Competition has results. Most schools, including old foundational universities like Harvard and Yale, ultimately chose the new “progressive” track in order to remain competitive and continue accruing wealth. In most regards this was the rational course. Germ theory works. Vaccines do as well. Evolutionary theory and many other scientific theories, no matter how much they do not seem to apply to the Bible, all ended up having evidentiary track records. Business appreciated the effect these matters had upon technology. Government appreciated the effect these matters had upon “diplomacy” and the welfare of “the state.”
The church fought this with a revivalist movement that, in effect, continues to this day. But, the church, finally, had to take a step back. Such is "progress."
Religion always has its place within a culture, within civilization. Religion does not have to fight to find that place. When it does fight, however, it ultimately loses or causes more damage than necessary by “winning.” Part of the reason the church has lost its place is because it has lost a battle. There was no purpose served in the church’s resistance to progress. The Founding Fathers already saw the inevitability of immigration, and with it the expansion of religion and religious freedom, including the freedom from religion. Churches have fought “progress” and “progress” has fought back. Search history and see which side inevitably wins, time after time. And, when “winning,” what the outcome always is.
St. Cyril killed Hypatia and destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Who is more revered today? St. Cyril. But, did science end? Certainly, the young Catholic Church didn’t die away, nor the burgeoning Eastern Orthodox. A double sainthood for mighty Cyril! What does it matter? In the end it always manages to become a losing battle for both science and religion. Leaving us where we are today. Empty and dying.
If you study theology at any depth you discover that the point is to find ecstasy in doubt, to relish the fact that you live inside a universal mystery and relish the mystery. You will find no resolution to this mystery. There is none.
Then you have science, where the crucial matter is eliminating all mysteries and uncovering the meanings of all aspects of life and the universe itself. But you find that it is all based upon theories that must be supported by masses of collected data, also, usually, never fully resolved but proved to ever-convincing probabilities by the mountains of evidence. Such evidence can take years, decades, even centuries to gather before manifesting in that collective, substantial conviction which might take hold of the public’s consciousness. Convincing people with the strength equal to a theological mystery, let’s say.
In the halls of religions, you have those whose faith in the mystery is so strong that it becomes a virtual reality, surpassing all doubt. The antithesis of theology. In the ivory towers of science, always there have been those who are so convinced by numbers that doubt becomes a madness. Both become fanatics.
You may mock entire classes of people for begrudging the efforts of science. But they may also have a point, as unconscious as they may be of it. Science itself moves forward based on a type of faith in its own work, seeking wisdom in that mountain of evidence and the providence of probability, deciding that reason alone will explain all problems, an answer to all questions. Which may provide us, ultimately, with the answer we require to the question: Why does science so often fail us? Indeed, fail us, in all probability, as often as religion and politics combined.
Today, the third leading cause of death in the United States is medical error. And the first two causes of death are heart disease and cancer, also closely related to the medical field, a part of science. Medicine is only one major field of science.
Possibly, one of the largest definable groups of child rapists can be found in the Catholic Church. So, there is that pseudo-statistic, as well.
You can find statistics if you go hunting around for them. I’m not. Just saying, as they say. You will find at both extremes, religion and science, causes for shame and embarrassment, histrionics and merciless pleas to bring justice to the world. But, in the end, we should also consider mercy for the good these institutions have given us. Better health and education, for example. Progress never comes on the cheap.
So, if I am a Catholic parent, do I keep my child from going alone to church? No. But I sure as heck sit her down and have a long talk about what’s going on and make certain she talks to me about any inconsistencies in behavior she senses. By the way? This has been going on for centuries in all other religions as well… And given the problems in medicine, and all the noise I hear about vaccines, do I keep my child vaccine-free? Hell, no. Why should I give in to the stupidity of non-scientists, which is where all the vaccine-free nonsense comes from? Sure, scientists have their problems, but vaccines have proved their efficacy with statistical probability that should satisfy any sane person.
The question before us today is whether progress will now come to a halt. Partly because of science and partly because of religion. Partly despite the efforts of both to change us and the nature of the elements that may destroy us. And partly because our democracy has been aided by science to allow for a steady stream of irrational voices that demand “justice” where justice sometimes cannot and often should not be served.
This is why we are so distracted from what is genuinely important. Perhaps the end of civilization, or human existence. Maybe something as important as that. If you believe the scientists.
But, who does, when there is gluten to be feared? Or the Judeo-Christian foundation to be upheld against the onslaught of Muslim immigration.
An interesting story if anyone would care to tell it.
Not my job. Just saying. Read a newspaper, why don’t you. Of course, in the newspapers, you’ll hardly ever see anything interesting about what might really be happening, like Richard Thiel building houses for the wealthy on the oceans, or Elon Musk building rocketships to Mars for the wealthy.
Oh, wait, no, the papers are actually full of that, but no one is paying attention. Who reads newspapers when there is Instagram and Netflix?
August 13, 2020
Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Four
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Speaking of golf and institutions, Robin hated Bob Hope. Mac, the ex-Marine, loved him. One of the few joys he and I were able to share, like baseball. But Robin? Something slightly painful between us at moments, like on movie night. This intense dislike she inherited from her father, her mother as well, as far as I knew, never having met her mother. She never had to talk about it at length, I could gather the impressions. Her eyes, mostly. I understood it as plain as a piece of pound cake. Something completely political. The way she and Willard saw politics in black and white. Like a cookie. In terms of what they saw about this question of hypocrisy on an emotional level, too.
I suppose I had my difficulties with Hope when I was younger, but those didn’t last long. I can’t claim that I personally had the courage, if that’s the right word, to climb up the ladder of success, if that’s what it was, people like Hope scaled. I seriously doubt I’m the better person. I look at what he did and what I’ve done. Of course he a hypocrite? But certain hypocrisies are necessary, some lies have to be told. You accomplish nothing without them. In order to keep faith with certain people you have to be able to suck it up, smile that gruesome smile, rather than showing your true feelings. Willard and Robin didn’t agree. A lot of people don’t. You know what? They were both liars. Myself, I don’t like people based on the people they associate with. That’s my flaw. One of them. My wife was a social liar. Her flaw. She did not have many. Guess how many social liars there are? You’ll lose count quickly.
I can’t do it most of the time, myself. I try to laugh things off. My true feelings come out, sometimes they cripple me, and I just can’t deal with situations. Mrs. Mannes told me never to play poker. That was the second grade. It’s been obvious at least that long. That’s why people like Hope are heroes in many ways, icons, role models, because of their natural hypocrisy. Their gift for fooling us.
Forget about whatever we might be thinking about politics, they might be fooling us there, too, for our own good. Maybe not. What does it matter? Politics come and go, they change on a whim for most people. Real politics for most people has to do with their stomachs, the roof over their heads, the future of their kids. You think of it in terms of anything else, the way I used to, the way Willard and Robin did, you’re an elitist idiot. I could never successfully argue this point with Robin, she stood her ground. I loved her for standing her ground. That was not a flaw, just a disagreement. But you know me, I’m stubborn, too.
When I was a kid, learning to love Hope because he was the creative ideal for Bugs Bunny, among other things, I was learning to hate Plato because I thought Plato was a capitol F Fascist, down as he was on democracy. But, over time, as I read Plato more closely, and came to understand that he merely better understood the outcome of things, the true nature of things, and saw that all of life was temporary, and that, from his perspective, completely built in to democracy was its own doom, I understood that Plato wasn’t a Fascist but, from his perspective, a realist. Was Hope a part-time philanderer, a liar about his wealth, a shameless marketer? Everything is temporary, and everything is flawed.
Too many people don’t go into battle. They don’t know what warfare is like. They have no concept. You cannot figure it out reading a book, watching a movie. You have to be there. Think of all those men and women who, for a few minutes on the battle lines, had their lives lifted up from the war because Bob Hope put his life on the line to be there, day after day, year after year, unafraid, willing to serve, voluntarily, to make people laugh in person, on the front lines. As the man said himself, he could not look in the mirror if he didn’t do it. Not because he liked war, because he loved people, and especially those men and women who served. That’s precisely what they felt, too. They don’t like the war, but they love the men and women they serve with, especially the ones right next to them in battle. They don’t fight for country, or for you and me. Probably not even for family back home. They fight for the person sitting next to them being shot at. Even the fraction who, imperfectly, flawed, sometimes do the wrong thing. And that’s the only way to do it, the only way to survive, physically, and emotionally, if at all. If you aren’t there, if you’ve never been through it, you don’t understand it. Not at the gut level. You can’t.
I’ve lived a long time now. I look myself in the mirror, most days more than once. I don’t know how you do these balancing acts, no, I still don’t. Everyone has good and bad in them. How does it work?
Take a look at Anthony Wiener. There’s an extreme case. He is our country’s, our century’s Alcibiades. Maybe. Couldn’t keep his cock off the phone. Maybe even worse than that. But he devoted his life to serving the best interests of poor people, every living day. How do you deal with that balancing act? I don’t know the answer for people like that or myself. I don’t know if there can be an answer, do you?
What do we do with the Michael Jacksons who deliver to us high art containing high moral concept, then deposit their flaming demons on our doorsteps at night, leaving victims to ring our doorbells and run? Who do so much good in the floodlights then turn in fear when their shadow lives are exposed?
Don’t judge? Don’t judge. Take the best that people offer and deal with the worst. I guess.
I admire lots of people and some I wouldn’t name because they do things that are less than admirable. Some people think other people lack integrity. Life is what life is. You can add integrity to that list of items that come with a sliding scale. Some have more of it. Some less, others have just enough for the time and place, just enough to do their jobs just right. Or just enough to satisfy their own self-satisfied tastes.
I had enough integrity to be satisfied that I didn’t get drafted and didn’t have to love the poor bastard next to me getting blown to bits in a rice paddy, making me want to run away and have bad dreams for the remainder of my miserable life. How’s that for standards of taste? I’ve had to live with that for a few decades. What’s your excuse for that phony smile on your face, Joe American? About 99% of you, I mean. Us. No, Bob Hope is just fine with me. And I like his jokes. I love ‘em. Hate the war. Love the man.
There’d be no Bugs Bunny without him. I can’t even imagine living in a world like that. What would be the point?
Speaking of golf and institutions, Robin hated Bob Hope. Mac, the ex-Marine, loved him. One of the few joys he and I were able to share, like baseball. But Robin? Something slightly painful between us at moments, like on movie night. This intense dislike she inherited from her father, her mother as well, as far as I knew, never having met her mother. She never had to talk about it at length, I could gather the impressions. Her eyes, mostly. I understood it as plain as a piece of pound cake. Something completely political. The way she and Willard saw politics in black and white. Like a cookie. In terms of what they saw about this question of hypocrisy on an emotional level, too.
I suppose I had my difficulties with Hope when I was younger, but those didn’t last long. I can’t claim that I personally had the courage, if that’s the right word, to climb up the ladder of success, if that’s what it was, people like Hope scaled. I seriously doubt I’m the better person. I look at what he did and what I’ve done. Of course he a hypocrite? But certain hypocrisies are necessary, some lies have to be told. You accomplish nothing without them. In order to keep faith with certain people you have to be able to suck it up, smile that gruesome smile, rather than showing your true feelings. Willard and Robin didn’t agree. A lot of people don’t. You know what? They were both liars. Myself, I don’t like people based on the people they associate with. That’s my flaw. One of them. My wife was a social liar. Her flaw. She did not have many. Guess how many social liars there are? You’ll lose count quickly.
I can’t do it most of the time, myself. I try to laugh things off. My true feelings come out, sometimes they cripple me, and I just can’t deal with situations. Mrs. Mannes told me never to play poker. That was the second grade. It’s been obvious at least that long. That’s why people like Hope are heroes in many ways, icons, role models, because of their natural hypocrisy. Their gift for fooling us.
Forget about whatever we might be thinking about politics, they might be fooling us there, too, for our own good. Maybe not. What does it matter? Politics come and go, they change on a whim for most people. Real politics for most people has to do with their stomachs, the roof over their heads, the future of their kids. You think of it in terms of anything else, the way I used to, the way Willard and Robin did, you’re an elitist idiot. I could never successfully argue this point with Robin, she stood her ground. I loved her for standing her ground. That was not a flaw, just a disagreement. But you know me, I’m stubborn, too.
When I was a kid, learning to love Hope because he was the creative ideal for Bugs Bunny, among other things, I was learning to hate Plato because I thought Plato was a capitol F Fascist, down as he was on democracy. But, over time, as I read Plato more closely, and came to understand that he merely better understood the outcome of things, the true nature of things, and saw that all of life was temporary, and that, from his perspective, completely built in to democracy was its own doom, I understood that Plato wasn’t a Fascist but, from his perspective, a realist. Was Hope a part-time philanderer, a liar about his wealth, a shameless marketer? Everything is temporary, and everything is flawed.
Too many people don’t go into battle. They don’t know what warfare is like. They have no concept. You cannot figure it out reading a book, watching a movie. You have to be there. Think of all those men and women who, for a few minutes on the battle lines, had their lives lifted up from the war because Bob Hope put his life on the line to be there, day after day, year after year, unafraid, willing to serve, voluntarily, to make people laugh in person, on the front lines. As the man said himself, he could not look in the mirror if he didn’t do it. Not because he liked war, because he loved people, and especially those men and women who served. That’s precisely what they felt, too. They don’t like the war, but they love the men and women they serve with, especially the ones right next to them in battle. They don’t fight for country, or for you and me. Probably not even for family back home. They fight for the person sitting next to them being shot at. Even the fraction who, imperfectly, flawed, sometimes do the wrong thing. And that’s the only way to do it, the only way to survive, physically, and emotionally, if at all. If you aren’t there, if you’ve never been through it, you don’t understand it. Not at the gut level. You can’t.
I’ve lived a long time now. I look myself in the mirror, most days more than once. I don’t know how you do these balancing acts, no, I still don’t. Everyone has good and bad in them. How does it work?
Take a look at Anthony Wiener. There’s an extreme case. He is our country’s, our century’s Alcibiades. Maybe. Couldn’t keep his cock off the phone. Maybe even worse than that. But he devoted his life to serving the best interests of poor people, every living day. How do you deal with that balancing act? I don’t know the answer for people like that or myself. I don’t know if there can be an answer, do you?
What do we do with the Michael Jacksons who deliver to us high art containing high moral concept, then deposit their flaming demons on our doorsteps at night, leaving victims to ring our doorbells and run? Who do so much good in the floodlights then turn in fear when their shadow lives are exposed?
Don’t judge? Don’t judge. Take the best that people offer and deal with the worst. I guess.
I admire lots of people and some I wouldn’t name because they do things that are less than admirable. Some people think other people lack integrity. Life is what life is. You can add integrity to that list of items that come with a sliding scale. Some have more of it. Some less, others have just enough for the time and place, just enough to do their jobs just right. Or just enough to satisfy their own self-satisfied tastes.
I had enough integrity to be satisfied that I didn’t get drafted and didn’t have to love the poor bastard next to me getting blown to bits in a rice paddy, making me want to run away and have bad dreams for the remainder of my miserable life. How’s that for standards of taste? I’ve had to live with that for a few decades. What’s your excuse for that phony smile on your face, Joe American? About 99% of you, I mean. Us. No, Bob Hope is just fine with me. And I like his jokes. I love ‘em. Hate the war. Love the man.
There’d be no Bugs Bunny without him. I can’t even imagine living in a world like that. What would be the point?
