LOVE

Love. Separate from desire, as, I suppose is  generally agreed upon. Shakespeare of course had an opinion: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no it is the star to every wandering bark."* What "star"? Just off the top of my head, the most durable marriages I've observed were grounded in religion. Yeah, that "star."

So many divorces. Oh the divorces I have seen. Luckily I know none where there were children. Except my own, unwanted divorces, two. Dreadful for children, catastrophic in fact. The kids think they were to blame, the little innocent darlings.  

It's astounding how skillful some people can be in talking themselves into believing they are no longer in love. A common self-deception is for someone in an illicit relationship, unfaithful, and out of terror at being found out, convince themselves that if they were REALLY in love they wouldn't have done it, wouldn't have had that tryst in the back seat of a parked car in the darker recesses of a parking garage, love to the accompaniment of squealing tires as cars go from floor to floor.

Grubby. Life can be so grubby. I suppose the fragility of love is sometimes what drives people to escapes such as drink, gambling, drugs, food, honing ones skills at lying, always having a backup lover in their secret cache of phone numbers.

For all of those reasons, and millions more, writers of fiction can potentially have a ball writing about the vicissitudes of Love. One excellent defense against the fear of loss of love, is to love God more. Who's that strong however?

Barry

* From Memory I've left out a clause I can't remember.

 

 

 

 

Armed, & In Armor

Well, the title of this entry is a little savage: but that's how I was about to characterize many bloggers in these here parts.

Here's a list of sources of my willingness to tell one on myself. What immediately brought this on is that a notorious troll, quite possibly a very longtime AOL employee, or just a hanger-on in the company of a male lover who's an AOL employee, has asked all Members to call the authorities about my allegedly being the source of my son's eyebrow injury, the subject of my entry yesterday or the day before. Even after the passage of ten years I know absolutely nothing about the actual individual who carries the name of the troll, his screen name. The last time I tried to complain, here, and gave the screen name, about this individual, my entry was expunged, with no notice that it was being taken down. Mr Scalzi, Our Editor, showed total indifference.

Here are the sources which collectively have allowed me to 'tell one on myself,' something, btw, which in my opinion is imperative for the writing of fiction, at least the kind of fiction I admire the most. Eugene O'Neill, the subject of a Ric Burns documentary to be aired Tomorrow evening on PBS, will explain, I hope, just how the playwright dealt with his need to subject his own life to public scrutiny.

1. The US Army

2. Therapy

3. Catholic Confession, the Sacrament.

4. Acting classes with Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Lee Strasberg, being an Observer at the Actors Studio, teaching sense memory at American Theater Arts, LA.

5. The est Training 1982

6. Assisting (staff) at The Forum 1994

7. A lifetime of writing letters.

8. Always associating, whenever possible, with others who need, or just want, to reveal their inner feelings, dreams, hopes, aspirations, defeats, and pain.

9. Reading, and reading about, Sigmund Freud

10. Studying language and writing.

Posting this entry should be on this list too, but I'm not sure how to explain that. Self-revelation is it's own reward I guess. One feels better about oneself after having done so. It's sort of in the domain of, 'Gee if that's the worst, or most troubling things about myself, then I must deal with whatever I have pretty well, at least so far.'

Barry

 

 

 

                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race: You asked for it!

Hmmm, so! race is a sticky wicket, huh? I still vividly remember my own hangups about race (I acknowledge that I still have some). Much later I ran into the expression "Hybrid Vigor," from biology, a phenomena which enables species to improve much more rapidly than do marooned specimens that don't mix. Opposites attract. Strongly. Fess up, to yourself, not me, haven't you secretly wondered what it'd be like with someone from a very different-looking race? Listen, they didn't put all those breasts from darkest Africa years and years ago in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, an organ of the Smithsonian, isn't it! Huh? just to be faithful to the region they were featuring, no, no, they were obeying Nature's magnetism.

Have you still succeeded in NOT viewing the very fine motion picture, replete with a hanging, Mississippi Burning (1988) Academy Award, Best Cinematography? How about the very fine documentary about Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man? Were you moved by the slightly querulous speech in which young Martin Luther King spoke a phrase soon to become famous, the first time for all of America to listen to, "Non-violence"? How lovingly he gently intoned the words!

African Americans are still not free. Peculiar in a way that some are dying in Iraq so that Muslims might be free.

        __________________________

This coming Monday evening March 27, PBS, KCET in Los Angeles, is premiering a Burns documentary about the first American (and he might be the only American) to win a Nobel Prize for playwrighting, Eugene O'Neill. In LA it starts at 9 PM.

This same Documentarian, Ric Burns, made the breathtaking work, showing lots and lots of footage of African American boxer Jack Johnson in action. He looked as if he could have made quick work of Ali, even in Ali's prime.  A Dodger Baseball executive was fired for stating the historical truth that African Americans did well in sports because they were selected for their physical powers during slavery.  Odd that speaking the truth meets so much punishment. Must keep up appearances, must be careful to not make anyone uncomfortable. I love to repeat what William Faulkner wrote near the end of his novel Absalom Absalom. (Absalom, father of peace, born bc 1050), that the only solution to America's race problems was for the slaves to "bleach out like rabbits." I don't remember if those words came from the mouth of a character, or from the narrator, or from Faulkner himself.

Barry

 

 

Idle, throwaway thoughts about race.

At the laundromat with time to kill while two huge machines washed a small portion of our voluminous dirty laundry I ruminated on race: the huge 'Spin Cycle' laundry, one of 256 of a chain, services a dozen races and more on Pico in LA, near La Brea.

I watched an African American (this term has more or less officially replaced 'Black' in current parlance, although there are many holdouts I understand) doing his own laundry, as different from that of his whole family.  Most of the time his back was to me; on the back of his T-shirt was stenciled, "I am therefore I be. - I. B. Blackman."

As a white man struggling sincerely to be colorblind - after all I'm in an interracial marriage with three various shades of brown children, I've been spellbound following as best I can Bill Cosby's criticism of greater African American culture. I won't even attempt to hint at the content of his complaints: to do so would be presumptious. Just the same I suspect, have a hunch, dare to slowly put forward, that ol' loveable Bill, collector of rare Editions of Mark Twain - Bill is a humorist ya know - might not be too happy about the writing on the back of the Black man's T-shirt. After I let it sink in I had the temerity to ask the wearer about the deliberate misquote of Descartes' (Rene 1596 - 1650 French Philosopher) "I think, therefore I am." He mumbled but was not insulted in his 'I dunno' reply. But later when I was inadvertently blocking his way to his dryer, it seemed he was livid. I can't be certain, doing laundry is not usually a favorite chore even though the machines do all the work.

In another journal entry I'll have to tell the tale of my having 'stolen' ten dollars from a machine that changes twenty dollar bills into quarters. Oh yes, they exist! They caught me on surveillance tape. The depths of my humiliation was deep sea. But, the tale has a more or less happy ending. By the tenets of a Conservative branch of Judaism I am innocent. Besides, I returned the money when I suspected I might be guilty. This is an advertisement for my next (?) journal entry.

So, with that off my conscience I can resume about the Black man. Wearing that T-shirt could be an innocent act. He wears it cause it fits, perhaps. I do that: to hell with what it says, if it fits I wear it. But, if he selected the T-shirt BECAUSE OF WHAT IT SAYS then, gasp, he's foot shufflin', the very thing that I suspect Bill Cosby is so infuriated by, in this late hour of 2006. Choosing the T-shirt in definace, is only a partial defense; what about the example for Black children?

And here endeth my dangerous foray into politics.

Barry

 

Games vs Character

Our esteemed leader, Mr Scalzi, has fallen into the trap of preaching the ever-popular I'm sure, cockeyed notion that video games are a preparation for success in the real world of getting and spending, and climbing corporate ladders. Rats!

The ultimate 'Game' is chess. In fact it's virtually the only game that garners near universal respect. Yet, it's been proven over and over that even becoming World Champion chess player has near absolutely zero power to assist the chess player to succeed in the real world. Bobby Fischer did absolutely everything he could to dominate the chess world and succeeded, but his skills at getting along in the world weakened as he got older, weakened to the point of becoming near totally delusional.

Mr. Scalzi, don't preach false doctrines!

Barry

Free Association (of thoughts, ideas, impulses)

Everyone's asleep. Today my youngest son will be four. His birthday photos, I'm sorry to have to realize, will be marred by his left eyelid showing dark blue bruising from the procaine injections needed for the doctor to sew up an inch-long cut across his left eyebrow. The tall, sweet physician, a woman, at Glendale Memorial Hospital made a gentle joke, 'That's why we have eyebrows, for protection of our eyes.' I tried to counter with a similar joke by saying, 'Intelligent Design!' but it fell flat 'cause, I suspect, we both think that expression sucks. She was a lovely, gracious lady and I pray her work turns out better than mine did.

You see, my son had done almost exactly the same thing to his right eyebrow many months ago, a cut I 'fixed' with surgical tape, Neosporan, and frequent changing of the strong tape attempting to keep the edges of the wound together for healing. There is a faint scar that'll probably fade away in time. In the nervousness of being at the hospital I almost blundered again with a jocular. 'Your repair better work better than mine did!' addressed to the physician 'Sewing Mistress,' but luckily I spared her. 

The physician and the male nurse, at different times, asked my son, "What happened?" to which he repeated what he'd told me, that his year-and-a-half-year older brother pushed him (while they were using their metal bunk bed as a piece of gym equipment.)  The first near eyebrow decapitation occurred when he jumped from another bed, missed the top bunk bed, and fell onto the metal railing of the bottom bed.

Glendale Memorial is a private hospital not a County Hospital. When we first checked in at the Emergency Room, and I was upset and befuddled and frightened for my son, I read the questioning I was subjected to - probably having, in part, to do with would they get paid - as overly defensive, so I blurted out in a loud voice that the day after tomorrow would be the fourth anniversary of his having been born in this very same exact hospital at very great expense! (Thanks to my insurance, not my bank account.)  Curiously, the twelve or so emergency room patients laughed, including one of whom, an elderly woman, I later learned, had stepped backwards to avoid an oncoming vehicle so strenuously she fell and seriously bruised her back, but luckily not her head.

When I was the same age as my youngest son a boy next door threw a rock at me hitting me in the head. I bled profusely, and the scar resulting caused my parents to part my hair on the other side. I've looked for the scar but it has vanished.

Old wounds often go away; what to do about the ones that persist is another matter, for another day.

Barry 

 

Advertising Sins

Advertising is expanding, literally, on the message boards. One ad is for dog food, an expanding ad that grows bigger and bigger to include a dog giving an interview. The word "Poop" is repeated over and over as if the word was intrinsically funny. Do you figure advertising is inherently anal?

Barry

Blogging

The first time today when I clicked on pixiedustnme I actually got to read her last entry on her new, unadvertised and advertising-minus site, wrote my Comment but couldn't post it as far as I know. I was 'frisked' at the door and denied entry, I think. When I clicked on the same link I couldn't get back to where I'd just been. Pixie, it appears, is incomunicardo. Reason? She's treasuring her secrets. Fears pickpockets. And how come her last entry was last Christmas? Adoration is wearing thin? Enquiring minds want to know. Maybe in a later entry I'll speculate.

Barry

I Dunno, ennui? anger? indigestion?

What on earth has happened to the AOL (and other) Journals? Some are undated. True there's a date hidden away on the side, but not showing in the main part of the entry. LillySweetChops has virtually vanished after a mysterious, and not up to her usual level of writing skill, exit speech. I can't escape a fantasy of her husband, armed, dictating every word of her 'Resignation.' Jimmy, who regularly gets 4,769 responses to every entry is in a deep funk, and someone interesting and amusing has decided she's really a philosopher, not a friendly blogger. Then there's those who fled from advertising and now when I click on their new site I get a full screen message saying, "Page Not Found" followed by being given the finger.  Oh well, I'll just talk to myself for a bit. Those who fled apparently don't understand how truly idiotic is their pose of specialness. I give up on the refugees, but appeal to the rest to stick it out till things shake down.

 

Barry

Speaking up CAN make a difference!

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Front page of the LA Times, and front page of Daily News San Fernando Valley: Times, has four dull topics:Stale politics, weather, famous aged pinup's story, teenage rapists given prison sentences.  Daily News, in big black letters: L.A. WOMAN IGNITES MUSLIM DEBATE.

Dr. Wafa Sultan, USA citizen and psychiatrist, has read the riot act to the Muslim militants. She's virtually psychoanalysed them as ignoble cretins following the edicts, or their idea of the edicts, of bankrupt Scripture. She notes that not one single Jew, no matter the extreme provocation of the Holocaust, has blown themselves up (good point, Wafa!) in retaliation.

Point: Al Jazeera, beginning on February 21, has put her on Arab TV all over: She's now a target, and her family and friends are also in danger. Her husband deserves kudos for his guts and support.

What tickles me especially is that it took a woman, yes a Muslim woman God bless her, a woman with a Doctorate in Psychiatry to be the one with enough daring and true sense of mission to speak up loud and clear. As the news story notes the very fact she got on Al Jazeera with her message strongly foreshadows others taking courage and running with her. A new voice has been born.  Amen.

Barry

Even the title of Memoirs of a Geisha is wrong. There is never

any other thing 'remembered' than how the lead suck-up-girl's

career is making out. In the DVD I watched last night the dubbed English doesn't agree with the subtitles. This is the most amateurish movie I've ever seen. Embarrassing, wrong, crude, simpering, lousy. Wrong: that American servicemen wore facial hair in occupied Japan. Wrong: that the emblems on USA bombers were in black and white. Wrong: That the relationship with the desired bigshot businessman would

have been consumated. That would necessitate the title

being changed to Memoir of a Prostitute. The photography of the movie is childish; and yes, it sure was shot in Thousand Oaks, a dismal Los Angeles 'suburb' in the desert. Much of it is hand held, with part of the face of the main 'Geisha' going out of frame for no reason other than sloppy technique and not

enough money left to fix it. The continual darkness is suffocating and this viewer, all the way through, longed for daylight. NOTHING beats daylight for photography. THAT'S WHY THE MOVIES CAME TO CALIFORNIA!

There's some kind of stultifying battle going on in the Biz in which camera operators and Cinematographers, and directors want more freedom to man the camera themselves, or some such, who cares not me.

 

The Oscar for that drech is made of frozen cream cheese.

Barry

Broke, crashed

How wonderful 'Broke' has 'Crashed!' I KNEW it couldn't, not in religious America where women are almost respected equals, could not win with a story about two illiterate, slow, boring hicks who mistreat their women and get away with it as entertainment! 

Now I gotta run to catch CAPOTE and CRASH.

Barry

 

  

Payments

Has it ever occurred to you that AOL forces us to pay with borrowed money? What do you feel about that? When you pay by some other method one is charged five dollars per month more. Just to stress the point, everytime we pay for something with a credit card we are paying with borrowed money. Advertising has turned paying with borrowed money into something fashionable, cool, with-it, when in fact it's stupid.

My monthly fee, because I have Adelphia cable broadband is $9.95 but because I have them dip into my bank, cash, not borrowed, AOL charges me $5 more, making a total of, you guessed it, $14.95.  A couple of times I've mailed a                    Postal Money Order which AOL has indeed cashed, but of course I never get a receipt. In fact ever since 1996 AOL has never, ever given me a receipt. AOL is master. AOL demands, extorts subservience. AOL is the universe and we are nothing.

AOL India, AOL Argentina, AOL Virginia USA, AOL South Africa, AOL New York, and AOL Who-Knows-Where else don't talk to each other much. Unlike AOL in North America, AOL in all those other countries at least are civil and sympathetic.

Will a real, viable alternative to AOL ever show up? It is my fervent prayer.

Barry

Every single window in which we type something is flawed. Why do I put up with it?