Applause: John Sayles

Just watched Amigo, the 2011 Sayles film set in a village during the Philippine-American war at the birth of the 20th century, the birth of American empire. A small gem, like so much of his work. Highly recommended.

Song of the day, week, month, year, decade, century ...

CHRISTIANS AT WAR 

Words: John F. Kendrick 

Tune: Onward Christian Soldiers

Published in Industrial Worker "Little Red Songbook," March 1916.

Onward, Christian soldiers! Duty's way is plain;
Slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain,
Pulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill,
God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill,
All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb on high;
If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray and die.

Onward, Christian soldiers! Rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;
Folks who do not speak your tongue deserve the curse of God.
Smash the doors of every home, pretty maidens seize;
Use your might and sacred right to treat them as you please.

Onward, Christian soldiers! Eat and drink your fill;
Rob with bloody fingers, Christ okays the bill,
Steal the farmers' savings, take their grain and meat;
Even though the children starve, the Savior's bums must eat,
Burn the peasants' cottages, orphans leave bereft;
In Jehovah's holy name, wreak ruin right and left.

Onward, Christian soldiers! Drench the land with gore;
Mercy is a weakness all the gods abhor.
Bayonet the babies, jab the mothers, too;
Hoist the cross of Calvary to hallow all you do.
File your bullets' noses flat, poison every well;
God decrees your enemies must all go plumb to hell.

Onward, Christian soldiers! Blight all that you meet;
Trample human freedom under pious feet.
Praise the Lord whose dollar sign dupes his favored race!
Make the foreign trash respect your bullion brand of grace.
Trust in mock salvation, serve as tyrant's tools;
History will say of you: "That pack of G.. d.. fools."

*

Alas, the decree of history is perhaps optimistic. We may not survive that long.

Sketch Wins

Often around 3 a.m.
Sketch rattles his collar
to inform me he wants to go out
and when we come back in
we both return to bed.

But sometimes, like this morning,
he'll soon jump onto the bed
and get in my face
as if to say, Hey
I have more to do.

This is Sketch at his best
following his natural energy
a persistent teacher, reminding
me of the first law of existence:
Nature wins.

Prayer

May my death
be a celebration
of my life

Death Cafe

First Pdx meeting today. I go out of curiosity. I suspect my own thinking is more evolved than the focus there. We'll find out.

Meanwhile, up to speed on student work, grunt work left to do.

Losing energy early lately. Need summer sun to charge the battery.

Lay low.

Two approaches

In a world filled with so much horror, there are two strategies for living in it. You can be a citizen-consumer and ignore horror, or distract yourself from it, or believe the system itself can fix it; or you can be an artisan-artist and create good work to counter-balance the horror, knowing it can't be fixed. You can participate; or you can counter-participate.

The easier it is to drop out and counter-participate, the freer the society and the more tempting the "rewards" for not dropping out in the first place. The key is understanding that only positive energy can neutralize negative energy. You don't get rid of horror. You match it with anti-horror.

And this is my mumbo jumbo for the day ha ha. Except I'm serious.

Both Sides Now

in a zero sum universe
the media cover half
and the other half finds
the human spirit shining
light into the darkest midnight
by a majority of one

What Andre saw

In My Dinner With Andre, Andre proposes that we're entering a new Dark Ages, which may last a long time, and those of us interested in preserving high culture must hide out in isolated enclaves, protecting the artifacts of culture, even as some of us add to them; we have to lay low, waiting for a new enlightenment. In a different context, Morris Berman says today the best writing is necessarily underground because the mainstream culture won't admit it's dying, which is the starting point for writing about reality.

This is as hopeful as it gets.

Coming of (Old) Age

Let's say you've been reading American history most of your adult life, over half a century now, and in that time you've reached some conclusions not taught in high school the usual suspects about genocide against American Indians lynchings of black citizens concentration camps for Japanese citizens and the most extraordinary atrocity of all, November 22, 1963, a coup d'etat orchestrated by rogue elements in the government and you accept all these things as true and you widen the focus to the world, where good deeds get lost in an historic avalanche of war and genocide and butchery mass graves, killing fields (inspiration for future video games) hard to keep track of it all and all this, too, is true It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the United States is no better than a Banana Republic, though more livable than most, with perks like shopping and mythology and escape valves for discontent like talk shows and voting and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that civilization is an asylum run by sadists a lifetime studying history two sad conclusions so the question naturally arises how possibly to live here? 1. lay low 2. reduce your universe 3. remember Nature wins 4. join the winning team 5. lay lower

Applause: Auschwitz

If you have the stomach for it, this 6-part BBC documentary establishes beyond belief the human capacity for calculated depravity. Don't get smug. Our genocide against American Indians, slave trade with its lynchings, and contemporary torturing of terrorism suspects are no models of humanism. Depravity is an equal opportunity employer. Just don't watch this one on a full stomach. These disciples of Goethe and Wagner may convince you that civilization is an asylum.

Whole cloth

Feels like I'm coming full circle ... Brown, Blake ... the real fight, the mental fight ... the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought ... inspiring my first play, Above the Fire, Strah in lead in Oregon, national T Williams one act winner ... and I've been telling variations on this theme ever since ... to a shrinking audience, or so it feels ... but I go on, a majority of one.

Periodic crusade

Now and again through my life I've gone on a crusade to turn thinking people on to Love's Body, Norman O. Brown's masterwork. The first time was in grad school. Maybe I need to do this once more, here in my final act. Hmm.

Violence is exciting

NPR interviews this morning with two reporters who wrote about the carjack and shootout with the Boston bombing brothers. Such excitement in the questions and storytelling! They could have been discussing the latest Tom Cruise movie.

I think of some kid hearing this. How cool! I want to be in a shootout when I grow up!

We are our own worst enemies. No progress since Homer, why should anyone expect any?

Norman Brown nailed it. War is war perverted: the problem is not the war but the perversion. Literal meanings. Decline of Imagination. After Blake: the real fight, the mental fight. The Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought. !!! Yes indeed, Brown nailed it.

Applause: Without Limits

This is the best of two films made about Steve Prefontaine, whose running career at the Univ of Oregon coincided with my years there in grad school. Unlike the other, this doesn't run from a probable contributor to his fatal car accident, his own recklessness. Crudup and Sutherland as Pre and Bowerman are terrific.

Lots of personal memories in this film shot on location. I was there. Indeed my office was in the building burned down by radicals in one scene.

Innocence Lost

I must have forgotten
where I was. Ahead of me
as I walked toward the market
was a woman and her little boy
maybe 10, and he's tossing
a ball in the air and catching it

as I'm about to pass them
a throw goes astray and
the boy has to run my way
to catch it, and I say
Good one!
grinning at the boy
who grins back

but then I see the mother
staring at me, all fear and
suspicion - and my heart sinks

she thinks I'm making a move
she worries I'm a pedophile

so I hurry past and into the store
thinking, So this is what we've become
this is America today

and I thank the gods
as I do so often
that I am old
that I am old

Who Is The Majority?

of total population
no, of voting age
no, of registered voters
no, of votes cast
no, of votes verified
no, of votes approved by Supreme Court ...
to hell with it

a majority of one

The Bearing

I can't help it:
throughout the day
my hand goes to
the small round hard
protrusion above my heart
the bearing that
drives my life.

It feels unnatural.
It feels inhuman
even though I realize
it drives the rhythm
of my heart and
keeps me alive.

I feel like Faust
and begin to question
if every trade medical
science offers is in
the best interests of

the human spirit.

Small Triumphs

Sitting on the deck
in the warmth of the sun
Sketch at my feet
Mulligan on the Fire
it feels like vacation
which may be as
good as it gets
in my aging present
life.

Applause: Nick Wauters

Creator of The Event. Although Wauters had five years of the story planned, NBC pulled this series, a sci fi thriller, after a single season. An official failure.

Too sophisticated for lowest common denominator programming, I guess. I loved it. In fact, I'd call it the best "aliens among us" story I've seen. I very much admire its craft of suspenseful storytelling and its high production values.

Without beating you over the head with them, some interesting themes emerge: idealism v. pragmatism in politics; when and if ends justify means; country patriotism v. self-interest.

Ends up there was a small club of fanatical fans, each feeling alone until they found one another on the Internet, that was outraged by the cancellation. But today mainstream culture is driven by the limited perceptions of the lowest common denominator.

I applaud writer/producer Wauters. I think he created a classic in its genre.

End Times

There are days when
not even Sketch can
cheer me up. But
even then, on these
darkest of dark hours,
I count my blessings,
I feel blessed

and I marvel that
over there in the land
of certainty, where
ignorance is sanctified
stupidity an honor badge
they, too, feel blessed.

Do they truly believe
Christ is going to drop
down like a two-bit
deus ex machina and
rescue their sorry asses
or is this some hoax
some convention of
theater majors?

What a sorry lot:
these deluded disgraceful
ignorant manipulative
solipsistic perverted
distorted dangerous
inauthentic sad
imitations of

 our better selves.

Applause: The Event

Revisiting NBC's 2010 series, a high octane sci-fi thriller with quicker plot twists than a celebrity marriage, and elevated both by its rich, complicated characters and non-chronological storytelling strategy of modular vignettes. Never a dull moment and, except for a deranged journalist with whom I completely identify, no attempt at heavy meanings. Great edge-of-your-seat entertainment.

LATER. This series bombed. I love it.

Color Code

The trouble with conservatives
is that everything is black or white.

The trouble with liberals
is that everything is gray.

Comfort

Waking up to pee
moving through the dark bedroom
I can make out Sketch
on a blanket on a chair

and I smile.

Cummings Redux

So many vigils;
such grief to give.
"the most who die
the more we live"

Caruso

Listening to Caruso this morning. Something amazingly contemporary, deeply cosmic, and spiritually soothing in his sad voice.

American Tragedy

The major tragedy in America is that so many good people who are doing so many good things no longer control their own destinies and lack the awareness and lack the anger and lack the faith and lack the numbers in a culture where ignorance grows faster than historical insight --these good people are trapped in a status quo that has become a noose around their necks because they act as if nothing can happen to them. R.I.P.

Parenting

Surely the most difficult job in America today is the job of parenting. How do you explain to your children that past actions by you and your countrymen that you supported with votes, taxes, ideology and seldom opposed with knowledge or protest that these actions made a mess of the planet and are responsible for the legacy of natural disasters you now leave your children storm after storm, each worse than the other how do you explain your culpability, your lack of power, your anger and frustration that these things happened on your watch? How do you ask for their forgiveness? How do you give them advice about the future? I have never been a parent. I am one of the lucky ones. So I have no idea.

Starbucks At Three

(Scene: Curt and Baker, men in their 70s, sit at a table on a small patio outside Starbucks.) C: You watch the Blazers game last night? B: Missed it. Who won? C: I didn't watch it either. Couldn't get past the National Anthem. B: Oh Jesus, here we go. C: It's the Star Spangled Banner, for Christ's sake. Show a little respect. B: Who was it? C: I don't remember her name. Some Grammy winner. B: Who over-sang it. C: To say the least. Total show off, can I hold a high note or what? And no way you could understand the lyrics. It was all about showing off her voice. B: I forget your name for that. C: The Ella Fitzgerald School of Singing. Versus the Billie Holiday School of Singing, where the song comes first, the voice serves the song. B: And for this you missed the game? C: I couldn't watch it. The TV broke. B: Talk about bad timing. C: Well, I threw a book at it. Shattered the screen. B: Jesus. C: Goddamn it, she was scat singing the National Anthem!

Applause: Client 9

I stumbled upon this documentary and started it out of curiosity, not expecting much. But I was surprised by this story of the rise and fall of NY governor Eliot Spitzer.

This may be the best documentary about the functional heart and soul of America that I've ever seen. Not the theory or mythology of our government and culture, but its actual practice. The cover of the DVD box says it all: Money. Sex. Power. Betrayal.

But the story isn't as simple as it seems. Yes, we have greed and obscene wealth here, high end escort services and corruption; we also have philanthropy, the NY art scene, well-meaning progressives at work. There is drama and farce and comedy, both light and dark. And a few heroes.

I think the interviewed women working at the escort service are heroes. They are bright and rational and live in the real world. They make their living, and a very good living it is indeed at three grand an hour, on biology. Talk about the American Dream.

I think the filmmaker, Alex Gibney, is a hero. He gets the major streams in our culture right. Not a pretty sight but a true one.

A Lesson From Norman Brown

What made my dead friends special
is not how much we shared
when we were talking
but how much we shared
when we weren't talking at all.

"Doing nothing,
if properly understood,
is the supreme action."

Warmth

Sometimes in this cold house when even turning up the heat when even putting on a coat don't help, the only alternative is to go back to bed and get under the covers which doesn't always help either but at least it provides the right image.

Greetings, America

Images on TV manhunt for a terrorist and lovely Watertown turns into a war zone swat teams and police gun fire and sirens and a subtext rises in the tension and fear clear to anyone who would listen, a message Greetings, America! Welcome to the world.

History As A Film

Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in a movie house and can't leave until the film is over but it's the longest most boring movie I've ever seen, the same story repeated over and over again, okay with different actors and different settings but the same actions, over and over until I want to scream, I might as well be trapped in an elevator with endless Muzak and you get desperate when subjected to this kind of torture, you take risks you might not take otherwise attempts to escape the movie house just for the variety of it and you come up with outrageous schemes to stop the movie to pull the electric plug plunge the city into darkness anything but this which is about the time the film teases you with change a new plot point! but no, just a clever tease to keep you engaged nothing new here at all the same repetitive story new actors, new setting on and on and on no end in sight unless you drop dead on the spot or is this too part of this long boring plot?

Applause: Helen Mirren

Am revisiting Mirren's Jane Tennison, the detective in the Prime Suspect series. Does detective storytelling get any better than this? Probably not.

Beyond Surprise

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that asks the question "How do you know what you know?" How do you know your classmate is not a terrorist? How do you know your neighbor is not a pedophile? How do you know your priest won't rape you? How do you know your wife your soul mate isn't a lesbian? I know a few things. I know when Sketch scratches at the door he wants to go out and take care of business. I know if I jump off the roof I'll land on the ground. I don't know a thing about you really, and nothing would surprise me all the same, with some of you I assume a few things on faith and hope beyond hope I'm right.

Beyond Belief

Here we go again an early morning shootout one marathon suspect dead one on the run two young brothers from Russia one "like an angel" it's "beyond belief" they are violent according to classmates which of course is why they exchanged gun fire with the police. Listen, when reality collides with your belief system it's time to change your beliefs. At the door Sketch lets me know he wants out; later he comes in, shakes himself dry and gets comfortable on the couch, basic needs addressed. What dogs believe is what dogs need, according to their nature, not according to their ideologies.

The Writing Life II: An easy scrapple recipe in your kitchen -- photos

The Writing Life II: An easy scrapple recipe in your kitchen -- photos:

So easy, so good!

Oregon Dream (a play)

ACT ONE

1/
(AT RISE: Inside a ramshackle cabin.
It's an under-furnished mess and clearly
hasn't been lived in for a long time.)

(At a table sits HANK, 60s. He is dressed
in outdoor gear, as if he planned to take
off on a hike somewhere.)

(Prominent on the table are a bottle of
whiskey and an outdoor vest from
which wires hang out. This was, in fact,
an attempt at making a bomb.)

(Someone is shouting at Hank from
outside. This is CHEYENNE, 30s, his
daughter.)

CHEYENNE (OS)
Dad, please let me in!

(Hank takes a swig from the bottle. No
response.)

CHEYENNE (OS)
I'm not going away ... so you might as well unlock the
door. ... Dad, for God's sake! Unlock the door!

HANK
(not loud)
It's not locked.

Read the play
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the last play I wrote. 2008. Probably the last I'll ever write. Never produced. Well, never marketed. This note says why:

Performance rights to Oregon Dream will not be

available until after the author’s death. At that time,

contact his widow, Harriet Levi, for information:

amelia693@yahoo.com.

This play illustrates what I mean when I say my work comes from "whole cloth": the autobiographical elements, the echoes from my short film Deconstructing Sally, my poem  I'm Not Fit Company, the work of Norman Brown and Bertrand Russell. One long continuing story. Variations on a theme.

LATER. Read it for first time in years. I own up to it. Very much so.

The Flesh of Friendship

When I outlive a close friend I trade the flesh of friendship for something abstract the memory of friendship and my friend becomes the star of a movie in my head all images and sound track "based on a true story" and no matter how vivid the movie 3D and stereo, nothing compares to the feel of flesh on my hand when I slap a good buddy on the back.

Epistemology

in the early morning dark quiet hours stillness draws me like a flame but if I get burned surely I will awake the wiser or the deader or both