The Spanish Medievalist

On Pitas Payas, a fabliaux (an adaption from the Libro de buen amor)

2012-01-31T11:44:00.000-08:00

My friend Pitas just came back from a painting job that he did in Flanders. He was there two years. I wouldn't be telling this story except that before he left for Flanders on that fateful day two years ago, he celebrated his one month anniversary of being married. I won't mention his wife's name but let's just say that she was younger than he was. In fact, I think that when they married she was all of nineteen. He told me about accepting the job in Flanders, and that he was worried about his wife. He was afraid to leave her for so long. They had only been married a month, so he suggested a plan to keep her safe from harm and from temptation: he would paint a small lamb on her stomach. If the lamb was intact upon his return, then she would have remained pure and above temptation. Well, Pitas left for his job, and his wife got very sad. Everything month seemed like a year, and she was so lonely. You guessed it, before long she had made friends with another man, and in no time, the lamb was gone--rubbed off. One might be critical and say that she was inconstant and conniving, but she was so young and so lonely. I mean, who could blame her. So the rest of the two years past and one day a few weeks ago news arrived from Pitas that he was coming home. His wife was frantic. I'm a painter too, so she called me up, "Can you paint a little lamb on my stomach like the one I showed you two years ago? Like the one Pitas painted on my tummy?" I said that of course I could, but I had something else in mind. I gathered up my paints and brushes and headed for her house, but I didn't paint a little lamb, I painted a full-blown ram with the sweetest set of horns you ever did see. Pitas came home and the first thing he wanted to see was the lamb. His wife obliged. He said, "But dear, I left an innocent little lamb behind. What's this? A full grown ram?" I wasn't there, but I heard reports that she said, "Pitas, what do you expect if you are gone two years? A little lamb turns into an enormous ram in two years." Poor Pitas. The moral to this story is simple: if you don't pay attention to what you have, it may wander off and get lost.

On honey

2012-01-27T21:29:00.000-08:00

An old food, our hunter and gatherer ancestors probably figured this one out right away. Getting it away from the bees might have been a wholly other problem, but it was sweet and they were hungry. One of my favorite foods, I used to take a honey and butter sandwich to school. I guess there is nothing written about taste, especially when you are dealing with an eight-year-old. One of my absolute all-time favorite snacks is freshly made bread, toasted with butter and honey. The bees do work hard and tirelessly to produce this strange and sticky product. Odd how we can just separate it from the comb and it's immediately edible. I mean, bees are insects, and we can eat insect food? Bees and their hive mentality and social community is a little creepy. Their love of six-sided forms seems a little obsessive, if not overly geometric. Their precision is only matched by their remarkable ability to repeat their structures ad infinitum. Bees do not bother me although all the other winged stinging creatures do, especially the wasp and hornet varieties, which really don't produce much good any way you look at them. Bees, on the other hand, just seem obsessed with making honey and more bees. This is the natural way of the world, but honey seems to be a wonderfully capricious and haphazard by-product of these hard-working striped drones. Beekeepers, such as Sherlock Holmes, usually use a bit of smoke to tame these gentle creatures. Make no mistake, if you rile them up, be prepared for a trip to the emergency room. If enough of these little guys sting you, your life could be in danger. Yet, if you leave it to the experts, you can enjoy this simple sugary pleasure on your toast or in your tea. The taste varies according to which bees are making the honey, where they are living, and which flowers they have from which to chose. The honey can pick up the taste of wild flowers, or orange blossoms, depending on what is growing in the area. So I love honey, and it doesn't really bother me that I'm eating insect food extraordinaire.

On fast food

2012-01-26T22:51:00.000-08:00

Lately, most fast food is neither fast nor food. Certainly, fast food covers the major food groups--fat, sugar, salt and caffeine, but isn't there more to life than just choking down a burger and fries with a sugary, caffeinated drink? Sometimes I wonder if fast food joints aren't a sign of the time poverty that both lowers our standards and robs us of life? I don't mean to pick on these well-meaning businesses that serve us burgers, fries, chicken, fish, tacos, pizza, burritos and sandwiches, but we seem to be sacrificing a lot more than our basic nutrition by frequenting these places. Perhaps fast food is a weird oxymoron that invalidates the real meaning of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Perhaps none of these meals was every meant to be inhaled in some linoleum clad anti-aesthetic eating factory. For lunch today I sat with a retired colleague and we talked while we ate and neither he nor I was in any hurry. The food was all freshly made that day, including the chili which was really quite tasty. We took our time. None of our food came wrapped in anything. No ketchup, no fries, no cheese--why do they have to put that creepy orange cheese on everything?. Do we lose track of our souls when we submit them to a regime of fast anonymous food? Perhaps a family should spend time eating together--it certainly couldn't hurt. I don't really dislike the foods served in fast food joints--lots of salt, lots of fat, what's not to like? But neither the empty calories nor the anonymous atmosphere of that food and those places can help with digestion. Eating for human beings is much more than just eating. Our gregarious nature leads us to share food in groups. Major religions have festivals in which a common meal is obligatory, often imbued with deep religious and spiritual significance. Fast food robs significance from the experience of eating. Once in awhile fast food might solve a momentary problem of eating when time is not on your side, but I would suggest that perhaps we all need to take a good long look at ourselves if this happens frequently. Fast food is bad not because it's food, but because it's fast. The burger and fries are not bad because they come in paper containers, but they are bad because we consume them with little or no expectation of doing little more than just filling our stomachs. That's bad.

On melancholy

2012-01-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I get the opportunity to teach Spanish Romanticism. For the Medievalist in me, this is a bit of a stretch since contemporary literature holds no interest for me, especially anything written as recently as 1836. I mean, really, has enough time passed to really test if this material has any real value at all? I think not. But, on the other hand, teaching Jose Mariano de Larra does have at least one huge bright spot: melancholy. I get to teach literature that is concerned with feeling sad for the sake of feeling sad. "Christmas Eve of 1836" has to be one of the most self-deprecating pieces of writing ever penned. I don't really know which is more interesting--his satire or his cynicism. Certainly, the literary voice narrating a horrible December 24th is pushing every social criticism button it can find, devastating the object of that criticism: the writer. The melancholy hits in waves like thunderstorms "training" over the same patch of flooded ground with no end in sight. Melancholy may be the opposite of happiness, but why anyone would want to continually wallow in it for days and weeks at a time is beyond me. For a moment, perhaps melancholy might be a literary posture that one might adopt for a moment in order to prove a point or illustrate a tight piece of irony, but why would a sane person perpetually gravitate towards a pitched mid-life crisis? So your plants die, you feel sad, but then you have an excuse to go to a greenhouse and replace that ugly thing that died: no melancholy. You feel bad for the baker across the street who lost his wife, but she was a horrific crab of a person who browbeat him endlessly--no melancholy. You sit on a dark, rainy evening, working on a poem about death, sipping a little something, scratching out a few words on your notebook. Raindrops are falling on the window, you pull on a warm woolen sweater, you write a few more words about gravestones, moss, old wrought iron, creepy trees, dark shadows, tears that silently fall across a cheek, an empty chair, a missing voice, and although the poem is not perfect, you now have something to work with: bones, dust, shadows, nothing. You are plumbing the depth of melancholy, but now it has become truly conventional, removed from your soul and converted into art.

On being afraid of the dark

2012-01-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

I'm not afraid of the dark, anymore. Yet, as I recall, being a small child in a big old house (built 1895, so it made every creepy sound a house could make), I was from time to time afraid of the dark. Yes, totally irrational, but who ever asked a five-year-old to be rational? Heavens, even at 53 being rational is not always an option. My imagination would get out of control, especially about those things that inhabited the dark closet under the stairs or even what dwelt under my bed, and I don't mean just dust bunnies. There were shadows and strange sounds coming from empty rooms, groans and creaks that could make your blood run cold. If you turned on a light, however, everything would go dead quiet. The dark was full of the unknown, so that's why we burned a night light in the stair case for years. Even the dog did not like the pitch black darkness that could reign in the small hours of the morning. Darkness harbors things, dark things that crawl on their bellies whose long nails make scratching noises on the kitchen tile. And don't even think of going down into that basement after midnight because it had more dark corners than Carter's got little liver pills. The stone walls of the basement were rather dungeon-like as was the winding path that led to the farthest corners of the underground vaults. Spider webs, a musty smell, old machines and discarded memories huddled together in the dim light of a single light bulb. The dark is patient, it has time on its side, it doesn't get old, it sits and waits. Of course, no matter how hard I tried to stay awake, at some point my eyes would go closed and darkness would overwhelm me, and I would slip away into the vast void of the unconscious, unable to help myself, fear silently screaming in a dream. And then I would awake and the night would be over and the light would be everywhere and I was fine. Coming back from the brink always seemed to be a much more positive experience than venturing into the void. As an older person, I now welcome the darkness of night, wrap myself in it, embrace it, smothering myself in the warm cocoon of darkness that promises rest and a safe port from the stress of the day. Funny, how I'm no longer afraid of the dark.

On Skipper and Gilligan

2012-01-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

Who should we really blame for this fiasco? It was supposed to be a three hour tour and it turned into an extended stay on an island in the south Pacific. I mean, Ginger or Mary Ann is an easier riddle to solve than who was responsible for letting the Minnow run aground. How hard can it be, even in bad weather, to keep a boat or ship off of the rocks? Perhaps I should blame the mighty storm than blew them off course. Mother Nature is, perhaps, one of those wild cards that is both inconstant and unpredictable, chaos, you might say. Their intentions were good, and their motives true, but they just couldn't steer the Minnow back to a safe port that night. In fact, perhaps they should be complimented on saving their themselves and their passengers. Loss of life is only too common when a ship runs aground, especially big ships. Skipper and Gilligan both stayed on board until all hands were safe. Perhaps other skippers and their first mates should study the ill-fated voyage of the Minnow and take notes. People mostly travel on huge luxury liners and cruise ships to get away from the daily grind at work or home, so the last thing they need on the high seas is drama. I think the other passengers on the Minnow were doing just that: escaping from the strange realities that trapped them in their daily lives--the Professor, the Howells, Ginger, and Mary Ann were all looking for a little fun and sun away from it all. Gilligan would not be my first choice as first officer, but then again the Skipper wouldn't be my choice as captain either, yet Fortune turns her capricious wheel in strange and inexplicable ways which put this odd bunch of people in the rolls of castaways. They were in Hawaii on vacation. What could have been simpler? I did a very similar thing in Venice not a year ago, traveling completely across the bay not once, but twice. I trusted the boat captain to do what was right and take me to my destination. I guess I was luckier than some. I don't blame either Gilligan or Skipper. In fact, I think their skills could have been useful this past week in Italy. I'm just saying.

On summer in January

2012-01-20T20:17:00.001-08:00

Since I don't live in Buenos Aires, I expect my January weather to be cool or at least my body expects it to be cool. Today I was walking around campus in a short sleeve shirt thinking that the sun was rather warm for today. I was wrong: the sun was actually quite hot for today because this is the dead of winter--January. I have put up with January weather that was so cold that you couldn't go out without covering every inch of your skin. So cold that the snow squeaks under your feet as you walk to your frozen car that you hope starts, but you aren't betting on it. I once had a car battery give up the ghost on a morning when the mercury only rose to -27F. A friend gave me a ride to work at the University of Minnesota because Minnesotans, and especially gophers, do not cancel work or close schools because its cold outside. Needless to say, I don't crave the cold, but my body expects it. Today it was pushing +80F in Central Texas, and in Corpus Christi, just down the road from here, it was +82F, a new record for the day. So my body is all haywire: it expects cold, but it gets warm. I can't hardly sleep at night because of all the heat I produce when I sleep. I'm messed up. I expect that all the fruit trees in the area are also getting ready to bloom because it is warm and they don't know any better. We do get frosty weather in February in this part of the world, so I hope the trees don't bloom. I ran the air conditioning in my car on the way home from work, which is weird, but at least I know it works. I could have used some sun block today. I used to think that drinking ice tea in January was creepy and weird, now it seems rather normal. Conundrum: do you wear a coat to work when you know you really won't need it, but you can't leave the house in January without your coat without going into shock and having a dissociative moment? Where's a good polar high pressure system when you need one? Alberta, probably.

On Gatsby

2012-01-19T21:04:00.000-08:00

Originally, I got to know Gatsby because I was invited to his lavish parties out at his "house" in West Egg. I'm not much of a party guy, but my girlfriend (now, ex-girlfriend) said it would be fun. I knew better. I had seen a million of these guys come into the business, get used up, and vanish. Some two-bit mechanic broke into his house and shot him yesterday. I lied when I said I didn't know Jay Gatsby before I went to his party. I knew him as a quiet, Jim Gatz, a normal guy from back home. Then the war came and our paths crossed again, albeit briefly. He was just a kind, humble guy in those days. He was nothing like the strange monster I encountered on the lawn of his mansion. After I came home from the war I found that my girl had married someone else so I moved to New York and got a job on Wall Street. My accounting degree from a small liberal arts school in the Midwest was just the ticket I needed to get into banking. I even look the part--skinny, glasses, bad hair. To say that Gatsby was up to his ears in illegal activities is to not really understand the problem at all. Let's not get squeamish or prissy, part of my firm's business was to launder money, and some of these bootleggers had tons of it--cash. Now, there is nothing wrong with cash, but if you have lots, the government wants to know where it came from. You know, did you pay your taxes? Gatsby was a great front for his syndicate because he looked the part--handsome, blond, broad shoulders, charm, great smile. I was just an anonymous accountant with a bad scar who worked in a windowless office on Wall Street. I have mad accounting skills, but no one wants me to represent the firm in public. So, for a ton of money, Gatsby sold his soul to the Devil so the Devil could launder his money and turn it into legitimate business ventures. He looked the part of a legitimate businessman, but he was as dirty as they come, and I would know, I've seen them all. Gatsby's cut made him a millionaire, made him a success, but it also made him numb to almost any and all ethical considerations. He didn't enjoy his parties, and I get the feeling he knew almost no one there. I assume he was killed because of a woman, but that's rather irrelevant, especially for Gatsby. Too much money too fast will kill you every time.

On witnessing a shipwreck

2012-01-18T11:07:00.001-08:00

In the not too distant past, someone challenged me on whether shipwreck was a wholly negative event. Though I was intrigued by the possibility that a shipwreck might have a positive outcome, I was perplexed in the sense that I saw shipwreck as a wholly negative phenomenon. Could a shipwreck have a positive outcome? In the wake of the latest fiasco off of the southern Italian coast where a huge pleasure cruiser grounded on a reef, I have to admit that I am still convinced that shipwreck still stands for disaster, loss and catastrophe. It boggles the mind that with today's modern navigation tools, GPS and the like, that a modern ship could ever run aground. Yet, ships are still piloted by people, and the last time I checked, people are still fallible, ergo, shipwrecks are still possible. The tools of navigation are only as good as the people using them. This metaphor could be extended to almost any profession, which cheers me and chills me to the bone at the same time. I mean, really, there were almost five thousand people on that little dingy, and yet the captain, a foolish man on his best day, went five miles off course on the whim of another crew member. The death toll is hovering around twenty at this point and will rise. People are still missing. Apparently, after the ship ran aground, the captain and first mate were the first to jump ship, so they were cowards and left more than 4,500 people, passengers and crew, to their own devices in the middle of the night to fend for themselves. I do not deny that shipwreck is a terrifying experience, perhaps one of the most terrifying that anyone might face, but shouldn't the captain be there to care for his crew and passengers? So my answer is still one-sided: shipwreck is an unmitigated disaster of monstrous proportions and no amount of persuading can change my point of view. Perhaps some of the shipwreck survivors are getting to know a new part of Italy, eating some new food, making new friends, learning a little Italian, but do these possible benefits make up for a night of abject terror, icy ocean waters, and loss of life? The recent shipwreck in Italy reminds me of a few important lessons: if we build it, it can fail; professionals are capable of very bad judgment; no amount of planning and drills can prepare you for the reality of a real disaster.

On strange friends

2012-01-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

I imagine it depends on how you define either strange or friends. We all have all sorts of friends these days, especially our multitude of facebooks friends, but we also have our best friends, our life-long friends, friends in need, friends that will help you bury a body, you know, friends. What I have always found extremely curious are strange friends. Everybody has at least one--a person who, for one reason or another, most others would consider strange. Yet I have no idea how to define strange. I know what "funny-looking" means, and although strange rather defies me, it doesn't mean funny looking. A beautiful person might be incredibly strange. Strange might mean different, but different from what? Strange is an odd idea that leads from one dead end to another dead end. Perhaps strange friends is a combination of people that would not exist under normal circumstances, but since no one can define normal, I continue to run out of ways of defining "strange." Unusual might mean strange, but I have met many unusual people who are not strange at all. Does strange suggest unknown or unfamiliar? Maybe, but your Uncle Harold might be strange, but you do know him, unfortunately. We use the word strange and we use the word friends on a rather consistent basis without giving either word much thought. Does strange suggest disapprobation? Perhaps we are suggesting that we do not approve of that particular person because they don't seem to fit our limited idea of what normal might be. Perhaps the problem with strange resides in our unwillingness to accept difference, to allow anarchy a small place in our world view, to let people be who and what they are. The grand massification of our society, the idea that we should all conform to some grand spurious myth that tells us who and what we should be, tends to erase identity, to erase the individual, to urge conformity in thought, word and deed, is what breeds strangeness, yet I would suggest that being strange, unique, unknown, quaint, anachronistic, anarchic, leads an a break through in mental health. By rejecting the idea that we must "keep up with the Jones," we feed our strangeness which may in turn lead to happiness. I know that nothing is guaranteed, especially not happiness, but if you are happy with who you are, apart from who society tells you, you are, you might be on that path less traveled, you might be on your way home. Embrace your strange friends, be a strange friend to others.

On Friday the 13th

2012-01-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

This note has nothing to do with bad slasher movies. And although I could talk about the blaming the Templars for the Friday the 13th as a day of bad luck, in Spain, it is Tuesday the 13th which is considered bad luck, so, the Templars have nothing to do with this tradition. Personally, I know that superstitions that have to do with either numbers or calendars are not only ridiculous, they border on complete lunacy. Calendars--Julian, Roman, Mayan--are all arbitrary human inventions which are trying to measure, calculate and make sense of our planet's trip around the sun, which is fine, but counting our revolutions around the sun is not only pointless, it is meaningless in any larger context. In a sense, we are always completing another orbit of the sun--just depends on when you want to start counting. Same thing applies to our arbitrary, if not colorful and pagan, array of months and days. All of this is underscored by the inherent inadequacies of our current calendar which must be adjusted every four years because we gain a quarter of day each time we lap the sun. So 2012, instead of being the end of the world, is just a leap year. Pity the poor soul born that particular February 29th. Perhaps it is the strange number thirteen, prime number, a dozen plus a spare, Jesus and the disciples. There is no way to split it cleanly, either into halves or thirds or quarters. Friday, end of the work week, gets it name (probably) from the ancient Germanic love goddess, Frigg, who is both directly and indirectly related to Venus ♀. The associations with Friday may appear sinister, but like any other day of the week, luck or bad luck has nothing to do with anything. We may want to blame Friday the 13th for our bad luck, our strange misfortune, but bad things and good things happen quite independently of the calendar. Perhaps if we get up on Friday the 13th expecting bad things to happen, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Superstition, black cats, broken mirrors are totally meaningless in the world of the hyper-rational empiricist where hard work and rational thought substitute quite easily for bad omens and strange luck.

On a cold winter´s night

2012-01-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

Seems hardly credible that one might contemplate the dark side of winter in Waco, Texas. After almost a hundred days over one hundred this summer and early fall, tonight the mercury in central Texas will dip into the lower twenties. For Minnesotans this is a daily phenomenon even in June, so for them winter really starts below zero. But in central Texas, a tropical climate most of the year, this is dead cold. You have to cover the plants, bring in the pets, make sure your water pipes don't freeze, throw an extra blanket on the bed because this is the dead of winter in central Texas. In fact, it is only the dead who feel comfortable on night like this. In many ways, though, the cold is good. The cold is good because it reminds one of the reality of winter and how vulnerable and shaky we are as animals. Even the lowly squirrels boast a better, more adaptive winter coat than we do. We are highly dependent on our technology to keep us warm and a blackout or a brownout would leave us vulnerable to the cold. When the air conditioning breaks, you might sweat a bit and curse your rotten fortune, but you don't die. And although we don't enjoy the luxury of snow, the cold winter winds, which howl in central Texas, started out on the plains of Ontario and Manitoba, and they chill to the bone. So everyone hunkers down under the blankets, hibernating like the squirrels or bears, hoping that in the morning the temperatures will be higher and more liveable. Traffic slacks off as darkness comes over the edge of the plains and the life-giving sun bids farewell for the night. People are hiding from the cold. The cold slows down all the molecules, and even neurons fire a little more slowly. Creativity takes a break for a nap. Perhaps this is when one should reassess one's place in the world, look on the face of God and ask hard questions about life, the universe and everything. Perhaps it is the cold and the dark together which are so reminiscent of the mysteries of life and death. Perhaps a cold winter's night is just meant as a resting place for a weary soul that is tired of sweating all the time.

On sugar

2012-01-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

Where should one begin? On the dangers of flying sugar bowls? On the temptation to put another spoonful of sugar on your cereal or into your coffee? Guilty. Guilty as charged, but sugar is so good, such a sinfully wonderful pleasure that it is impossible to resist. It was Oscar Wilde himself who said, and I quote, "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation," which, I think, pretty much sums up my opinion on sugar. Sugar is a compound complex of desire and love. We cannot fight it because we are hard-wired to crave the fine crystalline granules of sweet indulgence. Genetically speaking, our ancestors craved the stuff more than others did which meant they had more energy for survival, more fat stored away for the thin times, and more desire for more. I am a sugar junkie. Oh, there are times when I shun it, pour myself another glass of water, or eat my shredded wheat with not added sweetness, searching for my inner horse. But let's face it, even horses love sugar. Yet, my contemporary sensibility, which has nothing to do with my medieval sensibility, tell me that sugar is bad because even a little sugar always turns into a lot of sugar quite easily. It's an easy addiction to cheat on: a hunk of fudge here, an extra packet of sugar there, a can of regular soda to get through that meal of cheeseburgers and fries, a little extra sugar for the grapefruit, a little on my cereal, a little on my toast. In the end I feel dirty and shameful because I know that even if I repent, I will only fall again. We are a society based on sugar. Our earliest efforts in global economics were based on trading sugar and sugar products. Today sugar is a multimillion dollar industry that spans the globe and infects every inch of the planet. The best I can do, personally, is to cut back, eat less chocolate, less sweet cereal, use artificial sweeteners a little more often, but I surrender. I know I'm hopeless. The temptation is just too great. Pass the sugar bowl, slowly.

On confessions

2012-01-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

They say that confession is good for the soul. Augustine, already middle-aged, had similar views, but I also think he was a wily writer who was more than willing to lay a trap for unsuspecting readers. His incredibly popular Confessions is heavily autobiographic which means, of course, that Augustine could write about any life he imagined, real or invented. I suppose as readers we make the assumption that he is always telling the truth, and I would expect no less from this incredibly talented rhetorician. In fact, his doctorate, if he were to have one, was in rhetoric. Today, his dissertation would be on literary discourse, but I think you get the drift: he is an amazing writer and extraordinarily adept at manipulating his audience. Confessions is a tour de force in literary discourse, manipulation, exposition, and rhetoric. His book is about (spoiler alert!) one man's journey from skepticism and disbelief into faith. He understands that all people as they make an intellectual journey from ignorance into wisdom must cross a vast wasteland of conflicting philosophies, dead-end arguments, phony religions, power hungry preachers and spurious belief systems. The trick, Augustine might suggest, is using the intellect to sort out the true from the false, but he would also suggest it is tougher than just true or false. Faith, he might suggest, has a tenuous quality to it that may not be rationally supported by traditional paths of logic. In fact, faith, the belief in things unseen (or unprovable--the metaphor is Biblical), only depends on what is in a person's heart, not in their head. Faith is not logical, it is emotional and irrational. So how does one of the West's great minds, Augustine, put aside his rational empiricist mask just long enough to let Christ into his life? Reading Confessions will not completely answer that question, as I am sure Augustine would admit. He would probably say something like, "Read it, experience it, talk about it, write about it. You still won't understand me, but I will have given you plenty to think about." Confession is good for the soul.

On the neophyte

2012-01-06T14:06:00.000-08:00

The road to enlightenment is long, hazardous, full of potholes, dangerous, boring, and sometimes tedious. The neophyte, always a victim of their own pride and ego, must make a journey from innocence to experience, a journey plagued with doubt, disasters, failures and change. The neophyte, however, does not know that their "education" is not necessarily about learning facts, though facts are important. Getting good grades is important, but the grades should not be the sole end of study, though the neophyte often confuses getting grades with learning. History, religion, science, philosophy, literature, music and art are all a part of the journey, but not particular ends in and of themselves. It is the process of learning about these fields of endeavor which shape the mind and soul of the neophyte. Reading books, taking notes, listening to a lecture, explaining a concept or lesson, learning a soliloquy, playing an etude, writing a paper, leading a discussion, studying for an exam, attending a concert are a means to an end, but none of those things by themselves has anything to do with the journey from innocence to experience. Some neophytes will fall along the way, drop out, do something else with their lives. Others will learn to fight their battles, tame the ego, put pen to paper, figure out what makes the world tic. The neophyte will have a few dark nights of the soul when pride, desperation and fatigue settle in like the thieves from the Pardoner's tale. There will be disappointments, but there will be shining victories as well. Nothing will go as planned, and when it does go as planned, the expected outcomes and rewards will fall short of the dream. The dreams of the neophyte are good things, perhaps the best things, but they will inevitably change to adapt to new situations, new people, new tasks, new philosophies. If the journey is successful, the neophyte will be changed. How that will happen is anybody's guess, but the most surprised person in the room will be the neophyte who will finally figure out that their is no shedding the cloak of neophyte, ever.

On metafiction, simulacra, and Nikki Heat

2011-12-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

How can a fictional character in a popular television series be the author of a best-selling mystery novel, including an acknowledgements page, a blurb on the book jacket and a photo on the back? Apparently, the answer is very easily. Nikki Heat is the imaginary hero of a series of crime novels written by a fictional character. I do believe this is the epitome of both simulacra and metafiction, two phenomena that are running rampant through our popular media, which itself is becoming a substitution for real life if such a thing even exists anymore. Richard Castle, the fictional author of the Nikki Heat series, does not really exist although many of his crime writer cronies, Patterson et al, do. In other words, Castle exists in a metaliterary world that allows the fictional and the real to interact, creating the illusion of an extended reality where Nikki Heat may also exist. Nikki Heat and Richard Castle, and Castle's literary alter ego Jameson Rook, are simulacra which replace other discourses of reality with a wish fulfillment dream in which Nikki Heat always gets the bad guy, Rook continues to write popular magazine articles and Castle is a best-selling author. Men want to be like him, but they want to make love to her. This is the oldest genre of romance fiction: the knight-quest form in which the hero works hard to solve the mystery or conundrum which is keeping him from being successful and getting the girl. In this metaliterary simulacra, writing the mystery novel and delivering the solution becomes the quest. Faced with a real world which is plagued with tragedy and chaos and anarchy, the mystery novel becomes a logos that makes sense, justice is delivered and the players live happily ever after. Readers choose to substitute the metaliterary world of Rick Castle and Jameson Rook for the day-to-day disappointments which plague their worlds, where violence is random and senseless, relationships fall apart, loneliness is persistent, and happiness is fleeting. So along come Richard Castle and his literary creation, Nikki Heat, where, in spite of the inherent violence of their world, solutions are viable, happiness happens, and the world seems like a place where you want to live and not something that just happens to you. The knight gets the girl even in this postmodern simulacra of the knight's tale.

On Moriarty

2011-12-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

We all have a great capacity for doing bad things, but for the most part, as a member of a larger society, we refrain because we know the difference between good and bad. Yet, there are those people who willfully decide to do evil knowing full well that what they are doing is wrong. Professor James Moriarty is one of those people. As a child, I never gave Moriarty much thought, but now that I too am a professor, I understand only too well what he is up to: willfully do evil and rotten things to gain an unfair advantage in his business dealings. In other words, Moriarty is that rare and dangerous bird that is willing to do anything in order to get what he wants, and anything does mean anything: lie, cheat, steal, and murder. What is so wrong about Moriarty does is that he does these things with the full knowledge that they are wrong. He isn’t a small child who hits another out of anguish or grief or envy, reacting strongly to some external stimulus and being unable to intellectually weigh an ethical or moral response that is more proportionate to the stimulus. Moriarty does evil things because he wants to do evil things. For the good professor, his own narcissism has overridden the systems of ethics that we all use to avoid falling into a world of dangerous anarchy and chaos. The good professor knows that what he is doing is wrong, and that is what makes him both different and dangerous. The ends he hopes to achieve, the acquisition of material wealth, are both old stories and spurious ends. To put the acquisition of material things in front of loving your fellow man (and following the rules and laws of civilization) is a hollow, empty pursuit that will never satisfy even the hardest, most cynical materialist. Not only is this activity empty, it is solitary, leaving Moriarty lonely and bitter, having rejected both family and friends and seeking the company of fellow criminals, evil-doers, murderers, thieves, liars and con-artists. These kinds of people have no friends, no love in their lives. In the end, Professor Moriarty wallows in the isolation of his crimes, and it is his own evil genius which has deceived him because he has always failed to understand that happiness is not found in things or places or gold or wealth of any kind, but it is found in the generosity that we share with others, whom we love and who love us back.

On cranberries

2011-12-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

Is there a more bitter fruit than the lowly raw cranberry? Even if you have the courage to bite into a raw cranberry, they don't really show a lot of promise as something that might be good to eat. They do have a wonderfully rich red color, which is extremely promising, and they are round, but the extreme bitterness is a sticking point and deal-breaker for most people. That is, until you get out the sugar. My favorite recipe for freshly cooked cranberries, and let's forget about the jelly stuff that comes in cans, is cranberries, sugar, water, low heat, and ample supplies of freshly cut orange zest. Once these elements are combined in the correct amounts, the cranberry that was willing to take your head off blossoms into a ruby red sauce of breathtaking flavor and outrageous taste. There is nothing like freshly cooked cranberry sauce. (Hint: spread your toast with sour cream and top with cranberry sauce for the best breakfast extravaganza you might ever have!) I can understand people who, for the sake of tradition, will eat a bit of the jellied strangeness that comes out of a can at Thanksgiving, thinking that this is weird and icky and I hope nobody notices while I hide it under Aunt Hotencia's weird lime jello and shrimp concoction. Canned cranberries are over-cooked, overly sweet, and funky tasting--it is no longer fresh. Buying a bag of these impressive flavor grenades and cooking them is not that difficult, but opening a can is infinitely easier. The flavors which are produced by cooking fresh cranberries, however, are an outstanding experience that has nothing to do with the canned varieties.. My only problem is that it is often difficult to get anything but the canned variety except during the holiday seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas. And there is always the price: the cans are cheaper, no question. I guess the cranberry is, then, about choices, about opting in or out, about making work for yourself that will have an excellent result or about taking the easy way out, the consequence being red, jellied mud. You can enjoy or explore the brilliant facets of cranberries and their flavors, or you can huddle with the masses. Your choice.

On scratch paper

2011-12-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

Can you ever have enough? Ours is kept in the space reserved for cookbooks in the microwave stand. We have all colors. The best place to harvest scratch paper is from unwanted single-sided copies of anything that is no longer useful or has become outdated. Scratch paper is so useful for taking notes, putting under a coffee cup, picking up something hot, plugging a hole, writing down a telephone number, keeping track of passwords. Scratch paper is paper that still has a second life after its first life has been lived. This is a combination of resurrection and recycling, turning already used material into something that is newly useful again. I love writing on scratch paper because you don't have to worry about lines or spelling or size or evenness or levelness or anything of things that are demanded by standard writing conventions which you learned in second grade from an obsessive compulsive who thought the world would end if you couldn't make a perfect capital Q. (Still can't make that Q but from time to time channeling Mrs. Jensen is weirdly satisfying). And once an ordinary piece of paper has become scratch paper, it will live forever. Who ever heard of throwing out a piece of scratch paper, especially if it has something written on it. I mean, you might be throwing away the combination to Fort Knox if you do that. The only strange thing about scratch paper is that once it has something written on it, they tend to disappear, as if this were some standard issue note paper at Hogwarts. Only when you are looking for something else--a lost set of keys, a book, a pocket knife, a small child--can you actually find the lost bit of scratch paper. Scratch paper really has some great advantages: no batteries, no software, minimal hardware, portable, durable, multiple uses, especially when leveling a wonky table in a seedy bar or restaurant. And if all else fails, it can be employed as a fire starter and it returns to the ash from whence it came, starting the cycle all over again.

On the desert

2011-12-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

Not really a mythic wilderness, a desert is a dry, rocky, sandy, sparse bit of land that seemed emblematic of the year that is about to end. My muse, who just got back from St. John's Bay ("You can have the heat. I'm not coming back until I can breath outside again.") is sitting outside on the back porch drinking her coffee and enjoying the cool weather. She's barefoot. The town where I live has been a desert. Even for longtime residents, this year has been a difficult one with temperatures at or above the century mark for more than four months. Grass, bushes and trees have died. Large trees have died. The misty rain that has been falling in these parts over the past several days is nice, but it falls with a bitter irony of drought and necessity. People walk in it without umbrellas, not wanting to smile as if their souls have been suffering a bitter drought as well. There is really nothing wrong with living in the desert. The sun burns away all of the superfluous fluff, the unnecessary, the useless, and what is left is an essence of being, a spark, an unquenchable flame that keeps the synapses firing, the medulla burning brightly. Perhaps the desert only leaves truth. We surround ourselves with so much meaningless blather that we not only forget who we are, we forget what life is all about. And life is not about how much stuff we can acquire or how much power we can muster. The desert will always keep you honest. We simulate life, but we so infrequently live it. My muse is wiggling her toes in the rain and water drips off her foot. Steam rises from her cup of coffee and she pulls her shawl around her. The garden is quiet, but some of the plants are returning to life and are green again. "It was snowing in the bay when I left. Snow that was going to stay for six months. I had to get out of there. What are we writing today?"

On Santa

2011-12-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

There are lots of strange rumors out their about Santa Claus. Sure, it's easy to be a cynic and just say he doesn't exist, but being a cynic is easy, and I would hate to get put on the "naughty" list, and end up with a piece of coal in my stocking because I had no faith. Whether Santa exists or not, he will be out delivering lots of goodies, toys, candy and other presents this Christmas Eve. You say I have no proof? Christmas comes and goes each year, and each year Santa (and his many helpers) appear and disappear with a kind of regularity that is almost surprising. Red suit, white beard, I'd recognize him instantly, anywhere. What happens if you don't have a chimney? Irrelevant. Santa is not bound by such physical barriers. I mean, a guy who employs flying reindeer cannot have hang-ups such as the laws of physics--time, space, gravity, mass. Am I implying that Santa is magic or supernatural? No, not really, but I would suggest that Santa is special in the sense that he is not bound by the natural laws that make up our physical world. I already hear the rational empiricists scoffing, but I would also suggest that if you don't have Santa in your heart, he probably doesn't pay much attention to you either--it's called the "naughty list," and that is fine. One should always have the right to choose whether one participates in matters of faith. Those who put all their eggs in the positivist rationality of absolute empiricism basket are also members of a faith community who think it can explain all things all the time. I would suggest that this is not only an empty way of going through life, it is a boring way of going through life. Where there is no mystery and imagination, there is also no fantasy or illusion, no possibility of the unexpected. When everything is planned and explained down to the last detail, there is no room for spontaneity, for surprise, for the unexpected. Santa may or may not bring you what you want this Christmas, but he will be there. Whether you get what you want or you get what you need (which may be nothing--think about it) are two totally different things. Santa exists, no question about that, so perhaps it is more of a question of letting him exist than asking for proof that he exist. I'm just saying.

On mistletoe

2011-12-11T22:12:00.001-08:00

"The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases." Washington Irving, "The Sketchbook of Geoffry Crayon"The only way to describe mistletoe is quasi-parasitic. A weird plant that is spread by birds who eat its white fruits, it latches on to more than two hundred different plants, shrubs, bushes and trees, leeching off water and minerals from its host. Perpetually green, the tradition of hanging mistletoe in a house as protection against fire and general mishaps (a good luck charm) is probably many, many centuries old. Mistletoe was considered to have magical properties because its roots never touch the earth. Of course, mistletoe, a long-respected symbol of masculinity, has been used as a love charm by ancient European peoples, including the Celts and Druids. Branches and sprigs of mistletoe were often hung over a baby's bed to ward off evil spirits. Being quasi-parasitic, it's leaves do a certain amount of photosynthesis, it has been the object of witch doctors and medicine men as well, but all claims to its value as a treatment for almost anything are unfounded, and, other than its decorative uses, is a rather useless plant. Christians will hang the plant in their homes during the Christmas season as a decoration and, regarding the plant's more pagan considerations, as a love amulet or charm, so they might have an excuse to kiss another person, as Washington Irving so aptly described. I find the idea of a hemi-parasitic plant just over the hill from creepy where the zombies keep bunches of the stuff around to spruce up the cemetery, a place, curiously, where it is often easy to find mistletoe. The plant itself is oddly skeletal looking with small, oval shaped leaves and white berries. It is a plant that is neither a parasite completely nor its own plant completely, sucking life out of its host plant. If enough mistletoe takes over in a tree, the tree may die. Mistletoe is a plant which supports an inordinately large amount of folklore and myth. Common enough, the plant may be seen around the world in one variety or another, so it begs the question: why did this odd, creepy, relatively useless plant become so popular and so mysterious and so magical? I guess the rational empiricist in me is just shaking his head and saying, "You could take the fun out of anything with that attitude." Wait while I go hang my mistletoe.

On leaf blowers

2011-12-09T12:07:00.001-08:00

Whoever invented the leaf blower was deaf and had a highly developed sense of irony and humor. First, these infernal machines make the most awful noise, ranking them right up there with vacuum cleaners and garbage trucks. Since it is late fall here in central Texas, the leaves on most of the trees (except the creepy Live Oaks) have started to fall in earnest, mostly because they have no other choice after the horrendous summer we had. The leaves feel betrayed--no water for months--and have given up the ghost. Now, lots of well-intentioned landscapers and gardeners have taken it on themselves to blow them off the lawn. The problem is like this: after an intense leaf blowing session, one slight gust of wind quickly deposits the leaves back on the lawn from whence they originally came. The net gain on the leaves is zero, but we have had the luxury of listening to thirty minutes of intense leaf blowing activity. The sound is so utterly mind-numbing that it actually redefines the whole idea of noise. Leaf blowing is something like the sound of dentist drill, but three octaves lower. After having your brains melted by the noise of a leaf blower, listening to some coed drown on about the party she was at last night while she sits outside your office door is actually rather entertaining. I believe that my intense dislike of the noise has something to do with its persistent whines that go up and down, vary in pitch. And just when you think they have turned their machines off, they start up again. So they blow these leaves into piles and and clean up the lawns, but have they actually looked up to see how many more leaves are coming behind their cousins? If I had to rake leaves, a past-time which I despise, I always waited until all of the leaves were down before I started such a useless effort. Run the mower (another infernal machine) over them, turn them into mulch and let mother nature finish the leaf removal job. That's what winter is for. Now, for some peace and quiet.

On reindeer

2011-12-07T09:38:00.001-08:00

It has come to my attention that reindeer really know how to fly. I saw a documentary on television the other day called "Elf" which clearly showed reindeer flying, so of this fact I have no doubt. Some people, nay-sayers mostly, would have us all believe that these four-footed, non-winged animals walk around twelve months a year, munching on the moss under the snow as they traverse the northern tundras of Finland and Norway. This is nothing but a rational cover for what is really an extraordinary animal. I mean, look, the scientists need to be comforted by constants and theories that create a rational, predictable world--the speed of light, gravity, general relativity, Plank's Constant, a^2+b^2=c^2, and so on. I don’t need Scully and Mulder to tell me that there are more strange things in this universe than can be dreamt of in my philosophy. A flying quadruped is not entirely out of the question. Really, who can deny me the magic of my world simply because it encroaches on ideas such as the conservation of mass, or π or x_(y^2 )=2. Imagine living your entire life as a rational empiricist and never knowing the magic of the supernatural, tripping over your logic, stumbling over your reason and common sense, rejecting the serendipitous nature of universal caprice, and drowning yourself in drudge and routine. Sensible, reasonable, realistic, sound and wise can turn Jack into a very dull boy, especially if he not Earnest in the country and Jack in the city. The fact that reindeer really know how to fly, flies in the face of all reason and all world experience. Irrelevant. Reindeer will fly again, Santa will make the rounds, the Grinch will save Christmas, the holly and the mistletoe will festively decorate my humble abode. No sense in confusing me with the facts.

On pews

2011-12-04T14:51:00.001-08:00

When I was little, one of my best friends had (still has, in fact) a pew in his living room. This is not just a little weird, it's flat out bizarre. But I digress. I have been sitting on pews in one church or another for my whole life. I don't imagine that pews were invented for comfort because then we would all sleep just a little bit more than we do now during the sermon. No, pews were invented to give the legs a little relief during the service so we don't fall down, but I think pews can also be used as instruments of torture as well. There is something about the angle between the back and the seat which is just not comfortable. And if you have a skinny butt, well, that's your particular cross to bear. What I most love about pews is that the people who sit in them think that by sitting in the same spot Sunday after Sunday that they own that particular pew and God help you if you sit in someone else's pew. I still think, however, that on any given Sunday, a pew is still a very strange piece of furniture--long, linear, dry, hard, aesthetically challenged. Almost anti-aesthetic, really. So we all file into our pews, being careful not to be friendly with the people around us even though we have known them for years. You have to be dead serious when you sit in the pew. You have to be quiet and respectful, not daring and debonaire. Then there are the requisite hymnals, pew cards and little pencils. Kids find pews to be a particular cross they must bear as children and small people. The torture inflicted by pews is poignantly worse if you are under the age of fourteen. I have no idea what happens when you are fourteen, but teenagers seem to bear the burden of pews a little better, probably because they are already out their minds. So at my friends house you could sit on a pew and drink a beer, which I thought was very cool and made sitting on the pew a whole lot more fun. Napping in the prone position is a challenge, but I couldn't say why.

On Saturday morning

2011-12-03T09:47:00.001-08:00

Let's just face it: I hate to get up on Saturday morning. I mean, who does like to get up on Saturday morning? We all run our little sleep deprivation experiments during the week, using ourselves as test subjects, pushing until the candle is burnt on both ends and in the middle. Can this be a good thing? So I sleep a few more minutes on Saturday morning, make a little coffee, burn a little toast, read the paper a bit and sort out the week that I just put behind me, looking forward, of course, to the work that is already spreading out before me on Monday. But for now, it is Saturday morning: a time for relaxing, putting a pot of chili on the stove, sipping coffee, reading something that is not work related, writing something that is not work related. There is an appealing chaos to Saturday mornings: unstructured, anarchic, haphazard, indeterminate, fractured, unpredictable, surprising, opportunistic. Do I want the strawberry jam or not? I make the bed, head for the shower. Shave? Maybe not today. The family is out doing their thing and might be back at some point, but I just pour another cup of coffee, stir the chili. Saturday morning used to mean cartoons, but then cable television became a 24/7 cartoon, especially the cable news shows, so the specialness of Saturday morning cartoons was lost. I guess what I like most about Saturday morning is the way it breaks up routine. During the week we are all slaves to our routines--go to work, work, come home, get up the next day and start over. Saturday is a fiesta, a moveable feast of surprises, new things, naps, football games, parties, fun, exercise, and maybe you don't have to shave that day. Wash the car, paint a wall, build something, read a book, talk to a friend, bake something. The possibilities for Saturday morning are endless--too bad we don't have an endless number of Saturday mornings from which to choose.

On falling asleep

2011-11-28T20:46:00.001-08:00

Close your eyes, let your mind drift, the light is off, the house is quiet, you pull up the covers and roll over on your side, your muscles relax, weariness washes over you, you sigh deeply. The cares of the day float away. Your day is over. You try to ignore the fact that everything will start over again in a few short hours. Places to be, folks to talk to, plans to carry out, deadlines to meet, classes to teach, papers to read, exams to correct. For a moment, at this very moment between waking and sleeping, none of that matters. You have entered a liminal zone, a threshold that divides thinking from dreaming, you are neither awake nor asleep, but you have managed to shut down the machinery, to shut off the your over busy mind, you have stopped chasing after the next thing, at least for a moment. You don't have to wear the mask, you don't have to be responsible, you don't have to be in charge, you don't have to make any decisions, you don't have to take any criticism, you don't have to dish any out. This is the only moment in the day when for a split second you are carefree and peaceful. You feel secure--all doors and windows locked, alarm system armed, blankets up to your nose. The entire world could end and you don't care. Going to sleep is that rare simulacrum which everyone loves but no one discusses because you are simulating death. You are voluntarily sliding out of consciousness and into never-never-land, a dream world where nothing is real except what your own mind can manufacture. You totally trust yourself to wake up again at the edge of night, when the world starts coming to life again. No one calls it death because no one wants to die, but the only truth about all life and all lives is that they end the same. We tell little children that their favorite cat is just sleeping, we tell them that Aunt Hortensia is sleeping with the angels, just sleeping as if they will wake up at any moment. I take great pleasure in going to sleep each night, letting my cares drift off aimlessly into the inky blackness of sleep. Being tired is a burden, a burden that can only be shifted by sleep, sweet, sweet sleep. So it is getting close to the end of the day, and weariness is creeping in on all sides, the jobs and responsibilities of tomorrow are lining up to take over the day, and I haven't even put a finish to this one yet. Going to sleep and leaving my cares on the shore will be a pleasure. I'll be back in the morning to hoist them on to my shoulders, but for now, rest.

On gargoyles

2011-11-25T22:36:00.001-08:00

Are they really evil just because they are scary to look at? No one has ever explained to me why gargoyles have such a fierce reputation. By most standards they wouldn't appear to be either good pets or great neighbors, but Gothic architects decided to put them on the tops of their most recent structures to hide the water spouts that channeled water off of the their stone-roofed structures, which makes no sense at all. Of course, the architects and engineers want the water to fall away from their buildings: water is a stone building's number one enemy. Perhaps gargoyles got their fierce looks from bored stone cutters who were tired of doing the standard saints, disciples, Jesus, angels, eagles, bulls, and cherubim. Gargoyles seem rather regal, perched on the parapets and cornices of monstrous stone structures. Guardians, brooding over their stone kingdom, balancing ornately on cathedral crags and crevices, they watch over the hordes of tourists that come to visit these ancient structures. There are still a few loyal parishioners who make their way to mass in these cavernous constructions of stone and mortar, but it is the tourists coming to see the gargoyles who pay the bills that keep the stone masons coming back, year in and year out, to repair the slowly rotting magnificent creations of an era that has long since past. The modern pizza parlors that pass as churches today can boast neither the elegance nor the grace of their arches, buttresses or vaults. All of which were created in by-gone era of imagination, inspiration and vision when every piece of stone was handled by hand, without power tools, without power winches. The gargoyles are an iconoclastic touch, a small rebellion, an act of anarchy, a rejection of beauty, a revolution, doubt, fear, loathing, hatred, subversion. The gargoyle rejects symmetry, pushing for disorder, chaos, disbelief. If the cathedral is all about order in God’s world, then the gargoyle is defiant, rebellious, hideous, ugly, malevolent, insolent, bold, impudent, audacious and original. If beauty is all we know, than how can it exist at all? Beastly, inhuman, violent, revolting, ghastly, horrible, these creatures of night, these creatures of the heights, sit perched in the wind, watching quietly over the city, unblinking, but also unforgiving, representing the swift power of divine judgment, the cruelty of vengeance, the sheer beauty of the grotesque, the gross, the fantastic, the bizarre, the monstrous, the misshapen. We spend all of our time trying to describe beauty, and we lose ourselves in the mundane, the transitory, unsuspecting all the while that our notions about what is exactly beautiful are trite and spurious. The gargoyle sits silently, gathering lichen and moss, brooding quietly as the days, weeks, months and years pass, unchanging and ageless in its wisdom.

On elevators

2011-11-23T22:17:00.001-08:00

Weird contraptions, elevators. They are there to make our lives easier, but they often don't. If you live or work in a building with more than four floors, they are an absolute necessity, but that isn't my case. I will always walk up one flight of stairs, and even two flights, up to the third floor, isn't too bad. My lazy factor kicks in while I contemplate going up to the fourth floor. I know, the exercise will always do me good. No argument there. One of the elevators at work, however, has not been behaving itself this past week, and yesterday is was on the blink. Actually, no matter which buttons you pressed, it just beeped and stayed on the third floor, doors open, lights on, like a weird, bright mechanical mouth, a steel Venus Flytrap, waiting silently for its innocent prey to just walk in before closing and descending to the basement to devour and digest an Education major from Tulsa or a German major from San Antonio. More than one expectant student stood inside the elevator, nervously pushing buttons, trying to get the upright metal coffin to move. By late afternoon work crews had lowered the elevator to the first floor and locked it into place. Elevators, and that one in particular, is a strange place to meet people. Cram seven or eight strangers into a small, moveable space and you can tell which perfume is popular at the moment, who hasn't bathed yet today, that cinnamon gum is easily detectable and won't cover up whiskey breath, that hairspray never really goes out of style, that someone has on yesterday's clothes, that the nice young thing in the corner smokes, that aftershave should be put on sparingly. And what do you say? "Have a nice day!" "How's it going?" "Third floor or fourth?" "Second." "Bye now!" "Yeah, you too." "Didn't we meet at Rick's Café Américain?" "No, you must be confusing me with somebody else." "Bye." "Play it, Sam, if you could play it for her, you can play it for me. Play, "As Time Goes By." Yes, elevators are very strange places.

On Max Headroom (twenty minutes into the future)

2011-11-22T07:12:00.001-08:00

For those of you who don't know my friend Max, he is still alive and living somewhere on the world wide web, twenty minutes into the future. Max had his own television show back in the eighties when television was finally starting to open up about a plethora of controversial topic. Max was an over stylized, urban punk who terrorized television networks as he openly hijacked television signals across the planet, showing up at the most inopportune times. He was television that had been distilled, the superfluous burned away, and whatever was left was Max Headroom, for good or bad, a truth for all times, the glaring truth about television whether anyone cared to look or not. Perhaps predating the internet or perhaps foreshadowing the same, Max exists only electronically, an analogue signal, a stuttering staccato delivery that would eventually sell a major soft drink, participate in an Olympics and hijack (for real) an actual television broadcast. Max has never been caught mostly because he does not exist on the same quantum reality as the rest of us. His is approximately twenty minutes into the future. The cops will never catch him. He is pure satire, unapologetically so, taking no prisoners, sparing no sacred cows. But even though he is pure satire, he is almost more real than his object of ridicule since he is self-conscious of himself as a television signal. Max is a meta-position from which one might criticize the false simulacra that we take for reality on the tube. He is pure simulacrum in the sense that he was never real nor has he ever pretended to be real. He takes his job as pure icon of television completely seriously, which means he isn't serious at all. His mere existence defies and challenges the spurious nature of all television, a vast wasteland of truck and soap commercials that substitute for all other realities, both real and imagined. I think that he may be immortal all the while living twenty minutes into the future. I know if you lurk on YouTube, you might find him there. Max Headroom, unforgettable.

On Vietnam

2011-11-20T21:21:00.001-08:00

My younger readers will probably skip reading this note, unfamiliar as they are with Vietnam and the place it occupies in my psyche. You see, I was just a kid when the whole mess in southeast Asia got underway. I was born in the last year of the Eisenhower presidency, 1959, you know, Formica, the red scare, House Committee on Un-American activities, Korea, Richard Nixon, so when escalation began to occur in dribs and drabs under Kennedy I was but four years old. When things really started to escalate, Tonkin Gulf et. al., under Johnson, I was all of five and six, but I was old enough to understand what a war was and that it is awful, and that people were dying. The nightly news was awash in blood and the wounded and the dead. And Walter Cronkite would give, each night, the score, the dead, the wounded, and how many on each side. I will not bother your with names of the people involved or the places where the violence took place. They were seared into my soul between 1965 and 1975 when South Vietnam fell. I will not bother you with the frustrations of the never-ending peace talks where participants could barely agree on the shape of their conference table. This was played out against the political theory that if one country fell into Communist hands, then the surrounding countries would also be in danger--the Domino theory--an idea that is just a ludicrous today as it was then. My country, though, was ripped in half by those who believed in the Domino theory and the Red threat and those who did not. Perhaps it was the draft that scared so many, perhaps it was the violence that seemed only too horrific. Many good people on both sides of the war debate felt that they were doing the right thing, an ironic tragedy that cost America more than 50,000 dead and the almost uncountable wounded that returned home in one state of misery or another. Sometimes the psychological wounds are the worst because they don't ever really heal. The Red threat was never real, the internal civil war that ripped Vietnam in half was never something most Americans ever understood, and the war was lost when the first special forces went to Vietnam to act as advisors. Although a few gung-ho survivors would say I'm wrong, the rest of the survivors know that from the start, the mission was lost because we not only did not understand the enemy, we did not understand the people we were trying to protect. I grew up in mid-America a long way from southeast Asia, but part of my childhood was played out in the jungles and rice paddies in a hot and humid portion of globe half a world away. I do respect those who went and fought because they were doing what they thought was right--no one can blame them for that. I, myslef, cannot claim to be either a victim or a survivor, but I am a part of an entire generation whose childhood is marked by these horrors, and that Vietnam, Da Nang, Quang Tri, My Lai, and all the rest left a dark place on our souls and it has never healed.

On the subjunctive

2011-11-18T10:49:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I teach grammar, and sometimes I teach the subjunctive. As a twelve-year-old in first-year Spanish class in junior high, the subjunctive was a grammatical mystery, a mythical monster, an impossible obstacle course, a gauntlet. English grammar was still rather mysterious, but now I was learning another language and its obscure secrets? The teacher tried to help, but my limited pre-teen imagination wouldn't let me see beyond English until someone else, in a totally random conversation, said, and I quote, "Oh, Jack's giant uses the subjunctive to express his disdain for Jack's well-being: "Fee, fie,foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he alive or be he dead I'll grind his bones to make my bread!" That "be" is the subjunctive in English, or what's left of it anyway. This was news to me. I began to approach the subjunctive with renewed interest. This was a verb tense that dealt with indecision and doubt, with hypothetical situations, with what might be, with non-existence, with the complete unknown, with situations that are contrary to fact. In essence, a verb tense that was waiting for Godot, a verb tense whose problem may or may not be indecision, a verb tense to express desire, to beg for mercy, to make love. Yet the strange endings, the wild constructions, the impenetrable meaning often made the subjunctive an impassive wall of misunderstanding and silence. By the time I got to graduate school in Spain about ten years after my initial forays into Spanish, I was ready for a crash course in the subject, so I crashed and burned, a glorious failure, a grand disaster on the scale of Airport or Towering Inferno, a capsized Poseidon. Now I am a recovering subjunctive user who throws out an occasional “tenga” or “oyera.” I am still jealous of native speakers who can use the subjunctive with reckless abandon, but I’ve made my peace with it, sometimes use it myself. Está claro que algún día de estos lo hare bien.

On almost nothing at all

2011-11-15T21:32:00.001-08:00

There are times when a body just does not feel like writing. Your head hurts, the creative juices are not there, nothing sounds good. The second sentence sounds just as trite (or worse) than the first. Maybe I should write about Marilyn. Where does inspiration go? There are times just before I fall asleep, or I'm brushing my teeth, and I have ten great ideas for notes. But I'm busy and the ideas quickly fade away like a puff of smoke in the wind. Looking at a blank screen is even worse. The minutes tick by and you look for inspiration in some old photos--nothing. A favorite book of poetry only serves to depress you even more. Then you wonder why people watch monster movies which were obviously written while someone was dealing with a serious case of writer's block. Really? Zombies? You couldn't do better than that? Smoke. Maybe I'll write about some loser smoking a cigarette out in the rain this morning. Maybe not. I could write about the three drops of rain that fell today, but then again, what's particularly interesting about a fizzled rainstorm. Even Mother Nature fails. Even the thunder was wimpy. In short succession, I also thought about umbrellas, the color purple, puddles, the smell of steak cooking, chocolate, not having chocolate, a rather full garbage can in my office, letters of recommendation, the Ides of November, a large dog, weird plastic rain boots, humus (during lunch), olives, and correcting papers. None of any of that inspired anything. Perhaps if the large dog were wearing the weird plastic rain boots while he smoked a cigarette in the rain while his owner, dressed in purple and holding an umbrella, talked incessantly on her cell phone about the elective surgery she is having then this might be moderately interesting. No, it's not. So the ideas keep coming, but it all seems superficial, like you've been over this ground before and you feel frustrated that nothing excites you. Writing seems so phony, so forced, so trite, so you better give it up or you might write a note about nothing at all. You might find that you bore even yourself. Perhaps it is the Ides of November which are so uninspiring, falling squarely between Halloween and Thanksgiving, a couple of truly American holidays which inspire me to write a lot. Okay, so, for tonight, I write nothing.

On rivers

2011-11-13T20:35:00.001-08:00

Are our lives like rivers? Small, large, dry, flooding, frozen, crystalline, muddy, dangerous, refreshing, transportation, lazy, rushing, calming, home, polluted, serpentine. I've lived in river towns my whole life. Probably a tribute to human nature, craving a fresh water source, drinking water is not a problem, but I think there must be more to it than that. Do the blind and unseeing waters of the river remind us of our very beginnings, afloat in water, weightless, warm, comforting, held in suspension, neither touching the air nor the earth, literally suspended between heaven and earth? Rivers are old, and they carve out their respective serpentine routes out of the dry earth, first curving one direction and then the next. Seldom is it a straight line and the curves chaotic, sharp, surprising, geometric. All curves are dangerous. Rivers are a plethora a pitfalls and dangers, swirling currents, deep pools, sandbars, sunken objects, trees, boulders, shallow rocks. Yet, in spite of the danger, the danger of drowning, we sit on the bank and watch the current carry water out to the sea. All rivers eventually end in the sea, but does that make the sea, death? You can fish on the river, ride a boat, float on an inner tube, drink a beverage, get a tan. The river is silent and moving. In the summer it gets lazy and shallow; in the winter it may ice over; in the spring it can flood; in the fall it carries the flotsam and jetsam of year to some secret resting place where the bones pile up and things rot and turn back into the mud from which they came. The river, unlike the sea, does give up its secrets. A place of transcendent beauty, it is neither good nor evil; it is only what others make of it. For travelers, it is a barrier to be bridged. The river cannot escape its liminal state as both threshold and barrier between the outside and inside, between the city and the country, between here and there. So we build bridges, transitory places that are neither here nor there, but a place in between. Perhaps our lives are like rivers, sometimes we walk across a bridge, sometimes we float by, perhaps we even build a bridge or two along the way. For now, just sitting here watching the fog rise on a late fall morning is enough.

On castles

2011-11-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

If I could afford one, I'd have one, but the upkeep on 21,000 square feet of stone and brick is expensive. First, you need a hilltop where no one has already built their castle. One could always attack and take the other guy's castle by force, but what if he has a dragon? Tactically, that might be a mistake. Or if the other guy has good knights? Weren't counting on that, were you? One would have to assume that his torture chamber is primitive, which doesn't bode well either way. Plumbing and electricity are better than chamber pots and burning torches, so sometimes castles will be inconvenient and uncomfortable. Does Target sell tapestries? Because that would lower costs. One the other hand, you have great secret passages, a wonderfully damp and dark dungeon, a nice-sized veranda, stinky moat and rickety drawbridge, and a very lonely tower keep. Dragons would be extra. I'm wondering how difficult it would be to install wi-fi. You could have as many fireplaces as you wanted. Large parties would be easy. Archers would be a nice accessory, but costly. I wouldn't mind if my castle had a labyrinth or a room with lots of mirrors. I would insist on a library just off the master bedroom. The chapel would necessarily be haunted. Having ramparts that one could stalk around on and mope would be spectacular, especially if the whole place had a rather ruined atmosphere to it--some broken walls, a bat or two, skeletal cats. Having a real castle would mean I could lower the gate each night before bedtime, keeping out the riffraff and other undesirables. On lonely nights of the full-moon, one might hear the solitary barking of a lonely dog, the tenuous light of the moon glinting off the wet stones of the courtyard. I imagine that during the winter, the lack of central heat would be a drawback, but in summer the six foot thick walls would be a plus. Would having a television and phone be horribly anachronistic? Do many municipalities zone for castles? I'm going to talk with some wizard friends about this idea.

On Uqbar

2011-11-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

I've checked maps, atlases, encyclopedias and a soothsayer or two and I can't find Uqbar. My only reference to Uqbar is a text message from a friend in California while I was Green Bay, but my friend wasn't at all sure of the spelling--Ookbarh? The internet makes some crazy reference to a story by Borges, which I'm sure is apocryphal. Now my phone is on the blink and I can't access the original text message which I fear is lost. I've got an old edition of the Encyclopedia Amercaine (19th edition, 1929, Paris and New York) but it's missing one volume. You guessed it: "Tri-Uri". I found an old travel narrative entitled, "Mirrors and Labyrinths, Lost in Uqbar" but the online seller says he can't find the book. The author is listed as a certain John Walker DeQuincey, the 29th Earl of Sandwich, but the only other thing he ever wrote was a shipwreck narrative entitled, "A Year in Hell: the Tragic Account of the Stellae Maris." DeQuincey lived between 1789 and 1864, dying in an overturned horse cart fiasco in Nantucket. I've been told by a retired professor of Geography that Uqbar was a mythical region of northern Iraq that existed for only a moment during the Peloponnesian War when Sparta used Uqbar to hide its army to launch a secret counter-attack which eventually failed. While in Buenos Aires, I recently found an anonymous atlas published in 1649 (Paris) that mentions Uqbar and the Actbarian people, a nomadic tribe of Himalayan Bedouins that no one has seen in centuries. An anthropologist I know at Yale by the name of Murdock felt that the Ookbarians (?) were a mythical tribe of desert nomads, making reference to a travel pamphlet published in Italian by the Venetian daredevil Marco Caruso Swenson, who accidentally drowned in a gondola accident fleeing his lover's home in 1397. As recently as 2009 a doctoral dissertation on hypothetical corollaries in chaos theory mentioned Uqbar and the complex geometry of window lattice construction found in Prague and attributed to Uqbarian architects. The writer of the thesis, Julio Steinberg, recently accepted a teaching job in Salzburg and could not be reached for clarifications. I am still looking for Uqbar.

On finishing

2011-11-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

I find it fascinating how some people finish and others don't. No, I don't mean the cheeseburger they were eating, but that is as good a metaphor as any other: why buy a cheeseburger if you are only going to eat half? Not that I am a terribly good finisher, but I don't drop out in the middle either. They don't give advanced degrees to folks who quit in the middle. I once threw up on my coaches shoes after finishing my first three mile race. I felt wretched, but he just smiled and said, "Good job. I knew you'd finish." Finishing is not easy especially when you are the slowest guy on the team.. Starting projects, races, degrees, papers, jobs, meals, conversations, friendships, or a new business is relatively easy, but seeing it through to the end is hard. I have not always finished everything, but today, after packing away the last left over book, we finished this year's book sale--a fundraiser in which I participate each year. I know there are probably a million little pieces that need to be picked up, but the bulk of the work is over for this year. The books are off to a new retail life in Indianapolis, the fairgrounds are being swept and cleaned, and new books are piling up for next year's sale, but the 2011 sale is finished. The book sale is a little like painting the Golden Gate Bridge--you never really finish. In a couple of days the finance folks will have a number that we can hang our hat on, but I think we did okay. We finished. The lifting and toting, the cleaning and arranging, the planning and the execution are all over. Now all I have left is an aching body and a tired soul, but that the beauty of finishing, it gives one a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment that you don't get from quitting. I've seen people falter. It happens. That's a part of the human equation. Yet sometimes you have to reach down, deep into your soul and push yourself through that final quarter mile, up that one last hill and cross the finish line even when nothing is at stake but your dignity. Throwing up is secondary. I have worked with some extraordinary people over the past week, and they have finished everything—even the clean up.

On talking

2011-11-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

We talked the other day. I was going one direction, you the other. We both stopped, weary to the core with the constant chasing and sat down. I sipped on some coffee while you played with your phone. You put your phone down in disgust, rested your head on your hand and sighed. You wanted to talk about poetry and other disasters. I wanted to complain about the weather. "We don't talk enough. I never know what you are up to." "I'm trying to write that one thing about that book I read last summer." "Really? I thought you gave up on that." Our conversation wandered about for awhile, touching on a variety of subjects before we started talking about talking. Our digital world has gotten out of hand. It has killed talking. When someone wants to talk to you, you automatically think they want something, something else, that is, other than conversation. We continued to talk, and talked a great deal about how talking is the healthy interaction between two minds that are curious about each other. Talking is about sharing, I suggested, but not about sharing everything. Yet a good conversation can be enervating, helpful, healthy. We didn't try to solve the world's problems, we didn't share any recipes for rhubarb pie, we didn't discuss the Vikings or their terrible season, we didn't even discuss the weather (although I wanted to say a couple of things about that topic). You wanted to talk about a new mystery you were reading, I wanted to talk about tator-tot hotdish. A woman went by dressed as a witch. You saw her, but didn't blink. You talked about your sister, a dead cat, and why squirrels make bad pets. After awhile, we both had to go--to run to our next thing. So until the next time we talk, I'll miss you, your stream-of-conscience connections, and your slightly disconnected way of juxtaposing non-sequiturs--sowing machines and umbrellas and dead squirrels, for example. I also know that the conversation won't end there, and that is perhaps the most important part of talking--it never ends.

On clogs

2011-11-02T14:38:00.001-07:00

If there is one word no one wants to hear, it is "clog." Nobody is talking footwear here. After a long day at the office, who wants to find out their sink or toilet or bathtub or shower is clogged? I can remember more than one totally panicky situation where a clogged toilet made everyone run for safety. First, you try to avoid getting wet. Second, you utter a few expletives of the figurative variety, questioning the parentage of the person who designed the clogged system in the first place. Third, you call the plumbers because you know that no matter how much weird chemical unclogger you throw down there, it's not going to unclog it. No, somebody is going to have to take it apart, stick weird snaky tools down there, make a big mess, grunt and groan and bend over a lot before it gets unclogged. If you are moderately lucky, the bill will come in under $500 dollars. Those guys won't even come to your house for less than $75 and they haven't even done anything yet. So the flotsam and jetsam is floating everywhere, there's a weird odor of waste hanging in the air, and your water is still turned off because nothing is going down the drain. You have to use the neighbor's bathroom. Oh, the humility of it all! And clogs are mysterious because you would swear that you did not use the toilet as a trash can. What could be down there causing all this havoc? A towel? An alligator? a Smurf? A very large rat? By the way, has anyone seen my slippers? Clogs are evil, sinister, inconvenient, and always strike when you least expect it: Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. We just built this house, how can the sink be clogged? Stick your hand down there and see if you can feel anything. Pour some more harsh chemicals in there. It doesn't smell bad enough yet. And the gray water continues to back up and things are floating in it. No thanks, I think I'll call a plumber.

On fearful symmetry

2011-10-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

Tyger, Tyger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry? --Blake

People who study human beauty tell us that the highest quality in human good looks is symmetry--that both sides of the face look the same. Though I am sure they can back up their claim, I really wonder if that is all there is to it. Symmetry may not be all it's cracked up to be. Symmetry is not particularly pleasing, for example, in art. The Mona Lisa is anything but symmetrical. Cars are only symmetrical in one direction. Symmetry has nothing to do with playing baseball although the infield is symmetric, the outfield is not most of the time. Apples are not symmetric. Some buildings are, but most are not. A fork sports a certain symmetry, as do circles, squares and other abstract geometrical forms. Words on a page, unless they are palindromes, are not symmetric. Palindromes are weird: Able was I ere I saw Elba (Joyce). My ears are not symmetric, but then again, why should they be. Most designers of almost anything flee from symmetrical designs, though symmetry is good for most chairs and tables. Clouds are not symmetric, nor are tigers or this sentence. Bookcases will often work better if symmetry is involved in some way. When symmetry occurs, it seems to be more of an accident than a design. Symmetry has nothing to do with rain, snow or fog. Spam enjoys symmetry when it comes out of the can--that's how you know it's been processed a bit. The dishes you make with Spam are not symmetrical at all, but they are mighty tasty. Poetry defies symmetry, hates it, even. Yet certain faces do enjoy a fearful symmetry, and we pay those faces a lot of money so they can sell our cars and other junk that we don't need. Do we need to fear symmetry? Perhaps, but it would be worse to pin any of our hopes on it. Just being human defies symmetry, but it makes us unique because, after all, isn't that the definition of asymmetry--a unique human experience?

On solitude

2011-10-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Do we or don't we like a little solitude in our lives? A great question, but I think that the gregarious nature of human beings belies a strong sense of wanting to be with other people most of time. Yes, some poets, a few wise men, an anarchist or two, maybe even a few philosophers have sought the untraveled and rare path of solitude. We treat hermits and anchorites as if they were monsters, and those that live alone know only too well the joys of prepared foods for dinner each night, the dilemma of opening a bottle of wine, and going to bed and getting up alone every single day. Single people understand the bite of their marginalized existence every time they must attend a function, public or private--do they look for a date or not? Yet even those who are part of large social groups, families, clubs, jobs, churches, neighborhoods, will still often find the bitterness and sting of solitude, even when they are with other people. Solitude is often more a state of mind, of internal exile than it is a question of numbers. Even popular people may often feel misunderstood, lonely, isolated, unloved, unprotected, excoriated, underappreciated or strange. We come into this life alone, and we go out the same way, alone. Solitude is an internal condition, a place where the mind goes to listen to itself, a place where other voices may be heard. Yet, there are those who pursue solitude, and it is in that solitude where they find peace, a peace that is denied them in the mundane world of everyday existence. Shouting, arguing, news, conflict, money, bright lights, fame, competition, anger, war, love, a fancy house, fine china, a golden scepter, murmuring tongues. Solitude strips away all of that and leaves the truth for all time. Many flee the truth of their identity, all wound up in consumer obsessions and bling. Solitude is always, then, a two-edged sword, capable of granting peace or of revealing truth. What is troubling about either outcome is our own inability to understand either our needs or our desires, both of which are different, but it takes a wise eye to understand the difference.

On the strange case of Alonso Quixano

2011-10-19T16:29:00.001-07:00

Ironically, the hidalgo is more “Caballero del Triste Figura,” defeated and failed, than he ever was “Don Quixote” heroic righter of wrongs and dashing lady’s man. The name “Don Quixote” is a part of a heroic narrative constructed by the middle-aged hidalgo to justify to himself and others who he is. In fact, unless one stops referring to him as “Don Quixote” and starts calling him Alonso Quixano, the illusion created by the narrative never stops functioning. If he is Don Quixote than the possibility of being a knight is always viable. It is the reader who naively allows Cervantes to construct the knight errant at the beginning of the first part by not questioning the naming game played by the narrator. It is also true that it is the reader who sadly deconstructs the old hidalgo at the end of the second part when the naming game is no longer any fun—the comic buffoon of the first part of the novel has been replaced by a dying tragic figure. Since the fun of watching Don Quixote being thrown from Rocinante or Sancho being tossed in a blanket is over, readers no longer need to continue the literary charade. The joke is over. They lose their willingness to participate in the game, dropping their suspension of disbelief and returning Don Quijote to a less literary and more mundane existence as an ordinary man—Alonso Quixano. In the closing moments of the novel when the protagonist finally declares his sanity, he recovers his original name and epithet, linking the recovery of his name, Alonso Quixano, the Good, with his recently recovered sanity.

On monsters

2011-10-18T22:26:00.001-07:00

Probably since before time was invented, our poets and other scandalous writers have been looking for monsters, and they find them everywhere. I'm not talking about the monster under your bed (you know, the one with the teeth), or the one in your closet that sighs a lot. No, I'm talking about crazy old werewolves, blood-sucking vampires, and incredible shrinking women. Or a blob that rolls and rolls until it rolls over you, crushing and digesting you to increase its mass. I'm talking about a faceless, formless, sneaky, hairy, malevolent creature that wants to eat you. Why this monster hates you, in particular, is unknown, and frankly, given who you are, not very logical or explainable, but there it is. It swims easily in deep parts of your lake, mysteriously reaching out to touch your bare foot as you tread water. It moves creakily, wrapped in thousand-year-old bandages, blindly following your every move as you flee, and fall, and twist your ankle, allowing it to slowly, but surely, catch up to you. It's hiding in your basement with the lights out (No! The lights are out, broken.) and you must slowly descend the stairs to check out a strange noise you hear coming from the shadows. It's up in the attic, and you can hear the footsteps, but you are alone in the house. It's in an empty church where you have stop and ask for directions because you've never been in this party of the country before. It's trapped with you on a lonely space freighter that is still weeks from the outer rim of your solar system and it's coming for you because you are food. Soylent Green is people. Well, you sort of suspected that anyway. They come out at night because the light burns them up. They come out at the full moon because it drives them even more insane. No, I'm not talking about Wall Street executives, or maybe I am. It's an amalgam of parts, put together and borrowed from a half dozen corpses, all in varying states of decomposition. And they are all coming for you because you represent something normal that they must destroy. The monsters are not normal--hideous, deformed, dead, brutal, hairy, carnivorous, undead, zombies, werewolves, creatures, vampires, abominable snowmen, yeti, monsters, and they all live in your practically normal everyday mind. Who'd 'a thunk it? Why just looking at you, you seem perfectly normal.

On hand washing

2011-10-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

After a bit of hard work on Saturday, moving boxes, packing books, taking out the trash, my hands were dirty, dark gray in fact. The dirt was both anonymous and ubiquitous, unknown and democratic, is was everywhere and for everyone. No political, religious or social distinction were evident. The dirt was spread around evenly to all. I didn't feel like getting in my car and spreading it around, so I made my way to the men's lavatory. "Lavatory" is a strange Latinate that means "an area where you wash." I went to wash. Much to my delight I found that the soap containers contained soap and that the water coming out of the tap was hot. I took off my watch, placed it on the side of the sink, and soaped up. I was generous with both the soap and the hot water because I had no idea what was making up the dirt on my hands. In the first go-around, the soap turned black and gray, and as I rinsed it into the sink, the sink went black as well. I had to rinse the sink before starting over again. By the time I had scrubbed again (all the way up to my elbows), my hands were starting to look like my hands again. The only thing that failed was the hand-dryer, which is, of course, designed to fail, so I just wiped my hands on my pants the way everyone else does. A recent study in England showed that one in six people were using a cell phone with fecal matter on it. That means that people are not washing their hands as much as they say they do. Soap and water are a great invention. One might be surprised at how easy it is to get dirty hands, but one might also be surprised at how easy it is to clean them. A man sneezes and then puts his moist hand on the handle of the grocery cart he is pushing. Door knobs, cell phones, key boards, light switches and coffee cups. Our immune systems are really quite good at keeping the little monsters out, but let's lend it a hand, so to speak, and use liberally that soap and water, and give yourself a fighting chance.

On boxes

2011-10-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today I spent two hours breaking down boxes that had piled up in our warehouse area. People donate books to the Friends of the Library for our Booksale in every wild box that has been repurposed to hold books. The best boxes (i.e., hardest to break down and flatten) are liquor boxes, and it seems like the people in this town like bourbon, or at least that is what they buy by the case. We get boxes for diapers, printers, bananas, and canned vegetables. Going through these repurposed boxes is an anthropological study of both what we consume and what we through away. Generally, boxes are not a standard size, so after they are broken down, the flat space they occupy is highly irregular. Repurposed boxes are also wounded and often have been patched together so they might fight another battle, or three. Many have been written on: "Books from under the television," "Grandma's Romance novels," "Wrecked in the flood." So, with the help of another booksale volunteer (Hats off to Sha Towers), we flattened over a hundred boxes that were going to recycling. The cardboard in most boxes is highly recyclable, so there's no sense in throwing it away. One box smelled of pee, so I threw that one in a dumpster. The problem with repurposed cardboard boxes is that they smell. The cellulose in boxes absorbs moisture, and once that happens, they start to break down and smell. Lots of boxes also attracts miniature livestock, which is a very bad idea in central Texas where the critters might be carrying plague. There are lots of good reasons to not accumulate boxes that you are neither using nor wanting. I applaud the efforts of my fellow citizens in their efforts to repurpose the box that their new toaster came in, but I must send the box along so that it might be made into other boxes, greeting cards, paper towels, and the paper coffee cups at the local Starjacks. We use bigger boxes to boxes the boxes that have been broken down and going to recycling. Let's face it, it's a recycle world or die.

On Don Quixote's name

2011-10-12T08:50:00.001-07:00

Some people think his first name is Don, last name Quixote. In reality, "don" is a formal salutation used to designate a Spanish "hidalgo," which is a low-level noble title, fairly common in Spain's medieval period and later. Today it's general use my be roughly equivalent to "Sir." So his first name is not Don. "Quijote" is not a first name either and does not belong to any group of first names such as Pedro, Pablo, Jaime, Ignacio or José. The confusion surrounding the protagonist’s real name seems intentional and artful, and it continues to grow more confused by the possibility, but uncertainty, of several different, but similar sounding variants of the name given initially: Quijada, Quesada, or Quejana. These names are all comically similar to Quijote and belie the parodic bent of the text, comically connoting odd and whimsical objects: “quijada,” the lower jaw, or “quesada,” a cheese cake, rendering names that would have the English equivalents of Sir Jaw-bone and Sir Cheesecake. Ducking behind a veil of pseudo-scholarship, the not so reliable narrator leaves the reader to ponder these possible names without specifying any of them as correct and finally dismisses the problem as if it were of no importance at all. The narrator gives the impression that there really is some debate over the man’s real name, covering up the real name of the protagonist until much later and diverting the reader’s attention away from the problem of the name until the middle-aged Manchegan has declared himself to be Don Quixote de la Mancha. The illusion created by this narrative slight-of-hand is the walking, talking, breathing knight, don Quixote de la Mancha. The tag, "de la Mancha" only adds to the comic and parodic game-playing by indicating not a noble or breathtaking landscape, but a plain, flat, and dusty farming area of central Spain, marked by its innumerable vineyards and olive orchards. The name is certainly meant to be a parody of other names such as Amadís de Gaula or Arthur or Tristan or Lancelot or even the Green Knight. By naming himself and creating a new narrative to go with the name, "don Quijote de la Mancha," the unnamed Manchegan hidalgo transgresses social boundaries and reinvents himself as a thirteenth-century knight errant—exactly what he is not.

On pink

2011-10-09T20:31:00.001-07:00

It has been a fascinating few days with pink appearing almost everywhere--pink socks, pink cars, pink t-shirts, pink towels, pink gloves, pink shoes. All of this to remind us of what an ugly disease breast cancer really is, how far we have to go in solving its murderous mysteries, and how this treacherous disease affects so many. Rare is the person who does not know a victim or a survivor or this ruthless and cunning adversary. Yet pink, except for a few spring frocks and dresses, is not a color most of use on any kind of normal basis. Perhaps this is why it is such an excellent symbol for the fight against this hideous interloper. An entire dance team wears pink t-shirts--nothing too odd about that, but the football team they are cheering for is wearing dainty pink socks. A three hundred pound lineman foregoes his normal white socks to that he can help us all remember why this mystery needs solving. Nobody wears pink pants. My favorite cartoon character is a pink feline. A holiday which I both dislike and distrust is associated with the color pink--Valentine's Day. Some tulips and some roses are pink. I never understood the pink Power Ranger, or Power Rangers in general. Pink is not a verb, but perhaps it should be? Is the color pink closer to red or is it closer to gray in your mind? If someone gave you a pink dress shirt would wear it? One time a red t-shirt got mixed into my whites, including my underwear, and it all came out pink. I have no idea who Pink Floyd was or is other than a really cool band that played anti-social music back in the late seventies and early eighties. I had (have) their albums. I have no pink stuffed animals. There are no pink elephants at my house. Why is getting fired referred to as getting a pink slip? A national line of cosmetics uses a pink Cadillac as one of its company's symbols. Anyway, there is no question that pink is an odd color, or is it a color at all?

On riding the underground

2011-10-06T19:38:00.001-07:00

I've been riding the underground for over thirty years. Whether that underground was in New York or Paris or London or Madrid, it didn't matter--all underground trains go the same place: home. At first, I was timid, a little frightened of the big, noisy trains, afraid I would get on it and never find my way home, but I was so wrong. Wherever I might be, all I needed was a "boca" or metro entrance, and I was on my way home. The underground is wonderful because everyone else is doing exactly the same thing: going home. Some might have to make intermediary stops in order to work or shop or kiss or whatever, but the end result of an underground ride was always the same: drop you off near your home. I would ride for hours, for miles, switching trains, switching lines. The great part about letting someone else drive is that no matter how tired you are, you still make it home. Close your eyes and let the stations go by. The train is a big metal cocoon that holds you until you make to your station: Ruben Dario, Bilbao, Gran Vía, Arguelles, Batán. The list is endless. The people make their own entertainment. Quirky, serious, non-descript, a mother with kids, a businessman in a suit, a Goth (or two), school children in uniform, housewives going somewhere, tourists, workers of all stripes, pick-pockets, itinerant musicians (some are really bad), a sleeping drunk, a señora de rancio abolengo. We are doing the same thing: traveling endlessly in the underground, on a secret mission, going to the store, coming home from school, going to meet a lover. The underground shields us from the eyes of the world. We move in darkness, lit only by the deathly fluorescents that illuminate this underworld. We are all anonymous to each other. If we recognize anyone, we don't show it. A girl tugs at her too short skirt, a boy eats a sandwich, I read a book, the college kid next to me studies for an exam. We are each other's company and yet we are all alone. Riding on the underground.

On flying

2011-10-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

I don't have a fear of flying but flying can be rather annoying. For example, I had a 6:40 a.m. flight today for which I had to get up at about 4:30. Not nice, not fun. Checking bags in and getting boarding passes. Not too difficult, but tedious and weird. Let's not even talk about security. Then you drink bad coffee and eat over-priced food--none of which is particularly good for either your stomach or your wallet or your waist line. And then there's the waiting. You wait in lines everywhere. You wait in the plane, you wait to get on and you wait to get off. The flying is almost accidental after you have been through all of the calamities that might befall the unsuspecting traveler. Trouble is after almost a million miles, I suspect everyone and everything. The one huge benefit of flying is covering great distances in no time at all, so I will continue to fly in spite of the fact that I know it will be a calamity-laden adventure from the outset. And I haven't mentioned delays, cancelations, odd travelers, broken planes, non-functioning air-conditioning or weird food. If you ride in coach, they nickel and dime you to death for even a snack, and forget about food because you won't get any. And a can of beer costs seven dollars! Yet today, with no delays, I covered about 1,500 miles in a little less than four hours of actual flying, so the outcome was great. But I had to get up early, sit in gates waiting for hours to leave, and had to tolerate large airport din until I was almost mad. Yet, once you get up to 35,000 feet, the view is magnificent, you thank your lucky stars you are not driving this trip on I-35, and you can anticipate getting home at a decent hour, all of which was true today. So I tried to make the best of it by treating myself to a new book, catching a few catnaps at K-4 in Chicago, and sleeping through the landing in Dallas. It wasn't all horrible, but I just wish there was some way of making the entire system run just a little more efficiently. You know?

On silence

2011-09-26T21:57:00.001-07:00

Silence is both hard to describe and hard to imagine in that silence is the lack of sound. Silence has no sound, and Simon and Garfunkel both knew it. Silence is the sound of fog that hangs over the valley on a cold spring morning, the sun arcing over the top whiting out the details of the landscape. Silence is the sound of an empty subway tunnel at 1 a.m. Silence is me standing on a country road miles from town, no breeze is blowing, no cars are coming. Silence is a walk in the park while it snows, enclosing you in the silent thunder of the falling flakes. Silence is a sleeping dog who had been chasing bunnies all afternoon. Silence is the prayer we say for a friend dying of cancer. Silence is a crystal bowl filled with water. Silence is knowing the other person so well that you don't even need to talk to enjoy each other's company. Silence is a phone that does not ring. Silence is the advice we should offer to others about their love lives. Silence is watching Harold Lloyd cling to the face of clock, high up on the side of a building. Silence is reading another story about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Silence is the sound that red wine makes in your glass when you smile at me. Silence is the sound of my pen while it is still in my pocket. Silence is the sound of a harpist thinking about something else. Silence is the sound of mourners at a young person's grave. Silence is the moment between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder. Silence is a well-fed, clean, tired baby that has surrendered their soul temporarily to the sand man and sleeps. Silence has nothing to do with traffic, large groups of students, video games, bars, circuses, gladiators, American football, malls, vacuum cleaners, fast food joints, airports or garbage trucks. My cactus is all about silence. The clean dishes in the drainer are about silence, as are geckos, roses, stopped watches. Silence is also the sound of inspiration, imagination and creativity. Silence is wise, uncritical, understanding, not jealous or mean. For our own good, we could all use a nice, healthy dose of silence from time to time.

On my muse

2011-09-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

She said it was time to get back to work, that I had taken a couple of months off, that it was time to get the creative juices flowing again. I asked if she was more interested in comedy than in tragedy, she responded by saying, "Love, fool, just love." She puffed her cigarette ("Don't start with me! I'm not even real, so leave me to my vices. I have to work with you. Isn't that punishment enough?") and the room smells of stale beer and smoke. I laughed a little and dumped some ice into a fresh glass. "Don't ask for more. That's all there is. Darkness searching in the empty reaches of your soul." She sipped a drink and used her tongue to play with the ice. I said, "You sound like a teenager suffering from isolation and existential angst in about equal parts." "What's wrong with existential angst," she said. "Blue mud leaves tracks without history and empty clouds." "Nonsense," I say. "So you want this to make sense?" she asks. Now she stirs her drink with an idle finger, the ice melts and little beads of sweat form on the glass. I wonder how I was ever inspired to write anything because now I'm fighting with my muse. She turns away silently, crossing her legs and staring out into the darkness of the night. A wind blows through the garden, combed by the silent fig tree, witness to too many dramas, too many tragedies. Stars spin overhead and I put fresh black ink in my pen. Fire, roses, bridges, bubbles, salamanders, whiskey, mirrors, keys, umbrellas, blood, doors, thorns, beds, woods, boats, pineapples, zebras, squirrels, pans, clocks and masks. To not make it mean anything, to avoid the cliché, to do something original, to fight mediocrity, to fight the status quo, to begin again, to be a believer. I could write something like this: I was the alternative she never considered. "No, no, you don't get it at all. You're just being bitter and maudlin. Nobody wants to hear that." She has turned back to me. "How about, let us consider the rose and the lily..."

On eros and thanatos

2011-09-17T21:36:00.001-07:00

After fifty plus years of interaction with human communities, I would say that these are the two great concerns of all human beings. The two ideas are inherently intertwined. We understand our own mortality, our finite existence, so we spend huge amounts of time and energy making sure our genes are passed down to the next generation. We are hard-wired for eros so that thanatos will not be the end of the species. Those who were never interested in eros have long since been eliminated from the gene pool. I am often amused by those who would ignore the flesh, punish themselves, because they are interested in eros and they feel ashamed of themselves because of it. Making offenders wear a scarlet “A” is both unjust and undeserved. We need to triumph over the flesh, ignore it, defeat it, they say. For instance, teaching teenagers to abstain is an unsuccessful strategy for preventing teenage pregnancy. The teenagers are hard-wired to procreate, so asking them to just say “no” is not only ridiculous, it’s unrealistic. Teaching them about birth control might be a better strategy. So eros and thanatos are two old friends, but they would be weird neighbors. Trying to deny the power of either only lends itself to hypocrisy, disillusionment, broken promises, repressed libidos, unhappy and cranky people, unwanted and unplanned children, and twisted psychological profiles. Tell me what your obsessions are and I can probably tell you what your oppressions are. Botox, plastic surgery, human growth hormones, steroids, diet supplements and hair implants are all an attempt at recovering eros and defying thanatos. The problem, however, is quite simple: once we pass on our genes and raise our children to adulthood, we become, essentially, superfluous. We stay young and strong just long enough to make sure the next generation is ready to take on the burden of raising the next generation. Aging and the loss of certain functions is the gateway to thanatos. Eros ceases to be our focus, and thanatos is our next step. We need to go in the end so that we make room for the next group, and the cycle repeats itself. Eros and Thanatos, they would be great names for a pair of twin Siamese cats.

On eating spicy foods

2011-09-16T10:54:00.001-07:00

I crave spicy food. Perhaps it is because I grew up in Minnesota where most of the food is not spicy. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, pork chops, corn, peas and lutefisk are all very nutritional but not at all spicy. I didn't see my first jalapeño until I was sixteen. Yet, as a child I was tantalized by onions, garlic, and horseradish. These were strong flavors that adults ate when they were doing their own thing, snacking, packing their lunch, eating alone. People who sought out these strong foods were iconoclastic, anarchic, individuals who didn´t much care what other people thought about what they ate. They had no interest in conforming to the general eating habits of a broader public or society. They loved stinky cheese, drank peaty brown liquids, and snacked on pickled herring and smoked trout. They ate spicy garlic pickles with cayenne peppers floating in the jar. I developed a secret desire to eat foods that were hot, spicy, that burned my tongue, that made me sweat. I eat jalapeños straight out of the jar because I like the taste and the burning sensation they cause. I like my picante sauce hot and bothersome. One of my favorite snacks in Spain is roasted "Pimientos de Padrón", some bite, others don't. As you make your way through your plate of roasted green chilies, most are not spicy, but there is always a killer or two in there. I love to make shrimp sautéed in garlic and red chilis. I love jalapeños on almost everything including ice cream. My special chocolate fudge is picante and has both cayenne and habaneros in it. Spicy hot tomato juice is a total taste sensation that totally out-classes regular tomato juice. I keep a bottle of hot sauce at hand at all times to perk up blander tasting food. Can one get too much? Yes, and I have met my match on a couple of occasions, but even those experiences won't deter me seeking out more hot, spicy foods. Yes, I understand all of that scientific stuff about endorphins and serotonin and other strange brain chemicals, but is that all we are, chemistry? I would suggest that the world is divided into two groups, those who seek heat in their foods, and those who will sit idly by and help themselves to another helping of mashed potatoes.

On drinking decaf coffee

2011-09-13T19:40:00.001-07:00

If I didn't know that caffeine was a type-4 mind-altering psychotropic drug that changes the way the mind works, I'd probably still be drinking regular coffee. For most people, and I do mean most people, caffeine is a pleasant stimulant that helps them perk up, get a lot of work done, and stay awake at the same time. For me, however, caffeine has the weird side-effect of giving me the shakes. Since I don't like that feeling, I stopped drinking caffeinated coffee about three years ago. I drink decaf because it is a viable simulacrum for the real deal. There is a tiny bit of caffeine in decaf, but the effect it has on me is negligible. I love the taste of coffee, and if I order a double decaf espresso, put a little milk and a little sugar in it, I almost have a Spanish "café con leche," one of my favorite morning drinks. I know that this is an "esfuerzo inútil" but I don't care. It's almost coffee, and that has to be enough. I continue to drink my decaf espressos because it is also a social time during which I love to talk with my friends and colleagues. You'd be surprised what you might find out over coffee--all you have to do is listen. I try to keep my coffee simple: no sprinkles, no whipped cream, no caramel sauce, and no other flavors of any kind--coffee is already a flavor, thank you. If I become fatigued at the end of the day (like I did today) at least I know I need some sleep and rest and that I should not become my own sleep deprivation experiment. If you mix too much coffee with the stress of final exams and not eating properly, you are bound to crash. Decaf keeps me honest and my hands don't shake. In summer, which lasts from the end of February to the first week of December in central Texas, I drink my coffee cold, over ice. Decaf has only one twentieth the caffeine of regular coffee.

De mis esfuerzos inútiles

2011-09-12T21:52:00.001-07:00

En mi vida he visto y he hecho muchas cosas. Intenté aprender una lengua extranjera y fracasé. Pensaba escribir poesía romántica, pero todo aquello era un desperdicio. No me gusta el calor y vivo en el lugar más seco y más caloroso del país. No aguanto los malos conductores en la carretera y me encuentro con ellos todos los días. Siempre quería tener una casa estable en un lugar, pero vivo a caballo entre europa y norteamerica y no dejo de volar nunca. Pago mis facturas y cuentas, pero no se terminan nunca. Me encanta comer pero me estoy engordando, así que pienso perder peso, comer menos, y hacer más ejercicio. Me encantaría tener el pelo bonito, pero soy calvo. Canto en el coro de la iglesia donde hago ruido infernal y los perros ladran. Me pongo lentillas porque soy medio ciego pero también soy muy vanidoso y no quiero ponerme gafas. Escribo artículos sobre cuestiones de literatura española medieval que van a leer tres gatos raros como yo. Pienso que todavía se puede decir algo nuevo sobre esa literatura española medieval. Miro al cielo todos los días con la esperanza de que llueva. Miro a las estrellas como si esperara que alguien llegara de allí en cualquier momento. Tomo café descafeinado. Quiero perder peso para aparentar más joven. Pienso que los políticos de este país, por muy malos que sean, todavía tienen el poder de arreglar algo. Me levanto todos los días para enseñar la lengua extrajera que nunca llegué a aprender con la esperanza de que mis estudiantes lo hagan. Intento explicar a mis estudiantes porque están aquí haciendo sus tareas, escribiendo sus ensayos, leyendo sus libros y tomando sus exámenes. Voy de vacaciones dos veces al año para olvidarme de mis esfuerzos inútiles. Regreso de mis vacaciones para volver a empezar todo otro vez como si importara un bledo lo que yo hago.

On "stair people"

2011-09-10T10:06:00.001-07:00

I live in central Texas, so I end up going to football games. Football games on Friday nights in Texas is as sure a thing as gravity. It happens. There are some problems, however, associated with Friday night football: the heat, the crickets, the stair people. What, you ask, is a stair person? A stair person is defined as that animal that goes to football games but never sits down for more than five minutes, or never sits down at all. If you have ever been to any sporting event in your life, you have seen stair people. If you are unlucky enough to get one in your row, you will spend three-quarters of the game standing up to let them out. They are in continuous movement, up and down the stairs of the stadium. During a three hour football game most people have to get up at some point to get a soda, jalapeños and chips, a hot dog, or visit the bathroom. Most people get up once or twice. Stair people get up between 93 and 94 times a quarter, making a trip to the gym unnecessary because they have already climbed 56,789 steps during their travels up and down the stairs. What I really like are the ones who are obsessed with some digital device so they aren't really paying attention to what their feet are doing. Falling either up or down the stairs seems inevitable at some point. Obviously, the stair people are the social butterflies of the stadium and are uninterested in the game itself. They are there to see and be seen, both men and women alike. The stair people at the Midway game last night was like a torrent, a human flood of individuals who found sitting and watching the game too tedious to tolerate. I made the mistake last night of sitting on the aisle. What was I thinking? Between the constant jumping and screaming of the fifth grade boys on the other side of the aisle who would all at once disappear and the constant flow of teenagers up and down the steps, there wasn't much time for watching the game, which, by the way, only made the stair people more antsy because Midway lost the game in the first five minutes of the contest, digging themselves a 22-0 hole against an inferior opponent. So it goes.

On the Death Star

2011-09-04T22:52:00.001-07:00

I wouldn't normally comment on such an odd bit of trivia, but the Death Star from the original Star Wars film really bothers me. A technological marvel, it is the ugly centerpiece of an oligarchic fascistic totalitarian regime that has overthrown its democratic roots in favor of big business and the military. The Death Star also represents death on a mega-scale since it itself is the size of a small moon. Its builders have completely thwarted the natural environment of planets and moons and created their own planet. Aesthetically, the Death Star is like all fascistic architecture: enormous, bombastic, grandiose and hideously anti-aesthetic, crowding out such ideas as form and function. Round and anonymously black, it defies easy categorization as architecture at all. Indeed, its anti-aesthetics are a rejection of all other forms of art, creativity and individuality. Just as all of the imperial storm troopers are masked and look alike, the Death Star is also masked in its jet black camouflage to be as anonymous as possible. The whole point of building the Death Star is to create a reign of fear which will convince non-conforming planets to "get in line" or risk possible destruction from the Death Star's mega-deathray. The simple idea that fear and violence are the only true way to rule a large population is inherently wrong. Living with difference, with differences of opinion, with different religions and different sexes, are basic stumbling blocks for people who cannot live with cognitive dissonance. The idea that anyone can interpret a text differently, that they might have different desires, that their politics does not including hording as much money as possible, that they might pray to a different God, is beyond the comprehension of many. The Death Star is a symbol of intolerance, pride and ego, all hallmarks of the people who built it. Absolutely nothing good will ever come out of the Death Star, and it was no surprise that the rebellion worked so hard to destroy it.

On signs

2011-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

I couldn´t really even begin to write this without signs, so I suppose I have to start there: words are signs to which participant speakers and receivers have assigned a specific, albeit, arbitrary meaning. Without the agreement between producers and users, communication would come to a total standstill. If we didn't agree what a particular sign meant, then all communicative interactions would take on the tone of two people speaking to each other in different languages. But we do agree that certain signs mean certain things. It is only when we don't agree that things get very interesting. Signs are not confined strictly to words, but words are interesting for a very simple reason: each word, each sign, often has multiple meanings. Poets have loved to take advantage of this ambiguity because they can write a poem about juicy red pomegranates, and pretend to write about fruit salad or desert when all the time he/she is also writing a sexually charged, highly erotic poem about extreme personal peak experiences. So signs that are words often exist in a double -world of multiple understandings: a surface reading, a literal reading and an interpreted meaning that takes into account other possible readings that might either contradict or ratify the initial reading. An interpretive reading is certainly a deeper or inner reading/meaning that bolsters or redefines an initial superficial reading. Signs that are words exist, then, in a liminal space filled with borders and boundaries of meaning, but the space is transitory or liminal because words defy normative attempts to control their subversive nature to undermine established meaning and the authority grounded in that discourse. The minute a text coalesces around one meaning, it automatically begins to undermine that meaning, destroying its foundation and sliding into a murky gray zone of multiple readings, multiple meanings, all of which is independent of anything that the author intended. Intention, you see, with signs is irrelevant.

On dust

2011-08-28T21:24:00.001-07:00

With all of the dry weather we have been having over the past year, dust has become a familiar customer in Texas. Most parts of the state a double digits below in regular rainfall, wildfires and grassfires are daily events, and fire departments are fighting drought, lots of tinder dry underbrush, and sky-high temperatures in the triple digits. We are quickly moving from the mud from whence we came to the dust of our eternal resting. The dust of ages, of the planets, of the big-bang is circling us all as life giving water falls everywhere but here. One almost feels both a little neglected and a little cursed. You can’t wash the dust off of your car because you would be wasting the precious crystalline liquid, so with one finger, you write, “Wash me when you can.” The dust falls on both the just and the unjust alike, but this realization is of little solace and does nothing to placate the common misery of high temperatures, dry as bone conditions, and no end in sight. We grow weary of a blazing sun, a car that wants to broil us, and the constant drone of the air-conditioning, the only thing that keeps us from going out of our minds—short trip this time of year. So the ancient dust accumulates on our clothing, in our yards, on our paths, and we continue to get up and go again. We all live with the illusion that we can "dust" and wipe away this ubiquitous reminder that we are all aging, always one step closer to the dust of our own mortality. I have no idea what dust actually is, but I’m not sure I want a scientific explanation either. Certainly, some of it is fine particles of dirt (whatever dirt might be), but I’m sure a lot of it is carbon based as well, organic material shed by humans as they go through their day. Dust falls and dries our throats, dust accumulates on the furniture and Aunt Hortensia’s knick-knacks, it falls like a winter blanket of snow, an almost weightless shroud that announces the end of times, that heralds the coming of death.

On (re)-reading

2011-08-26T13:41:00.001-07:00

A friend once said that he doesn't keep books after he has read them because he doesn't re-read anything. "What's the point?" he asked. I don't keep all the books that I read, but I do re-read things, and was reminded just recently that all reading is just re-reading after all. I would suggest that reading is not only re-reading, but that re-reading is also reading even if we know the butler did it, even if we know that Watson will always mention the obvious and overlook the important clue. Reading and re-reading are important not for what they bring to us, but for what they leave with us. When I read as a youngster, I understood as a youngster, now I read as an adult, darkly, as if in a mirror. My half-century of experiences has colored my readings, the books I choose to read, the books I leave alone. I am not afraid to read a particularly dark story about human nature because human beings have a rather dark side to them. We are petty and jealous, cynical and sad, solitary and pathetic. We get angry and envious, we are narcissitic and self-centered, we let others suffer for our mistakes unwilling or unable to be responsible for ourselves, so I know how weak and insignificant we are. Yet, we read and experience an epiphany, a cathartic release of emotion that gives us understanding and wisdom. I can re-read a text that I read decades ago and I will be reading again as if it were the first time. I may remember words, or sentences, or even a whole paragraph, but the experience is different so the text is different and I am reading a new book. Old words tumble past my nose, but they have new meaning, new insights, new beginnings. There are, perhaps, books that I will never read again. Perhaps I have outgrown them. Yet there are other books that I read as a youth that have returned to me as new texts, new meanings, new experiences. You can go back again. You may have lost your innocence, but then, doesn't everyone get corrupted? So I read a book again, and my eyes are opened.

On winding down after the first day of school

2011-08-22T22:04:00.001-07:00

The first day of school is always exciting, but after so much excitement, my nerves are feeling a little over-stimulated, a little wrecked this evening. The extended heat wave does not help at all. So I feel a little keyed up, tired, a little anxious for tomorrow when I start three new classes with a whole bunch of new students who I don't know at all. I'm not complaining, exactly, I mean this is the stuff of which a professor's day is made: directing the new students to the bathroom, the elevator, to Burleson, to Draper, to everywhere but here. I had to laugh at one point: one young man asked about his English class, but he only had the day, time, subject and place wrong. He was a little unprepared for his first day. I suggested he print out his schedule before leaving his room tomorrow. One young lady asked, "Do you know where Burleson 100 is? I answered that "yes, I did." She was speechless. At lunch I indulged in a hot spicy chicken Alfredo dish with fresh spinach, and I ate with friends from the music school. Wonderful fun because we talked about Flamenco music, the musicians and a bunch of other stuff that only academics talk about. In the meantime I worked on writing and finishing three syllabi and getting tomorrow's assignments out there. I mean today was the first day, which also means that final exam week is only fourteen weeks away--right around the corner as far as I'm concerned. Whoever said that time flies really underestimated the exact speed of time, which is probably about ten time the speed of light. I'm just guessing here and I have no empirical data to back up that statement, but someday someone will figure it out. So there is no time to waste and my students are already out there writing great things about life, death and love. After all, isn't that what the first day of school is all about?

On a dusty road

2011-08-20T19:54:00.001-07:00

My throat was dry, and the sun beat down with a certain amount of authority. August is like that. I only had to walk a half mile or so, but it was 4 pm, the sky was endlessly blue, and the clouds were on vacation. The road was gravel, dusty, and dry. I had no hat. My water had run out a few hours earlier. I trudged along the road, neither fast nor slow, and sweat trickled down my brow. My neck was wet. All the birds and animals were quietly hiding in the shade. The sun was the whitish yellow color of a hot day. I would definitely have sunburn by the time I got undercover. I am not a hot weather person, and my jeans were hot and uncomfortable. The summer is a merciless player. I was dreaming of a swimming pool and a cold drink when I crested the hill. My footsteps kicked up tiny clouds of dust. Smalls stones hurt my feet and made walking painful. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I wiped sweat and grime from my brow. The hair on my neck was damp. One hundred yards to go. I felt a little light headed as I stepped into the cool shade of the garage. I turned on the hose and drenched my head. I was overheated, no doubt, but I had made back to my oasis of water and shelter. How fragile we are when just the smallest of climatic conditions become just slightly extreme. For the moment I let the cold water run over my neck. I sat in the shade and closed my eyes, dreaming of snow and ice, of darkness and biting cold, knowing full-well that Mother Nature is relentless and takes no prisoners.

On a random thunderstorm

2011-08-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

Storms of any kind have been both random and scarce in central Texas over the past couple of months. My front yard looks like the Mojave Desert, but without the Gila monsters. The beiges and browns have taken over from various shades of green that normally decorate the garden. The ground is cracked and hard. Even the weeds won’t grow. Yesterday, at a pool party for our church youth group, it rained. Of course, we had to plan a pool party so that it would rain. Mother Nature got all pissed off that we had a pool party, so she rained on our parade. While we were having some pre-party snacks, our host exclaimed in a rightly surprised tone, “I do believe it’s raining!” Rather skeptically, we strolled casually to the front door (we had been fooled before and weren’t about to have our hopes dashed by some cruel joke) to find that it was indeed raining (big drops of water falling from the sky for those of you who need a reminder). But this is central Texas, so the sun was still shining on the other side of the house. It rained hard for a good five minutes, messed up all the cars parked out by the curb, and got everything wet poolside. The sun came out, the rain stopped, and we went swimming. The thunderstorm had been so random that it did not rain a drop at my house which was only a mile away as the crow flies. Mother Nature is cruel, isn’t she? So I continue to dream dreams of quiet, steady rains; rains that might go on for a couple of days, rains that are cool and gray, rains that wash away the dust and the grime, rains that fall on the just and the unjust alike. I can dream of the pitter-patter of drops on my roof, of puddles and glistening green grass, of a cool, wet breeze, of windshield wipers, of raincoats and boots, of a time when the liquid running down my neck might be rain instead of sweat.

On re-reading Christie (35 years later)

2011-08-10T22:05:00.001-07:00

As a part of summer vacation this year, I picked up the copy of “And then there were none” that I had received as a part of summer reading program some thirty-five years ago. An old paperback that is slowly disintegrating, I found my name scrawled in the inside cover—an autograph of my sixteen-year-old self. The book tugged at the nostalgic heartstrings of my youth, and I remembered how much it had intrigued me; I remembered it was creepy, perverse, and subversive. I believe that Agatha Christie, the gran dame of mystery writers, is unjustly accused of being both quaint and passé. Her stories don’t generally have wild chase scenes; there are few gunfights and no erotic sexual encounters. She is, and always will be, a product of England during the first half of the twentieth century. There may be a bit of blood, a scream from the library, a fainting maid, a rather dense policeman, a blunt object or two, but the pools of blood and exploded gray matter of today’s mysteries just are not there. What Christie really wants to deal with is guilt and justice. And what is particularly horrifying about her work, especially in “And then there were none,” is the cast of characters: they are all normal people. They are normal people in the sense that none of them is Professor Moriarty, the archenemy of Sherlock Holmes. None of them is a gangster, or hoodlum, or organized crime boss. One is a doctor, another, a nanny, another, a teacher and so on. Each person in the story is accused of killing or contributing to the death of another person. These murders, due to the strange circumstances surrounding the various cases, cannot be prosecuted. The premise of the book is, then, to group up these ten people and slowly kill them all off. The nagging perversity of the book is that one of the characters is also the murderer. The mystery is a tour-de-force exploration of guilt, justice, and punishment carried out outside of a legal system that cannot touch them. I am personally against any form of vigilantism, but then again, this is a “what if?” mystery fantasy. The premise of the novel is pure fantasy, but the writing re-creates a certain verisimilitude which is both uncomfortable and unforgiving, an uncharitable snapshot of England’s decadent middle class between the wars. I imagine that more than one of Dame Agatha’s readers threw down the book in disgust, or in shame, because they did not have clean conscience. As a sixteen-year-old I was shocked by the book’s unfettered sense of justice and punishment, but it also reminded me of how easy it might be to fall in with book’s odd cast of characters and have tea with them on that lonely, empty, island.

On black and white

2011-08-05T12:47:00.001-07:00

I am often amused at how easily people are willing to assume that the world is explainable in terms of the black/white metaphor, either/or. Black and white assumes a series of knowable answers that end debate, even when the very questions they claim to answer are themselves doubtful or unknowable. I know of few debates that even suggest black and white answers. Many people claim dibs on the truth and will be more than willing to explain to you how their black and white world revolves around a series of ethical claims and positions which are both false and spurious. I am not supporting a radical relativism, but often a question will spawn various answers, none of which is absolutely true or absolutely false, and none of which is mutually exclusive of the others. Some answers contradict other answers, but that doesn't necessarily mean they invalidate each other. Questions of morality, what is right, what is wrong, often ring hollow and self-serving, and are used by those in power to repress freedom of choice and freedom of expression. Murder is, of course, wrong, but what about capital punishment? Black and white answers quash debate and silence truth. The most toxic thing about black and white answers is their own tendency to appear reasonable without being reasonable. Some would like to use black and white arguments to deny others rights, do deny equal treatment, to exercise power over others because they themselves understand the irrational position that they themselves have created. The real world is a multi-faceted place where gray rules almost exclusively, where multiple answers must be considered and that one person's personal prejudice may be diametrically opposed to the rights of others. Life is not simple, nor will it ever be simple. A black and white reductionist view of the world denies the complexity and chaos of everyday life, it denies the ephemeral texture of everyday existence, it denies the multifaceted nature of every moment, reducing reality to a false binary of one's and zero's. In effect, our digital world contradicts reality, reduces it to a series of one's and zero's, and falsifies the very fabric of everyday experience.

On a hot day

2011-08-03T12:41:00.001-07:00

I might try and say something witty about the heat today, but then no one would care. The heat is on in Texas, and even for Texas this is a little extreme. Imagine that, in a state that prides itself on everything extreme, even the weather is extreme. No, it's not fifty below zero, but it is 103 in the shade today. When it's cold outside, you turn on the heat, grab a sweater and make the best of it. Maybe put a fire in the fire place. But when it's hot, except for the AC (which is the only thing between us and roasting today), you can't do too much to get away from the heat. The shade is good, but once you go over about 95F even the shade isn't much help. Cold drinks are good, a shower to freshen up, a darkened bedroom for the mid-afternoon siesta, an icy combination of lemonade and tea. These are all things that help endure the heat, but you can't run away from your skin. Naked. We could all go naked, but that would be a bit distracting for lots of reasons. We are people raised on, by, and in decorum, so naked is probably out even if the temperature is plus one hundred by 11 a.m. I know a few people who adore the heat, and bless their hears, when it gets cold, they drop into the fetal position and wait for it to warm up. The weather today is completely Dante-esque, although I am unsure of what level of hell his actually is. Obviously this is the ring for unrepentant backsliders, hypocrites, ne’er-do-wells, but we could all use a break. Nothing really works very well in this heat. My appetite is flagging, I sleep really badly (if at all), I can't focus or get things done. At some point in the future, I suspect that the temperature will drop to a fresh, 95 or 96 degrees, so I better go get the sweaters out now and beat the rush. I will say this, however, the sidewalks are not crowded, all the park benches have space, and getting an egg fried just about anywhere is easy. So there, go out and enjoy it, just watch out for heatstroke.

On spaghetti bolognesa

2011-07-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about the heat wave but who wants to read about that? It's hot, and there's nothing we can do about it except dump a little ice in our shorts and hope for the best. Instead, I made some excellent red sauce today, so in an attempt at getting our minds off of the heat, I offer up this simple recipe, which actually serves out rather nicely in spite of the heat. Purests may stop reading now because I break all kinds of rules--it's really the result that counts, right? Especially if you have five hungry people to feed. Pragmatists that must cook (even on a hot day) should take notes.

Ingredients:

One medium onion, diced
Two cups mushrooms, chopped
Half pound of hamburger
One large can crushed tomato
Two cloves garlic, fine chop
basil
two small bay leaves
oregano
parsley
one bullion cube each of beef and chicken
extra virgin olive oil
salt
one tablespoon sugar

Directions: brown hamburger in a largish pot that will hold all the ingredients by the end. Set aside and drain off excess fat—if you have a choice, use hamburger with a very low fat content. In a couple of table spoons of oil, slowly cook the onions until clear, add the mushrooms for a few minutes before re-adding the meat. If there is water or juice in the pot, cook some of it off. Add the crushed tomatoes and reduce the heat. Add herbs and garlic: tablespoon of oregano, tablespoon of parsley, teaspoon of basil, two bay leaves. Do not fry the garlic—it makes the flavor too strong for pasta. Add bullion. Stir on a low simmer. If the sauce is thick, add a little water, if thin, add a little tomato paste. Adding an optional half cup of white wine perks up this dish a lot. Test for salt at this point. Normally a couple of pinches will do the trick. If the sauce is really tart or acidic, add a teaspoon or two of sugar. Between the salt and the sugar, the flavors should all pop pretty well at this point. Cook over very low heat, uncovered, stirring from time to time. Cook up your favorite pasta, and serve with grated cheese. This will easily serve six.

On the good old days

2011-07-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

One of my friends from church put up a status on FB discussing all the stuff we used to do as kids back in the sixties. You know, three tv stations, no remote, drank from the garden hose, no computers, one telephone, no cell phones--stuff like that. I have to admit, our existences in those days were certainly simpler, although I don't know if that translates to better. I played outside more than my son does, but then again he does a lot of things I used to do: marching band, play tennis. I guess the biggest difference between then and now is the digital invasion of cable television, computers and cell phones. Now there are pads that do all three of those functions at once. Does this make life better? I know that having a cell phone makes communications easier especially if one is out of the house and in transit between places. I can always make sure that if we need something from the store, I can find out before making the trip all the way home. On the other hand, I watch way too much television, read less, and sleep less. I'm not sure that the deluge of information to which we are subject all day is necessarily good or necessarily necessary for a good and happy life. I can turn it off, and I find myself doing that more and more often. Historians will call this period in our history, "the digital revolution." I used to eat raw rhubarb out of the garden (and asparagus and radishes and peas and lettuce and beans and strawberries). The water out of the hose tasted a little rubbery on a hot day, but who cared? Did I make bootleg tapes off of the radio? Of course, and proud of it! The fact that we only had three television channels was just a matter of fact. The first time I saw a remote, I almost tipped over. Perhaps all of this means that change is inevitable, some change is for the better, some change, maybe not. Does this conversation make me nostalgic for a simpler, quieter, more uncomplicated life? Not really. I can always get that back if I just turn a few things off.

On blindfolds

2011-07-13T14:27:00.001-07:00

The blindfold is a very strange thing. I say “thing” because it’s not really a mask, or clothing, or hat, or anything else. It rather falls into its own category as a strange simulacrum for blindness, but it only works if the person wearing the blindfold is not blind, a disturbing paradox. In fact, most issues surrounding the blindfold and its uses are disturbing, disturbing even when there is nothing wrong with using the blindfold. Its most famous use is, of course, the condemned prisoner who will be facing the firing squad. Is the used of the blindfold intended in this case to be more humanitarian with the condemned or is it further humiliation heaped on top of the death penalty? Lady Justice wears a blindfold so that her justice with be equal for all, but we all know that there is more justice for the rich than there is for the poor (that’s just the cynic in me, sorry). Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Lady Justice was truly blind? The blindfold reached new and unheard of uses in the weirdly erotic film, 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. I have never been able to look at strawberries quite the same since. The blindfold is a simulacrum for blindness, but why would we ever try to simulate blindness? The blindfold debilitates and removes power, reducing the blindfolded person to something less than they were. Two children’s games, “Pin the tail on the donkey” and “la piñata” require that the little ones be blindfolded, adding a strange twist of fate or randomness to both games. The relationship between sight and power is clear, however, and the blindfold must reside in that strange liminal space where power and control intermingle. The blindfolded person is, essentially, helpless and at the mercy of their captors, colleagues, or lover, and has, either willingly or by force, given up control of their personal space, perhaps their very life, to others. Agency, then, is what the blindfold holds hostage, rendering the wearer a powerless soul who must submit to others. If the use of blindfolds is disturbing, and I have no doubt that it is, then it is because personal agency may be the most important personal right than any person might possess.

On the digital wristwatch

2011-07-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've never owned one, myself. They always seemed so unnecessarily plastic, phony, precise, disposable, sterile, strict, temporary, fake. I'm an old-time, regular watch guy. I like the roundness of the traditional watch face and the space-time relationship between the numbers and the hands on the face. Watches have faces, digital watches have numbers. Why must we always reduce art to numbers? The hands may be imprecise but one glance will tell me exactly what I want to know with little or no interpretation. As the digital numbers march by I am reminded of regimentation, deadlines, schedules, and appointments--nothing could be worse. My traditional watch with face and hands and numbers in a circle winds itself, and does not need to be pried open once a year to have a new battery installed in its guts. I can watch the sweep second-hand march around the other numbers without worrying about precision. The relationship between space and time is more meaningful than just the numbers that they represent. Yet so many people just abandoned their traditional watches for the next popular thing. Why replace something that works perfectly well with something that is just merely popular? Digital watches are more precise, they double as alarm clocks, stop watches, and calendars. They have a series of control buttons which are impossible to master, impossible to understand, and impossible to use. And the watchbands are only of the cheapest plastic material designed to break within the first year, rendering the watch unusable and turning it into a pocket watch. My point would be this: is progress always a good thing? In other words, we invented something--the digital wristwatch--which was not an improvement over the current paradigm, the traditional watch. So how was it possible that the watch companies convinced us all that we needed digital watches?

On Juliet

2011-07-02T15:26:00.001-07:00

She was all of thirteen, would have turned fourteen on July 31, when all of that boyfriend business got her into such dire straits. As my youngest cousin, I only saw her during family reunions. She was a precocious, cute, if not inexperienced young girl filled with dreams of boys and love and all those ephemeral emotions that make everything a drama for teenagers. I was in Rome when tragedy struck. Her parents were devastated, their last direct heir had died young and unexpectedly. I had talked to her about the young man in question, about how inappropriate it was that she start a relationship with him. I knew the Montagues, and they were an Italian family just like we were. I never understood the bad blood, but I have never gone in for feuding. My family is full of fighters, so I leave the violence to them. Juliet was a little spoiled, a bit narcissistic, very self-centered, spending hours on getting her clothes right, getting the latest hair styles; she was a consummate consumer who was more interested in the idea of being in love than actually being in love. Her lack of empathy for those around her probably explained why she fell in love with a bad boy from the other side of town. She knew that eventually her marriage to an appropriate man would be fixed up by her father. One must keep the money in the family, and Juliet was it. She treated everyone miserably. I watched from the sidelines, offering no advice, mostly because no one was asking. She was a rebellious young thing mostly because she never learned the meaning of the word "no." That word would have served her well and maybe even saved her life. They talked, mostly. He was handsome, or at least that's what my sister says. She was foolish, driven by romantic idealism, a teenage sense of angst and isolation, the notion that no one suffered as she did, that she was marginalized within her own family, unable to communicate with her parents, unable to get some good advice. Not that she probably would have listened anyway.

On a total eclipse of the moon

2011-06-15T13:52:00.001-07:00

Tonight, throughout Europe, there will be atotal eclipse of the moon beginning at 10:30 pm local time on the peninsula. An astrological coincidence, the alignment of the earth, moon, and sun has been studied by various cultures across the world and throughout the history of man. This comes as no surprise. Of course, this alignment is meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe, but people have imbued such an alignment with all sorts of meaning, making sacrifices, planting their crops, celebrating holidays. Yet the alignment, other than an interesting light show in the sky, has no meaning whatsoever. Just as a stopped watch is correct twice a day, orbiting planets will eventually line up in a row--a complete coincidence totally devoid of any transcendental meaning. Although it may be shocking to watch the moon pass into the earth's penumbra, turning dark brown and almost disappearing entirely, the occasion is completely fortuitous, a logical outcome of astral bodies that rotate at different velocities. From our perspective it has to happen from time to time, but it has no special meaning or significance, exerts no strange influence over anyone, not even the werewolves. The dead make no more noise than they usually do, this is not a sign of the end of times, this eclipse does not portend political upheaval, the beginning of the end or that the Cubs will win the World Series (come on, let's be realistic). Hell would just as soon freeze over first. This is not the beginning of the rapture, the second coming, or the final apocalypse--it's not religious at all. The only people who are affected by the eclipse are the superstitious, the irrational, the uncultured and the ignorant. The alignment is predictable, but it doesn't "mean" anything. Pyramids, crystals, incense, tarot cards, astrological charts, tea leaves, crystal balls, palms, eclipses and bones do not portend anything, ever. Enjoy the spectacle--it looks cool if you have a clear sky and an unobstructed view to observe it.

On (re) writing

2011-06-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have to get this on paper because I've already rewritten this thing so many times that it is completely not what I started out writing which was something about existential angst, the way people smell in the metro and the joys of eating a pear cooked in red wine.What this is really all about is all writing as rewriting. In other words (that's ironic if you didn't notice) I'm positing that all writing is necessarily rewriting whether we like it or not. Our little internal editor is always working overtime to make sure that words come out right. They don't, he fails, and we miscommunicate. Ergo, we must also posite that all writing is also miscommunication in spite of our best intentions, which, as it turns out, don't matter anyway. Readers will bring their own filter to the table in spite of what we say, do or write. So is miscommunication a beautiful thing? Since this is the only thing to which any writer might aspire, miscommunication must be a beautiful thing. It must be the first axiom in any argument. What rewriting brings to this mess is the ability to prune, add, cross out, insert, reword, eliminate, reorder and throw away. These are great tools for any writer. Rare is the piece of prose that works the first time off the tip of the author's pen. Original manuscripts are filthy things full of strike-throughs, erasers, emendations, inserts, comments and marginalia. Rewriting is where the art begins. Writing is nothing more than taking care of business, but rewriting is where the words flower and grow, where the omissions are corrected, where the writer polishes their prose to fine point, eliminating the superfluous, correcting the errors, adding light to the darkness. Rewriting can also be frustrating, especially when we think that we have it right, but the true writer always knows that they are the worst judges of their own art, and that it can always be better, that all prose can always benefit from another once over, a little imagination, a little criticism, and just a smidge of wisdom.

On tapas

2011-06-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

I think that "tapas" as I understand them, are misunderstood by the general public. Any small bit of food can be a tapa. There is no recipe for the perfect tapa, although I can imagine several tapas that will blow your mind. A tapa is a small bit of food, a bite or a couple of bites that accompanies your beverage of choice. Today, I had several excellent tapas, but I especially liked the "bonbón de morcilla." Callos are my all time favorite tapa, but "oreja" is also an excellent tapa. Salmon lends itself quite willingly to different kinds of tapas, especially when combined with blue cheese of some sort. A tiniy bit of steak combined with carmelized onions is a tapa to die for. I saw one tapa today that was a fried quail egg combined with a piece of jamón serrano on a small bit of toast. One bite, down the hatch, to die for it is so good. The art of the tapa certainly lies with the chef and the establishment in which you are drinking. Stuffed mushroom caps--ham, garlic, parsley, olive oil. A mini shish kabob with marinated pork, tiny onions and green peppers. Marinated roasted red peppers--garlic, vinegar, parsley, salt. Tiny hamburgers with blue cheese stuffing. Deep-fried chunks of cod. Ox-tail in any form. Herring, deep-fried, pickled, doesn't matter. One baby lamb chop, grilled rare. Olives, all kinds, all shapes. Fried chicken gizzards, garlic and salt in olive oil. White anchovies in vinegar. Anchovies on a potato chip. What one needs to make a good tapa is a little imagination, a good sense of humor, a bit of salt, olive oil, pork, eggs, small fish, peppers of all kinds. A shrimp wrapped in a baked jalapeño. If you are serving tapas, be generous, be funny, be adventurous. The tapa really has no limit as to what it might be. Shots of gazpacho. Crunchy bread doused with homemade tomato puree and topped with smoked ham. Micro chopped salad dressed with oil and vinegar on a piece of chapata. Be creative. Make it up as you go, but don't repress yourself. Tapas will set you free.

On Vogon poetry

2011-06-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

The book fair is on in Madrid, so tonight I went out looking for a little book of Vogon poetry called "Mother's Day Cards that should never have been written." Yes, the title is a little weird, but Vogon poetry, which, according the Encyclopedia Galactica (107th edition, Buenos Aires), is the third worst in the universe. I couldn't find a copy, so I expect it may be apocryphal, if not scarce or even destroyed. It is rumored that Vogon poetry is so bad that it will cause both strokes and spontaneous hemorrhaging in the listener. Apparently Vogons are unaffected by their own poetry. Admittedly, I have not traveled off of this planet yet, but perhaps one day, if NASA ever gets its stuff together, I might. Vogons don't seem to be any good at things like symbolism, metaphors or similes or most any other poetry trope you care to use. Themes, metaphors, allusions, or onomatopoeia are not a part of Vogon poetry. Their word for "rose" does not even exist. Mostly they write about death, but in a confused and comic fashion which turns most readers suicidal. In fact, I have never come across a line of Vogon poetry except that which has been stolen by greeting-card companies. Most birthday cards have a line or two of Vogon verses; all cards wishing a mother-in-law "get well" are all Vogon all the time. Vogon verses do not rhyme but may contain words such as pothole, geriatric, pendulous, crushed, horrific or tetric. Vogons have never written about honeysuckle, barn swallows, or love. Whatever poetry might be worse, I'm sure it must have to do with dressing in black, teenage angst, and sunsets. Encyclopedia Galactic does have a footnote which refers to a mid-twentieth century American poet, Rod McKuen, who for reasons beyond human understanding, sold thousands of books of his poetry. EG suggests he was a Vogon (page 567,783). None of his poetry has survived into the twenty-first century except in some plagiarized greeting cards.

On the end of times

2011-05-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

I swore to myself that I would not write about this stupid end-of-times nonsense, but, of course, I can't resist. Too easy. Shooting ducks in a barrel. All due regards to the apocalyptic discourse of a certain man who got all kinds of attention this week because he predicted the end of the earth and the second coming, but he is full of nonsense. He not only demonstrates a total lack of understanding of New Testament writing, he also lacks any kind of real perspective of how our arbitrary time and calendar system really works. We made it up. It's all arbitrary. The numbers and names that we assign to any given "day" of the week are, in and of themselves, meaningless. We could call today the 43rd of Poodle, year 11,768, and it would have the same "meaning" as the 23rd of May, 2011. There is nothing magical in the names, nothing magical in the year. These are all arbitrary designations that we humans have made up and have no other intrinsic value than just names. We have no real starting point and no real stopping point (okay, maybe when we finally poison our environment enough and it kills us back; that will be a stopping point). Someone just drew a line in the sand and that was the beginning. Arbitrary and meaningless. All apocalyptic predictions are nonsense of the first degree, especially from someone who is using the Bible as a source. I read the Bible, but it doesn't have hidden messages that need to be deciphered. I hold the Bible as a text in very high esteem, but hidden messages that reveal the end of the world? No, not one. I have spent my life studying hermeneutics, epistemology, semiotics, and all sorts of arcane fields which study the interpretation of texts. Believe me. No hidden messages. No codes. I actually feel sorry for the old dude because now he can't get the egg off of his face. So the rapture will come someday, but nobody is going to get a jump on it and predict it. You can't look at the calendar cross-eyed and figure out that it will all end at the end of 2012 (all due respect to Mayan calendar readers, but that is just as nonsensical as the old guy who predicted the end this weekend). The Mayan calendar craze is probably as simple as 2012 was so far off in the future that the world had to be over by then. No, the laws of physics say that we are here for a good long time to come. See you all tomorrow.

On my muse

2011-05-15T21:17:00.001-07:00

It's not easy come up with a new idea for an essay every single night. You can only write about bad driving, chocolate and thumbs so many times before the public starts to complain. My muse has been on vacation for a couple of weeks. I think she was in Florence, but she's back now, ready to get back to work. She told me not to write about her, but I said that we had been together too long for that. She scowled and poured herself of glass of whiskey. Jet-lag will do that to you. She said I should be writing about the night, the wind blowing in the trees, rain spotting the windows, a cool northwestern breeze, something about stars spinning overhead, something about falling in love, something about falling out of love. I said she needed to be more inspiring. She seemed bored and cleaned out her suitcase and started doing laundry. Laundry is not inspiring. I was thinking about poetry concerning roses and thorns, about yellow roses, moist with dew in the early morning light. I could write a verse such as "The stars swam overhead as the wind blew through the trees," but says that that's old and already been done. I could write a verse such as, "She loved me once, and I loved her," but she says I'm in a rut and need a new muse. I reminded her that a writer gets one muse, end of story. She just looked at me rather forlornly and shook her head. I said, I could write, "She once loved me, and I loved her, / and I held her in my arms, but I couldn't keep her." Dead silence. She says that if she could solve that little conundrum that her job would be over. I make a pot of coffee. We drink coffee and chat about what she saw in Florence. She has bought new shoes, a leather jacket, visited the Uffizi, the statue of David. Those muses were working overtime, it seems. She goes out on the balcony. The stars twinkle in the distance and the wind scrapes through the branches of the fig tree. She is sad, a kind of lingering melancholy that makes her soul ache. So tonight I comfort my muse. Art, creation, inspiration, how ironic that process can be at times.

On Harmon Killebrew

2011-05-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight, the great Twins slugger and my childhood hero announced that he was entering hospice care and that his cancer was no longer treatable. All heroes die, and this is no different, but this time it's my hero. Baseball is not important. Organized sports are a waste of time. I rationally know these things. The results on the sports page are here one day and thrown away the next. They have no transcendental importance. No even a little bit. But when you are a kid, it seems important. These sports figures are larger than life, examples of real men. I have long since stopped believing in any of that, but Harmon was a little different than the hyped-up, HGH stimulated, steroid controlled, spoiled babies that pass for professional athletes. I'm sure Hamon is not a saint, but he was old-school, never took steroids, played real baseball, always gave a hundred and ten percent, knew how to inspire a team. Now he is fighting for his own mortality, but this time he cannot win. I don't know know him personally. He doesn't know me. This is not a personal tragedy, but a young boy's innocent dreams die hard. Maybe they don't die at all. My new heroes are poets and writers that lived more than seven hundred years ago. Their words transcend time and space. Their messages are about hope and love and loyalty and faith. So tonight a man is facing the greatest challenge of his life: his own mortality. The fact that I might feel sad is irrelevant. This is one at bat that will not have a positive outcome. In the end, this is a reminder that the clock never stops, that our time on earth is finite, and that death comes at the end. This is the only true thing about human exist: all great stories have a tragic end. Comedy is an illusion, a mode of looking at the world that is essentially false and unrealistic. I wish the best for Harmon, and I hope that his final days on earth are full of peace and tranquility.
,

On Guy Montag

2011-05-10T20:25:00.001-07:00

Guy is one of my favorite characters of all time. He's a fireman, but instead of putting out fires, he lights them. More specifically, his job is to burn books which burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. In Guy's society, books have been prohibited, and it is his job to help root out the last vestiges of a literary society that fomented subversion, anarchy, free thought, personal responsibility and choice. The society that Guy supports is a society where all the decisions are made for you, you are told what and who to believe, news is broadcast 24/7 on your flat screen televisions, and nothing is left to the imagination. Guy suffers what might be considered a crisis of identity. He tucks a few books away--a Bible, some poetry, a novel or two--and begins to wonder if the leaders of his society and country aren't misleading him. He questions the constant flow of moronic and deadening television programming, he wonders about personal relationships, he openly defies a society that crushes knowledge, burns books, stifles creativity, and eliminates individuality. Books are too problematic. They often are murky or ambiguous, filled with dangerous individualistic thinking, shunning orthodoxy, avoiding difference. In Guy's society it is best if everyone does everything the same way, that they all have the same political opinion, that they not question governmental decisions, that everyone dress, eat and live the same way. Difference is highly problematic. Anyone who does not follow the orthodoxy is branded an enemy of the state and eliminated or incarcerated. Wars are fought to distract the people from their miserable consumerist existences. If they don't question anything, they have no idea that their lives might be better or different or more interesting or unique. Guy's wife runs away when she learns that her husband reads books. The other firefighters burn Montag's house and he runs. Read it: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Truer today that it was over fifty years ago when it was written.

On the fool

2011-05-09T22:08:00.001-07:00

The fool is a role that we all play from time to time, but I am not referring to any modern usage of the word "fool." I am referring to its medieval meaning of entertainer, court jester, comedian. The fool was always there to entertain, but he was also there to speak the truth, regardless of the situation. Kings often kept a "fool" around as a special kind of advisor who wasn't afraid to hurt the king's feelings and tell the truth. Some of the world's worst dictators were negative, ugly people because their henchmen would never tell them the truth, afraid of losing favor with the despot de jure. The fool is a strange character who exists outside of the law, outside of the normal rules of society. We still have them today, but we call them by other names. They appear as the hosts for late night television, ensemble actors in improvisational troops, stand-up comedians, and they work on the margins of mainstream society. I think fools are wonderful because they aren't afraid of telling the king he has no clothes on. When they hear or see a bad idea, they have no problem with sharing that information. They don't care what other people think of them, and perhaps that is what makes them so special. Their humor can be rather dark and acidic, bitter, really. They do not suffer sycophants, suck-ups or brown-nosers. The fool, the jester, is always on the brink of some precipice, always at the end or the beginning of some strange journey, and he may become anything or anyone. Jokers are wild, of course. So the fool is unpredictable, uncontrollable, unknown. They forge their own path, are owned by no one, create their own discourses, shun power, embrace independence, are unwilling to conform or even admit to conformity to the point of appearing childish and indolent. Yet, they know what they are doing and where they are going even if everyone around them thinks otherwise.

On Charlton Heston

2011-05-05T21:39:00.001-07:00

I think I first started noticing Charlton Heston in movies such as The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur or Planet of the Apes. Larger than life, he always plays the same character, the way John Wayne always plays the same character, just with different costumes. But I was troubled by three films in which Heston played very difficult characters, one was Soylent Green, another was The Omega Man, and the other, A Touch of Evil. All of these films are very imperfect, but they present characters who are not mere anti-heroes, they are genuinely troubled by both their identities and their roles in society. They are both in the middle of an existential crisis in which values are variable, ethics have disappear, and political expediency rules the day. They have to ignore blatant racism, injustice, and bigotry. Existence has become arbitrary, corrupt and decadent. Society no longer cares for what is right or what is wrong, and what is important is that which makes the system work. If people are forgotten, killed, erased, there are no consequences because no one is guilty. The anonymous entity that we call society needs to eliminate certain elements in order to function so let's just suspend all of our civil rights and call it a day. Planet of the Apes also poses many of these same questions. Call me cynical, but did anyone ever go to these movies but me? I think Heston got a little tired of his activism and just started collecting big paychecks in his later years because he made Airport 75, a hideous caricature of a disaster film that was truly a disaster. He's a cardboard cutout going through motions and saying dialogue so bad it could choke a Wookie. In his later years he was used by certain groups to promote their point of view, but I'm sure he was well-paid to be their spokeman. I don't blame him. I'm sure the money was sweet. "Soylent Green is people."

On rhubarb

2011-05-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

We make jokes about rhubarb pie in Minnesota, but the truth is that this incredibly bitter stem is wonderfully tasty if you add a ton of sugar--no exaggerations, please. To bite into a freshly cut stalk of rhubarb is for bitter what a fresh jalapeño is for picante (hot, spicy). Your whole mouth goes into lockdown with straight rhubarb juice flowing over the tongue. Let's just say that the experience isn't very nice. If you add sugar, however, rhubarb completely changes and turns into a multi-faceted, multi-layered taste sensation. If you have ever sucked on a raw piece of lemon, you know the difference between that and lemonade, which is the diluted, heavily sugared version that we drink in a glass with ice. I like my tea and coffee black, without milk or sugar, but those two drinks change completely if you doctor them with sugar and milk. Rhubarb, in all its brilliant bitterness, changes completely in the presence of sugar. Rhubarb preserves are an absolute delight on a thick slice of homemade bread. Strawberry and rhubarb pie is a taste sensation that no one should miss. The plant is rather plain and ugly: one big leaf at the end of every stalk. They are perennials, and if you ever try to dig them out, you are in for a huge surprise. They propagate through their root systems, so you never, ever really get them cleaned out. The stems, the part you cook and eat, are best in early summer because they become tough and woody during the late summer. If you are an active gardener and keep trimming them back, they will provide fresh shoots of rhubarb well into August. Freezing rhubarb for the long arctic winters of Minnesota is really easy, so rhubarb pies can make an appearance at almost any time during the year. I have no idea if it has any medicinal value, but I do know that it is very tasty and a nice break from your typical apple or cherry pie. It's a strange vegetable-fruit-stem-or whatever. Rhubarb almost seems like a throwback plant that might be more at home among the dinosaurs.

On complexity

2011-05-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

I think one of the greatest real-time examples of a complex system is Facebook. This multiple-user interface could be seen as an organized complex system with both chaos and randomness built into a predictable system. Complexity should not be confused with complicated. When something is complicated, it only means that it is not simple whereas when something is complex, it is the product of dependent interlocked systems. Complexity is, then, the opposite of independence. One might say that their life is complicated, and I don't doubt that it is, but there might be complex because of all of the interconnected systems that support and generate "a life." A family unit is complex because the different elements within the family are dependent upon one another. What is difficult to sort out are the systems that make up complexity, some of which are ordered and others are predictably chaotic. Algorithms, rules, relationships, heuristics, and states drive complex systems in such a way that patterns emerge, systems interlock, and outcomes are predictable, which in business systems is great, especially if a factory is producing a complex product, such as a car, but it's bad if you are looking at the stock market which is a system with a chaotic or predictably chaotic outcome that, if your sample is large enough, can be estimated but not predicted. In other words, building a car is a complex set of systems--workers, parts, designs, markets, fads, innovation, failure--but trying to predict the value of the car companies stock is predictably unpredictable, especially over the short term. Over the long term, it is predictable that the stock will rise and fall. An individual life, the length of that life, the travels, the jobs, the dreams are all part of a complex system (you can't say very complex because if you think about it, there is no difference between complex and very complex) with both randomness and predictability built in which means that mixed in with the good times, there will be some bad. Now, if you have been shipwrecked like Robinson Crusoe, your interconnectedness is way down, and you have become a complex system of one. I guess this is what happens to the mind which is driven by caffeine free diet soda and potato chips.

On zombies

2011-05-02T20:51:00.001-07:00

Zombies make me laugh. Poor things can’t help being zombies. It’s like their decision making capabilities have been taken from them as they were big box shoppers on Black Friday, lusting after just one more flat-screen high-definition television. Yes, zombies are the walking dead, but why are they inevitably murderous and drawn invariably to the living? Zombies make living people very nervous. You see, the dead always make the living nervous, and that’s why we spend so much time and money to bury, to incinerate, to pigeon hole in mausoleums, to enclose in coffins and burial vaults, to separate them the world of the living. I, personally, have no trouble with zombies and have never had a zombie close-call in my life. I’ve seen dead people, but they were pretty much immobile, embalmed, and set up with fresh haircuts which they will take with them into the great beyond and for all eternity. Change is not high on your list if you are a cadaver. Yet Hollywood continues to make zombie movies, and movie-goers continue to buy tickets as if they were the zombies and not the other way around. Come on, after “Night of theLiving Dead” (Romero 1968) do any zombie movies really make sense? Zombies could be nice, but then, nice doesn’t sell movie tickets. I see zombies from time to time, standing in line to buy popcorn or pick up a prescription at the local big box grocery store. I think zombies like big box stores because they don’t have to think at all since the store has done all their thinking for them, creating their tastes, deciding their needs, fulfilling their desires. Zombies never complain about waiting for anything because they have, you guessed it, all the time in the world. Zombies don’t make very good friends because they won’t tell you you’re wrong, won’t pay for coffee (because they don’t drink any unless they get it at a huge national coffee store chain—quadruple caramel macchiato grande with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, extra sugar and a shot of vanilla), don’t have original ideas, agree with the talking heads on their huge flat-screen television, don’t read books, can’t appreciate art, have no philosophy other than consuming things, and have no imagination. Zombies are for the birds, literally.

On Sirens

2011-04-28T21:45:00.001-07:00

This is not about tornado warnings, ambulance noises, police car chases or broken smoke alarms. This is about the imaginary and mythical creatures from Greek mythology that lure men (sailors) to their deaths by singing to them, making them crazy, and getting them to smash their ships on dangerous rocky shores. There is some confusion about whether Sirens are mermaids and vice versa, but for now, I'm going to let that go. The fact that myth writers and builders create a female/bird creature which endangers men and their ships is absolutely engrossing and totally Freudian. In part, this creature represents man's fear of powerful women, a real fear which is manifested the fear of a magical creature, not really human, not really animal, that is both dangerous and evil. Odysseus plugged his men's ears with beeswax so they could not hear the seductive songs of the Sirens, and Odysseus had himself lashed to the mast so that he could hear, but he could not respond. Of course, sailors felt that women were bad luck on ships, and the direct result of such an irrational fear is the invention of the Sirens. Physically, they manifest themselves as liminal creatures that exist on the border between humans and animals. What is disturbing about the Sirens is their overt and obvious sexuality, their extravagant carnal nature, and how their carnality and sexuality are linked to seduction, which is automatically seen as bad or evil. There are no good outcomes for men trying to sail past the Sirens. They will be seduced, go off course, and be killed on the dangerous rocks. The logical outcome suggests that women, here represented by the Sirens, are evil humans, tending or exhibiting animalistic qualities (i.e., emotional, irrational, disturbing, crazy, wild, extreme) that separate them from the logical, thoughtful sailors they would like to kill. The alterity, the otherness, the strangeness, of the Sirens relegates them to a non-human role, suggesting that all women are merely disguised Sirens, especially if we read “sailor” more broadly as “male.” The story of the Sirens suggests broadly that women are animalistic and working to destroy men by means of their sexuality, their suggestive song, their carnality. I would also suggest that the story points to a suspected, if undiscussed, weakness in men: that they are unable to control their own sexuality and will always fall victim to a temptress, unable to help themselves, as it were. The story of the Sirens, vamps of the seas, reflects poorly on all the involved parties, and suggests that men must either not listen or be bound in ropes if they are to pass in front of the rocky shores of the Sirens.

On drought

2011-04-26T22:55:00.001-07:00

A drought (or drouth [archaic]) is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Wikipedia

This short, banal entry in Wikipedia caught my eye because it alluded to an archaic pronunciation that my grandfather used to use when he spoke of extended periods when precipitation did not fall. He grew up speaking both Norwegian and English (he was a heritage speaker), so I always attributed his strange pronunciation to that phenomenon of bilingualism. He worked the same 160 acres of farmland his whole life, and during 96 years you see a drouth or two. Ironically, it rained this evening in Waco, but all that did was wash the dust from the bleached bones in my front yard of a dead steer that was lost on its way to Abilene. The ground is cracked and ugly, and the weeds are doing all they can to survive. The grass gave up months ago. The whole yard has taken on a dusty look that is just anticipating the Death Valley pastoral scene: cactus, rattlesnake, rocks, a dead tree, and sand. Maybe a tumble weed crosses the scene from time to time. Water is scarce in central Texas. The gullywashers we've had the past few nights do little to alleviate the drouth but these sudden cloud bursts do raise our spirits a bit. The weather was hot and muggy today, so when the dry line crossed the area, it was inevitable that it should rain with not a little bit of violence. The tornado sirens were blaring, and I took cover in the main closet of my bedroom, which is so totally Freudian that I am just going to suppress the memory of it. So the drouth continues. Five minutes of violent rain do not a rainy season make. It was good to see it rain because now we know it can. The hex has been lifted, the evil-eye reversed. Now, at least, the weeds stand a fighting chance of surviving for another year, but unless it rains more, it is going to be one hot, dry summer in Central Texas.

On postmodernism

2011-04-25T22:35:00.001-07:00

I am not here to defend or condemn postmodernism. If you were to ask for a definition, I would say that postmodernism is precisely what you cannot define in literature. Postmodernism is certainly a rejection of easy explanations, of continuous story arcs, of cause and effect. Postmodernism rejects the 19th century model of the novel, a model that explains human behavior once and for all times. I would suggest that it is the "fragment" which most informs the postmodern discourse, but it is a fragment out there, by itself, with no supporting arguments around it. Pile together fragments and you get an anti-narrative that does not lend its ear to meta-narratives, will not bow down to ideologies on either the left or the right. It is anarchy as if anarchy might be defined. Can one actually write a novel, for example that is "postmodern"? The answer is certainly "yes", but then you would have to ask yourself if you want to read a postmodern novel. The discontinuity and fragmentation that characterize the postmodern novel can be useful in undermining spurious political and social myths, such as savage capitalism or unbridled consumerism, but it can also dismantle dysfunctional political myths while it destroys and co-ops the social and political underpinnings of democracy. Postmodernism is critical of all pre-established social constructions, pre-established religious beliefs, social, religious and political constructions of all kinds. I believe that many postmodern authors wrote during other periods and only been described as odd or rebellious. Even the idea of literary periods is essentially false, but it takes an author such as James Ellroy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and be an equal opportunity offender. Read his novel, White Jazz, and tell me that is normal. Postmodern is not comfortable, or pretty, or even aesthetic in any way. It's discontinuous, fragmented, broken, disjointed, illogical, splintered, non-narrative, de-centered, disorienting. Even this note is a strange simulacra of an essay about a topic which I contend is postmodernism, when in reality its not that at all.

On standing in the shadow of the cross

2011-04-22T22:39:00.001-07:00

As a child I never understood the story of the passion of Jesus Christ. I'm not entirely certain children need to understand this particular story because as adults, they only understand too well. If there is a more brutal story than the torture and murder of an innocent man, then I don't know it. All of the great negatives of the human condition--shame, cowardice, betrayal, greed, bribery, envy, pride-- coalesce in the characters that surround Jesus. The brutality of humans is so acute that we hardly wince when he is lashed or beaten or forced to wear a crown of thorns. The Romans didn't invent brutality, but they were quick learners, life was cheap, occupying a foreign land was hard work, and the locals seemed as brutish and cruel as they were. What is important about the Good Friday story is to know that we have changed little in two thousand years, and that we continue to be victims of our ego, of our pride, of our desire to be right, of our need to hate those who are different, our need to be top dog, to be first, to get the other guy before he gets us. I listen to the story, to the names--Jesus, Peter, Judas, Pontius Pilot--and I am hearing a story of betrayal and envy, of hate and weakness, of intolerance and prejudice. There was no justice for Jesus because he had committed no crime. Just having other religious beliefs and practices is not against the law, or, at least, not here in Amerika. At least, it's not supposed to be. Sometimes the practice of religious tolerance is still light years from the theory of religious tolerance, a street of multiple directions. So each one of us stands in the shadow of the cross this evening, the broken body was taken down hours ago. He didn't last long. Perhaps a blessing. His friends and loved ones are destroyed by grief, a grief few can understand. He was their friend and teacher, a son. I want to ask myself how we could be so cruel, but I stop because I know only too well that we are even worse than that. One might cry or weep, but then again, is that only so self-serving?

On a burned out light bulb

2011-04-21T22:31:00.000-07:00

One of those fancy low energy light bulbs just blew out. It was right over the computer and now I can't see the keyboard, so I actually have to remember my typing education from over thirty years ago. Don' t you hate it when a light bulb goes out, fancy or not? How bloody inconvenient. You never have a replacement for that one. Oh, you have thirty light bulbs in the cupboard, but not the replacement for the one that blew. Just goes to show how dependent we are on our electric lights. Helpless when the lights go off. The new low energy bulbs are exactly that, low energy. They work about half as well as old-fashioned incandescent, but they are low energy. I guess that conservation of energy thing from physics really works and isn't something invented by physics teachers to torture high school students. What I like about the new bulbs is how difficult it is to get them out of the clear plastic packaging which took so much energy to make that the energy saved by the bulb during its lifetime is negated. And you need several knives and scissors to get the new bulb out of the packaging, and if you are a bit klutzy, you might just break the whole thing and have to start over. A burned out light bulb must be a metaphor for failure, disappointment, lack of ideas, decadence, fallen empire. Surely, we are a modern society capable of making light bulbs that do not burn out. How hard can this task be. Edison did it over a hundred years ago, and the improvements since then have not solved the burned out bulb problem? We can make hand-held computers but we can't make a "forever" light bulb? We can't cure the common cold either. Are our priorities in the right place? We can have two thousand songs on a portable music player that fits in the palm of your hand, and we still suffer from burned out bulbs? Cretins and maroons, as Bugs might say.

On ghost stories

2011-04-20T21:30:00.001-07:00

Everybody knows a ghost story or two. I find this ironic in our super-rational age of hand-held computing devices, high-definition television screens, and mobile phones with more computing power than the space shuttles. People are cynical about religion, but shows about ghosts populate the late-night cable stations. Why do we tell ghost stories? Isn't a belief in ghosts irrational, childish, superficial? As Mark Twain once said, "I don't believe in ghosts, but they do scare me." Even hyper-rational, super-logical, non-superstitious people will look into the corners of a deep, dark basement and wonder what is lurking there. Right, the hair goes up on the back of your neck, that's just an odd cool breeze which has crossed your path. Nobody has ever brought a ghost in for questioning, caught a ghost in an electro-magnetic field a la Ghostbusters, ever explained those weird typing noises that occurred late-night in the dining room of a house with no typewriters. We make movies about ghosts, tell stories about ghosts, sit around campfires late at night and scare each other with weird tales of ghosts, doppelgangers and poltergeists. We all know there are no such things, that they don't haunt us or our abodes, that pictures of ghosts are fakes, trickery, hoaxes. Even rational people will feel, from time to time, a tingling of the spine, goose bumps, that someone is watching them, that there is somebody else in the room with them. My favorite ghost movie, The Sixth Sense. My favorite ghost novel, Ghost Story. My favorite ghost short story,"La cruz del diablo" (Becquer). Do I have ghosts stories to tell? Of course I do, but I don't want you to think that I am cracked, so I won't tell them. Ghost stories are about the dead, about spirits, about the restless. I don't know if ghost stories are the result of the living not wanting to let go, or if they are spurred only by an overactive imagination. I don't know if I have ever talked to a ghost, but I've had a couple of candidates. If they are nothing more than spirits, why do we fear them? Most un-favorite ghost movie, Ghost.

On a very large cockroach

2011-04-18T21:25:00.001-07:00

So I'm sitting here last night writing about dragons, and I hear this weird scuffling noise coming from behind the wall next to the computer. "Oh, great," I thought, "a mouse." Usually we have mouse trouble in Texas in the fall when the temperature outside drops below 151 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in five months. So this scuffling noise continues and I thinking that I need to get more mouse poison and put it out tomorrow. The problem with mice in the southwest is that they can carry (and often do) both Hanta Virus and plague, so they get no sympathy from me, only a steady diet of D-con. I keep writing and scuffling keeps up. Well, it seems like he is an active mouse after all. Maybe I need to get the broom and go out into the garage to investigate. I tapped on the wall. The noise stopped. I continued to write for a few more minutes, riffing on dangerous dragons. No sounds were coming from the wall. About five minutes later, the noise starts again, but this time it sounds really close. The sound is now coming from the cold air (no such thing in Texas, I know) intake grate about two feet from my chair. And then I see it: huge sweeping antennae sticking out through the edge of the grate. It's a huge cockroach. They call the darn things "water bugs" here in Texas, but I know a big hacking cockroach when I see one, or at least its antennae. I run for poison. I blast the cold are intake. Nothing happens. The sound stops, no more antennae, no more bug. He must have gotten away. Flash forward eight hours to this morning. The first thing I hear when I come into the kitchen, "Where did you get the five pound cockroach? By the way, it's dead. Clean it up." It crawled out to die. In its death-throws it flipped over, feet in the air. Monster cockroach, reddish brown. Musta weighted a pound at least.

On the dangers of dragons

2011-04-17T22:35:00.001-07:00

To be or not to be a dragon is a choice, or so I've heard some people say. To live the dragon life-style, to breath fire, to terrorize small villages, to fight with knights, to imprison beautiful princesses is all about making some choices--green scales or brown. Swords are rather deadly when wielded in the wrong hands, but I think most dragons know that. They usually live in dangerous places--mountain tops, caves, stone grottos, high canyon hideouts, abandoned subway tunnels, dark attics, cluttered closets, garages. If I were a dragon, I would try to work on my image as a knight-killer and lady-napper. I would try to tone down my breath a little although breathing fire would come in handy while starting a barbeque. Lighter fluid and matches make such a mess of things. Since image and legend are everything, I would make sure that the townspeople spread a series of lies about me so that I could terrorize a whole bunch of people without really doing anything. Once people are afraid of me, perpetuating all sorts of lies and over-generalizations about my real strengths and weaknesses, defeating them is that much easier. Dragons are, essentially, unknowable, now, aren't they? Do they really flee from garlic or is that just an old wives' tale? I knew this dragon, once, his name was Puff. A rather unfortunate name for a dragon, but there it was. We would get together on occasion and roast a goat (five minutes, easy, made sure the barbeque sauce was ready before we started!). Puff liked his part a little rare, but I liked mine a little crunchy and charred. We would get together and talk about flying, updrafts, knights, swords and how to avoid them, best place to hatch a dragon egg (Enchanted Forest), best places for vacations, how to avoid blow-back, dragon stuff, you know. So you can either be a dragon or not because it is a lifestyle. It's a choice. Beware of small knights carrying large swords, they harbor evil intentions.

On vanity

2011-04-15T21:51:00.001-07:00

THERE is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so vainly. Montaigne, "Of vanity"

Good old Montaigne, his knife cuts to the quick rather quickly. There is perhaps no place on Earth that feeds our vanity like Facebook. We have lots of friends, we get along, people stalk our profiles, look at our pictures, read our status updates, check for our comments, read our notes. If I am vain, though, it is because I was always that way. Mother Nature, on the other hand, has taught me that all physical beauty is vain, and just as surely as Narcissus was made beautiful, if he hadn't fallen into the lake trying to embrace his own image and died, he would have gotten old, like Dorian Gray, lost his hair, gotten a little thick through the middles, a little jowly in the face, wrinkles would have plagued his face. I never had good hair, my ears look funny, I am imperfect physically as any human being. I have been vain in other ways, but doing a PhD has a humbling effect even on the most vain, egotistical graduate student. My writing, at best, is mostly mediocre, though I have noticed a well-trimmed sentence sliding out from under my pen from time to time. As I have said on several occasions, I have a lot to be humble about. If anything will teach you about vanity, it is age, getting older, which, by the way, is not for the weak. It is funny watching the freshmen go about campus, vainly trying to be noticed, subtly trying to not stand out. Vanity is a weakness that attacks us all, but we let ourselves fall victim to it. We preen and dress and try to hang out with the right people. I suspect that though vain, I am not horribly vain, in the sense that I have little to be vain about. Perhaps I am vain about my humility? I get the feeling that this note is going nowhere fast and that I should stop while behind.

On Pagliacci

2011-04-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

I just saw this opera in North Dakota--Fargo to be exact, and although one might think that that was the punch line to some bad joke about Minnesota or North Dakota, I was impressed. Of course, I have written about the figure of the clown as an exaggerated grotesque character who moves easily between comedy and tragedy, often doing both at once, as it is int his opera. The clown make-up, so recognizable, no matter who the clown is, erases identity and inducts the clown into the clown guild regardless of who they are. They are less a person and more of a type, a recognizable type from who certain kinds of jokes are to be expected. The make-up is a sign of both comedy and tragedy, and the opera by Ruggiero Leoncavallo demonstrates this combination of laughter and tears as love, envy, and hate mix in great quantities on stage. The plot is a fabliau gone bad, an older, richer actor falls in love with his lovely young protégé and co-star and wife. The wife has, as it is in these plots, a younger, handsome lover and she is putting the horns on her husband, the clown. The second act is a wild combination of play-acting and real life. The plot of the play mirrors the real life problems between the actor/clown and his wife/the cheating wife. We all know the outcome: the clown, in an inversion of roles, kills his wife and the lover, so the comedy on stage becomes a tragedy in real life, all plotted out, mapped out, staged on the stage of the theater, orchestra playing like madmen in the pit. The clown, then, becomes highly theatrical. He is a once an actor who plays an actor who plays a murderous, envy-driven, clown, a figure that should evoke laughter. Yet, the clown's exposition of his problems with a philandering wife is heart-breaking because he is supposed to make us laugh, but all he has in his heart are tears.

On flooding

2011-04-13T21:54:00.001-07:00

Ever since the great flood of the Old Testament, people have had a great fear of floods, which I think is pretty natural. Uncontrolled water going everywhere, washing things away, creating new spaces, erasing the old ones, creating a brand-new landscape dynamic with increasingly weird features: dikes, levees, sandbags, flood highways, sunken bridges; and all of that is littered with "road closed" signs and cones and barriers of all types. A parking garage becomes a concrete island from which to view the flood; a restaurant with sump pumps flowing turns into space box from which the flood may be safely viewed. A river becomes an ocean, and all the familiar landscape markers that defined the area are erased, turning trees into channel markers and concrete bridges into dams. And the water rises inexorably without regard to human habitation or structure. Cars turn into out-of-control pontoons, and garbage and flotsam and jetsam are everywhere, collecting at every fallen tree, at every underwater snag. I understand why people fear floods: the water washes away human constructions and only leaves mud and debris and dirt and sand. You cannot wish the water back into the banks of the river, you cannot make it crest or go down. All of the desire in the world cannot turn back the raging torrent that is a flood. Yes, we try to build causeways, and dikes, and flood control walls, but a flood is a greater force than it seems with the ability to wash away the sins of the builders, and turned a well-built structure into a pile of broken lumber, busted bricks, and twisted metal. Destruction, loss, damage, debris, dirt are all things that the flooding river brings to bare on a landscape. Whether that landscape be in New Orleans or California or Fargo or Mesopotamia, it is still a change that shakes humankind to the bone. Our puny structures are just that--puny. At the same time, the flood clears the way for the new, new structures, new roads, new ventures. Is flooding about seizing an opportunity or about lamenting the loss of the old?

On typewriters

2011-04-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have lost track of the last typewriter that I ever owned. I learned to type on a manual Remington when I was a senior in high school. The skill served me well, but the technology has changed just a bit since then. My old typewriter was a portable that fit into a beige carrying case which I imagine weighed more than ten pounds. It had a ribbon and a roller and when you finished a line, you threw the roller across the machine to the beginning of the next line. The "o" was always a little off center and wonky. The other day a friend was using a portable wireless keyboard with her portable computing device. The whole thing fit easily into a notebook thingy that fit easily into her bag. The whole thing did not weight two pounds. So I started thinking about my old portable typewriter that was not very portable and not very easy to use. Correcting mistakes was a nightmare, and you had to choose between a white liquid that got on everything or little strips of white paper that you had to slide between the key and paper. It was a messy proposition fixing even the simplest mistake. The shift in technology is both quantum and spectacular. Typewriters have become museum pieces, but all of this happened in my lifetime. Typewriters ruled the office machine world for more than a hundred years, and then they were thrown on the scrap heap of anachronistic technology. The typewriter is a symbol of how quickly obsolescence can swallow an entire industry. Keyboards, word-processors, personal computing devices have revolutionized communications, made most snail mail obsolete, and speeded up our production of almost everything. Sometimes I yearn for the slower times of mechanical communication where striking a key meant striking a key, not tapping a keypad. In fact, most keyboards are made to be less efficient and less sensitive than what they could be because human kinesiology is slower and clumsier than what a hyper-fast, hyper-efficient, keyboard can really handle. Is progress always a good thing?

On packing

2011-04-05T20:58:00.001-07:00

If there is one activity I despise even more than cutting the lawn, it has to be packing a suitcase. So I'm going on a short trip and will be back soon, but the shirts have to be folded, the toiletries all packing in a safe and leak proof manner, all the medicines have to be checked (yes, I'm an old wreck), toothbrush, razor, Ipod, books, paper, papers to correct, camera, computer, head phones, chocolate. When did my life get so complicated? When I would go to grandma's for the weekend, I packed a pair of clean undies and my pajamas, and there was still a lot of room left in my little black and white suitcase. Now I check a bag wherever I go because I can't carry all that crap on the plane. Granted, I'm heading north and need a hat and gloves, but that shouldn't complicate things too much. But the packing goes on. Where's this, where's that? And in the end, after all of my frantic running around, I will still leave some vital thing behind and have to go to Wally World or Evergreens to get something. And another thing, all that stuff in the suitcase will expand in volume so that when I'm packing up to come home, it won't fit in the suitcase anymore. Why is that exactly. Inquiring minds and all that. I have a book to read on the plane that isn't so esoteric that people will stare. I have my bag of chocolate in case I get stranded somewhere without food. I have my head phones and charged Ipod to fight the boredom. What I need to do is consolidate and simplify. Do I really need three ties? (Murphy's Corollary on ties: if you do not have one, a situation will present itself where you will definitely need one). An umbrella? No, in the Northland it snows, negating the effectiveness of umbrellas. Extra shoes? No, I'm a guy, no extra shoes. My only fear is this: after doing all this packing, the airline will lose my bag. Knock on wood.

On getting your hair cut

2011-04-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

As a child I was traumatized several times by really bad haircuts. Nobody did it on purpose, but I have naturally bad hair, and so most haircuts on me are just awful. During my teens, I just let it grow as much as possible, and it was long and stringy and awful. Then, when I did get it cut, I just looked horrendous. I once got a haircut in Spain that was so bad, it took four months for it to grow back (and I paid for that?). Now that I don't have any hair, I just cut off all the rest. I've never had nice hair, so this is probably best for me. Finding someone you trust to cut your hair is like finding the fabled city of gold, El Dorado. For the past fifteen years or so, the same guy in Waco has cut my hair, but I don't go anymore because my hairstyle is so simple, a #1. Anyone with a clipper can cut my hair, so now my wife does it on a bi-weekly basis, and she does a fine job. In the meantime, I stay nice and neat and trimmed. I save enormous amounts of money on combs, blow-dryers, straightners, shampoo, conditioner, and hair gel. It takes me about five seconds to do my hair in the morning, and I use a towel. In Spain, when I had hair, I went to the same barber for thirty years (but not the one that gave me the horrendous haircut--this was the guy that fixed the horrendous haircut), but he retired last year. He was sixty-six and tired of heads. I really can't blame him. My new stylist is a young woman with several piercings and many tattoos. I especially like the skull, rose, and rattlesnake motif on her right shoulder. She waxes my eyebrow (says, "All people should have two eyebrows, not one continuous one.") and my ears, and she wields a straight razor with lots of authority. "Don't move or you'll bleed!" When she's done with me, my hair is gone. My scalp is slick as a whistle and as smooth as a baby's behind. (Nice image, that one). So get your haircut. I always feel better when I do

On the meaning of shipwreck

2011-04-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

I think that as long as people have been building ships and sailing into blue water, they have also lived with shipwreck, which means that shipwreck means disaster on a massive scale with massive loss of life, shattered dreams, failed journeys, loss of cargo, lost investments. Whether we ponder the loss of 13th century passenger ship with less than a hundred aboard, or the loss of a modern marvel such as the Titanic, the meaning is the same: failure. In a society such as ours that prides itself on success, it seems strange to me that shipwreck would be such an important symbol in the semiotics of our culture. Yet we make movies, write songs, paint pictures, immortalize the dead heroes, publish books, write poetry, build monuments in order, perhaps to not forget the suffering and damage caused by these disasters. It’s like we cannot stop looking because, by the grace of God, there go I, and that is where I started this meditation, with you in a lifeboar, wondering what was going to happen next. Perhaps in a success driven society, we still must deal with failure so that we can move on when things are unsuccessful. All people, sometime during their lives, will have to face hardship, failure, loss and disaster. If it isn't the annual floods that haunt this part of the country, it might be the tornados that destroy hundreds of homes a year across the nation's midsection, or the forest fires and floods that alternately menace different parts of California, or the hurricanes of the gulf coast. If we know we are on a ship, metaphorically, then the possibility of shipwreck is always there. My own home town of St. Peter has been cut off this week by closed bridges, flooded highways, and wash outs. If we are all pilgrims, on our personal pilgrimage to wherever, then our travel plans may go awry no matter how well we have planned. To assume that we control our destinies is pure illusion. Blue skies and calm seas are nothing more than a mirage that does not let us see either the danger of our water-bound venture or our naiveté about the perils that may block our path. You build a house on a higher hill to get away from the flood, but lightening strikes it. You build a better boat so that it can't sink, and it is the very mass of the boat which is responsible for tearing apart its own hull plating. Victims of our own pride and hubris, we underestimate the power of Mother Nature, the laws of physics, and the fact that as far as naturally born land creatures go, traveling on water will always be perilous in spite of its rewards.

On the island of Murano (Venice)

2011-03-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

We were dead tired and it was our last day in Venice and our last day in Italy. We were flying home to Dallas early the next day. I was up to my cojones in guides and cathedrals and museums and people. I didn't want to listen to any more explanation about anything. Didn't want to see any more famous paintings, no more religious mosaics, no more great statues, no more tourist shops, no more people aiming cameras at me. I was, literally, hasta los mismísimos cojones con todo. So after the last guide offered to send us off to Murano Island out in the lagoon, I thought that this might be an excellent moment to get away from it all. Murano Island is famous for the blown glass that is manufactured there. There would be tourists, but perhaps not so many. We were put in a water taxi and we motored out to the island. We were also hungry. We were sort of at the mercy of the glass factory, so we came inside and watched a man make a vase. Little did I know that they would later sell that vase for over 5,000 Euros, or about $7,500 dollars. We left the glass factory in search of food, but the pickings were slim. I suggest a place with no name, but it did have a chalk board with that day's food. We decided to give it a try. We sat outside in the gentle sunshine alongside a canal filled with all sorts of boats and barges. Very peaceful. I felt a special relief in being able to sit for a moment and not have to worry about getting on to the next thing. That makes me cranky. We ordered some drinks and the some food. They actually had one of my favorite dishes--cuttlefish in its own ink over spaghetti. Makes the spaghetti look all black and the taste is all salty and earthy and fishy and wonderful. Somebody's mom was back in the kitchen making the food. The food came out piping hot, fresh, and wonderfully and lovingly prepared. Al dente. One of the best meals I had on the trip. On the last day, on the island of Murano in a restaurant with no name.