the whale

Frank:

Do you know what your problem is?  Isn't that a great way to start a message?  I think I'll begin all of my conversations that way from now on.  Anyway, do you know what your problem is?  About the photographs, I mean.  You are like a chef who goes to a Fourth of July picnic where everybody just wants hot dogs and hamburgers and beer and bags of potato chips, and you insist on cooking frog's legs. And everyone's going "Yuck!  What's this?" You think they should try frog's legs and learn to appreciate it, but they know what they want, and it ain't frog's legs.  They want comfort food, not gourmet. They just want you to humbly provide a service and to give them what they are looking for-- an image of themselves that conforms to what they would like to see. If you're not willing to do that for them, I don't think you should be mad that they're not appreciating your efforts.  Though it does seem to me that it's possible to have everybody posed the way they think is comfortable, and still end up with a sensitive, interesting photograph that reveals more about the people than they thought it would.  Isn't that the way a lot of top notch portrait photographers operate -- somehow let the people feel really comfortable, and being themselves, while still in some sense posing for the camera, and sometimes a beautiful, surprising essence of that person shines through.  Anyway, I can see both sides, why they're not accepting what you have to offer, and why you're not happy about it.  They know what they want, and you know what you want, and they're not the same thing.  The only solutions are (a) you give them what they want or (b) be done with family photography, as you already suggested.  Option b is too bad, though, since you've got all those photography skills.

Thanks for the nice words about my woodcut.  I attached a picture of another one.  This one is obviously based on Moby Dick, but it's essentially about madness.  Each of the people on the boat was a particular person from the rooming house where I lived during college, where about half the people were certifiably insane.  Two of the people I pictured are dead, one by suicide, another by the mysterious death circumstances that often happens to schizophrenics. I'm the guy cowering and covering his head in his hands.

I don't know which type of fertilizer Timothy McVey used in his Oklahoma bomb, but I do know it's hard to buy certain kinds of nitrate or nitrogen fertilizer now.  Last year the guy as the garden supply center told me I should buy some "urea" which is nitrogen fertilizer made out of cow urine.  I said fine.  He said he didn't have any, I should come back next week.  I came back the next week and he didn't have any.  Come back next week.  And so on for a few more weeks, until he finally told me that he didn't think it would ever come in, because government regulations made it almost impossible for him to get the stuff, thanks to its usefulness in bomb making.  I ended up buying a sack of dried cow's blood, which also has lots of nitrogen, but doesn't make very good bombs, I guess.  So I was flinging handfuls of dried cow blood all over the vegetable garden.  My dog came up, and I thought he would be interested in the smell of dried cow blood.  I put my hands out and he sniffed them.  He got a very worried look on his face, then ran away.

--edward

a fat man walks into a donut shop.....

Frank:

Interesting that the baptism was so traumatic.  I'm picturing a very bland gathering in a stuffy church sanctuary, with a lot of blah, blah, blah, and this hymn followed by that prayer, and on and on, with the only threat being that of boredom.  So I don't really get why you were so affected, with your eyes bugging out like a panicked chihuahua.  And this business of the antagonism with the minister.  You sound like a character from an Alfred Hitchcock movie -- Jimmy Stewart, maybe -- and somebody slipped a pill into your drink, and suddenly everything that is normal, calm and traditional, is swirling around and around and your mind is whirling around, like an ant on a hypnodisk.

It would be interesting to talk to different people and get their take on the whole baptism ceremony experience.  They could make a movie out of it, where they show the same event through different people's eyes.  I remember there was some western that was like that which we watched in Crestline, or the classic Japanese movie, Rashomon.  One person in the audience would be extremely bored, and barely able to keep their eyes open, while flies are buzzing around on the windowsill.   Another person would be touched by the beauty and symbolism of the baptism experience, overwhelmed by feelings of deep spirituality.  And then there's you, going nuts.

What is it about you and your camera?  Why don't people want you taking their pictures?  Are you giving off some creepy vibe and they are afraid you are going to steal their souls?  Steve and Martha certainly seemed to appreciate your photographs.  I would have been doing my part too, taking photos to rival Henri Cartier-Bresson, if some asshole hadn't stolen my camera.  Er, no.  I hate taking pictures. And I don't like having my picture taken, either.  But I put up with it.

Yes, I worked at the Dream Fluff donut shop in Berkeley while I was in college.  First, I was the assistant, going in at about 4 in the morning to fry the donuts and put frosting on them, and wash all the pots and pans, and dozens of other tasks, under the supervision of the real donut maker, named Scott Swall, who was a nice guy.  He was also a total pothead, and a drug dealer.  He had a gorgeous and lively girl friend who also worked at the donut shop for awhile, as a waitress.  She said a funny thing one time, after an obese regular customer had just left with his donut purchase:  "You know you're fat when you buy a dozen donuts and the waitress asks 'Do you want those for here or to go?'"  One time I was at Scott Swall's house and I got so high on hashish that I didn't know where I was for a couple of hours.  I woke up on a bus. Later, he trained me as the main donut maker, and I did that for a year or so.  That job ran from 11 pm to 7 am.  I attached a photo of a woodcut I made back in the 1970's showing Gail serving the fat man, and me in the background.  That fat guy had a Cadillac with fins, just like in the picture.  When he stepped off the curb, he would lean on the fin, and the front of the car would go up a little.  Strange thing, last time I was in San Francisco, about two years ago (the year of the In n Out Burger sickness), I am pretty sure I saw Scott Swall on the street downtown, a homeless person, begging for spare change.

--edward

A Clockwork Orange

Frank:

Hmmm,  interesting e-mail.  It's like the conversation of a person who is very hungry, where they start describing all kinds of food they like, how their mother used to make brownies, their favorite restaurants, and so on.  Except with you, it's all about alcohol and drinking in one way or another.  So what's with the no-drinking policy?  What made you decide to do that?  It sounds like a good thing, but it also sounds from the first paragraph like there's enough unpleasant stuff coming out that it will be hard not to give in to the pressure inside you saying "Start drinking again!"

I am going to be Mr. Therapist Without Credentials for a moment here and say the obvious, that the drinking sounds like a coping mechanism to insulate yourself from some stuff about yourself that you don't like.  But once you stop drinking, you're still left with that stuff you don't like, so it's tough.  On the flip side, I'm sure stuff you don't like happens because of the drinking, so you're kind of in a bind.

I have been reading a book lately called Self-Therapy, by Jay Earley.  I have never been much on self-help books, though I did enjoy the self hypnosis books we read for awhile when we were kids, not that they ever got us anywhere. My mom read a lot of self-help books, and they never helped her much.  But I'm enjoying this one a lot. It actually seems to be useful.   In the course of my meditation, I had been coming up with a sense of all these "voices" or "characters" inside of me.  I was actually getting to know these beings, and giving them names, and I was trying to understand what they were saying and what they wanted.  I mentioned this to a guy I know and he told me there was a whole book that talks about that sort of thing.... this book, Self-Therapy. (Actually, I think there are quite a few books on this subject right now... I guess the methods they are talking about are sort of the "in" thing in therapy these days.  Normally, I would reject it on those very grounds, but I figure I can use all the help I can get). It reads like your typical, hokey self help book, but it makes a lot of sense to me.  Read this book and maybe you'll get to know the parts of you that are keeping you from doing what you want to do, and the parts that are making you feel bad about it, and all the other shit that is probably turning the interior of your life into a house of horrors.  That's what was going on inside me, at any rate, and probably still is, but it seems to be better.  The alcohol is probably something you've needed to cope with all that, just like they've been giving soldiers amphetamines to help them out with their duties in Afghanistan.  I just ordered a copy of the book for you online.  It'll be sent to your Kings Beach address.  Read it or not, as you like.

I wouldn't have remembered the name of the Corpse Grinders, but I tracked it down with a google search, with search words something like "cat food movie eating dead bodies."  Actually, I don't remember seeing A Clockwork Orange in Monterey with you.  When I was in Monterey I wasn't working at a donut shop, by the way, I was working at the Round Table Pizza... a very up and coming job for a guy with a bachelor's degree in journalism.  I do remember the movie, though.  A few months ago, I had an eye appointment, and the eye doctor rigged me up in a machine that was very much like the apparatus in Clockwork Orange where they have the guy's eyelids pried open and they are messing around with his eyeballs.  It was horrible.  I'm surprised I didn't pass out in that doctor's office.  He is a very jokey guy.  Every single thing he says from start to finish is some kind of supposedly humorous comment, which doesn't mix all that well with having your eyelids propped open and your head strapped into a giant helmet while a jokester is coming at your eyeballs with a strange little tool, saying "This isn't going to hurt at all."

I'll be interested to hear how the baby's baptism went. 

--edward

assholes

Frank:

I can tell you the name of the movie.  It was The Corpse Grinders.  I think it played with one or two other gross movies filled with blood, murder, and grisly body parts.  We went on sort of a movie viewing rampage in San Bernadino that summer.  The Godfather was one of the other movies we saw.

You are lucky you are not running for president.  If you were, they would dig up your high school  mountain climbing scandal.  The headline would be something like FISHER APOLOGIZES AFTER REVELATION THAT HE LEFT A FRIEND ON MOUNTAIN TO DIE.  But you could give a Romneyesque apology, something like "I apologize if I did anything to hurt David's feelings.  I thought he was just pretending to be tired.  We were always goofing around and having a good time back them.  I am mortified that David took it the wrong way."   Actually, it doesn't sound to me like you did anything wrong.  This David guy was the one in the wrong, just wimping out and turning around without even telling anyone.  Part of the reason you were so exhausted the next day was that you had to expend all kinds of needless energy going back and looking for him.  I think you should go to the reunion, and coldcock him.  He's an asshole.

Speaking of assholes, this Chris guy just sounds like one of these people who get unbearably obnoxious when they've had a few drinks.  He also sounds like he doesn't take responsibility for his actions.  He'd be the guy who punches his wife, then says it was her fault. It would be interesting to do a study of different people, and the way they react to alcohol.  Some people get talkative and merry, others become antagonistic and aggressive. Some get sullen and silent... or maybe that's just the first stage before being antagonistic and aggressive. What are some other ways that people act when they are drunk?  Anyway, I wonder about the part of a person's personality that comes out when they've been drinking.  Is the "real" them that is unleashed by their depressed inhibitions, or is it something else?  I wonder if those people came down with Alzheimer's disease, are those the tendencies they would take on? Would the person who becomes angry when he's drunk also be the guy who'd be angry and upset all the time when he's got dementia? And the one who gets all friendly when he's been drinking would be the same one who'd sit there with a happy, distant smile on his face in the last stages of Alzheimer's?  Who knows?

I got an e-mail from Barrack Obama (yeah, right), titled "My Best Friend."  I was afraid his message was going to say I am his best friend and would I donate $100 to his campaign.  But no, it was about how Michelle is his best friend, and he wanted me to sign an electronic Mother's Day card that he was going to send to her.  "Okay, I'm game," I thought.  So I clicked on "Sign the card" and the next thing I knew I was staring at a page asking me how much do I want to donate to the campaign... $15? .... $25? .... $50? .... $100?....  $250?....$500? .... $1000?   I will donate money again at some point, but not today.

I see J.P. Morgan bank just lost two billions dollars with some risky trading scheme.  Two billion dollars?!  Gosh, it's great to know that the banks learned so much from the 2008 debacle.

--edward

Romney and the corpse grinders

Frank:

I am thinking it is a good thing that this unfortunate Chris will be coming along on the backpacking trip.  It's like having a lightning rod in the neighborhood, you just have to make sure you keep him at enough of a distance so that if some really unfortunate thing happens to him, you're not in the blast zone.  It would be different if you were all going to be on a boat together in the middle of the ocean where back luck for him would mean bad luck for everybody, but being in the mountains, it's a totally different.  You can rest easy, knowing all the bad energy will be headed his way.  Particularly if drinking is involved.

But what is this business of four football player-sized black guys being in a sleazy little bar in Tokyo?  What where these four brawny black men doing there?  And why did they care if he paid his bill or not?  Something is missing from that story.  I think Chris must have done something more objectionable than refusing to pay his bar tab.

I didn't realize there was a whole subculture of gross middle aged men posing as exotic fashion photographers, but it makes sense.  Yes, you're right, Wayne's website is all about hot babes supposedly testifying that he's fun and safe, the kind of person you would want to spend time with if you were a lively young woman with a beautiful body.  Which also makes sense.  The guy definitely puts a remarkable amount of thought and energy into this hobby of his.  It makes me want to develop some kind of scumbag activity that I can pour my enthusiasm into.  Something that will give me a good reason to develop a web site to further my nefarious plans.  For some reason, it makes me think of a low budget movie we saw in San Bernadino when we were teenagers.  The plot involved a butcher shop where they were killing people and grinding them up and turning them into pet food.  As I recall, it was being fed to cats, and the cats were then going out and attacking people.  And there was a scene where they had just killed two guys out back at the meat market, one white guy and one black guy.  Someone comes in the shop, asking for a pound of meat, and the butcher looks in back and then asks the customer if he wants light meat or dark meat.  Here's a memory quiz for you:  Do you remember that movie?  If so, what was the name of it?

Very, very interesting that information is coming up that Romney was a cruel, bullying asshole at his prestigious prep school.  Not surprising, I guess, but it adds a whole new dimension to his horribleness.  After reading the story about his vile "pranks and hijinks" against people who didn't fit in, I have to watch out that I don't develop a pathological hatred for the guy.  That whole persona -- the handsome, popular, leader of the crowd who goes around torturing outcasts for the amusement of his buddies -- I have a serious problem with that. I read the Fox News article to see how they handled the story, if they did at all.  They manage to report it in such a way that Romney comes across as a real fun guy in high school.  Sure, maybe he did some dumb things, but isn't that what being a teenager is all about?

I bought a light down jacket the other day from L. L. Bean.  I had forgotten what a great material down is.  There seems to be a flexible quality to the way it modulates temperature..... when it's cold, it keeps you warm, but if it's somewhat warm outside, it doesn't make you hot.  It just traps that pleasant warm temperature, without overdoing it.

--edward

wayne's world

Frank:

Hmmm, yes, I wonder why piles of rotten fence boards are appealing to passersby.  Firewood is all I can think of. Or maybe they want to start a termite farm. Jane should ask these people what their plans are for the wood, then pass the answer on to you, and you can pass it on to me.  And then if anyone ever approaches me and asks "Why are neatly stacked rotten fence boards appealing?" I will have a definite answer, and not seem like some wishy washy fool.  Maybe I will suggest that as the next question at the Socrates Cafe. 

That is horrible that Renee's insurance company was billed $20 per Tylenol, and $340 for a tube of ointment.  And they talk about how Mexico and India and places like that are rife with corruption.  They have nothing on our medical/insurance industries.  Having to stay in a hospital is like being kidnapped and held for ransom.

Meditating helps me understand what makes me tick. The main thing I get out of meditating is some kind of clarity about who I am, what I am feeling and why. To most people, that probably sounds like the dumbest thing ever, and they'd be saying "I already know who I am, and I already know how I feel, and I don't need to sit around doing nothing to find out!  Total waste of time!"  But it makes perfect sense for me.  I feel like I've gone through most of my life remarkably unselfaware, and out of touch with my emotions, and what makes me act the way I do. Many times I've felt essentially broken, with no idea what's wrong or how to fix it.  Meditating gives me insight.  I'm still a tangled mess in many ways, but I find meditation very helpful, and pretty fascinating, too.  Just as a recent and kind of unusual example, last night I had a strange dream in which I was playing a guy in ping pong, and he was a supercilious asshole and he was doing all these Bobby Riggs type cheap shots, and I couldn't score a single point off him.  He was smirking at me the whole time.  I woke up with a start in the middle of the night in an absolute rage.  "What the hell was that all about?" I wondered.  "Who gets that worked up about a ping pong game?"  I was in enough of a state that I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for about an hour, so I got up and meditated.  By the time I was done, I knew exactly what the dream meant and what it referred to.  It had to so with some dark shit from my childhood.  I faced it, and ended up at peace with it.  Plus, meditation an excellent stress reducer.  But having said all that, most people I know don't meditate, and many people who have tried it get nothing out of it.  No doubt, some people are genetically configured so that meditation "clicks" with them, and others aren't.  I don't mean to sound like some kind of meditation missionary. It works for me, that's all I can say.  Sometimes it's the most interesting part of my day.... it's like exploring a strange and scary land full of adventures, menacing figures, and hidden treasures.  Actually, if I told some authentic Buddhist or whatever what happens when I meditate, he'd probably sniff and say it's not meditating at all... it's just me playing mind games.

One of our neighbors just walked by the house.  His name is Wayne.  He's about 58 years old, and he's a total creep.  One of his favorite pastimes is to troll around high schools and any place with attractive young women, and go up to them and tell them he's a professional photographer.  He suggests they would make excellent models and he chats them up and takes their pictures in the most suggestive poses he can get out of them.  He does this obsessively, during all his free time.  I'm pretty sure he abused his daughter -- his family moved away years ago -- and his entire life now is devoted to cozying up to young women.  He's probably got several severed heads down in his basement.  He lives in a house that sort of looks like a suburban ranch style version of the Adams Family mansion, all falling apart and overgrown with weeds and stacks of junk.  On the other hand, I guess you could look at him in a different light and say he's a clever, self-motivated guy who is living the dream.  I just googled him and I see that he has a website that makes him appear to be legit.  Just something he created to give himself an air of legitimacy with the babes, I think.   Want to know more about Wayne's world?  Check out his website, Model Mayhem.

Interesting that the house on Arden Avenue seems a lot smaller, plus that it is now a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood.  How did that happen?   No doubt, grandfather and grandmother are turning in their graves.  Someone should come along and turn the house into a kosher meat market.

Yes, I remember some months ago you questioned whether you were going to keep up with your health insurance -- nobody can say I don't read e-mails carefully -- because it was your biggest expense.  Of course, if you ever cancelled the policy, it's pretty much guaranteed that within six months you would have some very expensive health crisis.  Think of it this way.... having health insurance is a semi-magical way of staying healthy.

Hey, I see that Obama listened to your advice and is making a statement clearly in favor of gay marriage.  Oh, that's going to get the southerners, catholics and social conservatives absolutely turning cartwheels of rage.  But they already hated him.  I don't know if it's going to help him or hurt him politically, but it's a good, honest stand.  One good thing that might happen could be that it will throw the fundamentalists into such a tizzy that they won't be able to talk about anything else for weeks, and they'll get more and more extreme and outrageous, and hopefully further alienate a bunch of moderates.

--edward

one big crappy family

Frank:

Thanks for the link to the Paul Krugman article.  I have to confess that I read Krugman articles the way I accused you of reading my stuff.... I usually just skim them.  Sadly, the reason for that is that his arguments are too intellectual and difficult to easily follow.  Maybe if he drew funny cartoons to accompany the writing and included a few fart jokes?  It's surprising that I haven't become a convert of Rush Limbaugh or someone like that.  Someone who requires absolutely no thinking. 

Krugman makes an interesting point that Germany benefited from the period when Greece and Spain and all those other good-for-nothing lazy countries were living it up and spending way beyond their means, and buying a bunch of German-made stuff, among other things.  I tend to feel sorry for the Germans.  It seems like they were following the rules and being responsible and all that, and now they're on the hook for their asshole neighbors' foolishness.  But maybe it's not that simple.

Thanks for the good explanation of your beliefs, determinism vs. free will.  Reading it was almost as demanding as reading Paul Krugman, actually, but I hung in there and think I understood it.  I have to stand up a little for the Jews.  It's true they seem to like to be center stage, and that they generally like money.  I think of it more that they love success and accomplishment, and they're good at it, and money is the primary gauge of success and accomplishment.  On the other hand, either because of genes or upbringing, Jews also seem to be more likely to be good-doers, and philanthropic, than the average non-Jew, though you might not be aware of it, because a lot of their good deeds are directed back to the Jewish community.  Jews are raised with a strong moral ethic that you should "give back" to your fellow man, and the idea that you should be a "mensch" -- an upright, honorable person who does good for his fellow man.  Bernie Maddoff was not a  typical Jew, he was an aberration,  loathed for the way he brought destruction to those who trusted in him.  Many of the Jewish people I have known personally are remarkable for their lifelong commitment to doing good in a sustained, disciplined way.  Something that I, as a petty, selfish bastard, admire and wonder at.

So, are you still meditating?  I find that meditating is like a daily therapy session.  I am becoming more and more aware that my "self" is actually a whole group of characters....  my mother's in there, and my father, and the frustrated, jealous, enraged little kid, and the philosopher who tries to escape pain by saying nothing has meaning, and a whole bunch of other fools.   Just being myself is like being at a big holiday family meal where everyone is screaming at each other and throwing food and sulking and so on.  Never a dull moment.

--edward

nature vs. nurture

Frank:

Well, I'm glad you agree that you don't read my e-mails very carefully. 

You're right, Brooklyn probably isn't a worrier.  That's good evidence you offered, that she is confident enough to tell her father where to sit.

Hmmm, maybe you are right.  That family that lives next to us IS very smart to keep their children so well protected from fear and insecurity.  But, like you said, it's unfortunate that their son will grow up to be gay, as a result of the way his mother treats him.  I hadn't thought about that.

Actually, I didn't think you'd take offense at my remark about you not paying attention to what I say in my e-mails.  I figured you wouldn't read it, since it was buried at the end of the message.

At any rate, I can see why this Rudy Sautter guy moved away from Crestline so his daughters wouldn't get raped.  Didn't you send me a link once that said that Crestline proclaimed itself "The swingingest town in America?"  A place where gambling, drinking and prostitution abounded?   Sounds like a pretty good place for innocent young girls to get raped if there ever was one.  Not to mention guys getting blown apart by shotguns, and the constant threat of fire.

This whole genetics vs. environment thing is the latest variation of a debate that has been going on for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.  Christians have debated it long and hard. John Calvin, back in the 1500's was a big proponent of the idea of predestination,  that god had already willed eternal damnation for some people and salvation for others, along with all the other lesser details of life.    Others argued that there was such a thing as free will.  It's also always been a big philosophical debate, determinism vs. free will.    Your emphasis on the power of genetics would tend to place you in the determinist camp.  Do you believe there is such a thing as free will?  If you don't answer that, I'll know you aren't even reading this.

I'm in kind of an odd position in the nature vs. nurture controversy, since I was raised by a man who wasn't biologically my father, and have no idea who my father was.  When a doctor says something like "Is there any history of psychosis or epilepsy in your family?" I have to say "I don't know."   I guess I could try to construct an image of what my father must have been like by taking all my personal characteristics, subtracting the ones that came from the Dolley family, and then assuming that whatever is left is half of what my father was like.  On the other hand, a very strong version of Ed Williams also exists as part of my make-up, and much of what I am today seems to be either because of him, or a reaction to him.  What's up with that?

Of course, I'll repeat a brilliant idea I had awhile back....  people will understand the whole genes vs. environment thing a lot better once some rogue scientist clones a human and creates ten people with identical genes.  Allow ten different families to adopt those kids, making sure that one is Jewish, and one is addicted/abusive, and one is super nurturing, and one is a tea party patriot,  one is a pair of gay men, and one is a billionaire capitalist, and one is a single black mother, and one is manic depressive, and so on.  Check back on the kids every ten years or so to see if there are any noticeable differences, or do they all end up pretty much the same?

On the other hand, here's a story that supports the power of genes.  I know a Jewish guy and his wife who adopted a baby girl from India.  The guy is very affectionate and physical, but the girl -- who is now eighteen -- is shy and has trouble showing or receiving any display of affection.  Culturally, that is the way most Indians are, though she was only exposed to Indian culture for four months before she was shipped off to America.  Though four months is a long time in the life of a baby, and who knows what or how much they absorb as infants.  I feel pretty strongly that infants receive strong messages in the womb all the time, that they are able to pick up a sense of the mother's feelings and reactions to what is going on in the outside world.  If the mother is chewing her nails and freaking out, the baby is probably chewing its nails and freaking out, too, and subliminally picking up the message "the world is a scary place."  Every emotion creates a chemical reaction in our bodies.... I would assume that the baby, who is part of the mother's body, would be sensing it too.

I see in the news that at a Romney campaign rally, a supporter stood up and said that Obama "should be tried for treason," and he just stood there, like a big cowardly slab of meatloaf.  He's horrible.  That's one thing I always respected about McCain, that when a supporter called out that she didn't trust Obama because he's "an Arab," McCain replied, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

--edward

Buddha bears

Frank:

That's pretty good that Brent is so lucky.  I'm not lucky, so I'm really not one to talk, but I think that the real key to having good luck, in gambling, anyway, is to have a light, free spirit, and not feel any sense of fear or anxiety about the prospect of losing.  As I'm sure I'm mentioned multiple times, my luckiest streaks in playing blackjack mostly came when I was on LSD, and felt only euphoria and lightness, and amusement at the fact that everyone in the casino looked like grotesque, badly dressed, overweight lizards.  There was no tension or tightness, and I would win and win.  Fear of losing attracts bad luck, like shit attracts flies.  I'm assuming Brent gambles with a carefree, unconcerned spirit? 

I have done reasonably well gambling with a game like blackjack over the years, but I have never, ever done anything but lose when I bet on horse racing.   Fortunately, watching horse racing is fun and interesting enough so that it's still enjoyable, even if you lose a little money. 

Interesting that Brooklyn carried that anxiety about bears.  Well, if she's a worrier, then if it's not bears, it'll be something else, so I wouldn't feel badly about it.  Actually, it's probably kind of a blessing that you gave her something tangible to worry about.  If she didn't have that concern to focus on, maybe it would have spilled over into some kind of unspecified dread that would have been more emotionally damaging than worrying about something specific, like bears. 

There is a family that is renting the house next to us.  They are very protective of their children and constantly shielding them from unpleasantness.  The son is in first grade.  They don't make him go to school if he doesn't feel like it, and I sometimes see him practicing baseball with his father in the driveway during the day when school is in session.  Not that it will do him any good... he seems like a very awkward kid and I wouldn't be surprised if he grows up to be gay. He already walks like a little gay person.  Anyway, the other day, the guy who actually owns the house -- a very likeable and nice guy -- was in the garden, doing a little weeding and some work around the yard.  The little four year old girl saw him out there, and became extremely concerned that there was a stranger out there.  She asked her mother who he was, and she reassured the girl that it was okay.  "What's he doing out there?" she wanted to know. "Who is that man?" And the mother told her that he owned the house.  I guess they had never told the children that they rented the house and didn't own it, and when the little girl found that out, it's like she had a complete psychological crisis.  The house owner told me about it later, and said she was still sobbing when he left.  He was kind of mystified by the whole thing.

Reminds me of the Buddha, who started out as an extremely spoiled, rich prince in India a couple of thousands of years ago.  His father raised him in such a way that he was protected from the knowledge that such things as suffering, sickness, old age and death existed.  Of course, when he finally found out about those things, he completely flipped out and went off the deep end for a long time.  But in the end, it worked out for him.  He did become the Buddha, after all.  Maybe the little girl next door will become an important spiritual leader when she is older.  After she has gone through the years of suffering, rejection and disillusionment that are eventually necessary for all over-protected children, of course.  I know that I already wrote about the Buddha in an e-mail about a year ago, by the way, but I don't think you read what I write very attentively most of the time, so I'm guessing it slipped right past you the first time around.

--edward

living figurines

Frank:

I hope Brent and Renee and the girls have a nice time at your house, and that there are no tragic or even slightly unpleasant accidents.

As to why I put myself into strange social situations, I want to get myself into as many different kinds of social situations as possible, within reason, because I think it's healthy for me.  It feels related to being alive, flexible, and to growing and changing, as opposed to being stagnant, drying up, and withering away.  My natural inclination through my whole life has been to isolate myself and withdraw, to a degree that most people can't relate to at all.  I'm feeling that if I continued to give in to those tendencies on a regular basis, it would spell some kind of death.  I definitely dread most social engagements, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on my emotional condition at the time, and what the social engagement is.  On the other hand, once I'm actually interacting with people, and afterwards, I'm usually glad I did it, for at least part of the time.  It feels like the equivalent of having a little Wd 40 squirted on my hinges, as opposed to having them rust up just a little more.  Sometimes it's painful, and many times, these social engagements trigger some kind of weird negative emotional reaction in me somewhere along the line, but I'm finding that is also interesting in a way.  It's like plowing ground and continually unearthing grubs, rusty nails, and various insect varmints.  But I'm trying to deal with those things. It feels like the alternative is to end up becoming a desolate, sun baked chunk of hard pan dirt, containing no life whatsoever.

I think anxiety runs in our family, but maybe it runs in every family.  Mira was actually a pretty anxious person, at least towards the end. My mom was an anxiety magnet. I feel a lot of anxiety too, a lot of the time. I think most people carry a lot more anxiety than they realize. They try to mask it or make it go away by trying to stay as active and busy and entertained as possible so they are distracted from it most of the time. That anxiety doesn't go away, any more than getting drunk would make an infection go away.  It festers and comes out in all sorts of others ways that don't necessarily feel like anxiety at all -- various physical ailments, difficulty concentrating, depression, sleeplessness, and stuff like that.  These days, I'm not trying so much to avoid anxiety, as to really feel it when it comes, gathered there in my belly like a nest of wasps.  Anxiety is like a person inside me, a part of me.  Who are you? I ask it.  What do you want?  Where did you come from?  Here, take a seat, have a cup of coffee, let's talk.....

Ouch, that sounds like a painful fall onto the rocks, while carrying stuff in each arm.  You're lucky you didn't knock all your teeth out.

Speaking of ancestors turning in their graves, a lot of cultures and religions spent a lot of time trying to appease the spirits of the dead.  It's huge in African and Asian cultures.  The ancestors are constantly moaning and groaning and wondering why you disappointed them, and why you're not listening to them and caring for them and honoring them.  And in the short spaces of time when they are at peace, they say nothing.  They only communicate when they are upset.  I can, and do, say that I don't care about dead relatives tossing and turning in their graves because of what I do or don't do. Let them flip around down there all they want, not that I believe that any of them are concerned with such trivial shit once they leave this earthy plane.  On the other hand, I know that when we are kids we swallow some version of our parents, and maybe other influential relatives, and those little living figurines keep moving around in there as long as we live, clawing around in our psyches. 

--edward

Turning over in the grave

Frank:

I hope you had a good return to King's Beach.  I just checked the weather for Lake Tahoe, and see the outlook is for "sunny" as far into the future as the weatherman sees.  We have been having many days of forty-five degree weather, with clouds, drizzle and fog, with "partly cloudy" being what we have to look for for the next few days.

We spent yesterday evening with Margaret's hospice patient, who is in her eighties.  She is an interesting person, with very clear memories of humorous and unusual happenings from long ago, but not very good recall of near-term events.  She's the one who likes cloudy weather.  She said that clear, sunny skies are depressing for her, but when it is cloudy and gray she finds it comforting, as if she was under a nice warm quilt.  I asked her if she had ever met anyone else in her long life that felt the same way she does, and she said no.  A sample memory of hers was that her first husband had been a methodist minister, but he was kind of sickly.  They lived in Iowa.  Her husband was friends with the town undertaker, who was a tall bald-headed man named something like Duddy Smithweather.  After funerals, the undertaker would give a whole bunch of the flowers to the minister, saying he should taken them home and use them to decorate his house, so they wouldn't go to waste.  Eventually, the sickly husband died -- this was 30 or 40 years ago.  When the funeral was all over, the undertaker patted the wife (now the hospice woman) on the head and said, "Well, you've been a good little soldier."

I didn't realize Jane was so stressed out during high school.  What was the problem?

Not only do I find that people often seem either vacant or downright distressed when I speak, I have also become increasingly aware that when I speak, other people don't hear the same message that I thought I was saying.  Sometimes what they hear is just a little different, sometimes it's so different it's frightening.  It makes me wonder if when I say "STOP!" perhaps some people hear "GO!"  I don't know if everyone has this same experience, or if it's worse for me.  Because another thing I increasingly realize as the years pass is that I am essentially different from most people in a lot of ways. Which is why I feel most comfortable talking with people who are retarded, senile, children, delusional, or foreign... such people are in no position to decide what is normal and what is not.

With all these ancestors turning over in their graves, it's too bad that energy can't be harnessed somehow from all that activity.  All these bodies turning in graves are like a turbine.  It could almost be a kind of job, constantly doing things that will cause them to keep turning, just to keep up the energy output.

That's interesting you had all those doctors and lawyers on your dad's side of the family as well.  On my dad's side of the family, it was all really poor white people, the kind of people they would show in a movie like To Kill a Mockingbird as a menacing group of unshaven, furtive, squinty-eyed drunks, living in squalid conditions and saying things like, "Willard, we got to kill ourselves a nigger."  They despised the idea of anyone getting an education, so my dad deserves some credit for pulling himself up out of that desperate situation, to the point where he attended college for a couple of years, though I don't think he ever graduated.  He had to leave home when he was about 14 and lie about his age to get into the navy, in order to start the process of pulling off his escape.  I'm sure his background showed to some degree when he met grandmother and grandfather and told them he intended to marry their oldest daughter, and that they weren't too happy about it.  Perhaps they are still turning over in their graves about it.

--edward

socrates cafe

Frank:

Yes, I have a copy of that photo of grandmother and grandfather.  It is a great picture, and grandfather does look like a happy Jack London.  I didn't realize grandmother didn't like to be photographed, but that would make sense, since I've seen very few photos of her.  I think the one you sent in the e-mail is maybe the only picture I have of her.  Which is fine... it's a good image of her.  So now anyone who sees that picture of her, and no others, will always think of her as a vivacious, happy person.  Which is a good legacy, whether it's true or not.

That's a very good revelation about yourself, that you are happiest when you are making things.  That reminds me of what Mira used to say about your father, that he would have been happier if he had stopped being a lawyer, and just had a little shop where he could tinker with and repair radios and record players and so on.  I don't know if that's true or not, but I do think it makes a lot of sense that you should be making things, or repairing things.  If there was some way to make money from a occupation/hobby like that, all the better.  The real question is whether a revelation like that leads you to do something about it, or if it ends up being like your idea about getting to know the latino community and parlaying that into a newspaper job.... something to fiddle around with in your brain, like Gary toying with the idea of going to the gym, and happily looking at his year membership pass as evidence that it all amounted to something.  Just for the record, I don't think that latino newspaperman idea was destined to ever come to fruition in any way, shape or form, so I don't see any point in getting down on yourself for missing the boat.  On the other hand, the making things/repairing things revelation actually does sound like it has a genuine ring of truth to it.

I'll look forward to trying your beef jerky, though I don't see how it could compare to that Gary Weill jerky, or whatever it's called, that you've given me for a couple of Christmases. 

I've been doing a spate of things lately that make it sound like I'm a dynamic, risk-embracing extrovert, which isn't true at all.  Such as the men's retreat, and tonight we're going to some rest home dinner party to sort of be chaperones to a lady that Peggy sees as part of her hospice work.... the woman I was telling you about who loves it when the weather is  gray, rainy and Oregon-like.  Well, a couple of nights ago Peggy and I went to something called the Socrates Cafe, at the local library, where a bunch of strangers get together to discuss some semi-philosophical question.  Turns out the question was "Is religion necessary?"  You probably would have been right at home with this crowd, as they all pretty much mutually decided that religion is not necessary, and that religion has done more bad than good through history, and that only pathetic, unsophisticated losers believe in god, and that if religion was eliminated, mankind would soon settle into a state of natural peace, bliss and joy.  I put in my own two cents' worth several times. Each time, I thought I was saying something calm, interesting and thoughtful,  but I didn't seem to register at all on their collective consciousness... it was as if I only thought I was talking but no sound came out.  Each time I finished talking, it seemed like everyone had gone into a temporary state of suspended animation, and the moment I stopped, they became reanimated, with no recollection that anyone had been speaking during the past two or three minutes. They just continued on from wherever they had been in the conversation at the moment before I started speaking.  And then when we got home I woke up with a jolt in the middle of the with a deep sense of having humiliated and embarrassed myself somehow, and I just wanted to find a big rock to crawl under. And so, life goes on.

--edward

Bjorn Andreson

Frank:

Yes, electric hedge trimmers are an awful concept.  You're pretty much guaranteed to cut the cord, unless maybe you discipline yourself to only spent five minutes at a time using the trimmer, and each of those minutes you give full attention to NOT cutting the cord, so much attention and focus that after five minutes you need to put the trimmer away and take a nap.  The only possibly worse gadget I can think of is an electric lawn mower, which is a truly awkward, dumb device, destined to also end up with lots of sparks and fireworks from cut cords.

Acid reflux sounds like an unpleasant surprise to wake up to.  It sounds like it would not be a good idea to have a nightcap of a glass of chocolate liqueur each night just before going to bed?

I think the movie of Death in Venice wasn't so much a Hollywood romance action adventure as a cult film for gay men.  It was made by an Italian director who made no bones about his homosexuality, which was kind of unusual in the 70's.  He called the kid who played Tadzio "the most beautiful boy in the world," and apparently he took him to a gay bar, and all these old gay men were pawing all over him.  This kid -- he was Swedish -- is not homosexual, and after the movie was made suddenly all the gay men in the world were dreaming about him, and following him around, and he was totally typecast as a "pretty boy."  But what he really wanted was to be a serious actor, like Harrison Ford or something.  He worked diligently on getting his image turned around, and rejected all offers for roles that called for him to be mincing around and batting his eyelashes, and then a book by this famous writer named Germaine Greer came out, with an unauthorized photo of him from his pretty boy days on the cover, barechested and looking again very much like a girl-boy.  The name of the book was "The Beautiful Boy."  That dealt a pretty serious blow to his carefully laid out plans.  So today, if you enter his name --  Bjorn Andreson -- in google images, all you find is a bunch of pictures of him as a pretty boy dressed up like a doll in little sailor suits and looking very, very silly.  It's wonderful how much you can learn about this kind of stuff, from a few clicks on the computer keyboard.  Sadly, I don't feel sorry for him at all, because I've got a bitter, jealous rage against all people who find success and fortune based on their good looks, since I didn't get to do that and it's NOT FAIR!  There actually are a few photos of him the way he looks today, more or less. He was born in 1955.  He looks like he spends a good deal of his time working on getting his hair to stand up in an unnatural and affected way, like a lion's mane.  I attached one of the these photos.  It would be more satisfying if he looked worse, with deep wrinkles and heavy dark bags under his eyes. 

The Chinese girl you were talking about sounds like she embodies most of the reasons why China is going to take over the world and eventually be using Americans as servants and experimental laboratory subjects, if we're lucky.  They are very practical and goal oriented, and willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead in the world, without a whole lot of nonsense about what they feel like doing, or emotions, and that sort of rubbish.  The book I was reading about the history of a t-shirt was talking about how awful their jobs are in the textile factories in Shanghai and places like that, where they're working twelve hour days, six days a work, with hardly any breaks, hunched over their machines, etc, etc.  But if you interview these people, most of them will say how happy they are to have that job, and how much better it is than their lives on the farms where they grew up, and how they plan to save up enough money to open a little shop of their own, and eventually they will..... etc. etc.  We're going down.

--edward

Death in Venice

Frank:

I appreciate you taking time out from wreaking havoc all over Jane's place, to write me.  Sounds like you've had a very busy time... you're like a tasmanian devil whirlwind of destruction.  I have used electric hedge clippers before, and have also cut through the cord, multiple times.  In fact, I think electric trimmers should have a label on them that clearly states "When operating this tool you will experience a loud sound, a flash of light, and a metallic burning smell. The trimmer will cease to operate.  This is normal, and an indication that maintenance and repair is needed."

Yesterday sounds like a pretty bad day, with the difficulty breathing, the acid reflux, and all that.  I've heard of acid reflux, but don't know anything about it.  What's that like?  The only thing missing from that day was if you had ended up dying, like Prof. Aschenbach, in Death in Venice.  Then the story of your day would end just like the book: "Some minutes passed before anyone hastened to the aid of the elderly man sitting there collapsed in his chair. They bore him to his room. And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease."  To find those words, I did a search online, where I came up with the entire text of the book.  I re-read the last page, and realized for the first time that the professor died happy, with a Twilight Zone-like hallucination that Tadzio is smiling at him and beckoning to him, and he's following him off into the sunset.  All this is happening while he's slumping to the ground and dying near the beach where he used to go to spy on Tadzio.

Speaking of Death in Venice, I did a google search on Death in Venice, and found a bunch of images from a movie they made of the book.  It looks horrible, like something that would be shown in a seedy theater with a bunch of gay men masturbating in the dark.  I attached a sample photo.  They took about 20 years off Aschenbach, and turned Tadzio into this sort of gay prostitute-looking guy and, well, definitely ran with the gay-man-likes-boy theme.

There were no homoerotic overtones to the men's retreat, fortunately.  Also fortunately, there was no one who used the gathering as an opportunity to tout what a success he was, though in the course of the conversations I did come to realize that most men have led their lives in a much more directed, planned, goal-oriented way than I have, complete with mentors and all kinds of shit like that.  I have lived a lot more like Sweetpea, the baby in Popeye cartoons, who would be crawling across the railroad tracks, and over the back of alligators, and managing to escape unharmed be sheer innocence and stupidity.  Actually the retreat wasn't about reviewing people's lives, thank goodness. It was supposed to be a sort of discussion of the themes of suffering and loss, from a spiritual/religious standpoint.  That's because the son of one of the guys in the group  was killed in an accident about a year ago.  It was a ridiculous and tragic event, where the kid and his roommate were both in college, both stoned.  The roommate had a pistol which he started throwing from one hand to the other while music was playing.  I'm not sure if he knew the thing was loaded, but the results were not good.

Interesting article about the meteorite hunters.  It sounds like my gold rush analogy was closer to the truth than I thought.

--edward