Man Martin's Blog, page 112

Narcissus and Echo

[image error] Last night, Zoe, who, let it be known, is a sweet dog, and a loving dog, and above all else, a good dog, woke me up at two o'clock and then again at three o'clock needing to go outside.  As I lay in bed in the predawn hours, trying, not very successfully, to get back to sleep, I thought about Dali's painting, "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus," which I'd looked at the day before as a possible writing prompt for my students.

What I noticed the other day, but never seen before is the figure on the left is the young man, Narcissus.  I'd always thought it was just a pile of rocks, but suddenly I could see quite clearly the golden-haired head bending downward, the slim and muscular limbs.  That, of course, is intentional: Dali is showing Narcissus in the midst of change, already "stone-still" gazing at his reflection.  The narcissus flower is sprouting from the egg-shaped rock in the gigantic lithic fingers on the right.


Dali adored those sorts of visual puns.  Notice how in this painting the breast and stomach of Venus de Milo becomes a woman's lower face.

Anyway, that set me to thinking that the stories of Narcissus and Echo are ghost stories.  Not what you would normally think of as ghost stories, but clearly that's what they are.  Both were transformed in death to a shadowy simulacrum of themselves, left behind as a reminder down to this day - just like that stain on the wall , which just won't wash out, and that resembles Aunt Agnes or the cold spot in the room where Gerald hanged himself.

Narcissus, as you may recall, saw his own reflection in the water and stared enraptured - literally seized by - his beauty until he was transformed into the flower that bears his name.  Echo, the hapless maiden who loved him, and followed him in sycophantic hopefulness, breathlessly trying to catch his attention and approval, died in a cave, and nothing is left of her but a disembodied voice that repeats anyone who will call out to her.

What occurred to me, lying in bed in the wee hours is that Narcissus and Echo both become reflections or echoes of what they were, and that moreover, the two stories, just like the rock formations in Dali's painting, echo each other.

Pretty slick, huh?  Worth reading the whole blog just to arrive at that one point, right?

Well, that's the sort of thing that comes to you when you're unable to sleep and have a chance to reflect.

A Day in the Life of a Writer

Herman Melville is 352 pages into Moby Duck
before he realizes it ought to be about a whale.I offer this post to fellow novelists, especially fledglings, who find the way unexpectedly rocky and hard and who wonder if they're even doing in right.

For at least a year and a half, I have been working on a new novel.  I won't give away any details, but suffice to say it is brilliant.  It has a secret government agency, a woman who's been struck three times by lightning, kidnappings, suspense, and frogs.  Can hardly wait to read it, right?

So since the first of September, I've been working on three consecutive scenes.  The scenes are short and interconnected and run about ten pages.  But you need to understand.  These were ten hard pages.  From keys that scorched the fingers I wrote and rewrote, re-rewrote, and re-re-rewrote them in the pre-dawn hours before going to my job.  I agonized over description and dialogue; I considered and weighed every word and comma.  I would go to sleep thinking about the phrasing of a single sentence, wake up and revise it, think about it on the drive to work, and revise again the next day.  

Then yesterday it hit me.  The scenes just weren't working.  I'd put the climax precisely in the wrong spot; I'd introduced at least two additional characters I could do without; I'd neglected to work with at least one indispensable character; I'd missed a valuable opportunity to build tension; and I needed at least two additional scenes I hadn't even considered.

So those ten pages I worked so hard on.  Scrapped.  I'll have to start afresh.  I can save a few shards and fragments here and there, but not much.  By the way, these new scenes promise to be even more difficult for me than the ones I'd already written.

Here is the message for my fellow novelists.  I have not wasted a month of my life.  What I have accomplished is valuable.  I am one massive wrong turn closer to my next masterpiece.

My Faves

This morning I am eating a cup of strawberry-flavored Chobani yogurt and a cup of blueberry-flavored Chobani yogurt.   These are my two favorite yogurt flavors.  Although peach is perfectly fine, I don't care for it as much.  The fact I'm eating both my favorites makes this a special day.  My very favorite is blueberry, but I make it a rule never to eat two blueberries in one day, so I won't run out.  I also have to be careful to eat a peach yogurt two days out of three, or else I'll wind up with nothing left but peach, which as I've stated, I don't especially care for.

Now here's the thing.

They all taste exactly the same.

They taste like sweet goo because that's what they are.  Never once, have I eaten a spoonful of Chobani and thought, "Mmm, just like fresh blueberries."  In the midst of eating, I'd be at a loss to tell you what flavor it was, unless I were permitted to look at the label.

We buy Chobani at Costco in a big flat blue box which contains an assortment of peach, strawberry, and blueberry yogurt.  For a time, Costco also offered Chobani in a big orange box which contained blood orange, pineapple, and some other flavor - I forget which because they all tasted like identical anyway.  Nancy and I preferred the orange box of Chobani because we preferred eating sweet goo with an exotic label like "blood orange" to sweet goo labeled "blueberry."  Of course, we had to mix it up, and buy an equal number of orange and blue boxes so we wouldn't spoil ourselves and get jaded.  We were disappointed when Costco discontinued orange-box Chobani.  Obscurely, I blame the philistine tastes of Costco shoppers, who were too parochial to try eating sweet goo with a tropical-fruit label once in a while.

All this reminds me of my childhood.  (The older I get, the more often things remind me of my childhood.)  The spectrum of basic Popsicle flavors - red, purple, orange, and banana - had no correlation whatsoever to any fruit flavor, and indeed only two of them - orange and banana - were known by the fruits they represented, and in the case of orange, that was only coincidence, and in the case of banana was because even though banana Popsicles tasted only as similar to bananas as Gatorade does to gators, they tasted even less like yellow, so we called them "banana" by default.  But no one asking for a Popsicle would say, "Give me a cherry flavor," or "Give me a grape," rather, it was always, "I want a purple one."  Or, "I like red."  Orange was the flavor you only ate if there was nothing left.  Orange was the peach yogurt of Popsicles.

The conflation of flavor was further reinforced by the fact that Kool-Aid flavors had a corresponding color-scheme.  Sno-Cones and slushies, although these were harder to come by, also used the same color-coding, and a child at a state fair ordering a red Sno-Cone could be confident of what he was getting.

At this point in my essay, I'm expected to come back to my opening observation and somehow tie the whole thing together with some pithy observation, but frankly, I'm stumped how I'm going to do it.  It has something to do with the way we think are tastes and preferences are all sophisticated and idiosyncratic, but the reality is the colors purple and red strike us as more flavorful than orange-ish colors, but at the same time, we don't want everything to be purple and red because we feel the variety would stale and we would cease to appreciate them.  The reality, however, when we get down to eating, our taste buds are colorblind and like what they've always liked.  Sweet goo.

The Lesser Novels of Jane Austen

Jane Austen has endured as one of the great novelists in the English language, appealing not only to a broad popular audience who love her simply for her engaging stories, to middlebrows who praise her irony and realism, to an esoteric academic audience as well, who find her slyly "subversive" and "proto-feminist."  Her novels have been adapted for film, imitated by other writers, and loved and admired the world over.

Recently some of her early, unpublished works have come to light, promising a new treasure-trove for scholars and readers alike.

Fanny and Marianne - For years thought lost to posterity, this early novel was a precursor to Sense and Sensibility.  Written in epistolary form, it tells the story of Susan and her widowed mother who have been left nearly destitute after the late Mr. Dashwood leaves his fortune to Marianne's greedy half-sister Fanny.  Marianne meets the handsome and aloof Colonel Brandon who convinces her to repair the family fortunes by entering a "Dance-Off" in which she will challenge Fanny to a one-on-one dance competition where each will show off her skills.  But Fanny was all-county dance champion three years running, will Marianne be able to best her in the competition and follow her dream?

Lady Susan - Lady Susan is a sassy young vixen who knows what she wants and goes after it.  When the mob kidnaps a favorite uncle for repayment of a gambling debt, Susan must go undercover as an exotic dancer to rescue him.  Helped along the way by two very different by equally desirable men - Lieutenant Bamford, a nobleman of the Horse Guard, and bad-boy bandit and roustabout Dirks Dimplechin and aided by a wise-cracking lady's maid, Bomquisha, there are plenty of hijinks and high adventure leading to a high-octane conclusion.

Whazzam!  Formerly titled Whuzzup and before that, simply, 'Zup, the intellectual but nearly destitute Margaret is taken in by the wealthier branch of her family into Berkford Park, where she meets her handsome and aloof cousin Bertram, with whom she falls gradually in love.  But Bertram likes only "bad" girls, and bookish Margaret doesn't seem to have a chance until she meets a sassy wise-cracking man servant, Raul, who teaches her to "get down."  Can Margaret win the All-County Twerk-Off against three-time winner, the snooty and wealthy, Lady Beatrice who is affianced to Bertram, take the cash prize and the man?  And will she discover it's Raul whom she truly loves?  You'll have to read this page turner, with its dry wit and plot twists as well as an exciting helicopter chase to find out.

Apologies for the Invasive Species

In the 1898 Exposition in Philadelphia, Kudzu was first introduced to the United States from Japan.  It proved able to out-compete native species for resources, especially light, growing completely over them.  It is estimated to be spreading at a rate of 150,000 acres a year.

Please accept our sincerest apologies.
In the 1980's, a disgruntled aquarium owner dumped out his tank, releasing a colorful exotic lion fish into the Atlantic.  Now they have spread everywhere from the Bahamas to the Carolina Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico.  There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of them.  They can only be caught one-at-a-time spearfishing or in hand-held nets.  They have poisonous spines, and no natural predators in this area.  They are quickly decimating natural reefs and wildlife.

Sorry about that.
A zoo or private owner released a Burmese Python near the Florida Everglades.  Now they have overrun the place, eating everything from marsh rabbits to American crocodiles.  (Yes, there is such a thing, although perhaps not for long.)  They are an "apex species" meaning they are at the top of the food chain, and their coloring makes it hard to detect them or get an accurate count of their numbers.  They have already permanently damaged the Everglade ecosystem.
Our bad.
1.8 million years ago, small bands of modern humans began migrating from Africa.  Now there are over 7 billion of us.  We have no natural predators and are voracious consumers.  We have already driven numerous species to extinction, changed natural habitats beyond recognition, and even altered the earth's climate.  And we're just getting started.
Oops.

If Jesus were Alive Today, He'd Be a Stand-Up Comic

Thanks everybody.  You've been a wonderful multitude.
Good night!This occurred to me the other night while Nancy and I were watching Sarah Silverman.  The best of our stand-up comics - Louis C K and Sarah Silverman - have something very profound at the bottom of their stories, and there is also something of the stand-up routine in Jesus' teaching.

Louis C K reminds me of the story of the woman taken in adultery.  If you recall, the crowd was about to stone her until Jesus said let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  CK, instead of looking around for a target that the audience will all enjoy laughing at, makes fun of his his own weakness and hypocrisy.  In effect, he's saying, "Hey, everybody, I'm a sinner myself," and he's so charming and engaging, we're compelled the stone we were just warming up to throw.  You can't remove a mote from your neighbor's eye until you attend to the beam in your own; and Louis CK says, "Oh, my God, look at this beam I got in my eye!"  And we laugh and realize we have beams in our own.

Silverman's humor is much more difficult, and she walks a narrower tightrope.  She comes this close (I'm pressing my thumb and forefinger together) to being just another vulgar unfunny stand-up cracking jokes about minorities and sex, anything to shock the audience.  And she does shock the audience, but what's shocking is not the knowing leer of the jaded comedian, but the topspin of innocence she gives everything.  Over and over again, Jesus was castigated for violating social norms - working on the Sabbath, eating unclean foods, hanging out with lepers.  Jesus says it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles us, but what comes out.  Silverman takes it one step further, and shows us that even what comes out cannot defile her, and whatever the nature of goodness is, it's something more substantial than being appropriate and careful not to offend anybody.

I don't know if Jesus could've held his own on the nightclub circuit, but he was very good with hecklers.  Wherever Jesus went, he'd be on a roll, doing his bit, and some Pharisee would call out from the crowd, "Who do you think you are anyways?" or the equivalent thereof, and Jesus would come right back with, "Who do you think I am?"  Maybe that's not exactly a knee-slapper of a comeback, but it had the effect of shutting him up, which is really the point.

Or you take the parables; a lot of them, like the Good Samaritan, have the classic three-part structure of a good joke.  "First guy comes by, a priest, he doesn't do nothing.  Second guy, a Levite, he doesn't do nothing either.  Third guy, a Samaritan, he takes care of the guy like a neighbor.  Whoa!  Crazy, huh?"  Or the Prodigal Son.  The bit where he ends up sleeping with the pigs is clearly Jesus riffing off his own material, coming up with the most comically gross outcome possible.  We can just imagine Jesus in front of the multitude, "... and he ends up... poor... sleeping with the pigs."  (Pause for laughter.  Maybe Jesus does a few oinks and snores, mimes sharing a blanket with a porker.)  

The Beatitudes are really just a bunch of one liners; Jesus has a sort of sort of format, like a template, and then just fills in the blanks.  If Jeff Foxworthy had delivered the Beatitudes, they'd have come out like, "If you're meek... you might be blessed.  If you mourn... you might be blessed.  If you hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake... you might be blessed."  

And Jesus wraps up his routine with the classic one-liner, "Take my life... please!"

My Zombie Run

There is no shame in being gotten by a zombie.  There is some shame in being gotten by the first zombie.  In the zombie run yesterday I was caught by the very first zombie I ran into.

It was a divided road, and there were two zombies on the right and one on the left.  Like the man in the poem, I took the road less traveled by.  I tried feinting right and then zagging left, but it made no difference.  I couldn't get around her, and she tore off one of my "flags," which indicated that I was dead, although I was still allowed to finish the race.

In retrospect, my error was allowing myself to become isolated from the other runners; if I'd stayed with the pack, I might've gotten by.  She couldn't have gotten all of us.  When you're facing a zombie, you need numbers on your side.  You don't have a chance if it's mano-a-zombie-o.

I am pleased to report, however, that having been "killed" bought out my inner nobility.  I saw myself as a sacrificial victim, offering himself to help save others.  I caught up with the pack of runners, and each time we ran into a herd of zombies, I'd shout "Yo, zombie, zombie, zombie!  Come and get me!  I ain't afraid of no zombies!"  The zombies, being highly susceptible to such taunts, would shuffle in my direction.  I do not know how many, if any, others I saved, but I am proud to know I made the effort.

Now, I am rethinking my plans for a zombie apocalypse.  First off, and I say this in a spirit of public helpfulness, if there is a zombie apocalypse, you probably need to steer clear of me.  If past experience is any guide, I will be the first to go.

You tell yourself you're ready if the zombies come, but you really aren't.

No one's ready for zombies.

Race-Day Jitters

It is to be expected, I suppose, to experience a few jitters the morning of the race, but for the 5K I will run today, I a little jumpier than usual.

This time I'm going to be chased by zombies.

The deal is this, I'm driving down to Senoia, Georgia - which will take about twice as long as the race itself - then run through the backdrop of sets such as Walking Dead and Pet Cemetery.  Along the way, zombies will pop out now and anon and attempt to grab one of my "lives" (it's sort of like flag football).

The thing is, I don't know quite what to expect.  Will they actually "pop" out from behind coverings, etc?  Or will they be waiting for us en masse at various intersections?  Can these zombies run?  I do not think zombies, real zombies, would be able to run; it wouldn't make sense for a zombie to run any more than for a mummy to skip rope, but if there's one thing my mamma taught me, you can't argue with a zombie.

Also, how sportsmanlike is it to try to avoid the zombies altogether?  In an honest-to-goodness zombie apocalypse, one would steer clear of zombies at all costs.  But then, one wouldn't be out running a 5K in the first place.  Maybe it's more like the running of the bulls, where to get the full juice out of the experience, you need to be as close as possible to the danger, not well out of reach, or better yet, watching from a balcony and drinking sangria.

Lastly, my fear is it will be a disappointment.  I've always dreamed of being chased by zombies, but what if the actual experience doesn't live up to my expectations?  But it'll probably be okay.  Being chased - whether by a dog, an irate neighbor, or the undead - always adds a little spice to a run.

Wish me luck.

Common Delusions

First a recap for those of you who don't know the difference.  An illusion is something that appears to be, but is not.  For example, if you make a quarter disappear then "find" it behind someone's ear.  A delusion is a mistaken belief-system.  For example, believing anyone was fooled by that lame quarter trick for even a second.  An allusion is a reference to an earlier famous work.  For example, saying, "That stupid quarter trick of yours is even dumber than Good Soldier Svek in the eponymous novel by Hasek."

So what are some common delusions afflicting the American psyche?

1. Believing You are Always Right.  This one is damn near universal at one time or another.  The condition is usually treatable in males by marriage.

2. Believing Someone Else is Always Right.  This is rarer than #1 although it has become somewhat more prevalent since the advent of talk radio.  In marriages, this usually takes the form of one spouse believing a third party has all the keys of all knowledge.  "Why don't you ask so-and-so," or "So-and-so says..."  [So-and-so is used here merely as a placeholder.  It is not meant to denigrate anyone with a last name that is actually So-and-so.]  Believing someone else is always right is potentially dangerous if left untreated since it frequently leads to homicidal thoughts in the other spouse.

3.  Believing Someone Else Believes He or She is Always Right.  This one's a doozy.  And really difficult to treat.  Even Freud was like, "Dude."  Even if the object of the delusion admits he's been wrong, this only serves, but some sort of backward logic, to confirm the delusion of the deluded party.  Is that clear?  Commonly in a marriage, both spouses will be afflicted with this delusion, each believing the other believes he or she is infallible while believing oneself to be freely willing to admit one's own foibles, mistakes, and short-comings.  This leads us to delusion #4, which is

4. Believing You Do Not Believe You are Always Right.  By now you're starting to see why psychoanalysts seem so grumpy all the time.  People afflicted with #4 are frequently subject to #1 and #3 as well, and often, through a kind of neurotic contagion, their spouses are subject to the same delusions with occasional bouts of #3 thrown in because, hey.  Technically, this situation is called a hot mess and it is astonishingly prevalent among married couples.  For years, compassionate legislators tried to block gay marriage, hoping to spare homosexuals, who otherwise seem so happy and carefree (ie "gay") this torment, but now gays can get married, too.  They can't say we didn't try to warn them.  There is no cure for this combination-type delusion, and the only known treatment is to sit couples in front of the tv and make them watch endless streaming shows so they don't get an opportunity to speak to each other.

5. Believing You are a Carrot.  Actually, there are no known cases of this delusion, but it'd be nice once in a while to meet someone who was willing to say, "I'm a carrot," and leave it at that.

Who Wants Sex More?

A typical woman is unlikely to focus on sex
under these circumstancesAfter years of careful research into the question, who wants sex more, men or women, I've determined they both want sex equally.  This will fly in the face of conventional wisdom that tells us men have stronger sex drives.  The only significant difference, as far as I can tell, is that women want other things as well.  Let me restate this in other terms: whereas men want sex and only sex, women want sex but they want other things as well.

Let's take an illustrative example.

Suppose the Martin domicile has gone without cleaning.  Dishes are in the sink, perhaps.  The bathroom tile has not been scrubbed.  Unwashed laundry has piled up.  The odd food scrap is lying on the floor.  Raccoons are foraging in the kitchen trash. 

At this juncture, Nancy and I want sex equally much.  Millions of years of evolution are shouting in our ears, "For God's sake, procreate!  I know you're old and useless, but try, for God's sake, try!  We're talking survival of the species here!"

And yet, in this situation, I will be the only one who will be able to focus.  Nancy's mind will keep turning to the dirty laundry and foraging raccoons.  She will be unable to muster a passionate mood until they have been dealt with.

Another example, this one fictional.

There's a genre of movie, targeted specifically at men, in which a man and his lubricious female counterpart face a dire apocalyptic situation: zombies perhaps, or Nazi zombies, or mutant raccoons from outer-space, or something.  Our great cities lie in ruins, corpses lie strewn about the streets (unless we're talking zombies, in which case they're up and walking) all official communications are down, and presumably the officials - the government, the police, the military - are all dead anyway.  There is no internet.  

At this point in the movie, our two heroes make love.  They're cowering in some corner behind the rubble, and the logic is, "Those mutant Nazi zombie raccoons are going to get us sooner or later, might as well have a quickie."  This is the fulfillment of a fantasy of every man who's ever been told, "Not if you were the last man on earth."  Well, in the movie, it is the last man on earth, so booyah!

The only problem is, it would never happen that way.  In reality, the woman would expect him to go out and get rid of those zombie raccoons before sex.  It would be no use pointing out that he would surely die in the attempt, making sex impossible, unless it were zombie sex, which even for a man is like ewww.

All this to say, gentlemen, a mutant zombie apocalypse will not get you laid, so you might as well stop wishing for it.  Instead, try to attend to some of those other things on your sweetheart's wish list, and you'll discover an unexpected font of sexual energy.

Anyway, them's my thoughts.

And now, I'm going to close this blog.  The weekend's coming up, and I have to attend to some raccoons in the kitchen garbage.