writing

This is a no brainer…

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Pun intended.

Comparing George Orwell’s “1984″ to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” Postman then added that, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Social media offer us two choices: Orwell’s hell, or Huxley’s, MarketWatch, September 7, 2022

I’m Team Huxley all the way.

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. – A. H.

Anyway…

I can thank Donald Trump for at least one thing: That is, being the impetus behind my decision to abandon just about all social media and forsake you all here at my website.

For the most part I’m a better man for it because Trump and all his idiotic minions cultish worshippers political supporters were driving me on the fast track to dark, warped places I had no desire to visit.

However, two years or so on, I do miss journaling* regularly here.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to re-engage with it like I used to.

But I’m trying.

At least I think often about trying.

Anyway…

I don’t really blame social media for all our societal ills like so many do.

As I see it, we will always look to blame who/whatever we can for the ignorant/dumb things we do that only we, ourselves, can possibly be responsible for doing.

Such as hating.

Or not accepting the truth.

Or even avoiding the truth.

Et cetera.

Et cetera.

Besides, we have allowed technology to debase and dumb us down at least since the invention of the printing press.

And there’s no turning back now.

And once our A.I. Overlords are in complete control, brains will no longer be optional.

They will be unnecessary.

Superseded.

Yeah…

Pun definitely intended.

*I still cannot reconcile myself to the word “blogging”.




Literary Zen XI

by
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer*

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.

*Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up my day job.

Oh yeah, my books will be free from 00:01 (PDST) tonight until 23:59 PDST) Friday.

✌️

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance

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You probably know that Steve Earle is a world-renowned folk/country/crossover singer-songwriter…

And maybe you know that he is also an actor, having appeared on The Wire, Treme, and other productions, his characters mostly mirroring his life as a musician, as in Treme, or as a recovering heroin addict, as in The Wire.

But did you know he is also an author?

And a damn fine one at that?

Yeah…

Dude’s def got it going on, I must say. Obviously, I’m a big fan.

His book I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive is named after a Hank William’s song. I listened to the audiobook version, of which Earle performed. It’s great. The main character is a down-and-out, disgraced doctor, and an addict, who angelically performs illegal medical services for the locals of his unruly hood, particularly for the at-risk sex workers. It is a sad, touching, funny, magical, hallucinatory/ghostly tale (Hank Williams plays a critical role… or at least his ghost/Doc’s hallucination of him does) of which I highly recommend.

Anyway, have a listen of this little ditty of Earle’s from when he was a much younger human, and tap a toe or two while you’re at it…

A Privilege to be Apart

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I wonder if there could be scientific research done that could come up with a way to measure how much privilege an individual possesses and then create a scale that tells us that this amount of privilege will lead to this amount of life.

Presuming that more privilege equals more life.

And visa versa, I suppose.

By all accounts I should be dead: leukemia in 2009, a year later a lung disease as a result of the bone marrow transplant and of which was to knock me off within five years, heart failure in 2014 as a result of my prophylactic chemo pills, forever more a decimated immune system as a result of all the above, and most recently this summer, also as a result of all the above, pneumonia, of which my oncologist said if I ever contracted it would be game over.

But the game continues…

I guess I’m kind of like a cockroach that there ain’t no gettin’ rid of.

Who knows for sure why I’m still here.

But my guess is that my off the chart privilege score has a heck of a lot to do with it.

Some of the points you can add up by site: white, male, tall, all my limbs and digits intact.

Some points can only be determined by knowing a bit about me.

For instance, by knowing that my ultimate privilege has to be that there never has been a moment in my life that I have not felt loved. That’s got to be worth beaucoup points, oui?

Or that there has never been a moment in my life that I have been without good health insurance.

Good medical coverage + lotsa love as medicine = one long-living cockroach.

And another big privilege of mine is that for the most part I could walk into just about any room of my choosing and feel accepted, or at least unthreatened.

Even without understanding that the ability to do something like that is a privilege, it’s gotta be good for one’s well-being, no?

Yeah…

But it goes the other way, too.

I’ve also had the privilege of self-induced estrangement without having to worried about being labeled as strange… or as a threat.

I used to love being in a foreign country, especially in Asia where I look completely different from most, and riding a bus or a train by myself and not understanding a single word being said around me. Everything just hummed in the background and I could be surrounded by masses of people crammed into the subway car with me and yet be completely apart from them… at peace, without fear.

It was almost spiritual.

A privileged feeling like that’s gotta be worth a few points.

I wonder how many of those from other parts of the world coming to my country today, the less than United States, can ride alone in a crowded subway car not understanding what’s being said around them and feel at peace and without fear.

There is a beautiful piece in the New York Times by Elisa Gonzalez titled How Alienation Became My Superpower…

In 2016, I moved to Poland to study and write poetry on a Fulbright arts fellowship. Doing so required stripping myself of fluency and the cloak of native understanding. With each failure of action or speech, I squelched around in touristic self-pity. “I live on Smutna Street,” I told someone, momentarily forgetting “Smolna” was my street’s actual name; her laughter reminded me that smutna means “sad.” I was often sad during that first, dark autumn, dealing with a disintegrating marriage and the parched loneliness of the unlanguaged.

Fortunately, later in the piece we learn that Ms. Gonzalez was eventually able to find peace with her alienation.

But I don’t suppose everyone who feels alienated and alone because they look different, or speak different, or love different, can find such peace.

But I wish they could.

My work in progress is a story about alienation and estrangement. The main character, white, male, old, kind of like yours truly, gets so fed up with the state of humanity that he decides to no longer identify as a human and disassociates himself completely from society.

But instead of becoming estranged from humanity, he, or it as it prefers to be referred to, creates a kind of a cult around itself in the process.

Go figure.

Privilege is a powerful thing and its worth can never be accurately tallied I suppose.

But we know, or at least I do, that it is so powerful it can fulfill and extend lives.

Now that’s not just power, that is a true superpower…

One that, unfortunately, not everyone has the privilege to enjoy.

The River and the Bed

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The river winds around my head,
Fish before my eyes.
I lay my cheek upon its bed and
Contemplate the skies of
Morning's red, of
Midday's blue, of
Twilight's pink aglow, that
Filters through the rushing stream
Born of mountains long ago.

Where does it go in such a rush from
Rushing 'bout my mind? This
Is the thought I can't escape;
Its answer won't unwind its
Liquid coils from the root where
All such knowledge grows. And
Like the river born of distant mounts,
Its seed sown long ago.

Where do all the dreams go

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In the 12-month period that ended in April, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The figure marks the first time the number of overdose deaths in the United States has exceeded 100,000 a year, more than the toll of car accidents and guns combined. Overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2015.

Overdose Deaths Reached Record High as the Pandemic Spread, New York Times, November 17, 2021

~~~~~

where do all the dreams go
when the hope for tomorrow
dies along the way

Where one scholar is in error and another in scholarly license

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Yes, this is yet another entry for the Ungeziefer file…

One where scholar and author Rebecca Schuman, who is obviously highly intelligent and supremely credible as evidenced by her skepticism (likeminded with yours truly of course) of Michael Hoffman translating Kafka’s Ungezeifer as a cockroach, as discussed in her 2017 Literary Hub article I Made a Mistake in My Book and the Internet Went Nuts.

Cockroach is, some might say, a bold choice. Others might, uncharitably, call it a mistake, and a big, significant one, one that would signify Hofmann’s grasp of the field he dominates as tenuous. But as vehemently as I disagree with cockroach—I prefer Susan Bernofsky’s some sort of monstrous insect—I’m not saying that Hofmann’s a hack, not entirely.

But this entry is a bit more than just a validation my point.

It is also one where with Schuman’s willingness to take on the odd word choice, which some might call a regretful miscalculation, of a renowned scholar such as Hoffman is, isn’t just an example of her intellectual rigor and toughness, it is also yet another example of the disparities between females and males in a professional setting, the setting here being in the arena of German language author-ity and scholarship.

The disparities this time being exhibited in the differences in the reception between a female scholar’s oversight versus a male scholar’s, where Schuman’s oversight of screwing up her German skulls almost lost her her career (and maybe even her mind) and Hoffman’s oversight of calling Gregor Samsa a cockroach was mostly viewed as harmless scholarly license.

Learn more

It was true. I had fucked up my skulls. Given: It’s hardly a rousing soliloquy claiming Goethe’s finest work is Macbeth. But still.

Here’s how it happened. The chapter now marred by Schädel-gate is called Liebeskummer, a word for heartbreak that literally translates to “love grief.” I wrote it, in its entirety, with a newborn baby, a feat comparable to climbing the sheer face of a cliff using only one’s teeth. It’s a goddamned wonder I could remember Goethe’s name. However, I’m loath to share this fact; offering, as an excuse, my attempt at multitasking the impossible reveals me as a woman—and, therefore, someone whose expertise is brought into question by default.

Obviously, these disparities in reception has much to do stereotype incongruencies, you know, kind of how people get weirded out by male nurses.

Anyway, what are we gonna do, right?

It is, after all, a man’s world…

At least until it isn’t.

~~~~~

Featured image courtesy of The New Sisyphus Is a Woman by Ron Milford