Audience Member #1

the amazing human silverfish

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:14:00 +0000

I am a librarian.

This is self-evident to those who know me, who know that I spent two years working toward a degree in that field and then transplanted my life halfway up the Seaboard. This degree mattered; I paid attention. Those who joined me in my undergraduate years would be astonished, because I chose a major that held no interest and was populated with the sort who felt the art of conversation was an ample justification for tenure. I spent those years taking courses in as many other disciplines as possible -- literature, art history, languages, the social sciences -- all the courses that would have comprised a fairly decent major in the humanities at any other university.

My opinion of the validity of the study of "communications" versus the humanities is really neither here nor there. I can still expound on the ideas of Lacan, detail the times Cuchulain entered warp spasm, and explain why Mansfield Hartley is the way he is.

The main reason why I did this -- and this will lead us to the main thrust of this post -- was intellectual curiosity fomented by a love of reading. As I went through each course, I began to discover that my initial reason for participating was justified: there really were bases in history for everything I enjoyed on an intangible level. This myth had that book as a direct descendant and this knowledge fleshed out what I had read and made it much more complete; this sculpture had been born out of that aesthetic principle, placing it in context and explaining the creator's choices.

I find it puzzling when I hear that men don't read. This -- "Dudes don't read" -- is a truism in every industry and service related to reading. Most people seem to think that males (in the 18-34 demographic and younger) don't read and that those who do are, in fact, somehow, in some way, not real. This is borne out by simple observation. Pull aside a few men on the street and ask if they read. Those who do are in the minority; do the same with women, however, and the opposite is true.

Why? That is, as someone very intelligent (and slippery) once said, above my pay grade. Something I found odd: there's a trend of blaming the parents. Mothers read to their kids when they're little; as they mature, boys therefore associate reading with women.

My mother and grandmother read to me, but I don't remember it. I learned how to read relatively early on, and all my memories of books involve direct connections. Aside from reading to children, I don't remember my parents actually reading. I know they probably did -- they've got their own books -- but they were never caught. My sister and I, on the other hand, read very conspicuously, which is another way of saying we're the kind of people who have to be told to put the damn book down.

My parents did nothing out of the ordinary from what I've seen with other parents. That would seem to deflate the gender-assigned theory. However, some would say that since I don't remember being read to, I therefore have no predefined gender roles assigned to the act of reading.

Maybe. There's no reason for reading to be gender-specific; many of the great individuals (the overwhelming majority) we learn about in the public school system were men who read nearly everything. Many of our greatest authors (not so overwhelming) have been men, and many of them are outstripped by the quality of female work (see Jane Austen). I've known plenty of male readers (we seek each other out; a guy holding a book is a clear indicator); there certainly doesn't seem to be a particularly noticeable extinction of the type.

What I do find bothersome, though, is the publishing industry's willingness to buy into the idea.The Hookup Handbook or Twilight exist in abundance on the bookstore shelves. The romance section at Barnes & Noble, in conjunction with pink flower-festooned covers in general fiction, is significantly larger than the science-fiction section. That is what I would call a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone sets up the mistaken notion that guys don't read, so they don't publish books for guys, thereby starving my gender of things to read.

On the other hand, there have been figures in my life who fought the tide. I recently discovered Guys Lit Wire, which has swelled my list of things to read and buy for my library. My favorite grad school professor insisted: "Never apologize for your choice of reading material." This skilled, well-educated woman who spent forty years of her life wandering through the stacks has no problem reading children's books or smut. She doesn't feel the sheepishness of being caught reading a book about a teenager's coming-of-age story among the privileged scions of Manhattan or a graphic novel about gay Japanese elementary-school witches acting as mules for a drug cartel.

Since then, I've felt much less guilty about reading what I think others would label "silly things"; I'm reading for my personal pleasure in finding and learning new things, not their personal pleasure in noting social conformity. My horizons have been expanded, from the terrible high-school-English-level writing of Twilight to the utter bliss of Toni Morrison.

That last one is a recent development. Since I became an official Librarian, I've been consuming books at a rate that much more closely matches my intake back in high school: something like a book (or more) a week. I've gone through Connie Willis, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Neil Gaiman, mathematical histories (I have been surprised to learn what a sucker I am for books about math or science, though I have no skill in either field), Atwood, a couple of young adult books fondly remembered from those days, and now Morrison. Near-death experiences, the Foundation, Karellen, Door of House Portico, Brownian motion, bioengineering gone mad, teenage spiritualism, sinking subs, and poor Pecola Breedlove.

I can't imagine another time in my adult life (short though it may be) that I've had access to such a treasure trove. I can't understand why it is so studiously ignored, but it leaves more for me.

From that perspective, why worry about the decline and fall of my gender and the rise of the intellectual matriarchy?

life now and then: a meditation in two parts

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:10:00 +0000

Part 2

Rather further away than "tomorrow," but there have been benefits to the time, which will inform this discussion.

The lobby show referred to in the previous post was, of course, the one located in the lobby of the Comcast Center. One side of the lobby is occupied by a gargantuan LED screen, so high-resolution that the wall's default setting quite literally blends into the rest of the wall. When the show begins, it's very subtly; a person appears. Life-sized, he walks back and forth on top of a doorway, looking brilliantly real.

The show progresses through various gimmicky things, showing nature scenes (filmed at an inappropriately low resolution, I felt) and gee-whiz-bangs like flying clock parts. This is followed by a good, old-fashioned Holiday Spectacular, which ends with a near-dystopian vision of a giant Caucasian child's face, beaming happily down upon the onlookers and cheerily wishing Happy Holidays on behalf of Comcast and its various subsidiaries.

When this ended, I turned to my friend and whispered, "We are in the future."

And yet the past lay all around us. The south side of Comcast Center is occupied by a small, sad-looking building, apparently done up in beaux/arts and looking like a Monopoly property nestling into the base of this blue-glass, LEED-chasing Nail of Heaven. Just a few blocks away sits City Hall, its crenellated spire visible from many parts of the city, and the heart of all its roads. Near there sprawls Independence Hall, looking suitably "preserved" among all the glass-and-steel rails driven, it seemed, headlong into the ground by the Angel of Progress.

Philadelphia has a strikingly modern skyline; this is because it was only relatively recently that the unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" was broken, incurring the wrath of William Penn, who was again mollified when one of his simulacra was placed atop Comcast Center -- apparently allowing the Phillies to crush my home team in the World Series this past fall.

Still, it is very odd to observe a row of ancient buildings erected, it seemed, when the city was young, only to discover the quartzlike outline of the Cira Centre peeking over the rooftops, or falling into the shadow of One Liberty Place's pseudodeco glassiness.

Philadelphia is certainly a place of temporal shock.

Now, a month later, I look back and find myself all the more surprised by both the weight of history and the intrinsic sense of transformation. I've been reading An American Plague, a high-school-level book about the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, which took place in Philadelphia. The conditions described -- no sewer system, leading to reeking cesspits in the street, the high level of dead cats and pigeons, people expiring any old place, leaving ripe corpses in public spaces, the Free African Society's efforts to help the white plague victims -- and their meeting-place near Walnut Street, where my friend works -- all of this inspires a sense of historical awe.

It was enough to know that Philadelphia was the original federal capital. That it was where our country, my home, was born. That this city was the seed from which all that we know has sprouted. But reading about the horrors of the plague and the people who gamely tolerated being upchucked on, pissed on, shat on, whiffed on, a circus that became a hospital for the sick and dying, the mansion that became another hospital in spite of the landlord, George Washington's flight and later insistence on returning after the news tap ran dry, plague or no plague, riding day after day from Virginia, vanishing from his aides' grasp to see the city for himself ...

All this in the house of the inchoate Republic. Barely begun, it was nearly soonest done; the constitutional crisis precipitated by the flight of Congress could have contained the seeds of destruction for a nation barely born. And yet, in spite of the utter uselessness of those federal leaders, we survived, largely thanks to community-level organization and aid.

Washington, DC, may be the heart of American power, but Philadelphia seems to be uniquely the seat of American history.

Then again, I've not been to Boston ... yet.

life now and then: a meditation in two parts

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:00:00 +0000

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-- William Wordsworth

I went to Philadelphia on Friday and it provided much food for thought in two arenas: sociability and history.

To wit: the lack of one and an abundance of the other.

Part 1

Let us begin with the first. At one point on Friday evening, I was prompted to try to taste a particular piece of sushi from someone whose gifts have proven invaluable in ensuring my current situation. Because of this individual's judgment, I was inclined to listen to her encouragement, but in the end declined because I simply cannot abide the consumption of a creature which swims or crawls with a shell upon its back. They're delicious, but something about their flavor just ...

Forgive the digression. I merely wished to say that I found myself declining her vehemence with the following statement: "Look, I already do everything else you tell me to." At her incredulous expostulation, I continued, "I write my resumes the way you tell me to, I apply for the jobs you tell me to, I correspond with people the way you tell me to, you are generally the person who shows me how to be an actual human being. Once in a while, though, I really should grow some balls and think for myself, and I have chosen this occasion to do so."

This sentiment's expression was largely unintentional. Still, the more I think about it, the more I find it to be true. I do require some off-stage prompting with the right lines, the right stance, the right mannerism. I do, in other words, need some help in being some species of actual person.

This I find interesting. It's not a matter of concern because I strongly believe that I do have the right to exist as the kind of person I am. I'm asocial by nature; I enjoy solitude. The roots of this trait may run too deeply to trace -- in spite of previous attempts to do just that -- but the scent of its flowering permeates my life.

I often run across near-satiric paeans to the love of solitude, where asocial behavior is supposedly taken as an indicator of genius; the popular opinion is that the need for time alone serves the desire to perform great works with the utmost of concentration. I draw and I paint and I write, and I do none of these very well. I can't solve the world's problems; that is strictly the province of greater minds than I. Still, I cherish my seclusion. I can think my private thoughts and do my private things and create my private art (such as it is; lately what little I can do has been co-opted by my mother for family needs) and find my private fulfillment on my own terms.

Wordsworth expresses this sentiment beautifully in the poem included at the beginning of this missive. It's too well-known to bother going into any serious analysis, but I want to point out his line about "the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude," which allows him, in quiet moments, to reflect on the beauty he sees throughout his life and derive an intangible gratification from a single image. This, I think, is a significant portion of the value of reclusiveness.

This stands in stark contrast to my host, whose gregariousness is still a wonder to behold after some years of acquaintance. She's a born charmer. Everywhere we went, she knew someone -- and this was not because this was a planned expedition. For instance, she knew the fellow behind the counter at the Mütter Museum, which hadn't even been considered as a potential destination until I happened to see a magnet emblazoned with its logo on her refrigerator that morning. Or the man who lived next door to her new apartment, whom she accosted by coincidence and involved in deep conversation for several minutes. Or the individual she knew at the Comcast Center who could have taken us to the top of the building, the tallest in Philadelphia -- but didn't because of the lobby show.

The general point is, of course, that there are just some people who were made for others and some people who were made for themselves.

I could go off into a long-winded examination of my phrasing in the previous sentence -- what does it indicate about my beliefs that I choose to refer to people as being "made"? -- but instead I shall end by giving you notice: The lobby show should be considered a segue into Part 2, coming your way tomorrow.

the walls were as of jasper

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:52:00 +0000

My first week as a librarian is over.

Librarian. That's me. Two years of grad school and another year of suffering through newspaper archiving (which had very little relevance to what I learned in grad school other than the overall mission), and I can finally call myself a Librarian. I won't be Questing for the Spear or Returning to King Solomon's Mines or being Cursed by the Judas Chalice (coming your way on TNT on December 7 at 8:00 p.m., 7:00 central), but the general gist is, I think, clear.

The strangest part is the return to deaf life.

I've described my complicated relationship with deafness on this blog before. I'm not quite certain how to describe my current situation. In one sense, it's tremendously comfortable -- everyone signs. In another, it's intimidating -- I had realized that I was given less responsibility in my previous job because of my deafness, but it didn't really hit home until I got here and truly understood how much authority I was being given, and how much I had truly lacked.

It sort of re-emphasizes the real wall against the world. I finally understand the sense of empowerment sought by so many deaf people, and which can be most easily found within the deaf community. It's at the same time very nice and very alarming; it seems easy to grow complacent and envision a future in the same place. There is a prevailing atmosphere of concern over the aging staff at the library, which encourages a lengthy stay.

I saw my future as one of peregrination; a year here, a couple years there, roaming the country before I hit my 30s and grow relict. I still hold to that, but it may be a few years further away. There's certainly a major compensation: Washington itself. That's without considering the monumental task of relocating once again, viewed through the lens of last week's effort.

The job itself certainly isn't terrible by any means. I am selecting for three of my favorite types of reading material, the fellow librarians seem neat and appropriately idiosyncratic, and the library itself is fairly large. From the outside, it looks like a small brick alien spaceship, but it's one of the most deceptive privately-owned buildings in the metro area. None of the walls meet at right angles, there are squiggly halls and doors everywhere -- sometimes just to connect one hall to another. The archives themselves take up two vaults, an enormous room, and at least six smaller ones devoted mostly to processing and photo storage--none of which is actually adjacent to each other or even in the same area. The deaf collection takes up most of the first floor and the general collection takes up most of the open space on the basement floor, which is shared by the archives (3 people, 4 student assistants) and the Academic Technology department (31 people, God knows how many student assistants, a couple of TV studios, at least one computer lab, and a bunch of video-editing suites). Really, the basement is the largest floor of the three and extends for over an acre underneath the two floors above ground level. Or possibly less; the twists and turns would upset a surveyor.

The students are also kind of interesting in their own right, although I'm not so interested in fraternizing (see how professional I am). All sorts of weird requests and it's oddly comforting to see such normalcy that I can actually eavesdrop on.

The city where I live is also fairly interesting. I live a couple blocks out of the "Downtown," which is an area infested with chains, movie theaters, parking garages, and teenagers, although I'm in a part of town blanketed with Ethiopian, Jamaican, Thai, Indian, Chinese and "world" shops, cafes, and restaurants. I live on the 15th story of a building that affords me wonderful views of what pass for high-rises here, as well as the Discovery Communications building a couple blocks away and the Metro trains next to that. I went to Borders (forgive me) this morning, then Fuddruckers for lunch. There was a Thanksgiving parade going on and I watched a group of people in support of building a new library next door to my building attempt to deflate a 20-foot-tall penguin.

Also, it is frigid outside and I keep seeing little flakes of snow here and there and I left my Vaseline at work. I could go and get it, but am not in the mood. My lips will simply have to chap freely. It's not the most annoying thing in the world; what is is the sheer proliferation of static electricity in cold weather when you walk across the carpet in socks. I could power this building with the sheer voltage I seem to discharge every time I touch something made of metal.

Zzzzap.

sinking in

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:19:00 +0000

I have moments inside myself, like crystals in a geode.

In the darkness enclosed by my skin, I contain precise matrices of different places, times of day, and certain turns of feeling (the emotional equivalent of turns of phrase). None of them are memories; rather, they are plans for the future. The basic elements are a specific kind of place, a particular time of day, and varying circumstances that engender an exact emotion paired with an essentially singular schema. They are all, to a one, open-ended dates with deja-vu.

One of the most long-lived moments is being alone in a dark room at night with a city outside my window, and feeling as though I were in a shell, nestling alone within multiplicity, gazing out across endless vistas while feeling extremely conscious of my corporeality. It's a cozy sense of isolation within dense population, of ownership of my own little corner to curl up in, of being able to observe the vibrant life of the outside world without being a part of it. Key to this sensation is a realization of the distance between me, the means of access, and everyone else.

I get this feeling every night in my new bedroom, which is the room furthest from the front door. As I prepare for bed, I shut the bedroom door, turn the light off, and open the blinds as far as they'll go, and drink in the light and the life and the night and the walls and the window and the ceiling and the floor and think I am here.

It's not something to which I readily admit, truthfully. It sounds odd and most likely will be perceived as though it were some sort of a psychological problem, the pleasure taken in utterly shutting myself off while still keeping an eye on everyone else.

The more I've thought about it since moving in last week, though, the more I realize that the crystalline futures I have hoarded within myself depend wholly upon an understanding of space. Vast spaces or close places, they nevertheless involve both a widening of my world and a constriction of my personal space to the area circumscribed by my feet.

I found a similar feeling the first time I took the Metro into the District. I only stopped at Union Station and Dupont Circle, but it was a feeling of liberation and also of myself among many. It happened again the second time, when I took it to the Mall and found myself at a loss for choice. Museums all around me. I wound up spending three hours strolling around the Museum of Natural History, in no hurry to get anywhere, knowing home was only two train rides away. It's a city. A world-class city. And it's mine to explore, to carve out niches, favorite places, that I can go to again and again and sort of snuggle myself into. It's a new home I can appropriate. Like taking the reins of a new horse and finding its rhythm, learning how to lean just here and just there to make it go just so.

Unfortunately, work prevents me from really settling into the city properly just yet. Fortunately, I have a four-day weekend coming up, an eleven-day holiday at the end of December, and another four-day weekend a couple weeks after that. It's almost as though I'm a parasite who just found a new host body, as sort of human-shaped Toxoplasma Gondii who is attempting to make a city more interested in the cat-urine of my comfort.

Or something. Either way, that moment which I've held inside myself for many years has now achieved its final actualization, so the move has become a sort of liberation in another, quite unexpected, sense.

of delays and moves

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:32:00 +0000

I know it's been a while. Sorry.

It's gonna be a while longer. I got the job in Washington and am in the process of stressing myself out over the whole operation.

Once I'm actually up there and settled in and stuff, there may be a lot more coming up here, based on my wandering throughout the city. Museums and monuments and public transit and architecture are virtually guaranteed to foment some thought. Oh, plus the whole throbbing-center-of-declining-global-power thing.

In the meantime, my mind has slipped into a coma. I sleep (not well) and eat (not well) and work (not well) and get paid (not badly) and intend to pack. Intention to pack is an ongoing activity, I've found.

treading

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:36:00 +0000

"If we look at the path, we do not see the sky."
-- Native American saying

So today has been a good day, I guess. Morning at the bookstore, then a haircut (have I ever mentioned how wonderful it feels to get one of these? Ecstasy!), then Blockbuster to return some movies--and, unexpectedly, to buy Unbreakable. Evo's for a free steakburger with some fries and a shake--and the only good thing was the shake. I suspect their other offerings are considerably better and that, should I return, I would be well-served to deviate from my usual culinary milieu (such as it is). Ate the lunch at Coffee Pot Park with a lovely view of the water, then took the "scenic drive" along Coffee Pot Boulevard into Snell Isle, where I ogled the big, pretty houses there.

I have very specific tastes in large houses. First, I hate most of the new ones, mostly because they seem to be really into superfluous pillars, the majority of which are twisted like those scary lollipops you can get at Disney World. I hate those pillars. Second, I dig houses that make use of interesting textures--like a little round brick tower in the corner between the house and garage, or waves of plaster, or square timber frames in a manner reminiscent of Mitteleuropa. Third, Interesting Architectural Details, like spiky dormers, little balconies with porch chairs, or outdoor staircases. Fourth, unabashed ostentation, like this one house I saw, which was unfortunately white-stuccoed but which had dark blue glass windows and a very massive and grand covered entry staircase leading up to metal doors that were punched in a sunburst pattern. Pimpin'. Fifth, deliberate imitation of a specific style, a favorite of which is the architectural elements found on Santorini, thick white plaster walls with little blue accents. A particularly fantastic example can be found on Longboat Key in Sarasota; a mansion there is almost blindingly blue and white. Such methods are uniquely suited to sunny locations on the water, particularly on a clear blue day.

And sixth: Complexity. I love complicated houses. Interminable hallways that get you mixed up, odd little rooms behind odd little doors, endless nooks and crannies with overstuffed armchairs and large windows, a few living rooms, a few decks, balconies all over the place where the best views can be had. If I ever grow wealthy enough to own a large house, my architect had better have a fine mind for detail.

The saying quoted above came from a short story by Charles de Lint, from an anthology that was one of two de Lint books I borrowed from my sister. I'm not necessarily a big fan of his work; he displays an overwhelming love of urban bohemia (slightly overrated, in my opinion; one should do what one wishes and not make a scene over scenes) and an unstinting pessimism regarding the associated crime rate, which he thinks is symptomatic of the larger world's decline, to say nothing of the effeminate streak gleaming among his endless paragraphs. Nothing wrong with that, but one grows tired of soft, dreamy women who find magic and the sternly protective men who have apparently never touched a football. What I do enjoy is the near-folkloric nature of much of his work, particularly the Amerindian elements he introduces (although he does seem to be strongly predisposed to Celtic folkways, he is writing about an American (or possibly Canadian) city)--such as the woman with birds in her head and the use of crows in many of his stories.

Anyway, this saying took me by surprise in Coffee Pot; I have a obscure obsession with paths, with finding them and walking them. The word "path" itself is one of my favorites, one of those perfectly shaped for its purpose. Like "orthodox" or "juxtaposition." At the same time, I find myself fixating on the sky, the vast spaces. It's the only truly long view that is available to anyone on Earth at any time, and such a proverb puzzles me; it seems to split both into a dichotomy, rendering the individual unable to observe both simultaneously. Treading the proper path is, to me, an ideal; if one focuses only on the sky, one will find that one has a tendency to plunge over precipices suddenly and without warning, resulting in a failure to see anything other than the sky as one's broken body lies dashed on the rocks below.

Far better, I feel, is this quote from Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell:

"Where?" Sir Walter was surprized; there was no place he found so much to his liking as London with its gaslights and its shops, its coffeehouses and clubs, its thousand pretty women and its thousand varieties of gossip and he imagined it must be the same for every one.

"Oh, wherever men of my sort used to go, long ago. Wandering on paths that other men have not seen. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain."

This was found on page 406 out of 846, incidentally, of my paperback copy. It is rather interesting to note that I had no idea of the quote's context and had to go hunting for it. It took less than ten minutes, in spite of my misremembering its phrasing. In order to find it again later if I wish, I just added a note. I have an urge to re-read the entire book once again, this time adding annotations and marginalia, something I do very, very rarely. It isn't that I have so much respect for books that I don't wish to mar them; in fact, I strongly encourage the reader's interaction with the text and the habit of leaving a record of this intercourse. One of my favorite things is to come across a used book in a bookstore that has had comments and notes scribbled on its pages; it lends a fascinating coloration to the book's printed contents. I just never feel as though I have anything sufficiently substantive to commit to paper.

As I was searching for Jonathan Strange's words, I realized that I had no specific strategy for pinpointing what I was looking for. The Internet failed to give me anything; Google showed its first flaw. The book itself has no index, and its contents are dense with narrative, footnotes, asides, and interwoven subplots. Strange is a major character; a significant portion of the book is devoted to him and his experiences. What was I thinking? Was I going to have to put this post aside for a few days or weeks while I carefully reread the book until, in the middle of page 406, I found what I had been looking for? Several times, as I searched, that thought crossed my mind, and I realized, suddenly, that I knew, knew, with utter certainty, that I could find my quarry. Knew. I can't explain how I quickly winnowed through Strange's sojourns on the Continent against Napoleon under Wellington, the thistledown gentleman's seduction of Stephen Black and enchantment of the Lady Pole, Mr. Norrell's struggle against the coming revolution in English magic, Drawlight and Lascelles's dastardly plots, homing in on that one paragraph, that line of dialogue buried very nearly in the exact center of the book.

What is it? Have I imprinted on this book so deeply that though I can remember very little of a set of words other than their meaning, I can ferret out its hidden structure, folded away in some dark corner of my unconscious mind? Or is it something much more mysterious, the smell of the words, their shapes somehow slowly revealing their proper place in the larger text?

Truth is, I think I can do it with almost any book I've read more than once. I think anyone can, actually--and I've clearly been reading too much science fiction. Or Charles de Lint.

As for the rest of this post--well. I was going to go off on a tangent regarding proportional taxation and how the number of people paying taxes doesn't matter so much as it is how much money those people are making or the fact that some people don't seem to realize that if the wealthy don't pay high taxes, then the poor people are going to have to. The money's got to come from somewhere, after all.

But I won't. First because I was originally planning to go off on authoritarian surveillance societies, and how interesting it seems that the most popular target for classic dystopian novels--Brave New World, 1984--and current dystopian culture objects--V for Vendetta, Children of Men--tend to be set in Britain, and how the actual country seems to be fulfilling these semi-prophecies rather admirably, but it's been done before. Second because I'm going to have a bagel. Third because I'm going to watch Unbreakable and very likely Bones, and don't quite feel up to spending the rest of the day working on this post, as opposed to the last 7 hours. Fourth because this post is quite long enough already.

In conclusion, watch your step; it can be a doozy.

pseudocivil conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:45:00 +0000

My thoughts on the presidential debate as it occurred...

McCain's lefthanded?!? Or is he just self-taught ambidextrous?

Oh, sweet. Obama brought up infrastructure--I haven't heard any of that so far in this cycle. McCain's pretty collected, though I'm not sure energy independence and tax cuts and the national debt have much to do with the collapse of retirement funds in conjunction with the decline of the market. I find it interesting that he's advocating the purchase of bad debts by the government--and saying is it expensive? yes--when in the last debate, he was advocating spending cuts.

Oh yay. He just reminded us of the "suspension" of his campaign so he could go "help" with the bailout. Also going after Obama and his "cronies"--although he does have a point about the CHA's expansion under Clinton. He's putting an awful lot on the shoulders of the bailout package and keeps shilling for the government's purchase of bad debt.

Obama keeps pounding away on the deregulation issue. Seems to be sticking to the talking points. Unfortunate. McCain's sounding more realistic, although of course he keeps bringing up the cronyism/special interest thing--not a good idea for someone who's been there six times longer than his opponent.

Obama seems to be a little condescending and meandering--is his point that although both parties are at fault, the Republicans are more so this time around, so trust the Democrats instead? He really didn't answer the question. McCain is answering the question much better, though, mentioning various civilian government-spending watchdog groups. The "my friends" thing is kind of irritating, though, and Joe Lieberman is NOT a good example of bipartisan cooperation.

No Middle Eastern oil in 10 years? Well, if we could send a man to the moon ... yeah, actually, that sounds pretty awesome, O. I wonder what people thought of that...

And I'm getting really annoyed by the overhead projector. Does he seriously think that thing's what's bringing down the economy? An overhead projector? Who cares about that? Do these people really not know what a small part earmark spending plays in the overall budget?

"Many of you remember the tragedy of 9/11 and where you were on that day ... " Yes, every second, rehashed every week since. The point being?

THE PEACE CORPS! I am definitely voting for Obama. Also, he's cute. And McCain gets attacky once again and pulls out the ridiculous cliche: Jell-O to the wall. Why have I been hearing this so much lately?

Oof. Brokaw just slapped Obama down and let McCain's attack on the tax increases stand. Ouch. And of course, Obama still gets his way--by not answering the new question. Urgh. I'm on the rumbly train to Maaloxburg. This had better work; if I'm not hearing a lot tomorrow about how he's not raising taxes on 95 percent of the population, I'm just going to give up milk. Long-winded fuck; he's eating up a lot of time.

On the other hand, McCain is surprisingly hypocritical tonight. Or...not that surprising? Oh, look. It's that famous pen. I swear to God it looked right at me from the TV. And Brokaw is a biatch--"Look at the lights, we have them in red and green and yellow and..." blah blah blah. Son, you're just the moderator. Shut up.

Supply-side economics, rah rah rah. McCain keeps walking around, directly into the camera's line of sight behind Obama. I wonder if he's trying Al Gore-style debating techniques, or if he might just wanna be on camera? In the meantime, Obama keeps talking ... and talking ... and talking. McCain, though, has the posture of Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons--holy shit, and the hair. I can totally see him going "Eeeeexcellent..."

Oh good. Arizona is a better place to live than Tennessee. How nice. I'm sure the Tennesseeans in the audience appreciate it. Sweet, McCain's gone over time too, that pasty fuck.

A good hit against McCain on children's insurance and also a pretty great point on federally-regulated health insurance versus cross-state insurance purchases.

Goodness. I had no idea that a strong military was absolutely essential for peacemaking. Thank you, Mr. McCain, for teaching me that peace can only be bought by force. Also, I hate how cunningly buddy-buddy McCain seems to think he's being; son, you're old. You've been in politics for a third again as long as I've been alive. Gravitas is your friend. Simulated roguishness is not. Every time you get that look in your eye when you're about to make a joke, it makes me wonder if you get the same look just before you beat your wife.

I like Obama's answer about his "doctrine" as far as humanitarian crises go. We do in fact have a moral obligation to intervene in places like Rwanda and Darfur, even if our national security isn't necessarily at stake. At the same time, I also liked his answer about the peacekeeper force already assembled by the African Union. On the other hand, McCain says we need "a cool hand at the tiller" in these situations; does he really think he can be that cool hand? Yeah, me neither.

10:10 p.m.: [Cig break]

After the fastest cigarette I've ever smoked--Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran! And I loved that straight-arm--shut up when the young and relevant are speaking, old man.

He acted responsibly throughout his military career? He slept around Rio, crashed three very expensive planes, and stopped the Vietnamese from killing him by whipping out daddy's name. And he knows how to get bin Laden, huh? I'm sure the President would have liked to know this, oh ... seven years ago?

Whoa. Obama'd go into Pakistan? Ballsy. Not that great an idea, although this may have to happen again eventually because of cross-border attacks. I don't know about McCain's answer re: Russia; is it really a good policy to continue to jab Putin as though he were an autocrat? I mean, he is an autocrat, but treating him as a bad guy won't serve to avoid another Cold War.

Oh, look at Clever McCain: he got out of that gotcha question! At least Obama said, they've engaged in evil behavior and have strongly nationalistic impulses and...well, blah blah blah.

McCain didn't answer the Navy Guy's question: he asked if Iran did attack Israel, not how to prevent it. Finally Obama does--we will never take military options off the table.

Long answer to the short, last question, O. Nice intro of your bio, but finish it. McCain's answering it but good--what I don't know is the unexpected, but I do know we can depend on each other for support and blah blah blah. Of course he knows that; he depended on his father's buddies in tough times! Although his ex-wife probably isn't as well-acquainted with the notion of being supported by people who love you in those times. He repeated the tiller line, though. Hmm...

Damn. Awkward moment, when McCain grabbed that guy's head. I will eat your brains. And fuck if John and Cindy don't look especially affectionate--a quick side-hug. Michelle's schmoozing the crowd, though and John's making the rounds, and Obama's spending his time chatting with this one member...interesting. He's got a rectangle under his jacket--Manchurian Candidate by remote control? Still, he's having a good talk with some folks in the audience there. He made a funny! But seriously, are the Obamas trying to talk to every single person in the auditorium?

Fark. I'm tired.

bold bullets

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:33:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've posted here. It's not because I've gotten bored or forgotten. Indeed, there are four drafts sitting in my Drafts folder, all of which were eventually abandoned for various reasons.

Mostly, I just feel as though I'm banging my head very hard on a wall. Pound, pound, pound, pound.

First: The presidential election. McCain has tanked pretty badly so far; he seems to be battling senility or Alzheimer's, judging from his behavior in recent weeks. Exacerbating his situation is a running mate who seems very certain that she will be the president soon, while demonstrating a disturbing commonality shared with the current occupant of the White House in many respects, not least of which includes simple elocution. In the meantime, it seems McCain has resorted to a Manchurian Candidate strategy, even stating that Obama had had to return money to illegal Palestinian donors--who had bought T-shirts in bulk from his campaign website but listed an address that confused "Georgia" (the state) with "Gaza" (the strip). Wonderful.

Second: The economy is circling the drain. Or so the media would have one think. The truth is, it's the credit market that is going down; unless the commodities market begins to collapse, the real economy--you know, that thing you actually live in and which confuses you because life still seems normal even though the newspapers say it isn't--is more or less okay. It's a little harder to get a car or a house or a credit card, but that's okay--they should be hard to get. Of course, this is not to say the sky isn't falling; it may very well be, but it's because of large, dark, distant machinery grinding to a halt. There's not a whole lot you can do about it except get a cart and a reliable donkey and bone up on your horticulture. In the meantime, I get to enjoy the alarming experience of actually agreeing with President Bush in his insistence that the economy will be fine in the long run. Of course it will. Our society has been nothing if not resilient. The problem, of course is, how to ensure that resiliency in the future. We need to learn how to build a civilization that will last for thousands of years, come what may, not one which relies on meeting the needs of the moment.

Third: My occupational life. I flew to Washington DC a couple of weeks ago for a job interview. Since then, I have heard nothing. In the meantime, I'm bucking for a promotion at work, which is its own special little source of stress. I would rather tell Bossman where he can put it, but can't do so unless I have an offer in hand from somewhere else. Alas! At least I do live in a fairly nice city with many of its own appealing qualities.

Fourth: My family life. My sister is pregnant again. My parents are McCain supporters. Nuff said.

Fifth: I've figured out why The Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn't quite work. It's a fantastic show, let me say that first of all; I love how it not only has these terrific sci-fi elements but also focuses on the human element as well. An example of this appeared in tonight's episode as the climactic battle was juxtaposed with a reading of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for a kid's book report.

However, the more I think about it, the more I think that Skynet's tactics aren't quite up to snuff. I mean, sending killer machines disguised as humans back in time to gun down key individuals?

Here's what I would do if I were an evil, globe-spanning AI with the ability to travel in time. Two possibilities.

Option 1: I'd send mobile copies of myself to, say, something like a million years before the present day. This is the most obvious one.
Option 2: If total causality collapse were to be too great a risk to exercise Option 1, I'd simply send small, almost unnoticeable machines to perform a few interesting tasks here and there: decreasing the structural integrity of a construction crane, say, or ensuring that someone's brakes fail at precisely the wrong moment. Why leave behind a chain of suspicious events when seemingly pure accident does the job equally well? To say nothing of the extremely unacceptable potential of human interference otherwise; Sarah Connor and her little coterie certainly seem to be quite skilled at staving off the Ts.

Happily, it seems that the show is working along those lines as well; the extremely unsettling Catherine Weaver would seem to be its embodiment.

However, the decided instability of recent events has me in a pessimistic set. We shall see.

politics again

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:59:00 +0000

I find myself both watching Tony Bourdain lip his way through a conversation with a heavyset Russian waiter and looking through the stock markets, trying to see some sign of a larger trend.

God knows the papers have been full of some pretty sky-high rhetoric, describing this as a "crisis" and introducing economists who assert that they can't say with certainty that the American financial system won't collapse by the end of the week.

Maaaaaan.

Whatever. What I especially like about the current national climate is how so much of it seems to depend on the analysis of past trends. In direct contradiction of one of my recent posts, I have to cop to wondering whether or not it's totally pointless to try to assume that things are going to happen the same way they happened last time.

One wonders. Have we reached a point at which historical trends no longer apply, and the future is beginning to pick us up and carry us off to a vast unknown? I think sometimes when I look at the current state of the economy and the stock market that we're in for a disaster, not necessarily just because we screwed up, but because it's what's needed. Then I remind myself: the human species is a creature predisposed to change; though the course of social evolution may be arrested in one part of the world, it nevertheless proceeds in another.

I used to subscribe to a theory that the United States can't--must not--exist for much longer. The founders of the country, the framers of the Declaration, the writers of the Constitution, all of those people embarked on their journey based on principles they had developed over the course of their lives under the boot of British imperialism. The newly-minted United States was a largely agrarian economy, in which farmers living on large, isolated properties predominated, and their collective will was that they be left alone to tend to their own affairs.

Is such a thing even possible anymore? Did the founders ever anticipate the growth of our cities, the swelling of our population, the clearly-visible upper limit to our expansion? Did they foresee the Internet, computer networks that enable surveillance, people so mindlessly rich that countries are bought and sold on a black market?

Consequently, I felt sure that the end of the United States would come in a sort of Balkanization. The cultural fault lines are there still. At least five superstates east of the Mississippi, three west, dominated by L.A., Vegas, and Seattle. Even now, I'm still unsure how unlikely such an occurrence really would be.

The world has changed.

Is the Constitution even, in any sense, applicable? Following from that, does the United States as envisioned by its fathers exist at all? I wonder what people like Hamilton or Jefferson would say if they took an educational constitutional through Washington, DC, with every single federal building pointed out to them along the way. Would they admire the White House or see it as a symbol of imperalistic power? Would they look at the Pentagon from a helicopter and wonder at a future so laden with import, creaking under the weight of its own iconic nature? Would they see Congress and see another King's Court, full of landed men greasing each others' backs?

In the end, one, I think, needs to savor the heavy air of significance that belabors our era. I think people sense that we exist at a crossroads, that the future begins--if not now--soon. They treat each little blip in the trendline as a looming crisis, because they think the Big One is inevitable. The apocalyptic themes running through nearly every creative pursuit over the past decade or two makes this abundantly clear. The question is, will we be prepared for it? After all, nobody has the faintest idea what it is, or even whether it'll happen at all.

Truthfully, these questions frustrate me almost constantly. They're more of an examination of my own feelings, of my own sense of what's happening within the world at large. Regardless of what happens from this point on, we dwell in turbulent times, and, as such, we think turbulent thoughts. I often end up being of two minds regarding the matter: one attacks the issue enthusiastically, never shy of speculation; the other sighs and ignores it all, happy merely to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I went to the parking garage this morning and the sun rose and I couldn't help but think, Man, this happens every day.

Think about that.

disentanglement

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:04:00 +0000

It's a beautiful fall morning outside, much like the morning of September 11, 2001.

I have the strongest urge to jump into my truck and head over to the parking garage and drink in the day. Then it'd be a couple hours at the bookstore, and then--what do you want to do today?

I turn around, and there's nobody there, like an arm recently amputated. My visitor of the past six days, known only as Toronto Kim, flew home yesterday afternoon. I'm having a hard time adjusting to her absence. The last place I want to be today is work. I should have asked for today off as a buffer between the visit and the return, just to laze around and not do much of anything while I snap out of this uncommon funk.

It was, by my standards, a fantastic week. We shopped, ate, visited, saw, talked, and enjoyed. I saw more of my city in one week than I have in the eight months I've lived here.

I learned the Dali Museum is free to anyone with a student ID from the local university. The Baywalk parking garage has an unparalleled view of the municipal marina--once you get over the monolithic condo tower to the east. Some people don't react well to the word "spanakopita." The view on the other side of the lake is equally nice, and fellow walkers are unfailingly polite. I'm terrible at minigolf, and the disappearance of Albertson's has a knock-on effect. The kitesurfers love the Skyway passage and the launching point off DeSoto looks like an alien planet when they're thick on the water. Ferg's is thinly populated at midday but has terrific food and plenty of room to stretch out alone with a book. The Haslam's cats are fond of high places. The Gallaudet student protest of 20 years ago represented the only complete student takeover of a college campus in the history of American student protests--and in the heart of Washington, DC, no less. The outlet mall at Ellenton has some awesome shopping and a comfortable Starbucks to escape to when rain arrives.

Most of all, though, it seems like it was just the sleeping form in the mornings, the mock-petulance as I returned from the bookstore, the feet kneading the arms of my recliner because of a small living room. The total honesty, the lack of pretense, the refusal to pull punches, the ability to cut someone else up behind their back with no remorse in order to blow off steam after a particularly nerve-wracking first meeting. Always having someone by and on your side. Getting the jump on each other's thoughts, and the promises of a paid-for dinner in exchange for a walk around the lake.

The urge's been recurring all day. Just hop in your truck, it says, and find a better place. I just keep feeling as though I'm not actually here in this office, like it's all some kind of dream or joke.

It really is kind of the most horrible feeling I've had in recent history. The breaking of an attachment, the acclimatization to singularity, the return to reality. At this point, I'm not really sure if it was because of her in particular, or because for the last six days, I wasn't alone.

Making it worse is the arrival of fall in a few days. Already I can see the light changing as the Earth swings away from our sun. Already I can see the fall themes emerging in the Bay area's department stores. There's kind of a sweet darkness to the arrival of the harvest season, a shadowed corner where the dry leaves blow and the smell of bonfires hangs heavy in the air. The sky gets bluer and the sun gets whiter and the days get shorter. It's both thrilling and sorrowful, as though I were laboring under the weight of a malignant star.

Fuck, man. I'm depressed.

the sun rises

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:28:00 +0000

3 What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
8 All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
--Ecclesiastes 1:3-9, King James Version

As I was growing up in my parents' Protestant tradition, I would give one of two answers when I was asked what my favorite book in the Bible was. If I were in a particularly sycophantic mood, I'd pick a Gospel, usually Mark or Luke. The life of Jesus Christ is always a good choice when wishing to please your fundamentalist elders. If, however, I were in a more dour, legalistic mood and wanted to take the questioner off-balance, I'd pick Leviticus. It's one of the more stringent books, full of rules and irrational proscriptions. I dug the bits about animal sacrifice.

The truth is, I didn't have a favorite book. I didn't really understand the Bible, although I spent every Sunday for the first 17 years of my life learning about it. Sunday School was less about truly internalizing Scripture on every level than it was about reciting what it told us to do.

As I get older, though, I find myself drawn more and more to Ecclesiastes. When I feel as though the person I'm speaking to won't quite get how I feel about the Bible in general, I explain it away as the result of Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes, quite possibly, I think, one of the greatest SF short stories ever written.

My quasi-religious streak may surprise some people. Don't worry: I'm not a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Jew (yet). I'm still strongly secular, and thumb my nose at Messiahs, prophets, and blue-skinned musicians.

Ecclesiastes, though...hmm. It's one of the only books that fares much better in the King James translation than in more modern versions; the passage above illustrates this. Verse 5 in in my copy of the NCV says: "The sun rises, the sun sets, and then it hurries back to where it rises again." It falls flat, having been translated into something much more straightforward and decidedly less poetic.

It's also one of the more depressing and anti-materialistic books of the Bible. The whole point of the book, essentially, is that history flows in an eternal circle and the individual lives of men leave little imprint. It is therefore foolish to waste time and energy on the outward trappings in the pursuit of imagined external distinction; one should focus inward, cultivating the spiritual inner life, because that's the only thing that matters in the face of physical ephemerality.

Truthfully, I like the historical perspective. It's a long-run sort of thing; it's not like you can take that 50-inch plasma with you when you die. Of course, it all presupposes an afterlife of some sort. After all, if we end when we die, it certainly isn't going to hurt anything to get that 50-incher and slobber in front of it until your final keel.

My attitude toward the Bible in general is a complicated one at best. I don't approve of the structure that's grown up around it, and I flat-out hate the idea that it was meant to be taken literally. Especially--leaving aside the whole Jesus Christ potboiler--the creation story.

It's beautiful. Imagine a mind in the void. It's utterly alone, but it has a singular purpose. It kindles a tiny spark in the vast nothingness, which then explodes outward into a formless cloud of matter, which is immediately rent asunder. Suddenly, light blazes, and is abruptly cut off before pouring forth again, becoming night and day. Water is formed and also torn into two, a small part blown into the sky and the rest poured out onto the earth. The land arises and blossoms, and the light is gathered into the sun and the moon, and animals spring forth.

It really is a lovely story, and, in my opinion is not too far off from the actual history of the universe. I find it interesting that the Bible takes particular note of the creation of water and its placement both in the sky and on the earth. The only problematic part is the presence of a creator, the expression of a divine will, the impetus of deliberate action. In spite of that, and also because of it, it becomes something much more than literal truth, a story that expresses a deeper meaning intrinsic to the human species, the creation of meaning underneath prosaic appearances. It becomes a form of high art, something more than simple fiction and a form of truth that strikes even deeper than quantifiable fact.

That's why it makes me sad to see the story of creation perverted into something that should be taught in schools as 'fact.' That's exactly what it isn't--and that's why it's so important to us as a species. We need to know the difference between the real world and our dreams, but more importantly, we need to be able to understand ourselves better through the examination of that which makes us more than simply the sum of our parts: belief and art. What does the creation story--in all its forms across all of history--say about us as thinking animals? Is it that we seek a divine authority, something higher to which we need to be accountable? That we have an intrinsic need to extract meaning from our daily lives? If so, why? What does it say about us that so many can't muster a simple acceptance of things at face value? Is that, in the end, what separates us from the beasts of the field? What about those who shun such deep examinations of their lives in favor of simple day-to-day living? Does it mean they're more like the lower animals than human beings?

That last question presents an interestingly slippery slope, but I think I've gone on longer than I'd planned. Bible shit always makes me sleepy.

hashing

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:51:00 +0000

I was just watching a YouTube video of a bunch of guys dancing around in their underwear and what appear to be army-surplus cargo vests, and realized that they were probably hoping to hit it big as the next Internet celebrities or, at the very least, yet another particularly annoying meme.

That reminded me of an overarching ambition once suffered by a friend of mine, which generally involved an easy road to fame and fortune by putting me on there. I managed to talk him out of it by reminding him once again what it was like to listen to me talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. Add in to that the fact that I'm not at all photo- or telegenic, and you've got the makings of an Internet celebrity--but not the good kind.

His idea involved putting me in front of a webcam, giving me a topic, and turning me loose. For some reason, I feel as though these days, I have a lot to say that might be better communicated through a few hours of verbal rambling rather than through a blog post, but A) I have no camera; and B) I have shame. I am therefore probably going to start speaking out loud right now and doing my best to transcribe what I say verbatim.

Okay, so, um, hi. [giggles] My name is Jim and, uh, welcome! To, uh...whatever the hell this is. [giggle] I just kind of figured I might as well, you know, uh, like start sharing my thoughts with, you know, you-all. So, here I am! Heh. Heh.

So, heh, okay. See, I've been thinking a lot lately about stuff. And, uh, this is more or less, uh, typical. There's a big old presidential 'lection goin' on and, uh, also we have like a bunch of hurricanes going on. Or, well, okay, not so much hurricanes as a lot of tropical disturbances, and obviously, uh, I live in Florida, I don't think I told you that yet, so you know, clearly it's kind of important that I pay attention to, uh, hurricanes. Tropical disturbances, yeah. And of course, you know, right around this time a-year, you get to be sort of an expert, you know, in hurricane tracking and, uh, storm forecasting and stuff like that. You learn about the various models that they use to predict the behavior of these massive, massive systems which incorporate a lot of chaos and stuff. They're very chaotic systems. And, you know, as I go along and watch all these storms form and spin off on their various tracks, uh... [pause] ...well, you get to thinking--or, well, I get to thinking at least, I do that kind of thing from time to time. I don't know if you do, but I do.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the, uh, the presidential election. So obviously, there's a whole lotta uncertainty type thing, uh, goin' on there. There's a big giant sort of industry that's built on, you know, predicting the behavior of a huge mass of voters, which I find interesting because, like, the poll results--and that, that's what, you know, what I mean by the whole predicting-voters thing--anyway, poll results tend to be very homogeneous representations of very heterogeneous groups of people, so, you know, they're just numbers that, you know, like--they, they, they seem to assume this-this sort of behavior can be, you know, quantified with very little context. I've been wondering if, you know, like maybe, like, that's why they don't work as well as they, like...should? So obviously this is, uh, kind of, uh, kind of problematic.

What has this got to do with, uh, hurricanes? Well. [pause] See, the thing is that I keep wondering about whether one method could somehow be applied to the other. I, I know that that doesn't sound very, uh, kosher. The most obvious reason, really, would be that, you know, hurricanes are discrete events, like, you know when one is happening when it's happening and you can look at the weather and go, okay well the, you know, the outflow from this system here is affecting this system here, and there's all this shear over here and the convection is all exposed and stuff so this thing here will probably happen. You really can't, you know, say that about human-directed events, because those sort of have a really fucking, you know, irritating tendency to require, you know, uh, sort of, uh, historical perspective as well as, uh, some very deep study of not only that, that event but also, you know, the events leading up to and affecting it. They're like hurricanes in that way, you know, they don't really occur in isolation at all, but, uh, wait. Oh, right. So human events aren't quite as simple to, uh, point out that this is a, uh, a seminal moment in history when really, you know, five or ten or fifty years from now, you know, nobody might give so much of a shit about it. Obviously, there are exceptions, but, uh...well, like Pepsi Clear or Crystal Pepsi or whatever the fuck that thing was, people thought it was gonna be basically a new, you know, totally new paradigm in, in, well, in soft drinks, but, uh, I think we all know, you know, what happened to that.

So basically... [pause] Like...the defining characteristic held in common by hurricanes and human societies is, uh, is-are-is, is, uh, is that--that they're both unpredictable in a very fundamental respect. They're heavily contextual, understanding the single event itself really, you know, depends on understanding all the millions of tiny little factors and hundreds of big assed factors that go into bringing them about.

So, the point, the point that I was trying to basically make was, was that although y-yes, superficially both phenomena--that is to say, you know, uh, th-the-the, uh, the, th-th-both-both phenomena being hurricanes--or at least big tropical storm systems, yeah--and, uh, human events in general--both of these phenomena would seem to be, you know, apples and oranges. One's discrete and easily measured and pointed out, the other's totally messy and sloppy and kind of, just, uh, you know, just kind of, uh, gross. Yeah. Also, uh, arbitrary. One of the more interesting things about history is a lot of it is a matter of, uh, interpretation. You know, there's, this, this historian who said Henry VIII was a, uh, a genius for establishing the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the-the C of E while another historian is all, you know, ew he was drunk and fat and yucky and selfish and caused a lot of, you know, damage to the English people by, uh, decoupling them from the Roman Catholic Church and a, uh, a central ecclesiastical authority, which, I guess, could be argued by yet another historian as being a good thing for, uh, England for, uh, wholly different reasons than the first.

I don't actually know if that's actually a, you know, an actual debate going on or anything like that. It's straight from my, uh, my ass, fresh, hot, and steaming, uh, for you. [giggles]

So, uh... [pause] So human history, I guess, could be said to be, you know, a large piece of, uh, like, arbitrariness. Although there certainly seems to be, uh, a consensus on the, the delineation of, of historical eras, that just mostly strikes me as, you know, a, uh, I guess, uh, you could call it like a mnemonic device? That's the impression that comes across sometimes, in like history class, when you're taught about this Age and that Age and the other Age, you come to think of human history as being an, an orderly, linear process from one clearly-defined period to the next when that's not at all the case. It's just a, a sort of way of, uh, classifying groups of, uh, contemporaneous related events in ways that make it easier to remember. Like, like we know the Stone Age has, has nothing to do with the Information Age, right? They're-they're separated by thousands of years, and, uh, you know, we all know they're not, like, side-by-side, temp-temp-historically speaking, but, uh, why, why not? A lot of our tech really, really, it really does, uh, depend a lot on the, the silicon and stuff, which is the, uh, the primary component of most stones if I, if I remember correctly. Or the, the Copper Age and you look at all our wires and stuff and a lot of those are made of copper. So really those, those periods of human history are not, in my head at least, it's kind of weird, they aren't at all that separate, in my head. There's sort of a linkage kind of thing happening there, uh, for me.

So that's where it seems to, uh, seems to fall down, I guess. You can tell one hurricane from another, but at a fundamental level, events in history aren't so easy to distinguish.

And then, uh, you know, uh, no, I have to backtrack on that one, because, obviously, you know, the more I think about it, and that's really, really, it's, uh, that's kind of, uh, the point of this whole, whole thing you're watching here is that I'm just thinking out loud and just sort of going on and on. But, uh, anyway, uh, so, you know, it's kind of interesting how, uh...No, right.

Well, uh, hmm. I guess what I am, at the middle of it all, uh, I guess, umm, is would it really be all that, you know, difficult applying forecast modeling principles to human history in order to, uh, predict where things may be going in the end? The interesting thing is that a lot of model-based forecasts really rely on, you know, past experiences. Like, hurricane forecasts tend to, uh, take previous instances of hurricanes that, uh, show similar behavior under somewhat similar circumstances, and then not only do they, uh, they-they take that, they also look at other pertinent, uh, well, uh, permin--per--meteorological phenomena--like high-pressure ridges or upper-atmosphere shearing--that have shown to have had, uh, uh, specific effects on a hurricane before and, and they take those things into account as well as those previous, these prior hurricanes that were similar and they combine it all into, uh, well, I guess, uh, you could say they sort of, uh, average it out into sort of an, uh, a, uh, a, a best-fit line that, that they think falls right into the middle of the, uh, the zone of probability as far as the potential, the hurricane's potential behavior is concerned.

So, why can't we do that to human history, you know? That's what I'm wondering. The, uh, the obvious answer to that question, I guess, would probably be that it's, uh, it's not like specific events keep repeating themselves predictably so that we can take the baseline and apply the, the various permutations dictated by the course of ancillary events while knowing that the basic phenomenon is one that's definitely occurred before and will occur again, like the essential hurricane. There is no, really, no, no "essential" human event.

Or, uh, or isn't there? Heh, uh. Perhaps--maybe--perhaps, perhaps events can be, be boiled down to the, uh, well, uh, I guess, uh, you could call it the, uh, the lowest common denominators? Like, uh, this category concerns politically significant marriages like John and Cindy McCain and that category concerns territorial conflict like Russia and Georgia and this category concerns resource depletion like, uh, like depending on foreign oil, and that category concerns, uh, eruptions of religious belief of one kind or another, like, uh, like, like the, uh, the evangelicals, and, uh, this category concerns the, the impetus for local or global hegemony of some kind and, you know, stuff like that. So much, though, so, so, depends on, uh, individual human interaction, though, so, so that in turn depends on various aspects of human personality, which sort of, uh, wrinkles up the issue a bit. But the truth is, although we, uh, we do seem to place a premium on being individuals and that although, that, that is true on a certain level--the, the combination of events over the course of individual lives can never be precisely duplicated among each other, between, uh, between each life--there do seem to be, uh, does seem to be a certain amount of similarity in, uh, personality aspects. We see this in various psychological tests and, and things like that, and there's like a whole industry based on the whole idea that, uh, people are essentially the same with minor variations.

Just as, you know, hurricanes are essentially the same with minor variations. So, uh, if-if we take that understanding of the basic nature of personality and, uh, uh, find some way to take that to a larger level, of treating humanity as a whole, or, or at least just, you know, just the United States in the case of this year's election, as a single, a single orga-organism of some sort that behaves according to fixed, fund-uh, fund-uh, well, fixed rules depending on the context for each one of its, uh, its constituent parts, it doesn't seem to be too, uh, far-fetched to contemplate the future within a cone of possibility.

You know?

clouds and food prices

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:25:00 +0000

On top of the parking garage today, I did something I'd never done before.

I lay down in the bed of my pickup truck and watched the sky. It was blue. As usual. There's always been something about the color of the sky for me that probably has affected every other human being who's trodden this planet. It's blue.

There was a large fish-shaped congerie of cloud making its way to the east, looking somewhat stormy. As I lay there, half the sky was covered with the mass's fluffy white outriders, the other half flawless except for the golden gradient where it shaded into the sun, which was blocked by the cab, throwing my eyes into shadow. As I watched, the whiteness congealed into an almost-fractal crystalline shape, evoking the glory of the Julia Set. Just as I was pondering the complexity of n-dimensional iteration, a large military transport plane with four buzzing propellers flew over, and my thoughts turned to matters of fate.

I am admittedly and unabashedly solipsistic. It is, in the end, all about me. Each time I hear about some fresh disaster which has befallen someone--a plane crash (one of the many occurring these days), a bridge collapse, whatever--I imagine it happening to me, and marvel at the many small occurrences which could have let me to that particular juncture. As I drive, I cross several bridges, and I think that at any moment, a too-large boat could pass under the bridge I happen to be on, ripping away a key segment just as I'm crossing it, and away I go. All the things that have led up to that moment--leaving work five minutes earlier than planned, the stop for gas at a slowly malfunctioning pump, a red light that changed just a second too late to catch me--would, it would seem, have very deliberately and specifically directed me to that point in time at which I would fall victim to catastrophe. As though it all happened for the single purpose of wiping me out.

Lying there in the bed of that truck, I came to a realization that has been burgeoning in stages over the past several days: The people who have actually experienced--and survived--such disasters probably feel the same way, as though they were meant to suffer their calamity, as though it were staged to change the course of their lives.

That may have happened, certainly, but it wasn't why such a hideous thing could have occurred. Shit happens. If I should narrowly escape death in some freakish accident, taking it personally would be foolish.

It's a relief. The world isn't out to get me. There's an abdication of responsibility involved, as though I'm no longer accountable for the tragedies that happen to befall others as a result of the one that finally does me in--or comes close to it.

That aside, I encountered a shocker today. I had gotten a gift card for the local megamart as partial payment for a portrait, and planned to go grocery shopping today. My supervisor retires on Friday afternoon, and she demanded a potluck for her farewell. Consequently, I decided I would contribute some homemade guacamole along with tortilla chips, and figured it would be expensive; the recipe requires quite a number of vegetables and spices, and I had some kitchen utensils and items for personal consumption to buy besides. So much for the gift card.

Once I had finished my circumnavigation of the store, I felt something ghostly slap my forehead: I had left the card in my truck! I didn't feel as though I could very well just abandon my cart and go get it and come back and find the carload of foodstuffs intact. Damnation. I was fully expecting it to cost upwards of $50--it was really quite a lot of food by my standards, mostly vegetables I don't ordinarily buy. With prices these days, I was quite accustomed to passing through the 10-items-or-less express checkout while being parted of thirty bucks, having it tide me through two or three days, then not eating at all until the following week.

Imagine my shock when I wound up spending less than usual for twice the amount. It made me wonder: perhaps food prices have only risen significantly for processed foods, the kind of stuff whose only culinary requirement is a preheated oven? And why don't I buy more fresh plant matter? Something to mull over.

And why is cilantro so goddamn hard to find? It's only available at the store for $5 in a tiny little container. I really don't want to go to a bodega; I can't help but feel that I risk being misidentified as a maricón and getting knifed for my trouble, thanks to my effete gringo-intellectual manner. Slightly racist, I know, but why tempt the likelihood of winding up in the hospital with my guts spilling out like a Georgian who mispronounced do svidaniya? Now that I've finally recognized that such things can happen without recourse to prevention, why, really, tempt fate?

extrintrospection

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:46:00 +0000

A paragraph from last night's post is stuck in my head.

It's the one where I mention my deafness and the strength of its associations with the significant events in my recent past. It's truth.

It's not often that I reach a point where I feel prompted to seriously examine the role my ability to hear (or lack thereof, or both) has played in my personal growth. I've heard it so many times from people: It shouldn't matter, it has nothing to do with the person you really are, and if anyone thinks so, well, they're plain ol' wrong. For a long time, I thought that was about right: this liability shouldn't matter. Only recently have I come to terms with it, stopped seeing it as a "liability."

This is mostly because it's as intrinsic a part of my inner makeup as is, say, being male or white. I'm deaf. It makes life hard and, occasionally, unpleasant in many ways. It has also shaped who I am as a person. I'm used to struggling just to speak. I'm used to dependency. I'm used to solitude.

Consequently, I'm forced to think about what I have to say before it comes out, to figure out how best to say it in order to both avoid the sibilants that seem nearly impossible to form properly and get my point across with concision. I've cultivated a tendency to draw in the kind of people whose very natures make life easier for them; gregarious, brilliant, wise in the ways of the world and in charming others to think along tightly-controlled lines--so I can draw on their strengths to compensate for my weaknesses. And they make wonderful, stimulating, fulfilling friends. I've learned the value of silence, of the long, quiet moments in which I turn inward and become better-acquainted with what sits inside me. Squeezed and constrained by a small life across the years, the intellect erupts.

The position in DC also mentioned yesterday also led to a slight reconnection with an old college friend--an exemplar of the kind of person listed above. Bright, outgoing, charismatic...I turned to him for help and advice at two particularly difficult points in college, and he came through both times. These days, I notice he's made a name around deafness: its study, understanding, examination, advocacy. It's a lifestyle. His involvement nears activist levels. Even now, I see a reference to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group I worked with briefly on a project for my last semester of graduate school, and which I see often on my Reader in various contexts. He presents at conferences about, by, and for deaf people on connecting to one another on the Internet, via deaf blog aggregators, portals, and discussion sites. It's a whole subculture--more so, really, than it used to be.

Looking at his example, I have to ask myself: Where am I as a deaf person? Am I anywhere at all? Does it matter in the end? I ask that last one because of one thing: invariably, people I associate with for a certain length of time, whether deaf or hearing, will ask me why I don't get a cochlear implant. The same question, asked for two very different reasons depending on which end of the curve the asker lands on.

I keep thinking about a long list of other people I know who might be considered well-read, well-educated--and deaf. They seem to fall on either end of a continuum: they fold themselves deeply into the notion of deaf empowerment--and the many who aren't as genuine as the example above hold deeply-rooted private attitudes of contempt and pity for those whom they claim to support--and build their lives around educating deaf children and advocacy and working in deaf-only environments, or they disappear into jobs among hearing people, finding either success or failure in the same distribution as among any other human subtaxon, their deafness turned into something like a theater director, unseen but powerfully influential in what plays out on the stage.

Where do I fall? A few weeks ago, I would have said theater-director. Now, this whole thing with Gallaudet--and the burgeoning anxiety about hearing back--has me wondering. Is it really just a job? Or is it the assertion of a hidden impulse to confront something I thought had long since been integrated? Is it the continuing search for some sort of singular identity through the exploration of alternatives and experiences? Or am I, once again and as always, overthinking things?

Four days to go. Then the sweet release of the bookstore and time to think on top of the world...

apply thyself

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:47:00 +0000

It's funny. You spend a few weeks sitting in your workspace, thinking about how maybe it's time you got out of here. Out of this job, out of this town, out of this state. Nothing's bad, precisely--in fact, things are looking better than they were a few weeks ago when the spectre of downsizing had "lurking" penciled in on every day in its August calendar.

And then, one day, one of the very institutions you had at the top of your short list for the Next Step announces an opening in your field. To boot, that institution is a university for the deaf in Washington, D.C. To boot even more, the base salary is half again as large as your current pay.

It's not something you expected to happen sooner rather than later, if at all.

I applied for the position yesterday. Therefore, mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's exciting and new and different and I know I'm more than sufficiently competent and well-educated and -trained for a job like this. On the other hand, it's not quite the schedule I was going for (why couldn't the posting have cropped up in, say, November?) and it's expensive just for the interview that I may or may not get and it's far away from my cat and my family.

Complicating it all is the sense I've been getting lately that I'm comfortable where I am because it's safe. It's secure. I easily outperform my coworkers. My job is in no danger. The weather is usually pleasant. My family is less than an hour away in case of catastrophe or loneliness. It is, in other words, a classic case of stagnation. I have no future where I am now that doesn't involve more of the same, just in a different apartment.

I'm not a risk-taker. I obsess and overthink and take one tremulous step at a time. I hate stepping outside my comfort zone. But I can remind myself that where I work these days is about as far out of my old comfort zone as Washington is out of my new one. A year ago, I never would have thought I'd be so...settled in such an exclusively hearing environment.

And then I think, Come on, you big giant pussy. Take a risk. Do something stupid. Uproot yourself from the metro area you grew up in and throw yourself someplace far, far away. There's more money--albeit a higher cost of living--and more to explore. Don't you miss the inexhaustible wonders of the Smithsonian? The grandeur of the planned city? The home of power that once bestrode the world? The seed, planted in the fertile Potomac soil, of the legends of the future?

There is, of course, that old wanderlust, that need to conquer the next peak. I lived in New York on my own for three years, in an all-deaf environment with which I had had only very unpleasant experiences. I then worked for a social-services organization, before quitting for no good reason and going on vacation for six full months. After that was graduate school, where I was the only deaf student. At the same time, I made...deaf friends and survived an enormous amount of crazy relatively unscathed. Then there's the job I have now.

You may have noticed that just about all of my personal milestones since graduating from high school--the point at which I think my life actually began--seem to have a lot to do with the difference between deaf and hearing people. Yes. They do. In fact, virtually everything significant in my life rotates, to some degree, around my deafness.

Anyway. All of this is why I have a Short List for the Next Step, and this place is on it. The process of getting this job--if they seem interested--will set me back for years on my personal student loan repayment plant.

You know what, though? It's worth it.

Pending a response e-mail expressing interest in arranging an interview, Thundercats are, I think, go.

clowns and beasties

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:18:00 +0000

I used to have a thing for Kyra Sedgwick.

I'm not sure what it was. The blonde curls, the soft, light-filled eyes, the generous lips that nevertheless avoided disingenuous pouting. I first discovered her in Heart and Souls, a poor Downey Jr. flick about some guy who gets followed around by souls laboring under the onus of a spectral bus driver with lewd tastes.

These days, I see her in ads for The Closer and I feel horrified. It's Meg Ryan syndrome. Something to do with the structure of the lips stretches them out horribly as the owner ages and loses the fatty padding in the cheeks. They look like Heath Ledger on Halloween. And Kyra no longer looks as warmly beautiful, Meg as glowingly vivacious. On the whole, I find that I prefer Samantha Brown.

I started Twilight today. I'm not proud of it, but I will, however, defend myself by making it clear the only reason I'm reading it is a book review I came across a couple of days ago by an English teacher who detailed how Stephenie Meyer had, surprisingly enough, managed to pull a number of teen readers into the classics, like Wuthering Heights and such. I'm not a big fan of fiction along those lines, but anything will do in a pinch, I suppose.

So I made it through the first six chapters, managing to ignore the poor grammar and slipshod editing, and have had some time to mull it over. What I found most interesting was that the werewolf Jacob doesn't appear until the sixth chapter, and his was the character that I, surprisingly, was looking forward to the most.

Why was this?

In general, it seems vampires get all the good press, really. In my (very) unscientific study of Google's search results, the masses are overwhelmingly in favor of hemophagia. Words that come up often run along the lines of "cool," "sexy," "civilized," "refined," "sophisticated," "aristocratic" ... you get the idea. I suppose part of it also involves the carnality of the most basic act of vampirism that appeals to people; there's an intimacy in burying oneself in someone else's neck and drinking of their essence. Few, if any, seem to be concerned with the immortality factor; some have actually noted that indefinite animation requires reliable funding. I also believe there's a slight tinge of necrophilia related to this phenomenon; death suffuses life, and it thrills people to have it so close at hand--even inside oneself, for that matter. Goths especially seem to dig it, the whole paleness thing.

Whatever. For my part, I've never been quite that fond of vampires in any interpretation. They've always struck me as being sickly, effeminately fragile, constantly moody and brooding and making with the aura of death. The hypnotism also does not sit well with me; it smacks of cheating. The lack of sunlight is also a deal-breaker; I am, almost literally, a sun-worshipper. At the very least, I'm a day person; bursting into flames at dawn is not my idea of a decent Vitamin-D infusion. And why be supernatural without the ability to shapechange?

Werewolves, on the other hand, have always been a favorite. I remember reading this book when I was younger, probably fourth or fifth grade, about a couple of city kids who encountered a pack of werewolves, and being fascinated. Fascinated, really, to the point of writing an autobiographical essay for a school assignment that mentioned my (fictitious) love of raw meat, which elicited an alarmed comment from my teacher along the lines of "This is disgusting and not healthy!! See me." The rest of the essay got an A, though. I don't remember the meeting with the teacher; I do remember my mother's perplexity over the note sent home with me and a judicious exercise in discretion by ignoring it utterly. My parents did that a lot where my reading habits and resulting eccentricities were concerned.

There's something about werewolves. They, more than vampires, give off a sense of strength, of vitality. They're primal, actualizations of the animal living in the oldest parts of our anatomy. Vampires are almost evolutionarily predisposed to suicide; all they need to do is go outside, bathe in the wrong water, eat some Italian food, go to church, or accidentally impale themselves. They're the freakin' walking dead--oh, yes. Sorry. I do mean undead. Now get your greasepainted hands off me.

One of my favorite dreams involves running through a field of tall silvery grass in the moonlight. The liberation is exhilarating. I've had weird experiences that were associated with the full moon--although I will cheerfully acknowledge the blatant selection bias involved here--and have always appreciated its cold light. I once dreamed of its terraformation, but now feel that that would kill that lovely crystalline glow, dim it somehow into blues and greens. Better to domesticate Mars.

I've never understood the predilection shown by many modern fantasists towards depicting werewolves as a lower caste of supernatural creature, a subtaxon to the vampire. Fleas are associated with them, and animalistic filth, yes, and the arbitrary limitation of the circled orb. I suppose the association involves the domestication of the canids, a loss of respect commensurate with greater control; vampires, on the other hand, tread their own path, a superior being to human and werewolf alike. This is silly. Obviously werewolves are more than capable of domesticating themselves. Fleas are hardly an issue when you spend the majority of your time without significant body hair, and the "filth" probably refers to the gouts of blood involved with hunting down live prey and tearing it apart as you NOM. That's what showers are for. And you can even use holy water if you've got a clerical buddy. The upshot: Much more freedom of movement than vampires.

Frankly, there's a hierarchical bias here that has little or no basis in reality (such as it is). If a comprehensive taxonomy of supernatural creatures were to be undertaken, vampires and werewolves would be in two separate groups; vamps would probably go into something like the, uh, Amortus zoophagia family or something (yes, unashamedly mixing Greek and Latin; so what?) along with zombies. Werewolves, though, would probably go into the, like, Homibestia misturum family with other werebeasts and, to a lesser extent, centaurs and harpies and the like.

Actually, a taxonomic family tree would probably be really interesting. I'm no good with Latin, though. A new project...

the big one

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:11:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot lately about my past experiences with drugs. For some reason, I feel prompted to step out of the closet, so to speak, and mull over my thoughts on my personal experiences in text. I've had a fair amount of those; my usage was definitely nowhere near as prolific as some I've known. I've had friends who dropped acid on a weekly basis and went to clubs while on shrooms or ecstasy. Those people are both brave and extraordinarily stupid.

Especially when it comes to psychedelics. I've both eaten shrooms and dropped acid in the past; those of you who have always wondered may now consider your suspicions confirmed. The difference between me and most of the people I've known who ingested either drug on a regular basis, though, lies primarily in our perceptions of their personal benefits. Mostly, they seem to think it's a great idea to pop a few and head out in order to enjoy the visuals. On the other hand, I've tended to use these sessions as opportunities for introspection.

The one trip that sticks out most in my mind was one that I embarked on in the summer of 2004. I was living on campus, going to a couple of classes, and utterly failing to find anything to do with my time that didn't involve pot or alcohol. An opportunity came my way in the form of my dealer, who had serendipitously come into a certain quantity of magic mushrooms, and offered me an eighth of an ounce. "Grind this shit up in a blender and add it to orange juice," he cautioned. "They taste terrible."

I followed his advice one evening at a couple friends' apartment on campus. I remember recoiling from the smell that wafted up from the blender and wondering if the psychedelic spores were even now melting into my boogers. What was left of the skinny, twiggy mushrooms now looked like dust and...ground-up twigs. Frankly unappetizing, but I took a pint of orange juice, sprinkled the whole mess in, poured the mixture into a large cup, and went outside. Both of my friends followed, morbidly curious as to what would happen. They weren't disappointed; I gagged repeatedly while downing the shroom juice and finally just held my nose shut and poured it all directly down my throat. The aftertaste made me spit up a little; the black stains on the pavement were still there when I graduated nearly a year later. The taste was a mixture of dirt, poo, and orange juice. Fabulous.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in my friends' living room when I suddenly noticed that I was happy, almost manically euphoric. I felt fantastic. There was a bright blue rope light arranged in an organic pattern on the opposite wall; the light emanating from it looked almost crystalline, as though there were a slight sparkly aura clinging to the plastic. The fluorescent kitchen lights took on extraordinary depth, suggesting rainbows hidden in the humming white glow, which were visible only when I moved my eyes quickly.

Close to ecstatic, I entered my friend's bedroom, where she was sitting at her computer and complaining on IM to an out-of-town friend about how bored she was, stuck in Rochester in the summer. I looked at the other friend, who had followed me in, and she immediately took on the aura of a painting I had studied in an art history course the previous semester, and I grew excited and asked the friend at the computer if I could Google something. I found the painting in question and showed it to both of them, and the friend who had been on the computer kneeled on the floor, her expression skeptical, looking at me. She grinned uneasily and leaned over to the other girl and said, "Dude, I think he's tripping." She leaned back in my direction and looked directly into my eyes, and said, "Holy shit, his pupils are dilated."

I was observing all this, but at the same time was feeling a pleasurable tingling spread over my skin, somehow underneath it and on top of it at the same time, and the air began to shift and manifest rainbow-colored geometric patterns that were nearly transparent, overlaid on everything I was looking at, and, thrilled, I looked at my kneeling friend. She looked at me, compact on her knees and haunches, and suddenly I could see patterns underneath her skin, as though they had been tattooed on in a very slightly darker shade, in line with the planes and angles of her face and constantly pulsating. She looked like a jaguar god in Mayan stone (I was studying pre-Columbian art at the time), and the rainbow patterns in the air took on the commensurate aspect.

By this time, the sun had set, and I noticed that the pulsating phantom geometry had mostly subsided, as had the euphoria. I felt more normal now, and slightly disappointed. Was this all there was? Both friends decided they'd go outside and smoke a cigarette, and we agreed there was probably no harm to be done in allowing me to join them, out in public.

I nearly went crazy with paranoia. Everything was moving, and I constantly thought car headlights were sweeping across my field of vision. Light wasn't fixed; the streetlights and the moon brightened and dimmed unceasingly, and the far trees appeared to be moving with sentient intent, and the shadows boiled with movement. Once I understood that the seeming headlights were actually artifacts of the drug, I calmed down and suddenly felt another wave of euphoria. Everything was alive. There was a secret, hidden life to things, and I was finally able to perceive it.

I felt like dancing--and did. Both of my friends looked at me, alarmed, and checked around them for any possible witnesses. I laughed and told them it was okay, but their concern penetrated, and the rest of the trip from that point on was characterized by a watchfulness; not of my friends nor of anyone else, but of myself. I saw that neither of them had the faintest clue about what was going on in my head--not helped by their total lack of experience with psychedelics--and would not be able to fully understand the motivations behind my actions or statements, so I pulled everything inside myself. They would only see me being quiet and somewhat uncommunicative, nothing of serious concern; I would, however, continue to enjoy my private experience. Since then, I have more than once regretted that I didn't pursue this undertaking with a guide, an experienced tripper who knew what I was experiencing and could channel my energy and perceptions in a healthy way. Not that things went bad, not at all. It just would have been better with someone who had been there, done that, and fully understood.

Especially in those waves of panic that hit occasionally. Sometimes it was overwhelming, things were moving too fast, it felt too permanent, I was going to be stuck like this forever, I'd done something irrevocable to my brain, I'd never be a normal person again, I'd never see the world the same way. That's how intense it can get; you feel as though it'll never, ever end because it's become so much a part of yourself. The only thing that kept me from freaking out altogether was the constant reminder: "You are on drugs. Your judgment is impaired. This is temporary. This will pass. This is just like what you've read about. You've experienced this before." After about five minutes, I would calm down and go back to enjoying the scenery and riding the wave of euphoria again.

Much of what has stayed in my memory about the whole experience was the novelty. I had experimented with smaller dosages of mushrooms and LSD before, to spooky effect--one person who was present at the very first time I tripped on shrooms still talks about it--but this was the first strong dose I'd ever taken. It quite literally changed me. My perspective on life in general underwent a cataclysmic shift that night; part of it was the sense of connection I felt to everything and everyone I saw, part of it was the rest of the trip after the dancing episode. Because I felt it was necessary to suppress any outward manifestation of my internal altered state, that seems to have set up the rest of the trip to reinforce that sense of separation, of isolation. I remember a particular point when I was outside, alone, an hour or two later, and suddenly saw a long white line that came through me from behind and then zoomed off to the left up ahead in a sharp curve amid the darkness, and understood that to be my path, to be undertaken Alone. Capital "a" and everything. It was the only journey there, and I was the only one on it, and I was moving along it at breakneck speed.

Although I have since acquired a more pragmatic viewpoint regarding that particular vision, the essential truth that underlay it hasn't left me. It's my life, my path, and I'm the only one who can take it. All questions of self-containment aside, though, the big "A" doesn't seem quite so mandatory anymore; it either happens or it doesn't. I'm fine with it either way, which is also a part of what this particular trip gave me. Life happens, with or without you. This represented a fundamental shift in my thinking about myself and others which has held true ever since; it's a side effect that, unlike most others, sticks around for a while. Those and flashbacks.

After that trip, I lost any sense of admiration or respect for people who used psychedelics as social drugs, a fun way to pop up your club experience. It's a waste of an unparalleled opportunity to get to know the inside of your head and the outside world and their interactions a little better. I've tried it in social contexts since then, and it's never been quite as personally fulfilling; you're too self-conscious and the other people there impinge on your vibe too much. I know some people scoff at the use of stuff like peyote for Native American rituals or whatever, thinking it's just an excuse to get high legally. That's bullshit; it's one of those things you really do have to go through in order to gain any sort of true conception of what it can be, to understand its real potential. It's fantastically intense, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and utterly, utterly unreal. And yet the sense of a vastly greater truth underneath everything becomes so real that it clings to you when you come back down to Earth and you feel as though it's completely natural.

Truthfully, if someone offered me some shrooms, no strings attached, to be taken when I felt ready, I wouldn't turn them down. No sir. The only brake on the venture would be, of course, the wait for the right time and place, which is difficult to achieve. That stuff is amazing, but not something I'd want to do more than once every few years. Too intense. If I felt that my inner self needed rebooting, let's say. Just shrooms, though, not acid. LSD doesn't do much for me; pretty lights, swirly walls, that's about it. No problem turning that down.

Don't ask me what prompted all this. I think it's a mixture of nostalgia, introspection, and an article I found in the New Yorker today about pot dispensaries in California and the author's description of the old-hippie growers there. I totally understand where those aging dipsticks are coming from, which is mind-boggling.

first post

noreply@blogger.com (Hugh VanDerGoetz) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:32:00 +0000

My book collection was ransacked.

Here, therefore, are my preferred first lines and why I like them:

"From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person."
--H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
It's just a weird story in general (young guy resurrects ancestor; ancestor kills descendant and takes his place; cultural/temporal shock lands him in asylum), but the sentence structure in particular is what stuck. First is the intriguing arrangement of "there" and "disappeared", then, of course, the fact that in an insane asylum, this individual was "exceedingly singular." Hm.

"They are the totally rich."
--John Brunner's The Totally Rich
Sounds kind of like surfer-speak at first, except this story was written in 1963. This lends a different perspective on the word "totally," which gives rise to much thought on the nature of wealth--and how much complete obscurity really costs when money ceases to have any meaning.

"I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable."
--Roger Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes
One of my favorite short stories of all time, it opens with a) the word "madrigal," which is nearly archaic, b) said Madrigals are "macabre," c) the notion of its translation into Martian, and d) that the author has been found acceptable by some unidentified body for some unidentified purpose. Just can't help yourself after that point, you know?

"This is not for you."
--Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
I hope to Christ it isn't. This line appears in Courier, completely isolated on the page. It's a reverse dedication, but it also serves equally well as the opening line of the story--if you want to call it that. Easily one of the most disturbingly creepy books I've ever read. Anyway, it's a warning: Don't go through that door. It's not yours.

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself."
--Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan
As opposed to the time the book was written? Apparently so, according to the rest of the first few paragraphs, which manages to lampoon people's obliviousness and "gimcrack religions." Both polemic and serene, this line opens one of my favorite books.

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."
--Joseph Heller's Catch-22
It's a pretty good way to open a book like Catch-22. I'm not wild about the redundant clunkiness, but it works as a means of mockery of established literary norms and well-worn clichés. You get set up with the trite first sentence, then knocked down with the absurdity of the second.

"Standing over all creation a doubt-ridden priest took a piss."
--Tony Daniel's Metaplanetary
I dig it. Not only is the imagery rather interesting, but the characterization of Andre Sud is effectively accurate. It helps that the entire line can, in light of the rest of the novel, be taken quite literally.

"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."
--Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Simple, sweet, and somewhat misleading. When one hears the word "magician" these days, one thinks of cheap birthday-party entertainment. It's not until one reads through the novel that the true, original sense of the word comes through. The formal tone also sets the key for the rest of the book; this isn't dime-store magic shit. It's serious. It's hardly a fantasy romp with telepathic dragons or one-liners from the wisecracking sidekick. This is what I would call truly speculative fiction.

Hm. Surprisingly, I find myself urged to re-read all these. I'm going to have to get Anne McCaffrey out of the way first, the pushy broad.