Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 92

Short Story Time

It's been a while since I've written a short story here, but I have written one on Medium. It's a mix of a short with photos and a double narrative including the captions below the photos. A new style indeed. Check it out and let me know what you think over there. You can always follow me on Medium or elsewhere. 

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17 years ago

By now the melancholy, forced or otherwise, of the remembrance of this day is slowly fading. Where were you on this day? I was growing a set of patriotism that would launch me into a desert a few times and back. 
Now I write against this kind of thinking because I believe this endless war will destroy us. You?

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The Modern Day Fiction

It's a little edgy, but when asked for best American fiction, I tend to list Book of Mormon in the list. This isn't to offend, though I'm sure it does, but to show that the border between fiction and non-fiction is not as clear as we would all like to believe. And that, in the end, it's the likes of these kind of writers, storytellers who last throughout history rather than the people we consider "writers". 
In other words, like many traditions, many leaders, there's an element of lying, of conman-gaming that goes on when it comes to telling stories that will last. And there's certainly an element of fan fiction to all of it as well. 
In this age of fake news, of people willing to come up with the craziest of conspiracies, I have lamented, just a little bit, that I wasn't able to come up with something similar or at least use my own story telling skills to do the same. I have morals, you see, but the bills do pile up and I wonder if history is simply that those with morals miss the boat.
As it was so shall it ever be.
So take a look at this video with Alex Jones in a donkey mask and tell me he's not one of the best actors out there and that he shouldn't at least be nominated for the Oscars. This, my friends is performative art, theater at its best. Except this play has real consequences.

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The Fire Next Time?

I've written a lot more essays in the past few years. I've always used my blog as a way to think, but I've enjoyed the stricter version of the essay as a way to think out loud. Itscomplicated, a site dedicated to veterans and their relationship with civilians has been great in publishing many of these. 
 And though I think that these essays are important and necessary for my growth as a citizen, as a human, as a writer... well they really haven't started conversations as I thought they would. Certainly some people have responded, but it adds to my sense of trying to change the direction of conversations as I see them today (much too shrill, even the best intentions). 

I'm not trying to be melodramatic or overly self-important (well, perhaps that last part can never be truly false for me) but it does strike me when what I think is somewhat insightful loses out to the chatter out there in the world. In fact it would seem that sometimes being too insightful is far too much for most echo chambers and it's better to speak the tribal language of a group and get some resounding "here here"s than provoke thought. 
I suppose I am being a little melodramatic.
So it goes, as that great modern day bard said. Hate the game not the player, as the other great bard said...
Still, it's good to read articles by others that provide something like insight on a subject I've been trying to wrestle with. Here Krugman looks at what's happening here in America and wonders if we'll become the next Poland or Hungary. This isn't exactly new territory. My article above on the curtain of ignorance from DC to Szczecin speaks to a similar animus.
But it's with his opening comment that provided a spark for some thought:

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend of mine — an expert on international relations — made a joke: “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path — fascism.” Even at the time, his quip had a real edge.

It reminds me of the argument I had with a woman from Bulgaria. There she proclaimed her love for Reagan for speaking up and defeating communism and went on to proclaim her love for Trump, call the Democrats socialists, and also claim that she wanted to bomb brown people in Syria out of existence (she walked it back after I pushed her on this Nazi-like desire).

I didn't get into a good argument and I think that's my own fault.

But when it's combined with what has happened in Eastern Europe as well as Krugman's story above, one wonders if indeed that had always been the trajectory of Eastern Europe?

I then got to thinking about the streams of discussion of beliefs, that tend to live in societies and clash and mix with other ideas. For example the above person thought Reagan freed her people then was perfectly okay with killing off large swaths of brown people for god-knows what reason.

So the prism that I had always seen the cold war, and the part about Eastern Europe was through the prism of Stalinism, a dark foreboding Warsaw Pact versus freedom. Even in my most woke moments (lately) this hadn't been revised as much as it should have.

But nowadays it has indeed been revised to take in the racism inherent in many of our leaders and reps as well as those in Eastern Europe. IOW this isn't to revise Stalinism but to point out the moral issues on our side. Looking at the cold war through a racial lens helps to explain a few things, though not everything (for example that Russia itself was racist, as was the USSR).

One does have to wonder about these trends today. Mishra has an article in the Times about White Supremacy in the Anglosphere and I have to wonder if perhaps it's only part of the issue. After all, it doesn't include places like Myanmar and India where similar forces are at play. And even if those are explained away as some sort of power structure similar to White supremacy (trying to mimic the major powers of the day etc) it falls short in some other ways, if you ask me.

How do we explain this craziness all around. This easy nightmare of history which we cannot awake from? I'm not sure I have the answers, but I will keep trying to break this down.





 

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The Social Media Trap

What is one to make of the Social Media Trap? I've spent more time on it in the past few years and I can't say that it has been especially good for me. I've reached a few readers (many still love Satan's Plea the most) and that has been great for my health as a writer, but really, I think it has been worse than it has been good. Twitter can lead to some good sources, can lead to something like a decent discussion, but Imma be real: it's really really bad over all. Mainly it's a loudspeaker for those who can use it as such. This is great, but it means that it's best to push in a singular direction and not to discuss.
Sure, one never knows if the person you're talking to is real, but in a blog and comment scene it's kinda easier (so far) to tell if the person is real or not. Of course a bunch of trolls can always throw off a comment section, but good moderation is always needed. Barring that, the blog is still the superior form for human thought. Human discussion. 
Here is an example of just such a thing. Of course it suffers from many discussions on the internet, (or many discussions involving humans) whereby nothing is well defined and people are kinda arguing past each other. But it's a hundred times better than what you'll find on social media (some might say that Facebook is possibly good for this as it allows you to blog, but I beg to differ. Besides, why let someone snoop on your privacy like that?).
I've switched more and more to Medium and have been writing more there, but there's an inherent bias in that site and a sad and notable lack of diversity in who they promote (in almost any way you can imagine). Of course, that means you should at least read my points there. 
I've written about this problem of the internet and even the blogs and their comment threads. There is a way to improve this, though I don't think that anyone has a real monetary reason to do so. We'll see, maybe I'll end up doing it.

Anyways, this is all a long way of saying that I'm off social media more and more and might be forever. So even if I feel like I'm leaving a battlefield (And that is what it is because that's where people are) it's time I start looking for something better.  I thought Medium would be it, but so far they have too many issues.

Your thoughts?


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Me and My Pen

So experts now claim that taking notes with a pen is better than doing so on a laptop where you're likely to be distracted. Probably true, though I wonder how much of that is the old man in me who doesn't like the change? To be honest, I have moved away from typing directly on my laptop too. 
Part of it was how the internet was sneaking into my life. I think I was inoculated in the Army by not using it that much. Once I got out both the internet got better at sucking in one's eyeballs and I got worse at keeping it at bay. 
Tbf, I also learned that James Baldwin used a pen to write out his work. 
And so I've switched (at the same time I switched to short stories as my main bread and butter) and have loved it, even if it means a lot of time spent transferring notes and work. 
Mainly I use a LAMY Safari and a Palomino pencil. I use some mechanical pencils too when it strikes me. But it really has changed my work process and helped to remove the internet from interfering in my work. 
How about you?

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Our Blue Skies Gone. Smoke is All That's Left.

We come to love summer here in the PNW. The blue cracks open a smeared-gray sky.
But then it goes on for too long. 
Cruel blue sky with that yellow cyclops' eye drying the ground to dust. 

  And then the fires start. 
This is the Anthroprocene and it's coming hard.



Make sure you're all dressed for it.



This is fine. This is the new normal. We'll be looking back fondly, I suppose. 



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#allcarsmustdie

 I used to love cars as a child. On some level they do indeed represent the epitome of freedom of movement, but living in a city and reading as much as I can has shown that they are anything but. It's more than obvious that they contribute to deaths via accidents, hitting pedestrians, and pollution. Yet we don't react to this. Meanwhile we react to escooter and bikes as if they need to go (why, is the question, of course). 
It may very well be a matter of a sick culture because smaller modes of transportation may save the city. Because the other way cars destroy cities is by giving up so much space and by spreading the distance between points. 
Nevertheless, this article here really sums it up well. 
Some gems in it:
"If the car is to prevail, there’s still one solution: get rid of the cities. That is, string them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs. That’s what’s been done in the United States. Ivan Illich sums up the effect in these startling figures: “The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes .Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren’t restricted to asphalt roads.”
How it breaks up our glorious cities: The reason? We’ve just seen it: The cities and towns have been broken up into endless highway suburbs, for that was the only way to avoid traffic congestion in residential centers. But the underside of this solution is obvious: ultimately people can’t get around conveniently because they are far away from everything. To make room for the cars, distances have increased. People live far from their work, far from school, far from the supermarket—which then requires a second car so the shopping can be done and the children driven to school. Outings? Out of the question. Friends? There are the neighbors… and that’s it. In the final analysis, the car wastes more time than it saves and creates more distance than it overcomes. Of course, you can get yourself to work doing 60 mph, but that’s because you live 30 miles from your job and are willing to give half an hour to the last 6 miles. To sum it all up: “A good part of each day’s work goes to pay for the travel necessary to get to work.” (Ivan Illich).
And the reason we all get articles from the NYTimes et al about why nature is better than the city: Maybe you are saying, “But at least in this way you can escape the hell of the city once the workday is over.” There we are, now we know: “the city,” the great city which for generations was considered a marvel, the only place worth living, is now considered to be a “hell.” Everyone wants to escape from it, to live in the country. Why this reversal? For only one reason. The car has made the big city uninhabitable. It has made it stinking, noisy, suffocating, dusty, so congested that nobody wants to go out in the evening anymore. Thus, since cars have killed the city, we need faster cars to escape on superhighways to suburbs that are even farther away. What an impeccable circular argument: give us more cars so that we can escape the destruction caused by cars.
And his final point? Meanwhile, what is to be done to get there? Above all, never make transportation an issue by itself. Always connect it to the problem of the city, of the social division of labour, and to the way this compartmentalizes the many dimensions of life. One place for work, another for “living,” a third for shopping, a fourth for learning, a fifth for entertainment. The way our space is arranged carries on the disintegration of people that begins with the division of labour in the factory. It cuts a person into slices, it cuts our time, our life, into separate slices so that in each one you are a passive consumer at the mercy of the merchants, so that it never occurs to you that work, culture, communication, pleasure, satisfaction of needs, and personal life can and should be one and the same thing: a unified life, sustained by the social fabric of the community.




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VS Naipaul

VS Naipaul is dead. Another from that generation gone. Of course, time waits for no human, but loss to the literary world stands as is. Still, VSN seemed to be more famous, of late, for his pronouncements, which tested the resolve of anyone adhering to the ideology of "trust the tale, not the teller".
I'm not sure I was all that great a fan of his work. I read Bend in the River when I was young. I suppose I appreciated it for telling a story that seemed familiar to me, a man who straddled far too many worlds than possible. But there was something in it that I hated. Something that looked far too superficial. My grandmother hated the book and though she was more pro-assimilation than I am nowadays (assuming we even have a definition of this), she said out loud: "no wonder Africans got tired of us. We acted like Europeans."
But just because a book evokes strong emotions doesn't mean it's not worth reading. For me, Bend in the River was merely pedestrian. Bold words from a writer with far fewer accolades than Mr. Naipaul—and as usual I could be accused of jealousy—but this really isn't such a case. No, it really felt like it wasn't deep enough. [1]
I never read his Mr Biswas , though I have it on my bookshelf. I do have his essays (definitely worth a read), and they certainly show his skill in turning a phrase... in observing. His points on India and its inhabitants in "In the Middle of the Journey" are spot on. So too are his points on the need for its people to defeat the colonial mentality that infects their minds. 
But reading something like "Our Universal Civilization" makes me feel like those powers of observation don't add up to much [2]. There are some great points. Great subtle sharp points. And I found myself nodding. Yet at the end, there's something like a conclusion (I would say failure to piece together all the observations) that's Islamophobic and hardly useful to anyone. 
Is this refutation of "trust the tale, not the teller"?
We see it a lot nowadays, though I think it's not without merit, and only those without context will outright mock  it [3]. But with VSN, we see him remembered for his comment on Austen, or other misogynistic or even racist remarks.
Yet take this beautiful essay by Teju Cole. It damn near resuscitates VSN's reputation. Perhaps it's not the only way he should be remembered, but it should be taken into consideration. 
RIP Mr. Naipaul.




[1] And now as I write it, I wonder if some of my own works are too weak. Perhaps not brave enough. Almost every book, every essay I've written has required a discovery that causes me to slay a god in my pantheon, in my history, in me. No easy task, this. But I do it because that's where the story and the thoughts go. It's not easy. I sometimes tremble knowing the powers I go up against, but I do it nonetheless. But there is something that holds me back and I wonder if I have held back too much, become superficial.... What say you, dear reader?
[2] And again, I think on something like this and turn it upon myself: am I sharp and incisive yet filled with so many biases (or fears of said gods) that all of that may amount to nothing. 
[3] Not going to get into it here, but censorship in its many forms (by powers, by gatekeepers) has always been around. To deny this is to deny reality. That a modicum of it has been aimed at those who are still in power is the least of our problems nowadays.

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On Hiking.

And You'll Need a Mobile Phone to read this, but it's worth it (or say a few readers who've check it out). Here is a series on a hike I went to.


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