This and That III

 Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
-- Walt Whitman

 Lecherous profs have been around forever.  Most often they are in the liberal arts, the tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, blue jeans and loafers type.  
I was not an English lit major but once  an English lit prof overheard 19-year-old me yakking about how I enjoyed reading Henry Miller and liked Charles Bukowski's and Kenneth Rexroth's poetry.
Pow! He was on me like white on rice, or, since he was black, um...hmm...well, like some appropriate  comparison that will come to me later.
That guy tried every which way to seduce me.  Along with my literary interests I played the piano and through my enthusiasm for Maurice Ravel had developed an interest in Les Apaches and especially the pianist Ricardo Viñes, so this guy tried to snow me by pontificating about the music of that era, though it was immediately clear to me that he knew nothing about it.
One time he said he was having a soirée at his home with a number of students and faculty and invited me to attend.  Suspecting nothing, I went only to discover I was the only one there. Ushering me into his parlor wearing a bathrobe and slippers, he said the others were just running late....
Aaaand the rest of the story shall remain untold. Unless you buy me a drink.  Um...better make it two.... 
Okay, okay, save your drinks, they would only make me barf anyway.  Nothing happened.  As my dad would say, I may have been born at night, but I was not born last night, so I got the picture right away, about faced and marched right out of there.

Speaking of Ravel, there's a well know anecdote recounting that when George Gershwin asked Ravel to give him composing lessons, Ravel said, “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you’re a first-rate Gershwin?”
Many have considered that a put-down by Ravel, which it was not at all.  Gershwin asked Ravel this at a party in honor of soprano Eva Gauthier and in declining his request Ravel was basically saying that Gershwin should follow his own muse, as Gauthier had done.
The interaction between Gershwin and Ravel is quite interesting.  According to Howard Pollack, author of George Gershwin: His Life and Work, there was a real aesthetic difference between the two that Ravel did not want to interfere with. Pollack described Ravel as the aristocrat of music and Gershwin as a sort of man of the streets composer.  "There’s really an interesting dichotomy there. They admired each other, but probably from some distance," wrote Pollack. Well, I don't know.  Being a fan of Ravel's Concerto in G, looking at the first movement, it's pretty obvious that Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue got inside Ravel's head. 

"References to BBC are actually quite common in ancient texts from the Mediterranean and the Middle East, including The Bible:
Ezekial 23
Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
The Hebrews tended to use the terms 'Egypt' and 'Egyptians' in a loose sense to encompass Nubia and Nubians. The Egyptians were perceived as a dark-skinned Other."
~ Peter Frost

That Old Testament is something else, ain't it?  All that incest, rape, family dysfunction, murder, depravity and genocide.  But maybe it is just telling it like it was among semi-civilized tribes thousands of years ago. Not a lot different from what goes on in the boondocks of Afghanistan today, and probably a lot of other places as well.  Cartel-controlled areas of Mexico, for example.  Civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism and savagery that's hard to establish and harder to maintain.  I much prefer the New Testament and don't pay a lot of attention to the Old. It's too alien.  I don't relate to ancient middle easterners or their ways.  I am much more comfortable with the Germanized Christianity (as defined by James Russell in The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity) than I am with anything non-European.

But if you stripped me naked, tied me up and tickled me unmercifully while loudly playing The Tammys' "Egyptian Shumba,"  I would confess that I suspect all religions to be just plastic banana, phony baloney, good-time rock-and-roll.  Whistling past the graveyard. But what do I know?  I'm only a grassland hominid evolved into an apex predator with a brain too big for its own good. 
And being tortured like that, I would confess to anything you wanted me to confess to.  I would just John McCain it with my mental fingers crossed.  Wouldn't you?

I do often suspect that God is a randy practical joker fond of slapstick humor and sick jokes.  After all, He created human beings didn't He?

About the fixation on gigantic organic gamete injectors, I think that's a guy thing more than a gal thing, and has to do with dominance displays toward other males, as has been recorded among various species of monkey, and not toward females. For a female, the mind and how it is stimulated is vastly more important, at least to me, anyway (always have to be careful not to project! -- no pun intended). As with that English lit prof I wrote about above:  I didn't care how big his Mr. Happy might have been, as far as I was concerned he was a creep.  Make that a Creep with a capital "C."  And that's all he was or ever would be.

 "We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it."
~ Michael Crichton

When I read right-wing websites I am always impressed, sometimes stunned, by the vicious hatred of women the writers and commenters express, especially, as I've noted before, hatred of white women -- by white men, mind you.  I can't help wondering how many wife-beaters and other abusers there are among these people.  And also serial killers.  I'm serious about that.  The hatred of women is so intense and so relentlessly expressed that you really have to consider that. In fact, I know one police officer who, after reading some columns by one of the contributors to a particular on-line publication, expressed the belief that he might well be a serial killer, not of women in his case, but homosexual men.  He's looking into it now, but has stopped talking about it, which indicates to me that it is a serious investigation.

 “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

"Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
― Herman Melville

Look Away

 

The Loneliness of the Military Historian

By Margaret Atwood
 

Confess: it’s my profession

that alarms you.

This is why few people ask me to dinner,

though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.

I wear dresses of sensible cut

and unalarming shades of beige,

I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser’s:

no prophetess mane of mine,

complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.

If I roll my eyes and mutter,

if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror

like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,

I do it in private and nobody sees

but the bathroom mirror.

 

 

 

 

In general I might agree with you:

women should not contemplate war,

should not weigh tactics impartially,

or evade the word enemy,

or view both sides and denounce nothing.

Women should march for peace,

or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,

spit themselves on bayonets

to protect their babies,

whose skulls will be split anyway,

or, having been raped repeatedly,

hang themselves with their own hair.

These are the functions that inspire general comfort.

That, and the knitting of socks for the troops

and a sort of moral cheerleading.

Also: mourning the dead.

Sons, lovers, and so forth.

All the killed children.

Instead of this, I tell

what I hope will pass as truth.

A blunt thing, not lovely.

The truth is seldom welcome,

especially at dinner,

though I am good at what I do.

My trade is courage and atrocities.

I look at them and do not condemn.

I write things down the way they happened,

as near as can be remembered.

I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.

Wars happen because the ones who start them

think they can win.

 

In my dreams there is glamour.

The Vikings leave their fields

each year for a few months of killing and plunder,

much as the boys go hunting.

In real life they were farmers.

They come back loaded with splendor.

The Arabs ride against Crusaders

with scimitars that could sever

silk in the air.

A swift cut to the horse’s neck

and a hunk of armor crashes down

like a tower. Fire against metal.

A poet might say: romance against banality.

When awake, I know better.

 

 

 

Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.

Finish one off, and circumstances

and the radio create another.

Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently

to God all night and meant it,

and been slaughtered anyway.

Brutality wins frequently,

and large outcomes have turned on the invention

of a mechanical device, viz. radar.

True, valor sometimes counts for something,

as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right—

though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,

is decided by the winner. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades

and burst like paper bags of guts

to save their comrades.

I can admire that.

But rats and cholera have won many wars.

Those, and potatoes,

or the absence of them.

It’s no use pinning all those medals

across the chests of the dead.

Impressive, but I know too much.

Grand exploits merely depress me.

 

 

In the interests of research

I have walked on many battlefields

that once were liquid with pulped

men’s bodies and spangled with exploded

shells and splayed bone.

All of them have been green again

by the time I got there.

Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.

Sad marble angels brood like hens

over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.

(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar

or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)

The word glory figures a lot on gateways.

Of course I pick a flower or two

from each, and press it in the hotel Bible

for a souvenir.

I’m just as human as you.

 

 But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.

Also statistics:

for every year of peace there have been four hundred

years of war.

 

One step beyond

 I know about an incident very similar to that depicted in this dramatization.  Something that couldn't possibly have happened, but did.

 First broadcast October 6, 1959.

"Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven, nor one single star can revolve but by some invisible power, how then can this one small heart beat, this one small brain think thoughts, unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I."
― Herman Melville

Dear Raymond

 

Downwind from the Sun

We sailed most of the day--42 miles as the seagull flies from the Long Beach light--to reach Santa Barbara Island, which is only a twin-peaked dot about a mile square far out in the ocean all by itself. There's no cove, just an open roadstead down from Arch Point on the east side of the island, which provides shelter from the prevailing westerlies.
We landed our Zodiac on some flat rocks and hiked the island. No one else was there. There's supposed to be a park ranger, but I guess he had gone off somewhere. We visited the sea lion rookeries around Shag Rock, snorkeled in the kelp beds, watched the sea birds enjoying perfect freedom.
The next morning we set sail for San Nicholas Island, another solitary, 24 miles to the southwest. We seemed to fly there, running on a reach before 25-knot winds. We were so far away from any sign of land or civilization that we could have been on another planet.

We anchored at Pyramid Cove off the southeast end of the island and snorkeled among the kelp beds there, too, dodging curious sea lions. I remember it was very windy, and sand blew down on us from the heights of the island, which is a long way from the mainland. I think the closest point is Port Hueneme, well over 50 miles of open ocean away.
At night I slept on deck as I had at Santa Barbara Island and watched the stars. They seemed so close and so bright, with no lights dimming the darkness. It was like being inside an upside-down bowl of stars, because they arched from horizon to horizon with nothing to block them. They rose from the sea and sank into the sea. The Milky Way was a river of stars bisecting the universe and I had a clear sense of spinning at the rim of the galaxy on the edge of infinity.  The meteors that streaked across the sky, some leaving persistent smoke trails, only enhanced the intense understanding of just how vast the universe was.  Without being aware of it, I grasped a deck cleat and clung to it, afraid of falling upward into eternity.
After raising anchor the next morning, we sailed before the prevailing northwesterlies to Santa Catalina Island, rushing through the seas in a perfect glory of sun, foaming waves and sea spray. We moored in Catalina Harbor at the isthmus, on the southwest side of the island. This is a very dramatic, narrow inlet, calm and perfectly protected--such a contrast with the breezy open anchorages of the other islands, with their endless ocean swells and hazardous holding grounds, requiring you to set two anchors for safety.  We walked over to Doug's on the other side of the isthmus at Two Harbors and had cheeseburgers, fries and draft Miller's while listening to day sailors and hikers chat, watched the ferry from San Pedro arrive and depart. I was back.  From wherever I had been.
I had a sudden recollection of that trip the other day and fell into a vivid reverie. The trip was one of the high points of my life, not only for the physical sensations but because of the people I was with and the thoughts in my head. I didn't know it at the time. I guess we never know that when we are living the experience. We only realize it later, when it's gone forever.
These days, I try to make myself aware of the passing of time, of what my life is like at the moment. I remind myself that all this so-very-real present will soon be vanished irrecoverably, lost in an ever-receding past.  At some point, we will only remember a few distorted highlights...if we haven't completely forgotten it. 
The story of our past life is like an absorbing novel that we once read.  We recall reading it, the title is familiar, maybe we vaguely recall what it was about, but the details that kept us turning the pages, that made us regret turning the last page knowing we could never again read it for the first time...well, that's all gone. 
And so it is with our own lives.  All those first times....  I've sailed the Seven Seas many times since my sail to Santa Barbara Island but that was the first time I'd ever sailed out of sight of land, saw the night sky unimpeded by lights and land, heard no human sound.  I swore I would never forget it.  But it is only a washed-out memory now no matter how hard I try to recall every detail, every image, every thought, every emotion.  I can't.  It's gone.

"Oh! Then was the sea like a living creature -- cold, but with a mighty, throbbing heart. I was walking on the heart of the sea; I was sleeping on it; and I could always, night and day, feel it beating beneath my feet, or beneath my back. Or perhaps it was the life, the heart, of the ship that I felt. For now I knew that our schooner was superbly alive. She carried, amid the snow of her sails, a living heart and soul."
--Barbara Newhall Follet, Voyage of the Norman D

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

~ John Masefield

This and That II

“The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
― George Washington Burnap

I was chatting with two Japanese women and a Chinese woman and the talk turned to the violent attacks on Orientals that have been in the news lately and the Chinese woman said that if the US police and courts won't do anything to stop it maybe China should send army units to take over American cities and enforce law and order.  I started to smile, not taking her statement seriously, but then I noticed the looks on the faces of the two Japanese women.  They looked afraid.

At first, I misread the headline and laughed out loud!

“Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind.”
― Joseph Addison 

Poet Kenneth Rexroth, dubbed "the father of the beat generation," once said that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that liberals actually believe the lyrics of love songs; that is, they possess a youthful wishfulness and naivety throughout their lives that those of a conservative bent either never had or quickly outgrew, and a good way to preserve that naivety is to avoid confrontations with reality.

 “Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”
― Camille Paglia

 One of my best friends was a Jewish girl with a similar background to me. She was an Air Force brat and officer via ROTC, helped pay her way through college with a series of odd jobs, and I was a Navy brat and officer via OCS and helped pay my way ditto. I only knew she was Jewish because one time we were invited to Christmas dinner  and she mentioned it and I said, "Huh.  Didn't know that.  So you're not coming?"  And she said, "And miss a free meal?  Didn't I just say I was Jewish?"  I knew Scotsmen were supposed to be skinflints but I hadn't know Jews were too.
When we were both stationed on Guam, she got a ride for me on a B-52 when a Japanese film crew came down to Andersen to do a story and since I am fluent in Japanese she arranged for me to be our side's interpreter.
The Japanese on-air talent showed up dressed as if he were going on stage during retro night at the Grand Ole Opry, with rhinestone suit, garish cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.  I thought he was an arrogant moron and so he proved to be, preferring to ask questions of the crew in his incomprehensible English rather than speak through me in Japanese.  I had to constantly reinterpret for him. Ugh.
We flew a simulated low-altitude bombing run to the range at Farallon de Medinilla and this guy lost his cookies all over his fancy suit.  To be fair, it was a very bumpy, bouncy ride.
I never saw the TV program, but I got the impression it had already been done except for video of the the base and a bomber and crew in action. I suppose it was a typical Japanese production about an American topic -- they consider us stupid and dangerous but entertaining and our country a carnival side show staffed by Darwin Award contestants.

“Discouragement is a moral state, a failure of heart; you treat it by taking courage, not Prozac.”
― David Gelernter

"A proper invasion of Taiwan would mean the largest amphibious invasion in human history. An operation on this scale could not be disguised or hidden. We would know about it weeks, and perhaps months, in advance. The weather in the Strait is treacherous. There are only a few months every year where such an invasion could occur, and only a few beaches where an invading force could safely land.
"Our era is defined by a precision-munitions weapons regime. This sort of weapons regime heavily favors the defense. The same A2/AD [Anti-access/area denial],  logic that keeps the U.S. Navy away from Chinese shores can work to keep PLAN vessels away from Taiwanese shores. Missiles, drones, and mines can destroy invading ships many times their cost and inflict thousands of casualties. 
"The PLA is an organization with human-capital problems. I have met kids in the PLA. I naively expected them to exude the confidence, competence, and intelligence of America's enlisted servicemen. They don't. The PLA is an organization with no combat experience, and the Chinese government having told their people for so long that Taiwanese reunification is inevitable and pacification easy, it is not clear to me that PLA peasant-soldiers, products of single-child families, and the broader Chinese public, will be all that resilient in the face of military casualties, setbacks or disruption."
~ Tanner Greer 

“One must never underestimate the profound bigotry, anti-intellectualism, intolerance and illiberality of liberalism.”
― Richard John Neuhaus 

 

 Setting aside all the profound differences among the various white nationalities and subcultures — as different as white eye and hair colors and skin tones — I’ve always thought that a profound pensiveness and melancholia, tied in some way to our love of our past, of our native soil, of our homelands, is very characteristically white, perhaps more northern white than Mediterranean, but even so….
Also a love of the sea, of storms, fog and forest, of nature, of animals, of grand vistas, mountain fastnesses, remote wilderness…and an incurable wanderlust, an urge to see what's over the next hill, around the next bend.
And also a joy in camaraderie and revelry, and a love of daring, of adventure, of challenge — “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” — in the words of Tennyson.
Or maybe that's just me.

The handshake game is too interesting to ever go away.  I recall reading an old Saturday Evening Post essay by a man who reckoned he was only four handshakes away from George Washington.  My great-grandfather was friends with Charles Lindbergh, whom he met in 1929 when Lucky Lindy visited the Saratoga in Panama.  How many famous people had Lindbergh shaken hands with by that time?  Since I've shaken hands with my father who shook hands with his father, have I in some way shaken hands with all those famous people?   Or does not knowing who they were make it not count?
My great-grandmother was friends with Anne Morrow before she became Mrs. Lindbergh.  I have a photo of my great-grandmother with Anne and Mary Pickford at some social function; she must have shaken hands with Pickford, and since I have...etc...does that mean I have shaken hands with...etc.?
My father once shook hands with G. Gordon Liddy, who was a speaker at some rubber-chicken dinner event -- and I can hear my dad correcting me that it was Liddy who shook hands with him, heh -- so since I've shaken hands with my father, I've vicariously shaken hands with Liddy who must have shaken hands with Richard Nixon who must have shaken hands with Dwight Eisenhower who....

“Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals.”
― Camille Paglia

Wait for me!

 

We used to be smarter, or at least better educated

Believe it or not, I read the following fairly obscure and erudite joke in a science fiction story by Murray Leinster (nee William Fitzgerald Jenkins), "Sam, This is You," first published in the May, 1955, edition of Galaxy:   

A telephone lineman's girlfriend, urging him to aspire to better things, asks him: "Do you want to spend your life with your arms wrapped around a pole?" And he replies, "Well, it was good enough for George Sand." 

You don't get it?  Well, see, the composer Frédéric Chopin was Polish and George Sand, who was a girl not a boy, was a 19th century French novelist with whom he had an intense affair.  The artist Eugène Delacroix even painted a portrait of them together.  Neither Leinster nor his editor, H.L. Gold, thought the joke would fly above the heads of the magazine's audience, primarily young men, including lots of high school and even junior high school students.  Alas, could the same be said today? 

 The Great Guildersleeve, a family situation comedy spun off from Fibber McGee and Molly, was immediately popular when it premiered in 1941. It was sponsored by Kraft Foods, which used the show to promote Parkay margarine and its new product, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese -- "cooks in seven minutes!"  The adventures of buffoonish Uncle Guildy and his starry-eyed niece Margery and school-hating nephew Leroy centered around life in the small town of Summerfield.  

In one episode, broadcast in 1942, Leroy is complaining because he has to memorize a chunk of Longfellow's narrative poem Hiawatha and recite it in front of the class.  Guildersleeve chides him, reminding him that the other students in his class also have to memorize parts of the poem and recite it so that the whole poem will be recited by the class.  Then he says that he had to memorize the poem when he was in school and can still remember it.  He begins intoning "This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green...."

Guildy, Margery and Leroy.

Margery interrupts him and sarcastically says, "That's Evangeline!" as the live audience laughs loudly.   The audience got the joke and when the script was written everyone involved with the show knew the radio audience would get the joke, too, because everybody in those days had to read those poems in school and memorize parts of them.  They had to learn other poems as well. It was part of being socialized as an American, so everyone could recite The Village Blacksmith, The Snow Storm and The Old Oaken Bucket, to name just a few.

But today?  What kid is required to memorize any poem, let alone one as demanding as Evangeline or Hiawatha? What kid has even heard of them?  What teacher, for that matter.

In a 1943 broadcast of the Jack Benny Show, a comedy-variety program sponsored by Post Grape Nuts Flakes cereal, one of the commercials for the cereal was made up  of the names of four operas:  Faust, Aida, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. The audience laughed at the cleverness of the bit.  Again, neither the writer, sponsor or anyone else associated with the show thought such a commercial would fly over the heads of the audience because everybody knew those operas, familiar old standards that lots of people could pick out a tune from on the piano or sing.

But today?  How many people have even heard of these operas  -- or any opera -- and would "get" the  commercial?  It would make no sense to them.  Certainly no ad agency would approve of such a commercial.

I could drag out a bunch more similar examples  -- Leroy's grade school teacher referring to Guildersleeve and Judge Hooker's friendship as like that between Damon and Pythias; the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Long-haired Hare" in which Bugs' conductor character is reverently called Leopold and the audience knew and appreciated that the reference is to Leopold Stokowski  -- but I think the point is made:  People were smarter, better educated and more sophisticated in their tastes generations ago than they are today.

Why is that?  What have we done to ourselves?

Here are two stanzas from Longfellow's The Village Blacksmith.  Isn't this a poem every child would be better off learning by heart so that it could be recalled easily to mind throughout life?

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees it close.
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

The Jack Benny program with the "opera" ad.  It begins at 13:06 into the show.

October!

 

Indian Ghosts

INJUN SUMMER
John T. McCutcheon
Chicago Tribune
September 30, 1907

Yep, sonny this is sure enough Injun summer. Don't know what that is, I reckon, do you? Well, that's when all the homesick Injuns come back to play; You know, a long time ago, long afore yer granddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here—thousands—millions, I reckon, far as that's concerned. Reg'lar sure 'nough Injuns—none o' yer cigar store Injuns, not much. They wuz all around here—right here where you're standin'.

Don't be skeered—hain't none around here now, leastways no live ones. They been gone this many a year.

They all went away and died, so they ain't no more left.

But every year, 'long about now, they all come back, leastways their sperrits do. They're here now. You can see 'em off across the fields. Look real hard. See that kind o' hazy misty look out yonder? Well, them's Injuns—Injun sperrits marchin' along an' dancin' in the sunlight. That's what makes that kind o' haze that's everywhere—it's jest the sperrits of the Injuns all come back. They're all around us now.

See off yonder; see them tepees? They kind o' look like corn shocks from here, but them's Injun tents, sure as you're a foot high. See 'em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o' smell in the air? That's the campfires a-burnin' and their pipes a-goin'.

Lots o' people say it's just leaves burnin', but it ain't. It's the campfires, an' th' Injuns are hoppin' 'round 'em t'beat the old Harry.

You jest come out here tonight when the moon is hangin' over the hill off yonder an' the harvest fields is all swimmin' in the moonlight, an' you can see the Injuns and the tepees jest as plain as kin be. You can, eh? I knowed you would after a little while.

Jever notice how the leaves turn red 'bout this time o' year? That's jest another sign o' redskins. That's when an old Injun sperrit gits tired dancin' an' goes up an' squats on a leaf t'rest. Why I kin hear 'em rustlin' an' whisper in' an' creepin' 'round among the leaves all the time; an' ever' once'n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost and comes floatin' down to the ground. See—here's one now. See how red it is? That's the war paint rubbed off'n an Injun ghost, sure's you're born.

Purty soon all the Injuns'll go marchin' away agin, back to the happy huntin' ground, but next year you'll see 'em troopin' back—th' sky jest hazy with 'em and their campfires smolderin' away jest like they are now.

 From his pipe the smoke ascending
Filled the sky with haze and vapor,
Filled the air with dreamy softness,
Gave a twinkle to the water,
Touched the rugged hills with smoothness,
Brought the tender Indian Summer
To the melancholy north-land,
In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
     Hiawatha, 1855

 

Nothing Ever Changes

 

Dearest Henry

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

―Henry Miller

 “I don't know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late.”

 ―Henry Miller

 

“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny,  serves to defeat us.” 

 ―Henry Miller

“Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.” 

  ―Henry Miller

“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.” 

 ―Henry Miller

 “I don't give a fuck anymore what's behind me, or what's ahead of me. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!” 

  ―Henry Miller

“What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”

  ―Henry Miller 

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.”

  ―Henry Miller

  “A good meal, a good talk, a good fuck--what better way to pass the day?” 

 ―Henry Miller

 

 

To A White Girl

 I love you
Because you’re white.
Your whiteness
Is a silky thread
Snaking through my thoughts
In red hot patterns
Of lust and desire.

I hate you
Because you’re white.
Your white flesh
Is nightmare food.
You’re my Moby Dick,
white witch.
Loving you thus
And hating you so,
My heart is torn in two.

   ~ Eldridge Cleaver

 

JAP, not Jap

The other day, I heard someone talking in an office I was walking by.  Her voice had a sharp, abrasive, vaguely New Yorky accent that reminded me of a former university acquaintance, a transfer student from Brandeis, I once gave a ride to when her white BMW (given to her by her parents) was in the shop again. She gingerly got into my lime green Mustang that I bought used with my own money and thought was totally the coolest car ever, as if it were one giant cootie.
She clutched both sides of her seat in a death grip and cringed back into the headrest as we catapulted up the on-ramp into freeway traffic. Once settled into the fast lane, I turned on the radio just as Tenth Avenue North’s song “By Your Side” came on. I turned up the radio as I shouted “Oh, I love this song!" (did I mention the top was down?) and began singing along. It was at that moment that I learned the true meaning of the phrases, “If looks could kill,” and “She looked daggers at me.”
Despite my efforts to be nice to her, she’d already made it pretty clear that I was some variety of subhuman because of my generic southern accent and the fact I was a service brat, but that I was an unapologetic Christian was the final straw.
I knew lots of folks get the dry heaves at the mere thought of contemporary Christian music, so at the time I didn’t think her reaction was all that big a deal. But thenceforth she would not even say hello to me when our paths crossed. I heard that she referred to me using compound adjectives describing my alleged political affiliation, eating habits, sexual proclivities and ancestry. I was hurt.
Sniff.
Okay, okay, I wasn’t hurt. I didn't think much about it at all.  I just shrugged.

 Before the above episode happened, how I met this girl, the first Jewish individual I ever knew -- or at least knew was Jewish -- was that she glomed on to me because I was a surfer and she was hot to hook up with what she called a surf Nazi, that being not at all what surfers mean when they say surf Nazi.  

What she meant was a surfer dude, a broad-shouldered, muscular, tall guy with sun-bleached blond hair and an outdoor tan, somewhat under-endowed between the ears but very well endowed between the legs.  Her fantasy fuck in other words, not someone to introduce to mom and dad but someone to boast about to her friends.

The problem was that she was a very...um...ethnic-looking, had a figure like an ironing board and a personality like a rattlesnake.  Oh, and she couldn't swim, let alone surf, and never tried to learn.  Her hunting technique was to lie on the beach in her thousand-dollar Rodeo Drive one-piece with obvious bra padding and say to any dude who walked by after riding the waves, "That looked dangerous!"  The guy would glance at her and give a wan smile without breaking his stride.

I surfed, so naturally had conversations with guys on the beach before going out about the waves and the wind and what not, sometimes chatted while floating if the waves weren't cooperating, and walked back up the beach with them afterwards.  When we passed by her, of course I had to stop and say hello, which gave her a chance to ask who my friend was and trot out her that-looks-dangerous routine.  That always fell flat because we surfed because it was fun and sometimes transcendental.  It could be dangerous, but like any physical skill you learned and managed the risks so that you could do what you wanted to do.

Saying surfing looked dangerous was like telling motorcycle racers that they must have a death wish and thinking that would attract them to you.

I mean, really.

Sometimes we would have little beach parties after sunset, with a fire sending up sparks to blend with the stars, sip a little happy juice, cook hotdogs, chat and cuddle.  She would invite herself along and try to join in, but it was always uncomfortable because her behavior wasn't...how can I explain it?...natural.  She wasn't one of us and clearly didn't want to be.  She was slumming among her inferiors for purposes of her own.  Still, out of courtesy, we tried to make her feel welcome.

She had her eye on one quite splendid example of the male animal and repeatedly made plays for him that he never seemed to notice.  But that never fazed her.  She kept at it until one evening, not seeing him by the fire, she went looking for him and discovered him giving a surfer girl an enthusiastic demonstration of kama sutra techniques.  Awkward. 

After that she never came around anymore, and after the Mustang episode she never talked to me again.

A few years later I saw her once more by chance.  She was performing at a comedy club in Oceanside that had a lot of Marine clientele.  I was there with a couple of crayon-eaters and was surprised to see her because I had assumed she had gone back east and married a stockbroker or something.  Her routine was of the "they're wrong" type, not the "it's funny because it's true" type.  I guess it was okay.  I'm not a judge of such things, but the audience laughed and clapped.  Anyway, I thought I should go up to her after her act and say hello, but then I forgot about it and only remembered as we were in the parking lot and I was climbing onto the pillion seat of my date's motorcycle.  I was about to say "Oh, wait, I forgot to..." when I stopped myself and thought, why should you say hello to her?  She never liked you and only wanted to use you to get what she wanted.  When that didn't work she dropped you. Why are you always trying to be nice to everybody?  Some people don't deserve being nice to.  So I mentally shrugged, wrapped my arms around my date and hung on tight as we roared south along the Pacific Coast Highway.

 

Friends

 

This and that

I took a Japanese immigrant senior citizen grocery shopping the other day.  She's lived in this country for more than 40 years.  I bought some things for myself, too, including a jar of malted milk powder.  She looked puzzled at my purchase and asked me how malted milk was different from ordinary powdered milk.  Despite all those decades in this country, she had never heard of malted milk or milk shakes.  

Later, we got to talking about the illegal alien crisis and all the Haitians flooding into Texas and she asked me when the United States had acquired Haiti.  When I said we never had and that it was an independent country, but had once been a colony of France, she was genuinely puzzled:  why were we taking in all those people from  someplace we had no connection too? Then she asked me why we didn't send the army to the border and open fire on the illegals and drive them away.

I used to know a Mexican-American guy who grew up in Salinas and got involved with the gangs there but managed to get away from all that and move to another city where he got a job as an inside bank guard.  He made $11 an hour and was proud of how well he was doing with such a responsible and prestigious job.  Once he asked me didn't I think $11 an hour was good money.  I agreed that it certainly was and he said soon he would have enough money saved to take me out to dinner. Then he got demoted to outside guard.  Instead of being warm and dry inside, with a chair to sit on, he stood outside in all sorts of weather.  And his pay dropped to $8.50 an hour.  Our dinner was postponed.  He had diabetes and the pain in his legs made it impossible to stand for very long.  He lost his job, was evicted from his apartment and then just disappeared.

One of my relatives was an engineer with North American at Downy in the 1960s. He worked on the Apollo Command Module.  I mentioned this to someone I was lunching with once and he said the whole moon landing thing was a hoax and never happened.  I looked at him, looked down at my coffee, then at my wrist where a watch would have been had I been wearing one, said I just realized I had an appointment and had to get going.

When I used to ride the super-crowded commuter trains in Tokyo, sometimes I would be groped.  Once some guy even ejaculated on me.  I didn't realize it until I got home and changed my clothes and saw this...well, you know... and practically tossed my cookies.  I threw that outfit right into the trash.  When I mentioned what had happened to a friend, she complained, "Nobody ever does that to me!"

Another time, when I was walking past a girlie bar in Ayase, the doorman or whatever he was stopped me and asked in broken English if I would like to be a hostess there, handing me a business card.  Then he raised both hands palm up and, smiling, repeated "Oppai!  Oppai!"  

One time I was having dinner with a Japanese graduate student matriculating at Cal and we got to talking about American history.  I mentioned the Civil War. He had never heard of it.  I referenced the Revolution. He looked blank.  He thought slavery was legal throughout the US and that it had only been ended by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s.  I asked him if he thought the attack on Pearl Harbor was revenge for the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima.  He looked thoughtful, then said he had never considered that but it was probably true.

A Japanese immigrant lady in her mid-80s began to get senile and could no longer be trusted to live by herself in her own apartment anymore so her daughter, whom I know, who works long hours and couldn't look after her, found an assisted-living facility that charged $3,000 a month, a figure she could barely afford, and moved her there.  All the staff were Mexicans and the food they served was the cheapest kind of Mexican food, usually just a bean burrito or plain mollete.  The old lady had a hard time eating such food and asked for some Japanese dishes, especially rice, but the request was denied.  Then the facility supervisor announced that all residents had to get Covid-19 shots.  So her daughter took her for an inoculation.  The shot made her so sick that she was hospitalized for three days.  When she returned to her room at the assisted care facility she found that many of her belongings had been stolen, including $390 in cash that she had entrusted to her personal care provider, a Mexican woman.  This woman denied she had been given any money, saying the old lady was senile and imagining things.  Her daughter called the police to report the theft but the dispatcher hung up on her.

This same old Japanese lady owns property in Harajuku that is worth $8 million. Her daughter wants her to sell it so that she can afford to move to a much better assisted-care facility, but the old lady refuses, saying her father (who has been dead for decades) won't let her.  She receives $1,100 a month Social Security, her daughter earns $60,000 a year, and both their savings are almost exhausted.

Once a guy edging by me in a ship's passageway paused, turned around, followed after me and tapped me on the shoulder.  I looked questioningly at him.  He asked me, "If I tell you something, promise you won't 'me too' me? I said, "Sure, I guess."  And he said, "I hope your day is as nice as your ass!"  I said that so far my ass was winning.  Okay, I didn't actually say that, but I thought about saying it.  It had been a crummy day and his lame compliment made me feel good.  I just smiled and went on my way.  But inside my head I was dancing -- not twerking; I don't know how to do that, plus it makes you look like a chimpanzee in heat -- but the Bus Stop, which my mom taught me how to do (it was big in the disco era when she was a hot club babe) and I always dance it when I am happy.  Come on guys!  Don't be shy, give a girl a compliment!

Speaking of compliments, I was showing my friend, who is a real, live PI, around an aircraft carrier one time with some aviator friends and she lagged behind with one guy and later I asked what they were talking about and she said that he was interested to know about her work as a forensic accountant and licensed private investigator.  "He wanted to know if I carried a 'gat.' Kidding, I said I always had one tucked into my garter belt. He said he'd like to see it sometime and I said, what, the gun? and he said no, the garter belt!"

A joke:

There was this guy at a bar just looking at his drink. He stays like that for half of an hour.
Then this big trouble-making truck driver sits down next to him, takes the drink from the guy, and swigs it all down. The poor man starts crying.
The truck driver says, "Come on man, I was just joking. Here, I'll buy you another drink. I can't stand to see a man cry."
"No, it's not that," says the guy. "This day is the worst of my life. First, my alarm clock doesn't go off and I'm way late to work. My boss, outraged, fires me. When I leave the building and go to my car, I discover it has been stolen. The police say that they can do nothing. I get a cab to return home, and when I get out I realize I left my wallet and credit cards in it. The cab driver just drives away.
"I go inside my house, arriving earlier than normal, and find my wife in bed with the gardener and the pool boy. I yell at her but the two men beat me up and throw me out of my own house. So I come to this bar. And just when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, you show up and drink my poison."

Shine, perishing republic

Thomas Hart Benton's "Indifference"

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
      heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops
      and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
      fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
      ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
      is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
      mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their
      distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the
      monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
      a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
      —they say—God, when he walked on earth. 

~ Robinson Jeffers

 I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future ... I would do so foolishly.  The
beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance
of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.

 ~ Robinson Jeffers