Boston Poetry World Cup 2014

I read at the Boston Poetry World Cup 2014 this past Saturday. It had been a busy, distracting week, so I came into it a little unfocused. I didn’t even finalize and print out what I wanted to read until that Saturday morning.

In reading aloud the handful of poems, just to make that effort, I started to cry when I began two of them. One poem mentions Erin, the other Beth. I have my moments of emotional surprise—where did that come from?—but I guess I can explain the tearfall. I don’t write to “say” something, but there exists an emotional envelopment of the words. That emotion hit me at the unarmed level, something like that. This was problematic because I didn’t want to make a display at the reading.

So anyway, Beth and I got there as the second set was beginning, people going in. Met Joel Sloman there. He did not go in. We spoke with Joel then I stood in the doorway and listened while Beth and Joel remained outside. I didn’t know any of the readers in the set. Nothing sprung out at me re “the work”. I don’t mean to be dismissive. I read poetry better than I hear it. After the set I found Joel, who had just said goodbye to Beth, who was just off to feed the metre. He seemed mildly perplexed that he wanted to leave. To be honest, I had entertained the idea of skipping the event (work precluded Friday night and Sunday).

I sat thru the next set sans Beth, who went and had coffee. I was to read in the following set. Or something like that. Beth joined me when my set began. I don’t want to review readers since my head was in the wrong place. The reader before me—I was second in the set—was kind of quirky and energetic. He seemed intent on pushing his work forward. One hears enough wispy readers, and I myself am not a dynamic reader, but I felt pushed upon. Still, there was something to grasp.

I first read an old poem, “Measly Poets Aloft” which is mildly snide yet I think uplifting vis-à-vis, you know, poetry and stuff. And I mean stuff. Voici est la poème:

the call from the minaret makes an opening between us and them. a crane lofts thru the sky that we started noticing just the other day. any sky makes a picture alerting us to words softened in rainwater, or perhaps a frog in a flooded ditch. when poets put on their big shoes, the minaret just about sparkles. the message is clear. we aren’t the only ones capable of flight, we who view the cranes. we listen for poets to gamble their lives and stress out. the matter sur la table will seem more important later, when the decoding has gone on long enough. why shouldn’t one want this sort of discussion? discussion wants theories in place. the term open should be closed permanently, an impossible position. the minaret has it over all other possibilities, frankly. someone stands up there now, calling out in that lovely way.

This poem is in my book Simple Theory. As I looked at it that Saturday morning, I decided to remove a line: “the minaret is as masculine as you can get.” I might have been worrying about meaning, whatever that is. I just thought the sentence might be read/heard by rote. Probably weak of me.

I next read a piece that actually is a narrative. I take pride in writing narrative that goes nowhere, that is, that doesn’t aim to fulfill the reader’s wish for simple completion. What I read next is a sort of scifi flourish, a seeming raygun sort of perplexity with the final declaration that I was a Republican. Scare quotes if you need them. To me, it’s a funny piece (only 1/9^th of the full work).

I read a quirky little something that I found in the Sunday comics—two speech balloons tied together:

Modest Lyric Compartment

I have made a list of
things you can do
that will tell me that
you love me
I call it
a strategy
so you won't
lose hope

I then read the Erin poem but not the Beth poem. Another poem sounded like Stein (mucho repetition). I muttered few footnotes. Have no sense of audience reaction.

I am not sure if we even completed the set. I did throw the little cash I had into the proffered bag-functioning-as-a-hat. We then went looking for provender.

Some observations:

The format of the reading: fine and dandy. I respect people willing to make these readings happen, in whatever form. Bringing a mob of poets together creates an event.

The 8 minute time limit is okay, I mean jinkies, people can and do go on. Those 8 minutes best serve those who read often. One can feel okay about reading one’s latest, or something unusual, or someone else’s work, or whatever, without feeling one is losing an opportunity. Those of us who don’t read often might feel pressed to cover a lot of bases. Something old, something new, something “great”, something funny. Funny means audience interest, of course.

It doesn't seem like people recognize the narrative nature of their work. They tell prosy stories about events or emotions without seeing how tied to the trail they are. This presents a sort of goal-oriented vista that simply talks too much. The music seems mainly to lie in the adjectives.

With the vast number of readers, one can declare that poetry is alive and well. Also that it is overwhelming us. I do not know what holds us all together. Audience is now a big fat fishbowl. Who are we singing to?

LANGUAGE poetry seems like the last entailing critical faction. What I mean is, Langpo gave people a climate of agitation and debate that brought poetic vitality, whether one was for or against. I am unaware of any other overarching influence since Langpo sprang into the pantsuit of the ages. Flarf might be mentioned, but it seems more like something those people over there do, rather than a general insight. That, at least, seems the critical stance.

Hearing the poets read, and I’ve felt this in all of these recent poetry fests, it sounds like an amalgam of amalgams. I don’t think of poetry as one thing, but the sightings I’ve been hearing don’t seem like any thing. I mean by that that the current answer to what is poetry is: whatever. Truly, I feel that way myself but the thing is, how does that translate to a community of listening machines?

I don’t think there’s enough listening to one’s self, let alone one’s non-self. The Internet says we are all good, step on up to the plate. Egalitarian wins everyday. For 8 minutes, I can be Allen Bramhall. I know just as do you that that is a pittance. Why, then, are we so careless in the realm? Well, that’s what I was thinking, these past few days and all.

Greek Orthodox Funeral

A co-worker lost his mother this weekend. The funeral service was this morning. Beth knows Steve, as well.

The service was to be at the Greek Orthodox church in Lexington, my home town. I had no idea there was a Greek Orthodox church in Lexington. It was located on a road I’m very familiar with.

We got to what I thought was the right place. In sooth, it was Episcopalian, and the door was locked (cue symbolism). Beth noticed across the street a little chapel. From the outside it gives little impression. I guess I never gave it notice. We were a little late because of my misunderstanding. The service had begun but people were still entering.

The images and iconography inside the church gave an almost visceral effect. The Unitarian church my family went to, there on Lexington’s Green, is rather elegant inside but clearly with a Puritan soul. A crisp, boring place. Frankly, the place was more about bake sales than spiritual comfort. I’m not taking back that remark.

The atmosphere was surprisingly comforting. The images were beautiful and the singing by the priests as they shifted between Greek and English. A patriarch or whatever he’s called led the service, one of the other two turned out to be the parish priest. I won’t describe the service any further except to say it was moving.

The most moving part came when the parish priest spoke about Steve’s mother. He looked fairly young, maybe in his 40s. He clearly had a connection with Steve’s mother. I guess by the presence of the Patriarch that she was much-respected in the community. The parish priest was extremely emotional as he spoke, taking frequent pauses to compose himself. It was stunning to witness that touching embrace by a religious figure. After the service, he hugged family members in the most tender way. Us WASPs must be soulless.

The funeral was open casket. After the service people were invited to kiss the deceased. I watched anxiously to see if this were a requirement. Beth assured me it was not.

As Beth said, this was the second funeral we’ve attended this year that actually offered a feeling of comfort and reassurance. Religion lays too much weight on angry differences, as if we all aren’t in the same plight. It’s nice to know that churches can contain loving kindness.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Going for a wider audience with the title reference to a Moody Blues lp. Anyway, Erin and I went to see the spectacle of our longing today.

A mezzo audience, theatres don’t seem to be crowded anymore. Short wait till previews. Only three movies to look forward to, or not. The first was a noisy Scarlett Johansen vehicle. The concept is a little fuzzy, something about her character getting kidnapped, and a bag of something placed surgically in her stomach. Oh, that old plot. The bag ruptures, thereby giving her super powers. Basically you watch to enjoy Scarlett looking like Scarlett, and the gymnastic mayhem her character perpetuates. Luckily I’ve seen enough. I mean, I sort of accept Scarlett as a capable implementation of the usual road, but this movie can’t possibly want anything.

Another movie shows a rascal hoodlum being trained as a government assassin. Look, there’s no balance here at all, it’s mindfuck for violence, with stray jokes to make it all okay. Their lordships Michael Caine and Samuel Jackson cannot make crap like this better. Another fury comes our way but at the moment I cannot recall what misery it releases.

So X-Men. The movie begins in The Matrix, to wit: a dark, dystopian world in which robotic warriors annihilate mutants, and everybody. A stupid, confusing scene of the remnant X-Men fighting off the robots, called Sentinels. It’s a mess. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan play Dr Xavier and Magneto, now elderly but friends. The only answer is to send someone back in time and prevent um Mystique from killing the inventor of the Sentinels, back in 1973. Yeah, sure. See, Ellen Page has some sort of power that, well it’s like this, um… Okay, it is Matrixy. Wolverine gets the nod because he’s so healthy. She puts him to sleep and his mind goes back to 1973. I guess mine does that occasionally, as well.

Big fail, not to exploit the music and culture of ‘73. The only thing Forrest Gump got right was the tunes of the era.

Wolverine wakes in bed with some 1973 female. He slips naked from the bed so that we can peruse most of the acreage of his jacked body. Hugh Jackedman. He looks like a professional wrestler, ready to explode. It is funny that acting chops emanate from that puddle of improvement. His mission is to find the young Charles Xavier and stop Raven/Mystique. Wolverine finds Xavier and Beast at the now closed school. Xavier is deep in self-pity. Eventually he comes around enough to join Wolverine in trying to get Magneto to help. Magneto is imprisoned under the Pentagon. Not clear why they need Magneto.

Wolverine enlists the help of someone who will eventually become Quicksilver. He’s just a slacker kid but can move faster than the eye can see. The scenes with Quicksilver are played for laughs, a super powered stoner. Pretty easy getting Magneto out. A bunch of guards convene with pistols blazing. Here Quicksilver enters Matrix slo-mo, tipping bullets seemingly motionless in mid-air so that they stray from their targets and so forth. Funny scene. After this, he’s about done.

A problem with the X-Men is that there are so many of them. Most are spear carriers. Several, like Wolverine, Magneto, and Mystique, get to chew the curtains. The rest are stand ins for something eventually to happen. Mystique is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who I glean is Hollywood something. My meager inventory of either sides with Scarlett, if we demand competition. Lawrence looked roped into sentiment.

Mystique fails in her attempt to kill the Sentinel inventor, at the—no kidding—Paris Peace Talks. She and Magneto reveal themselves as mutants, and that sets Richard Nixon to greenlighting the Sentinel program. This Nixon looked like 2nd rate Vegas comedian. For some reason, Magneto lifts a baseball stadium and drops it around the White House, where the Sentinels are displayed. Show off. This is a scene full of… scene.

At this point, Mystique almost kills the Sentinel maker. Thru the good offices of Dr Xavier and Wolverine, she chooses not to pull the trigger. Whew.

In the future, a gazillion Sentinels locate the remnant X-Men in their Chinese Fortress of Solitude. This brought to mind the scene in the Star Wars Thrillogy when the Jedi are killed off Godfather-style. X-Men as a rule hold their hand palm forward to exert their power. Pity the poor actors hung upon these pegs. Halle Berry looked like exerted Hollywood featurette, star power being a mere visual. A lot of yelling and vague ministrations as the Forces of Good flex their steroids. Good Lord, it is the inside of a chocolate éclair!

The Manichean bullshit here is American dream. Mutant Republicans and/or Democrats get to save their party platform by being right. Murder is right for the right reason. Everything is good if you’re right. Wolverine wakes up and the world is okay again.

Look, we don’t need physics, it just holds us back. And we don’t need empathy, where’s the thrill in that? Accusations that the director committed sexual assault on a teen kind of adds to the privilege of righteous mode. Look, there is no moral basis to this movie. It is just flickering electrons with commercial intent. How could we even ask those electrons to care for the endeavour? We are intent to blink as hard as we can.

I think it is time that Marvel start eating its own entrails, and not ours.

Why “Roadrunner” is the Greatest Song Ever

Song by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

The count down is magical extra two steps: Richman counts 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6, to start the song. And he means it. Paul McCartney's fully directed countdown to “I Saw Her Standing There” is a sprinter's call in the moment. I remember the insistence.

Modern Lovers, oh my god! Could we all, could we all reach that sanctum?

Richman has been to town at Stop & Shop.

“Going faster miles an hour”, grand vista of language faster than intent.

AM was a real creature then, and he knew. The scamp district ekes a vantage and sight. No Longer Exists As Such. Precursorian remnant.

“I'm in love with modern moonlight”. The precinct of sincere dispatch, in the cuddling grasp of how the night embraces the treasure.

Chunka chunka persistence, drums, bass, and guitar. Organ floats atop, a voice, a vowel.

“The factories and the auto signs got the power of moderns sounds”. ALRIGHT!

The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick
Suburban trees, suburban speed
And it smells like heaven (thunder)

Splashy/crunchy guitar chords, oozing/running organ runs.

Modern is a town with taste.

* * * * *

Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers is a personal obsession. When I saw Phish my 2nd time, the opened with this song. It was in the running for Mass State Song. Beaten out, naturally, by The Standells and "Dirty Water". Fair enough, but they were from LA and knew little enough of the Charles River. I think Richman knew Stop & Shop and Rt 128. Modern Lovers were eventual drummer for The Cars and eventual keyboardist for Talking Heads. Other song obsession: "Omaha" by Moby Grape ("Listen my friends").

Good Morning America Announces the End of the World

The tv was on when I arrived at the gym, so I watched the already chosen show, Good Morning America. If we need immutable evidence that we're up Shit Creek, shows like this provide it.

Fatuous comes quickly to mind when one reaches for descriptors. Fatuity is alive and well within the precincts of this show. GMA banks on your short attention span. I know the show aims for an audience readying to launch out the door, so yes, things are short and sweet (minus the sweet). But the smirky smarm of the microbits of information and entertainment of every segment should be seen as oppressive. Given the ratings magic of these morning shows, I guess people see oppressive smarm as a positive.

In the old days of these shows, sturdy desks and serious expressions made the chop suey being offered seem mildly consequential, even if the report were on the latest trend in wearable rutabagas. Celebrities were kept to a minimum, which is where they belong.

Nowadays, the word celebrity is big and flexible. It's not just film stars and bestseller writers, it's also the guy who split his pants in the Youtube video. That means there exists an awful lot of celebrities to celebrate. The panel itself is a congealed mass of celebrities, tho I cannot name them all.

Four women and a man form the panel. I suppose there are substitutions at times. I recognize three as first teamers: George Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, and Lara Spencer. The other two were properly lively and attractive (as well), whatever that might mean.

Stephanopoulos looks a little crunchy at this point. No longer the wunderkind on the big political stage, with his dark hair and dark suit, and especially as the women dress brightly, he looks grave and heavy. Not that he doesn't chum up with the banter, as the show requires. His effort at playful fun is unsettling, might even physically hurt, but he’s a game competitor.

Robin Roberts actually carries some gravitas herself. I imagine she was an athlete of note, in college. Well yeah, and a star pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, back in the 50s. She really knew what she was talking about as an ESPN anchor, or whatever she was. Stepping up to GMA represents a step down to frivolity, but at least now she can afford to buy stately Wayne Manor.

I first saw Lara Spencer on Antiques Roadshow. She looked the part, cool and efficient. She presented the right tone of sedate professionalism, as must be on PBS. On GMA, she matches all the others in cackle and smirk.

Amy Robach—I had to look her name up—--is whoever she is, I didn't see enough. Was there someone else sitting cross-legged on the panel or did I imagine it? The set, I should note, entirely lacks desks, the troupe lounges in swivel chairs as they blurt cheap hilarity at each other. Another guy was outside in the crowd looking for insipid people. Who were never far away.

And that's the dynamo producing moolah for some corporate entity. That's the product, that's the thing people are buying. Spencer got to introduce a Youtube video that showed animals in stop-motion that made them look as if they danced. Isn't that sad? That's where the billion dollar corporation goes for content. There's a bottom line here folks: let's don't overspend. Any crap will do.

Spencer also got to do a spot with a Youtube phenomenon dog. I don't know what the dog did in the video but on the live set it properly looked around and ignored Spencer. Great tv.

Don't worry, there's still news on the show, which means the word Benghazi was pronounced, etc. The show cuts away briefly for local weather. Apparently we'll be having some.

I've heard, like maybe from one of the People magazines collected at the gym, that bad blood exists between I guess it would be Spencer and Robach. I should hope so. Not that that would interfere with the prime bantering. Small talk and guffaws, that's a job and these stalwarts are determined to do it right. Good Morning, America!

Memorial Service

The three of us attended a memorial service for Leslie McLeod-Warwick. No, you don’t know her. She produced Shakespeare plays for the homeschool cooperative that Erin attended. We saw 6 or 7 seven of her productions, and Erin appeared in Romeo and Juliette.

Beth and Erin had more interaction with her but I had enough to say she was a rare and embracing person. Pictures on the order of service showed the same smile, when she was a teenager, and on thru her life. Too consistent to be imposed, she radiated a sense of warm acceptance.

Her productions found a place for everyone. That means a 6 year might play king to a 16 year old playing queen. It worked. She found a place for every child. This actually stirred up controversy among the Balkanizing forces of parents with superiour children, or whatever. Homeschooling attempts to avoid the plangency of hierarchy, allowing children to find their own means and interest and ability. It is supposed to take the blunt certifications away, football hero/cheerleader success stories. Ah, parents saw outsiders, children who didn’t fit, and squawked that Leslie allowed them in. Leslie, thank you.

A sudden remission of remission and she died last week. We never somehow got notice of her last production, King Lear.

The memorial service was thoroughly attended, to the degree that a second room was opened, with video transport of the service. She touched many people.

The best part of the service, for me, was when four of her former actors read comments about her that were posted on a Facebook page. I remember one of these readers when he was more than a foot shorter and 2 octaves higher. These comments were not undersigned: it was about what was said not who said it. Family members could be inferred. Thus it was painful to the point of tears to hear the testament of the youngest, who at 14 would have to remember the warmth of her mother. All of the children provided glimpses that were incisive yet funny. One wrote: Many people thought my mother was crazy. Well she was, she married my father. And a lot more of that.

Five children that she homeschooled. Plus these serious yet playful productions of Shakespeare. I mean, costumes and production, and not the easiest of venues. And no one was shamed or excluded.

Later, a reception at the home. People stood in every nook of the ramshackle farmhouse, many people touched. Books were everywhere.

A Poetics, Sort Of

I do not read much poetry nowadays. This does not reflect my opinion of the poetry written today, or in the past. Instead, it speaks to the machinery of my interest.

I began writing poetry in high school. Poetry didn't seem to be clearly defined, once we got past the rhyme and metre logjam (thanks mr cummings). Poetry, then proved a good place to start. In typical youthful spree, I wrote a lot of poetry in high school, but I also had the quantum of smarts to want to read the work of other writers of poetry. Didn't so much get it, but I tried.

My second, and last, year at Franconia College, I enjoyed the benefits of Robert Grenier's scope and curiosity, and read with more formal directive the poets who would most influence my writing. Charles Olson and William Carlos Williams were the main excitement, but Stevens, Dickinson and Whitman folded in, as well. And so on.

I continued to read, study, after college. I found that Charles Olson, whose work intrigued me, also provided a useful path. That path included writers important to him as well as writers provoked by him. These writers gave me a solid footing, I am willing to believe. They were not all poets, as the term is used.

I credit Olson as the one who made reading history a poetic program. That statement sounds inflated. I mean it's in his poetry: What the hell is the U S of A, historically speaking? And what are the words that make it so?

I don't want to read poetry for effects. I think when Gertrude Stein writes about Americans, she embraces something larger than and just exactly poetry. Not just an instance of exhaust, but an active participation in the society that says words. I mean, how can you read Karl Marx and not say he's a poet? William Blake no kidding was, so too dear Emily, etc.

Robert Grenier published a breakthru poem of mine in This 3, which almost but not really gives me historical context. Twenty plus years later, Stephen Ellis, an Internet acquaintance, published a broadside of my poems. I had completely botched the publication part of being a poet. I had sent work out, in those long years, but it seemed always to be the wrong bugle, and probably “not my best stuff”.

The Internet gave me promise. I could backchannel someone on a listserv—Buffalo Poetics, for one—and meet poets, Stephen Ellis for one. And wow plus too: I could place my writing in public view. So could everyone else.

I don't decry the abundance served on the web. I don't think I am decrying anything. Okay maybe I decry the produce market called Attention. The Internet is big, including big with poetry's writers. Big, alas, means Facebook scale dynamics. Lick me on Facebook.

In my younger days, I read poetry to learn. Poems are intricate machines. The Olson course I took proved fruitful but I didn't, and haven't, read enough Stein. I was late to reading John Wieners, and even later to Joanne Kieger. It is kind of a random selection, how one finds one's way. I never cottoned to Eliot, and never read Auden. This isn't rocket science, but I am sure neither is rocket science.

My point resides in what we must do as human beings. I assume I am human, and that you are too. We must care. Caring may mean 17 syllables in reference to the reality of cherry blossoms or finding meaning words about the fuck all of misery in Afghanistan. I'm not here to decree. I believe that the poem is a mechanism of expansion and embrace. I also, let's get loopy, believe that there is only one poem. That poem is a human participle and it lets us say time filled by colours. Those colours are individual and well met. We will always need them, sooner than soon.

So I find history is a sheering event that can mean something. I'm not a scholar, I just want facts to smell like lemons, like Jack Spicer's own lemons, delivered by Lorca, on a Wednesday in collusion.

Reality Shows

Reality programs have been around a long time. They've become a broadcast mainstay, in these days of desert winds. I get the seamy appeal, but the plethora of realities would seem to stifle audience interest. Bachelorettes, for heaven's sake, or lovebird publicity dynamos, Kim and Kanye.

I honestly don't know why these shows continue. They press dull and drab as heroic function. They represent Republicanism at its base value of zero. Anyway, they seem so faked up that one would expect them to flicker away. Well, faked up is the sort of ingenue we seem to favour, the mass appeal of not so much. Rather than flicker, they flock.

Long ago, public television followed a “real” family, the Louds. I didn't watch much of it, but it represented significant tv. I know, oxymoron. One of the sons came out during the filming, which was regarded as a bombshell at the time. Otherwise, what I saw of the show was dry and dispatched, a plucky attempt at relevance.

Empty Vee's Real World had its juicy moments for the first few years. Reality? I think not. Let's gather a handful of patently unmatchable personalities and let them go freefall. The show had a place where every Fussy Buttons could exhale in huge smallness about their housemates. Whoa: gossip, gripe: the human core.

That element, the whingeing, seems to be what has made this genre so widespread. Every pout, snipe, and gripe is ratings magic. I found that the initial lascivious jolt wore off quickly. The public testifies otherwise. When the show came to Boston, the Lifers were regarded as celebs, which clearly blows the Reality bit apart. Real or not, folks wanted to come home from work and settle in to a bunch of nobodies complaining about their housemates. Better than Gilligan and the Brady Bunch.

My attention strayed elsewhere last night but I saw some of a couple of realities, first a cooking one. Looked like 15-20 contestants who apparently feel they are awesome cooks. That seems like quite a crowd to handle, speaking television logistics. Hard to sort out love/hate among so many.

Celebrity cook Gordon Something leads the proceedings. He's known for acerbity, a la that jackboot who thronged American Idol, Simon Colwell. Two others joined him in overlordship: a critically serious fellow, presumably a restaurateur, and a plump Model Celebrity, who wore outre white glasses as a sign that he can wear outre white glasses in public. Outre means cred.

I dunno.

Attention kept shifting to various participants declaring that they are great cooks and this is their chance. I mean, their day job may be cleaning subways or talking to pianos, but in reality (a caustic factoid), they are chefs supreme.

In this episode—and don't we all live in episodes?—a woman won, by some presumption, the opportunity to have her meat balls, meatloaf, etc, be the standard for the others to attempt. You know this is stupid cooking, but you're excited, admit it. I witnessed no more of this splat. Competitive cooking doesn't register for me.

THEN, American Ninja. I actually have watched the Japanese version of this. It is an obstacle course of curious display. Contestants try. I aint saying it aint entertaining.,

The promo asserted: History will be made!!! History of two years, maybe. The thing about the 100 yard dash, or the mile run: we have a standard, a history. With this obstacle course, it's a once. One sees the difficulty of it, but it owns a short history of attempts.

The course begins with slanted perches that one leaps to. You could screw this up thru inattention but it should be an easy par.

Next comes a keg ride. What looks like a keg hangs on a line above a pool. One must attach oneself bearhug style, legs and arms. It then slides down the line. Midway, the line drops sharply. If you haven't the tightest of grip on the keg, you fall into the water hazard, the end. Many lost it at this point. One contestant nearly made it but the keg, which swung heavily, knocked him with a rebound as he tried to gain the far side.

The next, if I remember aright, is a dash across a bridge. This bridge pivots horizontally. Your first step will tilt it to the side, but if you can manage a second step, you can leap to the platform. I'm not sure how you can look at it and think you have a path. Seems like you just blast forward and hope you can extend to the platform.

Next a swing that you stand on, hung over the ubiquitous pool. The point is to launch yourself toward netting, which you must climb to reach the next platform. Otherwise, water hazard, and the end.

A sort of monkey bars follows. You have two rings, which you use to negotiate a series of pegs. You hang on the pegs by way of the rings, and move along by moving the rings to the next peg. That's a fairly straightforward tester.

Finalement, a dash up a curved surface similar to but steeper than what skateboarders work on. It is 13' high. You try to run up the curve so that you can reach the top and climb up. You then press the button to signify your accomplishment. Few succeeded. I wonder if there is room for cheating, like applications of adhesive to the soles of shoes. Stakes are high, after all.

The slanted perches claimed no one, but everything else was dicey. I will admit, it was entertaining to watch people compete. The attached blahblah thrilled less.

You would think Oprah Winfrey produced this show, the stream of feel good slogans never waned. Work hard, believe in yourself, believe in yourself working hard to believe in yourself, etc. It was an unrepressed banter of ended words, the way I heard it. I have to go on television to feel good about myself.

One contestant had watched the show and decided to believe in herself and work hard. She had been overweight but believing in working hard and working to believe in herself, to work hard in belief, she lost weight and got in shape. As she was introduced, she kissed her biceps. She wasn't that buff. All the intros were pro wrestling style. She failed, I forget where. Even tho she believed that if you work hard, believe in yourself, and work to believe in working hard for yourself, you will succeeded in believing that you worked hard, for yourself.

No woman had ever scaled the curved ramp (I didn't mench that woman and men compete equally). A couple of women had supposedly done it in training but with all the build up did not succeed in scaling the heights. This was a subplot that had yet to avail itself of plump interest. The best chance women did not, in this episode, make it up the ramp, whether failing at the ramp itself or earlier on.

Confidence is a great bundle but the show swarmed with solid slogan. That's all you really need.

An ex-Olympian competed, gymnast gold medal winner. I recognize the Olympics as the best versus the best, albeit with slogans. This dog and pony show doesn't match up. At all. Surprisingly, he lost it on the rings, Mr Iron Cross, he misplayed the rings.

A prob we meet here is where does one train? The answer (except see below), build your best replica. More importantly, believe in yourself.

It is absolutely true that the human body can do many things. The Boston Marathon has accumulated a cult who cry, I can run a mediocre marathon!!! Somehow, this show has made it a virtue for contestants to assert: I'm not as good as I claim to be. Which strikes an especially American note, I am sad to say.

A refugee from Cambodia came to Amerikay for the new life, trains suckers who want to compete in American Ninja. Yes, if you go thru all the exercises, you have a workout. But to learn the intricacies of leaping from one slanted platform to another seems crowded with misdirection. Child of the killing fields failed to complete the course. Somehow, the inspiration of that story didn't take hold.

Everyone has a reason to be Select. In this Reality World, growing up in Pol Pot's regime equals exactly being overweight, or just that your high school team failed to recognize your eminence. We all have startled stories to tell.

Into the Silence by Wade Davis (more Mt Everest rambling)

Just finished rereading Into the Silence by Wade Davis. It recounts the first attempts to climb Mount Everest. Davis wrote a formidable book. He provides exacting context. Most of the participants in the three British expeditions in the 20s were veterans—survivours—of World War I. That fact plus the machinations of British empire-building in Asia weighs heavily on the story of these assaults on the mountain. I knew, as I read the book the first time, that I couldn’t digest all the details in one reading.

I stumbled on the book in the new books shelf at the library. Anything re Everest will get my attention but as I read the first time, I realized I had to purchase the book. Its breadth demands study.

National Geographic sorts of accounts of Everest expeditions always interested me. Possibly the first book about Everest that I read would have been Four Against the Mountain.. That book had local interest. Woodrow Wilson Sayre, President Wilson's grandson, who wrote of his bumbling attempt to climb the mountain, lived near where I grew up.

The book tells how Wilson and three friends snuck into Nepal and tried to climb the hill. They lacked experience, skill, and an army of porters. Additionally, they eschewed bottled oxygen. They were lucky to return alive. It was an almost happy-go-lucky jaunt, except for the serious privations and danger that they faced. The book introduced the concept of anti-belaying, which can be translated as barely controlled falling. Their attempt was almost a satire on the military assaults that attempted and scaled the summit the previous 40 years. Their attempt also foretold the jaunty amateur ascensions that have crowded Everest in recent years.

Strictly arm chair mountaineer, I've read many mountaineering books. I harbour no inclination to get myself into that kind of trouble, I guess I like the second hand frisson of these adventures. When I read, long after it was 'news', Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, I became focused on Everest. Say, did you know the mountain's namesake pronounced his name EE-ver-est?

Including Krakauer's, I've read some six accounts of participants in the events of the disastrous 1996 season on Everest. I've reread most of them, tho no scholar do I be. Hard to explain the fascination but the tug is sure.

Anyway, Davis' book, perforce, begins with the horrors experienced by those who fought in World War I. This is the context, the mindset of the participants. I guess it is an existential gestalt, tho heaven knows I never expected to use such a phrase in my life. How can one embrace the notion of such slaughter? The war brought changes: horses faced tanks, infantry met machine guns and mustard gas. A generation slapped with ultra-force, producing a brand new deadening future. The War to End All Wars, Part 1.

Davis powerfully dilates on the wholesale human loss. Those who survived, who walked on thru, still had a world to see. A blackened, desperate world that one can no more comprehend anymore than the leveling peak of Everest. Almost all who participated in the three Everest attempts in the 20s were veterans of the trenches.

And that's not all. British interest, Chinese interest, empire interest:: the desolate place where lively tectonic plates still push mountains higher becomes an opulent pawn in the growing misgivings of civilization. One can hardly understand the necessity of such strident need, yet it seems so familiar.

About 80 pages in, iconic George Mallory appears. In other chronicles, he would be the sole star. His generation saw him as second only to Rupert Brooks in masculine perfection. That's a commodity, by the way. Physically beautiful, intellectually brilliant, gracefully athletic, and even upper crusty, despite not actually having the means, son of a vicar as he was.

Mallory was certainly of his time, as are we all. Tho progressive of thought, he still remained camped in the class warfare of British Empire. British Empire, however, had lost its shoes, its feet, and finally its heaven. World War I was an open spigot of loss, and by the way, World War II awaited.

The expeditions to conquer—a boding but correct word—Everest were emblems of relief for a pragmatically lost nation. Britain was lost by the nature of loss, as too the whole of Europe. The many maimed veterans who found their way to these attempts on Everest's summit seem to be trying to make sense. Function and purpose join forces: the mountain must be climbed.

In 1921, an expedition of discovery. This required a mapping of a vast, vast, vast unknown. A military sensibility built a logical and logistical tally of the problem and its solution. Sahib and coolies worked together in the task of finding a way to the mountain, then to its peak. Touching the crown hardly played into the exercise for this first expedition. Folks learned to bicker themselves into a (fairly) united purpose.

The reconnaissance recognized human strengths and weaknesses.Empirical steps to reach the driven conclusion. For instance, the air gets mighty thin as altitude climbs. For George Mallory and Sandy Irvine,finally, death, which don't have no mercy. But that's later on, let the story unfold.

The second expedition more firmly saw the summit as its goal. Supplemental oxygen? Not yet, wouldn't be sporting. No fixed ropes or permanent ladders across crevasses, either. Looking for a possible route. Outlanders from Canada and Aus-bloody-tralian looked down upon, let us sigh.

Empire is a clock, which is to say, it runs down. A generation of best and brightest entered the European soil in a display of ridiculous proportions. Davis states that none of the British high command visited the front. Thus could be ordered measured marches into strafing machine gun fire, the idea being that order must be maintained.

When Mallory was asked why climb the mountain, he replied famously, Because it is there. That could have been a flip remark but it follows such egregious whimsy as the bloody battles over and into bloody turf. Why march into machine gun fire? Because the ocular command, with no firsthand understanding of the front, says so. At least the mountain offers a sense of accomplishment.

The big mountain was not next door to anything, so science and survey needed to secure its place and size on the map. This is where glamour gets lost, but it impresses one, the effort to get the picture straight.

As mentioned, Mallory himself doesn't really appear till page 80. He's the hero because we need heroes. Seemingly, anyway. A breathless span of pages offers reviews, let us say, of Mallory's physical beauty. Everyone in the Bloomsbury crowd as well as others wax poetic about his beauty. From a young age he scurried up myriad mountains of Europe, enough to become famous. Otherwise he is a teacher at some stifling school. He survives the war largely unmaimed, tho the vision of slaughter cannot go away, can it?

The second expedition, one year later, seeks possible routes to the top. So much remains unknown about the mountain. Also of the people living within its shadow. With largely colonial zest, the expedition marches in again. Someone is mapping the land, a few others are cataloguing the local flora and flora of the land, even getting to know the native people themselves. Mostly, tho, the British trundle in and over. Glory is the goal.

Several climbers reach the so-called death zone some 2000 feet from the summit. The thin air barely supplies enough oxygen for the climbers. A one last attempt on the summit ended when an avalanche sweeps seven porters to their death. A serious pall and the now familiar why not me?

It boggles the mind what these climbers wore on the mountain. Wool waistcoats and scarves seem better suited for jaunts on the moors than the sub-zero blizzards common to Everest. Nails in shoes sufficed for crampons. Lacking the fixed ropes and ladders that have since been installed, climbers had to cut steps in ice and snow with their ice axes.

With the pall of death from this second expedition, and not wanting to part from his beloved wife and family, Mallory hardly wants to go again. Yet 1924, he relents to join the third expedition. By now, he is convinced on the necessity of supplemental oxygen.

Mallory has become a national hero by now due to his exploits and his personal glamour.. The third expedition brings young Sandy Irvine. Irvine is somewhat a younger version of Mallory. At 21, he's a star athlete and mechanical genius. He brings no mountaineering experience, however.

Finally the day that Irvine and Mallory leave the highest camp for the summit. Typical of Mallory, he forgets his flashlight and his compass. An observer at base camp sees them on a ridge. They are seen alive no more.

Seventy five years later, Mallory, as corpse, is rediscovered. You can join the speculation whether the duo made it to the top or not. As Edmund Hillary—namesake of a Ms Clinton—said, getting down alive is part of the challenge. But that's not to discredit the effort, of Mallory and Irvine, or the entire expedition. They charted new territory, no matter their intentions and concerns. And Mallory was a sort of pillar or prop for a fading empire.

What war isn't ugly, but World War I brought empire to a standstill, stalling in the bloody mud horror of battlefields. All glamour and glory disappeared, which seems to be what made Mallory so appealing a hero: he seemed a knight from a more flowering age.

I would put these early attempts on Everest alongside, say, the space program. The grand goals of reaching the moon, or Everest's summit, only to leave soon after, do not themselves bring the reward. But the galvanizing effect on the respective nations, and most especially the knowledge gained, prove the true value. National glory simply chastens the human value of curiosity and development. Think of the disputed land of Alsace-Lorraine, where iron for the pounding guns of WWI could be gouged in fantastic proportion from our only earth.

British command ordered infantry not just to walk toward machine gun emplacements, during one assault, but by god to maintain ranks. The nutbank sees everyone but themselves as pawns. Sound familiar? Like maybe hedge fund managers and corporate maximizing? The war remains at our heels.

Everest is a playground now, tho fresh corpses still make it real. The summit presents a muted glory to attain now, not to say an easy climb. It's just there, no longer a program, just a badge. Had I the courage and stamina, and the dough-re-mi, I'd take a stride up. But it is hard to get past the exponential bloodbath of the Somme and all those other insensate abbreviations of human life. Empires still consume the people, tho now done with money in hand. To renege on promise is to own the world.

The Men Who United the States

In the midst of reading this book by Simon Winchester. I’ve read two others by him: one about Krakatoa, the other about the San Francisco earthquake. Winchester is a geologist by education, and certainly a wide-ranging scholar. His books tend to be factually thick.

This book bears the hallmark of the next project from someone who has had success. He fabricates a structure, using the elements earth, wind, water, fire as residing concepts for the uniting of this country. It’s a bit laboured.

The book’s title of course is a ninny. That it is about MEN means that it’s that story again. It is about heroes, singular male figures who did stuff. Winchester inevitably offers Sacagawea as honourary heroine There’s really little trace of her in the annals. Carrying a papoose on such an expedition sounds almighty rough, but it is something native Americans did, and did and did. People made choices to move where opportunity seemed better. They went as families, or small communities, mostly. Glory hardly played into the decision. Out to find some land, out to make a buck, out to stretch the legs, whatever, but rarely heroism as the mainstay.

Winchester gives many fascinating stories about those who explored this continent. John Wesley Powell’s expedition battering its way thru the Grand Canyon is something I hadn’t read much about. For some reason, Winchester intrudes himself into the story. He does so in the National Geographic way: Here I stood where 150 years earlier a stout Maine division fought off a flanking rebel attack. We really don’t need Winchester’s account of driving to places where something happened years ago.

Winchester also marks the generating energy of mercantilism, as lives were lived to feed the immense commercial possibilities that the land was seen as. Canals, then trains, telegraph then telephone, all making space small and profit easier. The grand theme of liberty always sounds so misty when really, implacably, it refers to the ability to make money.

Early on, Winchester bloviates about one of Obama’s inaugural speeches. I don’t think Obama is a patch on Lincoln as far as speeches go, and the speeches are written for him anyway, so why even bring it up?

History concerns stories. We tend to make them testaments of eternal whatsis: George Washington chopped up the cherry pie. History only is interesting, however, and we use its mirror. When we can brush aside the crafty articulations and see how we ourselves make false claims and dazzle. The best part of the Lewis and Clark expedition was that they went and looked and wrote it down. Jefferson was just scheming for commerce, will nilly for the natives already on the land.

Winchester acknowledges the disaster of Progress’ march on the land and the little people in the way. I just react against mythologizing. These MEN who united the states bought ideas like class and progress, let the good and gentle be cast aside.

Set Piece

A man entered the store hand in hand with a toddler. The boy was a confident toddler with a good step. The man of course was directed, he had a mission in the store. The child looked around like brave new world. All was new. He did not pull,  they walked side by side. The boy said, “Come on, daddy.” With his eyes wide open, it was as if he were the mentor.

My Friend Fu Manchu

I first read Saxe Rohmer’s books about Fu Manchu when I was a teenager. I don’t know how I came to them. I found them entertaining. I gave little thought to the comprehensive view except that it was a lively read.

Years later I read one, just to see if it held up. I found it compelling, and gave thought about the nature of the series. I’m still thinking.

I don’t know what kind of audience the novels have. I suspect that the name Fu Manchu rings a bell for many, perhaps only for the mustache. I don’t believe there’s been any revival like with Conan. There have been Fu Manchu movies—Christopher Lee has played him, I think—but nothing like Sherlock Holmes. The character type, diabolical genius from the mysterious East, has been used to a fare-thee-well, Fu Manchu unnamed. It somehow touches something.

Racism is part of that something. We define evil as what we don’t know or understand. We imagine conspiracies and plots by an inscrutable enemy. Kind of lazy, kind of ugly. Fu Manchu represents a consummate political bogie man.

The books are a sort of relentless imitation of Sherlock Holmes. Whereas Holmes is a genius, apt nemesis to the masterminds he tangles with, Sir Denis Nayland Smith is a bit of a dud versus Fu Manchu. Nayland Smith is a bulldog but always seems to be outfoxed by Fu Manchu. And yet, every round ends up won by Nayland Smith, or at least not won by Fu Manchu.

Like Holmes, Nayland Smith has a sidekick, Dr. Petrie. Petrie sometimes carries a pistol and an electric torch. That is his job, plus narrate events in hyper gasp. He ends up marrying Fu Manchu’s daughter, whaddya know. I don’t know wherefore but Petrie later gets replaced by a young journalist, Bart Kerrigan.

Nayland Smith is a government investigator, expert in foreign affairs. Nothing more foreign than the Asian menace. Rohmer describes Nayland Smith’s manner of speech with verbs like rap and snap, which I take are synonymous. Resume writers take note, Rohmer is a caution with the action words. Sir Denis also frequently raps his inevitable pipe, and he snaps his fingers irritably.

Sir Denis always seems on the brink of desperation in his battles with the evil genius. He and Petrie rush about trying to find leads, chase minions, and lay traps for The Doctor. The minions are sadly disgraceful. In one book, a  short, powerful Burman, which I think means Burmese, is referred to as subhuman. Immensely strong but Asian zombie in his blood. Yellow Race/Yellow Peril. A very minor character is described in ugly Jewish caricature. I suppose this is all normal for the time and place. Fu Manchu himself is rendered as diabolical, sinister, and the Devil incarnate. He’s a wee bit crazy, too.

Fu Manchu has moments of elegant sanity. I imagine Ian Fleming learned from Rohmer some things about monomaniacal masterminds intent on controlling the world. Fu Manchu always manages to set up a fully-equipped hide out in a dank riverside warehouse or an abandoned house in a bog. Nayland Smith and Petrie come very close to succumbing to The Doctor when some lucky mischance by Fu Manchu causes his plans to fail and he must flee. The Doctor’s return remains a perpetual threat. A grudging admiration exists between Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu. The Doctor also admires Petrie, mostly for being a fairly ordinary bloke.

The stories are all the same, but that doesn’t matter. We have this Manichean battle to witness. And it is all done with action verbs. These books are comprehensive in the focal demands of their racist congeries. And yet, Nayland Smith is so overmatched that you have to admire his doggedness versus this ultimate mastermind and his mindless minions. It’s like some do-gooder trying to bring the Koch brothers into a rationale of compassion.

The book cover of The Drums of Fu Manchu offers a collage of events in the book. The top of this emblem is the face of Fu Manchu. He looks crazed and provoked. Rohmer describes him as being tall and having green eyes, or maybe it is just his daughter with the verdant eyes. He wears a mandarin hat. Below him to the left is Scotland Yard, I guess, or Big Ben. The stakes. To the right, a guy in a striped shirt smooches a red haired hottie. The James Bond School of Relationship. They are Bart Kerrigan, journalist, and Ardatha, daughter or grand daughter of FM. I guess this is a scene from the book. Below to the left is someone aiming a rifle, presumably Nayland Smith. Finally NS with a knife to his throat—grey at the temple gives him away—tho it was Kerrigan who suffered the threat, which Ardatha saved him from.

The back cover features a small b&w of Rohmer sitting uncompromisingly on a desk in his library. He has a pipe in his mouth and wears a silk long robe. Nice!

If I can come to a bottom line, I like the energy of the narrative. Conan Doyle certainly knew how to raise the heart rate, in stories that often featured a 2-bit thievery, and Rohmer may top him. The racist figurines and the confident English rectitude conflate into a passion play of redemption, not that anything can possibly be redeemed in this murk. The noble intent of saving one’s class from the influence of Other allows mindlessness to flourish with a graceful radical. No, we are not beans in warm soil, we are the heroes of our small disposition.

Antic View Returns

Almost nine years ago, Jeff Harrison and I began a blog called Antic View. We intended to have a public dialogue about writing, about his approach, my approach, the approach of others. We had a hiatus two years ago when my focus slid elsewhere. Not my interest, however, and certainly not Jeff’s. There was no formal closure, I just was looking in a different direction (several, I guess).

Jeff’s work has changed considerably over the years (I won’t comment on my own). In the fancy dance of the Internet, neither Jeff or I wiggle with proper gusto. I think Jeff has produced a fascinating and unique oueuvre unconditioned by the Internet’s official poetry world. I believe I have as well. Antic View, in my view, gives evidence that there are things outside Harriet the blog, and the academic rules committee. I don’t mean this in some sparkling defense of genius, I simply acknowledge the haves and haven’ts of promotion. I am happy to promote Jeff’s work, and even my own, but the point of Antic View is to see the work at work. The link, then: Antic View.

The Beer Works, Lowell

We dropped Erin off at UMass Lowell, specifically East Campus. East Campus is about a block from The Beer Works. We had a nice dinner last summer at the Beer Works, which itself is across the street from where the Lowell Spinners play. We parked where we did last summer, only now Lowell had installed a revenue source. At least one dollar for an hour isn’t the worst I’ve seen. Better this than a random eager ticket.

Monday, around 3:30, the place was empty. A waitress came to seat us but we chose to sit at the bar. There were two bartenders along with the waitress, waiting thru the lull before dinner. “Blister in the Sun” played on the sound system. It carried into the bathroom, which is nice. The bathroom was clean but both sinks had severely wobbly faucets.

After some thought Beth selected the nut brown ale. I went with an ipa, of which there were several. I think it was called Dye Street. We also ordered the deep-fried pickles. The nut brown ale was rich and smooth with a touch of sweetness. The ipa was spicy and satisfying. I’m okay with overdone but balance is good too. Beer Works offers three glass sizes, 12, 16, and 24 ounces. Beth liked the design of one glass but the bartender wasn’t allowed to use that glass for nut brown ale. Each beer had its specific glass.

I had a second beer. The same ipa I’d already had was listed twice. The second one was cask-conditioned and unfiltered (the first was bottle-conditioned). It was served slightly warmer. It was cloudy, rounder with more yeast and fruit in the nose. Very pleasant.

Above the bar were three televisions with the sound off. Should mench that a small group entered and sat at the bar talking. One tv had a sports show with three hosts who were apparently being funny. They showed clips of athletes failing: falling down, losing fights, etc. They were full of what looked like tired guffaw. The middle tv had three talking heads on CNN discussing the Malaysian crash. I have not kept up with the controversy, but I could see they were tearing all life from yet another subject. Two serious looking experts flanked the attractive blonde CNN host who wore pink. None were in the same studio. At least it wasn’t Fox but you know it would all be insipid if the sound were turned up. The third tv showed a game between the Dallas Cowboys and the SF 49ers, from the 1980s. Tony Dorsett, Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott. Golden oldies. What should beer drinkers watch if no sporting events are available?

Crown Royal Maple

For some reason, Beth got curious when she saw a small bottle of Crown Royal Maple Whisky. She wanted to try it, and wanted me too, as well. I’m not much of a whisky drinker, nor am I enamoured of maple as a flavour. But years in the wine business has left me curious about tasting wine, beer, and even liquor. So I got the bottle and Beth, of course, declined to sample. My opinion stands thus:

Flavoured whiskeys have become rather hot. I like to read industry gobbledygook that features demographics and statistics that declare that every product is on the rise. I do see a certain eagerness about new flavoured spirits. Jack Daniels came up with Tennessee Honey, which seems to have hit a good stride. Our store was tipped off by a customer about a maple whiskey called Cabin Fever. It was made pretty much entirely by one man, who used syrup from his own sugar bush to flavour the whiskey that he made. He has since sold Cabin Fever to Jim Beam, which ensuingly got bought by the Japanese conglomerate Sun Tory. Tra la.

Flavoured vodka of course is a natural since vodka has little flavour on its own. Vodka flavours have devolved, if you ask me, from fruit and vanilla, to whipped cream, bacon and, omg, cigarette. True story, regular cigarettes and menthol.

Flavouring whiskey is a different matter because of whiskey’s already strong character.  The flavouring has to merge with the whiskey flavour. I was a little surprised that Crown entered the flavoured whiskey space. Like it is above such tactics. The market cries out, however.

Anyway, I poured a dollop over ice. I usually don’t like iced drinks but it seemed like the way to try it. When I tried Cabin Fever, the guy—I don’t remember his name—used ice. Cabin Fever is somewhat sweet and the ice mutes that some.

Crown smelled like maple whiskey. I’ve never had straight Crown, but it clearly was a decent whisky aroma. I got interesting fruit aromas, along with the maple. Orange came thru particularly. I do not suspect the addition of orange, that’s just what happens when Crown Royal and maple converge.

There’s some sweetness to the Crown, possibly less than Cabin Fever. It is quite smooth and lingering. It was a pleasant sip. I would drink it again, but probably not buy it again. I express why above, in the third sentence. You might try adding some to maple syrup, for pancakes or whatever. Not me, I put Frank’s Red Hot on my pancakes. I’ll bet other good cooking uses can be made.

Blogs and Change

Tributary, this very blog, is almost 10 years old. That must be a century in Internet time. The blog has changed considerably. I began nervously, with flighty random thoughts. I then recounted things Beth, Erin, and I did, things I read or seen. That’s what I want from my writing, ride the wave.

A few years ago I chose to formalize the writing a bit. I used titles, which focused the subject matter a bit. I went to a little more effort with rewriting and the typo hunt. Not perfectly so, I am bound by a necessity with the blog to dash it off. I will usually let errors go if discovered later on, unless it is really ridiculous. And I almost never remove posts.

Anyway, I thought that I would post more often, and on a wider range of subjects, or even if I don’t know it’s a subject. Blogs of 10 years ago were much more conversational in the sense of readers functioning in and as a network. That job has been taken over by Facebook and Twitter, in a more fleeting and superficial way. I like writing and I like following the mysterious trails, so I will continue in my evolving niche. And there we are.

Dance Performance, “Calling to You”

I recently saw a dance performance by the Deborah Abel Dance Company last Sunday. I wrote about it directly. There's a degree to which I haven't really witnessed a performance or event unless I write about it. At least in part, I write to process the experience. Anyway, my blog awaits anything that interests me, and this performance certainly did.

Alas, I swung and missed. I tried to capture the narrative flow of the event, of everything that went into the concert. That can't be done in one sitting, maybe not in several sittings. Furthermore, I found my ignorance about modern dance hindered my writing. I cannot speak in the dance idiom, which essentially is what I tried to do. I can, however, speak in the art idiom. I am myself an artist and have been moved, confused, challenged, and inspired by the arts for all of my life. It is from this standpoint that I should write about the performance.

I have banished my first attempt from public view. With Take 2 here, I shall go light on technical matters. Plenty moved and excited me, music and dance.

The performance, or concert, is called “Calling to You”. Deborah Abel choreographed it. Lee Perlman wrote the music. Lee also played guitar and sang; Deborah also danced. They are married, which fact is apt because “Calling to You” touches on matters of collaboration, of engagement together.

The concert took place in a cozy theatre at Boston University. The musicians gathered in the pit at the left side of the stage. I could not see them well. Of course attention should be placed on the dancers but I was curious about what the musicians were doing. I think this is quite proper. They are part of the collaboration. It's not just the dancers who make the performance, it is the musicians, the person at the sound board, the person working the lights, the people changing the set. In theatre, we see the process and collaboration of creation that we do not see in movies or television.

After an opening invocation sung in Sanskrit, the curtain rose. A dark and sparely set stage greeted us. Two white rectangles hung on either side of the stage to suggest windows, ones that Nijinsky could never jump through. To the left a simple table and chair. Stage right a bed, more like a pallet. Two dancers set themselves at the table. The notes referred to them as Contemporary Male and Contemporary Female. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt and khakis, she a short red dress. He sat on the chair and she on the table. They were turned back to back. The tableau looked grim. Cue the music.

The music was essentially a set of songs, albeit richly arranged. Some were in English, some in Sanskrit, but either way I didn't really attend to the words. Taking in the spectacle of dance and music proves challenging enough on first viewing.

I found Perlman's music bore similarities to that of Dead Can Dance. Dead Can Dance is a musical group with a unique and eclectic sound. I don't mean to suggest similarities in any linear way. I mean more in the sense of passion, evocation, and mesmeric invitation. Percussion plays an important role in both examples, adding mood as well as beat.

The music of Dead Can Dance seems to have a strong Middle Eastern influence whereas Perlman's music seems tempered by that of India, at least here. I haven't mentioned yet that India provides the setting for much of this piece.

The instrumentation consisted of electric bass, tabla, flute, assorted other percussion, acoustic guitar, and violin. I mention the instrumentation because a rich and varied sound arose from the ensemble. I'm not quite sure how this collection of instruments produced those sounds.

The dancing in this first scene became an almost frenzied miscommunication between the two characters. They gallop towards each other, they swing away. They crawl on the floor, they roll over each other. The characters reveal anger and sadness, and even hope, but mostly look lost. All this in the difficult service of love. I think this scene ends with Contemporary Female curled face to the wall on the bed. Contemporary Male sits glumly at the table. Sadly opposed.

Between scenes the curtain remained raised but the stage was dark. A drone of some sort played. That made an effective maintenance of mood and connection to the next scene while the set changed. The audience clapped after each scene, which disturbed me. I guess it is what's done but it jolted me to return to “normal” after having been drawn into the meditative circumstance of the dance and music. The drone helped soften that jolt for me.

Narration accompanied the next scene. The story briefly, a boy and girl in ancient India become friends. Though they are young, their love reveals a knowing depth. Unfortunately, their families must move away and the children must part.

The contemporary set remains at the front of the stage, with Contemporary Male still seated at the table. He has his head on the table, dozing or just despairing. Ancient India is suggested in back by a few colourful elements plus the costumes of the dancers. Time is fluid; past and future are present now. The music here was upbeat and generative. The dancing was fluid, young, and happy.

The narrator speaks words in Sanskrit as the children part. The words are by Jnaneshwar Maharaj and are translated in the notes thus:

“Out of love for each other they merge and part for the joy of being two.” Read these words a few times, they are more of a riddle than you might at first think.

A quick web search discovers that Jnaneshwar Maharj was a revered poet who lived but 22 years at the end of the 13^th Century. A little further on in the piece whence came the above quote, one finds these lines:

Two lutes, one note

Two lamps, one light

Two eyes, one sight

Two lips, one word

Two hearts, one love

This human intersection in which boundaries fall proves a central theme to the piece. The contentious pas de deux that began the concert showed the difficulties of separation, of boundaries.

Anyway, the girl Prema becomes a priestess and the boy Viveka wanders the world. Time and space separate them.

If memory serves, and it may not, the next scene featured Sadhus and priestesses. We see them on cushions, meditating perhaps. They are covered by veils. As the scene develops, they slowly flower by uncovering from their veils to dance. We see an interplay among them. The sadhus and priestesses then return to their cushions and one of them gracefully covers each, and then himself. The characters here seem timeless, unbound in that way. Perhaps here we begin to see them as tutelary spirits or guardians. As the concert goes on, the Ancient Ones show more interest in the Contemporary Ones, and the Contemporary Ones feel more the presence of the Ancient Ones.

Adult Viveka wanders into the woods, where he meets Tiger Spirits. The Tiger Spirits attack him. He puts up a good fight but they beat him down. I believe at this point Contemporary Male is gone and Contemporary Female lies curled on the bed.

Prema discovers Viveka, brings him to the temple and helps heal him. They reunite. Finally, the space-time intersection becomes complete: the Ancient Ones join the Contemporary Pair. At first male to male and female to female, the Ancient Ones lead and encourage the Contemporary Pair. Then male to female, female to male. Finally the Contemporary Pair feel free to dance together. Their contentions have broken down and their dance thrives with reborn energy and insight. Yin and Yang completion.

I found it easy to enter the “space” of this concert. The music made a rich landscape and the expression of the dance had a recognizable emotional touch. The dancing looked energetic and effortless.

It should be noted that Lee Perlman teaches philosophy at MIT, specifically a course on The Philosophy of Love. Obviously there's a grounding in ancient texts in this work. That grounding is organic and expressed gracefully in the dance, the music, and the words.

All in all, “Calling to You” displayed an organic collaborative quality and a skill to deliver its wisdom with poetic grace.

Santa Claus the Weird

Richard Lopez recently wrote a blog post about a movie he and his son watched called Santa Claus. His reaction is here. He includes a link to the trailer. I remembered the movie! That is, I remember seeing the ad for the movie on television when I was a child. I never saw the movie itself till I watched it with Erin on Christmas Day. It can be found in the Youtube repository, where our entire culture currently resides.

As happens so often with diversions meant for children, Santa Claus is a good piece of craziness. It was made in Mexico in 1959, then turned into an American product. I cannot say what was lost and found during the translation process. The movie’s a bit jumbly but nonetheless full of spectacle of a surreal sort.

Eastman Colorscope gets credit for the visual attack of the film. Who knows what that entails? Is Eastman Colorscope better than Technicolor? Well, the color is both faded and heightened, some of which may owe to old film or I don’t know what.

A voiceover narrator explains bits thru out the film. It comes across like a documentary. The first scene shows Santa’s workshop floating out in space above the North Pole. You may wonder why the displacement of Santa’s workshop from its usual terrestrial situation but later on we are informed that Santa can only stay on Earth on Christmas Eve. That suggests some penance that the jolly elf must serve. That’s a curious, undeveloped touch.

Inside the workshop we meet the jolly fellow. His jolliness verges on insanity, at least in his most heightened moments. He laughs hysterically for no discernible reason. Santa, as we receive him in the panoply of legends, is never really mischievous, but still he seems to have an air of Coyote. You know, sneaking around from house to house, eating cookies and milk at each one, busy at his endeavour. He’s up to something.

In the movie, Santa looks at his Christmas shrine, which is a manger scene, with Mary the honoured one. That confluence of sacred and profane makes me uneasy. He quickly leaves his shrine and toddles to his organ, which he starts to play with gesticulating zest. Surprisingly, because the actor obviously isn’t actually playing the organ, Santa puts a lot of energy into playing the pedals. He does this, seemingly, to entertain the elves.

In a separate workshop area are gathered the elves. At least I believe they are elves. They appear to be children from around the world. Here we get a rather tedious scene in which children/elves dressed in traditional gear of their land sing songs in their native tongue. The children (the actors) appear drugged, perhaps overwhelmed by the movie-making process. Just the fact that it is snowing inside the workshop might be enough to explain their discomfiture. Maybe 10 countries are represented in this scene including Russia and the nation of Africa.

We shift from this scene to Hades, Satan’s domain. The workshop was trippy enough. Hades is where the bad acid takes over. Hades is dark and red and flaming. A handful of red demons with big ears and bovine horns perform a cheesy Broadway dance routine that I guess means to assure young viewers that Satan and his crew are a bit wan and not to be worried about. Maybe it’s just me but when I see demons doing high kicks, I know I’m looking at shoddy merchandise.

After the dance recital, Satan’s booming voice explains that something has to be done about this fellow Santa. Satan directs a demon named Pitch to head up to the surface and mess with Santa. This isn’t the childish crank depicted in the Book of Job, this is Snidely Whiplash inventing nefarious plots that thin to nothingness.

Pitch transports instantly to an earthly rooftop, where he laughs with unreasonable vigour. The game is on.

Well, all he does is irritate. A crowd of children and parents gathers outside a toy store to ogle the delights. Included are a rich man and his son, who is confident to receive a great gift. We also meet a wispy little poor girl, who doesn’t look to get much. Pitch tempts three boys to lean toward the coal side of Santa’s list. They proceed to throw stones at the store window.

At Santa HQ, an elf alerts Santa that something’s afoot. Santa commands that his viewing device be used. It’s a sort of telescope with an eye at the end. I remember this image from the ad of long ago. Santa also has a listening device, a big ear, an a speaking device, a big, weird mouth. All this serves Santa’s good/bad surveillance.

Santa approaches anger at the thought of these boys performing bad deeds. He understands that Pitch is involved but still lays a burden on the boys. When I was in first grade, some second graders convinced me to yell something at the policewoman who got kids across Bedford St safely. They did not bully me, just explained how doing so would be a good idea. Well I did, I yelled “You rot.” I ended up having to stay after school there at the crosswalk. High crime. The point of this reverie is that I knew no better, and neither did the three boys. But Santa no like the rules broken.

Pitch also convinces the little girl to go to the dark side in some minor way. Her good soul and that of her mother make this only a brief dalliance. And Santa’s there to help her. There’s also a boy whose parents are a little neglectful of him, which Santa needs to right.

Time to deliver the presents. Santa has his sack and the elves stick presents into its internal endlessness. The narrator informs us that Santa’s reindeer, all four, are mechanical. Another random adjustment of the familiar legend. Aint anybody heard of Clement Moore here?

Santa carries with him something to make people sleep, allowing him to make his sneak attacks, and something to allow him to float, so that he can make use of chimneys. He rights Pitch’s wrongs. Ah but Pitch manages to make Santa’s magical items go missing. And just then an angry dog chases Santa up a tree. This is desperate because Santa’s time on earth is almost up and Santa especially doesn’t want to disappoint the little girl.

Santa calls to the elves, who can hear him thru the listening device. A magician named Merlin is called for. He’s a fragile, doddering old man in wizard suit. I’m not sure Merlin actually does anything. It seems like some of Santa’s magic stuff just appears, and all is well. I mean the dog stops barking and Santa can climb down from the tree. When I put it that way, the crescendo of dramatic tension doesn’t sound like much.

Santa seems like a good soul, if not that bright. The movie evokes a sense of the downtrodden even amidst its concern for middle class virtues. The Santa myth lacks comprehensiveness, which is obvious here and elsewhere. Why does Santa even bother to give presents to the son of the rich man (identified as such): that kid’s going to get the toy he covets.

In the old days, Santa was seen doling out dolls for girls and tin soldiers for boys. You could see Santa and his elf crew making those. Who ever thought Santa made Rocket ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, let alone PS4? So that conception of Santa is a fizzle. The image of the laughing, red cheeked Santa pleases but you cannot really hold it all together, the myth. This movie has its visual strength and basically good soul. It differs from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which just wants to be antic and fails. I feel that Santa Claus the legend will soon be outmoded. Too simple, and not generative enough in terms of product merchandizing.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym is a writer who I suspect isn't well known in this country. I think I stumbled on a book by her in a used bookstore, years ago. I don't know what led me to get it. The book surprised me for being so intriquing without having much of a plot. Pym has been in play for the Booker Prize (for this very book) so Great Britain must know her better.

Beguiled by that first book, I read a couple others, with satisfaction. Been a while since I have read her, but finding this at the library proved invitation enough.

This is a wonder-full novel, tho its uninflected nature makes that something perhaps easy to miss. As I was reading, I thought of A Nest of Ninnies by John Ashbery and James Schuyler. A better comparison is Arthur and Guinevere, by Schuyler seul. It shares with those works a de-emphasis of plot. Characters move about and “do” things, but they don't seem really at the authour's bidding.

I think Quartet also belongs in a Jane Austen lineage. V S Pritchett described the way Austen's character's intereact as like naval manuevres. You can see that in the way she lets Miss X and Mr Y grandly move toward and away from each other in the course of the story. Pym doesn't pace that way but there's an almost coded system among the four main characters as they politely and tentatively engage with each other. This is major league stuff.

The previous novels that I read centered on unmarried women “of a certain age”, and how they get along. These women are settled with their unmarried status tho somewhat dissatisfied. The books end without romantic clinch. The reader may root for these characters to end up happy, but Pym refuses to obstruct the veritable human processses of the characters.

In one novel, the protagonist referred to herself as a spinster. The word struck me as shocking, because the setting was contemporary, and the word seems so anachronistic and dated. It even has a cruel savour, coming from a time when the unmarried older woman was a degraded thing. I suppose that cultural command still exists, but maybe eased some.

Quartet concerns two women and two men who work together in some dreary office. All near retirement age and indeed the two women retire in the course of the book.

All four are unmarried. Only Edwin, a widower, had been married. He has a house. He spends his time at church. Churches, that is: he daily roams about to whatever church that is celebrating a Saint's day. He's not motivated by religion so much as by an eagerness to immerse in church community.

Norman lives in a bedsetter, a one room apartment. Where Edwin is somewhat pompous, Norman is more querilous, perhaps a bit fussy. He's move given of the four to make snarky remarks.

Marcia lives alone in a house that she inherited. She recently had a double masectomy. She's the most eccentric character.

Letty (Leticia) is the central character, tho all four characters are given roughly equal weight. Pym seems to be most inside Letty. None of the characters are entirely likeable, but we find all finally sympathetic.

You can't really draw the plot of this novel. The four, at work, interact in a familiar, bickering sort of way. They regard each other almost as friends, but they do not socialize outside the office. Except for Edwin and his churches, they have no friends or even interests.

This may sound grim but Pym is amazing in her ability to create a lively, realistic dislogue with these people. The characters all have these inchoate ideas about the world, intimations of understanding, that they always drop before “getting too far”. They tease each other, almost touching nerves, yet they remain in their grey disengagement.

Tho their conversation remains eminently polite, they frequently make thoughtless remarks about each other. Remarks, for instance, about the hopelessness of the women's existence (as aging spinsters), or Norman as a pathetic little man. These comments are blurted without guile or even interntion. Letty especially reacts to these remarks, yet no one seems to take them deeply to heart.

When the women retire, the company does not replace them. The men won't be replaced either when their time comes. The men vaguely worry about how the women will get along. They all do this, actually, but the change in situation for the women intensifies the men's dull concern. They all have a lasting, unexamined concern for each other. Letty is at least competent within her bounds. Marcia spins into dazed eccentricity.

A comic prop thru out the book is Marcia's hording of milk bottles. During the late war (the book's set in the 70s), you didn't get milk if you didn't have a bottle. Somehow a bottle that Letty had came into Marcia's possession. Marcia's dairyman won't take back that bottle. She developes an animosity towards Letty because of this intrusion into her life. When Letty's apartment situation is up in the air, everyone thinks she and Marcia should live together. Marcia even considers it, but the ghastly affront of Letty's milk bottle puts the kibosh on that arrangement. Marcia also hordes tinned food, which she hardly eats.

Tinned meals, or an egg and toast, plus of course tea, are what all of them go home to. They all note tiny kindnesses, like Marcia willing to share an economy-sized tin of coffee with Norman at the office.

I liken this to Alfred and Guenivere because so much is intimated, so much ripples under the surface. And Pym, like Schuyler, is so delicate and humoured with her characters.

There are some resolutions by the end of the novel. Marcia, who spent her retirement fading away, dies quietly. She surprisingly wills her house to Norman, who realizes he may not want the responsibility. Letty had planned to move in with a longtime friend in the country until this friend became engaged to be married. In the end, that engagement falls apart, and Letty has that possibility again. Letty, however, is unsure whether she wants to live in such dependencies.

The plot doesn't seem to embrace any fabrication. Pym peers straightforwrdly at lives of quiet agitation, and manages a lively wit and a kindly sympathy. And the book is surprisingly funny. I'll keep looking for Barbara Pym's work.

Hey! An Operation!

Sunday I had my first operation since I was a teenager. As a child I had the tip of my finger lopped off. That required an overnight stay to sew it up. As a teenager, I had a deviated septum. I had my nose reamed (not the medical term). My nose was packed so I had to sleep breathing thru my mouth. Which I didn’t really do. The night nurse supplied an empathy that I still remember. I was told that my father sat by my bed for a couple hours after I returned from the operation. I never woke while he was there but I cherish that. I’ve had some emergency room stays. I have had several immersive stays when my parents and Erin variously had lengthy stays. I’ve seen the wringer but this was the first I really felt it.

Friday at work I suddenly felt sick to the stomach and shivery chills. I assumed food poisoning. It felt bad enough that I left work a little early. I had a really uncomfortable night with aches and chills and a pain in my gut. I also had a supreme and unlikely hunger. When I got up, I tried to make soothing oatmeal. It tired me just standing at the stove. I crawled under a blanket. I managed to eat what I made before I left for work.

I would have skipped work Saturday but I knew two people were unavailable. I thought I could muscle my way thru. I did eventually rally, and I ate a sandwich for lunch. I meant to work the full day but Beth encouraged me to leave when the next person in arrived. Beth made magic matzo balls and chicken broth and I went to bed.

I passed off the pain in my gut as gas but Beth suspected my appendix. I don’t think she ever trusted my appendix, when it comes to that. She consulted our doctor and he said go to the hospital. So there it was.

Completing the initial paperwork, we sat and watched the final inning of the Red Sox against Tampa. As Koji Uehara was about to throw his last pitch I got called to confirm my entrance. I wanted to see Koji’s celebration. Soon after, barely hearing any of David Ortiz’s bland interview with somebody, I got called to the emergency suite. Appendicitis offers more risks than the cuts, breaks, and muscle tears that I’ve otherwise brought for show. Short wait before a nurse came for vitals. Watched the Bruins finalize a win in souped up e-room convenience. Watching this was more to please the attending nurse. A doctor explained that the likeliest diagnosis was appendicitis, which a cat scan would confirm.

Cat scan = modern fun! Over the course of more than an hour, I had to drink apple juice laced with contrast liquid. This liquid would help the scan image’s clarity. This was not onerous labour but it took time. Beth went home because she was exhausted and the scan wouldn’t occur for another several hours.

On the other side of the curtain there was a teenage boy who fainted during an sat test. He suffered a mild concussion in his fall. I half dozed until a nursed collected me and took me by gurney to another emergency room. This was inscrutable because it seemed like the same room. It was already occupied by an older woman who had taken a fall. She broke ribs. Doctors and nurses kept remarking on the injury to her face but I never saw it. Hospital staff several times asked her about kin, and her answers always included addenda: Joe is my nephew and he’s married to Julie. She wanted answers about what was happening next. The doctor who answered one time was quite petulant in telling her that she had already been told. He tried to lead her on to answer her own questions but that tack didn’t work. I finally got gurneyed off to the scan.

This radiology wing, not unexpectedly, was scarcely populated. The scan operator was probably glad to have someone to talk to. A glitch right off: I’d had blood taken earlier, and the site was kept open so that… I hope I’m getting this right… more scan liquid could react with the scan. I’d notice that the site was a little painful but in fact the needle had come out. The operator had to do a new one. The initial site was a vein on my right hand. She tried the left hand. Turns out she was not that good at using needles. The operation hurt and she never made a proper site. I purposely kept my cool and brushed aside her apologies, not wanting to rattle her, or myself. She tried a vein at the crook of my left elbow. This was equally a painful failure, and left a bruise. She said I had very hard veins.

After that she called a nurse, who quickly and painlessly applied the needle. I was then stuck in the scan tube. The liquid was sent thru my veins. I was told that I would feel a warm sensation that might make me think I was pissing my pants. Also, I was supposed to listen to the instructions of the automated voice. This voice, when it spoke, was at first inaudible. That worried me. Ructions in my intestines also worried me. I should have asked how long the procedure took.

Finally the voice cleared and I felt the warm feeling. I had to take a deep breath and hold it a couple of times. It took a few minutes to finish. As I was exiting the tube, an intense and increasing sense of hunger fell over me. This turned immediately to nausea. I announced how I felt and the operator gave me a bucket. I dry heaved four or five times then felt fine. After a quick torso x-ray, I got admitted to a room. I think it was close to 3:00.

I had a saline drip. Where the needle was set, it was easy as pie for me to occlude the tube. This activated an obnoxious alarm, one that required a pro to quell. This happened probably ten times. The nurses et al were fine with this but I know my roomies were not. At 6:00, I readied for the operation. I had to remove my jewelry. For this peacock, that means an earring, two wedding rings, another ring, and a silver necklace. I had never taken any of them off before except the earring. All were given to me by Beth.

A footnote applies to the wedding rings. Not long after the wedding, the ring fell off. That was upsetting. We got another, larger one. They were cheap. Lo, the first one was found, so I wore that two. I didn’t even know how to remove the necklace. I felt a strong emotion in removing the rings. Just to add to that, twenty two years earlier to the day, in this hospital, my mother died. I don’t know why humans think like this but we do.

The doctor had earlier explained his diagnosis and intended procedure. The scan confirmed a sketchy appendix. Not perforated but increasingly ready to blow. He was mostly calming in the information he gave. He described an area on the intestine that could be inflamed. Alternatively, it could be something else, however unlikely. I wasn’t nervous. I would have been had this been a planned operation, but as it was, it was just a long, weird day. The surgeon stood before me holding a box in front of him to support a piece of paper. He drew a stick figure and explained how things were and would go. Because of the placement of my appendix, he would incise over it and make the snatch. Okay.

I was wheeled down to surgery. There I met the attending anesthesiologists. In sooth, it was one anesthesiologist, one nurse-anesthesiologist, and a nurse. The a introduced himself and spoke calmingly about what he would do. He’s actually the guardian angel who lets the n-a do the work and him get the money. Inequity, I’m sure. He was an entertainingly scruffy guy. He was also a physicist and apparently wants to start some sort of physics business, the nature of which I never got to hear. The others introduced themselves. It seemed like an affable group. The nurse injected me with something that she said would help me to relax and forget. It was the last thing I remember till after the operation.

I remember waking up brightly, as I typically do. I did not feel drowsey or out of it. I spoke to the attending nurse. Beth says that she was able to catch me as they were wheeling me to recovery (my next book Wheeling to Recovery, the hardhitting story of…). She reports that I said “you… you… you…” Then I declared that they didn’t do the operation, just pretended to. That’s something I would say, no doubt. On the other hand, perhaps a man on business from Porlock interrupted my dream. I dunno. Years ago, I contracted a doozy case of poison ivy. Beth was on constant watch that I didn’t scratch the rash. In bed I think I moved and Beth, still asleep, grasped my shoulder and said “Don’t scratch. I love you. What’s for dinner.” So we’ve got this crazy love.

What time did I reach my room? Eight, maybe? No, later, football games were impending. Beth stayed a while, then I watched football, dozed, read David McCullough’s book about some bridge in Brooklyn, and dozed. Beth and Erin returned, then football, doze, book, doze, and repeat. I mostly slept on my back, not my best choice. Left side hurt the wound, right side caused the alarm to ring. I slept in one hour portions, normal hospital routine.

During the night, I got a new roomie, the first leaving early in the day. I should have taken notes how to act sociable and pleasant. He had, I learned, diverticulitis. Med he was given apparently made him nauseous. I heard him throw up undramatically. When a nurse arrived he brushed it off as an inconvenience. I do that, brush things off. I don’t want the bad stuff to grow too big. I’m just not tuned to charming anyone.

I don’t know how we’ll pay for this extravaganza—thank you, Neanderthalis republicanis—but there was a large dose of experience. This is the first time in my large life that I was the old guy that needed help. It is not an easy position to sustain. Gracefully, at least. This is the time we start to learn things. Erin just served me some chicken soup he made.

Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

There the book was, so I decided to read it. I've seen two or three Clancy movies, Red October, Clear and Present Danger, for sure. They're the sort of thrillers that leave me convinced that I’ve missed ¾ of what's going on, but the ¼ I get offers some satisfaction.

You never know if a movie translates a novel fairly, or if “movie magic” keeps the eye transfixed, like jiggled string for a cat. I trudged thru the novel The Firm, somehow, not quite feeling the same excitement for billing as Grisham feels. Not to overpraise the movie but, despite starring Tom Cruise, it at least kept moving. So I assumed nothing as I entered Clancy's world.

Pop writers like Clancy, they tend to use random titles. The words just need to be punchy, not relevant to anything in the book. Altho Our Hero shows no remorse in one plotline here, he and everyone else in the book show plenty of remorse. Wear it on your sleeve remorse. A perfect storm of remorse. Let's go!!! Not to worry about it. We're here for action, and Clancy hands it out.

Clancy twines several plots that could have functioned nicely by themselves. There's an I'll show 'em quality to the shifting forth and back but he manages in near tour-de-force fashion to hold it all together. We won't fret the unlikeliness of the mayhem.

John Kelly, later Clark, is a young undersea demolition expert. He's a Vietnam vet, former Navy SEAL. His young, pregnant wife dies in a car crash, which sends the first glop of remorse into lugubrious motion. Cut to a few months later. Kelly seemingly has quit working but, since demolition is so lucrative (just guessing), he can live grimly on his island in the Chesapeake Bay. So okay, for some reason, he picks up a hitchhiker, a young woman who clearly has been thru a lot. That's the sullen version of meet cute. We learn slowly that she's an addict, forced into that condition by a ruthless pimp.

Am I going too fast here?

Well they fall in love. Then Kelly helps a couple who have boat trouble. One's a surgeon, the other's a psychologist. This is sort of meet cute, as well. The three help restore the young woman. The woman explains that other young women are held like she was. Kelly wants to help them. He and the woman go to the nasty neighbourhood just to scope it out. As I think on it, this seems both pointless and dangerous. The plot needed this action, however, because Kelly gets shot and the woman is killed. Tortured then killed.

Once Kelly recovers, he's out for revenge. There's the lack of remorse. Is that enough plot for you? Well there's also a fighter pilot who gets shot down over Vietnam. Held as a POW he gets interrogated by a Russian. There's a certain simpatico between the two, both being fighter pilots.

Meanwhile, some elder generals and admirals want to get him and the other prisoners out from the secret prison in Vietnam, in an off the books way. The son of one of these grandees was rescued from similar circs by a Navy SEAL named You Can Guess, back when Kelly was about 7. Yes, and Kelly found the lad at the same place as here we go. So there’s that plot, and it wants to help make everything sound plausible.

We're also watching closely how a black drug dealer and ruthless pimp sets up a biz with the mob selling pure Asian heroin. He has a mysteriously wonderful supply. By happenstance, they set up their lab right near Kelly's island. Okay, I'll tell you: the heroin enters the country in the corpses of dead American soldiers. The recompense for such horror ought to be pretty righteous.

All this action gets plenty of attention from Clancy.

Kelly starts methodically killing drug dealers in search of the main perps who killed his love. Did you guess that the black drug dealer is the one who killed her? The military men interrupt Kelly's spree. Remembering Kelly's earlier heroics, they invite him into the rescue mission. He trains with a select group of Marines then goes with them to Vietnam.

I'm getting caught up in all the plots. Clancy handles the story telling well enough. He writes with a sense of expertise. Wikipedia merely informs me that Clancy ran an insurance agency before becoming a bestselling author. Maybe he was also a SEAL or some such, but I suspect his expertise is painted. When actors come on talk shows to hype their latest, they are often interviewed as subject matter experts. If the movie's about the Civil War, they're regarded as experts on the Civil War. Here, the book crackles with military terms and slang. We get in depth insight into how Kelly machines his guns for ultimate performance. It sounds right out of Clancy's life, when he murdered a bunch of people in revenge for... Well, whatever. Possibly Clancy is just a writer, and he's making it all up.

When Clancy lets his characters start in on emotional issues, momentum stops. Wearisome dialogues ensue. The book tops 600 pages; 100-200 represent sleepytime. That would be a dreadful percentage except that the rest is well carried and nifty. Plus Clancy demarcates sections so you can easily skip over the trite emotional shit.

Clancy goes to the trouble of describing Kelly several times as a big man. Specifically he's 6' and 190. Sorry, that aint remarkable. Kelly's a machine, tho, James Bond without the martini. He just is.

The admirals and generals pretty much let Kelly run things in the Vietnam mission, which presses unlikeliness a bit much. Kelly seems to be in his early-mid twenties, and he's not even in the military anymore. The mission goes awry because the enemy has been tipped off. Even so, Kelly manages to capture the Russian interrogator. This allows the play of an East-West espionage plot line.

Back home, Kelly goes back to killing off those who helped torture and kill his lover. Even when things go wrong for him, they go right. This is where Clancy overcommits to his hero. He doesn't want, cannot accept, any blots in Kelly's 'scutcheon. Franchise writers have that prob. The writer's protagonist becomes the writer's good self-image. No room for the Not Okay child here.

Kelly has befriended a nurse who has worked with the surgeon and who helped Kelly's lover recover. She may get to dance with him in later novels. Currently, she mostly offers moral questions that Kelly doesn't need because he's right. He doesn't believe in killing unless people deserve it. As the I think 17 drug dealers did. It's a Republican simplicity that I guess one can expect from Clancy. By the end, Kelly's murders convince the nurse of his mission. Now okay, maybe, but Kelly savours the thrill of the hunt and loses no opportunity to take pleasure in his victim's demise. His fanciest and most extensive effort in this regard is using a pressure chamber to extract information from one of the perps. Trusting Clancy's science here, Kelly gives the guy a day's worth of the bends before putting a period on the sentence.

The ending is just the happy bloodlust that satisfies us so. The prisoners are saved—thru diplomacy. Too bad about the no guns part, but it allows related righteous killing. The kindly brutal Russian interrogator, who's not a stinking Vietnamese, is allowed to go home because he was sort of nice to the fighter pilot. The Ivy League twerp who dealt info to our foes was exterminated. Guess what, after learning that Kelly was the one killing all the drug dealers, those military guys send him to kill the twerp, which Kelly does righteously. Then they invite him to join the CIA. Because he's just crazy enough.

I could read another Clancy novel but don't expect to. I don't feel the commitment. One summer I read 11-12 Stephen King novels. Just to see. They were entertaining enough but I see no need for more. I get a twitch of interest when I see one of his recent 9000 page epics, because I wonder what he can do with so many pages to fill. Tho he's a competent writer you realize he's just blowing it out his ass.

The same goes with Clancy. They both produce comfortable franchises. Their competencies are straightforward and undeniable, but then you realize that triteness is one of the competencies. They have to give the reader something comfortable and familiar. We all accept this, that's why we have movies and television. Committing to this just doesn't seem in my best interest, however. But I like looking around.

Conceptualism, or, The Prime Minister Has Been Kidnapped!

Facebook and its Internet has seen some discussion lately about conceptualism vis-a-vis poetry. Why argue? I get the rancour of the competing sides, rancour is how we assert. But why this particular battleground? Poetry that we read needs this?

After all these years, I'm still not good at thinking of the stuff that surrounds poetry, the criticism, the theory. It all seems so private. Yes, we share poetry, but poetry works like dreams: the mechanisms and interpretations are personal. Theory ingratiates the poem to a stricture of delay. We await the confirmation or denial of the critical boundary overlaid upon the poem. The poem itself, it passes by, bored with argumentative readership.

A word like conceptualism is a backwards word. You have to look at all the roots and stems, all the integrated bits to understand it. Then you have to add in all the interpretations that people have accrued on the term. It's pretty confusing. Okay, the world's confusing. But gee, do I need this portmanteau conceptualism. How does it help my day?

A forward word would be one like tree. In reading the word tree, we have a picture based on our experience. That picture can lead anywhere, but it goes forward into the world. If you say tree and I say tree, between us we can develop a wider view. I mean exactly of oak, apple, or whatever, but also figurative possibilities. We're all nuts for figurative possibilities.

With conceptualism, we start with the big part, concept, whatever that might be. Then we have to work out all the other syllables, Greek and Latin tracks back to some primordial group of meaning. Then we sorta hafta agree on what we mean with the word, today if everyone's agreeable. Which they are not. And how does one experience conceptualism, anyway?

What I am saying is, conceptualism doesn't write poems. It's just an adjunct blur to keep poetry away. It's a debate word, a word with sides. Even in my stupid young youth, I never thought poetry had sides. I'll bet you felt likewise, in your poetic youth. As an instructional league teenager who just wanted to write, and with poetry's wide or even non-existent boundaries giving hope, I saw no sides to poetry. I saw clouds resolving into pictures, words into meaning. Or stranger still, words resolving into mystery. That is, the secure meaning that I understood with the words didn't seem to work. This was agitating, quite, but after all: interesting. Words are round and inclusive.

Conceptualism, as a concept, as a shared debate, is an exclusion. I say this, and I don't even know what people are “getting at” with the word. Exclusion is built in, tho. The descriptor conceptualism serves to limit if not mislead. The thing, poetry, is a thing: poetry. Poetry shakes us, round and round. The gabble of critical consequence is a loss of that.