"Best of": Master of TIVO and Time

I like this off-the-cuff essay from 6/8/07:

Obviously "The Whole Thing" did not play well to my invisible audience. Not that I play for an audience. But if I did, I would suspect the great Zen-ness of my Boethian concept of the giant dough ball was above them. Or below them. Or beyond them. Or all around them.

There is no way to grasp the whole thing. I mean, multitask all you want. Your brain can't even wrap itself around the average species extinction quotient, as that has never been determined. Thus when climate prophets proclaim the rate of species extinction, you have nothing to compare it to. What if the average was nature's average? Hmmmm....

I recommend Michael Crichton's book, "State of Fear," as a contrarian riposte to Al Gore. Quite fascinating, Crichton's argument. The book is not a novel but a shill for delivering scientific/social rhetoric, much like B. F. Skinners "Walden Two" or Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"--both books I thoroughly enjoyed. I guess that means I like my philosophy light, the way Plato did that there cave thing. Makes the whole thing more palatable. Pure philosophers, like Kant, can be boring in the extreme, since unlike current trends in poetry, they are loathe to give concrete examples. They like to build their philosophical castles from etymology and logic. Hell, I prefer a parable at least. Give me Jesus over Kant. I prefer the crucifixion of pure reason to its critique. But I cop to being lazy-brained and shiftless unless I'm cross-dressing.

Back to my topic. I'm house-sitting for my sister and she has TIVO. So after watching the first game of the NBA finals, which I had tivoed while attending a gallery opening, through which I fast-forwarded past commercials and the inevitable grind of the final outcome, I turned on Conan O'Brien. Live television! Suddenly the frustration set in: Why couldn't I fast-forward through his commercials? Why did I have to put up with all the boring bullshit?

Now I see why I must get digital recording of TV programs. If I have it all I have to do is wait for one or two hours before watching a show, and I can watch it commercial-free and pause it whenever I want.

So what?, all you TIVO experts out there say. Yet to me it feels like the Twilight Zone, where some guy has a stop watch that can stop time, and he can wander through a jewelry store of frozen mannequins and steal all the diamonds with nary a witness.

With TIVO (or its equivalent) I can master time. I am the master of time.

And if I master time, mass and energy can't be far behind!

Sorry, my brain is moving near the speed of light. Which makes its mass infinite.

I'm free, I'm free, thank heaven I'm free! (even if extremely fat-headed under the circumstances).

Still I have to figure out what Direct TV, my server, charges for this recording feature, and whether the time is worth the money. Time may be money, but only for those who are actually working and not on a fixed income like I am. ("Fixed?" Sounds like I'm a pet or an illicit gambling scam.)

I had "twice-cooked quail" tonight at an Oakland restaurant; it was so dry and stringy I didn't know whether to send it back for a third cook or ask them to go back and only cook it once. With TIVO I could have re-wound the whole process and tasted the little bird raw, once cooked, twice cooked, or thrice cooked. And no one would have noticed as I ruled them with my remote!

Ah, technology I love you! I have conquered time! And if all time is relative, whether live or recorded, whether in time past or time future, the time I conquer through TIVO is just as valid as any other time conquered or deferred, as in reading The New Yorker in your doctor's office.

It's late I'm done. Beware the blue-ringed octopus of Australia. Very venomous. Then you have to read the book.


--Ex-poet CE

(I have yet to re-post my "Giving Up Poetry" declaration in this series because it's embarrassing, in fact I've already passed it by chronologically. But that is why I sign off as an ex-poet here. Obviously I have not been able to escape my nature (for those who have followed my journey here).)

"Best of," cont'd: The Whole Thing

From 6/06/07

Regarding the whole thing. No one can see the whole thing. No one can deal with it. And no one can resist its gravity, its all-subsuming surface, its termite-tenting of reality, a GPS system for every point, in a word, the whole thing, the entire enchilada, the whole ball of wax, the sum of everything as it lies crushingly upon our shoulders.

I imagine it as a great ball of dirty dough rolling and bouncing over an old dirt road through a green valley. Everything it touches sticks to it and subsequently becomes part of the revolving show, much like the wheel of fortune about which Boethius wrote in his Consolation of Philosophy And everything that sticks to the dough can ride along for a spell or be plastered back on the road or thrown out to the fields.

I used to think that the reason I wasn't more successful in managing the whole thing was that I wasn't rich or famous enough to afford help with the whole thing.

Celebrities of every stripe have managers, maids, valets, lawyers, accountants, trainers and more, so I reasoned, to manage the whole thing for them with little supervision. Thus I lived in hope of becoming a celebrity to better deal with the whole thing. But each time I approached the cusp of fame I was so worn out from the swim that I missed the boat.

When I saw Whitney Houston looking like a Holocaust survivor in the tabloids, I realized that life can become unmanageable even for celebrities! Imagine that. (I do think Whitney would be well-served to hire a new drug counselor, one not afraid to slap the bitch around!).

Let us admit that not even a celebrity with support troops can manage the whole thing. The thing is--it's just too--too too too--gigantic to approach, this nightmare of a dough ball thundering through your green valley like a pale head.

Even with a personal trainer, you have to do the exercises. You have to decide what shade of white you want your teeth. Someone can shop for you, someone can dress you, but no one can sleep for you. And it's precisely in these unprotected moments that the whole thing comes to smash you and hoist you above like flattened gum on its sticky, inexhaustible surface.

There is no escaping the whole thing. The whole thing doesn't care if you have a personal trainer. The whole thing can make you fat if it wants to. We are talking about the very elemental forces of nature.

All matter, including sentient beings, is subject to the whole thing. And just when you reach the top of the spinning sphere with your beautiful wife and wonderful job and a ranch style house and 1.5 children, down you go. The whole thing will cram a Mercedes down your throat and a mortgage up your ass at the worst possible moment. As for children, there’s always leukemia. The wife? She can have an affair with your boss. If you're the boss, she can always have an affair with your secretary. The whole thing, the giant turning sphere of sticky dough that supersedes our most cherished plans is always there, ready to turn our existence inside out at a moment’s notice. It has and will.

There is no protection from the whole thing. Psychiatric medications may smooth out the gut-fluttering ride, but they can't protect you from being stuck in the dough and whirled about.

Occasionally the whole thing will drop you on the road and you feel a strange relief in getting off the randomly revolving spherical insanity without getting lost in the adjoining fields, where your inconsequentiality, as in death, will torture you and tempt you back to the unendurable ride. Trust me, this won't last: this is the whole thing psyching you up into a lack of caution before it swallows you again, plasters you to its surface, and takes you down the valley to the next dumping point, where contentment briefly threatens but ultimately eludes.

There is no escape from the whole thing.

Good luck with it!

CE

Christmas 2008

I should be doing my honey-do list but could not resist blogging something in lieu of my failure to send Christmas cards. Below I'll try to attach pictures of everyone in our family, including the pets.

To all my readers a Merry Christmas. I don't like the generic "Happy Holidays" any more than I like the tyranny of tolerance to which our culture has been subjected. I say "Merry Christmas" because I'm an unabashed Christian. If I were a pagan I would likely say, "Happy Saturnalia." It is a diverse holiday but diversity is best served by individual commitment. As I often advise, it is better to pursue one path (or religion) assiduously than sample them all like chocolates. The spiritual discipline of every path does or should lead to the love of God. All else is dross.

Regarding peace on earth, our cats and new dog are finally co-existing in a semblance of harmony. He rarely barks at them and some nights both he and a cat sleep in our California king. But when the cats are roaming outside, he still thinks them fair game for a good treeing.

I'm grateful for so much this year: Kathleen, my children (all doing well), this beautiful place I live in, friends, enough to eat, shelter, and of course the miracle of the incarnation that ennobles man more than anything. To the PETA people: notice he didn't come as a bunny!

I used to dislike Christmas, but over the years my heart has healed from the bleak ones I've known, particularly those endured during a depression. Each ornament, each hug, each gift speaks of a generosity within in us that I wish we could access all year long. Then there might be peace on earth.

And I think of all our troops in places far away--I even have a good friend serving in Afghanistan as a psychiatrist. May they come home soon; may Obama keep his pledge to withdraw from Iraq in 16 mos., and may he reconsider expanding the mess in Afghanistan.

I'm also naturally grateful to my publisher, Kelly, who sought me out to publish my first volume of poetry in over ten years. Poetry is a great joy to me, especially as a reader. There's no better brain candy--I think stockings should be stuffed with poems, although the children would no doubt complain.

"If ifs and buts were candy and nuts then every day would be Christmas." --Dutch Proverb.

Here's a poem by Emily:

The Savior must have been
A docile Gentleman—
To come so far so cold a Day
For little Fellowmen—

The Road to Bethlehem
Since He and I were Boys
Was leveled, but for that 'twould be
A rugged Billion Miles—

To all you who read me but whom I've never met, I hope my ramblings, especially about my difficulties with manic-depression, have somewhat extended your compassion and understanding for a disease that affects one in a hundred worldwide. And I'm grateful for all those who read my literary musings and poems. It is a strange thing, this anonymous connection through the ether. I would name all the countries from which people come here, but it would take to long. For now hello to Iran, Kuwait and the Ukraine.

Have a blessed Christmas!

CE

"Best of," cont'd: The Parnassian vs. the Conversational in Poetry

From 5/21/08:


I'm trying to loosen up my verse a little. But there’s always a catch.

The tradition of Parnassian verse, as in Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, Spenser, Shakespeare (ignoring comedies and comedic interludes), Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson—a type of poetry Matthew Arnold wrote of as containing "high seriousness"—seems clearly over.

Yet much of the magic of poetry depends upon such high seriousness, since we must take poetry seriously to set up heroic expectations, or even anti-heroic expectations. (See "The Hollow Men" by Eliot, "Out, Out" by Frost, or "Roan Stallion" by Jeffers. The Moderns could still do high seriousness, though one may say as well that "Howl" has a high seriousness as well.)

What am I trying to say? There must be a point between the conversational voice of Billy Collins and the often elevated voices of Milosz, Larkin, Yeats and the like.... I think Eliot mixes the conversational with the Parnassian better than anyone:

From “Gerontion":

"The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom."

(italics mine)

I find the conversational more effective when set up by the serious, the empyrean, or the Parnassian, but so few poets can do this—change voices in mid-stream successfully. You have to be very good to do this. Most of us can only write well employing one voice. In reading Jane H. lately, as good as she is, she doesn't even attempt this. Most poets don’t.

Again, without form verse libre is impotent; without seriousness the conversational becomes banal. The necessary dualisms of great writing are in the very nature of writing, just as Shakespeare relieves the political machinations of Henry IV with Falstaff.

Here’s a different example of coming from the conversational to a conclusion of high seriousness (Yeats):


CRAZY JANE TALKS WITH THE BISHOP

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

(italics mine)

Since first being enamored of poetry, I have been enamored of poetry of power. I find Plath powerful at times but not Collins. Dylan Thomas is powerful, as Larkin can be, but Walcott rarely. Milosz can do it, though he is a bit jagged. Coleridge's "Rime" must be the most powerful poem ever written in the sense I mean.

I wrote an essay called "Power Lyrics" several years ago in which I tried to develop this theme more clearly, but I doubt I'll ever explain it properly; it's like what Blackwell said about pornography; I know it when I see it.

What is even more powerful is when the poet has the skill to interrupt serious verse with a snatch of the intimately conversational, even ridiculous, or vice-versa, which takes us completely by surprise and works despite (and because of) the momentary jarring of switching inputs.

If you are confused by these points, it is the fault of the author, not your brain.


All for today,

CE

Best of the Blog, cont'd: How I Pissed off My Congressman

From 5/16/07:


Yesterday I was awakened at 7:30 AM by a strange voice.

“Is this Craig? Craig Chaffin?”

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I said “Yes?”

“This is Mike Thompson, your U.S. Representative, and I want to know why you called me a ‘weenie!’”

“Huh? Oh, in that letter I sent at your site?” I tried to remember, as I write a lot of letters to people who don't know me.

“Do you know my Iraq voting record? Do you know anything about me? Why did you write me such an offensive message?”

Gathering my dream-spattered thoughts: “Well, I assumed I would only get a form letter from you, so I called you a ‘weenie’ about Iraq in case I might actually get a response. Look’s like I did. You know, it’s hard to get the attention of an institution without spraying some graffiti.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Is it true you are a doctor, a medical doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe that you, an educated man, would write me this.”

“What, do you want me to apologize?”

“Do you know my record on the Iraq war? I was posterized by the Republicans for visiting Iraq before the war, looking for a non-military solution. And have you heard of the recent McGovern bill for immediate re-deployment of our troops? We only have 171 votes. So it won’t get passed. But I voted for it.”

“Is Pelosi with you on this?”

“Of course.”

“That’s good to know. But why do I hear all this noise of trying to compromise with the Republicans?”

“There is no compromise.”

(On his website he prides himself for being a moderate Democrat known for his bipartisan work.) “That’s refreshing to hear,” I say, “especially with the vetoes and Democrats talking about benchmarks and all.”

“Do you know I’m a vet and I saw my buddies blown up and that I go to Walter Reed every two weeks to visit the wounded?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well I do!”

I resisted the temptation to ask, “Are you a chaplain, too, or just a saint?” because at this point I’m wondering what he wants. A medal? An apology? Absolution? A contribution? I mean, who am I? Just some nut case from his district that occupies all of coastal Northern California.

“Uh huh.”

“And I’ve opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. I’ve always voted against funding the war.”

This I tried to check online but I couldn’t find his 2002-03 voting record.

“That’s good to know.”

“So who told you I wasn’t doing anything about Iraq?”

“Oh--when I attended the peace rallies outside your office, it was the considered opinion of all the activists that you weren’t doing enough.”

“Why don’t you tell those people to go protest at the office of someone who supports the war and leave me alone!”

“Are there any other congressman in our district?”

“Uh… no.”

“So where do you suggest we go?”

He couldn't even recommend another congressman to bother.


I suppose you could make this stuff up but I didn’t. Since he called me at 7:30 AM I assume he was in DC. For reasons I can only surmise, my e-mail must have crawled up his tightly wound ass big time. I mean, “weenie?” I’m sure he wanted to wash my mouth out with soap or rap my knuckles like a nun with a ruler, his being a Catholic and a vet and all. I’m sure in Viet Nam he never heard anything worse than, “Watch out for those darn gooks!” Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick must have lied to me.

Afterwards I did him the courtesy of researching his record online as much as I could in a few hours, and indeed, he should be proud of his stance on Iraq, the salmon fisheries, and other issues.

But why a relative flew with him on a junket to China in 2005 and who paid for it, I couldn’t find out, so I wrote him back to ask. And what a general partnership in “Travis Webb,” worth $100,000, might be I have no idea so I asked him about that as well. I hear he serves at the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue in Fort Bragg every year so I told him that I hoped to see him there and meet him in person. I was tempted to sign my new letter, “Your Employer,” but I don’t think he’s ready for that yet.

Ah, the hubris. In a country of free speech my own congressman spends half an hour on the phone with me because I dared to call him a “weenie.” As my employee, how dare he wake me up early in the morning and rant about my insulting him! I have every right to insult him!

What--after all these years dealing with the press and politicians and constituents, does he expect life to be fair? Is he losing touch? Did his wife turn him down the night before so he had to sublimate some anger at an easy target? Or is he just a stuffed shirt Boy Scout type like Shakespeare's Malvolio, wearing crossed yellow garters? Heck if I know (see how he's already helped me clean up my language?).

This kind of behavior can certainly make you doubt the sanity of a politician. He took a shotgun to an ant, a very sleepy ant at that. Luckily the ant, though mistaken about the facts of the congressman’s record, did not take the assault personally—especially since Thompson belongs to the Congressional Sportsman’s Club and I assume has guns, just as our late DA up here, Norm Vroman, was discovered to have a cache of illegal weapons and a small marijuana farm when they searched his house after he died. (Norm would have been re-elected, btw, if he hadn’t croaked. In fact, up here, if we’d contacted Jonathan Edwards we might have been able to re-elect him from the beyond. Everyone's so "spiritual" up here, though I think them more spiritualist. Did Arthur Conan Doyle really have a hand in murdering Houdini? Now there's an interesting story...)

Since marijuana is the biggest cash crop in our county, I regret I didn’t ask him what he was doing about it. I assume, like most politicians around here, he opposes legalization to keep our prices high. And since we need illegals to harvest the grapes and pears, of course he voted against the seven-hundred mile fence down south. That's too bad, because everyone knows that Mexicans steal the jobs Americans are too lazy to take.

All that said, I need to ask you this question to check my own sanity: Have you ever been awakened by a congressman early in the morning who bitterly complained about you calling him a “weenie” in an e-mail message? I submit that this may be one of the strangest occurrences in my long and interesting life. Unfortunately, now I can’t help but think of Mr. Thompson as “Weenie Mike.” I mean, who but a weenie would call up a constituent to complain about being called a weenie? Tsk, tsk.

Here'a picture of the good congressman, looking a little florid from wine or perhaps too much sun?




1 Kilobunny,

CE

"Best of," cont'd: Managing a Mood Upswing

From 5/13/07:


At two or three kilobunnies hypomania begins to appear. I chatter; Kathleen says, “You’re moving too quickly.” I multitask, I stay up until 4 AM reading, I charm strangers (who naturally pour out their life stories to me), I think about punching out anyone who disrespects Kathleen, particularly all the idiots who have no idea of how to treat lip readers.

Money worries vanish. I exercise with gusto. My body is in less pain. I pump out submissions like a Saudi king. The world is my oyster again. (Where does that phrase come from, anyway? Oysters are rich, yes, but rather unsightly and very difficult to open, with dangerously sharp edges. Then if the world is truly your oyster you no doubt have underlings to open the oyster for you.)

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

One great thing about feeling good—a little above euthymia, almost hypomanic—is that one’s quandaries tend to become Seinfeld-like in their triviality.

Take yesterday. I was swimming at the gym. A Latino man entered the lane next to me and began to jog slowly up and down the pool. Each time I passed him I got a schnauze-full of treacly-sweet menthol lime deodorant. Ecch.

(Here’s today’s diversity comment: I’ve noticed an overuse of cologne in this order: Arabs, Blacks, Latinos. My worst experience was being stuck with a rich young Arab in an elevator. Afterwards I searched for turbans in the shape of an atomizer bulbs.)

Back to the gym. I remembered a notice on the locker room door pleading with clients not to use cologne or essential oils or other strong scents, as there had been complaints. So while swimming my requisite mile I was in a quandary as to whether, like a good Communist citizen, I should turn in this reeking pendejo; or whether, as a Libertarian, I should confront him directly if I was sufficiently bothered; or whether, as a Christian, I should turn the other cheek and fuhgedaboutit.

When I finished my laps and entered the locker room I re-read the notice. It only applied to the saunas, which I don’t use! I was off the hook! Oh Happy Day! I didn’t have to make a decision.

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

It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy on a euthymic day. I am, truly, a different person. Kathleen says: “I’m so glad to have my husband back.” My older brother repeats, “Good to have you back!” All I can say is, “Good to be back!”

But it’s not all good. In my free flowing, equal opportunity, people-bashing humor (though to be fair I am fondest of bashing myself), I’m more liable to hurt Kathleen’s feelings—though I am also quicker to apologize and make up. I’m also tempted to drink or abuse drugs, because I’m feeling so good already what possible difference could it make? It’s as if the increase in mood is so intoxicating I want to speed up the process to get maximum enjoyment out of it. Sly Stone knows I can get even higher. The world is my oyster indeed.

My point? In manic-depression intervention is needed at both arcs of the mood pendulum. Last night I finally dosed myself with antipsychotic medicine after a double dose of my sleep meds failed and I was still going strong on a Michael Crichton novel at 4 AM. Naturally I woke up this morning fuzzier than a sheep’s navel (just short of “the thorazine shuffle”).

Clearly, I don’t want to risk getting too high or I’ll eventually flame out and get too low.

I’m not saying that if you have this disorder you have to micromanage your mood, only that if it accelerates in one direction or the other, you need to pay attention, and fast.


At two kilobunnies,

CE

Best of, cont'd: Poetic Archaeology

First, I'm glad for the increased readership of my blog in this "Best of" series, but I wish fewer people were attracted by the one entry where I mentioned Satan long ago. Clearly the mention of the Dark Lord outweighs any consideration of depression or literature, but in our tabloid mentality we knew that. I would ask readers to stop entering the blog through that page, but who knows? Maybe that's their introduction to the whole blog--but I severely doubt it. Let's face it, the allure of the Devil often outweighs the attraction of the Almighty. Nevertheless I'm going back to change the title of that post in order to obtain a more accurate count of bona fide visitors.


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


From 4/6/07 (and there must be a bevy of journals to add to this list now):

God, what a nuisance! I've been trying to sort my publications, some indexed by the names of journals, some by the titles of individual pieces, and some by other titles for the same pieces. Using Google and other sources, I have managed to discover, so far, the following journals either without a website or without archives to include my past work:

Apples and Oranges
A Writer’s Choice
Adirondack Review
Artemis
Avalon
Beauty for Ashes
Blue Moon Review
Brownflower
Burn
Conspire
Disclosures
Dust on My Palms
EZ Books
Free Cuisenart
Gravity
Horsethief’s Journal
Lid
Mefisto
Muse Apprentice Guild
Olympus
Poetry Cafe
Poetry Magazine (online journal, not the big one)
Poetry Now
Poetry Tonight
Recursive Angel
Samsara
Savoy
Serpentine
Shallow End
Slumgullion
Spoken Word
Susquehanna Review
Tintern Abbey
Wired Heart
World Poetry
Writer’s Hood
Ze Books
Zuzu’s Petals

If I am in error about any of these, I would appreciate a note from readers or their scattered connections on the literary Internet.

There are also those journals who list me in their archives as a contributor, but strangely, have no record of or links to my poems--often right next to another poet whose links are still good. I assume this is random and not personal, though I have made some enemies in my faux career.

Anyway, my back hurts terribly from sitting despite the new pain medication, even though I did go easy at the gym yesterday. Since my recent cold I've put at least ten pounds back on from not exercising regularly, then Kathleen and I also became derelict re: our low carb high protein diet.

Three steps forward and four steps back.

Is it discouraging to find so much of your work erased from the net forever? Here's an advantage: when there is no record of a work I consider it unpublished and open for submission again, a liberty I don't take with print--which may appear inconsistent until you realize that with print publications I can still hold the evidence in my greedy little narcissistic hand. Where all evidence is erased, can anything have happened?

Speaking of narcissism, Kathleen and I watched the original "Sunset Boulevard" last night, and Kathleen threatened to fall asleep before the end, whereupon I threatened her with this: "You can never call me narcissistic again if you don't finish this movie." I mean, c'mon--compared to Norma Desmond even poets are normal. (Such a comparison does stretch the (Marvin) Bell curve.)

Ah, so little to say, so much to write. We'll be house sitting for my sister this weekend in the lovely SF suburb of Burlingame, while she goes south to check out the alma mater of my middle daughter and myself, UCLA. My sister's only daughter is making the college tour now, and from what I understand, likely has her choice of most, and money is no object thanks to the prudent planning of her parents. I had to put myself through college and medical school, which includes loans, of course. And I couldn't help my one college graduate daughter much monetarily, though some; mostly I provided emotional support and medical expertise--I'm still very proud that she, a bipolar I, got through UCLA in four years--a miracle. She has guts and determination, which can sometimes appear as an extreme and brittle stubbornness.

Enough about family. Like photos from a wallet, all that patter is a bore, isn't it? Here's a photo of my grandson:




I'm in a mixed state--fragile and sort of +2 and -2 at the same time--cried on the treadmill yesterday, have been anxious--but while I'm working I naturally feel better as I am not thinking about myself even if I'm writing about myself, which writers understand.

What's a kilorat and a kilobunny at the same time?

Put me at two kilobats.


Thine,

CE

Best of, cont'd: Channeling Dostoevsky

From 3/12/07:

You, you, how dare you look down on me! My coat may be shabby and missing buttons; it does a better job of keeping out the rain than your fine silk umbrella, I assure you. I notice how you avert your eyes from me on the sidewalk, on the bridge, in cafés. It is easy to see how your feigned politeness only masks disgust. It would not become you to engage in conversation with such a shabby personage as myself, not that it would shame you, or damage your pride, but because it is not proper. I am a scrounging artist with an insolent servant I cannot afford in straitened quarters; you no doubt have a house on the hill or on the river and at least four servants. Perhaps you are having relations with one; perhaps you have dismissed two for becoming pregnant, handing them a little sack of rubles as compensation, knowing full well none will believe their tales— because on their one night out a week they must have been with sailors, or drunks, or others of the serving class with no self-control.

Your pocket watch chain may be gold, it may only be gilded. Your felt hat looks of good quality but is a little questionable around the edges. Your cravat? Ostentatious red silk. Cravats are cheap, of course. Your waistcoat looks in fine repair although your belly strains against it, a prosperous appearance if not refined. Your coat appears to be English tweed, certainly some sort of continental affectation, especially with those crude elbow patches. And the coat is not right for the cravat, which is certain. Which demands the question: Do you pick out your clothes or does your man? Obviously you do. Valets have better taste.

That you eschew boots in this thawing spring also proclaims your vanity; someone else will have to polish your brogues, but boots would not suit the gabardine slacks you affect. And is that an alligator belt? Again, your mismatched ensemble says more about you than fashion. You are bourgeois, an upper functionary perhaps, perhaps the last in a line of dwindling minor aristocrats with an income taken from the flesh of your serfs. You are not in the arts; doubtful in business, either, or you would have the sense to dress more tastefully. Had I your money I would certainly dress better than you; but I would rather have this ragged coat than your inelegant ensemble, however rich the material. You remind me of the “Emperor with No Clothes,” except it would be “The Emperor with Bad Clothes.”

As you smoke your cigarillo from an ivory holder, and gesture, world-weary to your better-dressed friends over a glass of vodka, you appear in command, a man among men, a man above the shabbiness I endure. But who’s to say how shabby you are inside? “One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside,” Lennoninsky wrote. Indeed, your subterfuges don’t fool me.

Your face is more indulgent than cruel, your cheeks soft and full, your moustache thick but not overweening, no need to hide your worsening teeth with a larger brush just yet; an early wattle on your neck that will come to swing with the years; the pomade on your thinning hair, the sensuous Mediterranean lips, the broad nose and the thin almond eyes recalling some Mongol ancestor, like your clothes, these features seem not to belong together, belying your outward, superficial, self-satisfied confidence!

I am wearing leather boots, the heels worn down but no holes as of yet; they manage to keep the rain out, though I am frequently footsore. No fancy shoes to hand waterlogged and scuffed over to a fawning servant. And though I have worn this, one of my two good shirts, for three days prior to this occasion tonight, and its cuffs are a little frayed, it is of good quality, a very fine wool, most likely a better quality once than you are wearing now. My stained beret, impractical for this weather, hangs on the rack. I took my hat off as I came in, a tradition you jauntily disrespect. And is the beret an affectation? No! By no means. It is a symbol by which I mock myself as an artist with little utility in this suffocating society of bores. I mock myself intentionally.

Have you ever mocked yourself? Have you ever looked in the mirror and beheld the essential evil behind your ingratiating smile? I doubt there has ever been a time in your life when you looked upon your reflection with anything save self-congratulation; such insight would be beyond you.

And yet you might represent a publishing house, a magazine, someone for whom I must scrape and bow to to eke out a living as an artist, someone not worth the last five thoughts from my brain. And if I met you in that relation, with these, my best clothes, you would certainly think to get the better of me and negotiate some scandalous payment for the sweat of my brain. You would not think me someone capable of bargaining over the quality of a piece; no, you would try to steal it from me, steal my thoughts and hope it improves your circulation, like some bug collector charging admission to his museum while adding a new bug. I am that bug, aren’t I?

How I despise you! How I despise the falsity of your pose, of everything it represents, half-measures, nods to liberalism, even Marxism, perhaps— no; that would be too daring and might make you slightly suspect even among those whom you call “friends,” no doubt old chums from the university who would abandon you if you fell out of society for your debts. I had to leave the university because of debts and become this creature you naturally avoid.

What if I were to walk up to your circle, right now, and begin talking as if I had been invited? I might talk of the recent architectural changes to Petersburg, or the price of pork rising above the peasant’s means, or the eternal illusion of freeing and reforming the serfs. I could nod and listen with the best of you, and for your sake pretend you were of equal intellectual standing as I, yes, I could pretend to humility among your overfed circle of bourgeoisie functionaries, minor aristocrats, businessmen, liberal-minded poseurs and the lot. And would you forgive my appearance? This three days’ beard? This ragged and thinning hair creeping over my ears like a bad fungus? Perhaps. Perhaps there is in you, or one of your circle, the ability to see beyond a man’s shell, to see into the heart and the mind—but what is the purpose of all your desultory and condescending conversation and polite niceties and slight bows toward your betters? To avoid this very thing, to lose humanity in inane politeness.

I pity you, Sir, I pray when your last breath comes it will be breathed with the sudden and horrifying realization of the triviality of your entire life. Only this will save you. Or should you lose a daughter or son or a beloved wife or friend you loved before that last deathbed revelation I doubt will ever overtake you, I pray the tragedy might be enough to make you kneel in church and confess, “Be merciful to me, O God, for I am a sinner,” and mean it. But you cannot do that now; church is for the best pews and the satisfaction that you are only a formal sinner, not in the real sense. You have not been unfaithful toward your wife in a long while, despite the opportunities your club regularly affords, and the last time meant nothing. The dismissed servants asked for your attentions, hardly your fault. You don’t cheat at cards and you return invitations for invitations; surely you are good, and insulated from common evil. Surely you are above the degradation God visits on the vast majority of humans, with their dirt floors and thatched roofs and drunken Saturdays, burying half their infants in graves whose markings disappear with the rains; surely you will never see how this might be your salvation, no, you must precede them into heaven! Surely you are the grasshopper with others to play the ant for you, while we, the hard working ants, suffer the fate of grasshoppers in the winter, that which you deserve--hungry and piled with blankets around a few coals. Have you earned anything in your life? You will know if that which has only been given is likewise taken away.


I'm a big fan of Fyodor, he vies with Eliot as my favorite author. Eliot is harder to imitate, and though it can be done, it usually ends in parody. Imitating Dostoevsky I find easier to do without degenerating into parody, but let the reader judge--that inveterate reader who will actually put up with 1400 words in one day's blog.


Thine at 1 Kilorat (feeling irritable and caged up),

CE

New Post: On Rilke and Eliot

It is time to interrupt this program of "The Best of" to pen something new. And having dwelt more on affective disorders than art in this string of posts, I feel impelled to write something about my favorite art, poetry.

Last night I was up until 4 AM reading Celan and all of Rilke's Duino Elegies. I know enough German to follow the translations and occasionally quibble with the translators, but Rilke's verse is difficult, even in German, because of his vast diction and complicated syntax, stumbling blocks for any translator. Yet the ineffable nature of Rilke's poetry shines through translation.

It's been said that poetry is what can't be translated, but I disagree, and put forth Shakespeare as an example, whose poetry has rivaled the Bible in the adaptation of his work to every major language.

Rilke is considered a Victorian/Edwardian poet by some, but I think his Duino Elegies put him squarely in the modern camp, for several reasons. First, the psychological depth of this, his later work; second, the almost conversational tenor of the Elegies; and third, the changing point of view that he manages so seamlessly. Sometimes he addresses an angel, sometimes a woman, sometimes the reader and often himself. There is also a deep honesty to his struggles, as if he tries to pull the last veil from his masks and find the essential being within. Yet even as he does this, he pulls away from the intimacy of being and calls upon the angels to save him, though he somewhat comically contends that the angels are most interested in "Things"--the details of a carnival for instance, while eschewing the temple.

I have never seen a work that so dovetails with Eliot's "Four Quartets" as the Elegies do, and the genesis of the majority of these ten master works occurred after a long fallow period, in a burst of inspiration in 1922 (he wrote the first three in 1912). In this Rilke observes a poetic silence much like Eliot's between "Ash Wednesday," written in 1927, and "Four Quartets" begun in 1936. Similar themes of time, mortality, spiritual illumination and being in the present also dominate the Elegies, though they bear the signature of a more consistent voice than Eliot's Quartets do. Yet note these comparisons:

"But this: that one can contain
death, the whole of death, even before
life has begun, can hold it in one's heart
gently, and not refuse to go on living,
is inexpressible." (Rilke, ending of the third Elegy)

"You can receive this: 'on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death'--that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others." (Eliot, Dry Salvages III, near the end)

Notice how the voice in each passage avoids lecturing, yet there is a certainty to the poet's arguments that is hard to resist, because each poet truly believes in what he is saying.

Here are another two passages:

"And you, dear women
who must have loved me for my small beginning
of love towards you, which I always turned away from
because the space in your features grew, changed,
even while I loved it, into cosmic space,
where you no longer were--" (fourth Elegy, near the middle)

"Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station...
You shall not think "the past is finished"
Or "the future is before us." (Dry Salvages III, middle passage)

How time transforms us into different people; how a human face changes with time until the person is no longer there. And both poets have a tenuous and mistrustful relationship with the body, best typified in Eliot's "Prufrock" but still present in 4Q:

Again, from the fourth Elegy:

"I won't endure these half-filled human masks;
better, the puppet. It at least is full.
I'll put up with the stuffed skin, the wire, the face
that is nothing but appearance."

From "Burnt Norton III":

"Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies empty of meaning."

So there are great similarities in substance between the Elegies and Four Quartets, although the pleading voice of Rilke is more Romantic and the more distant voice of Eliot more Classical.

Rilke's central theme is of a failed ascendancy; like the panther in the cage, he paces the world yet feels caged by it, hoping for the deliverance of angels, of some final epiphany, only to be returned to his body and the problems of human love and human boundaries that ultimately prevent a true earthly union between lovers, as in the famous passage at the end of the Fifth Elegy, so difficult to translate:

"If there were a place that we didn't know of, and there
on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here--
Would... [the soundless dead] throw down their final, forever saved-up
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?"

Difficult to say, but would those who never experienced ideal love throw their horded idealization of it at the feet of those who achieved it in some other world? That it must happen in some other world is testimony to the fact that Rilke could not achieve it in this one; he is more identified with the soundless dead. Indeed, in his upbringing and personal relationships he fled from intimacy and perhaps his own femininity, having been raised as a girl by his mother until-shock of shocks!--his father put him in military school.

Naturally these speculations deserve a fuller treatment, and no doubt these thoughts will develop into a more fully-formed essay. But for now, let me but speak of the unadulterated joy of staying up late to bathe in greatness, of having my attention riveted by a poet whom I've read before before but never truly embraced. And to mention Celan in passing is a disservice, though I urge you to read him as well. The joy of poetry, when it descends upon you, exceeds any other intellectual joy that I know, not to mention the emotional engagement and sheer adventure of great verse.

Here ends the break from "The Best of."


At 2 Kilobunnies,

CE

Best of, cont'd.: Poetic Narcissism and Depression

From 11/13/06:

I was plain wrong when I claimed a week of euthymia (good mood) yesterday; in reviewing my blog it was only four days. It felt like a week because I felt like myself again. Unfortunately, today I feel on thin ice and I’m anxious.

I got up yesterday and wrote my sonnet and blogged, which is my daily mental toilette. Later I felt restless. I couldn’t concentrate on the book I am supposed to review, or on learning the hieroglyphics of html. Finally at 1:30 PM I jumped in the van and drove south about forty miles on winding Highway 1 to the Garcia River. Three years ago in October I had netted a steelhead and a salmon at a deep part of the river, and I thought perhaps there would be some fish pooling around now. I didn’t get a bite, which is not unusual for the unluckiest fisherman in the world. I wear a hat that proclaims, “Fish Control My Brain.” I have since learned that that control means that I am constantly directed away from fish. If I’m there, they are not.

But the feeling of restlessness and irritability persisted as I fished. The landscape was overcast with occasional sprinkles; the bracken of summer had decayed into the color of straw; the leaves of the blackberry bushes had begun to turn red, imitating the dreaded poison oak, but I know the difference in the shape of the leaves. I saw a raven fight off a white-tailed kite over a territory dispute near the bluff above. Placid cows grazed high on the steep embankment along the river, and I thought it a miracle that they did not fall off for an unscheduled swim. I saw a beautiful red-tailed hawk.

I was entirely alone in this somewhat forbidding landscape, and not surprisingly, following my irritability, an angry irritability, melancholy descended. Was it for not catching fish? Was it my memory of fishing there three years ago that reminded me of all that had transpired between, our whole sojourn in that unmentionable country south of the border? In any case I felt like crying but controlled myself. When I came home Kathleen immediately spotted my change in mood. I can hide nothing from her.

This morning I woke up anxious. I held on to Kathleen as if she were a large stuffed animal for comfort. Eventually Kenyon stirred and I had to walk the old boy, as in his dotage he can easily get lost and confused. He stops sometimes, stands still, and exhibits the thousand-yard stare. I remember when he was young and frisky. Now I am a helpless participant in managing his decline.

The point is, my mood is still fragile. I could dive down from here. The self-critical thoughts have returned; I’m no good, I’ve never done anything in my life, yada yada. But I noticed another aspect of my illness, namely jealousy.

I’m jealous of the success of other poets and musicians. I feel somehow it’s not fair, that I’m good enough to be recognized. But even as I think this I castigate myself for my narcissism, since those with greater recognition, in general, have also striven harder to attain what they have. Other than a whole wad of publications on the net and a lesser wad in print, I remain a third tier poet, one of thousands who have not distinguished themselves from the herd. It is sad that the world of poetry works much like Hollywood, but them’s the cards, deal with it. I’m not submitting to anyone right now, a deficiency I need to correct. but sometimes it seems purely hopeless to try; I think my poetry is retro and the moment of its potential recognition has passed me by. Can I accept that without bitterness? Jealousy is the essence of narcissism and I am ashamed of it. But I must admit it. I resent those with greater success, especially when I think their verse is inferior. I try to tell myself that they earned it, but I can’t help believing they had lucky breaks. Take Wanda Coleman, for instance; what’s she doing in the second tier of poets? She is obvious and bombastic, though a good performer. Or take Charles Bukowski, from whom Garrison Keillor chose multiple entries in his anthology of poetry. I could go on, but naming names is always dangerous. You risk expulsion from the potential circle of venerable elders. I suppose my greatest achievement in poetry was when Dorianne Laux solicited me for an issue of the Alaska Quarterly Review and I had as much space as Billy Collins. To be solicited for a top flight journal is a thrill.

At 52 I’ve pretty much let my music and songwriting slide. I’ve let medical practice slide, though not by direct choice. Look: I’m being honest. The Bible advises that we pray for our enemies, for which a competitor in the small world of poetry might qualify, especially if I think their verse inferior to mine.

In my worst moments I’m so jealous I want to appeal to some objective cosmic judge for a decision. After all these years, from adolescence on, why have I not been able to master these feelings of injury? Those who succeed are not injuring me, only helping themselves. Why do I, in my worst moments, resent them? The answer is simple: I think I’m their equal or better, and that it just isn’t FAIR. What a ridiculous concept, that life and art should be fair. In my case it stems in part, no doubt, from being a middle child, a same sex second child quickly followed by my sister only 16 mos. later. Why did my older brother get more liberties? How come I couldn’t be his equal? It never dawned on me that it was just a difference in age that allowed him greater privileges. But I took his privileges as somehow diminishing mine. This is a problem I go through on the edges of depression. I wish I knew a cure.

I do remember one epiphany when I practiced in Palm Springs. At that time a Mercedes was the commonest car in the upscale desert. One day when driving I realized why others had Mercedes and I didn’t: They had earned their cars. I was not gypped; their cars did not diminish me; they had earned their luxury. Enough said. Or not enough.

My narcissism, which crops up when my mood is bent, embraces the ridiculous idea that the success of others, particularly others I think less talented, somehow takes away from me. This is plain silly. But it is one of the slippery slopes into depression again, as I must condemn myself for my narcissism, afterwards paralyzed by my perceived failure. Perhaps the only antidote for this is to simply accept that I have these feelings, justified or not, and that I need to keep working in the hopes of being recognized someday. “Don’t look behind, someone might be gaining on you.” But I am open to comment or commiseration regarding this psychological thorn, and I trust, among artists, that I am not the only one to suffer from it.


At 2 Kilorats, with Anxiety,

CE

Best of, cont'd: Depression, Obesity and the Lizard Brain

From 11/5/06:


Yesterday was a bad day. I had at least three weepy/weeping spells, two of them on the cliff across from the sea lions that made for a passable poem. What really made me cry was the idea of God and an attempt at prayer. I have such feelings of rejection from the Almighty, and the idea of approaching him fills me with such a sense of unworthiness I can’t begin to describe it. I feel like a bug under glass, but smaller. It’s a feeling of primal abandonment which likely goes back to infant bonding issues with my mother, and is subsequently projected on that great screen, God. It’s a grief over a vacuum that persists from my adolescence and young adulthood. Back then I was such a fanatic I felt I had to have a message from God to do nearly anything of consequence.

For some strange reason I received the impression at the age of 17 that God wanted me to become a doctor. When I didn’t get in to medical school the first year with a 4.0 from UCLA, I felt betrayed—“Look, God, I’ve done all this work for you getting through college, working three jobs and the rest, and then you thwart the ambition you gave me?” I later realized this was the sin of presumption. But just when being a doctor began to make sense in the third year of my psychiatry residency, I fell into a severe depression that caused me to drop out. There went my hope to make something of being a doctor, something I could bear, as psychiatry dovetailed with the humanities. After this debacle, my primitive thinking was: “I tried to do God’s will, but he screwed me.” How could I be so special that God would screw me? All this demonstrates the narcissism of the depressive. When an infant does not have enough human bonding, he makes up people in his head, and his life revolves around his head instead of society. To the degree you were isolated in your earliest years, to that degree will your head fill with chatter as a substitute.

I know that my feelings toward God are opposed to Christian theology, but I can’t help how I feel. If I have a relationship with God it must be infantile on my part. Especially in depressions, prayer only makes me sadder. Yes, I did pray for myself yesterday. There’s no harm in that. But any emotional wholeness from a perceived contact with God is something I’ve never experienced. I wish for healing, of course, but at my age I settle for acceptance. This is how I’m built. My emotional wounds go way back to infancy. I project them on authority figures, even an authority figure presumably on my side.

Mental illness lends itself to hyperreligiosity and religious psychoses, in which I was an avid participant, though to be fair, I didn’t know of the illness that possessed me until I was 30.

One more thing: When I am well I like to say, “It is not I who have a relationship with God, it is he who has a relationship with me.” Let the burden be on the Almighty. He can take it, one assumes.

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

From 11/7/06:


In depression minor issues become major ones and long-term problems become immediate crises. When I crossed the border from Mexico in February of this year I weighed 245, which made me technically overweight but not obese. In no time at all I blossomed into my present weight of 270, the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life. When I get the courage to look at myself in the mirror after a shower, my appearance gives me cognitive dissonance: I can’t believe I’m that fat. My belly protrudes, the definition in my arm muscles is barely discernible, and the new padding of the groin makes some items look smaller.

When I talked about this with my pain management doctor in April, while deeply depressed, she said, wisely: “That’s the last thing you need to worry about now.” Indeed. But that doesn’t make the depressive mindset let go of the issue. In depression we play with our defects like cats with dead mice. We pick at them like scabs. We revolve on a carousel from one defect to another. Here’s a list of some of my specific self-accusations in depression:

1) You’ve never done anything in your life.

2) You’re so fat how could anyone love you?

3) You’ve done nothing about retirement, do you want to be penniless?

4) You don’t deserve disability; you’re a mooching fraud.

5) Why don’t you go to the gym? Why don’t you swim?

6) You drink too much and it’s ruining your brain. You’ve permanently damaged your brain, especially with all the medications you take.

7) You’re a wimp to take so many medications. Why not just flush them and tough it out?

8) You’ve blasphemed against God and are beyond salvation.

9) Your children don’t care about you because they don’t call.

10) You call yourself a poet but you’re a fraud. You have three unpublished manuscripts that nobody wants. You’re afraid to get out there and do the real work of competition because secretly you know you’re not good enough. Poetry is a thin excuse to keep you occupied in your no-account life.

I could probably list a hundred of these and it would not be enough. When self turns against self it’s as if a stick were whittling itself-- whittling, belittling. All this is what I call “the chatter of the lizard brain.”

In depression the primary problem is mood. The depressive mood arises from primitive brain areas we share with reptiles. Thus our frontal cortex, the seat of thought, is directed by the lizard brain to spew all this self-denigrating chatter, because if only our accusations were true it would explain our depression and satisfy our need for causality.

In other words, in depression, the lizard brain is the horse and the frontal cortex is the cart. You can’t fight your lizard brain. It’s too primitive. Treatment requires medication, supportive therapy, and time, and if this does not suffice, possibly electroconvulsive therapy.

Some depressions are not just biochemically based, but mixed with psychology. In these cases cognitive-behavioral therapy can be helpful. But to a pure biochemical depressive, like a bipolar I, talk therapy can actually worsen the symptoms. After all, you have a new person to disappoint: your therapist. I’ve never had strict cognitive-behavioral therapy, but analytic therapy and ego-centered therapy have definitely made me worse. Anything beyond supportive therapy I find damaging. A biochemical depression is probably the worst time to try to make changes in your personality.

Back to obesity. I’m on medications (antipsychotics, lithium) that cause weight gain and fluid retention. The antipsychotic also takes all my stamina away, so I gasp going up stairs. I’ve found it terribly hard to exercise on my present medication regimen.

Like all fat people, I hope someday to be thin again, as I have been the majority of my life (until my early 40’s after failed back surgery). But as my doctor advised, it’s not something I should worry about now. For now I do two things: 1) try to accept that I’m sick; 2) try to stay busy. While writing this I’m doing the wash, for instance. Afterwards I have the kitchen to clean up. Then I want to start writing my book review, and later, perhaps, work more on my html course. That I can do these things shows that my depression is not as deep as it could be. Indeed, I could pass for normal.


At 3 kilorats,

Craig Erick

Best of: Discourse on Depression

From my continuing "Best of" selections out of 500 posts, this from 10/4/06:

I want to be honest, but in the act of writing despair seems briefly arrested. Then I would not call my state despair, exactly, which implicates the heart and will, only clinical depression. Yet clinical depression leads to despair, which can only be defined negatively: without hope, helpless, without recourse, bereft of comfort, and so on.

When my mood is normal (may it be again!) I feel like myself. In depression I become my anti-self. Whatever I do is pointless; those who love me are deceived; I have made nothing of my life, indeed, have no life, and nothing I can do will change this. I constantly berate myself for perceived failings. And this from a Lutheran who supposedly believes in grace, “God’s unmerited favor toward us.” In depression I’m sure that God made a mistake, that in my case it doesn’t apply. I don’t feel loved by God yet I believe God is love. I am not comforted by Jesus; I can’t relate to him at all, indeed, have always had tremendous trouble with the second person of the Trinity. It is an article of faith that Christ suffered all our sins and griefs on the cross, so surely his suffering included clinical depression, but that doesn’t help my depression. It just makes me feel more guilty, as if I’m failing God by not believing. I think about going to church but know in this state I will misinterpret everything as a demand and leave church feeling more guilty than ever. In depression you question your core beliefs, and my faith is certainly one thing eroded by depression. This is no suffering to make me a better person; this is the extinguishing of personality itself.

There is a sense in clinical depression that the pain of the moment is eternal pain, that one has always hated oneself, that it has never been any different. Because I have had a few days of relief here and there, I am lucky to remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. In saying that I have hope. It is intellectual hope based on past depressions; I have always, eventually, come out of them, and I have been most helped by medications and electricity. Activity is good as well; simple tasks like washing the dishes. I am not so bad that I fear my inability to wash the dishes, each dish weighing a ton as my hand shakes with the fear of not being able to do them. But I have been there. I have been at 8 kilorats and it’s not pretty.

I feel the need to justify my existence every day, but the paradox is that nothing will justify my existence. I worry about old age, my body is tired and my joints ache, I am more than unhappy, I am abandoned. I know the form of my depression goes back to infancy, but that does not change the state of depression or explain its occurrence. One must have genetic predisposition to become clinically depressed.

Have you ever felt utterly alone, like a smudge on a windshield, like a microscopic dot in infinite darkness? Have you ever suffered constant accusations in your mind telling you all was for naught? Have you been nauseated by food, taking pleasure in nothing and wishing only for death? If you’ve had such symptoms for a week straight without relief it qualifies as depression. It used to be four weeks, then two weeks, and now the APA has decided the requirement for treatment is only one week. One week can be an eternity.

Right now the one thing I look forward to is seeing a better psychiatrist, although there is no guarantee I will be able to see him come Wednesday, as he will be on call for emergencies and may not be able to stay in the office. If that happens I will no doubt think that’s exactly what I deserve, that it’s hopeless anyway, that no one can help me. But I know better. Those who follow this blog know that I experienced a few kilobunnies several weeks ago, only to fall back in the pit.

As an aside, yesterday’s poem was roundly condemned by my editor and wife, and I couldn’t agree more. In my present state I think most of the poetry I’ve ever written should be thrust into the fire. Then in depression one can have no objectivity regarding anything about the self. I had the same experience as a practicing doctor, fearing everything I said was nonsense, that it was a miracle no one perceived me as a fraud and that I did not harm anyone while practicing in a psychotic depression. At that time work did not make me feel any better or worse, so I continued to work. When a crying spell would overcome me, I’d slip in the bathroom, cry, use Visine, and wash my face with cold water. I did that for more than a year, day after day. The only relief I experienced at that time was while driving. Something about the motion was comforting, and it was the one task I felt I could still do.


At 3.5 kilorats,

Craig Erick

"Best of," cont'd: Obesity and Casuistry

From 9/10/06:


It's too bad that the taste of food can't be separated from its mass. If you could put a slip of paper on your tongue and experience prime rib, you would not feel as if the taste belonged to you unless you also swallowed the strip. The pleasure of eating is not just taste; it includes mastication, swallowing and satiety. The enjoyment of food is inextricably linked with these other sensations: the crunch of nuts, the slide of an oyster, the abdomen pleasantly distended.

I ate seven or eight tacos tonight. Not all at once but in stages. I am satiated but not in pain. I can't imagine the satisfaction of taste alone without the sensation of swallowing it, to claim that food for yourself, to swell your stomach with the triumph of having consumed something so tasty--which may or may not be good for you. Experts say fudge and fried chicken are bad for you, but how can they be if they taste so good? It goes against biology. Too bad biology has failed us until obesity is a plague. I read that there are more obese people in the world now than people in hunger. The fat get fatter and now the thin get fatter, too, in modern times. I don’t know whether to call this trickle up or down.

I sometimes think of the grinding poverty depicted in Angela's Ashes, or the depressing privation of some of Dostoyevsky's characters. How will obesity affect literature? It has already affected style, with many resorting to the combination of loose-fitting tops and form-fitting pants, as if the normal-appearing legs made one look normal weight while a massive belly is disguised by billowy material. What, they think they’re fooling us? Sorry, the joke is on the fat people, a group to which I now belong. And it was easy to get here. Just eat what I want and shun exercise. Sit on my ass and write.

But there’s obese and morbidly obese. Doesn't it freak you out a little when you see someone, usually a woman, who hides her arms with long sleeves only to reveal rolls on her wrists? Especially when the woman seeks further camouflage by wearing fancy bracelets? Ecch!

The plague is upon us. According to body mass index I need to drop about 20 lbs to achieve the distinction of being only overweight. To be "normal" weight I'd have to drop about fifty. Yet I am not so fat as to gross someone out, unless it's someone I haven't seen for a long time, someone who must readjust their image of me. Before my failed back surgery I was trim; afterwards I rolled slowly uphill to the well-padded club, where I now check in at 270 lbs. And my worst habit is late night binging. This is partly the fault of two medications I'm on, lithium and Zyprexa. If I'm sensible I realize the treatment of my depression is more important than my looks, especially since I don’t have a lot of physical vanity (though I do have some or wouldn’t be writing this schlock). What I really need to do isn't to take up an exercise program, but stop one. I need to quit the exercise of lifting my hand to my mouth so often. I should have my arms strapped to my sides between meals.

Doesn't everybody know that obesity is caused by a virus that the processed food companies put in the American water supply? The Department of Agriculture is in cahoots with the ranchers and farmers and Kraft and Nabisco. These same concerns own the weight loss companies too, I suspect, through dummy corporations. They get you coming and going. Imagine that perhaps the same people who tempt you with Twinkies are also milking you to take those Twinkie pounds off. That’s a slick marketing approach: sell the cause of a disease and its treatment at the same time. If I were a reporter and not merely a bloviator I might do an expose' on these connections I suspect, but I can't concentrate because I crave another taco and they’re all gone.

I made my bread and I'm going to have to lie in it.

I have a poem on weight gain, of course:


Casuistry

In the early September heat
with no hint of October,
my thin hair plasters my scalp
like spaghettinni—and I am fat.

I wasn’t always fat. In home movies
I am skin stretched over a xylophone,
taut as a kayak, yet now
my body feels thick and foreign
as a space suit or a sleeping bag.
I understand breasts better now,
like sacks of coins beneath the skin
that jiggle when you jump.

As an antidote I try to see myself
more as the sum of my existence
than any single frame, thus base my weight
not on this moment but as an average
of all my years on earth. Using this method
I’ll never be as fat as I am now
(besides, everyone knows it’s glandular).


I'm not heavy I'm your brother!


At 0.5 kilorats,

CE

Best of: "Call Me Judas; On Sociopaths"

From 9/6/06:

For those who did not read or don't recall the preparatory information for today's epistle, you might want to read my August 30 entry first.

Today the circus came to town. Three cops, one with gun drawn, 4 vehicles and a U-Haul truck.

The sergeant with the piece first knocked on Mike's door, our harmless neighbor. Mike saw the gun and was startled, but directed the police to the other tenants, my friends Bill and Darcy. (These are, of course, pseudonyms.)

Afterwards everything in their house was catalogued and photographed, while the police let friends of Bill and Darcy's former landlady repossess her goods, which included a Morris antique chair, an antique bureau, a plasma television and objets d'arte, including a large handmade quilt they had hung above their bed.

So the chickens came home to roost. Our landlord had heard through the grapevine how this couple had scammed other landlords; they rent for six months, avoid the deposit and leave the tail of the rent owed. The landlady of their previous residence had been in Hawaii when they skedaddled with her stuff. There is another line of secondhand information which claims they were evicted. Both may be true.

I slept through all of this and got the news from Mike, who has Albert Einstein hair and hails from Manhattan. He's worth at least three blogs but I like to hoard my material.

The goods were hauled back to the former landlady while Bill and Darcy were hauled to jail in handcuffs, an experience with which I can sympathize. (Dr. Chaffin has been to jail more than once, and not only for manic episodes.)

And who did Bill place his phone call to from jail? And whom did Darcy call? You got it. Yo.

If you read the August 30 post, you'll know that it was on the strength of my testimony that a warrant was issued. But I was always cordial with them, and we watched the NBA playoffs at their house (which gave me an eyeful of stolen property, though I didn't know it).

The cops took this long to move because ours is a county with a small population and a large expanse of land, so arranging for three officers to take a house took some doing.

As for the phone calls, both Bill and Darcy were unconcerned with their incarceration; they would be discharged soon, they assured me, it was all trumped up charges. Hmmm...

What most concerned them was their stuff and whether it was secure. Darcy told me she had $800 in a drawer towards the rent (strangely, they're behind in the rent, the worried landlord informed me.) They wanted to know if their furniture, television, yada yada, had been conserved, and they asked me to go over to their house and make sure. Darcy is going to call me back to find out. Unfortunately I will have to report that their stuff has been taken except for a bed, which apparently wasn't stolen.

Darcy made up a string of incredible lies on the phone. The landlady "was crazy. She had it in for them." The goods they had taken "she hadn't wanted when she was in Hawaii, then she changed her mind when she got back." Darcy had been to civil court "three times" over it and it was all "bogus." Every question I asked she had an answer for. But what is most significant is what Bill and Darcy were first concerned about: How was their stuff? Was their stuff OK?

This is always the first concern of sociopaths. Not their freedom, their defense strategy, whether they'll be released today, but their stuff. In all the times I visited e.with Bill as he drank a beer in front of me, he never offered me one. I wasn't valuable stuff. I did notice he offered his pot dealer a beer. Why? Because he wanted some stuff from him. Obviously it's all about stuff, and people are objects, and if they stole something, it wasn't stealing, they merely took stuff the landlady didn't want.

Understand this about sociopaths: To them, people are things. People are the means by which to obtain more stuff. I’ve had sociopaths in therapy before, usually court-ordered, and they’ll mimic any behavior that will lead to an earlier release from the hospital. They’ll dissemble “progress” in therapy, and when they leave they tell you how much you helped them. And they don’t change one iota.

You may say, "You are convicting your neighbors before their guilt has been proved." But I know a sociopath when I see one, and I had no illusions about Bill and Darcy from the beginning, when I told Kathleen they were scammers.

Now for the Judas factor. How does it feel to be a double agent? To be the person responsible for the warrant and also the first person said miscreants call for help? Strangely, to my surprise, I can play both roles without difficulty and Bill and Darcy suspect nothing about me except that I might be another easy mark. Darcy began to talk about money on the phone, but I steered the conversation elsewhere. I asked her if vegetarian meals were available in jail and she assured me they were. They advertise themselves as "vegetarian gourmet cooks." I've seen their repasts and can confirm this boast. But I also remind myself that Hitler was a vegetarian, lest anyone confuse morality with preference and habit.

You may ask yourself, "How can Dr. Chaffin come up with a poem for this event?" I have one, believe or not, unpublished but I'm fond of it.


Informer

If we lived in a police state
you might inform on me.
"Yes, officer, it pains me
but it's for his own good."

A tear falls in your Mocha Mix;
the citizenship plaque
goes above the coffee maker;
patriotism is hard.

When our children ask about me,
you say: "He's too sick to visit."
How noble it feels
to comfort them!

They send cookies, books
and drawings to hang
above the stainless toilet.
The guard tears them down.

You said you loved me.
You said I was a "good man."
It was not enough to feed
the worm inside you.

As the wife of a political prisoner
and his patriotic jailer,
you have secured
both pity and admiration.

How does it feel, if it does?


Thine in Truth and Art,

CE

The Economic Crisis: Transfusion of Continued Anemia?

We interrupt this "Best of" series to comment upon the economic crisis, a subject in which my qualifications are dismal, both by education and personal example. Yet something as abstract as the economy lends itself to intellectual curiosity, which fosters an instant education (in as much depth as the mind wishes to seek). So here's a Q and A with myself.

1) What is the economy?

2) This question cannot be answered with any certainty, but it has to do with the amount of imaginary money changing hands at any time. Capital overcomes its scarcity by leveraging about 10%--how much capital is usually required on a loan. The economy has something to do with how cash is converted to loans which are converted to derivatives which arrive in portfolios, and as we have recently seen, can be easily overvalued. The economy is an engine driven not by need but by consumption, a measure of human self-indulgence that has long exceeded simple survival--say since 4000 B.C.

Once real things are turned into commodities, they become phantoms of the future, leveraged by limited capital in real time. Loans are the lifeblood of the economy, loans are what allow us to spend ten times what we earn. Without loans a dentist can't open an office, even a donut franchise likely needs financing. To understand the beginning of the economy, you must understand that it is more concerned with leverage and collateral than cash, and that the values placed upon items in the future supersedes any present worth. Investors try to control the future, not the present. And businesses, in their need for loans, live off the future as well. The economy is a wonderful invention that allows us to live above our means on the basis of a credit culture--credit being the money accorded you for certain considerations that by no means equal a cash equivalent.

The economy is the arterial structure of the body politic; the blood flow is the flow of money available through credit arrangements. If credit contracts, the flow of money contracts accordingly, and all the organs of business suffer. Many things can be applied to this metaphor; in our present case it's anemia, a lack of sufficient red blood cells to oxygenate the organs, in a word, a lack of credit-- where more money changes hands than really changes hands, or, imaginary money from the future is promised by both parties.

In this metaphor, arteriosclerosis could be likened to encroachment of regulations, taxes, benefits, bribes, protectionism and other things that inhibit the flow of money. And cancer could destroy a single organ, say one large bank. Inflammatory diseases like arteritis might be likened to unstable political situations like wars and revolutions, affecting the blood flow spasmodically. But these are not the current problem.

For one organ to fail, like WaMu, would not indict the health of the body economy, but multiple organ failure, as in WaMu, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, points to a systemic cause.

To pursue our metaphor further, the cause of the present decrease of blood flow to the economy is that some investors in bone marrow (say mortgage derivatives, or pools of home loans) gave too much credit to stem cells who had not decided to be red blood cells yet, and many of them failed in the process (failure to fulfill a mortgage). Suddenly the investors said, "Oh my God! These potential red blood cells are worthless" (as in poorly secured mortgage derivatives); "now I have to hoard all the real red blood cells I have, and my God! There are not enough to meet the obligations I owe to other organs to keep them oxygenated."

As the blood supply decreases, all the organs suffer, because the bone marrow monitors (banks) and the stem cells (desperate home buyers) failed; the former by overestimating the future supply of money or blood flow, the latter by overpromising their futures ability to fulfill the contract.

2) OK, Doctor, we got your metaphor. So you say the economy can be likened to a blood flow of credit?

2) Exactly

3) How can this blood flow be increased?

3) We could wait for the bone marrow to recover gradually. The banks would have to pay for their losses in mortgage derivatives and wait to recover sufficient capital to extend credit again. Or we could do a bone marrow transplant, have the government buy up all the bad mortgages and free the banks to lend again.

4) That's not how the government is approaching it.

4) No, they are calling for a wholesale transfusion. They believe the anemia is too dangerous to rely upon a natural recovery, and that major organs are already in danger. They wish to bypass the actual cause of the crisis and inject blood upstream, else the body could go into shock--a mechanism to preserve the major organs at the expense of less valuable ones.

5) Why would that be so bad?

5) We don't, in truth, know that it would be. I don't know the exact figures on mortgage defaults, but we have already committed, with the bailout and Obama's promises, 1.3 trillion to a transfusion. Yet no one knows what this will do or where exactly to put the money. If that amount could cover the bad mortgages, it seems easy to say, why not put the money where the problem began? That has a nice symmetry to it. Unfortunately, as I said, the experts think things have gone too far for that to help much.

6) Gone too far?

6) The ripple effect of overvaluation of bad mortgages has already put other larger organs at risk, so the argument goes.

7) Do you think it's gone too far?

7) I do, but in my simplistic thinking I wonder why a transfusion instead of a bone marrow transplant? If buying up bad mortgages is possible it would straighten out the banks' books in a hurry. Here's an estimate for next year's mortgages:

"As recently as September research and consulting firm iEmergent was predicting that total mortgage originations in 2009 would be $1.53. Now it has lowered it estimate to $1.3 trillion at best."

1.3 trillion for one year, total? If the sub-prime rate of foreclosure reaches 20%, I doubt the government rescue for them would exceed the new mortgages generated in the year to come. Would it actually be cheaper to aid the mortgages? If so, it doesn't seem a bad alternative, but I don't have the figures.

8) So would you inject money into bad mortgages?

8) How do we know that wouldn't extend the bubble that burst? If we allow a buyer with a mortgage on a $600,000 house to reduce his payments to correspond to a $300,000 house, aren't we extending his credit? And if we do so, can we rely upon him to start spending again? Confidence is a big part of this. On the other hand, do we say, "Eat it, it's too late, there's help needed upstream because the banks are bigger and thus more important than you." But are they? If homeowners were bailed out, however unfair that is (it is no more unfair than choosing banks to bail out), would it get the economy running again? More likely they'd be grateful but gun shy when it came to new purchases. Banks, on the other hand, make their money off of credit. So a direct transfusion to them might lube the economy more efficiently.

9) If there were a causative agent in this scenario, what would it be?

9) Greed, pure and simple. The bankers and buyers of bone marrow futures all erred.

!0) So you agree with the transfusion?

10) My natural instincts say no; in a previous blog I opposed the bailout. Japan went through this in the nineties, however, and hindsight now seems to suggest that their balanced budget and tax increases backfired and extended the crisis. Likewise it has been shown that FDR didn't spend enough early on to turn the economy around, it was too much "a little here, a little there." So I now halfheartedly endorse the experiment of a transfusion; if it fails we will have to taste the pain of a depression anyway. If it succeeds, the accumulated debt can be managed over time given a healthier economy.

Thine in speculation,

C. E. Chaffin

Best of: The Bloviator Returneth

From 8/9/06:

I was struck today by a word that has suddenly entered the vocabulary of the working class. "Issues" has apparently replaced "problems" in NorCalSpeak.

When my laptop got disconnected from the coffee house's wireless service this morning, the manager went to fix it and said, "Tell me after you try it again if you still have any issues."

To my ear an issue is a chronic problem and a problem a more temporary difficulty. To make issues out of problems makes things worse, I think, as we have enough problems already without issues.

As an counter-example to this new usage, I miss a word that has left the common vocabulary, Weltanschauung, German for world view or life philosophy--it doesn't translate well, probably the reason some of us liked to use it, the same for SchadenFreude. Maybe people got tired of spelling German, just like I can never get Nietzsche right.

For another example of increased usage, take the word, "bloviation." Five years ago it was in the dictionary and no one was using it. I wrote two columns on the word, published over four years ago (I lack an exact date). Within six months to a year after my columns it began to appear in the work of syndicated columnists. Could I have possibly been the one that set that development in motion, or is that just a messianic delusion? Most likely the columnists subscribed to the same vocabulary listserv as I. But I'd never seen the word in print before I used it.

Now if you hear the words "gart" (garlic fart) or "schmegg" (messy mess, the detritus of abandoned activities, like breakfast plates dripping syrup all over the counter), my family and I can take credit for them. There's also "houchy," which means you're so hungry you're grouchy. And if kilorats and kilobunnies catch on, you know whom to credit (or blame).

Strange how new phrases insinuate themselves into the language, even when they are senseless, like "orientate" or "up to this point in time," or "basically" (but I think 'basically' already peaked.)

Language is infectious. It spreads like a virus. It may be true that my employment of 'bloviation' as a subject for two columns and my usage of it in everyday speech had a ripple effect, though this is unlikely, as the Devil wants to make sure I don't get credit for anything.

I like to say that the greatest achievement of a poet or writer is to enter the language:

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

"What beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

"a red wheelbarrow"

"Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.?"

"crossing of the bar"

"Candy is dandy
but liquor is quicker"

"Lend me your ears"

"the Undertoad"

(I could go on for pages and I would if I hadn't learned to curb my bloviations just a tad. When your wife is a lip-reader it impairs your ability to bloviate.)

All these snippets, now clichés, were once exotically fresh. But like "walking on eggshells," tropes enter the language because they are the most evocative and economic way of transmitting complex information. Today's breakthrough is tomorrow's cliché. Sometimes avoiding cliche's in a poem is like stepping through a minefield.

I can support most colorful additions to speech. Just today I told my wife that "I had to piss like a race horse." I used that one for years before I discovered that before races, horses get a powerful diuretic to prevent fluid build-up in their lungs.

Some colloquialisms eat at me. I think the one responsible for 70s smiley faces and "have a nice day" should be drawn and quartered.

First, I don't want a 'nice' day, I want a good day. And what the hell does a stranger care about my having a nice day? Pretensions to intimacy abound, possibly because modern living affords so little intimacy, save the superficial kind when you exchange life stories with a stranger on a long flight.

My bank has propaganda phrases wired into its employees' brains. They answer the phone with "Thanks for choosing B of A, my name is Darla, how may I provide you with excellent service today?"

Honey, I haven't seen excellent service anywhere in a long time unless you drop $100 for a dinner for two at a nice restaurant. Even then there's no guarantee.

(BTW, never ask 'Why?' of an institution. You will only be transferred to a different phone menu.)

After all this dancing around my central theme, bloviation, here's an excerpt from my first column on the matter, since de-published:

First, may I say I am honored to write this column, indeed, more than honored, I am extremely privileged, nay, positively exhilarated by the opportunity afforded me by my gracious editor, whose support I more than appreciate, in fact, may I say I am greatly indebted to him both as a writer and human being for the chance to display my meandering exhalations online. It goes without saying that without publication I would be writing nothing, nor would you be reading this elegant distillation of vapors, this monumental Aeolian blunderbuss of opinion that some mistake for meaningless logorrhea at their peril.

Further, to state the obvious, my meaning is obvious, though the obvious is not always the apparent. My statements must be understood in context, not subject to subjectivity in the miscalculation of my intent, which is not to mystify but de-mystify the process of communication by employing all means at my disposal, including Aristotle’s. I guarantee that nothing I say in this column is without merit, and if you but read between the lines I shall be exculpated from any accusation that maintains the obverse. And though my peregrinating perorations may try your patience, they shall not convict it, rather extend it to the next paragraph, where I continue this argument.

I will not give quarter or dime to those who disagree with my position; I have made my position abundantly clear, and any re-positioning on behalf of my central thesis will be avoided in the interest of unity. For what is an argument without unity? And what is unity without purpose? And what is purpose without intent? And what is intent without pre-meditation? And what is pre-meditation without calculation? And what is calculation but the supreme evidence of forethought as confirmed by my ongoing diatribe? I am not dithering in dithyrambic here, nor circumambulating the issue at hand, which is very near, in fact propinquitous and proximal to my primary consideration. Thus I think my opinion deserves equal consideration regardless of race, creed, color, party affiliation or preferment of style.

The plague of style without substance is upon us, and I aim to fight back like a man, true Homo Sapien, a seasoned veteran of vocalic divination, proclamation, extrapolation and salutation. Furthermore, I challenge anyone to dispute the fact that everything I have said thus far has gone no further than it ought, that I have not exaggerated my thesis for the sake of self-aggrandizement, nor should my flow of thought be interrupted by any unfounded, nugatory and unfledged calumnies that may rain upon my head in a storm of disputation, and any disappointment or dissatisfaction with my primary point, which, as I said before and repeat again ad nauseum, ad infinitum and non-adversarially, is pointless.



Have a Nice Day :-)!

CE