Mathias B. Freese

If you want to see a “performance” by an actor right up there with Daniel Day-Lewis in TWBB, rent “M” by Fritz Lang, starring Peter Lorre. Watch the last ten minutes of screen time in which he breaks down portraying a pedophile. He was a student of Freud’s for awhile, Mr. Lowenstein. A great actor like Day-Lewis, although consigned to character roles for much of his career. Memorable in “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca.” Rarely did he ever give a bad performance. Like Edward G. Robinson, he grabbed you by the lapels. . .The days of the character actors are long since gone — Thomas Mitchell, Edward Arnold, Thelma Ritter, et al.

Movies have always been a part of my inner self. In the late 40s and all through the 50s I went to the movies almost once or twice a month. In those days you saw two flics, the A picture and the B picture. Often, as I look back, the B pictures were to become classics — Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Thing,” “Forbidden Planet,” etc. By the end of the year, I may have seen 24 to 30 films on the big screen where the impact is always greatest. And when TV came into our culture, Saturday mornings were spent with Hopalog Cassidy, Ken and Kermit Maynard, Buck Jones, Gabby hayes, Bob Steele, Buster Crabbe, as well as those wonderful Art Deco Flash Gordon serials which were marvelous. Years later I began to write about the movies of my childhood and I was published in movie papers, especially Classic Images. Recently while surfing I came across a book by Sam Rubin, editor of Classic Images, and sure enough there was a listing in the 80s of two or three articles I had submitted to him. That was a kick in the pants. By the by, the best book that I ever read on the movies was by Manny Farber, “Negative Space,” bubble gum wise and crackling with New York City smarts and prose. One of the classic B movies of the 50s was Jimmy Cagney in “White Heat.” It really was an A movie all the way. Cagney, in a jail cafeteria scene, literally tears apart the film. Magnificent. So I was breast fed cinema milk during a time and place that only used the word movies.

By the way, the best candy at that time was jujy fruit, jujubes, and Goldenberg’s peanut chews. The best gum was not Bazooka — too sweet, but Dubble Bubble. And the best yo yo was Duncan, not Cheerio.

I am always intrigued by what bubbles up in mind when I have nothing to write but knowing there is always something.I really use this blog to write to myself because I have long realized that surfers seem to have little time to comment; I chalk that up to Americana, at this time in our culture. I blog to sustain a continuous conversation with myself — to express myself as clearly to me as possible. I have decided not to pay attention — not that I ever did — to what you, dear reader, need or want. I write to pleasure myself.  Given that “bold” statement, I will continue. I will now proceed to bite the hand that feeds me.

I have observed that some bloggers should not be blogging or representing themselves as reviewers. Many of them are readers, not reviewers. I find it particularly dismaying to find that there is some kind of bias to books of short stories, as if a short story doesn’t have weight or little plot or not much to munch upon. The expectations for stories are too grand at times and often not appreciated as much as an art form in itself. I learned how to write within the confines of a short story. Less is more. Readers complain about short stories that are plotless, as if that hasn’t existed for decades. Often I want to shout at these “readers” to discover Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” Joyce’s, “Dubliners,” Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” Harlan Ellison’s, “I Have No Mouth And I Want to Scream,” Salinger’s “Nine Short Stories,” Poe and Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and all the other wonderful writers down to Prioulx’s, “Brokeback Mountain.” Often these bloggers are into “giveaways” and “challenges” to see who can read the most books in a certain amount of time. I came across a blogger today who listed 1,024 pages read. Oh, I see. The appalling emptiness is beyond repair. At least Don Quixote read his tales of chivalry and became blinded to reality. These dunderheads just collect books for bragging rights. It reminds me of the Gilded Age and right now with the super rich who build libraries to display their books. We are a people of glut.

I go about my business, writing, trying to make inroads into myself. What a ridiculous occupation it is to write for marketing, selling, but what a wonderful time it is to write for one self without the exigencies of ambition, greed and money. I just want to get by, and what is sad and stifling about the culture I am in is that my existence is aggravating to some. I have to stay the course as everything about me tells me that I am blowing in the wind. Sometimes I look at people who I bump into or engage ever so slightly and realize I am really dealing with Macy Day balloons . . . It must be brutally difficult to raise children now. (The concept of play has died.)

Malcolm Campbell, writer and reviewer, at http://www.campbelleditorial.com/advice.html has composed a splended review of The i Tetralogy, saying that”The unrelenting power of Freese’s writing skills calls to mind the gritty horror and hopelessness of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front and the grim insanity of Dalton Trumbo’s story about a wounded soldier in Johnny Got His Gun.” Read the rest if you will. So, since 2005 “i” has become a sleeper, so sound asleep that it is rarely prodded to wake up. I am sitting on what Campbell calls a “masterpiece.” Indeed, a conundrum for me. I have the idiotic belief that the worth of the book will emerge. America tells me that the purpose of a book is secondary, that the writing of it is not as essential as the hoopla before you market it. I see. I see only too well. It is either too late for me to change or I choose not to change. In any case I stand firm. I write for me, not you, dear reader, and if you like the book or even admire it we can chat. The rest is persiflage. I have learned the worth of my book from myself. Others and close friends have expressed their admiration for what I have achieved. What else do I need? Well, I need money and lots of it; I need to have significant royalties — wouldn’t that be nice; I need recognition; I need to be on TV; I need access to Palin’s crotch in search of caribou stays in her corset; I need fame. What I really need is to puke!

Of late I’ve compiled short stories from here and there, cannibalizing longer works for what might be salvageable. I “maggot” my works. In so doing I have encouraged myself to write short stories about the Holocaust, once again. They all need dramatic revision but as a writer it is self-supporting to have a folder build up for what might make another book of short stories. The tentative title is: Tales of the Holocaust and Other Fun Stories. My humor comes from the devil’s anus. It is more than ghetto humor; it is humor that is noxious, reeking fumes and taking no prisoners. (See the short story in Down to a Sunless Sea titled “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Father Was a Nazi.”) I hope to come in about 130 to 150 pages. While that is fermenting, Sojourner, a quest novel of intention and meaning has been edited and will be re-edited again and then off to the publisher. What I am doing in my late sixties is returning to old efforts that I could not get to because family and living and earning were the priorities. And now I stave off mental death by going into the “resurrection” business. If it is junk, out it goes; but I am taken with some of my efforts and I use the expertise I have now, the training wheels taken off years ago, to improve the writing and the themes I wish to engage the reader with. Doubts, of course, always come with these recent efforts, but I go ahead anyway. As my sands flow through the hourglass, I am in a “rush” to complete some efforts — and what are these, reader? I’d like to see several novels on the shelf, perhaps two books of short stories, a book of essays, so that my children and their children’s children know that I came this way — that I loved very deeply one woman in my life (how fortunate!) and lost her; that I had suffered too much in my time; that as a secular Jew I was honored by my cultural heritage; that I never forgot who I was nor denied my Jewishness; that I did not waffle in life, that I took a stand, sometimes being in error; that I wrote my heart out to understand me and that my progeny should get that clear in their minds — write for you, always write for you, for in that is great understanding in life. Play the guitar, fife the flute, paint the oil, not so much for others , although that can be thrilling, but for the understanding, profound understanding, one learns about one’s self — that the artist is never poor.

I am writing from Arizona, the land of McCain, skin cancer, terrific one note weather, and my feelings and thoughts bring me back to the East Coast. I miss the stimulation, the rabid talk, the ornariness, the food (!), the inclement weather, the snow and rain, rude taxis, umbrellas, subways, carvel, pastrami on rye, the smells of fall, the fabulous looking women crossing the avenues, MOMA, Bloomingdale’s, SAKs, walking down Fifth Avenue during the Christmas Season, looking at the window displays that they take a year to prepare for. I miss life. What I have here in Arizona is a variant of life and for many this is sufficient. I am city-bred and I cannot let go of it. I may very well return . . . I may very well return. Don’t bury me on the high prairie — just bury me in a mountainous drift pushed to the side of the street by a snow plow. And with that, reader, I say adieu.

No matter how you look at Ms. Beehive she reads the same backward or forward. What is it in this culture that spews out such cartoon figures? And why is it that we take these caricatures to heart, pumping formaldehyde into their veins, standing them up and having them run for office? Here is a person who believes in Creationism, believes the Iraq war is god destined, refuses to read a book on homosexuality because it might bring conflict to that “brain” of hers and yet requests it be dropped from the library. I’ve come across this type of mentality throughout the ages — Joseph Smith, Torquemada, the Catholic Index, the Inquisition, the conquistadores, Strom Thurmond, Jessie Helms, all the Bushes, Dick Cheney, fascists, all who have been relegated to the dustbin of history after wreaking untold suffering. Sorry to say, Ms. Palin does not rise to this level of grotesqueness.  She is a mere upstart, the runt of the liiter and she reeks of that ambition that makes fools think they are wise. The old word is hubris and she is saturated in it. I feel that the best she really could manage is a regional dealership of Avon. Poor Palin has no real sense of her limits, the mark of someone with character and a fair knowledge of self. Heavily defended (I’d love to interview her parents), conditioned  by religion and society, a true believer, she appeals to the baseness in our species. The “I am tough stance” is appalling. Nuance is beyond her. Her “philosophy” is a gallimaufry of small town crackerjack wisdom and doctrinaire religiosity. It all reflects on how poor McCain’s judgment is. What I conclude is that it is absolutely true that in America a horse’s ass can run for office. I believe it was either Caligula or Nero who brought a horse into the Roman Senate and appointed him senator. Crazy as it was, it had some merit.

Allow me a measure of fulmination, as I take after how ridiculous we can be as a people — as individual human beings. I am not into parties, or political philosophies, the religious right (no pun intended), conservatism and all that other bullshit that comes into politics. I suffer from a deformed naivete which keeps me still hoping that rationality might affect us. It will not. Just forget about that. Working with people in therapy reveals the sad situation of us all — driven by drives we are unaware of; emoting without reflecting; pushed by the waves of passion, greed, ambition and inquisitiveness. I am not jaundiced, but I am not a fool and I have rendered down what I have experienced with people, metabolized that and have savored the total distateful brew of it all. It is hard not to be cynical which some wit said is the last refuge of an idealist. That has some truth to it. Thus, I have no expectations for this culture or the American people or the species, and in so doing I need not feel disappointed. People behave in a whole host of ways. It is like trying to follow the path of a snake — good luck! Palin represents the darker forces within us. If she and McCain win, I won’t leave the country, nor will I be surprised by this nation which voted in George Bush with millions still supporting him. We are a politically correct people because, to quote Phlip Wylie, we are a “Generation of vipers.” Think on this one thing: what we did in that Iraqi prison which we want to hide forever is an indelible statement about how we train our soldiers, how we rear our children in our schools and “small towns,” how we now accept torture as an American practice, how we have lost our way significantly. The species is in need of repair — it has always been so.

In the next cycle after all this craziness we will evaluate once more how mad we were at the turn of the century under George Bush. And historians and the smart folk among us will wag our heads and wonder how it came to be. And that is the nature of the species. Hopefully Palin will return to Alaska, slay more caribou, write her memoirs, be invited to speak at the opening of Georgie Bush’s new library, have barbecue in Arizona with the McCains, speak at the 2012 convention and spend her remaining years teaching abstinence to all her illegitimate grandchildren. We can make a good case that at the present time there is no such thing as hypocrisy. We dwell in entropy.

What is to be made of Palin? At this point she is a series of images to me. I am being conditioned as is the way in all societies. But I am on it. She presents herself or is presented as mother, caribou shooter, fisherperson (argh!), as a “barracuda,” as representative of small town values. At this point I usually gargle with mothballs to wake up my senses. Jefferson’s hope for an agrarian society is ancient history.  Farmers have long been off the farms. Conglomerates own farming. No one goes to Paducah to become enlightened. We are all city bound. So the true believers marinate themselves in this old myth. It has long since been extinguished. I’d rather have, if one must choose, the anomie of big city life than the ass sniffing nose of the PTA. All history has been the conflict between the individual and society; I’d rather work that out in a city. Palin appeals to the so-called rugged individualism of Americans, another myth.

A very small point of view is coming up now. In Arizona there are mountain roads that are fairly treacherous, although very scenic, if you are not cautious. I have observed that it would be quite easy to go off a turn and down a precipice in a second. I have ridden these roads. I have also noticed that guardrails are absent. I will now extrapolate. It is as if the state is telling you that you need to be careful, that it is up to you to be wary and that monies cannot be expended to put up guardrails –that you are on your own.  The attitude I pick up in this part of the southwest is that you have to manage for yourself, take care of yourself and that social security, at its core, is anti-individualistic. Sorry. I think the state should put up guardrails and that the state has to provide for the welfare of its citizens. Test my character in other ways and not my ability to drive.Tangentially, I would think twice if not thrice before shooting a caribou;not Ms. Palin who  is enriched with a great deal of testosterone. Manhood or womanhood must meet rigorous measures of sincerity in my mind than pulling a trigger. Again, all this is Americana. And the true believers suck it up and dip their minds into the gravy of nostalgia and hard-hearted if not hard-headed sentiment.

Small town America had its values, but it is not the value system, in my belief, for America as we exist in a global economy and internationally. Ms. Palin also is lacking in shame, but aren’t we all in this culture at this time? I find it disconcerting that she parades her daughter and boyfriend out on the dais  as if isn’t this all loverly; no it is not. The odds against a successful teenage marriage is very high. Because her daughter couldn’t keep her legs crossed and he couldn’t keep his fly closed is now expressed as a kind of randy charm. Clearly this lady who preaches abstinence has failed in her family. Well, families are like that, imperfect and messy “regimes.” And I am also disconcerted by having her infant child up on the dais. Infants are very much more sensitive and knowing than we give them credit for. The literature is immense on that fact. Ms. Palin leave the infant at home rather than as a tool to operate your ambition engine.

I, for one, do not want a small town brain operating at the highest echelons of government. I am not charmed by small town America. And this is Ms. Palin’s “charm.” I remember being stunned by McGovern’s loss to Nixon in 1972. He still is alive and is so vastly more superior to Nixon as a man; he is an honorable human being, as I read him. After that stunning defeat, I chose not to vote for years. It took me a while to metabolize that the American people preferred old, crusty, tough and hard and nasty and tricky Dick than someone who was immeasurabvly superior. i sense that all over again with McCain and Palin. McCain running on the Hanoi Hilton ticket, but then I can’t abide motorists who have purple heart veteran on their tags, as if this is the place to be honored. Tacky.

When I look at the tube and stare at Palin’s face hidden behind those deceptive glasses, I see small town beauty queen with the gonads of a truckdriver. I see hard. I see tough. I see a rage at the world. By the time you reach her level, you are hidebound and this is her antique appeal to the true believers. She is the new woman, a terminator, indestructible.  ”Resistance is futile.” In fantasy I see her giving a lap dance to Dick Cheney as metal gears and shifts grind.  Quick, the smelling salts. As I ask myself why such an animus to her, all I can offer is that anything as repetitive and retrograde as her persona I find eminently ridiculous. How best can I say it? She is a historical footnote, not the written page above.

I was a passed up child. I had to say that first. I will return to it in a while. As I near my end the past becomes sharper and sharper; or, to say it better, events or mild epiphanies seem clearer now. I just finished a short story tentatively titled “The Tea Table” or “The Tea Wagon.” I wish I were a better writer so that I could do it justice. It is a story taken from memory and elaborated upon. In short I believe around the age of 10 a Holocaust victim had brushed by me experientially; he was a wood refinisher and had stained a tea table we had. His work was impeccable. I recall how he had asked my parents if they would accompany him to the airport. It was an odd request to make. He was leaving to go to Israel, and this was about 1950. He pleaded with them to do so. They reassured him, but they could not comply. I feel my parents were not cruel or insenstive but I feel now that they could have done something more for him, as I was saddened by his plight and shaken by his terror.

I was passed up as a child is a free association that has much substance to it. I imagine it comes to mind with the fearful craftsman because I was not attended to, although my strife was that of a child, not a probable Holocaust victim who had been eviscerated psychologically.  Someone who mentored me as a psychotherapist, who is a very close friend, who has helped my family in several wonderful ways in order to attain our dreams, once said about how you go about understanding Matt Freese: “Matt needs to be felt.” I rubbed that for weeks as if it were a worry bead until I grasped the full intensity and realization behind it. That craftsman needed to be felt and perhaps I was the only one there trying out what it is to feel someone else’s anguish. I may be at times a schmuck, selfish, grandiose — pick your noun, but I feel. And no one taught me that. I was passed by as a child. All learnings were mostly garnered by me — “gather ye rosebuds while ye may, young virgins” comes to mind like a descending butterfly.

So 58 years have streamed by and this victim comes to mind; that is why “rosebud” is such a brilliant ending to “Citizen Kane.” For some reason, I remember well, I remember, very, very well. In a sense I lithograph memories to the cortex. And it is my not very unsurprising contention that my writer’s life has not been to create new but to metabolize and revitalize the ancient into new and sparkling prose creations. Apparently I — or you, if a writer, if not a writer — recycle our lives, trying to wring out of them meaning and much understanding. We squeeze memory like a lemon until the pips squeak, is that not so, reader? And in an ethnic comment, that is why memory is so vital to Jews. In memory we honor and keep alive in the present those who have come before and who have impacted upon us. In memory we reserve the dark halls of horrors of those who would immolate us. Memory is person. Memory is life. Memory is not the past. It is in the now.