tributary

Clever Shakespeare reference, yes? Well I just presume to scribble about the Internet, and specifically Facebook. Facebook’s initial public offering—the drama!—brought on this urge to opine.

The build up to that IPO caught me. I don’t like Facebook, which made any misstep by the company, and with luck any train wreck, entertaining. When Ford cancelled advertising on Facebook, my wish was fulfilled. Not that Facebook could not weather the blow, just that something had occurred to diminish the surge of excitement for the stock.

The small family of Internet bullies—Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple—leaves us all weary, I’m sure. We want their services, but their intent directive to extract from us becomes more burdensome as times goes by. We have to put up with some of this crap, but everyone, and every thing, are within limits, as Charles Olson noted.

I used to think of Microsoft as a sort of evil. I do not want to overextend the idea, but its presence has been heavy. I have a more relaxed view now, because of the company’s ability to stumble and barely get out of its own way. Amazon smells like Walmart, something I would like to avoid. Google seems earnest but somehow autistic. I mean, Google has grand ideas and the ability to innovate but comes across like a guy in a zoot suit wondering why people don’t think he’s cool. Apple, its dappled face oif his innovation, combines cheap labour with gadgety foofaraw to extricate oodles of cash from consumerism. Facebook just never feels good; all sneaky and peremptory.

Design-wise, Facebook is surprisingly messy. It’s clearer than Myspace, but so’s my closet. I have to hunt the page if I want to do anything beyond posting. I am amazed that Facebook  makes billions with their advertising. Ads on it seem like those tv commercials that, when over, leave you wondering what kind of tree that was in the background. I almost never notice Facebook’s ads, let alone interact with them in some critically prosperous way. Somebody is, apparently, but  I do not know why.

I make it hard, perhaps, for Facebook to bleed me, because I don’t use the Like button much. When I do, it is for something someone wrote or uploaded. Leaves Facebook to make broad guesses about what sort of commodity exerts my eagerness. The button should be called Monetize This. The thing is, Facebook’s advertising model seems pretty old skool, or, more formally, the See If Anyone Salutes School of Advertising. Who am I to say, tho: they seem to be making a buck.

The IPO did not seem to have a point beyond making a handful of people rich. We keep hearing that Facebook has all this raw data, but until Facebook finds a way to cook it, the data collection just becomes an obsession. And for Facebook to succeed, that obsession can’t be irritating users. Facebook and all the other extremities of the social combine must balance that obsession with the necessity to remain within bounds. There are legal lines, however vague, that the company should not exceed. They must also respect—that’s an entirely wrong term to use in these circs, considering the disrespectful land grab these companies participate in—what their users think is too much. Users will push back when things get uncomfortable. That’s their job.

If I’m right that Facebook earned a billion dollars in advertising last quarter, and if I’m to believe that it has close to a billion active users, then the company earns about a buck per user per quarter. You can jiggle the numbers, everybody else does, but that billion sounds less lucrative. Still, a billion is a billion.

No use pretending that I can see the future. The mechanization of the social graph has its limits, which is to say, the social network seems less social. Facebook is trying to read a whole lot more into its Like button, for instance, than seems reasonable. Facebook seems to believe that people log in to get themselves some advertising. Of course we just put up with that. Even if we are interested in what ads offer, we invest our time in Facebook for the service, the chit chat, the pictures, the games, the excitement. And I was thinking about photos, which I admit I occasionally upload. Will I be uploading photos to Facebook the rest of my life? Facebook, Youtube, and so on, picture a future of that sort of desperation. Oh yes, things change.

Dear Friends,

I have a project on Kickstarter that I hope you will help with. It is a book about family, love and loss. It deals with Alzheimer's, Asperger's, and inherent confusion. It's also funny. Details are at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theforgetting/the-stories-we-tell-documented-in-time?ref=home_location

Kickstarter projects are supported by PEOPLE LIKE YOU. People donate to the project, in exchange for gifts and the experience of crowd-sourcing. If funding reaches my goal within the set time, the project is a success and I get the funds (less Amazon's fee), and the book gets published. If not, then no money is taken. It's a nifty, supportive, collaborative concept. Please consider contributing, and please tell people about my project and share the url.

yours,

Allen

Sunday Beth and I did a number of things, nothing large but all satisfying. It was a beautiful spring day.

First, we did our volunteer work for OARS. I think that stands for Organization for the Assabet River System. The organization works towards improving the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers. The sources of the Assabet and the Sudbury are about a mile apart, 20 some miles away. They hook away from each other but end up in the Concord, which then ends up in the Merrimac, which is tributary to the Atlantic. Got the picture?

I was surprised by the industrial usage of the rivers, from earliest colonial times. Mills and tanneries, but even iron foundries, sat by the banks of these rivers. All of which, as you might imagine, had deleterious effect.

We met our squire at the Concord boathouse at 6am. He’s been doing this monitoring for several years. Our job was to take water samples and other data. We scooped water from the river, dunked a meter in the water, stuff like that. It was cool and quiet. Beth and I found that the water seemed to make our skin tingle, from that one dunking (the other two sites we visited, we used an extender to reach into the water from the precarious banks).

For some reason, we only had three spots to take readings from. Usually it’s more like six. Our next stop was Lowell, ignoring publicly accessible points in Bedford and Billerica. The first spot we hit was in this nook in the city. It was a cramped little village of houses. Provincetown offers a similar quality of houses close together in quaint congestion. Lowell alas is dumpish in nature. Still, the beauty of the land survives.

The site was a small park next to a bridge over the river. The Concord’s a pretty mopey river, especially in the area of Concord, but at this spot, it had some momentum. It looks sylvan but to the left is the bridge, well covered with graffiti, and let’s don’t forget to leave trash around.

Sadly my camera’s battery died so no more pictures. A little park above the river had a large arbour covered with wisteria, with species roses around it. Wowzer! Our guide warned us about poison ivy so Beth kept me back to just write down the data. Years ago, I had a bad reaction to poison ivy, which inspired a memorable response from Beth. One night in bed I was unconsciously scratching my affected arm and Beth in her sleep said, in succession, Don’t Scratch. I love you. What’s for dinner?

The next site was even more poison ivyish, down an embankment next to a building and near another bridge.  There was a dam upstream, and the water was suspiciously foamy. Readings there showed greater conductivity, which, I believe, means the presence of metals. Grape vines growing into the trees had bunches the size of my thumbnail. Here we bid adieu to our guide and headed home. We got coffee at Starbuck’s then went to the Concord Bridge. It is actually called North Bridge, tho Emerson called it rude. I don’t think Emerson ever saw a bridge at that location, in sooth. Several bridges there have been destroyed by flood, and I think in his lifetime folks settled for the bridge down the road.

The area around the bridge looked spectacular. Trees leafed out last week, and the sun shone. The National Parks Service in their wisdom have attempted to make the area look at it did during the Revolution, which is to say, divested of trees. A lot of trees were removed a few years ago, which I find disturbing.

An earlier visit to the visitor’s centre was equally dispiriting. It’s a former mansion sitting on a hill. Brick patios, if that’s what you want to call them, and walkways, go down the embankment. Vines and bushes made these walkways mysterious and wonderful, but they’ve been removed. The formal garden looks like it is cared for by the DPW. Sigh.

Anyway, it was lovely by the bridge.  A Canada goose barked and barked. I watched it drift across the river, barking rhythmically. Another goose, probably his mate, hung back. Sounded like he was taking command of the whole river area.

We had pancakes that Erin prepared then Beth and I went out again. Beth wanted pictures of the Bridge. We then headed to Lowes in Lowell, again, and got a couple of ferns and a bird feeder for our porch. Oh, I guess I should mench that we stopped at a car wash, and cleaned the car thoroughly inside and out. That’s a gift and a thrill for Beth.

Not quite satisfied, plantwise, we stopped at a nursery. We got a basket of impatiens and some other plants. One was a green and yellow variegated planted with leaves that resemble a maple in shape. The flower is a round sort of tulip shape (abutilon: new to me)     bbbb. Unusual. Beth hung the feeder and basket, and arranged the other plants. ten hours later, a redpoll sat on the feeder bracket and announced his territory. A little later a female nestled into the pothos. That afternoon, a hummingbird partook of the impatiens.

I received The Relational Elations of Orphaned Algebra (Marsh Hawk 2012) by the two mentioned in the post title. Every new book incites the excitement of exploration. I mean even the most clunkaroony book invites investigation, even if it only results in the comment clunkaroony. Eileen is safe from that term, I know. j/j hastain I do not know (prior this, I mean), but as I scanned merely scanned their collaboration, I got involved. That's a good thing.

I will formally review this book for Galatea Resurrects but I post here now because of the very real excitement I felt when I began to "take in" the book. That started when I pulled it from the envelope it was mailed in.

The cover photo, a photo collage, had the right kind of here it is, even tho I didn't/don't know where here is. Visceral reaction.

To boil it down ruthlessly, Eileen brings an interest in orphans and adoption, and j/j an interest in transgender issues. When I say interest, I mean a compelling force. Between them, they create an algebraic equation that embraces human inconsistency. I detect in my scan neither screed nor mere chiding, which maybe you were fearing as was I, given such topics.

My conviction stands that poetry doesn't last long in the frame of About. So those issues of orphans and transgender, serious and compelling, are only places where the poetry can happen. Poetry is the exertion of possible words within the magnitude of our confusion. In the rational world, neither orphans or transgender makes sense, but where is this rational world anyway? We're a confused animal.

So I write here to say that this looks like something interesting.

I should read Tristram Shandy again, or A Sentimental Journey, because Laurence Sterne’s ability to ramble seems noteworthy and praiseworthy. With poems, movies, and novels, the more easily that you can say what the work is about, the less interesting. I like when trails are broken, rambling on. So this peregrination…

Two weeks ago, then, Beth and I went to an open house at The Emerson Umbrella. The Emerson Umbrella is an art organization in Concord, and it offers studio space. The building is a former school, a three story brick edifice, suitably drear for a school but completely inviting as an artist hive.

One notices quickly that the artists are older. It makes sense, since Concord is a swish town with a paucity of starving young artists in its population. Or starving young anything, even the dogs are fat (fat labradors should be oxymoronic). Whatever studio space costs, it is probably more than most of the artists make in their art; they are well-heeled by other means. That’s my guess.

The quality was pretty good. I stiffened a couple of times at rank amateur work, I mean work that didn’t seem at the level to be shown to anyone outside of family and close friends. but largely I saw work that one could look at with pleasure.

Some of the studios did not look like work areas. Sure, cleaned up, but no materials around. Maybe they hauled that stuff out for the open house, but that seems against the whole concept. I dunno. The studios lack the convenience of sinks, so you would have to head down the hall  for water.

A man had a real workshop set up, for making model boats. Historically accurate ones. He was engaging until his wife and daughter showed up, then he ignored us. Some of the artists were weird that way. One woman was talking with her friends and didn’t even acknowledge us. There’s an ostensible sales opportunity, hello? Not that we were there to buy, and not that I wore my Rolex pants to alert artists that I might be looking for something to hang above my Dior toilet. But you never can tell. We left that woman’s little world pronto.

Most of the artists offered nibbles, which was the first thing I looked for as I entered. Crackers and cheese, cookies, jelly beans, chocolates. Some of those jelly beans were the gourmet kind, mango and espresso flavoured. I found myself putting the pieces together. I mean, one served hummus and blue corn chips, what does that say? Or how about standard quality jelly beans, flavoured red, green, whitish and black? Obviously there’s a different mindset there compared to the mango/Alka Seltzer flavoured treats.

And the music. Mushy soft jazz stylings a la Starbucks, or Indian music, or Baroque, or hyper Dixieland. Enter my little world.

One artist used Tyvek, which proved an interesting material to work with. She cut out bird shapes, painted them, and hung them on a branch for a lovely mobile. She painted a large sheet they she said she displayed outside, and it survived a torrential downpour during which it got blown down and sat in a puddle all night. Cool.

A potter made mostly uninteresting things, tho a couple of oddly skewed house shapes were very interesting. She was remarkably concerned about not losing anything, and took pictures of all her work. One needn’t go all self-ultimate about one’s work, but one can let some of it go. You’re learning as you go. She had, by the way, the best light of any of the studios.

One dullard actually seemed to be making a financial go of it. I rather liked his work, which tended toward houses and street scenes in Provence, with some influence of a guy named Cezanne. He was an Artist Type with the given spark of having been a lawyer. He did talk. Not to us, but a woman who seemed like someone who would buy had his attention. I mean, her interest seemed to have a possibility of acquisition. The studio was more like an office, with muted lighting. His walls were completely covered with his work.

A couple of artists ignored us out of shyness. Might as well not bother with the open house. In fact, one studio had a Poet. I did not want to enter, because a mousy woman just sat there with no sense of invitation. Turns out she was just sitting in for her friend. I suppose it would be interesting to have an office like this, especially amongst all these artists, but it’s a pure luxury. Seemed like a setting, with her standard issue poetry books (some guy named Frost), and her typewriter.

One studio held an older woman and her friend. They were friendly. The artist’s paintings were mostly copies of pictures of galaxies, say 5’x7’. The conversation quickly directed itself to the political rocks towards which our ship sails. Beth has a way of finding the firebrands, being one herself. The general political sway amongst the artists was presumably liberal in a conservative way, so it was nice to see some elevated feistiness.

I enjoyed the studio of an illustrator. He does art for children’s books. He did several Math is Fun books for a Korean publisher. He said that he mostly made up the illustrations that he did. That is, the scenes he depicts barely conform with anything in the book. Which is what I have suspected. He had several large originals displayed. All of them were on spec. There were no stories behind them, he just made these tableaux as samples. That struck me because they were loaded with adventure. One showed a ghostly figure in a cavern looking down at a pirate looking bunch, The Goonies plus ghosts. Zowie!

I noted that artist work could be expensive. You got your computer and Photoshop and the deluxe scanner, as well as the old-fashioned material, and you got serious commitment. I also note once again that there’s a shitload of art out there. What will be do with it all???

There is something to be said about reading thru a chunk of an author’s works. I engaged a second Palahniuk novel, Pygmy. I also got three novels by Mary Renault at the library, but have only read one so far. CP’s Damned interested me even as it disappointed or irritated me. Pygmy satisfies me more. Maybe I will continue with this author.

I guess what I like about CP is his tendency towards tour de force. He sets up somewhat impossible situations—somewhat because this is, after all, fiction—then tries to hang on. This is an especially definitive plus in Woolf, whose experiments seem part of her lifeforce. Okay, CP does hang on. Damned featured a cheerfully detestable Hell, as seen thru the eyes of a sassy 13 year old. Pygmy posits terrorists from an unnamed totalitarian state infiltrating high school, as part of a scheme to overthrow the country.

It is written as a report from one operative, who is inexplicably named Pygmy. He is brought to this country as a foreign exchange student, along with a number of other operatives. The parents are fundamentalists—they give him a PROPERTY OF JESUS t-shirt—the children denatured teen revolt.

Pygmy writes in a broken English that cannot be explained. Full of literalisms and semantic confusions, it doesn’t add up. If he’s writing to his own people, he would use his own language (helpfully translated by CP into English). This manner of expression is the book’s style, and one of its pluses, but its use makes no sense.

But so it goes.

Choice state bromides course thru Pygmy’s mind, as well as ruminations on how it would be to perform various martial arts moves—Lashing Lynx, Barracuda Deadly Eye Gouge—in situations he is in. The cover consists of some figures illustrating the moves that Pygmy thinks about and uses. He’s supposed to be 13, but he and his host siblings don’t add up agewise. We assume that he’s just daydreaming. but after his pigdog brother gets bullied, Pygmy doesn’t just efficiently beat up the bully, Pygmy anally rapes him. And it would have been graphically described had Pygmy not described it in his screwy patois.

Such a scene seems in accord with a certain style of outrageousness. It is almost lurid, but resists, finally. Outrageousness is a pale form of currency, after all.

Pygmy fears retaliation by the bully, but in fact the bully becomes infatuated in Pygmy. Unrequited, he sets off murderous events at an Academic United Nations, so that Pygmy will kill him. Ugh, I’m getting lost in the plot. There’s some satire in there, under heavy hand.

You can relax. It all comes to an orderly climax in which Pygmy thwarts Operation Havoc, his host family survives, and he removes the hollow molar containing cyanide from his mouth. Boo hoo, no spoiler alert. Thru out the book, he develops feelings for his host sister. I guess we’re supposed to think his humanity causes him to turn from the robotic state.

Like with Damned, we have pat resolution. The hyped outrageousness of both books receives a shock tempering in the final chapter. Palahniuk does not know how to keep his hands off the product of his imagination at the crucial point. Neither book offers a clear way to end, so CP opts for platitudinous relief. I wonder if he ever solves this problem.

Thru out, quotes from heroes such as Hitler, Mao, Idi Amin, part of Pygmy’s inculcation, celebrate the mad social effort to keep in line, as lived by Pygmy. These revolutionary statements sound good. I mean, you could sweep them together with Jefferson, Rousseau, or whoever. They represent the cannier side of CP. His writing sets framed in the social context, which is quite compelling. I wish he wasn’t so convinced by a satisfying ending, however.

I picked up Damned at the library simply because I saw a review in the Times recently. I only glanced at the review. The author’s name rang no bell, but I see that he wrote Fight Club, which I have heard of, even if I haven’t read it or seen the movie. I think I have clearly demonstrated that I had no particular reason to read this book. And yet I did.

It’s not a bad book, which is to say, I’m equivocal. It’s fast-paced and somewhat funny, but over extends itself. Or do I mean under extends?

It concerns a 13 year old girl, Madison, who dies, as she says, of a marijuana overdose. Well, it later turns out, and she learns, that it was something else that killed her. Okay, her adopted brother killed her accidentally, and forget you, spoiler alert. Which puts her in Hell, verily a place wrought of Dante’s imagination. Now, I’m not much for dead narrators. Sunset Boulevard sticks in my craw because a guy lying face down in a pool narrates. But here, the setting is antic enough, and Hell seems less hellish for Madison than life did.

Her parents are super rich, and her mother’s an actress, all of which victimizes the girl. Madison is, as she tells us, fat with bad complexion. Palahniuk makes no attempt to portray her as a 13 year old, except for a certain sass. She’s way world weary and sardonic, despite being a virgin and largely friendless.

Palahniuk portrays Hell as an antic place for sure, gross but not terrifying. He takes an Over the Top license to flesh out Hell with yucky details. I find this sort of satire tiresome and unsustainable. After citing The Breakfast Club as the greatest movie ever, Madison meets up with kids who replicate the cast, with Madison in the Ally Sheedy role.Their hijinks are just testy set pieces between Madison’s many chatty soliloquy’s. Eventually, those characters peter out. The soliloquies, tho, allow Palahniuk to rap forth, and they show the warm blood in Madison’s veins. Madison evolves most warmly when speaking such lines as: “Yes I do want to go to Heaven—who doesn’t?—but not if I have to be a total asshole.” In the best sense, she reminds me of Huckleberry Finn, astute yet innocent, with a large moral geist.

Palahniuk must’ve given Wikipedia a thorough work out looking up ancient gods and devils and such. It just seems like an exercise. And he places all this smart stuff into the mouth of The Breakfast Club nerd, the Expositionator.

Thru out the book, we’re whipped back to events in Madison’s life. Flashbacks should be used roughly once a century, if you ask me, and if you’re reading this, you did. The Hell stuff makes the book exotic, but it’s basically Catcher in the Rye with a girl in the lead. Every chapter begins with a harangue by Madison, aimed at Satan, each beginning “Are you there, Satan?” It works as structure, except that it wears on me.

Near the end she beats up Hitler and steals his mustache. This gives her power, or perhaps I should use the verb empower  (everyone else does). She gains an army of  followers. From there she proceeds to do likewise to other likely Hell denizens, and she even sort of faces down Satan. This sort of approach to fiction seems to be aimed at 10 year olds, the flush, upbeat ending. It really leaves me dissatisfied. I mean, I like the Madison character, and Palahniuk’s sensitivity to her plight in life (but not in Hell), but it’s all done up in an underwhelming package of excess. And it all ends with the words To be continued…, italicized and with suspension points. Like he ran out of steam at 240 quick read pages, but could squeeze out more after he rested. No, say I, the structure will not hold.

But you see, I’m interested in fiction trying stuff. I think the worst novel I ever finished was The Dean’s December by Saul  Bellow. It was built exactly on the lines of soap operas (remember them?). Bellow would shift his characters to scenes, and then they would talk. I know, that’s what James does, and him I like. James went to the trouble of filling his sentences with interesting turns, however, and he was avid about context. Maybe Bellow was hunting for veritas but he dug up ennui.

So I’m okay with an author attempting energetically. I see the old college try in effect with Palahniuk. But when I note a resemblance to Catcher in the Rye, that’s an ouchie. If you want Hell, try Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. O’Brien’s one of the few.