A kind of limbo

I am starting to despair of ever getting any writing done. I have three novels and a history floating in a puddle of inaction, slowly dissolving into unmemorable fragments.

Part of the problem is the lack of proper chemicals to subdue my distractibility long enough for me to get some words on paper. Another part is the need to travel to other libraries and towns to gather the research materials for the history. It's not that I don't like to travel, but the sense that by doing so I am removing what little chance my wife has of getting out of the house.

I know that her depression and agoraphobia are not my doing but I seem to have persuaded myself that any action on my part underscores and emphasizes her inaction. So I don't do anything.

I have psychologically painted myself into a corner where I sit and rust while waiting for her to decide to get better.

I have written several blog entries today, and will visit a sick relative this afternoon. Perhaps I'll sort some books and try to decide whether giving her the latest Leonard Cohen album for Valentine's Day is a good idea.

A bookish day

Today I received two of the books that I ordered recently.

One of them, "Timothy Dexter Revisited" by John P. Marquand will be put on the shelf unopened until the first of his books about that singular Newburyport gentleman arrives. I am looking forward to devouring the two in order since, as Lord Timothy himself said, "I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the known world." He sounds like a man worthy of attention if not respect.

I have his wonderful little book, "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones," sitting on my desk for inspiration. He was a canny and very lucky businessman for someone who declared himself a lord (although he insisted that it was popular acclaim that did so), who faked his own death in order to see who would turn up for the memorial, who kept a personal "poet laureate," and who seems so oddly disorganized and self-absorbed.

John P. Marquand fictionalized Dexter's life. That is the book that I'm waiting for. The book I just received is more of a memoir and historical piece written 35 years after the first one. It is my fancy that it is important to read them in chronological order

The second book I received today is "What I Require From Life" writings on science and life by J.B.S. Haldane. I am looking forward to reading it. Haldane is a witty and engaging writer and, whether you agree with his politics or not, time with him is well spent and challenging.

I met Haldane once in (I believe) 1961 when he visited the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. That would have made me 13 years old, just old enough to be terribly embarrassed to meet the 70 year old author of one of my favorite books in person. In addition to his political and scientific writing, he had also written a wonderful book called "My Friend Mr. Leakey" (a copy of which still sits on my shelves).

But if I start dipping into Haldane tonight, I'll have to set aside "1493" by Charles Mann with only a third of it read.

Ah me, the vagaries of distraction send me tumbling hither and yon like a crisp, dry maple leaf in an hibernal gale.

Vegetarian tipplers

«A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.» --G.K. Chesterton

Sharing Meme

It seems to me that this whole sharing meme is a bit out of whack. Someone puts a picture or a quote identifying some reprehensible behavior on facebook and gives you a moral shove saying that, “if you don't pass this along, then you are a bad person who condones this." Alternately, they do the same thing for positive stuff.

A case in point is a picture posted in my FB stream recently showing a bruised woman wearing a slit skirt and pink blouse collapsed at the feet of a man wearing bluejeans and a plaid shirt. The man's hand is closed, but you cannot see his face. The bruises, the spraddle-legged posture of the man, the position of his hand and the camera angle lead you to leap to the conclusion that he has just beaten her. The message beneath the picture says, “hit share if your against women abuse. lets get 1000 shares."

Well! Who wouldn't be against the abuse of women. So why not click?

But I have two problems with the post. The first is the picture. It has too many inconsistencies to be effective. The man's hand, though closed, is not clenched, his forearm is not tensed, his knuckles do not show the damage that would be evident had he been beating someone. His posture is as likely to be that of someone reaching down to help spreading his legs to balance as he helps her to her feet. So now there are multiple new possible scenarios involving helpful strangers or off-duty EMTs coming upon auto accidents, or the aftermath of a drunken brawl or perhaps a woman being abused.

So the photo is either bad staging or a misrepresentation. So what‽

Too many people skim their emails and social media, not reading deeply or interpreting, making snap judgments and, when they see something for which they can construct an easy conclusion, saying “me too" by hitting the share button. They have constructed a scenario, supplying the missing pieces according to their own prejudices. That can't be helped. Our brains are hard-wired to supply narratives, sequences, causal chains to fit what we see. There is an excellent recent article in Wired about how that propensity for humans to construct a narrative has occasionally led science in some disturbingly bad directions.

In a way you could say that my problem with the photo is that it was done poorly and offends my editorial sensibilities in such a way that it interferes with my ability to create the expected response. I would add that it seems to me to be a gratuitous use of shock values, no better than using a pornographic photo and saying “share this if you are against pornography."

But the problems with the photo are petty compared to my real gripe.

I want to talk about the veneer of involvement that we apply to ourselves by tapping the share button, a kind of non-invasive soul-surgery accomplished with a single click. The question to ask is, “What does that click on share do?"

It does a couple of things. It lets the person, who is saying “me too" think that they have added their voice to some kind of petition, or that they have joined some kind of movement. It lets the “me too" feel that they have raised their voice in outrage. It lets them think that they are on the side of good. Solidarity!

Give me a break.

What it actually means is that the “me too" has been socially engineered through embarrassment and implied social pressure into passing along a message with someone else's name on it. At best the result will be that the originator of the message will be able to harvest the names of, in this case 1000 people who forwarded their message on. This then gives them the chance to “friend" them (since the initial contact has been made) and potentially sell that list of names, spam them or, in the best case scenario, inflate their own importance.

What it doesn't do is anything else. It doesn't pay for shelters or medical treatment, it doesn't provide psychological or social support, it doesn't change the mind of any brutalizer or victim. It does nothing except make “me too" feel like they have done something. It lessens the impact of real appeals for actual support. In essence, it lets the person say that they support something that they are actually ignoring. They can pretend they have done something. It's like the ultimate, “I gave at the office" excuse.

“I condemn the battering of women by clicking on an ambiguous photograph," they say. “My soul is clean and I am a good person and I can be counted among the morally upright without any cost to my wallet, my time or my life."

You cannot dry clean your soul so easily. Don't share the damn photograph. Go do something about it.

Phantasy

"Phantasy, or imagination, which some call estimative, or cogitative ... is an inner sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind again, or making new of his own. In time of sleep this faculty is free, and many times conceive strange, stupend, absurd shapes, as in sick men we commonly observe. His organ is the middle cell of the brain; his objects all the species communicated to him by the common sense, by comparison of which he feigns infinite other unto himself. In melancholy men this faculty is most powerful and strong, and often hurts, producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if it be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to it from common sense or memory. In poets and painters imagination forcibly works, as appears by their several fictions, antics, images: as Ovid's house of sleep, Psyche's palace in Apuleius, &c. In men it is subject and governed by reason, or at least should be; but in brutes it hath no superior, and is ratio brutorum, all the reason they have."

-- Robert Burton "The Anatomy of Melancholy"

"Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese -- toasted, mostly."

-- (Ben Gunn) R.L. Stevenson "Treasure Island"

Dreamscape

For nearly a year, I have been taking a combination of medications that is intended to thin my blood, lower its pressure and keep my arteries open. At the same time, I have had to reduce my caffeine intake (a terrible sacrifice for someone who thinks that four portions of espresso is barely enough to lift the eyelids) and give up the stimulant medications that control my ADD and keep me productive.

The blood pressure medication is, I believe, to blame for my lassitude and lack of energy. It is bad enough to have one's work require a sedentary life without a drug draining what little remains of my vim. Combined with my stimulant fast, this has resulted in a singularly unproductive, uncommunicative, and unusually unfriendly year.

The most unusual effect has been that of the blood thinners. The labels warn of the potential for disturbed sleep and vivid dreams, but I was not expecting the clarity and memorability of them. As Joel 2:28 would have it, I am an old man who "shall dream dreams" leaving the visions to my juniors. The dreams I have are so startling and so different from any that I have had before that at times I wonder just what is happening to my mind.

I have had dreams all my life; predictable, simple dreams, easily interpreted and understood. I call them the "frustration dreams". 

I am on a Navy ship doing an errand and it is time for me to leave. I know where I'm going and I have plenty of time to get off before the ship sails. Suddenly I realize that I have taken a wrong turn. I am lost. I don't see this as a problem, I know how to read the numbers on the bulkheads, and I have a sense of how the ship is laid out. I take another turn and the ship has changed. It is now a cross between a cruise ship and a mall. There are escalators and ladders. In essence I am in a "maze of twisty passages all alike". When I finally find my way out I find myself on the bow of the ship. It has left port and I am stuck on it. As I stand there, the ocean transforms into a lake, then a river, which narrows until the ship runs aground.

This is only one scenario. There are many, but the form is always the same. The sense of desperate confusion and being out of control wakes me up and leaves me rattled for the early part of the day.

These new dreams are different, more vivid, more real. I drop into someone else's head as a first-person observer of a story or a life in progress, knowing the back story, recognizing venues, friends, and situations that are common to me in this new persona, as fantastic as they might seem in my "real" life. These dreams are durable, easy to remember. I wake from them suddenly, sometimes sure that I have awoken but other times not, and with some of them, if I let myself drift back to sleep, I take up the story shortly after I left off. The dream seems to have continued its progress in my absence. They are not unpleasant, many are amusing and quite cinematic and there is often a sense of loss when I wake up. 

I have a consistent physical reaction too. When I wake I invariably have a dry mouth. I mean bone dry as if my salivary glands had completely stopped. Unless I keep a glass of water next to the bed, it takes a minute or two of working my tongue and jaw muscles to start them going again.  

This was last night's dream. 

I enter the dream as if opening my eyes from a blink. It is a pleasant spring day and I am waiting, sitting on a stoop of a building that I know I do not live in, watching the door of a building across the street. I'm in tan chinos, a blue button down shirt and white sneakers. The street is lined with three and four story brownstone walk ups and there is little traffic and few parked cars. A few large trees provide puddles of shade up and down the street. The stoop that I sit on is near the corner where this street crosses a similar one. The cross-street has a number of storefronts on it but this street does not. It looks a bit like the area in Boston where Marlborough Street crosses Mass. Ave. 

I am waiting for something to happen. Charlie, my friend and colleague is sitting, cross-legged, under a tree near the door that I'm watching. He's in his forties but has made himself look older. He's wearing a ratty t-shirt, blue jeans with frayed cuffs. He's playing a harmonica and a dirty paper coffee cup is set up between his dirty bare feet. He's playing a wheezy, inept "Red River Valley" when he seems to hear something. He plays a quick blues lick, and tucks the harmonica into his pocket. 

The door bursts open, bounces against the high concrete side of the stoop and partially closes again. A man looks out to check the street, his face red and contorted under closely cropped blonde hair. He doesn't notice me and seems to discount Charlie. The face pulls back into shadow then the man backs out of the door shouldering it fully open. I can see the collar of a white shirt rising above the collar of his gray suit. His shoes are very shiny and black. 

He has his right arm around the neck of an attractive woman with dark curly hair. She's wearing a thin floral print dress. In the man's left hand is a small black automatic. A bald man in a brown suit, pale yellow shirt and bright blue tie steps out behind them. He uses his left hand to slam the door shut behind him. His right arm hangs by his side seemingly to minimize the visibility of the revolver he holds. His expression is calm but grim as he nods to the first man who wrenches the woman around to face the steps and starts forcing her down them.

Her face is purpling from the pressure on her neck. She reaches back and grabs at the bright red of his necktie, but gets hold of the white shirt collar and yanks. He grunts and his sleeve bulges as he tightens his grip on her neck until she lets go. They reach the bottom and the second man starts backing carefully down the steps watching the door.

Charlie has disappeared, but I know where he is. We've done this kind of thing before. I move to the dark blue car parked under the tree near me and lean against the trunk. Neither of the men notice me. They seem to be looking everywhere but where I am, which is as it should be. 

The first man drags the woman across the street to the car. He pulls on the passenger door handle twice before he realized it's locked. A momentary confusion flickers across his face. He's right, he left it unlocked, but I took care of that for him. He tucks the gun in his belt and reaches into his pocket for his keys. I look through the back of his head and see a kaleidoscope of colors. There is one in particular that I'm looking for, a blob of cyan with red veining, the pleasure center. He jumps slightly as I reach through the back of his skull, touch the spot and send an overload. All the tension in his body instantly evaporates. His arm drops from the woman's neck and she leaps away turning to face him. 

I know what she is seeing. He has a goofy happy expression on his face, probably starting to drool slightly, and over his shoulder she sees me. I smile slightly and raise my hands to let her know that I am not a threat. Across the street the other man is standing by a utility pole starting to raise his gun in our direction, when Charlie peels himself off the wood and touches the shoulder of the brown suit. The man's gun clatters to the ground as he floats up. He seems paralyzed as a gust of wind catches him and in a swirl of updraft he drifts into the power lines and explodes into flame and fragments like a small Hindenburg.

I pull the gun from the unresisting fingers of the man by the car. I can see and smell the effects of my intrusion in his brain. A dark stain spreads across the front of his trousers, and it is not urine. Charlie comes to help me I open the door of the vehicle and we help him collapse inside as the woman stands watching us. We close the door. His eyes are glazed. I have given him unendurable pleasure, indefinitely prolonged and it will eventually kill him. Charlie pulls a cell phone from his pocket, and looks at me. 

"Should I bother the cops about this?" he asks. I shake my head.

"No, it's nothing they could turn off."

Charlie and I walk on either side of the woman as we cross the street to her door. We let her precede us she opens the door and waves us in, but immediately turns and runs to the back of the house. We follow through a living room full of overstuffed chairs, glass fronted cabinets, bookshelves, and small tables, some of the furniture is overturned and broken. We find her in the kitchen struggling with the knots binding an older couple to two back to back wooden chairs. I walk over and reach down flattening my finger to the width of a few atoms and slice through the ropes.

I step back and let Charlie and the young woman get the couple to their feet. 

"Would you like some coffee?" asks the woman we rescued.

Charlie and I nod. 

"Go clean up," the older woman tells her, "I'll make it." She shoos us out of the kitchen.

The younger woman goes upstairs. The old man, Charlie, and I straighten the living room. We right the chairs, straighten the rugs, and sweep up shattered pieces of porcelain and glass. I find a chair with a loose leg and crouch to fix it when I hear footsteps and smell coffee. I continue to work. Then I smell something damp with the light perfume of soap. I look up and the young woman is standing by me. She smells like the shower she has just taken. I am very aware that she is wearing a thin white cotton robe and little else. 

I stand up and she puts her arms around me, hugging me tightly. I hug her back amending my awareness, she is wearing nothing else. She lets go and steps back, then settles onto the arm of a chair. The older couple are already seated and Charlie is standing near the mantle of the fireplace. 

"How did you do that," she says, smiling at me warmly.

I look over at Charlie and nod to him as she follows my glance. He turns sideways and disappears.

"It has to do with dimension," I say, and take a backward step to the wall near me at the same time wondering why I am showing off. I grin at how her eyes widen as I flatten myself against it, like a poster against a billboard. But then I feel a tug from behind and I seem to re-expand into the wall instead of the comfortable living room where my friend and partner, an older couple and a warm and attractive woman are waiting.

Instead there is darkness, and a flicker of light. I realize that a car has just driven by. My mouth is dry. I feel a tug back in the other direction and I know that I can go back, but I reach over and wrap my fist in my wife's t-shirt. Even in her sleep she jerks away from my touch but I hold on, knowing that the three dimensionality of the knot will anchor me in reality and prevent my return to the dream. I work my tongue, feeling the saliva start. Now I am fully awake. I sit up.

And then ... too late ... I feel an overwhelming sense of loss.

Falstaff ...

S'blood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lug'd bear.

Starting again

What a poor performance on my part. There is all this space to fill up on the server farms and I just haven't been doing my part.

I could claim, rightfully that my life has been overfull of late, but that's not really an excuse. I am old enough, if not wise enough, to be able to take the vagaries of existence in stride and still be able to take quill in hand and set it to paper.

This is not the only project that has lain fallow and I am horrified at my lack of productivity on all sides. The materials for two half-written historical biographies are stacked, forlorn and dusty on the bookshelf behind my left shoulder. The notes for three novels are neatly labelled in expansion file envelopes. My in-basket overflows with unanswered correspondence and the miscellaneous scraps of paper that constitute my "day book".

It is not just the mental pursuits that have drifted out of control. Tomatoes lie rotting in my garden. The basil has blossomed, overgrown, and toppled leaving the rhubarb in domination of the small plot. My list of things to do has grown to the point that I can no longer bear to even think of looking at it.

Perhaps the onset of Autumn and the colder weather, the prospect of being able to take fewer medications and the institution of a new and simpler diet will help to change my mood. As regards diet, it is interesting that Burton, in cataloging those foods that the classical writers believed would cause one to be melancholic, seems  to suggest that in order to avoid the black humor one must perforce become a Breatharian, an airy fancy that I would find unpalatable.

I seem to have persuaded myself into a working mood. It's time to push the keyboard back for a while and take up my pen.

Sorry

 I got distracted for nearly a year. I keep saying that I will try to do better and I keep failing. In any case, I have pulled two of my other blogs out of circulation in disgust at my own inability to concentrate.

 Instead I have added a new one called Henry and the Nipping Jig. This blog will document the successes and failures I experience as I write a new book. It is a history ... in a way. Please visit it, I seem to be better at keeping it going.

 I will try to post here more as I get my brain back into synchro-mesh.