Mathias B. Freese

Jane and I are working on two writing projects, a new book of essays that go back as far as 30 years ago and a book of short stories on the Holocaust that I have been working on for the past year. I have categorized parts of the essay book which consists of published essays and blogs, the blogs revealing a writing style which has morphed greatly since years ago, much freer, more loose, chatty and conversational, perhaps the end result of blogging in which I just blather. As Jane read through the old stuff and then moved to blogs that are about three years old, which I printed out, she and I agreed, after some discussion, that she should cut out the deadwood with an ax rather than a scapel, to assist me to get to the essence of the blogs which often go on for paragraphs before I hit the vein I am looking for. Consequently she has “savaged” the blogs, cutting out paragraphs if not pages. All to the good.

I am sharing this for those of you who are writers, regardless of your experience, to get at what goes on, often haphazardly, often by luck in the writing process. In fact, David Herrle, editor of Subtle.com, has published a few of my blogs in the past year or so (See “Glut and Loathing in Las Vegas” at Subtletea.com); he suggested that I consider writing a book consisting only of my blogs. That stayed in mind, considering that Jane had mentioned the idea of a book of essays; and all that began with her reading of Eric Hoffer’s essays which he said somewhere were inspired by the writings of Montaigne. It came together in mind. In the past two weeks Jane has slugged through my old essays and  new blogs, observing that I am often a kvetch, that the same themes repeat themselves over and over (Melville took to the sea; I take to dyspepsia). She determined, my closet intellectual, that she’d take the best of the lot — in each category –as a representative sample.

I relented and bit my lip as I heard the silence of the lambs. Being 70 allows me to relent, to let go, to pass on control and so I believe the book will be that much better. The categories are reflective of who I am and they will change, but here is a sample: on movies; on childhood; on teaching, teachers and the taught; on sons and daughters; on marriage; on being a therapist; on the Holocaust; on being a Jew; and a potpourri of essays on the fabric of my life, musings, etc.

On purpose, I have left the book of short stories, tentatively titled, “Working Through the Holocaust” to “rest,” like a newly baked cake. The last revision was rigorous and again listening to my spouse I cut out more and more. You see, reader, Jane has a great nose for literary crap, being more interested in the delivery of the pitch than the pitcher’s wind-up. Sometimes I get absorbed with the style of the wind-up and forget there is a pitch to deliver; we must advance the man to first. As Jane and I know and as professional writers accept as a cliche, often the writer doesn’t say anything for at least 3 to 4 paragraphs, much like blowing into one’s cupped hands on a cold day, a useful meaninglessness. And Jane is an excellent content editor.

She advised me some time back to send out a few stories, to sample the marketplace. I did well: one story, “Soap,” was accepted by a new online journal edited by Duff Brenna, novelist; “Archipelago” was accepted by David Herrle, poet and polymath; and The Mensa Bulletin accepted “The Tea Table.” So three stories out of about 26 were accepted within weeks of one another. Realize that I have as yet to have Jane edit this collection and I have agreed to the putting to death of some lambs if it does not advance the men on base. Within the past two days I posted about 10 short stories in addition to others I have out; I sent out “Away,” which deals with a mentally slow child abandoned to his own devices after the Nazis round up his mother. It is three pages and minimalist in style. I was very gratified to be emailed by the editor that it was accepted within a day that it was sent — now, that is something! The idea, of course, is to test out my works and when I go to publish I can acknowledge that many of the stories were in print online or in print magazines.

Jane will begin the pruning in a week or so while she works on her degree in library science, works on her own stories as well; recently she posted a fine literary memoir. So the Freese household has twenty fingers working in writing, about writing and a very collegial feeling wafts through our home. Only a few hours ago I edited a short piece that Jane will send out tonight; it deals with her ongoing relationsip with her mother, She who must be adored, the Medusa of Madera Canyon, Arizona. If a marriage between writers can sustain mutual editing of one another’s works, “What larks, Pip, what larks!”

I really don’t want to write again about Glenn Beck fulminating on Fox 5 views. As an old history major and secondary teacher of social studies for several years, I watched him this afternoon –one does not observe Beck, for he is as deep as a wall decal — take a few facts, twist and distort them, and come out the other end of Alice’s tunnel. Often he has an “historian” as an accomplice to support him in his big lies. He will take a simple historical fact and right before you eyes draw the most eely and exquisitely malformed conclusions with all the sincerity of a Goebbels.

Beck cherry picks history and once he finds a ripe cherry he wraps it into interpetations and glazes it with assumptions and then pimps it out as a general rule about all cherries in all history. Although he is a “recovered alcoholic,” his thinking process is like that of one completely soused. And he is not only a danger to himself but to others. If i were teaching today I would tape one of his rants and present it without any observations on my part to a class and ask them to tell me what or what is not going on here. I’d examine Beck as if he were the first microbe of living matter on Mars, without judgment. Think of Lumet’s prophetic ”Network,” and Howard Beal (Is that his name?) and you have a sense of the directon Beck is heading for. I await a swoon. Indeed, he will be speaking at the Lincoln Memorial in a few days (the hubris must have been soaked in aged whiskey). I can’t wait to see the video of that and the vermin that will come out to support him and collude in the desecratation of that monument, the site of King’s and Lincoln’s speeches.

When Rush Limbaugh refers to the President as “Imam Barama,” and Hannity calls him the “anointed one,” when a Senator slyly avoids the question about his being a Christian or not, we are in real trouble. The racism is palpable. Boundaries are being crossed, the center doesn’t hold. I am not writing here of good taste, good behavior, reasonableness, sensitivity, tolerance and precision with words. I am writing of those inhibitions we need to keep and sustain if we have any characteristics of a civilized humanity. I do not piss in the street nor do you. I like that inhibition, a standard for all of us. However, Beck and his cohorts are marching knowingly or sometimes not knowingly, propelled by conscious (often) and unconscious forces into areas that I had assumed were generally taken for granted among rational human beings. At my age I cannot avoid observing the decline — maybe decadence – of the body politic. Anything goes now. I didn’t believe I would see a person such as Sarah Palin hold people in rapture so that they would stand in lines for a book she most probably never wrote, given her use of “refudiate” a few weeks ago. She is a total ignoramus, a spawn of McCain’s dementia, the so-called “maverick.”

For me Palin represents everything that is loathesome and repugnant about American marketing, capitalism and culture.

These are savage times and the beasts are on the prowl. I am not John in his wet dream writing about the Apocalypse, but few voices of recognizable character are making their voices heard. Stalwart souls are hard to find as night crawls over the cityscapes like tar. I do not have faith for humanity, for it has revealed itself over and over again to be a worldwide plague. When boundaries dissipate and dissolve, inner controls are lost and anything goes. The tether we hold on ourselves, on our culture, in my view, are precarious and slipping away. No use to get up and leave the USA; entering Belize with my luggage would just reintroduce me  to another variant of humankind — the American tourist.

David Herrle, poet, editor, at Subtletea has just published ”Archipelago” online, the opening story from my now completed short story collection, “Working Through the Holocaust.” If you are interested in my new effort, take a peek. It always validates me, at least, when a story or section of a work in progress is accepted for publication prior to publishing. David has also published my “Glut and Loathing in Las Vegas” in the same issue.

Before I knew it another blog was needed. About 9 months ago I was overweight to such a degree that diabetes was an incipient threat. I have seen what that disease can do and I was in no mood for insulin shots and the paraphernalia associated with that medical anguish. I got on supplements, read some essential books on dieting and began to work out at least five days a week for about 50 to 60 minutes per session. I can report after several blood tests that I am in the normal range (!) once again and that my doctor and I are both elated. He encouraged me, but I did it.  Exercise really has shown the way because losing weight has been very hard to do. I am on a version of Weight Watchers (19 points per day for those who know about such calculations), eating the so called right stuff and taking over 10 supplements to assist my body from wearing down. Being compliant when it comes to health issues and not complaisant — after all, I want to be in good health to meet the grim reaper, exercise is no longer a passing fancy. It has to be part of my life if I choose not to become a diabetic — and I choose not to.

 I have one more emotional hurdle to overcome; I am detecting a hearing loss so I will have to look into that. So with a diagnosis of a cataract and macular degeneration as well, I forge ahead. Deaf, blind, but never dumb. I go on. For 70, not too bad.

All of the above has given me an oxymoronic calm urgency, to knock off at least 4 or 5 books if not more in this decade. I am bombarded in e-mail and by the world at large as to how to market my books in the digital age — e-books, twitter ( should we rename that twinkie), facebooks and all that gelatinous American push to sell, sell, sell that I enjoy my resistance to it all. As long as I can get the bucks together to finance another book and send it out to friends and mildly hustle and mildly merchandise it here and there, it keeps mental and moral dementia away from my doorstep.

Perhaps as I sit here and associate to what I am writing at this second, allow me to share my “credo,” just newly formulated and brought to you, ladies and gentlemen, directly from the unconscious, the only real friend any good writer has — for it is authentic, unbiased and nonjudgemental.

: I love existence. I do not love religion, nor country, nor nation. I disdain all tyranny, to paraphrase Jefferson, that controls our minds. And it is most everything in any culture in any country throughout the world.

: I am in insurrection over any unreasonable conditioning — Tea Partyers, parties, sects, religions, media, formal national history, family, “normal” human interactions and artists as poseurs (see “Exit Through the Gift Shop” in your local cinema).

If I come to die, let Krishnamurti tell me the truth of that and Eric Hoffer tell me that I fought the good fight.

As I close down my latest work, “Working Through the Holocaust,” and waiting for a read through by Jane as to what to save and what to delete, I received a message from David Herrle, Subtletea.com editor, in which he suggested he wanted to publish my blog, “Glut and Loathing in Las Vegas.” At the end of his e-mail he asked if I would consider publishing my blogs and that started me thinking. Additionally, all along, Jane had urged me to consider the many essays I had written and had  published as a possible book. And so it came to pass as they say in fairy tales, that I began to put everything on hold in terms of my present book and I began to gather from files and storage boxes essays that I had been proud of. The blogs are another story as I am perusing them to see if they hold up and while doing so considering if they might serve as the salt and pepper of this new book of essays.

The essays are short, some not so, and most of them represent the workings of my mind over 40 years. As to marketability, I couldn’t care less. No one reads essays these days, much less sells them; however, this is my summing up and my gift to that share of posterity I may have within my family. The essays will be given to friends and others, a few to reviewers who favor my efforts and may possibly review the book. Again I go against the grain and swim upriver, but my essays deal with that in spades. I look at what I have in hand, dusty, musty xerox copies, magazine copies, typed copies and I may well near 250-300 pages. That feels good. I’ve accomplished something for me, meaningful for me, perhaps to you, in a meaningless existence, for life is a blank slate and we must assert ourselves to leave writ, for what it is. I always get a emotional kick by holding my manuscripts in hand, to see visibly the outpourings of a mind I just steward  for it is way beyond my control.

Having read Erik Hoffer’s The True Believer, Jane is now perusing Montaigne’s collected essays, for Hoffer learned to write by studying this master. I mention this here because this new collection has much to say obviously, about me, but it reveals no arc or parabola, but “doglegs.” I believe Montaige’s essays are focused yet discursive and as he writes in a short introduction it tells a great deal about him if you were to peek beneath the bedspread. And so with that in mind, I will share with you right off some of the topics in this book quickly assembling itself.

I intend to break it up into themes — family, musings, movies, on being a therapist and therapy, childhood, growing up, teachers and the taught, perhaps memoir. All this is in flux. But I can share with you as I freely recollect what issues, concerns and relationships made me write over the years. I wrote two articles, one short, one extended, for the New York Times about my experience as a teacher in suburban Dix Hills, Long Island; they were published in the Sunday edition so the articles were widely circulated. They were both met with silence and a quiet venom. Published 10 years apart, the first one was artfully composed, may I say so, but needle sharp; the second was savagely presented, calling teachers “capons,” and so you get the drift. They represent my frustration, resentment and anger at schools and teachers, the worst of the blind leading the worst of the blind, turning all of us into “soylent green” crackers.

One article won a prize as I was completing studies at an analytic school and entered a contest; the article was on a schizophrenic and was well-written and I was lambasted during the peer review but somehow it won. Other articles were on my daughter Caryn who had CFIDS and was wheeling toward her own suicide in 1998 (I wrote a short story about her as well which was published); a recent article about my remembrances of Rochelle who died in 1999. I wrote essays about my Grandpa Charlie, my Grandma Fanny, a bag lady, my son Jordan, about my sister Harriet, about my “father” and other kith and kin. I wrote an  extended article on Otto Rank who had grabbed my analytic interest at the time. So several essays were very good and sometimes hard hitting and they were published.

And in the 80s I struck gold and had several long essays published in Classic Images, a zine dedicated to movies. Years later it became quite well known by aficionados which pleased me no end. I wrote loving  prose-poems about the movies that marinaded my young heart as a young boy growing up in the late forties and fifties, the years in which movies were that and not cinema! I wrote about Sabu, Kane, Ivanhoe, Brando, Conrad Veidt, Disney’s “Song of the South,” and endlessly on. Recent reviews are on Daniel Day-Lewis in “Last of the Mohicans,” simply unreal. Movies have made an indelible impression upon me until this day.

As I think over all that I have written I see my depression, my neuroses, my rage and resentment: I also see my inability to surrender but to persevere, to work out all this through writing for the rage was not inconsiderable, given my upbringing.

Rightfully so, I begin the collection with an essay on my early years before 10 and my experience with my mother and the sea wall. It sets the tone for all to come. (It was published in Europe, of all places.) I see how unclear and messed up and lathered and confused I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s; it was not until my 50s that I began to see a horizon and headed for the light; however, all this muddling through, although sad to reread also paved the way for the newer skin I took on. I am the same self with all my distortions and contortions and torturous thinking processes, but I have a sharper clarity now and not a little comprehension of what I went through, experienced and have somewhat tamed.

As I said earlier, my life has been a series of doglegs, golf course traps veering off to the right and left. I will wait until Jane reads all this and can tell me what she sees, what she makes of all this blather of a somewhat tortured soul. I always believe that the reader owns the book she or he reads; that we are vastly unknown to ourselves until they day we are no more; that we are never in charge of ourselves — a myth, a delusion, Americana; that we are channels of many selves, for as we never will see or touch our inner organs so we shall never completely see who we are as individuals. It is all a mess, is it not? Writing, for me, apparently, is an attempt to dip the popsicle stick into the yogurt and pull it out hoping that something adheres — or at least takes shape. I write to adhere, to cohere. I “stick” it to me.

I decided a few months back to “celebrate” my 70th birthday with my son in Chicago. I have no idea what 70 is except it is vexing, annoying, troublesome and has arrived as predicted on the wings of tempus fugit. I humorously detest even saying the age out loud, as if to do so would immediately lead to my being Miranda-ized. One thing for sure is that internally I live the cliche that I am really 40 or so; yes, that is true; the character remains the same. The body decays, the spirit is alive and well. The curmudgeon still lives. The greatest sadness of my life is the estrangement between my daughter and myself; I have not seen nor spoken to her in 7 years. The reasons are too complex to go into here and quite frankly none of the reader’s business. I state the fact because it would have been significant for me as a father to be surrounded by my son and daughter at a family gathering, and such a small family we are. I will deal with that anguish as I have dealt with anguish all my life, by the ways and means each of us deal with individual pain. My pain, reader, and how I deal with it, I will not share here, either. It is only a blog. I can only say as I schlep off this mortal coil it would be of meaning to me to have hearth and kin about. My daughter’s ungrounded rage for me  will not abate, for change itself frightens her. I move on.

We spent four days in Chicago, visiting my son’s apartment, seeing his workplace, a digital production studio which is highly complex and varied — we played ping pong, Jane and I, as Jordan finished up a task, staying in the oldtime but very well situated Palmer House (Monroe Street), a block’s throw from The Art Institute of Chicago (splendiferous); the Adler Planetarium which is on a spit of land jutting out into Lake Michigan, affording a striking view of Chicago, although the show itself was a bore, alas; the Rookery, a small gem designed by Frank Lloyd Wright which is an entranceway and staircase to a granite made skyscraper encrusted like a Tiffany stone in a Tiffany setting within one of the oldest skyscrapers of Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art which had a spanking new exhibit of stabiles and mobiles by Alexander Calder all  spritely, refreshing and not at all somber and beautifully set out in a large exhibition hall; much of modern art turns me off as I feel it is pretentious, showy, consumed in the artist’s narcissism and not pleasurable, joyous or giving to the beholder; we have a six-foot mobile hanging from our living room ceiling which gives us pleasure and is called “Archeopteryx” named after that transitional bird-mammal fossil. When I was 17 or18 I fashioned  a mobile out of wire hangers for a school project and so even then Calder had entranced.

Walking Chicago’s streets within the first or second day made me very aware of the panhandlers and the disabled if not deformed trying to cadge money from pedestrians. One man in a wheel chair had legs so thin that they looked like my wrists were attached to his groin; he skittered along the street and I returned and gave him a dollar as it was too much for me. I will not go into a rant that speaks to begging or the helpless in our streets and the failure of this society to deal with that; more than that, I was trying to imagine what he ate for lunch, if he had money for lunch, where did he “live,” and what were his  quarters like. I imagined all kinds of things but what I didn’t do was dismiss him out of mind. One man came up to Jane and I while we waited for a downpour to subside and gave us a complicated spiel in well-articulated Americanisms from which we extracted ouselves; one young man asked us and others to give him money to buy a hamburger at the McDonalds behind where we were sitting on a street bench; some woman took him up on that and escorted him to the store. It rolled about in mind to what degree I would beg or panhandle for food and I came up with no good answer except the feeling that I would not like being so pressed  and so destitute in a country so abundant in food. I just had a virulent association: I Hate Republicans, for they represent to me the callousness, the indifference, the coldness, the lack of charity as a group; and the second association had to do with good old capitalism, that of Adam Smith and Charles Dickens; and then I associated to people in general and that association I share not.

So, architecture, sights, street people, imprinted themselves on my mind’s eye. On the last day of the trip we had lunch together in an Italian restraurant (not bad) and we all talked for an hour or so, my hearing Jordan slightly open up and discuss his life, his art, his movie in progress, sharing his self, humoring me at times (all fathers are apparently dodos), revealing his worries, and so on, all for my knowing and not yours, reader. We left hours later for the airport out of Midway and it was delayed by two hours and finally we arrived in Vegas in that supercharged heated and very grumpy air, flopping into our beds about 3 A.M. As I flip back through the new memories I see jane and I videotaping our responses in the hotel room which we now do as a new  marital tradition, our sense of place, restaurants, people we encounter, our overall impressions of events. We will complete that half hour tape today; it is a surprisingly good technique for we unburden ourselves of all things fleeting and memorable — such as losing our luggage for a an hour or so until it arrived in another plane and how I was suprised by Jane’s having put her camera and best earrings from a trip to Portugal in her luggage rather than in the carryall for the plane itself; no, I did not have a fit (or did I?) but I am 70 and I should behave and act my age — fuck that!

All is well, all is safe, and the trip was very, very good; if you have a child, it is always poignant to see them do so well — apartment, income, spiffy new car, goals, ambitions, desires as you know you are in maximum fade. Children cannot abide thinking about their parents having great sex — and they cannot abide thinking about the increasing mortailty of a parent as he ages (but they must). Love and death, the great carousel of life. Stretch up and out on the stirrup as the horse moves up and down gracefully and go for the brass ring!

I’m breaking the weak rule I keep for myself, no more than one blog per week. When the unconscious percolates up into awareness and the brewing bubbles burst revealing an idea or feeling to write about, then there’s no stopping that. The heat of the Nevada desert is insufferable; one runs errands and then beats it back to the air conditioning. Unlike a more temperate climate, it goes for months without rain, of any kind. As a new Yorker I could easily describe the varieties of rain in the big city between the East and Hudson  rivers — light drizzle, heavy downpour, trickle, impending rain, threatening rain, fog-ridden moisture, dew on the tips of one’s shoes; torrents and then buckets, all knowable to  the average city slicker. Jane wakes up to the stark and glaring sunshine and speaks to the climate gods for a cloudy day, one in which she can dwell in the shadows. Shadows and inclement weather make for good writing, no doubt.The trouble here in Henderson is that there is no adversity climatically speaking, it is all the same and interminably boring which reflects something of the human population hereabouts. (Readers of this blog will understand my seemingly interminable rant against the species.) What is missing is variety. I wonder if the lack of climatic stimulation may impact upon the citizenry, creating a dull, flat affect.

Sometimes as the heat broils my cortex I wish I were in some Caribbean or Latin American country, to spend the rest of my years gazing out on the BP free sea. After all, at 70, what do I have left,  10 to 15 years at the most declining into decrepitude, hearing loss, cataracts and macular degeneration? Since many of my peers — celebrities, newscasters, actors, Ringo Starr at 70 — are aging I try to ask myself what is it I need to do to prepare for my great swan dive into existential nothingness.Three questions in a row and I confirm my Judaism. As I wrote to someone recently, I hang between carpe diem and tempus fugit. (If I could say that in Yiddish, it would have an earthier and more graphic effect –anyone out there  who can supply me with the equivalent?). I was fantasizing about Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador for a week or so but I was informed that Medicare cannot be used there. That was an eye-opener, for apparently many well-intentioned ex-pats find out that pension and social security checks can be forwarded, but not Medicare, That is to be found in U.S. territories or protectorates — the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, whatever. So now I am limply gathering info about Puerto Rico. I chuckle at Americans — and their “tastes” on such a show as International House Hunters, who venture into Mexico and fall for the beauty of the land, disregarding cartels, and the lack of an infrastructure (we call this well-schooled dentists, doctors and surgeons). It is a kind of blindness in search of pleasure. So what else is new? Perhaps we stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic when Jefferson offered us “the pursuit of happiness.” He should have known better; to pursue happiness is to end up with your nose up your butt. Silly founding father — take that, Glenn Beck.

And sometimes as the heat broils my home and this Jewish lobster within, I think about going back to my practice as a therapist, that is, part time. All the conflicts and issues that creates is something to behold — but I do miss the intensity of a session, the search for a better question on my part, the struggle to understand the other self a few feet away, that taxing of one’s feelings and emotions, the stretching of one’s reasoning powers, the ability to offer choices and show the client how to use choices as a way to humanly go on in life, the need to have after some years of practice a kind of wisdom, a good nature, a supportive and encouraging self, a goodness about one’s self; of being brave and courageous as a therapist, to share that knowledge; to metabolize depression that pours from the patient and to change it into  a kind of feeling talc, gently falling to the floor, and a whole host of other feelings and sentiments and emotions. I think about that and then I go take a nap. It passes.

However, I am clear to myself about why I think this. It is a giving; it is challenging; it makes for growthbetween patient and therapist — it is growth; it is existential; it is meaningful; it is real and most of all, if you have guts and grit, it can be authentic! I feel I am at the peak of my creative powers but there is no call for this. Indeed, Nevada puts up all kinds of barriers to practicing, since I am from another state. The credentialing process is a pain in the ass; all the credentials that testify to your professionalism are disregarded here, in this rather stupid and arch-conservative state. I bridle at the thought of being supervised by a 35 year old. A former instructor of mine is 87 and he is still practicing in New York City, recently writing me for information as he is working on a new article. To practice psychotherapy is to keep one intellectually alive, for it is the impossible profession and because of this endlessly fascinating, much like fiction writing. It is the best defense against dementia. I get all worked up about this “unjustness” but then I take a nap and it too passes.

What I just observed in this self-moment is that most if not all my wishes are not retroactive or attempts at repair or reparative; I seek not to go back, although I have my rueful and remorseful moments.  Whether I did or did not do my best as a father and husband and human being is lost in the folds of time cascading through the voids of space, evermore. I wish for things and opportunities in the present, for time instructs me that I have no future but this very moment. Sometimes I wish I could “shape” the immediate present into something I would not have to siesta through. And I think I know what that is. It has been given to me the need in this autumnal part of my life to just write — believe me, blogging isn’t writing; blogging is practice for the real writing that lies ahead or — perhaps tomorrow or the next day. With that, adieu.

 I don’t know if you have observed but we have become shabby as a country; the American people absolutely deserve what they are getting, for they have voted in the rascals. Indeed, we are the rascals. I have no faith in politicians but I have a greater lack of faith in the American people — and a great fear of them as well.

White men, lawyers, WASPS wrote the Constitution and it is a perfect lawyer’s document which protected economic vested interests (See Charles Beard’s The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution )– and racist: the slave is three-fifths of a white man for purposes of representation, etc. Yeah, yeah. I know the come back lines. I don’t read the books Glenn Beck reads and only a decade or two ago he would never have been allowed to drive a Good Humor truck much less preach his Mormonisms filtered through his racism and ignorance. There are those who learn history from him, who esteem him and they are fast becoming in charge, as far as I am concerned. If I had the werewithal I would leave this country, for it reeks of things foul and fetid. Hatred pours in large quantities from each of the stars in our flag.

I have observed that Newton Minow’s comment about television decades ago is still of worth, that it was “a vast wasteland.” It still is. Anyone watching American television abroad might conclude that we are a fairly polluted people, reeking of materialism, the fat cats of the world; we find it hard as a nation to look at ourselves closely or in any other perspective except positive. I feel we are a society in decline. Years ago, many years ago, the historical bromide was that the American people eventually catch their wind and do the right thing; that this was a remarkable trait of us as a people. Well, that is over. The American people have acted as dullards for decades now and if you have observed this empire of ours, yes, it is an empire, we  have been in continual wars up to this date. Sssshh! Don’t tell anyone. In fact, we easily feel free about labeling war criminals in other nations but there is no doubt in my mind that George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals and that no one will ever bring charges against them; that in 25 years we will have revealed historical knowledge about how our dear Constitution was sullied by their behaviors. Our textbooks most likely will expunge any mention about the cultural genocide we wreaked against the American Indians, for we must sell textbooks and the grand state of Texas, because of its buying power, tells publishers what they want in their social studies textbooks. The publishers capitulate.Talk about corruption.

In a side note: when I began to teach social studies more than 30 years ago, I came to the classroom constipated with a lot of historical knowledge, weighted with all the historical works of note I could manage to read and absorb, for I had majored in American History. In a book by Carl Becker, one of our most eminent historians, about the Declaration of Independence, he made the very capable case that it was essentially a piece of propaganda meant for the digestion of the American colonies; that some of the charges against King george were meretricious, and so on. He had done the historian’s task — he told the truth dispassionately. In class, in my naivete, I had mentioned that it was propaganda and before the week was out one family asked that their child be allowed to transfer out. I told the unvarnished truth and for that I was not punished, but a child was denied what I feel is still a very valid truth. Read his book! We don’t want to hear, we don’t want to know — ask any witness to the cattle cars heading to Auschwitz.

All societies are essentially corrupt, Krishnamurti said a long time ago. And his generalization is spot on, all countries except the United States, that is. Only in this country might we say that such and such is “unAmerican.” Do they say in Europe something is “unFrench” or unGerman”? It is as if the very language we employ reveals our obstinancy and blindness. However, let me be gracious — since all societies are essentially corrupt because all societies are composed of human beings and human beings are a very dark species, indeed. What is insufferable in this nation is the traditional trait of our feeling superior, as if we are the coming of the lord, our messianic impulse if you will. The same old shit that the Catholic Church has used to declare itself as the successor to Judaism (super succession or replacement theology), that for me to be better you must get worse, for me to succeed you must fail, all emblematic of human nature and society, all societies, at large. You know it is really damn hard to get off this planet in one piece, intact and whole. I imagine this is the “up” side of dying, for this living lunacy dies — the thought of heaven with others of my ilk is just too much a fantasy for me to entertain for even a moment.

About a year ago Jane and I met a Holocaust survivor whose name, for my purposes, will be Josef Vekkony. An author of a ghost-written book about his experiences during the Holocaust, he lectures around Henderson, Nevada and elsewhere. He is probably past seventy and is a retired businessman. Something of a celebrity here, I now view him as the Holocaust “expert,” used by jewish agencies when next faced with an oubreak of anti-Semitism. All this back story is necessary as I was readily repelled when he gave me his business card which listed him as a Holocaust survivor — that was a new one on me. In fact, shortly after I wrote an extended short story called “Shoah Business,” exploring in fiction the correspondence he and I might have over this issue. I was really annoyed by his aggrandisement. I never published it. I believe Josef Vekkony is oblivious to what he is and what he does — welcome to the world.

I recall giving him my book and receiving his which I read. I never heard from him again, although I expected he might read my book and get back to me on it; but that was not to be and I soon gave up on that wish. During the year there was a scene in a local high school in which a gym teacher made remarks that essentially denied that the Holocaust had ever occurred. Local jewish groups got involved;  Mr. Vekkony was called in to talk to a large group and gave what I imagine is his silver bullet speech. I caught that talk on YouTube and was appalled in how he dealt with the students. After all, he is not a teacher but some of his techniques were ridiculous and more than ineffective — more on that later on. (I was so aggravated by his performance that I spent time drafting a letter to a local newspaper about it; it went unpublished.) Apparently he is the local Jewish fireman on call to put out anti -Jewish blazes. If you want to read my take on the Holocaust, see “On the Holocaust,” in Pages on this site; I gave it to a group of survivors and military personnel at an air force base in Arizona, about three years ago.

I am offended by Shoah business, the subtle and blatant kind. Enough said! On Sunday 27 June I received this e-mail from LinkedIn.

Matt,

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

-Josef

All the latent anger emerged. Jane and I chatted. She knew my anger and suggested that I may want to play the game, that is, connect up with him, that my book on the Holocaust might get some readership and whatever else the politically correct way might do for me. Jane  presented an option, but she knew that was not the way I would go. I sent this e-mail.

Mr. Vekkony: I read your book; you did not read mine or you did not respond; in any case, I have significant differences in how you go about presenting yourself. A Holocaust survivor is not an occupation which you apparently feel it is. Here we part. I will not become part of your network which only serves to advance your own narrow needs.

There is a curious synchronicity here; the other day I really considered to dispose of Vekkony’s book as I had enough of him as well (in trash now). The book reminded me of his narcissism if not grandiosity. in any case, after a year or more, he writes me so that we can link up professionally, ah the world of the business mind. Clearly he was scouring through business cards to extend his network — but not one word to another author about the Holocaust. Or to even say hello.

Vekkony answered the e-mail within minutes: here it is as it appeared with spelling errors, etc.

You are Right Holoasust Survivor is not an occupation. Under choices opf occupation, Retired or Lectuer was not listed. I did not list myself as a Holocaust survivor, but as a Phylantropist. “As to serve my narrow needs.” World wide there are around 140,000 people, who have listened, to my 560 lectures. At home I’ve around 7,000Letters, from my followers. You will have a hard time to convince these people. You are entitled to your opinion. By the way what was the title of your book? I’m getting a lot oof b ooks to read. May be I’ve not yours. No hard feeling on my side. god bless you and have a great life. Sincerely Josef Vekkony.

When I met him a year back, he made special note to Jane and I of how many lectures he had given! Tragic. I thought less is more applies not only to architecture but to life, to writing especially.

I wrote back:

You condemn yourself by your own words — you have “followers”; I have your business card given to me by you which lists you as a Holocaust survivor; yes, I am angry at you because you are into Shoah business and have very little insight into your own behaviors. I also watched you with young people at a recent school event and you simply have no idea how to deal with these kind of children — “Repeat after me, Never again!” {Jane finds that “refrain” personally distasteful.} Are you so simple that you believe people will change because of your exhortations? You are the one with the narrow mind; as an English teacher and psychotherapist I know what I am speaking about. You don’t. Any further correspondence will be deleted.

I had so much more to say but I left it at that.

I have no grand conclusion to come up with. It’s not the first nor last time that Jews will differ over the meaning(s) of the Holocaust; but I will not have it merchandised, especially by a dim-witted Jew who hasn’t the foggiest notion of what he is about. Survivors are human beings not immortals — I direct you, once again, to “On the Holocaust” at this site for further clarification of my point of view.

I am perplexed why I keep on writing.

I associate to Krishnamurti who was asked by a disciple, if you will, why he continued his teaching after so many decades, given that most people had heard his message and did not change. He answered that a rose has to give off its essence. I like that. I write because I write, no more, no less.

It may be that there is nothing else for me, or for me to do as I look about the world.  I am not materiallyrewarded. I have no fans or fame to speak of. I see something of my intent in the great final words by Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. “It is  a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known, ” an eloquent mixture of ennui, resignation and self-evaluation. And then off with his head!

I wonder as I look at my fellow creatures what it is that they do to sustain themselves in this world of the fascist Taliban, the BP spill, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the psychotic Michele Bachmann, the Jew hatred of the world at large – the same old eternal shit giving; the inability to depict cartoons of Mohammed, the stupidity of the Kaaba and the Vatican, priests ejaculating all over the place, a denying Pope, a President who dost think too much; Fox News (you should pardon the expression), a school that expels a child for wearing a cap with toy pistols on it, the morons of Scientology and Mormonism, and the true believers who follow, the damage being done to the environment, the Japanese who, kamikazi-like, still slaughter whales; the corporations that rule this world, the digitalization of almost everything — genomes, books, the workplace and the slavish esteem  which we give gadgets rather than individuals, for all this is endless in a rather corruptive environment. I had someone say to me that hope and faith will get us through;  besides restraining myself from throwing up,  I felt like saying that ghouls, vampires, ghosts, miracles, Catholic relics, probably in some demented way make more sense than the idiocies of conditioned religious thinking. We are a doomed species — please hurry up with extinction.

We are all handicapped — pick your disability. From the barbecueing American dad with his bumper stickered SUV and his need for a “man cave,” to the aimless and drab lives of American housewives, to the ideologues — Anne Coulter, Laura Ingraham — she with the inch high and wide gold cross on her conditioned neck, to the inane and fat cat sensibility of a Jay Leno and the snide David Letterman; Wolf Blitzer boring us out of our minds as he drones out the news and Chris Wallace, he with the incised smirk in his face, to geriatric gym rats who try to stay alive longer but have nothing between their ears to make it meaningful, to Joan Rivers, slathered in plastic surgery, a living marionette, to the sycophantic writers who kiss ass to get published, to the writers who write fluff and attend dozens of critique courses in order to get their vanity published, to the fat little kids who don’t know what play is as they are absorbed into the digitalization of their world, to the parents who have no idea how to parent for they are bereft of an inner life and their own children simply extension cords of ignorance plugged into their collective assholes.

I am still curious how we defend not only against death from day one — “Mommy, are you going to die?” but how we manage our daily lives in order to give it meaning of some kind — football, soccer, the sport stations which are terminally boring,the players who are essentially moronic; the celebrities of stage and screen; the sleaze of the Madonnas and Lady GaGa and their ilk; the Roman games we abide in on a daily basis. The media who thrives on the decomposing bodies of the body politic, scavengers all. The reptilian politicians are a minor travesty given that we as a country are fast going down the tubes. So here I am scribbling stories to defend against the lunacies of my time, the culture I am immersed in.

Curious, is it not? that on one level the Tea Partyers represent a kind of psychological resistance to the state of affairs in our country and are oblivious to that except for the political aspect of it.  Unfortunately,  historically true,  a good rebellion is usually twisted and perverted — I give you Robespierre, Lenin and Trotsky. The discrepancy between what is and what could be is vast and often our rebellion about it comes out skewed.  I associate to The Great Awakening in the 19th Century in which religious leaders tapped into the ferment bubbling beneath the surface, but it  got screwed up, essentially because it is religious in nature; belief systems savagely destroy anything alive and fresh.

The one telling piece of advice to give an attentive child moving into young adulthood is to encourage him or her to be in constant insurrection (!) against society and everything that may serve to conform and condition  in that culture, including his or her parents. In fact, the task of parenthood, for me, is to help the child be free of his parents in a loving way if at all possible. Ultimately it may lead to isolation of a kind but I weigh that against the capacity to be free or to quote Kazantzakis’s, “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Life is an existential crisis and the sooner we understand that the sooner we may determine whatever meaning we can make of it, although I do not vest too much in meaning. There is no external meaning, for we make it, and we place it out there. I’ll take the crisp and cold solitude on the mountaintop, knowing I am indeterminate rather than the plush pomp of certainty in the lowlands of every culture and the Huxleyan Soma we imbibe each day.

I favor discontent, intellectual unruliness, disgruntlement rather than the KY gel we live in. The soporific platitudes we derive from religion and politics, from the general daily interactions we have with other human beings make me stand back and evaluate. It is essential, for me, not to become part of this society although I am stuck up to my ears in terms of its daily demands. I know I have chosen to write or to become a writer for it is in that task that I define who I am and make clear to myself what the matrix is. The artist,  poet and  writer must be in rebellion for his or her own sanity is at stake. History is an avalanche of human nonsense presenting itself as “progress,” whatever.

One never becomes completely free but sometimes it is excitingly emancipating to wipe one’s feet free of human shit.

Reading Freud of late has reawakened, I suppose, the dormant analytic tools I used as a psychotherapist. It has me thinking along intentions, conscious and unconscious, motives, illusions and delusions, guilt and conscience or superego. In that light it dawned on me that most of the stories I’ve been writing of late for my next book are told from the first person. As I have said in earlier blogs, one of which was published online by David Herrle, editor of subtletea.com I favor  the immediacy of that point of view. However, as I look at it again perhaps, without being self-serving,  we humans spend an inordinate amount of psychic time deceiving ourselves (Perhaps a good definiton of psychotherapy might be to help the client to be less deceptive with himself and the world at large: to tell the truth!) And so, given I am as slippery as you are, I do think that when I go about writing these stories about the Holocaust part of me wants to become that character or that experience, to dwell there for a time and by writing it from the first person, I can taste terror, abandonment, loneliness, suffering, torture, the whole panoply of the Holocaust catastrophe. In that way my stories no doubt suffer for I am too engaged in this linear perspective of the “I.” I don’t care, is my response. I will tell the story for it is cathartic for me as well, perhaps rounding out and shapening my interior psychic walls as a serendipitous response to what I have created in prose. I enlarge me, in short, Freud’s principle of secondary gain — or in layman terms, what’s the payoff for doing something?

I have also realized that the book will not come together as if it is resisting my attempts to bring it to an end. I can’t get the steers into the corral. One idea is that I suffer from the writer’s angst about whether or not the collective effort has merit, although two stories will be published in the coming months; I also worry that the stories reveal my limitations as a writer which I know intimately and will not share here, but they exist and it is hard to go around them. I guess I am too old or too stubborn as an old dog to learn new tricks. Another option banging off the interiors of my skull is the fear that if I complete this latest effort I have run dry, shot my load and no more will issue from me except reworkings of old stories and novels in lieu of creating new efforts, freshly hewn. Clearly all these concerns are variations of fear.

I feel all my writing has been a working out and a working through of all the neuroses which pinioned me to the ground much like Gulliver in Lilliput. As I look through my work over the decades I see the issues, only known to me – perseverations, passive-aggressiveness, stubornness, a wee touch of grandiosity and gradations of anger into rage. Some I have managed to stabilize, others are free floating viruses and others will be with me to the end of days. That I work on a second book dealing with the Holocaust at least tells me consciously that everything I need to know about others, man, friends, relationships, love, cruelty and everything I could ever learn and know about myself has coalesced into that abyssmal event, a time in which mankind fractured forever. It is my convenient paint box, I suppose, for in it dwells everything a decent writer could ever imagine. One friend has asked me why I want to torture myself. It is not torture; it is my own small quest into the beyond, a way of determining who I am and who you are. Serendipitously over the decades what it meant for me to be a Jew in this world, in America has for a variety of reasons, some discernible, others undiscoverable to my own eyes, absorbed my interest; I was not consumed nor driven by it. What I did was enter all that I observed into the well of my being, that depository we all carry with us — call it memory or the junk drawer in the kitchen, or the seething cauldron. It suits my psychic purposes, I believe, to write about the Holocaust as a way of defending against it or sublimating my feelings about it, for my mind is like a long snout — I want to sniff about and see.

I want to push myself a bit more. It is apparently something characterologically about your writer that he has always wanted to know or to learn, thwarted as I was a child by parents who did not own that desire or encouraged it in more direct ways as I grew up; they did not know any better and ignorance held them back as it must. I had to self-preen myself, hold myself in my arms and with long strokes across my back as a cat soothe me or make me feel felt. And so I make the extrapolation that my need to write has been, only in part, a self-definition of who I am but also a way of soothing andpreening myself, rubbing my fur in the proper direction so that I feel less fearful and stressed. It is in the telling; it is the culminative impact of the words that I set into motion across the printed page that I determine who I was, and who I am now and how best to deal with dying in the days ahead. And all ofthis means nothing. Meaning is not in this equation. What all this does is to help me seize the day, squeeze its pips until they squeak, make me more cognizant of my awareness and not to expect anything, not to hope for anything, not to fear anything and in so doing become free. I cannot think of anything grander other than the birth of my own child than to be free before I perish — and the grander hope is to show my children without conditioning, dogma, or teaching, what it is to strive toward freedom. Civilization, this decadernt soup of a culture we presently live in, this digitalized state rooted, grounded in materialistic pursuits and marketing, no longer has me as chattel. I am relatively free of all that — consequently dangerous, consequently someone who needs to be punished (catch me if you can).

In short, can you see the matrix?