Hugging the wall

Do you know what the antonym of the word 'megalomania' is? This source http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/megalomania, suggests it is 'altruism' or 'selflessness'. Are those really antonyms? (The antonym of of the word 'antonym' is 'synonym', by the way.) The same source says 'antonym' is a 'negation', 'contradiction' or 'opposite'.

Well, the opposite of the prefix 'mega', is 'mini', and author Tom Wolfe, in his essay titled "Afterward: High in the Saddle", which describes the aftermath of the literary scandal caused by his articles in the New York Herald Tribune in 1965, titled "Tiny Mummies" and "Lost in the Whichy Thicket" about The New Yorker magazine and its editor William Shawn, contains the following paragraph on pages 262-3 of the book Hooking Up, which collects these and other Wolfe articles.

By now The New Yorker had decided to take a page from a master, namely, Aristotle, who had advised that if the argument was giving you problems, -- in this case, the argument that the New Yorker was a dull magazine edited by a minimomaniac (emphasis mine - A.) -- then go after the facts and try to invalidate the argument that way

.

Earlier in the same book, in a Foreword to this entire story (page 252), Wolfe cites his source:

Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that the world was full of megalomaniacs but that William Shawn was the only minimomaniac he had ever met

And so, it is 'minomomania', and 'minomomaniac', two words not found in my dictionaries and found only in one place on the World Wide Web by Google (at least until this is published and indexed.)Tom Wolfe describes William Shawn as follows:

Shawn is a very quiet man. He has a soft, somewhat high voice.He seems to whisper all the time. [...] The Shawn whisper, the whisper zone radiates our from Shawn himself. Shawn in the hallways slips along as soundlessly as humanly possible and--chooooo--he meets somebody right there in the hall. The nodding! The whispering. Shawn is fifty seven years old but still has a boyish face. He is a small plump man, round in the cheeks.

[...] He is self-effacing, kind, quiet, dilligent, an efficient man, courtly, refined, considerate, humble, and -- Shawn uses this quiet business like a maestro. He has the quiet moxie to walk through the snow at 3 a.m. to the apartment of somebody who owes him a story--the magazine is at absolute deadline, and this writer is revising and revising and won't turn loose of the story...

(To read the rest of the story, get the book.)

I've known some minomomaniacs, and I can tell you that the affliction buys one much less friendship and affection than being an antonymic opposite of that. A co-worker of mine some years ago was probably a minimomaniac. His physique and manners were similar to those of William Shawn, except that he wasn't as accomplished or well positioned as Shawn, and he wasn't married. In fact, he didn't have much luck with women at all.

I remember in the place where we worked, he walked the long hallways of the building so close to the wall he rubbed it with his shoulder, as if he wanted to merge into it, hug it, become invisible. Shy, self-effacing, a conscientious worker, and a terrific friend to those (men) who knew him, he was lonely and depressed, though he never showed it.

What's most interesting however, is that when he tried to come out, so to speak, and assert himself just a little, whether in a mixed group or with individual females, he was always being pushed back, put down and stomped upon, for being too aggressive, impertinent and rude. And he wasn't by any measure. The man was simply expected to forever remain a wallflower, as the saying goes, to be invisible, to remain that minimomaniac. He wouldn't be accepted as anything else but that. Who knows what happened to him after I moved away.

13 women (and only one man in town)

Last night I was dreamin'
Dreamed about the H-Bomb
Well the bomb-a went off and I was caught
I was the only man on the ground

There was-a 13 women and only one man in town
Thirteen women and only one man in town
And as funny as it may be
The one and only man in town was me
With 13 women and me the only man around


This is the thirteenth post on this blog. Above excerpt is from a song by Dickie Thompson, recorded in 1954 by Bill Haley and His Comets. You'll find more information about it here.

Tonight: The Fabulous Intruders!

When I was younger, much younger, I had the idea of naming the white boy rhythm and blues band I was starting The Intruders. The name was perfect for the type of band we were to be: dangerous, rude, aggressive, impertinent. Alas, I discovered that there was already a sweet soul vocal group of this name, and I had to give up the whole idea of competing with the Rolling Stones and the Stranglers, and the...

You can believe this story or not, (the alternate name considered was The Tormentors), but believe me when I say that the idea of the intruder has haunted me for a long while. It is a common theme of course. What would the Western literature be without the Intruder? Odysseus was an intruder, as were Don Quixote, and Count of Monte Cristo.

Closer to our modern, visual imaginations, John Wayne was an intruder into those corrupt towns of his early Western films, the towns he would save from themselves. Gary Cooper, playing the luckless, if brave, sheriff Will Kane in High Noon, turned out to be an intruder in his own town. (John Wayne, by the way, was said to have hated High Noon, and the happy John Ford Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was supposed to be his answer to the bleakness of High Noon.) So was J.J.Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, who ended up contributing to the drama's tragedy, as he had done sometime in the past, we learned. Intruder John Wayne might have won in all those fairy tales, but Will Kane and J.J.Gittes clearly lost in their own dark, arguably, more realistic, dramas. One of the most interesting and disturbing films about an intruder was Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema with Terrence Stamp playing a mysterious stranger who intrudes on the lives of a wealthy Milanese family. Here's a link to a 1969 interview with the director.

The thought of the intruder came back to me recently, as I reviewed some past intrusions, as it were, into my life, and my own intrusions into others' lives. There were times when I was, was seen, or was treated as a nuisance, a disruptor, an intruder. Just in case you were wondering, by some miracle, everyone survived all those intrusions.

I spoke about it to a friend one recent evening after six, and this is what he said: "The problem is that the people we meet at our age, that is people no longer in their teens or twenties, the people that we find interesting, worth knowing, all have complicated present lives and life histories, and however delicately, carefully we approach them, get involved with them, we cannot help but become intruders into those lives, if we ever hope to establish deeper relationships with them, whether friends or lovers. However complicated or simple their lives are, we are intruding into them."

"Intrusion is the word to remember", he added, emphatically, "This is especially true of women. You and I, men in general, can wipe our slates clean and start all over again, the past being little more than a prologue. For one reason or another, women can't do that."

"In kindergarten", I said, "everyone is your friend. Every kid, there or out on the street or playground, is your friend. Once out of the kindergarten, or perhaps grade school, things become complicated. Once you've reached the middle age, it's no easier to make friends out here than it is in prison. People start making rules for themselves: can't (or can) make friends at work, can (or can't) make friends in neighbourhood, at a cafe, and so on."

"Exactly," he agreed, "and then, anyone who's overly friendly outside of those arbitrary rules you've established for yourself, becomes an unwelcome intruder. It takes an extraordinary skill to steer those waters, and I am unable to advise you. The baggage, the obligations, the habits, the past experiences, the delusions that people carry, all make you want to go back to the kindergarten and start all over again. I know you haven't given up, but your heartbreaks and disappointments only help to prove my words."

"I hope you won't give up, but you'd better hope you'll catch that young Monica Vitti on the train home again", he added, finishing his strong drink.

"Increasingly disturbed writing"

Ready? Set? Go! ... Analyze, Report!

In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, let's all start looking for "early warning signs" of a "tortured soul", in these and all writings. YIKES! He's got a gun in one of his 'drawers'! (You should see my other blog; no there are no guns in it, but existential despair, yes, overflowing with blood and guts. But then, you shouldn't see my other blog. No one should, except the persons who won't ever report me, or my insane Mr Hyde double, or will they?)

It's no joking matter, and no one will need encouragement. We will now be looking at each other with suspicion, reading each other's writings with suspicion, distrusting each other even more than before, in the happy paradise of only the lonely. My writings, here or there, may turn out to be disturbing, or "increasingly disturbing" to someone somewhere.

We received a year or so ago mandatory sexual harassment training at the corporate headquarters. It wasn't a yawner, as expected. It left me increasingly disturbed, so to speak. Say "You look nice today", to a female co-worker (and it's always a female, even as the official masquerade requires the policy to state that the rules apply to both genders; but let's not kid ourselves), she complains of sexual harassment, you're out of a job, pal! It's that crazy. It has happened, and veiled or unveiled threats happen daily. You can't touch, and you can't look, buster! It's called "an unwanted advance", or something of the sort. Enough to make you grab your guns! Oh wait, can I take back what I just said?! Too late? I need to start packing for a trip to a re-education camp, comrade?

Well, I understand, we're at war in America, extraordinary measures must be taken. The latest reports from the front say that the Female side is still winning, though the long winning streak doesn't seem to make it too happy.

Universal deafness

"When the going gets tough, the tough get blogging"
-- Christopher Buckley

I was talking to a friend about graphomania. He had never heard the word, and in the din of the fine restaurant where we were dining, he strained his ears, already damaged by years of rocking and rolling, to understand its components. I had to spell it out for him. G-R-A-P-H-O-M-A-N-I-A. (Графомания in Russian.) The Online Medical Dictionary defines the affliction thus:

Morbid and excessive impulse to write.

(In the age of universal blogging, the Big Pharma could cash in on this mania by developing Prozac-like drugs to cure it. There are 100 million bloggers/potential patients out there to be overmedicated. Again.)

In any event, I wasn't surprised by my esteemed friend's ignorance of the concept, as obsession with graphomania is a European thing. Call it graphomania mania. It is a concern of the literati there, the writers, the critics, the elites of the written word. My friend and I agreed that the concept originates from centuries old traditions in Europe of limiting access to professions and crafts to pre-screened, experienced and worthy individuals. One has to apprentice for years and years before becoming a craftsman himself. Writers, poets, composers, artists, are born, not made, and they are inspired by the gods on Mount Olympus, or the Muses, is an all too common belief across the Big Pond.

This is of course good and bad, as it serves to produce high quality art, but on the other hand it arbitrarily limits access to the tools of the trades and the audiences. In a democratic, egalitarian America, anyone can call himself a writer, artist or composer, and let the market decide, we say, as everything here is treated as a marketable product, including your own pitiful self. The barriers to entry exist here as well, let's not kid ourselves, but they don't usually involve years of apprenticeship.

A security guard where I hang my hat has just published a novel with a publishing house that is regarded in the publishing industry as a 'vanity press' (though they didn't charge him for it as is customary, except for the copies he ordered himself. It is a new kind of vanity press called POD, or Print On Demand publisher.) The father of my dinner companion had published his memoirs as a vanity press project, distributed them to his family members, and provoked a mini storm with his self-serving distortions. Outside the restaurant where we were dining that evening, on power utility poles hung advertising flyers from writing coaches, teachers, and editors. American psychoanalysts recommend writing as therapy.

The question of blogging as graphomania has been raised by others, and you can find discussions of it elsewhere. Before I sign off to work on the next posts for my two blogs, and then the next ones after those, I will only cite a quote on graphomania by the Czech writer Milan Kundera from his 1978 book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting:

Graphomania is not a mania to write letters, personal diaries, or family chronicles (to write for oneself or one’s close relations) but a mania to write books (to have a public of unknown readers). … Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society devlops to the point of creating three basic conditions:

1. an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
2. a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isoalation of individuals;
3. the absense of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel.

.. The mainspring that drives her to write is just that absence of vital content, that void. But by a backlash, the effort affects the cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside. … One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

I ain't superstitious

Don't want a four leaf clover
Don't want an old horse shoe
Want your kiss 'cause I just can't miss
With a good luck charm like you

(Elvis Presley - Good Luck Charm)

We've waited so long for this unlucky day, Friday the 13th, to record for posterity, as they say, some of our private superstitions.

I have heard that some skyscrapers and hotels in this country don't include a 13th floor. I've never been inside one, but I have often wondered what is between the 12th and 14th floors of such buildings. As for an old horse shoe, you can buy one at your local flea market. Luck for sale.

I live in a house located on the 13th hundred block of the street, and I can't complain of long strings of bad luck. But then I can't brag of good luck either.

I won't walk under ladders. I am careful about not breaking mirrors. I do step on the cracks in the sidewalk. I knock on unpainted wood (which is harder and harder to come by these days.) I won't open an umbrella in the house. Clover has been invading my once beautiful lawn for years, but I have yet to find a four leaf clover. I have experienced beginner's luck when playing games. I don't wash my car, as doing so will surely bring rain. I do not think that a bird pooping on my car will bring me good luck, but I do believe that stepping into dog poop will.

I beware of black cats crossing the road, and when walking I will occasionally wait for someone else (a sucker!) to pass me when faced with being the first person whose path the cat crossed. (You ought to try doing this in America, when often enough you are the only man on foot for miles around, arousing suspicions of normal citizens inside their moving vehicles, and inviting friendly chats from police cruisers stopping by just for you.) When driving, I try to run over the damn black pest. About the time my current string of bad luck started, a black cat crossed the road in front of my car, I wasn't close enough to run it over, and the only bright spot I saw at the time was that the cat's feet were white. The paws gave me a pause. Alas, the legs didn't lift my luck a lick!

The black cat with white feet happened on a Saturday morning when I do my shopping errands with eight or nine stops to complete. Eight in China signifies prosperity, and nine long life, so at least on Saturdays things ought to look copacetic. During the same recent time period, I was finding what are called lucky pennies -- I found three, giving two of them to the woman I was thinking of while spotting them, and I still have the third one, right here in the breast pocket of my shirt. You are supposed to blow on coins found on the street for good luck. I do. The three lucky pennies have brought no kind of luck.

If I found a lucky penny
I'd toss it across the bay
Your love is worth all the gold on earth
No wonder that I say

Come on and be my little good luck charm
Uh-huh huh, you sweet delight
I want a good luck charm
a-hanging on my arm
Uh to have, (to have), uh to hold, (to hold), uh tonight

The late great Willie Dixon wrote I Ain't Superstitious

Well I ain't superstitious, but a black cat crossed my trail
Ain't superstitious, but a black cat crossed my trail
Don't dust me with no broom babe, just might land in jail

Well the dogs be howling all round my neighbourhood
Dogs be howling all round my the neighbourhood
Sure is a bad sign babe, don't mean no earthly good

When my right hand itches, I gets money for sure
When my right hand itches, I gets money for sure
But when my left eye jumps babe, somebody got to go

Telephone Plans for the Family

"Like you", he said, "I don't own a mobile phone". He insists on using his foreign name for what we call 'cellphone' here.

"I know. But you own an iPod, and I don't", I answered.
"Well, you have a flat screen TV, and I don't", he came back.
"True, but I don't subscribe to cable, like you!", I hit him with my best shot.

Two grown men playing children's games. In reverse.

"Now, if you allow me to finish", he said with a hint of resignation.

My head nodded.

"She wants me to get a mobile phone, to help us communicate, she says", he told me.

"Who, Mona?" , Mona is the name of his latest flame.

"Who else!", he said, "And why do their names all have to start with an 'M' ?"

"Don't complain, we're in the middle of the alphabet now, just right for our ages. We have a long way to go before we reach the 'Z's. Zelda, Zora, Zena, await us in the distant future!", I told him, adding, "So what's the problem, get a damn cellphone, they're as cheap as dirt."

"Not really", he answered, "you have to sign a two year contract."

"Ah, I see", I said, "And you don't think Mona will last that long. Do you want her to last that long? Longer?"

"Mona's wonderful. I'd keep her for the rest of my life in a New York minute. But you know women these days."

At least, he's picked up some of our clichés, like the "New York minute", even if he hasn't learned to use them properly.

"Well, can you tell her about the two year contract?", I was giving impractical advice, as usual, "ask her what she thinks about it vis a vis her commitment? Delicately? Grinning? While she's chewing on a madeleine?"

He gave me That Look, his eyes above the eyeglasses on his nose.

"Commitment, huh?! Shall I remind you of your 'friend for life' ?", he hit back with his best shot this time, inflicting a life threatening wound.

"Well, you did, didn't you!", bleeding now and dying, I attempted one last desperate volley, "Ask her to marry you, and you'll both get a family plan on your cellphones. Problem solved!"

"I ought to..."



In the end, we agreed there are no plans for life, and no friends for life, in this land rich in material goods and poor in human values like genuine affection, friendship and love. We finished our drinks, said 'goodbye' , didn't hug each other like Hollywood celebrities and encounter group participants do, and we returned to our respective homes as friends. For at least a fortnight. For now.

Facing a white wall

Believe it or not, a few years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle's Religious Affairs Editor was a journalist named Don Lattin. He's no longer there, I understand, but you can find his articles either on his own website http://www.donlattin.com/ or at http://www.sfgate.com/. Oh, and Mr Lattin is Jewish. (While we're on the subject of people's names, some years ago there was a famous animal psychologist, as he called himself, whose name was James Fox. Would you trust Dr Fox with Freudian therapy for your chickens?)

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Don Lattin was good. He would dare to say in print this about Dalai Lama's new book:

The beloved and bespectacled Tibetan also has a new book, which says more or less the same thing as his last book, and the one before that.

I recently recalled some Don Lattin articles I had read, while observing, what one could call, Eastern influenced affectations of a few people around me. Yoga is big these days, Meditation (with a capital 'M') is big, talking mystical gibberish, influenced by Eastern religions and translated into Western therapeutic lingo ('psychobabble'), is big, and people don't seem any happier than before. Whatcha gonna do?! (Watch out, cognitive behavioral therapy is coming, and even FORBES magazine has noticed it recently! A subject for another post.)

I recently asked an Indian (from India) friend why I wasn't seeing any Indians (who are numerous around here) in my yoga class. I was expecting some interesting insights, like "oh, that's nothing but old folklore", or something similar, but she was surprised to hear that, and told me that her middle class mother in India practiced yoga. But she, a modern educated young woman, and her husband in a traditional arranged marriage, living and raising a family here in the U.S., did not. At the end of our conversation, I learned little about yoga, but quite a bit about Bollywood and its stars.

Be that as it may, Don Lattin once surveyed the Buddhist practices in his region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Here's what he wrote:

Like most converts, Western Buddhist practitioners take their religion seriously, devoting countless hours, weeks or months to vigorous meditation regimes. They try to train the mind to empty itself of the clutter and clatter of ordinary consciousness.

[...]

Most Asian American Buddhists (and Buddhists in Asia) seem perfectly content to let their monks do the hard work of this moral and spiritual regimen.

Rather than sitting cross-legged on the floor all day, suffering through hours of painful knees and aching backs, Buddhists who are born Buddhist are more likely to make offerings at the temple, light some incense and spend a few minutes praying for good luck.

[...]

My suggestion to those seeking an understanding of the two Buddhisms in America is to go experience a Sunday afternoon on the 1900 block of Russell Street in Berkeley. At 1911 Russell St., you will find scores of Thai immigrants crowding into the backyard of Temple Mongkolratanaram for a noontime feast of Thai food and boisterous conversation.

Above the din, in an upstairs flat converted into a makeshift temple, you may find a Thai family presenting the monks with a plastic laundry basket filled with bottles of Calistoga fruit juice, rolls of paper towels and other household supplies.

Just a few doors up the street, at 1929 Russell St., you may find a few dozen veterans of the spiritual counterculture filing into the rustic elegance of a traditional Japanese meditation hall. Once inside the zendo of the Berkeley Zen Center, you may see these "serious" Buddhists sitting atop round black cushions, backs straight, facing a white wall.

Lonely Avenue

Free newspaper in my left hand,
I will soon toss without reading the sex ads that sustain it,
Walking down the Avenue,
On Easter Saturday afternoon
Shoppers, students, pass me,
black beggars, white punks in black,
Lesbian couples, cripples, tattoos,
Smells of pizza, Indian food, espresso steam,
Cellphones ringing unfamiliar songs,
I thought I heard one play Lonely Avenue,
composed by Doc Pomus,
Sung by Ray Charles
And much later by Dion, Dion di Mucci

I live on a lonely avenue
Little girl, since you said we're through
Now I feel so sad and blue
It's all because of you

At the next corner, a man over fifty, with a bullhorn
Assures me Resurrection did happen,
I walk two Avenue blocks, and
a man over fifty with a bullhorn
Assures me Revolution will happen.

The sun comes out when I reach my car,
None of this having an effect on my life,
I drive towards the library
To look up a word in a book I once read,
Describing a man there I never knew,
And ones I knew then and now.

Um

Who remembers this song by Major Lance?

Walking through the park, it wasn't quite dark
There was a man sitting on a bench
Out of the crowd as his head lowly bowed
He just moaned and he made no sense
He'd just go
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um


And on it went like this: Um, um, um, um, um, um...

The record came out as a single on OKeh Records in early 1964 and reached the Top 10 on the charts.


I just couldn't help myself
Yes, I was born with a curious mind
I asked this man just what did he mean
When he moaned if he'd be so kind
And he'd just go
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um

Now that I've grown up
And the woman I love she has gone
Now that I'm a man, I think I understand
Sometimes everyone must sing this song
Listen to me sing
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um
Um, um, um, um, um, um

It's easy

I talk to my dog. We hold regular conversations.

"WHAT? You do what?", you ask.

"I hold regular conversations with my dog," I repeat.

"Dogs don't talk. Are you lonely and depressed? Are you on medication, or needing medication?"

"I'm not on medication and don't need medication. As for 'lonely and depressed', a word from you could do something about it. Everything about it. But I do talk to my dog. My dog talks to me. As a canine he cannot talk as intelligently and about as many matters as professor Harold Bloom, but he can grasp basic ideas and express them, better than most American celebrities and politicians who spout daily on television on matters from politics, war and peace, life and death, to climatology, and who itch to tell the rest of us how to conduct our lives."

"Huh?", you say, intrigued just a little now.

"My dog is a mutt, a rescue dog, of indeterminable breed; I think he has 3 breeds in him from his parents and grandparents; people we meet make all kinds of guesses at what these three or six or nine more breeds might be, while I have long given up -- I don't need to know names for everything around me. He's pretty, he's handsome, people comment on that too, pay him compliments, stare at him, and he doesn't consider them arrogant or rude for doing so, on the contrary, he perks up, lifts his tail and wags it, looks straight at them as if to say, 'thank you, I know I'm beautiful, and so are you'."

Have I at last got your attention? Good, I'll go on.

"And we talk. Me and my dog. Just this evening, he quoted to me the Beatles. Sensing my depressed and lonely mood, like only dogs can do, he said: 'It's easy. All you need is love. Love is all you need." (He has heard all those Beatle records. But then, who hasn't?!)"

I then said, "Oh, you think so? You think it's easy? You ought to try it. You're all love, and how do they treat you?", I asked and he gave me a quizzing look.

I continued.

"Ground control to Major Tom, don't lean on me man, I'm back from suffragette city!", I said, quoting David Bowie this time. His name is Bowie, and, appropriately enough, I often quote to him singer David Bowie. He turned his head to look at me, but he didn't try to stop me from talking. I went on.

"Recall the days of your puppyhood and the time inside those cages at the rescue society. Do you remember how those two women, a mother and her young daugher picked you out of a crowd of barking, begging and whining dogs? How they picked you and not another dog? No, it wasn't your good looks, buddy, there were better looking mutts there that evening. They picked you out of that mob, not because you seemed like a 'nice guy', either, but because they saw you as a challenge, as a wild guy to be tamed, a fun guy to be with, a rascal, untamed, unrestrained, who they saw had a potential to maybe become some nice guy that they imagined in their minds but never actually met in a dog or man. That's why those two women picked you and not some begging, good looking, romantic and loving nice guy. You weren't offering love to them, only trouble and challenge. You don't remember, do you."

He turned his head and stared at me with the look dogs give when they hear something new that they don't quite understand.

"And what happened after that?" I continued. "We tamed you, trained you to be a sweet loving guy, and then what? The two women who had picked you, lost interest in you, why, they are now tired of and annoyed by your presence, your barking, your requests for love and attention. You're no challenge any more, you're no fun, boy."

I finished, "It's just you and me now, boy, two depressed, lonely guys, on medication or needing medication, as somebody just told us. Love alone will gets you nowhere. It takes cunning, scheming and premeditation, to get a little bit of it back after you give it with all the sincerity you can muster."

And that was my conversation with my dog Bowie this evening. Years ago, famous singer David Bowie, loved by fans, surrounded by fellow musicians, groupies, managers, entourages, moved out of Los Angeles, where he was living, back to Europe, after saying he could not survive in this empty, lonely, desolate land.


'It's easy. Love is all you need.'

Russian Questions

"Maybe this planet is another planet's hell."
-- Aldous Huxley

"Hell is other people."

-- Jean Paul Sartre

When I was growing up, the term 'Russian question' referred to the type of question that could not be easily answered, such as "What is life?, "Who am I?", an existential question. The jokers among us would of course extend the definition to questions such as 'Why are the stores out of toilet paper?", and similar equally unanswerable queries. Why Russian and not French or German, when those latter nations produced the most famous modern philosophers, I don't know . Perhaps because Russia has produced many more philosophers of the street and village.

One of the masters of Russian questions, even if he didn't call them that, was an American comedian Don Novello, who in his pseudonomous persona as Lazlo Toth, sent out letters to politicians and businesses posing such questions. These letters and responses to them were later published in books titled Lazlo Letters. One letter I remember, to a supermarket company, asked why the milk cartons with the nearest expiration dates were being pushed to the front of the shelves, while the cartons with the farthest expiration dates were stocked at the back of the shelves, forcing supermarket customers always to buy the least fresh milk.

In any event, I've encountered many such 'Russian Questions' and I will share some of them with you here. Beware that this is not the last time such questions will be posed. Let's go!

I drive a sports car. My young son drive a Mercedes Benz. Most people I encounter who drive sports cars, men and women, are not, uhm, young. How come we all, all the time, and in spite ourselves, end up living up to stereotypes of ourselves?

How come on the train home, which I take every weekday late afternoon or early evening, I repeatedly see the same faces of people I have no interest in knowing or talking to, but when an interesting person appears, she (it's always a 'she', for some odd reason) will only appear once, I will fail to speak to her, and she'll never re-appear again?

I walk or run to the train station from work in late afternoon on weekdays. The station is almost a mile away, and the route is L shaped with about the same ratio of distances as in the letter. I first walk the vertical line of the letter, crossing one traffic light and then at the second traffic light I turn to the horizontal line of the letter. The first part of the path goes along a busy expressway, with open fields on both sides, that are beginning to be developed. The two traffic lights are at T shaped intersection, inverted to each other. Both traffic lights stay green most of the time for the expressway traffic, the first light changes rarely, sometimes only every two minutes or so, mainly for cars turning left into the vertical leg of the T which crosses my path. Logic (ah logic!) tells me that walking towards that intersection I should find the light green for me and the expressway traffic most of the time. It isn't. It is green 3-4 times out of ten. The second light, which I need to be red for the expressway traffic in order to cross the expressway, I will find red perhaps one time out of 40-50. A Russian question, don't you think?

There is an Internet cafe right next door to the pub where I order my pints of beer. It is a pleasant, bright, inviting place, selling coffee, tea and pastries. You can even plug in your laptop to one of their electrical outlets free of charge. I have been temped to buy a laptop computer, or bring mine from work and type these musings there. But. The place is always crowded every time I pass by or go inside to look around. There are no empty tables and no seats to share a table. How come? How and when did the people already there get their seats and tables?

How come when you visit Prague, Czech Republic, and ride public transportation there, you will see in every train car, every subway car, every bus and every tram, at least one beautiful girl or woman?

How come American women, when breaking up with their boyfriends, lovers, or male friends (or 'dumping them' in the sweet post-feminist female lingo. Popular advice columns printed in thousands of American newspapers, routinely advise women to 'dump the bum'), how come they will invariably say "let's be friends" and "you are a nice romantic guy, but..."?

How come disdain, contempt, hatred are so easy to call on and produce, and friendship, affection and love so hard?

Wisdom is

"Wisdom is _________," said Linda (her real name), to Gary (his real name.) Then she turned to me and repeated it, "What do you think, Adalbertus?" (not my real name.) I stopped reading the free newpaper I had picked up on the way there, titled Kabbalah Today (Volume 1, Issue 1) , and said "No, wisdom is __________", contradicting Linda. I should have asked her why she thought what she thought, now it was too late. I reached down to my sack searching for my gun, thinking, "I'm only on my second pint, and I'm hearing and spouting nonsense; I might as well shoot myself and end this trip now." But the gun wasn't there. Linda said something else, I wasn't listening. She turned to Gary to continue their Sunday afternoon conversation. I overheard that neither she nor he owned a mobile phone or an iPod. A trio we were.


I had arrived at the pub less than an hour earlier, a few minutes past my usual time of 4:30 in the afternoon. Unlike the previous day at this time, the place wasn't crowded. Linda, another regular, preceeded me through the door and took the corner seat at the bar. Not particularly interested in a conversation, I decided to take a stool away from her, in the middle of the L shaped bar, between an old man on the right, who in the next hour would disappear twice for 20 minutes at a time, a coaster covering the top of his glass to signal he'd be coming back, and on the left the unfriendly punkette waitress there, with a skunklike haircut and hair bleach, at the end of her shift apparently, slowly picking at a hamburger and a bowl of coleslaw, next, to her left, her heavyset punk boyfriend, like she, dressed all in black, always friendly and talkative, a three and a half inch silver needle sticking horizontally through his nose, (does he take it out when he goes down on her, I wondered?), and to his left Doug (his real name) another regular, working on a crossword puzzle or a sudoku.

As I arrived, Paulie (her real name), the punk barmaid, said to me, "Sorry, we're out of IPA, today", my usual ale on warm days, and so I ordered a pint of my cold day brown creamy ale, sat down and started looking at the freebie newspapers I had picked up somewhere. There was the Daily News from Saturday, with nothing interesting in it, and COMPETITOR, formerly CITY SPORTS, with a consumer survey of running shoes, all near or over $100 a pair, twice or thrice of what I, a runner, would be willing to pay. Who buys these expensive shoes, I thought? Not the professional athletes who get them gratis from manufacturers in return for endorsements, or for just being seen wearing them. There was an article by Jeff Galloway, a wise running coach, whose old book I have somewhere, and whose program I once tried to follow. He claims in the article to have coached 200,000 runners. He stresses quality over quantity, and the importance of rest days. He recalls the legendary promoter of running, the late Dr George Sheehan, who, at over sixty years of age, realized his race running times were getting slower, and instead of running medium length runs every day, he settled on three 10 mile runs a week, and soon beat his marathon running record to arrive at 3 hrs, 1 minute.

At 5, his usual time, Gary arrived. Gary and I seldom talk beyond simple greetings and a few casual remarks. On Saturdays he comes with his wife, on Sundays alone. He sat to my left after the punkette waitress packed her uneaten hamburger in aluminum foil and disappeared somewhere. Her boyfriend was still there. To his left now sat Mike (his real name) another regular, now playing cribbage with his usual partner Doug. I kept up my attempts at reading.

Around 5:30 another Mike would normally arrive. My drinking buddy, I call him, master mandolin player (not his profession), unmarried, but wise beyond his years, probably from reading so much Russian literature, I figure. He was the one who advised me recently on my heartbreaks and woes, saying "You've got to protect yourself now." Mike (his real name) would usually talk to me or Gary, an amateur guitar player himself, and it occurred to me today that Gary and I were at times in competition for his attention. But Mike didn't arrive. Instead, about 15 past 5, Linda moved from her perch in the corner to sit between Gary and me (she had to pull up a stool and I had to move mine a few inches to the right), to talk mostly with Gary, while I nodded, exchanged a few pleasantries and went back to my Kabbalah Today reading (Volume 1, Issue 1.)

Linda is an umarried woman over 50, pleasant and friendly, who reminds me of some nun I used to know or perhaps imagined. Years ago I helped to assauge her fears about the Microsoft Access program, there at the same bar. Her job is to write grant proposals.

I finished my second pint, segregated my pile of free newspapers into two, COMPETITOR and Daily News, I'd leave behind on the newspaper pile in the corner, Kabbalah Today, I'd take home with me for further study (isn't Madonna into this stuff?), and I asked Paulie for the tab. I handed her $20 and received $11.50 in change. There was some handwriting on the one dollar bill she gave me back, that I was going to leave as a tip along with another dollar I pulled from my pocket. Linda was the first to notice it. The writing was in Spanish, and she attempted to translate it, but the translation didn't quite come out. I decided to keep it. "I'm superstitious," I told Linda, "and I need an omen". "Yes, omens are good," she replied. I said goodbye to her and Gary and went out on the street. It was now just before six in the evening and the sun was shining brightly.

The writing on the one dollar bill said the following in block letters.

On the bill's face:

ERES LO MAS BONITO
QUE ME PASO. E'PERDIDO
Y NO PIDO
REVANCHA

=LORENZO=
MEXICALI

On the bill's back:

MONICA IE QUIERO

Translated by my co-worker Gabriel (his real name) on Monday morning:

YOU ARE THE PRETTIEST
WHAT HAPPENED TO ME
I LOST AND I'M NOT ASKING FOR REVENGE.

=LORENZO=
MEXICAN

MONICA, I LOVE YOU

"Monica" and "Lorenzo". Not their real names.

Wisdom is.











Monday morning, 04/02/2007.

Dedication

For uM, with appreciation and love...

"The nature of thinking is but"

-- Susan Sontag

"One learns to think through books; one learns to live through women"

-- Arthur Koestler

"How many times I wondered
It still comes out the same
No matter how you look at it or think of it
It's life and you just got to play the game"

-- Tony Joe White, 'Rainy Night in Georgia'

Stop breaking down,
Mama, please, stop breaking down.
Stuff is gonna bust your brains out, baby,
Gonna make you lose your mind.

-- Robert Johnson, 'Stop Breaking Down'

"You write because you must."

-- Henry Fairlie (to yours truly.)

"She writes like a dream."

-- An unknown poet