Wrote an e-mail yesterday. It's endless and intensely personal and very highly
political. Also whinges about desperate need for sadly lacking feedback on my
occasional reflections, which tend to mingle inner and outer realities from the
viewpoint of that literary staple, the unreliable narrator– me, in this case, a
retired writer, but not unreliable on purpose.
Decided there is much here that pleases me, so am putting it here so that my
"cosmic wisdom" (my term for b.s.) can "benefit" others and, what with one
thing and another, maybe even gain some commentary. Better from friendly
strangers than none at all.
If any of the following sounds like I'm stuck on myself and overly pleased with
my prose, you are being misled. Easy enough for me to praise my own work when
a second look pleases me, because it really feels as though it writes itself by
some lifetime of ingrained autonomic processing that happens on its own and is
not something I deserve credit for. (Always welcome, just the same,)
BTW, what not everyone knows, but British comedian John Oliver reported truthfully on
his US television show-- is that a certain talking yam's original family name, changed
some generation before he was hatched, was Drumpf. Oliver even has a web site
where you can download his Drumpfinator Chrome Extension, a free browser app
that automagically changes every online instance of the man's name that you might
find into its original version for your viewing pleasure. Very droll and entertaining,
at least for me: donaldjdrumpf.com.
Or, you could just skip the whole thing. Otherwise, as Count Dracula said, "Enter
freely, and of your own will."
======
There sure are a lot of informed and witty people online and I enjoy saving and
reusing some of the terms they come up with or bandy about, like "Vichy
Republicans" for Drumpf-leaning establishmentarians. They often find their way
into my online rants, weaving the phrases and observations of others into
commentaries from my own observations, interpretations ("analysis" feels too
pretentious, since it suggests a wider and deeper understanding and knowledge
than I have).
Today, I did not (perhaps could not) resist saying something about today's
shots being fired between the Frontrunner and Sen. Prof. Elizabeth Warren, who
called him "a loser." Guess she knows how he feels about losers. Even more
thin-skinned than he is short-fingered, the vulgarian promptly called her "the
Indian," because nicknames based on race, heritage and such are always
appropriate.
The fact is that he won't shut up about saying she used her 1/32nd degree of
Cherokee blood to get benefits for being a minority. In fact, she never did any
such thing, but she really did have a full-blooded Cherokee grandmother, making
her legally a member of that tribe if she wants to be, according to its rules.
In fact, the current Chief is no more than 1/32nd himself. None of which he
cares about, of course.
Anyway, this was my initial response online:
At least he did not say "Redskin," which we all know is
not one bit racist. Totally not racist. Just like the Klan.
A moment later, I realized there are two prominent Republic*nts who actually do
have blood ties to the Subcontinet. Bobby Jindal, born there under the name
Piyush and a practicing Hindu before he tried various alternatives in this
country, once going so far as to carry out an exorcism on his own to cure
someone's cancer. (Supposedly a success.) And then there is the woman born in
SC and raised by her Sikh parents, who came from abroad and called her Nikki,
which means something like "little one," I think.
Anyway, I am pleased enough by what I wrote earlier today that I'm inflicting
the rest on you as well. The subject line of this e-mail is one of a couple of
variations that arose, apparently all on their own, welcome as morningwood,
from a spontaneously produced original phrase that popped out of my fingertips
at just the write moment in my electronic scribbling:
Come to think of it, maybe he meant Pious Jingle, the man who
bankrupted Lousyana. Or maybe Il Douche meant Gov. Nikki Haley, born Nimrata
Nikki Randhawa. So hard to tell all these lesser races apart since mud people
all look alike. Sure, that's a disgusting thing to say, but since that kind of
racism is being promoted night and day as the most American of American values,
saying that kind of thing out loud about the rich white "steal-lionaire"
presiding over freely and widely televised putsch and shove rallies might be
some sort of step (I mention no goose) toward addressing the danger outright.
Tonight some detective show had a reference to a suspect owning a glock, and I
got a funny warm feeling all over because that instantly reminded me that I
know someone who actually owns a glock as part of his professional activities
and knows how to use it.
Made me feel special because not that many people know anyone who has such a
weapon at all. Stupid, huh? But more than that, I had a feeling of safety
because of the way it makes me feel protected, even a thousand miles away from
each other. Maybe those people who do own a glock are ammosexual fetishists of
some kind doing some kind of adventurist larking about being macho and playing
fun games, but there's no adventurism here and none is needed.
"This is my weapon, this is my gun...."
Fighting stupid and unnecessary wars or picking unwinable fights is political
adventurism, a kind of irresponsibility that feels like the same kind of gross
contempt some clerics have used in using "enthusiast" to rever to some extreme
types of fervid religiosity.
Or, more on point, back in the real world, I was once at a meeting of the
Explorer's Club at a talk by a man who had spent some hours hanging upside down
from a rope in a crevass he fell into in Antarctica. Scoffing at those who say
they want to do that kind of movie stuff for fun, he explained what he had
learned in the course of his career (no pun intended):
"An adventure is the result of bad planning."
Above, "the write moment" was unintended, a nonsexual but otherwise freudian
slip of the pen (lapsus calumi) that seemed best left alone. Equally
unconscious until I recognized my unintentionally apt word choice was the use
of "career." Once aware of it, options included replacing the term, ignoring it
and hoping not to be accused of being too clever by half, or note that once
again something inside me obsesses over language and spends its time fitting
words into phrases, coupling and uncoupling meanings and euphony, and generally
playing with all the gravity and discipline of a child in a puddle.
Which all feeds nicely into the following set piece that started out as a note
to myself so that I would not forget what I was going to say next but did not
get to put down Here at the time because the mail server got dropped, leaving
me grateful a while later when it turned out that at least nothing had been
lost due to the broken connection.
Good luck for me, possibly the reverse for you. I was grotching again about how
I get next to no feedback from stuff I write, personal or political, if there
is a difference for me. And that led to more navel gazing about the way my mind
works in words the way a photographer's eye might work in images.
====
A fog of unawareness or cloud of unknowing has perhaps utterly distorted those
biographical remarks, but if anyone ever reads these things I may never know,
and nothing I send via e-mail seems to get any personal response anyway, so
there's also no way for me to know anything, one way or another, any other
interpretations, information, or context than what is here already, leaving me
as confused, baffled, and mystified as usual.
In the same way, while I rather fancy my cleverness and glib agility to leap
from point to point and lard them insight (sometimes entirely my own novel
take, but often compounded and condensed from myriad others, whether such
observations are more than wanking is something I may never know either because
except for an occasional thumb's up or reply comment to something I've posted
online, no one addresses the content and argues in support or opposition, and
few enough people are even offered a chance to bother with such stuff to begin
with, so there are not many people who even have the chance to let me know
whether the form, content, grammar, wit, style, etc. is at all notable and the
exercise worthwhile to anyone but myself.
Again, there is, from time to time, a stray remark in favor of some piece in
form or content, but since none of these things coule be written by anyone
else, the bulk of my questions might as well not exist. Guess it's just as well
that all my writing these days is only for me, though whether hobby or
compulsion is unclear. I'm aware of the process of my writing, the constant
churn of rephrasing, correction, addition, and all the other bits of the
process by which the author is astonished to discover what he thinks and notice
how something like "when putsch comes to shove" appears in front of his
wondering eyes like a miniature sleigh, piled high with surprising content.
Whether my writing is also constantly too close to some literary reference is
another matter. The pro argument would be that words and phrases from high and
low culture add richness and resonance, incorporating additional meanings, if
only as decoration intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise
bald and unconvincing narrative.
Don't know whether you noticed Gilbert and Sullivan in the above paragraph,
visiting along with good St. Nick, and frankly cannot tell whether my fretting
about it is ridiculous because I enjoy indulging in that stuff even though I
don't have much idea how subtle such language is or how completely hamfisted
and crudely, brutally, obvious. Not even sure I could help myself if I wanted
to. ("Stop me before I kill again!")
Enough for now and more than enough. Hope the storms are bear-able. If you want
it, my love can keep you warm whether you are stopping by the woods on a snowy
evening or when the small rain down can rain.
--
"Love never fails." -- 1 Corinthians 13:8
