Mathias B. Freese

Sabrina Williams has reviewed both of my books at Breenibooks, http://breenibooks.blogspot.com/.  Her reviews ( see them both at her site)  went far beyond what a writer might expect, especially her review of The i Tetralogy. So I responded very recently to her notice about POD reviewers and her open and diverse thinking about publishing on demand in general. Only today I had a blogger in her profile say that she did not accept self-published books. I feel that is narrow-minded, to say the least. Some bloggers, many? few? who knows, are inexpert in writing and in how to write a review, but for some odd reason here on the web they express literary airs. The aforementioned blogger also requested hardback review copies. Sense the latent meaning to that demand.

One thing led to another and Sabrina Williams has announced that a group of POP reviewers (see her site and announcements) are available for authors to submit their works. Some of the sites and individuals on that list are reputable if not knowledgeable about the field. As a POD author I am now one of her reviewers.

I urge you to read the list of reviewers, seek out their sites, review their efforts to decide if there is compatibility. In this light, read my 2 July blog in which I announced that I would review books, POD or not POD. Over the years I reviewed books for psychology journals as well as ezines. In that announcement I gave the “flavors” I like to review in literature. I also set out parameters. On this site are two queries for your perusaI. I use them to have my books reviewed or looked at by publishers. I prefer that the author send me a query with all the background data about the book as well as a statement of what the book is about. The query itself is a measure of an author’s ability to get to the point. It tells me if I am dealing with someone, quite frankly, who is trying to be serious about his or her craft. It is not a hazing process. It says much about the author. On the basis of that, I will request to see your book or kindly state it is not for me.

I will not attack you as a person — I have had that unpleasant experience by a demented blogger. I feel your ideas and how you express them or not is fair game. I am not afraid of dissenting with you or criticizing your ideas, or relishing how well you craft your work, or how insightful you are. You as a person will not be handled roughly, mark my words, but your content, whatever, is subject to my thought processes. That is why a query helps me assess what kind of book is being presented to me. Before you send off your book to a pod reviewer scan and study his or her site, your market for your work.

Finally, I do not enter “challenges” (see the previous blog) or hurry through a book so that I can impress other bloggers with how intelligent I am. You will have a professional writer reading your book who happens to have a blog. I will also bring to it my years as an English teacher and psychotherapist. I am serious but not somber about life. Send me your best effort and if you think it is fluff pass me by…Don’t worry, I only sound tough.

Kind Regards,

Matt

I’ve written on this blog before about this need to read and collect books as if trophies. Specifically, on many blogs there are “challenges,” which means, I gather, to read as many books as possible over a week-end, or a year. The challenges can be focused: mysteries, or an author, thematic tasks. One blogger lists the amount of pages he has read in a year. I flashback to a graduate course in English in which the instructor told us that it took him at least an hour to go through a story or a chapter by Henry Adams, underlining, commenting to himself on the margins. The implication was that such a craftsman needed time and consideration in order to value his prose or the strength of his ideas. Perhaps there is a direct line between this kind of reading and the kind of “reviews” that are generated. Apparently the amount counts or is an important status to be garnered, how many franks you can put away in a Coney Island contest. No one says or alludes to the possiblity that all this reading does not lead to anything or any viable learning(s) for the reader. It is conspicuous consumption by the nouveaux riche dilettante. It is peacock time, look at how many books I’ve read, a schoolyard tease that I am smarter than you are. What I want to say to these literary thugs is that books are dead matter. One learns, if one learns how to do this, that books do not give wisdom. Life gives wisdom.  (Given all the books written about and against war in all the libraries across the world, we still have not learned to kill one another!)  And, of course, we don’t teach our young to learn from daily life — we codify them, we moralize them, we imbue them with guilt. We root them in past experience so that daily living, intensely, is literally unthought of. There is no awakening of intelligence.  Ironically, I say to you to buy a copy of Krishnamurti’s Think on These Things and read his first chapter on the significance of education. Next to Walden I give copies of this book to young people to help them on their way. To read all these books aimlessly and to display the “erudition” in reading them is folly, a very good and old word. Bloggers are often virtual lint.

Satiety, glut and gluttony are the order of the day across this culture. Many bloggers preen their books so as to be admired. I will not hem or haw about blogging being this or that. In general, there is an obsession with the “me” and the “more.” Few make the connection to what happened to the mind of Don Quixote. Bloggers hoard the reading of books as if they will be rewarded. A Russian master penned a short story in which a man has to pay off a debt. He is “sentenced” to a room which is a library, containing thousands of books. After many years he walks out of the room earlier than he should have, therefore forefeiting the debt and, if I remember this correctly, he harbors no resentment or anger to his captors. What is being telegaphed is that his having read  all these books over the years tempered him, instructed him, brought him to awareness. I don’t buy it, although artfully expressed. Books can condition you, they can fill you up, for good or bad, sandpaper your rough points, move you into fantasy and worlds unknown, and on and on.  They are not life and will never be. The above fable is sweet and conventional and naive. I read books to nudge me, not to teach or condition me. Books, for me, are diving boards, no more, no less. To amass books as if to say you are learned is to be a horse’s ass and many bloggers are, indeed, addled and confused about reading and literature. Show and tell is what these blogs are about. And what an inane school exercise that was. Reflective thinking, I think not. Sternberg: “Pinlight on Miss Dietrich, Please.”

I have also observed what I have observed about human nature in general, that we are often outer-directed rather than inner-directed, that we are more often true believers than not, that we are lemmings rushing to the cliffs ahead, that we are hordes, that we are followers,  the list is endless. Blogs reflect much of this. Nothing unusual about it. Bloggers who kiss one another’s asses. Bloggers who cow and fawn before other bloggers. Bloggers who are virtual ignoramuses. And there are bloggers who do not review books but review the author — lovely. Bereft of knowledgeable backgrounds, claiming that they are not reviewers but go ahead and attempt to review in any case, disclaimer or no disclaimer, often the author is merged with what he has written as if Melville himself rode a whale or Kafka lived in a penal colony. Well, yes, in a literary and imaginative way, they do all that. However, some bloggers confuse reality with art. I remember a witty rejoinder by a woman writer in the 60s who said she would refuse to shake Philip Roth’s hand after reading Portnoy’s Complaint. Because I was a psychotherapist and this is cited on my bookcover, often my stories are dismissed or criticized because of their analytic salt and pepper. What if I reveal that more than half of them were written before I had ever entertained being a therapist. What if I proffer that I read Freud but did not consciously set out to lubricate my stories with his learnings. It is fascinating to observe how often the preface to my book and the blurbs are metabolized into “prose” so that the blogger can knock off another book “read.” Granted, reviewers have time pressures and pr materials are cannibalized for that beginning paragraph or so. However, I have had brilliant reviews and some not so brilliant. The ones that are insightful reflect a mind at thought and not a collector looking for a place on his shelf. In short, it is a very imperfect world and I am getting dirtied in the sandlot. So, what is to be done? I just try to find bloggers who can write a decent review and have read decent books and appear to be decent human beings.I grind my teeth when I come across a blogger who spends so little time with my book so that he or she can get on with another; all this can be detected in the review itself. So, I catch myself, maintain few expectations and teach these bad people to behave by writing another story. It is in my art that I define me. To write is to hide or defend oneself against the world. I like that. I will keep at that. And there is no stopping me.

Adieu.

It sounds biblical, but from out of the whirlpool something speaks to me. Around me stories are being lived. David Herrle has a mother-in-law in the hospital and his wife is distraught…Ben Rapoport in upstate Canaan, New York is aging with his Parkinson’s…My son, Jordan, just left Chicago for New York with his present squeeze for an upstate tour of Canaan, New York where we had a summer home for 14 years. And Jane and I have made plans for a trip to Chicago to see my son upon his return. On 8 November he will be 32…We both cannot believe that…I muse about Uncle Mike who I haven’t seen in decades. He is over 90 now. I dedicated one chapter of The i Tetralogy to his son and my cousin, Howard, who died in an accident at 21…Surrounded by stories around me, I seek not to know their endings. I am intrigued about their fits and starts. Much is withheld from us, much we withhold from ourselves. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, the saying astutely proffers. 

I have always been philosophic in my thinking processes; perhaps a consequence of observing too much as a child and young person. As I reflect back i sense that I took in without processing and my entire adult life has been one of metabolizing all those threads of existence one encounters as one grows up. It is a cliche but amply true that there are more stories and novels in any one’s childhood to last a lifetime. I am sure if you are old enough you might agree that as we age the past becomes clearer, also a cliche but a truism as well. We see things uncluttered by relationships, connections, obligations, musts and shoulds. We become a little better at deconditioning ourselves so that we see lucidly. I will argue that all the books and stories I have written are simply re-digested experiences at one level or another, disguised from you, sometimes from me. i did not know that the book Grandma Flora gave me as a very young boy, Jewish tales and Legends, I believe, would play a part in the writing of The i Tetralogy. But it did. Freud argued that nothing is ever really forgotten, suppressed, yes, repressed, yes, forgotten, sure, but everpresent, ready to be rescued from the subliminal self. So when I go to write I often dwell inside of myself, seek questions and answers from selves I have to reintroduce myself to. I greet the nether me and ask of myself what questions I need to pose to advance my writing or my self-understanding. Perhaps my philosophizing is a defense against being pragmatic — or dirt real; or, perhaps, it is a defense that keeps me away from me, a siren’s song that blinds me to the truth, whatever that might be. Perhaps I need to be safe and secure so I wind myself up into words, phrases and highfalutin thoughts. Perhaps. Perhaps. You know, dear reader, I am too old to be frightened by my very self. And what a curious remark that is.  Do we come, you, me, that person there, her, him arrive at some point in life that we serendipitously make peace with ourselves? I do feel less divided than before, more coherent and cohesive than ever before. Ssssh! I think I am at the height of my powers, whatever they are. I feel strong and certain and resolute. Yes, resolute! That is a sweet feeling to have.

As I said in the previous blog, I am working time. Testing it, trying it out, putting a spin on it with my fingers as I curve it into your space while we play boxball, you and I. I am working on comprehending not only who I am — the ever question, like the ever tidal flows across the span of the world’s oceans, but how to best serve me as I wade through the thick ephemera which is time, the cotton candy of time’s trespass, all fluffy and inconsequential. All is flux. All is sound and fury signifying nothing. In that cosmic and personal change I grasp at a straw — can I? may I? in some intelligible way direct its course. Give me a rudder I shout out and I will give you a direction, I boldly declaim, like a crewman on the Pequod.

Struggling with time is struggling with meaning, one and the same thing, in my mind. What is to be done with time as it courses and meanders through our lives? The days go by as we think we use them. I don’t believe there is a human being on this planet who has a real handle on how to use time effectively which connotes industrialism; rather, one  who dispenses time as one might put on cologne, atomizing it, spritzing over your head and going beneath it to be sweetly inundated in essences. No methods exist for manipulating time. That is a fool’s fantasy. I speak of time that makes this moment and the next part and parcel of the time ahead. All this comes to mind as I am planning a trip to see my son, Jordan, in Chicago in about four weeks. I choose to see him for my mental health. I need to get away from the geriatric ghetto I moved into here in Green Valley, Arizona. I choose to visit with him because how many visits do I have left to see him as he lives so far away.  I am not being maudlin, I am being very pragmatic and realistic. It is getting close to the time in which I need my luggage packed.I  have questions to ask him as a father, I have queries to pose to him, and I need to hear him on different levels as a man and son. I want to be ready (ha!) when the bell tolls. All lives are incomplete. However, i know, I hope, my children will read my books after I am gone, for they say almost everything about me I can imagine to say. They are my autobiographical history, here fictionalized, here non-fictionalized, all for the telling and sharing. So, in a way I have “captured” time. Not really, but I feel delusions serve good ends at times.

I muse now. We cannot plan time — we think we can. We clock it, we digitalize it; we divide it. We organize for it. We make holidays from it. We create years on calendars ahead. We look backwards upon time and call it tradition or history. We look forward and call it future. What we have not mastered is how to dispense or disperse it moment to moment so that we savor its strength and sweetness, for in time things develop and grow, children become adults, passion cools, reason becomes wisdom and the world changes while often we stagnate. I am curious about time at 68. I have no need to extend it. It is not hambuger helper. I want to enter it, seek out its struts, how it rests on its fundament, what makes it “tick.” In every tick is present slipping into past. The poet said, “Gather ye rosebuds, young virgins, while ye may,” or words to that effect. I believe that is true at any age and I am trying again to play with, to understand, to realize, to figure out the measure of time given to me. I know while I write time stands still. I know while I write that I am doing something vitally important for me in the second. As my fingers trounce upon the keyboard, I feel a suspended animation, as if the ultimate referee calls time out. Other than writing I would like to acquire a similar feeling in my living of the day. The trip to Chicago is an act in time, to shape and sculpt it for the experience that lies ahead with my son, my family. What must it be like to live on a daily basis having that same intention?  As i said earlier I am struggling with that. I write about it here, I think about it, and I muse about it. The desire is to squeeze the lemon until its pips squeak. I do know that one can become frantic and not a little hysteric and overwrought when the realization huits that one is not immortal and one has not done well with time. Ironically the con says in despair that he’s doing time. It might be wise to ask a convict, in fantasy, how he sees time. For those outdoors and free, I will argue that we are in a different prison as well. We think we are free and using time. We are not. We are merchandising time, using it to produce things. Ask a real artist and I imagine for him time is virtual, that is, it is lived within a flow within the minute and within the hour. An artist has no sense of time as he creates.

For the artist, for the creative soul time stands still; he enters this house and dwells for a while. However for the mass of mankind, most of us do not ask the questions we should as we are conditioned to seek answers. I am asking all kinds of questions as I bathe in time, washed by a liquid and a solvent I do not truly grasp. One question that I pose is this: how can I use time creatively, productively, intensely so that I feel at the end of a minute, hour or week that I have accomplished an end or did something or performed significantly? I believe these are pragmatic concerns and because they are pragmatic they leave out something beautiful and magical if not soul-stirring. How can I be with time so that I ride its crest, so that I am both time and not of it, that I feel purposeful, meaningful? I imagine what I really feel is a need to attain  union with my existence so that I feel at one. In that attainment death is not to be feared. It is only an agent, one among many, of time itself.

i have been informed that comments are not being registered. If you want to reach me for a book review or other matters, email me at ifreese@hotmail.com. I am working on having it mended. Parenthetically, to other Wordpress bloggers, I don’t know about you but the so-called “help” provided by Wordpress is ridiculously arcane and I find myself trying to learn early Mayan. For an environment geared and dramatically rooted in communication, English is becoming Aramaic. It reminds me of cars today. Wait on the road for the towing company. Open the hood and there is nothing you can reasonable do except to sigh. Oh, for the days of of carburetors.  How about: Comments are not being recorded. Press Comment Repair and follow instructions.  What we have now and for some time as well is geek speaking to geek, techie speaking to techie, all those computer specialists who cannot write a declarative sentence. So if you try to work it out yourself you are stymied. You have your hands bound behind your back, you legs trussed up and a hood put over your head as they deep six your into the nether world of Jobs and Gates. Resistance is futile.

I’m sitting at my desk wondering what to write about.  The dynamic duo come to mind, McCain and Palin. It is tragic that the best we can offer is the Iditarod idiot and and a very disheveled Don Quixote tilting his lance at Anheuser-Busch distributorships. I don’t believe that the American people deserve better. I believe we get what we want. I am not that crazy about Obama as well. He has to explain to me why he knew about Ayers and heard his good reverend’s splenetic tirades over the years and did not distant himself from both. Of course, he did not pal around with Ayers but he knew his history. I do not believe in redemption — too “religulous” for me. What irks me about Obama is the unwillingness to answer the question right on, not his association with these men. He is good at giving nuanced answers. I’ll take a nuanced answer if he answers why he knew about Ayers background and did not remove himself from that. Let me get to the quick. I would not shake hands with Mel Gibson, Wagner, T.S. Eliot, Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Mencken, Dickens, Orwell, Bertrand Russell, FDR and his State department, Louis Farrakhan, Pat Robertson, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindbergh. So, I view Obama as unclean in terms of giving a rigorous response or reply to a rigorous question: “You knew, sir, of Ayers’ background. Why did you then still associate with him?” I accuse you of nothing. I need to know your answer to make an informed decision about my vote.

Of late Mutt and Jeff have pandered to racism. When that malfunctioning woman called Obama an “Arab,” McCain’s response was lame. Rather, he should have taken her on. What is wrong in being an Arab? He would have, in my eyes, dealt with her racism right then and there. Palin is beyond insufferable. I read “payback” in her mentality, a kind of vindictiveness if need be. She is so over her head that as an American I have to wait while she “bones up” on general American history. An ignoramous of the first order, I do not underestimate her craftiness and excessive ambition. Woe for this nation, if we really believe she is the best we can have. Parentheticaly, many do. May I inform you, reader, the yahoos have always been in charge.

Back to McCain. Driven by disordered personal demons — vanity, ambition, high-powered neediness, he gives being “old” a bad name, for it speaks of overweening pride, rigidity, stubbornness, tunnel vision, and dogmatism. I do not see a reflective person in him, a ponderer. When he got on his white horse like the generals of old and galloped into Washington, pennants flying high, flags unfurled, he crashed into himself, giving birth to a stillborn. It was beyond a stunt. It was poorly thought out. He is a limited man which probably makes him perfect for the presidency. It is an old historian’s wisdom that by the time you run for president you have been so sandpapered by corruption, deals, weak compromise and lobbyist ointments that you represent nothing, a tabula rasa for the people to project their needs upon, the Lockean social contract, indeed.

When McCain chose Palin for the second part of his ticket I realized his judgment was poor, his actions and behavior erratic and unthought through.  Palin is a political catastrophe and I believe he really lost the election with that choice. Or, he may win it. If you have been polluted by TV while growing up, have developed cataracts from playing games, and have a mind made up of bumper stickers, Palin is the one. I won’t ask what was the last book she read — too elitist; I will ask: what was the last clear series of thoughts that came to mind, that you thought about considerably, that you brought to fruition, that you assayed as worthless or not? And please spare me governance; I speak of the personal inner kind. She is a product of causes, she has, to my eyes, a conditioned mind, consequently  she is a flagrant exemplar of what Americans admire — the marketeer.

So Mutt and Jeff, one the empty bottle, the other the empty contents, give some Americans what they want to hear. Americans love to be soothed by con men and women — the history is long for that. I prefer my politicians corrupt and shady, a prerequisite for their running, in my mind. All I want, naive me, is honesty, ha! about their foibles. Never to be gotten.  The difference between McCain and Obama is that one has a better soda can to sell. Are these the best choices we could have? Of course, not. The very sad thing is that given what faces us as a people nationally and internationally we have very few options in our leaders. By the by, I don’t need a leader, I require a mensch. What about you?

In the last 7 to 10 days I have been beset by yahoos, that Swiftian nomenclature for libidinous creatures, low in intellect, high in passion, applying no rationality to their lives. it was Theodore Dreiser who said that out of a thousand human beings nine hundred and ninety nine are bastards. I submit he has a strong point. What does one do when fools seem to be even in your soup?  What I do is try to turn inward, that inner self that is impervious — hopefully — to the inclemencies brought about by human nature. In this space I dwell, set my GPS to home, and navigate there. I take things to heart although a very wise human being has advised me not to expect too much of human beings. In so doing I would not be disappointed with them. I see that, I know that. I am working on all that.

When I work on myself I recall memories, often memories that strangulate my heart and soul, such as the death of my wife in 1999. I abide in that memory for it gives me succor, that old-fashioned word so rich in  biblical meaning. Indeed, when I have to be adversarial or stronger than I really am, I go back to her being on a gurney —  dead, in lifelike repose. From this no human being can touch me. I become a lion. As she would, I imagine, want me to be. I do not limp, nor stutter, nor have macular degeneration. I am only hypertensive, aren’t we all? I am not grossly obese. I am just aging. However, if you sense me without looking at my bodily apparatus, if you acutely listen to me over weeks and months, you might imerceptibly realize that I am damaged beyond all repair. I lost Rochelle. And so as I work on myself, as I try to focus on what is essential, what is important and what is not important, all I can share with you, reader, is my belief that daily life should have a measure of reflection and consideration. I believe the most critical thing I might say to another human being is: “You are not a serious human being.” Serious, of course, does not mean somber; however, to live day by day, as markets fall because people panic, while racism wafts through our politics, without posing questions to oneself is to go awry, one piston missing. What is that old Chinese cliche that, to wit, one should live in difficult times. I’d revise that, change it all around. One should be condemned to posing questions without waiting for answers. And so for me working on my self is asking questions, especially ones I cannot answer. Why am I under attack of late? Who cares for me regardless of my imperfections? Why do people herd together and act as a mob? How do I generally handle adversity? What strengths prevail within my inner climes? Why can I be led astray and allow myself to be intimidated?How resourceful can I be while assailed? What is in my nature that makes me face the wind, much like the horse whereas the cow turns its ass to the wind to let it blow over him?

It is very hard, is it not? to stand fast. We are not taught that. We either observe that quality in relatives while growing up, or friends, teachers, or characters in books perhaps. Or we are tested, as I have been, by the cruel realities of life — loss, abandonment, death, the jujy fruits of existeence. I associate to what my son, Jordan, told a rabbi who was asking us about Rochelle, as wife and mother, at the day of her funeral services. He wanted to know something of the woman. Gently, my son stopped him to say a few telling words. “Rabbi, my mother taught us to get on with things, to handle all kinds of emergencies.” In short, to be strong, to persevere. Perhaps Rochelle said that in words or perhaps he observed that in her over the years. He shared a learning I had never been privy to. The rearing of my son (23) ended on that mournful day. I no longer had a son. I had a man by my side. Oh, the rabbi looked at me and in that look was everything a parent needed to understand about how he saw my son.

I have monies in the funds, but I am so constructed I cannot get too upset about all this as I observe human nature imploding upon itself. I have learned, I have been trained, I have observed all this, to expect all this. And I fear not. I have little or no fear. I lost all fear in 1999. Understand that about me, and you understand all that needs to be said. To work on oneself is to take on fear, to take it in the mouth like Jesus took in the centurion’s vinegar soaked sponge. Whenever I get rattled or fearful or tremble, I recall what the blessed Benzion Rapoport, told me: “It’s fear, Matt.” The implication is that I must render that impotent, not the issue itself. Fear first, everything after that. And so I say adieu, enough.

I have had several issues before me these last six months; one is litigious –and no words on that. I am surrounded by issues, like us all, that have beset me, causing the wheels of my mind to work. I am trying, as I have in the past, not only to keep focused on what is or is not essential to living, but to rationally see my way out several externally imposed mazes. I am in a labyrinth not of my own making, at least not in most instances. I have no Ariadne to lead me out. I have only me. And what else is new? Jane tells me that she admires or appreciates or is cognizant that I continually work on my mental health — should I work on yours? I talk to myself during the day, sometimes ranting or muttering out loud while driving the car. I highly recommend it, for it discharges tension but it also gives word to feelings and emotions. If writers can read their dialogue out loud to test for verisimilitude, I can surely engage myself verbally to deal with the hardcore issues of everyday living.  I think in terms of choices, always choices, as I used to advise my clients when I practiced. I sometimes view myself as a client, give it a diagnosis, and proceed to deal with it somewhat realistically, somewhat therapeutically so as to effect not an answer, but a better question to ask so as to get myself out the ditch as the rear tire is spinning against slush.

In a metaphysicial sense, to wit, I pose questions about my mortality — I am 68 — knowing full well I can conk out at any time, but I rally to the sensibility that today and this moment is all I have and I try to do meaningful things — and that is a hard thing to decide to do as life is filled with exigencies and economic tethers and messy relationships, all wrapped up in a burrito of unclear options, fuzzy thinking, fantasies and simply undoable thoughts. In this goulash I struggle to write, to write this blog for me — not you, dear reader, not really, not ever. I struggle to decide if a trip miles away to have a New York bagel and read the New York Times is worth it. It often is if I can escape from Green Valley, this retirement morgue. Should I buy my girl a pair of expensive cashmere lined leather gloves at Coach? You bet I say yes even if I am up to my neck in bills, many not of my making. I choose to live now, in the moment. I am frugal, but not cheap; I am generous with money, for it is a frivolous concern grounded in nettles and burrs. I seek pleasure in a good olive, in looking at art, and writing has given me pleasure, and reviews good and bad, have helped clarify me to me as a writer — scorned, detested, praiseworthy, awarded prizes, the received esteem from colleagues. You put yourself out on the line when you publish. It takes guts.

I have reached a conclusion about myself. If I died today, I believe I have done my life’s task. I published a few books and have succeeded with some success so that I appreciate myself as a writer. I have a close relationship with my son but not with my daughter. This saddens me, but if I died I know I have reached out to her through the years. I have been unkind to people as I look back now, but I was young –no exuse, callow — no excuse, and did not know better. However, in recents years I have not set out purposefully to do harm, for it is not in my character to do so. If i were to die today, I believe I have a good handle on who I am. I have struggled for years with that and continue to do so. Without the analytical jargon, I am a wounded soul, naive, impulsive, spontaneous as well, generous to a fault, unrealistic at moments, kind, feeling, impassioned, intellectual and deeply feeling, compassionate and angry at the world’s injustices; I do not hate but I can sneer and hold others with contempt. I have a grand sense of humor; i am a secular Jew, not a religious one, proud of the Jewish contribution to the world; I saturate in memory, like another Jew, Proust; I stand up for myself; I have a good measure of integrity; grandiose at moments; depressive, ornery, but like madras, I bleed in many different colors. My life has been a holocaust ( small “h”) with great moments of horror in it — the death of my wife Rochelle in an automobile accident and the suicide of my daughter, Caryn, in 1998. I have had days and despair that to me were unworldy. Yet I persist. And if I died today I have sailed my skiff to the territory ahead, as Twain called it, alone, hand on the rudder, with a measly tattered sail and without compass, battered and beatened about. To arrive is not in the cards. To struggle, I have learned, is all there is and in that is meaning. So I am a Jewish Sysyphus.

What does one do with the days in hand, and what does one do with the days and hopefully the years yet to come? I have some answers, but I am working on better questions to get at that. Even today in “retirement,” whatever that gargoyle is, I am trying to figure out or imagine what to do with my self — do I write which I am doing now? Do I plan for a future trip? Do I think of seeing my son in Chicago? Do I think about yesterday’s letter to my daughter asking if she might consider reconciling with me? It comes down to how each one of us manages time; it is a critical “administrative” skill. How does one go about sucking the juice from the lemon? How does one take strengths and personal attributes and convert them into an engine of discovery, exploration and deeds? How does one take the very fiber of the day and granulate it? How does one metabolize existence into whatever mist it becomes? And so the questions compound like interest.

Well, I am at an end. The psychological rant, the eruption, has eased. I want to thank myself for being such a meaningful annoyance. I think we all should creat an imaginary pest that looks like us and that we can keep on a leash.

By this coming Monday I will make a pleasant announcement about a writing contest I won; it is a good start for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. I will have more to say about that next week. Ironically, I submit stories and prose pieces to the Society of Southwesterm Author’s yearly contest. I won first place in 2005 for an essay. Since then fiction and essays have been rejected. However, whenever I lose this contest I win big time elsewhere; I am thinking of submitting work here on a regular basis, for it has become a lucky charm. Two short stories and two essays were shot down and then published shortly after. “Cameras as Remembrances of Things Past” lost this year’s contest in prose but just won at a literary ezine. More on that win this Monday.

Watching Fox news and the conditioned minds of Hannity, Von Susteren, the pontificating Rove, the fire hydrant personality of O’Reilly, I am sadly amused how they throw around the word “socialism.” In their minds it really means Communism.  I recall as a history major studying socialism in Contemporary Civilization at Queens College. For most of the 19th Century western civilization was moving in that direction. It all ended with the Bolsheviks in 1917. In other words Socialism is distinct from Communism and has a respectful and honorable history. The American public has no mind for distinctions — never did, probably never will. And if we are a  nation of Joe six-packs as Palin pitches her woo, woe is us.

Palin appeals to the Neanderthal in us. Smart women are appalled by her. The fact that she has ovaries does not make her suitable for vice president. Compare her to John Adams. Well, that is unfair. Or Jefferson. Unfair, again. Compare her to Quayle and now you are talkin’. When Quayle pressured that kid in school to add an “e” to potato, I knew we were in deep trouble. So Palin appeals to what is base in us, what is empty in us, what is diminished. Here, as a people, we are rightly indignant about the bailout for Wall Street which is, in effect, our collusion with the marketeers. Yet, Palin appeals to our nether selves and we buy into it. So-called educated pundits just reveal their narrow biases and reality becomes so distorted that I feel I am reading Animal Farm, that socialistic novel! Ignorance is strength, baby! Palin’s latent bumper sticker.

Our plutocracy has been caught with its drawers down. And now we will begin to regulate, once again, a la Roosevelt, rampant capitalism. And we call that, in some quarters, socialism.  I wouldn’t mind that for a while as a countervailing response.  The real culprit in all this is human nature. The stock market is human nature on bi-polar spins. Palin is a true believer, reared on pablum, superficial American dreams, unbridled ambition with the mind of a conquistador who is pressed to pee. She will lose, one hopes. It is not my faith in America that makes me feel that. It is my hope that reason may still hold sway. After the Holocaust, nothing is unacceptable — or impossible. We are an exceedingly corrupt culture and that is my take on this civilization. Georgie will go off to Crawford, Texas and barbecue his Texas brisket while over 4,000 Americans will lie mouldering in their graves and over 30,000 wounded — wounded for life. He will build his library, filled with Harlequin romances, give it to Laura every 9 days and go to his death unalarmed or aware of his hideous actions. The American Dream.

Long ago I gave up having expectations of my fellow man,  and I have begun to feel less stressed. I am a human being stationed in a country called The United States of America. My allegiance is to the planet, not a nationalistic state. I am always working on deconditioning myself, to be free of the lacquer that is applied to us by parents and patriots (really scoundrels). Thank god that there is the grim reaper. At least it ends the travail. If I were a parent once again, I’d rear my kids (I did) to work on being free of the pollutants of television, religion and politicians, the crud of this culture. And thankfully, most of my meaning in life has come from this — especially that my kids are free of me. After all, I don’t own them. I lease them.

The trouble with me is that I care. Gee, I have to work on that!