I am sitting here, waiting, registering myself, thinking, wondering what will ooze forth. Lately I’ve been having the uncomfortable sense that many of my stories sent to online literary editors, probably from ages 25 to 45, may not relate to the kind of stories I write. It is a false fear, I know, because the bones of a good story cross over generations. I have come to that remarkable point in my life in which I am seemingly superannuated.
Here I am with all kinds of skills and talents which are “worthless” in this society, grounded in capitalism and the values thereof. Jane’s ex made millions providing the edgings that go around tables, really ridiculous, and yet this provider of laminates, whatever, is part of the mighty course of this country’s business. I cannot fathom — nor could he fathom me — what the production of that requisite societal shit does to one’s mind, “soul” or spirit. The effort put into some kinds of business just fatigues me, the very thought of it creates a moral nausea. The concept, the idea of equity is a mental quicksilver and has no place in this writing, for fairness, justice, et al is as random as the the whirl of planets in their voids. It simply is what is, but I can comment on that because as a writer that is my task, my laminate “business.”
If you are awake or aware and you are retired as we know it in this country, a cultural artifact of significance, what do you do with your time, or your time left? It is a question that should be asked when first consciousness dawned in your noggin ( recall the Wagnerian sounds in “Space Odyssey: 2001”) I have more time than ever to cogitate over this day and the day after, of how best to “use” the time or the time left to me, as I live in this temporary husk — on loan, by the way — that has been and is being ravished by wear and tear. After all, how long can one’s innards endure stress, digestion, arterial plaque, the accruing deposits of bad cholesterol, the heart pumping for year after year, etc. It is and has always been this needling question for me, at least for as long as I can remember, of what to do with existence, for that is what I am asking. The only man who I have learned about and who I have read who apparently wrestled with this in a rational way for decades and spoke to all the issues that beset me and you was Krishnamurti. I cannot describe or assess him other than say one must read what he has to say and yet that is not enough for me. I will die in my own little Venetian glass bottle thrown upon the sands of time.
With issues like this in mind or with concerns I take seriously, I moved early into writing which is just a mere expression of my character. You can see why business in itself entirely bores me. I am figured to work out my life in other ways. That genetic reptilian part of my brain is soused in consciousness, reminding me how a good and decent tomato or cucumber can easily be soured in brine to make something else. I feel that awareness or consciousness is much like taking a pickle from a jar, soaking wet, dripping and how one must shake it a bit to get at the total savoriness of it all. No matter how we are aware we still reek of the reptile, all instinct and aimless instinctual discharge.
Here I am with perhaps 10 years or so to live, or to die, besotted with the same questions that have pickled me in brine for decades. I believe we flower, wither and die without any sense of who we are, much like the flower in the field. Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are throwaway existences who see so far and yet so little and aimlessly live but that is their choice if they are cognizant of realistic choice rather than the rush of drugs. Humorously society now tells me to “live,” to enjoy retirement which is appalling for society is nothing more than another abstraction or “idea” concocted by this culture at this time; entire companies and medical plans are obsessed with this concept. Capitalism in no way is concerned and never was concerned about the moral welfare of human beings, for it is rooted in the abstraction of money, its making, its use, its entrepreneurial aspects. After all these years, I would like to proclaim a national day of rest which means a day of rest from ideas and any conceptualizing at all, for ideas gave us religion, systems, castes, slavery, anti-semitism, conditioning, cultural anomalies and monstrosities such as the Inquisition and colonialism. Ideas have spawned Beck, Palin, Bachman, Hannity, O’Reilly, Cavuto, Laura Ingraham, the cultural pus of our present day America. Everything ever written or said about masturbation is the ejaculation that comes from ideas about it. Americans love the mind/body split.
And so like the little mouse with his very little piece of cheese I struggle to nibble away at my existence in ways that go beyond mere survival or struggle. I have not been successful. My failures are in all my writings. It is the task I willingly self-assign myself, and I will go to my grave nibbling at whatever intention I can find for myself. It may be as wasteful as designing another laminate for the kitchen island.
Blood Libel and All That Jazz
Impressions. Since Sarah Palin does not write her own books — nor credit the ghosts who do, I suppose her “Blood Libel” talk was composed by speechwriters. I also suppose that ignorance is usually surrounded by ignorance, the undereducated in league with the undereducated. Quite likely that team Palin had no idea about the loaded meaning of that term for Jews. And that is point one. Palin comes to us without historicity. She dwells in the present abandoned by cognition of the past. In short, she doesn’t know gradations of feelings or emotions. What drives her is pure unadulterated narcissism which is as American as apple pie. The dynamic of her family and her relationship to Todd, the capon, is fascinating to observe and what can be derived from that is very little, alas. What we are given is mirrored images and so appropriate for a narcissist. Pundits, left and right wingnuts, ask what is the hold she has on her detractors. I think she is the new American, poorly educated, grandiose, having broken through to her “real” self so that she has the chutzpah to declare that ignorance is bliss, that ignorance is strength, for she is hatched from Orwell’s world. She is dangerous, mark my words, as she barrels throughout the culture, for she has made it safe and secure, she has made it honorable and appropriate to be blazingly stupid and yet go for the holy grail — the presidency. A quick survey of our present legislators reveal an appalling group of stupid men and women which only reaffirms Palin’s belief system that anyone can run for office. The days of Harry S. Truman are long gone. I wouldn’t trust the man in the street with my nail parings.
Impressions. I have observed her, from time to time, growing more facile with the language as she is being prepped and prepared, more certain. Doubt, for her, is indecisiveness. That is why religion is up her spine. People who do not doubt ultimately damage others. And as she learns it only serves to make her feel more commanding than ever. That speech pattern and sound of her voice is grating and pressured as if she has a ton of verbal garbage she has to emit, for she is on automatic and every day as she gathers more data and “learnings” it will become a steady stream of sound, like a flat tire endlessly flapping its tread on pavement. Some men find her attractive, physically, that is; some women admit she has a way about her, perhaps like a doped up cheerleader. I find her to be encapsulated, as if ensconced in a cloud of nothingness. She is Alaskan ice, pristine and pure, but a confection of temperature and water. And Palin is a hard personality which makes some women enthralled with her and some men envying Todd’s tool. Palin is not so much a castrator as she is a chilled presence, for her warmth, look carefully now, is manufactured, for I think this is how she has managed to get as far as she has and what an interesting defense that is. Growing up, one can imagine how she figured out how to behave in order to sustain her own vapidity. Perhaps she subliminally concluded to make pretend, to choose a self and play it out for all time. We all do a variation on this.
Impressions. I cannot say, I don’t really know, I can only imagine and I don’t have all the facts to render an intelligible interpretation or conclusion. Having learned from Sarah that this is in no way an impediment, in fact, it is an energizing kind of self-actualization, I will go on with other observations, emboldened by Sarah, my culture hero. Her children. I see them as an extensions of her own narcissism and her own planetary self worlds. The shabby presentation of her teenage daughter to the media, the lack of parental restraint, of protecting and securing for a child a parental “hold” does not apply for Saran (notice the Freudian slip, Saran instead of Sarah; I love our minds, for she is cellophane) for her children are “things,” apparently in her eyes. When she struts her retarded child on to a stage, having him in her left arm as if he were some kind of doll, I associate to Michael Jackson’s stupid behavior with his child on a balcony, such an inept man-child. That child is part of a twisted narcissism, see how I can make him part and parcel of my world, my very extensive world; Palin should be home with her children, attending to them in loving ways. What appalls me is the using of children to further her image of the magnificent mama grizzly. What she lacks is grace.
Palin’s monumental inability to put aside her own political shenanigans in order to disinfect herself of “blood libel” gets me to my final impression. If there is any spine to this blog, it is the one I will give now and that is her inability to empathize, for I find her inordinately hard and unfeeling as a person. My intuition tells me so. And narcissists, of course, are notorious for not seeing the other person’s difficulties, anguish or pain. A mirror has no depth, it only reflects. In the old movies of the fifties that dealt with flying saucers and such, the classic line was “Watch the skies!” In the years ahead watch her children, for in that will be the real testament of her as a human being. “Watch her kids!”
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Posted in Commentary, Culture, Politics
Tagged blood libel, ignorance is strength, mama grizzly, narcissism, Orwell, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin