Merry Christmas

I've been paying attention to too many Jewish comics lately. First it was Lewis Black, now it's Jon Stewart. But what the hell, imagine how Jewish people feel around Christmas time in a narrow-minded Christian society like the USA? The little lord Jesus and all that crap? The immaculate conception? What kind of garbage is that? I'm a biologist. Am I supposed to take this shit seriously?
How did this state of affairs ever come about?
Without doubt the biggest snowjob ever perpetrated on human kind is this one: that Jesus rose from the dead.
Again, I'm a biologist...
But there it is. It sits like a giant cowpat on the head of our collective society. The biggest lie of all time, with about the biggest impact on the lives of the most people.
There are a number of striking cases of mass delusion in history, and I hesitate to mention one of the most obvious (centered somewhere around Germany), but this one is bigger. It's the biggest.
Of course, we know that the special little brat's birthday was December 25, right?
Of course we do.
Don't get me wrong. If there ever was a Jesus and if the things he was supposed to say and stand for were anything like the things he said and stood for in the New Testament he was cool by me. But there have so many other people (real humans who have lived and died, and who still live and will die) who have been, and are, equally cool. They were around before Jesus. They have been around since Jesus, and some have been inspired by him and some have not.
Knowing this and acknowledging them is how we love our fellow man.
I wonder if we can live without mythology.
I know I can.
Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.

Kiss Ass

Kiss Ass

 

There’s an odd perspective out there

circulating in various unstated ways

like a polluted groundwater

drilling softly into the soles of our feet.

 

It is the view that the host does not welcome the guest

but rather

the guest must kiss the ass

of the host.

 

It’s a thermal inversion

a flip of priorities

an ignorance of opportunities

a death of unity.

 

How did this happen?

 

Writers

There is an ocean of writers that swells against our shores. They crash upon our beaches and leave forlorn bits of insight if we take the time to peek into the flotsam they have left behind. They are like a mounting wave of zombies crawling over a barrier, relentless in their desire to inflict their views upon us. I am overwhelmed at their number and the sheer volume of words that pour forth from them. They gush out as if from a broken conduit to hell. It all passes over my head like the wave that took me under on the beach when I was five years old, feeling the power of the sea for the first time.
Sad to say, I am one of them.
It is a hopeless position to be in.
No one has time for this.
In fact, many of them are not that bad, many are even good.
But that makes no difference at all.
The raves will still go to those who play the game the most strategically, and manipulate the audience the most effectively, those who plumb the public psychology the most cynically; and damn those who seek to find an honest expression.
And it's not easy to say that that's a bad thing sometimes,
because
there
are just
too
many
damn
writers.

Marathon

It's a good thing the NY marathon has been cancelled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It was an insensitive waste of money in the face of all the people who had been deprived of basic services, after all. Someone finally came to their senses.
It's also a good thing because marathons are pathetic spectacles of mass masochism. Can you imagine what it takes to get all those people out there toe to toe, ass to belly, thinking that enduring self-inflicted torture is victory? One tends toward the view that yet another form of brainwashing has infected a substantial body of humanity.
Marathon running is not a sport. It is a form of mass delusion.
Sport in general has some key features that marathon running lacks:
1) strong hand-eye coordination
2) agility in multiple body parts
3) quick reactions to sudden and unexpected situations, setting into play multiple body parts
4) strategy beyond simple endurance
5) teamwork coupled with individual effort
6) multifaceted intellectual and physical skills in the particulars of an ordered discipline

Marathon running is monotonic, duller than snakeshit, lacking in most of the key features noted above.
Why do people do it?

Misery loves company, and we're all too fat.

American values

It's not too easy to express clearly what any nation's or culture's values are, but the way this phrase is being bandied about in the current climate of ass-kissing for votes is nothing short of bewildering.
What the hell does it mean?
For example, when Rom-Ry berate the Obama admin for not upholding American values in the Libyan embassy attacks...what the fuck do they mean? Which American values? Family? Church? Three square a day? How do they relate to Libya? Why would American values have any relevance whatsoever in Libya? What the fuck are they talking about?
I can only surmise that they are talking about the core value of freedom of expression. That's what needs to be defended. Of course for radical Islamists that's the problem. Why should people be allowed to say such things?
They have a point, given their lack of experience of open expression.
But wait...it was a terrorist attack, not a protest.
Ah, now which values do we mean? The value of self-defense? That's not an American value. That's a human value, or even more; an organismal value.
That can't be what they mean.
What do they mean?
I think they mean the value of the US as being the biggest and baddest motherfucker on the planet, the value of being able to tell other soveriegn states what to do, when to do it, and when and where to jump when we ask them to. That's what needs to be defended. That's what American values are.
I think they mean the value of arrogance.

I see no value in that at all.

The Unshaven Man

Sometimes one has nothing better to do than issue a bit of a rant. Now is as good a time as any to do that.
For quite awhile now I've been peeved to no end at this extraordinarily irritating trend of men who cultivate the unshaven look. We see it a lot in tv shows and Hollywood movies. If I saw a doctor looking like the one in the tv show House walk into my room I'd kick him in the nuts and tell him to get away from me (in spite of the fact that the actor is a reasonable facsimile of a blues musician). Apparently some one out there, perhaps a gaggle of fools in LALA land, believes this to be an attractive, masculine look  - a devil-may-care look perhaps, a look of a man who has too many more exciting things to do in his life than worry about his appearance - there simply isn't any time to shave.
Well, then grow a beard, asshole. Make up your mind.
Talk about indecisiveness; a lack of masculinity.
I've had difficulty discerning whether women find this look attractive. At the level of whiskers most of these guys cultivate it's hard to see how it can be good for the muff dive.
Which is of course, the point.
It's a cultivated look, not even remotely related to a devil-may-care stance or approach to life and the world, or any kind of practicality.
It's Hollywood.
It's bullshit.
It's like walking around with a flag flying over your head with the logo:
'I AM A STUPID SHIT'.
Because, as any man who has gone a few days without shaving knows, ants begin to crawl across your face, they crawl down your arms and begin to invade your torso, and elsewhere.
It doesn't feel good.
It begins to feel better if you actually let it grow out into an actual and real beard.
But these assholes truly cultivate this look by using their little electric razors set at 1/4 inch depth to assure the appearance of a four-day beard.
Why would you want to feel bad all the time?
The hypocrisy is clear, but it's still a mystery.

Nadine Gordimer

Reading another novel by Nadine Gordimer. I don't know why I do this to myself. Her prose is so tortured, so dense, so filled with excess verbiage, that I get tempted to throw the book against the wall. A 320 page book could have been so much more eloquently stated in 200 pages, or even less. This one is called None to Accompany Me, but it applies equally to all the others.
So while I'm inclined to throw the book against the wall... I don't.
There is insight into the political and social life of South Africa that keeps me plodding along. Gordimer truly has had something useful to say about South Africa, and the deeper things that spring from the conflicts in that country, and it makes me willing to wade through a style of writing that I see as tedious.
It begs the question as to what is good writing.
Gordimer's prose is crap, but is she a good writer anyway?

The Experts

It's a funny thing about tourists - so many seem to come back to their natal abodes and cohorts as sudden experts on almost every aspect of the place they've visited, however briefly. Their friends and family gush and quiver with excitement and envy at every new tale told of the 'adventure'.

Well, a trip to a new place, exposure to a new culture, and a new geography, different politics, etc., is an adventure. It's a wonderful thing to do. But what can you learn about a place on a two or three week visit?

Damn little. That's the truth.

All the same, you're bound to hear rabid pontificating and lecturing from returning tourists who've ventured into unknown lands. It seems like it's the worst with Americans, but maybe it's just a more general phenomenon of tourism. It seems like it's worse with Americans because they are on average affluent enough to be frequent tourists.

This realization will only come to one after one has lived in a tourist destination, or a foreign land of some attraction, and had the opportunity to listen to the speeches of the returning touristas about that place.

Generally, they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.

I lived in South Africa for 8 years and traveled widely in that time as a biologist scouring the bush for insects. I read and listened to the local news and literature extensively, I listened to the music, walked the streets, watched the cricket and rugby and soccer, enjoyed braais, drank in the pubs, drove the bloody dangerous roads endlessly, worked and taught and laughed with a wide cross-section of the society, got burglarized regularly, got paid in rands not dollars, paid taxes  - participated in every way as a member of South African society.

After all that time, I still don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. The history and culture and land is complex and it is likely that a foreigner will never really be in with it (South African tourists to the USA - you fall into this category too).

But there's something about Americans (USA Americans, that is). About 2-3 years after movng to SA an American couple came over to work on higher degrees. We had a few get-togethers. Within 6 months they were absolute experts on a vast array of aspects of South African life. It was astounding! They would go on and on, contradicting anything I tried to say from my own experience.

It was also absolute bullshit.

Fascinating phenomenon.

Be humble and honest, people. Life is much nicer that way.

The Craft of Poetry

One of the few journals that has accepted my work has recently gotten a new editor. This editor has stated that there will be less attention to 'free association' writing, and more to the 'craft of poetry'.
Phew!
I know what that means.
It means he's not likely to publish me in future issues.
Not that my poems are 'free assocation'. They aren't. I work reasonably hard on each and every one, giving great thought to the nuance and meaning behind each and every word and image, after the initial inspiration that burst forth. There is a clear form, even if it is not an established form.
There is an addiction to phony formalism in poetry that sickens the soul. An adhesion to a formalism that does nothing to further meaning or expression.
It's interesting that I reject the standard forms of poetry, because I don't reject the standard forms of song - the 12 bar blues, the 32 bar song form, the 3 chord country songs. It seems like a contradiction, but it isn't really - I expect more from poetry, or something different. Songs can almost be poetry, but mostly they are just songs. I don't mean that in a demeaning way, because they are tied to music - the greatest art of all. Poetry is something else however, and if it is forced into the confines of an accepted form that will only be recognized as such if coming from a practitioner of the 'craft of poetry' it is as dead as snakeshit.

Is there craft in this poem?

Art

One must believe that there are modes of expression

that pull back the curtains

that cover the core of life.


I think so.

Advice

What is it with people and their penchant to hand out advice? Who asked for it? Do the people giving advice have any expertise to back up the advice that they give?
Generally, the answer is no. That includes the people who have 'credentials' and are supposed to know how to give advice.
The problem is that advice is not what is needed, and there are very very few who are in a position to hand out advice in a credible manner. The advice givers seldom really have the street cred that lends real meaning to their pronouncements. They are operating from a menu, a recipe book.
For example, a useful review of any of my writing would not say:
'You should do this...'
'You should do that...'
Rather say:
'The book bored me.'
'I got bogged down around chaper 13.'
'I found too many adjectives.'
or,
'I laughed my ass off.'
'That scene at the dock was cool.'
'The bit about meeting the woman at the bar knocked my dick in the dirt.'

That's enough for me. It'a all I ask for.
Do not give advice. You do not know what you are talking about.
Reactions work for me.

Big Projects

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted anything on this wildly popular blog. I have the twinge of an urge to do so now after watching a Frontline show on a proposal for an open pit copper/gold mine in Alaska. The CEO of the mining consortium lamented about the obstacles to executing 'big projects' brought on by people with environmental priorities. There's a stink of backroom scheming and dark alley salivating over profits behind these kind of proposals, however rational and considered are the concerns about 'coexisting' or 'making it work for all concerned'.

But that's not what I'm on about.

There is a subset of the population, in almost any field, where people are intoxicated by the idea of the Big Project. In my own field of science I've been around people who pushed for Big Science - ever larger, highly collaborative endeavors, across disciplines, involving large numbers of researchers in projects requiring huge amounts of money. They get delirious about these Big Science projects. Their eyes glaze over as they fantasize and proselitize about the many wonders and benefits that will rain down on all. Somehow they seem to think that good science will not get done without huge amounts of money, massive inputs of infrastructure, vast numbers of graduate students, all pumping out paper after paper - not to mention large amounts of PR. All the better to get more research funding.

Well, it's good to get students trained, and it's good to get research done and published. But face it, most research papers are garbage, and Big Science only increases the depth of the dump pile. It gets to be like a treadmill, and it's dubious how much value derives from the Big Project mentality.

It's really all about Big Prestige. With Big Prestige comes Big Funding, and with Big Funding comes more Big Projects, and with more Big Projects comes more Big Prestige.

Oh well...that's the way it is...it isn't pretty, and if one looks through history at the most elegant and insightful science one will see that little of it came from Big Projects.

It's a kind of sickness that has its roots in the bowels of the capitalist system and the marketplace. I see that as a problem.

Bigger is Better...

or not.

If, then

If laughter is the best medicine
and weed makes you laugh

then weed
is good medicine.

Pieces of Pride

Pieces of Pride

My little pieces of pride

what’s left of the whole

will see my ass to hell.

I should have left it all

buried it in the trash

the same way I’ve buried

so many other delusions.

I get so het up about the inconsiderate nature

of human interactions.

It’s as rare as diamonds to find someone

who will offer a human response.

They’re busy, they’re busy, they’re busy…

They’re assholes is what they are

and there is no other explanation

for their crude and crass behaviour.

It’s as if they think I’ve never been busy.

The other day I sent a poem to an editor.

I didn’t expect a response

and I didn’t get one.

A couple weeks later I get a knock on the door.

Shit! Who the fuck is that?

I ask myself.

I get up and answer the pestiferous thing.

There’s some wizened little guy with a shaved head standing there

he’s got a little gold earring in his left earlobe

and a Masai stretched plug thing in his right earlobe.

Very unimaginative that

the little shit.

He’s got tattoos smeared across both his arms

and who knows where else.

Doesn’t he realize that he will never experience nudity again?

Who the fuck are you?

I ask.

I’m Nate Miller

Artistic Editor of The Weed & Scratch Review.

Ah, you…I reply.

You’re the guy who doesn’t have the common courtesy

the common decency

the simple respect

the team spirit

the union with fellow

artists

writers

musicians

the poor and reviled

such as myself

to spend 30 seconds of your time

on a single line response.

Get the fuck off my porch asshole, I hiss.

But I have something to tell you, he says.

Get off my fucking porch before I fucking put my foot a mile up your asshole!

I lunge out the door at him.

He skedaddles down the steps

sidles across the grass

sidestepping the birdbath.

We want to publish you! he shouts

as he backs off toward his bike.

I don’t hear him though

I’m simply sick of it all.

Damn!

I say to myself

it’s too early for a beer.

The last little pieces of pride stick

like spikes in my side.

I’ll be a monk yet,

someday.   

The Fool

The Fool

The definition of a fool

is

one who continues to make the same mistakes

over

and

over

and

over

again.

I am such a person.

It causes me great consternation,

but I plow on

convinced somehow

that it’s all unrecognized

genius.

I’d commit suicide if I wasn’t so

curious about what crap

is going to

crop up

next.

But America is trying to kill me

so I don’t need to commit suicide.

That job has already been assigned

and the hit is being carried out

as we speak

here

tonight.

I keep hoping for an opening

though I can see

as clear as a June morning

on a Sierra lake

that there is no door

no window

no gate

into

the open.

There is a world that lives

in my mind

that will always be

an apparition

hovering in the distance.

I flail against the wall

like a drowning person

beating my fists

till they bleed

until finally I am spent

husked out of my shell

and cast against the stones.

There,

I’ve gone and done it

again.  

Heroes

Most of my life I've had the attitude that having heroes was a bad thing. There was a kind of suicide there, buried in the reveration of another. The subordination seemed to be equivalent to a denigration to me.
All the while I had my heroes, of course.
I tried to avoid having only one, or having too many.
I criticized these 'heroes' when I saw fit, thus absolving myself of the sin of 'having heroes'.
I do have my heroes, however.
Here are some of them:

Claudie
Emma
Charles Darwin
Charles Bukowski
Che Guevara
Charlie Parker
Blind Blake
Louie CK
Lenny Bruce
Knut Hamsun
Fyodor Dostoyevski
Michael Lynch
Louis Ferdinand-Celine
Missippippi John Hurt
Miles Davis
Thelonius Monk
Barry Bonds
...
there are others, of course.
Perhaps I'll add to this list; accrete additional heroes onto my armor...who knows?
Perhaps I'll add to the list in days to come...

Sanctum

A FB post about trout in NJ sparked me to remember this piece. It was written way back in the 1980's and is in my book Cat Came Back and Other Stories. It was also in the South African sport journal The Fishing and Hunting Journal (June 2007).

SANCTUM

It had been a lousy day, but then, many days are. I got home from work, didn’t bother to shower, just packed what groceries I’d bought into the fridge, grabbed my rod and my few flies, and was off down the river road early on that summer evening. The spot I was headed for was maybe ten miles south of the little Delaware River town I was living in. It was a nice drive, no towns and few houses from Frenchtown to Stockton - just the green hills and the Delaware pumping along next to you. The low sun cast an orange stripe across the rippled water and the warm evening wind filled your nostrils with the smell of the grasses, the trees, and the pungent odor of river mud.

                I knew of a place.

                A little creek, barely more than a brook, cascading down the slopes into the Delaware through a lovely little canyon, a secret spot.

                You couldn’t see much sign of a creek from the road. It disappeared in dense brush back from the road, then went under the road, and couldn’t be seen below the road as it made its final dive into the big river. A little trail, not much used, led up through little willows and berry bushes into a sudden silence, shade, and sanctum.

                It always felt like a discovery.

                The steep V-shaped walls blocked the sun out most of the day. Overhead I could see a patch of crimson gold sky. I was missing a beautiful sunset. Small maples grew by the banks, hanging out over the water.

                There was silence. That shrouded, muffled silence that you find in tiny little life systems like this one. There were a few birds, not many, an occasional ruffle of leaves, a squirrel, and the water. The constant tumbling and dripping and popping and clunking and slurping of that little creek running down to the Delaware from the Lokatong, not more than a mile upstream.

                You had to walk only a hundred yards before you came to the first and biggest pool; a deep oval cup of clear water, eight feet deep, with huge tumbled boulders holding the water.

                There was always a trout in there, sometimes two, but always at least one. I had taken a few out of there to bring home for dinner and was always excited to see another one had taken its place.

                It was tough fishing in there. It would probably be tough for someone who was good. I’m not that good and in those days I was less so. You had to be stealthy, cunning, and very quiet. You absolutely could not let that trout catch a glimpse of you or it was all over. You could try again on the way down. Casting was impossible with all the undergrowth, the canyon walls themselves right at your back. You didn’t backcast, but just kind of flung the fly out there, or went upstream and let it go down with the current to tumble into the big pool like so many real insects did. I usually caught that fish, and then sometimes I spooked his stubborn self and didn’t see it again, even an hour and a half later on the way down. Sometimes I killed the fish to enjoy with salsa soaked hash browns and beer, other times let it go, no doubt to get fat and ornery out there in the Delaware, if it could survive that river.

                There was really only one other good pool in the entire creek but I always found fish in tiny little scoops and pockets, stops on their route down this ladder. I’d perch on a rock above a small pool and just watch the trout darting for its food, or lurking in the shadow of a rock, sometimes just patrolling its tiny realm. I’d catch these by dapping, just patting the fly (invariably an Adams) on top of the water, letting it eddy over to the trout’s rock. I could see every movement of the fish including that twitch of the tail that told me it would strike, almost like a cat.

                Up at the top of the hill was another pool, not so deep as the lower one, but much wider across. There was a six or seven foot falls below it and when you got up on the lip you could look back down the creek and canyon and see the water jumping down through the cool, mossy stillness. I stood there awhile, catching my breath and enjoying the presence of this place.

                I saw three trout in the pool, two holding under an overhanging rock across and to my left, one under a fallen snag, across and to my right.

                I amazed myself by casting once, twice, three times without snagging on anything. The third cast caught one of the trout under the overhanging rock. It darted out from under the rock as the fly drifted past, and fought all over the pool to free itself. After five minutes I slid it out onto the burnished granite, unhooked the fly from its jaw, and decided that trout for dinner sounded good. I killed the fish and placed him off to the side. There was no sense in casting again so soon after all the ruckus so I contented myself by sitting still, listening to the few sounds, feeling the cooler but still warm evening’s air, feeling better and better every minute, tuning in to the lifeline.

                Against my expectations I caught the trout holding under the snag on my first cast. It didn’t put up quite such a fight, and soon my meal was complete – minus the hash browns and beer.

                It was getting dark as I made my way down, rock to rock, leapfrogging along the creek, exhilarated as I pushed through the brush back to my car.

                A secret unknown place where I always caught fish, and I always caught peace. It felt like a wild place, though I knew there was a farm not one hundred yards from my second pool, the highway below, and I knew the trout were not native but planters who’d made their way down from the Lokatong.

                I wheeled the car around and headed back home.

                It had been a lousy day, but the future looked bright.

On ‘The Greatest Country on Earth’ and American Exceptionalism

On ‘The Greatest Country on Earth’ and American Exceptionalism

It’s the election season (the only season you’ll ever experience on earth that lasts 2-4 years) and we will be hearing the phrase ‘the greatest country on earth’ spewing rather loudly and repetitively from the mouths of Republican and Democrat alike, and probably from the mouths of some candidates from minor and marginal parties as well. It’s supposed to be a kind of unifying, rallying call and those who call it the loudest and longest are deemed to be the ones who love the country the most.

            And that must be a good thing, right?

            Except that it’s bullshit.

            Making that statement precludes this piece from publication in any of the watered-down pussy-whipped rags called newspapers and magazines in this country. It will likely affect my job opportunities, even, if it were. It is simply unacceptable for a wide swathe of the citizenry of the US to utter critical, or even realistic, statements about the place of this country in the world if they seek many of the available jobs; including political office, of course. These dopes that run for office must tire of being endlessly coached on how to praise the country and feign patriotism.

            If they don’t tire of mouthing those platitudes, we certainly do tire of listening to them; those of us out here in the real world.

            But is loving one’s country the same as believing that it is the greatest country on the planet? Is it ever enough to simply think that one’s country is a great place to live and leave it at that - period, full stop?

            If not, why not?

            A rallying cry of a segment of the political spectrum seeks to revive the concept of ‘American Exceptionalism’. What does this mean? It has been said that it means that there is something in the American experience that is ‘exceptional’, unique, special, exalted, elevated to a level that rises above the status of other countries.

            How fucking arrogant and obnoxious can you get? Entire histories filled with pain and achievement, rich and innovative art and music, complex social relations and colourful cultures, vibrant and ancient histories, get cast upon the slagheap so that the puny peons of industry can get exalted to the skies.

            What crap!

            It is no wonder that many people around the globe are not enamoured of the US. How could it be otherwise if the only relationship possible is one of subjection, of subservience?

            Do we, as Americans, really need these concepts and images (myths?) in order to feel good about ourselves?

            I don’t think so.

            It is an odd perspective on life and one that relies explicitly on the belief that others are inferior. It’s a grand delusion that reflects a kind of underlying inferiority complex, where self-esteem can only be found by denigrating others, by putting others down.

            It is a very bad thing I think, a thing which we need to put into the dustbin of history, to grow up out of. Patriotism itself is a debatable virtue, but patriotism that depends on placing oneself on a fictitious pedestal towering above others borders on being evil. It perpetuates divisiveness as a virtue; indeed, even a virtue of the highest order.

            American exceptionalism was perhaps born in the hyperbole of Manifest Destiny – the former colonists, now united in an independent nation, were fated to drive to the ends of the continent, colonizing all that lay before them, capturing all the resources and all the land in order to make the nation that would rise above all other nations.

            The devastation of proud, virtuous, and noble nations that fell in the wake of that massive bout of bullying should be lesson enough on how to navigate the way forward.

             But it hasn’t been, and the revival of a mind-set that seeks to place stupidity above intelligence smacks of the cold fact of continual battle.

            Eyes on the prize people, eyes on the prize.

I Knew Her When

I Knew Her When

I knew her way back when

and I knew then

that she was slightly crazed

deluded,

but brilliant and interesting.

There are people who get tangled up

in a messiah complex.

They become convinced that they have more to offer

than other people.

Try to tell them otherwise

and they lash out,

or grinch up.

I knew her way back when,

and I just found out

that nothing’s changed.

Interview with Jack Dugan

Well let’s get started by asking, when did you first begin writing?

I began writing when I first saw a line of words upon a page that I had written.

I mean, when did you actually start writing?

I was writing then.

Most people think that writing means putting words into a structure.

Most people are wrong.

Who are you to say such things?

I’m nobody.

OK, we’re here to talk to you about your novel, Lint in My Navel, just published by Broken Petals Press.

Good for you. Wait, which we are you talking about? Is there someone else here?

Lint doesn’t really seem to be about much of anything. There’s no resolution, the conflict is not even clear, though it is filled with undirected conflict.

Which way do you direct your conflict? Do you think you’re in charge, or something?

All I’m saying is that it’s generally acknowledged that a good story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and develop characters. We need to know what the characters are thinking, feeling. The characters in Lint are not fully developed. They just do things and say things and then they move on.

The characters in life are not fully developed. A fully developed character is another euphemism for unbridled egotism. The writer regaling in himself, without ever admitting it. It’s a horrible arrogance of a knowledge that doesn’t exist. The people and stories in life are unresolved. That’s the point. Fiction is fiction, but fiction without truth is useless. No amount of ‘research’ can produce a true story.

Did you do no research for Lint?

I certainly did, but I didn’t know it at the time.

You feature dialogue quite strongly in your writing. The narrative is sparse.

People will talk, you know. I get tired of reading things where every piece of dialogue must be accompanied by a description of what the speaker is doing, or thinking, or feeling. Or long descriptive passages as we enter the mind of the character. Nobody enters anybody’s mind, ever, anywhere, on this planet. It’s pretension. But I guess that’s what they call ‘character development’. Or long monologues where the writer sticks his, or her, bloody little viewpoint into it, and craps all over us. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anyone talk that way since I was in high school. It sucks, and it isn’t profound, it’s just self-indulgent. Most novels could be cut in half.

But isn’t that what this is, the narrative? On page 44 you write:

‘There may have been a point, a defining moment, when Duncan first crossed over from the believing side to the non-believing side. It seemed to him that there was such a time, but he couldn’t find it in his memory. He finally came to conclude that the reason for this was that it had happened at a very early age. He couldn’t remember his first pair of shoes, he couldn’t remember his first steps across a living room carpet, he couldn’t remember his first taste of blueberry pie, he couldn’t remember his first run across a leaf strewn lawn on an autumn afternoon, and he couldn’t remember the first time he saw that he was being fed a pack of lies, that the story was a shuck, that the greatest fiction was the fairytale people had concocted in order to live with themselves, the self-congratulatory and self-perpetuating advert for themselves that allowed them to avoid all confrontation with their actual place in nature.’

What did you mean by this?

Damned if I know. I was drunk. A little stoned too. I think it had something to do with hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is probably in using the third person.

Elsewhere you seem to use the literary device of….

Literary device? What is a literary device anyway? Is it like a strap-on? Something you use when you can’t get it up?

You don’t seem to set much store on formal study of literature.

A Master’s degree in creative writing is probably good for wiping your ass. Really, if you feel the need to take a creative writing course then you’re not a writer. Go wash the dishes or watch Oprah on tv.

Trouble is, is that people get too picayune. They need to forget what they were told by their masters and learn how to write again. They’ve lost all feeling. Someone once criticized me for repeating a word in the same sentence (in an off-the-cuff and vernacular blog entry by the way): ‘That all depends on what the meaning of is, is.’ I’ll get back to her now now.

Do you see any value in formal study?

Well, there is the time and opportunity to read, which one must do at some point.

What do you think the novel is about?

Which novel? The novel? Think of your life. Is it of less value than other lives? Novels have always been about supposedly ‘interesting’ or ‘important’ people, events, epochs, wars, upheavals, etc. Fuck that shit. There are stories everywhere and it’s wrong to lose them, if we tell them honestly, they turn out to be good stories. Honesty is important. It’s the real window into the world. I could care less about a writer blathering on about characters he couldn’t possibly know anything about. Of course anger is important too.

What’s the difference between poetry and prose?

Are you for real? There is no difference. It’s only so-called ‘poets’ that will make this distinction. It’s all writing. Poetry is prose and prose is poetry. Poems are nothing but snippets of prose that punch far above their weight. Anything else is pure phoniness. Any writing should serve its purpose. The fake formalism of most ‘poetry’ is enough to make any strong person puke.

Will you give any readings from Lint?

Lots of people say poetry was meant to be read. What a load of shit. If that was true then most poetry would never see the light of day. That’s what people who are afraid to stay home alone at night say. Poetry was meant to be read as if it was being spoken. No, I’ll only read for big bucks, or at least a piece of ass.

You seem to be getting a little tipsy.

Indeed. One more beer, then we’ll be OK.

Well, let’s wrap it up by asking, what’s next?

Besides a tune or two on the guitar I think we’ll call it quits for now. I have a story about childhood, but that will have to wait. Turning a life into art takes some time. Cheers to all the writers; remember, tomorrow we die.

Loss Poem #93

This poem was in the South African lit journal New Contrast in 2008, vol 141: 32-33.

Loss poem #93

I walk the streets of this African town

with women carrying boxes of oranges on their heads

and the road a mad chaos of slow strollers

oblivious of two ton tins captained by crazed pirates.

Every day, this is my walk to the post office

to open yet another empty box.

The day has been fine so far but now,

now the weight returns

like another bloody cold front coming on from Cape Town

and I miss you and see you walking the streets of that American town

so far from here, so far.

I don’t know why this agony returns every day as the clock strikes one

or why it’s so difficult to reunite with you

but more than miles separate us, and its

not so much the ocean but the obstacles

not so much the continents but the constraints

and as I walk through this African town

on a sunny summer’s day with dozens of bright bandanas

blazing like flowers in a meadow

I feel like a fly trapped in a web

and my heart sinks like some stone

into the muck of some polluted pool.

What is this spider that has captured me

and bound me in its threads?

The spider is called paradox and the prime rate

and woven into this web of loss,

I don’t stand a fucking chance.

Hand Piano

Short excerpt from a novel in progress:

It was about this time that I invented the hand piano.

            Hell, I know I didn’t invent it. It was the oldest musical instrument of all time. There’re five fingers. That’s five notes. A pentatonic scale. The bones are like bones. They’re both the black and the white keys. You can play the blues on your hand. The hand is a percussive instrument, but it's also a melodic instrument.

            One can refine this even further

            There are three accessible joints on each finger, each with a different note. A single finger can register three distinct pitches. This means that, superimposed upon the basic pentatonic scale, we have a harmonic series. There are a large number of melodic and rhythmic possibilities buried in the hand.

            Bless the hand piano.

Moving Day

This appeared in Botsotso, a South African journal, May 2011.
http://www.botsotsoportal.co.za/?page_id=194

Moving Day

“Are you ready? Let’s go.”

            It was lunchtime and the cleaning staff were lounging or lying around on the benches under the plane tree that I’d watched transform all these years as the subtle seasons of the Eastern Cape passed by my office window.

            It was a common pose when the weather was warm and they were loud and raucous and full of life. There seemed to be a megaphone pointed toward my office window and I continually wondered why they had to shout at each other when they were only fractions of meters apart but there was laughter, and lots of it.

            They rose in near unison, clearly ready.

            We piled into my little VW Polo, two up front and four in back. Xhosa words rattled around the headspace like ping pong balls as we darted across oncoming traffic and made it across campus on the shortcut to Beaufort St.
.            When we got to my place they all piled out and pushed in, with twelve eyes scoping out the place for loot or good deals. I lived in an old building that dated back to close to the 1820’s, and was never meant to be a house. A wall had been constructed and two rooms been installed downstairs and a loft upstairs but it was really an old church, all open space.

            “How much for this?” said Herman, displaying a thermos he’d pulled from under the ‘kitchen’ counter.

            “I think I’ll keep that.”

            “What about this?” hoisting an electric kettle.

            “You can have that. It doesn’t really work. Not for me anyway. You have to have the touch.”

            Meanwhile, Nkosinathi was swinging my dumbbells around, feeling the strength of them at the end of his arms.

            “I want these.”

            “Oh, you do?”

            “I want these.”

            I thought about it. My shoulder was fucked from recent rotator cuff surgery. I used the damn things about every 19 months for about 20 minutes.

            “Ok, R50.”

            He gave me 20.

            “I’ll give you the rest back in the department.”

            “How much for the bike?” Ezekiel was pointing into my ‘storage’ room.

            “You don’t want that bike. It’s American. You can’t get tires for it.”

            “How much? I’ll give you R200.”

            “You’ll give me R200 for that bike?”

            “R200.”

            “R150.” I offered.

            He grinned and grasped my hand in the shake that I could never quite remember; shake, flip, shake.

            “You drive a hard bargain.” I said.

            There was a shout outside and I went to take a look. It was another university employee with a blue coverall, pointing at my car.

            “How much?”

            “R35000.”

            He mused a bit and approached the car, eyeing it as if he could suss it out without the need to actually take it for a spin. He stared at the broken windshield. He hovered over the hood.

            “R30000.”

            “You want to look at the engine?”

            He nodded.

            After a few minutes he noted that I had some kind of oil leak. It was news to me, but it was true.

            “Well, ok.“ I said, “They told me over there at JX Auto that I should sell this car for R40000. So, I said, ok, R35000. Broken windscreen, R2000, that makes R33000. Oil leak, that makes R30000. I’ll take your offer. I need the car till Thursday.”

            “No problem.” he said.

            Inside, my cd’s were being pawed like medallions of sirloin.

            “I want this one.” Nkosinathi said.

            “You can’t have that! That’s my favourite cd right now.” It was Vusi Mahlasela’s new one.

            “I need something to remember you by.”

            In eight years I’d barely spoken to him, or he to me.

            I picked out a collection of women jazz singers.

            “You’ll like this.” I said.

            And I knew he would.

Mass Murder in Afghanistan

The killer who mowed down innocent women and children in Afghanistan has been whisked out of the country to a safe haven in the US. What the hell is with that?
This man walked out of a US military compound onto Afghan soil outside of any military ordered action, brutally killing unarmed non-combatants. This act was outside the context of war and the rules of engagement. The killer removed himself from the jurisdiction of the US military and exposed himself to the laws and justice system of Afghanistan - and he's carted off ultmately to be tried by a US military court! This is outrageous! He should be handed over to Afghan authorities, to be tried under Afghan jurisprudence.
If they condemn him to be drawn and quartered, beheaded, have his eyes ripped out...or whatever...so be it! It'll be hard to feel sorry for him. It will be hard to feel sorry for any accomplices he may have had as well.
Sorry, Bruce, We Take Care of Our Own doesn't cut it here.

When Love Dies

Poem was published in Chiron Review, December 2011, if I recall. Written in 2005 or 6.

When Love Dies

When love dies it’s not like a gunshot to the head

or the heart.

It’s not like the crash of tangled tin and gleaming chrome

of a 4 wheel hack or a silver bullet fallen from the sky.

It’s not like a mortar lobbed into a foxhole or

the glint of a blade and a line of blood along a slit neck

or peeled scalp.

It’s not like a shiv stuck in your stomach to disembowel you

and let your innards fall like rotten fruit onto a stained soil.

It’s not like the whiteout and mushroom cloud of a megaton delivery

from demonic fools

or the rush and rage of flame thrown from flyers over the jungles.

No, it’s not like that.

Love dies slowly and unseen, taking its time, taking its toll,

creeping like a vine in the attic

or a nest of ants diligently working in the walls

or a fungus eating out the insides of an old tree,

and you only realize it’s gone when its already been dead for quite some time

and the glorious once-tree finally falls in the forest

and spills its dust onto the moldy leaves and musty humus below.

Misconceptions

A student recently interviewed me for an English assignment, meant to probe a professional in her field of biology. One of the questions she asked, and my answer, was:

Any common misconceptions about Biology?

Sure there are lots of misconceptions about biology, or aspects of biology. The whole concept of a 'balance of nature' is probably one. It is a steady-state concept, whereas most ecologists and other biologists now accept that ecosystems are dynamic, constantly changing, with outcomes of organismal interactions shifting back and forth. In my own field of evolutionary biology we are constantly faced with misconceptions. A common one might be that organisms do things 'for the good of the species'. This is completely incorrect. Oranisms do things to maximize their individual fitness (survival and reproduction). Period. 

During my time teaching evolution I always began by enumerating some of the misconceptions about this process. I recreate these here.

Common misconceptions about evolution

• Evolution is a process of perfecting organisms.

     -Organisms are rarely perfectly adapted. They are as adapted as they can be in their current environment, given past history.

• Evolution is progressive, striving toward a goal.

     - The history of life is like a bush, not a ladder (leading to humans).

• Evolution is a random process.

     - There are random processes in evolution but natural selection is deterministic, selective.

• Natural selection = evolution.

     - Natural selection is only one mechanism of evolution.

• Organisms change because they “need” to.

     - Mutation is random. If a population has variants that reproduce more than others in a given environment the population will change. 

• Evolution explains the origin of life.

     - Evolution is about organic history. It’s what happened after life began.

•Adaptations are for the good of the species.

     - Adaptations are preserved because individuals that have them reproduce better than those that don’t, not because they perpetuate the species.

• Microevolution and macroevolution are distinct processes.

     - Speciation (formation of new species) and extinction are the only processes that occur above the species level. It's the relative rates of each that determine macroevolutionary patterns.

Rumblings in the Madhouse

Continued rumblings in the madhouse...endless farts from assholes filled with fat heads...the babbling of ten thousand pundits and politicians undergoing reverse development...when will it end?
We've gotten past one bugbear...one of a long line of bugbears...it wouldn't do to go too long without creating another one. Now the bugbear is Iran. The war talk is increasing in volume...the flatulence is filling the empty balloons of the airwaves and internet...perhaps they will pop, smearing shit all over the faces of...people who have read and studied much but learned very little...leastwise how to think...less so how to feel.
When will it end?
Enemies are everywhere...we must threaten and throw down a monstrous stone upon the ground to deafen all who would dare to defy, make them cower in fear of our might...
Well, when a defensive regime is threatened by nuclear powers (such as...), a logical response is to develop comparable defenses. The greatest stimulus to Iranian nuclear weapons may be the threat of military action against them.
When will it end?
In the rooms of power the minds narrow so that they look like upright flatfish, eyes pointed in only one direction.
All may not be hopeless...but I am not heartened.

Delusion and Fantasy on the Fringe

Here in Sacramento a group calling themselves The South Africa Project came out with placards, skinheads and tattoos decrying the 'genocide' of whites in South Africa. Why do this at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, USA, is not clear. A segment of the Occupy movement came and engaged in a bit of violence toward the police who were protecting these people. I was moved to write this letter, which was published in the Bee today, March 2.
:
Re "Two officers injured, three arrested as protesters clash near state Capitol" (Capitol & California, Feb. 28): Lest one take 'the South African Project' seriously, I'd like to affirm that after 8 years living in South Africa I can guarantee that there is no genocide of white South Africans, in any sense. These deluded souls pine for the days of white supremacy and special priviledge, nothing more.
True, South Africans experience considerable violent crime. The vast majority of victims are black.
Also true, the economic purse-strings and bulk of the wealth in South Africa are still in the hands of the white minority - it isn't surprising that those who seek to get something on the quick might target those who have something.
This group's website is sufficient to dissuade oneself of any doubts that they are a racist, anti-semitic, neo-fascist fringe living in a fantasy world, few likely to be South African.
Here we have Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to worry about...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/01/4299456/mondays-protests.html#storylink=cpy

One Dog Barking

Also in the recent issue of New Contrast. Check it out. It's very South African but hopefully there's a thread that might resonate with others.

One Dog Barking

It was a wild night in the old settler town that sat in a bowl on a hilltop, tipped on the edge of the future. There was singing and screaming and dogs barking and the howls of people whose gender or race or age could not be discerned. The arrogant accelerations of excessively loud engines ripped asphalt off the streets and the pop of what might have been guns punctured the night.

            It was a routine night for me.

            All day long some guy down at the petrol station had been singing, in a guttural and broken voice a song of only his imagination, while random hooters popped the air. He had stopped for a few hours and then begun again. Such endurance amazed me.

            By the time midnight came close there were voices everywhere. They could have been coming from the trees on Hill St. or the belfry up at St. George’s, or a gathering on Raglan Rd., or an event at Rhodes, or just any group of Saturday night people who were both near and far.

            People were partying in their way, as I was in mine.

            I sat there and I thought; ‘I will die, and no one will know my story.’

            And then I thought; ‘Life’s like that.’

            Friday had been an interesting day.

            It all started when I woke up and realized I’d forgotten to pull up the little green latch on the alarm clock. So I was late in getting going. I don’t have to punch a time clock, but it doesn’t look good.

            Of course, that’s part of the problem. The Episcopalian adherence to early to rise, early to bed, ran like a gash through the gut of the life I sought after. It was the dominant paradigm, and it was pathetic, but I confess I had it far better than in all those years of frozen dawns and bare fingers on fire, scraping ice from a broken windshield.

           Within minutes people started to draggle in to see me, as if they’d been hovering in the corridor waiting for my arrival. On any given day I could go for hours without a soul recognizing my existence, but sudden bursts of supplicants penetrated the brief period between lock click and log on.

            I didn’t begrudge any of them for those moments, for it was my job, and unlike the other side of my life this one was a social life. It allowed the other side of my life, and I was grateful for that.

           The stream carried students, staff, salespeople, colleagues, maintenance workers, and various more or less lost souls, some of them plain flotsam and some of them sparks, brilliance in the making. I felt lucky to be in their presence.

            None of them knew where I had come from, or where I was going.

            It was a day much like any other day. I had my day routine and my night routine. It was too damn bad one had to sleep somewhere in between.

            Not that I don’t waste time. I succumb to the enticements of the internet as much as any of my compatriots – for example. The intellectual life is fettered by trying to frame it in filigrees of mahogany or oak.

            So when Jimbo came in, shuffling around a bit, shy as a duiker caught in the lights, I was taken a bit by surprise.

            “I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for us this year. It was a good year. I got a lot out of it.”

            “I’m glad to hear it Jimbo. All I really wanted to do was to help you guys out a bit.”

            He thanked me again, and bowed backwards through the door as if he was a wraith.

            I looked out the window at the plane tree that stood out there and which had marked the seasons for me, now in full greenery, with a weaver pulling at a recalcitrant bit of phloem or xylem. Clouds were rolling in and I saw a bolt of lightening split the darkness above the township. I knew the temperature was dropping like a stone into a bottomless well, the typical late afternoon loss of summer or spring that happened in this place.

            And then the building shook; the walls and floors seemed to ripple, and the ripple rolled up my jeans, ran across my thighs, grabbed my gut, slid up my sides and pulled my ears, and finally skitched my scalp. What would make a building rumble so?

            I sat dazed for less than a minute….they were having training manoeuvres up at the Army base. It was not common, and it had never made the house of science shake before.  

            The reality of my leaving gripped me - a warm glove or a cold vise, I wasn’t sure.

           

            By two o’clock in the morning, the aural environment had become softer, and silence was no longer a foreign thing. It was lovely to hear very little at all, and it was so rare a thing that I simply sat and listened, and then listened some more, for quite some time.

            Finally there was only the sound of one dog barking.

            The night was not hopeless.