Monday, October 29, 2007

lies, falsehoods, prevarication

Smells just as foul by any other name.

We are all capable of halting and even reversing the aging process. Exercise in general, and strength training in particular, has been scientifically proven to help achieve such results. In this seminar, participants will learn the basics of designing and performing an overall exercise program, with an emphasis on strength training; there will be an overview of major muscle groups of the body. With the fitness skills and nutritional guidelines taught, participants will learn how to condition themselves so that they can live each day as though they were 10 or 20 years younger.
(promotional blurb for a well-intentioned, deceptive, manipulative corporate program [my emphasis])


Did you know that aging can be stopped or reversed? It's been scientifically proven! Don't believe me? Just ask an ignorant hack writer of PR blurbs for the benevolent, altruistic, worker-friendly corporate program. Conclusion: If I join the program, I won't get any older; if I join it wholeheartedly, I'll get younger. All this plus an overview of major muscle groups! I (heart) corporation.

The Prophet Clint Eastwood sayeth: Some people believe you should exercise less as you get older, but you should exercise more. I subscribe to that belief. I also believe that one must exercise more carefully, more mindfully, i.e. more responsibly as the years go by. But Clint doesn't claim that exercising more will make you less old, that time and its physiological effects magically shift backward. The Prophet Clint doesn't think we're all idiots.

So where does a person find reliable information? TV, of course, where the totally truthful drug ads tell you to "Ask your doctor whether red Lebanese hash is right for your unexplained sensations, the urge to move, or other disturbing symptoms of RLS (gasp!)." One of these days I'm going to put my restless leg through the TV screen.

Which reminds me of the Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, who said (or is said to have said), "Half of what people say is lies, and the other half is bullshit." Unless it's the kinder, gentler department of human skill-sets, which always tells the truth.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Paradise

Donald Barthelme, may he rest in something akin to joy with a sharp edge of erotic tension, if not in peace, wrote some remarkable pieces of fiction, mainly during the seventies and eighties I think. Now that he has left this earthly plane, he will presumably write no more amazing literary morsels for his readers to savor, but they are in print, thank you Gutenburg, so that's something.

I've read most of his books - Barthelme, not Gutenburg - novels and short stories I guess you would call them, though they don't follow the usual narrative conventions - and they seldom fail to surprise, provoke, and entertain. I laughed, I cried, I reflected, he shot himself.

Why I missed this one (1986) I have no idea, but there it was on the shelf at the public library, where I was looking for something by John Barth, whom I discovered about the same point in my disjointed cut-and-paste undergraduate years. Did I read a review? Did someone hand me a copy and say you gotta read this? Snow White was my first encounter with Barthelme, and it was hilariously freaking absurdly beautiful in an archetypally tragic and tubular way. Then, as now, I wished I could write like him. To wit:

Q: What did you do, after work, in the evenings or on weekend, in Philadelphia?
A: Just ordinary things.
Q: No special interests?
A: I was very interested in bow-hunting. These new bows they have now, what they call a compound bow - Also, I'm a member of the Galapagos Society, we work for the environment, it's really a very effective -
Q: And what else?
A: Well, adultery. I would say that's how I spent most of my free time. In adultery.
Q: You mean regular adultery.
A: Yes. Sleeping with people although legally bound to someone else.
Q: These were women.
A: Invariably.
.... [something about a haircutter]
A: What if she stabs me in the ear with the scissors?
Q: Unlikely, I would think.
A: Stabs me in the ear with the scissors in an excess of rage?
Q: Your guilt. I recognize it. Clearly, guilt.
A: Nonsense. The prudent man guards his eardrums. The prudent man avoid anomalous circumstances.
Q: You regard yourself as prudent.
A: I regard myself as asleep. I go along, things happen to me, there are disturbances, one copes, thinking of the golden pillow, I don't mean literally golden but golden in my esteem -
Q: Let me play this track here for you, it's by Echo and the Bunnymen -
A: I'll pass.
Q: I also have a video of the Tet offensive with Walter Cronkite...
(Donald Barthelme, Paradise, NY: Putnam, 1986, p. 47)

Sorry, that was a bit on the long side, but you get the idea. Or not. I'm not going to try to unpack it because the packaging is already so well done. I'll do what D.H. Lawrence did in his essays about Hawthorne and Melville, which was essentially to let them write it for him, which he did brilliantly of course.

Veronica told him that she had flunked Freshman English 1303 three times. "How in the world did you do that?" he asked. "Comma splices," she said. "Also every time I wrote down something I thought, the small-section teacher said that it was banal. It probably was banal." [....] "We all went through this," he told them, and Dore said, "Yeah, and you smart guys did the Vietnam war." Simon had opposed the Vietnam war in all possible ways short of self-immolation but could not deny that it was a war constructed by people who had labored through Psychology I, II, III, and IV and Main Currents of Western Thought. "But, dummy, it's the only thing you've got," he said. "Your best idea." "I have the highest respect for education," she said. "The highest. I'd be just as dreary when I came out as I was when I went in." (Paradise, p. 169)

It's like trying to explain a joke, which is always a mistake, for the same reason that Isadora Duncan told the journalist, when asked what the dance means, that if she could tell him what it means, she wouldn't have danced it. Or maybe it was Martha Graham. On the other hand, what good is a review that says, This is a good book, and you should read it? Not much. Is that enough filler between slices of fresh fruit, enough bread to clear the palate before the next sip of wine?

"One day there won't be any wives any more."
"Or husbands either."
"Just free units cruising the surface of the earth. Flying the black flag."
"Something to look forward to."
"Do you really think so?"
"What about the children?"
"Get one and keep it. Keep it for yourself. Hug it and teach it things. Everything you know."
(Paradise, p. 200)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

National Corporate Master Appreciation Day

Do you know what today is? It's National Boss Day, aka Kiss-Ass/Brown-Nose/Suck-Up Day, which means it can't be long before National Corporate Master Appreciation Day, and soon after that National CEO-Robber Baron Love-Fest Week, followed by Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib Warden/Guard Adoration Month.

The little spectacle on this cube farm took the form of a contest between departments over who would out-do the other in fawning over their beloved manager, and within the department over which serf could gush the most over how great thou art. Excuse me while I gag on the cake.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Vaccinium macrocarpon

The common cranberry. An Amerikan tradition. A Thanksgiving staple. A group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines...found in acidic bogs throughout the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

When I talked to Jessi Golly two weeks ago on the phone, he had just arrived in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, to begin work on the cranberry harvest. He had given his notice at Forbidden Planet, having made arrangements with his housemate Gabriel to work at the cranberry farm. Gabriel has worked there before so he knows the drill. Thursday was Jessi's last day at the bookstore, and he will have his job back after the cranberry gig, which lasts until just before Thanksgiving.

So on Monday he took the Chinatown Bus to Boston, then the southbound train to Buzzard’s Bay, where Gabriel picked him up in his truck and brought him to the farm. For the next six weeks he has a room in a doublewide, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with five other people, some of whom he already knew from New York.

It was good for me to talk to him after he had arrived and gotten situated. He's an adult, he's been on his own for a few years now, but to me and Gven he's still The Boy. We need to be reassured every now and then that The Boy and The Girl are okay. We appreciate their having their own adventures, and we can even enjoy the ride vicariously sometimes, but it isn't fun to be out of touch for too long.

Zelda came in the door just as I was hanging up the phone with Jessi. I hadn't really seen her in a few days. Monday is receiving day at her bookstore, and she had spent a long day unpacking, sorting, and tracking a shipment of books from the warehouse, making sure everything was there, recording errors and irregularities, like a nonfiction book is recorded as fiction.

There happened to be a lot of errors and irregularities, so sitting in the den with the crickets chirping outside, I learned a lot about the way they handle book shipments, and she is very good at breaking down the process in terms I can understand.

It had been an interesting day for me too, as in the curse “May you live in interesting times.” Work was slow, and office communication has been uneven, shall we say, making for some minor unease and frustration, which I managed to work out of my system with qigong and handstands in the fitness room and a bike ride home.

That night there was a small, peculiar drum circle at the percussion store on High Street, so I also got to indulge in the group therapy of improvising rhythms by wailing on stretched animal skins. You never know who will show up at these things, and this one was mostly old people (meaning anyone born before 1951) plus one hipster with dreadlocks and great chops on hand drums. The guy could really play, and a couple of times we got into a pretty good jam, with him in the lead and me providing mainly bass.

None of which has anything to do with cranberries, except circumstantially, in which case all of the above is closely connected, if only because it all happened to me within a short time-frame in which I was paying attention. This is the metanarrative, where I talk about the way random stuff occurs, and then it occurs to me to write it down.

A few days later Jessi called me at my desk, and I got a lot more information about what he actually does out there on the farm. It's a little more than the grunt labor I had pictured. Some days are long, like 16-18 hours, depending on the size of the order they have to get out. The crew of six does all phases of the process - from bog to bag - harvesting, processing, and packaging, so it's not too monotonous.

Some days they do a wet harvest: flood the field and use a machine that cuts and then pulls the floating berries through a long tube to the conveyor for and processing. Wet berries don't keep well, so this is only done when they are being sold to Ocean Spray for concentrate.

Other days they do a dry harvest, which involves another machine that works like a large self-propelled lawnmower. Someone drives it down the rows of plants, and it cuts berries, separates the stems, and collects the berries in a bag. It's tricky if the ground is uneven.

Another machine screens out the berries that are too small or not ripe. Additional sorting requires people to sit by the conveyor and pick out any remaining substandard berries before they reach the bagging stage. There two people fill up 12-ounce plastic bags, seal them shut, and pack them in boxes. When there are enough boxes filled, they stack them on pallets and load them on the truck for delivery to the buyer.

It's a family farm on Cape Cod that's been doing this for like four generations. It's agriculture. Plant, cultivate, weed, water, worry, harvest, package, sell. It sounds like a great experience, and I think he will learn a lot. When I was talking to Rachel about it during a pause from checking proofs before releasing files to the printer, I saw how Jessi is doing what the motto says is the mission of the college he dropped out of: Learning and Labor.

Go Yeomen!

Friday, October 05, 2007

seven-minute bio

My Wednesday night men's group was given the assignment of presenting a brief biographical sketch. My response was to pile as many details as possible into a small container, shake vigorously, and see what comes out, although I think I went over the seven minute limit. In the interest of reducing, reusing, recycling, and revealing, I reproduce it almost verbatim here.

Born 1951 in a small town in Minnesota. It was the postwar era, I had three older sisters, both my parents had college degrees, and upward mobility was a major theme.

When I was three, we moved across the Mississippi to a larger town in Wisconsin. What I recall most vividly is the house on Market Street, riding my red Schwinn, and walking to Hogan School two blocks away. I remember learning to read and do long division, playing a lot of baseball, basketball, football, and war with the other boys in the neighborhood. The Milwaukee Braves, Minneapolis Lakers, and Green Bay Packers were our teams. In war it was still us versus the Germans. I spent a lot of time alone, and that was fine with me. My parents were a steady presence, and we were a close-knit family.

Grandpa Anderson died in 1960, just before we moved to Detroit, which was a whole new world populated by the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, and Lions, new schools, new friends, reading the Detroit Free Press, and some influential teachers and coaches. I cared about being on the team, getting good grades, getting to know girls; I read a lot of biographies and histories. My brother was born when I was eleven, and I enjoyed having and being a brother.

In 1966 we moved to a more affluent suburb, and I started to learn about wealth and status. I played basketball, found out I liked to write, and got some recognition working on the high school newspaper and then the town newspaper. I liked being known. I found out that having a car was important (this was Detroit in the 1960s) and I liked driving my 1966 Mustang. I also learned about limitations: I wasn't the smartest, coolest, fastest, strongest, or most talented guy around, and I never would be.

I went to school in Ohio for two years and tried to do everything. I was in the Honors College, dorm government, on the track team, intramural sports, into politics, and eventually serious 'partying'. When I transferred to Michigan, I got an apartment with two friends from high school and did more 'partying' than studying - but it was SERIOUS partying. In and out of school for two years, I had very little academic focus, but I did connect with a couple of really interesting women.

I moved to the Upper Peninsula with a friend in 1974, and a whole new adventure began. When not traveling to Texas, Georgia, Indiana, or Florida, I worked in a candle shop and a food coop, drove a school bus, lived in a tent, played ball, played music, and gradually migrated west from Munising to AuTrain to Deerton to Marquette, where Northern Michigan University provided my first exposure to yoga and modern dance - and a couple of really interesting women.

Instead of staying in the UP, I accepted my sister Jo Jo's invitation to go south. I moved to Strawberry Mountain Farm in north Georgia in 1976 and met my future bride. We worked and played for two years among a loosely organized group of people attempting to build a therapeutic community. Helping run health-related workshops with folks from the city gave us a lot of opportunities for gardening, hiking, fun and games, taking care of horses and cows, as well as human interaction, miscommunication, and conflict.

Gven and I moved to Chicago for a year, where I met an important teacher and started to study taiji. Gven made a lot of friends working at a great restaurant called the Heartland Cafe, and I worked first for a weekly newspaper and then for the phone company. We made good use of the resources of city life: museums, libraries, restaurants, theater, music, and public transporation. That December we returned to Atlanta to get married. We initially moved to Ithaca, New York, where we met a very good teacher, and almost went to school at SUNY Cortland, but changed our minds and landed in Oberlin.

We spent two years in Oberlin, where I met another important teacher and learned a little about philosophy and its relation to everything. I learned more taiji and got the chance to coach both basketball and track as a student assistant. I also had a nice job writing for the faculty-staff newspaper and learned a little about academic politics. After graduating, I got a one-year job teaching at New Garden Friends School in North Carolina. Shortly before Jessi was born in 1982, we migrated back to Atlanta.

Jessi and Zelda were born in Atlanta 20 months apart. We lived in three different houses in three different neighborhoods. I worked for a carpenter, a psychologist, a retail nursery, a landscaper, and a tree-planting crew. I taught taiji at Emory, Clayton, Georgia State, and a dance studio. When I got a paper published, we decided it was time for graduate school, so we moved back to Ohio. The kids were toddlers.

At Ohio State I connected with a couple of influential teachers and learned a little more about philosophy, history, literature, language, research, writing, and more taiji. I also connected with a couple of peers in a drinking and discussion group we called the Physical Club after our heroes William James, C.S. Peirce, and their friends, the original pragmatists, who called themselves (tongue in cheek) the Metaphysical Club. Gven went to massage school and had a thriving practice in Grandview. The kids were starting school, playing soccer, and making friends.

When I graduated, we went to south Alabama for a one-year teaching job that didn't work out. We moved back to Ohio, this time to Clintonville, where the kids made new friends in a new school and started to discover their own gifts. I worked here and there doing landscaping, baking bread, doing I Ching readings on the psychic hotline, teaching ethics and critical thinking at a community college. Freelance copyediting for SUNY Press helped me get into textbook editing at LDA, which helped me get into production editing at Megacorporate Publishing, where I've been for almost eight years.

Jessi and Zelda grew up in central swingstate and went through pretty good public schools. I was able to be present in their soccer teams, coach their basketball teams, scream my head off watching Jessi run track and cross country, go to Zelda's band concerts, and witness their friendships, adolescent struggles, and college transitions. Gven and I moved to a smaller house in Methodistville, and now the kids are grown, mostly on their own, but still very much part of our lives.

(That's over the seven-minute limit, but it's hard to decide what to leave out. It's also hard to tell what larger truth, if any, emerges, aside from the obvious horizontal mobility.)

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Contemporaryfictiongurl

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Contemporaryfictiongurl!

It's late September and cool in the morning. I walk around and check the pepper plants, which are starting to ripen, and pick a handful of cherry tomatoes.

I sat out on the patio and read a couple chapters of Snow Crash while I ate my fried egg sandwich with a second cup of coffee. A hacker named Hiro Protagonist is hot on the trail of a neurolinguistic conspiracy to reverse the Tower of Babel story by reprogramming everyone to speak in tongues. Some would call it "science fiction" because that's the section where it is shelved in the bookstore. Others would call it "cyberpunk" because that's the subgenre where its fans say it fits like a nanotechnological glove. I'm just looking for a live story.

This is the suburbs. Name's Sven Golly. I'm an editor.

After breakfast I mixed some dry yeast with warm water and sugar, let it sit, added flour, and set the bowl of whole wheat sponge out in the sun to grow into dough. Then I started a second batch, pouring sourdough starter into a bowl, adding a little oil and water, some flour, and setting it in the sun to encourage select microorganisms to propagate and grow in that nutritious, moist medium and carry their informational structure into their organic environment. A culture spreads in a community; software informs and instructs hardware; viruses attach themselves to a habitable medium and change it.

I hear a dog's sharp bark down the block and look around for Dali. A minute ago she was chasing a squirrel up a tree, but I don't see her anywhere in the yard. She isn't napping in her usual chair in the house, so I worry. Did I leave a gate open? I walk to the corner, where some new neighbors, Rita and Dennis, are sitting in lawn chairs having a yard sale. "Nice bike. You haven't seen a little spotted dog, have you?" No, they haven't, and the barking is their golden retriever. I hadn't even noticed their moving in (this week?), or Brian's moving out (last week?), or the for-sale sign being taken down. That's how disconnected I am from my immediate environment.

Is there a story here? Can one be crafted from the scant material available? Does the mind make one up anyway, filling in the missing facts as needed to make sense of it all? I decide to check one more place, and Dali is found whimpering in the upstairs bedroom where she has locked herself in. Mystery solved.

I decide to pickle some cherry tomatoes in a sealed jar of saltwater and see how they react. It works with peppers, why not tomatoes?

Something purple has dripped on the pale pink ceramic tiles of the patio table, staining it in irregular blotches. A few little bundles of brown pine needles mixed in, smearing the purple pigment. Some kind of berries? Bird poop from the overhanging maple tree? One perfectly radiating purple splatter looks like photos of solar flares leaping from the surface of the sun, or Jackson Pollack's careful randomness, or an ink blot on paper.

Zelda wants me to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I don't know why, but she thinks I'd like it. I saw a copy of it lying on the floor of her room. She declared her intention yesterday to read a "classic" once a month to make up for the many great books that weren't assigned while she was in school. I had to ask what defines 'classic', and for her purposes it's canonical literature - Beowulf, Dickens, Hemingway. I think she knows what she's doing: she calls herself a "contemporary fiction girl." She wants to broaden her knowledge base, and she's in a good position to do it now.

When I found the dog up in Zelda's room, there was stuff all over the place: clothes, art books, paperbacks, cigarettes, empty cups and glasses. Yet I sense an orderly, self-contained fermentation taking place in that warm space.