Politics and Foxhunting Novels

Politics
I am not prescient enough to know if anything will be accomplished in Washington these next few weeks. The Republican party represents logjam. The Democrats represent the squabbling family. The lobbyists still own pretty much everybody, access-wise. Out among the rest of us in this land, we go to work and pay our bills and hope for the best. We take care of our kids.

The people marginalized and crazy listen to Rush and Glenn Beck. The young not-so-cool beat each other up, still looking for some sort of manhood ritual. The women in the audience vacillate between being attractive and fearing their own bodies. Overall the culture is not too clear on what it wants to be.

But that's okay. Whatever else is going on, Obama is president. Remember the last few years. No matter how bad this guy may be perceived to be, he will never be in GWB's class for stupidity and poor luck. What gets me about George Bush and his supporters is that this was clear even before the powers that be in the aristocracy and the Republican party made him president. He was always a failure, with poor luck and an inability to make a good judgement. I suppose they figured he'd be easy to control.

Frankly, if Scooter Libby hadn't been convicted (and thus diminished Dickhead Cheney's influence in the white house), and Condi Rice hadn't risen in influence, things could have been even worse. As it was, the Bush years pretty much trashed america. So, will Obama bring us back? Is it even possible?

But you gotta love those Republicans. They are ever more nuts. Now Newt Gingrich has been characterized by the Mullahs of the Right as a RINO, republican in name only. Ouch. And he used to be seen as the intellectual face of the right. Now that role has been taken over by Glenn Beck. Wow. Things are gonna get really crazy. We can only hope the electorate continues to vote their economic interest.

Culture
I bought some more Rita Mae Brown books off of ebay. I bought a bunch of her books new in the 90s when Paige was reading the cat mysteries. Now I buy them used for low money. At one time I would've felt bad about that. But no longer. Mainly because the people in her books who she consistently characterizes as poor middle-class people, even though they hang out with the rich and powerful people in their little towns and they live in property that is worth millions, these people constantly complain about paying their fair share of taxes. Government is always bad, the people are always good. Never mind the infra-structure, or defense, or social security. Never mind any of that. It 's just mindless whining about cash flow.

I point out that Brown herself keeps many horses, runs a foxhunt, and travels when she wants to. Whine whine whine. She pounds out the books, two or three a year, because she needs a lot of cashflow. The avergage american family gets by on in the neighborhood of 50gs. How much do you think this woman is spending? I would guess she's more in the 250gs area. In any case, it doesn't matter. I buy her books, which I find entertaining, and pay her nothing for the privilege. Well, I have given her some serious money over the years. But hey. Those days are over Rita.

What's really interesting to me is that Rita used to be a fiery lesbian activist in the city. It turns out she's really just an upper middle-class little lady at heart. Her books often have discussions of really high-end sports car and guns. She knows a lot about food and possessions, but clearly not much about policy and culture. It is interesting to me.

And yes, I've read her other books, too. Her tennis novel, her book that rang up the grecian gods (literally), and some of the others. And they are all over the map. She's really not too clear on what it is she believes. There's a mild amount of xtianity in the cat books, very middle-level except for the old lady, Miranda Hogendobber, that is a serious fundie, until her old boyfriend shows up and they start up again, after forty or fifty years. Then her religion becomes less pronounced.

Why read the woman? Mainly, the animal characters are fun. They are critical of humans in smart and interesting ways. They also share the author's inability to take responsibility for the larger world, though. But they get away with it by simply saying it it the natural way. To let the poor starve to death. That's what the animals in the forest do. Does Brown think that is what we should do? If humans are different from other species in some demonstrable way, isn't it because we make it possible for the failures of the species to continue to live and spawn. Is this good or bad? Is it your kid we are talking about? If it is, then you would say it is necessary. Mrs. Murphy, Brown's cat, would say it is irresponsible to allow those who can't keep up to continue living.

Well, that's pretty much the argument about the role of government there. The libertarians would say that is what is wrong with government, the idea that we should take care of everybody. There is always a tension between the fact that humans are a herd animal, that we have to live together or our children will die, and the fact that there is an element of the nomad that is inherent in us, but these days it is expressed by the desire to make something of one's self (and by these days, I mean since city culture arose six thousand years ago). We are either all in this together, or we are all on our own. Which is it?

Both of course. You come into the world into your family, but you are significantly trapped in your own head. Self consciousness exists, but culture is learned from your family. Ultimately you grow up, marry, reproduce, get old and die by yourself, even if your family is around you. You never get outside of the skull, unless you are one of those people who have convinced yourself you can cast your consciousness out into the universe. Hey, maybe you can. In which case, I guess you can leave the rest of us behind and go be the next evolved species.

But this entire discussion begs the actual question: buying books used means the creators of those books are not paid for what they have provided. And the music biz is upset because people download stuff for free? Ha. Writers have been ripped off for years. Who among us hasn't haunted used bookstores? I know I have. And although I have felt bad about it, I have ripped off many writers in my lifetime.

But the only people who get really rich from art in our culture are the business people who create the models of production and distribution. Do they deserve it? Sure. But they always make sure they get the most of the revenue stream, and that is where it breaks down. That isn't right. Is there anything that can be done about this? Who knows. The internet is fun, though, because it takes a lot of control away from the MBAs, so things are much more diverse than they were. Publishing on demand to kindle devices and cell phones will also complicate it all. The one thing you can be assured of is that the artists will continue to be screwed. That is the nature of capitalism. That's why most artists are democrats and not republicans. Or maybe they become more republican as they age and accrue some holdings (Rita Mae comes to mind, here).

So I am going to read Rita's foxhunting mysteries. I like the character of Sister, the old lady, because she isn't as judgemental as most of Brown's other characters. And I like the foxes and the interest they have in the game itself. Is this actually true of foxhunting? I have no clue. Consciousness seems like it should be extremely different between species, but Brown of course antromorphises all her animal characters as much as possible.

Poetry
Meanwhile I've started reading Anne Sexton's poems again. They remind me of Pat Smith, the woman I lived with from 1973 through 1981. She was 13 years older than me and had been significantly wounded in her life by her mother's suicide when Pat was thirteen. In any case, Pat was a pretty good poet, and eventually Sangamon Poets published a chapbook of her stuff entitled "The Museum Is Closed". I don't know how familiar she was with Sexton in those days. I was not reading Sexton, myself. Knoepfle didn't like her and discouraged me from looking at her stuff (Knoepfle liked Liesl Mueller as far as women poets went; he wasn't really fond of women in general, except insofar as they kissed his ass).

The only problem with Anne is her relentless desire to kill herself. It manifests in nearly every piece in ways ranging from blatant to obscure. And her episcopalianism seems to legislate for it consistently. Well, I have an interest in other people's suicides, I have to admit it. Having children, I would never do something like that. But I try hard not to be judgemental. Sexton of course also had an incestuos relationship with her daughter. So she had some big problems. Yikes.

I have been writing some new poems, however. I'd ask someone to read them, if anyone were reading this. But I doubt somehow that anyone is. On my poetry blog, Homage & Apology, in the last hundred hits on the blog, 32 of them aren't me. And of those 32 at least 8 are google's bots roaming through. So, I understand that know one reads this stuff unless I put in something that is currently pop, which I sometimes inadvertently do do. Like the anglo-saxon thing. Better not to go there, eh?

May the Lady Arianrhod honor me with Her mercy this hard weird Tuesday at the end of October, 2009. May you all be well in your diverse selves.

Reptile Fear in America

So it turns out that Balloon Boy's old man is stone crackers. He comes from that group of strange and stupid people who believe that some reptile aliens that can change their appearance are actually running our government, and indeed, the entire world. Yes, this guy was desperate to get on tv so he could tell the masses about this whole conspiracy and thus "save the world."

Well, we all want to save the world. What is interesting to me about this is how people come to allow themselves to believe things that there is no physical evidence for. So, yes, religion comes under this heading. And, fact of matter, there is some parts of the scientific map that require you to believe unprovable things to go to the next step.

This ultimately turns into that game of trusting your instincts. What is real and what is not. What is truth and what is illusion. Nobody can be truly sure without telling themselves a lie. Thus, living in doubt is the only surety. I guess that would be Heisenberg in a metaphorical sense. Yeah baby, to quote Austin Powers.

But I feel sorry for the kid in this initial story. Balloon Boy, as he will always be known, though he never traveled in the balloon, will grow up and this will be the demarcation point of identity for him. He will be that kid. His father will be shown to be a complete flake and probably do some minor jail time. Lord knows what will become of them all, his family, his siblings. That is the tragic part.

One thing I did not know before reading about this story is that Denver's airport is supposed to be an alien prison facility for locking up those who are onto the whole scam. Yes, the aliens are locking people up at the Denver airport. Wonder if my ex-wife knows this?

Details of being: I gotta laugh, hopefully with the Lady. Why is there suffering? Because the universe conserves energy, folks. It's just not that hard. There is no controlling force that can change the rules. Why would there be such a thing? The Lady knows that all progeny grow up to be who they are, not who you would choose them to be.

Hereditary Privilege; Why Don't We Arrest Cheney for Treason?

Well, a year ago I was still not at all certain Obama would beat McCain, though it looked pretty good. A year ago, Piper was going to Wiley School and it wasn't going at all well. A year ago we went to Terre Haute for a college football game and Piper completely fell apart. It was a bad experience.

This year my health has been more problematic. I've been to the ER a couple of times. I even dreamed about going to the ER the other night. Mostly i remember I was upset that I was spending yet another $200 co-pay. It's hard to keep up with the mounting medical costs. We have decent, even good, health insurance, but they have raised co-pays for both meds and for office visits. And we have more of both to contend with. I suppose this is going to be the order of the day for us all, as we age, and as our health demands being dealt with. I could be ignoring things, but, I can't ignore my daughter Piper's problems. They deserve whatever we can put into them. Which we do.

Politics
Olympia Snow jumped ship this week and came over to the light side, voting with the dems for the health bill that Baucus put together. I don't think it is enough, by far, but to have anything come together would be some sort of relief for us all. Meanwhile the Republicans stonewall constantly now. As if that is going to work.

There is a new republican website, gop.com, but it doesn't work worth a fuck. And lots of the information is not exactly right. They promote all the black republicans they have had, but those people are from before Nixon turned the party into the party for racists. It might as well be said. They have Michael Steele as their head, but they treat him like a monkey. And he is one self-hating black guy if you ever want to see one. It explains his almost complete lack of sense in dealing with things. He too was unhappy that a black american president won the Nobel Prize. Wouldn't want that, would we?

Anyway, on that website they were referring to Ronald Reagan as Ronaldus Magnus, the great Ronald. As if this were twelfth century england or scotland. You can see that at the heart of the modern republican party is the tory strain that resisted the american revolution. They would actually prefer an america, based on hereditary privilege. What's truly amazing in our time is how they have convinced all those dirtpoor working class white guys that they are on the same side. Some people just desire peasant status. As long as they are allowed to have their guns.

You just want to grab them by their lapels and shake them, "wake up, smell the coffee. These guys are crooks and they are taking everything that everybody worked for and using it to live in mansions in gated communities. It's time to man up and take these bastards down."

But that is the real truth of the Limbaugh brigade: They won't ever man up. The inner core of these people is that they are the cowards. Rush didn't go to Vietnam and none of the neo-cons ever served our country in any meaningful way. Dick Cheney got exemption after exemption. He still thinks he's exempt.

The one thing that could change everything is arresting Dick Cheney for treason.

That's what should actually happen.

Of course, it won't. The democrats are no more capable of "manning up" than the republicans are. I, at least, am secure in my masculinity. But, not being from the hereditary ruling class, I pretty much have no actual money or holdings of any kind. I do have this blog. Which nobody reads. Well, there is my sense of irony. Its very well defined.

I ask the Lady for mercy.

Obama's Nobel Prize and Reaction to It

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize because those people really do want things to change. Will they change? I see extreme madness in the air, all over the map. The republican right wing machine had their heads explode over Obama winning this award. Yet two years ago it was a commonplace for them to say that any criticism of the president amounted to treason. They cheered when the olympics didn't go to Chicago. They whined when the Nobel committee gave him this prize. They hate him. And they hate us. Anybody who isn't on board with their insanity.

The time has come to start ignoring them. But they control the media, or at least they control what the media thinks the narrative should be. Too bad, too. If we were just allowed to ignore them, they would all go away in about six months. They would dry up and disappear, because there is no substance there.

And frankly, perhaps there is no substance to Barack Obama. Although I have read his books, and they seem pretty substantive. I think it is worthy of note that the other great source of critique to this prize is from the american Left. As usual, they cannot decide how much more pissed off they can get from not being able to drive everything on Obama's agenda right into the garage they have constructed of their ideology. It is almost comical. American leftists are absolutely great at shooting their own toes off in terms of getting anything done.

So there's our man in the middle: Barack Obama, trying to deal with a lot of truly heavy crap in the world today.

Oh yes, who else hated this award? Hamas, the Taliban, Hezbollah. People who have a lot in common with Hannity and Beck. They all hate Obama. That's because he actually is an inspirational figure and they are just petty little players trying to grab power with tactics from the street. There is little real difference now between what stands for the republican party and the people who run Hamas. And the religious right is pretty much just like the taliban when it comes to gay people, women, sexuality, all those issues that just freak them out because their little weenies are jumping in their robes.

But, never mind. Obama represents hope. Giving him this award is an entirely political decision. They are trying to say let this man govern and make foreign policy and we will all be better off. And maybe we will. Maybe we will. We'd better hope so. There is not much else left to refer to, people.

Thanks to the Lady for Her surprises. This is a particularly cool one; it is both funny and not funny at the same time.

Regarding the Work, the Past, the Alchemical Process

Cardamom in the frontal lobe this a.m. Detritus from a lifetime in positive confusion. I have, after complaining in this space just days ago, written some new poems, mainly from ancient notes. But that is not to imply they are not current, relevant to the scene as it exists today. I am seeking to create the distance of an objective heart to reconnoiter the uses of this art work. My friend in the beach cities speaks of this as an alchemical journey, the creation of the philospher's stone by the hermetic process.

Well, hermetic does mean "hidden", so perhaps this is accurate, in that what is happening to the emotional self, the shadow of feeling, is indeed hidden, at least from me. What little I can glean of understanding does come from allowing the poems to act upon me, rather than me acting upon them.

There are three, though one of them is sort of an obituary for an ancient girlfriend who is convinced that indeed nothing is real. The best of the three is the one that comes up first; it is a small journey through the subconscious, ending at one of those dark altars we sometimes erect in our hearts. Jolly fun.

Homage & Apology.

Finally, let me say, I've had a lot of traffic lately entirely because I mentioned that find of late dark ages metal work in England. Who knew so many people would trundle through here? But, at least there was a link for them to click upon. Welcome to the world of the rest of our lives. It's exactly like being at a party in Greenwich Village in 1985, talking to people who as soon as they ascertain you don't know anybody important, they move right on, without even a polite adieux. It's okay, though. Nobody actually cares.

Thanks to the Lady for another day. I hope to have them for awhile.

Navel Gazing, part 201

Try as I might, I can't quite get worked up about anything these days. Still, the world is with me and I am with it, so clearly not a suicide or a potential psychotic. And there is much to amuse one's self if one is paying attention.

Originally I wrote more about politics and culture. Bush was president, people were unhappy, the republicans were nuts. Now Obama is president. Things haven't been allowed to change much by the oligarchs that really run things. There are changes around. The Republicans are still nuts. So it goes.

Often in these pages I have spoken of civil war and the breaking apart of this body politic. I think these were usually overstatements for effect. We will never be allowed to come apart, only more together. Because that is best for markets, and markets are what we are about. Each human in this time represents someone who can make money by offering labor and who can spend money, usually for goods and services. We have been essentially mechanized by our entire structure.

And so the structure works in these terms and really only in these terms. We still get to have some fun, though most of our sanctioned fun is that that comes from eating food or otherwise consuming something. And to get us to maximize the amount of our labor we devote to food and drink the system has striven to make it taste as good as possible, sugar and salt and fat, and this has in turn driven the massive increase in the need for medical services. The rich get richer this way.

Is it right or wrong? Well, good food is a quality of life thing, I suppose. And feelings can be manipulated, and are, by most of us, in mattes of family, and love. Thus we are no different than the system we inhabit.

I used to believe that truth was all that was important. Guess what, I still believe that. I still believe I am a great poet, that that is a truth, however unsanctioned and un-shared it is. I also believe that my sexuality has fucked up my life, and other humans lives, over and over again. Whether anyone else sees these truths, it is important for me to see them and to accept their actual being.

Thanks to the Lady for Her mercy. I clearly am in need of it.

Don't Cry for Me, Rio de Janeiro

So Chicago came in last for the Olympics, after Barack Obama went to Copenhagen. What this says to me is very simple: the sports world is terrified of black america, of the coming hegemony of athletes of color. What the bid of Chicago truly represented was the coming of age of Black America to the world. Well, the world rejected it. And the conservatives are alive with joy. Perhaps they are right, that this means the world has rejected the great black man from America. It is entirely possible.

I myself think most sports people/figures are really not engaged in the world the rest of us inhabit. They live outside the norms, even the officials. They have different rules for being, they have different financial structures. They are just not about the rest of us though we celebrate contest.

Ultimately what this portends is less interest in the next olympics. I predict that american television has already decided the next olympics and perhaps the one after it are not going to bring in the viewership they have in the past. And the money will definitely be down. We shall see what the rights for 2016 bid to, but I would be surprised if they bring in the kind of money we have been seeing. And, well, if it had been in Chicago the money would've been really spectacular.

It points out that everybody is essentially parochial. That is the problem with healthcare: the blue dogs keep thinking they have to appear conservative to hold their swing voters. Maybe they do. The people voting in Copenhagen keep thinking this is about them, the IOC, and the way the world perceives them. The world will perceive this as essentially the wrong decision. You wait and see. The next thing that happens to the Olympics is this: Big Yawn.

And it is too bad the Obamas threw themselves into this, but they do come from the City of the Big Shoulders, and they owe pretty much everything to that place and that time. Illinois was the right place for Obama to come from. The real question now, is the rest of the world, the rest of the democrats, capable of honoring the possibility that he has always reprensented.

I have always been afraid that Obama as president would get sandbagged, like Carter before him. I think he may do better with a republican congress, as did Bill Clinton. I do point out though, that Sonia Sotomayer is a justice on the supreme court for the rest of her life. And there will be at least one and probably two or three more appointments in the next 7 years. Pay attention. The future rests on this.

May the Lady Arianrhod enfold us in Her mercy tonight. May the people of this time understand that self interest is not in our self interest. Oh, and I won't watch those Olympics in 2016, because they will constantly show that statue of the great pretender, the Jesus that never was, that overlooks the city. And all the catholic b.s. will be lurking behind every string bikini. Yuck.

Mad Men Falling

Here it is October, autumn's first child. The trees are beginning to find the cold consistent enough to darken their leaves. The air in the morning here is crisp in that fashion. Funny how fifty feels cold now when I know that in March fifty will be a warm day. I am not a winter person.

Yet I am not a person who longs for the sunbelt. I lived in LA one year, in the beach cities, and the lack of winter was distressing.

Culture
So, of late, my wife and I have discovered Mad Men, the cable series that runs on AMC. As we don't have cable we come to these things rather late. When they appear in the rental stores we get to take a look at them.

This show, Mad Men, has a very cinematic texture to it, the way it is shot. It clearly owes a great deal to Alfred Hitchcock. It is set in America, begninng just before the 1960 presidential election. On its third season now, we will be familiar only with the first season, having seen, now, five episodes of the thirteen.

I like this piece: it is well-written and extremely accurate. The people are all associated with a madison avenue ad agency (thus the name). The men are mainly sexist and the women are used to it. There's lots of certain kinds of prejudice. Everybody cheats on their lovers/spouses. It reminds me of that Flaubert quote, "without adultery there would be no novel." Everybody smokes, too. Very reminescent of those days.

After all, I am old enough to have a clear memory of those days. I was 10 in 1960. I couldn't wait to smoke (thirteen), and drink hard liquor (seventeen), and have sex (nineteen).

In any case, we like this show so much we watched two episodes night before last. We are people who try to sleep extra in case our AS child is up in the night. So, that is some sort of recommendation.

Politics
I like the dem congressman who characterized the republican health plan as "don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly." I think we've got something there that competes with the death squad memes of the right. Still, Sara Palin's unpublished book is number one at Amazon. Sad but true, kiddies. Millions of people are going to pay big bucks to read what Sara's ghost writer has made of her odd life. Titled Going Rogue. As if she knew enough to go rogue in any circumstance. Well, the republicans have tied up the no-nothing vote for the foreseeable future.

Food
There is no doubt this low salt business is damn hard. I crave things that are bad for me every day and I suppose I always will. I have nothing brilliant to report in dealing with it. Now I read recipe books and imagine what these things must taste like.

And as for poetry, there seems to be nothing left in me.

Thanks to the Lady for the beauty that is this autumn world. "Here it is Autumn, the color disks are whirling..." Jane Morrel. I miss you, my old friend.