Eggland's Best (Or, Is Facebook Making Me Lonely?)

An old idiom goes like this: you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.  This makes sense, but as a truism it brings to mind whiffs of something sulfuric, something unappetizing. The thought of freshly-fried eggs, steaming hot from a teflon pan, in theory seems like a fairly commendable dietary idea. But I simply cannot bring myself to eat an egg knowingly. I can crack them, I can mix 'em up here and there, I can cook them, I can even present them in most attractive ways on a platter: but do not ask me, ever, to consume one. The same goes for bourbon, scotch, and other spirits.

So, surprisingly, I was not aware until now that I had been paying subsconsious (rapt?) attention to televsion commercials that featured fresh eggs. Yet, whenever a chipper, colored Eggland 's Best spot reveals itself on my television screen, and the spokeshands of some woman model  begin to crack open some of those pearly white shells, with the raw contents all slimy and translucent and mellow orange streaming down like a leak from a rusty pipe into a glass mixing bowl, making me think as well, incongruously, disturbingly of the gutting of a dead-swinging pig in a slaughterhouse, I surrender as a complete captive, I melt like something cold in that fiery pan: You got to mess with some eggs . . . .  as that time-tested saying goes.

Having left me deeply unsettled, it is as if some long submerged anti-social tendency, like an Edgar Allen Poe protagonist, is trying to express itself  to the world. Part of the story is this: I always feel sad when I step up to shelves of those hopeless, cartoned-up eggs, cracked and uncracked. I sympathize with their hapless donors: the chickens.

Walking in a Safeway or something, plucking up a carton of twelve eggs (large size, grade A quality please) that will pleasure someone else is a tricky thing -- it's a task not be entrusted to your average urban egghunter. Nearly everyone makes a predictable error. You must always peer in, with a keen eye, into the coffinesque foam holder before you place your eggs in your basket. This should be a required ritual in our egg-crazy culture, at the sparkly egg case, under the big word Dairy high on the wall above. For once you roll on up to the electronic scanner and your precious money gets laid down on the barrelhead: it's too late to turn your broken misfortune around.

It never fails. If your eyes did not swoop in properly, when making your decision at the frosty Dairy henhouse, there will turn out to be a cracked egg (perhaps  more than one) hidden away in a bent up little package mold. Then things really begin to go to hell.  Like your brain on drugs in the archetypal TV commercial:  Any questions . . . ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4H517oi7pU&feature=fvwrel

Hey, you: yes, you. I asked if you have . . . any questions!

This it so happens raises the whole overly examined question of using Facebook. In my case:  I feel some days like FB use is causing me to turn me into that lonely, leaking lookalike orb of an egg in that imperfect and enviromentally undesirable carton.

Are these denizens of Digitopia feelin' lonely?

In the Atlantic Monthly current issue, the tease by a copy editor eggs us on: Social media — from Facebook to Twitter — have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity . . . we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic). And the loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society. Cracked. Leaking. Weakening. My life force oozing out oh so slowly: like old antifreeze dripping down from the car's battery, or like fragments of skin at the cellular plane sloughing off minuscule and weightless to the floor from a computer user's forearm.

The author of the magazine piece, Stephen Marche, gamely takes a stab of what is the conundrum, or the stealthy fox as it were, in the digital denizen's hen house:

     We know intuitively that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing. Solitude can be   lovely. Crowded parties can be agony. We also know, thanks to a growing body of research on the topic, that loneliness is not a matter of external conditions; it is a psychological state. A 2005 analysis of data from a longitudinal study of Dutch twins showed that the tendency toward loneliness has roughly the same genetic component as other psychological problems such as neuroticism or anxiety. Still, loneliness is slippery, a difficult state to define or diagnose . . . various research studies have shown loneliness rising drastically over a very short period of recent history. A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely, as opposed to 20 percent of a similar group only a decade earlier. According to a major study by a leading scholar of the subject, roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness. Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly of an epidemic of loneliness.

Any questions?  Well I have about one or two dozen, grade A large ones. But I will not launch into them here. The words that rivet me from The Atlantic instead are narcissistically densely networked: wuff, that is an evocative mouthful.

I am convinced that I am over-networked. I am willing to take Step One to deal with this conundrum. In fact, like a compulsive consumer, I view myself sometimes as one of the dozens of eggs standing at quiet attention, with propped up assistance from foamy cartons in a chilly Dairy world. E-Mail, Facebook, Blogging, Texting. Hoarding new apps. Almost a 24/7 indulgence on my part. But I am not of a mind that my messy, lengthening life among the savage micro processors has been scrambled into powerlessness -- or sunk into the sinkhole valley of lonely laptop reboots. Like overeaters with their foodstuffs, I seek out the social media, and the consequent connectivity, with others: to this I plead guilty -- to the disembodied and embodied. Facebook and my Text-o-Matic smartphone are not stalking me.  There are no Crackberry monsters lurking low in my closet; they are just make-believe. Like most of my co-human beings, I am thinly cracked here, dented there, chipped in crucial places, as brittle as the ego of an alcoholic in denial: but the fissures and  the escaping proteins and the dripping sticky contents of my past and present are not always perceivable. These problems get more pronounced internally with each dawn, an ennui-inducing syndrome -- like my brain on drugs and in the line of fire for that slamming fry pan. But honestly, many days turn out pretty good, thank you. I believe I resist the penchant to stalk and be stalked. Is this a sad case of narcissistic nay-saying on my part? Hmm . . . Where is Dr. Freud when one really needs him?

Marche's recollection of a critical scene in the Oscar-crushing movie The Social Network, makes the recent Atlantic magazine piece a true keeper, a blue ribbon champ.

In that scene, its hot bitter sting lingering awhile after the film has finished up, the founder of Facebook sits alone in the dim glow of a computer monitor in a spare bedroom. Wealthy beyond fantasy, the piper at the lead of a gazillion online subscribers, a young man idolized by a new breed of digitized social communicators: reluctantly he, then impulsively he, presses down on the Friend Request command of his sensational software invention. One chick in a ponderous sea of creatures, Mark Zuckerbeg's former girlfriend, is the intended target of his Friend Request impulse. He sits. Stares expectantly. Does not move in the glow.  He is a hidden-away, cracked, and quietly oozing egg in a worldwide carton of  virtual lookalikes.  She does not reply. It's maddening. She does not acknowledge. He taps impatiently, tentatively, on his PC keyboard. Still, she does not answer: but then the movie ends. Zuck winds up with his stock still stare, like the depressingly warped and staring Bartleby of literary legend who, frankly, would prefer not to. Crushing, heart bumping, a feeling of emptiness settles in: who among the legions of desperately-seeking other good eggs -- in the depths of digital Dystopia -- has not felt that sense of unraveled and wireless emptiness and soulful longing, and a spritz of hope, for a timely response, any response, a proactive microporcessed surprise, that would validate this existential egg-ness? A person holding  a computer, which is a mechanized extension of himself or herself, part cyborg and part animal, peering in and through a flat screen, gets a show and tell on the microchip's schedule only, before all fades to dark.

The credits begin to roll on The Social Network. Psychodrama's over. The dark isolation of the movie is complete. It is time for everyone to get up and go. Blackberrys suddenly materialize in hands, as if conjured by unseen spirt guides. Check now for texts. Re-establish connectivity. U get my msg, dude? Swing back  into cyberland. One last lesson from The Social Network pairs inside the rotating film credits if you are not in too much of a rush to miss it:  the blues song "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" plays, the long goodbye, to lingering audience members. 'Hope my eyes don't deceive me?, 'cuz there is something going wrong around here.' Like this:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y5BaurXMmMU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Greatness in song. This movie's denouement is replete with meaning. It is a symbolic mirroring of a new normal, a new take on the Beatles tune "A Day in the Life." You gotta break some eggs, bunky . . . to muddle along in this identity-squelching Digitalmerican farmscape.

The fragile egg in the foam cocoon leads me to a humorous anecdote by Woody Allen in his movie  Annie Hall, a cinematic paean to the bittersweet complications of life -- especially lonely obsession -- among all us chickens.

Woody:  My brother has been seeing a psychiatrist. He's not well. But the sessions are not doing him any good. He thinks he's a chicken.

Annie:  My goodness, that's terrible. But if it's not helping, why doesn't he just quit?

Woody:  He tells me he would, but he can't, 'cuz he needs the eggs.

Do my eyes deceive me? I think there's something going on around here. So, any questions?

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The magazine article that was cited:  

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/8930/

Dick Clark: The Second Act Was Not Kind

"There are no second acts in American lives."

                                               --  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

It is a fact that Francis Scott Fitzgerald, having reveled in the spotlight of American literary fame thanks to his book about Jay Gatsby and other fictional contributions, died as an indigent of sorts at age 44 in the fantasy nightmare of old-time Hollywood. His all-consuming alcohol habit actually swallowed him up. By the Christmas season of 1940, Fitzgerald was gone. No second act. He did not live long enough for it.

You may not like this idea, but it's on my mind.

Sadly, Dick Clark who was born in 1929 (82 years ago) and became famous as a disc jockey, TV persona, and "America's oldest teenager," has now shuffled off the American stage too. Perhaps, if you are of a certain age, and if you had a handy b-&-w television in your house (or at a friend's place) during after-school hours weekdays, you remember Dick Clark making his mark in our shared pop culture with the program American Bandstand -- in this way:

"http://www.youtube.com/embed/DH3N1cDphsQ"

Kitschy and cool it was. Dig that crazy beat, the white bucks, and the rockin' kids from Philly front and center: taking awesome star turns on the dance floor, moondoggies.

Or perhaps you remember Mr. Clark in this most regrettable way -- during his wretched second act, sporting a pained visage, hampered by a critical speech-impairment from a stroke, showing up in recent years on his wholly-owned, formerly clever, and annual New Year's Eve television extravaganza:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24J2VTSzcKE&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL8C8157E46B70D44D

Not kitschy and not cool. In fact, it all reeks of a year-end countdown to soullessness. Ryan Seacrest, the heir apparent to Mr. Clark on American commercial radio and television, strains a little too hard to be hospitable and obvious, subconsciously mirroring Clark's stressful diction and demeanor. The innocent-looking Philly kids and those way cool white bucks on Fabian's famous  rockstar hooves are literally out of the picture. How did we get to this point? Not the sweet '50s teenagers but some slickened New Kids (or NKOTB for a jawbreaker of a musical acronym) are making the scene. Ke$sha -- a new but not improved "Barbie lives" project with that awful neon lipstick and dyed hair -- is close to truly speechless at the living spectacle unfolding. Looking into the face of pummelled human brokenness and suffering, even through a square TV monitor, will do that to a young person like her.

Look again. The crowd on Times Square NYC is buzzing and swaying with excitement, yet far removed, exiled, from anything and everything that's perched up on that static, outdoors ABC sound-set; and that perennial preener, Jenny McCarthy (a genuine "Jenny on the block" in this case), purloining time from her low-demand sitcom guest jobs on Two and a Half Men and other insipid shows -- kept toasty warm by her furs, blonde hair extensions, and silicone trusses -- works harder, more racously and more stridently, than even the rising idol Seacrest, as if she has something (could it be the memory of Dick Clark reading his script painfully aloud a few minutes before?) to overcome. Is that colorful logo for Toyz R Us on the backdrop building, behind them all, just a cynical product placement by that company -- or did someone in the Dick Clark Productions corps spot the chance for a spot-on, post-modern metaphor and joke?

Having suffered the awful slings and arrows of great misfortune, at least one massive stroke, yet not at all ready to shuffle off this mortal coil (look, not every run of the mill blogger can dredge up timely allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet with such ease), Dick Clark pushed onward. And on and . . . on. I will forever recall the reaction of shock and sadness that a close friend and pop-music lover gasped out, like recoil of a rifle, on December 31, 2009, when Mr. Clark came into focus after an 'on-the-air' toss to him from the ever-buoyant, sparkly Mr. Seacrest. What a reminder that was of those cracks and fissures, and painful wrinkles, that have appeared in our cultural veneer since those hallowed afternoons listening to the saxophone swing of American Bandstand's theme and watching the apparently naive and unworldly Philly kids coupling up metaphorically there before our eyes. No, Dick Clark was not destined to have a successful second act.

Veneer. I guess that's what it was. Time rolls on, in fact it rocks and rolls on. There is no genuine turning back, as some still claim. Veneers wear away and all polished surfaces eventually tarnish, even finest woods go bad. Dick Clark, oh what a veneer he wrought from the raw material with which he was gifted. He had a great act, as did his perky audiences. To his last day, he was wildly rich $$$ materially and economically. Making money and creature comforts, and adulation from fans, were not the problems. Yet something kept him pushing on, . . . a spiritual void, a need to be seen and heard, whatever, and he chose to appear again on Rockin' Eve after Rockin' Eve.

Viewers looked on -- aghast at the symbol of what he/we have become, or maybe not, and yet sweetly sentimental for what once was and appears to be no more. Fitzgerald was right about there (in truth) being no second acts in American life. With his last breath, Dick Clark felt his heart break. Alas, even Gatsby the Great's favored existence hit some rough patches, then came apart. 

Maybe the real lesson here is to strive constantly for an authentic first act, all the way, without apologies or personal excuses. And then -- who knows what?

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Hopefully, We Won't Be Hearing About This Anymore

A.P.’s approval of ‘hopefully’ symbolizes larger debate over proper use of language

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/aps-approval-of-hopefully-symbolizes-larger-debate-over-language/2012/04/17/gIQAti4zOT_story.html?tid=pm_lifestyle_pop

Considering the traditional  elements of style?

Helpful Words from WordPress -- About Blogging

This is a guest post by Kristina Chang, Evan Moore, Tony Xu, and Omer Rabin. They are students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business


What makes a blog popular?

. . . . What drives page views? . . . Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations.

We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggest that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!

Make your blog easy to follow

It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post . . . . there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.

Get Comments, Comments, Comments

The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: "have you ever done X?"; "do you think Y is acceptable?". 

Post Frequently and Regularly

Your blog readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals.

While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook, for example, could lead to additional page views.

Happy blogging!

Something Savory -- Stories That Lie

Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

       http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/why-storytellers-lie/255490/

Maura Kelly is an author and commentator. She has written for the New York Times, Slate, Salon, The Guardian, and in this case The Atlantic. Here she writes about a new book called The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, in which Jonathan Gotschall discusses why we humans have such a strong interest in stories, and argues that we're all storytellers — and all liars too, even if most of us don't realize it, even if most of us are lying primarily to ourselves!

Having toyed for several days with an original piece about memory and catharsis, I was really fascinated by (and learned some things from) this essay. Looking forward to reading the book.
-- Butch Ekstrom


          "Many of our memories are records of our own stories, not of events that actually
          took place."

          "When we tell (or write) stories about ourselves, they also serve another important
          (arguably higher) function: They help us to believe our lives are meaningful. The
          storytelling mind — the human mind, in other words — "is allergic to uncertainty,    
          randomness, and coincidence," Gottschall writes. It doesn't like to believe life is
          accidental; it wants to believe everything happens for a reason. Stories allow us to
          impose order on the chaos. And we all concoct stories, Gotschall notes: even those
          of us who have never commanded the attention of a room full of people while tell-
          ing a wild tale. 'Social psychologists point out that when we meet a friend, our con-
          versation mostly consists of an exchange of gossipy stories," he writes. "And every
          night, we reconvene with our loved ones . . . to share the small comedies and
          tragedies of our day."


This is Butch writing again. If someone invented a new pill called, say, Amygdalop which gave you the power to forget a painful or embarrassing memory or, perhaps, all memories (to give you a fresh start at life of sorts), would you be interested in taking that pill?

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Making Character Judgments

Trust in others, especially when it came to business matters, did not come easily to my parents. This stemmed, I believe, from their individual, working class struggles through the Great Depression and the cultural emphasis, among such offspring of European immigrants, to save, save, save (all tangible assets available) for a future unknown.

There was one life-altering day around 1950, or so I have heard, during which my parents (as yet still childless) laid down some serious money -- serious for that burgeoning economic era -- with a guy who sold them on the dream that he possessed the next best idea. Now, when I say serious money, I mean it. If it had not been for that one successful scam, I would be very wealthy today -- like I won a big state lottery drawing kind of well-to-do.  In fact, things are pretty good for me now in material terms, all things considered. But, geez, . . .  In sum, what I possess from that con job are stark memories about how disappointed my parents were in a person they had believed and trusted.

Which brings me to this: a person's admirable (upstanding) character is something to be far more prized than a pot clogged with monetary wealth. Well, I keep reminding myself of that anyway. It is built up decision by decision, encounter by encounter, attitude by attitude. If only my mom and dad had been more fond of, i.e., trusting in financial institutions post-Depression. One's low-standing character can be created over an arcing expanse of living large or frozen into other people's perceptions through one stunner of a misanthropic moment. All I know is that I have been somewhat obssessed for years by live, electrifying versions of the song "Money" (from the Dark Side of the Moon) by the Pink Floyd.

Maybe there is something in this aspect of our family history that makes me a pretty lousy judge of character. I get about half of my snap judgements about individuals right, and I get about half or more wrong. This lends me a kind of Richard Lewis sensation of being doomed to make that one unalterable misjudgment someday, I suppose. Don't you just know there is a sensitive trapdoor out there, somewhere, ready to spring open?

Which of course leads me intuitively to consider my personal experiences at Starbucks. I go through the Starbucks drive-thru lane on most mornings. I always order the same things. The relentlessly cheerful staff -- Matt, Amy, Rob, Kaitlyn, C.J., Aaron, others -- can recognize my voice echoing out of my car (and see me on the little surveillance camera posted strategically on the outdoor order board). Often, any one of the staff members can verbally complete my order, before I do, from memory. This all started, I guess, because of my quirky straw requests. Something idiosyncratic like that just sticks, then grabs the attention of others. They smile at almost all-comers @ Starbucks -- even though, on some mornings, they simply do not want to. They talk to me when I roll up to the dispensary window when I show even mild interest in engagement, introduce themselves to me, tell me how late they were up the night before, tell me about their plans for life (briefly at least -- and isn't that just so classically young adult-like?). I admire these character traits. But if they only knew what I am really like in real life, all this employer-demand chipperness and sharing, probably, would vaporize like the coffee-scented air that rolls like a light fog out of the drive-thru portal.

Clearly, I am hoping that I am batting more than .500 when it comes to judgments about these young people. I hope they are getting it essentially right about me too, despite my obvious character defects. Maybe they are pleasant because I am like the prototypical big-spender -- I always have a traceable $$ balance on my Starbucks card, dollars that I guess could ultimately be attributed in part (like time-worn Ellis Island census records) to my parents and grandparents. Or perhaps some of them youngsters @ Starbucks inherently trust that I would take good care of their pets or plants or their cherished life plans in times of need, someone who just might lead them to unpredictable well-being.

Just the other day, at the drive-up window, I wished Aaron good luck. He is a young, enthusiastic, married midwestern guy who told me he was moving along (hooray!) to a technology-based job, and a pretty good one at that. He said, 'Wait a second.' Then he fished a piece of paper out of his green apron. It had his wife's first name and his on it, plus a cell phone number. 'Here. We should get together,' Aaron says. 'I like talking to you. I think there's a lot we could talk about.'

I thanked him and replied, 'Okay, sure, good luck again.' Then I drove away with my everyday order.

But, while driving away, taking my first drink of the morning, I figured I will actually send him a text message or give him a call soon. And, of course, I could not help but admire his character judgment.

And, yeah, I mean that to be humorous and ironic all at once.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Praxis as a Concept and Lifestyle

So, I tried to do a kind of semantic clarification in which praxis -- if not on the thither side of this divide -- was perhaps somehow between the theoretical and the practical as they are generally understood, and particularly as they are understood in modern philosophy.

Praxis as the manner in which we are engaged in the world and with others. It has its own insight or understanding prior to any explicit formulation of that understanding . . . Of course, it must be understood that praxis, as I understand it, is always entwined with communication.

                                                                                          -- Calvin O. Schrag

While praxis commonly refers to the process of putting theoretical knowledge into practice, the strategic and socio-political usage of the word emphasizes the need for a constant cycle of conceptualizing the meanings of what can be learned from experience in order to re-frame practical and operational models.

Trayvon: Send Not For Whom the Bell Tolls

Young man, African-American, in a dark hoodie sweatshirt. Very suspicious? A specter demanding self-defense?

Barack Obama said Friday that "every aspect" of the death of Trayvon Martin, the black teenager shot in Florida last month, must be investigated.

"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. "I think that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we're going to get to the bottom of what happened . . . Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids."

Meanwhile, on Friday, students at several South Florida high schools, near the Martin household, staged walkouts in protest since there have been no arrests in the case.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in humankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

                --  John Donne, 1624 c.e.

No matter what more transpires, there will be no satisfying outcome to this episode. The travesties of racial divides and barely unfettered gun violence have struck again -- and will go on. For some reason, I am reminded of the Casey and Caylee Anthony case this morning. Florida, Orlando area, power confronts naivete. Is it true, what Donne also said?

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

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"Estamos bien en el refugio," Los 33

Los 33 de Copiano

       Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth:
       And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.

                                             --  John Milton, Lycidas


One of the great stories of perseverance, hope, and transcendence during our era. It's just that the full story of what happened . . . and what goes on still . . . has never really been explained.

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Lorcan's Heavy Heart

Alas, you poor and foolish people, what will you do now?
I have given you my heart. Who will now take care of 
you in your times of trouble? Who will come to help you?"

                                     --  Lorcan Ua Tuathail,  c.e. 1180


  A Landing at Normandy Cove 

Laurence (Lorcan) O'Toole's saintly heart was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral in the Diocese of Dublin on March 3, 2012.

The Dean of the Cathedral, the Reverend Dermot Dunne, said: "I am devastated that one of the treasured artifacts (the preserved heart of Lorcan) of the church has been stolen. It has no economic value, but it is a priceless treasure that links our present foundation to its founding father."

Ua Tuathail (Laurence O'Toole) was well-known as an ascetic. Legends say that he wore a hair shirt, never ate meat, and fasted every Friday on bread and water. In contrast to this, it is said that when he entertained his guests lacked for nothing while he drank water coloured to look like wine so as not to spoil the feast. It is also said that each Lent he returned to Glendalough to make a forty-days retreat in a rough cave on a precipice of Lugduff Mountain above a scenic lake.

Due to the miracles soon attributed to Laurence either at his tomb or through his intercession after his death, he was canonized only forty-five years after his death.

St Laurence's skull was brought to England in 1442 by Sir Rowland Standish who had fought at Agincourt. The bones were interred at a parish in Chorley, now named St. Laurence Church. The bones disappeared under Henry VIII's rule. Traditionally, English Christians have believed that Laurence's heart has been preserved at the Irish Christ Church Cathedral since the 13th century -- that is, until March 2012.

To Be Continued

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky. Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Disagreement, But Not Disagreeable

Time has come today young hearts can go their way
   can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say they say
  We don't listen anyway
Time has come today, hey

The room has changed today I have no place to stay
I'm thinking about the subway
   my love has blown away
My tears have come and gone -- O, Lord I got to run
   I got no home no, I have no home

Now the time has come
  nowhere (place) to run
Might get burned up by the sun but
  I'll have my fun
I've been loved, pushed (put) aside
I've been crushed by tumbling tide
  and my soul has been psychedelicized
Now the time has come and there are things to realize
Time has come today
Time has come today
Time

          "Time (Has Come Today)," The Chambers Brothers

The Ballad of Casey and Caylee: A Rough Cut for Justice

First Note:

Caylee Marie Anthony was born on August 9, 2005 in Orlando, Florida. Her mother was Casey Anthony. Caylee Marie disappeared during mid-June 2008. Her desperate situation and her family members attracted widespread mass-media attention, about one month later, when it became apparent that the mother, Casey, had not officially reported that her child was missing. . On December 11, 2008, Caylee's skeletal remains were found in a patch of swamp near the Anthony family's house in central Florida.

Later, Casey was charged with first degree murder, manslaughter, child neglect, and other legal counts. She maintained adamantly that she had nothing do with Caylee's death throughout her 2011 trial, which was held during Summer 2011.

                     The more I know, the less I understand, all the things I thought I'd figured out,
                          I have to learn again.
                     I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter, 'cuz flesh will get weak
                         and the ashes will scatter.
                     But I think it's about forgiveness, forgiveness, even if, even if
                         you don't love me anymore.

                                                                                   Don Henley, "Heart of the Matter"

This day of decision (July 5, 2011) -- unlike the outrageous and ugly wrap-up of the O.J. Simpson Trial on TV during the 1990s -- has brought a regrettable closure to an infamous, capital murder trial in the state of Florida, one that has become truly hot-commodity reality television porn for a hungry American public of voyeurs over recent weeks, and more. Now, today, this is where the lurid pages of the script, about the shrouded passing of Caylee Marie Anthony, the little daughter of one young adult female, named Casey, fails to screech to a clear stop. Actually, it guns its engines anew and veers down a suddenly wild and winding route, since the weeks of courtroom interactions have been unsatisfyingly summed up in tearful disbelieving cries, widespread anger for millions, and ambiguous confusions. The sickening script en medias res thus provides us with a an uncertain roadmap that may soon voraciously choose to plunge all travelers down, head-first, into a mystical rabbit-hole that is choked with still-unknown and tragic implications. To tell the truth, this seems like no other legal drama that I have ever experienced. (And I have totally had my share of odd, jurisprudence dramas throughout my lengthy life.) Put more simply, at the heart of this matter, this murder mystery -- now that the main courtroom drama has been darkly curtained and no person involved has been called to accountability -- is morphing speedily into a body of questions quite tantalizing for the thoughtful person, especially the great storytellers among us, that should not be disregarded before a deep search for the truth and focused critical reflection can take shape. 

Here is the springboard for the gruesome tale. An apparently physically hale but emotionally whacky and deeply deceitful family clan, the Anthonys of Florida -- a collection of practiced obfuscaters, cheats, and perjurers at best, each individual member wounded and bleeding in psychic depths way too deep down, in their darkened hearts to behold, manage somehow (when coupled together) to stamp out every actual particle of the  f-u-n  in some monstrous interpersonal/family dysfunction. So, how does one talk to others, meaningfully, about the painful and yet-undone Anthony morality-play?


Today, the glaring TV lights in the cramped criminal courtroom have been switched to darkness, and a portfolio of indelible memories, in even the casual trial observer's mind, picturing a two-year-old's needless suffering and death: these linger and gnaw. Casey Anthony -- the notoriously accused felon-mother, now at 25 years of age, irrevocably labeled by a jury of her peers as not guilty as of this day -- will decide to do what in response?  (What will Casey do now?) As the jury spoke words of consolation to her, her practiced and icy facade cracked in noticeable relief, and she laughed and, suddenly energized, hugged others and cried big wet tears. Over time, as the weeks of her not guilty identity slide into ambivalent months and long years, maybe Casey will slink out of sight, with cold suspicion and burning anger eternally dangling down from her head like a granite necklace, and trudge lonely and "misunderstood" back to her unremarkable life, either inside or outside (likely outside for good!) of her parents' prosaic suburban household. In this scenario, Casey would become the sadder but wiser earthly pilgrim, as Samuel Coleridge might claim);. Or Casey might remain unspeakably delusional, clearly not innocent, believed guilty as sin by all who encounter her, her inner landscape and daily ruminations replete with imaginary friends and staff co-workers -- like Zenny, who was Caylee's never-there, disappearing nanny, and Casey's purely fictional work colleagues at Universal  Studios in Orlando. Perhaps Casey tearfully will re-unite, on a sentimental Geraldo hour special on Fox News Network, greeting at long last again her stressed and shamed (and lying) parents and older brother. Maybe Casey will once more take up her party hearty tendencies, a forest of Smartphone cameras extended on upraised arms, flashing brightly, documenting every smiling gesture and spontaneous twist of the hips by this pop culture aberration. Or, maybe, she will one day assume the role of earnest and 'you don't know me' interviewee throughout soft daytime media appearances, talking away on non-serious and touchy-feely fests like The View, Tyra Banks, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In fact, it's possible that Casey might breathlessly 'write' her definitive and tell-all autobiography, promising the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth at last (to which she would not dare to testify during her court proceedings -- her book ultimately judged a phony, tear-inducing bestseller that was luridly designed to peak in sales revenue during the merry Holiday Season of 2012). Or perhaps, and this will be hard to handle for legions of child-lovers, the Former Tot Mom may choose to marry (or simply co-habitate with a starfucking string of admirers) and, possibly with that, gasp, could it be so?, Casey might choose to conceive an adorable, flawless Caylee Marie copy -- a precious doppelganger standing in for the little one who was, somehow, horrifically, lost -- and then hurled over the edge.

Just brushing up slightly against the razor sharp emotions, and the hot and simmering frustrations, engendered by this nightmare of a tragedy, seems to nudge the truly compassionate person towards the crazy state. Justice has been dished out cold -- live, as it actually happened, on Headline News and Tru Television on cable. It turns out this bit of justice tastes bitter and dry (as in un-swallowable) to almost everyone -- even the quartet of of Tru's biggest luminaries, the sinking Anthony clan -- and it has been purchased with your personal taxpayer dollars, just as long ago John Jay and Thomas Jefferson imagined it should be. Dished out, then hurled down -- onto the coldstone floor of freedom. Once again.

As the courtroom lights are doused, the now-empty seats are straightened up, and the big wooden doors to the chamber are bolted and chained, I suddenly think this. This tragic storyline of the Anthony clan and their forever lost fifth cog, Caylee Marie, had to take shape in the American South. Had to. Absolutely. One simply cannot imagine this lingering, unsolved mystery issuing from anywhere else (well, okay, possibly it could have come from Shakespeare or a great writer of 19th Century, Russian literature). The ballad of Casey and Caylee is a tale completely ruined by human toxins, like a dinner soup that has been poisoned with diseased milk and unclean water. When the ballad is crafted into fiction, eventually, the lyrical account of Caylee, the offspring lost, and Casey, the mom unsteady, will emerge only from the subconscious of a fearless Southern teller of human tales. This awful story's defiant twists and legendary backflips will rivet ususpecting readers (as the moment by moment trial on Tru-TV has done), and it should cause them to ruminate on what issues from the abuse others, lying to beat all, cruel indifferences toward others, narcissism, and other pathologies -- all conveniently tossed together, under one family roof, or as if in a kitchen baggie, like salad makings, to be garnished later with spicy, crunch and munch ethical ambiguities. It should remind the avid readers of miserable (but fictional) family assemblages such as the Sutpens and the Compsons, key Faulknerian tribes who, flawed grievously, populated old Mississippi.



The epic of Casey and Caylee will likely haunt those who dwell on the in-court chapters of the tale. Some day that gifted storyteller, writing within a lonely chamber somewhere in the U.S. South, will draft an opening chapter. It will present the broad sweep of the Anthony family's tragic circumstances. During suceeding elements of the book, all of the key particles buried in the gruesome details of this passion play will be disclosed, page by page. A beautiful and charming innocent child of two, Casey's offspring, father unknown, so full of loving promise and spirit, will figurativel stare back at us, from playtimes past, with her oversized and perfectly clear brown eyes, from inside the novel. Words will say that she, Caylee Marie, inexplicably went missing during June 15 or 16 of 2008, and then turned up dead in December, 'drowned' (in one manner way or another), forever breathless and still, victim of some faceless cruel fate. In the book, the child's body is monstrously concealed (by the little girl's scared-secretive and neurotic family members) within her own home, until its decaying mass begins to make silent demands and its unmistakable odors prove too much to bear. In time, the tiny and decomposing lump of  Caylee is furtively secured, by someone, in a crude canvas laundry bag, on the oil-smeared floor of an uncleaned garage. Eventually it is cast, heaved frightfully, into a haunting, lonely acre of wooded swamp. Disposed of, sunk down wetly into the black and smelly muck, the tell-tale corpse is seemingly hidden away forever, nothing to be scared of, last touched by the messy hands of some family member(s) -- perhaps her birth mother, or a grieving and wrinkled gray-haired grandparent.

But. Quite crazily, the unspeakable horror story does not draw to a quiet conclusion. Months later, as the sun rises on an unremarkable December morning, in the middle of that cloying and hushed patch of swampland, the oddly selected burial ground, the vulnerable infant's skull -- and then, amazingly, the whole fleshfree corpse -- claws it's way out of the brown canvas laundry sack into which it had been zippered (aided by the sharp-toothed labors of ravenous swamp creatures). The remainder of what was  Caylee surfaces in silence, a shocking but wordless testimony. It lies unmoving atop its horrific, but not final, resting place. The sad pieces of Caylee Marie's earthly self are soon discovered by accident, stumbled upon by a blue-collar meter reader, as the Winter sun strains for its apex in the sunny Southern sky. Once gathered, then newly and tenderly bagged and tagged by investigators, the precious remains begin to speak metaphorically, with righteous but silent claims, challenging authorities bitterly to find the one(s) who plunged her into that dark and creepy abyss and make them pay. Forever trapped in death, Caylee summons her killer(s) to a merciless and brutal reckoning.

Sad. That's what the state of modern, American jurisprudence is -- down in the simmering South and elsewhere, thanks to the virueses carried by "real-life" Tru-TV dramas. The shocking ending of the Anthony family passion play in that Orlando courtroom, after months of justice-applied destined to become justice denied, leads to this  lesson: no one is going to pay the price for the horrible snuffing out of young Caylee. That's the way it goes in this country. A hard to fathom and irrational verdict has issued forth, like a piercingly loud gunshot exploding and echoing throughout the hills, and valleys, and canyons of the tragic old South lands. Sadly, this mesmerizing and maddening outcome, with its breathtaking aura of anger, ambivalence, and ambiguities, was actually to be expected. So, as the ballad on the stage ends, and the curtains swing closed, the major characters leave hastily without anything to say, heads bowed and eyes nearly closed, soon out the reach of TV's klieg lights. The Anthonys and other cast members will disappear into the haze of cultural oblivion in due time. The black-robed judge retires, in utter disbelief, to his secret chambers; he makes no comment, but thinks thoughts that he will never share with anyone. The dutiful jury of 12 disperses frantically as the gavel strikes down for the last time. They choose to say no words into waiting microphones, for they (the now-former jurors) are greatly fearful of the angry heat and derision that the public will soon fasten firm, like sparking electrodes, to them.

So. It's over. Blind American justice and subjective morality demand that we all trudge on. Days and months will stretch quietly into decades. Memories will begin to deteriorate. Facts, names, opinions, and deceits will get mixed roughly together, as most good story elements seem to eventually do, like a collection of hastily penned recipe notes on how to concoct a lasting legend.  Books and songs will get composed. Perhaps some of them will be sung and read. Magazines will feature colorful, alluring cover pages that present Casey, Caylee, The Anthonys, the lawyers, some jurors -- all the the main players -- who have shuffled off of  center stage. Many tears will still be shed as the great new Southern novel comes to light. But all of this, unlike our timeless American judicial system, will fade away soon. Since inquiring minds in the USA will no longer crave to read about it, the sordid descent of Casey and the passing of Caylee, in People magazine or the pages of The National Enquirer. And because it's over, and something new will have jumped up to sit in its place of dishonor.


Finally, there is this. Families of the shameful lie endure somehow, some of them even prevail, in America's southern culture. There is no innocence (nor genuine recognition of guilt) in such family aggregates, like the secretive Anthony clan. They remain the busy fashioners of America's telltale tragedies, epics, and ballads -- and they live on with their diseased blood lines until the tribe as a whole meets some unforeseen demise. For the time being, today's notorious American epic is focused madly, ruefully, on such a clan of deceivers, headed by George Anthony. At its center are two dark-haried daughters whose given names each begin with a capital C -- they are Casey and Caylee. In one instance, a daughter's name starts with a hard C and it wraps quickly, in two breezy syllables, toward a twisty, last letter -- Y.  <<  Case-y >>   The name possesses at first a harshly hissing and sibilant sound, quite unlike the lilting, tender syllables of the name Cay-lee.  Like the mythical death of the Florida child, Casey ends with the hard sound of E! (as in: eeeee)  So, I say, 'that's a lonely and harsh conclusion, that dangling Y -- way out there on the bitter end of your name, Casey.' And it leads me to think about another kind of  Y.  As in: why, Casey, why? And also, dear girl, please, when you get around to explaining (if ever) your Why?, will you kindly (unburdened for all time by the need to defend your life) give us some insights on How it all came to pass with poor Caylee? Casey, please, don't make earnest storytellers grope about in the darkness forever.

 ************************************************************************

Last Note:

Casey Anthony was found not guilty on July 5, 2011 of first degree murder, aggravated manslaughter, and aggravated child abuse by a jury of 12 men and women in Orlando, Florida. However, she was found guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to the police. Later, Casey received a criminal punishment of four years in prison, yet she was credited with jail time (about 3 years) that she had already served. She is scheduled to be released from custody on before July 15, 2011.

Intuition -- It's What's in Store

The word for reflection today is: Intuition.

Intuition the gift. 'It's what's in store.' Unbidden. --  Epistemology in its most singular and mysterious.

So sugary is it 2 hear (that @ 1 time) you were the best-ever, the top, the best -- a peak in a chosen field. But: all dreams and lifeskills inevitably erode. Recede with age and experience. Leave us most in need: to see and accept a nagging intuition, awful, deep.

That would be: that the time has come. The clock has struck 11, perhaps 12. The awful call 2 step away has been inexorably delivered: life, & profession moves on, far beyond the temptations 2 anxiously, desperately, cling.

And how? With the passing margins of the pages, and in the summary notes, a dimming yesteryear is a story that has been written, has already drifted away, out pnto the o[en and rolling seas forever. (And here I take a moment 2 ponder the once-stellar athleticism of one man of steel-will named Peter Rose, or the iron-jawed Johnny Bench, the once magical Willie Mays, and like Brett Favre, and of course Joe Willie. Each greeted the hard lesson of intution, and time passing, but only dimly, until it was too late, lacking completely in the simple grace of acceptance).

Intuition. An understated and inexplicable high. One struggles 2 explain it. But: sometimes, you know?, you just know ---->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgAhG6mmbNw

Disaster Tourism: Aching for That Lingering Look

A mighty weather front brought the clatter and roar of Summer tornadoes, with rushes of flooding rains riding on their swishing tails, into sweaty humid metro Louisville -- and thus to our vulnerable neighborhood -- in the mystic duskiness of last evening. It launched massive, silvery, madly-spinning harpoons, glinting and slanting savagely, this way then that way, right past our Cherry Springs. Too close, way too close, for any restfulness --

In the awful wreckage of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, for the rest of 2005, we often sadly referred to a daily sight with the odd name: 'disaster tourism.'

It looks like: SUVs full of people arrived from elsewhere. Snail's-pace drive by's. Necks craned at very odd angles -- little black and red smartphones shooting brilliant white flashes. Aching hunger to see -- for a little while -- what the charging weather bombs hath wrought. Staring blankly, jaws slack and distended slightly, at the ruins that once constituted some poor souls' homefront and livelihood. Curious. Hopeful the pictures will be good. And: Predatory. Words spoken in hushed tones, as if at a funeral. Japanese motorcar engines purring softly along the debris-laden, breezeless streets. Lacking, all ways, in human care and compassion.

Yes, the touchdowns, then stark and shattered aftermaths, of power storms -- Mother Nature in vivid, 3-D stop action -- seem to (predictably) spur a horrific thing inside otherwise 'normal' people . . .  Truth: I have beheld it again today . . . . Edgar Derby plaintively said:  And so it goes.

Resolve: It's a Hard Thing

No time to fallter. Press the button labeled shock doctrine. Keep a fiirm and steady hand, all the way! Then, as those all about dissolve, and look pitiful and quiver-y, both inside and out: observe.

A thin drip of glimmering red slides bloodily down, so whispery light , so truly crimson, from the promising mark that has been made, a piercing into the vulnerable skin..

And this, yes this, is what it feels like . . . a stinging pain that cuts, and burns, and lingers with inevitability. Then strain, all, to seeresolve, what it brings: slim hints of sun rays lighting up the east.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK8YAuIxTrI

Winner Takes All

My hands were still shaking, because four and a half weeks had gone by and they had not, like my jilted love, been fed. My thoughts mirrored them, fidgeting and wracking back and over my mental 'scape from one alarming thought to another. Though it would be so satisfying, or so I thought, to get out of hospital scrubs, pack of Kools slipped down into the breast pocket and a ( ___________ ) tucked into my left pants pocket, just in case I really needed to grab something. Or someone's -- sturdiness.

I had been told it would be therapeutic, as in calming and as in constructively soporific, for me to pen journal entries every day, a couple of times. Especially when I felt this miserable. The iron-handed man with whom I was about to meet had contended this. God, I hated him, improbably named White,  and his gray wizard stares. The worst thing he had ever said to me, I now recalled. I just could not get why I let his contentions get to me with such guile.

"Winner takes all," White had said.

Bullshirt, I said to myself. "Don't try to feed my that," I said, unable to disguise my surliness, lamely hiding behind lame humor. I expected suddenly for him to leap out of this work chair and clasp his calloused hands around my newly-shrunk and breakable neck.

"Did you write anything?," he said. Unmoved. Unmoveable.

"This is my last," I said.

"What makes you think so?," he replied icily.

"I'm posted to get out. Remember, sir? Breakout time. I'm just about to go across the bridge." I laid four white, legal-size sheets on his desk, by my left hand.

"You are going nowhere until I sign-off," White said implacably. He nodded, a bare tip of the head, to a security guard who materialized behind me, by the suite's doorway. A moment of breathlessness shook me. I sat on my hands, literally sat on them. I hated it when they shook and people saw or when I had to clasp hands with another.

"Well, let's get it started," White said. With a swipe of his hand, he grabbed my papers. With a look more serious than I could have ever before conjured, stupor or no, he read how I now put the pieces together. The guard pulled back into the hallway, judicious but not more than an athletic leap away.

I had written on the paper, in pencil:  I have lived many fruitful and some fruitless years, and I never really thought it would happen, that I would actually kill off another person's seamy existence. Other than my indefatiguably controlling and perennially pissed off former spouse, I had never really felt a bona fide temptation, like I would genuinely accomplish it (until lately), to murderously end the life of another, even one of the crudest and most cruel members of the human parade of losers who have invaded my life. And as an addict (euphemistically in full-blown recovery) you can imagine how outlandish some of those human dregs have proved to be. Whenever anyone asks me 'why did you do it?,' I invariably respond by claiming that he earned the shot, deserved it more than anyone I had ever met, and that I did our wounded race a humongous favor. Homicidal anger though is a shrieking, self-destructive, and nerve-fraying spin cycle, a topsy-turvy thrill barrell-roll of a ride as some call it, from which one never comes back wholly and which depletes one's self-justifying spirit indelibly. My plan called for me to pay out $5000 in untainted currrency, which I did, for a bullet to the back of a monster's brain. But I learned something long hidden in my heart (after the money had been doled out) when, with my good hand and arm, and a trifecta of tiny white Oxycontin tablets, I suddenly cut another down, in an irresistible-impulse rage, with extreme prejudice, as they say. Too bad for me and my dim future that I did this deed in a church, gun protruding from my left palm, as religious tune whined out from a synthetic organ, on a Sunday morning, while about a thousand eyewitnesses looked my victim, who also whined miserably when the metal hit him, and me over with eyes agog.White glanced up at me, his forehead wrinkled by rejection, sitting on my downturned jittering palms and fingers.

To Be Continued

No Place for Crosstops

I am working out a couple of new short stories; one will likely (working title) be called "No Place for Crosstops." Yes, that is a Green Day musical allusion. Here are some possible opening paragraphs. I think I will do five, one for each work day this week. A guy with a wandering mind and a creative-impulse working overtime, spun out in this room, has gotta do something, eh? I'm asking for your help. Which one(s) seem(s) to draw you in, initially, more than the others (which implies, of course, I know, that they all might suck; this is the constant, worrisome dilemma of the contemporary storyteller)? You know?

Monday:

It was very good, very, until it all began to fade, as undetectably as a once-sparkling coat of satin paint slowly degrades, then pales away, all of this mainly unnoticed on the walls of any small, poorly-lit European salon. Mr. Obscure Writer reacted to the urgency he felt by gripping a cheap blue Bic, and he began to write sentences, scribbling madly, cursive not so polished, about what he had suddenly intuited while looking above a hazy, smoked gray London skyline. This time he believed that he could, if he were single-minded, if he could remain focused on a crucial point in time, finally tell it like it really is, perform like a refined and sensible imaginateer, and tell them all, as well, at long last, how it ought to be.

(What I am hearing in my head: Stereophonics, "Mr. Writer")
Play it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnbb_zfIxBY


Tuesday:

He closed his eyes, and his inner darkness rapidly enclosed him, but he felt as sick (even sitting down in an overstuffed Victorian wing chair) as if he were spinning and stumbling in jagged circles crazily -- like some misbehaving little miscreant would perform when he turned round and round and round quickly till falling-down dizzy, even though he had been sternly warned by all not do so. Do not open them, do not peek for any reason, he thought he heard again, though he was absolutely by himself in the flower-scented room (well, the only breathing being at least) as he looked, sitting, all over, left to right, the well-tooled and burnished casket that now possessed the long-perished remains. It had been a cruel, thunderbolt of an insight -- what he had seen, with his own eyes -- when first he peered down, very reluctantly, perhaps cowardly is the better term to use, and saw what, or should that be who, was staring back at his face with a bleeding and pleading stare from the interior of the satin-lining of the burial box where, in all situations predictable and orderly, the dead one's head should have been resting, eyelids forever slammed down, brainlessly.

(What I am hearing in my head:  Green Day, "Brain Stew/Jaded")
Spin out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHP4TWIxx_I


Wednesday

They had been kissing in that way, that morning, for long and precious minutes like Caleb had often believed, yearned, that one day would be possible. But, then, she without warning rolled away from him, rotating mostly on her left hip awkwardly and too quickly, and she sighed heavily, with a disappointing frown, leaving him with his arms still curled out in a grasping semi-circle and confronting a sense of surprise and utter loss, like that complex sensation of the numb-jawed, wet, blood-sucking pop (but there is no real popping sound) when a useless tooth gets extracted from one's pried-open mouth. Displayed on the LG flat-screen monitor were the dazzling but frightening pictures of tall buildings burning down, with people jumping off of them from heaven-scraping floors. The CD player, set down low, with bass notes on heavy, was just at that moment rumbling with the smoky piano crescendo (Yoo-hoo-ooow-ewe) at the close of the cover of "Imagine," by the musicians called A Perfect Circle. Caleb and Gina had never been huddled together in a desperate and awesome moment of choice quite like this -- and the wicked, deceitful conspiracies that they had concocted to lead them to it, this naked decision point, lent the present tense a breathless, high-up-and precipice-dangling tingle deep in each of their undernourished stomachs.

(What I am hearing in my head:  A Perfect Circle, "Imagine")
Play it loud:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktv2C9vnRKU


Thursday

I have lived many fruitful and some fruitless years, and I never really thought it would happen, that I would actually kill off another person's smarmy existence. Other than my indefatiguably controlling and perennially pissed off former spouse, I had never really felt a bona fide temptation, like I would genuinely accomplish it (until lately), to murderously end the life of another, even one of the crudest and most cruel members of the human parade of losers who have invaded my life. And as an addict (euphemistically in full-blown recovery) you can imagine how outlandish some of those human dregs have proved to be. Whenever anyone asks me 'why did you do it?,' I invariably respond by claiming that he earned the shot, deserved it more than anyone I had ever met, and that I did our wounded race a humongous favor. Homicidal anger though is a shrieking, self-destructive, and nerve-fraying spin cycle, a topsy-turvy thrill barrell-roll of a ride as some call it, from which one never comes back wholly and which depletes one's self-justifying spirit indelibly. My plan called for me to pay out $5000 in untainted currrency, which I did, for a bullet to the back of a craphead's brain. But I learned something long hidden in my heart (after the money had been doled out) when, with my good hand and arm, and a trifecta of tiny white Oxycontin tablets, I cut another down, in an irresistible-impulse rage, with extreme prejudice, as they say. Too bad for me and my dim future that I did this deed in a church, as religious tune chimed on a Sunday morning, while a couple of hundred eyewitnesses looked my victim and me over with eyes agog.

(What I'm hearing in my cranium:  Green Day, "Hitching a Ride"")
Louder now: 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlOy9V6vpNs&feature=related

Friday

It was the dream again, the one that forever made Agnese stare at the unthinkable. She was lost and wandering within a mysterious pine forest, at the base of the hill east of Montepulciano, her home village, and Agnese as usual could not find her way. A gray fog seemed blanket thick and icy sharp. Just like the one that now kept her home for single women, near day's dawning, out of sight from all mortal eyes. Agnese struggled to breathe nomally. Again she was searching, in this untamed forest that was rumored to have magical powers, for the confessional box where her all of anxieties and guilt would be relieved. Or so she chose to tell herself half-heartedly. Wild owls called out in shrill tones. Something big and menacing, and uncaged, and apparently bloody hungry, growled near her. The shadowed trees exhaled one then another, and another -- like lost souls randomly sighing. But the cold mists that she always discovered, in this bizarre night journey, prevented Agnese from beholding anything or anyone clearly.

The Land of Ever-Been Meets the Place of Never-Was-Before

Oh, make me over; I'm all I want to be; A walking study; In demonology;
Hey, so glad you could make it; Yeah, now you really made it; Hey, so glad you could make it now
Oh, look at my face; My name is might have been; My name is never was; My name's forgotten
Hey, so glad you could make it; Yeah, now you really made it; Hey, there's only us left now.

                                                                                               Hole, "Celebrity Skin"


Part I  --  Oh, Look at My Face, My Name is Might Have Been, My Name Is Forgotten!

There was a sultry night in October, long ago, when my parents both, two adult neighbors, and I looked up toward the dark, clear Summer sky. I think a neighbor kid, named We were in our family's rambling back lawn. Unlike in urban settings today, a canopy of twinkling stars was clearly visible all over the awesome, vast-black overhang.

My parents and those neighbors were disturbed, and shook their tilted-up heads. My mother and father each spoke about disgust and fear, a couple of times. One neighbor seemed quite certain, except his voice had a faltering quality to it, that the End was near. Yes, the End.

We searched the night sky, trying to catch a glimpse of the space contraption, now known to just about everybody as Sputnik. It was, supposedly (we only had news reports from TV and daily papers to go on -- there had been no pictures shown yet, so we had to use our individual imaginations to conjure what Sputnik looked like), racing through space, and thus orbiting the globe! On its own. Or was that "in" space, or "up" there, or "over" there. Defining the space and the then oxygen-rich, earth lifezone continuum was rumored to be a tricky thing. So, if one went to space, he or she definitely did not go up (though it seemed so). The physics of the equation and reality suggested something else. Decades later, like now, I would be reading rather difficult books full of entertaining, but arcane, science about the possibilities of whole universes -- close to us as our, well, neighbors, that consist completely and specifically of mathematics. As the philosopher Suess was to exclaim years later, 'Oh the places you'll go!' You know? 

After about 30 minutes of fruitless and semi-frantic sky-search, my father spotted it. It, Sputnik, appeared to be a tiny (I mean really tie-nee) pinprick of star. But it was behaving oddly. It was racing, like a tiny diamond NASCAR racer, on what appeared to be a consistent left to right track, with a little arcing movement mixed
in cleverly. Once it was spotted, we all stood silently, looking into virtual darkness, and (heads rolling back and forth in disbelief) watched a shiny, tiny Russian monster above, yet in, our space (as the word 'space' is used in common parlance today). To loyal and proud Americans, this was felt like a sharp and forceful right jab, to each person's abdomen, because the bitter enemy of all free peoples, the Soviet Union, was symbolically winning the struggle to do the impossible -- that is, reach out to a finish line (as in a race) and conquer space.

"Damn Ruskies,' said Mr. Alexander, with his thick accent, since he was a native of Scotland and had moved to explore the manifest destiny of the United States lower 48. "Soon enough, I tell you, they be putting us right in their gunsights from up there. There'll be no place to hide."

As a mere child incapable of deep thought, my native response on seeing the dazzling little pinpoint that was now racing away to my right (that was supposedly Sputnik) was limited to observations like "Wow," and "Cool." On an emotional level I was anxious, mostly because my parents were also nervous. And of course they showed disgust that America -- which should be first in everything -- had failed to beat the Russian scientists to space travel. I could not grasp the implications. Not many people of any age could. Mr. Alexander began to pull away toward his crackerbox, frame house next door. He tightened the features of his face, pursed his lips, then said (sadly? like a prisoner giving up once he has been captured?), "This could be it. This is going to be big trouble." Then, he walked away, head down.

I wonder where he is today. In his grave, I would guess. But his progeny live on -- three children Stuart, Jamie, and Jennifer., along with their offspring. On his grave marker, I imagine the saying, "The End is near. This is going to be big trouble.'

The brilliant, energetic, pioneering human foray -- with its many, many smart machines -- into deep space: was it trouble? Well, such a case might be made. Opposite arguments, and all manner of other viewpoints and learning about the human search for ultimate meaning, can also be posited.

Twenty-five years or so after that remarkable night of strange magic on our black-blanket lawn, still recalling with a little thrill my first glimpse of the rogue machine that had imagined Russian insignias (and warlike, frowning grimaces) on its sides, I could read and think about -- and even see detailed pictures of Sputnik I and many other satellites. So many facts, figures, and details had come into focus.

Satellites were conceived to help us look through space, then out toward other worlds -- planets like Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn -- and beyond, even into rumoured parallel solar systems, galaxies, and whatever else strange magic hovered in the impossibly vast chamber of the universe.

But the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote compelling about possibly using satellites for mass communications among earthlings. Clarke thought that perhaps only 3 (powerful) geo-stationary satellites could be launched to provide high-speed, world-circling communications coverage for our entire planet. What was once conceived as a mediating force -- a satellite -- that would telescopically cause us to look way beyond ourselves, into the vastness of the Other 'out there.' Instead, sat-tech began to primarily serve the missions of espionage on all sides East and West; reconnaisance oerflight double- and triple-checking; geological and other earth studies; and the reflection back, to us on earth, of our news and entertainment media --put another way, we got (in all quarters of the globe, rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, Christian-Muslim-Hindu-etc., pictures and films, advertising images, shapes, sounds, stories, performers, fashion, ideas about food and drink, yes, the whole nine yards of Western pop culture through electronic transmissions. Pop culture myths and stories pinged up on the satellites. And they got pinged back in many directions to many land and many peoples. In philosophical studies of culture, some ask does the culture form the people in it, or is it the people present who are alive, thinking, writing, painting, storytelling who form and develop the culture. In truth, people shape culture. Culture, in turn, shapes people back. It's dynamic and ongoing as a process. Once the mass communications satellites, like Arthur Clarke had imagined, were "up" and running, it was game on. As a human community, we got extreme doeses pinged and beamed from satellites @ us about who we are, could be, might never be, and, above all, how to get the most toys in order to win the game of "I'll get mine."

Computer-technology was just about hit the scene too. Lookout, was the cry throughout the Land of Ever Been, for it had been struck by a game-changing set of conditions. And it was reeling and adjusting. The Place of Never Was Before going to really rock its planet. Some young men were working studiously in common garages, and basement workshops, on motherboards, harddrives, and other eccentricities. This was a few short decades after the impossible had been achieved again -- by the Soviet Union again. Sputnik II had gone racing into space during Novemeber. It's pasenger was alive -- a cute dog named Laika.

As Mr. Alexander said to my father on another quiet, backyard night-watch, this time for Sputnik II. "Well now, does that not just beat all?" Turns out that no, not by any means at all, did that excursion beat all. Which begs for a new topic to look at in this metaphysical musing.


Part 2 --  So Glad You Could Make It . . . (But) Hey, There's Only Us Left Now

         (To Be Continued Soon)