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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!

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.

I feel it percolating but it has not found its egress as yet. The unconscious presses upon me much in the way you feel the need to urinate, that bodily pressure. So hello, unconscious. Ah, it sees an opening. I just sent off my copy of Bambi versus Godzilla, a recent book (2007) by David Mamet, writer, actor and playwright. He did the screen plays for “Hoffa” and “The Untouchables.”  At times he slows to sludge but then like a phoenix he soars. His takes on actors, screenwriting and movies are terrifically acute, given his background as writer and director. Of course, he draws upon his ethnicity and laces his prose with yiddishisms which are always apt. Some smart wit said that Yiddish is Jewish rap, in that it is for a special group while keeping outsiders out. So true. However, as I stray in this paragraph, Yiddish words have become part of the American lexicon. “Putz,” “schmendrik,” and the glorious “schmuck” are commonplace, so commonplace a whole new generation doesn’t know their derviation. By the by, the above three words are Yiddish for penis; however, the smallest dick is a schmendrik — go away, don’t bother me; the second, if I have this right, in size is the schmuck. The putz is enormous and god bless you all and a merry Christmas at that. An anecdote of some note, and only from New York City: there was a law case brought from one councilman against another in the city council because one was referred to as a putz. Now these are fighting words. Imagine in court how that had to be defined, explained and adjudicated.

Back to Mamet. (That unconscious has opened up completely now, so hold on.) He takes after Olivier, finding him starch; he lauds Tony Curtis in “The Boston Strangler” and “Some LIke It Hot.” He likes Endfield’s “Zulu,” which is very intense and exciting. He cites “Gun Crazy” as a top-notch film noir. Jordan, my son, is several things as an artist and one is that he does screenplays; I forwarded the book to him knowing full well that when we read that which we like — or don’t like – it falls like talcum powder upon the unconscious mind. As Freud said brilliantly, nothing is  ever forgotten (give that some measured thought).  It may be suppressed (conscious effort) or repressed (unconscious effort), but it is there. Remember that when working with children and your spouse. — and your self.

Today I am lying fallow, as most of the week is spent in retirement twaddle. I read blogrolls for potential reviewers; I read emails to see if I can market the book into other areas; I think; I write books that go nowhere, but I am used to that, having written short stories over a period of three decades with little encouragement except my own inner grit. I fight off despair or whiffs of sticky depression, as I was reared in that tar and have spent not an inconsiderable part of my life pulling away and out of that. A very wise therapist once wrote that one of the major characteristics of an able therapist is that he should have had a depressive for a mother. I did. And what did the therapist wisely say, that the capacity to “hold” within you the torture tinctures of mother’s depression, not to be eroded by that, but to contain it, serves very well when clients come to you as a therapst. A client’s pain and anguish as well as rage and fury can wear upon the therapist, unless he can hold a great deal of shit in his pot without being destroyed. My pot is as large as the crater in Arizona. Who knew that mom was rearing me to be a shrink?

Are you wagging your head about the twists and turns Freese’s unconscious is taking him today? C’mon, let us see what other mental lint is in the stream of consciousness. It is a beautiful Arizona morning as I look out the bay window which is behind my desk. The sun and blue skies, the sun and blue skies, always the sky and the sun, that fireball in the sky. I was thinking last night how I would like to be in New York when the first half inch of snow dusts the streets, covers railings and sills and I crunch along the pavement reveling in the sheer wintry beauty of it. I miss the seasons, I miss the clothing for each season, I am sullied by the same weather every day here in Arizona. Perfection sucks. I am a seasonal person and I have wishes to return to my enclave: imagine this, dear reader — the snow is fresh, falling lightly, the streets are getting a coating and I am in a good diner or bistro-bakery having a cup of joe with a butter-slathered bialy. You know, if I had my family around me, close and dear ones, it wouldn’t be a bad time to kick off — almost as gravitationally holding as “Rosebud.”

Adieu.

I have to turn to something else. Writing my new “book” is fatiguing me and the subject is intense so that I have transferred  to the blog to calm down. I’ve noticed that over the past week or so that I write fewer blogs; the unconscious needs time to fill up before it decants itself. I have been writing about “emptiness” versus “awareness” and I have chosen in my parody to take the side of emptiness. And as I sink into my empty self I am struggling to define what it is to be fully empty, that is an oxymoron in a way. The annoying thing is that often i start something and all along the process I feel it will not work and I am feeling this is so in my new effort. Call it the old depressive in me.

I persevere. I slog through my own verbal shit, now and then coming upon some worthy phrase or insight, perhaps outsight; after all, I am writing about emptiness and I am beginnging to feel there is merit in that stance. What i want to do is go after all the Dyers, Dr. Phils and Chopras who hawk awareness as a commodity. I find all three galling, experts supposedly on their own internal states and then like Joseph Smith selling the snake oil to others, so vastly American. Like religion, these awareness peddlers are the “dragon at the gate.” Perversely, I make a case for emptiness as I throw the gauntlet down. To make it “fun” or digestible, I use humor, ha ha, quizzes, anecdotes, all the paraphernalia of the self-help book. And quite frankly I go after the holies of our culture –Mother Teresa, religion (easy target), hard work, et al. It is quite enervating but I like to snarl at what I feel are the apparitions of bullshit in this culture.

What I intend to do with this short pamphlet or slim book is to self-publish it and give it away as a throwaway. My business card, if you will. I have no doubt that this book has percolated away from consciousness for many years, for its sourness and misanthropy have long been with me. One of the great moments of literature is when at the the end of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver is on a raft, isolated, desolate. When by chance he is discovered by a boat, at first he refuses to come aboard. It is a great moment, for he has seen enough of human nature that the thought to be with others of his kind nauseates him. Bravo!

On this blog I feel free to blather and blather I do. When I began in September 2007 I introduced myself and my intent for this blog. I hold true to it. it is a Thoreauvian puddle, of a kind. I find it useful to write to myself each day as a way of emptying ballast. Very few people respond to bloggers, I have noticed, I have read. I find it interesting that on some sites thousands have visited and maybe 30 to 40 comments are left. Do you have a thought about that? I do. Whatever! I go on quite oblivious to you as you are to me. And so it is in this culture. I believe that a sincere and good writer, leave great writers to history, are writers — this is only a self-centered belief on my part — who are discontented. I know where my discontent lies. And that is for me to work out and work it out I do every time I sit down to express myself. As I said to someone who tried to pin me down like a Nabokovian butterfly with a pin through its thorax, that I am happily discontented – lovvve that oxymoron. Like Indian madras, she had trouble handling the running colors.

I tire and end on this note.

I had a lovely essay completed and somehow it was lost. I used to get bent out of shape about that but I know that an asteroid is hurtling through space at our planet and with that as comfort I will redo the essay. I have a potpourri of things to say, associations and mental quiltwork to express. What has gotten my writing interest of late is The Optimist’s Rag, a parody of a self-help book that I am personally having fun with. I want it to be so dry and savage that one might mistakenly take it for the real thing, whatever that is. I leaven it with puns and dry humor and wild ideation interspersed among the serious and savage things I have to relate. If you will see the Ten Canons and the talk I gave to the Stony Brook Psychology society in 1990 under Pages you will see a very serious effort at getting at self-awareness. Well, I take after myself. I comment on each of the essential parts and parody it. That was interesting to do. The essential theme of the book is that emptiness, empty people and acutely empty people are the happiest people around. I savage self-awareness as unnecessary angst. You get the idea. Often Iget confused and I come out on the side of emptiness which just delights me. Now I will press “save” and see if wordpress does that. I love Bill Gates who breast-fed on a lactating intel chip.

So what does the title allude to. It is how I write. I excavate interiorly, I dig, I scratch and I spade. I crack open geodes and break down shale to get at some “truth” of the matter. Oh, I know when I am there; it is this writer’s “G” spot. (Isn’t writing when it’s going well orgasmic?)  Of late I cannot seem to open that door as I struggle with myself to write about emptiness in as much a serious vein as I write about awareness.  The writing comes and goes fitfully. I am with it. I have that boa’s fucking head in my grasp and I will not let go of the beast until its caged. As you may well know, reader, writer, interested party, we are only sacks of shit and skin ruled by eruptive and often volcanic emotional sources. I realize that well and I count on that seething cauldron to produce the best writing I can do. I am only a utensil to modulate and moderate its strength. I am the spigot. I just associated to Star Trek. I found it enjoyable when I realized that Kirk was the ego, Doc the id, and Spock the superego. Once you have that in mind watch Shatner work the other two, using reason always to get out of predicaments, much as our own ego does for us. Remember, though, the action comes from the id.

I am about 50 pages into the pamphlet or book, some 13,000 words and I have still not nailed the head of the boa to the plank with a tenpenny nail (that’s three inches).  However, I am patient and now and then the unconscious oozes out a few paragraphs. At my age I can only think of the corollary with regard to my own sexuality. Moving on, hmmm!, I started off with a kind of writer’s despair that the work had no merit. It does. I sent a PDF file to my son (Big shot, he thinks he’s a hacker) and he told me to continue. I found that encouraging. If we heard that as a child, continue, go on, reach for platinum, not gold, the world is not the Olympics, your inner self is the medal to obtain, what larks, Pip what larks!

As a tangential note so that you can understand my son’s wild yet dry sense of humor. He works as a high end technician at Morningstar in Chicago. He is an artist and that is how he eats, but it is not his metier. Anyhow he relates how a woman from another department came to him with a problem. Her mouse was not working. Jordan tells me she was a nice person and she did not ask him to come down several floors to handle the situation. What she did to prove the mouse was dead was to shake it vigorously in front of my son as a display of how dead it was and queried him as how he would help her. His response was along these lines, “You only shake people like that.” I now call him the levity that came from my loins.

So the son saves the father, this is not Christianity folks, not from me.

i know no fear as I end this blog. It will be saved or it will not be saved, all this religious terminology. Jews are not into being saved. We tire of that. We tired of that centuries ago. Now we are more into saving one another.  I bid you adieu, having run out of steam and feeling a need to get back to The Optimist’s Rag.