If you want to play the game, you must have the balls
The framers of our Constitution feared three things above all: kingship, religious influence and foreign interference in our political processes. Today, thanks in large part to the Republican party, we have a dictator-king, evangelicals and other religious zealots interfering in secular legislative matters and a clearly identified assault on our electoral processes by Russia above all, and probably other foreign governments.
We are in a game. We are in a vital, frightening game for survival, and the democratic republic called the United States of America is in danger of losing. The game is between the majority Democratic party electorate and the minority Republican citizenry. In order to play this particular game, the most important outcome of which will be the election of the next President of the United States, on November 3, 2020, we need balls. We need a large number of balls, balls of high quality. In the political game, these are called policies. The point of the game is to dribble and score, shoot through hoops on our end of the court projects, laws, regulations and protections that will benefit the American people, all the American people, and temporary and long-term visitors.
We Democrats have the best policies, the highest quality balls with which to win the game. We propose these policies as we play the game, we legislate these policies as we play the game, or promise to legislate them when we win; and we vow to protect and improve these policies as needed, later. We choose these policies because we Democrats actually believe that all men and women are created equal and that they are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We Democrats believe the promise of the framers of the Constitution that the laws in this document to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of all Americans must be implemented and defended. We Democrats believe that with these balls we can win the game, and thereby protect and improve the conditions of our nation and all nations and the earth itself.
We promote these policies, not in isolation. We are playing the game for the benefit of American citizens. We ask the American people, who elect an executive to supervise, a bicameral Congress to legislate and fund, and an elaborate judiciary system to implement, promote and protect the policies that the majority of American citizens favor and demand and have a right to expect from their elected representatives.
The game is underway. The game used to be called civics in the classroom, sometimes political science, and these days, by almost everyone, politics. Politics. The collective affairs of the people of the city, its Greek origin tells us. This is our game.
We have the balls. We Democrats have the balls, the policies that Americans favor. The policies that the majority of our party and the majority of the entire American electorate and citizenry favor. Their will, the majority will, is what makes a democracy a democracy.
What do they wish? We, Democrats, favor and honor their wishes. The American people, in majority numbers overall including all parties, favor gun controls, the limited and regulated ownership of certain high-powered weapons intended only for use by trained military personnel, and not even by most civilian law enforcement officers. The requirement of registration and a license to own a gun; the sale of a gun only to an adult, and only following his background check. The majority of Americans polled on the question favor a woman’s right—and her man’s— to choose abortion when subject to unplanned or unwanted or unsustainable pregnancy. We hold that ball in our court.
We, Democrats, support equal pay for equal work for women who do the same work or provide the same service as men in equal situations, in the Federal government, as well as in the public sector. Republicans don’t carry that ball. We Democrats will protect and strengthen the Social Security system. Republicans long to bounce that ball into private corporate hands. We carry the ball-stamped Medicare. Democrats, with majority public support, will strengthen the Affordable Care Act. The Republican health care bill is stamped insurance corporations and Big Pharma. Immigration laws need above all to provide more judges to clear applications for United States citizenship. Republican xenophobes dribble a ball labeled the Presidential pronouncement, “The United States is full.” We majority Democrats know that the right thing to do is to naturalize DACA men and women. Republicans keep passing that ball around the court, without taking a shot.
Democrats, inspired these days by the soulful memory of John Lewis, will attack the basket again to score a new Voting Rights Bill, to keep the game honest. While Republicans re-apportion and re-district constituencies and suppress votes.
All other world governments and the Democratic party recognize the damaging effects of global warming. All acknowledge the scientific data that show human industrial and agricultural practices are responsible for the rapid rise in temperatures worldwide that literally inflame the earth; and for the poisoning of the air, the land and the waters by the fossil fuel corporate-industrial complex. The Republican party, unique among nations, denies the scientific facts and the corroborating evidence collected and labels the entire climate change phenomenon a hoax. No balls. Democrats are dribbling and shooting in the court of awareness.
The US Postal Service is one of the two most respected American Federal institutions—along with the U.S. military—and it is remarkably efficient. It has been pummeled and bounced around by the Republican party for several decades in an effort to weaken it, delegitimize it, and condemn it to private ownership. Their efforts threaten a fair election. Their obstruction and efforts to discredit the Postal Service itself is another example of cheating to win. Because they do not have the balls to win honestly. One Democratic ball can legitimately be said to carry the patriotic logo “In honor of the USPS.”
In honor of the United States Postal Service, which is being dishonorably weaponized by the Republican party to do what they can’t do honestly: play a fair game. They do not have the balls.
When one team does not have the balls, it can’t play the game. If it can’t play the game, the only chance it has of winning is to cheat and lie. If Republicans keep repeating that this economy is a Republican economy, it is lying. This economy is the longest continuously growing economy in our history. It started in the Democratic administration of President Barak Obama. It has not yet been halted by the present Republican leadership. But it will be. Unless Democrats take over in time, on January 20, 2021. We have the balls. They don’t.
Some of the Republican cheating can’t be remedied. Many—too many—ultra-Conservative judges have been appointed by the grim reaper and approved by the block-voting lockstep Republican Senate. Many of these judges, as reported by the legitimate watchdogs who rate them, according to their evaluations, are under-qualified for their high, lifetime appointed positions. The Republicans did not have the balls, that is, the declared will of the majority electorate, so they stuffed in and railroaded through their ideological enforcers as quickly and invisibly as they could. By winning in November, we Democrats can halt the cheats and lies, and prevent further damage to our judicial system. Americans want qualified justices. We Democrats represent the majority. We have the balls.
If they had had the balls, they would have welcomed Democratic opinions for a bipartisan or compromised decision in every case. If you don’t have the balls, bend, even break the system of laws, to win. On the Supreme Court sit two bent-law appointees, situated to influence for decades policies, inevitably, favored by only a minority of United States citizens. We Democrats had the balls, but we didn’t have the court.
We have the balls to win, this time. And we must. We have the balls, for this election, to win the court advantage. To win the game.
A pandemic is killing thousands worldwide. We have had these before. On the Democrat watch of Barak Obama and Joe Biden, a plan to deal with future pandemics was written and preserved. The Democratic president handled the Ebola crisis so well that few died. He had the balls. He played the leadership game and won for the United States. The plan to check a future pandemic was scuttled by the Republican president and his Republican Senate. They threw away the ball. Principally because the plan bore the name of his predecessor, not because it wasn’t useful. When we win in November, our plan will be activated, and Democrats will rescue the nation once again.
This president is dangerous. The evidence is clear. He must not win. Democrats must prevail. We have the balls to win again. We’ll play the election game and win. The majority of our national electorate are on our side. If they play with us, they can’t lose. And even if the Republicans cheat and lie, they can’t win. The stands are full of voters who favor our team. They came out to games all across the nation in the mid-terms. They cheered and voted, and Democrats, playing with superior balls, won…. bigly. Republicans will lose this time, too. Because they don’t have the balls.
Comey
To Donald Bertelle:
Hope you’re feeling comfortable these days.
Okay. I’ve watched and read and heard plenty. This once eminently honorable man, whose ethics and righteousness were so effective for decades as head of the F.B.I, was rendered so drunk and unbalanced with the narcotic power of oversight of a herculean political combat being followed and highlighted in the flattering golden glow of an international spotlight, like so many charismatic figures in history when a rare, supremely dramatic opportunity presented itself to them, lost his composure.
His level and doctrinaire judgement, his Eagle Scout’s flame of righteousness flared up and enveloped him.
Lordy, this is exciting!
He violated the rules of his own playbook. In his fateful summer, he spoke out of turn about an ongoing investigation. He closed the investigation and declared it closed.
In his declaration, he violated another tenet in the F.B.I book of rules: he thrashed the subject, self-consciously presenting his condescending reprimands as if it pained him to do so, and concluded with an anticlimactic verdict of some “reckless” behavior and intimation of possible harm caused by it, but no grounds for prosecution. He was directed by his own rule book not to editorialize, but he did. His only statement should have been that after a thorough investigation of her emails he and his team had found no grounds for prosecution. End of news conference.
Skirting the edge of his Directorship precipice.
Finally, he went over the cliff. Fourteen days before the election, he sent a letter saying that he was reopening the investigation. He violated protocol. The letter could have waited. F.B.I tradition was clear, no new—especially no vague and unsubstantiated information—was ever revealed so near the day of a federal election. A well-known clear practice.
He wrote that he had new emails he had not seen before, and needed to pore through them for some possible new evidence. The emails in Uma Abedin’s emails revealed nothing new. BUT he wrote the letter to Congress before he know anything at all about what they showed. At best, precipitous. At worst, reckless.
Eleven days before the election he declared, “Oops, sorry. No harm, no foul.” But the damage was done.
Pity that he cannot face his stupendous error in judgement even now.
Tragic. It fits the literary definition. A tragic flaw. The little boy who was bullied, I just found out. The plot thins. I know there are more details in his background, traits and incidents that foreshadowed this leap over the edge into infamy.
The accounts of his interchanges with Scum may redeem his legacy. I wish him well. But I deeply regret his incompetence.
P.S. I’m perplexed by his reasoning that he thought he was deciding between disclosure and “hiding” what might be in the as yet unexamined emails on Abedin’s computer.
I’m disturbed by his not recognizing first, that there was no risk in withholding an announcement of said messages; even if there was new evidence in them, because he should not have been speaking publicly about a continuing investigation in the first place; and second, that it seemed not to occur to him that the public airing would likely damage Hillary’s chances; and thirdly: that he already regarded Scum as unfit for office (I’m sure) and he would be helping him win.
So…the worm in the wood of his psyche was probably the suppressed REPUBLICAN. You once said sneeringly that Obama had appointed a Republican and should have known that Comey would be apt to turn if any pressure arose.
I think Mueller in the same position (which of course he held before) would not have succumbed like that.
Comey’s weakness, after all, when his deepest character was challenged. And his cloaked inferiority complex. As an actor, I find his complex psyche very interesting. Personally, too. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I have described myself as that.
Hugs and Kisses,
DjT
P.P.S. The Lordy boy is now on a moral crusade. Won’t walk out from under the follow spot and out of the keylight (when being filmed, I’m always aware of the keylight; on the stage, as well)
Compound Deceptions
Think of the compound deceptions: take the cane and crush, pound, strip and squeeze it. Drain it of all nutrients. Throw away the nutritious essence; boil it, strain it, and dry it until all you have left is a dead white granular anti-nutrient. Eat it, crave it by the millions of tons. But regret it only because it has calories. So, take this false food and imitate it by combining chemicals, to produce an imposter of an imposter, but one that doesn’t have calories. To accomplish what?
COMEY’S CHOICES
In July, Comey told us his conclusion, after extensively investigating Hillary’s emails. His team were looking for possible breaches in security and the possible breaking of laws. His conclusion: he and the searches could find no reason to recommend an indictment of Hillary Clinton on any provable charge. That was his duty: to report to the American people.
But he did not execute that duty properly. He went further. He broke a code of never elaborating in detail upon his findings, or on his OPINION of Hillary’s actions. He called her actions “reckless” but not criminal. Comey went too far. Why?
The only answer can be, the ONLY ANSWER can be, that he felt PERSONALLY that she had behaved badly. He had no mandate to say so. No other F.B.I. director had ever gone that far past a curt, official verdict of this kind. Some have suggested that he wanted to assure the world that he saw Hillary’s flawed judgment. WHY? There was no legal justification. There was no threat to the integrity of the F.B.I. There was only his ego, his self-centered presumptuous feeling. THAT FEELING SHOULD HAVE REMAINED PRIVATE.
Comey violated custom, protocol, and decency. His EGO required it. He put himself above the law. He put his ego above fairness.
Ten days before the election, having opened the laptop emails of Anthony Weiner and his wife, Hillary’s personal aide and adviser. Most of the emails there he and his team had already seen. There was nothing pertinent to his investigation of Hillary. Probably a day or two of examination would have corroborated the fact that no NEW details were there. Comey should have kept silent, until he had concluded the examination of those emails.
Instead, Comey sent a letter to Congress, expressing VAGUELY that there might PERHAPS be some new emails pertinent to the Hillary inquiry. He could have dismissed that possibility in a matter of hours or at most, according to experts, a day or two. There was no sound to an alarm.
Comey then announced that there was nothing new in those Weiner household emails. Never mind. We were excited for a minute, but all’s well now. The clearance came too late. The damage to Hillary had been done. The ALL CLEAR couldn’t clear the cloud away from the Hillary campaign.
Comey’s choices: To remain silent until he had drawn his conclusion. Instead, he sent the letter to Congress. Why? To pre-empt a possible leak to the public and to the press? A leak of WHAT?
Supposed he had not covered himself—as the letter was clearly meant to do—and the news of the investigation of another batch of emails did reach the public. It was Comey’s job to conduct his investigation IN PRIVATE. That’s the F.B.I rule—law?—protocol. The proper way to behave. ESPECIALLY IN AN ELECTION YEAR and SO CLOSE TO VOTING DAY.
Why did he do it? I submit that his MOTIVE COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN PERSONAL. I submit that his motive COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN out of his wish (DESIRE?) to influence the election. He could not have been unaware that the letter would do that. He could not have been unaware that the ONLY INFLUENCE WOULD HAVE BEEN TO AID TRUMP and harm Hillary. He should have known that NOT SENDING THE LETTER COULD NOT HAVE BEEN HELD AGAINST HIM, even if some new evidence surfaced later. He WAS NOT OBLIGATED TO ANNOUNCE POSSIBLE NEWFOUND INFRACTIONS. THAT was RECKLESS and IRRESPONSIBLE.
Why did he do it? It must, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, have BEEN A PERSONAL gesture to cause the Hillary campaign distress.
IT SIMPLY WAS NOT justified.
Even if more evidence had come out that could have justified a re-evaluation of Hillary’s culpability in using an unauthorized server, or of having endangered U.S Security, actions against Hillary would have continued.
Therefore: Hillary could not have avoided possible charges, so justice would not have been thwarted.
Scientific Conclusions
The beauty of the pursuit of scientific conclusions is that they don’t have to be precise or even correct. Scientists are always in a muddle. Mathematics and physics—sometimes—are precise. But scientists are otherwise only issuing temporary answers. “Mankind is _______ years old. Yes, definitely!” Six months later, when someone else uncovers one more skeleton, we hear, “No, no, thanks to the scientific method we know now that mankind is ____ years old. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“The streets of Pompeii were frequented by prostitutes and shoppers looking for bakeries and the baths. And these little alcoves were post offices, and we can prove it!” Fifteen years later, another Scientist twists around all those facts and utters new, even more startling facts!
The serious scientist relies on hard facts. Unless he can prove a theory with hard facts, through scientific tests—usually in laboratories, never minding common sense or clear actually—it’s not a threat or true. Malathion is not a threat because no tests have proved that it is. Never mind common sense, which tells us that all chemicals—especially those manufactured by man—are poisons. Sure, some natural substances are poisons too, but they are not bottled in intense concentrations. They’re dispensed naturally for natural purposes, which are usually in aid of the cosmos. (This is in anticipation of the use of that lame cliché argument against my tirade). The air, land, and water are dying thanks to our polluting of them. NO, no, no, that’s not scientific. NO, it’s merely the truth that any cretin could see—if he looked and opened up his sealed, moldy mind. Many scientists work for Industry, of course, and there lie some criminal activities of the lowest order; that is, of the lowest level of sensitivity.
Science
Melody Road
Science reveals its laws gradually. Or, humans only gradually come to see natural laws. We learn in stages. When we discover a phenomenon, it becomes a scientific truth. Physicists, engineers, physiologists, mathematicians, archaeologists, geologists, astronomers, botanists, lepidopterists and all manner of scientists come to understand their truths across national boundaries and cultures. What is so in one place is also true in any other. The natural laws are universal. Insofar as we know now, even the laws of interplanetary motion are understood by all inhabitants of the Earth equipped to grasp them. All such laws change. Some of these truths are expanded—we learn more in addition to a particular phenomenon or mathematical operation. Some laws are supplanted by better information. All scientists recognize the previous error (entire or partial) and a new law is put in place. And new laws are discovered regularly. Whatever they are, these laws are not hidden from the view of some because their superstitions or politics disallow their acceptance or understanding. God, or the notion of a high all-powerful controlling force, may reveal itself gradually, too.
It seems only logical and fair, then, that as revelations of this force occur, they be recognizable and comprehendible by all peoples, as laws of science are. Laws of nature are not the exclusive property of certain tribes or nations. Nature prevails over all. God must certainly operate in the same way.
One nation tells you that there are certain laws of behavior dictated by god. Another nation will tell you that its set of laws is the correct set of laws, dictated by god. Can they both be correct? If five or eight nations tell you that its set of rules dictated by god are the correct ones—with which to achieve one’s happiness and eventually one’s reward in the next life, and each set of laws has in them rules that contradict laws in the others—which laws can be proved to be correct? Can it be that god promotes this confusion? Can it be that god will not reveal once and for all the absolutely correct single set of rules of behavior? Or is man foolish to follow orders that can at best be merely relative notions of right and wrong, not applicable to all people in all places now and since the beginning of time? Can each tribe, nation or cult really believe that it alone of all peoples has found the secret? Can it believe that god would keep secret in the first place, laws of correct behavior? What would that secrecy accomplish? Confusion and fear, hatred and conflict. Could that be this god’s intention? If the sets of rules are numerous, mankind must be mistaken. If mankind had several sets of laws of electricity and light, none of which could be proved, every set logically would be mistaken. So, are all religions therefore wrong? Of course.
Then where on earth are the rules, the laws of this god? They must be clear—if there are any. This power, god, is by definition clear. Clear is unconfused. Nature is clear. It is observable. It is before us, all around us. It has been functioning since before our time. It does not require our understanding, or even our comprehension and acknowledgement, to exist or go on functioning. We are in it. We are of it. We have some small ability to interfere with its operations. We try to alter specific functions. We harm and destroy. We never improve, as we claim. We don’t have that power. But we vainly insist that we do. We arrogantly tamper and thwart. Always, in the end, we fail. And we pay a price. Of pain, confusion and death. Nature, its laws and relentless force, continues.
The power we call god does, too. There do not seem to be varying laws for scattered ant colonies around the earth. There do not seem to be varying laws of thermo-dynamics or gravity or light among the continents. Seasons operate according to varied climates, but always in clear patterns. Alterations occur through the millennia, but always in discernable patterns traceable through mathematics and physics. The power we call god must have been operating always and openly for all peoples in all places since the beginning. If there are laws for the human creature, they can only be laws that have always been discernible. From the beginning. Compile a set that can be seen clearly to have operated since our beginning, and you may have found the rules of the behavior all religions have searched for in vain.
To accomplish this, we must go back and observe the earth and its inhabitants, not the heavens. Not the fanciful heavens, that is, of the imagination. Astronomers know the heavens as they are; a book of mathematics, said Galileo.
If there were multiple books of mathematics that contradicted one another, and none of them could be proved to be correct, all of those books would be invalid. Because there is a book of laws of mathematics that can be proved. If there are multiple books of the laws of god, and none can be proved to be a true or correct collection of rules or laws, then none of those books can be the correct one. Since no book has yet appeared to outline rules and laws that must have been operating since the beginning of time, there cannot be a book of the rules and laws of the god all religions of the world identity as the higher power.
The three most widely followed religions are all based on living humans who declare—according to their own and the accounts of later followers—that to enter into the good graces of the omnipotent god, one must believe in that human and his declarations. Each man asserts that the god we all seek spoke through him. That this god does not speak directly to all people. That the laws each of these men delineates are inerrant. That only people who learn these laws can gain the love and rewards this god offers. So, anyone born before these men existed can’t have this god’s good offerings, not in this life or the next. In other words, this force, god, revealed itself for the first time, starting only about thirty-two hundred years ago; through Moses. Then again through Jesus, and through Mohammed. Before their time, people had no valid understanding of this god, and none of this god’s promised benefits. And ever since, each (along with his followers) declares that only by following his set of rules can humans have these benefits.
Unlike the rules of mathematics and the laws of gravity, these three sets of rules oppose one another on many counts. In fact, the accounts of the Christian Bible contradict one another repeatedly on very many important details. The accounts of the older Hebrew Bible were written by anonymous figures and contradict many points of the later Christian texts. The declarations of the Koran are a new set of orders widely different from the other two. Yet all are the “word” of this god. Each set of beliefs is the one and only correct set. Each of these “messengers” of this god is correct. Only he, in fact. Any other person’s declarations are incorrect. All three texts warn that anyone who fails to adhere to its rules will be punished. Here on earth in some cases. And in the next life, for certain. What happens to someone who follows none of these books?
Anyone who doesn’t understand the laws of mathematics, gravity, thermo-dynamics and interplanetary motion will always be subject to laws nevertheless. He need not even acknowledge the laws to benefit from them. He certainly is not required by this god to understand them, in order to be subject to them. He is entitled, by mere virtue of existing. I think the same must be so for the so-called laws of this god.
The first human and the last human, in every place, of all time, benefits from the forces of nature and god. Nothing else is required of humankind. If a human chooses to kill and destroy, or nurture and create, he is entitled to the benefits of this god.
No religion has ever been devised or declared, with its rituals and requirements for salvation, and rules of living, that is universal. No concept of a single god has ever been stated that could be understandable by all people in all times, everywhere. Perhaps this is because humans have ignored the most obvious signs of a god’s presence.
Nature, with its complex connections and orderly laws, is surely the best evidence of a creative force and overruling power. Grand enough, powerful enough and rather easily understood, or at least observed, by all people everywhere from the beginning of human existence. Nature does not keep its secrets. It functions the same for all people. It requires only the simplest understanding, to live in it and cope with its demands and dangers. It supplies everything a human could possibly need. It does not require tribute, only understanding, acceptance and prudence in the face of its ultimate power to give life and take it. It does not even require understanding beyond a minimum awareness. Education, apart from experience passed from one generation to the next, in its complexities, is not a necessity. Nature does not punish. Nature merely operates. Nature does not reward. It merely functions. If one takes its abundance, one feels rewarded. If one is caught in an avalanche or a tidal wave, one is harmed. These functions are what we call “natural.” They are not the exception. Nature operates unfailingly by rules. Only humans, in fact, of all creatures, seem to break natural rules or laws. The result sometimes is God, or the originating and controlling force, like all operations of nature, must have been operating always. From the beginning of time. Gradually, humans come to see these operations. If the workings of nature are seen one way in one place on the planet and in another in another place, comparisons are made between them. Scientists do not argue much about what can be proved. Electricity, wind, seas, light, heat, planets, forests, mountains, genes. All always have been. All always are. All always operate in one discernible way. Discernible by all in one way. If there is god, it must be so for that force, too. Nature is not a mystery. It operates whether we understand it or not. It does not need our permission. And it operates according to its own laws even when we interfere. It operates upon all always in the same ways. Nature does not select. It hums along, causing and affecting.
God must operate in like manner. From the beginning of time. Upon the entire planet. Upon all people. Without our understanding. With our understanding, should we ever have any.
The trouble with religions is that they are all incorrect. If any religion were correct, it would be clear and comprehensible to all. It could not be relative. It would be absolute, like nature. Religions are all relative. Believers say that the word of god is written in Arabic, Aramaic, Chinese, English, Latin, Greek. God does not operate in words. Words would limit god, and god is limitless, like nature. Religions say that their set of laws are absolute. There can be only one set of laws, like the laws of nature. If the scientists of five different nations proposed five varying sets of laws of planetary motion and declared each set of laws incontrovertible, the world would laugh. Only one set of laws could be the correct one, or it could be that none of those nations has observed the correct set. But there is one. And it is obtainable. By all.
If the people or churches of ten different nations proposed ten varying sets of laws of god and declared each set of laws incontrovertible, the world ought to laugh. Instead, the nations condemn and threaten one another, in the name of each nation’s god.
If one asks for proof of the truth of any one of these sets of beliefs, the believers say that the ways of god are mysterious. Which means, of course, that there are no proofs. Sometimes, they will offer a prophet or prophets as proof. If a scientist cannot prove a premise, he might try offering a prophet as proof. People would laugh if the scientist say that Aripope said it was so. Where is the proof? Never mind, Aripope is our proof. In fact, for centuries the Western world took Aristotle as their proof. Universities taught “received wisdom” of Aristotle as all the truth one need know. Until the scientific revolution proved that Aristotle could not have known many things that only science could prove. And that, in fact, Aristotle was wrong. The Pope said the sun revolves around the Earth, which was the true center of the cosmos. He had Galileo jailed because he said the opposite.
Only humans punish. And viciously, sometimes. Humans guard virtuous behavior jealously. So jealously that if someone is seen to be unvirtuous, that person is sometimes punished unto death. This is the “I am better than thou” syndrome. Some people are so frightened of life that they need an advantage. Cloak yourself in “belief” and you are superior. And unassailable. Anyone who doesn’t understand is inferior. Anyone who contradicts is a heretic. That person is doomed. But we who “believe” are saved. Nyah, nyah!
But do devout people doubt?
Why do they need to “convert” others? To feel less lonely? If they fail to convert others, then they condemn those they have failed to bring “into the light.” Or do they just pity those? No, those who remain outside are a threat. To the convictions of those who seek to convert others.
Lake Forest
Winter is staying here. It may have traveled to Lake Forest from the west; no, I think it slipped over the border from the north, and maybe slightly west, over the corner of Minnesota. May is its very latest deadline, I would think, but it’s not going.
Blackie is the most careful evaluator. She scoots around the edge of my half open bedroom door and sniffs up. Her fangs show when her head is tilted and her read end is flattened against the deck because she has only one leg back there. Her head bobs up and down. I read that cats see in a different manner from us. They need to align shapes, so they bob and twist their heads to get their eyes in the right position. Her nose tells her the temperature while she is viewing the sky and checking the light. I know she will stay close if the temperature is cool. This morning it is chilly.
Daisy wanted to be released to the big yard, so I let her charge out the back door. Antonio is working out back, putting in dozens of flowers. I have discovered New York Asters. They have small starry blooms (aster means “star”) on flayed out bushy stems in the fall. I’ll pull in many more mums in late summer. They will keep the blooms past July. The trick is to keep the flowers coming without annuals. Annuals strike me as too little bang for the buck. Pansies and petunias are paltry. I don’t like to denigrate flowers, but those two disappoint me. Probably because they are displayed incorrectly in gardens. Americans think “variety” is important. They don’t understand massing. Italians do. The French, too. And English gardens use large clumps of roses and hydrangeas for dramatic effect. Scale. Americans don’t see it. They plant tiny flowers in massive containers. Too low, too pale. If I planted pansies, I’d place one color (or one multi-colored version) in low beds in a serpentine shape, like a fat snake. But annuals have to be replaced yearly. No, thanks.
So my perennial plantings carry me through to snow time. (We had some a few weeks ago!). No letup. But this late-arriving summer and spring give me more time to plant. Leaves are slow arriving too, so my new forsythia (fifteen bushes) get more sun for blooming. The daffodils are just beginning to fade—an extra long display. While they sit, I can see spaces to fill. And I’ll have Antonio divide them. Neighbors don’t bother. So scattered clumps awkwardly bestrew nearby yards. My blooms are spread like a quilt, and wider each year. They multiply, but you have to help out by separating. The result is uplifting. There is a cozy feeling from the coverlets and a harmony between the trees and shrubs wrapped by the splotches of color. I have no plan, so my paintings are impressionistic. Sometimes they’re awkward, sometimes graceful, often surprising. You keep altering. Move it here, shove it over there, put those two together, separate those. No, leave it. What the hell, dig it up again!
My stone path is garrulous. It declares itself, then whispers, crunches and scrunches you to the new pool patio fountain and the yard. My own peculiar shape and statement. The out buildings are a vivid gloss green. All the pickets are gone (some lining the back property line) and mature flat-bottomed round-topped gray and taupe stones surround two flower gardens. Just sitting atop one another. As natural as unnatural placement can be. But no mortar. Only gravity, wind, rain and critters to set them askew from time to time; to honor nature. Sometimes I squat on them, low to the ground, and think I’m a New England farmer. They are a barrier, but a necklace, and so low as to invite a stepover. The flowers feel safe but included in the party.
New copper bird feeders are large and canopied, like coolie hats. Big scale, which I prefer. Large capacity and shelter from the rain: feasting troughs. One fountain trickles water down a ragged slate face, lit from above, into a copper basin; another looks like a rough black rock on a tall square plinth. Water bubbles up from the center of the ball and creeps down the curves. It’s really fiber glass. Both gurgle soothingly.
Blackie sniffed the air and scooted back inside. Daisy is back on my bed. I’m off to the nursery again.
Thinking of you with Love,
Daniel J.
Bush DJT 2004
On the last night of the Republican convention, President Bush was clearly moved by his own words. But only when he got to the part about war. All religious zealots are clear about right and wrong. Their god is the one and only higher power, and all others are false. And all religious zealots are keen about killing the opposition. Check the Old Testament and the New. As Mark Twain tells us in brilliant bubble-bursting satire in “Letters From the Earth,” the Bible is a record of simplistic self-righteous bloodshed. For leaders like Mr. Bush, complex diplomacy is frightening. It requires a well-furnished mind that can understand subtle social nuances in a variety of rich cultures. Any understanding of Middle East societies requires deep reading and study. We all know our president brags about not reading. You can tell by his speeches. Though his writers may read more—one wonders!—they are careful to reflect their leader’s simplistic view of the world.
If one Arab is a terrorist, all are terrorists. Killing one is as good as killing another. Just kill. If the rest of the world doesn’t agree, they just don’t understand. One nation can not only lead, it is the only one that knows the Truth. If other nations doubt this, the nation in charge (ours) can show them their guns and bombs and wave their trade agreements, subsidies and threats of embargo. Might makes right. The Bible says so.
This president upholds not the Constitution, which he has sworn to follow, but another volume as the highest authority.
I am afraid.
Destiny
…I thought I was controlling my destiny, regulating my moves—so I wouldn’t be too far out of N.Y. Actually, I was frightened and lonely. I was incapable of taking my own good advice. I’m so glad you’re operating sanely. I said the word would get around and someone would notice and be smart enough to take you. Try not to expect it to add up to anything. It may not. One piece of good work at a time—for George.
I fled from Madison. I’m glad to hear it’s a happy place for you, and northern Wisconsin sounds sublime. I hid out. I called myself a loner, but that was a euphemism for a confused condition of the spirit. Ellen and I met backstage at the Union Theatre, when it was a primary space. It seemed semi-abandoned when I stood on its stage in 1983. No experience is wasted. Nothing. Laurette Taylor didn’t act for ten years and then returned to the stage in triumph. But she was seldom happy. You’re cheerful about the half-assed work and fable attempts by the many assholes floating in and out of our world. Wait’ll the “press” intrudes. Like your high-roller attorney, these people are lonely, mostly, and can survive only by sucking other people’s marrow. They know nothing about acting, writing or directing, or patience, persistence, poetry, or pretty dreams.
I think it was Goethe who said that after food, storytelling is mankind’s greatest need. He may have been right. Actors are among the most energetic storytellers. Like Shakespeare, we don’t judge, we just show it—all. Reporters annoy me when they go on about my playing normal men. I keep pointing out that I choose roles almost solely because they’re the best ones offered to me. Sometimes I turn down even a pretty good role because I don’t want to repeat myself. But I don’t give a fuck about campaigning for goodness, in my work, anyway. Sorry. There’s a complex slip and pun, combined. Be good—believable and interesting—but never mind how high or low the character’s morality.
Unfortunately, television, at least, has sunk to presenting nothing but morality plays anymore, or shallow comic book miniseries. I have to do some of them to support my theatre habit. Valmont is a complex, selfish son-of-a-bitch who fakes himself—like so many men today. It’s a beautiful, disturbing, amusing, suspenseful and entertaining, intelligent play. Most of my work over 27 years hasn’t been of such high quality. No matter. All you have is now. I have only this work for 7 more weeks, and that’s enough. You may be working in the Steppenwolf Company. Good. If not, you’re still O.K., because yours is the standard that stays with you. You keep it up. Alone. With others. But I’m with you. Keep laughing.
Best Regards,
Dan
SHAOYU "An Inspector Calls"
New York City
“SIAO YU” and “An Inspector Calls” Play
Sylvia Chang is earnest. Bright, intense, pretty. She’s been in ninety movies! An assistant told me. She directed nine films.
The building where the production offices are located is a confident classic. It’s in the New York Registry, I was happy to hear. Sylvia and I talked about the relationship of the characters. I said that the basic difference is too often between what American film makers choose and what attracts certain foreign artists is that we tend to want a gimmick, an idea that can be pitched at a meeting—where there isn’t time to explain depth of a character or the surprises that come in emotional shifts, instead of in tricky shifts in plot. Whereas, Bergman and Fellini and Kurosawa and now as I see, Chinese directors, are inspired by complex characters in surprising relationships; by their weaknesses, desires and the force of their passions, which sometimes cause them to surprise themselves as well, with their decisions. Complex characters in complex situations.
This script has that: character. The special effects are of the spirit, the mind and the heart. Sylvia has the confidence that human beings in an unusual situation and seemingly different from each other in every way, can discover that they are engaged irresistibly through a mutual need. This surprises them. It surprises us, but we believe it because such connections are inevitable, and yet we cannot anticipate them. When we see them, we recognize similar longings in ourselves and then we are taken with the protagonists, even if they do not look like us or live the way we do. It is a kind of betrothal or engagement by accident.
Such an accident underscores the happiness that just the existence of possibilities for change, for improvement can bring. They’re out there. Sometimes they happen.
If the characters we’re watching are fetching, vulnerable and flawed and earnest, possessing a sense of humor and patience in persistence; if they entertain us with their questions and their doubts, we will care for them, root for them and need to know their fate. It’s our fate. It’s our ballad for an hour and a half.
I saw “An Inspector Calls” this afternoon. It’s a strained concept.
It’s a morality play. It’s realistic but intended to rise to a low surreal perch, raised just off the stage of reality about as high as the shrunken house is in this set at the Royale Theatre. It’s described as a psychological drama, meaning that what we see until near the end has not actually happened in the flesh, but it might and after the final phone call, we realize, will. Or it already did. Or, it could. Or, it may at any time for any one of us. So, watch out! And care more about your fellow creatures.
The set is in a slum, though it takes a while to realize that. At first, you wonder why the outside mess with its fragments of pavement and suggestions of an urban dump doesn’t match the interior of the bright cheerful rich interior. I read that the play was first presented in 1945. Maybe the original states that Wartime rubble is in evidence. The shrunken house is symbolic, I take it. Of the lives within. Of their views of the world, of humanity. They are elevated but squeezed; pinched brains, squinting eyes that don’t see past their desires. The house ends up toppled.
Higher Education
The real problem of higher education for the highly educated one is that the rest of the world—most of it—is not very bright and doesn’t know very much. Therefore it cannot operate on a high intellectual level; so it brings down the level of thinking to its majority’s low level. It is not tolerant of high intellect. It doesn’t understand it, it fears it, and ultimately, it resents it. The low level masses win. This is because most human beings are not especially bright. Most believe in the old bad habits that have motivated human societies from the day the first cities were established. Most people do not understand the simple fact that people are only temporary creatures who are dependent on the microbes, worms, enzymes, gases, flora, and other fauna and chemicals that make the earth. Most people do not understand that we are composed of these chemicals, gases, and microbes, and are material manufactured by nature out of the earth. We are the earth, as the trees, the snakes, and the eagles. The rocks are fellow beings, out of the earth and, like us, not on the earth not having come from some other creation. We are created from substances of the earth and we are therefore inescapably bound to it, by it, in it, and upon it. Most people with little education and too many with a great deal of education, do not accept this irrefutable truth. The result of our relentless, stubborn refusal to see this is our own destruction. Until it is complete, the continuing result is agony.
Don Ameche
Don Ameche died yesterday. He was 85. He was born in my hometown, Kenosha, Wisconsin. When his picture appeared in TIME Magazine in 1985, my picture was on the same page. Ameche was in a bathing suit standing on a diving board, I was in one of the morrow poses, cigarette in hand, in shirt sleeves, impersonating the great broadcaster for an HBO movie. I framed the page, saying that when I grew up I wanted to be just like Don Ameche. I was 45; he was 78.
When I saw him in the movies during the forties, I thought he was loud—all of the time. Too direct. Too late, too nuance. He was oddly handsome. His hair was slick, his moustache neat, and his face unlined and a little too round. He stood erect always. He looked good in a tuxedo, with broad shoulders and his hands at his side. That’s a hard thing to do, for any actor; to just stand there with your hands comfortably at your sides, doing nothing but talking or being still. His voice was deep, resonant, sometimes sounding like an announcer instead of like a regular person just talking. He could shout and talk fast. He could sound poignant, but it seemed to me when I saw him after I grew up, that he was pretending to be poignant. But it was a good pretense. I understood that was his truth. He meant it; that’s how he expressed himself. His way, not mine. I liked him better.
He was a big movie star for about ten years. That seems to be the standard limit, often. I’ve noticed that about many movie stars. They get popular—hot for a year or two. They get handed every great role, seemingly, then they fade away for a bit. Then they come back. It’s the fifth year that we’ve been noticing them. Then an Academy Award nomination comes. The actor doesn’t win. He gets another nomination and is the favorite, but doesn’t win again. Then he’s playing the second role with another hot big star or a great old star. Now it’s eight years. The transition comes. The actor is no longer cute or merely attractive and good; the actor is semi-respected. The actor plays one more good role, receives an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and fades once more. People say, “Whatever happened to . . . ? He’s always good, though, I always liked him. ‘Member when he was in _______; he was really great in that.” Someone else says, “He works all the time. I jus’ saw him in a European film, kind of odd but O.K. He was good.” It’s ten years later.
Don Ameche once said to someone on a set, “I don’t know when I lost m name.” Sad. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. . . too much. He kept walking in Santa Monica. I used to see this man striding along. His arms would swing deliberately forward and back, like his acting. He was tall and stood erect, up one street, over to another and across, on a path, a trail, I guessed. I would follow him in my car sometimes, well, maybe twice, just to make sure it was he. He was eating one meal a day, he said, and staying fit. He loved to travel, he said, it kept him interested. He'd had his ten year, but he kept working. He had started in radio. He went back to radio for years. He acted on the stage and on television. He kept walking. For twelve years, he did not make a movie. Someone found him for a film in 1983. He was 75 years old. Three years later, he was in COCOON and they gave him an Oscar. His acceptance speech was an oration. It was clear, studied, and loud. He used repetition. With this award you. . . with this award you. . . with this award you have given me, and I hope I have earned, your respect. Thank you. He was Don Amache to the end. Maybe I can last as long.
Harry and Lee
December 6, 1993
Daniel J. Travanti
Harry and Lee lived together for over forty years, then she died, beautiful, brave.
Harry is alone, and the condominium is still being paid for by his son, but Lee won’t be in it.
The hospitality room seemed so big and such a good idea. It was. It doesn’t matter anymore.
The sun shines most of the time, and Harry can’t help looking into faces on the street to see if people are glad today.
I guess he’s glad when they are, but the hospitality room is empty.
They made promises to each other, and kept them.
They made one son and stopped, and he supported them some—now a good deal—now that Harry is alone.
He walks in Santa Monica, but he misses New York, Brooklyn, to be specific. I suppose I want a bunch of money to support myself, because I am never going to make a son.
The hospitality room in this building is not inviting. People smoke in it; I am not welcome.
I walk the streets of Chicago looking into faces to see if they’re glad. It’s cold, but they’re OK, I guess. I’m OK, too. I’m glad to go to the gym on the same floor where they’re smoking. I don’t like that, because I can smell the smoke just outside of the gym.
No escape. I am not married, and I can’t ever be for forty years, to anyone anymore; I make my way keeping the air clear, not being lonely, and not wanting to lose anyone. I will lose ones I love. I’m afraid. I guess I’ll make it.
ART
You have to be free to care about art—especially for its own sake—which bothers me these days; hanging on walls. Photos of “museum quality” seem so artificial, meaning fake. It’s an art-ifice, artful sometimes, not exactly living, if it doesn’t mean life but only itself. You have to be free from hunger and cold to want art. It’s like wanting a beautiful body for its own sake; separate from the life forces of dedication, familiarity, devotion, and companionship. You have to commit to those and have them every day, but you have to be free to take the beauty only for a moment, for a thrill, a fleeting jolt of ecstasy. Any time you spend with love is a comfort compared to that. Art for life’s sake may be the open door to peace, but back through darker corridors lie the manufacturers who market art for commerce. Art for commerce’s sake, for its own gain. Duchamp is laughing now, confirmed in his prophesy that bartering any thing for money is artful if it works. Sell a toilet seat, sell a piece of Limoges, a Picasso or a Dubuffet, an armoire for clothes though it meant to hold arms. WEapons are cruel, but artful, isn’t that a laugh? Life is rented—it’s a lease that expires. Life ought to be art, rented from the museums, safer in the streets.
Religion vs Nature
However effective religions claim to be, they are too varied, inconsistent, arbitrary and self-concerned to be much help to anyone. Morals vary from tribe to tribe and century to century, continent to continent.
Nature—hence science—is ONE: reassuringly consistent and affirmable, and indifferent to cultures and eras. Immutably the same for all time, to all creatures and things. Morals for humans can be deduced from the practices of all creatures. Save one. Humankind, with its fine complex brain, is paradoxically incapable of objective moralizing.
Nature is trustworthy. Science is imperturbable and universal. Religion is corrupt by its very nature, which is the nature of the wayward and vain human. It dictates relative truths, which it insists with passion and violence are the only truths. The only Way. Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Hebrew and Druid. Only Atheists and religious Jews seem not to proselytize. The others cannot peacefully accept difference. The result is chaos of the spirit and universal conflict.
To look to such troubled dogmas for morals is at the very least illogical, and at worst disastrous. All religions contradict one another, less or more. Nature is never contradictory. Nature is never uncertain.
What we call nature’s uncertainties is not uncertainty at all. Humans learn nature’s laws gradually, so we are always only partially aware, and so only partially certain. The nature of humans is to keep discovering what is and always has been consistent in nature. Nature is solid, unchanging, reliable. As long as we observe carefully and stay open to new information, we can follow nature; always adding to our understanding of its complex and perfect operations.
Morals and ethics are evident in nature. The closer we can imitate them in our societies, the closer are we to nature and its perfections.
But religions not only ignore nature’s laws, they arrogantly claim supremacy over those larger forces. They elevate humans to a position above all other creatures, and the planet itself. The result is universal chaos, all the evidence shows. Except in nature untouched by humankind.
We call chaos in nature by that name only when we do not yet see the order. Order is nature’s realm. Nature shows us integration and harmony. Disruption is humankind’s activity. Interference and restructuring drive us. Religions encourage humans to disrupt. They ought to be teaching submission and co-operation. They ought to be preaching harmony and acceptance of forces greater by far than our will. Nature’s order and truths are clear. They ought to inspire in us humility and ambition.
Humility that recognizes our smallness, and ambition to be worthy of our place in the grand order. And the simple wisdom that self-serving religions only drive us away from our purpose, which is to honor and follow nature, which is all-serving, all-nurturing, all-accepting and all-powerful.
Choose religion and you choose discord and pride. Choose nature, and you chose harmony and humility. And peace.
Zoos Art
Chicago
I have been troubled by zoos and art for art’s sake. I just found out what my trouble has been. They are not fair. They are not legitimate. I can explain. I want clean food. I want exercise that makes sense. I want to read only good writing. I wish to be healthy. I have felt that society, all societies, are not fair. They ought to promote health and a sense of well-being, but they promote disease and discomfort. There are artificial—no, worse—synthetic and counterproductive, machines, entertainments, foods, and habits. My society does not think clearly. My society provides and promotes activities of frighteningly destructive force.
Animals are beings equal to humans. Animals are tortured in zoos. They deserve to be natural; to live in their assigned places. They ought not to be trapped, confined, and limited by us. Our excuse for treating them badly is that we wish to see them and get to know them better. This is not fair. It is not valid. It is hypocrisy, because the way to see them and know them is to observe them in their proper habitats. The way to preserve them is to give them their environment and protect them against capture and murder. The way to appreciate them is to release them from all zoos. And the way to make art is not to make it at all.
Art ought to be art for the sake of living. Folk art is art for life’s sake. Some art is made for Heaven’s sake. It is a dedication to deities. That is art for living, too. Beautiful utensils, tools, and toys are made for the sake of utility; and they may be artful. Primitive art is called that because the maker did not mean to make art. He did not study the art of “art.” The maker merely made a chair with charms and usefulness, too. The shakers put their hands to “work.” They made graceful, strong, efficient buildings, furniture, tools, and conveyances. When any of these are displayed, it pleases the eye, the spirit, and the mind. This is the pleasure that art gives. A painting painted to express a feeling, a memory, or just an urge can turn out to be art. It is not meant to be hung or displayed, though it may be.
Quite a large number of languages have no word for art. A thing is just itself, for its use, though it may be so beautiful, odd, or surprising that we call it “art.” Of course this is not a new thought. Duchamps tried to blow away the idea that only certain special things are art by proposing that as ordinary a thing as a urinal or a bicycle wheel is artful, too. He’s right.
Some people, especially in our time, have come to regard certain beautiful things as belonging in museums. They use the term “of museum quality” for photographs printed on acid free paper or for furniture that is old but free of damage. Museum quality? My, my, has art come down to this: to be for the sake of display in a museum? Ironically, though I deplore warfare for any reason, I’d have to say that I regard weapons that are finely wrought and beautiful as art. They are not intended as art in our modern sense, but as tools of destruction; yet they can be artful. To me, they are more legitimately art for their own sake than almost all other art which has been made for its own, “art’s sake.”
Both zoos and art museums separate life—animal life, life work, human enterprise—from the world. A museum is in the world, but visited by a small portion of its population. A zoo is seen by relatively few citizens in any country. The art is being preserved, we are to believe, as are the animals. The animals are being tortured. The art is too isolated to be of much pleasure to many people. But I suppose that conceptual art means to give itself meaning beyond its mere appearance. It conveys ideas. The artists who make it wish to have their art be meaningful in our lives, in society. They understand that art merely for its own sake is not enough for them, at least. And some of them tell us that they never mean to say that their art is more artful than unintentional art; it’s just theirs. No zoo, however, or aquarium, or “Sea World” will admit that it is illegitimate. Their controllers defend unkind practices. They defend their artificiality. They claim that they are naturalists, in the most unnatural settings imagi
Health
November 2, 1993
Chicago
Justice and truth are fled. Let the games begin.
Very heavy people are teaching people how to cook. The human heart comes in only one size, basically. It is designed to sustain the life of a medium to large size creature. It is never big enough to pump blood to a huge person; not efficiently, and not for long. Nature’s notion is to suit the pump to the job. Human beings ignore the rules. No other creature would—not on a large scale, at least.
Many people complain that they are overweight, that they can’t move around as freely as they would like, that they want to look better, meaning slimmer; that they have high blood pressure; that they are developing heart disease. The truth is that many people can improve. They can do it by themselves. The truth is they don’t want to improve; they want to be improved by someone. They ask doctors to give them something. They watch television broadcasts that show them how to prepare “low fat” foods, which are not low fat at all. The foods are not so different from the foods they have been eating all along, that any serious change need be made, or any sacrifice. Think about this. The complainer has a problem, for which the complainer could use a solution. The complainer looks for the solution, but settles for a solution disguised as different from the old bad habit which brought about the need for a solution in the first place—but which is not significantly different at all--it’s commonly, these days, a slight, that is, negligible improvement over the bad practice. The idea that the complainer has at least addressed the problem. The complainer is consoled that the problem has been faced and an effort has been made. When the new practice turns out to be useless, as it will inevitably be, the complainer reverts to the still most popular recourse: to a doctor, pharmacist, or surgeon who will prescribe a drug or mechanical procedure to fix the problem.
Complainers regard the changing of their eating habits as a drastic and difficult solution. They regard the hacking open of their chests and the cutting, scraping, sewing, re-routing, expanding, squeezing bloody acts of the trendy BYPASS OPERATION, as a conservative alternative.
It’s also unnecessarily expensive. Once the complainer has gone this far, the complainer is free. Having gone to this awful (and it leaves one truly in awe) extreme, having suffered this near death-dealing assault on the fragile human body (and the body is stricken almost beyond recall in most, if not all cases); the patient knows that the ultimate act has been performed, the ultimate step has been taken. The supreme sacrifice of fear, physical abuse, and severely high expense has been made. . . What more could a person do? Free at last, oh my, I’m free at last.
Wrong. Heart bypass operations are expensive temporary fixes. They amount to ineffective exaggerated first aid. They come down to a blind dedication to superficial mechanization that is designed to relieve a person from the responsibility or maintain and protecting one’s own life. That is a bad idea. Worse than that is incontrovertible truth that the surgery by itself will not solve the problem. What is required after the operation is the changing of eating habits that would have (might well have in many cases) removed the problem in the first place; making the surgery unnecessary. But now, the view is that the plumbing has been repaired, so we can let the games begin again. It was a close call, but all’s well again. Life has been cruel, but there is new hope, thanks to technology. The old eating practices may have been harmful, but the victim is reborn and ready to jump back into the coliseum and grapple with irresistible, provocative death food. Gladiators, as a rule, did not fare well in the arena. Human beings, who insist on grappling instead of foreswearing, fare no better today.
The surgeon has eliminated the need. I’m not sure who would rank as more negligent—the doctor who fails to send away the patient with proper instructions regarding the new diet that must be put into practice, or the patient who refuses to learn that it is necessary. Who is more negligent—the cook who truly does not know what constitutes low fat, low salt, and low sugar cuisine, but presents fraudulent versions as healthful to millions of viewers and readers, or the public who accept the fraud?
Truth is fled. But justly, the price will be paid. Self-deception is a dangerous and expensive game.
Rides
Chicago
Am I the only one frightened by this tendency? Life is a Disney ride. Every activity is a fantasy. Each one requires a ticket. Most rides are “D” or “E” riders. Those are the tickets you come back with. You use up the good tickets, those for the really interesting rides. You come back with the tickets to the stupid attractions, the childish ones, the dull oversimple gimmicks, like the Alice’s teacup ride. But that used to be only at Disneyland. Disney World came along, and it’s the same. Only worse. More blatant. Epcot center purport to be cultural, educational, an attempt to bring nations together by revealing meaningful aspects of their lives and people. They turn out to be sophomorically superficial “rides” just like the ones dreamed up forty years ago for California. And in Florida, at least in Orlando, the hotels have become rides. On your doorknob in the morning hangs a breakfast menu in the shape of Mickey Mouse, with the cheery announcement sprawled across the top, “Ears Your Breakfast!” Good grief, Charlie Brown! Are we so far gone over the edge of reality?
Into what? VIRTUAL REALITY. Video games. WE accepted them a long time ago. Are we now going to eliminate all reality, before we learned to cope with it? I’m afraid so. If you can’t join it and live it, abandon it. Fast. Before it sets in. Reality is now fantasy. Only fantasy.
Malls are rides. Las Vegas keeps building hotels that are merely rides; huge, expensive rides. Within each ride are special rides; for the children, for teenagers, for women and just for men. Clothing stores and restaurants are rides. They don’t just sell good merchandize. That’s not enough. They must attract customers; entice them with gadgets and tricks, colors, lights, music, streamers, and games. Rides. Baroque “E” ticket rides. Bad rides. Bad idea.
Films now take us on rides. Boat rides, plane rides, auto rides; extravagant, outlandish, absurd, exaggerated sped-up electronic rides, “special effect” rides. These are not special at all, of course. Special means exclusive, extraordinary, meaning rare. Now, they’re common. Ordinary, not special.
And all the rides are designed to create a general effect. This is a general effect of being enveloped—drowned but still breathing—surrounded by light, sound and color of your senses overwhelmed. The idea is to cloak or numb the senses, not to play on their subtle reactions to stimuli. The effect is large, gross. It is not refined. Refined response requires being present and aware. The effort here is to leave the present and lose ordinary awareness, because it is regarded as dull. Pity.
Television shows take you on rides. Rescue shows take you along on the rescue. Cop shows take you along on the bust of the lone perpetrator or the raid on the crack house. Home videos—those embarrassingly amateur, shaky, blurry throwaways turned into lucrative professional entertainment (How deep we’ve sunk!)—take us on trips through apartments, houses, and across backyards. Homey romps that merit not even an “E” ticket. Behind the scenes shows take you on trips to movie and television sets. Shows about the rich and famous take you on trips to the Riveria, and through conspicuously over-decorated homes and yachts.
Carnivals used to be rides and shows. Freak shows were popular. Exotic shows were, too. Now we have them on television. Panels are not considered interesting enough if they contain only articulate people. They must consist of people with bizarre problems, strange habits, or peculiar complaints. Many are merely psychotic rides, harrowing emotional roller coasters, or staged battles among angry, frightened, confused family members, friends, lovers, or neighbors. Freak shows. Not that the people who participate are freaks, just that they place themselves in this naked more than merely public forum, and are transformed by the medium and the gawkers into writhing exhibitionists. Are we all freaks, to want this, to participate with relish? This frightens me.
I am afraid of what we have become. I am afraid of what we have stopped trying to be. I fear that we have left reality, and are settling for Never Never Land; where peace of mind can never be found. If peace of mind is not what we’re after, then exile to infantile fantasy may be our only solace. Scary. If everything is a trick—a façade, a forced semi-reality, a disguise—what is the Truth that these simulate, cover, or alter? Where is it? I, for one, can still set it, because I find the pretense boring. But once the “fix” is on. Once the drug has taken hold and the addict can see nothing else. Feel nothing but the relief that comes from satisfying the craving—which has been induced usually by the addict himself—the addict wants nothing else. No reality exists. Even if there is a glimpse of it, the addict sees it only through blurred Virtual Real Eyes, shakes off the uncomfortable mirage, and takes one more ride.
What we could use is a walk in the park, planting a tree, reading good books, writing a bit every day, or most days, or just occasionally (How do I know what I mean until I see what I say?) conversing: actually discussing of today and yesterday and seriously considering tomorrow.
Varieties
October 16, 1993
Daniel J. Travanti
I am amused by another of the “lies we agree to live by.” Some people—many—speak of the variety being offered in the marketplace. They say that we are “faced with so many choices” that consumers are confused, but grateful for “diversity” that helps them avoid being bored with “the same old things” day in and day out.
These peculiarly blind observers mention food. They speak of the variety of burgers, cereals, salads, meats, and fish. The talk about the dozens of car models, choices in underwear styles, and colors.
I see that food comes in four categories only: saturated with fat or all fat, drenched in salt, sugared (true, the variety of sweeteners is impressive. There are sometimes three or four listed in the ingredients of many foods before the food itself—which you thought you were buying—is mentioned at all) or laced with chemicals. This list doesn’t seem varied to me. Sorry, there is actually a fifth category. Though it’s small, it can be found if one searches patiently. It’s food that is nutritious and untainted, un-fattened, unsalted, and un-sugared.
As for motor vehicles, there is still only the infernal internal combustion engine. You can’t buy a car that does not have in it a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. How much more determinedly regressive and unvaried can a detail be! The variety in automobiles is nothing but superficial detail. The vehicles are all the same, save for insignificant and mostly redundant novelties. To prove it, I say that almost no one can distinguish one car from another anymore. We used to have true variety. A ford was not a Buick, a pickup was not a van, and no one would ever have mistaken a Mercedes for a Lincoln Continental.
Hamburgers are, of course, all alike. With each new season, the “accomplishments” vary: lettuce, then none, tomato, salsa or not, mustard with onions, without, topped with mayonnaise or cheese, chicken this or chicken that. And the names serve in place of actual diversity, as the distinguishing and individual factors. We have Fat burgers, Chicken burgers, Chacha burgers, Thinwiches, Halfpounders, Doubledeckers, Surf and Turf, etc. The game is cute. It’s also insidious. The message is “Here are your many choices,” but the truth is “Hey, fools, we have only what we have: fat, salt, sugar, and chemicals; if you demand variety, we’ll go along, as long as you don’t probe too deeply and don’t ask too many questions once we’ve presented our packages.” Okay. But not with me.
Books are being published in greater numbers than ever before. Not because more good information is available and longs to be revealed; only because people will read anything. The choices are limited. The numbers are vast. We find Romance Novels, Self Help, How To, Lists, Picture Books, Historical Novels, Novels, Children’s Books. Not much to pick from. Most of it is not good writing.
Few restaurants offer true whole foods. Few bookstores offer fine literature. Clothes all over the world look the same. Sneakers, jeans, tee shirts, trench coats, baseball caps, polo shirts, heavy hiking boots, and moccasins are the only outerwear allowed in every country. People all over the world don’t want variety. They want many choices of the same few things, and packaging.
Yes; keep changing the bags, closures, and boxes. Fool me into thinking I don’t buy the same things over and over again. I don’t mind. Variety is not the spice of life. Variety is a substitute for many lives. When a person is satisfied and happy, variety is not a question. Diversity is not good if it is mediocre or bad. Only various good experiences can satisfy. Good food and enduring beauty are always satisfying. Good things are always good. Good work is gratifying. If one is engaged in bad work, one will be anxious. Anxiety leads to a search for variety, instead of a useful change. The change that could make a difference would be to do work that is good. Superficial, irrelevant variety will not take its place. It can’t.
Spice is the spice of life. Most people, I’d bet, certainly most people I’ve met, don’t use a variety of spices. They use salt and pepper, one clove of garlic, and a “pinch” of this or that: oregano or basil. The spice of life is life. Life is naturally varied. Human beings are constitutionally limited. They get into ruts, furnish them, and settle down. Down. When they want to be picked up, they take up some new dull habit, craze, fad, “hot” thing.
New cuisines make people think they’re getting something new. New sneakers with lights in the heels make people think they’re getting new footwear. New tie widths make them think they’re hip and new again. Each season a “new” color is introduced, a new fragrance, the new sport—every jerky activity that includes a ball, wad, or paddle and an opponent is automatically a sport, these days—the new video game (which is the same lights, sparks, and beeps show that you find in Planet Hollywood, The Hard Rock Café, and all other counterparts), the latest drink (which is exactly the same as all the old drinks that are harmful and sweet, not good and certainly not new), and a new magazine, newspaper, television channel, cable access, or shopping center and “theme park” are unveiled. Under the veil are the same razzle-dazzle versions of stupid pet tricks, only they’re stupid people tricks.
Distraction is the name of the game. Escapism used to be a reasonable pastime, but only if sought on an occasional basis, not as a way of life. If people spent as much time and passion on experiencing their real lives—fully tasting, feeling good human pleasures of the mind and senses, of family and friends and loving and arguing and really seeing and noting and learning—they would find themselves in a varied life. Variety would be the norm, because experience would be deep and satisfying. The body will crave real food if all it’s had for the day is white sugar. It will want real nourishment. But if it receives nutrition, it will not crave empty calories. The spirit works pretty much the same way, I’m sure.
Chicago Day
Come to the pump room.
Is this a command performance? I asked Mariann. She just faxed me the directions.
This morning I felt rested. I must buy white tape to shut out the light coming in over the edges of my blackout shade. I made some phone calls. The crew arrived from Kenosha.
I lectured them on communication. None of them wrote the stiff, imprecise logos of the attempted cable promotional. It had been an afterthought, and I turned it into a forgotten thought. But we tampered a bit with the intended message to teenagers and made it plausible, I think.
We had a lively conversation, though I dominated. Bigmouth. The bells just rang; musical, cozy. This north light is soothing. It’s better for the plants, but better for me to be facing the North Pole. I don’t know, really, the direction makes such a large difference. I had no idea. How does one turn? Everyone has a tendency—in one direction or another—on a regular basis. The door you reach, on your right or on your left. You tilt a certain way. Reach for a particular pocket to hold keys; once grasped, left hand, right hand, turn lock to right or left. I haven’t this much about handedness or directional inclination, but it’s a strong force. BELLS again. Sweet, melodious, humming, sort of.
Spoke to Arney. Will rendezvous for brunch Saturday, 12:30. Fan mail: set out 24 photos, six to one address. I’m keeping a list, geographical and general. I won’t keep it up. Bob Swan on the phone, where are you? I’m in 2202. I’m here. Come on up.
We talked about his preacher family. Three preachers. One is tolerable, with a Gone With The Wind name. Bob said that wrestling is tangled up violence and sex. His uncle was tongue-tied, livid. The notion damned his innocent pastime. Don’t bring around the sunlight to shine on my parade.
Is the convocation as a ruse; to get us together for the happy announcement that we’re here to stay another day or so?
Wheeling my bike, I found Paty, Suzanne, and Bob twittering on the curb. Wished I had a camera. Talk of gurus, spirituality, fake, misguided, and actual. Convocations be damned. The herders are confused, no doubt in my mind. As long as I am not, that’s O.K. with me. To Marshall Fields and Company.
I looked at the unbleached blankets and sheets from France. The luscious blanket was $350, down to $225 several weeks ago, and today at $180. I was right. We’ll wait. But I bought at Filene’s Basement: underwear, gray; two silk suede shirts. . . still no black in the right size, a truly EXTRA large. The Chinese see smaller—everything—including human beings. They don’t bother to measure or know that they are making the garments for the west. And no one tells them. HMMM? Three bananas were $1. I ate all three, though I didn’t mean to. . . at first. Bought winter laced snow-rain boots. Vote of confidence? Socks. The sock fetish holds on to me. I’m dressed now for DON QUICHOTTE. Let’s see if it’s comparable to all the other versions I’ve seen.
It was pleasant. The scenery is pretty and evocative. The singing was good.
The meeting was satisfying. The bosses wanted to keep us friendly; asked for our complaints, laughed with us, commiserated. We lodged a loud protest against the firing of Carolyn.