Maybe it should feel like work

After a predictably rough holiday season, with more personal and political gloom in the air, I've started writing a new story. For the past several weeks it's seemed like I didn't know what I wanted to read or write, so this feels like a breakthrough of sorts. We were driving past a house that had a widow's walk on the roof, and that made me think of "The Turn of the Screw," though a brief search of the text suggests the strange man in the story appears atop a tower, not on a widow's walk as such. Anyway, that, in turn, made me think of the framed narrative, in which the narrator recounts a story someone else told him. It's also a device H. G. Wells and other old-school science fiction authors often use, and I decided I wanted to try it to tell a ghost-type story.

Also, checking my records, I saw that I had received some rejections recently that included invitations to submit something else. I used to get so excited about those; now I sort of think, "meh, maybe, if I get around to it." But today I responded to a few of those. (It also depends on whether I have something to send, but in this case, I did.)

My point here is that I do not feel particularly inspired or energized by any of this. It feels like something I have to do, or ought to do, because I'm a writer.

But maybe that's how it's supposed to feel. I should know by now that inspiration and joy and energy are only sometimes part of the writing experience. Just as often it feels like going to the dentist. And maybe that's how you know that you've truly taken on this vocation.Whether you're rewarded or not, you do it, because that's what you do.  

It's a new morning...meh.

Time and the time: a belated wish for the New Year

This winter, trying to come up with something tangible that my husband could buy me for Christmas—all I ever really want is for the holidays to be over—I finally settled on a wristwatch.

I took to the Internet to find the simplest possible example. If not actually analog, my new watch had to strongly espouse analog-ness: a large, circular face, with clearly visible numbers and hands—nothing else. I just wanted it to tell me the time. Compared to my phone, which I had been using for that purpose, and which then lured me onto Facebook and Twitter and myriad other distractions every time I checked it, I expected a plain watch to be pure, sanity-restoring elegance.

But looking at one ultra-basic watch after the other dredged up a visceral memory: That Clock. The one I stared at beseechingly throughout my childhood, in 1970s and 80s public school classrooms, where rote, one-size-fits-all learning ruled the day. You probably know That Clock, too. Now sold on EBay, Etsy, and elsewhere as a “vintage” or “old-school school” clock, its current incarnations still preside over all manner of institutional spaces. It’s one foot in diameter, white with slightly-too-thick black numbers and two hands. The versions at my school didn’t even have second hands, because their continuous motion and/or ticking might have drawn attention. Instead, the minute hand lurched forward, presumably regularly, with a thunk.

The institutional clock denies the bored student, or the enmeshed bureaucrat, anything to gaze at or reflect upon. It thwarts distraction, sending its seekers reluctantly back to their work. This was exactly what I had wanted from my new watch, rendered sinister. In places where time feels most oppressive, most necessary to try to accelerate or halt, the anti-aesthetic institutional clock tells us: Don’t bother. The hours and the minutes move no faster or slower than they must. Do not beseech, do not wonder. Do not look up from your task. You will learn nothing more from this dullest of clocks than the time, which is simple, quantifiable, and instantly knowable.

And yet time—as opposed to the time—is anything but dull, simple, or knowable. As I’ve gathered from reading popular cosmology books, time remains a tantalizing conundrum. What’s it made of? How does it function? How might we alter its speed or trajectory? No one really knows. What we do know is that it’s closely related to entropy, the universal tendency toward increasing disorder that originated, in our universe, with the Big Bang. Objects break. Mountains wear down. We grow old, and we die. So far, the arrow has only ever pointed one way.

Time is everything falling apart. And while we realize disorder is inevitable, we have no idea how, or when, or (often) why it will occur. Time is in fact the opposite of the time, of what That Clock says and claims to know. Time is mystery, and surprise.

We humans resemble time—mysterious, surprising, often surprised ourselves. We don’t fully know what we’re made of. But, while disorderly, we’re curious, intelligent, empathetic, creative, and courageous. When things come apart, we can put them back together in new and better ways. And while we can’t yet stop aging (and we may not actually want to), inside we can slow down or speed up, or come at the world from different angles. We can imagine.

So here is my wish for this already advancing new year: Let us embrace time as entropy, not as order. However, I don’t mean we should completely reject That Clock. In fact, we can enlist it in our efforts. Whenever we see it, or any tool of numb officialdom, let’s remember to question its message of resignation. Let That Clock—in fact, any clock, our lovely new wristwatch, even the bewitching clock in our phone—remind us to look up, to dream, wonder, and reflect more often.

And let us imagine and work toward a world where everyone can do the same.

Some cheery thoughts on grief and horror for the new year

I tend not to have very high expectations for the holidays, but this past season was an especially large suckburger with extra moldy cheese. Our cat died rather suddenly, and although the suddenness has an upside (she was probably in for a fair degree of lingering misery), the event plunged us into grief. Which, I'm now reminded, is a feeling not quite like any other ... except, possibly, for horror.

When my father died nearly ten years ago, I had a very strong urge to watch horror movies. Not slasher-type, gory movies, but creepy, terrifying ones (I remember finding The Others especially satisfying). Normally I don't seek out horror, so this was a strange experience.

I haven't had such a strong urge on this occasion, but I have come to think that horror and grief are quite close. There's the same helplessness in the face of suffering and death. The same shivering emptiness. The shock, even when the death is expected. So I suppose that getting through the horror movie, or book, is sort of practice for getting through the grief: a miniature version of the longer, harder process, which contains a promise that you will survive.


Zee Hebert, 2002(?)-2015

Disturbing Christmas Carols, 2013 Edition

The holidays are upon us, and it's time to take a closer look at some of the strange messages being piped into our innocent ears and souls. This year, I'm finding "Frosty the Snowman" particularly unsettling, though perhaps no more so than "Rudolph" or "Little Drummer Boy."

To recap:

Frosty the Snowman, was a jolly happy soul,
With a corn cob pipe and a button nose, and two eyes made of coal.

Frosty the Snowman, is a fairytale, they say.
He was made of snow, but the children know he came to life one day.

There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found,

For when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around!

Oh, Frosty, the Snowman, was alive as he could be;
and the children say he could laugh and play,
just the same as you and me.

Thumpety thump, thump, thumpety thump, thump,
look at Frosty go.

Thumpety thump, thump, thumpety thump, thump,
over the hills of snow.

Frosty the Snowman, knew the sun was hot that day,
so he said, "Let's run, and we'll have some fun now, before I melt away."

Down to the village, with a broomstick in his hand,
Running here and there, all around the square,
sayin', "Catch me if you can."

He led them down the streets of town, right to the traffic cop;

and only paused a moment, when he heard him holler, "Stop!"

For Frosty, the Snowman, had to hurry on his way,
But he waved goodbye, sayin' "Don't cry, I'll be back again some day."

I will not dwell on the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy regarding the silk hat, though I'll note that the lyrics cleverly gloss over the dilemma with that odd conditional, "must have." Is the song firmly committing to the existence of magic, or only speculating, toying with our desire to know for certain? We cannot say. Like Frosty himself, the song dances on the knife edge of being/not being.

No, what strikes me in this season of enforced cheer is the idea of Frosty as memento mori, specifically aimed at children. As he begins to melt, his running and cavorting grow ever more frantic, until the weeping children watch their dwindling friend disappear over the hills. Here we sense the tragic nature of Frosty, who knows he's dying but is determined to entertain till the end; he is the archetypal sad clown. The carpe diem message comes through clearly, and that's a lesson it's never too early to learn.

Yet perhaps Frosty would have been more heroic had he not announced to the children that this was his last day (for now, anyway) on earth. Couldn't he have simply made an excuse that he had an appointment or something? Yes, the children would perhaps have felt confused and hurt. Where is he going? Doesn't he like us anymore? Are we too boring for Frosty, who appears afflicted with ADHD? But now, whenever they see snow, they will think of loss and death intertwined with, and perhaps overshadowing, the fun and beauty of the season.

On the other hand, as Wallace Stephens said, "Death is the mother of beauty." Perhaps winter and snow become more beautiful as we learn to connect them with aging, impermanence, and the witless brutality of nature. Perhaps Frosty sensed these children were old enough to understand this; and perhaps he's a Buddhist and expects to be reincarnated. As, indeed, he may be, every time someone builds a snowman.

All I'm saying is, this is a lot for a young person to take in. I don't believe in shielding kids from reality, but this deceptively jolly song is an odd way to deliver it.

"Show, don't tell" and hoarding

I spent the past two days purging old clothes from my closets. I hauled five bags of stuff off to Goodwill, and upon returning home, I felt ... awful. My sense is that one is supposed to feel liberated on such occasions, and also not a little holy for contributing to charity (though one is also aware that clothing donations from the first world can interfere with nascent clothes-making businesses in the third). While I kept reminding myself of how lame it is to hang onto stuff I don't wear, when others might be able to use it, when I drove away from the Goodwill container I felt almost like I was fleeing the scene of a crime I had just committed.

Yes, things are just things. And yet they are not. In the same way that in fiction, the specific, telling detail is a window into a character's psyche, things--in our consumer society, anyway--are portals to the past. To me, even the most trivial piece of clothing I heaved into the Hefty bag had some bit of memory stuck to it, along with lint and cat hair. I almost always remembered where I'd bought the thing, and what life was like at that time (I really have hung onto things far too long). If the piece of clothing was a gift, well, so much the worse. How ungrateful I felt for never wearing that jacket (even if it didn't fit, or made me look like Carmela Soprano, or both). How I felt like I was stabbing the giver in the heart, like I was tossing a kitten out of a car into the rain.

It's my guess that although I may be nuttier than many in this area, I'm not alone. (I am fortunate, too, that our condo is small enough that full-on hoarding is simply not possible.) Consumerism, I think, depends on this fear of loss, especially of the loss of memory. We buy to ward off Alzheimer's, and we give to keep others from forgetting us. Those aren't the only reasons, of course, but they come into play--maybe more so when we feel ourselves isolated, and people close to us start dying, and we start to think of how many people we've already lost track of over the course of our lives.

What will keep our memories for us, if not objects? Stories? Facebook? The Cloud? Fine, but we can't touch and see these things in the same way I could have--but didn't--wear that TV-test-pattern sweater I bought in England two-plus decades ago. You can tell stories to kids and grandkids, but if they're not connected to tangible things, those stories mutate and dissipate over generations, even if they're written down. Objects don't change, although they do decay, and their original appeal or function can become questionable.

This is where Buddhism is supposed to help, right? Impermanence, impermanence. Further: giving up clothing is nothing compared to giving up one's life, which is what Memorial Day is about. Yet Memorial Day is also about sales. It really seems like this endless circulation of stuff through our lives is really the presence (presents?) of death.

Anyway, I've moved more junk into the empty spaces in the closets, so there's lots more space in my office now. That's kind of nice.

What is writer's block?

I've told people that I never get writer's block. I always seem to be able to write *something,* if not something interesting or good or important. This is what blogs are for, writing *something.* And now that I am in revision mode with novel 2, getting *something* done is even easier. All that is required is staring at the printed (not blank!) page and making some sort of change. Or not! Because maybe I'll just keep what's already there, and keeping counts as revision! I am thinking! I am deciding! This is real work!

However. I am beginning to get a hint of what classic, cigarettes-bathrobe-wild-haired-baggy-eyed-cocaine-haunted-hotel-ax-murder-type writer's block is like. I have been trying to come up with "ideas" for some new short stories, which I hope to start on when this next round of revision is over. I have done about three pages on two different stories, and finished a full draft of another. But all of them just seem hollow. That's the best word I can use to describe them. They are words wrapped around a nonexistent core. I don't enjoy reading them or thinking about them. They feel like imitations of stories.

Well, Robert Olen Butler would say that having "ideas" for stories is my first problem. It means I'm coming at the problem intellectually rather than "from where I dream." And I suspect that is an issue. I'm writing about things I don't really care about. That is, I'm working from "concepts" that I think are "interesting" rather than from emotions that I don't fully understand (or accept). Even though some of my more successful stories have always seemed to me rather aloof, even arch, I'm starting to realize that there's some strangled cry of personal anguish within them. You can't fake that shit. You can't borrow someone else's personal anguish or conjure it up out of abstractions. In other words, at some point, you have to--metaphorically!--open a vein. Find an untapped agony mine, and then, maybe, make it funny.

The holiday season will probably help with this.

Bad messages in Christmas carols: Rudolph and Rand

Last year, by way of holiday cheer, I examined the vexed issue of means testing and the giving imperative as manifested in "Little Drummer Boy." To launch this season's festivities, let's look at "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" and its Ayn-Randian implications.

To review:

Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say
"Rudolph with your nose so bright
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
Then all the reindeer loved him*
And they shouted out with glee:
"Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
You'll go down in history!"
*Emphasis added.

First off: Notice how Santa lets his underlings bully Rudolph with impunity for an unspecified length of time and only intervenes when he wants something. Where was Santa all those months, even years, when Rudolph was getting his ass kicked on a daily basis? But now that it's foggy and Santa's headlights aren't working, it's all, Oh, Rudolph, you're so wonderful / talented / amazing, and it's high time you moved up in my organization.

And then notice: once he's singled out by the authority figure, suddenly "all the reindeer loved him." Perhaps this indicates that the other reindeer (Dasher, Dancer, et al) are a pack of mediocrities and followers who do only what they are told--while Rudolph is an individual. But it also seems that at the North Pole, love is purely a measure of one's usefulness in the Santasian service economy. Had Rudolph's nose not proven necessary on this foggy evening, after Santa has fallen down on the critical task of sled maintenance (shouldn't he have been prepared for poor visibility already? It's December, at the North Pole, for Chrissake)--the attacks on Rudolph would have proceeded indefinitely. So is the "love" of the bullying herd meant to be Rudolph's reward for putting up with the taunts of his peers? Is all right with the world at last? Is Rudolph now one of the crowd of his former tormenters, albeit a first among equals--who might join in (or lead) the hazing of the next funny-looking reindeer who comes down the pike?

The song does not specify. I believe we're meant to assume that Rudolph happily accepts the accolades, takes (and returns) the love as sincere, and guides the sleigh for the rest of his immortal life, even on clear nights. He forgives; but perhaps something has been lost in forgiveness--an opportunity to reassess the system in which he is now but a cog. Perhaps there ought to be a final verse in which Rudolph tells Santa, "You and your mob of antlered thugs can go wrap yourselves around a cellphone tower. I'm going to be a social worker!"

Little conundrummer boy

This year I banned Christmas music from the household. However, I have ventured outside these past few weeks and into stores, where the only song that ever seemed to be playing was "Little Drummer Boy." It was never the same version twice--at least I don't think so--and I see on Wikipedia that there are over 200 recorded versions of this exceedingly virulent earworm.

So here's what I've been wondering:

Does the playing of "Little Drummer Boy" in stores over and over and over subtly undermine the capitalist enterprise? The song, as you will recall, is about a "poor boy" who visits the baby Jesus, but has "no gifts to bring"--at least none "fit to give a king." In desperation (?) he plays a little number on his drum and the baby Jesus smiles at him. So this could suggest that material gifts are not necessary, and never were necessary, at Christmas. The wise men weren't so wise to haul that gold and frankincense and myrrh across the sands after all. The boy gives of himself by sharing his special (and perhaps only) talent, which is all Jesus really asks.

On the other hand, perhaps the drummer boy only gets a pass because, as he explains to the linguistically adept newborn, he is a "poor boy too." If he weren't poor, he would have been expected to cough up something nice in a gold or a myrrh. Each according to his means, in other words, which could be a nod to either communism or pre-easy-credit capitalism. But if he hadn't pleaded poverty, would Jesus have been pissed at getting a drum solo when he expected something he could melt down and sell later on?

So what's the message of this song, and how is the message affected by hearing it on a Muzak program amid the glare of fluorescent lights and the whir of hysterical consumption? As we shop along to its insidious thrum, do we think, wow, I'm glad I'm not so poor as to be reduced to playing a drum. I can offer the finest gifts--or I ought to, anyway. Maybe I haven't spent enough on Aunt Martha. OR--what the hell am I doing here? All this junk I'm buying just reifies, and further complicates, the family psychodrama that blows into town like a storm system every year. By god, we need to simplify our lives! I'm putting this chafing dish back! Aunt Martha will understand, if I just explain it in exactly the right words...

Certainly if the song is meant to be subversive, it isn't working. Merchants see it as no threat. Or perhaps the constant repetition is what robs it of its power.

When in doubt, cook

I can't remember a holiday season that I've felt more bleak about. Clearly it's the economy (and one is now more compelled than ever to add: Stupid!). We assembled the tree yesterday, and I flat-out refused to have Christmas music playing during the ritual. And honestly I only agreed to the tree for the sake of the cats, who like to sleep under it, and in past years have put aside their mutual hostility to actually snuggle under its fire-retardant boughs...

On the other hand, we had a lovely dinner with friends last weekend, for which I made the vegan moussaka from Veganomicon. That one's a definite keeper, and the pine-nut cream sauce more than makes up for the absence of cheese. And this weekend I made bread from scratch! I don't believe I have ever done that before--meaning real bread, with the damp towel and the kneading and the waiting around. The recipe was from this month's Vegetarian Times, which offers several good-looking recipes, most of which seem veganizable. I made the rye, which turned out great. I've been looking for bread recipes after the repeated failure of the extra-fast, no-knead recipe from the NYT. Could have been me, no doubt, but this thing was a brick, twice.

Actually I feel a little less bleak just having written the above. When in doubt, cook, or write about it, I guess.

Thought for the holiday season

Put your own mask on first before assisting other passengers.

War is a force...

For some holiday uplift, I am reading War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. It is truly frightening because the book was published in 2002, just as BushCo was beginning to beat the lie drums for the Iraq war. Referring mostly to the first gulf war and the Balkan Wars, Hedges predicts exactly how things have gone since the book was published. All wars, even "good" ones, tend to evoke the same powerful ambivalences in those who fight them. There's less ambivalence for the armchair cheerleaders, who avidly consume the myth of war, but never see the reality. The title of the book sort of says it all, but:

In mythic war we imbue events with meanings they do not have. We see defeats as signposts on the road to ultimate victory. We demonize the enemy so that our opponent is no longer human. We view ourselves, our people, as the embodiment of absolute goodness. Our enemies invert our view of the world to justify their own cruelty. In most mythic wars this is the case. Each side reduces the other to objects--eventually in the form of corpses. [....]

The potency of the myth is that it allows us to make sense of mayhem and violent death. It gives a justification to what is often nothing more than gross human cruelty and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our powerlessness. It hides from view our own impotence and the ordinariness of our own leaders. By turning history into myth we transform random events into a chain of events directed by a will greater than our own, one that is determined and preordained. We are elevated above the multitude. We march toward nobility. And no society is immune (23-24).

Isn't it interesting that the religious right, who claim to have so much meaning in their lives in the form of God and Jesus and the unwavering certainty of their own goodness--that these are the people who scream loudest for war, whenever the possibility even faintly appears? I thought we atheists were the ones who pathetically had no meaning in our lives, who were dangerous because of it. (We don't think God is watching us, so we naturally are immoral; even as adults, Christians apparently do the right thing only because they fear punishment.) Yet it would seem the fanatics are the meaning-starved ones. Their religion proves inadequate; they must have blood and sacrifice (of others), and still they aren't satisfied. Will someone please, please give these peoples' lives some real meaning? And is that what W, that empty shell of a human, is really craving?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, war correspondents and the press generally don't see their role as uncovering the realities of war. Hedges, who was a war correspondent for years, points out that the press is "eager to be of service" to the myth. The fact that we're now seeing more negative reports about Iraq is a reflection of American public opinion turning against the war. The press follows the trajectory of the myth, bolstering it till they can no longer credibly do so.

I'm grateful to the many bloggers out there who have kept the press more honest in this war than perhaps in any other. Though a lot of crap has slid through the cracks, war-myth making might be harder in years to come.

Chipped beef

When I was seven or eight, my mom and I took my grandmother to eat at a restaurant inside a department store. It must have been Christmas time, because that's when my grandmother used to visit, and the store must have been Higbee's or Halle's in the Westgate shopping mall in Fairview, Ohio--all now kaput, except Fairview, which is more or less OK. The mall in fact was razed last time I was home, but they are building a new outdoor one. Bear in mind this is Ohio we're talking about.

Anyway. Nana ordered the "chipped beef" which, if I recall correctly, is a pile of shredded beef in cream sauce on toast (so regional! so not possible to order anymore, probably not even in Ohio!). Memory and family legend perhaps distort the story, but the pile was huge. And Nana had a rule that you chewed each bite of food 32 times, or anyway far more times than anyone else ever chewed. I don't know how long it went on. As we finished our meals and the lights dimmed and all the other customers left, the employees gathered at the counter, waiting to close. Nana chewed. She was undaunted. She finished. My mom and I were mesmerised.

This episode is known in family lore as the Chipped Beef Episode, or Chipped Beef for short.

Sweet and Low (down)

The holidays are upon us, and I feel like bashing Woody Allen again. Every time I watch a movie of his that I used to like, I'm struck by the misogyny that forms the warp and woof of his stories. It may even go back to Sleeper; it definitely is more pronounced in the later films. The disillusioning film of the moment, courtesy once again of the San Carlos Library, is Sweet and Lowdown. I remember recommending this film wholeheartedly to my parents, then rushing out to buy Django Reinhardt CDs. I suppose the latter is something I can still be grateful for. But despite all Sean Penn's hard (you might even say sweaty) work, the film still has Woody's peevish little fingerprints all over it. First, and most prominently: the fantasy of the mute woman with a voracious sexual appetite who shrugs off verbal abuse because she knows "he doesn't mean it." God. But along with misogyny is the general resentment of all who don't recognize the great artist's talents. This occurred to me in a dream as I dozed off on the couch before the ending. Emmett Ray is the second best jazz guitarist in the world, the best being the European Django Reinhardt. In the past Allen carried on about how he wanted to make movies like Ingmar Bergman. I'm not sure whom he blames for his failure to come close to Bergman or even to Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze--maybe it's Mia's fault. In Sweet and Lowdown, the two women in Emmett's life tell him he'd be a better musician if he'd let his feelings out...but this can't be Woody's problem. What he'd let out would be a torrent of bitterness toward everyone, especially women, who fails to worship him (see Deconstructing Harry).

I used to think liking Woody Allen represented a certain level of sophistication, but now it seems like pseudo-sophistication--the very people he makes fun of in his movies are the only ones who would think the movies are profound.