Sepsis

Posted on November 5, 2016 by John Swinburn

I went to sleep last night in a different country. I awoke this morning in this one. This country, in which wolves are hunted for their feet; chopped off and hung from belts as talismans to fend against demonic marauders. This country, in which stabbing someone in the throat for the offense of using the ‘wrong’ fork at the dinner table is not only accepted but encouraged. Last night, I went to sleep in the country that has been my home for my entire life, but I woke up in New Septica. How could that have happened? What manner of necromancy spins one through time and space? Perhaps this story will answer my questions. But, more likely, it will simply add to the confusion.

New Septica exists only amidst the detritus of failed states. It is a place in which the putrid stench of corruption fills the hot,  humid air. Decomposing corpses of children litter the roadways. Old women, their youthful beauty defiled by time and bad choices, wander back alleys in search of scraps of food not yet sufficiently tainted to be poisonous. Gnarled old men, the sounds of their violent, convulsive coughs echoing against the glass facades of tall buildings long since abandoned to decay, limp along once-majestic boulevards.

The question, of course, is which reality is the normal state? Are compassion and decency normal? Or are they aberrations in a universe in which loathing and depravity reign? I pose these questions in an effort to understand whether normalcy is a state of being to which one should strive to achieve or, conversely, one which should be avoided at all costs. I suppose it depends on the country in which one awakens.

Warren G. (for Gamaliel) Harding, during the 1920 election following World War I, placed normalcy in a favorable light (and exposed his adoration of alliteration).  He said:

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.

But what is normal in New Septica? What would Warren have said after the War of the Words in New Septica? We have no way of knowing. Warren G. Harding is long since dead, having died in office. And, I might add, he did not live in New Septica. But if his doppelgänger had slipped out of 1920s USA into the future New Septica, he might have said this:

New Septica’s present need is not histrionics, but hooliganism; not negativity, but nihilism; not revisionism, but  revulsion; not anger, but acrimony; not spite, but scorn; not the tense, but the terrible; not equanimity, but evil; not to swim in serenity, but to sink in sloth.

In an ideal world, I would have awakened in the country of my birth but, instead, I awoke in the country that wants to kill me. I awoke to take into my lungs a toxic mix of orange sulphur and methane tinted green with copper sulfate. This poisonous vapor clouds my thoughts and stings my eyes. To cope, I must sharpen my teeth and my resolve so that I can tear into the flesh of the beasts stalking me and rip them into bloody whimpering strips of muscle and tendon. And a good day to you!

Posted in Absurdist Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Writing | 2 Comments

What Would You Do?

Posted on November 4, 2016 by John Swinburn

Imagine a set of conjoined twins. One has physical and behavioral problems that require constant therapy. The other, consumed by full-on psychosis, is a very real threat to his twin and to the nurses that tend to him; keeping sharp objects out of his grasp is necessary to protect his sister’s life and to ensure the nurses aren’t stabbed or sliced or otherwise injured or killed. Surgery to separate the twins will surely result in the death of one of them. The doctors and the parents must decide which one will live and which will die. But the father wants to save the demonic twin, while the mother wants the other one to survive. So, ultimately, it’s up to the surgeon to determine which twin will be given the opportunity to thrive and which will succumb to the scalpel. That decision will have implications far beyond the obvious. The surviving twin’s impact on others must be considered. How will the survivor influence people with whom he/she interacts? And what of his/her progeny?

Given the difficult choice, which role would you choose: mother, father, or surgeon?

Another scenario for you. A mother has just given birth to sextuplets. Through the miracles of modern medicine and the new science of “assured prediction,” you are privy to knowledge that one of the six children (but you do not know which), if allowed to survive, will one day set off a nuclear device that will kill ten million people. The ONLY way that can be prevented is to kill all six babies before they reach their first birthday. What’s your choice (your only choice): kill five innocent babies and a future murderer or take responsibility for the future nuclear annihilation of ten million?

Let’s try another. You know of Hitler’s rise to power and its horrible consequences when you are taken back in time and space to 1924 Germany. With clear knowledge of what he would do in the future, you find yourself alone with him one evening. You have a loaded pistol. You could use it to kill Hitler or you could decline the opportunity; in either case, after making your decision, you would be transported, instantly, back to the present. Your terrible choice would be to either murder a man who had, as of that moment, done nothing sinister or choose to allow him to live, knowing he would be responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and countless others in the years to come.

Now, of course, we do not have the benefit of knowing the future outcome of decisions we make today. But we do have some historical perspective upon which to base our assessment of current events. The difficult aspect of our lives in such situations is determining whether something simply looks like history repeating itself or is, in fact, a replay of history.

My mood this morning is not much better than last night, but it has improved slightly. Last night, I was certain Donald Trump had killed and filleted the last vestiges of the American experiment and was preparing to boil them in kerosene before swallowing them with an acid chaser. This morning, I believe it’s still possible the bastard has not won over enough mean-spirited pigs to lay claim to the White House. Regardless, though, he and his followers have changed the face of America. They have ripped away the veneer of decency to reveal an ugly soul that cannot be fixed through the usual means. The only possible cure requires the cancer to be removed. That’s not done gently. Surgeons don’t ask cancer’s permission; they use devastating chemicals and sharp scalpels.  What, exactly, will that work entail? And who has the unmitigated gall and the amazing decency to do the dirty work of cleaning up after a cancer spill?

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

Profound Gratitude

Posted on November 3, 2016 by John Swinburn

If you are reading this, you must know I love you. You are among a tiny, almost nonexistent, band of people who find my words valuable or, at least, not intolerably offensive. I write this blog to free my brain of thoughts it cannot properly contain. And here you are to receive them. You are magical. I love you. I do. I don’t know why you are here, because I know you have better and more fruitful places to be. But I thank you. And I wish I could tell you why I write what I write, but I simply don’t know. Thank you, anyway, for allowing me to capture a part of your day that might better be spent on yourself. Your generosity is stunning. I wish I could give you something of equal value, but all I can offer is profound gratitude.

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The Comedies of Rage

Posted on November 3, 2016 by John Swinburn

Win or lose, an emphatic obligation to engage in mass preemptive euthanasia becomes more apparent with each rising sun. Poisoning the water supply in key conservative districts as a means of correcting the abuses of gerrymandering. Explorations into the potential mental health benefits of selective cannibalism, provided one doesn’t choke on the putrid flesh.

These are ideas for stories. Not plans. Just to clarify.

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Negative Space

Posted on November 3, 2016 by John Swinburn

Negative space. That’s an interesting concept. The term refers to the space around and between one or more subjects of a visual image; it’s the space that surrounds an image. To an artist—and others who understand the concept in an even more abstract and intellectual context beyond the visual—negative space helps define and articulate the boundaries of the subject, i.e., the positive space. When I see negative space used in art, its use is clear and unambiguous. But negative space in literature and rhetoric is sometimes almost invisible (pardon the pun). Yet absence can be the most emphatic amplification of nuanced presence. A passage in which a woman stares intently at an empty crib, her eyes brimming with tears, can say more than a lengthy exposition in which a child is taken from that crib and placed in a casket. Negative space gives the reader or the viewer or the casual observer an opportunity to become an active participant in the “performance.”

An unreturned kiss. A glance into someone’s eyes that is not returned. An acerbic comment that prompts no reply. These are negative spaces that can, when used effectively, evoke more emotion than long, expressive paragraphs. Literature can learn from the visual arts. And the performing arts. It’s a matter of translation and adaptation. I wish I were more knowledgeable about ballet and modern dance and visual arts in general; they could teach me a thing or a thousand about writing. Despite my devotion to over-long sentences and paragraphs that last for months, minimalism has ruthless power unmatched by mass.

These thoughts were on my mind last night while the others in this house, three women, were glued to the television set in the hope the Cubbies would take the pennant. I hoped the Cubs would win, too. They deserved the lifting of the curse; they are young and shouldn’t be forced to live with the guilt of their forebears. Alas, my interest was not sufficient to merit staying awake throughout the enterprise. Only one of the three, the woman from Chicago, stayed awake long enough to relish the Cubbies’ victory. The absence of a loss; that’s truly a defining negative space.

Posted in Architecture, Art, Language, Literature | Leave a comment

Watching

Posted on November 2, 2016 by John Swinburn

We have a house guest, so I cannot go into the guest bedroom as usual to sit and cogitate and scheme. Instead, I must sit here in what I call the sky room, the room with monstrous windows that, when the sun is high in the sky, is impossibly hot. But at this time of morning, with the windows open, this room is cool. The huge windows allow me to pretend I am outside. My vista is magnificent. I see an enormous swath of blue and grey clouds in front of me, the winds aloft ripping them into ribbons and tearing them into sheets as they scurry from right to left. And in the distance, a massive horizontal rupture in the thick clouds reveals a beige gash, tinged with pink; it’s the sky colorized by the sun. That window in the clouds is littered with black and pink fragments of the cloud bank that once covered it. All of this drama I watch unfold before me takes place within a window of the sky framed by trees that, in this early morning light, look black and fragile as their leaves wither and fall. In the distance, I see the reflection of light on a small lake south of the Village against a backdrop of smoky hills. Looking upward again, I see the rupture in the clouds has grown huge, revealing a stretch of sky in which the clouds look like thin grey bands of round stones in a creek bed. If I could bottle mornings like this, I could put pharmaceutical companies that sell blood pressure medications out of business. But I can’t bottle these times and I can’t even begin to adequately describe them. So I’ll stop trying. Experiences are too precious and too fragile for words.

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Seven Lonely Birthdays

Posted on November 2, 2016 by John Swinburn

Seven now. Seven of her birthdays without her present to celebrate. My oldest sister died in 2010, just about three months after her November 2, 2009 birthday. On the day she died—Friday, February 19, 2010—I wrote a tribute on the blog I then maintained. Every year on her birthday, I go back to that post and read it silently. Reading it makes the pain of that day fresh, but I read it anyway because I don’t want to forget what I said. I’ll share a snippet here:

She fed people she didn’t know, she gave up her bed for people who needed to sleep, she battled the IRS and Social Security Administration for people who couldn’t do on their own, but desperately needed an advocate…She was, in many ways, the Molly Ivins of our family; she gave people hell if they deserved it, especially when they had mistreated someone else…the underdog was her pet

A few days later, I continued my recollections of my sister. I said:

She lived on a tiny Social Security check in a tiny subsidized apartment in a building operated for people near the bottom of the economic scale. She was able to see past the “need” for material things. She didn’t need a big house, a nice car, or money in the bank. Sure, she would have been more comfortable with those things, but what she needed was to be able to help other people. She needed that as much as she needed air to breathe.

Those words are true. I may have learned much of whatever empathy and sympathy I have from her. Those are lessons to be forever cherished.

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Exploring Answers

Posted on November 1, 2016 by John Swinburn

You may or may not wonder, “What has John learned from his experience writing this blog?” That’s a question I often ask myself. My answers, when I choose to give them, vary from day to day. They range from “absolutely nothing” to “I have insights into myself that I might not otherwise have achieved.” And all manner of responses between the two. I think writing this blog has enabled me to think about matters that probably would have remained in my subconscious had I not forced myself to write them.

One might regard the 2153 posts that came before this 2154th as fertilizer for this one, letters and words that supplied the nutrients this one needs to survive. Or, in contrast, they might constitute the inanimate foundation upon which this post is built. But more probably, they exist simply as peculiar precursors to yet more unnecessary banter that plays out in my head, spilling through the wonders of neurotransmitters and muscles and tendons to the keyboard in front of me and then magically appearing on my screen and, if you are reading this, on yours. If you do the math, you will discover that 2154 posts equates to almost six years’ worth of posts at one post per day. But this blog began only four years and two-plus months ago; don’t bother, I’ve done the math for you. I’ve averaged 1.465 posts per day since I started this blog. And and additional seventy-five drafts await either completion or deletion.

Regardless of the numbers and the often mindless banter, writing almost daily and sometimes several times daily has led to an occasional gem, albeit an uncut and unpolished gem, to find its way here among all the grains of sand and piles of unpleasantly aromatic sod. It’s unlikely those gems would have been noticed by the occasional reader. But I have noticed them, if only because they keep appearing in the form of themes that repeat themselves. Those repeating themes tell me something of myself that I need to know. I suppose writing so often naturally leads to such knowledge; simply stumbling upon that knowledge and using it to mold it into transformational knowledge, though, are worlds apart. Finally, I think, I understand that. Despite my self-taunts and self-mocking, even my rambling word-spillage posts tell me things about myself that merit my attention. And now, 2154 posts in, I have it and I will write about it, but not here. This is a place for exploration, not for answers.

Posted in Just Thinking | Leave a comment

Unmasked

Posted on October 31, 2016 by John Swinburn

It’s hard to believe, but today marks my sixty-third consecutive party-free Halloween. That’s right. I’ve never in my life attended a Halloween party. At least not in my adult life. And probably not even in my childhood. It’s not that I don’t want to attend a Halloween party; it’s just that, for one reason or another, either I haven’t been invited or I haven’t been able to attend. My spouse is unmoved by the idea of attending a Halloween party. She does not cotton to the idea of dressing up in a mask and behaving like a giddy child. I, on the other hand, find such a concept wildly appealing. We’ve been invited to attend Halloween parties in years past (but not this year); she has vetoed our attendance. Oh, I could have gone, but I would have gone alone. And the aftermath would have transformed the enjoyment of attending into a memory unworthy of the effort expended in making it.

If I were to attend a Halloween party one day, I think I’d not buy or rent a costume. Instead, I would buy theatrical makeup and would create my own costume. I would morph into something I am not. But, then, that’s nothing new; I do it almost every day, sans costume.

CORRECTION: My wife assures me we have gone to at least one Halloween party. She says this party took place at the home of a co-worker when I was employed by the first association I ever worked for. That would have been between 1979 and 1985. I have absolutely no recollection of it. So, it’s been at least thirty-one years since I attended a Halloween party.

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Eclectica

Posted on October 30, 2016 by John Swinburn

I’m in an eclectic musical mood, brought about, perhaps, by my earlier exorcism. Music helps me think or, more precisely, helps me analyze my thoughts. The playlist so far this morning, thanks to Spotify:

  • Stranger in a Strange Land, Leon Russell
  • Seduced, Leon Redbone
  • Lazy Bones, Leon Redbone
  • Ojo, Leo Kottke
  • Malaguena, Juan Poco
  • Zorba the Greek, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
  • Come Healing, Leonard Cohen
  • Cancao do Mar, Dulce Pontes
  • I Will Follow You into the Dark, Death Cab for Cutie
  • Dentro la tasca di un qualunque mattino, Gianmaria Testa
  • Come Away with Me, Norah Jones
  • The Story, Brandi Carlile
  • If 6 was 9, Jimi Hendrix
  • She Came in through the Bathroom Window, Joe Cocker
  • Down on Me, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)
  • Sunshine of Your Love, Cream
  • Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed, Kinky Friedman
  • Turning Japanese, The Vapors
  • Mexican Radio, Wall of Voodoo
  • Down Under, Men at Work
  • Lighthouse, Antje Duvekot
  • In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
  • Hang on Little Tomato, Pink Martini
  • Castles Made of Sand, Jimi Hendrix
  • Memphis in the Meantime, John Hiatt
  • This Life, Curtis Stigers, The Forest Rangers (theme from Sons of Anarchy)
  • My Uncle Used to Love Me (But She Died), Roger Miller
  • Adeste Fidelis, The Roches
  • God Bless the Child, Billie Holiday
  • What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong

I should collect all of these tunes in a single playlist so I can conjure the mood I’ve been in these last few hours. But that’s impossible. Not collecting these pieces into a play list; conjuring a mood with music. Thoughts conjure moods. But music can conjure thoughts. So am I thinking in circles? I often do.

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Exorcism

Posted on October 30, 2016 by John Swinburn

At four minutes past three this morning, when I walked outside on the back deck and looked skyward, I was treated to an amazing, spectacular vision. It was as if the stars had not hidden themselves behind the ambient light beneath them as usual but, instead, were in full grandstander mode. Millions of them danced above me. If I knew the constellations, I easily could have pointed them out to you…if you were here. But you were asleep, weren’t you? That’s the trouble with waking up in the middle of the night; there’s no one to talk to, no one to call. But that’s also the delight of dead-of-night, isn’t it? The solitude. The glorious, illuminating solitude. Sometimes, being alone can be lonely. But being alone can be liberating, too, giving one the opportunity to explore thoughts and ideas and imaginings without worry of interruption. I sometimes wonder why I write all the words I put down, knowing the audience on any given day is either small or nonexistent. I need not wonder; I do it because I want to capture how I feel, what I think, what brings me joy or moves me to tears. When I looked skyward a while ago, I wished I could put into words the sense of wonder I felt as I stared at the stars. I wished I could seize on just the right words to describe not only what I saw, but how I felt. I will not know whether my words will serve as adequate reminders to me until some time in the future when I read them; but I suspect that, having spent time pondering how to describe what I saw and felt has etched into my consciousness and subconsciousness what I saw. Perhaps that’s what my daily musings are all about. Perhaps they’re about something else entirely. Now that I think about that, I guess I realize I’ll never really know. I only know the only way to exorcise my mind is to exercise my fingers.

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Only Ideas

Posted on October 29, 2016 by John Swinburn

I have always considered myself somewhat ‘bohemian.’ But my unorthodox core, for virtually all my life until this very moment, has remained hidden beneath a shell, a cover designed to appear conventional.

Perhaps that’s a story I tell myself, though. It may be that I’ve only wished I were the rebellious iconoclast but, instead, behave as the nervous conformist I may have been from the start. It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know because I do not know what or who I am. I do not know whether I am narcissist or a misanthrope, an egotist or an ascetic. My view of the world is simply a reflection of the way others react to me; does that make me artificial? Am I alone in wondering whether I shape the world around me or the world around me shapes me? Or are there others? Are we all simply actors? Is the world really a stage? Do we behave and believe the way we do to satisfy our understanding of others’ expectations of us? If we were capable of stripping away those expectations, what would be left of us?

I remember wondering, when I was in my twenties, how my thoughts might have evolved had I developed and matured outside the sphere of face-to-face human influence. I wondered how my personality might have evolved, were the only external forces to which I had been exposed just information from books that I, alone, had to interpret and judge. My education in sociology and psychology and the liberal arts in general never satisfactorily answered my questions. Nor has anything since. I still wonder who I am, the real me. What do I believe? Why do I or don’t I believe something else? How would I treat people up and down the socio-economic ladder had I not been exposed to influences that molded who I am today?

These are the questions of a teenager still grappling with his identity, not the questions of a grown man who, ostensibly, has matured and should by now understand the world and his place in it. Am I unique in having failed to attain that level of understanding? Many days I think I am, indeed, among the unfortunate few who never found his place in the world and who, quite possibly, has no place in it. This is not a plaintive cry for understanding; it’s just my assessment of today’s reality for me. I don’t belong to any group, not really. Too many of my peculiarities disqualify me for membership in most groups, even those to which I might wish to belong.

This stream-of-consciousness post is going nowhere fast. I think it’s time to end it. My thoughts are only ideas. Nothing of substance, just disturbances caused by neural transmissions and the occasional misfire.

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Culinary Hypocrisy

Posted on October 29, 2016 by John Swinburn

I was reminded this morning of an essay I read six years ago that made me pause and reflect on my fascination with food. The essayist, William Deresiewicz, asserts that food replaced art as the embodiment of high culture. Deresiewicz says the “foodie” movement, which he says began somewhere around the mid 1990s (I think it started much earlier, but I can’t claim my opinion has more credibility than his), triggered a social movement in which the adoration of and appreciation for sophisticated flavors supplant the arts.  Referring to food, he says:

It is costly. It requires knowledge and connoisseurship, which are themselves costly to develop. It is a badge of membership in the higher classes, an ideal example of what Thorstein Veblen, the great social critic of the Gilded Age, called conspicuous consumption. It is a vehicle of status aspiration and competition, an ever-present occasion for snobbery, one-upmanship and social aggression.

That is the paragraph that gave me pause. Had I allowed myself to unknowingly (or, even worse, knowingly and secretly) latch on to food as a symbol of my sophistication? The question bothered me. But, after mulling it over for a while, I decided I was not (and am not) guilty. Yet I think Deresiewicz was on to something. I’ve read and heard comments that give credence to his argument. I know of people who use their knowledge of scarce ingredients and their ability to distinguish between esoteric flavors as cultural cudgels against those who do not share their high sophistication. I find that level of arrogance deeply disturbing, yet I wonder whether, when I mock that undeserved snobbery, other people think I’m serious. And that, too, gave me pause. Perhaps, even in my mockery, I am lending credence to the idea that a ‘sophisticated palate’ differentiates between commoners and the cream of the cultural crop…and that I belong to the latter cohort. And that bothers me, too. Am I guilty of culinary hypocrisy?

I suppose the answers to my questions remain elusive; I do not know whether, subconsciously, I lend credibility to the notion that knowledge of and appreciation for food is a cultural milepost on the way to supremacy. I hope not. I hope, instead, that my fascination with food is simply this: a fascination with flavors and textures and colors that, collectively, satisfy my palate and please my senses. I hope my passion for food exists only to the extent that food is fun; not that it defines my value as a person. When I encounter recipes that call for obscenely expensive ingredients, I question whether anyone would even consider spending the money to buy them; it’s only food, after all. But affordability is relative, isn’t it? Perhaps if I’d climbed higher on the status ladder and had achieve greater wealth, I would be willing to spend the money. Again, I hope not. But who’s to know? Would a true food snob seek out cheap dives in search of a perfectly prepared chicken fried steak? I tell myself ‘no,’ but I wonder if that’s precisely the behavior one might expect from a snob.

So, I can’t answer my own questions with any degree of certainty. But I can endeavor to avoid being a food snob, while maintaining my interest in trying new foods and experimenting with flavors and learning more about them. And I can continue to smirk at and mock food-snob behavior, all the while looking in the mirror in an effort to avoid mocking myself.

Posted in Food, Materialism, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Gunfire

Posted on October 28, 2016 by John Swinburn

Yesterday, my wife and I got involved in some gunplay. We went to a shooting range about ten miles from the house and fired a variety of weapons: 9mm Glock, a shotgun, and I fired an M4 carbine, though my wife did not. Though I’m not a fan of guns, I enjoyed learning a bit about how to shoot these particular weapons and I enjoyed the target practice.  The cause for this foray into weaponry was the conclusion of my wife’s citizens’ police academy training course. I went to a similar program a year or two ago, but I did not go to the gun range. Yesterday, I joined her. We were among only six people who participated. At least one of the other people was a rabid Trump supporter. And I suspect most of the others were, as well, though they were not vocal and visual about their Trumpery. That notwithstanding, we enjoyed the experience. As it turned out, I am a pretty damn good shot with both a pistol and a rifle. And I’m not half-bad with a shotgun. I fired the shotgun using three different rounds: birdshot, buckshot, and slug. All of them are powerful ammunition, but the buckshot seems to me to be the most lethal. While the slug would be more lethal with a well-placed shot, the buckshot is more forgiving to the shooter and less forgiving for the target.

Now, why would a guy like me, who is about as far from a gun-afficionado as you’d find, want to go to a gun range? It’s a bit tough to explain, but I’ll try. I do not blame guns and ammo for the damage guns do; I blame people. That having been said, I am a supporter of extremely stiff gun registration laws; I do not want Trump supporters, for example, to have ready access to guns without first undergoing psychological evaluations. But continuing the discussion, I think it’s important for gun opponents to understand the draw of guns to their advocates and to try to appreciate the allure of weaponry. I really believe it’s generally about enjoyment of the game, just like people like to play chess; sure, I’m sure there are those who ejaculate to the sound of gunfire, but I don’t think they’re all that common. We gun control advocates ought to try to understand the motives of gun enthusiasts. They are not all the nutcases we might assume them to be.

Back to the matter at hand. Both of us enjoyed the experience. Aside from the unpleasant political undertones, the experience of being outside with people who really know guns and who know how to explain safety and firearm operations was a treat. I learned a lot. I could enjoy target shooting. I can’t imagine using a gun to kill another person, but I can imagine getting a thrill at hitting a target.

So, there you go. I love to expand my horizons. I consider my horizon expanded.
jb-gunfire1 jb-gunfire2

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Ahead of the Game

Posted on October 27, 2016 by John Swinburn

bust1 bust2 bust3 bust4This afternoon, after missing an author’s presentation at the community library due to uncooperative time and distance, I arrived home to continue yesterday afternoon’s endeavor: painting a ceramic bust I made in my sculpture class. I bisque fired the monster but decided not to waste good glaze on him; he deserved no more than cheap acrylic paint. The bust appears alien, which I intended, but it is far more elongated (top of head to neck) than I planned; that’s just the way things work. It is, I must admit, hideous. With my masks, I can adjust along the way and, more often than not, finish with something I find pleasing to my eye. At least modestly so. No so much with the bust. When I deviate from the work in clay that I most enjoy, my lack of talent screams at me to stop. Painting is no more a natural talent than sculpting busts, so the outcome is, quite frankly, the work one might associate with a teenager who has yet to realize the visual arts have no place for him. That notwithstanding, I painted the thing.

While I waited for the paint to dry, I skimmed through photographs I took during our trips to France and, later, Wisconsin a few months ago. The places we saw oozed art and talent and beauty. But I did not feel compelled to try to imitate the artists of Provence or, for that matter, Madison, Wisconsin. Yet when I’m in the Village, I have this demented sense that I ought to produce art. Whether words or sculpture or pottery or painting; something artistic. It’s fine and good to try one’s hand at artistic endeavors, but after coming to the realization that art does not flow in one’s blood, one might be best served by doing something else. Like what? Hell, I don’t know; if I knew, I wouldn’t be writing this plaintive howl about my scarcity of talent. I should not be down (and, in fact, apparently I am not); I should be happy that I have been able to see and experience so many marvelous things. And I am. So why am I writing this? I’m thinking just now of the answer I would have gotten from someone I once knew: “diarrhea of the fingers.” That’s disgusting. Well, yes it is.

I suppose I’m typing in my blog-that-sometimes-pretends-to-be-a-journal. That’s what I’m doing.What else is one supposed to do at 4:30 p.m.? Oh, yeah, I could be exercising. There is that.

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Seeing Smoke

Posted on October 27, 2016 by John Swinburn

Elvin Sharp awoke with a start. His eyes sprang open to reveal ribbons of soft blue and white light billowing from beneath the motel door. The swirling strips of light confused him. Light doesn’t curl like that, does it? Of course not. I must be dreaming, or waking from a dream. He lifted his neck from the pillow and shook his head, hoping to clear the haze in his brain that he thought must have caused the unsettling image. But light continued to surge from the threshold, twisting and rolling back upon itself. He sat upright and smelled burning wood, realizing what he saw.  Orange and red flashes from outside the room illuminated the smoke pouring in from the hallway. The temperature in the room soared. Streamers of grey and blue and white smoke morphed into a black cloud as Elvin swung his legs over the side of the bed. He tried to breathe but the dark fog filled his lungs with hot soot, triggering reflexive coughs, as he stumbled out of bed and fell to the floor. Elvin struggled to crawl toward the window but he didn’t make it all the way, slipping into unconsciousness just inches away from the outside wall.

When he awoke at six fifteen, the bed sheets were wet with perspiration and his hair was wet with sweat. He  remembered the dream; it was so real he could smell the burning wood, still. He turned toward the bedside table where a cold cone of burned incense sat on a saucer, a half-burned match stick alongside.

“Damn her, she controls even my dreams,” he said aloud, seeing in his mind’s eye an image of the woman who married his best friend a year earlier.

[Vignette alert.]

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Bribe

Posted on October 26, 2016 by John Swinburn

My first visit to Germany is a bit of a blur. I traveled there on a “fam trip.” That’s a euphemism for “bribe.” A familiarization tour is a means by which the hospitality industry attempts to bribe people with the power to select meeting sites to select a specific city or venue. The all-expenses-paid trip initially was offered to my boss, who was executive director of the association for which I worked. But he was out of commission, recovering from a medical procedure; heart surgery, I think. I am embarrassed to recall that I responded on his behalf, saying I would be willing to make the trip in his stead. The association had no plans to meet in Germany, but my response suggested there was such a possibility.  So, I flew first-class from Houston to New York and from New York to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Berlin. I remember getting to the airport in Houston, dressed casually for travel, only to be told at the check-in counter that I could not travel as I was dressed and that I would have to change into a business suit in order to board. I think the ticket was the sort that, at the time, generally was available only to airline employees but, because the airline was a sponsor of the fam trip, it provided that class of ticket to the tour organizers. I changed into a business suit in the men’s room, checked my bags, and away I went. The group of people on the fam trip represented a broad cross-section of association executives and meeting planners. I would lay odds that the majority of us had neither any plans nor any authority to select Berlin as the site for future events. We were a bunch of freeloaders willing to bend the truth to get a free trip to Germany. I remember my rationale for accepting the offer. The association for which I worked had begun an international outreach in Europe; I reasoned that, as an outgrowth of that initiative, we might one day organize a meeting in Berlin, so it would be best for me to know something of the city in advance. I think lied to myself. I think knew better and that, if we ever were to arrange to meet in Berlin, it would be years away. But I wanted to go on that trip. Ever since then, I’ve condemned fam trips, because I proved to myself that they constitute bribery. If an organization wants to plan a meeting someplace, regardless of where, it should invest then necessary resources to send its  staff to do the groundwork; it should not rely on hospitality industry bribery. I was bribed. I accepted a bribe. The bribe didn’t do the trip organizers any good because I didn’t take business to Berlin. But, to this day, almost forty years later, I have a bad taste in my mouth about how I made my first trip to Berlin. Subsequent trips were on the up-and-up. I later attended meetings in Berlin and around Germany. But that one trip branded me as someone who would take a bribe. That blur of a trip was enjoyable, I think, but I spent the entire time feeling more than a little guilty for being there. I remember wondering whether my rationale for the trip was legitimate. I’ve long since answered with a firm “no.” And ever since, my moral indignation at fam trips, though admittedly hypocritical, has remained steadfast. My decision to take that trip has had a lifelong impact on my self-esteem; I wonder if I’ll ever get over the feeling that I am not the kind of guy I can trust.

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Photograph

Posted on October 25, 2016 by John Swinburn

The boy I was, looking earnestly into the camera,
could not have known his passion would melt,
after a thousand defeats, into painful indifference.
That hopeful lad, barely in his twenties, knew nothing
of failure. He believed intellect could take him
anywhere he wanted to go. His enthusiasm had not yet
been dulled by the sad scrape of detached cynicism.

Tears well up when I look at that boy, knowing what
I know about his dreams, dashed against the real
world; the world nobody explained to him, for fear
of breaking his heart, before he had a chance to try
to change it. He was a dreamer, that boy; when I see
one like him, I want to warn him about the nightmare
that’s coming, but I can’t bear to break his heart.

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The Person You Have Been

Posted on October 24, 2016 by John Swinburn

Boy, could I tell you some stories! You probably wouldn’t believe them, even though they’re all true. See, when you’ve lived a life as crazy as mine, people think the stories you tell are pure fiction.

Nobody believes me when I talk about the time Hempster and I went scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. A great white shark got Hempster by the leg and almost dragged him to his death, but I stabbed the bastard in the eye with a piece of coral and it let him go. The reason Hempster limps now is that his left leg is shorter than his right, thanks to the surgery after the shark attack.

And people assume I made up my story about pissing on Pablo Escobar while he was sleeping off a bottle of single malt Scotch, but it’s absolutely true. See, Jesus Trujillo and I were in Medellín, hoping to make a deal with Escobar to take over rural distribution of cocaine in the Texas panhandle. Well, with Escobar you didn’t just make your case and get his answer. No, he had to know who he was dealing with before he made any commitments. So he kept us close for a week or so, just sizing us up. Every night, we’d party. I mean big time. Booze, weed, music, girls. It was wild! One night, Escobar broke his own rules and drank like a fish. That night, we all did. He passed out and I got the idea in my head that peeing all over him while he slept would be cool. Fortunately for me, Trujillo got us out of there before Escobar woke up. Obviously, we didn’t get distribution rights for the Texas panhandle. And I’m still alive, so Escobar didn’t find me. But he had to know it was me. And that gives me a little bit of satisfaction.

After our little foray into cocaine distribution, Trujillo and I got mixed up with a couple of guys who stole company checks and made counterfeit copies. They were into a fairly elaborate ruse in which fake checks were sent to people who were told the money was the prize for a contest they had entered. Before they received the checks, though, the guys called and said a mistake had been made; the checks were for double the proper amount. They were asked to cash them and wire half the money back to the company. About half the idiots did it. Anyway, Trujillo decided we’d be better at this scam than these guys, so one night he breaks in to their place and steals everything they had: checks, address lists, databases. Everything. Two days later, the Feds bust the guys. Because we figure the Feds know what they’re looking for, we ditch everything Trujillo stole. We never did take over the game, but now these guys are looking for us, assuming they got out of jail.

Then, there was the time a girlfriend, Mary, and I took a train from New York to Nova Scotia. We made love, right there in our seats, between every stop. You know about the ‘mile high club,’ right? Well, we formed the ‘riding the rails club.’ Nobody said a word, but I’m pretty sure everybody knew exactly what was going on. The reason I think so is that, when we got up to get off the train in Halifax, the whole car we were riding in stood and gave us a standing ovation.

Those times are all gone now, though. And what do I have to show for them? Not a damn thing. Nothing. Hempster is dying and Trujillo is dead. So is Escobar. I don’t know about Mary, but even if she’s alive she’d want nothing to do with me now. A lifetime of thrills with nothing to show for it but memories. And my memories are the kind that people look at with disdain. Contempt.

I could tell you more stories, but what’s the point? They all paint the same picture. They all tell the same tale. You know, if I could live my life over again, I might do it differently. I probably would, in fact. But you can’t un-do things you’ve done. You can’t un-be the person you’ve been.

 

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Human Trafficking

Posted on October 23, 2016 by John Swinburn

I attended an interesting and informative, but disturbing, presentation this morning on human trafficking. I learned that human trafficking is not a problem limited to other countries but is of enormous concern right here in the USA. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and drug trafficking are three principal problems affecting large numbers of people in the U.S., with an especially significant impact on the young, who are particularly vulnerable. People who know how to take advantage of the chinks  in a person’s armor caused by emotional or physical vulnerabilities or abuse lure and/or force kids and young adults into prostitution, slave labor, and service as drug mules, among other functions. The presentation touched me and made me want to share my newfound knowledge. But something about the presentation and the organization behind it gives me pause.

Partners Against Trafficking Humans (PATH) endeavors to find and help victims of human trafficking; it advocates on behalf of trafficked victims in Arkansas. The organization’s efforts are admirable. But, again, something about PATH gives me pause. My issues are found in the following paragraphs from the organization’s website:

PATH’s Mission is to advocate on the behalf of those victimized by sex-trafficking, provide trauma focused restorative care and educate our communities. This is done through a number of services with a primary focus on providing a safe environment for rescued victims of sex-trafficking, sexual assault and prostitution to heal in a therapeutic, residential program of restoration and community reintegration, through a variety of Christ-centered services and recovery programs, offering hope for healing, personal growth and future success.

Our Philosophy: God is at the center of all we do. We are committed to building God’s Kingdom and integrating faith, healing, learning and action.

Some might consider my objection to the injection of God and Christ into the organization’s philosophical foundation an example of my own bias and bigotry. Perhaps. But I view the religious context of the proffered services as revelatory; the insistence on bringing religion into a social service ostensibly aimed at helping victims escape traffickers strikes me as evangelism disguised as empathy. While I don’t doubt the sincerity of staff and volunteers in wanting to help victims of trafficking, it is impossible for me to classify their motives as purely altruistic. Because they bring religious belief into their activities, I can’t believe they are involved purely as humanitarians; they are, to one degree or another, “spreading the gospel,” as it were. While I have no evidence to suggest that the services provided to victims are overtly religious in nature, the organization’s proclamations of its religious core strongly suggests services predicated on religion.

All of my misgivings having been aired, let me go on to say the good done by PATH, and organizations like it, probably outweigh the damage done by covert or overt evangelism. I wonder whether, if confronted with my attitudes about its philosophy, the organization would refuse my offer to help, were I were to make one? I probably won’t ask. But, until I know, I cannot in good conscience offer money or other assistance to an organization that might use such resources to further a religious agenda integral to its efforts to extract and heal victims of human trafficking. At least that’s where I stand today.

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Grace

Posted on October 23, 2016 by John Swinburn

bushletterAn image of a hand-written letter George H.W. Bush left in the Oval Office on January 1993 for Bill Clinton has gone viral (click on image to enlarge). The letter exemplifies a flurry of shared sentiments that seem to have sparked what I hope is an attitude shift in the American psyche. The letter exudes decency and good will. It personifies a rebirth of the American spirit that seemed to have died during this agonizing political season, this seventeen-month visitation from the depths of a toxic well that showed us the worst of humanity.

Lately, as I read even partisan essays that rail against the positions of various candidates, I see occasional evidence of a writer intentionally avoiding personal attacks. I think—I hope—the acidic vitriol the past year and a half may finally have caused us to seek a way out of the caustic soup in which we have been drowning. We require a radical shift in political discourse, I think, if civil society is ever to recover from its near-death experience. But political discourse is not the only aspect of our lives that must change; all interpersonal interactions must change so that society—that is, each of us—tolerates only respect and dignity and civility in our discussions and dialogue.

I do not have to agree with George H.W. Bush to acknowledge his generosity of spirit. And I need not accept the arguments made by Trump or Clinton or Johnson or Stein or McMullin or their supporters to accede they may have legitimate reasons to hold them. Let me be the first to admit that, heretofore, I have contributed to the fury and venom. But I hope I am one of millions who tire of the acrimonious words and behaviors plaguing this election season and who wish to put them behind us as we try to bridge the fissures dividing us. That task would be immeasurably harder if, perish the thought, Trump were elected. But even then, perhaps especially then, the need for decency must outweigh the desire for “revenge.”

George H.W. Bush wrote a letter that, in my view, exudes grace that’s not in any sense religious but, rather, deeply and wonderfully human. Let us all follow his example.

 

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Hoodwinked

Posted on October 22, 2016 by John Swinburn

Bloody insomnia! I tried a new tactic last night, getting to bed very early (before 9 pm), figuring I might be able to get more sleep if I gave myself more time to sleep. You know, if I planned to stay in bed from 9 pm to 5 am, maybe I could get six hours of sleep in during that eight-hour period.  Well, I awoke a few times between drifting off sometime shy of 10 and getting up at 2:45. At 2:45, I sensed staying in bed was fruitless; I would simply be tossing and turning without the benefit of sleep. So I got up, played a few games of Words with Friends, and read the “news” online.

Speaking of online news, I find it hard to differentiate, even in the work of legitimate news outlets, between news and gossip, facts and fantasy; it’s as if I’m witnessing the intellectual decay of the society in which we live. Perhaps that topic could become the foundation for a short story or a novel. Let’s try this on for size:

The National Enquirer and New York Post merge following their purchase by an egotistical billionaire whose legendary narcissism has been fodder for the very tabloids he buys. He renames the merged publications Unbridled: America’s Reliable Source of News and Information. Though some in the “main stream” media call the merger and the new name simply his manner of adjusting perceptions, he bullies on, accusing all media except those owned by him of being “in the pocket” of special interests.

His announcement, made in typical style: “My decision to form an unbiased news gathering and distribution system was based on the simple fact that Americans are being spoon-fed what special interests want them to see and hear. I don’t think Americans need to be given filtered news and information; we will give it to them straight.”

The new media magnate goes on to instruct his staff, wanna-be-journalists all, to “process” news reports coming out of “main stream” media in a way that makes the information conform to his philosophies. He asks his people to tell “the other side” of the stories by generating plausible counters to them. “If the reports say the President is meeting with a foreign dignitary, I want you to consider possible reasons for the meeting other than the official reasons given,” he says. “Look under every rock. What ulterior motive could he have? What are we not being told? I want every American to be able to understand our stories. Assume you’re writing to a third-grader; that’s the level of language I want you to use.”

The quality of the “investigative journalism” launched by Unbridled: America’s Reliable Source of News and Information is predictably poor, biased in ways that make Fox News seem supremely impartial. But the publication’s incorporation into its stories “sources” like NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and the Economist, gives many consumers of its “news” reason to believe its authenticity. Despite lawsuits filed by many sources against it, the new tabloid grows in popularity and influence.

Ahhh…I dunno. Maybe not. We’d have to be pretty stupid to allow ourselves to be hoodwinked like that, wouldn’t we?

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Birthday Decadence

Posted on October 21, 2016 by John Swinburn

Birthday Alarm (which I once used to remind me about birthdays of people with whom I did business) tells me I share my birthday with Dizzy Gillespie, Carrie Fisher, Alfred Nobel, and Benjamin Netanyahu. I should feel honored to be in the company of such astonishing talent and political prominence, because critical acclaim and deserved fame and leadership must course through my veins like blood pumps from brave hearts…

…but wait. I share my birthday with Kim Kardashian and Judge Judy Sheindlin, as well. So, could it be that arrogance and self-serving buffoonery also inhabit my DNA? Does my tenuous thread of connection with people who happened to be born on the same day and the same month as I, though in different years, suggest I might share attributes with those people?

I think not. I’ll take it a step further; I am as close to certain there is no connection as is possible. The very idea that any connection exists between personality traits and one’s birthday is,to put it politely, delusional. Am I absolutely certain? Of course not. I’m not absolutely certain my entire lifetime is not simply a dream taking place in someone else’s mind during that person’s fitful eight hours of sleep; but I’d be more than moderately surprised to learn that were true. Now, on to what’s real about this birthday, now that I’ve reached the halfway point in my life (I have sixty-three years remaining; I peered through a crack in the space-time continuum to witness my demise at age 126).

My favorite wife suggested this morning that we go out to celebrate my birthday with breakfast at The Quarter Cafe, in Hot Springs. We had not been there before and I’ve wanted to go (my intent has been to go at lunchtime, but I’m not one to decline an out-of-house breakfast experience), so I accepted.  Mi esposa hermosa ordered Country Ham Benedict, consisting of thick slices of ham served atop a biscuit with poached eggs. She chose sausage gravy for one of her eggs and hollandaise sauce for the other. Decadence on steroids! I selected the Creole Slammer, which consisted of eggs (I asked for poached), crawfish étouffée, a biscuit, and a choice of breakfast potatoes, cheese grits, or fresh fruit; I chose the potatoes (though I wanted the grits…I don’t know what came over me).

Fruit makes it healthy.

Fruit makes it healthy.

Étouffée for breakfast!

Étouffée for breakfast!

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Sinking into Fear and Politics

Posted on October 20, 2016 by John Swinburn

In terms of sleep, last night was moderately better than the several nights that preceded it. I think it only took me about thirty minutes to drift off to sleep after I went to bed at 12:30, though I was awake again an hour later, but only for ten or fifteen minutes. Wakefulness visited me twice more before four o’clock. Back to sleep shortly thereafter, though, and I did not awaken and get up until around six. Hallelujah! Sort of. In my view of the world, getting up at six is getting up late. And I don’t much like getting up late.

While sleep was marginally better, I spent the hours preceding it engaged in watching and then growling about the presidential debate. During my post-debate analysis of what I’d just watched, I came to the conclusion that people who support Trump are either delusional or demonic. I’d prefer to think they are simply delusional, but I think the more likely explanation is that they possess reprehensible attitudes; they can stomach ideas and even support concepts and behaviors that I find odious and unforgivable. After the election, if Trump loses, I will have to find a way to hold my nose and deal with those people as if they possess characteristics I consider human. If Trump wins, I will have to protect myself and my wife to the extent I can from the horrific consequences that most surely will befall us. I am not referring solely to economic and political consequences; I am referring to the impacts I would expect to see as civil society rapidly decays into a toxic atmosphere in which every breath breeds more hatred. I think I’m more tolerant of economic and political dislocations; I was able to deal with George W. Bush, as much as I did not like it. But I would find it damn near impossible to respond, in a positive manner, to wave after wave of uncivil discourse spewing from the White House and drowning the country in its untreated effluent.

Like so many others, concerned about the outcome of the election regardless of the “winner,” I am concerned that a Trump victory would be catastrophic. I am equally concerned that a Trump loss could trigger a retributive backlash among his rabid supporters that has the potential of ripping the country apart. Either way, Donald Trump would have succeeded in doing what World Wars I and II, the debacles of Korea, Vietnam, the Nixon white house, the Clinton impeachment, Iran-Contra, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, and terrorism could not; bringing a great country to its knees. I hope I’m wrong on both counts; I hope my fears are simply over-dramatic responses to bizarre times in this country. Time, alone, will tell.

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Adaptive Jook

Posted on October 19, 2016 by John Swinburn

jookWell, insomuch as my efforts to sleep in recent hours were only modestly successful, there’s only one thing to do: post a photo of last night’s dinner with an explanation. What you see in the photo is bastardized adaptive jook. Let me explain. Jook (AKA juk) is the Korean name for what the Chinese (and I) call congee. It is a porridge of rice cooked so long in liquid that the individual kernels of rice have  broken down.  In the Korean version I adapted for last night’s meal, I cooked a ham bone and turkey carcass along with the rice. After a few hours, the I stripped the bone and carcass of meat and returned the meat to cook some more. I adapted by using a chicken carcass, due to the unavailability of dead turkeys. I further adapted after the meal was cooked by bastardizing my bowl of adaptive jook with the addition of soy sauce and sambal oelek, two garnishes that prove the inauthenticity of any congee or jook made in my house. Neither garnish is called for in recipes for Asian rice porridge, but behind my doors’ threshold, Asian rice porridge does not have the same appeal without them.

I’ve probably written about my opinions about “authenticity,” when it comes to ethnic cooking. I know I have strong opinions on the matter, which almost always translates into having written about them. Regardless, here goes: the only authenticity one ought to be concerned with with respect to foods is the base, underlying flavor profiles. If one were to visit the homes of a dozen people from any given culture outside the U.S. and ask the host to prepare a dish common to that culture, more often than not there would be variance between the dishes. They might have a fundamental similarity in underlying flavor, but each would be unique. So, which one is authentic? Every one of them. Transferring the recipes to the U.S., some ingredients might not be readily available; but if those hosts came home with me and prepared the same dishes, using available ingredients to mimic flavor profiles, the dish would be authentic, in my view.

That having been said, I would not be surprised to learn that my bastardized adaptive jook is a far cry from jook I might find in a home in Seoul. The recipe from which I created and bastardized my meal may have been an adapted recipe. The ingredients I used may be only distantly related to the ones used in the household in Seoul. But I enjoyed making it and I enjoyed eating it. So, my meal may have been authentic only in the sense that the core ingredients were related and the method of cooking resembled that used in Korea. So, did I eat a Korean meal last night? Hell if I know. If I did, I have to admit that I prefer a Chinese version I make in which the primary flavor enhancer is ground pork, rather than ham bone and chicken carcass. Nonetheless, I’m pleased to have made jook (also spelled juk). By the way, my limited research into jook (or congee) suggests that the dish is the same from Asian culture to Asian culture, with minor modifications to ingredients and to linguistic roots describing it.

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