Maya, Me, and Maya by Charles Blow, a NYT columnist

The news of Maya Angelou’s death arrived with the abruptness of a great twister — violent, without warning, tearing things up and flipping things over.

I ached the way the soul aches in the world when a great soul is lost from it.

I have a group of writers I call my literary mothers and fathers: Alice Walker and James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Alex Haley and Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. And yes, Maya Angelou.

This is not because I knew them, but rather because, through their words, they have nurtured me, inculcating in me a sense of myself that sustains me. They helped me to see myself and love myself when I felt least seen and least loved.

They saved me.

So this is the scale of the loss for me, a disbelieving, bending-over-at-the-waist kind of loss, the kind where the eyes grow misty and the breath grows short.

You see, when I discovered Angelou’s memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which she published the year before I was born, it irreversibly altered me.

(That book would stay on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list for a record two years.)

Maya (her real name was Marguerite; Maya was a nickname taken from the fact that her brother, Bailey, insisted on calling her “Mya Sister” when she was a baby) spent part of her young life living with a grandmother and her brother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas.

Because my own mother got dreadfully ill every time she got pregnant, I also spent the first few years of my life with a grandmother in a small Arkansas hamlet, one county over and about 50 miles away from Stamps.

Reading her words, for the first time, I could see myself and my life in literature.

There were the calabooses and the slaughter of hogs and the picking of cotton. Though her childhood and mine were 40 years separated, the echoes to my life were uncanny. She wrote of how the mind of a child does battle with darkness, the intricacies of complex families, the simple beauty of rural living, how horrific and rather ordinary racism can be, and how a gifted spirit can find a way to soar.

Hers was an enviable ability as a writer to lower the lens so that it was just above the ground, so that the reader could record the grit and the minutia and the places where the bodies fell and struggled again to stand.

She showed me, personally, something that I was not fully aware of — that my voice was steeped in the cadence and mysticism that comes with Southern storytelling, told by women in straight-backed chairs and men with reed-stemmed pipes.

She gave the people I knew — and the person I was — value, and she did so with a phenomenal power of presence, her words lingering and her voice swelling.

She demonstrated to me, even as a child, the overwhelming power of a great story well told, the way it could change hearts and change history. I am forever in her debt for that.

And her poetry was no less stunning and moving. Her poem “Still I Rise,” which opens with the line “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies” and closes with “I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise,” bears testament to her staggering talent and her eternal optimism.

Angelou subscribed to a sort of grand unification theory of humanity. Where others saw difference, she saw sameness. Where others lost hope in the midst of acrimony, she held fast to the possibility of harmony. This was her great gift — being a light in the darkness.

While in search of the truth, she became the truth.

Angelou will be remembered as many things by many people. Not only was she a memoirist and a poet, she was an actress, singer and dancer. She was a friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin. She composed a poem for the inauguration of President Clinton and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

But I will remember her as a literary forebear, in whose shadow I stand and upon whose shoulders I hope to one day ride.

“Mya” Mother. Tears fall as you, magnificently, rise.

Power and Ego

Power and Ego

Most interpersonal problems are caused by Power and Ego. The more ignorant, stupid, ugly, vertically-challenged, unaccomplished and impoverished, and hence insecure you are, the more you will commit acts of folly to compensate for those feelings of inadequacy. Trust me, I know what I am talking about. I have personally met enough scumbags and assholes who adopt that behavioral pattern. 

Until very recently I harbored a not-so-secret desire to badly hurt these human animals, but now I would just say, "Shit happens" if I run into them and I no longer let them affect my psyche. 

A long time ago (circa 1999) I decided to live my life the way I wanted, and not what was expected of me. Like everybody else, I was burdened then with Ego, but, unlike the human animals, luckily for me over time I got rid of Ego and developed true Pride and I didn't give a shit about Power. The human animals don't really know shit about my mental make-up. Neither do they realize I do hold myself vastly superior to them. My only regret is that I was open about who I was (even with that, the animals could not understand me. They were too fucking stupid), instead of adopting a more mysterious personna. 

Pride and Retribution

Pride and Retribution

So Rodger, you killed six innocent people (okay, one, your roommate, admitted to the police of stealing your candles, but that act didn't really qualify him to be stabbed to death by you)  and injured a dozen more, before blowing your own head off. And you called that cowardly act of yours the "retribution" to your humiliation and sufferings at the hands of young women who refused to go out with you? You were a loser, Rodger. You lost in the game of life. You failed to have real respect for yourself. You were consumed by anger. It propelled you to a dastardly act. Yes, you were also a coward. No, I was not hard on you at all. I called you by your right names. But I didn't despise you. In fact, my heart was filled with pity and compassion for you. I wish you had read philosophy or had met me. You then might have been saved from destruction and self-destruction. You see, your insane act has impelled and compelled me to contemplate on the real nature of pride and anger. Anger is common and inborn. Pride is not. Ego, like anger, is common and inborn. Ego is not the same as Pride. I have both Ego and Pride, but with me, Pride is far stronger. And because of that, it has saved my life. It has prevented me from becoming a loser like you. It forced me to work very hard to get what I wanted and to be who I wanted to be. In order to have Pride, one has to be very honest with oneself. You see, recently an asshole kike called me dense and "a loser". That insult of hers really threw me into deep contemplation. And I came out of the contemplation smiling and far wiser than before coming in. Rodger, let me describe myself to you and please tell me if I am indeed "a loser", like you:

I am fit, good-looking, financially independent, well-read, and well-versed in four languages and fairly okay in reading in four more. I can write poems, essays, and short stories. So far I have yet met anybody who can surpass me in debating skills. I possess a highly logical mind and a heathy respect for facts, "truths", justice, and morality. Last but not least, I am "wildly" popular with women. Currently, besides being loved by my better half, four women are seriously in love with me, and at least half a dozen more find me charming and attractive. Let me quote a recent epistle to me from a Vietnamese lady:

"Anh Bá ơi, em ngạc nhiên quá khi anh viết …hay như thế, hihi… từ trong cuộc nói chuyện giữa anh và em mà anh viết thành 1 đoạn văn quá là hay!  Wow!  I love it!  Hết xẩy luôn!

 

Phục anh lắm, I think that’s one of the reasons I love you so much. Thank you, darling."

Rebutting Mark Cuban on Bigotry by Charles Blow, a NYT columnist

Let’s assume, as we always should in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, had good intentions when he confessed to Inc. magazine on Wednesday that he was “bigoted.”

Let’s assume that Cuban was indeed attempting to be an honest participant in the endlessly ached-for, perpetually stalled “national conversation on race” that many believe is needed but neglected, when he said:

“I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of.”

He continued: “No one has pure thoughts ... but it’s about recognizing when you have thoughts that aren’t right.”

Framed like that, the admission would seem admirable on some level, but nonetheless in need of a retort. So let’s take it as an opening volley and return in kind. After all, in an honest dialogue, good intention does not mean bad information should be allowed to stand.

First, let’s straighten out a conflation of words. Cuban seems, over the course of his comments, to use prejudice and bigotry interchangeably. These words have different meanings that should inform how we discuss our feelings. In The Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn made the distinction this way:

“I think of racial prejudice as a private thought — a personal response to an individual or situation that is based, fairly or unfairly, on experience and observation. It’s usually but not always a negative response; an invidious prejudgment. I think of bigotry as an act that is motivated by a negative prejudice — those thoughts turned into deeds.”

To complete the lexicon, I would submit that biases — either conscious or subconscious — are what inform prejudices on one end, and that racism is the application of prejudices and bigotry — interpersonally and institutionally — on the other end.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take the positive portions of what Cuban was saying. His admissions about himself came in the context of his thoughts about an evolving society in which people are becoming more tolerant and in which he, as an owner, has tried to identify people with “prejudices and bigotry” and to help those people see their flaws and correct them. That, without question, is a noble position and path of action.

While Cuban may, taking him at his word, find an equivalence within his own mind between “a black guy with a hoodie” and “a white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere,” that appears, in the grand scheme of things, to be a false equivalency, both in measure and meaning. It implies a symmetry that history will not allow.

It is important to recognize that not everyone experiences the types of threat responses Cuban does based on race, attire and tattoos — and as far as we can tell from his comment, without articulated attitudes or demonstrated hostility. This casual ascribing of intention, based solely on appearance, draws on deep-seated suspicions constructed over a lifetime of subtle and sometimes overt racial conditioning. This, too, must be acknowledged and accounted for. It is the same sort of suspicion that set in motion the events that led George Zimmerman to shoot Trayvon Martin.

To his credit, Cuban apologized to Martin’s family, via Twitter, for the “hoodie” reference: 

“In hindsight I should have used different examples. I didn’t consider the Trayvon Martin family, and I apologize to them for that.”

And then there’s Cuban’s claim that “we all have our prejudices and bigotries.” It’s not entirely clear that that statement is true and supportable when it comes to racial bias. Project Implicit, a virtual laboratory founded by researchers at Harvard University, the University of Washington and the University of Virginia, has administered hundreds of thousands of online tests designed to detect hidden racial biases and found that while most people possess these biases, many do not.

Cuban says in the interview, “I know that I’m not perfect.” None of us are, Mr. Cuban, and I applaud your candor even as I correct your assertions. That is how the race discussion must be conducted. 

Good Books, Part Two by David Brooks

On Friday, I offered some of my favorite books, as possibilities for summer reading. The books of Part Two come in two baskets, which we’ll call Athens and Jerusalem. The Athens books fire external ambition; the Jerusalem books focus on the inner spirit.

We’ll start the Athens basket with “The Peloponnesian War,” by Thucydides. In Homer, we see characters who are driven by a competitive desire to be excellent at something, to display their prowess and win eternal fame. This ambition drives Homeric heroes to excellence, but it also makes them narcissistic, touchy and prone to cycles of anger and revenge.

Through the figure of Pericles, Thucydides shows us how to live a life of civilized ambition, in which individual achievement is fused with patriotic service. He also reminds us that in politics the lows are lower than the highs are high. That is, when politicians mess up, the size of the damage they cause is larger than the size of the benefit they create when they do well.

Some of my favorite biographies are about people who followed the Periclean mold and dedicated themselves to public service: Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton; Edmund Morris’s series on Theodore Roosevelt; Winston Churchill’s endearing “My Early Life.”

These books arouse energy and aspiration. They have the risk-embracing spirit found in W.H. Auden’s famous poem, “Leap Before You Look,” which opens:

“The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.”

And ends this way:

“A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep

Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:

Although I love you, you will have to leap;

Our dream of safety has to disappear.”

The books in the Jerusalem basket interrogate worldly ambition and encourage righteousness. Of all the authors I’ve read, the one with the most capacious mind is Augustine — for his understanding of human psychology, his sonorous emotions and his intellectual rigor.

“The Confessions” is a religious book, but it can also be read as a memoir of an ambitious young man who came to realize how perverse life can be when it is dedicated to fulfilling the self’s own desires. “I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves leapt and boiled about me,” Augustine wrote. “I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated myself.” Gradually, he orders his love, putting the higher loves above lower ones, and surrendering to God’s ultimate love. He also reconciles with his mother, Monica, the ultimate helicopter mom.

Toward the end of Monica’s life, mother and son sit sweetly in a garden, their conversation rising to higher things. There is a long beautiful sentence, which is hard to parse, but which conveys the spirit of elevation. It repeats the word “hushed.” The tumult of the flesh is hushed. The waters and the air are hushed, and “by not thinking on self surmount self.” Even Augustine’s voracious ambition is hushed in this surrender.

For Jewish takes on inner elevation, I’d recommend “The Lonely Man of Faith” by Joseph Soloveitchik and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. For Christians, you can’t go wrong with Dorothy Day’s “The Long Loneliness,” or Sheldon Vanauken’s “A Severe Mercy,” which you should not read on airplanes, because you will cry.

Let’s end the inner-life basket with two books on love. Scott Spencer’s “Endless Love” is about youthful passion. It opens this way: “When I was 17 and in full obedience to my heart’s most urgent commands, I stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time ruined everything I loved. ...”

For mature love, we have to turn to George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.” It took me six runs to get into this book, because I was unready for it, but, in middle age, it is hard not to be awed by her characterizations. Some samples:

“She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.”

“We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.”

“His soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying.”

I suppose at the end of these bookish columns, I should tell you what I think books can’t do. They can’t carve your convictions about the world. Only life can do that — only relationships, struggle, love, play and work. Books can give you vocabularies and frameworks to help you understand and decide, but life provides exactly the education you need.

Formulaic "Thinking" and "Truths"

Formulaic "Thinking" and "Truths"

I didn't take to philosophy because doing philosophy was fun. Not at the outset anyway. I did philosophy because I wanted to live. Philosophy saved my life. It helped me walk away from the idea of killing myself. It brought to light an insight that philosophically speaking, I am smarter and braver than at least 95% of the human race. I have gained many insights about how the human mind functions especially when it comes to "truths", courage, peer pressure, and pride. I thus almost fell out of my chair when a loser told me that I myself was a loser. I almost choked on my own laughter when a dumb ass told me that I was "dense" and "stupid". I am telling you, "truths" are a lot of fun once you have learned how to play with them and once you understand how fools pathetically try to boost their image of themselves. 

It's really funny that fools think nobody understands them when they themselves fail to realize that they are emotional cowards and dare not confront their sense of inadequacy about themselves. 

I was no fool with regard to self-understanding. Yes, I was no stranger to bragging that I was popular with women. But I was also keenly aware thar the popularity was a result of long and painful practice. For a long time I got no where with women. I got rejected left and right, but unlike Rodger, the 22-year-old virgin who resorted to homicide and suicide to deal with his anger for failing to win affection of women, I undertook a thorough analysis of my failed romantic overtures and from them I gained invaluable understanding of myself and others. Then finally, I hit upon a winning formula and have not looked back since. Now it's the women who fall for me left and right. Now I am the one who holds the "trump" card. Now I am nonchalant and amused when the relationships go sour. There are hardly any feelings of anger and bitterness on my part. Instead, I gain more understanding of myself and of how women think. 

Wonder of Wonders

I have wandered in the wonder of wonders called Love

Recently a white woman dropped me a wondrous line,

Wondering out loud that perhaps she was falling hard for me.

Her confession caused a tingle to travel up and down my spine

And did wonders to my esprit.

Ever since I have wandered in the wonder of wonders called Love.

i guess I'm really lucky

For I myself was gliding on the wings of dove

After she and I struck up an acquaintance at a poker table.

She complimented me on my looks and intellect

And I gushed praises of her poker talents and physique.

I hardly paid attention to what was going on at the game 

I kept throwing furtive glances at her pyramids.

She pretended not to take any notice

And nonchalantly kept the conversation going.

The game drew on and day became night

And I didn't quite know how to say goodbye

She seemed to understand my plight

She handed me a note and simply said, "call me, please"

And stood up, gathered her chips, and headed to the cashier,

Leaving me all flustered and plastered with excitement and pride

I called her up the next night

And every night after that.

We exchanged dreams and wishes, poems and letters. 

And then she dropped that wondrous line.

Now I wonder how can I tell other women about her? 

May 24, 2014

Poet vs. Novelist by Philip Schultz

The word novel carries for me a weight as ominous, all-consuming and unforgiving as any Job encountered. I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created. I stayed up all night, writing description, dialogue, plot curlicues, stories within stories, convinced that anything fewer than 10 pages was wasted time. One wrote the way Thomas Wolfe did, I thought, with fury and hubris, translating everything one read, experienced and felt into glistening, unswerving prose. I didn’t need drugs, cigarettes or caffeine; writing was my drug of choice. And the novel was the high point of literary achievement. 

Over the next 20 years I wrote novel after novel, all of which were rejected by publishers. They were about my experiences growing up in a family of Russian-Polish Jewish immigrants and various troubled relationships. But content was never more than an excuse to display my talents over hundreds of pages. I never doubted my talent. If talent was the circus, then I was its ringmaster and audience, applauding its every move. No single book inspired me more than Bellow’s “The Adventures of Augie March.” The gorgeous onslaught of highbrow thought and febrile emotion was conveyed in a poetry of intense, nonstop filibustering language unlike any I’d ever read before. Who remembered or cared what novels like his were about? Percy’s “The Moviegoer” was about a guy who went to movies and fell for his cousin Kate, whom he tried to save. One didn’t need much more plot than this. To me Bellow’s Augie was about great drive and a love of the English sentence and being a writer at the height of his creative passions. It was about writing a masterpiece.

In between novels I wrote poems, mostly to console myself for the novels’ failures. Mysteriously, all my heartache, worry and grief went into these poems, which felt more like private notes to myself than professional attempts at writing literature. Even more mysteriously, most of them were getting published. I worked hard on them, to be honest, perhaps even harder than on my fiction, paying attention to the heft and balance of each word and idea. With my fiction I focused on chapters and overall conceptions, while in poetry I crawled along in the trenches of each sentence, examining every word for a sign of a deeper significance. Each finished poem felt realized, arrived at directly by way of an inner struggle between whatever emotion had inspired it and the nuanced thought needed to both express and propel its forward movement. 

Was I on some unrealized level granting permission to the poet that the novelist was being denied? In any case, The New Yorker magazine, the place I most wanted my fiction published, started taking my poems when I was 28. When one, “Like Wings,” generated a great flurry of letters (including marriage proposals and requests for advice, equaling a record at the magazine, the then poetry editor, Howard Moss, told me), I immediately explained to anyone who dared compliment me that, yes, it was very nice, but just wait till the story I was working on came out. That would be a real record-breaker. 

Finally, in my late 40s, after a new round of rejections, I gave up writing fiction and began to concentrate full time on my poetry. This, after some 30 years of struggle. It was a memorable, if not happy, day.

I’ve often suspected that the novelist in me resents everything the poet writes, maybe especially the very desire to write poetry. Claiming such a division of purpose may sound dubious at best, because how can one person harbor envious feelings toward himself? But, as my friends and students all learned soon enough, complimenting one of my poems often meant insulting the failed fiction writer within me, and I suspected that my feelings of accomplishment in poetry were tinged with a noticeable under-taste of nostalgia and regret. It’s probably not too surprising that the name of my book of poems that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 is “Failure.” I thought the subject was my father’s business failures but have good cause to think otherwise now. 

Perhaps the more interesting perspective is that of the poet in me toward the novelist. Courteous and cautious, the poet is something of a gentleman in his behavior toward the fiction writer. He tends to be deferential, even encouraging. The fiction writer could be equally successful if he just tried a little harder. The fiction writer, on the other hand, never wanted anything to do with the poet. His sole ambition was conquest and domination. 

In some ways this relationship reminds me of my two sons. It’s a complicated relationship born of great love and intense competition. But there, necessity arbitrates a truce of sorts. They need each other on some keenly felt primal level and know it. The novelist can’t stand the idea of needing poetry, however much he likes nice-sounding language. Perhaps sharing the same brain is more provocative and internecine than sharing the same DNA and household? 

Twelve years ago, I began work on a long poem about a subject I’d tried dealing with in several novels, my experience while working in a welfare building in San Francisco in 1969. I decided to combine this idea with new material about a pogrom in Poland in which 1,600 Jewish men, women and children were murdered. The many narratives and characters required balancing techniques I’d learned in writing all those failed novels. 

Winning the Pulitzer Prize had ended the rivalry, I thought. The poet in me was triumphant. I was never meant to be a novelist. But when I finally finished the book in the spring of 2013, my editor suggested calling this long poem “a novel in verse.” I protested somewhat but finally gave in; both my identities were too exhausted to continue the struggle. 

It’s hard not to smile when I hear myself explaining to people that “The Wherewithal” is a poem that uses some novelistic techniques. The novelist seems to be taking all this in his stride. He knows that the poet got the book published, and that the lines are broken into stanzas, not paragraphs. He’s even being, well, something of a gentleman about it. Forty-two years is a long time to struggle to do anything. And the poet is more than willing to share credit, if credit is due. In fact, we are on our best behavior. Maybe, after all these years, we’re finally learning to cooperate, or at least live like brothers. 

Philip Schultz is a poet whose most recent book is “The Wherewithal, a Novel in Verse.” 

Death and Dreams

Death and Dreams

As I said, a friend of mine had a heart-attack. She was lucky to stay alive. Both she and her husband smoked. And now both of them survived heart-attacks. They didn't know how lucky they were. 

I am now a committed vegetarian because of them. I went to a gym this morning because of them. I  trying to keep my mouth shut because of them. 

I am thinking I am getting wiser, but I am not so sure. I think less of most humans that I know with each passing day. I definitely think I am superior to them in so many aspects.  Anyway, last night I saw Laura. I was very surprised. I had not seen her for over ten years. I thought I would never ever see her again, even in my dreams. She didn't look too bad. She lived in a four-story house and seemed to be very proud of that fact, based on her behavior. Interestingly enough, she greeted me warmly and asked about my life since we last saw each other. The encounter was very interesting, at least to me, because this was the very first time I was not filled with self-pity and sorrow and pain when I saw her, not even when I woke up. Did that mean I finally outgrew the pain and the immaturity? Maybe so, but I do know if I ever meet her in real life, instead in dreams, I would just ignore her. Love dies when respect disappears. Harriette had told me a few weeks before she died of a heart-attack that she believed that finally I got smart with women. Her words were, "Roberto, baby, I seriously doubt that there is any bitch that really loves you as I do. Be careful, darling. Don't be stupid again as you were with Laura and other bitches."

Some Good Books according to David Brooks, NYT columnist

People are always asking me what my favorite books are. I’ve held off listing them because it seems self-indulgent. But, with summer almost here, I thought I might spend a couple columns recommending eight books that have been pivotal in my life. 

“A Collection of Essays,” by George Orwell. If you want to learn how to write, the best way to start is by imitating C.S. Lewis and George Orwell. These two Englishmen, born five years apart, never used a pompous word if a short and plain one would do. Orwell was a master of the welcoming first sentence. He wrote an essay called “England Your England” while sheltering from German bombs during World War II. Here is his opening: “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

Here’s the first sentence of his essay on Gandhi: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.” 

Here’s how he opened an essay on his schoolboy days, “Soon after I arrived at Crossgates (not immediately, but after a week or two, just when I seemed to be settling into the routine of school life) I began wetting my bed.”

There’s a disarming rhythm to each of those sentences; reality is odd, and it takes a few shimmies to get it right. Orwell was famous for sticking close to reality, for facing unpleasant facts, for describing ideas not ideologically but as they actually played out in concrete circumstances. Imperialism wasn’t an idea; it was a lone official haplessly shooting an elephant. 

His other lesson for writers, even opinion writers, is that it’s a mistake to think you are an activist, championing some movement. That’s the path to mental stagnation. The job is just to try to understand what’s going on.

“Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. This is a novel about characters who are not quite in control of themselves. Kitty goes to the ball in a perfect dress. Even the strip of velvet around her neck fits just so. She is swept up in a sort of ecstasy of movement until a glance at the man she thinks is her beau crushes her in an instant. 

Levin falls in love in a way he didn’t plan. He experiences unexpected transcendence cutting grass, of all things. He cannot account for his own happiness, which is in excess of what he deserves, and still has to hide the noose at dark moments for fear he might use it.

Anna is a magnetic person propelled by a love that is ardent and unexpected but also headlong and unpredictable. She’s ultimately unable to surmount the consequences of her actions or even live with the moral injuries she causes. Was Anna right to follow her heart? Should she have settled for a mediocre life in line with convention? This is a foxlike love story, with many angles, which does not lead to easy answers. 

 “Rationalism in Politics” by Michael Oakeshott. This essay dismantles a common form of contemporary hubris — the belief that it is possible to solve political problems as if they were engineering problems, with rational planning. Oakeshott distinguishes between technical knowledge and practical knowledge. Technical knowledge is the sort of information that can be put in a recipe in a cookbook. Practical knowledge is the rest of what the master chef actually knows: the habits, skills, intuitions and traditions of the craft. Practical knowledge exists only in use; it can be imparted but not taught. Technocrats and ideologues possess abstract technical knowledge and think that is all there is. Their prefab plans come apart because they simplify reality, and don’t understand how society works and the rest of what we know. 

 “All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren. This is nominally a novel about Huey Long. But it is also a novel about irony, the way good can come from bad, and bad can come from good, the way people march into public life imagining they are white lambs only to be turned into guilty goats. The main characters are tainted and mottled, part admirable, part noxious. The book asks if in politics you have to sell your soul in order to have the power to serve the poor.

It’s written in an elegiac tone that I’m a sucker for. “The Great Gatsby,” “Brideshead Revisited” and Ford Madox Ford’s “The Good Soldier” are also written in this tone. The narrator of “All the King’s Men” has to lose his innocence to understand the multiplicity and sadness of the truth.

Most of today’s books are about limitation — about being propelled by passions we can’t control into a complex world we can’t understand. For Tuesday, I’ll find some books that are more self-assured. 

Words and Feelings and Who I Am

Words and Feelings and Who I Am

My sisters, my closest kinsfolks alive, the ones who grew up with me during the first 22 years of my life, turned out to be woefully deficient in understanding me. They have accused me of being shallow, tightfisted, and unattractive to women. Thus they have been scratching their heads and searching their souls as to why dozens of women of all ages and ethnicities seem to find me "irresistible". They don't know my secret and I am not telling them about it. The irony is that they are all spinsters. I think they should spend more time speculating the reasons why they didn't attract the kind of suitors that they wanted. I love my sisters but honestly, they are so different from me that we have difficulties communicating. They always think they have more class and better manners than I do. Maybe they really do, but should they always drum that into my consciousness. Too much drama. Too much melodrama, as well. In fact. That's what happening all around me. Folks fancy they are righteous and better than they really are. Vanities. Nothing but vanities.

Not too long ago, I was not unlike them. And I paid a dear price for my ignorance. Needles anger and suffering, all because of empty vanities. 

I had a physical check-up today. The nurse was aggressively rude, but I managed not to get to her level. Anger is suffering. The doctor was nice, as usual. Life is precious. Arrogance is just the flip side of inferiority complex. Rudeness is a form of aggression. It declares war on the target. Fools and weaklings are rude; wise men and strong-minded folks are always polite and considerate. They know the values of courtesy and consideration. Fools and ignoramuses think by being rude, they dare their targets to do something as a response to the rudeness. And yes, most of the time, they get the response they deserve. I was angry and pissed off for a while after an ignoramus called me "dense" and "a loser". I used to be called "childish" all the time by all kinds of folks. That was quite funny and ironic in a sense. Everybody tried to be an "adult" with me. I suppose that made them feel good about themselves since they thought they were better than me. Hell, it doesn't take much to be "better" than me while it is very hard, if not impossible to be like me. Yes, it is impossible to be as "dense" and to be "a loser" like me.

I am trying to understand John Searle these days. We only study those areas where we are comfortable with. In my case, they are language, consciousness, intentionality, art, and of course, love and longing.

Today I paid a hospital visit to a friend who was recovering from a heart-attack. She was lucky to stay alive. After the visit, I cancelled a plan to make some money. I went home instead to have a nap. Tomorrow I will be a dedicated vegetarian, instead of being an amateur. Besides, the results of the blood test, which came online, were sobering. 

(To be continued)

(To be continued)

Midnight Reveries and Fantasies

Midnight Reveries and Fantasies

She said, "It's okay that I love you, even though you're an unavailable man---happily or not, that is immaterial to me. What matters is that you are lovable. What matters is that I don't have a strong desire to go to bed with you. Not yet anyway."

I laughed out loud at the absurdities of her assertions. I pointedly told her that she should pay more attention to the longevity and duration and true nature of her affection for me than my availability or her concern about the physical demonstrations of her affection. 

She then said that the period in which she discovered that her affection for me grew with each passing day was more exciting than the present day, now that she has declared that she loves me, platonically, although she is struggling not to go beyond it. 

I solemnly replied that the heart would have a way to let us know if our feelings are true or false. Yes, lust often masquerades itself as love while love does not have to take refuge behind any mask. Love shines brightly in the darkest night. Love endures against the ravages of time and the horrors of physical separation as long as the love object stays lovable. Love is comforting to the love object because it makes him/her feel that he/she is lovable and cared for, and not a totally repulsive human character. That's why I hang onto a notion---no matter how tenuous and unrealistic and far-fetched---that I am an attractive, sexy, charming man and I am desirable to women of all ages and ethnicities. 

Facts and Feelibgs

Facts and Feelings, at least in My Case

I pride myself in undertaking a relentless pursuit of facts as a stepping stone to truths and knowledge. I love knowledge, even if it is painful and forces me to change my long-cherished thinking. You see, I have a little brain and am not afraid to use it to its full extent. At the same time, I am an aspiring writer of fiction. So all my light-hearted pieces contain elements of fiction, though facts-based, not unlike magical realism. Truths are more poetic and harder hitting if they are tinged and laced with poetry and fiction. You see, I write for myself, first and foremost. I am my best friend, after the dust has settled. Yesterday, she sent me a piece that moved me. She was hurt by carping and snide comments. And she didn't deserve them, like I didn't deserve them when certain stupid and ignorant scumbags and assholes threw them at me. I was tempted to write to her and tell her, "baby, if you feel like crying, then go ahead and cry. Now you have learned that most humans, deep down, are cruel, uncaring, selfish hypocrites. They don't give a damn about you. All they care is themselves. Their attitude is me, me, and more me. I am not like that. I care for myself, but I also care for others, but only those who deserve my affection. And you may be one of those. You see, I may exaggerate, but I don't lie. I treat you like I treat myself: with sincerity and fairness. I don't ask anything from you that you can't or won't deliver. The heart may grow and expand and soften. Yours. And mine, too. All it needs is a bit of tenderness and trust and respect and willingness to learn more about the other person. Yesterday I almost called you as baby. Recently a midget kike called me "dense and a loser". Her characterization stunned me for its brutality and untruthfulness. It left me speechless and loquacious at the same time. If we ever say goodbye to each other, let's walk away gently and in silence, and not in brutality and acrimony. Okay, honey?"

Death

Death

La  préméditation de la mort est préméditation de la liberté.

Montagne, Essais

Moi seul, je sais ce que j'aurais pu faire...Pour mes autres, je ne suis tout au plus qu'un peut-être.

Stendhal, Le Rouge et Le Noir

Fools often say to dwell on Death is an exercise in morbidity (actually, fools are too stupid to phrase the issue in such an elegant manner. What they often say about the issue is crude and rude, reflecting a coarse "understanding" of the subject and a limited "intelligence". But fools never think they are fools. They all fancy they are smart, especially if they managed to get to college and obtained a BA in a subject that does not require much intelligence like Education or Art History or even Sociology. I really doubt if they can tackle Philosophy or Computer Science which requires a high level of abstract thinking. In other words, not all college graduates are equal in intelligence and abstract, incisive thinking. Most college graduates are dumb and ignorant. I should know. I have met and talked with a lot of them. Words coming out of their mouths just staggered me for their sheer nonsense and incoherence. The present dumbing down of education in America is just amazing), whereas a mind like Montaigne's made a startling leap of understanding while meditating on Death. Yes, to think of death is to think of liberation and freedom. Yet, most humans fear Death. They act as if they fear liberty. They all cling to their dreary and meaningless and unaccomplished existence called life. Yes, they act on instinct, not unlike wild beasts and barnyard animals. They live without once questioning the meaning of their life, without once doubting the truthfulness of their "faith" and religion, the "teachings" of their pastors, rabbis, and imams. They are sheep; they are herd animals. They are sub-humans. And they don't know they are such. They always think they are humans and they will be "saved" at Judgment Day after they die. How pitiful and pathetic of them for believing in such bullshit and nonsense. And yet they think they are smart and educated. And they called me "dense" and "a loser"! Where is Hitler when we need him? That was what I thought of when I got to know quite well a short, fat, poor, ugly, stupid, sarcasm-prone, superstitious, ignorant old female midget kike. 

Assholes think I am crazy for writing the way I do. Maybe I am, maybe I am not. But I do know I am not crazy enough. If I were, I would blast them out of this world and send them to the hereafter. Yes, I have such an intense hatred for certain assholes and scumbags. They nauseate me and I wish them ill. Without them, I would have never known about evil and hatred and violence and cruelty. Words coming out of their mouths are just staggeringly stupid. 

Allocution and Sympathy

Allocution and Sympathy for Donald Sterling

No, that was not a typo. Allocution, not allocation. I have a fondness for logorrhea, not gonorrhea. Yes, for periphrasis and prolixity, too. Making me feel "smart" and "educated", you know. Yes, despite how much we deny it, there's always a sense of inadequacy, an inferiority complex in all of us. Those who deny that are liars, I'm telling you. We all compensate, sometimes overcompensate, for what we feel uncomfortable about ourselves. I have yet met a man completely at peace with himself. All men I know are full of poses. Sometimes the poses are adopted unconsciously and unwittingly, but they are poses nonetheless. All men I have met are fearful of unpleasant realities. You would meet them in bull sessions in bars and in AA meetings and in jails. To combat unpleasant realities, you need to allocute or to join the American Marine Corps, and to be sent to battles where the odds are high that you will be maimed and killed. Then you probably would shed all illusions and delusions about who you are. Meeting Death has a way to make you very honest about yourself. Life has no meaning if Death is not a part of it. 

For many years, I was in love with a woman even after she dumped me for some Napoleonic, but good-looking nerd. I stupidly thought she deserved my love until I woke up in one glorious  Sunday morning. As I went out to pick up the paper in the driveway, the profuse sunlight, the breeze, the cool air in the Fall, and the quiet of the neighborhood, all combined to induce a satori in me: I was wrong and stupid in my love for her, and that we only truly love those for whom we have at least a modicum of respect, not contempt. From that moment on, I have had an insight about the nature of love. In order to really love others, we must really love and respect ourselves first. Love, like charity, begins at home. 

You could always tell about a dude by the way he writes, especially about himself. Several readers of mine have voiced an "opinion" that I am a narcissist. My "defense" to them has been, "listen, narcissism is built into us, like selfishness and greed and illusions and delusions. It is an affliction we all fall prey to. To live is to engage in a process to be free of these afflictions. I understand myself like no other man does. All philosophy begins with self-contemplation. We must learn to be comfortable with ourselves. Self-alienation is very pitiful, if not very dangerous. I like myself. I happen to think I am different from others and getting "better" and more "moralistic", by the week, if not by the hour. Self-ignorance is deplorable. I detest and despise those who complain about certain unpleasant traits in others, but fail to realize or admit that those traits are also in themselves. I am not like that. I am not perfect, but I am no hypocrite. Narcissism is a way for me to better myself. Bragging is my way to spur myself to greater heights. I brag, but I don't lie to myself or to others. I am basically a very honest man. I am honest because I respect facts, truths, and logic. I don't care for rules and regulations. They were set up for common folks who need guidance. I am no common man. All my life I have struggled to fit in society and to get along with others who are very different from me in values and temperament. To be different is to be misunderstood."

I saw Donald Sterling allocute in the interview by Anderson Cooper. I came away from the interview with sympathy for Sterling and respect for Cooper. Sterling was a bumbling, and surprisingly honest and lonely fool. Cooper was wise, dignified, and measured with his probing questions. I saw much of myself in Sterling. I'm praying very hard for emotional strength and equanimity that I will not fall hard for any woman as Sterling did. Public humiliation would be tough for me to face. I am not as thick-skinned as some assholes I know. I might end up killing myself out of shame. There are many conditions worse than loneliness. Don't use others to cure yourself of loneliness. Read philosophy and psychology. Exercise and meditate. Practice detachment. Trust no pretty, young women, if you are an old man. They are more vicious than insolent, young men. Don't think of yourself as a charming old man and you thus deserve an exception. There are no exceptions. And you can't fight against the ravages of time. You may feel young inside, but should act in accordance with your age outside. There's no greater fool than an old fool, especially with regard to women. 

There was once a "younger", attractive, but not quite educated woman in her early 30's who kept asking me to come to her house in order to show her how to cook certain dishes of which I was very good at preparing. I was flattered and pleased at her interest in my culinary skills. She also was openly quite admiring of my "intellect" and "linguistic" facility, not counting my "alluring", sculpted physique.  Normally, I would have jumped at the "invitation", but something inside me told me not to go to her house. Call it fear, prudence, or "male intuition", or whatever, but my inner voice told me, "Roberto, shun her, for she's a serpent underneath all those enticing, pleasant smiles." Yes, Sterling, we all need to be cared for. But you just had too much faith placed in that half breed woman. I was not proud enough of myself, despite my aforementioned attributes, as you were of yourself, so I didn't go to the woman's house and show her to prepare certain dishes. Because of my lack of confidence in myself, I probably saved myself from a lot of troubles. Love is magic, but don't expect the magic come to you, even though you have a lot of money, Donald, because you are a very old and physically unattractive man. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, lately? Anyway, now you finally know she didn't love you. And you cried publicly on TV about that. I feel sorry for you. By now, I hope you have learned something about women. I have, I'm telling you. My lesson about women is encapsulated in a twisted line from a short story I read a long time ago, right after I was dumped by Laura, "A hard man is good to find." I have learned not to let female tears soften my heart. Some women cry today, but tomorrow they will stab you in the back and in the front, right at your heart. Donald, my man, please remember that. I don't know about you, but my problem is that one woman after another confessed to me that they cared about me, even loved me, and then they went on cursing at me and hating me simply because I didn't really love them back. How could I when they were vastly inferior to my wife in looks, talents, wealth, and even in personality?

Anyway, Donald, let me tell you something about Her. I had a bicycle and it always had a flat tire. Sometimes both the tires were flat. One day, I took it to the tire shop to have the tires replaced. The repairman told me I was being ripped off by the bicycle manufacturer, as if I didn't already know about that.The next thing I knew I was pushing my bike in front of a house. The house's front door was open. People inside the house were having a party. They saw me and asked me to come in. It turned out they were my 1966 friends. I was surprised and awkward at the same time. I wondered why they had not invited me to the party beforehand. Then I heard Her voice in the kitchen. She looked almost as good as She did in 1969, the last time I saw Her. I exclaimed her name. She turned around and flew into my arms. We walked out of the house arms in arms. I remember the first words coming out of my mouth as we walked down the street were, "You need to know that I never stop loving you. And all I want before I die is to hear that you love me, too." I wanted to say more, but somehow the words couldn't get out of my mouth. The smartphone indicated that it was 3:03 am. Donald, I know what you went through with the half breed. I know that you needed love. But like me, you looked for it in the wrong house; you went out with the wrong women. Good luck to you next time. Be very careful with loneliness. Don't let it destroy you. Be nice and be careful with your speech. Speak what people want to hear, not what you want to say. Deep, deep down nobody is interested in what you want to say, anyway. Remember, we are all narcissists, racists, and sexists, in one degree or another. Some truths are better not spoken. Those which are spoken are really half truths. Silence is golden. The next time, you want to talk, call me. You are safer that way because I am nobody important or famous. And I won't set you up and stab you in the back, leaving you crying and lamenting in public. I value trust and loyalty. 

Now, I understand you are rejecting the 2.5 MM fine imposed on you by the NBA and you are suing the NBA for banning you from the NVA. Bravo to you, Donald. I wish you the best of luck. I want you to know I support your right to privacy and your right to free speech. I do hold that it's not crime to hold racist and sexist and narcissist views, as long as those views are not translated into criminal behavior, resulting in physical, emotional, or financial harms to anybody. As humans we must have freedom in thinking, in speech, and in being stupid as long as that freedom does not infringe on the freedom of others. We must reject thought police. We must  reject self-righteousness and hypocrisy. We must reject herd, lynching behavior. Donald, I support you in being you and let capitalism play out its role. If people don't like your views, they can stop going to see your team playing or they can stop sponsoring your team. But nobody has a right to take a team away from you. You can sell your team only when you want to, not when you are told by others to sell it. By the way, I didn't like the tone and the manner of the so-called NBA Commissioner when he announced the decision to fine you and ban you from the NBA. America is the land of the free and of the laws. Let's see what the court of law says about the legitimacy and the legality of NBA's actions towards you. Let's the legal fight begin. Donald, do you see the irony of the situation? You and your alleged racism? Are you aware that in America, Jews and Blacks are the two groups that are ever ready to jump up and down and cry "racism"? 

Wissai

May 16, 2014

Apology

Apology

I know not all apologies are heart-felt. Some are Machiavellian in nature. Still, all apologies are good and smart. But why do some assholes never apologize? Is it because they are too dumb, too arrogant, or both? 

I am dumb and I am arrogant, but I still apologize like crazy when I realize I am in the wrong because deep down I respect facts, truths, logic, and justice. I could be blind about myself but I think I am capable of objective self-assessment. Recently a friend of mine apologized to me after making several outrageous statements and acting quite childishly and self-importantly. His apology showed that he was still capable of rational thinking, despite being quite far gone in alcohol addiction. I remain to be his friend because of his apology. I forgave him and I am prepared to forgive him again and again. I think alcohol helps him to be assertive and feeds a much needed self-perception that he is somebody. We all need a boost to our ego now and then. Regrettably, most of us get ego boosting via "wrong" or "fallacious" ways. Truth is at once simple and complex. All it takes is an ability to accept pain and to reason. Open our heart first and then our mind. That's how we will get to truths. We must not be too quick to defend our fragile, brittle ego. If our ego is strong and healthy, pains would never kill it. A good, strong, healthy ego can deal with falsehoods, lies, and calumnies. In fact, it would smile at attempts by fools to injure it. And it would serenely move on in its path to peace and wisdom.

The world would be a better place if more humans are quick to say they are sorry and ask for forgiveness. 

Nature of Appropriateness

Nature of Appropriateness 

Things that are appropriate may not be just or true and vice versa. That is to say, the case of What has to be weighed and examined within the context of When, Where, and How. Sex, Humor, Love, Religiosity, Racism, Nudity, Aggression, Charity, and just about anything associated with human behavior are subject to the "laws" stipulated in the first two sentences of this paragraph. 

Take racism, for example. Most humans stupidly have a knee-jerked, at least publicly, negative reaction against racism, but the truth of the matter is that while racism, especially if it involves an assumption and an attitude that some races are inherently "superior" to another, from the scientific standpoint, is still subject to debate, in practice it's widely practiced in some form or another. Racism is tied to group think and tribalism, and in some aspects, necessary for survival of the members of the group/tribe. Racism has many shades. And of course most, if not all rabid racists, are understandably ignorant, as there are no fixed rules governing human behavior. There are always exceptions. But we must understand that most humans are colored and shaped by their circumstances and experiences. So if they hold a racist view about a certain group of people based on their isolated and limited encounters with some members of that group, it's understandable, though not scientifically valid and sound. After all, humans tend to generalize and jump to a conclusion, without being bothered to pause and think if the generalization and conclusion is sound. On the other hand, in America, Jews and blacks are ever ready to jump up and down screaming at the top of their lungs while foams are formed at their mouths that they are victims of racism, without pausing and thinking that their everyday behavior often contributes to the stereotype attributed to them. Yes, most Jews I do know are stingy, aggressive, and rude. And most blacks I have run into are loud, conniving, and forever playing the victims card. Yes, there are some fine Jews and blacks, but they are definitely rare. And I have personally met them, too. So the next time if I run into a Jew or a black, I wouldn't really blame myself if I find myself wary and weary of such an individual. Once bitten, twice shy, right? Yes, you guessed it right, I feel sorry for Donald Sterling for trusting so much a half breed woman that he openly bared his soul about his views about races, especially about the one having dark pigmentation and originally came from Africa. His views and words were not really outrageous or obscene, but he expressed them in a wrong context and in a wrong manner. The What was not really revolting but the Where and the How were deplorable.  I had a feeling he was set up for his past transgressions. And he stupidly trusted a wrong woman with whom he had a sociological discourse. On the other hand, he, like most humans, thinks he is nicer than he really is. Very few humans are capable of objective self-assessment. I personally knew one Russian Jewish woman. She was short, fat, ugly, ignorant, and not very bright. But she audaciously thought she was attractive, smart, and well-informed. 

Wissai

May 10, 2015

Memory, Memoria,....

Memory, Mémoire, Memoria, Ký Ức, Gedächtnis

Ever since Nabokov published his nostalgia-laden memoir aptly titled, Speak, Memory, the phrase has become part of the English vernacular, at least among the educated and the informed, and it has lodged in my mind and has triggered an unspeakable desire to write, to speak of the past, of memories at once too painful and too bittersweet to keep to myself. Call me Ishmael, call me Stupid, call me Self-Indulgent, call me with whatever epithet your imagination and scorn may lead to, but above all, don't ever forget to call me also Memory, for I am a man of memories. All what I have written in my spare time, consciously and unconsciously, is a reaction against certain memories.

This afternoon as I was racing against the traffic to get to an appointment on time, a Spanish song came on the radio and boom, my mind was flooded with the memories of her. I don't love her anymore. Of course not.  She didn't deserve my love, but I couldn't help remembering the memories associated with her. My puppy love for her was short-lived (really?), but my memories about it are forever, in spite of my will, my conscious efforts to strike them from my mind. The memories have a life and a will of their own, even though my stupid love adventure with her took place almost fifty years ago. Yes, I was sorry that I loved her. But I have often wondered that without having loved her, I would not be who I am today. So, for that, I was grateful for the experience. After her, I have met many women, 22 so far, and only 3 really loved me. Out of the 3, 2 died unexpectedly. The surviving one cursess and swears at me, but I think she still loves me. I don't know for sure, though. But at least in general, I knew what True Love was. It is not the same as the bullshit one. True Love is selfless giving and caring and ever-ready forgiveness, time and time again. True Love is not constant harping and sniping. Nor is it about sarcastic, petty put-downs and stupid and glorified defense of Self. True Love is always about The Other. It is never about me, me, me, and me. Selfish animals and ugly kikes never know about True Love. They only know about animal lust and sex and survival at any price, against dignity and self-respect and pride. For them, Life is only about one thing: survival. Like a piece of vegetation or a dumb animal, they are completely ruled by an instinct for survival and self-protection. To live, for them, is to hang in there, as long as possible, no matter how dreary and meaningless and stupid their existence is. So they lie to and about others and to and about themselves. They don't respect facts, truths, and logic. They are brazen and shameless and devoid of self-respect. But yes, they have anger because they think they have pride  whereas the fact of the matter is that they don't really know what pride is even if pride bites them in the ass. Only true humans have pride. Human animals fucking do not. I know, I am sounding like Homicide Rising in a Moonless Night. It's not easy to co-exist with human animals. They always say or do something that staggers me for its sheer stupidity and self-deception. If not for my sense of humor, I would have fucking blast them out of this world a long time ago.

Facts and Experiences

Coming out of the Closet or Is It Making it Up as I go along?

Contrary to would-be or wannabe writers who would kill or do anything almost as drastic and decisive to get their works published, I write just for the "fun" of it, for my own pleasure and satisfaction, and not necessarily for fame and recognition, or for fortune. I write because I have to otherwise I would have to commit acts of extreme violence and barbarity.

I always have a wry and bitter smile after reading autobiographical accounts penned by self-pitying and angry victims of abuse. I wish I would be bothered enough to drop a line or two to the authors that while it  might be a cathartic exercise to revisit and confront suppressed traumatic memories, it is much better for them to stop regarding themselves as victims of circumstances. These poor souls would be much better off to live with an attitude that we are all the sum of our experiences and all experiences are useful to our survival. The only requirement is we must view the experiences in their proper context, no more or no less. In other words, we must neither romanticize not dramatize the experiences. Most humans are scumbags, if given a chance to prove themselves. Most humans are cowardly, self-righteous liars, too. 

Fuck, I keep saying that we must know where we stand in relation to other organisms, especially other humans, on this planet. To do so, we must be very honest with ourselves and provide truthful answers to the following questions:

1. Why am I here? What's the fuck of my existence? What do I hope to accomplish with it? 

2. Do I believe in my own abilities or in a myth and a fiction called God?

3. Am I in the top 5-10 percentile of the human race in terms of health, looks, education, intelligence, charm, and money?  Or am I a fucked-up, hopeless, short, fat, ugly, impoverished woman loser, and of course no man wants my company, but amazingly enough I would stupidly go around telling others about a man whom I have been desperately chasing after for 15 years that he is dense and a loser. If he were such kind of a person, then why in fuck's name, I've been chasing after him for such a long time and have got no where with him? Think about the irony and the stupidity of my statement that the man is a loser. The statement did nothing but reveal that I am a fucked-up woman and deserve to be in an incineration chamber as my other 6 million kinsmen. Stupid is as stupid does! And this female kike is not alone. There are many like her. And the mother-fucking bitch fancies that she is a loving student of Buddhism! What a deluding "mind". I wish I had the power and wherewithal to feed the bitch to hungry stray dogs. 

But, seriously, Roberto, are you really as enraged with the stupid bitch as you seem to be?

Nah, Omar. The bitch does not deserve a minute of my time. I just said so for the "fun" of it. I have many things to do and far more interesting bitches to associate and cavort. I have lived and I have learned. I just acquired another experience about assholes and scumbags: they don't go for facts, truths, and logic. They are fucking weak---morally, emotionally, and intellectually. They are not even human. They are deep down animals and deserve to be exterminated and incinerated like garbage. That's my greatest insight about them. They are not my equal and should not be treated as my equal. I must stay away from them and consider them as disease-carriers. 

You're right, Roberto, for a change. Look at you!  A fine specimen of the human race: tall, good-looking, nice physique, intelligent, educated, well-read, well-reasoned, financially sound, living in a nice condo and driving a fine car, women falling over themselves for you, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a linguist, and a winning poker player, in short you're a Renaissance man, and yet the fucking midget kike told you that you were dense and a loser!  Look at her! Fuck, she's a fat, ugly, repulsive bitch, Roberto, and she's stupid and ignorant. Your compassion was misplaced. I hope you learned from your lesson. 

(To be continued) 

A cab driver and writer

Note by Wissai:

I felt inspired by this news report. There are some similarities between Alomar's life and mine, but I have been much more blessed in finance and English. Thus, I have no excuse in not coming up with better stories than what I have written so far. 

CHICAGO — In the Arab world, the Syrian writer Osama Alomar has a growing reputation as the author of short, clever parables that comment obliquely on political and social issues. But here, where he has lived in exile since 2008, he spends most of his time as the driver of Car 45 at the Horizon Taxi Cab company.

Up to a dozen hours a day, six days a week, Mr. Alomar cruises the northwest suburbs around O’Hare Airport in his bright blue cab, dictionaries and a volume of Khalil Gibran piled beside him. When parked in line waiting for a fare to appear, he pulls out a notebook and tries to write.

“Driving a cab is hard work and very hard psychologically, because it takes me away from writing,” Mr. Alomar, who turns 46 on Saturday, said in an interview here recently at a coffee shop and in his cab. “It is a kind of spiritual exile to go with my physical exile. But I have to be strong. I have to be patient.”

On Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Alomar, whose first book to be translated into English, “Fullblood Arabian,” was recently published by New Directions, will take a brief respite from that grueling routine to attend the PEN World Voices literary festival in New York. He is scheduled to take part in two panels: “Creativity and Craft in Asylum,” on Saturday, and a Sunday afternoon conversation with the American writer Lydia Davis, who has emerged as his biggest champion, and the Icelandic writer Sjon.

Mr. Alomar’s super-short stories “are very imaginative and vivid and exhilarating,” said Ms. Davis, whose own work often occupies a terrain similar to Mr. Alomar’s in terms of length and tone. “Some are dark and angry, while others are funny. They are compact stylistically, wasting no words, and they go quickly from one moment to the next and on to the end. So they have density, but also are sort of explosive, with an aftershock, because they seem to tell one story at the same time they are telling another.”

Mr. Alomar sees himself as an heir of a literary form, now called al-qissa al-qasira jiddan, or very short story, that in the Arab world dates back more than a millennium and contains elements of poetry, philosophy, folk tale and allegory. “Fullblood Arabian” was, in fact, issued as part of a poetry series that includes work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Hilda Doolittle, and the stories in the book run no longer than three pages, with the shortest being only one sentence.

Muhsin al-Musawi, a Columbia University professor and literary critic who is also the editor of The Journal of Arabic Literature, described the genre Mr. Alomar has embraced as “similar to the riddle or puzzle,” but requiring “a high level of prose.” As such, he added, “it offers a way out of many restrictions and constraints without being very explicit.” 

Certainly, many of Mr. Alomar’s stories make use of ambiguities, especially in relation to the political scene. Here, in its entirety, is “Tongue-Tie,” the title piece of one of his three collections published in Arabic: “Before leaving for work I tied my tongue into a great tie. My colleagues congratulated me on my elegance. They praised me to our boss, who expressed admiration and ordered all employees to follow my example.”

C. J. Collins, Mr. Alomar’s translator, remembers meeting the writer for the first time in Damascus in 2007. Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, had eased some restrictions on private gatherings, and Mr. Alomar was a regular at salons that had then sprung up, where invited speakers would address political, cultural and social topics, but steer clear of directly criticizing the dictatorship.

“In the discussions that would come afterward, Osama’s stories would come up spontaneously as a way of driving home an intellectual point in a poetic fashion,” Mr. Collins recalled, adding, “In the States, it is putting literature down to call it utilitarian, but for me it was quite striking to see his work put to this really concrete use.”

Mr. Alomar was born in 1968 in Damascus, where his father was a philosophy professor and his mother an elementary school teacher. He read widely from his parents’ library, studied Arabic literature in college and sang and played guitar in a pop band. When the BBC’s Arabic service broadcast a poem he had submitted, he became convinced that he had a future as a writer.

Thanks in part to that upbringing, “I’m very interested in social and political movements,” he said. “Especially in my own country, but in the Middle East in general. As a secular person, I believe in democracy and individual freedom. There is a lot of persecution and oppression.”

Asked about his literary influences, Mr. Alomar, who speaks accented but nearly fluent English, produced a diverse list.  Gibran, the Lebanese poet who wrote “The Prophet” and lived for many years in the United States, is at the top, but Mr. Alomar also cited Aesop, Hemingway (not surprising for a writer who values terseness and brevity), the British novelist and philosopher Colin Wilson and Kafka.

Emulating Gibran, Mr. Alomar came to the United States in 2008 to join his mother and an older brother. From an apartment near O’Hare, he has watched on CNN and Al-Jazeera over the last three years as his country has disintegrated into civil war, and he finds it agonizing.

“At the beginning, I was optimistic, because the Syrian people had an awareness about their freedom,” he said. “Now I’m not, because we have a lot of obscurants, even in the opposition. To see this suffering, it breaks my heart every day.”

If his exile started voluntarily, it would be difficult to return to Damascus now, Mr. Alomar said, and not just because he is so publicly identified with opposition to the Assad dictatorship. This year, he said, an apartment he owns there was destroyed in a bombing, and he lost not only his library and Fender guitar and amp, but also many manuscripts, including a novel.

“I lost everything, but I have to be wise about this,” he said. “I have to live with it. I have anger, but I keep it inside me. You can take it two ways, and I want that this can be a positive experience.”

Like Gibran, Mr. Alomar now aspires to write in both Arabic and English: “My goal, my aim, is to become an American writer,” he said. Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea,” he has begun a novel that he said will be written in the form of a journal kept by a fetus, even as he continues to write his short stories. 

Yet the long hours behind the wheel trying to make his weekly nut limit his opportunities to write and to meet people other than passengers who know nothing of his story and aren’t necessarily interested in Syria’s conflagration.

“I feel isolated in my cab,” he said. “I like my life here, but to be honest with you, I am homesick, too. I have a lot of memories of every corner, of every stone in Damascus. But this is my new country, and I want to penetrate it.” 

Our Lonely Home in Nature

THE tornadoes that have been devastating parts of the South and Midwest, just weeks after a deadly mudslide in Washington, demonstrate once again the unimaginable power of nature. 

After each disaster, we grieve over the human lives lost, the innocent people drowned or crushed without warning as they slept in their beds, worked in their fields or sat at their office desks. We feel angry at the scientists and policy makers who didn’t foresee the impending calamity or, if forewarned, failed to protect us. Beyond the grieving and anger is a more subtle emotion. We feel betrayed. We feel betrayed by nature. 

Aren’t we a part of nature, born in nature, sustained by the food brought forth by nature, warmed by the natural sun? Don’t we have a deep spiritual connection with the wind and the water and the land that Emerson and Wordsworth so lovingly described, that Turner and Constable painted in scenes of serenity and grandeur? How could Mother Nature do this to us, her children?

Yet despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn’t care one whit about us. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants. 

I first encountered the insensible power of nature during a two-week sailing trip with my wife in the Greek isles. It was just the two of us on a small boat. For the first few days of the voyage, traveling south along the coast from Piraeus to Cape Sounion, we were within sight of land. Then we turned west, toward Hydra. Soon, the land and other boats vanished. All we could see was ocean. 

At first, I felt elation. Then I felt fear. Because during the summer season, the Aegean Sea is plagued by a fierce, dry wind called the meltemi, which can appear without warning in clear air and be upon you in minutes with great waves and gales. At any moment, a wall of water and wind could have lunged from the horizon, washed over the boat, and drowned my wife and me. I realized that there was no compassionate overseer or oceanic consciousness to prevent that from happening. To the vast expanse of water, my wife and I were just additional pieces of flotsam and jetsam.

Our comfort with nature is an illusion. Here on earth, even with our earthquakes and storms, we have no conception of the range and the power of nature. In many other parts of the cosmos, conditions are far more extreme than on earth and quite inhospitable to life. On the planet Mercury, for example, the temperature reaches 800 degrees. On Neptune, it is minus 370. On Uranus, the winds exceed 350 miles per hour. With the recent work of the Kepler spacecraft, searching for planets favorable for life, we can estimate that only about one millionth of one billionth of 1 percent of the material of the visible universe exists in living form. From a cosmic perspective, we and all life are the exception to the rule.

For all of recorded history, humankind has had a conflicted view of nature. In ancient times, we made awesome and frightening gods of the natural elements. The Babylonian-Assyrian god of storms, Adad, brought rain to the crops but also caused havoc and death on land and sea. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, both created and destroyed and was sometimes invoked to annihilate one’s enemies. So close to nature are we in some mythologies that human beings are regularly transformed into other animals and even inanimate matter. In Aztec mythology, the twin volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl were once human lovers, later turned into mountains by the gods. 

In the other direction, nature is constantly given human qualities. Wordsworth wrote that “nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” Mother Nature has comforted us in every culture on earth. In the 20th and 21st centuries, some environmentalists claimed that the entire earth is a single ecosystem, a “superorganism” in the language of Gaia.

I would argue that we have been fooling ourselves. Nature, in fact, is mindless. Nature is neither friend nor foe, neither malevolent nor benevolent.

Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept. We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall. That absence of mind, coupled with so much power, is what so frightened me on the sailboat in Greece.

The recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change documents the damage now being done by human-created greenhouse gases and global warming. In reacting to the report, we should not be concerned about protecting our planet. Nature can survive far more than what we can do to it and is totally oblivious to whether homo sapiens lives or dies in the next hundred years. Our concern should be about protecting ourselves — because we have only ourselves to protect us.

Alan Lightman is a physicist who teaches humanities at M.I.T. His most recent book is “The Accidental Universe.”

Religion and Ignorance

To the Editor:

Re “Religion for $1,000, Alex” (column, April 27): As one who teaches world history to first-year college students, I can certainly testify that the ignorance and misinformation about religion that Nicholas Kristof catalogs is indeed widespread.

Many of my students are astonished to learn that there are two different “creation” stories in Genesis, and different accounts of Jesus’ lineage in the Gospels, and that these accounts contradict one another.

But Mr. Kristof’s implication that secularists do not care about religious knowledge is not fair. Secularists, including historians like me, care deeply about how religion motivates people’s actions, both for good and for ill. Secularists often try to show the similarities across religions, which makes the special pleading of any one religion for its role in history or its claim on the truth less compelling.

And many secularists wish that all people would study religious texts carefully, to see how they lend themselves to varied interpretations as well as to show the internal tensions and inconsistencies in many religious texts and doctrines.

ROBERT SHAFFER

 Shippensburg, Pa., April 27, 2014

 

The writer is a history professor at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

To the Editor: 

Nicholas Kristof’s column had me chuckling through the biblical bloopers. As a professor of religious studies, I’ve seen many of those same mistakes on exams and papers. I’ve taught in the Bible Belt and the godless Northeast, and curiously the bloopers are more apparent in the Bible Belt.

Yes, we need better religious literacy, but we also need to get beyond the quiz-show variety of religious knowledge.

Religion is not a set of beliefs and doctrines held by people who read texts. That deeply Protestant conception is the first thing that must give way if we are to find a better understanding of diverse religious traditions.

Instead of knowledge, people who are religious have expertise. That is because religion is a technology, an art and craft created in and through human bodies in time and space. The devout handle objects, sing, sway, sniff and see.

To learn about the religious lives of others, we need readings in the humanities, just as we need to engage the lived practices of those who may or may not have all the answers.

S. BRENT PLATE

 Clinton, N.Y., April 27, 2014

 

The writer, a visiting associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, is the author of “A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects.” 

Lessons at 65

Lessons at 65:

1. Forever gentle in speech. And ever-ready to apologize if in the wrong. 

2. Respect facts. Don't lie. Don't falsely accuse. Don't project your shortcomings unto others. If you are ugly, fat, vertically challenged, stingy, ignorant, blind and dense, don't tell somebody who's your superior in looks, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, and wit, that he suffers of the same afflictions as you do. Self-projection and imputing faults on others are hallmarks of despicable cowards and mother-fucking ignoramuses and ugly bitches.

3. If a woman is not loved by a certain man, it's because she is repulsive in appearance and character, and not because he doesn't  know about love, especially if he is attractive, charming, and witty, and women have flocked to him like bees to honey. 

4. Have some respect for yourself.  Improve your appearance, finance, and mind. Learn a foreign language. Read serious books. Cultivate love and understanding, not envy and resentment. Be objective about yourself. Look at yourself more closely in the mirror.

5. Ask yourself a square question: Am I lovable or am I a stupid, short, ugly, ignorant, fat bitch?

Truths and Losers

Fantasies While in Fear and Trembling

Truths often hit me at night when the stillness of the moment brings out insights with startling clarity, not counting of my mind's recollections and flirtations with words and language usage. Those episodic arrivals of truths have comforted me and reinforced a self-image and self-identity that has furnished me with a defiant and fierce pride and conviction, not unlike the silly beliefs that theists have about their Creator. Those episodic arrivals have provided a much needed palliative for my mind's darker moments when self-destruction seems to hold much promise. I have a feeling that everybody's talents are tied up and linked with their pathologies. We are all sucked into the vortex and maelstrom of the yin and yang of warring opposites and we all struggle to find the balancing. I am drawn to the melancholy of life while having an irrepressible sense of humor. I am touched when I am shown love but I delight in making myself unlikable, let alone lovable. A friend of mine recently said both theists and atheists are wrong in their dogmatic positions and the truth is somewhere in between. I wonder by playing it safe and embracing relativism and agnosticism, he is on to something profound or whether he is facilely flippant and easy. Somehow it's easier and more "natural" for me to embrace the view that God is only a concept invented by Man, and not an entity. Anyway, I used to, in my youth and middle passage, take full and uncompromising pride in my glaring eccentricity, agitating emotionalism, and abiding loneliness. Now it appears that a vaulting pride of my "intellect" coupled with a deep contempt for the masses are creeping into my soul while outwardly I try to evince polite, mannered speech and respectable attires, and in my mind echo the haunting final words uttered by Edgar Allen Poe, the poet and writer of several unforgettable poems and short stories, during his delirious struggle with Death, "I was never really insane, except on occasion when my heart was touched.”

A loser, an ugly, poor, stupid, fat, untalented female midget kike who has chased after me for 15 years, recently characterized me as a loser like herself. Her action reminded me of a similar deed by another midget. I have learned something from these two vertically challenged bitches: cowardice, self-deception, and stupidity tend to go together. From now on, I will cut loose from my association any bitch or son of a bitch which is cowardly or self-lying or stupid, because sooner or later it would say something stupid similar to what these two midgets said about me. These two motherfuckers and pond scum suckers didn't really know what they got themselves into.

Love Story by David Brooks

Preface by Wissai

We can only love what we understand, treasure, and miss.

Eight months ago, I came across a passage in a book that has haunted me since. It was in Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin, and it concerns a night Berlin spent in Leningrad in 1945. Berlin was hanging out when a friend asked if he’d like to go visit Anna Akhmatova. Not knowing much about her, Berlin said yes. 

Twenty years older than Berlin, Akhmatova had been a great pre-revolutionary poet. Since 1925, the Soviets had allowed her to publish nothing. Her first husband had been executed on false charges in 1921. In 1938, her son was taken prisoner. For 17 months, Akhmatova had stood outside his prison, vainly seeking news of him.

Berlin was taken to her apartment and met a woman still beautiful and powerful, but wounded by tyranny and the war. At first, their conversation was restrained. They talked about war experiences and British universities. Visitors came and went.

By midnight, they were alone, sitting on opposite ends of her room. She told him about her girlhood and marriage and her husband’s execution. She began to recite Byron’s “Don Juan” with such passion that Berlin turned his face to the window to hide his emotions. She began reciting some of her own poems, breaking down as she described how they had led the Soviets to execute one of her colleagues.

By 4 in the morning, they were talking about the greats. They agreed about Pushkin and Chekhov. Berlin liked the light intelligence of Turgenev, while Akhmatova preferred the dark intensity of Dostoyevsky. 

Deeper and deeper they talked, baring their souls. Akhmatova confessed her loneliness, expressed her passions, spoke about literature and art. Berlin had to go to the bathroom but didn’t dare break the spell. They had read all the same things, knew what the other knew, understood each other’s longings. That night, Ignatieff writes, Berlin’s life “came as close as it ever did to the still perfection of art.” He finally pulled himself away and returned to his hotel. It was 11 a.m. He flung himself on the bed and exclaimed, “I am in love; I am in love.”

Today we live in a utilitarian moment. We’re surrounded by data and fast-flowing information. “Our reason has become an instrumental reason,” as Leon Wieseltier once put it, to be used to solve practical problems.

The night Berlin and Akhmatova spent together stands as the beau ideal of a different sort of communication. It’s communication between people who think that the knowledge most worth attending to is not found in data but in the great works of culture, in humanity’s inherited storehouse of moral, emotional and existential wisdom. 

Berlin and Akhmatova were from a culture that assumed that, if you want to live a decent life, you have to possess a certain intellectual scope. You have to grapple with the big ideas and the big books that teach you how to experience life in all its richness and make subtle moral and emotional judgments. 

Berlin and Akhmatova could experience that sort of life-altering conversation because they had done the reading. They were spiritually ambitious. They had the common language of literature, written by geniuses who understand us better than we understand ourselves. 

The night also stands as the beau ideal of a certain sort of bond. This sort of love depends on so many coincidences that it only happens once or twice in a lifetime. Berlin and Akhmatova felt all the pieces fitting amazingly into place. They were the same in many ways. There was such harmony that all the inner defenses fell down in one night. 

If you read the poems Akhmatova wrote about that night, you get the impression that they slept together, but, according to Ignatieff, they barely touched. Their communion was primarily intellectual, emotional and spiritual, creating a combination of friendship and love. If friends famously confront the world side by side and lovers live face to face, Berlin and Akhmatova seemed to somehow enact both postures at once. They shared and also augmented each other’s understanding.

For Berlin, this night was the most important event of his life. Akhmatova was stuck in the Soviet Union, living under a regime of manipulation, fear and lies. She suffered horrendously for it. The regime decided that she had cavorted with a British spy. She was expelled from the Writer’s Union. Her son was thrown into prison. She was desolated but never blamed Berlin, speaking of him fervently and writing movingly about the numinous magic of that night. 

I’m old enough to remember when many people committed themselves to this sort of life and dreamed of this sort of communion — the whole Great Books/Big Ideas thing. I am not sure how many people believe in or aspire to this sort of a life today. I’m not sure how many schools prepare students for this kind of love.