What Do You Do With a Life of Work? What Do You Do With a Life of Work? What Do You DO With a Life of Work?

On page 261 of Book One of Father Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy (this morning's First Reading), I encountered this bit (courtesy of Plato):

 "' . . . imitative art must be a long way from truth.' It is 'two grades below reality, and quite easy to produce without any knowledge of the truth--for it is mere semblance and not reality.' The man who gives up his life to producing this shadow of reality has made a very bad bargain."

Ironically (?), I've also been reading I. Asimov of late . . . an autobiography of a man who (according to Wikipedia) "wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards." Only conclusion possible? According to Plato (at least as mediated by Father Copleston, but I think we can trust him on this), The Good Doctor Asimov wasted most of the 72 years of his life.

And . . . well, apologies to Plato 1 , but that's just bullshit. I've personally read a few of those 500+ books (I'd guess about 50 of them), and they have given me great pleasure and stimulated my brain and taught me things and increased my happiness, and I am pretty sure that that counts. 

Which got me to thinking about some of the premises that Plato's argument--at least as presented in this truncated form--rests upon.

First off, this notion that art is imitative. That might be true of some forms of art. Painting a landscape, for instance. And I suppose you could make a case for it being true of "realistic" literature . . . but not a very good one. There's not much about art that is imitative in my mind. Art is by its nature interpretive. And it seems to me that as every art evolves it becomes more and more removed from a straightforward presentation of that which is is interpreting (or "imitating" if you still want to swing that way). 

Let's put it this way: last night I went to St. Matthews Cinemark and saw the filmed version of Thomas Adès Exterminating Angel opera. Anybody who thinks that that work is imitative is living in a very different reality than the one which I inhabit. (One fueled by Industrial Strength Hallucinogens, at the very least.) As an interpretation, however, it is pretty fuckin' brilliant.

Second off, this "two grades below reality" bullshit? That doesn't even make any sense within the larger context of Platonic thought, does it? If you want to put Plato into a nutshell, you're going to have to end up saying that Reality--supposing that that refers to Real Life in the Sensible World . . . and I don't see what else it could refer to here--is vastly inferior to the World of Forms. So instead of being "two grades below reality," it seems to me that Art would be two grades above reality, because it is removed from Reality. I mean . . . am I missing something here?

I also think it's interesting how all of this plays into the common conception that Art is at least to some extent a waste of time. People who think that are, I believe, always people who believe that Art is Two Grades Below Reality. Instead of getting drunk, listening to loud music, pretending that you can dance, or fucking someone you don't care about, you're wasting your time reading? What a fuckin' loser.

Oh, Plato.

Consistency is all we ask.

And, come to think of it, Oh, Father Copleston. I know that you're just trying to report the facts here, but couldn't you help a brother out by either (1) clarifying this point or (2) affirming that there is a contradiction. 

Come on, people, now smile on your brother.

1  Pun intended, but you knew that, right?

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You . . .

I was just doing my regular, everyday (and every day) exercises when Jet decided to get involved. I thought it would make for a cute picture, but had no way to take one whilst exercising, so I set up the video camera. Then one thing led to another. This was fun. Please, Sir, I want some more.

Hypocrisy & The Death

Just for the record: I despise Roy Moore. I love John Conyers. And I love Morning Joe, and I especially love Mika Brzezinski.

But here's the thing. I just watched a segment in which Nancy Pelosi talked about how John Conyers deserved DUE PROCESS with respect to the allegations that have been made about him re: sexual misconduct. After that clip Mika came in to reiterate the importance of DUE PROCESS: "Look, I think it's really important that the words DUE PROCESS have come up in this conversation . . . . " 

Venisoon after M. Joe himself jumped onboard that argument.

And I could not agree more. I don't know what Justice is if it doesn't begin with a presumption of innocence, continue through DUE PROCESS, and end with the fairest verdict it's possible to achieve.

But, perhaps unfortunately, that means we have to make that Justice available to everyone, not just the people we like.

I haven't heard anyone argue about DUE PROCESS for Roy Moore. And it's just hypocrisy, and that will be the death not only of Pete Townshend, but of all of us. And of Justice as well.

Caveat emptor.

Hello, Dolly

I've been aware of Dolly Parton for a long time. How could you not be? I mean, really? But I was never all that impressed with her. She seemed very silly to me with her Minnie Mouse speaking voice and he gigantic tits, and I wrote her off.

I started to change my mind when I heard her song "Jolene." There was just something about that song that went right past my "Country Music Sucks" border wall (a wall which has long since been torn down, I hasten to point out) and lodged in my brain. And then when I found out that she had written the song "I Will Always Love You"--which was such a gigantic hit for Whitney Houston--well, I have to say that if I were wearing a hat, I'd have taken it off to her, 'cause that was a good song. 

But I didn't buy my first Dolly Parton album until today.

I was grazing in Half-Price Books when I caught the spine of The Grass Is Blue (from 1999). I'm not sure why I picked it up. It might have been because I caught a few minutes of a Whitney Houston tribute last night wherein somebody . . . maybe Jennifer Hudson . . . sang "I Will Always Love You" and that made me think of Dolly. But at any rate, I picked it up and had a look at the track listing, and the first song listed was ""Travelin' Prayer." And I'm one of the 14 people who immediately thought, "I wonder if that is Billy Joel's "Travelin' Prayer"? So I opened the jewel case and had a look at the booklet and sure enough, it was Billy Joel's song. And the cd was only $2.99, which didn't deter me. So I bought it.

Just finished listening to it, and man . . . that was $2.99 well spent. What a good album. Only 4 songs were written by Dolly this time around--"Steady as the Rain," "Endless Stream of Tears," "Will He be Waiting for Me," & "The Grass is Blue"--all of which are at least quite good, and the last of which is superb. But the other nine songs are all very good, too, and include songwriters of such calibre as Johnny Cash & Lester Flatt, so there's that. And oh yeah, Sam Bush and Alison Krauss play on the album, as well as some other kickass folks whose names I didn't recognize but who could well be gigantic stars in bluegrass for all I know. They sure sound like they are.

Think I'll go give it another spin.

The Case For Christ

I met some friends for coffee yesterday morning. One of them, C., I've known for 26 years. He's seen me through the births of two of my children, the diagnoses of those children as autistic, the ends of both of my marriages, and various other minor tragedies. As a matter of fact, at one point at the end of my second marriage, C. showed up in the middle of the night and stayed with me while I literally howled and screamed in pain. In a life in which I've seen at very least my fair share of tragedy, that was the nadir for me. And C. was there, and he made sure that I didn't kill myself, made sure that I stayed safe. I really don't know if I'd be alive today if he hadn't shown up that night.

When my kids were young, C. used to come over to the house on Christmas Eve to play Santa Claus. Jimmy was into it, but Jacqueline did her I Deny Your Existence autistic moves on him. I have pictures of that somewhere. 

So you can probably understand that when C. says something, it's important to me, it affects me, it has an impact on me. And when we met for coffee yesterday, he saw the two bracelets I was wearing and asked me, "Why are you wearing those bracelets? You're the least religious person I know." It wasn't just a passing comment to me. And I stumbled in my reply, just saying something about how I'd bought both of them at St. Lucy's Parish in The Bronx when I took Jacqueline and Joe to New York a month ago. And then I let our conversation move on. But C.'s question was burning me, and even though I was feeling pretty nervous about coming back to the subject, as soon as there was a pause I said something like, "I don't know if I'm really a non-religious person." And then we talked for maybe twenty minutes     . . . maybe even more . . . about religion.

C. seemed angry, or like there was a river of anger boiling underneath of what he was saying. It was pretty clear that his Catholic upbringing had brought him more pain than anything, and that he really resented and maybe even hated "his" religion. And I could definitely sympathize with that. There are so many atrocities that have come into being either directly or indirectly because of religion. It's enough to make you hate all of it. It's enough to push you to the end of your wits.

But I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Because religion lives at your wit's end. I don't think that means that there is no intellectual component to it . . . not at all. If nothing else, I can say that there are quite a few people I know or know of who are smarter than I am and who have embraced Christianity. But it also means that no matter how far your intellect can take you, it can't take you all the way into the land of faith. Because faith is beyond the reach of pure reason. And I don't think that that is a bad thing. 

Hmmm. I actually sat down to write about the movie The Case For Christ, which I've just finished watching. I'd read the book awhile back and thought that it was pretty good. It certainly gave me some grist for the thinking mill, anyway. And the movie was good, too, and took me back to the same big questions that the book has raised up for me.

To wit, Do I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person?

Do I believe that this Jesus died and then rose from the dead?

And if so, how can you refuse to embrace Christianity?

Well, the first question seems pretty easy to me: yes. I see no reason not to believe in the historical truth of the person known as Jesus of Nazareth. And I see (with some bolstering from Lee Strobel) that there is at least as much evidence of this person's historical existence as there is for many other things that are commonly accepted as true.

The second question gets pretty tricky. My upbringing, the theology classes I've attended, many of the religious books I've read (including the aforementioned The Case For Christ) all say that Jesus did rise from the death, and it is not difficult for me to accept that this is true.

So why do I keep stumbling on the last part of this equation? The part that should be the easy part? 

I don't know. But I admit--with some chagrin--that that is, indeed, where I keep pulling up short. And part of me fears that I pull up short here for precisely the same reasons that my friend C. is so angry at Catholicism: because I see so many stupid and cruel practicing Christians. So many people not only willing to judge others, but to abuse and condemn others. But I know it's not logical to reject Christianity because of what I perceive to be failures on the part of people who claim to be its adherents.

And there I am. Circling around and around.

Roi Dream

I guess Jet was feeling really lonely last night, because sometime before 2:00 a.m. she started crying, which she usually does not do. I tried to ignore her at first, and was partially successful and slipped back into sleep. I began to dream. 

I dreamed that I got up because of the cat noise and opened the basement door, and when I did Roi came into the kitchen. I was really freaked out, since I knew that Roi had died, and I kept thinking, "It's just my eyes, that's really Jet." But I knew that it wasn't, that it really was Roi.

I woke up feeling really freaked out. Looked at the clock. It was 2:00 a.m. I decided to hell with it and got up and fixed some coffee and read some of A History of Philosophy with Jet on my lap.

I miss Roi, man.

Roi

Sometime in early 2000 I took our cat, Jersey, to the vet for a check-up. When I was leaving I saw several very young kittens in a cage with a sign that basically said if nobody adopted them they would be sent away to be killed. So I took one of them. She was very tiny, and her hair stuck straight out, making her look something like a punk rocker.

I named her Roi, an acknowledgement of my love for singer Roy Harper, with the i serving to acknowledge that she was a she. The kids--who were 10, 8, and 5 at the time--were smitten with her. And she was amazingly cute in the way that only kittens can be. Jersey wasn't so smitten, and we had to keep them in separate parts of the house for a week or so, but they ended up becoming very close.

Jacqueline began to call her Roister, which (1) was pretty darned cute and (2) was an apt term for this rather wild kitty (secondary definition of roister: to revel noisily or without restraint [dictionary.com]). And she was most certainly Jacqueline's main kitty for many years.

But Roi'd been showing signs of her age of late. In fact, when  I took her to the vet because I feared she had a bladder infection, the receptionist, upon hearing that Roi was 17 years old and having some continence problems, immediately sent us to the Death Room to await the vet, who entered with a solemn expression and talked about putting Roi down. I was more than a bit taken aback. I also stopped seeing that vet after Roi and I left.

But there was no doubt that her days were numbered. And this morning when it was time for breakfast, Jet appeared as usual, but Roi didn't. I knew immediately, of course. She had never failed to appear at the first sign of breakfast. So I put it off as long as I could, then went down to the basement and found her, stiff and cold.

I'm not a person who bonds deeply with pets. I don't refer to them as my children, I don't talk baby talk to them, I don't make them wear sweaters or holiday costumes. I don't even buy special treats. I feed them good healthy food, I play with them, I pet them, I clean up after them. But they're just animals.

Still, 17 years is a long time. When I got Roi from that vet's office, I had just recently been divorced from my first wife. Roi was with me through the beginning, middle, and end of my second marriage, and several other minor relationships after that as well. 

And that does mean something, doesn't it.

So I couldn't  put her body into a plastic bag for the trash men. And I didn't want to just take her to an animal crematorium. I didn't want somebody else to "do the dirty work," for one thing, because this was personal. And so I did something I've never done before. I dug a grave. And I took Roister's favorite pillow and took out the stuffing and put her body inside of it, then Jacqueline and I stood by her grave and said good-bye to her. Jacqueline didn't seem very affected by it all. She did say, "Roister's in Kitty Heaven now." But I know my girl. Her emotions run in deep, fast, underground currents, and her sorrow will be fierce. Already is, really.

And me . . . I have the same feelings that I had after Jersey and Frances died. I wish that I had spent more time with her. I also wish I hadn't gotten mad at her for making messes. I'm glad that when she peed on the floor last night (where she was lying on a rug) that I didn't get angry with her, that I just cleaned up and didn't freak out. And I do and will miss her.

I hope she's having fun with Jersey in Kitty Heaven.

Ride With Daryl Dixon

Like about a billion other people, I love Daryl Dixon. And I loved Norman Mark Reedus long before DD . . . from back in 1999 when he appeared in The Boondocks Saints. So I was kind of interested when I heard that he was going to have a show of his own on AMC--Ride with Norman Reedus. But apparently not interested enough, as I missed all six episodes of the first season. But when the Season 2 premiere was advertised as co-starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan . . . well, I somehow found the time.

And you know, it was alright, it was nidth*. And it was well-timed, in that I'd just finished reading Dan Brown's Origin and NR & JDM visited Sagrada Família, so it was cool to be able to see the place I'd read about without all the stress and hard work of Googling. And the promo for the next show indicated that Dave Chapelle would be up next, so I watched that one. And it was good, too, but apparently not good enough to get me on schedule, as I missed the next show. But I did catch half of a show from the first season, in which NR and Some Other Guy went to Texas.

And one of the places they visited was a motorcycle shop where a guy named Colt Wrangler (sounds like the real life identity name of a Marvel superhero, doesn't it?) had a few things to say about this and that, one of which went like this:

"If you really want something, your actions will follow. You know? And you just do and you do and you do and the next thing you know you end up with something that you really like."

Colt Wrangler

Ride With Norman Reedus

Season 1, Episode 4: "Texas: Twisted Sisters"

And I thought that that was pretty good shit. Good enough to do the pause, rewind, play, pause, play, pause, play, pause, rewind, pause, play, rewind, pause, play, anyway.

And I was thinking about that and the show in general, and coming to some conclusions about this life thing. 

See, Norman likes to do stuff. He likes to ride on his motorcycle. He likes to eat good food. He likes to set off firecrackers. He likes to drink alcoholic beverages. He likes to talk to people. He likes to be recognized by fans. He likes to look at pretty scenery. He likes to smoke cigarettes. And other stuff, too, I'm sure, but that's mostly what we see on the show.

And all of that is good, it's fine. It's nidth, for sure. But . . . it's just the same old shit, you know? I mean, firecrackers. You light 'em up and they explode. Big bang, flash of light. So fucking what? If it makes you happy and you're not hurting anybody else, then that's fine, for sure. But to me it's just a stupid thing that people do. And the same for riding on a motorcycle. You can tell that Norman and the other people on the show think that it's really cool that he (& they) are riding on motorcycles. But seriously . . . why is that any cooler than riding a bicycle? You know? And I have to say that despite societal programming, it's not to me. When I see a person on a motorcycle, I don't think about how cool they look or how tough they are. I think, "Geeze, I hope you get home safe." Because they're just so vulnerable, and all it would take is a little bitty error for them to be smeared across a couple of thousand feet of asphalt and / or concrete. So to me it's just foolishness. And not like brave foolishness. Foolishness like, "Hey, I'm going to see if I can throw this knife up in the air and catch it in my teeth while I'm blindfolded." What the fuck, man?

We do what we do because we have to or because it pleases us. But on top of that, we (well, not so much we, but I don't want to get too snobby here) put other people down for doing what they do . . . or for not doing what we do . . . or for not being sufficiently awed by what we do. But the difference between sitting on the couch reading a book and burning down the highway on a Harley doing 80 miles per hour while naked women shoot off fireworks and offer you pulled pork sandwiches? Not much difference at all to me. 

Except that I'd prefer the book.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the 2 1/2 episodes of the show that I watched. I did enjoy them, and will probably watch more. But there's also a part of me that stands outside of the show and says, "Glad you're having fun, but I don't understand why anybody would think that Chicken Shit Bingo is more fun than reading Moby Dick, man."

* A very slight and unnecessary but somehow amusing to me allusion to a spoken bit in Iggy Pop's "Turn Blue," in which he sounds like he has a very bad head cold as he says the word "nice."

Great Shit @ A Great Price @ The Great Escape

The Great Escape had a box of graphic novels which had been marked down to $1.00 each. So of course I had to sit down on the floor and have a look at that. And there was lots of great stuff. Some of which I already had (Skreemer, for instance). Some of which I really wanted but ended up putting back (Steve Rude's The Moth, two volumes of the Mark Wheatley * illustrated Lone Justice, another thing or two which I've since forgotten) because I didn't think I'd get around to reading that much. And five of which I bought: Total Sell Out and Fortune and Glory by Brian Michael Bendis, Private Beach by David Hahn, Xanth Graphic Novel, Volume 1 - Return to Centaur (or: What Kind of Foal Am I?) by (deep breath) Piers Anthony, Richard Pini, Dennis Fujitake, and Gary Kato, and rock bottom by Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard. That's a whole lot of reading for a little bit of $. About 660 pages for $5 . . . but wait! Because TGE also hit me with their usual 25% off trade paperbacks discount, so it was $3.75 . . . so $3.98 including tax. Ummm . . . that's the price of one new Marvel (and, to be fair, just about everybody else except for the DC biweeklies) comic book . . . which weighs in at . . . what? 23 pages? I think less, but that's what Comixology says . . . which probably includes the cover . . . and maybe a text page introduction as well . . . but ANYway, you get the point. I'd also point out that the list price of the five books I bought was $66.75. So . . . yowza.

And a mere day and a morning later, I have already read three of those books and started my fourth. 

I started with Return to Centaur, which I was actually kind of anxious to read--not sure why. The look of it reminded me (a lot) of Phil Foglio's take on Myth Adventures which (1) I'd read and enjoyed back in the day, even though I'd not read any of the Robert Asprin books, and (2) I'd been thinking about quite a bit lately . . . probably because I've seen several of the books at Half-Price Books. And it was pretty disappointing. There was a touching introduction detailing how the story came to be . . . as a tribute to a fan who had suffered grievously . . . but the story itself was pretty stupid and riddled with really bad puns. Not even groaner-type puns, just "why did you think that would be a good idea?" type puns. And just to add that extra kick, the story ends abruptly, to be continued in Xanth: Morning Becalms Electra . . . and even if I wanted to read it, it looks like that is completely unavailable. (In fact, none of my go-to online bookstores had ever even HEARD of it, which doesn't happen very often. And by not very often, I mean ever. Hell, Ebay hasn't even heard of it.) So . . . it was still worth a dollar . . . or 75¢, anyway . . . and I did learn that the word Xanth comes from the middle of author Piers Anthony's name, which I thought was kind of interesting. So there's that.

I next went to David Hahn's Private Beach, which looked like and reminded me a great deal of Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise--which came out almost a decade before Hahn's book, so no doubts as to who made who there. There were some things I really liked about Hahn's book, and I wouldn't mind reading a bit more of the story, but (1) it looks like there's not much more of it out there, and (2) there were a few things that put me off more than a little bit, to wit: [a] there were three or four references to "retarded" people that I thought were pretty fuckin' mean-spirited & [b] Hahn is so Tit Obsessed that it's almost funny . . . except that it's not. I'm also thinking that in general it's not a great idea for a guy to do a book that is almost completely centered on a female perspective. Especially when there's not really a very good reason for doing that. (Couldn't he at least have called in a female co-writer to attempt to keep him honest?) Despite all of that, this was definitely worth my money and then some, and it even made me want to go back and read some more Strangers in Paradise--a series I didn't pay nearly enough attention to, though I did enjoy what I read of it.

rock bottom really kicked ass. Joe Casey . . . a writer I've had no love for previously . . . did a really good job on this one. And the art, by Charlie Adlard, was just stunning. Way different from his work on The Walking Dead or Astronauts in Trouble or White Death. For one thing, his line here is so thin . . . almost like we're looking at pencil work, but more substantial than un-inked pencil work looks when it's printed. Just fucking amazing stuff. If you only know Charlie from The Walking Dead, I think it's easy to think of him as being just a kind of "dependable" artist. You know, good, for sure, but nothing fancy, nothing all that interesting. But that's just not true. It kind of makes me wish that he would ditch TWD and strike out for The Territory. Even though I love his work on TWD. But he so obviously has more in him, and knocking back 300 or so pages of that every year (more or less--the book regularly comes out more than once a month and often has more than the usual number of pages, so it might be even more than that) can't possibly leave him enough time and energy to unleash on other projects of any substance, and that's just a sin This guy is so good. Do a little Google Image search for White Death by Charlie Adlard and you'll be searching the house for your socks.

And I started reading one of the Bendis books, Fortune and Glory, and it is already delightful. 

So it looks like I might actually knock back all five of my purchases before it's time for another trip to The Great Escape . . . so maybe I'll sit on the floor and make another pile of goodies. 

Unless you beat me to it.

I would like to have a look at those Wheatley books, though . . . . 



* One of the two brilliant people behind one of my all-time favorite comic book series, Mars. 

A History of A History of Philosophy

As Gregory Peck once said of Sophia Loren, "That's a whole lot of book." Except for the book part, of course.

This morning--my 15th consecutive day of reading A History of Philosophy--I hit page 143. Which is not particularly impressive, especially considering that I still have 5,201 pages to go, but I'd already made the decision to go in for a pound . . . or, in this case, in for 8.7 pounds. Over six inches of book that I'm going to attempt to shove up my cosmic wazoo. Ouch. 

I'd originally intended to hold off and see if I had it in me to at least finish off the first volume before investing any more dollars, as all too often I have gone hog wild on a topic or an author and then pooped out before delicti-ing the corpus, but I'd been keeping my eye on the prices of the second and third omnibus editions at several online bookstores, and copies turned up that were so damned cheap that I didn't see the point in passing them by. So now I have the first 9 volumes (there are two additional slim-ish ones) in my possession. If I can hold to my 15 minutes per day pace, I will finish volume 9 about 2 years from now. That sounds okay. A hell of a lot faster than Jacqueline and I read Les Miserables, for sure. Or The Bible. 

In this morning's reading Copleston asserted that so far as we know, we have the complete works of Plato in our possession. That's the first time I'd ever heard that said, and it kind of blew me away. I mean, we have such a pittance of other early philosophers. I have to admit that after my first thought--"No shit?"--faded, my second thought was, "Maybe I should try to read the complete works of Plato." And I just checked on Amazon, and it's only like 760 pages, so virtually a lark. AND you can get a Kindle version for free. Whaaaaaat? So that happened. Don't know when I'll get to it, but sometimes you have to strike the iron before it freezes, right?

Speaking of freezing, I'm looking down this long road and it looks like it gets pretty breezy and chilly down there. Plenty of time to join up if'n you want to, knowhati'msayin?

Who is Swarmius Chamber Orchestra, and Why Are They Playing Those Terrible Things Around Me?

Well, NOT terrible, actually. Just going for the Harry Kellerman thing, you know. Unless, of course, we're talking quaternary definition ("formidably great"), in which case, yes, terrible. 

It was an accidental find, of course. I got an email from Nick Harper (a personal one, I think), and it included a link to a video about the making of his latest album, which is the first one he's ever made with a band. So I watched the video. In the course of which Nick made mention of the fact that he had bumped into his new bandmates when he picked up their then new album Floating Above the City (2014) and loved it dearly. So I went for a little look-see on Amazon, and when I searched for Floating Above the City it came up with something called Suite Noir I in C Minor, Op. 63a: I. Floating Above the City At Night by someone called Swarmius Chamber Orchestra, so of course I had to play that sample. And it was pretty stunning. A kind of fusion of classical music with jazz and a dash of zhuh nuh say kwah thrown in for good measure. So I went to the You Tub to see what I could find there. Which turned out to be quite a bit. Amazon only had Suite Noir I in C Minor, Op. 63a: I., 63b: II., and 63c: III. YouTube had a whole bunch of live stuff which I'm working my way through, and all of it so far has at least been interesting, and at most revelatory. 

But I keep coming back to this Suite Noir I in C Minor, Op. 63. It's just 30 minutes and 11 seconds of wondrous shit, brahs and tahs. Like it's so good that I am on like my sixth run through today right now, even as we speak. And yet . . . the hit counter thingie is only showing 19, 12, and 31 (how'd that happen) views for the respective parts. I'm hoping that's because it's posted someplace else and there it has like a million views / listens there. 
  . . . but I'm thinking that that probably isn't so. Sheesh.

Well, I've gotten more than a little bit shy about posting links, so I'm not going to do that, but if you just go to YouTube and search under Suite Noir I in C Minor, Op. 63, you'll find the goods, and if you've got 9:17 for that first part, I'm betting that you'll come up with another 20:54 for the rest of it. It's just nothing but good.

Reading Matters

" . . . the world of sense-perception is a world of flux, and so not the right subject-matter for true and certain knowledge. That true and certain knowledge is attainable on the conceptual level . . . . "

A History of Philosophy by Fr. Frederick Copleston 
(page 128 of 5,344 pages)

I read this during my "15 Minutes of Philosophy" 1  this morning, and it gave me pause.

The opening proposition, that what our senses perceive is not necessarily true, is inarguable. What we perceive bears some passing relationship to reality, but is only rarely accurate and never completely reliable. I'm just going to regard that as axiomatic unless somebody wants to kick some sand in my face.

The second proposition, that true knowledge (or certain knowledge here) exists, is more a matter of faith, I suppose. It seems obvious to me, but I don't think there's any way to actually prove it. So no axiom there. But an assumption which I most heartily embrace.

And that leads to the conclusion, that in order (and I'm low-balling it here) to engage in a quest for true knowledge, one must journey via a conceptual trajectory . . . as opposed to journeying via a sensual trajectory. If you agree with the opening proposition, then even if you don't accept the second one, I think you'd have to agree on the truth of that conclusion. (That is, even if you don't think that there is True Knowledge, in order to journey towards True-r Knowledge . . . etc.)

And that got me to thinking about reading. 

It is common for people to ridicule reading as a waste of time, as an escape from life, as an avoidance of real life, and so forth. I can't help thinking ("again," if you're a long-time reader) of when I met up with a group of my friends from Ballard High School for lunch a few months after I'd retired and one of them asked me what I had been doing. I was very excited to tell them--primarily a group of English teachers, with a librarian thrown in for good measure, by the way)--that I had just finished reading Remembrance of Things Past, which had been one of my life goals ever since I was a teenager. Oh, the looks that they gave me. Pity, disdain, even disgust. I panicked, and in my cowardice I added that I had also taken my daughter to New York City, where we had climbed to the crown of The Statue of Liberty, seen the original Madeline paintings, ridden a carriage in Central Park, and gone to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Their relief was palpable. Their shoulders unstiffened. Their lips unsnarled. Their nostrils undilated. 

I spent a great deal of my pre-teaching life . . . from the ages of As Young as I Can Remember until Age 33 . . . in a Deep Blue Collar World, and let me assure you that I am very familiar with the attitude I encountered from those teachers (and the librarian). 

And I understand it, too. I even participate in that attitude myself at times . . . primarily in the form of saying things to myself on the order of, "Are you just going to sit around the house and read or are you going to get off of your ass and DO something?"

But that would be scanned.

Because let's face it: traveling to New York City, climbing to the top(-ish) of The Statue of Liberty, seeing Ludwig Bemelman's paintings in a museum, riding in a carriage in Central Park, and maybe even seeing The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway . . . it's all pretty much just walking from one room and into another, isn't it? And after you've done any of those things . . . or any other thing either, for that matter . . . the memory of it is so brittle, so easily broken into little pieces and blown away by the slightest of winds   
. . . .  Is it any more real than something I've read in a book? At the risk of revealing myself to be even more depraved than you may have previously thought me, I'll have to say that there are many things that I've read in books that are more real to me than experiences I have lived. Especially with books that I taught pretty much every year for 23 years: Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, Romeo and Juliet, Waiting for Godot, Beowulf . . . there are scenes from those works that are much more real and important to me than the memory of rappelling  out of a Huey back in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. 

And I can't help thinking of my daughter Jacqueline here. She regularly converses with churches and dead saints. Her conversations with them are not only very real and important to her, they are actually a necessary part of her existence. When she comes home in the late afternoon after having volunteered at Hosparus for several hours and working out at the YMCA and having lunch with her friends, the first thing she wants to do is go into her room and converse with St. James Church and saint St. Lucy. (Occasionally Helen Keller and Judge Judy and Mickey Mouse show up . . . and many others as well, but Saints James and Lucy are the mainstays.) Those relationships are as real to her as the 25 year relationship I have had with my friend Craig . . . and I dare say that they are more rewarding to her than my "real" relationship with Craig is, as well.

And maybe you think that Jacqueline's behaviors are just manifestations of mental incompetency or even mental illness. It's possible. That's not how I see it, though. I think that her interactions are on a par with how I see reading. To me, reading is a chance to participate in a higher level of reality. A reality which exists on the conceptual level. A level which permits at least the possibility of accessing Truth.

I would like to do a little research to find out if there's evidence that the brain registers any difference between intense imaginative experiences and "real" experiences. If I were a betting man, I would put a bundle down on Not a Whit to win.

Now excuse, please--I have some reading to do.



1  Which often turns into more than 15 minutes. I have found that if I make sure to "schedule" a small amount of time per day for something that it is much easier for me to stick to it, that the time I spend on it regularly expands, and that I make a hell of a lot of progress on some pretty monumental tasks eventually. (E.g. reading Les Miserables and The Bible to Jacqueline.)

10 Things I've Learned About Being Fat

1   I can exercise until my balls fall off, but I won't lose weight unless I keep a close eye on what I eat.

2   If I carry a 16 oz. bottle of cold water with me in the car, when I get home the bottle will be empty. 

3   If I buy a half-dozen or so different fruits and vegetables when I go grocery shopping and have some of one or both with each meal, then it's not a very big deal to consume 800 grams of fruits and vegetables per day . . . which, according to various respected sources, can have a massive salubrious effect upon your body's state of health.

4   If I sit down to eat with the expectation that I will stop when I am full, I will overeat.

5.   Programs which are designed to help you to choose healthy eating / get to a healthy body weight can be extremely annoying and can actually cause you to not be successful in reaching your goals. (And a big shout out to Lou Ryan's *livinglean program, which irritated the living fuck out of me. I would never have continued with this bullshit program if not for the points I earned from GO365, which will allow me to get a free Fitbit Zip Wireless Activity Tracker a lot sooner than just doing my daily "steps" upload would. And Lou, if you're out there, let me just say that you are a condescending, arrogant, supercilious rat bastard, and if I ever hear someone use the term "main munch" in my presence, I will punch them in the fucking nose. You are a true asshole, Lou. I hope I never hear your voice again.)

6.   Once you get used to eating chicken, pork, and fish regularly, you really don't miss the other, shittier meats. I can't even tell you the last time I ate a hamburger.

7.   Blackberries. It's all about the blackberries, man. 

8.   You've got to write it down. As much of it as you can, but at the very least what you eat. Writing it down makes it real. Making it public is even real-er, because even if no one sees it, there's always the chance that someone will see it. I worked my way up to the details, and am now keeping track of what I eat, calories, dietary fiber, grams of fruit and vegetables, amount of water, exercise and calories burned. It's not really a very big deal, and it really helps to keep me on track.

9.   Don't tell anybody that you're dieting. Don't tell anybody that you're losing weight. (Unless you're writing  about it on a blog, of course.) Wait for someone to notice. It will take longer than you think it should take, but eventually someone will make a fuss over you, and it will feel much better than if you coerced them into saying something.

10.  When you get off of tobacco or booze or drugs or whatever, once you're clean, you have to stay clean. You can't just casually have a smoke or a drink or a hit every once in a while. And it's pretty much the same way with overeating. So welcome to your new life. Assuming you like the results. If you didn't like the results, well, what the fuck. Some fat people live really long lives. I guess.

Lovecraft

I've been circling around H. P. Lovecraft for a long time. My first serious plunge into that lake occurred when Liveright (W.W. Norton & Company) published The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (edited by Leslie S. Klinger) with an Introduction by Alan Moore. I almost bought it, then reconsidered, found out that the library had a copy, and hied me to the pertinent branch. I read the Introduction. It was a good introduction. I read the first several stories. Not great stories, but interesting. And I like annotations. In one of these, I learned why a flashlight is called a flashlight. I'll leave it to you to follow through on that. But I pooped out after a half-dozen or so of  the stories, returned the book, and didn't really think about Lovecraft all that much again until Alan Moore reared his shaggy head with Providence . . . which was (1) a superb comic book series  (highly recommended, even if you aren't a comic book kind of person) and (2) directly related to  Mr. Lovecraft. But when the series was over, I pretty much forgot about Lovecraft again.

Until I saw this thing of beauty at Half-Price Books:

'cause, you know . . . it's a BOXED SET. I love boxed sets. Plus it's a pretty sweet price . . . six hardcover books for $30. And they're little books. I like little books. I thought pretty hard about picking it up. But then I thought, "Isn't it about time for Half-Price Books to do the coupon thing?" And I checked on that, and indeed it was about time. So I waited for that. And then, of course, I had to decide when to strike. On the 20% days? Best chance of still finding it on the shelves . . . and $6 off is nothing to sneeze at. Or the more daring 30% off days? 40%? Or even . . . that final 50% off day? That would mean contending with crowds plus risking it being sold out . . . but when I checked on the 20% days there were at least five boxes, so I decided to wait it out. And?

$15.89, baby. (Tax included.) Don't know when I'll get around to actually reading the thing as I am very busy with some Hungarians and a Lost Fleet . . . and Don Quixote, and several thousand pages of the history of philosophy . . . and a couple of Bibles and Notre-Dame des Paris . . . and the third Burroughs Pellucidar novel . . . and maybe a few other things . . . but I think having the stories broken up into smaller packages will be good for me. And I would like to see what this Lovecraft business is all about.

So there's that. 

Windmills of Your Mind

Q: Do you know Cervantes's Don Quixote?
A: Oh, sure, of course.
Q: What do you know about it?
A: He was a crazy old man who thought he was a knight. He fought windmills.
Q: What else?
A: That's about it, really. The windmills and all of that. Oh, and Sancho Panza was his squire, of course.

The version of Don Quixote that I'm currently reading is a little over one thousand pages long. The battle with the windmill occupies two of those pages. So .2%.

To borrow, alter, & re-contextualize from Hamlet, " . . . there's hope a great man's work may outlive his life half a year . . . . "

Know what I'm sayin'?

Cervantes deserves better than to be reduced to a Double Jeopardy answer. 

Please don't mention rain, please don't talk of trains, please don't mention buildings burning down.

Would that it were not so, but I forget shit. I forget a LOT of shit. In fact, I think I forget most shit. Practically all of it. 

But at least I know I'm not alone. I know that because I have friends (not many, for sure . . . and certainly not you, dear reader 1) who tell me the same fuckin' stories and jokes over and over and over. And when I try to talk to them about a movie we saw together or a book that we both read, they don't remember anything beyond the title. And sometimes not even the title.

So it's not just me. But that doesn't make me feel any better. Because I want to hold on to the books and the music and the movies and the moments of my life. Writing helps. It solidifies some of those moments.

But every little once in awhile something comes roaring back to life in my consciousness.

Like Steve Forbert.

I remember reading a review of his first album, Alive on Arrival, when it first came out way back in June 1978. Probably in Rolling Stone. I was a very faithful Rolling Stone reader back in those days. Something the reviewer said . . . and I blush to admit it, but I'm guessing that it was a comparison to Bob Dylan . . . struck me, and I went out and bought the album. And loved it, played the hell out of it. And bought his second album, Jackrabbit Slim, when it came out the next year. And the third album, Little Stevie Orbit, when it came out the next year. And then it was a couple of years later in 1982 when the fourth, eponymous, album came out.

And for some reason, Steve and I parted ways at that point. I don't remember why. It certainly wasn't for lack of love on my part. Those four albums all remained near and dear to my heart. 

Jo Ann and I got married in 1983, though, and money was certainly not plentiful--I remember our first joint tax return gross combined income was right at $10,000. And I'm sorry to say that shortly thereafter I sold a bunch of my vinyl in A Quest For Rent, and all four Forbert albums went out de dough. 

But a few days ago whilst comic book shopping at The Great Escape I decided to go to The Other Side of the Store for a minute, and as I was looking through the 99¢ records I saw one of those Steve Forbert albums. And then another. And then another. And then another. (You bet your ass I kept looking after that, but that was it.) So I got all of this

for $3.96 + tax. And I've just finished listening to them, and oh, my, what great, great songs. Which prompted me to wonder what Steve was up to these days, and I found that he has all kinds of other stuff out there--like 13 more albums. Bandcamp has all kinds of cool stuff, too. Including this freebie if you want a taste:

Oh, man, I love this guy. I am so glad that he's still out there doing his stuff. I'm hoping that he plays someplace within my Reasonable Traveling Distance so I can see him live.

Road trip, anyone?

1  Which is me pretending to be facetious when I'm actually 100% sure that it's not you, because none of the friends I'm thinking of here come anywhere within three hundred miles of this blog. Which kind of makes me wonder about designating them friends, ya know? But hey, I can deal with it. Motherfuckers. 

Roy Moore

So . . . I realize that there are some things one just should NOT talk about. But this Roy Moore shit is ubiquitous right now. CNN and MSNBC are on it non-stop. And I have to put my 2¢ worth in. Can't help it.

So first and foremost: anyone who preys on children sexually--or in any way--should definitely be punished harshly. No doubt about that. And if Roy Moore sexually assaulted a 14 year old girl, then he must be made to pay for that, statute of limitations be damned.

But here's the thing.

First off, that picture from CNN? I don't mean it as a cheap shot against the woman holding that sign. But I do want to focus on that sign.

Not in terms of the woman made a spelling error. But in terms of what that error says. And at the very least it says this: when she made the sign, the woman didn't check the spelling of the word pedophile. And that also strongly suggests that she made this sign in a hurry. And what I'm seeing on the news suggests that most of the people who are reporting / commenting on this story are functioning in a similar manner: they're saying whatever is on the top of their heads, not thinking through the consequences of their words . . . or maybe just not caring about the latter. 

So here's what I want to say to them.

First, the concept of Innocent Until Proven Guilty is a major component of our justice system. The fact that you look guilty or that I don't like your looks or that I don't think you're a good person is irrelevant so far as justice is concerned. In fact, that's precisely what is wrong with racial profiling, isn't it? So I have to say that people who are suggesting that Roy Moore step down because he has been accused of a crime are just wrong. Anyone can make an accusation. And there have certainly been false accusations made in the past. As a teacher, I certainly felt the sting of false accusations a time or two. Once a girl decided that she wanted to get out of my English class and into another one because the other teacher didn't have vocabulary tests. So she told her mother that I took her out into the hall and cursed at her, using the word fuck amongst others. Well, that never happened. Later on, the girl even admitted that it didn't happen. I know it's paltry in comparison to an allegation of sexual misconduct, but it certainly caused great upheaval in my life. There's a reason that we have a process to try people for crimes. 

Second, if Roy Moore had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl, then he should certainly be punished for that. But when I was listening to the news reports on this story on CNN and MSNBC, they didn't stop there. They went on to report that there was also at least suspicion that Roy Moore had had sexual relationships with 18 year old girls when he was considerably older--in his 30s. The pundits commenting on this--both male and female--went on and on about how terrible this was. 

Well. First off, in the interests of full disclosure I will say this: after my first divorce, when I was 42 years old, I was approached by three 18 year old girls in a row, all of them former students. The first came to my house and professed her love for me. We kissed. I liked it. I was lonely and aching and she was beautiful and sweet. She asked if I wanted to have sex with her. I told her no, that I didn't think that would be right. The second one stopped in at school to see me. She asked me if I wanted to go to Italy with her, where she was modeling. I told her that I couldn't. The third was a post-student coffee buddy for some time--usually as a part of a group. One night about a year after she'd graduated she came over to my house alone, and while talking about one of her friends she began to cry. I came to sit beside her and she began to kiss me. And I told God that enough was enough, and we had sex. And after that we had a relationship. And after that we began to live together. And after that we got married. And after that we got divorced. According to the standards evinced in the condemnation of Roy Moore by the aforementioned pundits, I am guilty of Something Or Other--Inappropriate Choice of Sexual Partner, I suppose. Not because it breaks a law, as it doesn't. Not because there was any kind of force or influence involved, because there wasn't. In fact, in all three cases I was the passive party. But that doesn't matter, I suppose, because I was considerably older than the women in question. And that is just bullshit so far as I can see. I didn't take notes on the news, but I remember one of the pundits saying something along the lines of, "What kind of 30 year old man wants to have sex with an 18 year old girl?" Well, I can answer that question: "Every kind." I mean, I guess that is no longer politically correct to say, but for fuck's sake, why pretend? I'm just sick of that bullshit.

Third, Roy Moore has said that this accusation is happening now for political reasons, and non-Republicans have responded to this suggestion with unbridled fury. But I have to say that I think that asking "Why now?" is a fair question. Leigh Corfman says that this sexual assault happened in 1979, when she was 14. Why did she wait until she was 52 to make the accusation? I realize that that is not a simple question . . . nor is it a kind one, and my heart aches for this woman if what she is saying did happen. But I don't think asking "Why now?" is unwarranted. At very least, some context would help to make this whole thing more comprehensible. If the timing was not politically motivated, then what was the motivation?

Enough. 

I loved Sen. Lindsey Graham when he said, “My party has gone batshit crazy." Recognition is the first step (in a long journey) towards political sanity. But it's time that Democrats echoed those words. CNN, MSNBC, fellow-liberals: You are all going batshit crazy. Let's try to get back to some clear thinking and stop acting like fucking idiots, okay? And take a goddamned minute to think about what you're going to say before you shoot your mouth off . . . or pen a sign.

And if the evidence shows that Roy Moore is guilty of sexual assault on a 14 year old girl, then I don't think any penalty is too harsh.