Good Times

In November, a reporter broke the story of the My Lai massacre, which had happened back in March of '68. Two platoons of U.S. soldiers had walked into a cluster of villages in the Quang Ngai province one morning, expecting to encounter Vietcong. Instead, they encountered families cooking breakfast, husbands and wives and elderly and children. None of them armed or even very worried, at first. Then one of the soldiers opened fire, another tossed a villager into a well and dropped in a grenade, and the rest of the soldiers joined in shooting, lobbing grenades, rounding up and executing person after person for sport. Mothers and babies, grandparents. They marched groups of villagers into ditches and shot them en masse. They raped young women in front of their families, then shot them all. Over the course of two hours, the two American platoons tortured and murdered anywhere from 350 to 500 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. That story on everyone's breakfast table (the photos, by chance, taken by a young war photographer from Cleveland) cut through any lasting, reasonable perception that the war was under control.

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This is why old people seem distant and distracted, he thought. We aren't living in the past; the past is living in us. 

--Buckeye, Patrick Ryan

And yet we live as well, doggedly, necessarily, in the present moment, and moment by moment, moving through, pressing on. We live continually in the worst of times, because those are the times that are upon us, those are the times that disappoint us once again, that break our hearts, that seem a crisis perhaps insurmountable. And we are too old for this. The whole world is playing with fire. 

And then we remember that it always has been. 

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan, reminds me of the many unpleasant fires we have all walked through, and come out on the other side, only to find a new fire burning there. Or perhaps it is the same fire burning eternally and for all generations. It is a long novel, but an easy read, in terms of flow, hearkening back to an older style of American narrative, reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser. It is a story, and no more than a story really. It is a reminder of the '40s and the '50s and the '60s and the '70s--those years that created all of us old fogies of the present time. There is no other story lurking beneath the surface, no mystery to interpret. But it is the years themselves that interpret us. We move along through love, relationship, betrayal, repentance, forgiveness, regret, loss, grief; we all live and know and experience the same things in various shades. It is built into life, and this life is played out on the stage of a world constantly at war, relentlessly ruthless, inclined toward evil. It has always been so. We merely forget, and call these years the good old days.

Wonderful

"I won't lie to you ... dying was unpleasant. But death? It's wonderful." 

--Buckeye, Patrick Ryan

That's just the thing, isn't it? As an aging man in my final years (any way you look at it), the dying itself does not seem like bad news. It's the unpleasantness of getting it over with that one would prefer to skip.

And as I reach this point of no return, as must we all, I am torn between regret and relief. Strangely enough, for all the pains of age that we suffer, for all the bother of full body arthritis, for all the embarrassments of progressive memory loss and even more progressive clumsiness and ineptitude, life begins to take on a new sharpness of focus - - not through the eyes, mind you, but through the soul. Color that has faded through the years, as if through simple neglect, begins to return, and how wonderful the world seems once again. We find ourselves, ironically, with time on our hands - - time for kindness, time for love, time for patience, time for forbearance, time for appreciation, time for empathy, and time for growth. Growth! Of all things, growth, at this age. And we can't help but wonder why we didn't do it sooner. 

We find ourselves with time, I say - - and yet, not much. We have but little time remaining and so very much to do and to be and to become. We cannot possibly finish, and yet we are nearly finished.

Lest, however, I paint too bright a picture, what we find before us as well is ruin, heartbreak, decay, failure. Not in ourselves, if we are fortunate enough to have lived not too badly in our time, but in the world, for which we once had high hopes. I will admit that I am no longer able to watch the news. It is simply too tragic. I attempt to clean my algorithms, so smudged with the dirt and shit of my country's relentless decline. I suffer every day from what I see and from what I hear of my old home even though I am not even there. Even though I've not been there in 15 years. And yet I am there. My heart is there, my soul is there, my mother, my father, my son, all of my family, albeit all in the grave. We are there, I am there. It cannot be undone. It is in my blood. No tree exists separately from its roots.

This wonderful world, in the end, as we cannot help but acknowledge, is no more than a hopeless wasteland. And so I say, Enough. I'm done. And so I am relieved to be relieved. No more of this. My heart cannot stand it, my soul longs for better things than a fallen world which will never rise. It was always meant to end, just as I am meant for an end.

And what then?

And then I am there.

Some from Sanur

Spent a very nice 10 days or so with Evelyn here in my hometown of Sanur. Just thought I would post a few photos. The rumor is that we will be going to Japan in November, but I will believe it when I see it 😉

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Wherezone.

I miss being at home in a culture. Using English with other native speakers is what I might miss most. For nuance and verve, English wins. We took a Germanic language and then enfolded it with Norman French and a bunch of Latin and ever since we keep building out. Our words, our expansive idioms, are expressive and creative and precise, like our music and our subcultures and our street style, our passion for violence, stupidity, and freedom.

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How much of fishing was fishing and how much was something else, a way to empty the mind, to stop time. 

--Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner

Just a couple more snippets from Creation Lake. I'm loving this story, it's offbeat narrative and it's offbeat protagonist, the quietly astute passing observations, the gathering of disparate storylines that finally merge to a whole. A creation, so to speak. 

And speaking of creations--how about Trump's creation of a war zone in Portland, Oregon out of thin air. The city is in flames, it seems, destruction as far as the eye can see ... and yet no eye has seen it. As far as I have read in the news or watched on TV or heard from old friends on site, no plumes of smoke or fiery flames or mobs of lunatic leftists or vicious Antifa armies have been sighted, although it has been said that there is a handful of young protesters hanging around outside the ICE facility, chanting and holding signs and such like. Falls a bit short of apocalypse.

I've been enjoying reading the daily jokes and sarcastic videos posted by Portlanders on Facebook about this invisible warzone. And it has given me a chance to show some nice pictures of Portland to my girlfriend, who of course has never been there. Looks like heaven to her, by the way. 

But to borrow a word from a well-known figure, it's all just a hoax, isn't it. Yes, it's an excuse for yet another round of political theatrics, and rather sinister ones at that. Something's happening here. What it is is exactly clear. There's a man with a crown over there. Telling us we've got to beware. 

So be careful out there, old friends. Stay low and move fast. Keep your heads down and your peaceful hopes high. And while you're at it, welcome the stranger, which in this case is us. 

If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. 

--Romans 12:20

Creation Lake

But here is how the state does things: They have a deer population that's getting out of control, so what do they do? They bring in lynx. When farmers get upset about the lynx, the government reintroduces wolves. The wolves kill livestock, so the state makes it legal to shoot them. Hunting accidents increase, so they build a new clinic, whose medical staff creates a housing shortage, necessitating new developments. The expanding population attracts rodents, and so they introduce snakes. And so far, no one knows what to do about the snakes.

--Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner

I've started excellent novel recently. Wow, two winners in a row. I'm on a roll. 

Creation Lake, the story of "a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions" (as the book cover blurb has it) was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2024. It is offbeat, intelligent, quietly witty, extremely well written, and most of all not what it seems to be on its face. Just my cup of tea.

A Hell of a Good Read

There's a million things to keep a soul from writing, all in the service of making you better at it. Remember that, Alice law. Hell is a writers' market. 

--Katabasis, R.F. Kuang

Well, I've finished Kuang's journey through Hell, and sadly all too quickly, for I enjoyed every page and looked forward to reading the next. But oh well, I can always return to it again in the future, if I live long enough, and if my eyesight holds out, which is something I've said about many novels which wait on the bookshelf for my return.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (I think), this novel is not for everyone, and certainly not for the casual reader; but for one who is familiar with the old classics, Dante, Homer, Milton, Plato et al, it is a sheer delight. 

Kuang gets a bit lost during the last quarter of the book in the mazes of hell (in my opinion anyway), but she finds her way again in the end, through the seven courts of hell, and wraps things up nicely, tying up the ends of an old tale, in her own new way, of love, sacrifice, redemption, and rebirth.

The Beast

A beast gnaws at me at all hours of the day, but you can't see it. I feel so weak and scattered my mind won't work...

--,Katabasis, R.F. Kuang

In this passage from Katabasis, the author describes the sufferings of a man inflicted with Crohn's disease, which, like MS, is an incurable autoimmune disorder. But the characterization in general may as well refer to all such disorders. It certainly strikes a note in me, for I am suffering these days from a very active phase of MS which is coinciding with and working alongside a problem with herniated discs in my back and neck, exacerbating the problem and exaggerating the pain. Not only does it influence the pain in my shoulder, neck and back, but then modulates to neuropathic symptoms in my legs. This begins with a feeling of numbness in my feet, which then begins to rise up through my ankles and calves in the form of an intense aching stiffness. This in turn makes me want to continually move, to get up and walk around in circles, to stamp my feet on the floor. If I sit down or lie down it will soon feel as if I want to crawl right out of my own skin. I guess this is similar to the RLS I used to often experience, or is a variant form of RLS. There have also been many times when I wake from sleep with a feeling of intense heat in my legs, as if my skin is actually on fire. Pregabalin helps with this, but I have been taking 300 mg a day, separated in three doses, and that feels like a bit much over the long term. So next week I hope to see the doctor and perhaps we can find out what other interventions might help. Until then, thank you, R.F. Kuang, for your sympathetic description.