mathiasbfreese.com

Working On The Optimist’s Rag and Other Extraneous Matters

mathias — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:12:27 +0000

You may have noticed some gibberish when you came on site. All I know is that it is WordPress database error or that is what it says,. My son is on it. I haven’t the slightest clue as to what that means. When I go into the greasy compacted mossy mass of information provided by Wordpress I am inundated with geekspeak. Clearly the digital age destroys by nature, apparently, the well-turned sentence. Clarity disappears altogether and what is “clear” only a geek can grasp. Wouldn’t it be loverly if instructions as to how to repair the above were as basic as the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle.

So bear with it as my son gives it a mechanistic prostate exam, truly digital.

Charlene Martel at http://theliteraryword.blogspot.com has corresponded with me over these past few days and I have forwarded copies of my short story collection and copies of the tetralogy for her to review and to put on bookcrossing. Char, as she likes to be called, has been supportive of my writings and what I appreciate is the sense of her excitement expressed through email. To be alive nowadays, or any days, is a rare treat for me to experience, given that a large portion of my life in a secular way was to revivify the dead into living lives while in therapy. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, clients only needed a charge, a boost, a human being to help them start up. I was no reanimator. Without grandiosity, I was alive so that I worked on making them alive. In this culture, in any culture, forces put us to asleep while we are “awake.” To wit, the thing I loathe the most about Cheney, Bush and Rove are their malignant efforts to put us to sleep. I just associated to a line from Shakespeare or Ray Bradbury, “Something wicked comes this way.” I look at the aforementioned three as a writer, man and therapist and I know in my gut, in the fabric of my self, how morally and ethically deformed they are. Cheney’s mother must have lactated battery acid. Rove is fearful of loving sex, he might turn into shattered ice, and Bush has the recovered addict’s false bonhomie.

Now that I have cleared my mind, I go to the Optimist’s Rag, which is a booklet, perhaps a book, I am writing which is going nowhere and may very well be deadly dull; however, I am writing and that keeps me at it, practicing. My intent is to publish it cheaply as an extended pamphlet to give away to friends as an encore piece to my other scribblings. The intent is simple. It is a grotesque self-help book, a savage parody I hope, in which I try to help the reader acquire a sense of emptiness, and if he or she wishes to go beyond that, to acquire what I term “acute emptiness.” I try to put in all the tricks of the self-help book: bulleted lists; short tasks; fill-ins; parables; Oprahesque “wisdoms,” literary “sound bites,” whatever. I despair at moments of it taking on any real meaning but I do know that editing, pruning, severe pruning, might rescue this book. I am on a lark and I just keep babbling, for it really is an expression of my self at this late stage in my life. I am having fun ripping off some of the articles on this site and twisting and disfiguring them so that awareness becomes despicable and emptiness esteemed. I argue that the truly empty person is the happy person and that the self-aware person suffers from self-imposed agony and anxiety. You choose. Sometimes I creep in between the crevices that connect awareness and emptiness so that I can comment on both.

To wit, Nietzsche’s quotation — one of my favorites — is “knowledge is death.” The empty person realizes that this smacks of awareness, causes unnecessary grief whereas denial of death is a really promising element of the acutely empty person and like all defenses, it should be admired, one to be grateful about. And so I work with this, sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously, always deadpan and dry. Sometimes I get so confused that I end up “empty.”

For you movie lovers as I move sideways here, I have a sleeper for you — see The Red House with Edward G. Robinson, directed by Delmer Daves; masterful Freudian flic with a beautiful score. No more than a few dollars. I am about to order my copy. The last scene shows how brilliant Robinson was. Did you know he spoke 8 languages?

Live!

A Reading At El Ojito

mathias — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:24:32 +0000

I gave a reading at Randy Ford’s cultural center in downtown Tucson. Sam Henrie, CEO of Wheatmark, a POD publishing house, attended to hear me read. If you want some feedback about Wheatmark comment at the end of this blog. Wheatmark has published both my books and I am exceedingly pleased with the quality of the paper, the cover stock and the font as well as the editing. My son did both covers and if you are interested in what he can do, write him at jdfreese@hotmail.com. Also in attendance was Malcolm Alexander, one other Poet, Curt (I didn’t get his last name), Randy himself. The attendance was small because the center had moved and a new season was just beginning. Go to Randy’s website, http://www.elojitosprings.com to see scheduled events and readings.

Jordan is a graphic artist who has won some major prizes. In a few weeks freezelab.com will be up and running as he is revamping his entire site. He is also a fine photographer, cinemaphile, works on animation and recently leaped from a plane at 14,000 feet as a personal deed he had to do for himself. He is 31; and the best part, he is a man. So saith his Jewish father.

I am scheduled for a major reading of the tetralogy in September. I am seriously contemplating buying horns for the reading. Jews at one time, perhaps today, were associated with having horns and secondly, my book is “devilish” so I will complete the canvas. And since I am Jewish, former teacher and therapist, I feel compelled to teach or share this bit of arcane material with you.

This falls under the category of: Did you know? Accordingly, when Michelangelo prepared for his sculpting of the statue of Moses he read the Bible in the vernacular. Having been translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then to Italian, in the description of Moses descending from Sinai with the two tablets in his hands, he is described as beeing illumined or having a halo about his head. When halo was translated several times from one language to another and finally into Italian, halo became horn. And so Michelangelo carved two nice horns into Moses’ head. And so began mischief of a very unwholesome kind. Ergo, Jews had horns. I know a woman who traveled across the west to see her husband during the years of W.W.II. In those days it was not uncommon for women to wear hats with a veil. I am so aged that as a child I had seen that. On the seat next to her was another woman and they began to converse to ease the hardship of such a tedious train ride. Soon it was revealed that my woman friend was Jewish. At the end of the ride the other woman felt compelled to ask her if she would be so kind as to lift her veil as she had never seen horns before. No comment. And thank you western civilization.

As a member of a remarkable minority and someone who is presently hated by a fair share of “humanity,” I revel in my Judaism, secular that it is. Why? you might proffer. The answer is mysterious. You figure it out: Because it has made me free!

And away we go. Returning now to the reading, I read “Juan Peron’s Hands” which you can read on this blog under Pages. It is an experimental story that rides on two tracks. See for yourself. The poets read in their two disparate styles and Randy read of an adventure he had with his wife, Peg, back in 1972 when they both traveled in Sumatra on bikes (why?) and that narrative can be read at his site: http://www.thebrainpan.wordpress.com. For some reason the computer created this space avoiding all attempts to correct it. And so it goes.

While this is going on in my life I have been working on a tentative piece called The Optimist’s Rag which is a feeble attempt on my part to write a self-help manual for the chronically empty with a feverish secondary effort to also reach the acutely empty. The premise is simple: I am sending up everything I know about our mercantile culture, from Cheney to plasticine Laura Bush, from the automaton Karl Rove who could not hold my mitt when I played softball as a kid, for he is an evil nerd, the mechanistic feces of a Darth Vader.

Several times I wanted to delete this entire screed but I am having fun just writing and writing about emptiness and how to attain it in this culture. The entire argument is to help the empty reader to attain a degree of emptiness while avoidng awareness of any kind. I have used quotations, mini-essays, short observations, lists and all the paraphernalia of a self-help book with the intent to publish a small pamphlet as a giveaway to friends and others. It is not satire. It is dry savagery. It is fully constructed bile, and it may be deadly to read, but again, writer, reader, whose life is it? If you go to Pages again and look up Ten Canons which is an attempt to help one see or become aware, I take that very piece and attack it, deconstruct it as folly. I then went on to write a new Ten Canons for the empty person. Does it all work? Who knows? I do now that like a freshly roasted piece of meat it needs to “rest,” thank you Top Chef. When and if I will bore you by putting up a few pages.

I will close with an interior observation. Like me, have you ever had the feeling that you are not riding the crest of a wave which is very powerful in turns of sensibility? Rather, I feel, using the sea analogy, as if I am spume and I have not the slightest idea as to where or when I will moisten a rock or a rotten piece of pier lattice. I am spume this past week.

Adieu.

TROGLODYTES SAY I TETRALOGY COVER IS A HATE CRIME

mathias — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:47:53 +0000

Randy Ford runs a cultural center and is a playwright out of Tucson. I gave a reading at El Ojito ( www.elojitosprings.com) of The i Tetralogy and Randy put a copy up for sale which was kind of him. And I thought that was the end of it.

Apparently not. I urge you to visit http://thebrainpan.wordpress.com. When I came across the site I thought it was a review of the book by Randy. It is and it is not. The cover has swastikas on it and a Jewish star. The thought police did not like the swastikas. I will not tamper with Randy’s prose so read about it.

One reader of my short story collection and a blogger wrote to me about this: …”I just read the article at brainpan and, wow, it’s ridiculous. But, on the other hand…maybe it will draw some attention to your book. Banned books often end up up classics, so negative attention can be good in the long run. But, wow. The cover illustrates the concept of Nazi intent perfectly, in my mind. The objective was to eradicate Jews, after all. A crunched Jewish star surrounded by swastikas makes complete sense. The only thing offensive about it is that such a horror occurred.”

I think I have to share Randy’s emails to me. At brainpan read the comments and you will see my first white heat commentary. After that, I told randy to ask me in to El Elojito this coming Monday to do a reading from my new book as Randy informed me he has moved to new quarters; I also suggested that we schedule a reading of the Tetralogy for September that would be better publicized. My background requires confrontation.

E-mail: “…Since your reading, I have displayed your book at El Ojito and still do. One of our supporters tried to pressure me into removing the book because “it was horrible” or something of the sort. A ciustomer called the police because of the book’s cover (I’m sure he never read it) and reported it as a ‘hate crime.’ The police came, but nothing came of that. At the same time I had an art piece on display with a swastika on it…somehow it was attached to our current president (I forget how), and a contractor of public-funded service in which El Ojito was entitled refused to provide those services as long as I had swastikas in the place…your book and the art piece. I refused to bend and never received the services. In dollars and cents I don’t know how much that cost me. I’m sure it would’ve helped but 4th Avenue was not the right location for us. Come check out our place on 6th Avenue. Our book nook has never really taken off. Hopefully some day it will.

I think you wrote a brilliant book. I read it on the job. Randy.”

E-mail: “I just remembered that I failed to tell you that your book has generated many conversations at El Elojito. At some point we felt the need to put a sign up that said ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ or some such thing. I’m not sure that was necessary but we did it. Good night. Randy”

Tucscon. Borat once visited a saloon in Tucson in an early TV episode before he got really famous. And in that amalgam of eastern accent and extraneous idiom, he began to sing. If I remember correctly the song had this title –”Let us throw the Jew into the well.” Within five minutes he had the crowd singing along — only Borat. And how telling. Now trhat I have smeared Tucson, let me go on. Philip Roth recently published a book that had a swastika on it and in 1960 (!) only years after the war William Shirer published his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in brown cover and white swastika emblazoned in the center of the design. I usually do not explain why I do things, much less why I write things. I have little patience for the thought police.

However, citizens, for that honorable and courageous Randy Ford who I had no abiding connection to until this past day or so — but I do now, email him your thoughts.

As for me, I can more than handle it. It is not for nothing that the first association I had for all this was Shadrach, Meschach and Abendigo. And they came out alive and untouched!

Of Late

mathias — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:36:43 +0000

Of late I had my Dahon folding bike serviced. It is a sweet little thing, perfect for bicycling about this geriatric park I live in. I bike with my yellow Giro helmet. For more than two years the bike languished in my garage but now that I have lost 19 pounds in Weight Watchers it is time to include exercise as the next component. My pressure has been reduced to that of a young man’s. It is more a regimen than a diet which I can adapt to readily.

Clearly I purchase things and then it takes a really long time for me to use them. An interesting behavior I have repeated over and over, the good old repetition compulsion at work. Recently an interest in model trains has been reawakened in me. I went to EBay and bought locomotives, passenger cars, Kato Unitrack and some freight cars. I like the smallness of n scale. I am now surfing for a table to put a layout on. What is interesting is how I go about things. I buy. I wait, far too long at times. And it all comes down to fear. It is the risk of exercising oneself in order to attain pleasure. The Dahon is like that. As I have told Jane, I am much like the horse in the pasture who will shy away if you come near; however, if you leave a slice of apple or some sugar, and if it is to my liking, I will come for it. I cannot be rushed nor expedited, everything in my own time.

An idiosyncrasy of mine, I suppose. Let us deal with model trains. Returning to this hobby I see that I do not want to become obsessed with it. One can get lost in just “perfecting” a layout on a 4′X8′ table or door. There are all kinds of tracks, some realistic, some not; there are layouts which you can use and software on that; there is a whole array of kit structures, some made of resin, plastic or laser cut wood; and then there are the trains themselves — I am inclined to European makes, the workmanship, to wit. And then you pick an era, steam engine versus diesel, and all the other choices. At times I read and collect articles and all the detritus to get started. But I don’t get started. I delay. I amass data. I read, not too bad to do that. I learn, I dream, I configure. However, I may just fall back upon the simple idea to buy a starter set, throw it down on a table and watch the sweet harmonic lunacy of a model train circling in figure eights or ovals.

I did much the same thing years ago with stamps, revivifying an interest I had as a teenager. I read, I ordered panes and first day covers, a stamp book and began to collect only stamps that appealed to my sense of the beautiful — butterfles, for one. A whole pane of butterflies is like an art object. And then i wrote an article about stamps which was published. I may very well put it up on this blog as I may also put my observations about trains into a piece. I am not that good with my hands so that is why I don’t want to be consumed by this hobby; it is my eye that is my skill, my observational powers.

I wrote about a demented train set in The i Tetralogy which replicated Auschwitz. Gunther got off on that set as it reproduced his “halycon” days as a Nazi officer in the camp. I researched the Marklin catalog to select the correct “era” and the kind of cattle cars used to write about the set with care and expertise. And now I have to choose what trains and area I want to develop. I like the idea of long stretches for a train to chug along and that makes me lean toward the Southwest. I am beginning to consider to buy kits that model sheds, hardware stores and the like for this kind of route. And so again I pore over things, read more, dream and think more and try to not rush into it all. It may all be a temporary fling. I seek out other interests to keep myself “vital.” Cameras used to and still do that for me until they turned the way of digital which is an arcane mystery for me that I do not wish to explore.

As an example of the above, I recently bought Jane a nanopod, cute little device that holds about 240 songs. Jane is computer wise, but not savvy and she had a hell of a time going to the computer and downloading the songs. So here again Apple beautifully seduces and you have to be a Rhodes scholar to decipher it all. I find it ridiculous to buy a device and then spend hours trying to go to a computer and download it all. I can look at my photographs quicker than you can go to the screen and access yours. I like the tactility of it all. Young kids on the block can understand the nanopod in a flash; I agree but unwillingly they are in the unconscious worldwide plot to do away with critical thinking.

I am too old or too long in the tooth to buy into the new as better. Human beings are the same old cro-magnon creature but this time arrayed with intel chips up its ass. The brain case has not increased; the devices have multiplied. We are still the infant with the rattle, but now infinitely more dangerous. Our bag of tricks keeps enlarging, but we do not. Wouldn’t it be loverly for every thousand years we could say that mankind has improved cerebrally, psychological and emotionally? We have not improved upon ourselves, not yet, that is; if you speak of civilization, also speak of civilization and its discontents and read a little Freud. Civilization is a pie crust containing a nether batter of Medusan snakes. Keep your eye on the snakes and not on Apple. What an interesting unconscious association — snakes and apples; make of it what you will, reader.

I watch myself interiorly, try to understand rationally, psychologically as I wade into my disappearance. I do not mourn my past. It was a given. Whether or not I spent it wisely is for me to determine and not my biographer. I try to do something meaningfully each day and this blog is in that category for it is an expression of a self typing onto a screen for you to read as you graze across the world wide web. I look at my self ”filled” with all the personal things that describe who I am — a quick perusal, reader:

I scan blogrolls to determine if this or that site might be good to forward a query about Down to a Sunless Sea”; I nap; I read the Times, New Yorker that I am; I run to the computer to see if queries are answered; I Google my name or the titles of my books to see if there have been reviews; I nosh here and there; I order my papers, making folders and folders and folders to contain and organize all the flurry I put into print; oh, I worry, not excessively so; and I work, very, very hard on considering, reflecting, thinking about what to do with my daily life and the days ahead; I think of my son, Jordan, who recently jumped out of a plane at 14,000 feet (age 31), thinking he is a fucking Israeli — perhaps he is; I write some new pieces or struggle with them; I edit Gruffworld which is not going well; I make love to Jane; I shower with a fragrant soap which is my favorite; I shave every other day which is delightful, using a good cream from France; I go on Sundays to Einstein’s to have a bagel (6 points worth on the diet) with onions and tomatoes smeared with cream cheese; I pursue me. I feel as if I am the only Freese extant in this quadrant of the world, the asshole known as Green Valley, Arizona. I experience myself as a mammoth coming to an epic end. I do not obsess. I experience anxiety, dread and fear and am hapless and helpless in the face of these human feelings which are a given of my very humanity. I seek no fame, I seek without ambition; I have few friends, I take no prisoners, I am honest, I dwell within my own integrity. Not only do I march to the sound of my own drummer — godammit, I made the drum itself.

And of late my very integrity has been attacked. Although Martin Luther was a son-of-a-bitch and rabid anti-semite, he did say one thing which I admire when he was under assault for his beliefs: “Here I stand!” Bravo. And so I declare to the wolves at my door, Here I stand! I leave on that cryptic note, dear reader.

Reviews And Other Matters

mathias — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:12:15 +0000

I’d like to mention a few recent reviews which are making me feel quite light-headed. See http://thefix-online.com/reviews/down-to-a-sunless-sea/ for a story by story analysis; quite impressive. Aeron Hick’s review is at http://metamorphosesonline.blogspot.com/2008/07/aerons-review-down-to-sunless-sea-by.html and is generous in nature. Harry Markov lives in Bulgaria and is only nineteen and his review is at http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot.com/ And today Maureen Nixon writes a rave at http://randomdistractions.blogapot.com/2008/07/down-to-a-sunless-sea-review.html. All in all, I feel enriched by these reviews, not agreeing with some judgments, agreeing with a few others. Only Maureen Nixon in all these reviews realized that the mother in “Herbie” is a prick. (if the sites don’t click on, as I am not proficient in this idiocy, you can google the .com names.)

Today Jane and I will go over Sojourner again; I will rewrite at points that Jane feels are unclear, et al. And then she writes her introduction. The genesis of this novel was a short story I wrote between 1969 and 1972 which I later expanded into a novel, my very first. Gruffworld, which I am now “editing,” is become tedious — not a good sign. I may hire an editor to clean out the deadwood and quicken the pace, although I feel it has a lot of merit to it, greased as it is with Freud and Krishnamurti. It contains some of my best descriptions. So publication of Sojourner first and then I will follow up with Gruffworld.

While I’m at it, if you wish to have me review a book of yours take a look a few days back to my announcement of a litblog. Details and requirements are listed. By now, if you have returned to my blog here and there, you sense that I am from another era and another sensibility. I am serious about my own work and I will approach yours with due diligence.

I would like to end my years on earth with a shelf laden with several books that complete my story here on the third planet from the sun. I write for me and my family. In this way I am not contaminated by the teat of materialism and authorial avarice. In September I will attend the yearly Society of Southwestern Authors Conference. It runs for two days and has many workshops given by pros. Other than the usual human behaviors at conferences like these, one sees the neediness and the angst to be published at any cost by some attendants. It is more sad than pathetic. And grist for my own mill. As far as I am concerned, the only task for a writer is to be free and if he or she is free, what they write is free as well — authentic and real and passionate.

For a take on me which reflects my general attitude, see http://www.gvnews.com/articles/2008/07/12/columns/columns04.txt which apeared in a local paper on 12 July. I was at play with the reporter.

As I reflect, given the two books now out, Sojourner is a departure, although it was written years before. The short stories were written over a period of 30 years. I learned my craft while writing short stories. I became terse and concise, something which I am on occasion criticized for. Go know. As I’ve written before, I write, let us say, 20 pages knowing that I will cut back to 10. I allow my unconscious to spew, to erupt and then the superego kicks in to censor and restrict. If i hadn’t been through my own therapy and had not gone on to be a shrink, I don’t think I would have attained that self-liberating quality. You know as well as I do a writer is very lucky if he or she has a sentence or paragraph in his or her book that is solely the creation of the unconscious. When I trust the unconscious I am free, like the prometheus Djinn in The Thief of Bagdad.”

I am moving from editing Sojourner and Gruffworld, to scouring for bloggers to review my book, to reading about n-scale model trains as I am returning to an interest from childhood, to reading, to riding my Dahon, a folding bike. While working as a shrink I remember a story I would tell clients who became fixated on only one thing and so were stuck. I would ask them to describe the ocean at a beach. I would ask that they describe the waves as the broke upon the beach. At last not a few realized that water came upon the beach at different places and with different energies, so that some water ran into the dry sands and other water just lisped upon wet sands. And then I’d asked them to comment on all that, and then with a little help by me we reached the understanding that much of life was like that; that water does not come upon the beach in a horizontal and perfect line; that while you are waiting to make coffee, you break the eggs, you put in the bread for toasting, you take your morning vitamins. And thus I was trying to educate them to be flexible, varied and to exercise all kinds of options while they go about living. And thus the sage ends this blog.

Passim

mathias — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:04:49 +0000

Often I go to blog and the damn essay vanishes, often because I don’t save it or whatever Gates has perversely devised. The last few days I have not felt the urge to write, for whatever reasons. I wrote a short piece which you can read in Pages called “The Artist Is Never Poor.” The upshot is that the well of the artist is continually flushed with writing water. So it isn’t that I have “dried” up. It is something else, a disinclination, if you will. I just associated to my birthday which is tomorrow. I will be 68. What is fire? What is love? What in the hell is 68? In Our Town Wilder talks about the passage of time in his homely and earthen way. I recall a line in which he says that the person across you in the morning at breakfast has eaten with you for about 50,000 times. Suddenly, you are there; suddenly you are old; “suddenly” which has taken years to manifest itself.

Well, I just saved that paragraph. I hope it doesn’t vanish. Of late I have been querying bloggers and reviewers about review copies often sent many months ago. Some of the responses are empty, unkind or insensitive, some dramatic or some odd. To wit:

“I decided not to write a review since it would have been mostly negative. It’s subjective I know, and I’ve seen several positive reviews and note that you have won several awards for your stories. But for me they read more like a pyschologists [sic] case notes than stories. I’m sure it’s just me and not the stories, since as I’ve noted it appears I’m alone in my disappointment.”

Go figure. As I said in my announcement that I will review books, I don’t buy into a non-review. I can take the heat. Life is short, nasty and brutish, good old Hobbes opined.

And then I receive this response.

“Matt,

“I am so sorry. I have fallen extremelly ill over the increasing months and have had to move home to be taken care of. Sadly it is more serious than I would have liked and I am not sure of my status. I hope that you can forgive me.

“I will try to rewrite a review soon but just to warn you I may be hospitalized in the near future. I apologize for my lack of professionlaism in this matter.”

It tears your heart out, doesn’t it. I sent him a few kind words; perhaps if he writes back I will direct him to my blogs on the colonoscopy. In this case fuck the review and take care of yourself, Doug.

It all comes down to priorities; that is why I am no longer bent out of shape by the weird responses I get to my work. Some bloggers, I sneakily detect, pile up books like Don Quixote so that they can admire them on their shelves, show others how “learned” they are. The job of a reader is to give the book away to another. I’ve become aware of blog “challenges,” in which — and I may have this altogether wrong – bloggers try to read as many books as possible under the challenge of a set amount of time. I resented that when my book was part of a reading challenge. So it isn’t what you read so much as it is how many books you read under the gun. Americana. Good old capitalistic competition. Nauseating.

Sixty eight years ago, a few months before Pearl Harbor, my mother in a hospital ward spread her thighs and a random presence was born. In August 1945 I dimly remember her getting excited about Japan’s surrender. And so time adds up.

At Harry’s Bar & American Grill

mathias — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:49:42 +0000

At Harry’s Bar & American Grill, Papa said, an epiphany comes late to each man and best of all in a clean, well-lighted place and best before dawn before the heat of day is best gone and the shadows stretch long and far into the night, la noche misterioso.

“Hombre, nada mucho,” Papa said.

He sat there under the light and the heat of the bulb was weak but it gave off a burnished glow much too weak.

“The light is good and bright and pleasant but the bar floor goes unwaxed,” the waiter said.

Papa sat off in a corner in the shade by the side on a bentwood beneath the bulb that gave light and a shot glass left its ring on the tablecloth. Across the way and through the wooden beads the hills looked like white rhinoceri. Papa brought the glass to his lips.

The waiter looked with despair at the unwaxed floor, and he thought of how Papa of late, now barrel-chested, grown gray, had looked in the shade off in a corner by the side on the chair beneath the bulb that gave no light.

Our papa who art in papa as it is in papa. Give us this papa our daily papa and papa us our papa as we papa our papa and papa us not into nada but deliver us from papa; pues papa. Hail nada full of nada, nada is with thee.

The waiter’s reflection was caught in the expresso machine.

The Blunted Sword of Damocles

mathias — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:48:14 +0000

All is well. The biopsy was benign. I need to see the doctor next year for another scope. I am being watched, I suppose. Otto Rank, a disciple of Freud, and a kind of genius — bedmate of Anais Nin — tells a story of his youth. Planning to shoot himself during a bout with Sturm und Drang, at the last moment he moved the weapon away from his head. He later observed, later that same day, that he felt so remarkably alive and vital; that he was again engaged with the world, and that the experience was more than relief, but ecstatic. I do not do the anecdote justice, but when I read it years ago I chose to remember it. I later incorporated it into a long article that was published about Rank in Pilgrimage.

I have been given a reprieve — until next time. Like trying to gather up a small bead of mercury on the floor, I cannot wrap my mind about this experience. Threat comes to self, threat is removed — all by chance and happenstance. I am left spinning like a skewed dreidel. I did not pray to god, irrelevant, immaterial, non-existent, a fraud perpetrated upon man and woman. I thought more of Rochelle and asked for her assistance. A prayer to an immortal which only made me feel better. Better a prayer to a passed loved one than a prayer to an idol of the mind.

I fall back upon myself in such dreadful instances and the few loving people about me, my son, Jane, she of the compassionate and practical mind. I believe I could blog about this all day, giving threads of associations, philosophical disquistions. But it all comes down to fear. It is fear that must be dealt with for it cripples and weakens resolve. Oh, one more thing, to those of you younger than I — the more a situation is repeated such as the one I just had, the less prior experience can help you with it. The past is dead in these cases. The answer is in the moment or, better still, the question is better posed in the present. So, when dire news comes again I just hope that I can handle it freshly, new, and look upon it as if it were for the first time. In this instance prior learning is useless. The event is too new, too pressing, too threatening. My appreciation to Cinderkeys for her thoughtfulness.

Self-Observing As A Defense Against Terror — Or Feeling Damn Helpless

mathias — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:15:52 +0000

On 7 July I had my second colonoscopy within 8 years. Supposedly I could have waited 10 years; however, the PA and I decided after a few words about the necessity of having it at all, to go ahead since I had initiated the doctor’s visit. I had no symptoms. I was being vigilant. After all, I want to be in the best possible health when I come to die.

The procedure went well, the nurses attended to me more than competently, things explained along the way. I associated to Soylent Green as I was being readied and “processed.” I had a choice of doctors and I went with a gastro man who had interned at Mount Sinai in the Bronx. Anyone trained there or in a New York hospital pays his or her dues. We chatted before the scoping about how he enjoyed New York pizza and he remarked that his 10 years in Manhattan was an experience he thought invaluable. And then the sand man put me to sleep.

I was roused from a sleep that was much like I imagine death to be like, complete non-existence. Ain’t bad. It is the leaving that is painful. The nurse said, to my displeasure, that 2 or 3 polyps were discovered and removed and that they would be biopsied. The doctor came by to tell me much the same and to call back on Thursday for the results. He did tell Jane that they looked benign but that if I had not attended to them they most likely would have turned cancerous. It was the randomness of the event, the circumstances by which I asked for this procedure that quite frankly shook me.

On Thursday i couldn’t get the results and was given a kind of run around which in hindsight was unavoidable; late Thursday the doctor’s assistant called to tell me that there were too many specimens to biopsy but on Friday morning she would call before noon to share the results. The perversity of waiting.

From Monday to Thursday I was unsettled, doing my drama queen material. I am writing this Thursday evening so I still don’t know. If it is not benign, what then? if it is benign, I need to report back next year, I believe the doctor told me. I don’t believe there is anything I can do to stop growing polyps. The nurse told me that some patients have a “farm” in their colon.

Quite frankly, I experienced fear, I am still experiencing fear, and there is nothing I can do except to feel it, which is unpalatable. I am less tense tonight and I don’t know why. I am not resigned to the results whatever they may be. I am not that kind of personality. I dwell in me in such situations. I am of an age that symptons and maladies will soon start showing up. I will be 68 on 23 July. I know a kind of paralysis comes over me –perhaps you, when one discovers such threats to the self. I had this occur when Rochelle was killed in an automobile accident. It is trauma that cannot, for the moment, be absorbed. I am trying to allay my anxiety, but trying to allay my anxiety is much like turning straw to gold, a fairy tale “reality.”

I have not had the will, and that is the word, to sit down to write this blog or any blog. The air of self flew out of me. I don’t know what the morrow will bring, but I do know I will now have to “watch” myself as if that is not what we all do all the time on levels unknown to us. The impending threat to self-existence is crucifying. I am not a person of equanimity; I am a high strung individual and a fighter, or I hope I am. The threat of a malignancy hovers this evening. I can only deal with it with reason and emotion, for there is nothing I can do to change the course of events. I am only a mere rudder. I’ll end here as I have no ending to come up with. I am in a sea of dread.

ANNOUNCING A LITBLOG

mathias — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:36:30 +0000

I have thought about reviewing specific books on these pages. Quite frankly, it is to encourage a give-and -take between readers or writers and this writer, who has expertise in some areas of the human soul.

If you wish to have a book reviewed by me, I will give it the attention it needs. I do not want to be rushed. You take a risk as I have experienced risk with bloggers. I will not be mean-sprited in the reviews although I do not suffer fools. I will not pull my punches. Some book review bloggers give me the option of not reviewing the book if they do not like it. Crapola!

To be a writer requires guts. So, I have my interests — I would like to review books about the Holocaust, historical fiction as well as non-fiction; collections of short stories interest me as well as collections of sci-fi stories such as Harlan Ellison produces. I favor fiction that moves me emotionally and then cerebrally, in that order. I like my writers brave.

I am attentive to detail so that I will get back to you quickly. If you peruse the queries I wrote for The i Tetralogy and Down to a Sunless Sea in these pages, forward a similar query to me. (In this way I get a sense of you). I am new at all this, but I am not new at living. For example, how would I put your review up on Amazon? I haven’t the slightest. So if you would enlighten me I would comply. In this exchange we share a writerly collegiality. No, you need not read my books unless you are inclined to. No, you needn’t pull your punches with me, for I am human as much as you are. It is all in how you express yourself — well, that is your job as a writer, isn’t it?

Finally, I am open to suggested parameters for running this litblog.

I look forward to hearing from you.

If you would go to blogcritics.org/ and read the interview with Mayra Calvani and then to pifmagazine.com for another interview with Derek Alger, editor, you will get a better sense of who I am. Work it out from there, friend.